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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
G-IFT OF
HENRY DOUGLASS BACON.
1877.
Accessions No. ../£J~£&.-. Shelf No. .. . >
THE
MISCELLANEOUS VOKKS
OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
SIE JAMES MACKINTOSH,
THREE VOLUMES,
COMPLETE IN ONE.
PHILADELPHIA:
CAREY AND HART.
1848.
Fruitful byT. K. & P. G. Collins.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE LONDON EDITION,
BY THE EDITOR.
THESE Volumes* contain whatever (with the exception of his History of England) is
oelieved to be of the most value in the writings of Sir James Mackintosh. Something of
method, it will be observed, has been attempted in their arrangement by commencing
with what is more purely Philosophical, and proceeding through Literature to Politics ;
each of those heads being generally, though not quite precisely, referable to each volume
respectively. With such selection would naturally have terminated his responsibility \
but in committing again to the press matter originally for the most part hastily printed,
the Editor has assumed — as the lesser of two evils — a larger exercise of discretion in the
revision of the text than he could have wished to have felt had been imposed upon him.
Instead, therefore, of continually arresting the eye of the reader by a notification of almost
mechanical alterations, he has to premise here that where inaccuracies and redundancies
of expression were obvious, these have been throughout corrected and retrenched. A few
transpositions of the text have also been made ; — as where, by the detachment of the
eleventh chapter of what the present Editor, on its original publication allowed to be called,
perhaps too largely, the " History of the Revolution of 1688," a stricter chronological order
has been observed, at the same time that the residue — losing thereby much of its frag
mentary character — may now, it is hoped, fairly claim to be all that is assumed in its new
designation. Of the contributions to periodical publications, such portions only find place
here as partake most largely of the character of completeness. Some extended quota
tions, appearing for the most part as notes on former occasions, have been omitted, with a
view to brevity, on the present; while, in addition to a general verification of the Author's
references, a few explanatory notes have been appended, wherever apparently needful,
by the Editor.
R. J. MACKINTOSH.
* The Miscellaneous Works of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, 3 vols. 8vo.f Lon
don: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1846.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
On the Philosophical Genius of Lord Bacon and Mr. Locke 17
A Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations 27
Life of Sir Thomas More 43
Appendix 81
A Refutation of the Claim on behalf of King Charles I. to the Authorship of the EIKilN
BASIAIKH 82
Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, chiefly during the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries. 94
Introduction ib.
Section I. Preliminary Observations 96
II. Retrospect of Ancient Ethics ... 99
III. Retrospect of Scholastic Ethics 104
IV. Modern Ethics Ill
V. Controversies concerning the Moral Faculties and the Social Affections 117
VI. Foundations of a more just Theory of Ethics 131
VII. General Remarks 175
Notes and Illustrations 188
An account of the Partition of Poland 198
Sketch of the Administration and Fall of Struensee 217
Statement of the Case of Donna Maria da Gloria, as a Claimant to the Crown of Por
tugal 225
Character of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis 235
Character of the Right Honourable George Canning 238
Preface to a Reprint of the Edinburgh Review of 1755 242
On the Writings of Machiavel 245
Review of Mr. Godwin's Lives of Edward and John Philips, &c. &c 249
Review of Rogers' Poems .* 254
Review of Madame de StaePs " De L'Allemagne" 260
Review of the Causes of the Revolution of 1688 271
CHAPTER I.— General state of affairs at home.— Abroad.— Characters of the
Ministry.— Sunderland.— Rochester.— Halifax.— Godolphin.— Jeffreys.— Fever-
sham. — His conduct after the victory of Sedgemoor. — Kirke. — Judicial pro
ceedings in the West.— Trials of Mrs. Lisle.— Behaviour of the King.— Trial
of Mrs. Gaunt and others.— Case of Hampden.— Prideaux.— Lord Brandon.—
Delamere ib,
CHAPTER II.— Dismissal of Halifax.— Meeting of Parliament.— Debates on the
Address. — Prorogation of Parliament. — Habeas Corpus Act. — State of the Ca
tholic Party.— Character of the Queen.— Of Catherine Sedley.— Attempt to
support the Dispensing Power by a Judgment of a Court of Law. — Godden V.
Hales. — Consideration of the Arguments. — Attack on the Church. — Establish
ment of the Court of Commissioners for ecclesiastical causes. — Advancement
of Catholics to offices. — Intercourse with Rome 284
a
xii CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER III.— State of the Army.— Attempts of the King to convert it.— The
Princess Anne. — Dryden. — Lord Middleton and others. — Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. — Attempt to convert Rochester. — Conduct of the Queen. —
Religious conference. — Failure of the attempt. — His dismissal 299
CHAPTER IV.— Scotland.— Administration of Queensberry .— Conversion of Perth.
— Measures contemplated by the King. — Debates in Parliament on the King's
letter. — Proposed bill of toleration — unsatisfactory to James. — Adjournment of
Parliament. — Exercise of prerogative. Ireland. — Character of Tyrconnel. —
Review of the state of Ireland. — Arrival of Tyrconnel. — His appointment as
Lord Deputy. — Advancement of Catholics to offices. — Tyrconnel aims at the
sovereign power in Ireland. — Intrigues with France 307
CHAPTER V.— Rupture with the Protestant Tories.— Increased decision of the
King's designs. — Encroachments on the Church establishment. — Charter-House.
— Oxford, University College.— Christ Church.— Exeter College, Cambridge.—
Oxford, Magdalen College. — Declaration of liberty of conscience. — Similar at-
. tempts of Charles. — Proclamation at Edinburgh. — Resistance of the Church. —
Attempt to conciliate the Nonconformists. — Review of their sufferings. — Bax
ter. — Bunyan. — Presbyterians. — Independents. — Baptists. — Quakers. — Ad
dresses of thanks for the declaration 319
CHAPTER VI.— D' Adda publicly received as the Nuncio.— Dissolution of Parlia
ment.— Final breach.— Preparations for a new Parliament.— New charters. —
Removal of Lord Lieutenants. — Patronage of the Crown. — Moderate views of
Sunderland. — House of Lords. — Royal progress. — Pregnancy of the Queen. —
London has the appearance of a Catholic city 337
CHAPTER VII.— Remarkable quiet.— Its peculiar causes.— Coalition of Notting
ham and Halifax. — Fluctuating counsels of the Court. — "Parliamentum Pacifi-
cum." — Bill for liberty of conscience. — Conduct of Sunderland. — Jesuits 350
CHAPTER VIII.— Declaration of Indulgence renewed.— Order that it should be
read in Churches. — Deliberations of the clergy. — Petition of the Bishops to the
King. — Their examination before the Privy Council, committal, trial, and ac
quittal. — Reflections. — Conversion of Sunderland. — Birth of the Prince of Wales.
—State of Affairs 359
CHAPTER IX. — Doctrine of obedience. — Right of resistance.— Comparison of
foreign and civil war. — Right of calling auxiliaries. — Relations of the people of
England and of Holland 380
Memoir of the Affairs of Holland, 1667—1686 384
Discourse read at the opening of the Literary Society of Bombay 398
Vindicae Gallicae :— A Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers,
against the accusations of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, including some
Strictures on the late Production of Mons. de Calonne 404
Introduction ib.
Section I. The General Expediency and Necessity of a Revolution in France 406
II. Of the composition and character of the National Assembly 424
III. Popular excesses which attended the Revolution 430
IV. New Constitution of France 436
V. English admirers vindicated 448
VI. Speculations on the probable consequences of the French Revolution
in Europe 457
Reasons against the French War of 1793 461
On the State of France in 1815 466
On the Right of Parliamentary Suffrage 472
A Speech in Defence of John Peltier, accused of a Libel on the First Consul of France 484
A Charge, delivered to the Grand Jury of the Island of Bombay, on the 20th July, 1811 504
Speech on the Annexation of Genoa to the Kingdom of Sardinia, delivered in the
House of Commons, April 27, 1815 508
CONTENTS. xfci
PAGE
Speech on moving for a Committee to inquire into the State of the Criminal Law ;
delivered in the House of Commons, March 2, 1819 , .... 524
Speech on Mr. Brougham's Motion for an Address to the Crown, with Reference to the
Tria.1 and Condemnation of the Rev. John Smith, of Demerara ; delivered in
the House of Commons, June 1, 1824 534
Speech on presenting a Petition from the Merchants of London for the Recognition of
the Independent States, established in the Countries of America, formerly sub
ject to Spain; delivered in the House of Commons, June 15, 1824 549
Speech on the Civil Government of Canada ; delivered in the House of Commons,
May 2; 1828 564
Speech on moving for Papers relative to the Affairs of Portugal; delivered in the
House of Commons, June 1, 1829 569
Speech on the second Reading of the Bill to amend the Representation of the People
of England and Wales; delivered in the House of Commons, July 4, 1831 580
Appendix 591
ON THE
PHILOSOPHICAL GENIU!
OF
V1ESITY]
\#*
OIH1
«> __
LORD BACON AND KR. LOCO.
"HISTORY,' 'says Lord Bacon, "is Natural, [
Civil or Ecclesiastical, or Literary \ whereof ,
of.the three first I allow as extant, the fourth :
/ note as deficient. For no man hath pro
pounded to himself the general state of learn
ing, to be described and represented from,
age to age, as many have done the works of
Nature, and the State civil and ecclesias
tical j without which the history of the world |
seemeth to me to be as the statue of Poly- !
phemus with his eye out ; that part being I
wanting which doth most show the spirit i
and life of the person. And yet I am not
ignorant, that in divers particular sciences, as
of the jurisconsults, the mathematicians, the
rhetoricians, the philosophers, there are set
down some small memorials of the schools,
— of authors of books ; so likewise some bar
ren relations touching the invention of arts
or usages. But a just story of learning, con
taining the antiquities and originals of know
ledges, and their sects, their inventions, their
traditions, their divers administrations and
managings, their oppositions, decays, depres
sions, oblivions, removes, with the causes
and occasions of them, and all other events
concerning learning throughout the ages of
the world, I may truly affirm to be wanting.
The use and end of which work I do not so
much design for curiosity, or satisfaction of
those who are lovers of learning, but chiefly
for a more serious and grave purpose, which
is this, in few words, ' that it will make learned
men wise in the use and administration of
learning.' "t
Though there are passages in the writings
of Lord Bacon more splendid than the above,
few, probably, better display the union of all
the qualities which characterized his philo
sophical genius. He has in general inspired
a fervour of admiration which vents itself in
indiscriminate praise, and is very adverse
to a calm examination of the character of
his understanding, which was very peculiar,
and on that account described with more than
ordinary imperfection, by that unfortunately
* These remarks are extracted from the Edin
burgh Review, vol. xxvii. p. 180 ; vol. xxxvi. p.
229.— ED.
t Advancement of Learning, book ii.
3
vague and weak part of language which at
tempts to distinguish the varieties of mental
superiority. To this cause it may be as
cribed, that perhaps no great man has been
either more ignorantly censured, or more un-
instructively commended. It is easy to de
scribe his transcendent merit in general terms
of commendation; for some of his great
qualities lie on the surface of his writings.
But that in which he most excelled all other
men, was the range and compass of his in
tellectual view and the power of contemplat
ing many and distant objects together without
indistinctness or confusion, which he himself
has called the "discursive" or "comprehen
sive" understanding. This wide ranging in
tellect was illuminated by the brightest
Fancy that ever contented itself with the
office of only ministering to Reason : and
from this singular relation of the two grand
faculties of man, it has resulted, that his phi
losophy, though illustrated still more than
adorned by the utmost splendour of imagery,
continues still subject to the undivided su
premacy of Intellect. In the midst of all
the prodigality of an imagination which,
had it been independent, would have been
poetical, his opinions remained severely ra
tional.
It is not so easy to conceive, or at least to
describe, other equally essential elements of
his greatness, and conditions of his success.
His is probably a single instance of a mind
which, in philosophizing, always reaches the
point of elevation whence the whole prospect
is commanded, without ever rising to such a
distance as to lose a distinct perception of
every part of it.* It is perhaps not less singu-
* He himself who alone was qualified, has de
scribed the genius of his philosophy hoih in respect
to the degree and manner in which he rose from,
particulars to generals: " Axiomata infima non
multum abexperientia nuda discrepant. Suprema
vero ilia et genera!issima(quae habentur) notionalia
sunt et abstracta, et nil habent solidi. At media
sunt axiomata illavera, et solida, et viva, in quibus
humanae res et fortunae sits sunt, et supra haec
quoque, tandem ipsa ilia generalissima, talia scili
cet quae non abstracta sint, sed per haec media
vere limitantur." — Novum Organum, lib. i. apho-
ris. 104,
B2 17
18
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
lar, that his philosophy should be founded at
once on disregard for the authority of men,
and on reverence for the boundaries pre
scribed by Nature to human inquiry ; that he
who thought so little of what man had done,
hoped so highly of what he could do ; that so
daring an innovator in science should be so
wholly exempt from the love of singularity
or paradox ; and that the same man who re
nounced imaginary provinces in the empire
of science, and withdrew its landmarks with
in the limits of experience, should also exhort
posterity to push their conquests to its utmost
verge, with a boldness which will be fully
justified only by the discoveries of ages from
which we are yet far distant.
No man ever united a more poetical style
to a less poetical philosophy. One great end
of his discipline is to prevent mysticism and
fanaticism from obstructing the pursuit of
truth. With a less brilliant fancy, he would
have had a mind less qualified for philoso-
.phical inquiry. His fancy gave him that
power of illustrative metaphor, by which he
seemed to have invented again the part of
language which respects philosophy ; and it
rendered new truths more distinctly visible
even to his own eye, in their bright clothing
of imagery. Without it, he must, like others,
have been driven to the fabrication of uncouth
technical terms, which repel the mind, either
by vulgarity or pedantry, instead of gently
leading it to novelties in science, through
agreeable analogies with objects already fa
miliar. A considerable portion doubtless of
the courage with which he undertook the re
formation of philosophy, was caught from the
general spirit of his extraordinary age, when
the mind of Europe was yet agitated by the
joy and pride of emancipation from long
bondage. The beautiful mythology, and the
poetical history of the ancient world, — not
yet become trivial or pedantic, — appeared
before his eyes in all their freshness and lus
tre. To the general reader they were then a
discovery as recent as the world disclosed by
Columbus. The ancient literature, on which
his imagination looked back for illustration,
had then as much the charm of novelty as
that rising philosophy through which his rea
son dared to look onwrard to some of the last
periods in its unceasing and resistless course.
In order to form a just estimate of this
wonderful person, it is essential to fix stead
ily in our minds, what he was not, — what he
did not do, — and what he professed neither
to be, nor to do. He was not what is called
a metaphysician : his plans for the improve
ment of science were not inferred by ab
stract reasoning from any of those primary
principles to which the philosophers of
Greece struggled to fasten their systems.
Hence he has been treated as empirical and
superficial by those who take to themselves
the exclusive name of profound speculators.
He was not, on the other hand, a mathema
tician, an astronomer, a physiologist, a chem
ist. He was not eminently conversant with
the particular truths of any of those sciences
which existed ir^jis time. For this reason,
he was underrated tven by men themselves
of the highest merit, and by some who had
acquired the most just reputation, by add ing-
new facts to the stock of certain knowledge.
It is not therefore very surprising to find,
that Harvey, " though the friend as well as
physician of Bacon, though he esteemed him
much for his wit and style, would not allow
him to be a great philosopher;" but said to
Aubrey, "He writes philosophy like a Lord
Chancellor/'' — "in derision," — as the. honest
biographer thinks fit expressly to add. On
the same ground, though in a manner not so
agreeable to the nature of his own claims on
reputation, Mr. Hume has decided, that Ba
con was not so great a man as Galileo, be
cause he was not so great an astronomer.
The same sort of injustice to his memory has
been more often committed than avowed, by
professors of the exact and the experimental
sciences, who are accustomed to regard, as
the sole test of service to Knowledge, a pel-
pable addition to her store. It is very true
that he made no discoveries : but his life
was employed in teaching the method by
wrhich discoveries are made. This distinc
tion was early observed by that ingenious
poet and amiable man, on whom we. by our
unmerited neglect, have taken too severe a
revenge, for the exaggerated praises be
stowed on him by our ancestors : —
" Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,
The barren wilderness he past,
Did on the very border stand
Of the blest promised land ;
And from the mountain top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and showed us it."*
The writings of Bacon do not even abound
with remarks so capable of being separated
from the mass of previous knowledge and
reflection, that they can be called new . This
at least is very far from their greatest dis
tinction : and where such remarks occur,
they are presented more often as examples
of his general method, than as important
on their own separate account. In physics,
which presented the principal field for dis
covery, and which owe all that they are. or
can be, to his method and spirit, the experi
ments and observations which he either made
or registered, form the least valuable part of
his writings, and have furnished some cul
tivators of that science with an opportunity
for an ungrateful triumph over his mistakes.
The scattered remarks, on the other hand, of
a moral nature, where absolute novelty is
precluded by the nature of the subject, mani
fest most strongly both the superior force
and the original bent of his understanding.
We more properly contrast than compare
the experiments in the Natural History, with
the moral and political observations which
enrich the Advancement of Learning, the
speeches, the letters, the History of Henry
VII., and, above all, the Essays, a book
which, though it has been praised with equal
Cowley, Ode to the Royal Society.
ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS OF BACON AND LOCKE.
19
fervour by Voltaire, Johnson and Burke, has
never been characterized with such exact
justice and such exquisite felicity of expres
sion, as in the discourse of Mr. Stewart.* It
will serve still more distinctly to mark the
natural tendency of his mind, to observe that
his moral and political reflections relate to
these practical subjects, considered in their
most practical point of view ; and that he
has seldom or never attempted to reduce to
theory the infinite particulars of that " civil
knowledge," which, as he himself tells us,
is, " of all others, most immersed in matter,
and hardliest reduced to axiom."
His mind, indeed, was formed and exer
cised in the affairs of the world : his genius
was eminently civil. His understanding was
peculiarly fitted for questions of legislation
and of policy; though his character was not
an instrument well qualified to execute the
dictates of his reason. The same civil wis
dom which distinguishes his judgments on
human affairs, may also be traced through
his reformation of philosophy. It is a prac
tical judgment applied to science. What he
effected was reform in the maxims of state,
— a reform which had always before been
unsuccessfully pursued in the republic of
letters. It is not derived from metaphysical
reasoning, nor from scientific detail, but from
a species of intellectual prudence, which,
on the practical ground of failure and dis
appointment in the prevalent modes of pur
suing knowledge, builds the necessity of
alteration, and inculcates the advantage of
administering the sciences on other princi
ples. It is an error to represent him either
as imputing fallacy to the syllogistic method,
or as professing his principle of induction to
be a discovery. The rules and forms of ar
gument will always form an important part
of the art of logic ; and the method of induc
tion, which is the art of discovery, was so
far from being unknown to Aristotle, that it
was often faithfully pursued by that great
observer. What Bacon aimed at, he accom
plished ; which was, not to discover new
principles, but to excite a new spirit, and to
render observation and experiment the pre
dominant characteristics of philosophy. It
is for this reason that Bacon could not have
been the author of a system or the founder
of a sect. He did not deliver opinions; he
taught modes of philosophizing. His early
* "Under the same head of Ethics, may be
mentioned the small volume to which he has given
the title of 'Essays,'— the best known and most
popular of all his works. It is also one of those
where the superiority of his genius appears to the
greatest advantage ; the novelty and depth of his
reflections often receiving a strong relief from the
triteness of the subject. It may be read from be
ginning to end in a few hours ; and yet, after the
twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in
it something unobserved before. This, indeed, is
a characteristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only
to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment
they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympa
thetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties"
Encyclopedia B^'annica, vol. i. p. 36.
immersion in civil affairs fitted him for this
species of scientific reformation. His politi
cal course, though in itself unhappy, proba
bly conduced to the success, and certainly
influenced the character, of the contemplative
part of his life. Had it not been for his ac
tive habits, it is likely that the pedantry and
quaintness of his age would have still more
deeply corrupted his significant and majestic
style. The force of the illustrations which
he takes from his experience of ordinary life,
is often as remarkable as the beauty of those
which he so happily borrows from his study
of antiquity. But if we have caught the
leading principle of his intellectual character,
we must attribute effects still deeper and
more extensive, to his familiarity with the
active world. It guarded him against vain
subtlety, and against all speculation that was
either visionary or fruitless. It preserved
him from the reigning prejudices of contem
plative men. and from undue preference to
particular parts of knowledge. If he had been
exclusively bred in the cloister or the schools,
he might not have had courage enough to
reform their abuses. It seems necessary that
he should have been so placed as to look on
science in the free spirit of an intelligent
spectator. Without the pride of professors,
or the bigotry of their followers, he surveyed
from the world the studies which reigned in
the schools ; and, trying them by their fruits,
he saw that they were barren, and therefore
pronounced that they were unsound. He
himself seems, indeed, to have indicated as
clearly as modesty would allow, in a case
that concerned himself, and where he de
parted from an universal and almost na
tural sentiment, that he regarded scholastic
seclusion, then more unsocial and rigorous
than it now can be, as a hindrance in the
pursuit of knowledge. In one of the noblest
passages of his writings, the conclusion " of
the Interpretation of Nature," he tells us,
"That there is no composition of estate or
society, nor order or quality of persons, which
have not some point of contrariety towards
true knowledge; that monarchies incline
wiu to profit and pleasure ; commonwealths
to glory and vanity ; universities to sophistry
and affectation ; cloisters to fables and unpro
fitable subtlety; study at large to variety:
and that it is hard to say whether mixture of
contemplations with an active life, or retiring
wholly to contemplations, do disable or hin
der the mind more."
But, though he was thus free from the
prejudices of a science, a school or a sect,
other prejudices of a lower nature, and be
longing only to the inferior class of those who
conduct civil affairs, have been ascribed to
him by encomiasts as well as by opponents.
He has been said to consider the great end
of science to be the increase of the outward
accommodations and enjoyments of human
life : we cannot see any foundation for this
charge. In labouring, indeed, to correct the
direction of study, and to withdraw it from
these unprofitable subtleties, it was neces-
20
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
sary to attract it powerfully towards outward
acts and works. He no doubt duly valued
" the dignity of this end, the endowment of
man's life with new commodities ;77 and he
strikingly observes, that the most poetical
people of the world had admitted the inven
tors of the useful and manual arts among
the highest beings in their beautiful mytho
logy. Had he lived to the age of Watt and
Davy, he would not have been of the vulgar
and contracted mind of those who cease to
admire grand exertions of intellect, because
they are useful to mankind : but he would
certainly have considered their great works
rather as tests of the progress of knowledge
than as parts of its highest end. His im
portant questions to the doctors of his lime
were : — " Is truth ever barren ? Are we the
richer by one poor invention, by reason of all
the learning that hath been these many
hundred years?77 His judgment, we may
also hear from himself: — "Francis Bacon
thought in this manner. The knowledge
whereof the world is now possessed, espe
cially that of nature, extendeth not to magni
tude and certainty of works." He found
knowledge barren ; he left it fertile. He did
not underrate the utility of particular inven
tions ; but it is evident that he valued them
most, as being themselves among the high
est exertions of superior intellect, — as being
monuments of the progress of knowledge, —
as being the bands of that alliance between
action and speculation, wherefrom spring an
appeal to experience and utility, checking
the proneness of the philosopher to extreme
refinements ; while teaching men to revere,
and exciting them to pursue science by these
splendid proofs of its beneficial power. Had
he seen the change in this respect, which,
produced chiefly in his own country by the
spirit of his philosophy, has made some de
gree of science almost necessary to the sub
sistence and fortune of large bodies of men,
he would assuredly have regarded it as an
additional security for the future growth of
the human understanding. He taught, as he
tells us, the means, not of the "amplification
of the power of one man over his country, nor
of the amplification of the power of that coun
try over other nations ; but the amplification
of the power and kingdom of mankind over
the world/7 — "a restitution of man to the
sovereignty of nature,77* — "and the enlarg
ing the bounds of human empire to the ef
fecting all things possible.77!— From the
enlargement of reason, he did not separate
the growth of virtue, for he thought that
" truth and goodness were one, differing but
as the seal and the print ; for truth prints
goodness.)7i
As civil history teaches statesmen to profit
by the faults of their predecessors, he pro
poses that the history of philosophy should
teach, by example, "learned men to become
* Of the Interpretation of Nature.
t New Atlantis.
J Advancement of Learning, book i.
wise in the administration of learning.'7 Early
immersed in civil affairs, and deeply imbued
with their spirit, his mind in this place con
templates science only through the analogy
of government, and considers principles of
philosophizing as the easiest maxims of po
licy for the guidance of reason. It seems
also, that in describing the objects of a his
tory of philosophy, and the utility to be de
rived from it. he discloses the principle of
his own exertions in behalf of knowledge ; —
whereby a reform in its method and maxims,
justified by the experience of their injurious
effects, is conducted with a judgment analo
gous to that civil prudence which guides a
wise lawgiver. If (as may not improperly
be concluded from this passage) the reforma
tion of science was suggested to Lord Bacon,
by a review of the history of philosophy, it
must be owned, that his outline of that history
has a very important relation to the general
character of his philosophical genius. The
smallest circumstances attendant on that out
line serve to illustrate the powers and habits
of thought which distinguished its author. It
is an example of his faculty of anticipating.
— not insulated facts or single discoveries, —
but (what from its complexity and refinement
seem much more to defy the power of pro
phecy) the tendencies of study, and the
modes of thinking, which were to prevail in
distant generations, that the parts which he
had chosen to unfold or enforce in the Latin
versions, are those which a thinker of the pre
sent age would deem both most excellent
and most arduous in a history of philosophy;
— "'the causes of literary revolutions; the
study of contemporary writers, not merely as
the most authentic sources of information,
but as enabling the historian to preserve in
his own description the peculiar colour of
every age, and to recall its literary genius
from the dead.77 This outline has the un
common distinction of being at once original
and complete. In this province, Bacon had
no forerunner ; and the most successful fol
lower will be he, who most faithfully ob
serves his precepts.
Here, as in every province of knowledge,
he concludes his review of the performances
and prospects of the human understanding,
by considering their subservience to the
grand purpose of improving the condition, the
faculties, and the nature of man, without
which indeed science would be no more than
a beautiful ornament, and literature would
rank no higher than a liberal amusement.
Yet it must be acknowledged, that he rather
perceived than felt the connexion of Truth
and Good. Whether he lived too early to have
sufficient experience of the moral benefit of
civilization, or his mind had early acquired too
exclusive an interest in science, to look fre
quently beyond its advancement ; or whether
the infirmities and calamities of his life
aad blighted his feelings, and turned away
his eyes from the active world; — to what
ever cause we may ascribe the defect, cer
tain it is; that his works want one excellence
ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS OF BACON AND LOCKE.
21
of the highest kind, which they would have
possessed if he had habitually represented
the advancement of knowledge as the most
effectual means of realizing the hopes of
Benevolence for the human race.
The character of Mr. Locke's writings can
not be well understood, without considering
the circumstances of the writer. Educated
among the English Dissenters, during the
short period of their political ascendency, he
early imbibed the deep piety and ardent spirit
of liberty which actuated that body of men ;
and he probably imbibed also, in their schools,
the disposition to metaphysical inquiries
which has every where accompanied the
Calvinistic theology. Sects, founded on the
right of private judgment, naturally tend to
purify themselves from intolerance, and in
time learn to respect, in others, the freedom
of thought to the exercise of which they owe
their own existence. By the Independent
divines who were his instructors, our philoso
pher was taught those principles of religious
liberty which they were the first to disclose
to the world.* When free inquiry led him
to milder dogmas, he retained the severe mo
rality which was their honourable singulari
ty, and which continues to distinguish their
successors in those communities which have
abandoned their rigorous opinions. His pro
fessional pursuits afterwards engaged him in
the study of the physical sciences, at the mo
ment when the spirit of experiment and ob
servation was in its youthful fervour, and
wrhen a repugnance to scholastic subtleties
was the ruling passion of the scientific world.
At a more mature age, he was admitted into
the society of great wits and ambitious poli
ticians. During the remainder of his life, he
was often a man of business, and always a
man of the world, without much undisturbed
leisure, and probably with that abated relish
for merely abstract speculation, which is the
inevitable result of converse with society
and experience in affairs. But his political
connexions agreeing with his early bias, made
him a zealous advocate of liberty7 in opinion
and in government ; and he gradually limited
his zeal and activity to the illustration of such
general principles as are the guardians of
these great interests of human society.
Almost all his writings (even his Essay it
self) were occasional, and intended directly
to counteract the enemies of reason and free
dom in his own age. The first Letter on
Toleration, the most original perhaps of his
* Orme's Memoirs of Dr. Owen, pp. 99 — 110.
In this very fcbie volume, it is clearly proved that
the Independents were the first teachers of reli
gious liberty. The industrious, ingenious, and
tolerant writer, is unjust to Jeremy Taylor, who
had no share (as Mr. Orme supposes) in the per
secuting councils of Charles II. It is an import
ant fact in the history of Toleration, that Dr.
Owen, the Independent, was Dean of Christ-
church in 1651, when Locke was admitted a mem
ber of that College, " under a fanatical tutor," as
Antony Wood says.
works, was composed in Holland, in a retire
ment where he was forced to conceal him
self from the tyranny which pursued him
into a foreign land ; and it was published in
England, in the year of the Revolution, to
vindicate the Toleration Act, of which he
lamented the imperfection.*
His -Treatise on Government is composed
of three parts, of different character, and
very unequal merit. The confutation of Sir
Robert Filmer, with which it opens, has long
lost all interest, and is now to be considered
as an instance of the hard fate of a philoso
pher who is compelled to engage in a conflict
with those ignoble antagonists who acquire a
momentary importance by the defence of
pernicious falsehoods. The same slavish ab
surdities have indeed been at various times
revived : but they never have assumed, and
probably never will again assume, the form
in which they were exhibited by Filmer.
Mr. Locke's general principles of government
were adopted by him, probably without much
examination, as the doctrine which had for
ages prevailed in the schools of Europe, and
which afforded an obvious and adequate jus
tification of a resistance* to oppression. He
delivers them as he found them, without
even appearing to have made them his own
by new modifications. The opinion, that
the right of the magistrate to obedience is
founded in the original delegation of power
by the people to the government, is at least
as old as the writings of Thomas Aquinas:!
and in the beginning of the seventeenth
century, it wras regarded as the common
doctrine of all the divines, jurists and philo
sophers, who had at that time examined
the moral foundation of political authority.}:
It then prevailed indeed so universally,
* "We have need," says he, "of more gene
rous remedies than have yet been used in our
distempers. It is neither declarations of indul
gence, nor acts of comprehension such as have yet
been practised or projected amongst us, that can
do the work among us. Absolute liberty, just and
true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, is the
thing that we stand in need of. Now, though
this has indeed been much talked of, I doubt it has
not been much understood, — I am sure not at all
practised, either by our governors towards the
people in general, or by any dissenting parties of
the people towards one another." How far are we,
at this moment [1821] , from adopting these admir
able principles ! and with what absurd confidence
do the enemies of religious liberty appeal to the
authority of Mr. Locke for continuing those re
strictions on conscience which he so deeply
lamented !
t " Non cujuslibet ratio facit legem, sed multi-
tudinis, aut principis , vicem multitudinis gerentis."
— Summa Theologian, pars i. quaest 90.
t " Opinionem jam factam communem omnium
Scholasticorum." Antonio de Dominis, De Re-
publica Ecclesiastica, lib. vi. cap. 2. Antonio de
Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato in Dalmatia,
having imbibed the free spirit of Father Paul,
inclined towards Protestantism, or at least towards
such reciprocal concessions as might reunite the
churches of the West. During Sir Henry Wot-
ton's remarkable embassy at Venice, he was pur-
suaded to go to England, where he was made
Dean of Windsor. Finding, perhaps, the Protest •
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
that it was assumed by Hobbes as the basis
of his system of universal servitude. The di
vine right of kingly government was a princi
ple very little known, till it was incuicatecl
in the writings of English court divines after
the accession of the Stuarts. The purpose of
Mr. Locke's work did not lead him to inquire
more anxiously into the solidity of these uni
versally received principles ; nor were there
at the time any circumstances, in the condi
tion of the country, which could suggest to
his mind the necessity of qualifying their
application. His object, as he says himself,
was "to establish the throne of our great
Restorer, our present King William j to make
good his title in the consent of the people,
which, being the only one of all lawful go
vernments, he has more fully and clearly
than any prince in Christendom • and to jus
tify to the world the people of England,
whose love of their just and natural rights,
with their resolution to preserve them, saved
the nation when it was on the very brink of
slavery and ruin.'7 It was essential to his
purpose to be exact in his more particular
observations: that part of his work is, ac
cordingly, remarkable for general caution,
and every where tiears marks of his own
considerate mind. By calling William "a
Restorer," he clearly points out the charac
teristic principle of the Revolution ; and suf
ficiently shows that he did not consider it
as intended to introduce novelties, but to
defend or recover the ancient laws and lib
erties of the kingdom. In enumerating cases
which justify resistance, he confines himself,
almost as cautiously as the Bill of Rights, to
the grievances actually suffered under the
Jate reign : and where he distinguishes be
tween a dissolution of government and a dis
solution of society, it is manifestly his object
to guard against those inferences which would
have rendered the Revolution a source of an
archy, instead of being the parent of order
and security. In one instance only, that of
taxation, where he may be thought to have
introduced subtle and doubtful speculations
into a matter altogether practical, his purpose
was to discover an immovable foundation
for that ancient principle of rendering the
government dependent on the representatives
of the people for pecuniary supply, which
first established the English Constitution ;
which improved and strengthened it in a
course of ages; and which, at the Revolution,
finally triumphed over the conspiracy of the
Stuart princes. If he be ever mistaken in his
premises, his conclusions at least are, in this
part of his work, equally just, generous, and
prudent. Whatever charge of haste or inac-
ants more inflexible than he expected, he returned
to Rome, possibly with the hope of more success
in that quarter. But, though he publicly abjured
his errors, he was soon, in consequence of some
free language in conversation, thrown into a dun
geon, where he died. His own writings are for
gotten ; but mankind are indebted to him for the
admirable history of the Council of Trent by Fa
ther Paul, of which he brought the MSS. with him
to London.
curacy may be brought against his abstract
principles, he thoroughly weighs, and mature
ly considers the practical results. Those who
consider his moderate plan of Parliamentary
Reform as at variance with his theory of
government, may perceive, even in this re
pugnance, whether real or apparent, a new
indication of those dispositions which ex
posed him rather to the reproach of being an
inconsistent reasoner, than to that of being
a dangerous politician. In such works, how
ever, the nature of the subject has. in some
degree, obliged most men of sense to treat it
with considerable regard to consequences ;
though there are memorable and unfortunate
examples of an opposite tendency.
The metaphysical object of the Essay on
Human Understanding, therefore, illustrates
the natural bent of the author's genius more
forcibly than those writings which are con
nected with the business and interests of men .
The reasonable admirers of Mr. Locke would
have pardoned Mr. Stewart, if he had pro
nounced more decisively, that the first book
of that work is inferior to the others; and
we have satisfactory proof that it was so
considered by the author himself, who, in.
the abridgment of the Essay which he pub
lished in Leclerc's Review, omits it altoge
ther, as intended only to obviate the preju
dices of some philosophers against the more
important contents of his- work.* It must be
owned, that the very terms " innate ideas''
and "innate principles," together with the
division of the latter into " speculative and
practical." are not only vague, but equivo
cal ] that they are capable of different senses :
and that they are not always employed in
the same sense throughout this discussion.
Nay, it will be found very difficult, after the
most careful perusal of Mr. Locke's first
book, to state the question in dispute clearly
and shortly, in language so strictly philoso
phical as to be free from any hypothesis.
As the antagonists chiefly contemplated by
Mr. Locke were the followers of Descartes,
perhaps the only proposition for which he
must necessarily be held to contend was,
that the mind has no ideas which do not arise
from impressions on the senses, or from re
flections on our own thoughts and feelings.
But it is certain, that he sometimes appears
to contend for much more than this proposi
tion ; that he has generally been understood
in a larger sense } and that, thus interpreted,
his doctrine is not irreconcilable to those
philosophical systems with which it has been
supposed to be most at variance.
These general remarks may be illustrated
by a reference to some of those ideas which
are more general and important, and seem
* " J'ai tache d'abord de prouver que notre es
prit est au commencement ce qu'on appelle un
tabula rasa, c'est-a-dire, sans idees et sans con-
noissances. Mais comme ce n'a etc que pour de-
truire les prejuges de quelques philosophies, j'ai
cru que dans ce petit abrege de mes principes, je
devois passer toutes les disputes preliminaires qui
composent le livre premier." Bibliotheque Uni-
verselle, Janv. 1688
ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS OF BACON AND LOCKE.
more dark than any others ; — perhaps only
because we seek in them for what is not to
be found in any of the most simple elements
of human knowledge. The nature of our
notion of space, and more especially of that
of time, seems to form one of the mysteries
of our intellectual being. Neither of these
notions can be conceived separately. Nothing
outward can be conceived without space;
for it is space which gives owtaess to objects,
or renders them capable of being conceived
as outward. Nothing can be conceived to
exist; without conceiving some time in which
it exists. Thought and feeling may be con
ceived, without at the same time conceiving
space ; but no operation of mind can be re
called which does not suggest the conception
of a portion of time, in which such mental
operation is performed. Both these ideas
are so clear that they cannot be illustrated,
and so simple that they cannot be defined :
nor indeed is it possible, by the use of any
•words, to advance a single step towards ren
dering them more, or otherwise intelligible
than the lessons of Nature have already
made them. The metaphysician knows no
more of either than the rustic. If we confine
ourselves merely to a statement of the facts
which we discover by experience concerning
these ideas, we shall find them reducible, as
has just been intimated, to the following; —
namely, that they are simple ; that neither
space nor time can be conceived without
some other conception ; that the idea of space
always attends that of every outward object ;
and that the idea of time enters into every
idea which the mind of man is capable of
forming. Time cannot be conceived sepa
rately from something else ; nor can any thing
else be conceived separately from time. If
we are asked whether the idea of time be
innate, the only proper answer consists in
the statement of the fact, that it never arises
in the human mind otherwise than as the
concomitant of some other perception ; and
that thus understood, it is not innate, since it
is always directly or indirectly occasioned
by some action on the senses. Various modes
of expressing these facts have been adopted
by different philosophers, according to the
variety of their technical language. By
Kant, space is said to be the form of our per
ceptive faculty, as applied to outward ob
jects ; and time is called the form of the
same faculty, as it regards our mental ope
rations : by Mr. Stewart, these ideas are con
sidered "as suggested to the understanding'1*
by sensation or reflection, though, according
to him, "the mind is not directly and imme
diately furnished " with such ideas, either by
sensation or reflection : and, by a late emi
nent metaphysician,! they were regarded as
perceptions, in the nature of those arising
from the senses, of which the one is attend^
ant on the idea of every outward object, and
the other concomitant with the consciousness
of every mental operation. Each of these
modes of expression has its own advantages.
The first mode brings forward the univer
sality and necessity of these two notions ; the
second most strongly marks the distinction
between them and the fluctuating percep
tions naturally referred to the senses ; while
the last has the opposite merit of presenting
to us that incapacity of being analyzed, in
which they agree with all other simple ideas.
On the other hand, each of them (perhaps
from the inherent imperfection of language)
seems to insinuate more than the mere re
sults of experience. The technical terms
introduced by Kant have the appearance of
an attempt to explain what, by the writer's
own principles, is incapable of explanation ;
Mr. Wedgwood maybe charged with giving
the same name to mental phenomena, which
coincide in nothing but simplicity ; and Mr.
Stewart seems to us to have opposed two
modes of expression to each other, which,
when they are thoroughly analyzed, repre
sent one and the same fact.
Leibnitz thought that Locke's admission
of " ideas of reflection" furnished a ground
for negotiating a reconciliation between his
system and the opinions of those who, in
the etymological sense of the word, are more
metaphysical; and it may very well be
doubted, whether the ideas of Locke much
differed from the "innate ideas" of Des
cartes, especially as the latter philosopher
explained the term, when he found himself
pressed by acute objectors. " I never said
or thought," says Descartes, " that the mind
needs innate ideas, which are something dif
ferent from its own faculty of thinking ; but,
as I observed certain thoughts to be in my
mind, which neither proceeded from outward
objects, nor were determined by my will,
but merely from my own faculty of thinking,
I called these l innate ideas,' to distinguish
them from such as are either adventitious
(i. c. from without), or compounded by our
imagination. I call them innate, in the same
sense in which generosity is innate in some
families, gout and stone in others; because
j the children of such families come into the
world with a disposition to such virtue, or to
such maladies."* In a letter to Mersenne,*
he says, "by the word 'idea.' I understand
all that can be in our thoughts, arid I dis-
i tinguish three sorts of ideas ; — adventitious,
like the common idea of the sun ; framed
by the mind, such as that which astronomical
reasoning gives us of the sun ; and
Philosophical Essays, essay i. chap. 2.
* Mr. Thomas Wedgwood ; see Life of Mack
intosh, vol. i. p. 289.
* This remarkable passage of Descartes is to be
found in a French translation of the preface and
notes to the Principia Philosophic, probably by
himself. — (Lettres de Descartes, vol. i. lett. 99.)
It is justly observed by one of his most acute an
tagonists, that Descartes does not steadily adhero
to this sense of the word "innate," but varies it
in the exigencies of controversy, so as to give it
at each moment the import which best suits the
nature of the objection with which he has then to
contend. — Huet, Censura Philosophic Cartesi
ans, p. 93.
t Lettres, vol. ii. lett. 54.
24
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
as the idea of God, mind, body, a triangle,
and generally all those which represent true,
immutable, and eternal essences." It must
be owned, that, however nearly the first of
these representations may approach to Mr.
Locke's ideas of reflection, the second devi
ates from them very widely, and is not easily
reconcilable with the first. The comparison
of these two sentences, strongly impeaches
the steadiness and consistency of Descartes
in the fundamental principles of his system.
A principle in science is a proposition from
which many other propositions may be in
ferred. That principles, taken in this sense
of propositions, are part of the original struc
ture or furniture of the human mind, is an
assertion so unreasonable, that perhaps no
philosopher has avowedly, or at least perma
nently, adopted it. But it is not to be forgot
ten, that there must be certain general laws
of perception, or ultimate facts respecting
that province of mind, beyond which human
knowledge cannot reach. Such facts bound
our researches in every part of knowledge,
and the ascertainment of them is the utmost
possible attainment of Science. Beyond
them there is nothing, or at least nothing dis
coverable by us. These observations, however
universally acknowledged when they are
stated, are often hid from the view of the
system-builder when he is employed in rear
ing his airy edifice. There is a common
disposition to exempt the philosophy of the
human understanding from the dominion of
that irresistible necessity which confines all
other knowledge within the limits of experi
ence ; — arising probably from a vague notion
that the science, without which the princi
ples of no other are intelligible, ought to be
able to discover the foundation even of its
own principles. Hence the question among
the German metaphysicians, " What makes
experience possible 1" Hence the very gen
eral indisposition among metaphysicians to
acquiesce in any mere fact as the result of
their inquiries, and to make vain exertions
in pursuit of an explanation of it, without
recollecting that the explanation must always
consist of another fact, which must either
equally require another explanation, or be
equally independent of it. There is a sort
of sullen reluctance to be satisfied with ul
timate facts, which has kept its ground in the
theory of the human mind long after it has
been banished from all other sciences. Phi
losophers are, in this province, often led to
waste their strength in attempts to find out
what supports the foundation ; and, in these
efforts to prove first principles, they inevita
bly find that their proof must contain an as
sumption of the thing to be proved, and that
their argument must return to the point from
which it set out.
Mental philosophy can consist oi nothing
but facts; and it is at least as vain to inquire
into the cause of thought, as into the cause
of attraction. What the number and nature
of the ultimate facts respecting mind may
be; is a question which can only be deter
mined by experience : and it is of the ut
most importance not to allow their arbitrary
multiplication, which enables some indivi
duals to impose on us their own erroneous
or uncertain speculations as the fundamental
principles of human knowledge. No gene
ral criterion has hitherto been offered, by
which these last principles may be distin
guished from all other propositions. Perhaps
a practical standard of some convenience
would be. that all rcasoners should be required
to admit every principle of which the denial
renders reasoning impossible. This is only to
require that a man should admit, in general
terms, those principles which he must as
sume in every particular argument, and which
he has assumed in every argument which he
has employed against their existence. It is,
in other words, to require that a disputant
shall not contradict himself; for every argu
ment against the fundamental laws of thought
absolutely assumes their existence in the
premises, while it totally denies it in the
conclusion.
Whether it be among the ultimate facts in
human nature, that the mind is disposed or
determined to assent to some proposition s,
and to reject others, when they are first sub
mitted to its judgment, without inferring
their truth or falsehood from any process of
reasoning, is manifestly as much a question
of mere experience as any other which re
lates to our mental constitution. It is certain
that such inherent inclinations may be con
ceived, without supposing the ideas of which
the propositions are composed to be, in any
sense, 'innate'; if, indeed, that unfortunate
word be capable of being reduced by defini
tion to any fixed meaning. " Innate," says
Lord Shaftesbury. " is the word Mr. Locke
poorly plays with : the right word, though
less used, is connate. The question is not
about the time when the ideas enter the
mind, but, whether the constitution of man be
such, as at some time or other (no matter
when), the ideas will not necessarily spring
up in him." These are the words of Lord
Shaftesbury in his Letters, which, not being
printed in any edition of the Characteristics,
are less known than they ought to be ; though,
in them, the fine genius and generous prin
ciples of the writer are less hid by occasional
affectation of style, than in any other of his
writings.*
The above observations apply with still
greater force to what Mr. Locke calls "prac
tical principles." Here, indeed, he contra
dicts himself; for, having built one of his
chief arguments against other speculative or
practical principles, on what he thinks the
incapacity of the majority of mankind to en
tertain those very abstract ideas, of which
these principles, if innate, would imply the
presence in every mind, he very inconsistent-
* Dr. Lee, an antagonist of Mr. Locke, has
stated ihe question of innate ideas more fully than
Shaftesbury, or even Leibnitz : he has also antici
pated some of the reasonings of Buffier and Rei(K
— Lee's Notes on Locke, (olio, London, 1702.
ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL GENIUS OF BACON AND LOCKE.
25
ly admits the existence of one innate practi
cal principle, — " a desire of happiness, and
an aversion to misery.*'* without considering
that happiness and misery are also abstract
terms, which excite very indistinct concep
tions in the minds of "a great part of man
kind." It would be easy also to show, if this
were a proper place, that the desire of happi
ness, so far from being an innate, is not even
an original principle ; that it presupposes the
existence of all those particular appetites
and desires of which the gratification is plea
sure, and also the exercise«of that deliberate
reason which habitually examines how far
each gratification, in all its consequences, in
creases or diminishes that sum of enjoyment
which constitutes happiness. If that subject
could be now fully treated, it would appear
that this error of Mr. Locke, or another
equally great, that we have only one practical
principle, — the desire of pleasure, — is the
root of most false theories of morals; and
that it is also the source of many mistaken
speculations on the important subjects of
government and education, which at this
moment mislead the friends of human im
provement, and strengthen the arms of its
enemies. But morals fell only incidentally
under the consideration of Mr. Locke; and
his errors on that greatest of all sciences were
the prevalent opinions of his age, which can
not be justly called the principles of Hobbes,
though that extraordinary man had alone the
boldness to exhibit these principles in con
nexion with their odious but strictly logical
consequences.
The exaggerations of this first book, how
ever, afford a new proof of the author's
steady regard to the highest interests of man
kind. He justly considered the free exercise
of reason as the highest of these, and that
on the security of which all the others de
pend. The circumstances of his life rendered
it a long warfare against the enemies of
freedom in philosophising, freedom in wor
ship, and freedom from every political re
straint which necessity did not justify. In
his noble zeal for liberty of thought, he
dreaded the tendency of a doctrine which
might " gradually prepare mankind to swal
low that for an innate principle which may
serve his purpose who teacheth them."f He
may well be excused, if, in the ardour of his
generous conflict, he sometimes carried be
yond the bounds of calm and neutral reason
his repugnance to doctrines which, as they
were then generally explained, he justly re
garded as capable of being employed to
shelter absurdity from detection, to stop the
progress of free inquiry, and to subject the
general reason to the authority of a few in
dividuals. Every error of Mr. Locke in
speculation may be traced to the influence
of some virtue ; — at least every error except
some of the erronftous opinions generally re
ceived in his age, which, with a sort of pas-
* Essay on Human Understanding, book i.
chap. 3. $ 3.
t Chap. 4. $ 24.
4
sive acquiescence, he suffered to retain their
place in his mind.
It is with the second book that the Essay
on the Human Understanding properly be
gins; and this book is the first considerable
contribution in modern limes towards the
experimental* philosophy of the human
mind. The road was pointed out by Bacon;
and, by excluding the fallacious analogies of
thought to outward appearance, Descartes
may be said to have marked out the limits
of the proper field of inquiry. But, before
Locke, there was no example in intellectual
philosophy of an ample enumeration of facts,
collected and arranged for the express pur
pose of legitimate generalization. He him
self tells us. that his purpose was, '• in a plain
historical method, to give an account of the
ways by which our understanding comes to
attain those notions of things we have." In.
more modern phraseology, this would be
called an attempt to ascertain, by observa
tion, the most general facts relating to the
origin of human knowledge. There is some
thing in the plainness, and even homeliness
of Locke's language, which strongly indicates
his very clear conception, that experience
must be his sole guide, and his unwilling
ness, by the use of scholastic language, to
imitate the example of those who make a
show of explaining facts, while%in reality they
only "darken counsel by words without
knowledge." He is content to collect the
laws of thought, as he would have collected
those of any other object of physical know
ledge, from observation alone. He seldom
embarrasses himself with physiological hy-
pothesis,f or wastes his strength on those
* This word "experimental," has the defect of
not appearing to comprehend the knowledge which
flows from observation, as well as that which is
obtained by experiment. The German word " em
pirical," is applied to all the information which ex
perience affords ; but it is in our language degraded
by another application. I therefore must use
"experimental" in a larger sense than its ety
mology warrants.
t A stronger proof can hardly be required' than
the following sentence, of his freedom from phy
siological prejudice. " This laying up of our
ideas in the repository of the memory, signifies no
more but this, that the mind has the power in many
cases to revive perceptions, with another percep
tion annexed to them, that it has had them be
fore." The same chapter is remarkable for the
exquisite, and almost poetical beauty, of some of
its illustrations. "Ideas quickly fade, and often
vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no
more footsteps or remaining characters of them
selves than shadows do flying- over a field of corn.'r
— " The ideas, as well as children of our youth,
often die before us, and; our minds represent to-
us those tombs to which we are approaching;
where, though the brass and marble remain, yet
the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the ima
gery moulders away. Pictures drawn in our
minds are laid in fading colours, and, unless some
times refreshed, vanish and disappear," — book ii.
chap. 10. This pathetic language must have been
inspired by experience ; and, though Locke could
not have been more than fifty-six when he wrote
these sentences, it is too well known that the first
decays of memory may be painfully felt long be
fore they can be detected by the keenest observer.
C
26
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
insoluble problems which were then called
metaphysical. Though, in the execution of
his plan, there are many and great defects,
the conception of it is entirely conformable to
the Verulamian method of induction, which,
even after the fullest enumeration of parti
culars, requires a cautious examination of
each subordinate class of phenomena, before
we attempt, through a very slowly ascending
series of generalizations, to soar to compre
hensive laws " Philosophy," as Mr. Play fair
excellently renders Bacon, u has either taken
much from a few things, or too little from a
great many; and in both cases has too nar
row a basis to be of much duration or utility."
Or, to use the very words of the Master him
self — " We shall then have reason to hope
well of the sciences, when we rise by con
tinued steps from particulars to inferior
axioms, and then to the middle, and only at
last to the most general.* It is not so much
by an appeal to experience (for some degree
of that appeal is universal), as by the mode
of conducting it, that the followers of Bacon
are distinguished from the framers of hy
potheses." It is one thing to borrow from
experience just enough to make a supposition
plausible; it is quite another to take from it
all that is necessary to be the foundation of
just theory.
• In this respect perhaps, more than in any
other, the philosophical writings of Locke are
contradistinguished from those of Hobbes.
The latter saw, with astonishing rapidity of in
tuition some of the simplest and most general
facts which may be observed in the operations
of the understanding; and perhaps no man
ever possessed the same faculty of conveying
his abstract speculations in language of such
clearness, precision, and force, as to engrave
them on the mind of the reader. But he
did not wait to examine whether there might
not be other facts equally general relating
'to the intellectual powers; and he therefore
"took too little from a great many things."
He fell into the double error of hastily ap
plying his general laws to the most compli
cated processes of thought, without consider
ing whether these general laws were not
themselves limited by other not less compre
hensive laws, and without trying to discover
how they were connected with particulars,
by a scale of intermediate and secondary
laws. This mode of philosophising was well
suited to the dogmatic confidence and dicta
torial tone which belonged to the character
of the philosopher of Malmsbury. and which
enabled him to brave the obloquy attendant
on singular and obnoxious opinions. " The
plain historical method," on the other hand,
chosen by Mr. Locke, produced the natural
fruits of caution and modesty ; taught him to
distrust hasty and singular conclusions; dis
posed him, on fit occasions, to entertain a
mitigated scepticism; and taught him also
the rare courage to make an ingenuous
avowal of ignorance. This contrast is one
* Novum Organum, lib. i. $ civ.
of our reasons for doubting whether Locke
be much indebted to Hobbes for his specu
lations; and certainly the mere coincidence
of the opinions of two metaphysicians is
slender evidence, in any case, that either
of them has borrowed his opinions from the
other. Where the premises are different,
and they have reached the same conclusion
by different roads, such a coincidence is
scarcely any evidence at all. Locke and
Hobbes agree chiefly on those points in
which, except the^Cartesians. all the specu
lators of their age were also agreed. They
differ on the most momentous questions, —
the sources of knowledge, — the power of ab
straction, — the nature of the will ; on the two
last of which subjects, Locke, by his very
failures themselves, evinces a strong repug
nance to the doctrines of Hobbes. They dif
fer not only in all their premises, and many
of their conclusions, but in their manner of
philosophising itself. Locke had no preju
dice which co.uld lead him to imbibe doc
trines from the enemy of liberty and religion.
His style, with all its faults, is that of a man
who thinks for himself; and an original style
is not usually the vehicle of borrowed opin
ions.
Few books have contributed more than
Mr. Locke's Essay to rectify prejudice ; to
undermine established errors; to diffuse a
just mode of thinking; to excite a fearless
spirit of inquiry, and yet to contain it within
the boundaries which Nature has prescribed
to the human understanding. An amend
ment of the general habits of thought is, in
most parts of knowledge, an object as impor
tant as even the discovery of new truths;
though it is not so palpable, nor in its nature
s-o capable of being estimated by superficial
observers. In the mental and moral world,
which scarcely admits of any thing which
can be called discovery, the correction of the
intellectual habits is probably the greatest
service which can be rendered to Science.
In this respect, the merit of Locke is unri
valled. His writings have diffused through
out the civilized world, the love of civil lib
erty and the spirit of toleration and charity
in religious differences, with the disposition
to reject whatever is obscure, fantastic, or
hypothetical in speculation, — to reduce ver
bal disputes to their proper value, — to aban
don problems which admit of no solution, —
to distrust whatever cannot clearly be ex
pressed, — to render theory the simple ex
pression of facts, — and to prefer those studies
which most directly contribute to human
happiness. If Bacon first discovered the
rules by which knowledge is improved,
Locke has most contributed to make man
kind at large observe them. He has done
most, though often by remedies of silent
and almost insensible operation, to cure
those mental distempers which obstructed
the adoption of these rules; and has thus
led to that general diffusion of a healthful
and vigorous understanding, which is at once
the greatest of all improvements; and the
ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
27
instrument by which all other progress must
be accomplished. He has left to posterity
the instructive example of a prudent re
former, and of a philosophy temperate as well
as liberal, which spares the feelings of the
good, and avoids direct hostility with obsti
nate and formidable prejudice. These bene
fits are very slightly counterbalanced by
some political doctrines liable to misapplica
tion, and by the scepticism of some of his
ingenious followers ; — an inconvenience to
which every philosophical school is exposed,
which does not steadily limit its theory to a
mere exposition of experience. If Locke
made few discoveries, Socrates made none :
yet both did more for the improvement of the
understanding, and not less for the progress
of knowledge, than the authors of the most
brilliant discoveries. Mr. Locke will ever
be regarded as one of the great ornaments
of the English nation ; and the most distant
posterity will speak of him in the language
addressed to him by the poet —
" O Decus Angliacoe certe, O Luxalteragentis!"*
* Gray, De Principiis Cogitandi.
A DISCOURSE
ON THE
LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.*
BEFORE I begin a course of lectures on a
science of great extent and importance, I
think it my duty to lay before the public the
reasons which have induced me to undertake
such a labour, as well as a short account of
the nature and objects of the course which I
propose to deliver. I have always been un
willing to waste in unprofitable inactivity
that leisure which the first years of my pro
fession usually allow, and which diligent
men, even with moderate talents, might of
ten employ in a manner neither discreditable
to themselves, nor wholly useless to others.
Desirous that my own leisure should not be
consumed in sloth, I anxiously looked about
for some way of rilling it up, which might
enable me according to the measure of my
humble abilities, to contribute somewhat to
the stock of general usefulness. I had long
been convinced that public lectures, which
have been used in most ages and countries to
teach the elements of almost every part of
learning, were the most convenient mode in
which these elements could be taught; —
that they were the best adapted for the im
portant purposes of awakening the attention
of the student, of abridging his labours, of
guiding his inquiries, of relieving the tedious-
ness of private study, and of impressing on
his recollection the principles of a science.
I saw no reason why the law of England
should be less adapted to this mode of in
struction, or less likely to benefit by it, than
* This discourse was the preliminary one of a
course of lectures delivered in the hall of Lincoln's
Inn during the spring of the year 1799. From the
state of the original MSS. notes of these lectures,
in the possession of the editor, it would seem that
the lecturer had trusted, with the exception of a
few passages prepared in extenso, to his powerful
memory for all the aid that was required beyond
Vvhat mere catchwords could supply. — ED.
any other part of knowledge. A learned gen
tleman, however, had already occupied that
ground,* and will, I doubt not, persevere in
the useful labour which he has undertaken.
On his province it was far from my wish to
intrude. It appeared to me that a course
of lectures on another science closely con
nected with all liberal professional studies,
and which had long been the subject of my
own reading and reflection, might not only
prove a most useful introduction to the law
of England, but might also become an inter
esting part of general study, and an import
ant branch of the educatiou of those who
were not destined for the profession of the
law. I was confirmed in my opinion by the
assent and approbation of men, whose
names, if it were becoming to mention them
on so slight an occasion, would add authority
to truth, and furnish some excuse even for
error. Encouraged by their approbation, I
resolved without delay to commence the un
dertaking, of which I shall now proceed to
give some account ; without interrupting the
progress of my discourse by anticipating or
answering the remarks of those who may,
perhaps, sneer at me for a departure from,
the usual course of my profession, because
I am desirous of employing in a rational and
useful pursuit that leisure, of which the
same men would have required no account,
if it had been wasted on trifles, or even
abused in dissipation.
The science which teaches the rights and
duties of men and of states, has, in modern
times, been called " the law of nature and
nations." Under this comprehensive title
* See " A Syllabus of Lectures on the Law of
England, to be delivered in Lincoln's Inn Hall by
M. Nolen, Esq."
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
28
are included the rules of morality, as they
prescribe the conduct of private men towards
each other in all the various Delations of hu
man life ; as they regulate both the obedi
ence of citizens to the laws, and the authority
of the magistrate in framing laws, and ad
ministering government j and as they modify
the intercourse of independent common
wealths in peace, and prescribe limits to their
hostility in war. This important science
comprehends only that part of private ethics
which is capable of being reduced to fixed
and general rules. It considers only those
general principles of jurisprudence and poli
tics which the wisdom of the lawgiver adapts
to the peculiar situation of his own country,
and which the skill of the statesman applies
to the more fluctuating and infinitely varying
circumstances which affect its immediate
welfare and safety. " For there are in nature
certain fountains of justice whence all civil
laws are derived, but as streams • and like as
waters do take tinctures and tastes from the
soils through which they run, so do civil laws
vary according to the regions and govern
ments where they are planted, though they
proceed from the same fountains."*
On the great questions of morality, of poli
tics, and of municipal law, it is the object
of this science to deliver only those funda
mental truths of which the particular appli
cation is as extensive as the whole private
and public conduct of men j — to discover
those "fountains of justice," without pursu
ing the '-streams" through the endless va
riety of their course. But another part of
the subject is to be treated with greater ful
ness and minuteness of application ; namely,
that important branch of it which professes
to regulate the relations and intercourse of
states, and more especially, (both on account
of their greater perfection and their more
immediate reference to use), the regulations
of that intercourse as they are modified by
the usages of the civilized nations of Chris
tendom. Here this science no longer rests
on general principles. That province of it
which we now call the tc law of nations," has,
in many of its parts, acquired among Euro
pean ones much of the precision and cer
tainty of positive law ; and the particulars
of that law are chiefly to be found in the
works of those writers who have treated the
science of which I now speak. It is because
they have classed (in a manner which seems
peculiar to modern times) the duties of indi
viduals with those of nations, and established
their obligation on similar grounds, that the
whole science has been called, " the law of
nature and nations."
Whether this appellation be the happiest
that could have been chosen for the science,
and by what steps it came to be adopted
* Advancement of Learning, book ii. I have
not been deterred by some petty incongruity of
metaphor from quoting this noble sentence. Mr.
Hume had, perhaps, this sentence in his recollec
tion, when he wrote a remarkable passage of his
works. See his Essays, vol. ii. p. 352.
among our modern moralists and lawyers,*
are inquiries, perhaps, of more curiosity than
use, and ones which, if they deserve any
where to be deeply pursued, will be pursued
with more propriety in a full examination of
the subject than within the short limits of an
introductory discourse. Names are, how
ever, in a great measure arbitrary; but the
distribution of knowledge into its parts,
though it may often perhaps be varied with
little disadvantage, yet certainly depends
upon some fixed principles. The modern
method of considering individual and na
tional morality as the subjects of the same
science, seems to me as convenient and rea
sonable an arrangement as can be adopted.
The same rules of morality which hold toge
ther men in families, and which form families
into comrnon\vealths, also link together these
commonwealths as members of the great so
ciety of mankind. Commonwealths, as well
as private men, are liable to injury, and ca
pable of benefit, from each other; it is,
therefore, their interest, as well as their
duty, to reverence, to practise, and to en
force those rules of justice which control
and restrain injury, — which regulate and
augment benefit, — which, even in their pre
sent imperfect observance, preserve civilized
states in a tolerable condition of security
from wrong, and which, if they could be gen
erally obeyed, would establish, and perma
nently maintain, the well-being of the uni
versal commonwealth of the human race. It
is therefore with justice, that one part of this
science has been called "the natural law of
individuals," and the other " the natural law
of states;'' and it is too obvious to require
observation,! that the application of both
these laws, of the former as much as of the
latter, is modified and varied by cugtoms:
* The learned reader is aware that the "jus
naturae" and "jus gentium" of the Roman law-
yers are phrases of very different import from the
modern phrases, "law of nature" and " law of
nations." "Jus naturale," says Ulpian, " est
quod natura omnia animalia docuit." " Quod
naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id
apud omnes perasque custoditur; vocaturque jus
gentium." But they sometimes neglect this subtle
distinction — "Jure naturali quod appellatur jus
gentium." " Jus feciale" was the Roman term
for our law of nations. " Belli quideni 83quitas
sanclissime populi Rom. feciali jure perscripta
est." De Officiis, lib. i. cap. ii. Our learned ci
vilian Zouch has accordingly entitled his work,
" De Jure Feciali, sive de Jure inter Gentes."
The Chancellor D'Aguesseau, probably without
knowing the work of Zouch, suggested that this
law should be called. " Droit entre les Gens"
((Euvres, vol. ii. p. 337), in which he has been
followed by a late ingenious writer, Mr. Bentham,
(Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Le
gislation, p. 324.) Perhaps these learned writers
do employ a phrase which expresses the subject
of this law with more accuracy than our common
language ; but I doubt whether innovations in the
terms of science always repay us by their superior
precision for the uncertainty and confusion which
the change occasions.
t This remark is suggested by an objection of
Vattel, which is more specious than solid. See
his Preliminaries. $ 6.
ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
29
conventions, character, and situation. With
a view to these principles, the writers on
general jurisprudence have considered states
as moral persons; a mode of expression
which has been called a fiction of law, but
which may be regarded with more propriety
as a bold metaphor, used to convey the im
portant truth, that nations, though they ac
knowledge no common superior, and neither
can, nor ought, to be subjected to human
punishment, are yet under the same obliga
tions mutually to practise honesty and hu
manity, which would have bound individu
als. — if the latter could be conceived ever
to nave subsisted without the protecting re
straints of government, and if they were not
compelled to the discharge of their duty by
the just authority of magistrates, and by the
wholesome terrors of the laws. With the
same views this law has been styled, and
(notwithstanding the objections of some writ
ers to the vagueness of the language) ap
pears to have been styled with great pro
priety, " the law of nature." It may with
sufficient correctness, or at least by an easy
metaphor, be called a " law," inasmuch as
it is a supreme, invariable, and uncontrolla
ble rule of conduct to all men, the violation
of which is avenged by natural punishments,
necessarily flowing from the constitution of
things, and as fixed and inevitable as the
order of nature. It is " the law of nature,"
because its general precepts are essentially
adapted to promote the happiness of man,
as long as he remains a being of the same
nature with which he is at present endowed,
or, in other words, as long as he continues to
be man, in all the variety of times, places,
-and circumstances, in which he has been
known, or can be imagined to exist ; because
it is discoverable by natural reason, and suit
able to our natural constitution ; and because
its fitness and wisdom are founded on the
general nature of human beings, and not on
any of those temporary and accidental situ
ations in which they may be placed. It is
with still more propriety, and indeed with
the highest strictness, and the most perfect
accuracy, considered as a law, when, accord
ing to those just and magnificent views
which philosophy and religion open to us of
the government of the world, it is received
and reverenced as the sacred code, promul
gated by the great Legislator of the Universe
for the guidance of His creatures to happi
ness ;— guarded and enforced, as our own
experience may inform us, by the penal
sanctions of shame, of remorse, of infamy,
and of misery ; and still farther enforced by
the reasonable expectation of yet more awful
penalties in a future and more permanent
state of existence. It is the contemplation
of the law of nature under this full, mature,
and perfect idea of its high origin and tran
scendent dignity, that called forth the enthu
siasm of the greatest men, and the greatest
writers of ancient and modern times, in
those sublime descriptions, in which they
have exhausted all the powers of language.
and surpassed all the other exertions, even
of their own eloquence, in the display of its
beauty and majesty. It is of this law that
Cicero has spoken in so many parts of his
writings, not only with all the splendour and
copiousness of eloquence, but with the sen
sibility of a man of virtue, and with the gra
vity and comprehension of a philosopher.*
It is of this law that Hooker speaks in so
sublime a strain : — " Of Law, no less can be
said, than that her seat is the bosom of God,
her voice the harmony of the world ; all things
in heaven and earth do her homage, the very
least as feeling her care, the greatest as not
exempted from her power; both angels and
men, and creatures of what condition soever,
though each in different sort and manner,
yet all with uniform consent admiring her
as the mother of their peace and joy."t
Let not those who, to use the language of
the same Hooker, "talk of truth." without
" ever sounding the depth from 'whence it
springeth," hastily take it for granted, that
these great masters of eloquence and reason
were led astray by the specious delusions of
mysticism, from the sober consideration of
the true grounds of morality in the nature,
necessities, and interests of man. They
studied and taught the principles of morals;
but they thought it still more necessary, and
more wise, — a much nobler task, and more
becoming a true philosopher, to inspire men
with a love and reverence for virtue.! They
were not contented with elementary specu
lations : they examined the foundations of
our duty; but they felt and cherished a most
natural, a most seemly, a most rational en
thusiasm, when they contemplated the ma
jestic edifice which is reared on these solid
foundations. They devoted the highest ex
ertions of their minds to spread that benefi
cent enthusiasm among men. They conse
crated as a homage to Virtue the most perfect
* " Est quidem vera lex recta ratio, naturae
congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiter-
na; qua? vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando a
fraude deterreat, quce tamen neque probos frustra
jubet aut vetat, neque improbos jubendo aut ve
tando movet. Huic legi neque obrogari fas est,
neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet, neque tola
abrogari potest. Nee vero aut per senatum aut
per populum solvi hac lege possumus: neque est
quaerendus explanator aut interpres ejus alius.
Nee erit alia lex Romae, alia Athenis, alia nunc,
alia posthac ; sed et omnes gentes et omni tern-
pore una lex et sernpilerna, et immutabilis con-
tinebit ; unusque erit communis quasi magister et
imperator omnium Deus, ille legis hujus inventor,
disceptator, lalor : cui qui non parebit ipse sc
fugiet et naturam hominis aspernabitur, atque
hoc ipso luet maximas pcenas, etiamsi caetera sup-
plicia, qua? putantur, effugerit." — De Repub. lib.
iii. cap. 22.
t Ecclesiastical Polity, book i. in the conclusion.
+ " Age vero urbibus constitutis, ut fidem co-
lere et justitiam retinere discerent, et aliis parere
sua voluntate consuescerent, ac non modo labores
excipiendps communis commodi causa, sed etiam
vitam amittendam existimarent ; qui tandem fieri
potuit, nisi homines ea, quae ratione invenisser.t,
eloquentia persuadere potuissent V' — De Iiivent.
Rher. lib. i. cap. 2.
c 2
30
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
fruits of their genius. If these grand senti
ments of "the good and fair" have some
times prevented them from, delivering the
principles of ethics with the nakedness and
dryness of science, at least we must own
that they have chosen the better part, — that
they have preferred virtuous feeling to moral
theory, and practical benefit to speculative
exactness. Perhaps these wise men may
have supposed that the minute dissection
and anatomy of Virtue might, to the ill-judg
ing eye, weaken the charm of her beauty.
It is not for me to attempt a theme which
has perhaps been exhausted by these great
writers. I am indeed much less called upon
to display the worth and usefulness of the
law of nations, than to vindicate myself from
presumption iii attempting a subject which
has been already handled by so many mas
ters. For the purpose of that vindication it
will be necessary to sketch a very short and
slight account (for such in this place it must
unavoidably be) of the progress and present
state of the science, arid of that succession
of able writers who have gradually brought
it to its present perfection.
We have no Greek or Roman treatise re
maining on the law of nations. From the
title of one of the lost works of Aristotle, it
appears that he composed a treatise on the
laws of war,* which, if we had the good for
tune to possess it, would doubtless have am
ply satisfied our curiosity, and would have
taught us both the practice of the ancient
nations and the opinions of their moralists,
with that depth and precision which distin
guish the other works of that great philoso
pher. We can now only imperfectly collect
that practice and those opinions from various
passages which are scattered over the writ
ings of philosophers, historians, poets, and
orators. When the time shall arrive for a
more full consideration of the state of the
government and manners of the ancient
world, I shall be able, perhaps, to offer satis
factory reasons why these enlightened na
tions did not separate from the general pro
vince of ethics that part of morality which
regulates the intercourse of states, and erect
it into an independent science. It would re
quire a long discussion to unfold the various
causes which united the modern nations of
Europe into a closer society. — which linked
them together by the firmest bands of mutual
dependence, and which thus, in process of
time, gave to the law that regulated their
intercourse, greater importance, higher im
provement, and more binding force. Among
these causes, we may enumerate a common
extraction, a common religion, similar man
ners, institutions, and languages; in earlier
ages the authority of the See of Rome, and
the extravagant claims of the imperial crown ;
in latter times the connexions of trade, the
jealousy of power, the refinement of civiliza
tion, the cultivation of science, and, above all,
that general mildness of character and man-
* A/ttSUti^AT* TWV TTOXttAC/eV.
ners which arose from the combined and
progressive influence of chivalry, of com
merce, of learning and of religion. Nor must
we omit the similarity of those political in
stitutions which, in every country that had
been overrun by the Gothic conquerors, bore
discernible marks (which the revolutions of
succeeding ages had obscured, but not ob
literated) of the rude but bold and noble out
line of liberty that was originally sketched
by the hand of these generous barbarians.
These and many other causes conspired to
unite the nations of Europe in a more inti
mate connexion and a more constant inter
course, and, of consequence, made the regu
lation of their intercourse more necessary,
and the law that was to govern it more im
portant. In proportion as they approached
to the condition of provinces of the same em
pire, it became almost as essential that
Europe should have a precise and compre
hensive code of the law of nations, as that
each country should have a system of mu
nicipal law. The labours of the learned,
accordingly, began to be directed to this sub
ject in the sixteenth century, soon after the
revival of learning, and after that regular
distribution of power and territory which has
subsisted, with little variation, until our
times. The critical examination of these
early writers would, perhaps, not be very in
teresting in an extensive work, and it would
be unpardonable in a short discourse. It
is sufficient to observe that they were all
more or less shackled by the barbarous phi
losophy of the schools, and that they were
impeded in their progress by a timorous def
erence for the inferior and technical parts of
the Roman law, without raising their views
to the comprehensive principles which will
for ever inspire mankind with veneration for
that grand monument of human wisdom. It
was only, indeed, in the sixteenth century
that the Roman law was first studied and
understood as a science connected with Ro
man history and literature, and illustrated by
men whom Ulpian and Papinian would not
have disdained to acknowledge as their suc
cessors.* Among the writers of that age we
may perceive the ineffectual attempts, the
partial advances, the occasional streaks of
light which always precede great discov
eries, and works that are to instruct pos
terity.
The reduction of the law of nations to a
system was reserved for Grotius. It was by
the advice of Lord Bacon and Peiresc that he
undertook this arduous task. He produced a
work which we now, indeed, justly deem im
perfect, but which is perhaps the most com
plete that the world has yet owed, at so early
a stage in the progress of any science, to the
* Cujacius, Brissonius, Hottomannus, &c., &c.
— See Gravina Origines Juris Civilis (Lips. 1737),
pp. 132 — 138. Leibnitz, a great mathematician as
well as philosopher, declares that he knows no
thing which approaches so near to the method
and precision of Geometry as the Roman law.—'
Op. vol. iv. p. 254.
ON THE STUDY OF TRE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
31
genius and learning of one man. So great is
the uncertainty of posthumous reputation,
and so liable is the fame even of the greatest
men to be obscured by those new fashions
of thinking and writing which succeed each
other so rapidly among polished nations, that
Grotius, who filled so large a space in the
eye of his contemporaries, is now perhaps
known to some of my readers only by name.
Yet if we fairly estimate both his endow
ments and his virtues, we may justly consider
him as one of the most memorable men who
have done honour to modern times. He
combined the discharge of the most impor
tant duties of active and public life with the
attainment of that exact and various learning
which is generally the portion only of the
recluse student. He was distinguished as
an advocate and a magistrate, and he com
posed the most valuable works on the law
of his own country; he was almost equally
celebrated as an historian, a scholar, a poet,
and a divine ; — a disinterested statesman, a
philosophical lawyer, a patriot who united
moderation with firmness, and a theologian
who was taught candour by his learning.
Unmerited exile did not damp his patriot
ism; the bitterness of controversy did not
extinguish his charity. The sagacity of his
numerous and fierce adversaries could not
discover a blot on his character ; and in the
midst of all the hard trials and galling provo
cations of a turbulent political life, he never
once deserted his friends when they were
unfortunate, nor insulted his enemies when
they were weak. In times of the most fu
rious civil and religious faction he preserved
his name unspotted, and he knew how to
reconcile fidelity to his own party, with
moderation towards his opponents.
Such was the man who was destined to
give a new form to the law of nations, or ra
ther to create a science, of which only rude
sketches and undigested materials were
scattered over the writings of those who had
gone before him. By tracing the laws of his
country to their principles, he was led to the
contemplation of the law of nature, which
he justly considered as the parent of all mu
nicipal law.* Few works were more cele
brated than that of Grotius in his own days,
and in the age which succeeded. It hap,
however, been the fashion of the last half-
century to depreciate his work as a shape
less compilation, in which reason lies buried
under a mass of authorities and quotations.
This fashion originated among French wits
and declaimers, and it has been, I know not
for what reason, adopted, though with far
greater moderation and decency, by some
respectable writers among^ ourselves. As to
those who first used this language, the most
candid supposition that we can make with
respect to them is, that they never read the
work: for, if they had not been deterred
from the perusal of it by such a formidable
* " Proavia juris civilis."
Pacis, proleg. § xvi.
De Jure Belli ac
display of Greek characters, they must soon
have discovered that Grotius never quotes
on any subject till he has first appealed to
some principles, and often, in my humble
opinion, though not always, to the soundest
and most rational principles.
But another .sort of answer is due to some
of those* who have criticised Grotius, and
that answer might be given in the words of
Grotius himself. t He was not of such a stu
pid and servile cast of mind, as to quote the
opinions of poets or orators, of historians
and philosophers, as those of judges, from
whose decision there was no appeal. He
quotes them, as he tells us himself, as wit
nesses whose conspiring testimony, mightily
strengthened and confirmed by their discord
ance on almost every other subject, is a
conclusive proof of the unanimity of the
whole human race on the great rules of duty
and the fundamental principles of morals.
On such matters, poets and orators are the
most unexceptionable of all witnesses; for
they address themselves to the general feel
ings and sympathies of mankind ; they are
neither warped by system, nor perverted by
sophistry ; they can attain none of their ob
jects, they can neither please nor persuade,
if they dwell on moral sentiments not in uni
son with those of their readers. No system
of moral philosophy can surely disregard the
general feelings of human nature and the
according judgment of all ages and nations.
But where are these feelings and that judg
ment recorded and preserved ? In those
very writings which Grotius is gravely
blamed for having quoted. The usages arid
laws of nations, the events of history, the
opinions of philosophers, the sentiments of
orators and poets, as well as the observation of
common life, are, in truth, the materials out
of which the science of morality is formed ;
and those who neglect them are justly charge
able with a vain attempt to philosophise
without regard to fact and experience, — the
sole foundation of all true philosophy.
If this were merely an objection of taste,
I should be willing to allow that Grotius has
indeed poured forth his learning with a pro
fusion that sometimes rather encumbers than
adorns his work, and which is not always
necessary to the illustration of his subject.
Yet, even in making that concession, I should
rather yield to the taste of others than speak
from my own feelings. I own that such rich
ness and splendour of literature have a power
ful charm for me. They fill my mind with
an endless variety of delightful recollections
and associations. They relieve the under
standing in its progress through a vast
science, by calling up the memory of great
men and of interesting events. By this
means we see the truths of morality clothed
with all the eloquence, — not that could be
produced by the powers of one man, — but
that could be bestowed on them by the eol-
* Dr. Paley, Principles of Moral and Political
Philosophy, pref. pp. xiv. xv.
t De Jure Belli, proleg. § 40.
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
lective genius of the world. Even Virtue
and Wisdom themselves acquire new majesty
in my eyes, when I thus see all the great
masters of thinking and writing called to
gether, as it were, from all times and coun
tries, to do them homage, and to appear in
their train.
But this is no place for discussions of taste,
and I am very ready to own that mine may
be corrupted. The work of Grotius is liable
to a more serious objection, though I do not
recollect that it has ever been made. His
method is inconvenient and unscientific : he
has inverted the natural order. That natural
order undoubtedly dictates, that we should
first search for the original principles of the
science in human nature ; then apply them
to the regulation of the conduct of indivi
duals ; and lastly, employ them for the decision
of those difficult and complicated questions
that arise with respect to the intercourse
of nations. But Grotius has chosen the re
verse of this method. He begins with the
consideration of the states of peace and war,
and he examines original principles only oc
casionally and incidentally, as they grow out
of the questions which he is called upon to
decide. It is a necessary consequence of this
disorderly method, — which exhibts the ele
ments of the science in the form of scattered
digressions, that he seldom employs sufficient
discussion on these fundamental truths, and
never in the place where such a discussion
would be most instructive to the reader.
This defect in the plan of Grotius was per
ceived and supplied by PufTendorfT, who re
stored natural law to that superiority which
belonged to it, and, with great propriety, treat
ed the law of nations as only one main branch
of the parent stock. Without the genius of
his master, and with very inferior learning,
he has yet treated this subject with sound
sense, with clear method, with extensive and
accurate knowledge, and with a copious
ness of detail sometimes indeed tedious, but
always instructive and satisfactory. His
work will be always studied by those who
spare no labour to acquire a deep knowledge
of the subject; but it will, in our times, I
fear, be oftener found on the shelf than on
the desk of the general student. In the time
of Mr. Locke it was considered as the manual
of those who were intended for active life ;
but in the present age, I believe it will be
found that men of business are too much occu
pied, — men of letters are too fastidious, and
men of the world too indolent, for the study
or even the perusal of such works. Far be
it from me to derogate from the real and
great merit of so useful a writer as PufTen
dorfT. His treatise is a mine in which all his
successors must dig. I only presume to sug
gest, that a book so prolix, and so utterly void
of all the attractions of composition, is likely
to repel many readers who are interested in
its subject, and who might perhaps be dis
posed to acquire some knowledge of the
principles of public law.
Many other circumstances might be men
tioned, which conspire to prove that neither
of the great works of which I have spoken,
has superseded the necessity of a new at
tempt to lay before the public a system of
the law of nations. The language of Science
is so completely changed since both these
works were written, that whoever was now
to employ their terms in his moral reasonings
would be almost unintelligible to some of
his hearers or readers. — and to some among
them, too, who are neither ill qualified, nor
ill disposed, to study such subjects with con
siderable advantage to themselves. The
learned, indeed, well know how little novelty
or variety is to be found in scientific disputes.
The same truths and the same errors have
been repeated from age to age, with little va
riation but in the language ; and novelty of
expression is often mistaken by the ignorant
for substantial discovery. Perhaps, too, very
nearly the same portion of genius and judg
ment has been exerted in most of the various
forms under which science has been culti
vated at different periods of history. The
superiority of those writers who continue to
be read, perhaps often consists chiefly in
taste, in prudence, in a happy choice of sub
ject, in a favourable moment, in an agreeable
style, in the good fortune of a prevalent lan
guage, or in other advantages which are
either accidental, or are the result rather of
the secondary, than of the highest, faculties
of the mind. But these reflections, while
they moderate the pride of invention, and
dispel the extravagant conceit of superior
illumination, yet serve to prove the use, and
indeed the necessity, of composing, from
time to time, new systems of science adapt
ed to the opinions and language of each suc
ceeding period. Every age must be taught
in its own language. If a man were now to
begin a discourse on ethics with an account
of the "moral entities'' of PufTendorfT,* he
would speak an unknown tongue.
It is not, however, alone as a mere trans
lation of former writers into modern language
that a new system of public law seems likely
to be useful. The age in which we live
possesses many advantages which are pe
culiarly favourable to such an undertaking.
Since the composition of the great works of
Grotius and PufTendorfT, a more modest,
simple, and intelligible philosophy has been,
introduced into the schools ] which has in
deed been grossly abused by sophists, but
which, from the time of Locke, has been
cultivated and improved by a succession of
disciples worthy of their illustrious master.
We are thus enabled to discuss with pre
cision, and to explain with clearness, the
principles of the science of human nature,
* 1 do not mean to impeach the soundness of
any part of Puffendorff's reasoning founded on
moral entities : it may be explained in a manner
consistent with the most just philosophy. He used,
as every writer must do, the scientific language of
his own time. I only assert that, to those who
are unacquainted with ancient systems, his philo
sophical vocabulary is obsolete and unintelligible.
ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
33
which are in themselves on a level with the
capacity of every man of good sense, and
which only appeared to be abstruse from the
unprofitable subtleties with which they were
loaded, and the barbarous jargon in which
they were expressed. The deepest doctrines
of morality have since that time been treated
in the perspicuous and popular style, and
with some degree of the beauty and elo
quence of the ancient moralists. That phi
losophy on which are founded the principles
of our duty, if it has not become more cer
tain (for morality admits no discoveries), is
at least less "harsh and crabbed," less ob
scure and haughty in its language, and less
forbidding and disgusting in its appearance,
than in the days of our ancestors. If this
progress of leaning towards popularity has
engendered (as it must be owned that it has)
a multitude of superficial and most mis
chievous sciolists, the antidote must come
from the same quarter with the disease :
popular reason can alone correct popular
sophistry.
Nor is this the only advantage wrhich a
wrriter of the present age would possess over
the celebrated jurists of the last century.
Since that time vast additions have been
made to the stock of our knowledge of hu
man nature. Many dark periods of history
have since been explored : many hitherto
unknown regions of the globe have been
visited and described by travellers and navi
gators not less intelligent than intrepid. We
may be said to stand at the confluence of
the greatest number of streams of knowledge
flowing from the most distant sources that
ever met at one point. We are not confined,
as the learned of the last age generally were,
to the history of those renowned nations who
are our masters in literature. We can bring
before us man in a lower and more abject
condition than any in which he was ever
before seen. The records have been partly
opened to us of those mighty empires of
Asia* where the beginnings of civilization
are lost in the darkness of an unfathomable
antiquity. We can make human society
pass in review before our mind, from the
brutal and helpless barbarism of Terra del
Fuego, and the mild and voluptuous savages
of Otaheite, to the tame, but ancient and
immovable civilization of China, which be
stows its own arts on every successive race
* I cannot prevail on myself to pass over this
subject without paying my humble tribute to the
memory of Sir William Jones, who has laboured
so successfully in Oriental literature ; whose fine
genius, pure taste, unwearied industry, unrivalled
and almost prodigious variety of acquirements, —
not to speak of his amiable manners, and spotless
integrity, — must fill every one who cultivates or
admires letters with reverence, tinged with a me
lancholy which the recollection of his recent deaih
is so well adapted to inspire. I hope I shall be
pardoned if I add my applause to the genius and
learning of Mr. Maurice, who treads in the steps
of his illustrious friend, and who has bewailed his
death in a strain of genuine and beautiful poetry,
not unworthy of happier periods of our English
literature.
of conquerors, — to the meek and servile na
tives of Hindostan, who preserve their inge
nuity, their skill, and their science, through
a long series of ages, under the yoke of
foreign tyrants, — and to the gross and in
corrigible rudeness of the Ottomans, incapa
ble of improvement, and extinguishing the
remains of civilization among their unhappy
subjects, once the most ingenious nations of
the earth. We can examine almost every
imaginable variety in the character, man
ners, opinions, feelings, prejudices, and in
stitutions of mankind, into which they can
be thrown, either by the rudeness of barba
rism, or by the capricious corruptions of re
finement, or by those innumerable combina
tions of circumstances, which, both in these
opposite conditions, and in all the interme
diate stages between them, influence or
direct the course of human affairs. History,
if I may be allowed the expression, is now
a vast museum, in which specimens of every
variety of human nature may be studied.
From these great accessions to knowledge,
lawgivers and statesmen, but. above all,
moralists and political philosophers, may
reap the most important instruction. They
may plainly discover in all the useful and
beautiful variety of governments and insti
tutions, and under all the fantastic multitude
of usages and rites which have prevailed
among men, the same fundamental, compre
hensive truths, the sacred master-principles
which are the guardians of human society,
recognised and revered (with few and slight
exceptions) by every nation upon earth, and
uniformly taught (with still fewer excep
tions;) bv a succession of wise men from the
first dawn of speculation to the present mo
ment. The exceptions, few as they are, will,
on more reflection, be found rather apparent
than real. If we could raise ourselves to
that height from which we ought to survey
so vast a subject, these exceptions would
altogether vanish ; the brutality of a handful
of savages would disappear in the immense
prospect of human nature, and the murmurs
of a few licentious sophists would not ascend
to break the general harmony. This consent
of mankind in first principles, and this end
less variety in their application, which is one
among many valuable truths which we may
collect from our present extensive acquaint
ance with the history of man. is itself of vast
importance. Much of the majesty and au
thority of virtue is derived from their consent,
and almost the whole of practical wisdom is
founded on their variety.
What former age could have supplied facts
for such a work as that of Montesquieu ?
He indeed has been, perhaps justly, charged
with abusing this advantage, by the undis-
tinguishing adoption of the narratives of
travellers of very different degrees of accu
racy and veracity. But if we reluctantly
confess the justness of this objection ; if we
are compelled to own that he exaggerates
the influence of climate, — that he ascribes
too much to the foresight and forming skill
34
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
of legislators, and far too little to time and
circumstances, in the growth of political con
stitutions, — that the substantial character
and essential differences of governments are
often lost and confounded in his technical
language and arrangement, — that he often
bends the free and irregular outline of nature
to the imposing but fallacious geometrical
regularity of system, — that he has chosen a
style of affected abruptness, senteritious-
ness, and vivacity, ill suited to the gravity
of his subject ; — after all these concessions
(for his fame is large enough to spare many
concessions), the Spirit of Laws will still re
main not only one of the most solid and du
rable monuments of the powers of the hu
man mind, but a striking evidence of the
inestimable advantages which political philo
sophy may receive from a wide survey of
all the various conditions of human society.
In the present century a slow and silent,
but very substantial, mitigation has taken
place in the practice of war ; and in propor
tion as that mitigated practice has received
the sanction of time, it is raised from the rank
of mere usage, and becomes part of the law
of nations. Whoever will compare our pre
sent modes of warfare with the system of
Grotius* will clearly discern the immense
improvements which have taken place in
that respect since the publication of his
work, during a period, perhaps in every point
of view the happiest to be found in the his
tory of the world. In the same period many
important points of public law have been the
subject of contest both by argument and by
arms, of which we find either no mention, or
very obscure traces, in the history of prece
ding times.
There are other circumstances to which I
allude with hesitation and reluctance, though
it must be owned that they afford to a writer
of this age some degree of unfortunate and
deplorable advantage over his predecessors.
Recent events have accumulated more terri
ble practical instruction on every subject of
politics than could have been in other times
acquired by the experience of ages. Men's
wit sharpened by their passions has penetra
ted to the bottom of almost all political ques
tions. Even the fundamental rules of moral
ity themselves have, for the first time, unfor
tunately for mankind, become the subject of
doubt and discussion. I shall consider it as
my duty to abstain from all mention of these
awful events, and of these fatal controversies.
But the mind of that man must indeed be in
curious and indocile, who has either over
looked all these things, or reaped no instruc
tion from the contemplation of them.
From these reflections it appears, that,
since the composition of those two great
works on the law of nature and nations
which continue to be the classical and stand
ard works on that subject, we have gained
both more convenient instruments of reason-
* Especially those chapters of the third book,
entitled, " Temperamentum circa Captivos," &c.
ing and more extensive materials for science.
— that the code of war has been enlarged
and improved, — that new questions have
been practically decided, — and that new con
troversies have arisen regarding the inter
course of independent states, and the first
principles of morality and civil government.
Some readers may, howTever, think that in
these observations which I offer, to excuse
the presumption of my own attempt. I have
omitted the mention of later writers, to
whom some part of the remarks is not justly
applicable. But, perhaps, further considera
tion will acquit me in the judgment of such,
readers. Writers on particular questions of
public law are not within the scope of my
observations. They have furnished the most
valuable materials; but I speak only of a
system. To the large work of Wolfh'us, the
observations which i have made on PurTen-
dorff as a book for general use, will surely
apply with tenfold force. His abridger, Vat-
tel, deserves, indeed, considerable praise : he
is a very ingenious, clear, elegant, and useful
writer. But he only considers one part of this
extensive subject, — namely, the law of na
tions, strictly so called ; and I cannot help
thinking, that, even in this department of the
science, he has adopted some doubtful and
dangerous principles, — not to mention his
constant deficiency in that fulness of example
and illustration, which so much embellishes
and strengthens reason. It is hardly neces
sary to take any notice of the text-book of
Heineccius, the best writer of elementary
books with whom I am acquainted on any
subject. Burlamaqui is an author of superior
merit ; but he confines himself too much to
the general principles of morality and politics,
to require much observation from me in this
place. The same reason will excuse me for
passing over in silence the works of many
philosophers and moralists, to whom, in the
course of my proposed lectures, I shall owe
and confess the greatest obligations; and it
might perhaps deliver me from the neces
sity of speaking of the work of Dr. Paley, if
I were not desirous of this public opportu
nity of professing my gratitude for the in
struction and pleasure which I have received
from that excellent writer, who possesses, in
so eminent a degree, those invaluable quali
ties of a moralist. — good sense, caution,
sobriety, and perpetual reference to conve
nience and practice; and who certainly is
thought less original than he really is, merely
because his taste and modesty have led him
to disdain the ostentation of novelty, and be
cause he generally employs more art to
blend his own arguments with the body of
received opinions (so as that they are scarce
to be distinguished), than other men in the
pursuit of a transient popularity, have exert
ed to disguise the most miserable common
places in the shape of paradox.
No writer since the time of Grotius, of
PufTendorff, and of Wolf, has combined an
investigation of the principles of natural and
public law, with a full application of these
ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
35
principles to particular cases ; and in these
circumstances, I trust, it will not be deemed
extravagant presumption in me to hope that I
shall be able to exhibit a view of this science,
which shall, at least, be more intelligible and
attractive to students, than the learned trea
tises of these celebrated men. I shall now
proceed to state the general plan and sub
jects of the lectures in which I am to make
this attempt.
I. The being whose actions the law of
nature professes to regulate, is man. It is
on the knowledge of his nature that the
science of his duty must be founded.* It is
impossible to approach the threshold of moral
philosophy without a previous examination
of the faculties and habits of the human
mind. Let no reader be repelled from this
examination by the odious and terrible name
of "metaphysics;" for it is, in truth, nothing
more than the employment of good sense, in
observing our own thoughts, feelings, and
actions ; and when the facts which are thus
observed are expressed, as they ought to be,
in plain language, it is, perhaps, above all
other sciences, most on a level with the
capacity and information of the generality of
thinking men. When it is thus expressed,
it requires no previous qualification, but a
sound judgment perfectly to comprehend it ;
and those who wrap it up in a technical and
mysterious jargon, always give us strong
reason to suspect that they are not philoso
phers, but impostors. Whoever thoroughly
understands such a science, must be able to
teach it plainly to all men of common sense.
The proposed course will therefore open
with a very short, and, I hope, a very simple
and intelligible account of the powers and
operations of the human mind. By this
plain statement of facts, it will not be diffi
cult to decide many celebrated, though frivo
lous and merely verbal, controversies, which
have long amused the leisure of the schools,
and which owe both their fame and their
existence to the ambiguous obscurity of
scholastic language. It will, for example,
only require an appeal to every man's ex
perience, that we often act purely from a
regard to the happiness of others, and are
therefore social beings ; and it is not neces
sary to be a consummate judge of the de
ceptions- of language, to despise the sophis
tical trifler, who tells us, that, because we
experience a gratification in our benevolent
actions, we ^re therefore exclusively and
uniformly selfish. A correct examination
of facts will lead us to discover that quality
which is common to all virtuous actions, and
which distinguishes them from those which
are vicious and criminal. But we shall see
that it is necessary for man to be governed,
not by his own transient and hasty opinion
upon the tendency of every particular action,
but by those fixed and unalterable rules,
which are the joint result of the impartial
* " Natura enim juris explicanda est nobis,
eaqne ab hominis repetenda natura." — De Leg.
lib. i. c. 5.
judgment, the natural feelings, and the em
bodied experience of mankind. The autho
rity of these rules is, indeed, founded only
on their tendency to promote private and
public welfare ; but the morality of actions
will appear solely to consist in their corres
pondence with the rule. By the help of this
obvious distinction we shall vindicate a just
theory, which, far from being modern, is, in
fact, as ancient as philosophy, both from
plausible objections, and from fhe odious
imputation of supporting those absurd and
monstrous systems which have been built
upon it. Beneficial tendency is the founda
tion of rales, and the criterion by which
habits and sentiments are to be tried : but it
is neither the immediate standard, nor can
it ever be the principal motive of action.
An action to be completely virtuous, must
accord with moral rules, and must flow
from our natural feelings and affections,
moderated, matured, and improved into
steady habits of right conduct.* Without,
however, dwelling longer on subjects whicn
cannot be clearly stated, unless they are fully
unfolded, I content myself with observing,
that it shall be my object, in this preliminary,
but most important, part of the course, to lay
the foundations of morality so deeply in hu
man nature, as to satisfy the coldest inquirer;
and, at the same time, to vindicate the para
mount authority of the rales of our duty, at
all times, and in all places, over all opinions
of interest and speculations of benefit, so ex
tensively, so universally, and so inviolabtyj
as may well justify the grandest and me
most apparently extravagant effusions of mo
ral enthusiasm. If, notwithstanding all my
endeavours to deliver these doctrines with
the utmost simplicity, any of my auditors
should still reproach me for introducing such
abstruse matters, I must shelter myself be
hind the authority of the wisest of men. u If
they (the ancient moralists), before they had
come to the popular and received notions of
virtue and vice, had staid a little longer upon
the inquiry concerning the roots of good and
evil, they had given, in my opinion, a great
light to that which followed ; and especially
if they had consulted with nature, they had
made their doctrines less prolix, and more
profound. "t What Lord Bacon desired for
the mere gratification of scientific curiosity,
the welfare of mankind now imperiously de
mands. Shallow systems of metaphysics
have given birth to a brood of abominable
and pestilential paradoxes, which nothing but
a more profound philosophy can destroy.
However we may, perhaps, lament the neces
sity of discussions which may shake the ha
bitual reverence of some men for those rules
which it is the chief interest of all men to
practise, we have now no choice left. We
must either dispute, or abandon the ground.
Undistinguishing and unmerited invectives
* " Est autem virtus nihil aliud, quam in so
perfecta atque ad summum perducta na)ura."
Ibid. lib. i. c. 8.
t Advancement of Learning, book ii.
36
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
against philosophy will only harden sophists
and their disciples in the insolent conceit,
that they are in possession of an undisputed
superiority of reason; and that their antago
nists have no arms to employ against them,
but those of popular declamation. Let us
not for a moment even appear to suppose,
that philosophical truth and human happiness
are so irreconcilably at variance. I cannot
express my opinion on this subject so well as
in the words of a most valuable, though ge
nerally neglected writer: "The science of
abstruse learning, when completely attain
ed, is like Achilles' spear, that healed the
wounds it had made before ; so this know
ledge serves to repair the damage itself had
occasioned, and this perhaps is all that it is
good for ; it casts no additional light upon the
paths of life, but disperses the clouds with
which it had overspread them before; it ad
vances not the traveller one step in his jour
ney, but conducts him back again to the spot
from whence he wandered. Thus the land
of philosophy consists partly of an open cham
paign country, passable by every common
understanding, and partly of a range of woods,
traversable only by the speculative, and where
they too frequently delight to amuse them
selves. Since then we shall be obliged to
make incursions into this latter track, and
shall probably find it a region of obscurity,
danger, and difficulty, it behooves us to use
our utmost endeavours for enlightening and
smoothing the way before us."* We shall,
however, remain in the forest only long
enough to visit the fountains of those streams
which flow from it, and which water and
fertilise the cultivated region of morals, to
become acquainted with the modes of warfare
practised by its savage inhabitants, and to
learn the means of guarding our fair and
fruitful land against their desolating incur
sions. I shall hasten from speculations, to
which I am naturally, perhaps, but too prone,
and proceed to the more profitable considera
tion of our practical duty.
The first and most simple part of ethics is
that which regards the duties of private men
towards each other, when they are considered
apart from the sanction of positive laws. I
say apart from that sanction, not antecedent to
it ; for though we separate private from politi
cal duties for the sake of greater clearness
and order in reasoning, yet we are not to be
so deluded by this mere arrangement of con
venience as to suppose that human society
ever has subsisted, or ever could subsist,
without being protected by government, and
bound together by laws. All these relative
duties of private life have been so copiously
and beautifully treated by the moralists of
antiquity, that few men will now choose to
follow them, who are not actuated by the wild
ambition of equalling Aristotle in precision,
or rivalling Cicero in eloquence. They have
been also admirably treated by modern mo
ralists, among whom it would be gross in-
* Light of Nature, vol. i. pref. p. xxxiii.
justice not to number many of the preachers
of the Christian religion, whose peculiar char
acter is that spirit of universal charity, which
is the living principle of all our social duties.
For it was long ago said, with great truth, by
Lord Bacon, "that there never was any phi
losophy, religion, or other discipline, which
did so plainly and highly exalt that good
which is communicative, and depress the
good which is private and particular, as the
Christian faith."* The appropriate praise of
this religion is not so much that it has taught
new duties, as that it breathes a milder and
more benevolent spirit over the whole extent
of morals.
On a subject which has been so exhausted,
I should naturally have contented myself
with the most slight and general survey, if
some fundamental principles had not of late
been brought into question, which, in all
former times, have been deemed too evident
to require the support of argument, and
almost too sacred to admit the liberty of dis
cussion. I shall here endeavour to strengthen
some parts of the fortifications of morality
which have hitherto been neglected, because
no man had ever been hardy enough to attack
them. Almost all the relative duties of hu
man life will be found more immediately, or
more remotely, to arise out of the two great
institutions of property and marriage. They
constitute, preserve, and improve society.
Upon their gradual improvement depends the
progressive civilization of mankind ; on them
rests the whole order of civil life. We are
told by Horace, that the first efforts of law
givers to civilize men consisted in strength
ening and regulating these institutions, and
fencing them round with rigorous penal laws.
" Oppida coeperunt munire, et ponere leges,
Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis adulter.?'t
A celebrated ancient orator. t of whose
poems we have but a few fragments remain
ing, has well described the progressive order
in which human society is gradually led to
its highest improvements under the guardian
ship of those laws which secure property
and regulate marriage.
" Et leges sanctas docuit, et chara jugavit
Corpora conjugiis; et magnas condidit urbes."
These two great institutions convert the
selfish as well as the social passions of our
nature into the firmest bands of a peaceable
and orderly intercourse; they change the
sources of discord into principles of quiet;
they discipline the most ungovernable, they
refine the grossest, and they exalt the most
sordid propensities ; so that they become the
perpetual fountain of all that strengthens,
and preserves, and adorns society : they sus
tain the individual, and they perpetuate the
race. Around these institutions all our social
duties will be found at various distances to
range themselves ; some more near, obviously
* Advancement of Learning, book ii.
t Sermon, lib. i. Serm. Hi. 105.
t C. Licinius Calvus.
ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
essential to the good order of human life ;
others more remote, and of which the ne
cessity is not at first view so apparent; and
some so distant, that their importance has
been sometimes doubted, though upon more
mature consideration they will be found to
be outposts and advanced guards of these
fundamental principles, — that man should
securely enjoy the fruits of his labour, and
that the society of the sexes should be so
wisely ordered, as to make it a school of the
kind affections, and a fit nursery for the com
monwealth.
The subject of property is of great extent.
It will be necessary to establish the founda
tion of the rights of acquisition, alienation,
and transmission, not in imaginary contracts
or a pretended state of nature, but in their
subserviency to the subsistence and well-
being of mankind . It will not only be curious,
but useful, to trace the history of property
from the first loose and transient occupancy
of the savage, through all the modifications
which it has at different times received, to
that comprehensive, subtle, and anxiously
minute code of property which is the last
result of the most refined civilization.
I shall observe the same order in consider
ing the society of the sexes, as it is regulated
by the institution of marriage.* I shall en
deavour to lay open those unalterable princi
ples of general interest on which that institu
tion rests; and if I entertain a hope that on
this subject I may be able to add something
to what our masters in morality have taught
us. I trust, that the reader will bear in mind,
as an excuse for my presumption, that they
were not likely to employ much argument
where they did not foresee the possibility of
doubt. I shall also consider the historyt of
marriage, and trace it through all the forms
which it has assumed, to that descent and
happy permanency of union, which has, per
haps above all other causes, contributed to
the quiet of society, and the refinement of
manners in modern times. Among many
other inquiries which this subject will sug
gest, I shall be led more particularly to ex
amine the natural station and duties of the
female sex, their condition among different
* See on this subject an incomparable fragment
of the first book of Cicero's Economics, which is
.too long for insertion here, but which, if it be
closely examined, may perhaps dispel the illusion
of those gentlemen, who have so strangely taken
it for granted that Cicero was incapable of exact
reasoning.
t This progress is traced with great accuracy in
some beautiful lines of Lucretius : —
Mulier, conjuncta viro, concessit in unum ;
Castaque private Veneris connubia laeta
Cognita sunt, prolemque ex se videre creatam ;
Turn genus humanum primum mollescere ccepir.
; pueriquo parentum
Blanditiis facile ingenium fregere superbum.
Tune et amicitiam cceperunt jungere, habentes
Finitimi inter se, nee leedere, nee violare ;
Et pueroscommendarunt, muliebreque saeclum,
Vocibus et gestu ; cum balbe significarent,
Imbecillorum esse aiquum miserier omni.
De Rerum Nat. lib. v.
nations, its improvement in Europe, and the
bounds' which nature herself has prescribed
to the progress of that improvement : beyond
which every pretended advance will be a
real degradation.
Having established the principles of private
duty, I shall proceed to consider man under
the important relation of subject and sove
reign, or, in other words, of citizen and ma
gistrate. The duties which arise from this
relation I shall endeavour to establish, not
upon supposed compacts, which are alto
gether chimerical, which must be admitted
to be false in fact, and which, if they are to
be considered as fictions, will be found to
serve no purpose of just reasoning, and to be
equally the foundation of a system of uni
versal despotism in Hobbes, and of universal
anarchy in llousseau ; but on the solid basis
of general convenience. Men cannot subsist
without society and mutual aid ; they can
neither maintain social intercourse nor re
ceive aid from each other without the pro
tection of government ; and they cannot en
joy that protection without submitting to
the restraints which a just goverment im
poses. This plain argument establishes the
duty of obedience on the part of the citizens,
and the duty of protection on that of magis
trates, on the same foundation with that of
every other moral duty ; and it s|iows, with
sufficient evidence, that these duties are re
ciprocal ; — the only rational end for which
the fiction of a contract should have been
invented. I shall not encumber my reason
ing by any speculations on the origin of
government, — a question on which so much
reason has been wasted in modern times;
but which the ancients* in a higher spirit of
philosophy have never once mooted. If our
principles be just, our origin of arovernment
must have been coeval with that of man
kind ; and as no tribe has ever been dis
covered so brutish as to be without some
government, and yet so enlightened as to
establish a government by common consent,
it is surely unnecessary to employ any seri
ous argument in the confutation of the doc
trine that is inconsistent with reason, and
unsupported by experience. But though all
inquiries into the origin of government be
chimerical, yet the history of its progress is
curious and useful. The various stages
through which it passed from savage inde
pendence, which implies every rnan;s power
of injuring his neighbour, to legal liberty,
which consists in every man's security against
wrong; the manner in which a family ex
pands into a tribe, and tribes coalesce into a
* The introduction to the first boqk of Aristotle's
Politics is the best demonstration of the necessity
of political society to the well-being, and indeed
to the very being, of man, with which I am ac
quainted. Having shown the circumstances which
render man necessarily a social being, he justly
concludes, '' K*/ wi aptyamc tvjst TroxiTix-cv ^wov."
The same scheme of philosophy is admirably pur
sued in the short, but invaluable fragment of the
sixth book of Polybius, which describes the his
tory and revolutions of government.
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
nation. — in which public justice is gradually j
engrafted on private revenge, and temporary j
submission ripened into habitual obedience; j
form a most important and extensive subject
of inquiry, which comprehends all the im
provements of mankind in police, in judica
ture, alid in legislation.
I have already given the reader to under
stand that the description of liberty which
seems to me the most comprehensive, is that
of security against wrong. Liberty is there
fore the object of all government. Men are
more free under every government, even the
most imperfect, than they would be if it
were possible for them to exist without
any government at all : they are more secure
from wrong, more undisturbed in the exer
cise of their natural powers, and therefore
more free, even in the most obvious and
grossest sense of the word, than if they were
altogether unprotected against injury from
each other. But as general security is en
joyed in very different degrees under dif-
ierent governments, those which guard it
most perfectly, are by the way of eminence
called "free." Such governments attain most
completely the end which is common to all
government. A free constitution of govern
ment and a good constitution of government
are therefore different expressions for the'
same idea.
Another material distinction, however, soon
presents itself. In most civilized states the
subject is tolerably protected against gross
injustice from his fellows by impartial laws,
which it is the manifest interest of the sove
reign to enforce : but some commonwealths
are so happy as to be founded on a principle
of much more refined and provident wisdom.
The subjects of such commonwealths are
guarded riot only against the injustice of each
other, but (as far as human prudence can con
trive) against oppression from the magistrate.
Such states, like all other extraordinary exam
ples of public or private excellence and hap
piness, are thinly scattered over the different
ages and countries of the world. In them the
will of the sovereign is limited with so exact a
measure, that his protecting authority is not
weakened. Such a combination of skill arid
fortune is not often to be expected, and indeed
never can arise, but from the constant though
gradual exertions of wisdom and virtue, to
improve a long succession of most favourable
circumstances. There is, indeed, scarce any
society so wretched as to be destitute of
some sort of weak provision against the in
justice of their governors. Religious institu
tions, favourite prejudices, national manners,
have in different countries, with unequal de
grees of force, checked or mitigated the ex
ercise of supreme power. The privileges of
a powerful nobility, of opulent mercantile
communities, of great judicial corporations,
have in some monarchies approached more
near to a control on the sovereign. Means
have been devised with more or less wisdom
to temper the despotism of an aristocracy
over their subjects, and in democracies to
protect the minority against the majority,
and the whole people against the tyranny of
demagogues. But in these unmixed forms
of government, as the right of legislation is
vested in one individual or in one order, it is
obvious that the legislative power may shake
off all the restraints which the laws have
imposed on it. All such governments, there
fore, tend towards despotism, and the se
curities which they admit against misgovern-
ment are extremely feeble and precarious.
The best security which human wisdom can
devise, seems to be the distribution of poli
tical authority among different individuals
and bodies, wTith separate interests, and
separate characters, corresponding to the
variety of classes of which civil society is
composed, — each interested to guard their
own order from oppression by the rest, —
each also interested to prevent any of the
others from seizing on exclusive, and there
fore despotic power \ and all having a com
mon interest to co-operate in carrying on the
ordinary and necessary administration of
government. If there were not an interest
to resist each other in extraordinary cases,
there would not be liberty : if there were
not an interest to co-operate in the ordinary
course of affairs, there could be no govern
ment. The object of such wise institutions,
which make selfishness of governors a se
curity against their injustice, is to protect
men against wrong both from their rulers and
their fellows. Such governments are, with
justice, peculiarly and emphatically called
" free ;?; and in ascribing that liberty to the
skilful combination of mutual dependance
and mutual check, I feel my own conviction
greatly strengthened by calling to mind, that
in this opinion I agree with all the wise men
who have ever deeply considered the prin
ciples of politics ; — with Aristotle and Poly-
bius, with Cicero and Tacitus, with Bacon and
Machiavel, with Montesquieu and Hume.*
It is impossible in such a cursory sketch as
the present even to allude to a very small
part of those philosophical principles, poli-
* To the weight of these great names let me
add the opinion of two illustrious men of the pre
sent age, as both their opinions are combined by
one of them in the following passages: "He
(Mr. Fox) always thought any of the simple un
balanced governments bad ; simple monarchy,
simple aristocracy, simple democracy ; he held
them all imperfect or vicious, all were bad by
themselves ; the composition alone was good.
These had been always his principles, in which
he agreed with his friend, Mr. Burke.'' — Speech
on the Army Estimates, 9th Feb. 1790. In speak
ing of both these illustrious men, whose names I
here join, as they will be joined in fame by poste
rity, which will forget their temporary differences
in the recollection of their genius and their friend
ship, I do not entertain the vain imagination that
I can add to their glory by any thing that I can
say. But it is a gratification to me to give utter
ance to my feelings ; to express the profound ve
neration with which I am filled for the memory
of the one, and the warm affection which I cherish
for the other, whom no one ever heard in public
without admiration, or knew in private life with
out loving.
ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
39
tical reasonings, and historical facts, which
are necessary for the illustration of this mo
mentous subject. In a full discussion of it
I shall be obliged to examine the general
frame of the most celebrated governments
of ancient and modem times, and especially
of those which have been most renowned for
their freedom. The result of such an exa
mination will be, that no institution so de
testable as an absolutely unbalanced govern
ment, perhaps ever existed; that the simple
governments are mere creatures of the ima
gination of theorists, who have transformed
names used for convenience of arrangement
into real politics ; that, as constitutions of
government approach more nearly to that
unmixed and uncontrolled simplicity they
become despotic, and as they recede farther
from that simplicity they become free.
By the constitution of a state, I mean "the
body of those written and unwritten funda
mental laws which regulate the most import
ant rights of the higher magistrates, and the
most essential privileges* of the subjects."
Such a body of political laws must in all
countries arise out of the character and
situation of a people ; they must grow with
its progress, be adapted to its peculiarities,
, change writh its changes, and be incorporated
vvith its habits. Human wisdom cannot form
such a constitution by one act, for human
wisdom cannot create the materials of which
It is composed. The attempt, always inef
fectual, to change by violence the ancient
habits of men, and the established order of
society, so as to fit them for an absolutely
new scheme of government, flows from the
most presumptuous ignorance, requires the
support of the most ferocious tyranny, and
leads to consequences which its authors can
never foresee, — generally, indeed, to institu
tions the most opposite to those of which
they profess to seek the establishment.!
But human wisdom indefatigably employed
in remedying abuses, and in seizing favour
able opportunities of improving that order
of society which arises from causes over
which we have little control, after the re
forms and amendments of a series of ages,
has sometimes, though very rarely, shown
itself capable of building up a free constitu
tion, which is "the growth of time and na
ture, rather than the work of human inven-
* Privilege, in Roman jurisprudence, means the
exemption of one individual from the operation of
a law. Political privileges, in the sense in which
I employ the terms, mean those rights of the
subjects of a free state, which are deemed so es
sential to the well-being of the commonwealth,
that they are excepted from the ordinary discretion
of the magistrate, and guarded by the same fun
damental laws which secure his authority.
t See an admirable passage on this subject in
Dr. Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (vol. ii.
pp. 101 — 112), in which the true doctrine of re
formation is laid down with singular ability by that
eloquent and philosophical writer. See also Mr.
Burke's Speech on Economical Reform ; and
Sir M. Hale on the Amendment of Laws, in the
Collection of my learned and most excellent
friend, Mr. Hargrave, p. 248.
tion."* Such a constitution can only be
formed by the wise imitation of " the great
innovater Time, which, indeed, innovateth
greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarce to
be perceived."]" Without descending to the
puerile ostentation of panegyric, on that of
which all mankind confess the excellence,
I may observe, with truth and soberness,
thai a free government not only establishes
a universal security against wrong, but that
it also cherishes all the noblest powers of
the human mind; that it tends to banish
both the mean and the ferocious vices ; that
it improves the national character to which
it is adapted, and out of which it grows ;
that its whole administration is a practical
school of honesty and humanity ; and that
there the social affections, expanded into
public spirit, gain a wider sphere, and a
more active spring.
I shall conclude what 1 have to offer on
government, by an account of the constitu
tion of England. I shall endeavour to trace
the progress of that constitution by the light
of history, of laws, and of records, from the
earliest times to the present age; and to
show how the general principles of liberty,
originally common to it with the other Go
thic monarchies of Europe, but in other
countries lost or obscured, were in this more
fortunate island preserved, matured, and.
adapted to the progress of civilization. I
shall attempt to exhibit this most complicat
ed machine, as our history and our laws shovr
it in action ; and not as some celebrated
writers have most imperfectly represented it,
who have torn out a few of its more simple
springs, and putting them together, miscal
them the British constitution. So prevalent,
indeed, have these imperfect representations
hitherto been, that I will venture to affirm,
there is scarcely any subject which has been
less treated as it deserved than the govern
ment of England. Philosophers of great and
merited reputation!: have told us that it con
sisted of certain portions of monarchy, aris
tocracy, and democracy, — names which are,
in truth, very little applicable, and which, if
they were, would as little give an idea of this
government, as an account of the weight of
bone, of flesh, and of blood in a human body,
would be a picture of a living man. Nothing
but a patient arid minute investigation of the
* Pour former un gouvernement modere, il
faut combiner les puissances, les regler, les tem-
perer, les faire as;ir ; donner pour ainsi dire un lest
a 1'une, pour la mettre en etat de register a une
autre ; c'est un chef-d'oeuvre de legislation que le
hasard fait rarement, et que rarement on laisse
faire a. la prudence. Un gouvernement despot-
ique au contraire saute, pour ainsi dire, aux yeux ;
il est uniforme partout : comme il ne faut que des
passions pour 1'etablir, tout le monde est bon pour
cela. — Montesquieu, De 1' Esprit de Loix, liv. v.
c. 14.
t Bacon, Essay xxiv. (Of Innovations.)
t The reader will perceive that I allude to Mon
tesquieu, whom I never name without reverence,
though I shall presume, with humility, to criticise
his account of a government which he only saw at
a distance.
40
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
practice of the ^ government in all its parts,
and through its whole history, can give us
just notions on this important subject. If a
lawyer, without a philosophical spirit, be un
equal to the examination of this great work
of liberty and wisdom, still more unequal is
a philosopher without practical, legal, and
historical knowledge ; for the first may want
skill, but the second wants materials. The
observations of Lord Bacon on political writ
ers in general, are most applicable to those
who have given us systematic descriptions
cf the English constitution. " All those who
have written of governments have written as
philosophers, or as lawyers, and none as states
men. As for the philosophers, they make ima
ginary laws for imaginary commonwealths,
and their discourses are as the stars, which
give little light because they are so high." —
"Haec cogmtio ad viros civiles proprie perti-
net," as he tells us in another part of his
writings ; but unfortunately no experienced
philosophical British statesman has yet de
voted his leisure to a delineation of the con
stitution, which such a statesman alone can
practically and perfectly know.
In the discussion of this great subject, and
in all reasonings on the principles of politics,
I shall labour, above all things, to avoid that
which appears to me to have been the con
stant source of political error : — I mean the
attempt to give an air of system, of simpli
city, and of rigorous demonstration, to sub
jects which do not admit it. The only means
by which this could be done, was by refer
ring to a few simple causes, what, in truth,
arose from immense and intricate combina
tions, and successions of causes. The con
sequence was very obvious. The system
of the theorist, disencumbered from all re
gard to the real nature of things, easily as
sumed "an air of speciousness : it required
little dexterity, to make his arguments appear
conclusive. But all men agreed that it was
utterly inapplicable to human affairs. The
theorist railed at the folly of the world, in
stead of confessing his own ; and the man
of practice unjustly blamed Philosophy, in
stead of condemning the sophist. The causes
which the politician has to consider are,
above all others, multiplied, mutable, minute,
subtile, and, if I may so speak, evanescent,
— perpetually changing their form, and vary
ing their combinations, — losing their nature,
while they keep their name, — exhibiting the
most different consequences in the endless
variety of men and nations on whom they
operate, — in one degree of strength produc
ing the most signal benefit, and, under a
slight variation of circumstances, the most
tremendous mischiefs. They admit indeed
ofcbeing reduced to theory j but to a theory
formed on the most extensive views, of the
most comprehensive and flexible principles,
to embrace all their varieties, and to fit all
their rapid transmigrations, — a theory, of
•which the most fundamental maxim is, dis
trust in itself, and deference for practical
prudence. Only two writers of former times
have, as far as I know, observed this general
defect of political reasoners ; but these two
are the greatest philosophers who have ever
appeared in the world. The first of them is
Aristotle, who. in a passage of his politics,*
to which I cannot at this moment turn,
plainly condemns the pursuit of a delusive
geometrical accuracy in moral reasonings as
the constant source of the grossest error. The
second is Lord Bacon, who tells us, with that
authority of conscious wisdom which belongs
to him, and with that power of richly adorn
ing Truth from the wardrobe of Genius
which he possessed above almost all men,
l- Civil knowledge is conversant about a
subject which, above all others, is most
immersed in matter, and hardliest reduced
to axiom.7 ;t
I shall next endeavour to lay open the
general principles of civil and criminal laws.
On this subject I may with some confidence
hope that I shall be enabled to philosophise
with better materials by my acquaintance
with the laws of my own country, which it
is the business of my life to practise, and of
which the study has by habit become my
favourite pursuit.
The first principles of jurisprudence are
simple maxims of Reason, of which the ob
servance is immediately discovered by expe
rience to be essential to the security of men's
rights, and which pervade the laws of all
countries. An account of the gradual appli
cation of these original principles, first to
more simple, and afterwards to more com
plicated cases, forms both the history and
the theory of law. Such an historical ac
count of the progress of men, in reducing
justice to an applicable and practical system,
will enable us to trace that chain, in which
so many breaks and interruptions are per
ceived by superficial observers, but which
in truth inseparably, though with many dark
and hidden windings, links together the se
curity of life and property with the most
minute and apparently frivolous formalities
of legal proceeding. We shall perce-ive that
no human foresight is sufficient to establish
such a system at once, and that, if it were
so established, the occurrence of unforeseen
cases would shortly altogether change- it ;
that there is but one way of forming a civil
code, either consistent with common sense,
or that has ever been practised in any coun
try, — namely, that of gradually building up
the law in proportion as the facts arise which
it is to regulate. We shall learn to appre-
* Probably book iii. cap. 11.— Ed.
t This principle is expressed by a writer of a
very different character from these two great phi
losophers, — a writer, " qu'on n'appellera plus phi-
losophe, mais qu'on appellera leplus eloquent des
sophistes," with great force, and, as his manner
is. with some exaggeration. "II n'y a point de
principes abstraits dans la politique. C'est une
science des calculs, des combinaisons, et des ex
ceptions, selon les lieux, les terns, et les circonstan-
ces." — Lettre de Rousseau au Marquis de Mira-
beau. The second proposition is true ; but the
first is not a just inference from it..
ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS.
41
ciate the merit of vulgar objections against
the subtilty and complexity of laws. We
shall estimate the good sense and the grati
tude of those who reproach lawyers for em
ploying all the powers of their mind to dis
cover subtle distinctions for the prevention
of justice ;* and we shall at once perceive
that laws ought to be neither more simple
nor more complex than the state of society
which they are to govern, but that they ought
exactly to correspond to it. Of the two faults,
however, the excess of simplicity would
certainly be the greatest ; for laws, more
complex than are necessary, would only pro
duce embarrassment ; \vhereas laws more
simple than the affairs which they regulate
would occasion a defeat of Justice. More
understanding has perhaps been in this man
ner exerted to fix the rules of life than in any
other science ;t and it is certainly the most
honourable occupation of the understanding,
because it is the most immediately subservi
ent to general safety and comfort. There is
not so noble a spectacle as that which is dis
played in the progress of jurisprudence ;
where we may contemplate the cautious and
unwearied exertions of a succession of wrise
men, through a long course of ages, with
drawing every case as it arises from the
dangerous power of discretion, and subject
ing it to inflexible rules, — extending the do
minion of justice and reason, and gradually
contracting, within the narrowest possible
limits, the domain of brutal force and of ar
bitrary will. This subject has been treated
with such dignity by a writer who is ad
mired by all mankind for his eloquence, but
who is, if possible, still more admired by all
competent judges for his philosophy, — a writ
er, of whom I may justly say, that he was
"gravissimus et dicendi et iritelligendi auc-
tor et magister," — that I cannot refuse my
self the gratification of quoting his words : —
"The science of jurisprudence, the pride of
the human intellect, which, with all its de
fects, redundancies, and errors, is the collect
ed reason of ages combining the principles
of original justice with the infinite variety
of human concerns. '7t
I shall exemplify the progress of law, and
illustrate those principles of Universal Jus
tice on which it is founded, by a compara
tive review of the two greatest civil codes
that have been hitherto formed, — those of
Rome and of England,*— of their agreements
* "The casuistical subtilties are not perhaps
greater than the subtilties of lawyers ; but the lat
ter are innocent, and even necessary." — Hume,
Essays, vol. ii. p. 558.
t "Law," said Dr. Johnson, "is the science
in which the greatest powers of the understanding
are applied to the greatest number of facts." No
body, who is acquainted with the variety and mul
tiplicity of the subjects of jurisprudence, and with
the prodigious powers of discrimination employed
upon them, can doubt the truth of this observation.
t Burke, Works, vol. iii. p. 134.
§ On the intimate connection of these two codes,
let us hear the words of Lord Holt, whose name
never can be pronounced without veneration, as
and disagreements, both in general provi
sions, and in some of the most important
parts of their minute practice. In this part
of the course, which I mean to pursue with,
such detail as to give a view of both codes
that may perhaps be sufficient for the pur
poses of the general student, I hope to con
vince him that the laws of civilized nations,
particularly those of his own, are a subject
most worthy of scientific curiosity; that prin
ciple and system run through them even to
the minutest particular, as really, though not
so apparently, as in other sciences, and ap
plied to purposes more important than those
of any other science. Will it be presump
tuous to express a hope, that such an in
quiry may not be altogether a useless intro
duction to that larger and more detailed
study of the law of England, which is the
duty of those who are to profess and prac
tise that law ?
In considering the important subject of
criminal law it will be my duty to found, on
a regard to the general safety, the right of
the magistrate to inflict punishments, even
the most severe, if that safety cannot be
effectually protected by the example of infe
rior punishments. It will be a more agreea
ble part of my office to explain the tempera
ments \vhich Wisdom, as well as Humanity,
prescribes in the exercise of that harsh right,
unfortunately so essential to the preservation
of human society. I shall collate the penal
codes of different nations, and gather to
gether the most accurate statement of the
result of experience with respect to the effi
cacy of lenient and severe punishments;
and I shall endeavour to ascertain the princi
ples on which must be founded both the pro
portion and the appropriation of penalties t">
crimes. As to the law of criminal proceed
ing, my labour will be very easy; for on thac
subject an English lawyer, if he were to de
lineate the model of perfection, would fiiH
that, with few exceptions, he had trans
cribed the institutions of his own country.
The next great division of the subject IP
the "law of nations," strictly and properly
so called. I have already hinted at the
general principles on which this law is
founded. They, like all the principles of
natural jurisprudence, have been more hap
pily cultivated, and more generally obeyed,
in some ages and countries than in others;
and, like them, are susceptible of great va
riety in their application, from the character
and usage of nations. I shall consider these
principles in the gradation of those which
are necessary to any tolerable intercourse
between nations, of those which are essen
tial to all well-regulated and mutually ad-
long as wisdom and integrity are revered among
men : — " Inasmuch as the laws of all nations are
doubiless raised out of the ruins of the civil law,
as all governments are sprung out of the ruins of
the Roman empire, it must be owned that the
principles of our law are borrowed from the civil
law, therefore grounded upon the same reason in
many things." -12 Mod. Rep. 482.
42
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
vantageous intercourse, and of those which
are highly conducive to the preservation of
a mild and friendly intercourse between
civilized states. Of the first class, every
understanding acknowledges the necessity,
and some traces of a faint reverence for
them are discovered even among the most
barbarous tribes; of the second; every well-
informed man perceives the important use,
.and they have generally been respected
by all polished nations; of the third, the
great benefit may be read in the history of
modern Europe, where alone they have been
carried to their full perfection. In unfolding
the first and second class of principles, I
shall naturally be led to give an account of
that law of nations, which, in greater or less
perfection, regulated the intercourse of sa
vages, of the Asiatic empires, and of the an
cient republics. The third brings me to the
consideration of the law of nations, as it is
now acknowledged in Christendom. From
the great extent of the subject, and the par
ticularity to which, for reasons already given,
I must here descend, it is impossible for me,
within my moderate compass, to give even
an outline of this part of the course. It com
prehends, as every reader will perceive, the
principles of national independence, the in
tercourse of nations in peace, the privileges
of ambassadors and inferior ministers, the
commerce of private subjects, the grounds
of just war, the mutual duties of belligerent
and neutral powers, the limits of lawful hos
tility, the rights of conquest, the faith to be
observed in warfare, the force of an armis
tice, — of safe conducts and passports, the
nature and obligation of alliances, the means
of negotiation, arid the authority and inter
pretation of treaties of peace. All these,
and many other most important and compli
cated subjects, with all the variety of moral
reasoning, and historical examples which is
necessary to illustrate them, must be fully
examined in that part of the lectures, in
which I shall endeavour to put together a
tolerably complete practical system of the
law of nations, as it has for the last two
centuries been recognised in Europe.
"Le droit des gens est naturellement fonde
sur ce principe, que les diverses nations doi-
vent se faire, dans la paix le plus de bien, et
dans la guerre le moins de mal, qu'il est pos
sible, sans nuire a leurs veritables interets.
L'objet de la guerre c'est la victoire, celui
de la victoire la conquete ; celui de la con-
>quete la conservation. De ce principe et du
precedent, doivent deriver toutes les loix qui
forment le droit des gens. Toutes les na
tions ont un droit des gens ; et les Iroquois
meme, qui mangent leurs prisonniers, en ont
un. Us envoient et rec.oivent des embas-
sades ; ils connoissent les droits de la guerre
et de la paix : le mal est que ce droit des
gens n'est pas fonde sur les vrais principes."*
As an important supplement to the practi
cal system of our modern law of nations, or
* De 1'Esprit des Loix, liv. i. c. 3.
rather as a necessary part of it, I shall con
clude with a survey of the diplomatic and
conventional law of Europe, and of the trea
ties which have materially affected the dis
tribution of power and territory among the
European states, — the circumstances which
gave rise to them, the changes which they
effected, and the principles which they in
troduced into the public code of the Christian
commonwealth. In ancient tim.es the know
ledge of this conventional law was thought
one of the greatest praises that could be be
stowed on a name loaded with all the honours
that eminence in the arts of peace and war
can confer: "Equidem existimo judices,
cum in omni genere ac varietate artiumj
etiam illarum, quae sine summo otio non
facile discuntur, Cn. Pompeius excellat, sin-
gularem quandam laudem ejus et prsestabi-
lem esse scientiam, in fcederibus, pactioni-
bus, conditionibus, populorum, regum, exte-
rarum nationum : in universo denique belli
jure acpacis.?;* Information on this subject
is scattered over an immense variety of
voluminous compilations, not accessible to
every one, and of which the perusal can be
agreeable only to a very few. Yet so much
of these treaties has been embodied into the
general law of Europe, that no man can be
master of it who is not acquainted with them.
The knowledge of them is necessary to ne
gotiators and statesmen ; it may sometimes
be important to private men in various situ
ations in which they may be placed ; it is
useful to all men who wish either to be ac
quainted with modern history, or to form a
sound judgment on political measures. I
shall endeavour to give such an abstract ol
it as may be sufficient for some, and a con
venient guide for others in the farther pro
gress of their studies. The treaties which I
shall more particularly consider, will be those
of Westphalia, of Oliva. of the Pyrenees, of
Breda, of Nimeguen, of Ryswick, of Utrecht,
of Aix-la-Chapelle, of Paris (1763), and of
Versailles (1783). I shall shortly explain,
the other treaties, of which the stipulations
are either alluded to, confirmed, or abro
gated in those which I consider at length.
I shall subjoin an account of the diplomatic
intercourse of the European powers with the
Ottoman Porte, and with other princes and
states who are without the pale of our ordi
nary federal law; together with a view of
the most important treaties of commerce,
their principles, and their consequences.
As an useful appendix to a practical trea
tise on the lawr of nations, some account will
be given of those tribunals which in different
countries of Europe decide controversies
arising out of that law; of their constitution,
of the extent of their authority, and of their
modes of proceeding; more especially of
those courts which are peculiarly appointed
for that purpose by the laws of Great Britain.
Though the course, of which I have sketch
ed the outline, may seem to comprehend so
* Cic. Oral, pro L. Corn. Balbo, c. vi.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
43
great a variety of miscellaneous subjects, yet
they are all in truth closely and inseparably
interwoven. The duties of men, of subjects,
of princes, of lawgivers, of magistrates, and
of states, are all parts of one consistent sys
tem of universal morality. Between the most
abstract and elementary maxim of moral
philosophy, and the most complicated con
troversies of civil or public law, there sub
sists a connection which it will be the main
object of these lectures to trace. The princi
ple of justice, deeply rooted in the nature and
interest of man, pervades the whole system,
and is discoverable in every part of it, even to
its minutest ramification in a legal formality,
or in the construction of an article in a treaty.
I know not whether a philosopher ought
to confess, that in his inquiries after truth he
is biassed by any consideration, — even by
the love of virtue. But I, who conceive that
a real philosopher ought to regard truth itself
chiefly on account of its subserviency to
the happiness of mankind, am not ashamed
to confess, that I shall feel a great consola
tion at the conclusion of these lectures, if,
by a wide survey and an exact examination
of the conditions and relations of human na
ture, I shall have confirmed but one indivi
dual in the conviction, that justice is the
permanent interest of all men, and of all
commonwealths. To discover one new link
of that eternal chain by which the Author
of the universe has bound together the hap
piness and the duty of His creatures, and in-
dissolubly fastened their interests to each
other, would fill my heart with more plea
sure than all the fame with which the most
ingenious paradox ever crowned the most
eloquent sophist. I shall conclude this Dis
course in the noble language of two great
orators and philosophers, who have, in a few
words, stated the substance, the object, and
the result of all morality, and politics, and
law. '-'Nihil est quod adhuc cle republica
putem dictum, et quo possim longius pro-
gredi. nisi sit confirmatum, non modo falsum
esse illud, sine injuria non posse, sed hoc
verissimum, sine summa justitia rempubli-
cam geri nullo modo posse."* '* Justice is
itself the great standing policy of civil so
ciety, and any eminent departure from it
under any circumstances, lies under the sus
picion of being no policy at all."t
* CicDeRepub. lib.ii.
t Burke, Works, vol. iii. p. 207.
LIFE OF SIB, THOMAS MORE.
ARISTOTLE and Bacon, the greatest philo
sophers of the ancient and the modern world,
agree in representing poetry as being of a
more excellent nature than history. Agree
ably to the predominance of mere under
standing in Aristotle's mind, he alleges as
his cause of preference that poetry regards
general truth, or conformity to universal
nature ; while history is conversant only with
a confined and accidental truth, dependent on
time, place, and circumstance. The ground
assigned by Bacon is such as naturally issued
from that fusion of imagination with reason,
which constitutes his philosophical genius.
Poetry is ranked more highly by him, be
cause 'the poet presents us with a pure ex
cellence and an unmingled grandeur, not to
be found in the coarse realities of life or of
history ; but which the mind of man, although
not destined to reach, is framed to contem
plate with delight.
The general difference between biography
and history is obvious. There have been
many men in every age whose lives are full
of interest and instruction ; but who, having
never taken a part in public affairs, are alto
gether excluded from the province of the
historian : there have been also, probably,
equal numbers who have influenced the for
tune of nations in peace or in war, of the
peculiarities of whose character we have no
information ; and who, for the purposes of
the biographer, may be said to have had no
[ private life. These are extreme cases : but
i there are other men, whose manners and
I acts are equally well known, whose indi-
| vidual lives are deeply interesting, whose
j characteristic qualities are peculiarly striking,
' who have taken an important share in events
: connected with the most extraordinary revo
lutions of human affairs, and whose biogra
phy becomes more difficult from that com-
' bination and intermixture of private with
; public occurrences, which render it instruc-
! tive and interesting. The variety and splen-
; dour of the lives of such men render it often
: difficult to distinguish the portion of them
; which ought to be admitted into history, from
i that which should be reserved for biography.
; Generally speaking, these two parts are so
distinct and unlike, that they cannot be con
founded without much injury to both ; — as
when the biographer hides the portrait of
the individual by a crowded and confined
picture of events, or when the historian al
lows unconnected narratives of the lives of
j men to break the thread of history. The
j historian contemplates only the surface of
: human nature, adorned and disguised (as
j when actors perform brilliant parts before a
; great audience), in the midst of so many
[ dazzling circumstances, that it is hard to
j estimate the intrinsic worth of individuals,
i — and impossible, in an historical relation,,
to exhibit the secret springs of their con
duct.
44
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
The biographer endeavours to follow the
hero and the statesman, from the field, the
council, or the senate, to his private dwell
ing, where, in the midst of domestic ease,
or of social pleasure, he throws aside the
robe and the mask, becomes again a man
instead of an actor, and. in spite of himself,
often betrays those frailties and singularities
which are visible in the countenance and
voice, the gesture and manner, of every one
when he is not playing a part. It is par
ticularly difficult to observe the distinction
in the case of Sir Thomas More, because he
was so perfectly natural a man that he car
ried his amiable peculiarities into the gravest
deliberations of state, and the most solemn
acts of law. Perhaps nothing more can be
universally laid down, than that the biogra
pher never ought to introduce public events,
except in as far as they are absolutely neces
sary to the illustration of character, and that
the historian should rarely digress into bio
graphical particulars, except in as far as they
contribute to the clearness of his narrative
of political occurrences.
Sir Thomas More was born in Milk Street,
in the city of London, in the year 1480, three
years before the death of Edward IV. His
family was respectable, — no mean advantage
at that time. His father, Sir John More, who
was born about 1440, was entitled by his
descent to use an armorial bearing, — a privi
lege guarded strictly and jealously as the
badge of those who then began to be called
gentry, and who, though separated from the
lords of parliament by political rights, yet
formed with them in the order of society
one body, corresponding to those called noble
in the other countries of Europe. Though
the political power of the barons was on the
wane, the social position of the united body
of nobility and gentry retained its dignity.*
Sir John More was one of the justices of the
court of King's Bench to the end of his long
life ; and, according to his son's account, well
performed the peaceable duties of civil life,
being gentle in his deportment, blameless,
meek and merciful, an equitable judge, and
an upright man.t
Sir Thomas More received the first rudi
ments of his education at St. Anthony's
school, in Thread-needle Street, under Nicho
las Hart : for the daybreak of letters was now
* " In Sir Thomas More's epitaph, he describes
himself as ' born of no noble family, but of an
honest stock,' (ov in the words of the original,
familia non celebri, sed honesta natus,) a true
translation, as we here take nobility and nolle;
fo,r none under a baron, except he be of the privy
council, doth challenge it; and in this sense he
meant it ; but as the Latin word nobilis is taken in
other countries for gentrie, it was otherwise. Sir
John More bare arms from his birth ; and though
we cannot certainly tell who were his ancestors,
they must needs be gentlemen." — Life of More
(commonly reputed to be) by Thomas More, his
great grandson, pp. 3, 4. This book will be cited
henceforward as " More."
t " Homo civilis, innocens, mitis, integer." —
Epitaph
so bright, that the reputation of schools was
carefully noted, and schoolmasters began to
be held in some part of the estimation which
they merit. Here, however, his studies were
confined to Latin ; the cultivation of Greek,
which contains the sources and models of
Roman literature, being yet far from having
descended to the level of the best among the
schools. It was the custom of that age that
young gentlemen should pass part of their
boyhood in the house and service of their
superiors, where they might profit by listen
ing to the conversation of men of experience,
and gradually acquire the manners of the
world. It was not deemed derogatory from
youths of rank, — it was rather thought a
beneficial expedient for inuring them to stern
discipline and implicit obedience, that they
should be trained, during this noviciate, in
humble and even menial offices. A young
gentleman thought himself no more lowered
by serving as a page in the family of a great
peer or prelate, than a Courtenay or a How
ard considered it as a degradation to be the
huntsman or the cupbearer of a Tudor.
More was fortunate in the character of his
master: when his school studies were thought
to be finished, about his fifteenth year, he
was placed in the house of Cardinal Morton,
archbishop of Canterbury. This prelate,
who was born in 1410, was originally an emi
nent civilian, canonist, and a practiser of
note in the ecclesiastical courts. He had
been a Lancastrian, and the fidelity with
which he adhered to Henry VI., till that un
fortunate prince's death, recommended him
to the confidence and patronage of Edward
IV. He negotiated the marriage with the
princess Elizabeth, which reconciled (with
whatever confusion of titles) the conflicting
pretensions of York and Lancaster, and
raised Henry Tudor to the throne. By these
services, and by his long experience in af
fairs, he continued to be prime minister till
his death, which happened in 1500, at the
advanced age of ninety.* Even at the time
of More's entry into his household, the old
cardinal, though then fourscore and five
years, was pleased with the extraordinary
promise of the sharp and lively boy • as aged
persons sometimes, as it were, catch a
glimpse of the pleasure of youth, by enter
ing for a moment into its feelings. More
broke into the rude dramas performed at the
cardinal's Christmas festivities, to which he
wras too young to be invited, and often in
vented at the moment speeches for himself,
" which made the lookers-on more sport than
all the players beside." The cardinal, much
delighting in his wit and towardness, would
often say of him unto the nobles that dined
with him. — " This child here waiting at the
table, whosoever shall live to see it, will
* Dodd's Church History, vol. i. p. 141. The
Roman Catholics, now restored to their just rank
in society, have no longer an excuse for not con
tinuing this useful work. [This has been accord
ingly done since this note was written, by the Rev.
M. A. Tierney.— Ed.]
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
45
prove a marvellous man."* More, in his
historical work, thus commemorates this
early friend, not without a sidelong glance
at the acts of a courtier : — " He was a man
of great natural wit, very well learned, hon
ourable in behaviour, lacking in no wise to
win favour.;Jt In Utopia he praises the car
dinal more lavishly, and with no restraint
from the severe justice of history. It was
in Morton's house that he was probably first
known to Colet, dean of St. Paul's, the foun
der of St. Paul's school, and one of the most
eminent restorers of ancient literature in
England ; who was wont to say, that " there
was but one wit in England, and that was
young Thomas More."!
More went to Oxford in 1497, where he
appears to have had apartments in St. Mary's
Hall, but to have carried on his studies at
Canterbury College, § on the spot where
Wolsey afterwards reared the magnificent
edifice of Christchurch. At that university
he found a sort of civil war waged between
the partisans of Greek literature, who were
then innovators in education and suspected
of heresy, if not of infidelity, on the one
hand j and on the other side the larger body,
comprehending the aged, the powerful, and
the celebrated, who were content to be no
wiser than their forefathers. The younger
followers of the latter faction affected the
ridiculous denomination of Trojans, and as
sumed the names of Priam, Hector, Paris,
and ^Eneas, to denote their hostility to the
Greeks. The puerile pedantry of these cox
combs had the good effect of awakening the
zeal of More for his Grecian masters, and of
inducing him to withstand the barbarism
which would exclude the noblest produc
tions of the human mind from, the education
of English youth. He expostulated with the
university in a letter addressed to the whole
body, reproaching them with the better ex
ample of Cambridge, where the gates were
thrown open to the higher classics of Greece,
as freely as to their Roman imitators.il The
established clergy even then, though Luther
had not yet alarmed them, strangers as they
were to the new learning, affected to con
temn that of which they were ignorant, and
could riot endure the prospect of a rising
generation more learned than themselves.
Their whole education was Latin, and their
instruction was limited to Roman and canon
law, to theology, and school philosophy.
They dreaded the downfal of the authority
of the Vulgate from the study of Greek and
Hebrew. But the course of things was irrre-
sistible. The scholastic system was now on
the verge of general disregard, and the pe
rusal of the greatest Roman writers turned
all eyes towards the Grecian masters. What
* Roper's Life of Sir T. More, edited by Singer.
This book will be cited henceforward as "Roper."
t History of Richard III.
t More, p. 25.
$ Athenae Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 79.
II See this Letter in the Appendix to the second
volume of Jortin's Life of Erasmus.
man of high capacity, and of ambition be
coming his faculties, could read Cicero with
out a desire to comprehend Demosthenes and
Plato ? What youth desirous of excellence
but would rise from the study of the Georgics
and the JEiieid, with a wish to be acquainted
with Hesiod and Apollonius, with Pindar,
and above all with Homer ? These studies
were then pursued, not with the dull languor
and cold formality with which the indolent, in
capable, incurious majority of boys obey the
prescribed rules of an old establishment, but
with the enthusiastic admiration with which
the superior few feel an earnest of their own
higher powers, in the delight which arises
in their minds at the contemplation of new
beauty, and of excellence unimagined before.
More found several of the restorers of
Grecian literature at Oxford, who had been
the scholars of the exiled Greeks in Italy : —
Grocyn, the first professor of Greek in the
university • Linacre. the accomplished foun
der of the college of physicians: and Wil
liam Latimer, of whom we know little more
than what we collect from the general tes
timony borne by his most eminent contem
poraries to his learning and virtue. Grocyn,
the first of the English restorers, was a late
learner, being in the forty-eighth year of his
age when he went, in 1488, to Italy, where
the fountains of ancient learning were once
more opened. After having studied under
Politian, and learnt Greek from Chalcon-
dylas, one of the lettered emigrants who
educated the teachers of the western nations,
he returned to Oxford, where he taught than
language to More, to Linacre, and to Eras
mus. Linacre followed the example of Gro
cyn in visiting Italy, and profiting by the in
structions of Chalcondylas. Colet spent four
years in the same country, and in the like
studies. William Latimer repaired at a
mature age to Padua, in quest of that know
ledge which was not to be acquired at home.
He was afterwards chosen to be tutor to
Reginald Pole, the King's cousin : and Eras
mus, by attributing to him li maidenly mo
desty," leaves in one word an agreeable im
pression of the character of a man chosen for
his scholarship to be Linacre's colleague in a
projected translation of Aristotle, and solici
ted by the -latter for aid in his edition of the
New Testament.*
At Oxford More became known to a man
far more extraordinary than any of these
scholars. Erasmus had been invited to Eng
land by Lord Mountjoy, who had been his
pupil at Paris, and continued to be his friend
during life. He resided at Oxford during a
great part of 1497 ; and having returned to
Paris in 1498, spent the latter portion of the
same year at the university of Oxford, where
he again had an opportunity of pouring his
zeal for Greek study into the mind of More.
Their friendship, though formed at an age of
considerable disparity, — Erasmus being then
* For Latimer, see Dodd, Church History, vol«
i. p. 219. : for Grocyn, Ibid. p. 227: for Colet and
Linacre, all biographical compilations.
46
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
thirty and More only seventeen, — lasted
throughout the whole of their lives. Eras
mus had acquired only the rudiments of
Greek at the age most suited to the acquisi
tion of languages, and was now completing
his knowledge on that subject at a period of
mature manhood, which he jestingly com
pares with the age at which the elder Cato
commenced his Grecian studies.* Though
Erasmus himself seems to have been much
excited towards Greek learning by the ex
ample of the English scholars, yet the cul
tivation of classical literature was then so
small a part of the employment or amuse
ment of life, that William Latimer, one of
the most eminent of these scholars, to wrhom
Erasmus applied for aid in his edition of the
Greek Testament, declared that he had not
read a page of Greek or Latin for nine years,f
that he had almost forgotten his ancient lite
rature, and that Greek books were scarcely
procurable in England. Sir John More, in
flexibly adhering to the old education, and
dreading that the allurements of literature
might seduce his son from law, discouraged
the pursuit of Greek, and at the same time
reduced the allowance of Thomas to the
level of the most frugal life ; — a parsimony
for which the son was afterwards, though
not then, thankful, as having taught him
good husbandry, and preserved him from
dissipation.
At the university, or soon after leaving it,
young More composed the greater part of
his English verses ; which are not such as.
from their intrinsic merit, in a more advanced
state of our language and literature, would
be deserving of particular attention. But as
the poems of a contemporary of Skelton, they
may merit more consideration. Our language
was still neglected, or confined chiefly to the
vulgar uses of life. Its force, its compass,
and its capacity of harmony, were untried :
for though Chaucer had shone brightly for a
season, the century which followed was dark
and wintry. No master genius had impreg
nated the nation with poetical sensibility.
In these inauspicious circumstances, the com
position of poems, especially if they mani
fest a sense of harmony, and some adapta
tion of the sound to the subject, indicates a
delight in poetry, and a proneness to that
beautiful art, which in such an age is a
more than ordinary token of a capacity for it.
The experience of all ages, however it may
be accounted for, shows that the mind, when
melted into tenderness, or exalted by the
contemplation of grandeur, vents its feelings
in language suited to a state of excitement,
and delights in distinguishing its diction from
" Delibayimus et olim has literas, sed summis
duntaxat labiis ; at nuper paulo altius ingressi,
videmus id quod saepenumero apud gravissimos
auctores legimus, — Latinam eruditionem, quamvis
impendiosam, citra Gra3cismum mancam esse ac
dimidiatam. Apud nos enim rivuli vix quidam
sunt, et lacunulae lutulentas ; apud illos fontes pu-
rissimietfluminaaurum volventia." — Opera, LUO-.
Bat. 1703. vol. iii. p. 63.
f Ibid. vol. iii. p. 293.
common speech by some species of measure
and modulation, which combines the gratifi
cation of the ear with that of the fancy and
the heart. The secret connection between
a poetical ear and a poetical soul is touched
by the most sublime of poets, who consoled
himself in his blindness by the remembrance
of those who, under the like calamity,
Feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers.
We may be excused for throwing a glance
over the compositions of a writer, who is
represented a century after his death, by Ben
Jon son, as one of the models of English lite
rature. Mo re's poem on the death of Eliza
beth, the wife of Henry VII., and his merry
jest How a Serjeant would play the Friar,
may be considered as fair samples of his
pensive and sportive vein. The superiority
of the latter shows his natural disposition
to pleasantry. There is a sort of dancing
mirth in the metre which seems to warrant
the observation above hazarded, that in a
rude period the structure of verse may be
regarded as some presumption of a genius
for poetry. In a refined age, indeed, all the
circumstances are different : the frame-work
of metrical composition is known to all the
world ; it may be taught by rule, and ac
quired mechanically; the greatest facility of
versification may exist without a spark of
genius. Even then, however, the secrets of
the art of versification are chiefly revealed
to a chosen few by their poetical sensibility;
so that sufficient remains of the original tie
still continue to attest its primitive origin.
It is remarkable, that the most poetical of
the poems is written in Latin : it is a poem
addressed to a lady, with whom he had been
in love when he was sixteen years old, and
she fourteen ; and it turns chiefly on the
pleasing reflection that his affectionate re
membrance restored to her the beauty, of
which twenty-five years seemed to others to
have robbed her.* \/
When More had completed his time at
Oxford, he applied himself to the study of
the law, which was to be the occupation of
his life. He first studied at New Inn, and
afterwards at Lincoln's Inn.t The societies
of lawyers having purchased some mns, or
noblemen's residences, in London, were
hence called "inns of court." It was not
then a metaphor to call them an university ;
they had professors of law; they conferred
the characters of barrister arid serjeant. ana
logous to the degrees of bachelor, master,
and doctor, bestowed by the universities;
and every man, before he became a barrister,
was subjected to examination, and obliged
* " Gratulatur quod earn repererit incolumem
quam olim ferme puer amaverat." — Not. in Poem.
It does not seem reconcilable with dates, that his
lady could have been the younger sister of Jane
Colt. Vide infra.
t Inn was successively applied, like the French
word hotel, first to the town mansion of a great
man, and afterwards to a house where all man
kind were entertained for money.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
47
V
to defend a thesis. More was appointed
reader at Furnival's Inn, where he delivered
lectures for three years. The English law
had already grown into a science, formed by
a process of generalisation from usages and
decisions, with less help from the Roman
law than the jurisprudence of any other
country, though not with that total indepen
dence of it which English lawyers in former
times considered as a subject of boast : it
was rather formed as the law of Rome itself
had been formed, than adopted from that
noble system. When More began to lecture
on English law, it was by no means in a
disorderly and neglected state. The eccle
siastical lawyers, whose arguments and de
terminations were its earliest materials, were
well prepared, by the logic and philosophy
of their masters the Schoolmen, for those
exact and even subtle distinctions which the
precision of the rules of jurisprudence emi
nently required. In the reigns of the Lan
castrian princes, Littleton had reduced the
law to an elementary treatise, distinguished
by a clear method and an elegant concise
ness. Fortescue had during the same time
compared the governments of England and
France with the eye of a philosophical ob
server. Brooke and Fitzherbert had com
piled digests of the law, which they called
(it might be thought, from their size, ironi
cally) " Abridgments." The latter composed
a treatise, still very curious, on "writs;"
that is, on those commands (formerly from
the king) which constitute essential parts of
every legal proceeding. Other writings on
jurisprudence occupied the printing presses
of London in the earliest stage* of their ex
istence. More delivered lectures also at St.
Lawrence's church in the Old Jewry, on
the work of St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei,
that is, on the divine government of the
moral world ; which must seem to readers
who look at ancient times through modern
habits, a very singular occupation for a
young lawyer. But the clergy were then the
chief depositaries of knowledge, and were
the sole canonists and civilians, as they had
once been the only lawyers. t Religion,
morals, and law, were then taught together
without due distinction between them, to
the injury and confusion of them all. To
these lectures, we are told by the affectionate
biographer, il there resorted Doctor Grocyri,
an excellent cunning man, and all the chief
learned of the city of London."! More, in
his lectures, however, did not so much dis
cuss "the points of divinity as the precepts
of moral philosophy and history, wherewith
these books are replenished. "§ The effect
of the deep study of the first was, perhaps,
however, to embitter his polemical writings,
and somewhat to sour that naturally sweet
temper, which was so deeply felt by his
* Doctor and Student (by St. Germain) and Di-
versite des Courtes were both printed by Rastell
in 1534.
t Nullus causidicus nisi dericus.
J Roper, p. 5. § More, p. 44.
companions, that Erasmus scarcely ever con
cludes a letter to him without epithets more
indicative of the most tender affection than
of the calm feelings of friendship.*
The tenderness of More's nature combined
with the instructions and habits of his edu
cation to predispose him to piety. As he
lived in the neighbourhood of the great Car
thusian monastery, called the "Charter
house," for some years, he manifested a
predilection for monastic life, arid is said to
have practised some of those"'austerities and
self-inflictions which prevail among the
gloomier and sterner orders. A pure mind
in that age often sought to extinguish some
of the inferior impulses of human nature, in
stead of employing them for their appointed
purpose, — that of animating the domestic
affections, and sweetening the most impor
tant duties of life. He soon learnt, however,,
by self-examination, his unfitness for the
priesthood, and relinquished his project of
taking orders, in words which should have
warned his church against the imposition of
unnatural self-denial on vast multitudes and
successive generations of men. f
The same affectionate disposition which
had driven him towards the visions, and,,
strange as it may seem, to the austerities ol
the monks, now sought a more natural chan
nel. " He resorted to the house of one Mais-
ter Colt, a gentleman of Essex, who had often
invited him thither ; having three daughters,
whose honest conversation and virtuous edu
cation provoked him there especially to set
his affection. And albeit his mind most
served him to the second daughter, for that
he thought her the fairest and best favoured,
yet when he considered that it would be
both great grief, and some shame also, to
the eldest, to see her younger sister prefer
red before her in marriage, he then of a cer
tain pity framed his fancy toward her, and
soon after married her, neverthemore dis
continuing his study of the law at Lincoln's-
Inn."} His more remote descendant adds,
that Mr. Colt " proffered unto him the choice
of any of his daughters; and that More, out
of a kind of compassion, settled his fancy on
the eldest. "§ Erasmus gives a turn to More's
marriage with Jane Colt, which is too inge
nious to be probable : — "He wedded a very
young girl of respectable family, but who
had hitherto lived in the country with her
parents and sisters, and was so uneducated,
that he could mould her to his own tastes
and manners. He caused her to be in
structed in letters,: and she became a very
skilful musician, which peculiarly pleased
him."ll
The plain matter of fact seems to have
been, that in an age when marriage chiefly
depended upon a bargain between parents^
* " Suavissime More." " Charissime More."
" Mellitissime More."
t " Maluit maritus esse castus quam sacerdoa
impurus." Erasmus, Op. veil. iii. p. 475.
J Roper, p. 6. § More, p. 30.
li Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 475.
48
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
on which sons were little consulted, and
daughters not at all, More, emerging at
twenty-one from the toil of acquiring Greek,
and the voluntary self-torture of Carthusian
mystics, was delighted at his first entry
among pleasing young women, of whom
the least attractive might, in these circum
stances, have touched him ; and that his
slight preference for the second easily yield
ed to a good-natured reluctance to mortify
the elder. Most young ladies in Essex, in
the beginning of the sixteenth century, must
have required some tuition to appear iji Lon
don among scholars and courtiers, who were
at that time more mingled than it is now
usual for them to be. It is impossible to
ascertain the precise shade of feeling which
the biographers intended to denote by the
words "pity" and " compassion," for the
use of which they are charged with a want
of gallantry or delicacy by modern writers;
although neither of these terms, when the
context is at the same time read, seems un
happily employed to signify the natural re
finement, which shrinks from humbling the
harmless self-complacency of an innocent
girl.
The marriage proved so happy, that no
thing was to be regretted in it but the short
ness of the union, in consequence of the early
death of Jane Colt, who left a son and three
daughters; of whom Margaret, the eldest,
inherited the features, the form, and the ge
nius of her father, and requited his fond par
tiality by a daughterly love, which endured
to the end.
In no long time* after the death of Jane
Colt, he married Alice Middleton, a widow,
seven years older than himself, and not hand
some ; — rather, for the care of his family, and
the management of his house, than as a com
panion and a friend. He treated her, and in
deed all females, except his daughter Mar
garet, as better qualified to relish a jest, than
to take a part in more serious conversation ;
and in their presence gave an unbounded
scope to his natural inclination towards plea
santry. He even indulged himself in a Latin
play of words on her want of youth and
beauty, calling her "nee bella nee puella."t
" She was of good years, of no good favour
or complexion, nor very rich, and by disposi
tion near and worldly. It was reported that
he wooed her for a friend of his; but she
answering that he might speed if he spoke
for himself, he married her with the consent
of his friend, yielding to her that which per
haps he never would have done of his own
accord. Indeed, her favour could not have
bewitched, or scarce moved, any man to
love her; but yet she proved a kind and
careful mother-in-law to his children ." Eras
mus, who was often an inmate in the family,
speaks of her as " a keen and watchful ma-
* " In a few months," says Erasmus, Op. vol.
iii. p. 475. : — " within two or three years," ac
cording to his great grandson. — More, p. 32.
t Erasmus, vol. iii. p. 475.
nager, with whom More lived on terms of
as much respect and kindness as if she had
been fair and young." Such is the happy
power of a loving disposition, which over
flows on companions, though their attrac
tions or deserts should be slender. "No
husband," continues Erasmus, "ever gained
so much obedience from a wile by authority
and severity, as More won by gentleness and
pleasantry. Though verging on old age, and
not of a yielding temper, he prevailed on her
to take lessons on the lute, the cithara, the
viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she
daily practised to him. With the same gen
tleness he ruled his whole family, so that it
was without broils or quarrels. He com
posed all differences, and never parted with
any one on terms of unkindness. The house
was fated to the peculiar felicity that those
who dwelt in it were always raised to a
higher fortune ; and that no spot ever fell on
the good name of its happy inhabitants."
The course of More's domestic life is mi
nutely described by eye-witnesses. "His
custom was daily (besides his private prayers
with his children) to say the seven psalms,
the litany, and the suffrages following; so
was his guise with his wife, children, and
household, nightly before he went to bed, to
go to his chapel, and there on his knees or
dinarily to say certain psalm_s and collects
with them."* " With him," "says Erasmus,
" you might imagine yourself in the acade
my of Plato. But I should do injustice to
his house by comparing it to the academy
of Plato, where numbers, and geometrical
figures, and sometimes moral virtues, were
the subjects of discussion ; it would be more
just to 'call it a school and exercise of the
Christian religion. All its inhabitants, male
or female, applied their leisure to liberal
studies and profitable reading, although piety
was their first care. No wrangling, no angry
word, was heard in it ; no one was idle : every
one did his duty with alacrity, and not with
out a temperate cheerfulness."! Erasmus
had not the sensibility of More ; he was more
prone to smile than to sigh at the concerns
of men : but he was touched by the remem
brance of these domestic solemnities in the
household of his friend. He manifests an
agreeable emotion at the recollection of these
scenes in daily life, which tended to hallow
the natural authority of parents, to bestow a
sort of dignity on humble occupation, to raise
menial offices to the rank of virtues, and to
spread peace and cultivate kindness among
those who had shared, and were soon again
to share, the same modest rites, in gently
breathing around them a spirit of meek
equality, which rather humbled the pride of
the great than disquieted the spirits of the
lowly. More himself justly speaks of the
hourly interchange of the smaller acts of
kindness which flow from the charities of
domestic life, as having a claim on his time
as strong as the occupations which seemed
* Roper, p. 25. t Op. vol. iii. p. 1812.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
49
to others so much more serious and impor
tant. "While," says he, "in pleading, in
hearing, in deciding causes or composing
differences, in waiting on some men about
business, and on others out of respect, the
greatest part of the day is spent on other
men's affairs, the remainder of it must be
given to my family at home ; so that I can
reserve no part of it to myself, that is. to
study. I must talk with my wife, and chat
with my children, and I have somewhat to
say to my servants; for all these things I
reckon as a part of my business, except a
man will resolve to be a stranger at home ;
and with whomsoever either nature, chance,
or choice, has engaged a man in any com
merce, he must endeavour to make himself
as acceptable to those about him as he can."*
His occupations now necessarily employed
a large portion of his time. His professional
practice became so considerable, that about
the accession of Henry VIII., in 1509, with
his legal office in the city of London, it pro
duced 400L a year, probably equivalent to
an annual income of 5000/. in the present
day. Though it be not easy to determine the
exact period of the occurrences of his life,
from his establishment in London to his ac
ceptance of political office, the beginning of
Henry VIII. 's reign may be considered as
the time of his highest eminence at the bar.
About this time a ship belonging to the Pope,
or claimed by his Holiness on behalf of some
of his subjects, happened to come to South
ampton, where she was seized as a forfei
ture, — probably as what is called a droit of
the 'crown, or a droit of the admiralty. —
though under what circumstances, or on what
grounds we know not. The papal minister
made suit to the King that the case might be
argued for the Pope by learned counsel in a
public place, and in presence of the minister
himself, who was a distinguished civilian.
None was found so well qualified to be of
counsel for him as More, who could report
in Latin all the arguments to his client, and
who argued so learnedly on the Pope's side,
that he succeeded in obtaining an order for
the restitution of the vessel detained.
It has been already intimated, that about
the same time he had been appointed to a
judicial office in the city of London, which
is described by his son-in-law as " that of
one of the under-sheriffs." Roper, who was
himself for many years an officer of the court
of King's Bench, gives the name of the office
correctly; but does not describe its nature
and importance so truly as Erasmus, who
tells his correspondent that More passed
several years in the city of London as a judge
in civil causes. "This office," he says,
" though not laborious, for the court sits only
on the forenoon of every Thursday, is ac
counted very honourable. No judge of that
court ever went through more causes ; none
decided them more uprightly; often remit
ting the fees to which he was entitled from
* Dedication of Utopia to Peter Giles, (Burnet's
translation,) 1684.
7
the suitors. His deportment in this capacity
endeared him extremely to his fellow-citi
zens."* The under-sheriff was then appa
rently judge of the sheriff's court, which,
being the county court for London and Mid
dlesex, was, at that time, a station of honour
and advantage. t For the county courts in
general, and indeed all the ancient subordi
nate jurisdictions of the common law, had
not yet been superseded by that concen
tration of authority in the hands of the su
perior courts at Y\restminster, which con
tributed indeed to the purity arid dignity of
the judicial character, as well as to the uni
formity and the improvement of the admin
istration of law, — but which cannot be said
to have served in the same degree to pro
mote a speedy and cheap redress of the
wrongs suffered by those suitors to whom
cost and delay are most grievous. More's
office, in that state of the jurisdiction, might
therefore have possessed the importance
which his contemporaries ascribed to it ;
although the denomination of it would not
make such an impression on modern ears.
It is apparent, that either as a considerable
source of his income, or as an honourable
token of public confidence, this office was
valued by More ; since he informs Erasmus,
in 1516, that he had declined a handsome
pension offered to him by the king on his
return from Flanders, and that he believed
he should always decline it ; because either
it would oblige him to resign his office in the
city, which he preferred to a better, or if he
retained it, in case of a controversy of the city
with the king for their privileges, he might be
deemed by his fellow-citizens to be disabled
by dependence on the crown from sincere
ly and faithfully maintaining their rights. t
This last reasoning is also interesting, as the
first intimation of the necessity of a city law-
officer being independent of the crown, and
of the legal resistance of the corporation of
London to a Tudor king. It paved the way
for those happier times in which the great
city had the honour to number the Holts and
the Denmans among her legal advisers. §
* Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 476.
t " In urbe sua pro shyrevo dixit." — Epitaph.
t Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 220.
$ From communications obtained for me from
the records of the City, I am enabled to ascertain
some particulars of the nature of More's appoint
ment, which have occasioned a difference of opin
ion. On the 8th of May, 1514, it was agreed by
the common council, " that, Thomas More, gen
tleman, one of t he under-sheriffs of London, should
occupy his office and chamber by a sufficient depu
ty, during his absence as the king's ambassador
in Flanders." It appears from several entries in
the same records, from 1496 to 1502 inclusive, that
the nnder-sheriff was annually elected, or rather
confirmed ; for the practice was not to remove
him without his own application or some serious
fault. For six years of Henry's reign, Edward
Dudley was one of the under-sheriffs ; a circum
stance which renders the superior importance of
the office at that time probable. Thomas Marowe,
the author of works on law esteemed in his time,
though not published, appears also in the above
records as under-sheriff.
50
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
More is the first person in our history dis
tinguished by the faculty of public speaking.
A remarkable occasion on which it was suc
cessfully employed in parliament against a
lavish grant of money to the crown is thus
recorded by his son-in-law as follows : — "In
the latter time of king Henry VII. he was
made a burgess of the parliament, wherein
was demanded by the king about three
fifteenths for the marriage of his eldest
daughter, that then should be the Scottish
queen. At the last debating whereof he
made such arguments and reasons there
against, that the king's demands were there
by clean overthrown ; so that one of the
king's privy chamber, named maister Tyler,
being present thereat, brought word to the
king out of the parliament house, that a
beardless boy had disappointed all his pur
pose. Whereupon the king, conceiving great
indignation towards him, could not be satis
fied until he had some way revenged it.
And forasmuch as he, nothing having, could
nothing lose, his grace devised a causeless
quarrel against his father; keeping him in
the Tower till he had made him to pay 100/.
fine," (probably on a charge of having in
fringed some obsolete penal law). " Shortly
after, it fortuned that Sir T. More, coming
in a suit to Dr. Fox, bishop of Winchester,
one of the king's privy council, the bishop
called him aside, and, pretending great fa
vour towards him, promised that if he would
be ruled by him he would not fail into the
king's favour again to restore him ; meaning,
as it was afterwards conjectured, to cause
him thereby to confess his offences against
the king, whereby his highness might, with
the better colour, have occasion to revenge
his displeasure against him. But when he
came from the bishop he fell into communi
cation with one maister Whitforde, his fami
liar friend, then chaplain to that bishop, and
showed him what the bishop had said,
E raying for his advice. Whitforde prayed
im by the passion of God not to follow the
counsel; for my lord, to serve the king's
turn, will not stick to agree to his own fa
ther's death. So Sir Thomas More returned
to the bishop no more ; and had not the king
died soon after, he was determined to have
gone over sea."* That the advice of Whit
forde was wise, appeared from a circum
stance which occurred nearly ten years after,
which exhibits a new feature in the character
of the King and of his bishops. When Dud
ley was sacrificed to popular resentment,
under Henry VIII., and when he was on his
way to execution, he met Sir Thomas, to
whom he said, — ''-'Oh More, More! God
was your good friend, that you did not ask
the king forgiveness, as manie would have
had you do ; for if you had done so, perhaps
* Roper, p. 7. There seems to be some for-
getfulness of dates in the latter part of this passage,
which has been copied by succeeding; writers.
Margaret, it is well known, was married in 1503 ;
the debate was not, therefore, later than that year :
but Henry VII. lived till 1509,
you should have been in the like case with us
now."*
It was natural that the restorer of political
eloquence, which had slumbered for a long
series of ages,t should also be the earliest of
the parliamentary champions of liberty. But
it is lamentable that we have so little infor
mation respecting the oratorical powers which
alone could have armed him for the noble
conflict. He may be said to hold the same
station among us, which is assigned by
Cicero, in his dialogue On the Celebrated
Orators of Rome, to Cato the censor, whose
consulship was only about ninety years prior
to his own. His answer, as Speaker of the
House of Commons, to Wolsey, of which
more will be said presently, is admirable for
its promptitude, quickness, seasonableness,
and caution, combined with dignity and
spirit. It unites presence of mind and adap
tation to the person and circumstances, with
address and management seldom surpassed.
If the tone be more submissive than suits
modern ears, it is yet remarkable for that
ingenious refinement which for an instant
shows a glimpse of the sword generally hid
den under robes of state. "His eloquent
tongue," says Erasmus, "so well seconds
his fertile invention, that no one speaks bet
ter when suddenly called forth. His atten
tion never languishes ; his mind is always
before his words j his , memory has all its
stock so turned into ready money, that, with
out hesitation or delay, it gives out whatever
the time and the case may require. His
acuteness in dispute is unrivalled, and he
often perplexes the most renowned theolo
gians when he enters their province. "£
Though much of this encomium may ben
applicable rather to private conversation
than to public debate, and though this pre-
perience must have been limited ; it is still
obvious that the great critic has ascribed to
his friend the higher part of those mental
qualities, which, when justly balanced and]
perfectly trained, constitute a great orator, j
As if it had been the lot of More to open?
all the paths through the wilds of our old
English speech, he is to be considered also
as our earliest prose writer, and as the first
Englishman who wrote the history of hiaj
country in its present language. The his-j<
torical fragment^ commands belief by sim
plicity, and by abstinence from too confident,
affirmation. It betrays some negligence
about minute particulars, which is not dis
pleasing as a symptom of the absence of
eagerness to enforce a narrative. The com
position has an ease and a rotundity (which
gratify the ear without awakening the sus-
* More, p. 38.
t " Postquam pugnatum est apud Actium,
magna ilia ingenia cessere." — Tacitus, Hist. lib.
i. cap. 1.
\ Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 476.
$ History of Richard III.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
51
picion of art) of which there was no model
in any preceding writer of English prose.
In comparing the prose of More with the
modern style, we must distinguish the words
from the composition. A very small part of
his vocabulary has been superannuated ; the
number of terms which require any expla
nation is inconsiderable : and in that respect
the stability of the language is remarkable.
He is, indeed, in his words, more English
than the great writers of a century after him,
who loaded their native tongue with expres
sions of Greek or Latin derivation. Cicero,
speaking of '{old Cato," seems almost to de
scribe More. '-His style is rather antiquated ;
he has some words displeasing to our ears,
but which were then in familiar use. Change
those terms, which he could not, you will
then prefer no speaker to Cato."*
But in the combination and arrangement
of words, in ordinary phraseology and com
mon habits of composition, he differs more
widely from the style that has now been
prevalent among us for nearly two centuries.
His diction seems a continued experiment to
discover the forms into which the language
naturally runs. In that attempt he has fre
quently failed. Fortunate accident, or more
varied experiment in aftertimes, led to the
adoption of other combinations, which could
scarcely have succeeded, if they had not
been more consonant to the spirit of the lan
guage, arid more agreeable to the ear and the
feelings of the people. The structure of his
sentences is frequently not that which the
English language has finally adopted: the
language of his countrymen has decided,
without appeal, against the composition of
the father of English prose.
The speeches contained in his fragment,
like many of those in the ancient historians,
were probably substantially real, but bright
ened by ornament, and improved in compo
sition. It could, indeed, scarcely be other
wise : for the history was written in 1513,t
and the death of Edward IV., with which it
opens, occurred in 1483; while Cardinal
Morton, who became prime minister two
years after that event, appears to have taken
young More into his household about the
year 1493. There is, therefore, little scope,
in so short a time, for much falsification, by
tradition, of the arguments and topics really
employed. These speeches have the merit
of being accommodated to the circumstances,
and of being of a tendency to dispose those
to whom they were addressed to promote
the object of the speaker; and this merit,
rare in similar compositions, shows that More
* De Clar. Orat. cap. 17-
t Holinshed, vol. iii. p. 360. Holinshed called
More's work " unfinished." That it was meant
to extend to ihe death of Richard III. seems pro
bable from the following sentence : — " But, for
asmuch as this duke's (the Duke of Gloucester)
demeanour ministereth in effect all the whole
matter whereof this book shall entreat, it is there
fore convenient to show you, as we farther go,
what manner of man this was that could find in
his heart such mischief to conceive." — p. 361.
had been taught, by the practice of speaking
in contests where objects the most important
are the prize of the victor, that eloquence is
the art of persuasion, and that the end of the
orator is riot the display of his talents, but
dominion over the minds of his hearers. The
dying speech, in which Edward exhorts the
two parties of his friends to harmony, is a
grave appeal to their prudence, as well as an
affecting address from a father and a king to
their public feelings. The surmises thrown
out by Richard against the Widvilles are
short, dark, and well adapted to awaken sus
picion and alarm. The insinuations against
the Queen, and the threats of danger to the
lords themselves from leaving the person of
the Duke of York in the hands of that prin
cess, in Richard's speech to the Privy Coun
cil, before the Archbishop of York was sent
to Westminster to demand the surrender of
the boy. are admirable specimens of the
address and art of crafty ambition. Gene
rally speaking, the speeches have little of
the vague common-place of rhetoricians and
declaimers ; and the time is not wasted in
parade. In the case, indeed, of the dispute
between the Archbishop and the Queen,
about taking the Duke of York out of his
mother's care, and from the Sanctuary at
Westminster, there is more ingenious argu
ment than the scene allows ; and the mind
rejects logical refinements, of which the use,
on such an occasion, is quite irreconcilable to
dramatic verisimilitude. The Duke of Buck
ingham alleged in council, that sanctuary
could be claimed only against danger ; and
that the royal infant had neither wisdom to
desire sanctuary, nor the malicious intention
in his acts without which he could not re
quire it. To this notable paradox, which
amounted to an affirmation that no certainly
innocent person could ever claim protection
from a sanctuary, when it was carried to the
Queen, she answered readily, that if she
could be in sanctuary, it followed that her
child, who was her ward, was included in
her protection, as much as her servants, who
were, without contradiction, allowed to be.
The Latin epigrams of More, a small vo
lume which it required two years to carry
though the press at Basle, are mostly trans
lations from the Anthologia, which were
rather made known to Europe by the fame
of the writer, than calculated to increase it.
They contain, however, some decisive proofs
that he always entertained the opinions re
specting the dependence of all government
on the consent of the people, to which he
professed his adherence almost in his dying
moments. Latin versification was not in
that early period successfully attempted in
any Transalpine country. The rules of pros
ody, or at least the laws of metrical compo
sition, were not yet sufficiently studied for
such attempts. His Latinity was of the same
school with that of his friend Erasmus;
which was, indeed, common to the first gen
eration of scholars after the revival of clas,5i~
cal study. Finding Latin a sort of general
52
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
language employed by men of letters in their
conversation and correspondence, they con
tinued the use of it in the mixed and cor
rupted state to which such an application
had necessarily reduced it : they began,
indeed, to purify it from some grosser cor
ruptions; but they built their style upon
the foundation of this colloquial dialect,
with no rigorous observation of the good
usage of the Roman language. Writings
of business, of pleasantry, of familiar inter
course, could never have been composed
in pure Latinity; which was still more in
consistent with new manners, institutions,
and opinions, and with discoveries and in
ventions added to those which were trans
mitted by antiquity. Erasmus, who is the
master and model of this system of compo
sition, admirably shows how much had been
gained by loosening the fetters of a dead
speech, and acquiring in its stead the na
ture, ease, variety, and vivacity of a spoken
and living tongue. The course of circum
stances, however, determined that this lan
guage should not subsist, or at least flourish,
for much more than a century. It was as
sailed on one side by the purely classical,
whom Erasmus, in derision, calls "Cicero-
nians ;" and when it was sufficiently emas
culated by dread of their censure, it was
finally overwhelmed by the rise of a' national
literature in every European language.
More exemplified the abundance and flexi
bility of the Erasmian Latinity in Utopia,
with which this short view of all his writings,
except those of controversy, may be fitly con
cluded. The idea of the work had been sug
gested by some of the dialogues of Plato,
who speaks of vast territories, formerly culti
vated and peopled, but afterwards, by some
convulsion of nature, covered by the Atlantic
Ocean. These Egyptian traditions, or le
gends, harmonised admirably with that dis
covery of a new continent by Columbus,
which had roused the admiration of Europe
about twenty years before the composition
of Utopia. This was the name of an island
feigned to have been discovered by a sup
posed companion of Amerigo Vespucci, who
is made to tell the wondrous tale of its con
dition to More, at Antwerp, in 1514 : and in
it was the seat of the Platonic conception of
an imaginary commonwealth. All the names
which he invented for men or places* were
*The following specimen of Utopian ety
mologies may amuse some readers : —
Utopia - - OUTOTTOS - nowhere.
Achorians - d-^wpoc - of no country
Ademians - - d-Ja^o? - of no people.
TThe in-
Anyder(ariver) a-Mup - waterless.
Amaurot (a city) d-,u«.v/>o? dark,
Hythloday - Jaua-vfaoe - a learner of
trifles, &c.
visible
city is
on the
river
water
less.
Some are intentionally unmeaning, and oth
ers are taken from little known language in
intimations of their being unreal, and were,
perhaps, by treating with raillery his own]
notions, intended to silence gairisayers. The 1
first book, which is preliminary, is naturally
and ingeniously opened by a conversation, I
in which Raphael Hylhloclay, the Utopian :
traveller, describes his visit to England;.
where, as much as in other countries, he]
found all proposals for improvement encoun- ]
tered by the remark, that, — "Such things'
pleased our ancestors, and it were well for
us if we could but match them; as if it
were a great mischief that any should be j
found wiser than his ancestors." " I met,"
he goes on to say, " these proud, morose, and]
absurd judgments, particularly once when •
dining with Cardinal Morton at London."]
'•There happened to be at table an English ,
lawyer, who run out into high commenda- 3
tion of the severe execution of justice upon
thieves, who were then hanged so fast that
there were sometimes twenty hanging upon
one gibbet, and added, 'that he could not
wonder enough how it came to pass that]
there were so many thieves left robbing in]
all places.'" Raphael answered, "that it
was because the punishment of death was
neither just in itself, nor good for the public;
for as the severity was too great, so the rem- \
edy was not effectual. You, as well as other
nations, like bad schoolmasters, chastise their
scholars because they have not the skill to
teach them." Raphael afterwards more spe
cially ascribed the gangs of banditti w7ho,
after the suppression of Perkin Warbeck'sJ
Cornish revolt, infested England, to two^
causes; of which the first was the frequent;
disbanding of the idle and armed retainers
of the nobles, who, when from necessity let
loose from their masters, were too proud for
industry, and had no resource but rapine;
and the second was the conversion of mucbJ
corn field into pasture for sheep, because
the latter had become more profitable, — byj
which base motives many landholders were
tempted to expel their tenants and destroy,
the food of man. Raphael suggested thej
substitution of hard labour for death; for:
which he quoted the example of the Ro
mans, and of an imaginary community inj
Persia. "The lawyer answered, 'that it
could never be so settled in England, with-j
out endangering the whole nation by it :? he
shook his head, and made some grimaces, :
and then held his peace, and all the com
pany seemed to be of his mind. But the
cardinal said, i It is not easy to say whether
this plan would succeed or not, since no
trial has been made of it; but it might
be tried on thieves condemned to death,
and adopted if found to answer ; and vaga
bonds might be treated in the same way.'
When the cardinal had said this, they
all fell to commend the motion, though
order to perplex pedants. Joseph Scaliger
represents Utopia as a word not formed ac
cording to the analogy which regulates the
formation of Greek words.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
53
they had despised it when it came from me.
They more particularly commended that
concerning the vagabonds, because it had
been added by him." *
From some parts of the above extracts it
is apparent that More, instead of having an
ticipated the economical doctrines of Adam
Smith, as some modern writers have fancied,
1 was thoroughly imbued with the prejudices
of his contemporaries against the inclosure
of commons, and the extension of pasture.
It is, however, observable, that he is per
fectly consistent with himself, and follows
f his principles through all their legitimate
consequences, though they may end in doc-
'•• trmes of very startling sound. Considering
separate property as always productive of
unequal distribution of the fruits of labour,
". and regarding that inequality of fortune as
the source of bodily suffering to those who
labour, and of mental depravation to those
' who are not compelled to toil for subsistence,
Hythloday is made to say. that, "as long as
there is any property, and while money is
the standard of all other things, he cannot
expect that a nation can be governed either
justly or happily."! More himself objects
to Hythloday : " It seems to me that men
cannot live conveniently where all things
are common. How can there be any plenty
where every man will excuse himself from
labouring? for as the hope of gain does not
excite him, so the confidence that he has in
other men's industry may make him slothful.
And if people come to be pinched with want,
and yet cannot dispose of any thing as their
own, what can follow but perpetual sedition
and bloodshed : especially when the reverence
and authority due to magistrates fall to the
f round ; for I cannot imagine how they can be
ept among those that are in all things equal
rto one another." These remarks do in reality
contain the germs of unanswerable objections
to all those projects of a community of goods,
•which suppose the moral character of the
majority of mankind to continue, at the mo
ment of their adoption, such as it has been
heretofore in the most favourable instances.
If, indeed, it be proposed only on the suppo
sition, that by the influence of laws, or by
the agency of any other cause, mankind in
general are rendered more honest, more be
nevolent; more disinterested than they have I
hitherto been, it is evident that they will, in -I
the same proportion, approach to a practice
more near the principle of an equality and a
community of all advantages. The hints of
an answer to Plato, thrown out by More, are
so decisive, that it is not easy to see how he
left this speck on his romance, unless we
may be allowed to suspect that the specula
tion was in part suggested as a convenient
cover for that biting satire on the sordid and
rapacious government of Henry VII., which
*Burnet's translation, p. 13, et
t Bur net' s translation, p. 57.
"fi
appening to
write where I have no access to the original, I use
Burnet's translation. There can be no doubt
of Burnet's learning or fidelity.
occupies a considerable portion of Hythlo
day'' s first discourse. It may also be supposed
that More, not anxious to save visionary re
formers from a few light blows in an attack
aimed at corrupt and tyrannical statesmen,
thinks it suitable to his imaginary personage,
and conducive to the liveliness of his fiction,
to represent the traveller in Utopia as touched
by one of the most alluring and delusive of
political chimeras.
In Utopia, farm-houses were built over the
whole country, to which inhabitants were
sent in rotation from the fifty-four cities.
Every family had forty men and women,
besides two slaves ; a master and mistress
preside over every family ; and over thirty
families a magistrate. Every year twenty
of the family return to town, being two years
in the country; so that ail acquire some
knowledge of agriculture, and the land is
never left in the hands of persons quite
unacquainted with country labours. When
they want any thing in the country which it
doth not produce, they fetch it from the city
without carrying any thing in exchange : the
magistrates take care to see it given to them.
The people of the towns carry their commo
dities to the market place, where they are
taken away by those who need them. The
chief business of the magistrates is to take
care that no man may live idle, and that
every one should labour in his trade for six
hours of every twenty-four; — a portion of
time, wrhich, according to Hythloday, was
sufficient for an abundant supply of all the
necessaries and moderate accommodations
of the community; and which is not inad
equate where all labour, and none apply
extreme labour to the production of super
fluities to gratify a few, — where there are
no idle priests or idle rich men, — and where
women of ail sorts perform their light allot
ment of labour. To women all domestic
offices which did not degrade or displease
were assigned. Unhappily, however, the
iniquitous and unrighteous expedient was
devised, of releasing the better order of fe
males from offensive and noisome occupa
tions, by throwing them upon slaves. Their
citizens were forbidden to be butchers, "be
cause they think that pity and good-nature,
which are among the best of those affections
that are born within us, are much impaired
by the butchering of animals;" — a striking
representation, indeed, of the depraving ef
fects of cruelty to animals, but abused for
the iniquitous and cruel purpose of training
inferiors to barbarous habits, in order to pre
serve for their masters the exclusive benefit
of a discipline of humanity. Slaves, too, were
employed in hunting, which was deemed too
frivolous and barbarous an amusement for
citizens. " They look upon hunting as one
of the basest parts of a butcher's business,
for they account it more decent to kill beasts
for the sustenance of mankind, than to take
pleasure in seeing a weak, harmless, and
fearful hare torn in pieces by a strong, fierce,
and cruel dog." An excess of population
E 2
54
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
•was remedied by planting colonies ; a defect,
by the recall of the necessary number of for
mer colonists ; irregularities of distribution,
by transferring the superfluous members of
one township to supply the vacancies in an
other. They did not enslave their prisoners,
nor the children of their own slaves. In those
maladies where there is no hope of cure or
alleviation, it was customary for the Utopian
priests to advise the patient voluntarily to
shorten his useless and burthensome life by
opium or some equally easy means. In cases
of suicide, without permission of the priests
and the senate, the party is excluded from
the honours of a decent funeral. They allow
divorce in cases of adultery, and incorrigible
perverseness. Slavery is the general punish
ment of the highest crime. They have few
laws, and no lawyers. "Utopus, the founder
of the state, made a law that every man
might be of what religion he pleased, and
might endeavour to draw others to it by force
of argument and by amicable and modest
ways; but those who used reproaches or
violence in their attempts were to be con
demned to banishment or slavery." The
following passage is so remarkable, and has
hitherto been so little considered in the
history of toleration, that I shall insert it at
length : — " This law was made by Utopus,
not only for preserving the public peace,
which, he said, suffered much by daily con
tentions and irreconcilable heat in these
matters, but because he thought the interest
of religion itself required it. As for those
who so far depart from the dignity of human
nature as to think that our souls died with
our bodies, or that the world was governed
by chance without a wise and over-ruling
Providence, the Utopians never raise them
to honours or offices, nor employ them in any
public trust, but despise them as men of base
and sordid minds : yet they do not punish
such men, because they lay it down as a
ground, that a man cannot make himself
believe any thing he pleases : nor do they
drive any to dissemble their thoughts; so
that men are not tempted to lie or disguise
their opinions among them, which, being a
sort of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians :"
— a beautiful and conclusive reason, which,
when it was used for the first time, as it
probably was in Utopia, must have been
drawn from so deep a sense of the value of
sincerity as of itself to prove that he who
thus employed it was sincere. " These un
believers are not allowed to argue before the
common people ; but they are suffered and
even encouraged to dispute in private with
their priests and other grave men, being
confident that they will be cured of these
mad opinions by having reason laid before
them."
It maybe doubted whether some extrava
gancies in other parts of Utopia were not in
troduced to cover such passages as the above,
by enabling the writer to call the whole a
mere sport of wit, and thus exempt him from
the perilous responsibility of having main
tained such doctrines seriously. In other
cases he seems diffidently to propose opinions
to which he was in some measure inclined,
but in the course of his statement to have
warmed himself into an indignation against
the vices and corruptions of Europe, which
vents itself in eloquent invectives not un
worthy of Gulliver. He makes Hythloday
at last declare, — "As I hope for mercy, I can
have no other notion of all the other govern
ments that I see or know, but that they are
a conspiracy of the richer sort, who, on pre
tence of managing the public, do only pursue
their private ends." The true notion of Uto
pia is, however, that it intimates a variety of
doctrines, and exhibits a multiplicity of pro
jects, which the writer regards with almost
every possible degree of approbation and
shade of assent ; from the frontiers of serious
and entire belief, through gradations of de
scending plausibility, .where the lowest are
scarcely more than the exercises of inge
nuity, and to which some wild paradoxes are
appended, either as a vehicle, or as an easy
means (if necessary) of disavowing the se
rious intention of the whole of this Platonic
fiction.
It must be owned, that though one class
of More's successors was more susceptible
of judicious admiration of the beauties of
Plato and Cicero than his less perfectly form
ed taste could be, and though another divi
sion of them had acquired a knowledge of
the words of the Greek language, and per
ception of their force and distinctions, for the
attainment of which More came too early
into the world, yet none would have been
so heartily welcomed by the masters of the
Lyceum and the Academy, as qualified to
take a part in the discussion of those grave
and lofty themes which were freely agitated
in these early nurseries of human reason.
Th^ date 'of the publication of Utopia
would mark, probably, also the happiest pe
riod of its author's life. He had now acquired
an income equivalent to four or five thousand
pounds sterling of our present money, by his
own independent industry and well-earned
character. He had leisure "for the cultivation
of literature, for correspondence with his
friend Erasmus, for keeping up an intercourse
with European men of letters, who had al
ready placed him in their first class, and for
the composition of works, from which, un
aware of the rapid changes which were to
ensue, he probably promised himself more
fame, or at least more popularity, than they
have procured for him. His affections and
his temper continued to insure the happiness
of his home, even when his son with a wife,
three daughters with their husbands, ana
a proportionable number of grandchildren,
dwelt under his patriarchal roof.
At the same period, the general progress
of European literature, and the cheerful pros
pects of improved education and diffused
knowledge, had filled the minds of More and
Erasmus with delight. The expectation of
an age of pacific improvement seems to have
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
55
prevailed among studious men in the twenty
years which elapsed between the migration
of classical learning across the Alps, and the
rise of the religious dissensions stirred up by
the preaching of Luther. " I foresee," says
Bishop Tunstall, writing to Erasmus, " that
our posterity will rival the ancients in every
sort of study ; and if they be not ungrateful,
they will pay the greatest thanks to those
who have revived these studies. Go on, and
deserve well of posterity, who will never suf
fer the name of Erasmus to perish."* Eras
mus, himself, two years after, expresses the
same hopes, which, with unwonted courtesy,
he chooses to found on the literary character
of the conversation in the palace of Henry
VIII.: — "The world is recovering the use
of its senses, like one awakened from the
deepest sleep ; and yet there are some who
cling to their old ignorance with their hands
and feet, and will not suffer themselves to
be torn from it."f To Wolsey, he speaks in
still more sanguine language, mixed with the
like personal compliment : — " I see another
golden age arising, if other rulers be animat
ed by your spirit. Nor will posterity be un
grateful. This new felicity, obtained for the
world by you, will be commemorated in im
mortal monuments by Grecian and Roman
eloquence."! Though the judgment of pos
terity in favour of kings and cardinals is thus
confidently foretold, the writers do not the
less betray their hope of a better age, which
will bestow the highest honours on the pro
moters of knowledge. A better age was, in
truth, to come ; but the time and circum
stances of its appearance did not correspond
to their sanguine hopes. An age of iron was
to precede, in which the turbulence of refor
mation and the obstinacy of establishment
were to meet in long and bloody contest.
When the storm seemed ready to break
out, Erasmus thought it his duty to incur the
obloquy which always attends mediatorial
counsels. " You know the character of the
Germans, who are more easily led than
driven. Great danger may arise, if the na
tive ferocity of that people be exasperated
by untimely severities. We see the perti
nacity of Bohemia and the neighbouring pro
vinces. A bloody policy has been tried with
out success. Other remedies must be em
ployed. The hatred of Rome is fixed in the
minds of many nations, chiefly from the ru
mours believed of the dissolute manners of
that city, and from the immoralities of
the representatives of the supreme pontiff
abroad." The uncharitableness, the turbu
lence, the hatred, the bloodshed, which fol
lowed the preaching of Luther, closed the
bright visions of the two illustrious friends,
who agreed in an ardent love of peace, though
not without a difference in the shades and
* Erasmi Opera, vol. iii. p. 2G7.
t Ibid. p. 321.
t Ibid. p. 591. To this theory neither of the
parties about to contend could have assented ; but
it is not on that account the less likely to be in a
great measure true.
modifications of their pacific temper, arising
from some dissimilarity of original character.
The tender heart of More clung more strong
ly to the religion of his youth ; while Eras
mus more anxiously apprehended the dis
turbance of his tastes and pursuits. The
last betrays in some of his writings a tem
per, which might lead us to doubt, whether
he considered the portion of truth which was
within reach of his friend as equivalent to
the evils attendant on the search.
The public life of More may be said to
have begun in the summer of 1514;* with a
mission to Bruges, in which Tunstall, then
Master of the Rolls, and afterwards Bishop
of Durham, was his colleague, and of which
the object was to settle some particulars re
lating to the commercial intercourse of Eng
land with the Netherlands. He was consoled
for a detention, unexpectedly long, by the
company of Tunstall, whom he describesf
as one not only fraught with all learning, and
severe in his life and morals, but inferior to
no man as a delightful companion. On this
mission he became acquainted with several
of the friends of Erasmus in Flanders, where
he evidently saw a progress in the accom
modations and ornaments of life, to which he
had been hitherto a stranger. With Peter
Giles of Antwerp, to whom he intrusted the
publication of Utopia by a prefatory dedica
tion, he continued to be closely connected
during the lives of both. In the year follow
ing, he was again sent to the Netherlands on
a like mission; the intricate relations of traf
fic between the two countries having given
rise to a succession of disputes, in which the
determination of one case generally produced
new complaints.
In the beginning of 1516 More was made
a privy-councillor; and from that time may
be dated the final surrender of his own.
tastes for domestic life, and his predilections
for studious leisure, to the flattering impor
tunities of Henry VIII. " He had resolved,''"
says Erasmus, "to be content with his pri
vate station ; but having gone on more than
one mission abroad, the King, not discour
aged by the unusual refusal of a pension, did
not rest till he had drawn More into the
palace. For why should I not say ( drawn ,'
since no man ever laboured with more in
dustry for admission to a court, than More to
avoid it? The King would scarcely ever
suffer the philosopher to quit him. For if
serious affairs were to be considered, who
could give more prudent counsel? or if the
King's mind was to be relaxed by cheerful
conversation, where could there be a more
facetious companion ?"J Roper, who was
an eye-witness of these circumstances, re
lates them withg an agreeable simplicity.
" So from time to time was he by the King
advanced, continuing in his singular favour
and trusty service for twenty years. A good
* Records of the Common Council of London,
t In a letter to Erasmus, 30th April, 1516.
J Erasmus, Op. vol. iii. p. 476.
56
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
part thereof used the King, upon holidays,
when he had done his own devotion, to send
for him ; and there, sometimes in matters of
astronomy, geometry, divinity, and such other
faculties, and sometimes on his worldly
affairs; to converse with him. And other
whiles in the night would he have him up
into the leads, there to consider with him
the diversities, courses, motions, and opera
tions of the stars and planets. And because
he was of a pleasant disposition, it pleased
the King and Queen, after the council had
supped at the time of their own (i. e. the
royal) supper, to call for him to be merry
with them." What Roper adds could not
have been discovered by a less near ob
server, and would scarcely be credited upon
less authority: "When them he perceived
so much in his talk to delight, that he could
not once in a month get leave to go home to
his wife and children (whose company he
most desired), he. mucn misliking this re
straint on his liberty, began thereupon some
what to dissemble his nature, and so by
little and little from his former mirth to dis
use himself, that he was of them from
thenceforth, at such seasons, no more so
ordinarily sent for."* To his retirement at
Chelsea, however, the King followed him.
"He used of a particular love to come of a
sudden to Chelsea, and leaning on his shoul
der, to talk with him of secret counsel in his
garden, yea, and to dine with him upon no
inviting."! The taste for More's conversa
tion, and the eagerness for his company thus
displayed, would be creditable to the King,
if his behaviour in after time had not con
verted them into the strongest proofs of utter
depravity. Even in Henry's favour there was
somewhat tyrannictl ; and his very friend
ship was dictatorial arid self-willed. It was
reserved for him afterwards to exhibit the
singular, and perhaps solitary, example of
a man unsoftened by the recollection of a
communion of counsels, of studies, of amuse
ments, of social pleasures with such a com
panion. In the moments of Henry's par
tiality, the sagacity of More was not so ut
terly blinded by his good-nature, that he did
not in some degree penetrate into the true
character of these caresses from a beast of
prey. "When I saw the King," says his
son-in-law, " walking with him for an hour,
holding his arm about his neck, I rejoiced,
and said to Sir Thomas, how happy he was
whom the King had so familiarly entertained,
as I had never seen him do to any one before,
except Cardinal Wolsey. l I thank our Lord,
son,' said he, 'I find his grace my very good
lord indeed, and I believe he doth as singu
larly favour me as any other subject within
this realm : howbeit, son Roj>er, I may tell
thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof;
for if my head would win him a castle in
France, when there was war between us. it
should not faii to go.' "t
* Roper, p. 12. t More, p. 49.
t Rooer, pp. 21, 22, Compare this insight into
An edition of Utopia had been printed in
correctly, perhaps clandestinely, at Paris;
but, in 1518, Erasmus' friend and printer,
Froben, brought out a correct one at Basle,
the publication of which had been retarded
by the expectation of a preface from Buda3us,
the restorer of Greek learning in France, and
probably the most critical scholar in that
province of literature on the north of the
Alps. The book was received with loud ap
plause by the scholars of France and Ger
many. Erasmus in confidence observed to
an intimate friend, that the second book
having been written before the first, had oc
casioned some disorder arid inequality of
style • but he particularly praised its novelty
and originality, and its keen satire on the
vices and absurdities of Europe.
So important was the office of under-sheriff
then held to be, that More did not resign it
till the 23d of July, 1519,* though he had in
the intermediate time served the public in
stations of trust and honour. In 1521 he
was knighted, and raised to the office of
treasurer of the exchequer,! a station in some
respects the same with that of chancellor of
the exchequer, who at present is on his ap
pointment designated by the additional name
of under-treasurer. It is a minute but some
what remarkable, stroke in the picture of
manners, that the honour of knighthood
should be spoken of by Erasmus, if not
as of superior dignity to so important an
office, at least as observably adding to its
consequence.
From 1517 to 1522, More was employed
at various times at Bruges, in missions like
his first to the Flemish government, or at
Calais in watching and conciliating Francis
I., with wThom Henry and Wolsey long
thought it convenient to keep up friendly
appearances. To trace the date of More's
reluctant journeys in the course of the unin
teresting attempts of politicians on both sides
to gain^or dupe each other, would be vain,
without some outline of the negotiations in
which he was employed, and repulsive to
most readers, even if the inquiry promised
a better chance of a successful result. —
Wolsey appears to have occasionally ap-
Henry's character with a declaration post of an
opposite nature, though borrowed also from cas
tles and towns, made by Charles V. when he
hoard of More's murder.
* Records of the city of London.
t Est quod Moro gratuleris ; nam Rex hunc nee
ambientem nee jlagitantem munere magnifico ho-
nestavit, addito salario nequaquam penitendo : est
enim principi suo a thesauris. . . Nee hoc con-
tentus, equitis aurati dignitatem adjecit. — Eras
mus, Op. vol. iii. p. 378.
" Then died Master Weston, treasurer of the
exchequer, whose office the King, of his own ac
cord, without any asking, freely gave unto Sir
Thomas More."— Roper, 13.
The minute verbal coincidences which often
occur between Erasmus and Roper, cannot be
explained otherwise than by the probable suppo
sition, that copies or originals of the correspond
ence between More and Erasmus were preserved
by Roper after the death of the former.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
pointed commissioners to conduct his own
affairs, as well as those of his master, at
Calais. At this place they could receive in
structions from London with the greatest
rapidity, and it was easy to manage negotia
tions, and to shift them speedily, with Brus
sels and Paris; with the additional advan
tage, that it might be somewhat easier to
conceal from each one in turn of those jealous
courts the secret dealings of his employers
with the other, than if the despatches had
been sent directly from London to the place
of their destination. Of this commission
More was once at least an unwilling mem
ber. Erasmus, in a letter to Peter Giles on
the 15th of November, 1518, says, "More is
still at Calais, of which he is heartily tired.
He lives with great expense, and is engaged
in business most odious to him. Such are
the rewards reserved by kings for their fa
vourites.7'* Two years afterwards, More
writes more bitterly to Erasmus, of his own
residence and occupations. " I approve your
determination never to be involved in the
busy trifling of princes; from which, as you
love me, you must wish that I were extri
cated. You cannot imagine how painfully
I feel myself plunged in them, for nothing
can be more odious to me than this legation.
I am here banished to a petty sea-port, of
which the air and the earth are equally dis
agreeable to me. Abhorrent as I am by na
ture from strife, even when it is profitable,
as at home, you may judge how wearisome
it is here where it is attended by loss."t —
On one of his missions, — that of the summer
of 1519 — More had harboured hopes of being
consoled by seeing Erasmus at Calais, for all
the tiresome pageantry, selfish scuffles, and
paltry frauds, which he was to witness at
the congress of kings,; where he could find
little to alter those splenetic views of courts,
which his disappointed benevolence breathed
in Utopia. Wolsey twice visited Calais du
ring the residence of More, who appears to
have then had a weight in council, and a
place in the royal favour, second only to
those of the cardinal.
In 1523. § a parliament was held in the
middle of April, at Westminster, in which
More took a part so honourable to his me
mory, that though it has been already men
tioned when touching on his eloquence, it
cannot be so shortly passed over here, be
cause it was one of those signal acts of his
life which bears on it the stamp of his cha
racter. Sir John, his father, in spite of very
advanced age, had been named at the be
ginning of this parliament one of " the triers
of petitions from Gascony," — an office of
which the duties had become nominal, but
which still retained its ancient dignity ; while
of the House of Commons-. Sir Thomas hira-
* Op. vol. ii. p. 357.
t Op. vol. iii. p. 589.
t Ibid. From the dates of the following letters
of Erasmus, it appears that the hopes of More
were disappointed.
* 14 Henry VIII.
8
self was chosen to be the speaker. He ex
cused himself, as usual, on the ground of
alleged disability; but his excuse was justly
pronounced to be inadmissible. The Jour
nals of Parliament are lost, or at least have
not been printed ; and the Rolls exhibit only
a short account of what occurred, which is
necessarily an unsatisfactory substitute for
the deficient Journals. But as the matter
personally concerns Sir Thomas More, and
as the account of it given by his son-in-law,
then an inmate in his house, agrees with the
abridgment of the Rolls, as far as the latter
goes, it has been thought proper in this place
to insert the very words of Roper's narrative.
It may be reasonably conjectured that the
speeches of More were copied from his
manuscript by his pious son-in-law."* —
"Sith I perceive, most redoubted sovereign,,
that it standeth not with your pleasure to
reform this election, and cause it to be
changed, but have, by the mouth of the most
reverend father in God the legate, your high-
ness's chancellor, thereunto given your most
royal assent, and have of your benignity de
termined far above that I may bear for this
office to repute me meet, rather than that
you should seem to impute unto your com
mons that they had unmeetly chosen, I arn
ready obediently to conform myself to the
accomplishment of your highness's pleasure
and commandment. In most humble wise
I beseech your majesty, that I may make to
you two lowly petitions; — the one privately
concerning myself, the other the whole as
sembly of your commons' house. For my
self, most gracious sovereign, that if it mishap
me in any thing hereafter, that is, on the be
half of your commons in your high presence
to be declared, to mistake my message, and
in lack of good utterance by my mishearsal
to prevent or impair their prudent instruc
tions, that it may then like your most noble
majesty to give me leave to repair again
unto the commons' house, and to confer with
them and take their advice what things I
shall on their behalf utter and speak before
your royal grace.
"Mine other humble request, most excel
lent prince, is this: forasmuch as there be
of your commons here by your high com
mandment assembled for your parliament, a
great number of which are after the accus
tomed manner appointed in the commons7
house to heal and advise of the common
affairs among themselves apart; and albeit,
most dear liege lord, that according to your
most prudent advice, by your honourable
writs every where declared, there hath been
* This conjecture is almost raised above that
name by what precedes. "Sir Thomas More
made an oration, not now extant, to the king's
highness, for his discharge from the speakership,
whereunto when the king would not consent, the
speaker spoke to his grace in the form following."
— It cannot, be doubled, without injustice to the
honest and amiable biographer, that he would
have his readers to understand that the original of
the speeches, which actually follow, were ex'ant
in his hands.
58
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
as due diligence used in sending up to your
highness's court of parliament the most dis
creet persons out of every quarter that men
could esteem meet thereunto: whereby it is
riot to be doubted but that there is a very
substantial assembly of right wise, meet,
and politique persons : yet, most victorious
prince, sith among so many wise men, neither
is every man wise alike, nor among so many
alike well willed, every man well spoken ;
and it often happeth that as much folly is
littered with painted polish speech, so many
boisterous and rude in language give right
substantial counsel; and sith also in matters
of great importance, the mind is often so oc
cupied in the matter, thai a man rather stu-
dielh what to say lhan how; by reason
•whereof the wisest man and best spoken in
a whole country fortuneth, when his mind is
fervenl in the matter, somewhat to speak in
such wise as he would afterwards wish to
have been uttered otherwise, and yet no
worse will had when he spake it than he had
when he would so gladly change it; there
fore, most gracious sovereign, considering
that in your high court of parliament is
nothing treated but matter of weight and
importance concerning your realm, and your
own royal eslale, it could not fail to put to
silence from the giving of their advice and
counsel many of your discreet commons, to
the great hindrance of your common affairs,
unless every one of your commons were ut
terly discharged from all doubt and fear how
any thing that it should happen them to
speak, should happen of your highness to be
taken. And in this point, though your well-
known and proved benignity putteth every
man in good hope ; yet such is the weight
of the matter, such is the reverend dread
that the timorous hearts of your natural sub
jects conceive towards your highness, our
most redoubted king and undoubted sove
reign, that they cannot in this point find
themselves satisfied, except your gracious
bounty therein declared put awray the scruple
of their timorous minds; and put them out
of doubt. It may therefore like your most
abundant grace to give to all your commons
here assembled your most gracious licence
and pardon freely, without doubt of your
dreadful displeasure, every man to discharge
his conscience, and boldly in every thing in-
<5ident among us to declare his advice; and
•whatsoever happeneth any man to say, that
it may like your noble majesty, of your in
estimable goodness, to take all in good part,
interpreting every man's words, how uncun-
ningly soever they may be couched, to pro
ceed yet of good zeal towards the profit of
your realm, and honour of your royal person ;
and the prosperous estate and preservation
•whereof, most excellent sovereign, is the
thing which we all, your majesty's humble
loving subjects, according to the most bound-
en duty of our natural allegiance, most highly
desire and pray for."
This speech, the substance of which is in
the Rolls denominated "the protest," is con
formable to former usage, and the model of
speeches made since that time in the like
circumstances. What follows is more sin
gular, and not easily reconciled with the in
timate connection then subsisting between
the speaker and the government, especially
with the cardinal : —
"At this parliament Cardinal Wolsey found
himself much aggrieved with the burgesses
thereof; for that nothing was so soon done or
spoken therein, but that it was immediately
blown abroad in every alehouse. It fortuned
at that parliament a very great subsidy to
be demanded, which the cardinal, fearing
would not pass the commons' house, deter
mined, for the furtherance thereof,' to be
there present himself. Before where coming,
after long debating there, whether it was
better but with a few of his lords, as the
most opinion of the house was, or with his
whole train royally to receive him; 'Mas
ters,' quoth sir Thomas More, l forasmuch as
my lord cardinal lately, ye wot well, laid to
our charge the lightness of our tongues for
things uttered out of this house, it shall not
in my mind be amiss to receive him with all
his pomp, with his maces, his pillars, his
poll-axes, his hat, and great seal too; to the
intent, that if he find the like fault with us
hereafter, we may be the bolder from our
selves to lay the blame on those whom his
grace bringeth here with him.' Whereunto
the house wholly agreeing, he was received
accordingly. Where after he had by a solemn
oration, by many reasons, proved how neces
sary it was the demand then moved to be
granted, and farther showed that less would
not serve to maintain the prince's purpose;
he seeing the company sitting still silent, and
thereunto nothing answering, and, contrary
to his expectation, showing in themselves
towards his request no towardness of incli
nation, said to them, 'Masters, you have
many wise and learned men amongst you,
and sith I am from the king's own person
sent hitherto unto you, to the preservation of
yourselves and of all the realm, I think it
meet you give me some reasonable answer.'
Whereat every man holding his peace, then
began to speak to one Master Marney, after
wards lord Marney: 'How say you,' quoth
he, 'Master Marney?' who making him no
answer neither, he severally asked the same
question of divers others, accounted the
wisest of the company ; to whom, when
none of them all would give so much as one
word, being agreed before, as the custom
was. to give answer by their speaker ; ' Mas
ters.' quoth the cardinal, 'unless it be the
manner of your house, as of likelihood it is;
by the mouth of your speaker, whom you
have chosen for trusty and wise (as indeed
he is), in such cases to utter your minds,
here is, without doubt, a marvellously obsti
nate silence :' and thereupon he required
answer of Mr. Speaker; who first reverently,
on his knees, excusing the silence of the
house, abashed at the presence of so noble a
personage, able to amaze the wisest and best
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
learned in a realm, and then, by many proba
ble arguments, proving that for them to make
answer was neither expedient nor agreeable
with the ancient liberty of the house, in con
clusion for himself, showed, that though they
had all with their voices trusted him, yet
except every one of them could put into his
own head their several wits, he alone in so
weighty a matter was unmeet to make his
grace answer. Whereupon the cardinal,
displeased with Sir Thomas More, that had
not in this parliament in all things satisfied
his desire, suddenly arose and departed." *
This passage deserves attention as a speci
men of the mild independence arid quiet
steadiness of More's character, and also as a
proof how he perceived the strength which
the commons had gained by the power of
the purse, which was daily and silently
growing, and which could be disturbed only
by such an unseasonable show of an imma
ture authority as might too soon have roused
the crown to resistance. It is one among
many instances of the progress of the influ
ence of parliaments in the midst of their
apparently indiscriminate submission, and it
affords a pregnant proof that we must not
estimate the spirit of our forefathers by the
humility of their demeanour.
The reader will observe how nearly the
example of More was followed by a succeed
ing speaker, comparatively of no distinction,
but in circumstances far more memorable, in
the answer of Lenthall to Charles I., when
that unfortunate prince came to the House
of Commons to arrest the five members of
that assembly, who had incurred his dis
pleasure.
There is another point from which these
early reports of parliamentary speeches may
be viewed, and from \vhich it is curious to
consider them. They belong to that critical
moment in the history of our language when
it was forming a prose style, — a written dic
tion adapted to grave and important occa
sions. In the passage just quoted, there are
about twenty words and phrases (some of
them, it is true, used more than once) which
would not now be employed . Some of them
are shades, such as "lowly/' where we say
" humble j" " company,"
a house of
reverent,"
" if
reve-
or "reverential."
it should so hap-
parliament;" "simpleness," for "'simpli
city," with a deeper tinge of folly than the
single word now ever has: "'right," then
used as a general sign of the superlative,
where we say "very," or "most;" "
rend," for " rever
"If it mishap me
pen, " to mishap in me," "it often hap
peth," are instances of the employment
of the verb "hap" for happen, or of a
conjugation of the former, which has fallen
into irrecoverable disuse. A phrase was
then so frequent as to become, indeed, the
established mode of commencing an address
to a superior, in which the old usage was,
" It may like," or " It may please your Ma-
* Roper, pp. 13—21.
jesty," where modern language absolutely
requires us to say, " May it please," by a
slight inversion of the words retained, but
with the exclusion of the word "like" in that
combination. "Let" is used for "hinder,"
as is still the case in some public forms, and
in the excellent version of the Scriptures.
" Well wilted" is a happy phrase lost to the
language except on familiar occasions with a
smile, or by a master in the art of combining
words. Perhaps "enable me," for "give
me by your countenance the ability which
I have not," is the only phrase which savours
of awkwardness or of harsh effect in the ex
cellent speaker. The whole passage is a
remarkable example of the almost imper
ceptible differences which mark various
stages in the progress of a language. In
several of the above instances we see a sort
of contest for admission into the language
between two phrases extremely similar, and
yet a victory which excluded one of them as
rigidly as if the distinction had been very
wide. Every case where subsequent usage
has altered or rejected words and phrases
must be regarded as a sort of national ver
dict, which is necessarily followed by their
disfranchisement. They have no longer any
claim on the English language, other than
that which may be possessed by all alien
suppliants for naturalization. Such examples
should warn a writer, desirous to be lastingly
read, of the danger which attends new
words, or very new acceptations of those
which are established, or even of attempts
to revive those wfrich are altogether super
annuated. They show in the clearest light
that the learned and the vulgar parts of lan
guage, being those which are most liable to
change, are unfit materials for a durable
style ; and they teach us to look to those
words which form the far larger portion of
ancient as well as of modern language, — that
" well of English undefiled," which has been
happily resorted to from More to Cowper, as
being proved by the unimpeachable evidence
of that long usage to fit the rest of our speech
more perfectly, and to flow more easily,
clearly, and sweetly, in our composition.
Erasmus tells us that Wolsey rather fear
ed than liked More. When the short session
of parliament was closed, Wolsey, in his gal
lery of Whitehall, said to More, " I wish to
God you had been at Rome, Mr. More, when
I made you speaker." — "Your Grace not of
fended., so would I too, my lord," replied Sir
Thomas : " for then should I have seen the
place I long have desired to visit."* More
turned the conversation by saying that he
liked this gallery better than me cardinal's
at Hampton Court. But the latter secretly
brooded over his revenge, which he after
wards tried to gratify by banishing More,
under the name of an ambassador to Spain.
He tried to effect his purpose by magnifying
the learning and wisdom of More, his pecu
liar fitness for a conciliatory adjustment of
* Roper, p. 20.
§
60
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the difficult matters which were at issue be
tween the King and his kinsman the Empe
ror. The King suggested this proposal to
More, who, considering the urisuitableness
of the Spanish climate to his constitution,
and perhaps suspecting Wolsey of sinister
purposes, earnestly besought Henry not to
send his faithful servant to his grave. The
King, who also suspected Wolsey of being
actuated by jealousy, answered. u It is not
our meaning, Mr. More, to do you any hurt :
but to do you good we should be glad ; we
shall therefore employ you otherwise."*
More could boast that 'he had never asked
the King the value of a penny for himself,
when on the 25th of December, 1525,t the
King appointed him chancellor of the duchy
of Lancaster, as successor of Sir Anthony
Wingfield — an office of dignity and profit,
which he continued to hold for nearly three
years.
In the summer of 1527, Wolsey went on
his magnificent embassy to France, in which
More and other officers of state were joined
with him. On this occasion the main, though
secret object of Henry was to pave the way
for a divorce from Queen Catharine, with a
view to a marriage with Anne Boleyn, a
young beauty who had been bred at the
French court, where her father, Sir Thomas
Boleyn, created Earl of Wiltshire, had been
repeatedly ambassador.
On their journey to the coast, Wolsey
sounded Archbishop Wareham and Bishop
Fisher on the important secret with which
he was intrusted. Wareham, an estimable
and amiable prelate, appears to have inti
mated that his opinion was favourable to
Henry's pursuit of a divorce. t Fisher, bi
shop of Rochester, an aged and upright man,
promised Wolsey that he would do or say
nothing in the matter, nor in any way coun
sel the Queen, except what stood with Hen
ry's pleasure; "for," said he, '-'though she
be queen of this realm, yet he acknowledg-
eth you to be his sovereign lord :"§ as if the
rank or authority of the parties had any con-
* More, p. 53. with a small variation.
t Such is the information which I have received
from the records in the Tower. The accurate writer
of the article on More, in the Biographia Britannica,
is perplexed by finding Sir Thomas More, chancel
lor of the duchy, as one of the negotiators of a
treaty in August, 1526, which seems to the writer
in the Biographia to bring down the death of Wing-
field to near that time ; he being on all sides ac
knowledged to be More's immediate predecessor.
But there is no difficulty, unless we needlessly as
sume that the negotiation with which Wingfield
was concerned related to the same treaty which
More concluded. On the contrary, the first ap
pears to have been a treaty with Spain ; the last a
treaty with France.
\ State Papers, Hen. VIII. vol. i. p. 1 96. Wol-
sey's words are, — " He expressly affirmed, that
however displeasantly the queen took this matter,
yet the truth and judgment of the law must take
place. I have instructed him how he shall order
himself if the queen shall demand his counsel,
which he promises me to follow."
^ State Papers, Hen. VIII. vol. i. p. 168.
cern with the duty of honestly giving coun
sel where it is given at all. The overbearing
deportment of Wolsey probably overawed
both these good prelates: he understood
them in the manner most suitable to his pur
pose ; and, confident that he should by some
means finally gain them, he probably colour
ed very highly their language in his commu
nication to Henry, whom he had himself just
before displeased by unexpected scruples.
It was generally believed by their contem
poraries that More and Fisher had corrected
the manuscript of Henry's answer to Luther ;
while it is certain that the propensity of the
King to theological discussions constituted
one of the links of his intimacy with the
former. As More's writings against the Lu
therans were of great note in his own time;
and as they were probably those of his works
on which he exerted the most acuteness, and
employed most knowledge, it would be wrong
to omit all mention of them in an estimate
of his mind, or as proofs of his disposition.
They contain many anecdotes which throw
considerable light on our ecclesiastical his
tory during the first prosecution of the Pro
testants, or, as they were then called, Lu
therans, under the old statutes against Lol
lards, during the period which extended from
1520 to 1532; and they do not seem to have
been enough examined with that view by the
historians of the Church.
Legal responsibility, in a well-constituted
commonwealth, reaches to all the avowed
advisers of the government, and to all those
whose concurrence is necessary to the va
lidity of its commands : but moral responsi
bility is usually or chiefly confined to the
actual authors of each particular measure.
It is true, that when a government has at
tained a state of more than usual regularity,
the feelings of mankind become so well
adapted to it, that men are held to be even
morally responsible for sanctioning, by a base
continuance in office, the bad policy which
may be known not to originate with them
selves. These refinements were, however,
unknown in the reign of Henry VII I. The
administration was then carried on under the
personal direction of the monarch, who gene
rally admitted one confidential servant only
into his most secret counsels ; and all the
other ministers, whatever their rank might
be, commonly confined their attention to the
business of their own offices, or to the exe
cution of special commands intrusted to
them. This system was probably carried to
its utmost height under so self-willed a prince
as Henry, and by so domineering a minister
as Wolsey. Although there can be no doubt
that More, as a privy-councillor, attended
and co-operated at the examination of the
unfortunate Lutherans, his conduct in that
respect was regarded by his contemporaries
as little more than the enforcement of orders
which he could not lawfully decline to obey.
The opinion that a minister who disap
proves measures which he cannot control is
bound to resign his office, is of very modern
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
61
origin, and still not universally entertained,
especially if fidelity to a party be not called
in to its aid. In the time of Henry, he was
not thought even entitled to resign. The
fact of More's attendance, indeed, appears in
his controversial writings, especially by his
answer to Tyndal. It is not equitable to
treat him as effectively and morally, as well
as legally, answerable for measures of state,
till the removal of Wolsey, and the delivery
of the great seal into his own hands. The
injustice of considering these transactions in
any other light appears from the circum
stance, that though he was joined with Wol
sey in the splendid embassy to France in
1527, there is no reason to suppose that More
was intrusted with the secret and main pur
pose of the embassy, — that of facilitating a
divorce and a second marriage. His respon
sibility, in its most important and only practi
cal part, must be contracted to the short time
which extends from the 25th of October, 1529,
when he was appointed chancellor, to the
16lh of May, 1532, when he was removed
from his office, not much more than two
years and a half.* Even after confining it
to these narrow limits, it must be remember
ed, that he found the system of persecution
established, and its machinery in a state of
activity. The prelates, like most other pre
lates in Europe, did their part in convicting
the Protestants of Lollardy in the spiritual
courts, which were the competent tribunals
for trying that offence. Our means of deter
mining what executions for Lollardy (if any)
took place when More had a decisive ascend
ant in the royal councils, are very imperfect.
If it were certain that he was the adviser of
such executions, it would only follow that he
•executed one part of the criminal law, with
out approving it, as succeeding judges have
certainly done in cases of fraud and theft ; —
where they no more approved the punish
ment of death than the author of Utopia
might have done in its application to heresy.
If the progress of civilization be not checked,
we seem not far from the period when such
capital punishments will appear as little
consistent with humanity, and indeed with
justice, as the burning of heretics now ap
pears to us. More himself deprecates an
appeal to his writings and those of his friend
Erasmus, innocently intended by themselves,
but abused by incendiaries to inflame the
fury of the ignorant multitude.! "Men,"
says he (alluding evidently to Utopia), "can
not almost now speak of such things inso
much as in play, but that such evil hearers
were a great deal the worse." "I would
not now translate the Moria of Erasmus, —
even some works that I myself have written
ere this, into English, albeit there be none
harm therein." It is evident that the two
philosophers deeply felt the injustice of citing
against them, as a proof of inconsistency.
* Records in the Tower,
t More's answer to Tyndal, part i. p. 128. —
(Printed by John Rastell, *1532.)
that they departed from the pleasantries, the
gay dreams, — at most the fond speculations,
of their early days, when they saw these
tiarmless visions turned into weapons of de
struction in the blood-stained hands of the
boors of Saxony, and of the ferocious fanatics
of Munster. The virtuous love of peace
might be more prevalent in More ; the Epi
curean desire of personal ease predominated
more in Erasmus : but both were, doubtless
from commendable or excusable causes, in
censed against those odious disciples, who
now, "'with no friendly voice," invoked their
authority against themselves.
If, however, we examine the question
on the grounds of positive rtestimony, it is
impossible to appeal to a witness of more
weight than Erasmus. "It is," said he,
"a sufficient proof of his clemency, that
while he was chancellor no man was put to
death for these pestilent dogmas, while so
many have suffered capital punishment for
them in France, in Germany, and in the
Netherlands."* The only charges against
him on this subject, which are adverted to
by himself, relate to minor severities; but
as these may be marks of more cruelty than
the infliction of death, let us listen on this
subject to the words of the merciful and
righteous man :f "Divers of them have said
that of such as were in my house when I
was chancellor, I used to examine them
with torments, causing them to be bound to
a tree in my garden, and there piteousAy
beaten. Except their sure keeping, I never
did else cause any such thing to be done
unto any of the heretics in all my life, ex
cept only twain : one was a child and a ser
vant of mine in mine own house, whom his
father, ere he came to me, had nursed up in
such matters, and set him to attend upon
George Jay. This Jay did teach the child
his ungracious heresy against the blessed
sacrament of the altar; which heresy this
child in my house began to teach another
child. And upon that point I caused a ser
vant of mine to strip him like a child before
mine household, for amendment of himself
and ensample of others." " Another was
one who, after he had fallen into these fran
tic heresies, soon fell into plain open frensy:
albeit that he had been in Bedlam, and after
wards by beating and correction gathered his
remembrance ;t being therefore set at lib
erty, his old frensies fell again into his head.
Being informed of his relapse, I caused him
to be taken by the constables and bounden
to a tree in the street before the whole town,
and there striped him till he waxed weary.
Verily, God be thanked, I hear no harm of
him now. And of all who ever came in my
hand for heresy, as help me God, else had
never any of them any stripe or stroke given
them, so much as a fillip in the forehead. "§
* Op. vol. iii. p. 1811.
t More's Apology, chap. 36.
t Such was then the mode of curing insanity '
$ Apology, chap. 36. ^
62
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
This statement, so minute, so capable of
easy confutation, if in any part false, was
made public after his fall from power, when
he was surrounded by enemies, arid could
have no friends but the generous. It relates
circumstances of public notoriety, or at least
so known to all his own household (from
which it appears that Protestant servants
were not excluded), which it would have
been rather a proof of insanity than of im
prudence to have alleged in his defence, if
they had not been indisputably and confes
sedly true. Wherever he touches this sub
ject, there is a quietness and a circumstan
tiality, which are among the least equivocal
marks of a man who adheres to the temper
most favourable to the truth, because he is
conscious that the truth is favourable to
him.* Without relying, therefore, on the
character of More for probity and veracity
(which it is derogatory to him to employ for
such a purpose), the evidence of his hu
manity having prevailed over his opinion
decisively outweighs the little positive testi
mony produced against him. The charge
against More rests originally on Fox alone,
from whom it is copied by Burnet, and with
considerable hesitation by Strype. But the
honest martyrologist wrrites too inaccurately
to be a weighty witness in this case ; for he
tells us that Firth was put to death in June
1533, and yet imputes it to More, who had
resigned his office a year before. In the
case of James Baynham, he only says that
the accused was chained to two posts for
two nights in More's house, at some unspe
cified distance of time before his execution.
Burnet, in mentioning the extreme tolera
tion taught in Utopia, truly observes, that if
More had died at the time of its publication,
" he would have been reckoned among those
who only wanted a fit opportunity of decla
ring themselves openly for a reformation." t
The same sincere and upright writer was too
zealous for an historian, when he added : —
"When More was raised to the chief post in
the ministry, he became a persecutor even
to blood, and defiled those hands which were
never polluted with bribes." In excuse for
the total silence of the honest bishop re
specting the opposite testimony of More him
self (of whom Burnet speaks even then with
reverence), the reader must be reminded
that the third volume of the History of the
* There is a remarkable instance of this obser
vation in More's Dialogue, book iii. chap, xvi.,
where he tells, with some prolixity, the story of
Richard Dunn, who was found dead, and hanging
in the Lollard's Tower. The only part taken by
More in this affair was his share as a privy coun
cillor in the inquiry, whether Dunn hanged him
self, or was murdered and then hanged up by the
Bishop of London's chancellor. The evidence to
prove that the death could rot be suicide, was as
absurd as the story of the bishop's chancellor was
improbable. He was afterwards, .however, con
victed by a jury, but pardoned, it should seem
rightly, by the King.
i History of the Reformation (Lond. 1820),
vol. in. pi.rt i. p. 45.
Reformation was written in the old age of
the Bishop of Salisbury, thirty years after
those more laborious researches, which at
tended the composition of the two former vo
lumes, and under the influence of those ani
mosities against the Roman Catholic Chuich,
which the conspiracy of Queen Anne's last
ministers against the Revolution had revived
with more than their youthful vigour. It
must be owned that he from the commence
ment acquiesced too lightly in the allegations
of Fox; and it is certain, that if the fact,
however deplorable, had been better proved,
yet in that age it would not have warranted
such asperity of condemnation.*
The date of the work in which More de
nies the charge, and challenges his accusers
to produce their proofs, would have aroused
the attention of Burnet if he had read it.
This book, entitled "The Apology of Sir
Thomas More/' was written in 1533. "after
he had given over the office of lord chancel
lor," and when he was in daily expectation
of being committed to the Tower. Defence
less and obnoxious as he then was, no man
was hardy enough to dispute his truth. Fox
was the first who, thirty years afterwards,
ventured to oppose it in a vague statement,
which we know to be in some respects inac
curate ] and on this slender authority alone
has rested such an imputation on the ve
racity of the most sincere of men. Who
ever reads the Apology will perceive, from
the melancholy ingenuousness with which
he speaks of the growing unpopularity of his
religion in the court and country, that he
could not have hoped to escape exposure, if
it had been then possible to question his
declaration.!
On the whole, then, More must not only be
absolved ; but when we consider that his ad
ministration occurred during a hot paroxysm
of persecution, — that intolerance was the
creed of his age, — that he himself, in his
days of compliance and ambition, had been
drawn over to it as a theory, — that he was
filled with alarm and horror by the excesses
of the heretical insurgents in Germany, we
must pronounce him, by his abstinence from
any practical share in it, to have given
stronger proofs than any other man, of a re
pugnance to that execrable practice, founded
* The change of opinion in Erasmus, and the
less remarkable change of More in the same re
spect, is somewhat excused by the excesses and
disorders which followed the Reformation. " To
believe," says Bayle, "that the church required
reformation, and to approve a particular manner
of reforming it, are two very different things. To
blame the opponents of reformation, and to dis
approve the conduct of the reformers, are two
things very compatible. A man may then imi
tate Erasmus, without being an apostate or a trai
tor." — Dictionary, art. Castellan. These are po
sitions too reasonable to be practically believed,
at the time when their adoption would be most
useful.
t In the Apology, More states that four-tenths
of the people were unable to read ; — probably an
overrated estimate of the number of readers.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
on the unshaken basis of his natural hu
manity.
The fourth book of the Dialogue* exhibits
a lively picture of the horror \\ith which the
excesses of the Reformers had filled the mind
of this good man, whose justice and even
humanity were disturbed, so far at least as
to betray him into a bitterness of language
and harshness of opinion foreign from his
general temper. The events themselves are,
it must be owned, sufficient to provoke the
meekest, — to appal the firmest of men.
"The temporal lords," he tells us, "were
glad to hear the cry against the clergy; the
people were glad to hear it against the clergy
and the lords too. They rebelled first against
an abbot, and after against a bishop, wrhere-
with the temporal lords had good game and
sport, arid dissembled the matter, gaping
after the lands of the spirituality, till they
had almost played, as JEsop telleth of the
dog, which, to snatch at the shadow of the
cheese in the water, let fall and lost the
cheese wrhich he bare in his mouth. The
nplandish Lutherans set upon the temporal
lords: they slew 70,000 Lutherans in one
summer, and subdued the remnant in that
part of Almayne into a right miserable servi
tude. Of this sect was the great partf of
those ungracious people which of late en
tered Rome with the Duke of Bourbon."
The description of the horrible crimes per
petrated on that occasion is so disgusting in
some of its particulars, as to be unfit for the
decency of historical narrative. One speci
men will suffice, which, considering the
constant intercourse between England and
Rome, is not unlikely to have been related
to More by an eye-witness : — " Some took
children and bound them to torches, and
brought them gradually nearer to the fire to
be roasted, while the fathers and mothers
were looking on, and then began to speak of
a price for the sparing of the children ; ask
ing first 100 ducats, then fifty, then forty,
then at last offered to take twain : after they
had taken the last ducat from the father,
then would they let the child roast to death."
This wickedness (More contended) was the
fruit of Luther's doctrine of predestination ;
"'for what good deed can a man study or
labour to do, who believeth Luther, that he
hath no free will of his own."J '"If the
world were not near an end, and the fervour
of devotion almost quenched, it could never
have come to pass that so many people
should fall to the following of so beastly a
sect." He urges at very great length, and
with great ability, the tendency of belief in
destiny to overthrow morality; and repre
sents it as an opinion of which, on account
ol its incompatibility with the order of so-
* Dialogue of Sir Thomas More, touching the
pestilent sect of Luther, composed and published
when he was chancellor of ihe duchy of Lancaster,
"but newly oversene by the said Sir T. More,
chancellor of England," 1530.
t A violent exaggeration.
$ Dialogue, book iv. chap. 8.
ciety, the civil magistrate may lawfully pun
ish the promulgation; little aware how de
cisively experience was about to confute
such reasoning, however specious, by the
examples of nations, who, though their whole
religion was founded on predestination, were,
nevertheless, the most moral portion of man
kind.* "The fear;" says More, "of out
rages and mischiefs to follow upon such here
sies, with the proof that men have had in
pome countries thereof, have been the cause
that princes and people have been constrained
to punish heresies by a terrible death; where
as else more easy ways had been taken with
them. If the heretics had never begun with
violence, good Christian people had perad-
venture'used less violence against them:
while they forbare violence, there was little
violence done unto them. 'By my soul,;
quoth your friend,t ll would all the world
were agreed to take violence and compulsion
away.' 'Arid sooth,' said I, 'if it were so,
yet would God be too strong for his ene
mies.7 " In answer, he faintly attempts to
distinguish the case of Pagans, who may be
tolerated, in order to induce them to tolerate
Christians, from that of heretics, from which
no such advantage was to be obtained in ex
change ; — a distinction, however, which dis
appeared as soon as the supposed heretics
acquired supreme power. At last, however,
he concludes with a sentence which suffi
ciently intimates the inclination of his judg
ment, and showrs that his ancient opinions
still prevailed in the midst of fear and ab
horrence. "And yet, as I said in the begin
ning, never were they by any temporal pun
ishment of their bodies any thing sharply
handled till they began to be violent them
selves." It is evident that his mind misgave
him \vhen he appeared to assent to intoler
ance as a principle ; for otherwise there was
no reason for repeatedly relying on the de
fence of society against aggression as its jus
tification. His silence, however, respecting
the notorious fact, that Luther strained every
nerve to suppress the German insurgents,
can never be excused by the sophistry which
ascribes to all reformers the evil done by those
who abuse their names. It was too much
to say that Luther should not have uttered
wrhat he believed to be sacred and necessary
truth, because evil-doers look occasion from
it to screen their bad deeds. This contro
versial artifice, however grossly unjust, is
yet so plausible and popular, that perhaps
no polemic ever had viriue enough to resist
the temptation of employing it. What other
controversialist can be named, who, having
the power to crush antagonists whom he
viewed as the disturbers of the qxiet of his
own declining age, — the destroyers of all the
hopes which he had cherished for mankind,
contented himself with severity of language
(for which he humbly excuses himself in his
* Switzerland. Holland. Scotland, English puri
tans, New England, French Huguenots, &c.
t This wish is put into ihe mouth of the adverse
speaker in the Dialogue.
64
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Apology — in some measure a dying work),
and with one instance of unfair inference
against opponents who were too zealous to
be merciful.
In the autumn of 1529. More, on his return
from Cambray, where he had been once
more joined in commission with his friend
Tunstall as ambassador to the emperor, paid
a visit to the court, then at Woodstock. A
letter written from thence to his wife, on oc
casion of a mishap at home, is here inserted
as affording a little glimpse into the manage
ment of his most homely concerns, and es
pecially as a specimen of his regard for a
deserving woman, who was, probably, too
"coarsely kind" even to have inspired him
with tenderness.*
l' Mistress Alyce, in my most harty will,
I recomend me to you. And whereas I am
enfourmed by my son Heron of the loss of
our barnes and our neighbours also, w' all
the corne that was therein, albeit (saving
God's pleasure) it is gret pitie of so much
good corne lost, yet sith it hath liked hym
to send us such a chance, we must saie
bound en, not only to be content, but also to
be glad of his visitation. He sent us all that
we have lost : and sith he hath by such a
chance taken it away againe, his pleasure
be fulfilled. Let us never grudge thereat,
but take it in good worth, and hartely thank
him, as well for adversitie, as for prosperitie.
And par adventure we have more cause to
thank him for our losse, than for our winning :
for his wisedom better seeth what is good
for us then we do ourselves. Therefore I
pray you be of good cheere, and take all the
howsold with you to church, and there thank
God both for that he hath given us, and for
that he has left us, which if it please hym.
he can increase when he will. And if it
please him to leave us yet lesse, at hys plea
sure be it. I praye you to make some good
ensearche what my poor neighbours have
loste, and bidde them take no thought there
fore, and if I shold not leave myself a spone,
there shall no poore neighbour of mine bere
no losse by any chance happened in my
house. I pray you be with my children and
household mery in God. And devise some
what with your friends, what way wer best
to take, for provision to be made for corne
for our household and for sede thys yere
coming, if ye thinke it good that we keepe
the ground still in our handes. And whether
ye think it good yl we so shall do or not,
yet I think it were not best sodenlye thus
to leave it all up, and to put away our folk
of our farme, till we have somewhat advised
us thereon. Howbeit if we have more no we
than ye shall neede, and which can get
the other maisters, ye may then discharge
* In More's metrical inscription for his own
monument, we find a just but long, and somewhat
laboured, commendation of Alice, which in ten
derness is outweighed by one word applied to the
long-departed companion of his youth.
" Chara Thomae jacet hie Joanna uxorcula Mori."
us of them. But I would not that any man
wer sodenly sent away he wote nere we
ther. At my coming hither, I perceived
none other, but that I shold tary still with
the kinges grace. But now I shall (I think),
because of this chance, get leave this next
weke to come home arid se you ; and then
shall we further devise together uppon all
thinges, what order shall be best to take : and
thus as hartely fare you well with all our chil
dren as you can wishe. At Woodstok the
thirde daye of Septembre, by the hand of
" Your loving husband,
•'•THOMAS MORE, Knight."
A new scene now opened on More, of whose
private life the above simple letter enables us
to form no inadequate or unpleasing estimate.
On the 25th of October 1529, sixteen days
after the commencement of the prosecution
against Wolsey, the King, by delivering the
great seal to him at Greenwich, constituted
him lord chancellor, — the highest dignity of
the state and of the law, and which had
previously been generally held by ecclesias
tics.* A very summary account of the na
ture of this hiffh office, may perhaps prevent
some confusion respecting it among those
who know it only in its present state. The
office of chancellor was known to all the
European governments, who borrowed it,
like many other institutions, from the usage
of the vanquished Romans. In those of
England and France, which most resembled
each other, and whose history is most fa
miliar and most interesting to us,f the chan
cellor, whose office had been a conspicuous
dignity under the Lower Empire, was origi
nally a secretary who derived a great part
of His consequence from the trust of holding
the king's seal, the substitute for subscription
under illiterate monarchs, and the stamp of
legal authority in more cultivated times.
From his constant access to the king, he
acquired every where some authority in the
cases which were the frequent subject of
complaint to the crown. In France he be
came a minister of state with a peculiar
superintendence over courts of justice, and
some remains of a special jurisdiction, which
continued till the downfal of the French
monarchy. In the English chancellor were
gradually united the characters of a legal
magistrate and a political adviser; and sincts
that time the office has been confined to
lawyers in eminent practice. He has been
presumed to have a due reverence for the law,
as well as a familiar acquaintance with it ;
and his presence and weight in the counsels
of a free commonwealth have been regarded
as links which bind the state to the law.
One of the earliest branches of the chan
cellor's duties seems, by slow degrees, to
have enlarged his jurisdiction to the extent
* Thorpe, in 1371, and Knivet, in 1372, seem
to be the last exceptions.
t Ducange and Spelman, voce Cancellarius,
who give us the series of Chancellors in both
countries.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
65
which it reached in modern times.* From
the chancery issued those writs which first
put the machinery of law in motion in every
case where legal redress existed. In that
court new writs were framed, when it was
fit to adapt the proceedings to the circum
stances of a new case. When a case arose
in which it appeared that the course and
order of the common law could hardly be
adapted, by any variation in the forms of
procedure, to the demands of justice, the
complaint was laid by the chancellor, before
the king, who commanded it to be considered
in council, — a practice which, by degrees, led
to a reference to that magistrate by himself.
To facilitate an equitable determination in
such complaints, the writ was devised called
the writ of "subp&nd^ commanding the
person complained of to appear before the
chancellor, and to answer the complaint.
The essential words of a petition for this
writ, which in process of time has become
of so great importance, were in the reign of
Richard III. as follows : " Please it therefore,
your lordship, — considering that your orator
has no remedy by course of the common
law, — to grant a writ subpoena, commanding
T. Coke to appear in chancery, at a certain
day, arid upon a certain pain to be limited
by you, and then to do what by this court
shall be thought reasonable and according
to conscience." The form had not been
materially different in the earliest instances,
which appear to have occurred from 1380
to 1400. It would seem that this device
was not first employed; as has been hitherto
supposed,! to enforce the observance of the
.duties of trustees who held lands, but for
cases of an extremely different nature, where
the failure of justice in the ordinary courts
might ensue, not from any defect in the
common law, but from the power of turbu
lent barons, who, in their acts of outrage and
lawless violence, bade defiance to all ordinary
jurisdiction. In some of the earliest cases we
find a statement of the age and poverty of
the complainant, and of the power, and even
learning, of the supposed wrongdoer ; — topics
addressed to compassion, or at most to equity
in a very loose and popular sense of the word,
which throw light on the original nature of
this high jurisdiction. J It is apparent, from
the earliest cases in the reign of Richard II.,
* " Non facile est digito monstrare quibus
gradihiis, sed conjecturam accipe.'1 — Spelman,
voce Canrellarius.
t Blackstone, book iii. chap. 4.
t Calendars of Proceedings in Chancery, temp.
Eliz. London, 1827. Of ten of these suits which
occurred in the last ten years of the fourteenth
century, one complains of ouster from land by
violence ; another, of exclusion from a benefice,
by a writ obtained from the king under false sug
gestions; a third, for the seizure of a freeman,
under pretext of being a slave (or nief) ; a fourth,
for being disturbed in the enjoyment of land by a
trespasser, abetted by the sheriff; a fifth for im-
, prisonment on a false allegation of debt. No case
is extant prior to the first year of Henry V., which
relates f> the trust of lands, which eminent writers
that the occasional relief proceeding from
mixed feelings of pity and of regard to sub
stantial justice, not effectually aided by law.
or overpowered by tyrannical violence, had
then grown into a regular system, and was
subject to rules resembling those of legal
jurisdiction. At first sight it may appear
difficult to conceive how ecclesiastics could
have moulded into a regular form this ano
malous branch of jurisprudence. But many
of the ecclesiastical order. — originally the
only lawyers, — were eminently skilled in the
civil and canon law, which had attained an
order and precision unknown to the digests
of barbarous usages then attempted in France
and England. The ecclesiastical chancellors
of those countries introduced into their courts
a course of proceeding very similar to that
adopted by other European nations, who all
owned the authority of the canon law, and
were enlightened by the wisdom of the Ro
man code. The proceedings in chancery,
lately recovered from oblivion, show the sys
tem to have been in regular activity about
a century and a half before the chancellor
ship of Sir Thomas More, — the first common
lawyer who held the great seal since the
Chancellor had laid any foundations (known
to us) of his equitable jurisdiction. The
course of education, and even of negotiation
in that age, conferred on Moore, who was
the most distinguished of the practisers of
the common law, the learning and ability of
a civilian and a canonist.
Of his administration, from the 25th of
October 1529, to the 16th of May 1532, four
hundred bills and answers are still preserved,
which afford an average of about a hundred
and sixty suits annually. Though this ave
rage may by no means adequately represent
the whole occupations of a court which had
many other duties to perform, it supplies us
with some means of comparing the extent
of its business under him with the number
of similar proceedings in succeeding limes.
The whole amount of bills and answers in the
reign of James I. was thirty-two thousand.
How far the number may have differed at
different parts of that reign, the unarranged
state of the records does not yet enable us
to ascertain. But supposing it, by a rough
estimate, to have continued the same, the
annual average of bills and answers during
the four years of Lord Bacon's administration
was fourteen hundred and sixty-one, being
an increase of nearly ten-fold in somewhat
less than a century. Though cases con
nected with the progress of the jurisdiction
and the character of the chancellor must
have somewhat contributed to this remarka
ble increase, yet it must be ascribed princi
pally to the extraordinary impulse given to
have represented as the original object of this
jurisdiction. In the reign i of Henry VI. there is
a bill against certain Wycliffites for outrages done
to the plaintiff, Robert Burton, chanter of the
cathedral of Lincoln, on account of his zeal as an
inquisitor in the diocese of Lincoln, to convict
and punish heretics.
F2
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
daring enterprise and national wealth by
the splendid administration of Elizabeth.
\vhich multiplied alike the occasions of liti
gation and the means of carrying it on.* In
a century and a half after, when equitable
jurisdiction was completed in its foundations
arid most necessary parts by Lord Chancellor
Nottingham, the yearly average of suits was,
during his tenure of the great seal, about
sixteen hundred.! Under Lord Hardwicke,
the chancellor of most professional celebrity,
the yearly average of bills and answers ap
pears to have been about two thousand ;
probably in part because more questions had
been finally determined, and partly also be
cause the delays were so aggravated by the
multiplicity of business, that parties aggriev
ed chose rather to submit to wrong than to
be ruined in pursuit of right. This last mis
chief arose in a great measure from the
variety of affairs added to the original duties
of the judge, of which the principal w^ere
bankruptcy and parliamentary appeals. Both
these causes continued to act with increas
ing force ; so that, in spite of a vast increase
of the property and dealings of the kingdom,
the average number of bills and answers was
considerably less from 1800 to 1802 than it-
had been from 1745 to 1754.J
It must not be supposed that men trained
in any system of jurisprudence, as were the
ecclesiastical chancellors, could have been
indifferent to the inconvenience and vexa
tion which necessarily harass the holders
of a merely arbitrary power. Not having a
law, they were a law unto themselves ; and
every chancellor who contributed by a de
termination to establish a principle, became
instrumental in circumscribing the power of
his successor. Selden is, indeed, represented
to have said, " that equity is according to
the conscience of him who is chancellor ;
which is as uncertain as if we made the
chancellor's fodjjlhe standard for the mea
sure which we*xjall a foot."§ But this was
spoken in the looseness of table-talk, and
under the influence of the prejudices then
prevalent among common lawyers against
equitable jurisdiction. Still, perhaps, in his
time what he said might be true enough for
a smart saying: but in process of years a
system of rules has been established which
has constantly tended to limit the originally
discretionary powers of the chancery. Equity,
in the acceptation in which that word is used
in English jurisprudence, is no longer to be
confounded with that moral equity which
* From a letter of Lord Bacon (Lords' Journals,
20th March, 1680,) it appears that he made two
thousand decrees and orders in a year ; so that in
his time the bills and answers amounted to about
two-thirds of the whole business.
t The numbers have been obligingly supplied
by the gentlemen of the Record Office in the
Tower.
t Account of Proceedings in Parliament rela
tive to the Court of Chancery. By C. P. Cooper,
Esq. (Lond. 1828.) p. 102, &.C.— A work equally
remarkable for knowledge and acuteness.
$ Table Talk, (Edinb. 1809,) p. 55.
generally corrects the unjust operation of
law, and with which it seems to have been
synonymous in the days of Selden arid Bacon.
It is a part of law formed from usages and
determinations which sometimes differ from
what is called " common law" in its subjects,
but chiefly varies from it in its modes of
proof, of trial, and of relief; it is a jurisdic
tion so irregularly formed, and often so little
dependent on general principles, that it. can
hardly be defined or made intelligible other
wise than by a minute enumeration of the
matters cognisable by it.*
It will be seen from the above that Sir
Thomas More's duties differed very widely
from the various exertions of labour and in
tellect required from a modern chancellor.
At the utmost he did not hear more than two
hundred cases and arguments yearly, inclu
ding those of every description. No authentic
account of any case tried before him, if any
such be extant, has been yet brought to light-
No law book alludes to any part of his judg
ments or reasonings. Nothing of this higher
part of his judicial life is preserved, \\hich
can warrant us in believing more than that
it must have displayed his never-failing in
tegrity, reason, learning, and eloquence.
The particulars of his instalment are not
unworthy of being specified as a proof of the
reverence for his endowments and excel
lences professed by the King and entertained
by the public, to whose judgment the min
isters of Henry seemed virtually to appeal,
with an assurance that the Kirig''s appoint
ment would be ratified by the general voice.
'•He was led between the Dukes of Norfolk
and Suffolk up Westminster Hall to the Stone
Chamber, and there they honourably placed
him in ine high judgment-seat of chancel
lor j"t (for the chancellor was, by his oflice,
the president of that terrible tribunal.) "The
Duke of Norfolk, premier peer and lord high
treasurer of England," continues the biogra
pher. u by the command of the king, spoke
llmsunto the people there with great applause
and joy gathered together : —
" ' The King's majesty (which, I pray God,
may prove happie and fortunate to the whole
realme of England) hath raised to the most
high dignitie of chancellourship Sir Thomas
More, a man for his extraordinarie worth
and sufficiencie well knowne to himself and
the whole realme, for no other cause or earth-
lie respect, but for that he hath plainely per-
ceaved all the gifts of nature and grace to be
heaped upon him, which either ihe people
could desire, or himself wish, for the dis
charge of so great an office. For the ad
mirable wisedome, integritie, arid innocencie.
joyned with most pleasant facilitie of witt,
that this man is endowed wit hall, have been
sufficiently knowTen to all Englishmen from
his youth, and for these manie yeares also to
* Blackstone, book iii. ch;ip. 27. Lord Hard-
wicke's Letter to Lord Kames, 30ih June, 1757.
— Lord Woodhouselee's Life of Lord Kames, vol.
i. p. 237.
t More, pp. 156, 163.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
67
the King's majestie himself. This hath the
King abundantly found in manie and weightie
affayres, which he hath happily dispatched
both at home and abroad, in divers offices
which he hath born, in most honourable em-
bassages which he hath undergone, and in
his daily counsell and advises upon all other
occasions. He hath perceaved no man in
his realme to be more wise if! deliberating,
more sincere in opening to him what he
thought, nor more eloquent to adorne the
matter which he uttered. Wherefore, be
cause he saw in him such excellent endow
ments, and that of his especiall care he hath
a particular desire that his kingdome and
people might be governed with all equitie
and justice, integritie and wisedome, he of
his owne most gracious disposition hath
created this singular man lord chancellor;
that, by his laudable performance of this
office, his people may enjoy peace and jus
tice; and honour also and fame may re-
dounde to the whole kingdome. It may
perhaps seem to manie a strange and un-
usuall matter, that this dignitie should be
bestowed upon a layman, none of the nobili-
tie, and one that hath wife and children ; be
cause heretofore none but singular learned
prelates, or men of greatest nobilitie, have
possessed this place; but what is wanting in
these respects, the admirable vertues, the
matchless guifts of witt and wisedome of
this man, doth most plentifully recompence
the same. For the King's majestie hath not
regarded how great, but wrhat a man he was;
he hath not cast his eyes upon the nobilitie
of his bloud, but on the worth of his person ;
he hath respected his sufficiericie, not his
profession; finally, he would show by this
his choyce, that he hath some rare subjects
amongst the rowe of gentlemen and laymen,
who deserve to manage the highest offices
of the realme, which bishops and noblemen
think they only can deserve. The rarer
therefore it was, so much both himself held
it to be the more excellent, and to his people
he thought it would be the more gratefull.
Wherefore, receave this your chancellour
with joyful acclamations, at whose hands
you may expect all happinesse and content.7
" Sir Thomas More, according to his wont
ed modestie, was somewhat abashed at this
the duke's speech, in that it sounded so
much to his praise, but recollecting himself
as that place and time would give him leave,
he answered in this sorte : — <• Although, most
noble duke, and you right honourable lords,
and worshipfull gentlemen, I knowe all these
things, which the King's majestie, it seemeth,
hath bene pleased should be spoken of me
at this time and place, and your grace hath
with most eloquent wordes thus amplifyed,
are as far from me, as I could wish with all
my hart they were in me for the better per
formance of so great a charge ; and although
this your speach hath caused in me greater
feare than I can well express in words : yet
this incomparable favour of my dread soue-
raigne, by which he showeth how well, yea
how highly he conceaveth of my weake-
nesse, having commanded that my meanesse
should be so greatly commended, cannot be
but most acceptable unto me ; and I cannot
choose but give your most noble grace ex
ceeding thankes, that what his majestie hath
willed you briefly to utter, you, of the abun
dance of your love unto me, have in a large
and eloquent oration dilated. As for myself,
I can take it no otherwise, but that his ma-
jestie's incomparable favour towards me, the
good will and incredible propension of his
royall minde (wherewith he has these manie
yeares favoured me continually) hath alone
without anie desert of mine at all, caused
both this my new honour, and these your
undeserved commendations of me. For who
am I, or what is the house of my father, that
the King's highnesse should heape upon me
by such a perpeiuall streame of affection,
these so high honours? I am farre lesse then
anie the meanest of his benefitts bestowed
on me; how can I then thinke myself wor-
thie or fitt for this so peerlesse dignitie ? I
have bene drawen by force, as the King's
majestie often professeth. to his highnesse's
service, to be a courtier; but to take this
dignitie upon me, is most of all against my
will ; yet such is his highnesse's benignitie,
such is his bountie, that he highly esteem-
eth the small dutiefulnesse of his meanest
subjects, and seeketh still magnificently to
recompence his servants ; not only such as
deserve well, but even such as have but a
desire to deserve well at his hands, in which
number I have alwaies wished myself to be
reckoned, because I cannot challenge myself
to be one of the former; which being so, you
may all perceave with me how great a bur
den is layde upon my backe, in that I must
strive in some sorte with my diligence and
dutie to corresponde with his royall benevo
lence, and to be answerable J^hat great ex
pectation, which he and yo^Mfeme to have
of me ; wherefore those so ffl§R praises are
by me so much more grievous unto me, by
how much more I know the greater charge
I have to render myself worthie of, and the
fewer means I have to make them goode.
This weight is hardly suitable to my weake
shoulders; this honour is not correspondent
to my poore desert; it is a burden, not a
glorie ; a care, not a dignitie ; the one there
fore I must beare as manfully as I can, and
discharge the other with as much dexteritie
as I shall be able. The earnest desire which
I have alwaies had and doe now acknow
ledge myself to have, to satisfye by all
meanes I can possible, the most ample be
nefitts of his highnesse, will greatly excite
and ayde me to the diligent performance of
all, which I trust also I shall be more able
to doe. if I finde all your good wills and
wishes both favourable unto me, and con
formable to his royall munificence : because
my serious endeavours to doe well, joyned
with your favourable acceptance, will easily
procure that whatsoever is performed by me,
though it be in itself but small, yet will it
68
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAY'S.
seeme great and praiseworthie ; for those
things are alwaies atchieved happily, which
are accepted willingly ; and those succeede
fortunately, which are receaved by others
courteously. As you therefore doe hope for
great matters, and the best at my hands, so
though I dare not promise anie such, yet do
I promise truly and affectionately to per-
forme the best I shall be able.'
"When Sir Thomas More had spoken
these wordes, turning his face to the high
judgment seate of the chancerie, he pro
ceeded in this manner : — l But when I looke
upon this seate, when I thinke how greate
arid what.kinde of personages have possessed
this place before me, when I call to minde
who he was that sate in it last of all — a man
•of what singular wisdome, of what notable
experience, what a prosperous and favour
able fortune he had for a great space, arid
how at the last he had a most grevious fall,
arid dyed inglorious — I have cause enough
by my predecessor's example to think hon
our but slipperie, and this dignitie not so
grateful to me as it may seeme to others ;
for both is it a hard matter to follow with
like paces or praises, a man of such admira
ble witt, prudence, authoritie, and splendour,
to whome I may seeme but as the lighting
of a candle, when the sun is downe ; arid
.also the sudden and unexpected fall of so
.great a man as he was doth terribly putt me
in minde that this honour ought not to please
me too much, nor the lustre of this glistering
seate dazel mine eyes. Wherefore I ascende
this seate as a place full of labour and dan
ger, voyde of all solide and true honour;
the wrhich by how much the higher it is, by
so much greater fall I am to feare, as well in
respect of the verie nature of the thing it
selfe, as because I am warned by this late
fearfull examrie. And truly I might even
now at this4|^ftkjust entrance stumble, yea
faynte, burl^MJiis majestie's most singular
favour towar^KT me; and all your good wills,
which your joyfull countenance doth testifye
in this most honorable assemblie, doth some
what recreate and refresh me; otherwise
this seate would be no more pleasing to me,
than that sword was to Damocles, which
hung over his head, tyed only by a hayre of
a horse's tale, when he had store of delicate
fare before him, seated in the chair of slate
of Denis the tir'ant of Sicilie ; this therefore
shall be always fresh in my minde, this will
I have still before mine eies, that this seate
will be honorable, famous, and full of glorie
unto me, if I shall with care and diligence,
fidelitie and wisedome, endeavour to doe
my dutie, and shall persuade myself, that
the enjoying thereof may be but short and
uncertaine : the one whereof my labour ought
to performe ; the other my predecessor's ex
ample may easily teach me. All which be
ing so, you may easily perceave what great
pleasure I take in this high dignitie, or in
this most noble duke's praising of me.'
" All the world took notice now of sir
Thomas's dignitie, whereof Erasmus writeth
to John Fabius, bishop of Vienna, thus :~
1 Concerning the new increase of honour
lately happened to Thomas More, I should
easily make you believe it, if I should show
you the letters of many famous men, rejoi
cing with much alacritie, and congratulating
the King, the realme, himself, and also me,
for More's honor, in being made lord chan-
cellour of England.' "
At the period of the son's promotion, Sir
John More who was nearly of the age of
ninety, was the most ancient judge of the
King's Bench. "What a grate'furspectacle
was it," says their descendant, "to see the
son ask the blessing of the father every day
upon his knees before he sat upon his own
seat V* Even in. a more unceremonious
age, the simple character of More would
have protected these daily rites of filial re
verence from that suspicion of affectation;
which could alone destroy their charm.
But at that time it must have borrowed its
chief power from the conspicuous excellence
of the father and son. For if inward worth
had then borne any proportion to the grave
and reverend ceremonial of the age, we
might be well warranted in regarding our
forefathers as a race of superior beings.
The contrast which the humble and affa
ble More afforded to the haughty cardinal,
astonished and delighted the suitors. No
application could be made to Wolsey, which
did not pass through many hands; and no
man could apply, whose fingers were not
tipped with gold : but More sat daily in an
open hall, that he might receive in person
the petitions of the poor. If any reader
should blame his conduct in this respect, as
a breach of an ancient and venerable pre
cept, — "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in
judgment ; thou shalt not respect the person
of the poor, nor honour the person of the
mighty ; but in righteousness shalt \ho\i judge
thy neighbour,"! let it be remembered, that
there still clung to the equitable jurisdiction
some remains of that precarious and eleemo
synary nature from which itorigirially sprung;
which, in the eyes of the compassionate
chancellor, might warrant more preference
for the helpless poor than could be justified
in proceedings more rigorously legal.
Courts of law were jealous then, as since,
of the power assumed by chancellors to
issue injunctions to parties to desist from,
doing certain acts which they were by lavv
entitled to do, until the court of chancery
should determine whether the exercise of the
legal right would not work injustice. There
are many instances in which irreparable
wrong may be committed, before a right can
be ascertained, in the ordinary course of pro
ceedings. In such cases it is the province
of the Chancellor to take care that affairs
shall continue in their actual condition until
the questions in dispute be determined. A
considerable outcry against this necessary,
though invidious authority, was raised at the
More, p. 163. t Leviticus, chap. xix. v. 15.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
commencement of More's chancellorship.
He silenced this clamour with his wonted
prudence and meekness. Having caused
one of the six clerks to make out a list of the
injunctions issued by him, or pending before
him, he invited all the judges to dinner. He
laid the list before them; and explained the
circumstances of each case so satisfactorily,
that they all confessed that in the like case
they would have done no less. Nay, he
offered to desist from the jurisdiction, if they
would undertake to contain the law within
the boundaries of righteousness, which he
thought they ought in conscience to do. The
judges declined to make the attempt; on
which he observed privately to Roper, that
he saw they trusted to their influence for
obtaining verdicts which would shift the re
sponsibility from them to the juries. " Where
fore," said he, "I am constrained *to abide
the adventure of their blame."
Dauncey, one of his sons-in-law, alleged
that under Wolsey " even the door-keepers
got great gains," and was so perverted by
the venality there practised that he expostu
lated with More for his churlish integrity.
The chancellor said, that if "his father,
whom he reverenced dearly, were on the
one side, and the devil, whom he hated with
all his might, on the other, the devil should
have his right." He is represented by his
descendant, as softening his answer by pro
mising minor advantages, such as priority of
hearing, and recommendation of arbitration,
where the case of a friend was bad. The
biographer, however, not being a lawyer,
might have misunderstood the conversation,
which had to pass through more than one
generation before the tradition reached him ;
or the words may have been a ha'sty effusion
of good nature, uttered only to qualify the
roughness of his honesty. If he had been
called on to perform these promises, his head
and heart would have recoiled alike from
breaches of equality which he would have
felt to be altogether dishonest. When Heron,
another of his sons-in-law, relied on the bad
practices of the times, so far as to entreat a
favourable judgment in a cause of his own,
More, though the most affectionate of fathers,
immediately undeceived him by an adverse
decree. . This act of common justice is made
an object of panegyric by the biographer, as
if it were then deemed an extraordinary in
stance of virtue; a deplorable symptom of
that corrupt state of general opinion, which,
half a century later, contributed to betray
into ignominious vices the wisest of men,
and the most illustrious of chancellors, — if
the latter distinction be not rather due to the
virtue of a More or a Somers.
He is said to have despatched the causes
oefore him so speedily, that, on asking for
the next, he was told that none remained ;
which is boastfully contrasted by Mr. More,
his descendant, with the arrear of a thousand
in the time of that gentleman, who lived in
the reign of Charles I. : though we have
already seen that this difference may be re
ferred to other causes, and therefore that the
fact, if true, proves no more than his exem
plary diligence arid merited reputation.
The scrupulous and delicate integrity of
More (for so it must be called in speaking of
that age) was more clearly shown after his
resignation, than it could have been during
his continuance in office. One Parnell com
plained of him for a decree obtained by his
adversary Vaughan. whose wife had bribed
the chancellor by a gilt cup. More surprised
the counsel at first, by owning that he re
ceived the cup as a new year's gift. Lord
Wiltshire, a zealous Protestant, indecently,
but prematurely, exulted: "Did I not tell
you, my lords," said he, "'that you would
find this matter true'?" "'But, my lords,"
replied More, "hear the other part of my
tale." He then told them that, "having
drank to her o'f wine with which his butler
had filled the cup, and she having pledged
him, he restored it to her, and would listen
to no refusal." When Mrs. Croker, for
whom he had made a decree against Lord
Arundel, came to him to request his accep
tance of a pair of gloves, in which were con
tained 401. in angels, he told her, with a
smile, that it were ill manners to refuse a
lady's present ; but though he should keep
the gloves, he must return the gold, which
he enforced her to receive. Gresham, a
suitor, sent him a present of a gilt cup, of
which the fashion pleased him : More ac
cepted it ; but would not do so till Gresham
received from him another cup of greater
value, but of which the form and workman
ship were less suitable to the Chancellor. It
would be an indignity to the memory of such
a man to quote these ^acts as proofs of his
probity; but they may be mentioned as spe
cimens of the simple and unforced honesty
of one who rejected impropmroflers with all
the ease and pleasantry oj^^HBn courtesy.
Henry, in bestowing {^I^HRt seal on
More, hoped to dispose his^Hf ellor to lend
his authority to the projects of divorce and
second marriage, which were now agitating
the King's mind, and were the main objects
of his policy.* Arthur, the eldest son of
Henry VII., having married Catharine, the
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, sove
reigns of Castile and Arragon, and dying
very shortly after his nuptials, Henry had
obtained a dispensation from Pope Julius II.
to enable the princess to marry her brother-
in-law, afterwards Henry VIII. j and in this
last-mentioned union, of which the Princess
| Mary was the only remaining fruit, the par-
I ties had lived sixteen years in apparent har-
| mony. But in the year 15,27, arose a con-
i currence of events, which tried and estab-
j lished the virtue of More, and revealed to
| the world the depravity of his master. Henry
had been touched by the charms of Anne
i Boleyn, a beautiful young lady, in her t wenty-
i *" Thomas Morus. doctrina et prnbiiafe sperta-
; bills vir, cnncellarius in Wolsrei locum constitui-
j tur. Ntufiquam Regis causa cequior." — Thuanus,
! Historia sui Temporis, lib. ii. c. 16.
70
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
second year, the daughter of Sir Thomas
Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, who had lately
returned from the court of France, where
her youth had been spent. At the same
moment it became the policy of Francis I.
to loosen all the ties which joined the King
of England to the Emperor. When the
Bishop of Tarbes. his ambassador in Eng
land, found, on his arrival in London, the
growing distaste of Henry for his inoffensive
and exemplary wife, he promoted the King's
inclination towards divorce, and suggested
a marriage with Margaret Duchess of Alen-
9011, the beautiful and graceful sister of
Francis I.*
At this period Henry for the first time
professed to harbour conscientious doubts
whether the dispensation of Julius II. could
suspend the obligation of the divine prohibi
tion pronounced against such a marriage as
his in the Levitical law.t The court of
Rome did not dare to contend that the dis
pensation could reach the case if the prohi
bition were part of the universal law of God.
Henry, on the other side, could not consistent
ly question its validity, if he considered the
precept as belonging to merely positive law.
To this question, therefore, the dispute was
confined, though both parties shrunk from an
explicit and precise avowal of their main
ground. The most reasonable solution that
it was a local and temporary law, forming a
part of the Hebrew code, might seem at first
sight to destroy its authority altogether. But
if either party had been candid, this prohi
bition, adopted by all Christendom, might be
justified by that general usage, in a case
where it was not remarkably at variance
with reason or the ptiblic welfare. But such
a doctrine would have lowered the ground
of the Papal authority too much to be ac
ceptable t^taaae, and yet, on the other hand,
rested it j^^BBbpexceptionable a foundation
to suit thefj^Hpf Henry. False allegations
of facts in^raftfeamble of the bull were
alleged on the same side ; but they were in
conclusive. The principal arguments in the
King's favour were, that no precedents of
such a dispensation seem to have been pro
duced j arid that if the Levitical prohibitions
* " Margarita Francisci soror, spectatae formae
et yenustatis foDmina, Carolo Alenconio diice
marito paulo ante mortuo, vidua permanserat. Ea
destinata uxor Henrico : missique Wolsaaus et
Bigerronum Prresul qui de dissolvendo matrimo-
nio cum Gallo agerent. Ut Caletum appulit,
Wolsaeus mandatum a rege contrarium accipit,
resciyitque per amicos Henricum non tam Galli
adfinitatem quam insanum amorem, quo Annam
Bolenam prosequebatur, explere velle." — Ibid.
No trace of the latter part appears in the State
Papers just (1831) published.
t Leviticus, chap. xx. v. 22. But see Deutero
nomy, chap. xxy. v. 5. The latter text, which
allows an exception in the case of a brother's wife
being left childless, may be thought to strengthen
the prohibition in all cases not excepted. It may
seem applicable to the precise case of Henry.
But the application of that text is impossible ; for
it contains an injunction, of which the breach is
chastised by a disgraceful punishment.
do not continue in force under the Gospel,
there is no prohibition against incestuous
marriages in the system of the New Testa
ment. It was a disadvantage to the Church
of Rome in the controversy, that being driven
from the low ground by its supposed ten
dency to degrade the subject, and deterred
from the high ground by the fear of the re
proach of daring usurpation, the inevitable
consequence was confusion and fluctuation
respecting the first principles on which the
question was to be determined.
To pursue this subject through the long
negotiations and discussions which it occa
sioned during six years, would be to lead us
far from our subject. Clement VII. (Medici)
had been originally inclined to favour the
suit* of Henry, according to the usual policy
of the Roman Court, which sought plausible
pretexts for facilitating the divorce of kings,
whose matrimonial connections might be
represented as involving the quiet of nations.
The sack of Rome, however, and his own
captivity left him full of fear of the Empe
ror's power and displeasure ; it is even said
that Charles V., who had discovered the
secret designs of the English court, had ex
torted from the Pope, before his release, a pro
mise that no attempt would be made to dis
honour an Austrian princess by acceding to
the divorce."!" The Pope, unwilling to provoke
Henry, his powerful and generous protector,
instructed Campeggio to attempt, at first, a
reconciliation between the King and Queen ;
secondly, if that failed, to endeavour to per
suade her that she ought to acquiesce in her
husband's desires, by entering into a cloister
— (a proposition which seems to show a rea
diness in the Roman court to waive their
theological difficulties); and thirdly, if nei
ther of these attempts were successful, to
spin out the negotiation to the greatest length,
in order to profit by the favourable incidents
which time might bring forth. The impa
tience of the King and the honest indigna
tion of the Queen defeated these arts of
Italian policy; while the resistance of Anne
Boleyn to the irregular gratification of the
King's desires, — without the belief of which
it is impossible to conceive the motives for
his perseverance in the pursuit of an unequal
marriage, — opposed another impediment to
the counsels and contrivances of Clement,
which must have surprised and perplexed a
Florentine pontiff. The proceedings, how
ever, terminated in the sentence pronounced
by Cranmer annulling the marriage, the
espousal of Anne Boleyn by the King, and
the rejection of the Papal jurisdiction by
the kingdom, which still, however, adhered
to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic
Church.
The situation of More during a great part
of these memorable events was embarrass
ing. The great offices to which he had
been raised'by the King, the personal favoui
hitherto constantly shown to him, and the
* Pallavicino, lib. ii. c. 15.
t Ibid.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
natural tendency of his gentle and quiet dis
position, combined to disincline him to re
sistance against the wishes of his friendly
master. On the other hand, his growing
dread and horror of heresy, with its train of
disorders; his belief that universal anarchy
would be the inevitable result of religious
dissension, and the operation of seven years'
controversy on behalf of the Catholic Church,
in heating his mind on all subjects involving
the extent of her authority, made him re
coil from designs which were visibly tend
ing towards disunion with the Roman pon
tiff', — the centre of Catholic union, and the
supreme magistrate of the ecclesiastical
commonwealth. Though his opinions re
lating to the Papal authority were of a mo
derate and liberal nature, he at least respect
ed it as an ancient and venerable control on
licentious opinions, of which the prevailing
heresies attested the value and the necessity.
Though he might have been better pleased
with another determination by the supreme
pontiff, it did not follow that he should con
tribute to weaken the holy See, assailed as it
was on every side, by taking an active part
in resistance to the final decision of a lawful
authority. Obedience to the supreme head
of the Church in a case which ultimately
related only to discipline, appeared peculiarly
incumbent on all professed Catholics. But
however sincere the zeal of More for the
-Catholic religion and his support of the legi
timate supremacy of the Roman See un
doubtedly were, he was surely influenced at
the same time by the humane feelings of
his just and generous nature, which engaged
his heart to espouse the cause of a blame
less and wronged princess, driven from the
throne and the bed of a tyrannical husband.
Though he reasoned the case as a divine and
a canonist, he must have felt it as a man ;
and honest feeling must have glowed be
neath the subtleties and formalities of doubt
ful and sometimes frivolous disputations. It
was probably often the chief cause of con
duct for which other reasons might be sin
cerely alleged.
In steering his course through the intrigues
and passions of the court, it is very observa
ble that More most warily retired from every
opposition but that which Conscience abso
lutely required : he shunned unnecessary
disobedience as much as unconscientious
compliance. If he had been influenced solely
by prudential considerations, he could not
have more cautiously shunned every need
less opposition ; but in that case he would not
have gone so far. He displayed, at the time
of which we now speak, that very peculiar
excellence of his character, which, as it
showed his submission to be the fruit of
sense of duty, gave dignity to that which in
others is apt to seem, and to be slavish. His
anxiety had increased with the approach to
maturity of the King's projects of divorce and
second marriage. Some anecdotes of this
period are preserved by the affectionate and
descriptive pen of Margaret Roper's husband,
which, as he evidently reports in the chan-
ellor's language, it would be unpardonable
to relate in any other words than those of
the venerable man himself. Roper, indeed,
ike another Plutarch, consults the unre
strained freedom of his story by a disregard
of dates, which, however agreeable to a gene
ral reader, is sometimes unsatisfactory to a
searcher after accuracy. Yet his office in a
court of law, where there is the strongest
inducement to ascertain truth, arid the largest
experience of the means most effectual for
hat purpose, might have taught him the ex
treme importance of time as well as place in
estimating the bearing and weight of testi
mony.
:'0n a time walking with me along the
Thames' side at Chelsea, he said unto me,
' Now would to our Lord, son Roper, upon
condition that three things were well esta
blished in Christendom, I were put into a sack,
and were presently cast into the Thames.'
— ' What great things be those, sir?' quoth
I, 'that should move you so to wish.' — 'In
faith, son, they be these,' said he. 'The
first is, that whereas the most part of Chris
tian princes be at mortal war, they were all
at universal peace. The second, that where
the church of Christ is at present sore afflict
ed with many errors and heresies, it were
well settled in perfect uniformity of reli
gion. The third) that as the matter of the
King's marriage is now come in question, it
were, to the glory of God and quietness of
all parties, brought to a good conclusion.' "*
On another occasion.! " before the matri
mony was brought in question, when I. in
talk with Sir Thomas More (of a certain joy),
commended unto him the happy estate of
this realm, that had so catholic a prince, so
grave and sound a nobility, and so loving,
obedient subjects, agreeing in one faith.
'Truth it is, indeed, son Roper; and yet I
pray God, as high as we sit upon the moun
tains, treading heretics under our feet like
ants, live not the day that we gladly would
wish to be at league and composition with
them, to let them have their churches, so
that they would be contented to let us have
ours quietly.' I answered, 'By my troth, it
is very desperately spoken.' He, perceiving
me to be in a fume, said merrily, — 'Well,
well, son Roper, it shall not be so/ Whom,"
concludes Roper, in sixteen years and more,
being in his house, conversant with him, I
never could perceive him as much as once
in a fume." Doubtless More was some
what disquieted by the reflection, that some
of those who now appealed to the freedom
of his youthful philosophy against himself
would speedily begin to abuse such doctrines
by turning them against the peace which he
loved, — that some of the spoilers of Rome
* The description of the period appears to suit
the year 1529, before the peace of Cambray and
the recall of the lesate Campeggio.
t Probably in the beginning of 1527, after the
promotion of More to be chancellor of the duchy
of Lancaster.
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
might exhibit the like scenes of rapine and
blood in the city which was his birth-place
and his dwelling-place : yet, even then, the
placid mien, which had stood the test of
every petty annoyance for sixteen years,
was unruffled by alarms for the impending-
fate of his country and of his religion.
Henry used every means of procuring an
opinion favourable to his wishes from his
chancellor, who, however, excused himself
as unmeet for such matters, having never
professed the study of divinity. But the
King " sorely" pressed him.* and never
ceased urging him until he had promised to
give his consent, at least, to examine the
question, conjointly with his friend Tunstall
and other learned divines. This examina
tion over, More, with his wonted ingenuity
and gentleness, conveyed the result to his
master. "To be plain with your grace,
neither your bishops, wise and virtuous
though they be; nor myself, nor any other
of your council, by reason of your manifold
benefits bestowed on us. are meet counsel
lors for your grace herein. If you mind to
understand the truth, consult St. Jerome, St.
Augustin, and. other holy doctors of the Greek
and Latin churches, who will not be inclined
to deceive you by respect of their own worldly
commodity, or by fear of your princely dis
pleasure. "t Though the King di'd not like
what " w^as disagreeable to his desires, yet
the language of More was so wisely temper
ed, that for the present he took it in good
part, and oftentimes had conferences with
the chancellor thereon." The native meek
ness of More was probably more effectual
than all the arts by which courtiers ingratiate
themselves, or insinuate unpalatable counsel.
Shortly after, the King again moved him to
weigh and consider the great matter : the
chancellor fell down on his knees, and re
minding Henry of his own words on deliver
ing the great seal, which were, — " First look
upon God, and after God upon me," added,
that nothing had ever so pained him as that
he was not able to serve him in that matter,
without a breach of that original injunction.
The King said he was .content to continue
his favour, and never with that matter mo
lest his conscience afterwards ; but when the
progress towards the marriage was so far
advanced that the chancellor saw how soon
his active co-operation must be required, he
made suit to his " singular dear friend," the
Duke of Norfolk, to procure his discharge
from office. The duke, often solicited by
More, then obtained, by importunate suit, a
clear discharge for the chancellor; and upon
the repairing to the King, to resign the great
seal into his hands, Henry received him with
thanks and praise for his worthy service, and
assured him, that in any suit that should
either concern his honour or appertain unto
his profit, he would show himself a good
and gracious master to his faithful servant.
He then further directed Norfolk, when he
installed his successor, to declare publicly,
" that his majesty had with pain yielded to
the prayers of Sir Thomas More, by the re
moval of such a magistrate."*
At the time of his resignation More assert
ed, and circumstances, without reference to
his character, demonstrate the truth of his
assertion, that his whole income, independ
ent of grants from the crown, did not amount
to more than 501. yearly. This was not more
than an eighth part of his gains at the bar
and his judicial salary from the city of Lon
don taken together; — so great was the pro
portion in which his fortune had declined
during eighteen years of employment in
offices of such trust, advantage, and honour. t
In this situation the clergy voted, as a testi
monial of their gratitude to him, the sum of
5000/., which, according to the rate of inte
rest at that time, would have yielded him
500L a year, being ten times the yearly sum
which he could then call his own. But good
and honourable as he knewT their messengers,
of whom Tunstall was one, to be, he declar
ed, "that he would rather cast their money
into the sea than lake it ;" — not speaking from
a boastful pride, most foreign from his nature,
but shrinking with a sort of instinctive deli
cacy from the touch of money, even before
he considered how much the acceptance of
the gift might impair his usefulness.
His resources were of a nobler nature.
The simplicity of his tastes, and the mode
ration of his indulgences renderedVetrench-
rnent a task so easy to himself, as to be
scarcely perceptible in his personal habits.
His fool or jester, then a necessary part of a
great man's establishment, he gave to the
lord mayor for the time being. His first care
was to provide for his attendants, by placing
his gentlemen and yeomen with peers and
prelates, and his eight watermen in the ser
vice of his successor Sir T. Audley, to whom
he gave his great barge, — one of the most
indispensable appendages of his office in an
age when carriages were unknown. His sor
row's were for separation from those whom
he loved. He called together his children
and grandchildren, who had hitherto lived
in peace and love under his patriarchal roof,
and, lamenting that he could not, as he was
wont, and as he gladly would, bear out the
whole charges of them all himself, continue
living together as they were wont, he prayed
them to give him their counsel on this trying
occasion. When he saw them silent, and
unwilling to risk their opinion, he gave them
his, seasoned with his natural gaiety, and
containing some strokes illustrative of the
state of society at that time : — " I have been
brought up," quoth he, " at Oxford, at an inn
of chancery, at Lincoln's Inn, and also in the
king's court, from the lowest degree to the
highest, and yet I have at present left me lit
tle above 100Z. a year" (including the king's
* Roper, p. 32.
t Ibid. p. 48.
* " Honorifice jussit rex de me testatum reddere
quod ap.gro ad pieces meas nie demiseri.t." — More
to Erasmus.
t Apology, chap, x.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
73
grants;) "so that now if we like to live to
gether we must be content to be contributa-
ries together : but we must not fall to the low
est fare first: — we will begin with Lincoln's
Inri diet, where many right worshipful and
of good years do live lull well ; which, if we
find not ourselves the first year able to main
tain, then will we the next year go one step
to New Inn fare : if that year exceed our abili
ty, we will the next year descend to Oxford
fare, where many grave, learned, and ancient
fathers are continually conversant. If our
ability stretch not to maintain either, then
may we yet with bags and wallets go a beg
ging together, and hoping for charity at every
man's door, to sing Salve regina; and so still
keep company and be merry together."* On
the Sunday following his resignation, he stood
at the door of his wife's pew in the church,
where one of his dismissed gentlemen had
been used to stand, and making a low obei
sance to Alice as she entered, said to her with
perfect gravity, — "Madam, my lord is gone."
He who for seventeen years had not raised his
voice in displeasure, could not be expected
to sacrifice the gratification of his innocent
merriment to the heaviest blows of fortune.
Nor did he at fit times fail to prepare his
beloved children for those more cruel strokes
\vhich he began to foresee. Discoursing with
them, he enlarged on the happiness of suf
fering for the love of God, the loss of goods,
of liberty, of lands, of life. He would further
say unto them, ': that if he might perceive
his wife and children would encourage him
to die in a good cause, it should so comfort
him, that for very joy, it would make him
run merrily to death."
It must be owned that Henry felt the
weight of this great man's opinion, and tried
every possible means to obtain at least the
appearance of his spontaneous approbation.
Tunstall and other prelates were command
ed to desire his attendance at the coronation
of Anne at Westminster. They wrote a let-
ler to persuade him to comply, and accom
panied it with the needful present of 20/. to
buy a court dress. Such overtures he had
foreseen ; for he said some time before to
Roper, when he first heard of that marriage,
"God grant, son Roper, that these matters
within a while be not confirmed with oaths !"
He accordingly answered his friends the bi
shops well : — " Take heed, my lords: by pro
curing your lordships to be present at the
coronation, they will next ask you to preach
for the setting forth thereof; and finally to
write books to all the world in defence
thereof."
Another opportunity soon presented itself
for trying to subdue the obstinacy of More,
whom a man of violent nature might believe
to be fearful, because he was peaceful.
Elizabeth Barton, called " the holy maid of
Kent," who had been, for a considerable
number of years, afflicted by convulsive
maladies, felt her morbid susceptibility so
Roper, pp. 51,52.
10
excited by Henry's profane defiance of the
Catholic Church, and his cruel desertion of
Catharine, his faithful wife, that her pious
arid humane feelings led her to represent,
and probably to believe, herself to be visited
by a divine revelation of those punishments
which the King was about to draw down on
himself and on the kingdom. In the univer
sal opinion of the sixteenth century, such in
terpositions were considered as still occurring.
The neighbours and visiters of the unfortu
nate young woman believed her ravings to
be prophecies, and the contortions of her
body to be those of a frame heaving and
struggling under the awful agitations of di
vine inspiration, and confirmed that convic
tion of a mission from God, for which she
was predisposed by her own pious benevo
lence, combined with the general error of the
age. ' Both Fisher and More appear not to
have altogether disbelieved her pretensions :
More expressly declared, that he durst not
and would not be bold in judging her mira
cles.*1 In the beginning of her prophecies,
the latter had been commanded by the King
to inquire into her case j and he made a re
port to Henry, who agreed with him in con
sidering the whole of her miraculous preten
sions as frivolous, and deserving no farther
regard. But in 1532, several monks t so
magnified her performances to More that he
was prevailed on to see her ; but refused to
hear her speak about the King, saying to her,
in general terms, that he had no desire to
pry into the concerns of others. Pursuant,
as it is said, to a sentence by or in the Star
Chamber, she stood in the pillory at PauFa
Cross, acknowledging herself to be guilty of
the imposture of claiming inspiration, and
saying that she was tempted to this fraud by
the instigation of the devil. Considering the-
circumstances of the case, and the character
of the parties, it is far more probable that the
ministers sliould have obtained a false con
fession from her hopes of saving her life, than
that a simple woman should have contrived
and carried on, for many years, a system of
complicated and elaborate imposture. It
would not be inconsistent with this aquittal,
to allow that, in the course of her self-delu
sion, she should have been induced, by some
ecclesiastics of the tottering Church, to take
an active part in these pious frauds, which
there is too much reason to believe that per
sons of unfeigned religion have been often
so far misguided by enthusiastic zeal, as to
perpetrate or to patronize. But whatever
were the motives or the extent of the "holy
maid's" confession, it availed her nothing;
for in the session of parliament which met
in January, 1534, she and her ecclesiastical
prompters were attainted of high treason, and
adjudged to suffer death as traitors. Fisher,
bishop of Rochester, and others, were attain
ted of misprision, or concealment of treason,
for which they were adjudged to forfeiture
* Letter to Cromwell, probably written in the
end of 1532.
t Of whom some were afterwards executed.
G
74
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
and imprisonment during the King's plea
sure.* The "holy maid," with her spiritual
guides, suffered death at Tyburn on the 21st
of April, she confirming her former confes
sion, but laying her crime to the charge of
her companions, if we may implicitly believe
the historians of the victorious party. t
Fisher and his supposed accomplices in
misprision remained in prison according to
their attainder. Of More the statute makes
no mention; but it contains a provision,
which, when it is combined with other cir
cumstances to be presently related, appears
to have been added to the bill for .the pur
pose of providing for his safety. By this
provision, the King's majesty, at the humble
-suit of his well beloved wife Queen Anne,
pardons all persons not expressly by name
attainted by the statute, for all misprision
and concealments relating to the false arid
feigned miracles and prophecies of Elizabeth
Barton, on or before the 20th day of October,
1533. Now we are told by Roper,£ •' that
Sir Thomas More's name was originally in
serted in the bill," the King supposing that
this bill would "to Sir Thomas More be so
troublous and terrible, that it would force
him to relent and condescend to his request ;
wherein his grace was much deceived."
More was personally to have been received
to make answer in his own defence : but the
King, not liking that, sent the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Chancellor, the Duke of Nor
folk, arid Cromwell, to attempt his conver
sion. Audley reminded More of the King's
special favour and many benefits : More ad
mitted them ; but modestly added, that his
highness had most graciously declared that
on this matter he should be molested no
more. When in the end they saw that no
persuasion could move him. they then said,
cc that the King's highness had given them
in commandment, if they could by no gen
tleness win him, in the King's name with
ingratitude to charge him, that never was
servant to his master so villainous, § nor sub
ject to his prince so traitorous as he." They
even reproached him for having either writ
ten in the name of his master, or betrayed
his sovereign into writing, the book against
Luther, which had so deeply pledged Henry
to the support of Papal pretensions. To
these upbraidings he calmly answered : —
" The terrors are arguments for children,
and not for me. As to the fact, the King
knoweth, that after the book was finished by
his highness's appointment, or the consent of
the maker, I was only a sorter out and placer
of the principal matters therein contained."
* 25 H. viii. c. 12.
t Such as Hall and Holinshed. t p. 62.
$ Like a slave or a villain. The word in the
tnouth of these gentlemen appears to have been
in a state of transition, about the middle point be
tween the original sense of " like a slave," and
its modern acceptation of mean or malignant of
fenders. What proof is not supplied by this single
fact in the history of the language of the masters,
of their conviction, that the slavery maintained by
them doomed the slaves to depravity !
! He added, that he had warned the King of
1 the prudence of " touching the pope's au
thority more slenderly, and that he had re
minded Henry of the statutes of premunire,"
whereby ^ a good part of the pope's pastoral
care was pared away;" and that impetuous
monarch had answered, '-We are so much
bounden unto the See of Rome, that we can
not do too much honour unto it." On More's
return to Chelsea from his interview with
these lords, Roper said to him : — " I hope all
is well, since you are so merry ?" — " It is so,
indeed." said More, "I thank God."— -Are
you, then, out of the parliament bill?" said
Roper. — " By my troth. I never remembered
it ; but," said More, " I will tell thee why I
was so merry; because I had given the devil a
foul fall, and that with those lords I had gone
so far, as without great shame I can never
go back again." This frank avowal of the
power of temptation, and this simple joy at
having at the hazard of life escaped from
the farther seductions of the court, bestows
a greatness on these few and familiar words
which scarcely belongs to any other of the
sayings of man.
Henry, incensed at the failure of wheedling
and threatening measures, broke out into vio
lent declarations of his resolution to include
More in the attainder, and said that he
should be personally present to insure the
passing of the bill. Lord Audley and his
colleagues on their knees besought their
master to forbear, lest by an overthrow in
his own presence, he might be contemned by
his own subjects, and dishonoured through
out Christendom for ever ; — adding, that they
doubted not that they should find a more
meet occasion "to serve his turn ;" for that
in this case of the nun he was so clearly in
nocent, that men deemed him far worthier
of praise than of reproof. Henry was com
pelled to yield.* Such was the power of
defenceless virtue over the slender remains
of independence among slavish peers, and
over the lingering remnants of common hu
manity which might still be mingled with a
cooler policy in the bosoms of subservient
politicians. One of the worst of that race,
Thomas Cromwell, on meeting Roper in the
Parliament House next day after the King
assented to the prayer of his ministers, told
him to tell More that he was put out of the
bill. Roper sent a messenger to Margaret
Roper, who hastened to her beloved father
with the tidings. More answered her, with
his usual gaiety and fondness, " In faith,
Megg, what is put off is not given up."t
* The House of Lords addressed the King,
praying him to declare whether it would be agree
able to his pleasure that Sir Thomas More and
others should not be heard in their own defence
before "the lords in the royal senate called the
Stere Chamber." Nothing more appears on the
Journals relating to this matter. Lords' Journals,
6th March, 1533. The Journals prove the narra
tive of Roper, from which the text is composed,
to be as accurate as it is beautiful.
t He spoke to her in his conversational Latin,—
" Quod differtur non aufertur."
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
Soon after, the Duke of Norfolk said to him,
— " By the mass ! Master More, it is peril
ous striving with princes: the anger of a
prince brings death." — " Is that all, my lord 1
then the difference between you and me is
but this, — that I shall die to-day, and you to
morrow." No life in Plutarch is more full
•of happy sayings and striking retorts than
that of More: but the terseness and liveli
ness of his are justly overlooked in the
contemplation of that union of perfect sim
plicity with moral grandeur, which, perhaps,
no other human being has so uniformly
reached.
By a tyrannical edict, miscalled "a law,"
in the same session of 1533-4, it was made
high treason, after the 1st of May, 1534, by
writing, print, deed or act, to do or to pro
cure, or cause to be done or procured, any
thing to the prejudice, slander, disturbance,
or derogation of the King's lawful matrimony
with Queen Anne. If the same offences
should be committed by words, they were
to be only misprision. The same act en
joined all persons to take an oath to main
tain its whole contents ; and an obstinate re
fusal to make oath was subjected to the
penalties of misprision. No form of oath
was enacted, but on the 30th of March,*
1534. which was the day of closing the ses
sion, 'the Chancellor Audley, when the com
mons were at the bar, but when they could
neither deliberate nor assent, read the King's
letters patent, containing one, and appointing
the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chancel
lor, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, to be
commissioners for administering it.
More was summoned to appear before
these commissioners at Lambeth, on Mon
day the 13th of April. On other occasions
he had used, at his departure from his wife
and children, whom he tenderly loved, to
have them brought to his boat, and there to
kiss them, and bid them all farewell. At
this time he would suffer none of them to
follow him forth of the gate, but pulled the
wicket after him, and shut them all from
him, and with Roper and four servants took
boat towards Lambeth. He sat for a while;
but at last, his mind being lightened and re
lieved by those high principles to which with
him every low consideration yielded, whis
pered :— " Son Roper ! I thank our Lord, the
field is won." — "As I conjectured," says
Roper, " it was for that his love to God con
quered his carnal affections." What follows
is from an account of his conduct during the
subsequent examination at Lambeth sent to
his darling child, Margaret Roper. After
having read the statute and the form of the
oath, he declared his readiness to swear that
he would maintain and defend the order of
succession to the crown as established by
parliament. He disclaimed all censure of
those who had imposed, or on those who had
taken, the oath, but declared it to be impos
sible that he could swear to the whole con-
* Lords' Journals, vol. i. p. 82.
tents of it, without offending against his own
conscience; adding, that if they doubted
whether his refusal proceeded from pure
scruple of conscience or from his own phan
tasies, he was willing to satisfy their doubts
by oath. The commissioners urged that he
was the first who refused it ; they showed
him the subscriptions of all the lords and
commons who had sworn; and they held
out the King's sure displeasure against him
should he be the single recusant. When he
was called on a second time, they charged
him with obstinacy for not mentioning any
special part of the oath which wounded his
conscience. He answered, that if he were
to open his reasons for refusal farther, he
should exasperate the King still more: he
offered, however, to assign them if the lords
would procure the King's assurance that the
avowal of the grounds of his defence should
not be considered as offensive to the King,
nor prove dangerous to himself. The com
missioners answered that such assurances
would be no defence against a legal charge :
he offered, however, to trust himself to the
King's honour. Cranmer took some advan
tage of More's candour, urging that, as he
had disclaimed all blame of those who had
sworn, it was evident that he thought it only
doubtful whether the oath was unlawful ;
and desired him to consider whether the ob
ligation to obey the King was not absolutely
certain. More was struck with the subtilty
of this reasoning, which took him by sur
prise, — but not convinced of its solidity:
notwithstanding his surprise, he seems to
have almost touched upon the true answer,
that as the oath contained a profession of
opinion, — such, for example, as the lawful
ness of the King's marriage, on which men
might differ, — it might be declined by some
and taken by others with equal honesty.
Cromwell, whom More believed to favour
him. loudly swore that he would rather see
his only son had lost his head than that More
had thus refused the oath ; he it was who
bore the answer to the King, the Chancellor
Audley distinctly enjoining him to state very
clearly More's willingness to swear to the
succession. "Surely," said More, "as to
swearing to the succession, I see no peril."
Cromwell was not a good man ; but the gen
tle virtue of More subdued even the bad.
To his own house More never more returned,
being on the same day committed to the
custody of the Abbot of Westminster, in
which he continued four days ; and at the
end of that time, on Friday the 17th, he was
conveyed to the Tower.*
* Roper tells us that the King, who had intended
to desist from his importunities, was exasperated
by Queen Anne's clamour to tender the oath at
Lambeth; but he detested that unhappy lady,
whose marriage was the occasion of More's ruin:
and though Roper was an unimpeachable witness
relating to Sir Thomas' conversation, he is of less
weight as to what passed in the interior of the
pajace. The ministers might have told such a
story to excuse themselves to Roper : Anne could
have had no opportunity of contradiction.
76
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Soon after the commencement of the ses
sion, which began on the 3d of November
folio wing,* an act was passed which ratified,
and professed to recite, the form of oath pro
mulgated on the day of the prorogation : and
enacted that the oath therein recited should
be reputed to be the very oath intended by the
former act ;t though there were, in fact, some
substantial and important interpolations in
the latter act: — such as the words "most
dear and entirely beloved, lawful wife. Queen
Anne," which tended to render that form
still less acceptable than before, to the scru
pulous consciences of More and Fisher. Be
fore the end of the same session two statutes!
were passed attainting More and Fisher of
misprision of treason, and specifying the pun
ishment to be imprisonment of body and loss
of goods. By that which relates to More,
the King's grants of land to him in 1523 and
1525 are resumed ; it is also therein recited whereof I have of pure necessity, for respect
that he refused the oath since the 1st of May unto myne own soul, so often given you so
of 1534, with an intent to sow sedition ; and | precise an answer before. The matters that
during his confinement. A short note writ
ten to her a little while after his conmit-
ment, with a coal (his only pen and ink)
begins, "Mine own good daughter,'7 and
is closed in the following fond and pious
words: — "Written Avith a coal, by your ten
der loving father, who in his poor prayers
forgetteth none of you, nor your babes, nor
your good husband, nor your father's shrewd
wife neither." Shortly afier, mistaking the
sense of a letter from her, which he thought
advised him to compliance, he wrote a rebuke
of her supposed purpose with the utmost
vehemence of affection, and the deepest re
gard to her judgment ! — "I hear many terri
ble things towards me j but they all never
touched me, never so near, nor were they so
grievous unto me as to see you, my well be
loved child, in such a piteous and vehement
manner, labour to persuade me
thing
he is reproached for having demeaned him
self in other respects ungratefully and un
kindly to the King, his benefactor.
That this statement of the legislative mea
sures which preceded it is necessary to a
consideration of the legality of More's trial,
which must be owned to be a part of its jus
tice, will appear in its proper place. In the
mean time, the few preparatory incidents
which occurred during thirteen months' im
prisonment, must be briefly related. His
wife Alice, though an excellent housewife,
yet in her visits to the Tower handled his
misfortunes and his scruples too roughly.
u Like an ignorant, and somewhat worldly,
woman, she bluntly said to him, — 'How can
a man taken for wise, like you, play the fool
in this close filthy prison, when you might
be abroad at your liberty, if you would but
do as the bishops have done V " She en
larged on his fair house at Chelsea — "his
library, gallery, garden, and orchard, together
with the company of his wife and children."
He bore with kindness in its most unpleasing
form, and answered her cheerfully after his
manner, which was to blend religious feeling
with quaintness and liveliness : — "Is not this
house as nigh heaven as mine own'?" She
answered him in what then appears to have
been a homely exclamation of contempt,§
" Tilly voile, titty valk."\\ He treated her
harsh language as a wholesome exercise for
his patience, and replied wTith equal mild
ness, though with more gravity, "Why should
I joy in my gay house, when, if I should rise
from the grave in seven years, I should not
fail to find some one there who would bid
me to go out of doors, for it was none of
mine?" It was not thus that his Margaret
Roper conversed or corresponded with him
* 26 H. VIII. c. 2.
t25 Id. c. 22. $ 9. Compare Lords' Journals,
vol. i. p. 82.
t 26 H. VIII. c. 22, 23.
$ Roper, p. 78.
II Nares' Glossary, London, 1822.
nove my conscience I have sundry times
shown you, that I will disclose them to no
one."* Margaret's reply was worthy of
lerself : she acquiesces in his "faithful and
delectable letter, the faithful messenger of
tiis virtuous mind," and almost rejoices in
his victory over all earthborn cares: — con
cluding thus: — "Your own most loving obe-
lient daughter and bedeswoman,t Margaret
Roper, who desireth above all worldly things
to be in John Wood'si stede to do you some
ervice." After some time pity prevailed so
tar that she obtained the King's licence to
resort to her father in the Tower. On her
first visit, after gratefully performing their
accustomed devotions, his first care was to
soothe her afflicted heart by the assurance
that he saw no cause to reckon himself in
worse case there than in his own house. On
another occasion he asked her how Queen
Anne did? "In faith, father," said she,
•never better." — "'Never
better, Megg!"
quoth he • "alas ! Megg, it pitieth me to re
member into what misery, poor soul, she
shall shortly come." Various attempts con
tinued still to be made to cajole him ; partly,
perhaps, with the hope that his intercourse
with the beloved Margaret might have soft
ened him. Cromwell told lurn that the King
was still his good master, and did not wish
to press his conscience. The lords commis
sioners went twice to the Tower to tender
the oath to him : but neither he nor Fisher
would advance farther than their original
declaration of perfect willingness to maintain
the settlement of the crown, which, being a
matter purely political, was within the un
disputed competence of parliament. They
refused to include in their oath any other
matter on account of scruples of conscience,
which they forbore to particularise, lest they
might thereby furnish their enemies with a
* English Works, vol. i. p. 1430.
t His waiting-man, Ibid. p. 1431. Bedesman
— one who prays for another.
i Roper, p. 72.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
77
pretext for representing their defence as a
new crime. A statement of their real ground
of objection, — that it would be insincere in
them to declare upon oath, that they be
lieved the King's marriage with Anne to be
lawful, — might, in defending themselves
against a charge of misprision of treason,
have exposed them to the penalties of high
treason.
Two difficulties occurred in reconciling
the destruction of the victim with any form
or colour of law. The first of them consisted
in the circumstance that the naked act of
refusing the oath was, eveh by the Jate
statute, punishable only as a misprision ; and
though concealment of treason was never
expressly declared to be only a misprision
till the statute to that effect was passed un
der Philip and Mary,* — chiefly perhaps oc
casioned by the case of More, — yet it seemed
strange thus to prosecute him for the refusal,
as an act of treason, after it had been posi
tively made punishable as a misprision by a
general statute, and after a special act of
attainder for misprision had been passed
against him. Both these enactments were,
on the supposition of the refusal being in
dictable for treason, absolutely useless, and
such as tended to make More believe that
he was safe as long as he remained silent.
The second has been already intimated, that
he had yet said nothing which could be tor
tured into a semblance of those acts deroga
tory to the King's marriage, which had been
made treason. To conquer this last diffi
culty, Sir Robin Rich, the solicitor-general,
undertook the infamous task of betraying
More into some declaration, in a confidential
conversation, and under pretext of familiar
friendship, which might be pretended to be
treasonable. What the success of this flagi
tious attempt was, the reader will see in the
account of More's trial. It appears from a
letter of Margaret Roper, apparently written
sometime in the winter, that his persecutors
now tried another expedient for vanquishing
his constancy, by restraining him from at
tending church; and she adds, "from the
company of my good mother and his poor
children."! More, in his answer, expresses
his wonted affection in very familiar, but in
most significant language: — "If I were to
declare in writing how much pleasure your
daughterly loving letters gave me, a peck of
coals would not suffice to make the pens."
So confident was he of his innocence, and so
safe did he deem himself on the side of law,
that "he believed some new causeless sus
picion, founded upon some secret sinister in
formation," had risen up against him.t
On the 2d or 3d of May, 1535, More in
formed his dear daughter of a visit from
Cromwell, attended by the attorney and so
licitor-general, and certain civilians, at which
Cromwell had urged to him the statute which
* 1 & 2 Phil, and Mar. c. 10.
t English Works, vol. i. p. 1446.
* Ibid. p. 1447.
made the King head of the Church, and re
quired an answer on that subject ; and that
he had replied: — "I am the King's true
faithful subject, and daily bedesman : I say
no harm, and do no harm : and if this be not
enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I
long not to live." This ineffectual attempt
was followed by another visit from Cranmer,
the Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, the Earl
of Wiltshire, and Cromwell, who, after much
argument, tendered an oath, by which he
was to promise to make answers to questions
which they might put ;* and on his decisive
refusal, Cromwell gave him to understand
that, agreeably to the language at the former
conference, "his grace would follow the
course of his laws towards such as he should
find obstinate." Cranmer, who too generally
complied with evil counsels, but nearly al
ways laboured to prevent their execution,
wrote a persuasive letter to Cromwell, ear
nestly praying the King to be content with
More and Fisher's proffered engagement to
maintain the succession, which would ren
der the whole nation unanimous on the prac
tical part of that great subject.
On the 6th of the same month, almost im
mediately after the defeat of every attempt
to practise on his firmness, More was brought
to trial at Westminster; and it will scarcely
be doubted, that no such culprit stood at any
European bar for a thousand years. It is
rather from caution than from necessity that
the ages of Roman domination are excluded
from the comparison. It does not seem that
in any moral respect Socrates himself could
claim a superiority. It is lamentable that
the records of the proceedings against such
a man should be scanty. We do not cer
tainly know the specific offence of which he
was convicted. There does not seem, how
ever, to be much doubt that the prosecution
was under the act "for the establishment
of the king's succession," passed in the ses
sion of 1533-4,t which made it high treason
"to do anything to the prejudice, slander;
disturbance, or derogation of the lawful mar
riage" between Henry and Anne. Almost
any act, done or declined, might be forced
within the undefined limits of such vague
terms. In this case the prosecutors proba
bly represented his refusal to answer certain
questions which, according to them, must
have related to the marriage, his observa
tions at his last examination, and especially
his. conversation with Rich, as overt acts of
that treason, inasmuch as it must have been
known by him that his conduct on these oc
casions tended to create a general doubt of
the legitimacy of the marriage.
To the first alleged instance of his resist
ance to the King, which consisted in his
original judgment against the marriage, he
answered in a manner which rendered reply
impossible ; " that it could never be treason
for one of the King's advisers to give him
* English Works, vol. i. p. 1452.
t 25 H. VIII. c. 22.
G2
78
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
honest advice." On the like refusal respect
ing the King's headship of the Church, he
answered that "no man could be punished
for silence." The attorney-general said, that
the prisoner's silence was ''malicious:" —
More justly answered, that "he had a right
to be silent where his language was likely
to be' injuriously misconstrued." Respect
ing his letters to Bishop Fisher, they were
burnt, and no evidence was offered of their
contents, which he solemnly declared to have
no relation to the charges. And as to the
last charge, that he had called "the Act of Set
tlement "a two-edged sword, which would
destroy his soul if he complied with it, and
his body if he refused," it was answered by
him, that " he supposed the reason of his
refusal to be equally good, whether the
question led to an offence against his con
science, or to the necessity of criminating
himself."
Cromwell had before told him, that though
he was suffering perpetual imprisonment for
the misprision, that punishment did not re
lease him from his allegiance, and that he
was amenable to the law for treason ; — over
looking the essential circumstances, that the
facts laid as treason were the same on which
the attainder for misprision was founded.
Even if this were not a strictly maintainable
objection in technical law, it certainly show
ed the flagrant injustice of the whole pro
ceeding.
The evidence, however, of any such strong
circumstances attendant on the refusal as
could raise it into an act of treason must
have seemed defective; for the prosecutors
were reduced to the necessity of examining
Rich, one of their own number, to prove cir
cumstances of which he could have had no
knowledge, without the foulest treachery on
his part. He said, that he had gone to More
as a friend, and had asked him, if an act of
parliament had made him, Rich, king, would
not he. More, acknowledge him. More had
said, "Yes, sir, that I would?"— "If they
declared me pope, would you acknowledge
me V — " In the first case. I have no doubt
about temporal governments; but suppose
the parliament should make a law that God
should not be God, would you then, Mr.
Rich, say that God should not be God ?"—
"No," says Rich, "'no parliament could
make such a law." Rich went on to swear,
that More had added, "No more could the
parliament make the King the supreme head
of the Church." More denied the latter
part of Rich's evidence altogether ; which is,
indeed, inconsistent with the whole tenor
of his language : he was then compelled lo
expose the profligacy of Rich's character.
"I am," he said, "more sorry for your per
jury, than for mine own peril. Neither I, nor
any man, ever took you to be a person of
such credit as I could communicate with on
such matters. We dwelt near in one parish,
and you were always esteemed very light of
your tongue, and not of any commendable
fame. Can it be likely lo your lordships that
I should so unadvisedly overshoot myself, as
to trust Mr. Rich with what I have concealed
from the King, or any of his noble and grave
counsellors?"' The credit of Rich was so
deeply wounded, that he was compelled to
call Sir Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer,
who were present at the conversation, to
prop his tottering evidence. They made a
paltry excuse, by alleging that they were so
occupied in removing More's books, that
they did not listen to" the words of this ex
traordinary conversation.
The jury,* in spite of all these circum
stances, returned a verdict of "guilty."
Chancellor Audley, who was at the heart of
the commission, of which Spelman and Fitz-
herbert, eminent lawyers, were members,
was about to pronounce judgment, when he
was interrupted by More, who claimed the
usual privilege of being heard to show that
judgment should not be passed. More urged,
that he had so much ground for his scruples
as at least to exempt his refusal from the
imputation of disaffection, or of what the
law deems to be malice. The chancellor
asked him once more how his scruples could
balance the weight of the parliament, peo
ple, and Church of England ? — a topic which
had been used against him at every inter
view and conference since he was brought
prisoner to Lambeth. The appeal to weight
of authority influencing Conscience was. how
ever, singularly unfortunate. More answer
ed, as he had always done, "Nine out of ten
of Christians now in the world think with,
me ; nearly all the learned doctors and holy-
fathers who are already dead, agree with
me ; and therefore I think myself not bound
to conform rny conscience to the councell of
one realm against the general consent of all
Christendom." Chief Justice Fitzjames con
curred in the sufficiency of the indictment ;
which, after the verdict of the jury, was the
only matter before the court.
The chancellor then pronounced the sa
vage sentence which the law then directed
in cases of treason. More, having no longer
any measures to keep, openly declared, that
after seven years' study, "he could find no
colour for holding that a layman could be
head of the Church." The commissioners
once more offered him a favourable audience
for any matter which he had to propose. —
"More have I not to say, my lords," he re
plied, "but that as St. Paul held the clothes
of those who stoned Stephen to death, and
as they are both now saints in heaven, and
shall continue there friends for ever; so I
verily trust, and shall therefore right heartily
pray, that though your lordships have now
here on earth been judges to my condemna
tion, we may, nevertheless, hereafter cheer-
* Sir T. Palmer, Sir T. Bent, G. LOVP!!, es
quire. Thomas Burbage, esquire, and G. Cham
ber, Edward Stoekmore, William Brown, Jasper
Leake. Thomas Bellington, John Parnell, Ri
chard Bellamy, and G. Stoakes, gentlemen, were
the jury.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.
fully meet in heaven, in everlasting salva
tion."*
Sir W. Kingston, "his very dear friend,"
constable of the Tower, as, with tears run
ning down his cheeks, he conducted him
from Westminster, condoled with his prison
er, who endeavoured to assuage the sorrow
of his friend by the consolations of religion.
The same gentleman said afterwards to
Roper, — " I was ashamed of myself when I
found my heart so feeble, and his so strong."
Margaret Roper, his good angel, watched for
his landing at the Tower wharf. "After his
blessing upon her knees reverently received,
without care of herself, pressing in the midst
of the throng, and the guards that were about
him with halberts and bills, she hastily ran
to him, and openly, in sight of them all, em
braced and kissed him. He gave her again
his fatherly blessing. After separation she,
all ravished with the entire love of her dear
father, suddenly turned back again, ran to
him as before, took him about the neck, and
divers times kissed him most lovingly, — a
sight which made many of the beholders
weep and mourn. "t Thus tender was the
heart of the admirable woman who had at
the same time the greatness of soul to
strengthen her father's fortitude, by disclaim
ing the advice for which he, having mistaken
her meaning, had meekly rebuked her, — to
prefer life to right.
On the 14th of June. More was once more
examined by four civilians in the Tower.
"He was asked, first, whether he would
obey the King as supreme head of the
Church of England on earth immediately
under Christ ? to which he said, that he could
make no answer: secondly, whether he
would consent to the King's marriage with
Queen Anne, and affirm the marriage with
the lady Catharine to have been unlawful 1
to which he answered that he did never
speak nor meddle against the same: and,
thirdly, whether he was not bound to answer
the said question, and to recognise the head
ship as aforesaid 1 to which he said, that he
could make no answer."! It is evident that
these interrogatories, into which some terms
peculiarly objectionable to More were now
for the first time inserted, were contrived
for the sole purpose of reducing the illustri
ous victim to trie option of uttering a lie, or
of suffering death. The conspirators against
him might, perhaps, have had a faint idea
that they had at length broken his spirit ;
and if he persisted, they might have hoped
that he could be represented as bringing de
struction on himself by his own obstinacy.
Such, however, was his calm and well-order
ed mind, that he said and did nothing to pro
voke his fate. Had he given affirmative
answers, he would have sworn falsely : he
was the martyr of veracity; he perished
only because he was sincere.
On Monday, the 5th of July, he wrote a
farewell letter to Margaret Roper, with his
* Roper, p. 90. t Ibid. p. 90. J Ibid. p. 92.
usual materials of coal. It contained bless
ings on all his children byname, with a kind
remembrance even to one of Margaret's
maids. Adverting to their last interview,
on the quay, he says, — ;'I never liked your
manner towards me better than when you
kissed me last; for I love when daughterly
love and dear charity have no leisure to look
to worldly courtesy."
Early the next morning Sir Thomas Pope,
"his singular good friend," came to him
with a message from the King and council,
to say that he should die before nine o'clock
of the same morning. "The King's plea
sure," said Pope, "is that you shall not use
many words." — "I did purpose," answered
More, " to have spoken somewhat, but I
will conform myself to the King's command
ment, and I beseech you to obtain from him
that my daughter Margaret may be present
at my burial." — "The King is already con
tent that your wife, children, and other
friends shall be present thereat." The lieu
tenant brought him to the scaffold, which
was so weak that it was ready to fall ; on
which he said, merrily, " Master lieutenant,.
I pray you see me safe up, and for my com
ing down let me shift for myself." When
he laid his head on the block he desired the
executioner to wait till he had removed his
beard, "for that had never offended his-
highness," — ere the axe fell.
He has been censured by some for such
levities at the moment of death. These are
censorious cavils, which would not be wor
thy of an allusion if they had not occasioned
some sentences of as noble reflection, and
beautiful composition, as the English lan
guage contains. " The innocent mirth, which
had been so conspicuous in his life, did not
forsake him to the last. His death was of a
piece with his life; there was nothing in it
new, forced, or affected. He did not look
upon the severing his head from his body as
a circumstance which ought to produce any
change in the disposition of his mind; and
as he died in a fixed and settled hope of im
mortality, he thought any unusual degree of
sorrow and concern improper."*
According to the barbarous practice of
laws which vainly struggle to carry their
cruelty beyond the grave, the head of Sir
Thomas More was placed on London bridge.
His darling daughter, Margaret, had the
courage to procure it to be taken down, that
she might exercise her affection by continu
ing to look on a relic so dear; and carrying
her love beyond the grave, she desired that
it might be buried with her when she died.t
The remains of this precious relic are said
to have been since observed, lying on what
had once been her bosom. The" male de
scendants of this admirable woman appear
to have been soon extinct : her descendants
through females are probably numerous.!
* Spectator, No. 349.
tSite survived her father about nine years.
\ One of them, Mr. James Hinton Baverstock,
inserted his noble pedigree from Margaret, in
80
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
She resembled her father in mind, in man
ner, in the features and expression of her
countenance, and in her form and gait. Her
learning was celebrated throughout Christen
dom. It is seldom that literature wears a
more agreeable aspect than when it becomes
a bond of union between such a father and
such a daughter.
Sir Thomas More's eldest son. John, mar
ried Anne Cresacre, the heiress of an estate,
still held by his posterity through females,
at Barnborough, near Doncaster,* where the
mansion of the Mores still subsists. The last
male desendant was Thomas More, a Jesuit,
who was principal of the college of Jesuits
at Bruges, and died at Bath in 1795, having
survived his famous order, and, according to
the appearances of that time, his ancient re
ligion; — as if the family of More were one
of the many ties which may be traced,
through the interval of two centuries and
a half,, between the revolutions of religion
-arid those of government.
The letters and narratives of Erasmus dif
fused the story of his friend's fate through
out Europe. Cardinal Pole bewailed it with
elegance and feeling. It filled Italy, then
the most cultivated portion of Europe, with
horror. Paulo Jovio called Henry "a Phala-
ris," though we shall in vain look in the story
of Phalaris, or of any other real or legendary
tyrant, for a victim worthy of being compared
to More. The English ministers throughout
Europe were regarded with averted eyes as
the agents of a monster. At Venice, Henry,
after this deed, was deemed capable of any
crimes : he was believed there to have mur
dered Catharine, and to be about to murder
his daughter Mary.t The Catholic zeal of
§pain, and the resentment of the Spanish
people against the oppression of Catharine,
quickened their sympathy with More, and
aggravated their detestation of Henry. Ma
son, the envoy at Valladolid, thought every
pure Latin phrase too weak for More, and
describes him by one as contrary to the
rules of that language as "thrice greatest"!
would be to those of ours. When intelli
gence of his death was brought to the Em
peror Charles V., he sent for Sir T. Elliot.
the English ambassador, and said to him,
" My lord ambassador, we understand that
the king your master has put his wise coun
sellor Sir Thomas More to death." Elliot,
abashed, made answer that he understood
nothing thereof. "Well," said the Emperor,
" it is too true ; and this we will say, that, if
we had been master of such a servant, we
should rather have lost the best city in our
dominions than have lost such a worthy
counsellor:"— "which matter," says Roper,
in the concluding words of his beautiful
narrative, " was by Sir T. Elliot told to my-
1819, in a copy of More's English Works, at this
moment before me.
* Hunter's South Yorkshire, vol.i. pp. 374, 375.
t Ellis' Original Letters, 2d series, lett. cxvii.
JIbid. lett. ex. " Ter raaximus ille Morus."
self, my wife, to Mr. Clement and his wife,
and to Mr. Heywood and his wife."*
Of all men nearly perfect, Sir Thomas
More had, perhaps, the clearest marks of in
dividual character/ His peculiarities, though
distinguishing him from all others, were yet
withheld from growing into moral faults.
It is not enough to say of him that he was
unaffected, that he was natural, that he was
simple ; so the larger part of truly great men
have been. But there is something home
spun in More which is common to him with
scarcely any other, and which gives to all
his faculties and qualities the appearance of
being the native growth of the soil. The
homeliness of his pleasantry purifies it from
show. He walks on the scaffold clad only
in his household goodness. The unrefined
benignity with which he ruled his patri
archal dwelling at Chelsea enabled him to
look on the axe without being disturbed by
feeling hatred for the tyrant. This quality
bound together his genius and learning, his
eloquence and fame, with his homely and
daily duties. — bestowing a genuineness on
all his good qualities, a dignity on the most
ordinary offices of life, and an accessible fa
miliarity on the virtues of a hero and a mar
tyr, which silences every suspicion that his
excellencies were magnified. He thus sim
ply performed great acts, and uttered great
thoughts, because they were familiar to his
great soul. The charm of this inborn and
homebred character seems as if it would
have been taken off by polish. It is this
household character which relieves our no
tion of him from vagueness, and divests per
fection of that generality and coldness to
which the attempt to paint a perfect man is
so liable.
It will naturally, and very strongly, excite
the regret of the good in every age, that the
life of this best of men should have been in
the power of one who has been rarely sur
passed in wickedness. But the execrable
Henry was the means of drawing forth the
magnanimity, the fortitude, and the meek
ness of More. Had Henry been a just and
merciful monarch, we should not have known
the degree of excellence to which human
nature is capable of ascending. Catholics
ought to see in More, that mildness and can
dour are the true ornaments of all modes of
faith. Protestants ought to be taught hu
mility and charity from this instance of the
wisest and best of men falling into, what they
deem, the most fatal errors. All men, in the
fierce contests of contending factions, should,
from such an example, learn the wisdom to
fear lest in their most hated antagonist they
may strike down a Sir Thomas More : for
assuredly virtue is not so narrow as to be
confined to any party ; and we have in the
* Instead of Heywood, perhaps we ought to
read " Heron?" In that case the three daughters
of Sir Thomas More would be present: Mrs.
Roper was the eldest, Mrs. Clement the second,
and Cecilia Heron the youngest.
LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE,
81
case of More a signal example that the near
est approach to perfect excellence does not
exempt men from mistakes which we may
justly deem mischievous. It is a pregnant
proof, that we should beware of hating men
for their opinions, or of adopting their doc
trines because we love and venerate their
virtues.
APPENDIX.
A.
SOME particulars in the life of Sir Thomas More
I am obliged to leave to more fortunate inquirers.
They are, indeed, very minute ; but they may ap
pear to others worthy of being ascertained, as they
appeared to me, from their connection with the
life of a wise and good man.
The records of the Privy Council are preserved
only since 1540, so that we do not exactly know
the date of his admission into that body. The
time when he was knighted (then a matter of some
moment) is not known. As the whole of his life
passed during the great chasm in writs for elec
tion, and returns of members of parliament, from
1477 to 1542, the places for which he sat, and the
year of his early opposition to a subsidy, are un
ascertained ; — notwithstanding the obliging exer
tion of the gentlemen employed in the repositories
at the Tower, and in the Rolls' chapel. We
know that he was speaker of the House of Com
mons in 1523 and 1524.* Browne Willis owns
his inability to fix the place which he represented ;t
but he conjectured it to have been " either Mid
dlesex, where he resided, or Lancaster, of which
duchy he was chancellor." But that laborious
and useful writer would not have mentioned the
latter branch of his alternative, nor probably the
former, if he had known that More was not Chan
cellor of the Duchy till two years after his speaker-
ship.
B.
An anecdote in M ore's chancellorship is con
nected with an English phrase, of which the origin
is not quite satisfactorily explained. An attorney
in his court, named Tubb, gave an account in
court of a cause in which he was concerned, which
the Chancellor (who with all his gentleness loved
a joke) thought so rambling and incoherent, that
he said at the end of Tubb's speech, " This is a
tale of a tub ;" plainly showing that the phrase
was then familiarly known. The learned Mr.
Douce has informed a friend of mine, that in Se
bastian Munster's Cosmography, there is a cut of
a ship, to which a whale was coming too close for
her safety, and of the sailors throwing a tub to the
whale, evidently to play with. The practice of
throwing a tub or barrel to a large fish, to divert the
animal from gambols dangerous to a vessel, is also
mentioned in an old prose translation of The Ship
of Fools. These passages satisfactorily explain
the common phrase of throwing a tub to a whale ;
but they do not account for leaving out the whale,
and introducing the new word " tale." The
transition from the first phrase to the second is a
considerable stride. It is not, at least, directly
explained by Mr. Douce's citations ; and no ex
planation of it has hitherto occurred which can be
supported by proof. It may be thought probable
that, in process of time, some nautical wag com
pared a rambling story, which he suspected of
being lengthened and confused, in order to turn
his thoughts from a direction not convenient to the
* Rolls of Parliament in Lords' Journals, vol. i.
f Notitia Parliamentaria, vol. iii. p. 112.
11
story-teller, with the tub which he and his ship
mates were wont to throw out to divert the whale
from striking the bark, and perhaps said, " This
tale is, like our tub to the whale." The com
parison might have become popular ; and it might
gradually have been shortened into "a tale of a
tub."
C.
EXTRACTS FROM THE RECORDS OF THE CITY
OF LONDON RELATING TO THE APPOINTMENT
OF SIR THOMAS MORE TO BE UNDER-SHERIFF
OF LONDON, AND SOME APPOINTMENTS OF HIS
IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS AND OF HIS SUC
CESSOR.
(A. D. 1496. 27th September.)
"Commune consilium tentum die^Martij
Vicesimo Septimo^ die Septembr Anno
Regni Regis Henr Septimi duo decimo.
"In isto Comun Consilio Thomas Sail et
Thomas Marowe confirmati sunt in Subvic Civi-
tati : London p anno sequent, &c."
(1497.)
" Comune Consiliu tent die Lune xxv10 die
SepT anno Regni Regs Hen? vii. xiij°.
" Isto die Thomas Marowe et Ed" Dudley con-
firmat sunt in Sub Vic Sit' London p anno sequ."
(1498 & 1501.)
Similar entries of the confirmation of Thomas
Marowe and Edward Dudley are made in the
14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th Henry VII., and at a
court of aldermen, held on the
(1502.)
17th Nov. 18 Henry 7. the following entry
appears^: —
"Ad hanc CuF Thomas Marowe uns sub vice-
comitu sponte resignat offim suu."
And at a Common Council held on the
same day, is entered —
"In isto Communi Consilio Radus adye Gen-
tilman elect est in unu Subvic" Ciyitats London
loco Thome Marwe Gentilman qui illud officiu
sponte resignavit, capieni feoct consueT."
" Coe Consiliu tent die Martis iij° die Sep-
tembris anno Regni Reg8 Henrici Oc-
tavi Secundo.
" Eodm die Thorns More Gent elect est in unu
Subvic" Civitats London loc RicT Broke Gent qui
nup elect fuit in Recordator London."
" Martis viij die Maii 6th Henry 8.
" Court of Aldermen.
"Yt ys agreed that Thomas More Gent oon
of Undersheryfes of London which shall go ov
the Kings AmbasseTin to fflaunders shall occupie
his Rowme and office by his sufficient Depute
untyll his cumyng home ageyn"
" Martis xj die Marcii 7 Henry VHP*
" Court of Aldermen.
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
" Ye shall sweare that ye shall kepe the Secrets
of this Courts and not to disclose eny thing ther
spoken for the coen vvelthe of this citie that myght
hurt eny psone or brother of the seyd courte onles
yt be spoken to his brothr or to other which in his
conscience and discrecon shall thynk yt to be for
the coen welthe of this citie.
So help you God."
" Jovis xiij die Marcii 7 Henry 8.
" Court of Aldermen.
"Itm ad ista Cur Thomas More and Wills
Shelley Subvice09 Cit8 London jur sunt ad articlm
supdcra spect xj die marcii."
" Veuis 23 July, 10 Henry 8.
Court of Aldermen.
^' Ad istam Cu? Thomas More Gent un Sub-
vic"Cits in Co nip in Pulletr London libe et sponte
Sur?^et resign officrii pdcm in manu Maioris et
Aldror."
" Coie Consiliu tent die Venis xxiij die
Julii anno regni regis Henrici Ociavi de-
cimo."
" Isto die Johes Pakyngton Gent admissus est
in unu subvic Ciyitats London loco Thome More
qui spont et libe resignavit Officiu illud in Man
Maioris aldr5r et Cols consilii. Et jur est &c."
A REFUTATION OF THE CLAIM ON BEHALF
OF
KING CHARLES I.
TO THE AUTHORSHIP OF
THE EIK{1N
A SUCCESSION of problems or puzzles in the
literary and political history of modem times
has occasionally occupied some ingenious
writers, and amused many idle readers.
Those who think nothing useful which does
not yield some palpable and direct advan
tage, have, indeed, scornfully rejected such
inquiries as frivolous and useless. But their
disdain has not repressed such discussions :
and it is fortunate that it has not done so.
Amusement is itself an advantage. The
vigour which the understanding derives from
exercise on every subject is a great advan
tage. If there is to be any utility in history,
the latter must be accurate, — which it never
will be, unless there be a solicitude to ascer
tain the truth even of its minutest parts.
History is read with pleasure, and with moral
effect, only as far as it engages our feelings
in the merit or demerit, in the fame or for
tune, of historical personages. The breath
less anxiety with which the obscure and con
flicting evidence on a trial at law is watched
by the bystander is but a variety of the same
feeling which prompts the reader to examine
the proofs against Mary, Queen of Scots,
with as deep an interest as if she were alive,
and were now on her trial. And it is wisely
ordered that it should be so : for our condi
tion would not, upon the whole, be bettered
* Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (vol.
xliv. p. 1.) as a review of " Who wrote EU.LV
Batr/x/K/i ?" by Chris'opher Wordsworth, D. D.,
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. London,
18-24.— ED.
by our feeling less strongly about each
other's concerns.
The question "Who wrote Icon Basilike ?"
seemed more than once to be finally deter
mined. Before the publication of the pri
vate letters of Bishop Gauden, the majority
of historical inquirers had pronounced it
spurious; and the only writers of great
acuteness who maintained its genuineness —
Warburton and Hume — spoke in a tone
which rather indicated an anxious desire that
others should believe, than a firm belief in
their own minds. It is perhaps the only
matter on which the former ever expressed
himself with diffidence ; and the case must
indeed have seemed doubtful, which com
pelled the most dogmatical and arrogant of
disputants to adopt a language almost scep
tical. The successive publications of those
letters in Maty's Review, in the third volume
of the Clarendon Papers, and lastly, but
most decisively, by Mr. Todd, seemed to
have closed the dispute.
The main questions on which the whole
dispute hinges are, Whether the acts and
words of Lord Clarendon, of Lord Bristol, of
Bishop Morley, of Charles II. , and James II.,
do not amount to a distinct acknowledgment
of Gauden's authorship? and, Whether an
admission of that claim by these persons be
not a conclusive evidence of its truth ? If
these questions can be answered affirma
tively, the other parts of the case will not
require very long consideration.
The Icon Basilike was intended to pro
duce a favourable effect during the Kina's-
ICON BASILIKE.
83
trial ', but its publication was retarded till
some days after his death, by the jealous
and rigorous precautions of the ruling powers.
The impression made on the public by a
work which purported to convey the pious
and eloquent language of a dying King,
could not fail to be very considerable ; and,
though its genuineness was from the begin
ning doubted or disbelieved by some,* it
would have been wonderful and unnatural,
if unbounded faith in it had not become one
of the fundamental articles of a Royalist's
creed. f Though much stress, therefore, is
laid by Dr. Wordsworth on passages in anony
mous pamphlets published before the Re
storation, we can regard these as really no
more than instances of the belief which
must then have only prevailed among that
great majority of Royalists who had no pe
culiar reasons for doubt. Opinion, even
when it was impartial, of the genuineness
of a writing given before its authenticity
was seriously questioned, and when the at
tention of those who gave the opinion was
not strongly drawn to the subject, must be
classed in the lowest species of historical
evidence. One witness who bears testimony
to a forgery, when the edge of his discern
ment is sharpened by an existing dispute,
outweighs many whose language only indi
cates a passive acquiescence in the unex-
amined sentiments of their own party. It is
obvious, indeed, that such testimonies must
be of exceedingly little value ; for every im
posture, in any degree successful, must be
able to appeal to them, Without them, no
question on such a subject could ever be
raised ; since it would be idle to expose the
spuriousness of what no one appeared to
think authentic.
Dr. Gauden» a divine of considerable ta
lents, but of*a temporizing and interested
character, was, at the beginning of the Civil
War, chaplain to the Earl of Warwick, a
Presbyterian leader. In November 1640,
after the close imprisonment of Lord Straf-
ford, he preached a sermon before the House
of Commons, so agreeable to that assembly,
that it is said they presented him with a
silver tankard,— a' token of their esteem
which (if the story be true) may seem to be
the stronger for its singularity and unseemli
ness, t This discourse seems to have con
tained a warm invective against the eccle
siastical policy of the Court; and it was
preached not only at a most critical time,
but on the solemn occasion of the sacrament
being first taken by the whole House. As a
reward for so conspicuous a service to the
Parliamentary cause, he soon after received
* Milton, Goodwyn. Lilly, &c.
t See Wagstaffe's Vindication of King Charles,
pp. 77—79. London, 1711.
t The Journals sny nothing of the tankard,
which was prohably the gift of some zealous mem
bers, but hear, " That the thanks of this house
be given to Mr. Gaudy and Mr. Morley for their
sermons last Sunday, and that they be desired, if
they please, to print the same." Vol. ii. p. 40.
the valuable living of Bocking in Essex,
which he held through all the succeeding
changes of government, — forbearing, of ne
cessity, to use the Liturgy, and complying
with all the conditions which the law then
required from, the beneficed clergy. It has
been disputed whether he took the Cove
nant, though his own evasive answers imply
that he had : but it is certain that he pub
lished a Protest* against the trial of the
King in 1648, though that never could have
pretended to the same merit with the solemn
Declaration of the whole Presbyterian clergy
of London against the same proceeding,
which, however, did not save them at the
Restoration.
At the moment of the Restoration of
Charles II., he appears, therefore, to have
had as little public claim on the favour of
that prince as any clergyman who had con
formed to the ecclesiastical principles of the
Parliament and the Protectorate; and he
was, accordingly, long after called by a
zealous Royalist "the false Apostate!"!
Bishoprics were indeed offered to Baxter,
who refused, and to Reynolds, who accepted,
a mitre ; but if they had not been, as they
were, men venerable for every virtue, they
were the acknowledged leaders of the Pres
byterians, whose example might have much
effect in disposing that powerful body to con
formity. No such benefit could be hoped
from the preferment of Gauden: and that his
public character must have rendered him
rather the object of disfavour than of patron
age to the Court at this critical and jealous
period, will be obvious to those who are
conversant with one small, but not insignifi
cant circumstance. The Presbyterian party
is well known to have predominated in the
Convention Parliament, especially when it
first assembled ; and it was the policy of the
whole assembly to give a Presbyterian, or
moderate and mediatorial colour, to their
collective proceedings. On the 25th April
1660, they chose Mr. Calamy, Dr. Gauden,
and Mr. Baxter, to preach before them, on
the fast which they then appointed to be
held, — thus placing Gauden between two
eminent divines of the Presbyterian persua
sion, on an occasion when they appear stu
diously to have avoided the appointment of
an Episcopalian. It is evident that Gauden
was then thought nearer in principle to Bax
ter than to Juxon. He was sufficiently a
Presbyterian in party to make him no favour
ite with the Court : yet he was not so deci
ded a Presbyterian in opinion as to have the
influence among his brethren which could
make him worth so high a price as a mitre.
They who dispute his claim to be the writer
of the Icon, will be the last to ascribe his
preferment to transcendent abilities: he is
not mentioned as having ever shown kind
ness to Royalists; there is no trace of his
correspondence with the exiled Court; he
* The Religious and Loyal Protestation of John
Gauden, &.c. London, 1648.
t Kennet, Register, p. 773.
84
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
contributed nothing to the recall of the King ;
nor indeed had he the power of performing
such atoning services.
Let ihe reader then suppose himself to
be acquainted only with the above circum
stances, and let him pause to consider whe
ther, in the summer of 1660, there could be
many clergymen of the Established Church
who had fewer and more scanty pretensions
to a bishopric than Gauden : yet he was
appointed Bishop of Exeter on the 3d of
November following. He received, in a few
months, 20,OOOL in fines for the renewal of
leases ;* and yet he had scarcely arrived at
his epispocal palace when, on the 21st of
December, he wrote a letter to the Lord
Chancellor Clarendon,t bitterly complaining
of the "distress." " infelicity," and " horror'7
of such a bishopric! — "a hard fate which"
(he reminds the Chancellor) " he had before
deprecated." "I make this complaint,"
(he adds,) "to your Lordship, because you
chiefly put me on this adventure. Your
Lordship commanded mee to trust in your
favour for an honourable maintenance and
some such additional support as might sup
ply the defects of the bishopric." * * *
"Nor am I so unconscious to the service I have
done to the Church and to his Majesty's family,
as to beare with patience such a mine most un
deservedly put upon mee. Are these the effects
of his liberall expressions, who told mee I
might have what I would desire ? * * *
Yf your Lordship will not concern yourselfe
in my affaire, I must make my last complaint
to the King." In five days after (26th De
cember 1660) he wrote another long letter,
less angry and more melancholy, to the
same great person, which contains the fol
lowing remarkable sentence : — "Dr. Morly
once offered mee my option, upon account of
some service which he thought I had done ex
traordinary for the Church and the Royall
Family, of which he told mee your Lordship
was informed. This made mee modestly
secure of your Lordship's favour j though I
found your Lordship would never owne your
consciousnes to mee, as if it would have given
mee too much confidence of a proportionable
expectation. * * * I knew your Lord
ship knew my service and merit to be no
way inferior to the best of your friends, or
enemyes.^l
In these two letters, — more covertly in the
first, more openly in the second, — Gauden
apprises Lord Clarendon, that Dr. Morly
(who was Clarendon's most intimate friend)
had acknowledged some extraordinary service
done by Gauden to the Royal Family, which
had been made known to the Chancellor :
though that nobleman had avoided a direct
acknowledgment of it to the bishop before
he left London. Gauden appears soon after
to have written to Sir E.Nicholas, Secretary
of State, a letter of so peculiar a character
* Biographia Britannica, article " Gauden."
t Wordsworth, Documentary Supplement, p. 9.
t Ibid. pp. 11—13.
as to have been read by the King • for an
answer was sent to him by Nicholas, dated
on the 19th January 1661, in which the fol
lowing sentence deserves attention : — " As
for your owne particular, he desires you not
to be discouraged at the poverty of your
bishoprick at present ; and if that answer
not the expectation of what was promised
you, His Majesty will take you so particularly
into his care, that he bids me assure you, that
you shall have no cause to remember Booking"*
These remarkable words by no means imply
that Gauden did not then believe that the
nature of his "extraordinary service" had
been before known to the King. They evi
dently show his letter to have consisted of
a complaint of the poverty of his bishopric,
with an intelligible allusion to this service,
probably expressed with more caution and
reserve than in his addresses to the Chan
cellor. What was really then first made
known to the King was not his merits, but
his poverty. On the 21st January, the im
portunate prelate again addressed to Claren
don a letter, explicitly stating the nature of
his services, probably rendered necessary
in his opinion by the continued silence of
Clarendon, who did not answer his applica
tions till the 13th March. From this letter
the following extract is inserted : —
"All I desire is an augment of 500Z. per annum,
yt if cannot bee at present had in a commendam ;
yet possible the King's favor to me will not grudg
mee this pension out of the first fruits and tenths
of this diocesse ; till I bee removed or otherwayes
provided for : Nor will yr Lordship startle at this
motion, or wave the presenting of it to hys Ma-
J'esty, yf you please to consider the pretensions
may have beyond any of my calling, not as to
merit, but duty performed to the Royall Family.
True, I once presumed yr Lordship had fully
known that arcavam, forsoe DrffjVIorley told mee,
at the King's first cdming ; when he assured
rnee the greatnes of that service was such, that
I might have any preferment I desired. This
consciousnes ' of your Lordship (as I supposed)
and Dr. Morley, made mee confident my affaires
would bee carried on to some proportion of what
I had done, and he thought deserved. Hence
my silence of it to your Lordship : as to the King
and Duke of York, whom before I came away
I acquainted with it, when I saw myself not so
much considered in my present disposition as I
did hope I should have beene, what trace their
Royall goodnes hath of it is best expressed by
themselves ; nor do I doubt but I shall, by your
Lordship's favor, find the fruits as to somthing
extraordinary, since the service was soe : not as
to what was known to the world under my name,
in order to vindicate the Crowne and the Church,
but what goes under the late blessed King's name,
' the elx^v or portraiture of hys Majesty in hys
solitudes and sufferings.' This book and figure
was wholy and only my invention, making and
designe ; in order to vindicate the King's wisdome,
honor and piety. My wife indeed was conscious
to it, and had an hand in disguising the letters of
that copy which I sent to the King in the ile of
Wight, by favor of the late Marquise of Hartford,
which was delivered to the King by the now
Bishop of Winchester :t hys Majesty graciously
accepted, owned, and adopted it as hys sense and
* Wordsworth, Documentary Supplement, p. 14.
t Duppa.
ICON BASILIC.
85
genius; not only with great approbation, but ad
miration. Hee kept it with hym ; and though
hys cruel murtherers went on to perfect hys mar-
tyrdome, yet God preserved and prospered this
book to revive hys honor, and redeeme hys Ma
jesty's name from that grave of contempt and
abhorrence or infamy, in which they aymed to
bury hym. When it came out, just upon the
King's death ; Good God ! what shame, rage and
despite, filled hys murtherers ! What comfort
hys friends ! How many enemyes did it convert !
How many hearts did it mollify and melt ! What
devotions it raysed to hys posterity, as children of
such a father ! What preparations it made in all
men's minds for this happy restauration, and which
I hope shall not prove my affliction ! In a word,
it was an army, and did vanquish more than any
sword could. My Lord, every good subject con
ceived hopes of restauration ; meditated reveng
and separation. Your Lordship and all good sub
jects with hys Majesty enjoy the recall and now
ripe fruites of that plant. O let not mee wither !
who was the author, and ventured wife, children,
estate, liberty, life, and all but my soule, in so
great an achievement, which hath filled England
and all the world with the glory of it. I did lately
present my fayth in it to the Duke of York, and
by hym to the King ; both of them were pleased
to give mee credit, and owne it as a rare service
in those horrors of times. True, I played this
best card in my hand something too late ; else I
might have sped as well as Dr. Reynolds and
some others ; but I did not lay it as a ground of
ambition, nor use it as a ladder. Thinking my
self e secure in the just valew of Dr. Morely, who
1 was sure faiew it, and told mee your Lordship
did soe too ;* who, I believe, intended mee som-
thing at least competent, though lesse convenient,
in this preferment. All that I desire is, that your
Lordship would make that good, which I think
you designed ; and which I am confident the
King will not deny mee, agreeable to hys royall
munificence, which promiseth extraordinary re
wards to extraordinary services : Certainly this
service is such, for the matter, manner, timing
and efficacy, as was never exceeded, nor will
ever be equalled, yf I may credit the judgment
of the best and wisest men that have read it ; and
I know your Lordship, who is soe great a master
of wisdome and eloquence, cannot but esteeme
the author of that peice ; and accordingly, make
mee to see those effects which may assure mee
that my loyalty, paines, care, hazard and silence,
are accepted by the King and Royall Family, to
which your Lordship's is now grafted."
The Bishop wrote three letters more to
Clarendon,— on the 25th January, 20th Feb
ruary, and 6th of March respectively, to
which on the 13th of the last month the
Chancellor sent a reply containing the fol
lowing sentence :— The particular which you
often renewed, I do confesse was imparted to
wief under secrecy, and of which I did not take
myself to be at liberty to take notice ; and truly
when it ceases to be a secret^ I know nobody
will be gladd of it but Mr. Milton ; I have
wry often wished I had never been trusted
with it.
It is proper here to remark, that all the
letters of Gauden are still extant, endorsed
* Tt is not to be inferred from this and the like
passages, that Gauden doubted the previous com
munication of Morley to Clarendon : he uses
such language as a reproach to the Chancellor
for his silence.
t Evidently by Morley.
by Lord Clarendon, or by his eldest son. In
the course of three months, then, it appears
that Gauden, with unusual importunity and
confidence, with complaints which were dis
guised reproaches, and sometimes with an
approach to menaces, asserted his claim to
be richly rewarded, as the author of the Icon.
He affirms that it was sent to the King by the
Duke of Somerset, who died about a month
before his first letter, and delivered to his
Majesty by Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Winchester,
who was still alive. He adds, that he had ac
quainted Charles II. with the secret through
the Duke of York, that Morley, then Bishop
of Worcester, had informed Clarendon of it;
and that Morley himself had declared the
value of the service to be such, as to entitle
Gauden to choose his own preferment. Gau
den thus enabled Clarendon to convict him
of falsehood, — if his tale was untrue. — in
three or four circumstances, differing indeed
in their importance* as to the main question,
but equally material to his own veracity. A
single word from Duppa would have over
whelmed him with infamy. How easy was
it for the Chancellor to ascertain whether
the information had been given to the King
and his brother! Morley was his bosom-
friend, and the spiritual director of his daugh
ter, Anne Duchess of York. How many other
persons might have been quietly sounded by
the numerous confidential agents of a great
minister, on a transaction which had occur
red only twelve years before ! To suppose
that a statesman, then at the zenith of his
greatness, could not discover the truth on
this subject, without a noise like that of a
judicial inquiry, would betray a singular
ignorance of affairs. Did Clarendon relin
quish, without a struggle, his belief in a
book, which had doubtless touched his feel
ings when he read it as the work of his Royal
Master? Even curiosity might have led
Charles II., when receiving the blessing of
Duppa on his deathbed, to ask him a short
confidential question. To how many chances
of detection did Gauden expose himself?
How nearly impossible is it that the King,
the Duke, the Chancellor, and Morley should
have abstained from the safest means of in
quiry, and, in opposition to their former opi
nions and prejudices, yielded at once to
Gauden's assertion.
The previous belief of the Royalist party
in the Icon very much magnifies the im
probability of such suppositions. The truth
might have been discovered by the parties
appealed to, and conveyed to the audacious
pretender, without any scandal. There was
no need of any public exposure : a private
intimation of the falsehood of one material
circumstance must have silenced Gauden.
But what, on the contrary, is the answer of
Lord Clarendon'? Let any reader consider
the above cited sentence of his letter, and
determine for himself whether it does not
express such an unhesitating assent to the
claim as could only have flowed from in
quiry and evidence. By confessing that the
H
86
* MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
secret was imparted to him, he admits the
other material part of Gauden's statement,
that the information came through Morley.
Gauden, if his story was true, chose the per
sons to whom he imparted it bolh prudently
and fairly. He dealt with it as a secret of
which the disclosure would injure the Royal
cause ; and he therefore confined his com
munications to the King's sons and the Chan
cellor, who could not be indisposed to his
cause by it, and whose knowledge of it was
necessary to justify his own legitimate claims.
Had it been false, no choice could have been
more unfortunate. He appealed to those who,
for aught he knew, might have in their pos
session the means of instantly demonstrating
that he was guilty of a falsehood so impru
dent and perilous, that nothing parallel to it
has ever been hazarded by a man of sound
mind. How could Gauden know that the
King did not possess his father's MS., and
that Royston the printer was not ready to
prove that he had received it from Charles I..
through hands totally unconnected with Gau
den ? How great must have been the risk if
we suppose, with Dr. Wordsworth, and Mr.
Wagstaffe, that more than one copy of the
MS. existed, and that parts of it had been
seen by many ! It is without any reason that
Dr. Wordsworth and others represent the
secrecy of Gauden's communications to Cla
rendon as a circumstance of suspicion: for
he was surely bound, by that sinister honour
which prevails in the least moral confedera
cies, to make no needless disclosures on this
delicate subject.
Clarendon's letter is a declaration that he
was converted from his former opinion about
the author of the Icon : that of Sir E. Nicho
las is a declaration to the same purport on
his own part, and on that of the King. The
confession of Clarendon is more important,
from being apparently wrung from him, after
the lapse of a considerable time ; in the for
mer part of which he evaded acknowledg
ment in conversation, while in the latter part
he incurred the blame of incivility, by de
laying to answer letters, — making his ad
mission at last in the hurried manner of an
unwilling witness. The decisive words, how
ever, were at length extorted from him,
l( When it ceases to be a secret, I know nobody
will be glad of it, but Mr. Milton.'''' Wagstaffe
argues this question as if Gauden's letters
•were to be considered as a man's assertions
in his own cause ; without appearing ever to
have observed that they are not offered as
proof of the facts which they affirm, but as
a claim which circumstances show to have
been recognized by the adverse party.
The course of another year did not abate
the solicitations of Gauden. In the end of
1661 and beginning of 1662, the infirmities
of Duppa promised a speedy vacancy in the
great bishopric of Winchester, to which
Gauden did not fail to urge his pretensions
with undiminished confidence, in a letter to
the Chancellor (28th December), in a letter to
the Duke of York (17th January), and in a
memorial to the King, without a date, but
written on the same occasion. The two let
ters allude to the particulars of former com
munications. The memorial, as the nature
of such a paper required, is fuller and more
minute: it is expressly founded on "a pri
vate service," for the reality of which it
again appeals to the declarations of Mor
ley, to the evidence of Duppa, ("who,"
says Gauden, "encouraged me in that great
work,") still alive, and visited on his sick
bed by the King, and to the testimony of
the Duke of Somerset.* It also shows that
Gauden had applied to the King for Win
chester as soon as it should become vacant,
about or before the time of his appointment
to Exeter.
On the 19th of March, 1662. Gauden was
complimented at Court as the author of the
Icon, by George Digby, second Earl of Bris
tol, a nobleman of fine genius and brilliant
accomplishments, but remarkable for his in
constancy in political and religious opinion.
The bond of connection between them seems
to have been their common principles of
toleration, which Bristol was solicitous to ob
tain for the Catholics, whom he had secretly
joined, and which Gauden was willing to
grant, not only to the Old Nonconformists,
but to the more obnoxious Quakers. On the
day following Gauden writes a letter, in
which it is supposed that "the Grand Arca
num" had been disclosed to Bristol "by the
King or the Royal Duke." In six days after
he writes again, on the death of Duppa, to
urge his claim to Winchester. This third
letter is more important. He observes, with
justice, that he could not expect "any extra
ordinary instance of his Majesty's favour on
account of his signal service only, because
that might put the world on a dangerous
curiosity, if he had been in other respects
unconspicuous ;" but he adds, in effect, that
his public services would be a sufficient rea
son or pretext for the great preferment to
which he aspired. He appeals to a new wit
ness on the subject of the Icon. — Dr. Shel-
* Doc. Sup. p. 30. We have no positive proof
that these two letters were sent, or the memorial
delivered. It seems (Ibid. p. 27) that there are
marks of the letters having been sealed and broken
open ; and it is said to be singular that such letters
should be found among the papers of him who
wrote them. But as the early history of these
papers is unknown, it is impossible to expect an
explanation of every fact. A collector might have
found them elsewhere, and added them to the
Gauden papers. An anxious writer might have
broken open two important letters, in which he
was fearful that some expression was indiscreet,
and afterwards sent corrected duplicates, without
material variation. Gauden might have received
information respecting the disposal of Winchester
and Worcester, or about the state of parties at
Court, before the letters were dispatched, which
would render them then unseasonable. What is
evident is, that they were written with an inten
tion to send them, — that they coincide with his
previous statements, — and that the determination
not to send them wan not occasioned by any doithtt
entertained by the Chancellor of his veracity ; for
such doubts would have prevented his preferment to
the bishopric of Worcester, — one of the most CO*
veted dignities of the Church,
ICON BASILIKE.
87
don, then Bishop of London; — thus, once
more, if his story were untrue, almost wan
tonly adding to the chance of easy, immedi
ate, and private detection. His danger would
have, indeed, been already enhanced by the
disclosure of the secret to Lord Bristol, who
was very intimately acquainted with Charles
I., and among whose good qualities discretion
and circumspection cannot be numbered. The
belief of Bristol must also be considered as
a proof that Gauden continued to be believed
by the King and the Duke, from whom. Bris
tol's information proceeded. A friendly cor
respondence, between the Bishop and the
Earl, continued till near the death of the for
mer, in the autumn of 1662.
In the mean time, the Chancellor gave a
still more decisive proof of his continued con
viction of the justice of Gauden's pretensions,
by his translation in May to Worcester. The
Chancellor's personal ascendant over the
King was perhaps already somewhat impair
ed ; but his power was still unshaken ; and
he was assuredly the effective as well as
formal adviser of the Crown on ecclesiastical
promotions. It would be the grossest injus
tice to the memory of Lord Clarendon to be
lieve, that if, after two years' opportunity
for inquiry, any serious doubts of Gauden's
veracity had remained in his mind, he would
have still farther honoured and exalted the
contriver of a falsehood, devised for merce
nary purposes, to rob an unhappy and belov
ed Sovereign of that power which, by his.
writings, he still exercised over the generous
feelings of men. It cannot be doubted, and
ought not to be forgotten, that a false claim
to the Icon is a crime of a far deeper dye
than the publication of it under the false ap
pearance of a work of the King. To publish
such a book in order to save the King's life,
was an offence, attended by circumstances
of much extenuation, in one who believed,
or perhaps knew, that it substantially con
tained the King's sentiments, and who deep
ly deprecated the proceedings of the army
and of the remnant of the House of Commons
against him. But to usurp the reputation of
the work so long after the death of the Royal
Author, for sheer lucre, is an act of baseness
perhaps without a parallel. That Clarendon
should wish to leave the more venial decep
tion undisturbed, and even shrink from such
refusals as might lead to its discovery, is not
far beyond the limits which good men may
overstep in very diffiult situations: but that
he should have rewarded the most odious of
impostors by a second bishopric, would place
him far lower than a just adversary would
desire. If these considerations seem of such
moment at this distant time, what must have
been their force in the years 1660 and 1662, in
the minds of Clarendon, and Somerset, anc
Duppa, and Morley, and Sheldon ! It woulc
have been easy to avoid the elevation of Gau
den to Worcester: he had himself opened the
way for offering him a pension ; and the Chan
cellor might have answered almost in Gau
den's own words, that farther prefermen
might lead to perilous inquiry. Clarendon, in
662, must either have doubted who was the
luthor of the Icon, or believed the claim of
Jauden, or adhered to his original opinion,
f he believed it to be the work of the King,
le could not have been so unfaithful to his
nemory as to raise such an impostor to a
second bishopric : if he believed it to be the
>roduction of Gauden, he might have thought
t an excusable policy to recompense a pious
'raud, and to silence the possessor of a dan
gerous secret : if he had doubts, they would
lave prompted him to investigation, which,
conducted by him, and relating to transac-
ions so recent, must have terminated in cer-
ain knowledge.
Charles II. is well known, at the famous
conference between the Episcopalians and
r*resbyterians, when the Icon was quoted as
lis father's, to have said, "All that is in that
30ok is not gospel." Knowing, as we now
do, that Gauden's claim was preferred to him
n 1660, this answer must be understood to
lave been a familiar way of expressing his
scepticfsm about its authenticity. In this
view of it, it coincides with his declaration
o Lord Anglesea twelve years after ; and it
s natural indeed to suppose, that his opinion
was that of those whom he then most trusted
on such matters, of whom Clarendon was
certainly one. To suppose, with some late
writers, that he arid his brother looked with
avourand pleasure on an attempt to weaken
he general interest in the character of their
ather, merely because the Icon is friendly
uO the Church of England, is a wranton act
of injustice to them. Charles II. was neither
a bigot, nor without regard to his kindred ;
he family affections of James were his best
qualities, — though by a peculiar perverse-
ness of fortune, they proved the source of
his sharpest pangs.
But to return to Lord Clarendon, who sur
vived Gauden twelve years, and w'ho, almost
to the last day of his life, was employed in
the composition of an historical work, origi
nally undertaken at the desire of Charles I.,
and avowed, with honest partiality to be
destined for the vindication of his character
and cause. This great work, not intended
for publication in the age of the writer, was
not actually published till thirty years after
his death, and even then riot without the
suppression of important passages, which it
seems the public was not yet likely to re
ceive in a proper temper. Now. neither in
the original edition, nor in any of 'the recent
ly restored passages,* is there any allusion
to the supposed work of the King. No rea
son of temporary policy can account for
this extraordinary silence. However the
statesman might be excused for the mo
mentary sacrifice of truth to quiet, the histo
rian could have no temptation to make the
sacrifice perpetual. Had he believed that
his Royal Master was the writer of the
only book ever written by a dying monarch
on his own misfortunes, it would have been
unjust as an historian, treacherous as a
In the Oxford Edition of 1826.
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
friend, and unfeeling as a man, to have pas
sed over in silence such a memorable and
affecting circumstance. Merely as a fact,
his narrative was defective -without it. But
it was a fact of a very touching and interest
ing nature, on which his genius would have
expatiated with affectionate delight. No
later historian of the Royal party has failed
to dwell on it. How should he then whom
it must have most affected be silent, unless
his pen had been stopped by the knowledge
of the truth 1 He had even personal induce
ments to explain it, at least in those more
private memoirs of his administration; which
form part of what is called his -'Life." Had
he believed in the genuineness of the Icon,
it would have been natural for him in these
memoirs to have reconciled that belief with
the successive preferments of the impostor.
He had good reason to believe that the claims
of Gauden would one day reach the public ;
he had himself, in his remarkable letter of
March 13th, 1661, spoken of such a disclo
sure as likely. This very acknowledgment
contained in that letter, which he knew to
be in the possession of Gauden's family, in
creased the probability. It was scarcely
possible that such papers should for ever
elude the search of curiosity, of historical
justice, or of party spirit. But besides these
probabilities, Clarendon, a few months be
fore his death, " had learned that ill people en
deavoured to persuade the King that his father
was not the author of the book that goes by his
name." This information was conveyed to
him from Bishop Morley through Lord Corn-
bury, who went to visit his father in France
in May 1674. On hearing these words.
Clarendon exclaimed, "'GoodlSod ! I thought
the Marquis of Hertford had satisfied the King
in that matter.'* By this message Clarendon
was therefore warned, that the claim of
Gauden was on its way to the public, — that
it was already assented to by the Royal
Family themselves, and was likely at last to
appear with the support of the most formida
ble authorities. What could he now con
clude but that, if undetected and unrefuted,
or, still more, if uncontradicted in a history
destined to vindicate the King, the claim
would be considered by posterity as estab
lished by his silence ? Clarendon's language
on this occasion also strengthens very much
another part of the evidence ; for it proves,
beyond all doubt, that the authorship of the
Icon had been discussed by the King with the
Duke of Somerset before that nobleman's death
in October 1660, — a fact nearly conclusive
of the whole question. Had the Duke as
sured the King that his father was the au
thor, what a conclusive answer was ready to
Gauden, who asserted that the first had been
the bearer of the manuscript of the Icon from
Gauden to Charles I. ! As there had been
* The first letter of the second Earl of Claren
don to Wagstaffe in 1694, about twenty years
after the event, has not, as far as we know, been
published. We know only the extracts in Wag
staffe. The second letter written in 1699 is printed
entire in Wagstaffe's Defence, p. 37.
such a communication between the King and
the Duke of Somerset, it is altogether incredi
ble that Clarendon should not have recurred
to the same pure source of information.
The only admissible meaning of Clarendon's
words is, that "Lord Hertford (afterwards
Duke of Somerset) had satisfied the King^ of
the impropriety of speaking on the subject.
We must otherwise suppose that the King
and Clarendon had been " satisfied," or per
fectly convinced, that Charles was the writer
of the Icon; — a supposition which would
convert the silence of the Chancellor and
the levity of the Monarch into heinous of
fences. The message of Morley to Claren
don demonstrates that they had previous
conversation on the subject. The answer
shows that both parties knew of information
having been given by Somerset to the King,
before Gauden's nominatidh to Exeter : but
Gauden had at that time appealed, in his
letters, both to Morley and Somerset as his
witness. That Clarendon therefore knew all
that Morley and Somerset could tell, is no
longer matter of inference, but is established
by the positive testimony of the two survi
vors in 1674. Wagstaffe did not perceive
the consequences of the letter which he pub
lished, because he had not seen the whole
correspondence of Gauden. But it is much
less easy to understand, how those who have
compared the letters of Gauden with the
messages between Clarendon and Morley,
should not have discovered the irresistible
inference which arises from the comparison.
The silence of Lord Clarendon, as an his
torian, is the strongest moral evidence that
he believed the pretensions of Bishop Gau
den : and his opinion on the question must
be held to include the testimony in point of
fact, and the judgment in point of opinion,
of all those men whom he had easy opportu
nities and strong inducements to consult. It
may be added, that however Henry Earl
of Clarendon chose to express himself, (his
language is not free from an air of mental
reservation), neither he nor his brother Lord
Rochester, when they published their father's
history in 1702, thought fit, in their preface,,
to attempt any explanation of his silence
respecting the Icon, though their attention
must have been called to that subject by the
controversy respecting it which had been
carried on a few years before with great zeal
and activity. Their silence becomes the
more remarkable, from' the strong interest
taken by Lord Clarendon in the controversy.
He wrote two letters on it to Wagstaffe, in
1694 and 1699; he was one of the few per
sons present at the select consecration of
Wagstaffe as a nonjuring bishop, in 1693 : yet
there is no allusion to the Icon in the preface
to his father's history, published in 1702.
It cannot be pretended that the final silence
of Clarendon is agreeable to the rigorous rules
of historical morality: it is no doubt an in
firmity which impairs his credit as an histo
rian. But it is a light and venial fault com
pared with that which must be laid to his
charge, if we suppose3 that; with a conviction
ICON BASILIKE.
of the genuineness of the Icon, and with such
testimony in support of it as the evidence
of Somerset and Morley, — to say nothing of
others, — he should not have made a single
effort, in a work destined for posterity, to
guard from the hands of the impostor 'the
most sacred property of his unfortunate mas
ter, The partiality of Clarendon to Charles I.
has never been severely blamed ; his silence
in his history, if he believed Gauden, would
only be a new instance of that partiality : but
the same silence, if he believed the King to
be the author, would be fatal to his character
as an historian arid a man.
The knowledge of Gauden's secret was
obtained by Clarendon as a minister; and he
might deem his duty with respect to secrets
of state still to be so far in force, as at least
to excuse him from disturbing one of the
favourite opinions of his party, and for not
disclosing what he thought could gratify none
but regicides and agitators. Even this ex
cuse, on the opposite supposition, he wanted.
That Charles was the author of the Icon
(if true) was no state secret, but the preva
lent and public opinion. He might have
collected full proofs of its truth, in private
conversation with his friends. He had only
to state such proof, and to lament the neces
sity which made him once act as if the truth
were otherwise, rather than excite a contro
versy with an unprincipled enemy, danger
ous to a new government, and injurious to
the interests of monarchy. His mere testi
mony would have done infinitely more for
the King's authorship, than all the volumes
which have been written to .maintain it : —
even that testimony is withheld. If the
Icon be Gauden's, the silence of Clarendon
is a vice to which he had strong temptations :
if it be the King's, it is a crime without a
motive. Those who are willing to ascribe
the lesser fault to the historian, must deter
mine against the authenticity of the Icon.
That good men, of whom Lord Clarendon
was one, were, at the period of the Restora
tion, ready to use expedients of very dubious
morality to conceal secrets dangerous to the
Royal cause, will appear from a fact, which
seems to have escaped the notice of the
general historians of England. It is uncer
tain, and not worth inquiring, when Charles
II. threw over his doubts and vices that slight
and thin vesture of Catholicism, which he
drew a little closer round him at the sight
of death :* but we know with certainty, that,
in the beginning of the year 1659, the Duke
of Ormonde accidentally discovered the con
version, by finding him on his knees at mass
in a church at Brussels. Ormonde, after it
was more satisfactorily proved to 'him, by
communication with Henry Bennett and
Lord Bristol.! imparted the secret in Eng
land to Clarendon and Southampton, who
agreed with him in the necessity of prevent
ing the enemies of monarchy, or the friends
* His formal reconciliation probably took place
at Cologne in 1658, under the direction of Dr.
Peter Talbot, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh.
t Carte, Life of Ormonde, vol. ii. pp. 254-^256.
of Popery, from promulgating this fatal se
cret. Accordingly, the " Act for the better
security of his Majesty's person and govern
ment^* provided, that to affirm the King to
be a Papist, should be punishable by " dis
ability to hold any office or promotion, civilr
military, or ecclesiastical, besides being lia
ble to such other punishments as by common
or statute law might be inflicted."
As soon as we take our stand on the
ground, that the acquiescence of all the
Royalists in the council and court of Charles
II., and the final silence of Clarendon in his
history, on a matter so much within his pro
vince, and so interesting to his feelings, are
irreconcilable with the supposition, that they
believed the Icon to be the work of the KingT
all the other circumstances on both sides not
only dwindle into insignificance, but assume
a different colour. Thus, the general credit
of the book among Royalists before the Re
storation serves to show, that the evidence
which changed the opinion of Clarendon and
his friends must have been very strong. —
probably far stronger than what we now pos
sess; the firmer we suppose the previous
conviction to have been, the more probable
it becomes, that the proofs then discovered
were of a more direct nature than those
which remain. Let it be very especially
observed, that those who decided the ques
tion practically in 1660 were within twelve
years of the fact ; while fifty years had pas
sed before the greater part of the traditional
and hearsay, stories, ranged on the opposite
side, were brought together by Wagstaffe.
Let us consider, for example, the effect of
the proceedings of 1660, upon the evidence
of the witnesses who speak of the Icon as
having been actually taken from the King at
Naseby, and afterwards restored to him by
the conquerors. Two of the best known are
the Earl of Manchester and Mr. Prynne.
Eales, a physician at Welwyn in Hertford
shire, certifies, in 1699, that some years be
fore the Restoration (i. e. about 1656), he
heard Lord Manchester declare, that the
MS. of the Icon was taken at Naseby, and
that he had seen it in the King's own hand.t
Jones, at the distance of fifty years, says
that he had heard from Colonel Stroud that
Stroud had heard from Prynne in 1649, that
he, by order of Parliament, had read the
MS. of the Icon taken at Naseby. J Now it
is certain that Manchester was taken into
favour, and Prynne was patronised at the
Restoration. If this were so, how came
matters, of which they spoke so publicly, to
remain unknown to Clarendon and South
ampton? Had the MS. Icon been intrusted
to Prynne by Parliament, or even by a com
mittee, its existence must have been known
to a body mnch too large to allow the sup
position of secrecy. The application of the
same remark disposes of the mob of second
hand witnesses. The very number of the
witnesses increases the incredibility that
* 13 Car. 2. st. 1.
t " Who wrote," &c. p. 93. Wagstaffe's Vin,<
dication, p. 19. t Ibid, p. 80.
H2
90
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
their testimony could have escaped notice
in 1660. Huntingdon, a Major in Cromwell's
regiment, who abandoned the Parliamentary
cause, is a more direct witness. In the year
1679. he informed Dugdale that he had pro
cured the MS. Icon taken at Nast'by to be
restored to the King at Hampton,— •! hat it
was written by Sir E. Walker, but interlined
by the King, who wrote all 'the devotions.
In 1681, Dugdale published The Short View,
in which is the same story, with the varia
tion, "that it was written with ihe King's
own hand ;:; — a statement which, in the
summary language of a general narrative,
can hardly be said to vary materially from
the former. Now, Major Huntingdon had
particularly attracted the notice of Claren
don : he is mentioned in the history with
commendation.* He tendered his services
to the King before the Restoration ;f and,
what is most important of all to our present
purpose, his testimony regarding the con
duct of Berkeley and Ashburnham. in the
journey from Hampton Court, is expressly
mentioned by the historian as being, in
1660, thought worthy of being weighed even
against that of Somerset and Southampton.}
When we thus trace a direct communication
between him and the minister, and when we
remember that it took place at the very time
of the claim of Gauden, and that it related
to events contemporary with the supposed
recovery of the Icon, it is scarcely necessary
to ask, whether Clarendon would riot have
sounded him on that subject, and whether
Huntingdon would not then have boasted
of such a personal service to the late King.
It would be contrary to common sense not
to presume that something then passed on
that subject, and that, if Huntingdon's ac
count at that time coincided with his sub
sequent story, it could not have been re
jected, unless it was outweighed by contrary
evidence. § He must have been thought
either a deceiver or deceived : for the more
candid of these suppositions there was abun
dant scope. It is known that one MS. (not
the Icon) written by Sir Edward Walker
and corrected by the King, was taken with
the King's correspondence at Naseby, and
restored to him by Fairfax through an offi
cer at Hampton Court. II This was an ac
count of the military transactions in the
Civil War, written by Walker, and published
in his Historical Discourses long after. It
was natural that the King shouldTbe pleased
at the recovery of this manuscript, which he
* Vol. v. p. 484. t Ibid. vol. vii. p. 432.
t Ibid. vol. v. p. 495.
§ Dr. Wordsworfh admits, that if Clarendon
had consulted Duppa, Juxon, Sheldon, Morley,
Kendal, Barwick, Legge, Herbert, &c. &,c. ; nay,
if he had consulted only Morley alone, he must
have been satisfied, — (Dr. Wordsworth, of course,
says for the King.) Now, ir is certain, from the
message of Morley to Clarendon in 1674, that pre
vious discussion had laken place between them.
Does not this single fact decide the question on
Dr. Wordsworth's own admission ?
II Clarendon, vol. v. p. 476 ; and Warbur ton's
note.
soon after sent from Hampton Court to Lord
Clarendon in Jersey, as a "contribution"
towards his H, story. How easily Hunting
don, an old suldier little versed in manu
scripts, might, thirty years afterwards, have
confounded these memorials with the Icon!
A lew prayers in the King's handwriting
might hiive formed a part of the papers re
stored. So slight and probable are the only
suppositions necessary to save the veracity
of Huntingdon, and to destroy the value of
his evidence.
Sir Thomas Herbert, who wrote his Me
moirs thirty years after the event, in the
seventy-third year of his age, when, as he
told Antony Wood, " he was grown old, and
not in such a capacity as he could wish to
publish it," found a copy of the Icon among
the books which Charles I. left to him, arid
thought "the handwriting was the King's."
Sir Philip Warwick states Herbert's testi
mony (probably from a conversation more
full than the Memoirs) to be, that ahe saw
the MS. in the King's hand, as he believes j
but it was in a running character, and not in
that which the King usually wrote.''* Now,
more than one copy of the Icon might have
been sent to Charles; they might have been
written with some resemblances to his hand
writing; but assuredly the original MS. would
not have been loosely left to Herbert, while
works on general subjects were bequeathed
to the King's children. It is equally certain
that this was not the MS. from which the
Icon was published a few days afterwards;
and. above all, it is clear that information
from Herbert! would naturally be sought,
and would have been easily procured, in
1660. The ministers of that time perhaps
examined the MS.; or if it could not be
produced, they might have asked why it
was not preserved, — a question to which, on
the supposition of its being written by the
King, it seems now impossible to imagine
a satisfactory answer. The same observa
tions are applicable to the story of Levett. a
page, who said that he had seen the King
writing the Icon, and had read several chap
ters of it, — but more forcibly, from his being
less likely to be intrusted, and more liable to
confusion and misrecollection; — to say no
thing of our ignorance of his character for ve-
racify, and of the interval of forty-two years
which had passed before his attestation on
this subject.
The Naseby copy being the only fragment
of positive evidence in support of the King's
authorship, one more observation on it may
be excused. If the Parliamentary leaders
thought the Icon so dangerous to their cause,
and so likely to make an impression favour
able to the King, how came they to restore
it so easily to it's author, whom they had
* Memoirs, p. 69. How much this coincides
with Gauden's account, that his wife had dis
guised the writing of the copy sent to the Isle of
Wight.
t He was made a baronet at the Restoration,
for his personal services to Charles I.
ICON BASILIKE.
deeply injured by the publication of his pri
vate letters'? The advocates of the King
charge this publication on them, as an act of
gross indel.cacvj and at the same time ascribe
to them, in the restoration of the Icon, a
singular instance of somewhat wanton gene
rosity.
It may be a question whether lawyers are
justified in altogether rejecting hearsay evi
dence; but it never can be supposed, in its
best state, to be other than secondary. When
it passes through many hands, — when it is
given after a Jong time, — when it is to be
found almost solely in one party, — when it
relates to a subject which deeply interests
their feelings, we may confidently place it
at the very bottom of the scale ; and without
being able either to disprove many particular
stories, or to ascertain the proportion in which
each of them is influenced by unconscious
exaggeration, inflamed zeal, intentional false
hood, inaccurate observation, confused re
collection, or eager credulity, we may safely
treat the far greater part as the natural pro
duce of these grand causes of human delu
sion. Among the evidence first collected by
Wagstaffe, one story fortunately refers to
authorities still in our possession. Hearne,
a servant of Sir Philip Warwick, declared
that he had heard his master and one Oudart
often say that they had transcribed the Icon
from a copy in Charles' handwriting.* Sir
Philip Warwick (who is thus said to have
copied the Icon from the King's MS.) has
himself positively told us, "I cannot say I
know that he wrote the Icon which goes under
his name ;t arid Oudart was secretary to Sir
Edward Nicholas, whose letter to Gauden,
virtually acknowledging his claim, has been
already quoted !
Two persons appear to have been privy to
the composition of the Icon by Gauden, —
his wife, and Walker his curate. Mrs. Gau
den, immediately after her husband's death,
applied to Lord Bristol for favour, on the
ground of her knowledge of the secret ; ad
ding, that the bishop was prevented only by
death from writing to him, — surely to the
same effect. Nine years afterwards she sent
to one of her sons the papers on this subject,
to be used " if there be a good occasion to
make it manifest," among which was an
epitome " drawn out by the hand of him that
did hope to have made a fortune by it."J
This is followed by her narrative of the whole
transactions, on which two short remarks
•will suffice. It coincides with Gauden's let
ters, in the most material particulars, in ap
peals to the same eminent persons said to be
privy to the secret, who might and must have
been consulted after such appeal : it proves
also her firm persuasion that her husband
had been ungratefully requited, and that her
family had still pretensions founded on his
services, which these papers might one day
enable them to assert with more effect.
Walker, the curate, tells us that he had a
* Who wrote, &c. p. 138. t Memoirs, p. 68.
t Doc. Sup. pp. 42, 48.
hand in the business all along. He wrote
his book, it is true, forty-five years after the
events: but this circumstance, which so
deeply affects the testimony of men who
speak of words spoken in conversation, and
reaching them through three or four hands,
rather explains the inaccuracies, than lessens
the substantial weight, of one who speaks
of his own acts, on the most, and perhaps
only, remarkable occasion of his life. There
are two facts in Walker's account which
seem to be decisive; — namely, that Gauden
told him, about the time of the fabrication,
that the MS. was sent by the Duke of So
merset to the King, and that two chapters of
it were added by Bishop Duppa. To both
these witnesses Gauden appealed at the Re
storation, and Mrs. Gauden after his death.
These communications were somewhat in
discreet; but, if false, what temptation had
Gauden at that time to invent them, and to
communicate them to his curate? They
were new means of detecting his imposture.
But the declaration of Gauden, that the book
and figure was wholly and solely my "in
vention, making, and design," is quoted with
premature triumph, as if it were incompati
ble with the composition of two chapters by
Duppa;* — as if the contribution of a few
pages to a volume could affect the authorship
of the man who had planned the whole, and
executed all the rest. That he mentioned
the particular contribution of Duppa at the
time to Walker, and only appealed in general
to the same prelate in his applications to
Clarendon and the King, is a variation, but
no inconsistency.
Walker early represented the coincidence
of some peculiar phrases in the devotions of
the Icon with Gauden's phraseology, as an
important fact in the case. That argument
has recently been presented with much more
force by Mr. Todd, whose catalogues of co
incidences between the Icon and the avowed
writings of Gauden is certainly entitled to
serious consideration.! They are not all of
equal importance, but some of the phrases
are certainly very peculiar. It seems very
unlikely that Charles should have copied pe
culiar phrases from the not very conspicuous
writings of Gauden's early life; and it is
almost equally improbable that Gauden, in
his later writings, when he is said to have
been eager to ^reap the fruits of his impos-
ture, should not have carefully shunned those
modes of expression which were peculiar to
the Icon. To the list of Mr. Todd, a very
curious addition has been made by Mr. Ben
jamin Bright, a discerning and liberal col
lector, from a manuscript volume of prayers
by Gauden, J which is of more value than
the other coincidences, inasmuch as it cor
roborates the testimony of Walker, who said
that he " met with expressions in the devo
tional parts of the Icon very frequently used
* Who wrote, &c. p. 156.
t Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, pp,
51—76.
t Ibid. Appendix, No. 1.
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
by Dr. Gauden in his prayers!" Without
laying great stress on these resemblances,
they are certainly of more weight than the
general arguments founded either on the in
feriority of Gauden's talents, (which Dr.
Wordsworth candidly abandons,) or on the
impure and unostentatious character of his
style, which have little weight, unless we
suppose him to have had no power of vary
ing his manner when speaking in the person
of another man.
Conclusions from internal evidence have
so often been contradicted by experience,
that prudent inquirers seldom rely on them
when there are any other means of forming
a judgment. But in such cases as the pre
sent, internal evidence does not so much de
pend on the discussion of words, or the dis
section of sentences, as on the impression
made by the whole composition, on minds
long accustomed to estimate and compare
the writings of different men in various cir
cumstances. A single individual can do
little more than describe that impression ;
and he must leave it to be determined by
experience, how far it agrees with the im
pressions made on the minds of the majority
of other men of similar qualifications. To
us it seems, as it did to Archbishop Herring,
that the Icon is greatly more like the work
of a priest than a king. It has more of dis
sertation than effusion. It has more regular
division and systematic order than agree
with the habits of the King. The choice
and arrangement of words show a degree of
care and neatness which are seldom attained
but by a practised writer. The views of
men and affairs, too, are rather those of a
bystander than an actor. They are chiefly
reflections, sometimes in themselves obvious,
but often ingeniously turned, such as the
surface of events would suggest to a specta-
tator not too deeply interested. It betrays
none of those strong feelings which the most
vigilant regard to gravity and dignity could
not have uniformly banished from the com
position of an actor and a sufferer. It has
no allusion to facts not accessible to any
moderately informed man; though the King
must have* (sometimes rightly) thought that
his superior knowledge of affairs would en
able him to correct vulgar mistakes. If it
be really the private effusion of a man's
thoughts on himself arid his own affairs, it
would be the only writing of that sort in the
world in which it is impossible to select a
trace of peculiarities and weaknesses, — of
partialities and dislikes, — of secret opinions,
—of favourite idioms, and habitual familiari
ties of expression : every thing is impersonal.
The book consists entirely of generalities;
while real writings of this sort never fail to
be characterised by those minute and cir
cumstantial touches, which parties deeply
interested cannot, if they would, avoid. It
is also very observable, that the Icon dwells
little on facts, where a mistake might so
easily betray its not being the King's, and
expatiates in reasoning and reflection, of
which it is impossible to try the genuineness
by any palpable test. The absence of every
allusion to those secreis of which it would
be very hard for the King himself wholly to
conceal his knowledge, seems, indeed, to
indicate the hand of a writer who was afraid
of venturing on ground where his ignorance
might expose him to irretrievable blunders.
Perhaps also the want of all the smaller
strokes of character betrays a timid and fal
tering forger, who, though he ventured to
commit a pious fraud, shrunk from an irreve
rent imitation of the Royal feelings, and was
willing, after the great purpose was served,
so to soften the imposture, as to leave his
retreat open, and to retain the means, in
case of positive detection, of representing
the book to have been published as what
might be put into the King's mouth, rather
than as what was actually spoken by him.
The section which relates to the civil war
in Ireland not only exemplifies the above re
marks, but closely connects the question
respecting the Icon with the character of
Charles for sincerity. It certainly was not
more unlawful for him to seek the aid of the
Irish Catholics, than it was for his opponents
to call in the succour of the Scotch Presby
terians. The Parliament procured the as
sistance of the Scotch army, by the imposi
tion of the Covenant in England; and the
King might, on the like principle, purchase
the help of the Irish, by promising to tole
rate, and even establish, the Catholic religion
in Ireland. Warburton justly observes, that
the King was free from blame in his negotia
tions with the Irish, "as a politician, and
king, and governor of his people ; but the
necessity of his affairs obliging him at the
same time to play the Protestant saint and
confessor, there was found much disagree
ment between his professions and declara
tions, and actions in this matter."* As long
as the disagreement was confined to official
declarations and to acts of state, it must be
owned that it is extenuated by the practice
of politicians, and by the consideration, that
the concealment of negotiations, which is a
lawful end. can very often be obtained by
no other means than a disavowal of them.
The rigid moralist may regret this excuse,
though it be founded on that high public
convenience to which Warburton gives the
name of "necessity." But all mankind will
allow, that the express or implied denial of
real negotiations in a private work, — a pic
ture of the writer's mind, professing to come
from the Man and not from the King, mixed
with solemn appeals and fervid prayers to
the Deity, is a far blacker and more aggra
vated instance of insincerity. It is not,
therefore, an act of judicious regard to the
memory of Charles to ascribe to him the
composition of the twelfth section of the
Icon. The impression manifestly aimed at
in that section is. that the imputation of a
private connexion with the Irish revolters
* Clarendon, vol. vii. p. 591.
ICON BASILIKE.
93
was a mere calumny; and in the only para
graph which approaches to particulars, it
expressly confines his intercourse with them
to the negotiation for a tirrie through Or
monde, and declares that his only object
was to save " the poor Protestants of Ireland
from their desperate enemies." In the sec
tion which relates to the publication of his
letters, when the Parliament had explicitly
charged him with clandestine negotiations,
nothing is added on the subject. The gene
ral protestations of innocence, not very spe
cifically applied even to the first instigation
of the revolt, are left in that indefinite state
in which the careless reader may be led to
apply them to all subsequent transactions,
which are skilfully, — not to say artfully, —
passed over in ..silence. Now it is certain
that the Earl of Glamorgan, a Catholic him
self, was authorised by Charles to negotiate
with the Catholics in 1645, independently
of Ormonde, and with powers, into the na
ture of which the Lord Lieutenant thought
himself bound not curiously to pry. It is,
also, certain that, in the spring of that year,
Glamorgan concluded a secret treaty with
the Catholic assembly at Kilkenny, by which,
— besides the repeal of penalties or disabili
ties, — all the churches and Church property
in Ireland occupied by the Catholics since
the revolt, were continued and secured to
them ;* while they, on their parts, engaged
to send ten thousand troops to. the King's as
sistance in England. Some correspondence
on this subject was captured at sea, and
some was seized in Ireland : both portions
were immediately published by the Parlia
ment, which compelled the King to imprison
and disavow Glamorgan.! It is clear that
these were measures of policy, merely in
tended to conceal the truth :J and the King,
if he was the writer of the Icon, must have
deliberately left on the minds of the readers
of that book an opinion, of his connexion
with the Irish Catholics, which he knew to
be false. On the other hand it is to be ob
served, that Gauden could not have known
the secret of the Irish negotiations, and that
he would naturally avoid a subject of which
he was ignorant, and confine himself to a
general disavowal of the instigation of the
revolt. The silence of the Icon on this sub-
* Birch, Inquiry, p. 68. The King's warrant,
on 12th March, 1645, gives Glamorgan power
" to treat with the Roman Catholics upon neces
sity, wherein our Lieutenant cannot so well be
seen" — p. 20.
t Harleian Miscellany, vol. iv. p. 494.
t See a curious letter published by Leland (His
tory of Ireland, book v. chap. 7), which clearly
proves that the blindness of Ormonde was volun
tary, and that he was either trusted with the se
cret, or discovered it ; and that the imprisonment
of Glamorgan was, what the Parliament called it,
"a colourable commitment." Leland is one of
those writers who deserve more reputation than
they enjoy : he is not only an elegant writer, but,
considering his time and country, singularly can
did, unprejudiced, and independent.
ject, if written by Gauden, would be neither
more wonderful nor more blamable than
that of Clarendon, who. though he was of
necessity acquainted with the negotiations
of Glamorgan, does not suffer an allusion to
the true state of them to escape him, either
in the History, or in that apology for Or
monde's administration, which he calls " A
Short View of the State of Ireland." Let it
not be said, either by Charles' mistaken
friends, or by his undistinguishing enemies,
that he incurs the same blame for suffering
an omission calculated to deceive to remain
in the Icon of Gauden, as if he had himself
written the book. If the manuscript were
sent to him by Gauden in September 1648,
he may have intended to direct an explana
tion of the Irish negotiations to be inserted
in it ; — he may not have finally determined
on the immediate publication. At all events,
it wrould be cruel to require that he should
have critically examined, and deliberately
weighed, every part of a manuscript, which
he could only occasionally snatch a moment
to read in secret during the last four months
of his life. In this troubled and dfirk period,
divided between great negotiations, violent
removals, and preparations for asserting his
dignity, — if he could not preserve his life, —
justice, as much as generosity requires that
we should not hold him responsible for a
negative offence, however important, in a
manuscript which he had then only read.
But if he was the author, none of these ex
tenuations have any place : he must then
have composed the work several years be
fore his death ; he was likely to have fre
quently examined it; he doubtless read it
with fresh attention, after it was restored to
him at Hampton Court ; and he afterwards
added several chapters to it. On that sup
position, the fraudulent omission must have
been a contrivance " aforethought" carried
on for years, persisted in at the approach of
death, and left, as the dying declaration of
a pious monarch, in a state calculated to im
pose a falsehood upon posterity.*
* After sketching the above, we have been con
vinced, by a reperusalof the note of Mr. Laing on
this subject (History of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 565),
that if he had employed his great abilities as much
in unfolding facts as in ascertaining^ them, nothing
could have been written for the Icon, or ought to
have been written against it, since that decisive
note. His merit, as a critical inquirer into history,
an enlightened collector of materials, and a saga
cious judge of evidence, has never been surpassed.
If any man believes the innocence of Queen Mary,
after an impartial and dispassionate perusal of Mr.
Laing's examination of her case, the state of such
a man's mind would be a subject worthy of much
consideration by a philosophical observer ol hu
man nature. In spite of his ardent love of liberty,
no man has yet presumed to charge him with the
slightest sacrifice of historical integrity to his zeal.
That he never perfectly attained the art of full,
clear, and easy narrative was owing to the pecu
liar style of those writers who were popular in his
youth, and may be mentioned as a remarkable
instance of the disproportion of particular talents
to a general vigour of mind.
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
DISSERTATION
ON THE PROGRESS OF
ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY,
CHIEFLY DURING THE
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.
[ORIGINALLY PREFIXED TO THE SEVENTH EDITION OK THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.!
INTRODUCTION.
THE inadequacy of the words of ordinary
language for the purposes of Philosophy, is
an ancient and frequent complaint ; of which
the justness will be felt by all who consider
the state to which some of the most import
ant arts would be reduced, if the coarse tools
of the common labourer were the only in
struments to be employed in the most deli
cate operations of manual expertness. The
watchmaker, the optician, and the surgeon,
are provided with instruments which are
fitted, by careful ingenuity, to second their
skill; the philosopher alone is doomed to use
the rudest tools for the most refined purposes.
He must reason in words of which the loose
ness and vagueness are suitable, and even
agreeable, in the usual intercourse of life,
but which are almost as remote from the
extreme exactness and precision required,
not only in the conveyance, but in the search
of truth, as the hammer and the axe would
be unfit for the finest exertions of skilful
handiwork : for it is not to be forgotten, that
he must himself think in these gross words
as unavoidably as he uses them in speaking
to others. He is in this respect in a worse
condition than an astronomer who looked at
the heavens only with the naked eye, whose
limited and partial observation, however it
might lead to error, might not directly, arid
would not necessarily, deceive. He might
be more justly compared to an arithmetician
compelled to employ numerals not only cum
brous, but used so irregularly to denote dif
ferent quantities, that they not only often
deceive others, but himself.
The natural philosopher and mathemati
cian have in some degree the privilege of
framing their own terms of art ; though that
liberty is daily narrowed by the happy dif
fusion of these great branches of knowledge,
which daily mixes their language with the
general vocabulary of educated men. The
cultivator of mental and moral philosophy
can seldom do more than mend the faults
j of his words by definition ; — a necessary,
| but very inadequate expedient, and one in
I a great measure defeated in practice by the
j unavoidably more frequent recurrence of the
| terms in their vague, than in their definite
! acceptation. The mind, to which such de
finition is faintly, and but occasionally, pre
sent, naturally suffers, in the ordinary state
of attention, the scientific meaning to disap
pear from remembrance, and insensibly as
cribes to the word a great part, if not the
whole, of that popular sense which is so very
much more familiar even to the most vete
ran speculator. The obstacles which stood
j in the way of Lucretius and Cicero, when
j they began to translate the subtile philoso-
j phy of Greece into their narrow and barren
j tongue, are always felt by the philosopher
when he struggles to express, with the neces
sary discrimination, his abstruse reasonings
I in words which, though those of his own lan-
i gnage, he must take from the mouths of
i those to whom his distinctions would be
j without meaning.
The moral philosopher is in this respect
subject to peculiar difficulties. His state
ments and reasonings often call for nicer dis
criminations of language than those which
are necessary in describing or discussing the
[purely intellectual part of human nature;
but his freedom in the choice of words is
more circumscribed. As he treats of mat
ters on which all men are disposed to form a
judgment, he can as rarely hazard glaring
innovations in diction, — at least in an adult
and mature language like ours, — as the ora
tor or the poet. If he deviates from com
mon use, he must atone for his deviation by
hiding it, and can only give a new sense to
an old word by so skilful a position of it as
to render the new meaning so quickly un
derstood that its novelty is scarcely per
ceived. Add to this, that in those most
difficult inquiries for which the utmost cool
ness is not more than sufficient, he is often
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
95
forced to use terms commonly connected
with warm feeling, with high praise, with
severe reproach ; — which excite the passions
of his readers when he most needs their
calm attention and the undisturbed exer
cise of their impartial judgment. There is
scarcely a neutral term left in Ethics ; so
quickly are such expressions enlisted on the
side of Praise or Blame, by rhe address of
contending passions. A true philosopher
must not even desire that men should less
love Virtue, or hate Vice, in order to fit them
for a more unprejudiced judgment on his
speculations.
There are, perhaps, not many occasions
where the penury and laxity of language are
more felt than in entering on the history of
sciences where the first measure must be to
mark out the boundary of the whole subject
with some distinctness. But no exactness
in these important operations can be ap
proached without a new division of human
knowledge, adapted to the present stage of
its progress, arid a reformation of all those
barbarous, pedantic, unmeaning, and (what
is worse) wrong-meaning names' which con
tinue to be applied to the greater part of its
branches. Instances are needless where
nearly all the appellations are faulty. The
term "Metaphysics" affords a specimen of
all the faults which the name of a science
can combine. To those who know only
their own language, it must, at their entrance
on the study, convey no meaning: it points
their attention to nothing. If they examine
the language in which its parts are signifi
cant, they will be misled into the pernicious
error of believing that it seeks something
more than the interpretation of nature. It is
only by examining the history of ancient
philosophy that the probable origin of this
name will be found, in its application, as the
running title of several essays of Aristotle,
placed in a collection of the manuscripts of
that great philosopher, after his treatise on
Physics. It has the greater fault of an un
steady and fluctuating signification ; — deno
ting one class of objects in the seventeenth
century, and another in the eighteenth;—
even in the nineteenth not quite of the same
import in the mouth of a German, as in that
of a French or English philosopher; to say
nothing of the farther objection that it con
tinues to be a badge of undue pretension
among some of the followers of the science,
while it has become a name of reproach and
derision among those who altogether decry
it. The modern name of the very modern
science called " Political Economy," though
deliberately bestowed on it by its most emi
nent teachers, is perhaps a still more notable
sample of the like faults. It might lead the
ignorant to confine it to retrenchment in na
tional expenditure; and a consideration of
its etymology alone would lead us into the
more mischievous error of believing it to
teach, that national wealth is best promoted
by the contrivance and interference of law
givers, in opposition to its surest doctrine.
and the one which it most justly boasts of
having discovered and enforced.
It is easy to conceive an exhaustive analy
sis of human knowledge, and a consequent
division of it into parts corresponding to all
the classes of objects to which it relates: — a
representation of that vast edifice, contain
ing a picture of what is finished, a sketch of
what is building, and even a conjectural out
line of what, though required by complete
ness and convenience, as well as symmetry,
is yet altogether untouched. A system of
names might also be imagined derived from
a few roots, indicating the objects of each
part, and showing the relation of the parts to
each other. An order and a language some
what resembling those by which the objects
of the sciences of Botany and Chemistry
have, in the eighteenth century, been ar
ranged and denoted, are doubtless capable of
application to the sciences generally., when
considered as parts of the system of know
ledge. The attempts, however, which have
hitherto been made to accomplish that ana
lytical division of knowledge which must
necessarily precede a new nomenclature of
the sciences, have required so prodigious a
superiority of genius in the single instance
of approach to success by Bacon, as to dis
courage rivalship nearly as much as the fre
quent examples of failure in subsequent
times could do. The nomenclature itself is
attended with great difficulties, not indeed
in its conception, but in its adoption and use
fulness. In the Continental languages to the
south of the Rhine, the practice of deriving
the names of science from the Greek must
be continued ; which would render the new
names for a while unintelligible to the ma
jority of men. Even if successful in Ger
many, where a flexible and fertile language
affords unbounded liberty of derivation and
composition from native roots or elements,
and where the newly derived and com
pounded words would thus be as clear to the
mind, and almost as little startling to the ear
of every man, as the oldest terms in the
language, yet the whole nomenclature would
be unintelligible to other nations. But, the
intercommunity of the technical terms of
science in Europe having been so far broken
down by the Germans, the influence of their
literature and philosophy is so rapidly in
creasing in the greater part of the Continent,
that though a revolution in scientific nomen
clature be probably yet far distant, the foun
dation of it may be considered as already
prepared.
Although so great an undertaking must be
reserved for a second Bacon and a fu'ure
generation, it is necessary for the historian
of any branch of knowledge to introduce his
work by some account of the limits ard con
tents of the sciences of which he is about to
trace the progress; and though it will be
found impossible to trace throughout this
treatise a distinct line of demarcation, yet a
general and imperfect sketch of the bounda
ries of the whole, and of the pa its, of our
96
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
present subject; may be a considerable help
to the reader, as it has been a useful guide
to the writer.
There is no distribution of the parts of
knowledge more ancient than that of them
into the physical and moral sciences, which
seems liable to no other objection than that
it does not exhaust the subject. Even this
division, however, cannot be safely employed,
without warning the reader that no science
is entirely insulated, and that the principles
of one are often only the conclusions and re
sults of another. Every branch of know
ledge has its root in the theory of the Under
standing, from which even me mathemati
cian must learn what can be known of his
magnitude and his numbers; moral science
is founded on that other, — hitherto unnamed,
— part of the philosophy of human nature
(to be constantly and vigilantly distinguished
from intellectual philosophy), which contem
plates the laws of sensibility, of emotion, of
desire and aversion, of pleasure and pain, of
happiness and misery : and on which arise
the august and sacred landmarks that stand
conspicuous along the frontier between
Right and Wrong.
But however multiplied the connections of
the moral and physical sciences are, it is not
difficult to draw a general distinction be
tween them. The purpose of the physical
sciences throughout all their provinces, is to
answer the question What is ? They consist
only of facts arranged according to their like
ness, and expressed by general names given
to every class of similar facts. The purpose
of the moral sciences is to answer the ques
tion What ought to be ? They aim at ascer
taining the rules which ought to govern vo
luntary action, and to which those habitual
dispositions of mind which are the source of
voluntary actions ought to be adapted.
It is obvious that "will," "action," " habit,"
"disposition," are terms denoting facts in
human nature, and that an explanation of
them must be sought in mental philosophy,
which, if knowledge be divided into physi
cal and moral, must be placed among physi
cal sciences, though it essentially differs
from them all in having for its chief object
those laws of thought which alone render
any other sort of knowledge possible. But
it is equally certain that the word "ought"
introduces the mind into a new region, to
which nothing physical corresponds. How
ever philosophers may deal with this most
important of words, it is instantly understood
by all who do not attempt to define it. No
civilized speech, perhaps no human lan
guage, is without correspondent terms. It
would be as reasonable to deny that "space"
and "greenness" are significant words, as to
affirm that "ought," "right," "duty, " "vir
tue," are sounds without meaning. It would
be fatal to an ethical theory that it did not
explain them, and that it did not comprehend
all the conceptions and emotions which they
call up. There never yet was a theory
which did not attempt such an explanation.
SECTION I.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
THERE is no man who, in a case where
he was a calm bystander, would not look
with more satisfaction on acts of kindness
than on acts of cruelty. No man, after the
first excitement of his mind has subsided,
ever whispered to himself with self-appro
bation and secret joy that he had been guilty
of cruelty or baseness. Every criminal is
strongly impelled to hide these qualities of
his actions frorru himself, as he would do
from others, by clothing his conduct in some
disguise of duty, or of necessity. There is
no tribe so rude as to be without a faint
perception of a difference between Right
and Wrong. There is no subject on which
men of all ages and nations coincide in so
many points as in the general rules of con
duct, and in the qualities of the human
character which deserve esteem. Even the
grossest deviations from the general consent
will appear, on close examination, to be not
so much corruptions of moral feeling, as
ignorance of facts ; or errors with respect to
the consequences of action; or cases in
which the dissentient party is inconsistent
with other parts of his own principles, which
destroys the value of his dissent ; or where
each dissident is condemned by all the other
dissidents, which immeasurably augments
the majority against him. In the first three
cases he may be convinced by argument that
his moral judgment should be changed on
principles which he recognises as just ; and
he can seldom, if ever, be condemned at
the same time by the body of mankind who
agree in their moral systems, and by those
who on some other points dissent from that
general code, without being also convicted
of error by inconsistency with himself. The
tribes who expose new-born infants, condemn
those who abandon their decrepit parents to
destruction : those who betray and murder
strangers, are condemned by the rules of
faith and humanity which they acknowledge
in their intercourse with their countrymen.
Mr. Hume, in a dialogue in which he inge
niously magnifies the moral heresies of two
nations so polished as the Athenians and the
French, has very satisfactorily resolved his
own difficulties: — "In how many circum
stances would an Athenian and a French
man of merit certainly resemble each other !
— Humanity, fidelity, truth, justice, courage,
temperance, constancy, dignity of mind."
" The principles upon which men reason in
Morals are always the same, though the
conclusions which they draw are often very
different."* He might have added, that
almost every deviation which he imputes to
each nation is at variance with some of the
virtues justly esteemed by both, and that
* Philosophical Works, (Edinb. 1826,) vol. iv.
pp. 420, 422.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
the reciprocal condemnation of each other's
errors which appears in his statement en
titles us, on these points, to strike out the
suffrages of both when collecting the general
judgment of mankind. If we bear in mind
that the question relates to the coincidence
of all men in considering the same qualities
as virtues, and not to the preference of one
class of virtues by some, and of a different
class by others, the exceptions from the
agreement of mankind, in their system of
practical morality, will be reduced to abso
lute insignificance; and we shall learn to
view them as no more affecting the harmony
of our moral faculties, than the resemblance
of our limbs and features is affected by mon
strous conformations, or by the unfortunate
effects of accident and disease in a very few
individuals.*
It is very remarkable, however, that
though all men agree that there are acts
which ought to be done, and acts which
ought not to be done ; though the far greater
part of mankind agree in their list of virtues
and duties, of vices and crimes ; and though
the whole race, as it advances in other im
provements, is as evidently tending towards
the moral system of the most civilized na
tions, as children in their growth tend to the
opinions, as much as to the experience and
strength, of adults ; yet there are no questions
in the circle of inquiry to which answers
more various have been given than — How
men have thus come to agree in the l Rule
of Life V Whence arises their general reve
rence for it ? and, What is meant by affirm
ing that it ought to be inviolably observed ?
It is singular, that where we are most nearly
agreed respecting rules, we should perhaps
most widely differ as to the causes of our
agreement, and as to the reasons which justify
us for adhering to it. The discussion of these
subjects composes what is usually called
the " Theory of Morals" in a sense not in
all respects coincident with what is usually
considered as theory in other sciences.
When we investigate the causes of our moral
agreement, the term "theory"' retains its
* " On convient le plus souvent de ces instincts
de la conscience. La plus grande et la plus saine
partie du genre humain leur rend temoignage.
Les Orientaux, et les Grecs, et les Remains con-
viennent en cela ; et il faudroit eire aussi abruti
que les sauvages Americains pour approuver leurs
coutumes, pleines d'une cruaute qui passe meme
celle des betes. Cependant ces memes sauvages
sentent bien ce que c'est que la justice en d'autres
occasions ; et quoique il n'y ait point de mauvaise
pratique peut-etre qui ne soil autorisee quelque
part, il y en a peu pourtant qui ne soient con-
damnees le plus souvent, et par la plus grande
partie des hommes." — Leibnitz, (Euvres Philo-
sophiques, (Amst. et Leipz. 1765, 4to.) p. 49.
There are some admirable observations on this
subject in Hartley, especially in the development
of the 49th Proposition : — " The rule of life drawn
from the practice and opinions of mankind corrects
and improves itself perpetually, till at last it de
termines entirely for virtue, and excludes all kinds
.and degrees of vice." — Observations on Man,
vol. ii. p. 214.
13
ordinary scientific sense ; but when we en
deavour to ascertain the reasons of it; we
rather employ the term as importing the
theory of the rules of an art. In the first
case, 'theory' denotes, as usual, the most
general laws to which certain facts can be
reduced; whereas in the second, it points out
the efficacy of the observance, in practice,
of certain rules, for producing the effects
intended to be produced in the art. These
reasons also may be reduced under the ge
neral sense by stating the question relating
to them thus : — What are the causes why
the observance of certain rules enables us
to execute certain purposes ? An account of
the various answers attempted to be made
to these inquiries, properly forms the history
of Ethics.
The attentive reader may already per
ceive, that these momentous inquiries relate
to at least two perfectly distinct subjects: —
1. The nature of the distinction between
Right and Wrong in human conduct, and
2. The nature of those feelings with which
Right and Wrong are contemplated by hu
man beings. The latter constitutes what
has been called the c Theory of Moral Sen
timents ;' the former consists in an investiga
tion into the criterion of Morality in action.
Other most important questions arise in this
province : but the two problems which have
been just stated, and the essential distinction
between them, must be clearly apprehended
by all who are desirous of understanding
the controversies which have prevailed on
ethical subjects. The discrimination has
seldom been made by moral philosophers j
the difference between the two problems
has never been uniformly observed by any
of them : and it will appear, in the sequel,
that they have been not rarely altogether
confounded by very eminent men, to the
destruction of all just conception and of all
correct reasoning in this most important,
and, perhaps, most difficult, of sciences.
It may therefore be allowable to deviate
so far from historical order, as to illustrate
the nature, and to prove the importance, of
the distinction, by an example of the ef
fects of neglecting it, taken from the recent
works of justly celebrated writers ; in which
they discuss questions much agitated in the
E resent age, and therefore probably now
imiliar to most readers of this Disserta
tion.
Dr. Paley represents the principle of a
Moral Sense as being opposed to that of utili
ty.* Now, it is evident that this represen
tation is founded on a confusion of the two
questions which have been started above.
That we are endued with a Moral Sense, or,
in other words, a faculty which immediately
approves what is right, and condemns what
is wrong, is only a statement of the feelings
with which we contemplate actions. But
* Principles of Moral and Political Philoso
phy. Compare book i. chap. v. with book u.
chap. vi.
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
to affirm that right actions are those which
conduce to the well-being of mankind, is a
proposition concerning the outward effects
by which right actions themselves may be
recognised. As these affirmations relate to
different subjects, they cannot be opposed to
each other, any more than the solidity of
earth is inconsistent with the fluidity of
water ; and a very little reflection will show
it to be easily conceivable that they may be
both true. Man may be so constituted as
instantaneously to approve certain actions
without any reference to their consequences ;
and yet Reason may nevertheless discover,
that a tendency to produce general happiness
is the essential characteristic of such actions.
Mr. Bentham also contrasts the principle of
Utility with that of Sympathy, of which he
considers the Moral Sense as being one of
the forms. * It is needless to repeat, that
propositions which affirm, or deny, anything
of different subjects, cannot contradict each
other. As these celebrated persons have
thus inferred or implied the non-existence of
a Moral Sense, from their opinion that the
morality of actions depends upon their use
fulness, so other philosophers of equal name
have concluded, that the utility of actions
cannot be the criterion of their morality, be
cause a perception of that utility appears to
them to form a faint and inconsiderable part
of our Moral Sentiments, — if indeed it be at
all discoverable in them.t These errors are
the more remarkable, because the like con
fusion of perceptions with their objects, of
emotions with their causes, or even the omis
sion to mark the distinctions, would in every
other subject be felt to be a most serious
fault in philosophizing. If, for instance, an
element were discovered to be common to
all bodies which our taste perceives to be
sweet, and to be found in no other bodies, it
is apparent that this discovery, perhaps im
portant in other respects, would neither
affect our perception of sweetness, nor the
pleasure which attends it. Both would con
tinue to be what they have been since the
existence of mankind. Every proposition
concerning that element would relate to
sweet bodies, and belong to the science of
Chemistry ; while every proposition respect
ing the perception or pleasure of sweetness
would relate either to the body or mind
of man, and accordingly belong either to the
science of Physiology, or to that of Mental
Philosophy. During the many ages which
passed before the analysis of the sun's beams
had proved them to be compounded of differ
ent colours, white objects were seen, and
their whiteness was sometimes felt to be
beautiful, in the very same manner as since
* Introduction to the Principles of Morality and
Legislation, chap. ii.
t Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, part iv.
Even Hume, in the third book of his Treatise of
Human Nature, the most precise, perhaps, of his
philosophical writings, uses the following as the
title of one of the sections : " Moral Distinctions,
derived from a Moral Sense,'1
that discovery. The qualities of light are
the object of Optics ; the nature of beauty
can be ascertained only by each man's ob
servation of his own mind; the changes in
the living frame which succeed the refrac
tion of light in the eye, and precede mental
operation, will, if they are ever to be known
by man, constitute a part of Physiology,
But no proposition relating to one of these
orders of phenomena can contradict or sup
port a proposition concerning another order.
The analogy of this latter case will justi
fy another preliminary observation. In the
case of the pleasure derived from beauty,
the question whether that pleasure be ori
ginal, or derived, is of secondary importance.
It has been often observed that the same
properties which are admired as beautiful in
the horse, contribute also to his safety and
speed ] and they who infer that the admira
tion of beauty was originally founded on the
convenience of fleetness and firmness, if they
at the same time hold that the idea of'useful-
ness is gradually effaced, and that the admi
ration of a certain shape at length rises in
stantaneously, without reference to any pur
pose, may, with perfect consistency, regard
a sense of beauty as an independent and
universal principle of human nature. The
laws of such a feeling of beauty are dis
coverable only by self-observation : those of
the qualities which call it forth are ascer
tained by examination of the outward things
which are called beautiful. But it is of the
utmost importance to bear in mind, that he
who contemplates the beautiful proportions
of a horse, as the signs and proofs of security
or quickness, and has in view these conveni
ent qualities, is properly said to prefer the
horse for his usefulness, not for his beauty ;
though he may choose him from the same
outward appearance which pleases the ad
mirer of the beautiful animal. He alone
who derives immediate pleasure from the
appearance itself, without reflection on any
advantages which it may promise, is truly
said to feel the beauty. The distinction,
however, manifestly depends, not on the
origin of the emotion, but on its object and
nature when completely formed. Many of
our most important perceptions through the
eye are universally acknowledged to be ac
quired : but they are as general as the ori
ginal perceptions of that organ ; they arise as
independently of our will, and human nature
would be quite as imperfect without them.
The case of an adult who did not immediate
ly see the different distances of objects from
his eye, would be thought by every one to
be as great a deviation from the ordinary
state of man, as if he wTere incapable of dis
tinguishing the brightest sunshine from the
darkest midnight. Acquired perceptions and
sentiments may therefore be termed natural,
as much as those which are more common
ly so called, if they be as rarely found want
ing. Ethical theories can never be satisfac
torily discussed by those who do not con*
stantly bear in mind, that the question
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
concerning the existence of a moral faculty
in man, which immediately approves or dis
approves, without reference to any farther
object, is perfectly distinct, on the one hand,
from that which inquires into the qualities
of actions, thus approved or disapproved.;
and on the other, from an inquiry whether
that faculty be derived from other parts of
our mental frame, or be itself one of the
ultimate constituent principles of human
nature. >^
//V 0? T£&
mi
SEC:
RETROSPECT OF A.1
INQUIRIES concerning the nature
the first principles of Knowledge, the origin
and government of the world, appear to have
been among the earliest objects which em
ployed the understanding of civilized men.
Fragments of such speculation are handed
down from the legendary age of Greek phi
losophy. In the remaining monuments of
that more ancient form of civilization which
sprung up in Asia, we see clearly that the
Braminical philosophers, in times perhaps
before the dawn of Western history, had run
round that dark and little circle of systems
which an unquenchable thirst of knowledge
has since urged both the speculators of an
cient Greece and those of Christendom to
retrace. The wall of adamant which bounds
human inquiry in that direction has scarcely
ever been discovered by any adventurer,
until he has been roused by the shock which
drove him back. It is otherwise with the
theory of Morals. No controversy seems to
have arisen regarding it in Greece till the
rise and conflict of the Stoical and Epicurean
schools; and the ethical disputes of the
modern world originated with the writings
of Hobbes about the middle of the seven
teenth century. Perhaps the longer absti
nence from debate on this subject may have
sprung from reverence for Morality. Per
haps also, where the world were unanimous
in their practical opinions, little need was
felt of exact theory. The teachers of Morals
were content with partial or secondary prin
ciples, — with the combination of principles
not always reconcilable, — even with vague
but specious phrases which in any degree
explained or seemed to explain the Rules
of the Art of Life, appearing, as these last
did, at once too evident to need investiga
tion, and too venerable to be approached by
controversy.
Perhaps the subtile genius of Greece was
in part withheld from indulging itself in
ethical controversy by the influence of So
crates, who was much more a teacher of
virtue than even a searcher after Truth —
Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men.
It was doubtless because he chose that
better part that he was thus spoken of by
the man whose commendation is glory, and
who, from the loftiest eminence of moral
genius ever reached by a mortal, was per
haps alone worthy to place a new crown on
the brow of the martyr of Virtue.
Aristippus indeed, a wit and a worldling,
borrowed nothing from the conversations of
Socrates but a few maxims for husbanding
the enjoyments of sense. Antisthenes also,
a hearer but not a follower, founded a school
rade and exaggeration, which caused
aster to disown him by the ingenious
, — "I sec your vanity through your
:bare cloak."* The modest doubts of
t sober of moralists, and his indispo-
to fruitless abstractions, were in pro
of time employed as the foundation of
systematic scepticism; — the most pre
sumptuous, inapplicable, and inconsistent of
all the results of human meditation. But
though his lessons were thus distorted by the
perverse ingenuity of some who heard him,
the authority of his practical sense may be
traced in the moral writings of those most
celebrated philosophers who were directly
or indirectly his disciples.
Plato, the most famous of his scholars, the
most eloquent of Grecian writers, and the
earliest moral philosopher whose writings
have come down to us, employed his genius
in the composition of dialogues, in which
his master performed the principal part.
These beautiful conversations would have
lost their charm of verisimilitude, of dra
matic vivacity, and of picturesque represen
tation of character, if they had been sub
jected to the constraint of method. They
necessarily presuppose much oral instruction.
They frequently quote, and doubtless oftener
allude to, the opinions of predecessors and
contemporaries whose works have perished,
and of whose doctrines only some fragments
are preserved. In these circumstances, it
must be difficult for the most learned and
philosophical of his commentators to give a
just representation of his doctrines, even if
he really framed or adopted a system. The
moral part of his works is more accessible.!
The vein of thought which runs through,
them is always visible. The object is to in
spire the love of Truth, of Wisdom, of Beauty,
especially of Goodness — the highest Beauty,
and of that Supreme and Eternal Mind,
which contains all Truth and Wisdom, all
Beauty and Goodness. By the love or de
lightful contemplation and pursuit of these
transcendent aims for their own sake only,
he represented the mind of man as raised
from low and perishable objects, and pre
pared for those high destinies which are ap
pointed for all those who are capable of en
joying them. The application to moral quali
ties of terms which denote outward beauty,
though by him perhaps carried to excess, is
* Diog. Laert. lib. vi. Lilian, lib. ix. cap. 35.
t Heyse, Init. Phil. Plat. 1827 ;— a hitherto in
complete work of great perspicuity and elegance,
in which we must excuse the partiality which be
longs to a labour of love.
100
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
an illustrative metaphor, as well warranted
by the poverty of language as any other em
ployed to signify the acts or attributes of
Mind.* The "beautiful" in his language
denoted all that of which the mere contem
plation is in itself delightful, without any
admixture of organic pleasure, and without
being regarded as the means of attaining any
farther end. The feeling which belongs to
it he called " love ;" a word which, as com
prehending complacency, benevolence, and
affection, and reaching from the neighbour
hood of the senses to the most sublime of
human thoughts, is foreign to the colder and
more exact language of our philosophy ; but
which, perhaps, then happily served to lure
both the lovers of Poetry, and the votaries
of Superstition, to the school of Truth and
Goodness in the groves of the Academy. He
enforced these lessons by an inexhaustible
variety of just and beautiful illustrations, —
sometimes striking from their familiarity,
sometimes subduing by their grandeur ; and
his works are the storehouse from which
moralists have from age to age borrowed the
means of rendering moral instruction easier
and more delightful. Virtue he represented
as the harmony of the whole soul; — as a
peace between all its principles and desires,
assigning to each as much space as they can
occupy, without encroaching on each other ;
— as a state of perfect health, in which every
function was performed with ease, pleasure,
and vigour; — as a well-ordered common
wealth, where the obedient passions exe
cuted with energy the laws and commands
of Reason. The vicious mind presented the
odious character, sometimes of discord, of
war; — sometimes of disease; — always of
passions warring with each other in eternal
anarchy. Consistent with himself, and at
peace with his fellows, the good man felt in
the quiet of his conscience a foretaste of the
approbation of God. "Oh, what ardent love
would virtue inspire if she could be seen."
"" If the heart of a tyrant could be laid bare,
we should see how it was cut and torn by
its own evil passions and by an avenging
conscience, "t
* The most probable etymology of "
seems to be from nditf to burn. What burns com
monly shines. " Schon," in German, which
means beautiful, is derived from "scheinen," to
shine. The word x«tx6c was used for right, so
early as the Homeric Poems. Ix. xyii. 19. In the
philosophical age it became a technical term, with
little other remains of the metaphorical sense than
what the genius and art of a fine writer might
sometimes rekindle. " Honestum" the term by
which Cicero translates the " xaxov," being de
rived from outward honours, is a less happy me
taphor. In our language, the terms, being from
foreign roots, contribute nothing to illustrate the
progress of thought.
t Let it not be forgotten, that for this terrible
description, Socrates, to whom it is ascribed by
Plato (riox. I.) is called " Praestantissimus sapieri-
tiae," by a writer of the most masculine under
standing, the least subject to be transported by
enthusiasm. — Tac. Ann. lib. vi. cap. 6. " Qua3
vulnera!" says Cicero, in alluding to the same
passage,— De Off. lib. iii. cap. 21.
Perhaps in every one of these illustrations,
an eye trained in the history of Ethics may
discover the germ of the whole or of a part
of some subsequent theory. But to examine
it thus would not be to look at it with the
eye of Plato. His aim was as practical as
that of Socrates. He employed every topic,
without regard to its place in a system, or
even always to its argumentative force, which
could attract the small portion of the com
munity then accessible to cultivation ; who,
it should not be forgotten, had no moral in
structor but the Philosopher, unaided, if not
thwarted, by the reigning superstition : for
Religion had not then, besides her own dis
coveries, brought down the most awful and
the most beautiful forms of Moral Truth to
the humblest station in human society.*
Ethics retained her sober spirit in the
hands of his great scholar and rival Aristo
tle, who, though he certainly surpassed all
men in acute distinction, in subtile argument,
in severe method, in the power of analyzing
what is most compounded, and of reducing
to simple principles the most various and
unlike appearances, yet appears to be still
more raised above his fellows by the prodi
gious faculty of laying aside these extraor
dinary endowments whenever his present
purpose required it; — as in his History of
Animals, in his treatises on philosophical cri
ticism, and in his practical writings, political
as well as moral. Contrasted as his genius
was to that of Plato, not only by its logical
and metaphysical attributes, but by the re
gard to experience and observation of Nature
which, in him perhaps alone, accompanied
them ; (though the two may be considered
as the original representatives of the two
antagonist tendencies of philosophy — that
which would ennoble man, and that which
seeks rather to explain nature;) yet opposite
as they are in other respects, the master and
the scholar combine to guard the Rule of
Life against the licentious irruptions of the
Sophists.
In Ethics alone their systems differed
more in words than in things. t That hap-
* There can hardly be a finer example of Plato's
practical morals than his observations on the treat
ment of slaves. "Genuine humanity and real
probity," says he, "are brought to the test, by
the behaviour of a man to slaves, whom he may
wrong with impunity." A/O^ACC yap o $6<ni X.AI
ju.» 7r\a.<T'T<Z? a-'t£a>v THV ef/x.»v. fjur^v S\ orrcee TO aJincv
iv TWTCit TW dvQp^Trctv iv ok a-uT^ PJJtov aJ«s?v, — No//.
lib. vi. cap. 19. That Plato was considered as
the fountain of ancient morals, would be suffi
ciently evident from Cicero alone : " Ex hoc igitur
Platonis, quasi quodam sancto augustoque fonte,
nostra omnis manabit oratio."— Tusc. Qusest.
lib. v. cap. 12. Perhaps the sober Quintilian
meant to mingle some censure with the highest
praise: "Plato, qui eloquendi facultate divina
quadam et Homerica, multum supra prosam ora-
tionem surgit." De Inst. Oral. lib. x. cap. 1.
t " Una et consentiensduobus vpcabulis philoso
phic forma instituta est, Academicorum et Peri-
pateticorum; qui rebus congruentes nominibus
differebant."— Cic. Acad. £uajst. lib i. cap.
"
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 101
piness consisted in virtuous pleasure, chiefly
dependent on the state of mind, but not un
affected by outward agents, was the doctrine
of both. Both would with Socrates have
called happiness "unrepented pleasure."
Neither distinguished the two elements
which they represented as constituting the
Supreme Good from each other ; partly, per
haps, from fear of appearing to separate
them. Plato more habitually considered
happiness as the natural fruit of Virtue ;
Aristotle oftener viewed Virtue as the means
of attaining happiness. The celebrated doc
trine of the Peripatetics, which placed all
virtues in a medium between opposite vices,
was probably suggested by the Platonic re
presentation of its necessity to keep up har
mony between the different parts of our na
ture. The perfection of a compound machine
is attained where all its parts have the fullest
scope for action. Where one is so far exert
ed as to repress others, there is a vice of ex
cess : where any one has less activity than
it might exert without disturbing others,
there is a vice of defect. The point which
all reach without collision with each other,
is the mediocrity in which the Peripatetics
placed Virtue.
It was not till near a century after the
death of Plato that Ethics became the scene
of philosophical contest between the adverse
schools of Epicurus and Zeno ; whose errors
afford an instructive example, that in the
formation of a theory, partial truth is equi
valent to absolute falsehood. As the astro
nomer who left either the centripetal or the
centrifugal force of the planets out of his
view, would err as completely as he who
excluded both, so the Epicureans and Stoics,
who each confined themselves to real but
not exclusive principles in Morals, departed
as widely from the truth as if they had
adopted no part of it. Every partial theory
is indeed directly false, inasmuch as it as
cribes to one or few causes what is produced
by more. As the extreme opinions of one,
if not of both, of these schools have been
often revived with variations and refine
ments in modern times, and are still not
without influence on ethical systems, it may
be allowable to make some observations on
this earliest of moral controversies.
"All other virtues," said Epicurus, "grow
from prudence, which teaches that we can
not live pleasurably without living justly and
virtuously, nor live justly and virtuously with
out living pleasurably."* The illustration
of this sentence formed the whole moral dis
cipline of Epicurus. To him we owe the
general concurrence of reflecting men in
succeeding times, in the important truth that
men cannot be happy without a virtuous
frame of mind and course of life : a truth of
inestimable value, not peculiar to the Epi-
TOV fjttv Tr^y.x.rinov, TOV fi d-t&wriidv. x.ttt TC-J
Toy TJ «9;xcy ttau 7rcMTtx.ov' TOU ft &to>wn-
xov, Toy rt PUO-/XCV, xaii xtyiMv. — Diog. Laert. lib.
v. $ 28.
* Diog. Laert. lib. x. § 132.
ureans, but placed by their exaggerations
in a stronger light; — a truth, it must be ad
ded, of less importance as a motive to right
conduct than as completing Moral Theory,
which, however, it is very far from solely
constituting. With that truth the Epicure
ans blended another position, which indeed
"s contained in the first words of the above
statement ; namely, that because Virtue pro
motes happiness, every act of virtue must be
done in order to promote the happiness of
the agent. They and their modern follow
ers tacitly assume, that the latter position is
the consequence of the former ; as if it were
an inference from the necessity of food to.
life, that the fear of death should be substi
tuted for the appetite of hunger as a motive
for eating. "Friendship," says Epicurus,
••' is to be pursued by the wise man only for
its usefulness, but he will begin ; as he sows
the field in order to reap."* It is obvious,
that if these words be confined to outward
benefits, they may be sometimes true, but
never can be pertinent; for outward acts
sometimes show kindness, but never com
pose it. If they be applied to kind feeling,
they would indeed be pertinent, but they
would be evidently and totally false : for it is
most certain that no man acquires an affec
tion merely from his belief that it would be
agreeable or advantageous to feel it. Kind
ness cannot indeed be pursued on account
of the pleasure which belongs to it ; for man
can no more know the pleasure till he has
felt the affection, than he can form an idea
of colour without the sense of sight. The
moral character of Epicurus was excellent ;
no man more enjoyed the pleasure, or better
performed the duties of friendship. The let
ter of his system was no more indulgent to
vice than that of any other moralist.! Al
though, therefore, he has the merit of having
more strongly inculcated the connection of
Virtue with happiness, perhaps by the faulty
excess of treating it as an exclusive princi
ple ; yet his doctrine was justly charged with
indisposing the mind to those exalted and
generous sentiments, without which no pure,
elevated, bold, generous, or tender virtues
can exist. J
As Epicurus represented the tendency of
Virtue, which is a most important truth in
ethical theory, as the sole inducement to
virtuous practice ; so Zeno, in his disposition
* T»y c/x/rtv fia T«C %f>ua.(. — Diog. Laert. lib. x.
$ 120. " Hie est locus," Gassendi confesses,
" ob quern Epicurus non parum vexatur, quando
nemo non reprehendit, parari amicitiam non sui,
sed utilitatis gratia"
t It is due to him to observe, that he treated
humanity towards slaves, as one of the^ character
istics ^of a wise man. "Ourt x.txd<ruv GJXST*?, «ASK-
cruv fJi'tv T«, net} <ruyyv*L(jt.}tv T/V) 'i?tiv T>> avrwfstiaiv. —
Diog. Laert. lib. x. § 118. It is not unworthy of
remark, that neither Plato nor Epicurus thought
it necessary to abstain from these topics in a city
full of slaves, many of whom were men not desti
tute of knowledge.
t " Nil generosum, nil magnificum sapit." — De
Fin. lib. i. cap. 7.
I 2
102
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
towards the opposite extreme, was inclined
to consider the moral sentiments, which are
the motives of right conduct, as being the
sole principles of moral science. The con
fusion was equally great in a philosophical
view, but that of Epicurus was more fatal
to interests of higher importance than those
of Philosophy. Had the Stoics been content
with affirming that Virtue is the source of
all that part of our happiness which depends
on ourselves, they would have taken a posi
tion from which it would have been impos
sible to drive them ; they would have laid
down a principle of as great comprehension
in practice as their wider pretensions ; a
simple and incontrovertible truth, beyond
which every thing is an object of mere cu
riosity to man. Our information, however,
about the opinions of the more celebrated
Stoics is very scanty. None of their own
writings are preserved. We know little of
them but from Cicero, the translator of Gre
cian philosophy, and from the Greek com
pilers of a later age ; authorities which would
be imperfect in the history of facts, but which
are of far less value in the history of opinions,
where a right conception often depends upon
the minutest distinctions between words.
We know that Zeno was more simple, and
that Chrysippus, who was accounted the
prop of the Stoic Porch, abounded more in
subtile distinction and systematic spirit.*
His power was attested as much by the an
tagonists whom he called forth, as by the
scholars whom he formed. "Had there
been no Chrysippus, there would have been
no Carneades," was the saying of the latter
philosopher himself; as it might have been
said in the eighteenth century, "Had there
been no Hume, there would have been no
Kant arid no Reid." Cleanthes, when one
of his followers would pay court to him by
laying vices to the charge of his most for
midable opponent, Arcesilaus the academic,
answered with a justice and candour un
happily too rare, " Silence, — do not malign
him ; — though he attacks Virtue by his argu
ments, he confirms its authority by his life."
Arcesilaus, whether modestly or churlishly,
replied, "1 do not choose to be flattered."
Cleanthes, with a superiority of repartee, as
well as charity, replied, (~ Is it flattery to say
that you speak one thing and do another?"
It would be vain to expect that the frag
ments of the professors who lectured in the
Stoic School for five hundred years, should
be capable of being moulded into one con
sistent system; and we see that in Epictetus
at least, the exaggeration of the sect was
lowered to the level of Reason, by confining
the sufficiency of Virtue to those cases only
where happiness is attainable by our volun-
" Chrysippus, qui fulcire putatur porticum
Stoicorum." — Acad. Quaest. lib. ii. cap. 24. Else
where (De Orat. lib. i. cap. 12— De Fin. lib. iv.
cap. 3.), " Acutissimus, sed in scribendo exilis et
jcjunus, scripsit rhetoricam seu potius obmute-
scendi artem ;"— nearly as we should speak of a
Schoolman.
tary acts. It ought to be added, in extenua
tion of a noble error, that the power of habit
and character to struggle against outward
evils has been proved by experience to be
in some instances so prodigious, that no man
can presume to fix the utmost limit of its
possible increase.
The attempt, however, of the Stoics to
stretch the bounds of their system beyond
the limits of Nature, doomed them to fluc
tuate between a wild fanaticism on the one
Hand, arid, on the other, concessions which
left their differences from other philosophers
purely verbal. Many of their doctrines ap
pear to be modifications of their original
opinions, introduced as opposition became
more formidable. In this manner they were
driven to the necessity of admitting that the
objects of our desires and appetites are wor
thy of preference, though they are denied to
be constituents of happiness. It was thus
that they were obliged to invent a double
morality; one for mankind at large, from
whom was expected no more than the xa6r]-
xov, — which seems principally to have deno
ted acts of duty done from inferior or mixed
motives; and the other (which they appear
to have hoped from their ideal wise man)
xatopOufia., or perfect observance of rectitude,
— which consisted only in moral acts done
from mere reverence for Morality, unaided
by any feelings; all which (without the ex
ception of pity) they classed among the ene
mies of Reason and the disturbers of the
human soul. Thus did they shrink from
their proudest paradoxes into verbal eva
sions. It is remarkable that men so acute
did not perceive and acknowledge, that if
pain were not an evil, cruelty would not be
a vice ; and that, if patience were of power
to render torture indifferent, Virtue must ex
pire in the moment of victory. There can
be no more triumph, when there is no ene
my left to conquer.*
The influence of men's opinions on the
conduct of their lives is checked and modi
fied by so many causes; it so much depends
on the strength of conviction, on its habitual
combination with feelings, on the concur
rence or resistance of interest, passion, ex
ample, and sympathy, — that a wise man is
not the most forward in attempting to deter
mine the power of its single operation over
human actions. In the case of an individual
it becomes altogether uncertain. But when
the experiment is made on a large scale,
when it is long continued and varied in its
circumstances, and especially when great
bodies of men are for ages the subject of it,
we cannot reasonably reject the considera
tion of the inferences to which it appears to
lead. The Roman Patriciate, trained in the
conquest and government of the civilized
world, in spite of the tyrannical vices which
sprung from that training, were raised by
* " Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill."
But aa soon as the ill was really " transmuted"
into good, it is evident that there was no longer
any scope left for the exercise of patience.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
103
the greatness of their objects to an elevation
of genius and character unmatched by any
other aristocracy, ere the period when, after
preserving their power by a long course of
wise compromise with the people, they were
betrayed by the army and the populace into
the hands of a single tyrant of their own or
der — the most accomplished of usurpers,
and, if Humanity and Justice could for a mo
ment be silenced, one of the most illustrious
of men. There is no scene in history so
memorable as that in which Caesar mastered
a nobility of which Lucullus and Hortensius,
Sulpicius and Catulus, Pompey and Cicero,
Brutus and Cato were members. This re
nowned body had from the time of Scipio
sought the Greek philosophy as an amuse
ment or an ornament. Some few, " in thought
more elevate," caught the love of Truth, and
were ambitious of discovering a solid founda
tion for the Rule of Life. The influence of
the Grecian systems was tried, during the
five centuries between Carneades and Con-
stantine, by their effect on a body of men of
the utmost originality, energy, and variety
of character, in their successive positions of
rulers of the world, and of slaves under the
best and under the worst of uncontrolled
masters. If we had found this influence
perfectly uniform, we should have justly
suspected our own love of system of having
in part bestowed that appearance on it. Had
there been no trace of such an influence dis
coverable in so great an experiment, we must
have acquiesced in the paradox, that opinion
does not at all affect conduct. The result is
the more satisfactory, because it appears to
illustrate general tendency without excluding
very remarkable exceptions. Though Cassius
was an Epicurean, the true representative of
that school was the accomplished, prudent,
friendly, good-natured time-server Atticus,
the pliant slave of every tyrant, who could
kiss the hand of Antony, imbrued as it was
in the blood of Cicero. The pure school of
Plato sent forth Marcus Brutus, the signal
humanity of whose life was both necessary
and sufficient to prove that his daring breach
of venerable rules flowed only from that dire
necessity which left no other means of up
holding the most sacred principles. The Ro
man orator, though in speculative questions
he embraced that mitigated doubt which al
lowed most ease and freedom to his genius,
yet in those moral writings where his heart
was most deeply interested, followed the se
verest sect of Philosophy, and became almost
a Stoic. If any conclusion may be hazard
ed from this trial of systems, — the greatest
which History has recorded, we must not re
fuse our decided, though not undistinguish-
ing, preference to that noble school which
preserved great souls untainted at the court
of dissolute and ferocious tyrants; which ex
alted the slave of one of Nero's courtiers to
be a moral teacher of aftertimes: — which
for the first, and hitherto for the only time,
breathed philosophy and justice into those
rules of law which govern the ordinary con
cerns of every man ; and which, above all,
has contributed, by the examples of Marcus
Portius Cato and of Marcus Aurelius Anto
ninus, to raise the dignity of our species, to
keep alive a more ardent love of Virtue, and
a more awful sense of duty throughout all
generations.*
The result of this short review of the prac
tical philosophy of Greece seems to be. that
though it was rich in rules for the conduct
of life, and in exhibitions of the beauty of
Virtue, and though it contains glimpses of
just theory and fragments of perhaps every
moral truth, yet it did not leave behind any
precise and coherent system ; unless we ex
cept that of Epicurus, who purchased con
sistency, method, and perspicuity too dearly
by sacrificing Truth, and by narrowing and
lowering his views of human nature, so as
to enfeeble, if not extinguish, all the vigor
ous motives to arduous virtue. It is remark
able, that while of the eight professors who
taught in the Porch; from Zeno to Posido-
nius, every one either softened or exaggera
ted the doctrines of his predecessor; and
while the beautiful and reverend philosophy
of Plato had, in his own Academy, degene
rated into a scepticism which did not spare
Morality itself, the system of Epicurus re
mained without change ; and his disciples
continued for ages to show personal honours
to his memory, in a manner which may seem
unaccountable among those who were taught
to measure propriety by a calculation of pal
pable and outward usefulness. This steady
adherence is in part doubtless attributable
to the portion of truth which the doctrine
contains; in some degree perhaps to the
amiable and unboastful character of Epicu
rus : not a little, it may be, to the dishonour
of deserting an unpopular cause ; but pro
bably most of all to that mental indolence
which disposes the mind to rest in a simple
system, comprehended at a glance, and easily
falling in, both with ordinary maxims of dis
cretion, and with the vulgar commonplaces
of satire on human nature. t When all in
struction was conveyed by lectures, and
when one master taught the whole circle of
the sciences in one school, it was natural
that the attachment of pupils to a professor
should be more devoted than when, as in
* Of all testimonies to the character of the Stoics,
perhaps the most decisive is the speech of the vile
sycophant Capito, in the mock impeachment of
Thrasea Paetus, before a senate of slaves: " Ut
quondam C. Cffisarem et M. Catonem, ita nunc
te, Nero, et Thraseam, avida discordiarum civitas
loquitur Ista secta Tuberones et Favonios,
veteri quoque reipublicse ingrata nomina, genuit."
— Tacit. Ann. lib. xvi. cap. 22. See Appendix,
Note A.
t The progress of commonplace satire on sexes
or professions, and (he might have added) on na
tions, has been exquisitely touched by Gray in his
Remarks^on Lydgate ; a fragment containing pas
sages as finely thought and written as any in Eng
lish prose. General satire on mankind is still
more absurd ; for no invective can be so unreasona
ble as that which is founded on falling short of an
ideal standard.
104
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
our times, he can teach only a small portion
of a Knowledge spreading towards infinity,
and even in his own little province finds a
rival in every good writer who has treated
the same subject. The superior attachment
of the Epicureans to their master is not with
out some parallel among the followers of
similar principles in our own age. who have
also revived some part of that indifference
to eloquence and poetry which may be im
puted to the habit of contemplating all things
in. relation to happiness, and to (what seems
its uniform effect) the egregious miscalcu
lation which leaves a multitude of mental
pleasures out of the account. It may be
said, indeed, that the Epicurean doctrine has
continued with little change to the present
day ; at least it is certain that no other ancient
doctrine has proved so capabje of being re
stored in the same form among the moderns:
and it may be added, that Hobbes and Gas-
sendi, as well as some of our own contem
poraries, are as confident in their opinions,
and. as intolerant of scepticism, as the old
Epicureans. The resemblance of modern to
ancient opinions, concerning some of those
questions upon which ethical controversy
must always hinge, may be a sufficient ex
cuse for a retrospect of the Greek morals,
which, it is hoped, will simplify and shorten
subsequent observation on those more recent
disputes which form the proper subject of
this discourse.
The genius of Greece fell with Liberty.
The Grecian philosophy received its mortal
wound in the contests between scepticism
and dogmatism which occupied the Schools
in the age of Cicero. The Sceptics could only
perplex, and confute, and destroy. Their oc
cupation was gone as soon as they succeeded.
They had nothing to substitute for what they
overthrew j and they rendered their own art
of no further use. They were no more than
venomous animals, who stung their victims
to death, but also breathed their last into the
•wound.
A third age of Grecian literature indeed
arose at Alexandria, under the Macedonian
kings of Egypt ; laudably distinguished by
exposition, criticism, and imitation (some
times abused for the purposes of literary
forgery), and still more honoured by some
learned and highly-cultivated poets, as well
as by diligent cultivators of History and
Science ; among whom a few began, about
the first preaching of Christianity, to turn
their minds once more to that high Philoso
phy which seeks for the fundamental prin
ciples of human knowledge. Philo, a learned
and philosophical Hebrew, one of the flour
ishing colony of his nation established in
that city, endeavoured to reconcile the Pla
tonic philosophy with the Mosaic Law and
the Sacred Books of the Old Testament.
About the end of the second century, when
the Christians, Hebrews, Pagans, and various
other sects of semi- or pseudo-Christian Gnos
tics appear to have studied in the same
schools, the almost inevitable tendency of
doctrines, however discordant, in such cir
cumstances to amalgamate, produced its full
effect under Ammonius Saccas, a celebrated
professor, who, by selection from the Greek
systems, the Hebrew books, and the Oriental
religions, and by some concession to the ris
ing spirit of Christianity, of which the Gnos
tics had set the example, composed a very
mixed system, commonly designated as the
Eclectic philosophy. The controversies be
tween his contemporaries and followers, es
pecially those of Clement and Origen, the
victorious champions of Christianity, with
Plotinus and Porphyry, who endeavoured to
preserve Paganism by clothing it in a dis
guise of philosophical Theism, are, from the
effects towards which they contributed, the
most memorable in the history of human
opinion.* But their connection with modern
Ethics is too faint to warrant any observation
in this place, on the imperfect and partial
memorials of them which have reached us.
The death of Boethius in the West, and the
closing of the Athenian Schools by Justinian,
may be considered as the last events in the
history of ancient philosophy.!
SECTION III.
RETROSPECT OF SCHOLASTIC ETHICS.
AN interval of a thousand years elapsed
between the close of ancient and the rise of
modern philosophy ; the most unexplored,
yet not the least instructive portion of the
history of European opinion. In that period
the sources of the institutions, the manners,
and the characteristic distinctions of modern
nations, have been traced by a series of
philosophical inquirers from Montesquieu to
Hallam ; and there also, it may be added,
more than among the Ancients, are the well-
springs of our speculative doctrines and con
troversies. Far from being inactive, the hu
man mind, during that period of exaggerated
darkness, produced discoveries in Science,
inventions in Art, and contrivances in Go-
* The change attempted by Julian, Porphyry,
and their friends, by which Theism would have
become the popular Religion, may be estimated
by the memorable passage of Tacitus on the The
ism of the Jews. In the midst of all the obloquy
and opprobrium with which he loads that people,
his tone suddenly rises, when he comes to con
template them as the only nation who paid re
ligious honours to the Supreme and Eternal Mind
alone, and his style swells at the sight of so sub
lime and wonderful a scene. " Summum illud et
aeternum, neque mutabile, neque interiturum."
Hist. lib. v. cap. 5.
t The punishment of death was inflicted on
Pagans by a law of Constantius. " Volumus
cunctos sacrifices abstinere :^si aliquid hujusmodi
perpetraverint, gladio ultore sternantur." Cod.
Just. lib. i. tit. xi. ' de Paganis.' From the au
thorities cited by Gibbon, (nate, chap, xi.) as well
as from some research, it snould seem that the
edict for the suppression of the Athenian schools
was not admitted into the vast collection of laws
enacted or systematized by Justinian..
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
105
vernment, some of which, perhaps, were
rather favoured than hindered by the dis
orders of society, and -by the twilight in
which men and things were seen. Had
Boethius, the last of the ancients, foreseen,
that within four centuries of his death, in the
province of Britain, then a prey to all the
horrors of barbaric invasion, a chief of one
of the fiercest tribes of barbarians* should
translate into the jargon of his freebooters
the work on The Consolations of Philosophy,
of which the composition had soothed the
cruel imprisonment of the philosophic Roman
himself, he must, even amidst his sufferings,
have derived some gratification from such
an assurance of the recovery of mankind
from ferocity and ignorance. But had he
been allowed to revisit the earth in the mid
dle of the sixteenth century, wnth what won
der and delight might he have contemplated
the new and fairer order which was begin
ning to disclose its beauty, and to promise
more than it revealed. He would have seen
personal slavery nearly extinguished, and
women, first released from Oriental impri
sonment by the Greeks, and raised to a higher
dignity among the Romans, t at length fast
approaching to due equality ; — two revolu
tions the most signal and beneficial since the
dawn of civilization. He would have seen
the discovery of gunpowder, which for ever
guarded civilized society against barbarians,
while it transferred military strength from
the few to the many ] of paper and printing,
which rendered a second destruction of the
repositories of knowledge impossible, as well
as opened a way by which it was to be
finally accessible to all mankind ; of the
compass, by means of which navigation had
ascertained the form of the planet, and laid
open a new continent, more extensive than
his world. If he had turned to civil institu
tions, he might have learned that some
nations had preserved an ancient, simple,
and seemingly rude mode of legal proceed
ing, which threw into the hands of the ma
jority of men a far larger share of judicial
power, than was enjoyed by them in any
ancient democracy. He would have seen
everywhere the remains of that principle of
representation, the glory of the Teutonic
race, by which popular government, an
ciently imprisoned in cities, became capa
ble of being strengthened by its extension
over vast countries, to which experience
cannot even now assign any limits; and
which, in times still distant, was to exhibit,
in the newly discovered Continent, a repub-
* King Alfred.
t The steps of this important progress, as far as
relates to Athens and Rome, are well remarked
upon by one of the finest of the Roman writers.
"Quern enim Romanorum pudet uxorem ducere
in convivium ? aut cujus materfamilias non primum
locum tenet asdium, atque in celebritate versatur ?
quod multo fit aliter in Graecia : nam neque in con
vivium adhibetur, nisi propinquorum ; neque sedet
nisi in interiore parte aedium, quae Gyn&conitis ap-
pellatur, quo nemo accedit, nisi propinqua cogna-
tione conjunctus." Corn. Nep. in Praefat.
14
lican confederacy, likely to surpass the Mace
donian and Roman empires in extent, great
ness, and duration, but gloriously founded on.
the equal rights, riot like them on the uni
versal subjection, of mankind. In one re
spect, indeed, he might have lamented that
the race of man had made a really retrograde
movement ; that they had lost the liberty of
philosophizing; that the open exercise of
their highest faculties was interdicted. But
he might also have perceived that this giant
evil had received a mortal wound from Lu
ther, who in his warfare against Rome had
struck a blow against all human authority,
and unconsciously disclosed to mankind that
they were entitled, or rather bound, to form
and utter their own opinions, and that most
certainly on whatever subjects are the most
deeply interesting : for although this most
fruitful of moral truths was riot yet so re
leased from its combination with the wars
and passions of the age as to assume a dis
tinct and visible form, its action was already
discoverable in the divisions among the Re
formers, and in the fears and struggles of
civil and ecclesiastical oppressors. The
Council of Trent, and the Courts of Paris,
Madrid, and Rome, had before that time fore
boded the emancipation of Reason.
Though the middle age be chiefly memo
rable as that in which the foundations of a
new order of society were laid, uniting the
stability of the Oriental system, without its
inflexibility, to the activity of the Hellenic
civilization, without its disorder and incon
stancy ; yet it is not unworthy of notice by
us here, on account of the subterranean cur
rent which flows through it, from the specu
lations of ancient to those of modern times.
That dark stream must be uncovered before
the history of the European Understanding
can be thoroughly comprehended. It was
lawful for the emancipators of Reason in their
first struggles to carry on mortal war against
the Schoolmen. The necessity has long-
ceased : they are no longer dangerous ; and
it is now felt by philosophers that it is time
to explore and estimate that vast portion of
the history of Philosophy from which we
have scornfully turned our eyes.* A few
sentences only can be allotted to the subject
in this place. In the very depths of the Mid
dle Age, the darkness of Christendom was
* Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophic.
Cousin. Cours de Philosophic, Paris, 1828. My
esteem for this last admirable writer encourages
me to say, that the beauty of his diction has some
times the same effect on his thoughts that a sunny-
haze produces on outward objects ; and to submit
to his serious consideration, whether the allure
ments of Schelling's system have not betrayed
him into a too frequent forgetfulness that princi
ples, equally adapted to all phenomena, furnish in
speculation no possible test of their truth, and lead,
in practice, to total indifference and inactivity re
specting human affairs. I quote with pleasure
an excellent observation from this worK : " Le
moyen age n'est pas autre chose que la formation
penible, lente et sanglante, de tous les elemens de
la civilisation moderne ; je dis la formation, et non
leur developpement." (2nd Lecture, p. 27.)
106
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
faintly broken by a few thinly scattered lights.
Even then, Moses Ben Maimon taught philo
sophy among the persecuted Hebrews, whose
ancient schools had never perhaps been
wholly interrupted ; and a series of distin
guished Mahometans, among whom two are
known to us by the names of Avicenna and
Averroes, translated the Peripatetic writings
into their own language, expounded their
doctrines in no servile spirit to their follow
ers, and enabled the European Christians to
make those versions of them from Arabic
into Latin, which in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries gave birth to the scholastic philo
sophy.
The Schoolmen were properly theologians,
who employed philosophy only to define and
support that system of Christian belief which
they arid their contemporaries had embraced.
The founder of that theological system was
Aurelius Augustinus* (called by us Augus-
tin), bishop of Hippo, in the province of Af
rica; a man of great genius and ardent
character, who adopted, at different periods
of his life, the most various, but at all times
the most decisive and systematic, as well as
daring and extreme opinions. This extra
ordinary man became, after some struggles,
the chief Doctor, and for ages almost the
sole oracle, of the Latin church. It hap
pened by a singular accident, that the School
men of the twelfth century, who adopted his
theology, instead of borrowing their defen
sive weapons from Plato, the favourite of
their master, had recourse for the exposition
and maintenance of their doctrines to the
writings of Aristotle, the least pious of phi
losophical theists. The Augustinian doc
trines of original sin, predestination, and
grace, little known to the earlier Christian
writers, who appear indeed to have adopted
opposite and milder opinions, were espoused
by Augustin himself in his old age ; when,
by a violent swing from his youthful Mani-
cheism, which divided the sovereignly of
the world between two adverse beings, he
did not shrink, in his pious solicitude for
tracing the power of God in all events, from
presenting the most mysterious parts of the
moral government of the Universe, in their
darkest colours and their sternest shape, as
articles of faith, the objects of the habitual
meditation and practical assent of mankind.
The principles of his rigorous system, though
not with all their legitimate consequences,
were taught in the schools ; respectfully pro-
mulerated rather than much inculcated by
the Western Church (for in the East these
opinions seem to have been unknown);
scarcely perhaps distinctly assented to 'by
the majority of the clergy: and seldom
heard of by laymen till the systematic ge
nius and fervid eloquence of Calvin ren
dered them a popular creed in the most
devout and moral portion of the Christian
world. Anselm,f the Piedmontese Arch
bishop of Canterbury, was the earliest re-
See Note B. t Born, 1033 ; died, 1109.
viver of the Augustinian opinions. Aquinas*
was their most redoubted champion. To
them, however, the latter joined others of a
different spirit. Faith, according to him,
was a virtue, not in the sense in which it
denotes the things believed, but in that in
which it signifies the state of mind which
leads to right Belief. Goodness he regarded
as the moving principle of the Divine Gov
ernment ; Justice, as a modification of Good
ness ; and, with all his zeal to magnify the
Sovereignity of God, he yet taught, that
though God always wills what is just, no
thing is just solely because He wills it.
Scotus,t the most subtile of doctors, recoils
from the Augustinian rigour, though he ra
ther intimates than avows his doubts. He
was assailed for his tendency towards the
Pelagian or Anti-Augustinian doctrines by
many opponents, of whom the most famous
in his own time was Thomas Bradwardine,J
Archbishop of Canterbury, formerly confes
sor of Edward III., whose defence of Pre
destination was among the most noted works
of that age. He revived the principles of
the ancient philosophers, who, from Plato
to Marcus Aurelius, taught that error of
judgment, being involuntary, is not the
proper subject of moral disapprobation ;
which indeed is implied in Aquinas' ac
count of Faith. § But he appears to have
been the first whose language inclined to
wards that most pernicious of moral here
sies, which represents Morality to be found
ed on Will.ll
William of Ockham, the most justly cele
brated of English Schoolmen, went so far
beyond this inclination of his master, as to
affirm, that (%'if God had commanded his
creatures to hate Himself, the hatred of God
would ever be the duty of man;" — a mon
strous hyperbole, into which he was perhaps
betrayed by his denial of the doctrine of
general ideas, the pre-existence of which in
the Eternal Intellect was commonly regarded
as the foundation of the immutable nature of
Morality. This doctrine of Ockham, which
by necessary implication refuses moral attri
butes to the Deity, and contradicts the ex
istence of a moral government, is practically
* Born, 1224 ; died, 1274. See Note C.
t Born about 1265 ; died at Cologne (where his
grave is still shown) in 1308. Whether he was
a native of Dunston in Northumberland, or of
Dunse in Berwickshire, or of Down in Ireland,
was a question long and warmly contested, but
which seems to be settled by his biographer, Luke
Wadding, who quotes a passage of Scotus' Com
mentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, where he
illustrates his author thus: "As in the defini
tion of St. Francis, or St. Patrick, man is ne
cessarily presupposed." Scott. Op. i. 3. As Sco
tus was a Franciscan, the mention of St. Patrick
seems to show that he was an Irishman. See
Note D.
t Born about 1290; died 1349; the contempo
rary of Chaucer, and probably a fellow-student
of WiclirTe and Roger Bacon. His principal
work was entitled, ' De Causa Dei contra Pela-
gium, et de Virtute Causarum, Libri tres.'
$ See Notfe E. II See Note F.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 107
equivalent to atheism.* As all devotional
feelings have moral qualities for their sole
object ; as no being can inspire love or rever
ence otherwise than by those qualities which
are naturally amiable or venerable, this doc
trine would, if men were consistent, extin
guish piety, or, in other words, annihilate
Religion. Yet so astonishing are the contra
dictions of human nature, that this most im
pious of all opinions probably originated in
a pious solicitude to magnify the Sovereignty
of God, and to exalt His authority even above
His own goodness. Hence we may under
stand its adoption by John Gerson, the oracle
of the Council of Constance, and the great
opponent of the spiritual monarchy of the
Pope, — a pious mystic, who placed religion
in devout feeling. t In further explanation,
it may be added, that Gerson was of the
sect of the Nominalists, of which Ockham
was the founder, and that he was the more
ready to follow his master, because they
both courageously maintained the indepen
dence of the State on the Church, and the
authority of the Church over the Pope. The
general opinion of the schools was, however,
that of Aquinas, who, from the native sound
ness of his own understanding, as well as
from the excellent example of Aristotle, was
averse from all rash and extreme dogmas on
questions which had any relation, however
distant, to the duties of life.
It is very remarkable, though hitherto un
observed, that Aquinas anticipated those
controversies respecting perfect disinterest
edness in the religious affections which oc
cupied the most illustrious members of his
communion}' four hundred years after his
death ; and that he discussed the like ques
tion respecting the other affections of human
nature with a fulness and clearness, an ex
actness of distinction, and a justness of
determination, scarcely surpassed by the
most acute of modern philosophers. § It
ought to be added, that, according to the
most natural and reasonable construction of
his words, he allowed to the Church a con
trol only over spiritual concerns, and recog
nised the supremacy of the civil powers in
all temporal affairs. II
It has already been stated that the scho
lastic system was a collection of dialectical
subtilties, contrived for the support of the
* A passage to this effect, from Ockham, with
nearly the same remark, has, since the text was
written, been discovered on a reperusal of Cud-
worth's Immutable Morality, p. 10.
t " Remitto ad quod Occam de hac materia in
Lib. Sentent. dicit, in qua explicatione si rudis
judicetur, nescio quid appellabitur subtilitas."— De
Vita Spirit. Op. iii. 14
t Bossuet and Fenelon.
$ See Aquinas. — " Utrum Deus sit super omnia
-diligendus ex caritate."— " Utrum in dilectione
Dei possit haberi respectus ad aliquam merce-
<Jem."— Opera, ix. 322, 325. Some illustrations
of this memorable anticipation, which has escaped
the research even of the industrious Tenneman,
will be found in the Note G.
II See Note H.
corrupted Christianity of that age, by a suc
cession of divines, whose extraordinary pow
ers of distinction and reasoning were mor
bidly enlarged in the long meditation of the
Cloister, by the exclusion of every other
pursuit, and the consequent palsy of every
other faculty ; — who were cut off from all
the materials on which the mind can operate,
and doomed for ever to toil in defence of
what they must never dare to examine ; — to
whom their age and their condition denied
the means of acquiring literature, of observ
ing Nature, or of studying mankind. The
few in whom any portion of imagination and
sensibility survived this discipline, retired
from the noise of debate, to the contem
plation of pure and beautiful visions. They
were called Mystics. The greater part, dri
ven back on themselves, had no better em
ployment than to weave cobwebs out of the
terms of art which they had vainly, though
ingeniously, multiplied. The institution of
clerical celibacy, originating in an enthusi
astic pursuit of Purity, promoted by a mis
take in moral prudence, which aimed at
raising religious teachers in the esteem of
their fellows, and at concentrating their whole
minds on professional duties, at last encour
aged by the ambitious policy of the See of
Rome, which was desirous of detaching
them from all ties but her own, had the
effect of shutting up all the avenues which
Providence has opened for the entrance of
social affection and virtuous feeling into the
human heart. Though this institution per
haps prevented Knowledge from becoming
once more the exclusive inheritance of a
sacerdotal caste ; though the rise of innumer
able laymen, of the lowest condition, to the
highest dignities of the Church, was the
grand democratical principle of the Middle
Age, and one of the most powerful agents in
impelling mankind towards a better order;
yet celibacy must be considered as one of
the peculiar infelicities of these secluded
philosophers; not only as it abridged their
happiness, nor even solely, though chiefly, as
it excluded them from the school in which
the heart is humanized, but also (an inferior
consideration, but more pertinent to our pre
sent purpose) because the extinction of these
moral feelings was as much a subtraction
from the moralist's store of facts and means
of knowledge, as the loss of sight or of touch
could prove to those of the naturalist.
Neither let it be thought that to have been
destitute of Letters was to them no more
than a want of an ornament and a curtail
ment of gratification. Every poem, every
history, every oration, every picture, every
statue, is an experiment on human feeling,
— the grand object of investigation by the
moralist. Every work of genius in every
department of ingenious Art and polite Lite
rature, in proportion to the extent and dura
tion of its sway over the Spirits of men, is
a repository of ethical facts, of which the
moral philosopher cannot be cleprived by his
own insensibility, or by the iniquity of the
108
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
times, without being robbed of the most pre
cious instruments and invaluable materials
of his science. Moreover, Letters, which
are closer to human feeling than Science can
ever be, have another influence on the sen
timents with which the sciences are viewed,
on the activity with which they are pursued,
on the safety with which they are preserved,
and even on the mode and spirit in which
they are cultivated : they are the channels
by which ethical science has a constant in
tercourse with general feeling. As the arts
called useful maintain the popular honour of
physical knowledg'e, so polite Letters allure
the world into the neighbourhood of the
sciences of Mind and of Morals. Whenever
the agreeable vehicles of Literature do not
convey their doctrines to the public, they
are liable to be interrupted by the dispersion
of a handful of recluse doctors, and the over
throw of their barren and unlamented se
minaries. Nor is this all : these sciences
themselves suffer as much when they are
thus released from the curb of common
sense and natural feeling, as the public loses
by the want of those aids to right practice
which moral knowledge in its sound state is
qualified to afford. The necessity of being
intelligible, at least to all persons who join
superior understanding to habits of reflec
tion, and who are themselves in constant
communication with the far wider circle of
intelligent and judicious men, which slowly
but surely forms general opinion, is the only
effectual check on the natural proneness of
metaphysical speculations to degenerate into
gaudy dreams, or a mere war of words. The
disputants who are set free from the whole
some check of sense and feeling, generally car
ry their dogmatism so far as to rouse the scep
tic, who from time to time is provoked to look
into the flimsiness of their cobwebs, and rush
es in with his besom to sweep them, and their
systems, into oblivion. It is true, that Lite
rature, which thus draws forth Moral Science
from the schools into the world, and recalls
her from thorny distinctions to her natural
alliance with the intellect and sentiments of
mankind, may, in ages and nations other
wise situated, produce the contrary evil of
rendering Ethics shallow, declamatory, and
inconsistent. Europe at this moment affords,
in different countries, specimens of these
opposite and alike-mischievous extremes.
But we are now concerned only with the
temptations and errors of the scholastic age.
We ought not so much to wonder at the
mistakes of men so situated, as that they,
without the restraints of the general under
standing, and with the clogs of system and
establishment, should in so many instances
have opened questions untouched by the
more unfettered Ancients, and veins of spe
culation since mistakenly supposed to have
been first explored in more modern times.
Scarcely any metaphysical controversy agi
tated among recent philosophers was un
known to the Schoolmen, unless we except
that which relates to Liberty and Necessity,
and this would be an exception of doubtful
propriety ; for the disposition to it is clearly-
discoverable in the disputes of the Thomists
and Scotists respecting the Augustinian and
Pelagian doctrines,* although they were re
strained from the avowal of legitimate con
sequences on either side by the theological
authority which both parties acknowledged.
The Scotists steadily affirmed the blameless-
ness of erroneous opinion ; a principle which
is the only effectual security for conscien
tious inquiry, for mutual kindness, arid for
public quiet. The controversy between the
Nominalists and Realists, treated by some
modern writers as an example of barbarous
wrangling, was in truth an anticipation of
that modern dispute which still. divides meta
physicians, — Whether the human mind can
form, general ideas, or Whether the words
which are supposed to convey such ideas be
not terms, representing only a number of
particular perceptions'? — questions so far
from frivolous, that they deeply concern
both the nature of reasoning and the struc
ture of language • on which Hobbes, Berkeley,
Hume, Stewart, and Tooke, have followed
the Nominalist; and Descartes, Locke, Reid,
and Kant have, with various modifications
and some inconsistencies, adopted the doc
trine of the Realists. f With the Schoolmen
appears to have originated the form, though
not the substance, of the celebrated' maxim,
which, whether true or false, is pregnant
with systems, — "There is nothing in the
Understanding which was not before in the
Senses." Ockham}: the Nominalist first de
nied the Peripatetic doctrine of the exist
ence of certain species (since the time of
Descartes called "ideas") as the direct ob
jects of perception and thought, interposed
between the mind and outward objects j the
modern opposition to which by Dr. Reid has
been supposed to justify the allotment of so
high a station to that respectable philosopher.
He taught also that we know nothing of
Mind but its acts, of which we are conscious.
More inclination towards an independent
philosophy is to be traced among the School
men than might' be expected from their cir
cumstances. Those who follow two guides
will sometimes choose for themselves, and
may prefer the subordinate one on some oc
casions. Aristotle rivalled the Church j and
the Church herself safely allowed consider-
* See Note I.
t Locke speaks on this subject inconsistently ;
Reid calls himself a conceptualist ; Kant uses
terms so different, that he ought perhaps to be
considered as of neither party. Leibnitz, varying
in some measure from the general spirit of his
speculations, warmly panegyrizes the Nominalists:
" Secta Nominalium, omnium inter scholasticos
profundissima, et hodiernaB reformats philosoph-
andi rationi congruentissima."— Op. iv. 59.
t " Maximi vir ingenii, et eruditionis pro illo
aevo siimmae, Wilhelmus Occam, Anglus." Ib. 60.
The writings of Ockham, which are very rare, I
have never seen. I owe my knowledge of them
to Tennemann, who however quotes the words
of Ockham, and of his disciple Biel.
-
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 109
able latitude to the philosophical reasonings
of those who were only heard or read in
colleges or cloisters, on condition that they
neither impugned her authority, nor dis
sented from her worship, nor departed from
the language of her creeds. The Nominalists
were a freethinking sect, who, notwithstand
ing their defence of kings against the Court
of Rome, were persecuted by the civil power.
It should not be forgotten that Luther was a
Nominalist.*'
If not more remarkable, it is more perti
nent to our purpose, that the ethical system
of the Schoolmen, or, to speak more proper
ly, of Aquinas, as the Moral Master of Chris
tendom for three centuries, was in its practi
cal part so excellent as to leave little need
of extensive change, with the inevitable ex
ception of the connection of his religious
opinions with his precepts and counsels.
His Rule of Life is neither lax nor impracti
cable. His grounds of duty are solely laid
in the nature of man, and in the well-being
of society. Such an intruder as Subtilty sel
dom strays into his moral instructions. With
a most imperfect knowledge of the Peripa
tetic writings, he came near the Great Mas
ter, by abstaining, in practical philosophy,
from the unsuitable exercise of that faculty
of distinction, in which he would probably
have shown that he was little inferior to
Aristotle, if he had been equally unrestrained.
His very frequent coincidence with modern
moralists is doubtless to be ascribed chiefly
to the nature of the subject ] but in part also
to that unbroken succession of teachers and
writers, which preserved the observations
contained in what had been long the text
book of the European Schools, after the books
themselves had been for ages banished and
forgotten. The praises bestowed on Aquinas
by every one of the few great men who ap
pear to have examined his writings since the
downfal of his • power, among whom may
be mentioned Erasmus, Grotius, and Leib
nitz, are chiefly, though not solely, referable
to his ethical works. t
Though the Schoolmen had thus anticipa
ted many modern controversies of a properly
metaphysical sort, they left untouched most
of those questions of ethical theory which
were unknown to, or neglected by, the An
cients. They do not appear to have discri-
jninated between the nature of moral senti
ments, and the criterion of moral acts: to
have considered to what faculty of our mind
moral approbation is referable ; or to have
inquired whether our Moral Faculty, what
ever it may be, is implanted or acquired.
Those who measure only by palpable results,
have very consistently regarded the meta
physical and theological controversies of the
Schools as a mere waste of intellectual
* " In Martini Ltnheri scriptis prioribus amor
Nominalium satis elucet, donee precedents tem-
pore erga omnes monachos aequaliter affectus esse
coepit."— Leibnitz, Opp. iv. 60.
t See especially the excellent Preface of Leib
nitz to Nizolius, § 37.— Ib. 59.
power. But the contemplation of the athletic
vigour and versatile skill manifested by the
European understanding, at the moment
when it emerged from this tedious and rug
ged discipline, leads, if not to approbation,
yet to more qualified censure. What might
have been the result of a different combina-
nation of circumstances, is an inquiry which,
on a large scale, is beyond human power.
We may, however, venture to say that no
abstract science, unconnected with Religion,
is likely to be respected in a barbarous age ;
and we may be allowed to doubt whether
any knowledge dependent directly on expe
rience and applicable to immediate practice,
would have so trained the European mind
as to qualify it for that series of inventions,
and discoveries, and institutions, which be
gins with the sixteenth century, and of which
no end can now be foreseen but the extinction
of the race of man.
The fifteenth century was occupied by the
disputes of the Realists with the Nominalists,
in which the scholastic doctrine expired.
After its close no Schoolman of note appear
ed. The sixteenth may be considered as
the age of transition from the scholastic to
the modern philosophy. The former, indeed,
retained possession of the Universities, and
was long after distinguished by all the en
signs of authority, But the mines were al
ready prepared : the revolution in Opinion
had commenced. The moral writings of the
preceding times had generally been com
mentaries on that part of the Summa Theo
logies of Aquinas which relates to Ethics.
Though these still continued to be published,
yet the most remarkable moralists of the six
teenth century indicated the approach of
other modes of thinking, by the adoption of
the more independent titles of " Treatises on
Justice" and "Law." These titles were
suggested, and the spirit, contents, and style
of the writings themselves were materially
affected by the improved cultivation of the
Roman law, by the renewed study of ancient
literature, and by the revival of various sys
tems of Greek philosophy, now studied in the
original, which at once mitigated and rival
led the scholastic doctors, and while they
rendered philosophy more free, re-opened
its communications with society and affairs.
The speculative theology which had arisen
under the French governments of Paris and
London in the twelfth century, which flour
ished in the thirteenth in Italy in the hands
of Aquinas, which was advanced in the
British Islands by Scotus and Ockham in the
fourteenth, was, in the sixteenth, with una
bated acuteness, but with a clearness and
elegance unknown before the restoration of
Letters, cultivated by Spain, in that age the
most powerful and magnificent of the Euro
pean nations.
Many of these writers treated the law of
war and the practice of hostilities in a juridi
cal form.* Francis Victoria, who began to
* Many of the separate dissertations, on points of
this nature, are contained in the immense coilec-
K
110
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
teach at Valladolid in 1525, is said to have
first expounded the doctrines of the Schools
in the language of the age of Leo the Tenth.
Dominic Soto,* a Dominican, the confessor
of Charles V., and the oracle of the Council
of Trent, to whom that assembly were in
debted for much of the precision and even
elegance for which their doctrinal decrees
are not unjustly commended, dedicated his
Treatise on Justice and Law to Don Carlos,
in terms of praise which, used by a writer
who is said to have declined the high dig
nities of the Church, led us to hope that he
was unacquainted with the brutish vices of
that wretched prince. It is a concise and not
inelegant compound of the Scholastic Ethics,
which continued to be of considerable au
thority for more than a century. t Both he
and his master Victoria deserve to be had in
everlasting remembrance, for the part which
they took on behalf of the natives of America
and of Africa, against the rapacity and cruelty
of the Spaniards. Victoria pronounced war
against the Americans for their vices, or for
their paganism, to be unjust. t Soto was the
authority chiefly consulted by Charles V., on
occasion of the conference held before him
at Valladolid, in 1542, between Sepulveda,
an advocate of the Spanish colonists, and Las
Casas, the champion of the unhappy Ameri
cans, of which the result was a very imper
fect edict of reformation in 1543. This,
though it contained little more than a recog
nition of the principle of justice, almost ex
cited a rebellion in Mexico. Sepulveda, a
scholar and a reasoner, advanced many max
ims which were specious and in themselves
reasonable, but which practically tended to
defeat even the scanty and almost illusive
reform which ensued. Las Casas was a
passionate missionary, whose zeal, kindled
by the long and near contemplation of
cruelty, prompted him to exaggerations of
fact and argument $ yet, with all its errors,
it afforded the only hope of preserving the
tion entitled " Tractatus Tractatuum," published
at Venice in 1584, under the patronage of the Ro
man Sea There are three De Bello ; one by Lu
pus of Segovia, when Francis I. was prisoner in
Spain ; another, more celebrated, by Francis
Arias, who, on the llth June, 1532, discussed be
fore the College of Cardinals the legitimacy of a
war by the Emperor against the Pope. There
are two De Pace ; and others De Potestate Re-
gia, De Pcena Mortis, &c. The most ancient and
scholastic is that of J. de Lignano of Milan, De
Bello. The, above writers are mentioned in the
prolegomena to Grotius, De Jure Belli. Pietro
Belloni, Counsellor of the Duke of Savoy (De Re
Militari), treats his subject with the minuteness of
a Judge-Advocate, and has more modern exam
ples, chiefly Italian, than Grotius.
* Born, 1494 ; died, 1560.— Antonii Bib. Hisp.
Nov. The opinion of the extent of Soto's know
ledge entertained by his contemporaries is express
ed in a jingle, Qui scit Sotum scit totum.
t See Note K.
\ " Indis non debere auferri imperium, idep quia
sunt peccatores, vel ideo quia non sunt Christiani,"
were the words of Victoria.
§ See Note L.
natives of America from extirpation. The
opinion of Soto could not fail to be conform
able to his excellent principle, that u there
can be no difference between Christians and
pagans, for the law of nations is equal to all
nations."* To Soto belongs the signal hon
our of being the first writer who condemned
the African slave-trade. '-It is affirmed,'7
says he, "that the unhappy Ethiopians are
by fraud or force carried away and sold as
slaves. If this is true, neither those who
have taken them, nor those who purchased
them, nor those who hold them in bondage,
can ever have a quiet conscience till they
emancipate them, even if no compensation
should be obtained."! As the work which
contains this memorable condemnation of
man-stealing and slavery was the substance
of lectures for many years delivered at Sala
manca, Philosophy and Religion appear, by
the hand of their faithful minister, to have
thus smitten the monsters in their earliest in
fancy. It is hard for any man of the present
age to conceive the praise which is due to the
excellent monks who courageously asserted
the rights of those whom they never saw,
against the prejudices of their order; the
supposed interest of their religion, the am
bition of their government, the avarice and
pride of their countrymen, and the prevalent
opinions of their time.
Francis Suarez,t a Jesuit, whose volumi
nous works amount to twenty-four volumes
in folio, closes the list of writers of his class.
His work on Laws and on God the Lawgiver,
may be added to the above treatise of Soto,
as exhibiting the most accessible and per
spicuous abridgment of the theological phi
losophy in its latest form. Grotius, who.
though he was the most upright and candid
of men, could not have praised a Spanish
Jesuit beyond his deserts, calls tSuarez the
most acute of philosophers and divines. §
On a practical matter, which may be natu
rally mentioned here, though in strict method
it belongs to another subject, the merit of
Suarez is conspicuous. He first saw that in
ternational law was composed not only of
the simple principles of justice applied to
the intercourse between states, but of those
usages, long observed in that intercourse
by the European race, which have since
been more exactly distinguished as the con
suetudinary law acknowledged by the Chris
tian nations of Europe and America. II On
* " Neque discrepantia (ut reor) est inter Chris-
tianos et infideles, quoriiam jus gentium cunctis
gentibus aequale est."
t De Just, et Jure, lib. iv. quaest. ii. art. 2.
± Born, 1538; died, 1617.
§ ' ' Tantag subtilitatis philosophum et theplogum,
utvix quemquam habeat parem." — Grotii Epist.
apud Anton. Bib. Hipp. Nov.
II " Nunquam enim civitates sunt sibi tarn suffi-
cientes quin indigeant mutuo juvamine et socie-
tate, interdum ad majorem utilitatem, interdum
ob necessitatem moralem. Hac igitnr ratione in
digent aliquo jure quo dirigantur et recte ordinen-
tur in hoc genere societatis. Et quamvis magna
ex parte hoc fiat per rationem naturalem, non
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. in
this important point his views are more clear
than those of his contemporary Alberico
Gentili.* It must even be owned, that the
succeeding intimation of the same general
doctrine by Grotius is somewhat more dark.
— perhaps from his excessive pursuit of con
cise diction. t
SECTION IV.
MODERN ETHICS.
GR OTIUS — HOBBES .
THE introduction to the great work of
Grotius,i composed in the first years of his
exile, and published at Paris in 1625, con
tains the most clear and authentic statement
of the general principles of Morals prevalent
in Christendom after the close of the Schools,
and before the writings of Hobbes had given
rise to those ethical controversies which
more peculiarly belong to modern times.
That he may lay down the fundamental
principles of Ethics, he introduces Carneades
on the stage as denying altogether the reality
of moral distinctions ; teaching that law and
morality are contrived by powerful men for
their own interest j that they vary in differ
ent countries, and change in successive ages ;
that there can be no natural law, since Na
ture leads men as well as other animals to
prefer their own interest to every other ob
ject j that, therefore, there is either no jus
tice, or if there be, it is another name for the
height of folly, inasmuch as it is a fond at
tempt to persuade a human being to injure
himself for the unnatural purpose of bene-
fitting his fellow-men. § To this Grotius an
swered, that even inferior animals, under the
powerful, though transient, impulse of pa
rental love, prefer their young to their own
safety or life ; that gleams of compassion,
and, he might have added, of gratitude and
indignation, appear in the human infant long
before the age of moral discipline ; that man
at the period of maturity is a social animal,
who delights in the society of his fellow-
creatures for its own sake, independently of
the help and accommodation which it yields ;
that he is a reasonable being, capable of
framing and pursuing general rules of con
duct, of which he discerns that the observ
ance contributes to a regular, quiet, and
happy intercourse between all the members
tamen sufficienter et immediate qtioad omnia,
ideoque specialia jura poter ant usu earundem gen
tium introduci." — De Leg., lib. ii. cap. ii.
* Born in the March of Ancona, 1550 ; died at
London, 1608.
t De Jur. Bell, lib. i. cap. i. § 14.
\ Prolegomena. His letter to Vossius, of 1st
August. 1625, determines the exact period of the
publication of this famous work. — Epist. 74.
$ The same commonplace paradoxes were re
tailed by the Sophists, whom Socrates is intro
duced as chastising in the Dialogues of Plato.
They were common enough to be put by the
Historian into the mouth of an ambassador in a
public speech. 'Avcfy/ 31 tvpawut » TTOKU dp^w *X,oi><ry
Thucyd. lib. vi. cap. 85'.
o n
of the community ; and that from these con
siderations all the precepts of Morality, and
all the commands and prohibitions of just
Law, may be derived by impartial Reason.
"And these principles/' says the pious phi
losopher, " would have their weight, even if
it were to be granted (which could not be
conceded without the highest impiety) that
there is no God, or that He exercises no
moral government over human affairs."* —
c< Natural law is the dictate of right Reason,
pronouncing that there is in some actions a
moral obligation, and in other actions a
moral deformity, arising from their respect
ive suitableness or repugnance to the rea
sonable and social nature ; and that conse
quently such acts are either forbidden or
enjoined by God, the Author of Nature. —
Actions which are the subject of this exer
tion of Reason, are in themselves lawful or
unlawful, and are therefore, as such, neces
sarily commanded or prohibited by God."
Such was the state of opinion respecting
the first principles of the moral sciences,
when, after an imprisonment of a thousand
years in the Cloister, they began once more
to hold intercourse with the general under
standing of mankind. It will be seen in the
laxity and confusion, as well as in the pru
dence and purity of this exposition, that
some part of the method and precision of
the Schools was lost with their endless sub-
tilties and their barbarous language. It is
manifest that the latter paragraph is a pro
position, — not, what it affects to be, a defini
tion; that as a proposition it contains too
m^y terms very necessary to be defined;
that the purpose of the excellent writer is
not so much to lay down a first principle of
Morals, as to exert his unmatched power
of saying much in few words, in order to
assemble within the smallest compass the
most weighty inducements, and the most ef
fectual persuasions to well-doing.
This was the condition in which ethical
theory was found by Hobbes, with whom the
present Dissertation should have commenced,
if it had been possible to state modern con
troversies in a satisfactory manner, without
a retros
which tney
spect of the revolutions in Opinion fi
they in some measure flowed.
rom
HOBBES. t
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury may 1
numbered among those eminent persons bo
* " Et hose quidem locum aliquem haberent,
etiamsi daretur (quod sine summo scelere dari ne-
quit) non esse Deum, aut non curari ab eo negotia
humana."— Proleg. 11. And in another place,
" Jus naturale est dictatum recta? rationis, indicans
actui alicui, ex ejus convenientia aut disconvenien-
tia cum ipsa natura rational! et sociali, inesse mora-
lem turpitudinem aut necessitatem, moralem, ac
consequenter ab auctore naturae Deo talem actum
autvetari aut pra?cipi." " Actus de quibus tale
exstat dictatum, debiti sunt aut illiciti per se, at-
que ideo a Deo necessario pracepti aut vetiti in
telliguntur."— De Jur. Bell. Jib. i. cap. i. § 10.
t Born, 1588 ; died 1679.
112
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
in the latter half of the sixteenth century,
who gave a new character to European phi
losophy, in the succeeding age.* He was
one of the late writers and late learners. It
was not till he was nearly thirty that he sup
plied the defects of his early education, by
classical studies so successfully prosecuted,
that he wrote well in the Latin then used by
his scientific contemporaries ; and made such
proficiency in Greek as, in his earliest work,
the Translation of Thucydides, published
when he was forty, to afford a specimen of
a version still valued for its remarkable fide
lity, though written with a stiffness and con
straint very opposite to the masterly facility
-of his original compositions. It was after
forty that he learned the first rudiments of
Geometry (so miserably defective was his
education); but yielding to the paradoxical
disposition apt to infect those who begin to
learn after the natural age of commence
ment, he exposed himself, by absurd contro
versies with the masters of a Science which
looks down with scorn on the sophist. A
considerable portion of his mature age was
passed on the Continent, where he travelled
as tutor to two successive Earls of Devon
shire; — a family with whom he seems to
have passed near half a century of his long
life. In France his reputation, founded at
that time solely on personal intercourse, be
came so great, that his observations on the
meditations of Descartes were published in
the works of that philosopher; together with
those of Gassendi and Arnauld.t It was
about his sixtieth year that he began to^aub-
lish those philosophical writings which con
tain his peculiar opinions; — which set the
understanding of Europe into general mo
tion, and stirred up controversies among me
taphysicians and moralists, not even yet de
termined. At the age of eighty-seven he
had the boldness to publish metrical ver
sions of the Iliad and Odyssey, which the
greatness of his name, and the singularity
of the undertaking, still render objects of cu
riosity, if not of criticism.
He owed his influence to various causes ;
at the head of which may be placed that ge
nius for system, which, though it cramps the
growth of Kno wledge,? perhaps finally atones
* Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Grotius. The
writings of the first are still as delightful and won
derful as they ever were, and his authority will
have no end. Descartes forms an era in the his
tory of Metaphysics, of Physics, of Mathematics.
The controversies excited by Grotius have long
ceased, but the powerful influence of his works
•will be doubted by those only who are unac
quainted with the disputes of the seventeenth cen
tury.
t The prevalence of freethinking under Louis
XIII., to a far greater degree than it was avowed,
appears not only from the complaints of Merserme
and of Grotius, but from the disclosures of Guy
Patin ; who, in his Letters, describes his own con
versations with Gassendi and Naude, so as to
leave no doubt of their opinions.
t "Another error," says the Master of Wisdom,
"is the over-early and peremptory reduction of
knowledge into arts and methods, from which
for that mischief, by the zeal and activity
which it rouses among followers and oppo
nents, who discover truth by accident, when
in pursuit of weapons for their warfare. A
system which attempts a task so hard as
that of subjecting vast provinces of human
knowledge to one or two principles, if it pre
sents some striking instances of conformity
to superficial appearances, is sure to delight
the framer, and, for a time, to subdue and
captivate the student too entirely for sober
reflection and rigorous examination. The
evil does not, indeed, very frequently recur.
Perhaps Aristotle, Hobbes, and Kant, are the
only persons who united in the highest de
gree the great faculties of comprehension
and discrimination which compose the Genius
of System. Of the three, Aristotle alone
could throw it off where it was glaringly un
suitable ; and it is deserving of observation,
that the reign of system seems, from these
examples, progressively to shorten in pro
portion as Reason is cultivated and Know
ledge advances. But, in the first instance,
consistency passes for Truth. When prin
ciples in some instances have proved suffi
cient to give an unexpected explanation of
facts, the delighted reader is content to ac
cept as true all other deductions from the
principles. Specious premises being assum
ed to be true, nothing more can be required
than logical inference. Mathematical forms
pass current as the equivalent of mathema
tical certainty. The unwary admirer is
satisfied with the completeness and symme
try of the plan of his house, — unmindful of
the need of examining the firmness of the
foundation, and the soundness of the mate
rials. The system-maker, like the conque
ror, long dazzles and overawes the world;
but when their sway is past, the vulgar herd,
unable to measure their astonishing faculties,
take revenge by trampling on fallen great
ness.
The dogmatism of Hobbes was, however
unjustly, one of the sources of his fame. The
founders of systems deliver their novelties
with the undoubting spirit of discoverers;
and their followers are apt to be dogmatical,
because they can see nothing beyond their
own ground. It might seem incredible, if it
were not established by the experience of
all ages, that those who differ most from the
opinions of their fellow-men are most confi
dent of the truth of their own. But it com
monly requires an overweening conceit of
the superiority of a man's own judgment, to
make him espouse very singular notions;
and when he has once embraced them, they
are endeared to him by the hostility of those
whom he contemns as the prejudiced vulgar.
The temper of Hobbes must have been ori
ginally haughty. The advanced age at
which he published his obnoxious opinions,
time commonly receives small augmentation."—
Advancement of Learning, book i. " Method,"
says he, "carrying a show of total and perfect
knowledge, has a tendency to generate acquies
cence." What pregnant words !
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 113
rendered him more impatient of the acrimo
nious opposition which they necessarily pro
voked ; until at length a strong sense of the
injustice of the punishment impending over
his head, for the publication of what he be
lieved to be truth, co-operated with the pee
vishness and timidity of his years, to render
him the most imperious and morose of dog
matists. His dogmatism has indeed one
quality more offensive than that of most
others. Propositions the most adverse to the
opinions of mankind, and the most abhorrent
from their feelings, are introduced into the
course of his argument with mathematical
coldness. He presents them as demonstrated
conclusions, without deigning to explain to
his fellow-creatures how they all happened
to believe the opposite absurdities, and with
out even the compliment of once observing
how widely his discoveries were at variance
with the most ancient and universal judg
ments of the human understanding. The
same quality in Spinoza indicates a recluse's
ignorance of the world. In Hobbes it is the
arrogance of a man who knows mankind and
despises them.
A permanent foundation of his fame re
mains in his admirable style, which seems
to be the very perfection of didactic lan
guage. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his lan
guage never has more than one meaning,
which it never requires a second thought to
iind. By the help of his exact method, it
takes so firm a hold on the mind, that it will
not allow attention to slacken. His little
tract on Human Nature has scarcely an am
biguous or a needless word. He has so great
a power of always choosing the most signifi
cant term, that he never is reduced to the
poor expedient of using many in its stead.
He had so thoroughly studied the genius of
the language, and knew so well how to steer
between pedantry and vulgarity, that two
centuries have not superannuated probably
more than a dozen of his words. His ex
pressions are so luminous, that he is clear
without the help of illustration. Perhaps no
writer of any age or nation, on subjects so
abstruse, has manifested an equal power of
engraving his thoughts on the mind of his
readers. He seems never to have taken a
word for ornament or pleasure ; and he deals
with eloquence and poetry as the natural
philosopher who explains the mechanism of
children's toys, or deigns to contrive them.
Yet his style so stimulates attention, that it
never tires; and, to those who are acquainted
with the subject, appears to have as much
spirit as can be safely blended with Reason.
He compresses his thoughts so unaffectedly,
.and yet so tersely, as to produce occasionally
maxims which excite the same agreeable
surprise with wit, and have become a sort
of philosophical proverbs; — the success of
which he partly owed to the suitableness of
such forms of expression to his dictatorial
nature. His words have such an appearance
of springing from his thoughts, as to impress
on the reader a strong opinion of his origi-
15
nality, and indeed to prove that he was not
conscious of borrowing : though conversation
with Gassendi must have influenced his
mind ; and it is hard to believe that his coin
cidence with Ockham should have been
purely accidental, on points so important as
the denial of general ideas, the reference of
moral distinctions to superior power, and the
absolute thraldom of Religion under the civil
power, which he seems to have thought ne
cessary, to maintain that independence of
the State on the Church with which Ockham
had been contented.
His philosophical writings might be read
without reminding any one that the author
was more than an intellectual machine. They
never betray a feeling exce'pt that insupport
able arrogance which looks down on his fel
low-men as a lower 'species of beings ; whose
almost unanimous hostility is so far from
shaking the firmness of his conviction, or
even ruffling the calmness of his contempt,
that it appears too petty a circumstance to
require explanation, or even to merit notice.
Let it not be forgotten, that part of his re
nown depends on the application of his ad
mirable powers to expound Truth when he
meets it. This great merit is conspicuous
in that part of his treatise of Human Nature
which relates to the percipient and reasoning
faculties. It is also very remarkable in
many of his secondary principles on the sub
ject of Government and Law, which, while
the first principles are false and dangerous,
are as admirable for truth as for his accus
tomed and unrivalled propriety of expres
sion.* In many of these observations he
even shows a disposition to soften his para
doxes, and to conform to the common sense
of mankind.!
It was with perfect truth observed by my
excellent friend Mr. Stewart, that "the ethi
cal principles of Hobbes are completely in
terwoven with his political system."! He
might have said, that the whole of Hobbes'
system, moral, religious, and in part philo
sophical, depended on his political scheme ;
not indeed logically, as conclusions depend
upon premises, but (if the word may be ex
cused) psychologically, as the formation of
one opinion may be influenced by a disposi
tion to adapt it to others previously cherished.
The Translation of Thucydides, as he him-
* See De Corpore Politico, Part i. chap. ii. iii.
iv. and Leviathan, Part i. chap. xiv. xv. for re
marks of this sort, full of sagacity.
t " The laws of Nature are immutable and eter
nal ; for injustice, ingratitude, arrogance, pride,
iniquity, acception of persons, and the rest, can
never he made lawful. For it can never be that
war shall preserve life, and peace desiroy it." —
Leviathan, Part i. chap. xv. — See also Part ii. chap,
xxvi. xxviii. on Laws, and on Punishments.
\ See Encyc. Brit. i. 42. T'ne political state of,
England is indeed said by himself to have occa^
sioned his first philosophical publication.
Nascitur interea scelus execrabile belli.
Horreo spectana,
Meque ad dilectam confero Lutetiam,
Postque duosannosedo De Give Libelhim,
K2
114
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
self boasts, \vas published to show the evils
of popular government.* Men he repre
sented as being originally equal, and having
an equal right to all things, but as being
taught by Reason to sacrifice this right for
the advantages of peace, and to submit to a
common authority, which can preserve quiet,
only by being the sole depositary of force,
and must therefore be absolute and unlimi
ted. The supreme authority cannot be suf
ficient for its purpose, unless it be wielded
by a single hand ; nor even then, unless his
absolute power extends over Religion, which
may prompt men to discord by the fear of an
evil greater than death. The perfect state
of a community, according to him, is where
Law prescribes the religion and morality of
the people, and where the will of an abso
lute sovereign is the sole fountain of law.
Hooker had inculcated the simple truth, that
"to live by one man's will is the cause of
many men's misery:" — Hobbes embraced
the daring paradox, that to live by one man's
will is the only means of all men's happi
ness. Having thus rendered Religion the
slave of every human tyrant, it was an una
voidable consequence, that he should be
disposed to lower her character, and lessen
her power over men ; that he should regard
atheism as the most effectual instrument of
preventing rebellion, — at least that species
of rebellion which prevailed in his time, and
had excited his alarms. The formidable
alliance of Religion with Liberty haunted
his mind, and urged him to the bold attempt
of rooting out both these mighty principles ;
which, when combined with interests and
passions, when debased by impure support,
and provoked by unjust resistance, have in
deed the power of fearfully agitating society;
but which are, nevertheless, in their own
nature, and as far as they are unmixed and
undisturbed, the parents of Justice, of Order,
of Peace, as well as the sources of those
hopes, and of those glorious aspirations after
higher excellence, which encourage and ex
alt the Soul in its passage through misery
and depravity. A Hobbist is the only con
sistent persecutor; for he alone considers
himself as bound, by whatever conscience
he has remaining, to conform to the religion
of the sovereign. He claims from others no
more than he is himself ready to yield to any
master ;t while the religionist who perse-
* The conference between the ministers from
Athens and the Melean chiefs, in the 5th book,
and the speech of Euphemus in the 6th book of
that historian, exhibit an undisguised Hobbism,
which was very dramatically put into the mouth
of Athenian statesmen at a time when, as we
learn from Plato and Aristophanes, it was preach
ed by the Sophists.
t Spinoza adopted precisely the same first prin
ciple with Hobbes, that all men have a natural
right to all things. — Tract. Theol. Pol. cap. ii. $ 3.
He even avows the absurd and detestable maxim,
that states are not bound to observe their treaties
longer than the interest or danger which first
formed the treaties continues. But on the inter
nal constitution of states he embraces opposite
opinions. Servitutis enim, non pads, interest
cutes a member of another communion) ex
acts the sacrifice of conscience and sincerity,
though professing that rather than make it
himself, he is prepared to die.
REMARKS.
The fundamental errors on which the ethi
cal system of Hobbes is built are not peculiar
to him ; though he has stated them with a
bolder precision, and placed them in a more
conspicuous station in the van of his main
force, than any other of those who have
either frankly avowed, or tacitly assumed,
them, from the beginning of speculation to
the present moment. They may be shortly
stated as follows :
1. The first arid most inveterate of these
errors is, that he does not distinguish thought
from feeling, or rather that he in express
wrords confounds them. The mere perception
of an object, according to him, differs from
the pleasure or pain which that perception
may occasion, no otherwise than as they
affect different organs of the bodily frame.
The action of the mind in perceiving or con
ceiving an object is precisely the same with
that of feeling the agreeable or disagreeable.*
The necessary result of this original confu
sion is, to extend the laws of the intellectual
part of our nature over that other part of it,
(hitherto without any adequate name,) which
feels, and desires, and loves, and hopes, and
wills. In consequence of this long' confu
sion, or want of distinction, it has happened
that, while the simplest act of the merely
intellectual part has many names (such as
" sensation," "perception," "impression,"
&c.), the correspondent act of the other not
less important portion of man is not denoted
by a technical term in philosophical systems ;
nor by a convenient word in common lan
guage. " Sensation" has another more com-
omnem potestatem ad unum transferre. — (Ibid. cap.
vi. § 4.) Limited monarchy he considers as the
only tolerable example of that species of govern
ment. An aristocracy nearly approaching to the
Dutch system during the suspension of the Stadt-
holdership, he seems to prefer. He speaks favour
ably of democracy, but the chapter on that sub
ject is left unfinished. " Nulla plane templa urbi-
um sumptibus aedificanda, nee jura de opinionibus
statuenda.' ' He was the first republican atheist of
modern times, and probably the earliest irreligious
opponent of an ecclesiastical establishment.
* This doctrine is explained in his tract on Hu
man Nature, c. vii. "Conception is a motion in
some internal substance of the head, which pro
ceeding to the heart, where it helpeth the motion
there, is called pleasure; when it weakeneth or
hindereth the motion, it is called pain.'1 The
same matter is handled more cursorily, agreeably
to the practical purpose of the work, in Leviathan,
part i. chap. vi. These passages are here referred
to as proofs of the statement in the text. With
the materialism of it we have here no concern.
If the multiplied suppositions were granted, we
should not advance one step towards understand
ing what they profess to explain. The first four
words are as unmeaning as if one were to say
that greenness is very loud. It is obvious that
many motions which promote the motion of the
heart are extremely painful.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 115
mon sense ; " Emotion" is too warm for a
generic term ; " Feeling" has some degree
of the same fault, besides its liability to con
fusion with the sense of touch; "Pleasure"
and "Pain" represent only two properties
of this act, which render its repetition the
object of desire or aversion; — which last
states of mind presuppose the act. Of these
words, " Emotion" seems to be the least
objectionable, since it has no absolute double
meaning, and does not require so much vigi
lance in the choice of the accompanying
words as would be necessary if we were to
prefer " Feeling;" which, however, being a
more familiar word, may, with due caution,
be also sometimes employed. Every man
who attends to the state of his own mind
will acknowledge, that these words, " Emo
tion" and " Feeling," thus used, are per
fectly simple, and as incapable of further
explanation by words as sight and hearing ;
which may, indeed, be rendered into syno
nymous words, but never can be defined by
any more simple or more clear. Reflection
will in like manner teach that perception,
reasoning, and judgment may be conceived
to exist without being followed by emotion.
Some men hear music without gratification :
one may distinguish a taste without being
pleased or displeased by it ; or at least the
relish or disrelish is often so slight, without
lessening the distinctness of the sapid quali
ties, that the distinction of it from the per
ception cannot <be doubted.
The multiplicity of errors which have flow
ed into moral science from this original con
fusion is very great. They have spread over
many schools of philosophy ; and many of
them are prevalent to this day. Hence the
laws of the Understanding have been ap
plied to the Affections; virtuous feelings
have been considered as just reasonings ;
evil passions have been represented as mis
taken judgments ; and it has been laid down
as a principle, that the Will always follows
the last decision of the Practical Intellect.*
2. By this great error, Hobbes was led to
represent all the variety of the desires of
men, as being only so many instances of
objects deliberately and solely pursued ; be
cause they were the means, and at the time
perceived to be so, of directly or indirectly
procuring organic gratification to the indi
vidual. t The human passions are described
as if they reasoned accurately, deliberated
coolly, arid calculated exactly. It is assumed
that, in performing these operations, there is
and can be no act of life in which a man does
not bring distinctly before his eyes the plea
sure which is to accrue to himself from the
act. From this single and simple principle,
all human conduct may, according to him,
be explained and even foretold. The true
laws of this part of our nature (so totally
different from those of the percipient part)
" Vpluntas semper sequifurultimum judicium
intellect as practici."— [See Spinozae Cog. Met.
pars. ii. cap. 12. Ed.]
t See the passages before quoted.
were, by this grand mistake, entirely with
drawn from notice. Simple as the observa
tion is, it seems to have escaped not only
Hobbes, but many, perhaps most, philoso
phers, that our desires seek a great diversity
of objects ; that the attainment of these ob
jects is indeed followed by, or rather called
" Pleasure ;" but that it could not be so, if
the objects had not been previously desired.
Many besides him have really represented
self as the ultimate object of every action : but
none ever so hardily thrust forward the selfish
system in its harshest and coarsest shape.
The mastery which he shows over other
metaphysical subjects, forsakes him on this.
He does not scruple, for the sake of this
system, to distort facts of which all men are
conscious, and to do violence to the language
in wrhich the result of their uniform expe
rience is conveyed. "Acknowledgment of
power is called Honour."'* His explana
tions are frequently sufficient confutations of
the doctrine which required them. "Pity
is the imagination of future calamity to our
selves, proceeding from the sense (observa
tion) of another man's calamity." " Laugh
ter is occasioned by sudden glory in our
eminence, or in comparison with the infirmity
of others." Every man who ever wept or
laughed, may determine whether this be a
true account of the state of his mind on either
occasion. "Love is a conception of his
need of the one person desired ;" — a defini
tion of Love, which, as it excludes kindness,
might perfectly well comprehend the hun
ger of a cannibal, provided that it were not
too ravenous to exclude choice. "Good
will, or charity, which containeth the natu
ral affection of parents to their children, con
sists in a man's conception that he is able
not only to accomplish his own desires, but
to assist other men in theirs:" from which
it follows, as the pride of power is felt in
destroying as well as in saving men, that
cruelty and kindness are the same passion. t
Such were the expedients to which a man
of the highest class of understanding was
driven, in order to evade the admission of
the simple and evident truth, that there are
in our nature perfectly disinterested pas
sions, which seek the well-being of others
as their object and end, without looking be
yond it to self, or pleasure, or happiness. A
proposition, from which such a man could
attempt to escape only by such means, may
be strongly presumed to be true.
3. Hobbes having thus struck the affec
tions out of his map of human nature, and
having totally misunderstood (as will appear
* Human Nature, chap. viii. The ridiculous
explanation of the admiration of personal beauty,
" as a sign of power generative," shows the diffi
culties to which this extraordinary man was re
duced by a false system.
t Ibid. chap. ix. I forbear to quote the passage
on Platonic love, which immediately follows : but,
considering Hobbes' blameless and honourable
character, that passage is perhaps the most re
markable instance of the shifts to which his self
ish system reduced him.
116
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
in a succeeding part of this Dissertation) the
nature even of the appetites, it is no wonder
that we should find in it not a trace of the
moral sentiments. Moral Good* he consi
ders merely as consisting in the signs of a
power to produce pleasure ; and repentance
is no more than regret at having missed the
way: so that, according to this system, a
disinterested approbation of, and reverence
for Virtue, are no more possible than disin
terested affections towards our fellow-crea
tures. There is no sense of duty, no com
punction for our own offences, no indignation
against the crimes of others, — unless they
affect our own safety ; — no secret cheerful
ness shed over the heart by the practice of
well-doing. From his philosophical writings
it would be impossible to conclude that there
are in man a set of emotions, desires, and
aversions, of which the sole and final objects
are the voluntary actions and habitual dispo
sitions of himself and of all other voluntary
agents; which are properly called "moral
sentiments;7' arid which, though they vary
more in degree, and depend more on culti
vation, than some other parts of human na
ture, are as seldom as most of them found
to be entirely wanting.
4. A theory of Man which comprehends
in its explanations neither the social affec
tion Sj nor the moral sentiments, must be
owned to be sufficiently defective. It is a
consequence, or rather a modification of it,
that Hobbes should constantly represent the
deliberate regard to personal advantage, as
the only possible motive of human action ;
and that ke should altogether disdain to avail
himself of those refinements of the selfish
scheme which allow the pleasures of bene
volence and of morality, themselves, to be a
most important part of that interest which
reasonable beings pursue.
5. Lastly, though Hobbes does in effect
acknowledge the necessity of Morals to so
ciety, and the general coincidence of indivi
dual with public interest — truths so palpable
that they have never been excluded from
any ethical system, he betrays his utter want
of moral sensibility by the coarse arid odious
form in which he has presented the first of
these great principles ; and his view of both
leads him most strongly to support that com
mon and pernicious error of moral reasoners,
that a perception of the tendency of good
actions to preserve the being and promote
the well-being of the community, and a sense
of the dependence of our own happiness
upon the general security, either are essen
tial constituents of our moral feelings, or are
ordinarily mingled with the most effectual
motives to right conduct.
The court of Charles II. were equally
pleased with Hobbes' poignant brevity, and
his low estimate of human motives. His
othical epigrams became the current coin of
* Which he calls the " pulchrum," for want, as
he says, of an English word to express it. — Levia
than, part, i. c. vi.
profligate wits. Sheffield, Duke of Buck
inghamshire, who represented the class still
more perfectly in his morals than in his fa
culties, has expressed their opinion in verses,
of which one line is good enough to be
quoted :
" Fame bears no fruit till the vain planter dies."
Dryden speaks of the "philosopher and poet
(for such is the condescending term employ
ed) of Malmesbury," as resembling Lucre
tius in haughtiness. But Lucretius, though
he held many of the opinions of Hobbes,
had the sensibility as well as genius of a
poet. His dogmatism is full of enthusiasm ;
and his philosophical theory of society dis
covers occasionally as much tenderness as
can be shown without reference to indivi
duals. He was a Hobbist in only half his
nature.
The moral and political system of Hobbes
was a palace of ice. transparent, exactly
proportioned, majestic, admired by the un
wary as a delightful dwelling; but gradually
undermined by the central warmth of human
feeling, before it was thawed into muddy
water by the sunshine of true Philosophy.
When Leibnitz, in the beginning of the
eighteenth century, reviewed the moral wri
ters of modern times, his penetrating eye
saw only two who were capable of reducing
Morals and Jurisprudence to a science. "So
great an enterprise," says he. " might have
been executed by the deep-searching genius
of Hobbes, if he had not set out from evil
principles; or by the judgment and learning
of the incomparable Grotius, if his powers
had not been scattered over many subjects,
and his mind distracted by the cares of an
agitated life."* Perhaps in this estimate,
admiration of the various and excellent quali
ties of Grotius may have overrated his purely
philosophical powers, great as they unques
tionably were. Certainly the failure of
Hobbes was owing to no inferiority in strength
of intellect. Probably his fundamental er
rors may be imputed, in part, to the faintness
of his moral sensibilities, insufficient to make
him familiar with those sentiments and affec
tions which can be known only by being
felt; — a faintness perfectly compatible with
his irreproachable life, but which obstructed,
and at last obliterated, the only channel
through which the most important materials
of ethical science enter into the mind.
Against Hobbes, says Warburton. the
whole Church militant took up arms. The
answers to the Leviathan would form a
library. But the far greater part would have
followed the fate of all controversial pamph
lets. Sir Robert Filmer was jealous of any
rival theory of servitude : Harrington defend
ed Liberty, and Clarendon the Church, against
* " Et tale aliquid potuisset, vel ab incompara-
bilis Grotii judicio et doctrina, vel a profundo
Hobbii ingenio praestari ; nisi ilium multa distrax-
issent; hie vero prava constituisset principia,"
Leib. Op. iv. pars. iii. 276.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 117
a common enemy. His philosophical antago
nists were, Cumberland, Cudworth, Shaftes-
bury, Clarke, Butler, and Hutcheson. Though
the last four writers cannot be considered as
properly polemics, their labours were excited,
and their doctrines modified, by the stroke
from a vigorous arm which seemed to shake
Ethics to its foundation. They lead us far
into the eighteenth century ; and their works,
occasioned by the doctrines of Hobbes,
sowed the seed of the ethical writings of
Hume, Smith, Price, Kant, and Stewart; in
a less degree, also, of those of Tucker and
Paley : — not to mention Mandeville, the buf
foon and sophister of the alehouse, or Hel-
vetius, an ingenious but flimsy writer, the
low and loose Moralist of the vain; the sel
fish, and the sensual.
SECTION V.
CONTROVERSIES CONCERNING THE MORAL FA
CULTIES AND THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS.
CUMBERLAND — CUDWORTH — CLARKE SHAFTES-
BURY — BOSSUET — FENELON — LEIBNITZ — MALE-
BRANCIIE — EDWARDS — BUFFIER.
DR. RICHARD CUMBERLAND,* raised to the
See of Peterborough after the Revolution of
1688, was the only professed answerer of
Hobbes. His work On the Laws of Nature
still retains a place on the shelf, though not
often on the desk. The philosophical epi
grams of Hobbes form a contrast to the ver
bose, prolix, and languid diction of his an
swerer. The forms of scholastic argument
serve more to encumber his style, than to
insure his exactness. But he has substantial
merits. He justly observes, that all men
can only be said to have had originally a right
to all things, in a sense in which "right" has
the same meaning with " power." He shows
that Hobbes is at variance with himself, inas
much as the dictates of Right Reason, which,
by his own statement, teach men for their
own safety to forego the exercise of that
right, and which he calls "laws of Nature,"
are coeval with it ; and that, mankind per
ceive the moral limits of their power as clear
ly and as soon as they are conscious of its
existence. He enlarges the intimations of
Grotius on the social feelings, which prompt
men to the pleasures of pacific intercourse, as
certainly as the apprehension of danger and
of destruction urges them to avoid hostility.
The fundamental principle of his system of
Ethics is, that '• the greatest benevolence of
every rational agent to all others is the hap
piest state of each individual, as well as of
the whole. "t The happiness accruing to
each man from the observance and cultiva
tion of benevolence, he considers as appended
to it by the Supreme Ruler ; through which
* Born, 1632; died, 1718.
t De Leg. Nat. chap. i. $ 12, first published in
London, 1672, and then so popular as to be re
printed at Lubeck in 1683.
He sanctions it as His law, and reveals it
to the mind of every reasonable creature.
From this principle he deduces the rules of
Morality, which he calls the "laws of Na
ture." The surest, or rather the only mark
that they are the commandments of God, is,
that their observance promotes the happiness
of man : for that reason alone could they be
imposed by that Being whose essence is
Love. As our moral faculties must to us be
the measure of all moral excellence, he in
fers that the moral attributes of the Divinity
must in their nature be only a transcendent
degree of those qualities which we most ap
prove, love, and revere, in those moral agents
with whom we are familiar.* He had a mo
mentary glimpse of the possibility that some
human actions might be performed with a
view to the happiness of others, without any
consideration of the pleasure reflected back
on ourselves. j But it is too faint and tran
sient to be worthy of observation, otherwise
than as a new proof how often great truths
must flit before the Understanding, • before
they can be firmly and finally held in its grasp.
His only attempt to explain the nature of the
Moral Faculty, is the substitution of Practi
cal Reason (a phrase of the Schoolmen, since
become celebrated from its renewal by Kant)
for Right Reason:? and his definition of the
first, as that which points out the ends and
means of action. Throughout his whole
reasoning, he adheres to the accustomed
confusion of the equality which renders ac
tions virtuous, with the sentiments excited
in us by the contemplation of them. His
language on the identity of general and indi
vidual interest is extremely vague ; though
it be, as he says, the foundation-stone of the
Temple of Concord among men.
It is little wonderful that Cumberland
should not have disembroiled this ancient
and established confusion, since Leibnitz
himself, in a passage where he reviews the
theories of Morals which had gone before
him, has done his utmost to perpetuate it.
"It is a question/' says the latter, "whether
the preservation of human society be the first
principle of the law of Nature. This our
author denies, in opposition to GTotius, who
laid down sociability to be so ; — to Hobbes,
who ascribed that character to mutual fear ;
and to Cumberland, who held that it was
mutual benevolence ; which are all three
only different names for the safety and wel-
* Ibid. cap. v. $ 19. .t Ibid. cap. ii. $ 20.
t " Whoever determines his Judgment and his
Will by Right Reason, must agree with all others
who judge according to Right Reason in the same
matter." — Ibid. cap. ii. § 8. This is in one sense
only a particular instance of the identical propo
sition, that two things which agree with a third
thing must agree with each other in that, in which
they agree with the third. But the difficulty en
tirely consists in the particular third thing here in
trpduced, namely, "Right Reason," the nature
of which not one step is made to explain. The
position is curious, as coinciding with "the uni
versal categorical imperative," adopted as a first
principle by Kant.
118
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
fare of society."* Here the great philoso
pher considered benevolence or fear, two
feelings of the human mind, to be the first
principles of the law of Nature, in the same
sense in which the tendency of certain ac
tions to the well-being of the community
may be so regarded. The confusion, how
ever, was then common to him with many,
as it even now is with most. The compre
hensive view was his own. He perceived
the close resemblance of these various, and
even conflicting opinions, in that important
point of view in which they relate to the
effects of moral and immoral actions on the
general interest. The tendency of Virtue to
preserve amicable intercourse was enforced
by Grotius; its tendency to prevent injury
•was dwelt on by Hobbes ; its tendency to
promote an interchange of benefits was in
culcated by Cumberland.
CUDWORTH.t
Cud worth, one of the eminent men educa
ted or promoted in the English Universities
during the Puritan rule, was one of the most
distinguished of the Latitudinarian, or Ar-
minian, party who carne forth at the Resto
ration, with a love of Liberty imbibed from
their Calvinistic masters, as well as from the
writings of antiquity, yet tempered by the
experience of their own agitated age ; and
with a spirit of religious toleration more im
partial and mature, though less systematic
and professedly comprehensive, than that of
the Independents, the first sect who preached
that doctrine. Taught by the errors of their
time, they considered Religion as consisting,
not in vain efforts to explain unsearchable
mysteries, but in purity of heart exalted by
pious feelings, manifested by virtuous con
duct, t The government of the Church was
placed in their hands by the Revolution, and
their influence was long felt among its rulers
and luminaries. The first generation of their
scholars turned their attention too much from
the cultivation of the heart to the mere go
vernment of outward action : and in succeed
ing times the tolerant spirit, not natural to an
* Leib. Op. pars. iii. 271. The unnamed work
which occasioned these remarks (perhaps one of
Thomasius) appeared in 1699. How long after
this Leibnitz's Dissertation was written, does not
appear.
t Born 1617; died, 1688.
t See the the beautiful account of them by Bur-
net, (Hist, of His own Time, i. 321. Oxford, 1823)
who was himself one of the most distinguished of
this excellent body ; with whom may be classed,
notwithstanding some shades of doctrinal differ
ence, his early master, Leighton, Bishop of Dun
blane, a beautiful writer, and one of the best of
men. The earliest account of them is in a curious
contemporary pamphlet, entitled, " An Account
of the new Sect of Latitude-men at Cambridge,"
republished in the collection of tracts, entitled
" Phcenix Britannicus." Jeremy Taylor deserves
the highest, and perhaps the earliest place among
them: but Cudworth's excellent sermon before
the House of Commons (31st March 1647) in the
year of the publication of Taylor's Liberty of Pro
phesying, may be compared even to Taylor in
charity, piety, and the most liberal toleration.
establishment, was with difficulty kept up
by a government whose existence depended
on discouraging intolerant pretensions. No
sooner had the first sketch of the Hobbian
philosophy* been privately circulated at
Paris, than Cudworth seized the earliest
opportunity of sounding the alarm against
the most justly odious of the modes of think
ing which it cultivates, or forms of expression
which it would introduce ;t — the prelude to
a war which occupied the remaining forty
years of his life. The Intellectual System,
his great production, is directed against the
atheistical opinions of Hobbes : it touches
ethical questions but occasionally and inci
dentally. It is a work of stupendous erudi
tion, of much more acuteriess than at first
appears, of frequent mastery over diction
and illustration on subjects where it is most
rare ; and it is distinguished, perhaps beyond
any other volume of controversy, by that
best proof of the deepest conviction of the
truth of a man's principles, a fearless state
ment of the most formidable objections to
them; — a fairness rarely practised but by
him who is conscious of his power to answer
them. In all his writings, it must be own
ed, that his learning obscures his reasonings,
and seems even to repress his powerful in
tellect. It is an unfortunate effect of the
redundant fulness of his mind, that it over
flows in endless digressions, which break
the chain of argument, and turn aside the
thoughts of the reader from the main object.
He was educated before usage had limited
the naturalization of new words from the
learned languages : before the failure of those
great men, from Bacon to Milton, who labour
ed to follow a Latin order in their sentences,
and the success of those men of inferior
powers, from Cowley to Addison, who were
content with the order, as well as the words,
of pure and elegant conversation, had, as it
were, by a double series of experiments,
ascertained that the involutions and inver
sions of the ancient languages are seldom
reconcilable with the genius of ours; and
that they are, unless skilfully, as well as
sparingly introduced, at variance with the
natural beauties of our prose composition.
His mind was more that of an ancient than
of a modern philosopher. He often indulged
in that sort of amalgamation of fancy with
speculation, the delight of the Alexandrian
doctors, with whom he was most familiarly
conversant; and the Intellectual System,
both in thought and expression, has an old
and foreign air, not unlike a translation from
the work of a later Platonist. Large ethical
works of this eminent writer are extant in
manuscript in the British Museum.! One
* De Give, 1648.
t " Dantur boni et mali rationes aeterna? et in-
dispensabiles." Thesis for the degree of B. D. at
Cambridge in 1664. — Birch's Life of Cudworth,
prefixed to his edition of the Intellectual System,
(Lond. 1743.) i. 7.
t A curious account of the history of these MSS.
by Dr. Kippis, is to be found in the Biographia
Britannica, iv. 549.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
119
rthumous volume on Morals was published
Dr. Chandler, Bishop of Durham, entitled
t( A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immut
able Morality."* But there is the more rea
son to regret (as far as relates to the history
of Opinion) that the larger treatises are still
unpublished, because the above volume is
not so much an ethical treatise as an intro
duction to one. Protagoras of old, and Hob-
bes then alive, having concluded that Right
and Wrong were unreal, because they were
not perceived by the senses, and because all
human knowledge consists only in such per
ception, Cudworth endeavours to refute them,
by disproving that part of their premises
which forms the last-stated proposition. The
mind has many conceptions (poq/iofct) \vhich
are not cognizable by the senses ; and though
they are occasioned by sensible objects, yet
they cannot be formed but by a faculty su
perior to sense. The conceptions of Justice
and Duty he places among them. The dis
tinction of Right from Wrong is discerned by
Reason ; and as soon as these words are de
fined, it becomes evident that it would be a
contradiction in terms to affirm that any
power, human or Divine, could change their
nature ; or, in other words, make the same
act to be just and unjust at the same time.
They have existed eternally in the only mode
in which truths can be said to be eternal, in
the Eternal Mind ; and they are indestructi
ble and unchangeable like that Supreme In
telligence.! Whatever judgment may be
formed of this reasoning, it is manifest that
it relates merely to the philosophy of the
Understanding, and does not attempt any
explanation of What constitutes the very
essence of Morality. — its relation to the Will.
That we perceive a distinction between
Right and Wrong, as much as between a tri
angle and a square, is indeed true ; and may
possibly lead to an explanation of the reason
why men should adhere to the one and avoid
the other. But it is not that reason. A
command or a precept is not a proposition :
it cannot be said that either is true or false.
Cudworth, as well as many who succeeded
him, confounded the mere apprehension by
the Understanding that Right is different
from Wrong, with the practical authority of
these important conceptions, exercised over
voluntary actions, in a totally distinct pro
vince of the human soul.
* 8vo. Lond. 1731.
t " There are many objects of our mind which
we can neither see, hear, feel, smell, nor taste,
and which did never enter into it by any sense ;
and therefore we can have no sensible pictures or
ideas of them, drawn by the pencil of that inward
limner, or painter, which borrows all his colours
from sense, which we call ' Fancy :' and if we
reflect on our own cogitations of these things, we
ehall sensibly perceive that they are not phantasti-
cal, but noematical: as, for example, justice, equi
ty, duty and obligation, cogitation, opinion, intel
lection, volition, memory, verity, falsity, cause,
effect, genus, species, nullity, contingency, pos
sibility, impossibility, and innumerable others."
— Ibid. 140. We have here an anticipation of
Kant.
Though his life was devoted to the asser
tion of Divine Providence, and though his
philosophy was imbued with the religious
spirit of Platonism,* yet he had placed Chris
tianity too purely in the love of God and
Man to be considered as having much regard
for those controversies about rights and opi
nions with which zealots disturb the world.
They represented him as having fallen into
the same heresy with Milton and with
Clarke ;t and some of them even charged
him with atheism, for no other reason than
that he was not afraid to state the atheistic
difficulties in their fullest force. As blind
anger heaps inconsistent accusations on each
other, they called him at least " an Arian, a
Socinian, or a Deist. "t The courtiers of
Charles II., who were delighted with every
part of Hobbes but his integrity, did their
utmost to decry his antagonist. They turned
the railing of the bigots into a sarcasm
against Religion ; as we learn from him who
represented them with unfortunate fidelity.
"He has raised," saysDryden, " such strong;
objections against the being of God, that
many think he has not answered them ;" —
" the common fate," as Lord Shaftesbury tells
us, " of those who dare to appear fair au
thors."^ He had, indeed, earned the hatred
of some theologians, better than they could
know from the writings published during his
life ; for in his posthumous work he classes
with the ancient atheists those of his con
temporaries, (whom he forbears to name,)
who held " that God may command what is
contrary to moral rules ; that He has no in
clination to the good of His creatures ; that
He may justly doom an innocent being to
eternal torments; and that whatever God
does will, for that reason is just; because He
wills it."||
It is an interesting incident in the life of a
philosopher, that Cudworth's daughter, Lady
Masham, had the honour to nurse the in
firmities and to watch the last breath of Mr.
Locke, who was opposed to her father in
speculative philosophy, but who heartily
£u. — (Motto affixed to the sermon above mention
ed.)
t The following doctrine is ascribed to Cud-
worth by Nelson^ a man of good understanding
and great worth : " Dr. Cudworth maintained that
the Father, absolutely speaking, is the only Su
preme God ; the Son and Spirit being God only
by his concurrence with them, and their subordi
nation and subjection to him." — Life of Bull, 339.
t Turner's discourse on the Messiah, 335.
§ Moralists, part ii. § 3. .
II Etern. and Immut. Mor. 11. He quotes Ock-
ham as having formerly maintained the same mon
strous positions. To many, if not to most of these
opinions or expressions, ancient and modern, re
servations are adjoined, which render them literally
reconcilable with practical Morals. But the dan
gerous abuse to which the incautious language of
ethical theories is liable, is well illustrated by the
anecdote related in Plutarch's Life of Alexander,
of the sycophant Anaxarchas consoling that mon
arch for the murder of Clitus, by assuring him that
every act of a ruler must be just. Tlav TO
8sv VTTO vov KfATovvrof fixsuov. — Op. i. 639.
120
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
agreed with him in the love of Truth, Li
berty, and Virtue.
CLARKE.*
Connected with Cudworth by principle,
though separated by some interval of time,
was Dr. Samuel Clarke, a man eminent at
once as a divine, a mathematician, a meta
physical philosopher, and a philologer; who,
as the interpreter of Homer and Caesar, the
scholar of Newton, and the antagonist of
Leibnitz, approved himself not unworthy of
correspondence with the highest order of
human Spirits. Roused by the prevalence
of the doctrines of Spinoza and Hobbes, he
endeavoured to demonstrate the Being and
Attributes of God, from a few axioms and
definitions, in the manner of Geometry. In
this attempt, with all his powers of argu
ment, it must be owned that he is compelled
sometimes tacitly to assume what the laws
of reasoning required him to prove ; and that,
on the whole, his failure may be regarded as
a proof that such a mode of argument is be
yond the faculties of man. t Justly consider
ing the Moral Attributes of the Deity as
what alone render him the object of Reli
gion, and to us constitutes the difference be
tween Theism and atheism, he laboured
with the utmost zeal to place the distinc
tions of Right and Wrong on a more solid
foundation, and to explain the conformity of
Morality to Reason, in a manner calculated
to give a precise and scientific signification
to that phraseology which all philosophers
had, for so many ages, been content to em
ploy, without thinking themselves obliged to
define.
It is one of the most rarely successful ef
forts of the human mind, to place me under
standing at the point from which a philoso
pher takes the views that compose his sys
tem., to recollect constantly his purposes, to
adopt for a moment his previous opinions arid
prepossessions, to think in his words and to
see with his eyes; — especially when the wri
ter widely dissents from the system which
he attempts to describe, and after a general
change in the modes of thinking and in the
use of terms. Every part of the present Dis
sertation requires such an excuse ; but per
haps it may be more necessary in a case like
that of Clarke, where the alterations in both
respects have been so insensible, and in
some respects appear so limited, that they
may escape attention, than after those total
* Born, 1675; died* 1729.
t This admirable person had so much candour
as in effect to own his failure, and to recur to
those other arguments in support of this great
truth, which have in all ages satisfied the most
elevated minds. In Proposition viii. (Being and
Attributes of God, 47.) which affirms that the first
cause must be " intelligent" (wherein, as he truly
states, " lies the main question between us and
the atheists"), he owns, that the proposition can
not be demonstrated strictly and properly a priori.
—See Note M.
revolutions in doctrine, where the necessity
of not measuring other times by our own
standard must be apparent to the most un-
distinguishing.
The sum of his moral doctrine may be
stated as follows. Man can conceive nothing
without at the same time conceiving its re
lations to other things. He must ascribe the
same law of perception to every being to
whom he ascribes thought. He cannot there
fore doubt that all the relations of all things
to all must have always been present to the
Eternal Mind. The relations in this sense
are eternal, however recent the things may
be between whom they subsist. The whole
of these relations constitute Truth: the
knowledge of them is Omniscience. These
eternal different relations of things involve a
consequent eternal fitness or unfitness in the
application of things, one to another ; with a
regard to which, the will of God always
chooses, and which ought likewise to deter
mine the wills of all subordinate rational
beings. These eternal differences make it
fit and reasonable for the creatures so to act ;
they cause it to be their duty, or lay an obli
gation on them so to do, separate from the
will of God.* and antecedent to any pros
pect of advantage or reward.! Nay, wilful
wickedness is the same absurdity and inso
lence in Morals, as it would be in natural
things to pretend to alter the relations of
numbers, or to take away the properties of
mathematical figures.! "Morality," says
one of his most ingenious scholars, " is the
practice of reason. "§
Clarke, like Cudworth, considered such a
scheme as the only security against Hobb-
ism, and probably also against the Calvinistic
theology, from which they were almost as
averse. Not content, with Cumberland, to
attack Hobbes on ground which was in part
his own, they thought it necessary to build on
entirely new foundations. Clarke more espe
cially, instead of substituting social and ge
nerous feeling for the selfish appetites, en
deavoured to bestow on Morality the highest
dignity, by thus deriving it from Reason. He
made it more than disinterested ; for he
placed its seat in a region where interest
never enters, and passion never disturbs,
By ranking her principles with the first
truths of Science, he seemed to render them
pure and impartial, infallible and unchange
able. It might be excusable to regret the
failure of so noble an attempt, if the indul
gence of such regrets did not betray an un
worthy apprehension that the same excellent
ends could only be attained by such frail
* " Those who found all moral obligation an
the will of God must recur to the same thing,
only they do not explain how the nature and will
of God is good and just." — Being and Attributes
of God, Proposition xii.
t Evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion,
p. 4. Lond. 1724.
I Ibid. p. 42.
§ Lowman on the Unity and Perfections of
God, p. 29. Lond. 1737.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 121
means; and that the dictates of the most
severe reason would not finally prove recon
cilable with the majesty of Virtue.
REMARKS.
The adoption of mathematical forms and
terras was; in England, a prevalent fashion
among writers on moral subjects during a
large part of the eighteenth century. The
ambition of mathematical certainty, on mat
ters concerning which it is not given to man
to reach it, is a frailty from which the dis
ciple of Newton ought in reason to have
been withheld, but to which he was natu
rally tempted by the example of his master.
Nothing but the extreme difficulty of de
taching assent from forms of expression to
which it has been long wedded, can ex
plain the fact, that the incautious expressions
above cited, into which Clarke was hurried
by his moral sensibility, did not awaken
him to a sense of the error into which he
had fallen. As soon as he had said that "a
wicked act was as absurd as an attempt to
take away the properties of a figure," he
ought to have seen that principles which led
logically to such a conclusion were untrue.
As it is an impossibility to make three and
three cease to be six, it ought, on his princi
ples, to be impossible to do a wicked act. To
act without regard to the relations of things, —
as if a man were to choose fire for cooling, or
ice for heating, — would be the part either
of a lunatic or an idiot. The murderer who
poisons by arsenic, acts agreeably to his
knowledge of the power of that substance to
kill, which is a relation between two things;
as much as the physician who employs an
emetic after the poison, acts upon his belief
of the tendency of that remedy to preserve
life, which is another relation between two
things. All men who seek a good or bad
end by good or bad means, must alike con
form their conduct to some relation between
their actions as means and their object as an
end. All the relations of inanimate things to
each other are undoubtedly observed as much
by the criminal as by the man of virtue.
It is therefore singular that Dr. Clarke suf
fered himself to be misled into the repre
sentation, that Virtue is a conformity with
the relations of things universally, Vice a
universal disregard of them, by the certain,
but here insufficient truth, that the former
necessarily implied a regard to certain par
ticular relations, which were always disre
garded by those who chose the latter. The
distinction between Right and Wrong can,
therefore, no longer depend on relations as
such, but on a particular class of relations.
And it seems evident that no relations are to
be considered, except those in which a liv
ing, intelligent, and voluntary agent is one
of the beings related. His acts may relate
to a law, as either observing or infringing it ;
they may relate to his own moral sentiments
and those of his fellows, as they are the ob
jects of approbation or disapprobation; they
16
may relate to his own welfare, by increasing
or abating it ; they may relate to the well-
being of other sentient beings, by contribu
ting to promote or obstruct it : but in all
these, and in all supposable cases, the in
quiry of the moral philosopher must be, not
whether there be a relation, but what' the
relation is ; whether it be that of obedience
to law, or agreeableness to moral feeling, or
suitableness to prudence, or coincidence with
benevolence. The term "relation" itself, on
which Dr. Clarke's system, rests, being com
mon to Right and Wrong, must be struck out
of the reasoning. He himself incidentally
drops intimations which are at variance with,
his system. " The Deity," he tells us, " acts
according to the eternal relations of things,
in order to the welfare of the whole Uni
verse;" and subordinate moral agents ought
to be governed by the same rules, " for the
good of the public."* No one can fail to ob
serve that a new element is here introduced,
— the well-being of communities of men. and
the general happiness of the world, — which
supersedes the consideration of abstract re
lations and fitnesses.
There are other views of this system^
however, of a more general nature, and of
much more importance, because they ex
tend in a considerable degree to all systems
which found moral distinctions or sentiments,
solely or ultimately, upon Reason. A little
reflection will discover an extraordinary
vacuity in this system. Supposing it were al
lowed that it satisfactorily accounts for mo
ral judgments, there is still an important part
of our moral sentiments which it passes by
without an attempt to explain them. Whence,
on this scheme, the pleasure or pain with
which we review our own actions or survey
those of others ? What is the nature of re
morse ? Why do we feel shame ? Whence
is indignation against injustice ? These are
surely no exercise of Reason. Nor is the
assent of Reason to any other class of propo
sitions followed or accompanied by emotions
of this nature, by any approaching them, or
indeed necessarily by any emotion at alL
It is a fata] objection to a moral theory that
it contains no means of explaining the most
conspicuous, if not the most essential, parts
of moral approbation and disapprobation.
But to rise to a more general considera
tion : Perception and Emotion are states of
mind perfectly distinct, and an emotion of
pleasure or pain differs much more from a
mere perception, than the perceptions of one
sense dp from those of another. The per
ceptions of all the senses have some quali
ties in common. But an emotion has not
necessarily anything in common with a per
ception, but that they are both states of
mind. We perceive exactly the same quali
ties in the taste of coffee when we may dis
like it, as afterwards when we come to like
it. In other words, the perception remains
the same when the sensation of pain i«
* Evid. of Nat. and Rev. Rel. p. 4,
L
122
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
changed into the opposite sensation of plea
sure. The like change may occur in every
case where pleasure or pain (in such in
stances called "sensations"), enter the mind
with perceptions through the eye or the ear.
The prospect or the sound which was dis
agreeable may become agreeable, without
any alteration in our idea of the objects.
We can easily imagine a percipient and
thinking being without a capacity of receiv
ing pleasure or pain. Such a being might
perceive what we do; if we could conceive
nim to reason, he might reason justly; and
if he were to judge at all, there seems no
reason why he should not judge truly. But
what could induce such a being to will or to
oc£? It seems evident that his existence
could only be a state of passive contempla
tion. Reason, as Reason, can never be a
motive to action. It is only when we super-
add to such a being sensibility, or the ca
pacity of emotion or sentiment, or (what in
corporeal cases is called sensation) of desire
and aversion, that we introduce him into the
world of action. We then clearly discern
that, when the conclusion of a process of
reasoning presents to his mind an object of
desire, or the means of obtaining it, a motive
of action begins to operate, and Reason may
then, but not till then, have a powerful
though indirect influence on conduct. Let
any argument to dissuade a man from im
morality be employed, and the issue of it
will always appear to be an appeal to a feel
ing. You prove that drunkenness will pro
bably ruin health: no position founded on
experience is more certain; most persons
with whom you reason must be as much
convinced of it as you are. But your hope
of success depends on the drunkard's fear
of ill health; arid he may always silence
your argument by telling you that he loves
wine more than he dreads sickness. You
speak in vain of the infamy of an act to one
who disregards the opinion of others, or of its
imprudence to a man of little feeling for his
own future condition. You may truly, but
vainly tell of the pleasures of friendship to
one who has little affection. If you display
the delights of liberality to a miser, he may
always shut your mouth by answering, "The
spendthrift may prefer such pleasures; I
love money more." If you even appeal to
a man's conscience, he may answer you that
you have clearly proved the immorality of
the act, and that he himself knew it before;
but that now when you had renewed and
freshened his conviction, he was obliged to
own that his love of Virtue, even aided by
the fear of dishonour, remorse, and punish"-
ment, was not so powerful as the desire
which hurried him into vice.
Nor is it otherwise, however confusion of
ideas may cause it to be so deemed, with
that calm regard to the welfare of the agent,
to which philosophers have so grossly mis
applied the hardly intelligible appellation of
f: self-love." The general tendency of right
conduct to permanent well-being is indeed
one of the most evident of all truths. But
the success of persuasives or dissuasives ad
dressed to it, must always be directly pro
portioned, not to the clearness with which
the truth is discerned, but to the strength of
the principle addressed, in the mind of the
individual, and to the degree in which he is
accustomed to keep an eye on its dictates.
A strange prejudice prevails, which ascribes
to what is called " self-love" an invariable
superiority over all the other motives of hu
man action. If it were to be called by a
more fit name, such as "foresight," " pru
dence,' • or, what seems most exactly to de
scribe its nature, "a sympathy with the
future feelings of the agent," it would ap
pear to every observer to be one very often
too languid and inactive, always of late ap
pearance, and sometimes so faint as to be
scarcely perceptible. Almost every human
passion in its turn prevails over self-love.
It is thus apparent that the influence of
Reason on the Will is indirect, and arises
only from its being one of the channels by
which the objects of desire or aversion are
brought near to these springs of voluntary
action. It is only one of these channels.
There are many other modes of presenting
to the mind the proper objects of the emo
tions which it is intended to excite, whether
of a calmer or of a more active nature ; so that
they may influence conduct more powerfully
than when they reach the Will through the
channel of conviction. The distinction be
tween conviction and persuasion would in
deed be otherwise without a meaning; to
teach the mind would be the same thing as
to move it ; and eloquence would be nothing
but logic, although the greater part of the
power of the former is displayed in the di
rect excitement of feeling; — on condition,
indeed (for reasons foreign to our present
purpose), that the orator shall never appear
to give counsel inconsistent with the duty or
the lasting welfare of those whom he would
persuade. In like manner it is to be ob
served, that though reasoning be one of the
instruments of education, yet education is
not a process of reasoning, but a wise dis
posal of all the circumstances which influ
ence character, and of the means of produ
cing those habitual dispositions which insure
well-doing, of which reasoning is but one.
Very similar observations are applicable to
the great arts of legislation and government;
which are here only alluded to as forming a
strong illustration of the present argument.
The abused extension of the term " Reason"
to the moral faculties, one of the predomi
nant errors of ancient and modern times, has
arisen from causes which it is not difficult
to discover. Reason does in truth perform
a great part in every case of moral sentiment.
To Reason often belong the preliminaries of
the act; to Reason altogether belongs the
choice of the means of execution. The ope
rations of Reason, in both cases, are compara
tively slow and lasting; they are capable of
being distinctly recalled by memory, The
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
123
emotion which intervenes between the pre
vious and the succeeding exertions of Reason
is often faint, generally transient, and scarcely
ever capable of being reproduced by an effort
of the mind. Hence the name of Reason is
applied to this mixed state of mind ; more
especially when the feeling, being of a cold
and general nature, and scarcely ruffling the
surface of the soul, — such as that of prudence
and of ordinary kindness and propriety, — al
most passes unnoticed, and is irretrievably
forgotten. Hence the mind is, in such con
ditions, said by moralists to act from reason,
in contradistinction to its more excited and
disturbed state, when it is said to act from
passion. The calmness of Reason gives to
the whole compound the appearance of un
mixed reason. The illusion is further pro
moted by a mode of expression used in most
languages. A man is said to act reasonably,
when his conduct is such as may be reason
ably expected. Amidst the disorders of a
vicious mind, it is difficult to form a reason
able conjecture concerning future conduct;
but the quiet and well-ordered state of Virtue
renders the probable acts of her fortunate vo
taries the object of very rational expectation.
As far as it is not presumptuous to attempt
a distinction between modes of thinking for
eign to the mind which makes the attempt,
and modes of expression scarcely translat
able into the only technical language in
which that mind is wont to think, it seems
that the systems of Cud worth and Clarke,
though they appear very similar, are in
reality different in some important points of
view. The former, a Platoriist. sets out from
those "Ideas" (a word, in this acceptation
of it, which has no corresponding term in
English), the eternal models of created things,
which, as the Athenian master taught, pre
existed in the Everlasting Intellect, and. of
right, rule the will of every inferior mind.
The illustrious scholar of Newton, with a
manner of thinking more natural to his age
and school, considered primarily the very-
relations of things themselves; — conceived
indeed by the Eternal Mind, but which, if
such inadequate language may be pardoned,
are the law of Its will, as well as the model
of Its works.*
EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.t
Lord Shaftesbury, the author of the Cha
racteristics, was the grandson of Sir Antony
* Mr. Wollaston's system, that morality con
sisted in acting according to truth, seems to coin
cide with that of Dr. Clarke. The murder of
Cicero by Popilius Lenas, was, according to him,
a practical falsehood; for Cicero had been his
benefactor, and Popilius acted as if that were un
true. If the truth spoken of be that gratitude is
due for benefits, the reasoning is evidently a circle.
If any truth be meant, indifferently, it is plain that
the assassin acted in perfect conformity to several
certain truths ;— such as the malignity of Antony,
the ingratitude and venality of Popilius, and the
probable impunity of his crime, when law was
suspended, and good men without power.
t Born, 1671 ; died, 1713.
Ashley Cooper, created Earl of Shaftesbury,
one of the master spirits of the English na
tion, whose vices, the bitter fruits of the in-
secu,rity of a troublous time succeeded by
the corrupting habits of an inconstant, venal,
and profligate court, have led an ungrateful
posterity to overlook his wisdom and disin
terested perseverance, in obtaining for his
country the unspeakable benefits of the
Habeas Corpus act. The fortune of the
Characteristics has been singular. For a
time the work was admired more undis-
tinguishingly than its literary character war
rants. In the succeeding period it was justly
criticised, but too severely condemned. Of
late, more unjustly than in either of the for
mer cases, it has been generally neglected.
It seemed to have the power of changing the
temper of its critics. It provoked the ami
able Berkeley to a harshness equally un
wonted and unwarranted •* while it softened
the rugged Warburton so far as to dispose
the fierce, yet not altogether ungenerous,
polemic to praise an enemy in the very heat
of conflict.!
Leibnitz, the most celebrated of Continental
philosophers, warmly applauded the Charac
teristics, and, (what was a more certain proof,
of admiration) though at an advanced age,
criticised that work minutely. t Le Clerc, who
had assisted the studies of the author, contri
buted to spread its reputation by his Journal,
then the most popular in Europe. Locke is
said to have aided in his education, probably
rather by counsel than by tuition. The au
thor had indeed been driven from the regu
lar studies of his country by the insults with
which he was loaded at Winchester school,
when he was only twelve years old, imme
diately after the death of his grandfather ;§ —
* See Minute Philosopher, Dialogue iii. ; but
especially his Theory of Vision Vindicated, Lond.
1733 (not republished in the quarto edition of his
works), where this most excellent man sinks for
a moment to the level of a railing polemic.
t It is remarkable that the most impure passages
of Warburton's composition are those in which
he lets loose his controversial zeal, and that he is
a fine writer principally where he writes from ge
nerous feeling. " Of all the virtues which were
so much in this noble writer's heart, and in his
writings, there was not one he more revered than
the love of public liberty .... The noble author of
the Characteristics had many excellent qualities,
both as a man and a writer : he was temperate,
chaste, honest, and a lover of his country. In
his writings he has shown how much he has im
bibed the deep sense, and how naturally he could
copy the gracious manner of Plato. — (Dedication
to the Freethinkers, prefixed to the Divine Lega
tion.) He, however, soon relapses, but not with
out excuse ; for he thought himself vindicating the
memory of Locke.
t Op. iii. 39—56.
§ [With regard to this story, authorised as it is,
the Editor cannot help, on behalf of his own
" nursing mother," throwing out some suspicion
that the Chancellor's politics must have been
made use of somewhat as a scapegoat ; else the
nature of boys was at that time more excitable
touching their schoolmates' grandfathers than it
is now. There is a rule traditionally observed in
College, " that no boy has a right to think till ho
124
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
a choice of time which seemed not so much
to indicate anger against the faults of a
great man, as triumph over the principles
of liberty, which seemed at that time to have
fallen for ever. He gave a genuine proof of
respect for freedom of thought, by prevent
ing the expulsion, from Holland, of Bayle,
(from whom,; he differs in every moral, poli
tical, and, it may be truly added, religious
opinion) when, it must be owned, the right
of asylum was, in strict justice, forfeited by
the secret services which the philosopher
had rendered to the enemy of Holland and
of Europe. In the small part of his short
life which premature infirmities allowed
him to apply to public affairs, he co-operated
zealously with the friends of freedom ; but,
as became a moral philosopher, he supported,
even against them, a law to allow those who
were accused of treason to make their de
fence by counsel, although the parties first
to benefit from this act of imperfect justice
were persons conspired together to assassi
nate King William, and to re-enslave their
country. On that occasion it is well known
with what admirable quickness he took ad
vantage of the embarrassment which seized
him, when he rose to address the House of
Commons. " If I," said he," who rise only to
give my opinion on this bill, am so confounded
that I cannot say what I intended/ what must
the condition of that man be, who, without
assistance is pleading for his own life!"
Lord Shaftesbury was the friend of Lord
Somers ; and the tribute paid to his personal
character by Warburton, who knew many of
his contemporaries and some of his friends,
may be considered as evidence of its excel
lence.
His fine genius and generous spirit shine
through his writings ; but their lustre is often
dimmed by peculiarities, and, it must be said,
by affectations, which, originating in local,
temporary, or even personal circumstances,
are particularly fatal to the permanence of
fame. There is often a charm in the ego
tism of an artless writer, or of an actor in
great scenes : but other laws are imposed on
the literary artist. Lord Shaftsbury, instead
of hiding himself behind his work, stands
forward with too frequent marks of self-
complacency, as a nobleman of polished
manners, with a mind adorned by the fine
arts, and instructed by ancient philosophy;
shrinking with a somewhat effeminate fasti
diousness from the clamour and prejudices
of the multitude, whom he neither deigns to
conciliate, nor puts forth his strength to sub
due. The enmity of the majority of church
men to the government established at the
Revolution, was calculated to fill his mind
with angry feelings; which overflowed too
often, if not upon Christianity itself, yet upon
representations of it, closely intertwined with
those religious feelings to which, in other
forms, his own philosophy ascribes surpass-
has forty juniors ;'-' upon which rock the cock
boat of the embryo metaphysician might have
foundered.]
ing worth. His small, and occasional wri
tings, of which the main fault is the want of
an object or a plan, have many passages re
markable for the utmost beauty and harmo
ny of language. Had he imbibed the sim
plicity, as well as copied the expression and
cadence, of the greater ancients, he would
have done more justice to his genius; and
his works, like theirs, would have been pre
served by that first-mentioned quality, with
out which but a very few writings, of what
ever mental power, have long survived their
writers. Grace belongs only to natural
movements; and Lord Shaftesbury, notwith
standing the frequent beauty of his thoughts
and language, has rarely attained it. He is
unfortunately prone to pleasantry, which is
obstinately averse from constraint, and which
he had no interest in raising to be the test
of truth. His affectation of liveliness as a
man of the world, tempts him sometimes to
overstep the indistinct boundaries which
separate familiarity from vulgarity. Of his
two more considerable writings, The Moral
ists, on which he evidently most valued him
self, and which is spoken of by Leibnitz with
enthusiasm, is by no means the happiest. —
Yet perhaps there is scarcely any composi
tion in our language more lofty in its moral
and religious sentiments, and more exqui
sitely elegant and musical in its diction,
than the Platonic representation of the scale
of beauty and love, in the speech to Pale-
mon, near the close of the first part.* Many
passages might be quoted, which in some
measure justify the enthusiasm of the sep
tuagenarian geometer. Yet it is not to be
concealed that, as a whole, it is heavy and
languid. It is a modern antique. The dia
logues of Plato are often very lively repre
sentations of conversations which might take
place daily at a great university, full, like
Athens, of rival professors and eager disci
ples, between men of various character, and
great fame as well as ability. Socrates runs-
through them all. His great abilities, his
still more venerable virtues, his cruel fate,
especially when joined to his very character
istic peculiarities, — to his grave humour, to
his homely sense, to his assumed humility,
to the honest slyness with which he ensnar
ed the Sophists, and to the intrepidity with
which he dragged them to justice, gave unity
and dramatic interest to these dialogues as a
whole. But Lord Shaftesbury's dialogue is
between fictitious personages, and in a tone
at utter variance with English conversation.
He had great power of thought and command
over words; but he had no talent for invent
ing character and bestowing life on it.
The inquiry concerning Virtuef is nearly
exempt from the faulty peculiarities of the
author ; the method is perfect, the reasoning
just, the style precise and clear. The writer
has no purpose but that of honestly proving
his principles; he himself altogether disap
pears; and he is intent only on earnestly en-
$3.
t Characteristics, treatise iv.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 125
forcing what he truly, conscientiously, and
reasonably believes. Hence the charm of
simplicity is revived in this production, which
is unquestionably entitled to a place in the
first rank of English tracts on moral philoso-
sophy. The point in which it becomes es
pecially pertinent to the subject of this Dis
sertation is, that it contains more intimations
of an original and important nature on the
theory of Ethics than perhaps any preced
ing work of modem times.* It is true that
they are often but intimations, cursory, and
appearing almost to be casual ; so that many
of them have escaped the notice of most rea
ders, and even writers on these subjects. —
That the consequences of some of them are
even yet not unfolded, must be owned to be
a proof that they are inadequately stated;
and may be regarded as a presumption that
the author did not closely examine the bear
ings of his own positions. Among the most
important of these suggestions is, the exist
ence of dispositions in man, by which he
takes pleasure in the well-being of others,
without any further view ; — a doctrine, how
ever, to all the consequences of which he
lias not been faithful in his other writings.?
Another is, that goodness consists in the pre
valence of love for the system of which we
are a part, over the passions pointing to our
individual welfare , — a proposition which
somewhat confounds the motives of right
acts with their tendency, and seems to fa-
'Tour the melting of all particular affections
into general benevolence, because the ten
dency of these affections is to general good.
The next, and certainly the most original, as
well as important, is, that there are certain
affections of the mind which, being contem
plated by the mind itself through what he
«alls " a reflex sense," become the objects
of love, or the contrary, according to their
nature. So approved and loved, they con
stitute virtue or merit, as distinguished from
mere goodness, of which there are traces in
animals who do not appear to reflect on the
state of their own minds, and who seem,
therefore, destitute of what he elsewhere
calls "a moral sense." These statements
are, it is true, far too short and vague. He
nowhere inquires into the origin of the reflex
sense: what is a much more material defect,
he makes no attempt to ascertain in what
state of mind it consists. We discover only
* I am not without suspicion that I have over
looked the claims of Dr. Henry More, who, not
withstanding some uncouthness of language,
seems to have given the first intimations of a dis
tinct moral faculty, which he calls " the Boniform
Faculty :'' a phrase against which an outcry would
now be raised as German. Happiness, according
to hinrK consists' in a constant satisfaction, *v T«
dyA^^i^t TH( 4u^«c. — Enchiridion Ethicum, lib. i.
cap. ii.
t " It is the height of wisdom no doubt to be
Tightly selfish."— Charact. i. 121. The observa
tion seems to be taken from what Aristotle says of
^iKAvritt: ~Tov /uev dya.Bc.vfst p/xavrov tiveti. — Ethics,
lib. ix. c. viii. The chapter is admirable, and the
assertion of Aristotle is very capable of a good
eense.
by implication, and by the use of the term
" sense," that he searches for the fountain of
moral sentiments, not in mere reason, where
Cudworth and Clarke had vainly sought
for it, but in the heart, whence the main
branch of them assuredly flows. It should
never be forgotten, that we owe to these
hints the reception, into ethical theory, of
a moral sense ; which, whatever may be
thought of its origin, or in whatever words
it may be described, must always retain its
place in such theory as a main principle of
our moral nature.
His demonstration of the utility of Virtue
to the individual, far surpasses all other at
tempts of the same nature ', being founded,
not on a calculation of outward advantages
or inconveniences, alike uncertain, precari
ous, and degrading, but on the. unshaken
foundation of the delight, which is of the
very essence of social affection arid virtuous
sentiment ; on the dreadful agony inflicted
by all malevolent passions upon every soul
that harbours the hellish inmates; on the
all-important truth, that to love is to be hap-
Ey, and to hate is to be miserable, — that af-
jction is its own reward, and ill-will its own
punishment ; or, as it has been more simply
and more affectingly, as w'ell as with more
sacred authority, taught, that "to give is
more blessed than to receive," and that to
love one another is the sum of all human
virtue.
The relation of Religion to Morality, as
far as it can be discovered by human reason,
was never more justly or more beautifully
stated. If he represents the mere hope of
reward and dread of punishment as selfish,
and therefore inferior motives to virtue and
piety, he distinctly owns their efficacy in re
claiming from vice, in rousing from lethargy,
and in guarding a feeble penitence ; in all
which he coincides with illustrious and zea
lous Christian writers. '-'If by the hope of
reward be understood the love and desire of
virtuous enjoyment, or of the very practice
and exercise of virtue in another life ; an
expectation or hope of this kind is so far
from being derogatory from virtue, that it is
an evidence of our loving it the more sin
cerely and for its own sa&e."*
* Inquiry, book i. part -iii. § 3. So Jeremy
Taylor; " He that is grown in grace pursues vir
tue purely and simply for its own interest. When
persons come to that height of grace, and love
God for himself, that is but heaven in another
sense." — (Sermon on Growth in Grace.) So be
fore him the once celebrated Mr. John Smith of
Cambridge: "The happiness which good men
shall partake is not distinct from their godlike na
ture. Happiness and holiness are but two several
notions of one thing. Hell is rather a nature than
a place, and heaven cannot be so well defined by
any thing without us, as by something within us."
—(Select Discourses, 2d edit. Cambridge, 1673.)
In accordance with these old authorities is the
recent language of a most ingenious as well as be
nevolent and pious writer. " The holiness of hea
ven is still more attractive to the Christian than
its happiness. The desire of doing that which is
right for its own sake is a part of his desire aftei
L2
126
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
FENELON.*— BOSSUET.t
As the last question, though strictly speak
ing theological, is yet in truth dependent on
the more general question, which relates to
the reality of disinterested affections in hu
man nature, it seems not foreign from the
present purpose to give a short account of a
dispute on the subject in France, between
two of the most eminent persons of their
time ; namely, the controversy between Fe-
nelon and Bossuet, concerning the possibi
lity of men being influenced by the pure and
disinterested love of God. Never were two
great men more unlike. Fenelon in his
writings exhibits more of the qualities which
predispose to religious feelings, than any
other equally conspicuous person: a mind
so pure as steadily to contemplate supreme
excellence ; a heart capable of being touch
ed and affected by the contemplation; a
gentle and modest spirit, not elated by the
privilege, but seeing clearer its own want of
worth as it came nearer to such brightness,
and disposed to treat with compassionate
forbearance those errors in others, of which
it felt a humbling consciousness. Bossuet
was rather a great minister in the ecclesias
tical commonwealth ; employing knowledge,
eloquence, argument, the energy of his cha
racter, the influence, and even the authority
of his station, to vanquish opponents, to ex
tirpate revolters, and sometimes with a pa
trician firmness, to withstand the dictatorial
encroachment of the Roman Pontiff on the
spiritual aristocracy of France. Fenelon had
been appointed tutor to the Duke of Bur
gundy. He had all the qualities which fit a
man to be the preceptor of a prince, and
which most disable him to get or to keep
the office. Even birth, and urbanity, and
accomplishment, and vivacity, were an in
sufficient atonement for his genius and vir
tue. Louis XIV. distrusted so fine a spirit,
and appears to have early suspected, that a
fancy moved by such benevolence might
imagine examples for his grandson which the
world would consider as a satire on his oWn
reign. Madame de Maintenon, indeed, fa
voured him ; but he was generally believed
to have forfeited her good graces by dis-
heaven." — (Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel.
by T. Erskine, Esq. Edinb. 1828, p. 32, 33.)
See also the Appendix to Ward's Life of Henry
More, Lond. 1710, pp. 247—271. This account
of that ingenious and amiable philosopher contains
an interesting view of his opinions, and many
beautiful passages of his writings, but unfortu
nately very few particulars of the man. His let
ters on Disinterested Piety (see the Appendix to
Mr Ward's work), his boundless charity, his
zeal for the utmost toleration, and his hope of
general improvement from "a pacific and perspi
cacious posterity," place him high in the small
number of true philosophers who, in their esti
mate of men, value dispositions more than opin
ions, and in their search for good, more often look
forward than backward.
* Born, 1651 ; died, 1715.
t Born, 1627 ; died, 1704.
couraging her projects for at least a nearer
approach to a seat on the throne. He offend
ed her too by obeying her commands, in
ay ing before her an account of her faults,
and some of those of her royal husband,
which was probably the more painfully felt
!br its mildness, justice, and refined obser
vation.* An opportunity for driving such an
intruder from a court presented itself some
what strangely, in the form of a subtile con
troversy on one of the most abstruse ques
tions of metaphysical theology. Molinos, a
Spanish priest, reviving and perhaps exag
gerating the maxims of the ancient Mystics,
bad recently taught, that Christian perfection
consisted in the pure love of God, without
hope of reward or fear of punishment. This
offence he expiated by seven years' impri
sonment in the dungeons of the Roman In
quisition. His opinions were embraced by
Madame Guyon, a pious French lady of
strong feeling and active imagination, who
appears to have expressed them in a hyper
bolical language, not infrequent in devotional
exercises, especially in those of otherwise
amiable persons of her sex and character.
In the fervour of her zeal, she disregarded
the usages of the world and the decorum
imposed on females. She left her family,
took a part in public conferences, and as
sumed an independence scarcely reconcila
ble with the more ordinary and more pleas
ing virtues of women. Her pious effusions
were examined with the rigour which might
be excusable if exercised on theological pro
positions. She was falsely charged by Har-
lay, the dissolute Archbishop of Paris, with.
personal licentiousness. For these crimes
she was dragged from convent to convent,
imprisoned for years in the Bastile, and, as
an act of mercy, confined during the latter
years of her life to a provincial town, as a
prison at large. A piety thus pure and dis
interested could not fail to please Fenelon.
He published a work in justification of Ma
dame Guyon's character, and in explanation
of the degree in which he agreed with her.
Bossuet, the oracle and champion of the
Church, took up arms against him. It would
be painful to suppose that a man of such
great powers was actuated by mean jea
lousy j and it is needless. The union of zeal
for opinion with the pride of authority, is
apt to give sternness to the administration
of controversial bishops; to say nothing of
the haughty and inflexible character of Bos
suet himself. He could not brook the in
dependence of him who was hitherto so do
cile a scholar and so gentle a friend. He was
jealous of novelties, and dreaded a fervour
of piety likely to be ungovernable, and pro
ductive of movements of which no man.
could foresee the issue. It must be allowed
that he had reason to be displeased with the
indiscretion and turbulence of the innova
tors, and might apprehend that, in preaching
motives to virtue and religion which he
Bausset, Histoire de Fenelon, i. 252.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
127
thought unattainable, the coarser but surer
foundations of common morality might be
loosened. A controversy ensued, in which
he employed the utmost violence of polemi
cal or factious contest. Fenelon replied with
brilliant success, and submitted his book to
the judgment of Rome. After a long exami
nation, the commission of ten Cardinals ap
pointed to examine it were equally divided,
and he seemed in consequence about to be
acquitted. But Bossuet had in the mean
time easily gained Louis XIV. Madame de
Maintenon betrayed Fenelon's confidential
correspondence ; and he was banished to his
diocese, and deprived of his pensions and
official apartments in the palace. Louis
XIV. regarded the slightest differences from
the authorities of the French church as re
bellion against himself. Though endowed
with much natural good sense, he was too
grossly ignorant to be made to comprehend
one of the terms of the question in dispute.
He did not, however, scruple to urge the
Pope to the condemnation of Fenelon. In
nocent XII. (Pignatelli,) an aged and pacific
Pontiff, was desirous of avoiding such harsh
measures. He said that " the archbishop of
Cambray might have erred from excess in
the love of God, but the bishop of Meaux
had sinned by a defect of the love of his
neighbour."* But he was compelled to con
demn a series of propositions, of which the
first was, " There is an habitual state of love
to God. which is pure from every motive of
personal interest, and in which neither the
fear of punishment nor the hope of reward
has any part."t Fenelon read the bull which
condemned him in his own cathedral, and
professed as humble a submission as the
lowest of his flock. In some of the writings
of his advanced years, which have been re
cently published, we observe with regret
that, when wearied out by his exile, ambi
tious to regain a place at court through the
Jesuits, or prejudiced against the Calvinising
doctrines of the Jansenists, the strongest
anti-papal party among Catholics, or some
what detached from a cause of which his
great antagonist had been the victorious
leader, he made concessions to the absolute
monarchy of Rome, which did not become a
luminary of the Gallican church.*
Bossuet, in his writings on this occasion, be
sides tradition and authorities, relied mainly
on the supposed principle of philosophy, that
man must desire his own happiness, and
cannot desire anything else, otherwise than
as a means towards it; which renders the
controversy an incident in the history of
Ethics. It is immediately connected with
the preceding part of this Dissertation, by
the almost literal coincidence between Bos-
suet's foremost objection to the disinterested
piety contended for by Fenelon, and the fun
damental position of a very ingenious and
once noted divine of the English church, in
* Bausset, Histoire de Fenelon, ii. 220, note,
t (Euvres de Bossuet, viii. 308. — (Liege, 1767 )
t De Summi Pontificis Auctoritate Dissertatio.
his attack on the disinterested affections, be
lieved by Shaltesbury to be a part of human
nature.*
LEIBNITZ.t
There is a singular contrast between the
form of Leibnitz's writings and the charac
ter of his mind. The latter was systemati
cal, even to excess. It was the vice of his
prodigious intellect, on every subject of sci
ence where it was not bound by geometrical
chains, to confine his view to those most
general principles, so well called by Bacon
"merely notional," which render it, indeed,
easy to build a system, but only because
they may be alike adapted to every state of
appearances, and become thereby really in
applicable to any. Though his genius was
thus naturally turned to system, his writings
were, generally, occasional and miscellane
ous. The fragments of his doctrines are
scattered in reviews ; or over a voluminous
literary correspondence ; or in the prefaces
and introductions to those compilations to
which this great philosopher was obliged by
his situation to descend. This defective and
disorderly mode of publication arose partly
from the conflicts between business and
study, inevitable in his course of life ; but
probably yet more from the nature of his
system, which while it widely deviates from
the most general principles of former philoso
phers, is ready to embrace their "particular
doctrines under its own generalities, and
thus to reconcile them to each other, as well
as to accommodate itself to popular or esta
blished opinions, and compromise with them,
according to his favourite and oft-repeated
maxim, " that most received doctrines are
capable of a good sense ;"J by which last
words our philosopher meant a sense recon
cilable with his own principles. Partial and
occasional exhibitions of these principles
* " Haec est natura volantatis humanas, ut et
beatitudinem, et ea quorum necessaria connexio
cum beatitudine clare intelligitur, necessario ap-
petat. . . Nullus est acius ad quern revera non im-
pellimur motive beatitudinis, explicite vel impli
cit e;" meaning by the latter that it may be con
cealed from ourselves, as he says, for a short time,
by a nearer object. — CEuvres de Bossuet, viii. 80.
" The only motive by which individuals can be
induced to the practice of virtue, must be the feel
ing or the prospect of private happiness."-Brown's
Essays on the Characteristics, p. ]59. Lond.
1752. It must, however, be owned, that the sel
fishness of the Warburtonian is more rigid ; making
no provision for the object of one's own happiness
slipping out of view for a moment. It is due to
the very ingenious author of this forgotten book
to add, that it is full of praise of his adversary,
which, though just, was in the answerer generous ;
and that it contains an assertion of the unbounded
right of public discussion, unusual even at the
tolerant period of its appearance.
tBorn, 1646; died, 1716.
\ " Nouveaux Essais sur 1'Entendement Hu-
main," liv. i. chap. ii. These Essays, which
form the greater part of the publication entitled
" CEuvres Philosophiques," edited by Raspe,
Amst. et Leipz. 1765, are not included in Dutene'
edition of Leibnitz's works.
128
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
suited better that constant negotiation with
opinions, establishments, and prejudices, to
•which extreme generalities are we'll adapted,
than'would have a full and methodical state
ment of the whole at once. It is the lot of
every philosopher who attempts to make his
principles extremely flexible, that they be
come like those tools which bend so easily
as to penetrate nothing. Yet his manner of
publication perhaps led him to those wide
intuitions, as comprehensive as those of Ba
con, of which he expressed the result as
briefly and pithily as Hobbes. The frag
ment which contains his ethical principles
is the preface to a collection of documents
illustrative of international law. published at
Hanover in 1693* to which he often referred
as his standard afterwards, especially when
he speaks of Lord Shaftesbury, or of the
controversy between the two great theologi-
.ans of France. "Right," says he, "is mo
ral power ; obligation, moral necessity. By
" moral" I understand what with a good man
prevails as much as if it were physical. A
good man is he who loves all men as far as
reason allows. Justice is the benevolence
of a wise man. To love is to be pleased
with the happiness of another j or, in other
words, to convert the happiness of another
into a part of one's own. Hence is explained
the possibility of a disinterested love. When
we are pleased with the happiness of any
being, his* happiness becomes one of our en
joyments. Wisdom is the science of hap
piness."!
REMARKS.
It is apparent from the above passage, that
Leibnitz had touched the truth on the sub
ject of disinterested affection; and that he
was more near clinging to it than any modern
philosopher, except Lord Shaftesbury. It is
evident, however, from the latter part of it,
that, like Shaftesbury, he shrunk from his
own just conception; under the influence of
that most ancient and far-spread prejudice
of the schools, which assumed that such an
abstraction as "Happiness" could be the
object of love, and that the desire of so faint,
distant, and refined an object, was the first
principle of all moral nature, and that of it
every other desire was only a modification
or a fruit. Both he and Shaftesbury, howr-
ever, when they relapsed into the selfish
system, embraced it in its most refined form ;
considering the benevolent affections as valu
able parts of our own happiness, not in con
sequence of any of their effects or extrinsic
advantages, but of that intrinsic delightful-
ness which was inherent in their very es
sence. But Leibnitz considered this refined
pleasure as the object in the view of the be
nevolent man ; an absurdity, or rather a con
tradiction, which, at least in the Inquiry
* Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus. — Hanov
i695.
t See Note N
concerning Virtue, Shaftesbury avoids. It
will be seen from Leibnitz's limitation, taken
together with his definition of Wisdom, that
he regarded the distinction of the moral sen
timents from the social affections, and the
just subordination of the latter, as entirely
founded on the tendency of general happi
ness to increase that of the agent, not merely
as being real, but as being present to the
agent's mind when he acts. In a subsequent
passage he lowers his tone not a little. "As
for the sacrifice of life, or the endurance of
the greatest pain for others, these things are
rather generously enjoined than solidly de
monstrated by philosophers. For honour,
glory, and self-congratulation, to which they
appeal under the name of Virtue, are indeed
mental pleasures, and of a high degree, but
not to all, nor outweighing every bitterness
of suffering ; since all cannot imagine them
with equal vivacity, and that power is little
possessed by those whom neither education,
nor situation, nor the doctrines of Religion
or Philosophy, have taught to value mental
gratifications."* He concludes very truly,
that Morality is completed by a belief of
moral government. But the Inquiry concern
ing Virtue, had reached that conclusion by a
better road. It entirely escaped his sagacity,
as it has that of nearly all other moralists,
that the coincidence of Morality with well-
understood interest in our outward actions,
is very far from being the most important
part of the question ; for these actions flow
from habitual dispositions, from affections
arid sensibilities, which determine their na
ture. There may be, and there are many
immoral acts, which, in the sense in which
words are commonly used, are advantageous
to the actor. But the whole sagacity and
ingenuity of the world may be safely chal
lenged to point out a case in which virtuous
dispositions, habits, and feelings, are not
conducive in the highest degree to the hap
piness of the individual ; or to maintain that
he is not the happiest, whose moral senti
ments and affections are such as to prevent
the possibility of any unlawful advantage
being presented to his mind. It would in
deed have been impossible to prove to Regu-
lus that it was his interest to return to a
death of torture in Africa. But what, if the
proof had been easy ? The most thorough
conviction on such a point would not have
enabled him to set this example, if he had
not been supported by his own integrity and
generosity, by love of his country, and rever
ence for his pledged faith. What could the
conviction add to that greatness of soul, and
to these glorious attributes ? With such vir
tues he could not act otherwise than he did.
Would a father affectionately interested in a
son's happiness, of very lukewarm feelings
of morality, but of good sense enough to
wreigh gratifications and sufferings exactly,
be really desirous that his son should have
these virtues in a less degree than Regulus,
* See Note N.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 129
merely because they might expose him to
the fate which Regulus chose ? On the cold
est calculation he would surely perceive,
that the high and glowing feelings of such a
mind during life altogether throw into shade
a few hours of agony in leaving it. And, if
he himself were so unfortunate that no more
generous sentiment arose in his mind to si
lence such calculations, would it not be a
reproach to his understanding not to discover,
that, though in one case out of millions such
a character might lead a Regulus to torture,
yet, in the common course of nature, it is the
source not only of happiness in life, but of
quiet and honour in death ? A case so ex
treme as that of Regulus will not perplex us,
if we bear in mind, that though we cannot
prove the act of heroic virtue to be conducive
to the interest of the hero, yet we may per
ceive at once, that nothing i-s so conducive
to his interest as to have a mind so formed
that it could not shrink from it. but must
rather embrace it with gladness and tri
umph. Men of vigorous health are said
sometimes to suffer most in a pestilence.
No man was ever so absurd as for that rea
son to wish that he were more infirm. The
distemper might return once in a century :
if he were then alive, he might escape it ;
and even if he fell, the balance of advantage
would be in most cases greatly on the side
of robust health. In estimating beforehand
the value of a strong bodily frame, a man of
sense would throw the small chance of a rare
and short evil entirely out of the account. So
must the coldest and most selfish moral cal
culator, who, if he be sagacious and exact,
must pronounce, that the inconveniences to
which a man may be sometimes exposed by
a pure and sound mind, are no reasons for
regretting that w'e do not escape them by
possessing minds more enfeebled and dis
tempered. Other occasions will call our at
tention, in the sequel, to this important part
of the subject ; but the great name of Leib
nitz seemed to require that his degrading-
statement should not be cited without warn
ing the reader against its egregious fallacy.
MALEBRANCHE.*
This ingenious philosopher and beautiful
writer is the only celebrated Cartesian who
has professedly handled the theory of Mo-
rals.t His theory has in some points of view
a conformity to the doctrine of Clarke ; while
in others it has given occasion to his English
follower Norrist to say, that if the Quakers
understood their own opinion of the illumi
nation of all men, they would explain it on
the principles of Malebranche. " There is."
says he, "one parent virtue, the universal
virtue, the virtue which renders us just and
* Born, 1638; died, 1715.
t Traite de Morale. Rotterdam, 1684.
t Author of the Theory of the Ideal World,
who well copied, though he did not equal, the
clearness and choice of expression which belonged
to his master.
17
perfect, the virtue which will one day render
us happy. It is the only virtue. It is the
love of the universal order, as it eternally
existed in the Divine Reason, where every
created reason contemplates it. This order
is composed of practical as well as specula
tive truth. Reason perceives the moral supe
riority of one being over another, as immedi
ately as the equality of the radii of the same
circle. The relative perfection of beings is
that part of the immovable order to which
men must conform their minds and their
conduct. The love of order is the whole
of virtue, and conformity to order constitutes
the morality of actions." It is not difficult
to discover, that in spite of the singular skill
employed in weaving this web, it answers
no other purpose than that of hiding the
whole difficulty. The love of universal order,
says Malebranche, requires that we should
value an animal more than a stone, because
it is more valuable : and love God infinitely
more than man, because he is infinitely
better. But without presupposing the reality
of moral distinctions, and the power of moral
feelings. — the two points to be proved, how
can either of these propositions be evident,
or even intelligible'? To say that a love of
the Eternal Order will produce the love and
practice of every virtue, is an assertion un
tenable, unless we take Morality for granted,
and useless, if we do. In his work on Mo
rals, all the incidental and secondary remarks
are equally well considered and well ex
pressed. The manner in which he applied
his principle to the particulars of human
duty is excellent. He is perhaps the first
philosopher who has precisely laid down and
rigidly adhered to the great principle, that
Virtue consists in pure intentions and disposi
tions of mind, without which, actions, how
ever conformable to rules, are not truly
moral ; — a truth of the highest importance,
which, in the theological form, may be said
to have been the main principle of the first
Protestant Reformers. The ground of piety,
according to him, is the conformity of the
attributes of God to those moral qualities
which we irresistibly Jove and revere.*
"Sovereign princes," says he, "have no
right to use their authority without reason.
Even God has no such miserable right. "t
His distinction between a religious society
and an established church, and his assertion
of the right of the temporal power alone to
employ coercion, are worthy of notice, as
instances in which a Catholic, at once philo
sophical and orthodox, could thus speak, not
only of the nature of God, but of the rights
of the Church.
* " II faut aimer 1'Etre infiniment parfait, et non
pas un fantome epouvantable, un Dieu injuste, ab-
solu, puissant, mais sans bonte et sans sagesse.
S'il y avoit un tel Dieu, le vrai Dieu nous de'fen-
droit de 1'adorer et de 1'aimer. II y a peut-etre
plus de danger d'offenser Dieu lorsqu'on lui don-
ne une forme si horrible, que de mepriser son fan-
tome." — Traite de Morale, chap. viii.
t Ibid. chap. xxii.
130
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
JONATHAN EDWARDS.*
This remarkable man, the metaphysician
of America, was formed among the Calvi-
nists of New England, when their stern doc
trine retained its rigorous authority .t His
power of subtile argument, perhaps unmatch
ed, certainly unsurpassed among men, was
joined, as in some of the ancient Mystics,
Avith a character which raised his piety to
fervour. He embraced their doctrine, pro
bably without knowing it to be theirs. " True
religion," says he, "in a great measure con
sists in holy affections. A love of divine
things, for the beauty and sweetness of their
moral excellency, is the spring of all holy
affections."}: Had he suffered this noble
principle to take the right road to all its fair
consequences, he would have entirely con
curred with Plato, with Shaftesbury, and
Malebranche, in devotion to " the first good,
first perfect, and first fair." But he thought
it necessary afterwards to limit his doctrine
to his own persuasion, by denying that such
moral excellence could be discovered in
divine things by those Christians who did
not take the same view as he did of their
religion. All others, and some who hold his
doctrines with a more enlarged spirit, may
adopt his principle without any limitation.
His ethical theory is contained in his Disser
tation on the Nature of True Virtue ; and in
another, On God's chief End in the Creation,
published in London thirty years after his
death. True virtue, according to him, con
sists in benevolence, or love to " being in
general," which he afterwards limits to "in
telligent being," though "sentient" would
have involved a more reasonable limitation.
This good-will is felt towards a particular
being, first in proportion to his degree of ex
istence, (for, says he, " that which is great
has more existence, and is farther from no
thing, than that which is little ;") and second
ly, in proportion to the degree in which that
particular being feels benevolence to others.
Thus God, having infinitely more existence
and benevolence than man, ought to be in
finitely more loved • and for the same reason,
God must love himself infinitely more than
he does all other beings. § He can act only
from regard to Himself, and His end in crea
tion can only be to manifest His whole na
ture, which is called acting for His own glory.
As far as Edwards confines himself to
created beings, and while his theory is per
fectly intelligible, it coincides with that of
universal benevolence, hereafter to be con-
* Born in 1703, at Windsor in Connecticut;
died in 1758, at Princeton in New Jersey.
t See Note O.
t On Religions Affections, pp. 4, 187.
§ The coincidence of Malebranche with this part
of Edwards, is remarkable. Speaking of the
Supreme Being, he says, "II s'aime invincible-
ment." He adds another more startling expres
sion, " Certainement Dieu ne pent agir que pour
lui-meme : il n'a point d'autre motif qiie son amour
propre." — Traite de Morale, chap. xvii.
sidered. The term "being" is a mere en
cumbrance, which serves indeed to give it a
mysterious outside, but brings with it from
the schools nothing except their obscurity.
He was betrayed into it, by the cloak which
it threw over his really unmeaning assertion
or assumption, that there are degrees of ex
istence ; without which that part of his sys
tem which relates to the Deity would have
appeared to be as baseless as it really is.
When we try such a phrase by applying it
to matters within the sphere of our experi
ence, we see that it means nothing but de
grees of certain faculties and powers. But
the very application of the term " being" to
all things, shows that the least perfect has
as much being as the most perfect ; or rather
that there can be no difference, so far as that
word is concerned, between two things to
which it is alike applicable. The justness
of the compound proportion on which human
virtue is made to depend, is capable of being
tried by an easy test. If we suppose the
greatest of evil spirits to have a hundred
times the bad passions of Marcus Aurelius,
and at the same time a hundred times his
faculties, or, in Edwards' language, a hundred
times his quantity of " being," it follows from
this moral theory, that we ought to esteem
and love the devil exactly in the same de
gree as we esteem and love Marcus Aurelius.
The chief circumstance which justifies so
much being said on the last two writers, is
their concurrence in a point towards which
ethical philosophy had been slowly approach
ing from the time of the controversies raised
up by Hobbes. They both indicate the in
crease of this tendency, by introducing an
element into their theory, foreign from those
cold systems of ethical abstraction, with
which they continued in other respects to
have much in common. Malebranche makes
virtue consist in the love of " order." Ed
wards in the love of "being." In this lan
guage we perceive a step beyond the repre
sentation of Clarke, which made it a con
formity to the relations of things; but a
step which cannot be made without passing
into a new province • — without confessing, by
the use of the word " love," that not only
perception and reason, but emotion and sen
timent, are among the fundamental princi
ples of Morals. They still, however, were
so wedded to scholastic prejudice, as to
choose two of the most aerial abstractions
which .can be introduced into argument, —
"being" and "order." — to be the objects of
those strong active feelings which were to
govern the human mind.
BUFFIER.*
The same stninge disposition to fix on ab
stractions as the objects of our primitive
feelings, and the end sought by our warmest
desires/ manifests itself in the ingenious
writer with whom this part of the Disserta-
* Born, 1661 ; died, 1737.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY,
tion closes, under a form of less dignity than
that which it assumes in the hands of Male-
branche and Clarke. Buffier, the only Jesuit
whose name has a place in the history of
abstract philosophy, has no peculiar opinions
which would have required any mention of
him as a moralist, were it not for the just
reputation of his Treatise on First Truths,
with which Dr. Reid so remarkably, though
unaware of its existence, coincides, even in
the misapplication of so practical a term as
" common sense" to denote the faculty which
reqognises the truth of first principles. His
philosophical writings* are remarkable for
that perfect clearness of expression, which,
since the great examples of Descartes and
Pascal, has been so generally diffused, as to
have become one of the enviable peculiari
ties of French philosophical style, and almost
of the French language. His ethical doctrine
is that most commonly received among phi
losophers, from Aristotle to Paley and Ben-
tham : " I desire to be happy ; but as I live
with other men, I cannot be happy without
consulting their happiness:" a proposition
perfectly true indeed, but far too narrow ; as
inferring, that in the most benevolent acts a
man must pursue only his own interest, from
the fact that the practice of benevolence
does increase his happiness, and that because
a virtuous mind is likely to be the happiest,
our observation of that property of Virtue is
the cause of our love and reverence for it.
SECTION VI.
FOUNDATIONS OF A MORE JUST THEORY OF
ETHICS.
BUTLER — HUTCHESON — BERKELEY — HUME — SMITH
PRICE HARTLEY — TUCKER — PALEY BEN-
THAM — STEWART — BROWN.
From the beginning of ethical controversy
to the eighteenth century, it thus appears,
that the care of the individual for himself,
and his regard for the things which regard
self, were thought to form the first, and, in
the opinion of most, the earliest of all prin
ciples which prompt men and other animals
to activity ; that nearly all philosophers re
garded the appetites and desires, which look
only to self-gratification, as modifications of
this primary principle of self-love ; and that
a very numerous body considered even the
social affections themselves as nothing more
than the produce of a more latent and sub
tile operation of the desire of interest, and
the pursuit of pleasure. It is true that they
often spoke otherwise; but it was rather
from the looseness and fluctuation of their
language, than from distrust in their doctrine.
It is true, also; that perhaps all represent
ed the gratifications of Virtue as more un-
mingled. more secure, more frequent, and
more lasting, than other pleasures ; without
which they could neither have retained a
* Cours de Sciences. Paris, 1732.
hold on the assent of mankind, BOP
ciled the principles of their systems withlSwr
testimony of their hearts. We have »e«r
how some began to be roused from a laarjr
acquiescence in this ancient hypothesis, wy
the monstrous consequences which Hob©e«
had legitimately deduced from it. A few*
of pure minds and great intellect, laboured
to render Morality disinterested, by tracing'
it to Reason as its source; without consider
ing that Reason, elevated indeed far aboT£
interest, is also separated by an impassaW*"
gulf, from feeling, affection, and passion..
At length it was perceived by more ifiam
one; that through whatever length of reason
ing the mind may pass in its advances Jo-
wards action, there is placed at the endot'
any avenue through which it can advance^
some principle wholly unlike mere Reassrci;
— some emotion or sentiment which must TO"
touched, before the springs of Will and Acti&m
can be set in motion. Had Lord Shaftesbsroj^
steadily adhered to his own principles, — ha<!
Leibnitz not recoiled from his statement; tbe
truth might have been regarded as pro--
mulged, though not unfolded. The writings
of both prove, at least to us, enlightened as
we are by what followed, that they were
skilful in sounding, and that their lead Jiad
touched the bottom. But it was reserved
for another moral philosopher to deterrajaw?
this hitherto unfathomed depth.*
BUTLER.t
Butler, who was the son of a Presbyterian
trader, early gave such promise, as to indtw*?
his father to fit him. by a proper educatiwy
for being a minister of that persuasion. Jfe*
was educated at one of their seminaries na-
der Mr. Jones of Gloucester, where
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury was
fellow-student. Though many of the
senters had then begun to relinquish Ca
ism, the uniform effect of that doctrine, a
disposing its adherents to metaphysical spe
culation, long survived the opinions
caused it, and cannot be doubted to h
fluenced the mind of Butler. When a
dent at the academy at Gloucester, he
* The doctrine of the Stoics is thus put by Ci
cero into the mouth of Cato : " Placet his, in^jBsJC,,
quorum ratio mihi probatur, simul atque naf«3R-
sit animal (hinc enim est ordiendum), ipsum siSi
conciliari et commendari ad se conservandum> «?'
ad suum statum, et ad ea, quae conservantia stssfi
ejus status, diligenda ; alienari autem ab mteritfia-
iisque rebus quae interitum videanlur affesjc-, J«t:
ita esse sic probant, quod, antequam voluptaa aisT
dolor attigerit, salutaria appetant parvi, asperners-
turque contraria : quod non fieret, nisi statum SB?-
um diligerent, interitum timerent : fieri an
non posset, ut appeterent aliquid, nisi sensum
berent sui, eoque se et sua diligerent. Ex
intelligi debet, principium ductum esse a se c
gendi sui." — De Fin. lib. iii. cap. v. We are t
that diligendo is the reading of an ancient
Perhaps the omission of " a " would be the e
and most reasonable emendation. The above pa»
sage is perhaps the fullest and plainest stateswaJT
of the doctrines prevalent till the time of Butfe?,
tBorn, 1692; died, 1752.
132
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
private letters to Dr. Clarke on his celebrated
Demonstration, suggesting objections which
were really insuperable, and which are mark
ed by an acuteness which neither himself
nor any other ever surpassed . Clarke, whose
heart was as well schooled as his head, pub
lished the letters, with his own answers, in
the next edition of his work, and. by his
good offices with his friend and follower, Sir
Joseph Jekyll, obtained for the young phi
losopher an early opportunity of making his
abilities and opinions known, by the appoint
ment of preacher at the Chapel of the Master
of the Rolls. He was afterwards raised to
one of the highest seats on the episcopal
bench, through the philosophical taste of
Queen Caroline, and her influence over the
mind of her husband, which continued long
after her death. uHe was wafted," says
Horace Walpole, "to the See of Durham, on
a cloud of Metaphysics."* Even in the
fourteenth year of his widowhood, George II.
was desirous of inserting the name of the
Queen's metaphysical favourite in the Re
gency Bill of 1751.
His great work on the Analogy of Religion
to the Course of Nature, though only a com
mentary on the singularly original and preg-
nent passage of Origen,t which is so honestly
prefixed to it as a motto, is, notwithstanding,
the most original and profound work extant
in any language on the philosophy of religion.
It is entirely beyond our present scope. His
ethical discussions are contained in those
deep and sometimes dark dissertations which
he preached at the Chapel of the Rolls, and
afterwards published under the name of
"Sermons," while he was yet fresh from the
schools, and full of that courage with which
youth often delights to exercise its strength
in abstract reasoning, and to push its facul
ties into the recesses of abstruse speculation.
But his youth was that of a sober and ma
ture mind, early taught by Nature to discern
the boundaries of Knowledge, and to abstain
from fruitless efforts to reach inaccessible
ground. In these Sermons,!: he has taught
truths more capable of being exactly dis
tinguished from the doctrines of his prede
cessors, more satisfactorily established, more
comprehensively applied to particulars, more
rationally connected with each other, and
therefore more worthy of the name of " dis
covery," than any with which we are ac
quainted j — if we ought not, with some hesi
tation, to except the first steps of the Grecian
phifc>sopriers towards a theory of Morals. It
is a peculiar hardship, that the extreme am
biguity of language, an obstacle which it is
one of the chief merits of an ethical philoso-
* Memoirs of Geo. II., i. 129.
t " Ejus (analogia) vis est ; ut id quod dubium
est ad aliquid simile de quo non quseritur, referat ;
ut incerta certis probet."
$ See Sermons i. ii. iii. On Human Nature ; v.
On Compassion ; viii. On Resentment ; ix. On
Forgiveness; xi. and xii. On the Love of Our
Neighbour ; and xiii. On the Love of God ; to
gether with the excellent Preface.
pher to vanquish, is one of the circumstances
which prevent men from seeing the justice
of applying to him so ambitious a term as
•'discoverer." He owed more to Lord Shafles-
bury than to all other writers besides. He
is just and generous towards that philoso
pher : yet, whoever carefully compares their
writings, will without difficulty distinguish
the two builders, and the larger as well as
more regular and laboured part of the edifice,
which is the work of Butler.
Mankind have various principles of action ;
some leading directly to the good of the in
dividual, some immediately to the good of
the community. But the former are not in
stances of self-love, or of any form of it ; for
self-love is the desire of a man's own hap
piness, whereas the object of an appetite or
passion is some outward thing. Self-love
seeks things as means of happiness ; the pri
vate appetites seek things, not as means, but
as ends. A man eats from hunger, and
drinks from thirst ; and though he knows
that these acts are necessary to life, that
knowledge is not the motive of his conduct.
No gratification can indeed be imagined
without a previous desire. If all the par
ticular desires did not exist independently,
self-love would have no object to employ
itself about ; for there would in that case be
no happiness, which, by the very supposi
tion of the opponents, is made up of the
gratifications of various desires. No pur
suit could be selfish or interested, if there
were not satisfactions to be gained by appe
tites which seek their own outward objects
without regard to self. These satisfactions
in the mass compose what is called a man's
interest.
In contending, therefore, that the benevo
lent affections are disinterested, no more is
claimed for them than must be granted to
mere animal appetites and to malevolent
passions. Each of these principles alike
seeks its own object, for the sake simply of
obtaining it. Pleasure is the result of the
attainment, but no separate part of the aim
of the agent. The desire that another per
son may be gratified, seeks that outward ob
ject alone, according to the general course
of human desire. Resentment is as disinte
rested as gratitude or pity, but not more so.
Hunger or thirst may be, as much as the
purest benevolence, at variance with self-
love. A regard to our own general happi
ness is not a vice, but in itself an excellent
quality. It were well if it prevailed more
generally over craving and short-sighted ap
petites. The weakness of the social affec
tions, and the strength of the private desires,
properly constitute selfishness- a vice utterly
at variance with the happiness of him who
harbours it, and as such, condemned by self-
love. There are as few who attain the great
est satisfaction to themselves, as who do the
greatest good to others. It is absurd to say
with some, that the pleasure of benevolence
is selfish because it is felt by self. Under
standing and reasoning are acts of self, for
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY, 133
no man can think by proxy ; but no one ever
called them selfish. Why ? Evidently be
cause they do not regard self. Precisely
the same reason applies to benevolence.
Such an argument is a gross confusion of
" self," as it is a subject of feeling or thought,
with " self" considered as the object of
either. It is no more just to refer the pri
vate appetites to self-love because they com
monly promote happiness, than it would be
to refer them to self-hatred in those frequent
cases where their gratification obstructs it.
But, besides the private or public desires,
and besides the calm regard to our own gene
ral welfare, there is a principle in man, in
its nature supreme over all others. This
natural supremacy belongs to the faculty
which surveys, approves, or disapproves the
several affections of our minds and actions
of our lives. As self-love is superior to the
private passions, so Conscience is superior to
the whole of man. Passion implies nothing
but an inclination to follow an object, and in
that respect passions differ only in force : but
no notion can be formed of the principle of
reflection, or Conscience, which does not
comprehend judgment, direction, superin-
tendency; authority over all other princi
ples of action is a constituent part of the
idea of it, and cannot be separated from it.
Had it strength as it has right, it would govern
the world. The passions would have their
power, but according to their nature, which
is to be subject to Conscience. Hence we
may understand the purpose at which the
ancients, perhaps confusedly, aimed when
they laid it down '•' that Virtue consisted in
following Nature." It is neither easy, nor,
for the main object of the moralist, import
ant, to render the doctrines of the ancients
by modern language. If Butler returns to
this phrase too often, it was rather from the
remains of undistinguishing reverence for
antiquity, than because he could deem its
employment important to his own opinions.
The tie w^hich holds together Religion and
Morality is, in the system of Butler, some
what different from the common representa
tions of it, but not less close. Conscience,
or the faculty of approving or disapproving,
necessarily constitutes the bond of union.
Setting out from the belief of Theism, and
combining it, as he had entitled himself to
do. with the reality of Conscience, he could
not avoid discovering that the being who
possessed the highest moral qualities, is the
object of the highest moral affections. He
contemplates the Deity through the moral
nature of man. In the case of a being who
is to be perfectly loved, " goodness must be
the simple actuating principle within him,
this being the moral quality which is the
immediate object of love.'' "The highest,
the adequate object of this affection, is per
fect goodness, which, therefore, we are to
love with all our heart, with all our soul, and
with all our strength." " We should refer
ourselves implicitly to him. and cast our
selves entirely upon him. The whole at-
;ention of life should be to obey his com-
nands."* Moral distinctions are thus pre
supposed before a step can be made towards
Religion : Virtue leads to piety ; God is to be
"oved, because goodness is the object of love;
and it is only after the mind rises through
luman morality to divine perfection, that all
the virtues and duties are seen to hang from
the throne of God.t
REMARKS.
There do not appear to be any errors in
the ethical principles of Butler : the follow
ing remarks are intended to point out some
defects in his scheme. And even that at
tempt is made with the unfeigned humility
of one who rejoices in an opportunity of
doing justice to that part of the writings of a
great philosopher which has not been so
clearly understood nor so justly estimated
by the generality as his other works.
1. It is a considerable defect, though per
haps unavoidable in a sermon, that he omits
all inquiry into the nature and origin of the
private appetites, which first appear in hu
man nature. It is implied, but it is not ex
pressed in his reasonings, that there is a
time before the child can be called selfish,
any more than social, when these appetites
seem as it were separately to pursue their
distinct objects, and that this is long antece
dent to that state of mind in which their
gratification is regarded as forming the mass
called •'•'happiness." It is hence that they
are likened to instincts distinct as these lat
ter subsequently become. t
2. Butler shows admirably well, that un
less there were principles of action inde
pendent of self, there could be no pleasures
and no happiness for self-love to watch over.
A step farther would have led him to per
ceive that self-love is altogether a secondary
formation, the result of the joint operation of
Reason and habit upon the primary princi
ples. It could not have existed without pre
supposing original appetites and organic
gratifications. Had he considered this part
of the subject, he would have strengthened
his case by showing that self-love is as truly
a derived principle, not only as any of the
social affections. 'but as any of the most con
fessedly acquired passions. It would appear
clear, that as self-love is not divested of its
self-regarding character by considering it as
acquired, so the social affections do not lose
any part of their disinterested character, if
they be considered as formed from simpler
elements. Nothing would more tend to root
out the old prejudice which treats a regard
* Sermon xiii. — " On the Love of God."
t " The part in which I think I have done most
service is that in which I have endeavoured to slip
in a foundation under Butler's doctrine of the su
premacy of Conscience, which he left baseless." —
Sir James Mackintosh to Professor Napier. — ED.
I The very able work ascribed to Mr. Hazlitt,
entitled " Essay on the Principles of Human Ac
tion," Lond. 1805, contains original views on this
i subject.
M
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ta self as analogous to a self-evident princi
ple, than the proof that self-love is itself
formed from certain original elements, and
that a living being long subsists before its
appearance.*
3. It must be owned that those parts of
.Butlers discourses which relate to the so
cial affections are more satisfactory than
those which handle the question concerning
the moral sentiments. It is not that the real
existence of the latter is not as well made
.-out as that of the former. In both cases he
occupies the unassailable ground of an ap
peal to consciousness. All men (even the
worst), feel that they have a conscience and
disinterested affections. But he betrays a
sense of the greater vagueness of his notions
, on this subject : he falters as he approaches
it. He makes no attempt to determine in
what state of mind the action of Conscience
..consists. He does not venture steadily to
.denote it by a name • he fluctuates between
different appellations, and multiplies the
metaphors of authority and command, with
out a simple exposition of that mental opera
tion which these metaphors should only have
illustrated. It commands other principles:
but the question recurs, Why, or How ?
Some of his own hints and some fainter
intimations of Shaftesbury, might have led
iim to what appears to be the true solution,
which, perhaps from its extreme simplicity,
kas escaped him and his successors. The
truth seems to be, that the moral sentiments
in their mature state, are a class of feelings
which have no other object bi't the mental dis
positions leading to voluntary action, and the
voluntary actions which flow from these dis
positions. We are pleased with some dis
positions and actions, and displeased with
others, in ourselves and our fellows. We
desire to cultivate the dispositions and to
perform the actions, which we contemplate
with satisfaction. These objects, like all
th.ose of human appetite or desire, are sought
for their own sake. The peculiarity of these
desires is, that their gratification requires the
use of no means; nothing (unless it be a vo
lition) is interposed between the desire and
tke voluntary act. It is impossible, there-
f6re, that these passions should undergo any
change by transfer from being the end to
•feeing the means, as is the case with other
•practical principles. On the other hand, as
&GOII as they are fixed on these ends, they
«eannot regard any further object. When
Another passion prevails over them, the end
*>f the moral faculty is converted into a
tneans of gratification. But volitions and
Actions are not themselves the end or last
object in view, of any other desire or aver
sion. Nothing stands between the moral
sentiments and their object ; they are, as it
were, in contact with the Will. It is this
^ort of mental position, if the expression may
* Compare this statement with the Stoical doc
trine explained by Cicero in the book De Finibus,
uoted above, 01 which it is the direct opposite.
be pardoned, that explains or seems to ex
plain those characteristic properties which
true philosophers ascribe to them, and which
all reflecting men feel to belong to them.
Being the only desires, aversions, sentiments,
or emotions which regard dispositions and
actions, they necessarily extend to the whole
character and conduct. Among motives to
action, they alone are justly considered as
universal. They may and do stand between
any other practical principle and its object,
while it is absolutely impossible that another
shall intercept their connexion with the Will.
Be it observed, that though many passions
prevail over them, no other can act beyond
'ts own appointed and limited sphere ; and
hat such prevalence itself, leaving the natu
ral order disturbed in no other part of the
mind, is perceived to be a disorder, when
ever seen in another, and felt to be so by
the very mind disordered, when the disor
der subsides. Conscience may forbid the
Will to contribute to the gratification of a
desire: no desire ever forbids the Will to
obey Conscience.
This result of the peculiar relation of Con
science to the Will, justifies those metapho
rical expressions which ascribe to it " au
thority" and the right of '-universal com
mand.'' It is immutable ; for, by the law
which regulates all feelings, it must rest on
action, which is its object, and beyond which
it cannot look ; and as it employs no means,
it never can be transferred to nearer objects,
in the way in which he who first desires an
object as a means of gratification, may come
to seek it as his end. Another remarkable
peculiarity is bestowed on the moral feel
ings by the nature of their object. As the
objects of all other desires are outward, the
r-atisfaction of them may be frustrated by
outward causes : the moral sentiments may
always be gratified, because voluntary ac
tions and moral dispositions spring from
within. No external circumstance affects
them ; — hence their independence. As the
moral sentiment needs no means, and the
desire is instantaneously followed by the
volition, it seems to be either that which
first suggests the relation between command
and obedience, or at least that which affords the
simplest instance of it. It is therefore with
the most rigorous precision that authority
and universality are ascribed to them. Their
only unfortunate property is their too fre
quent weakness \ but it is apparent that it is
from that circumstance alone that their fail
ure arises. Thus considered, the language
of Butler concerning Conscience, that, " had
it strength, as it has right, it would govern
the world," which may seem to be only an
effusion of generous feeling, proves to be a
just statement of the nature and action of
the highest of human faculties. The union
of universality, immutability, and independ
ence, with direct action on the Will, which
distinguishes the Moral Sense from every
other part of our practical nature, renders it
scarcely metaphorical language to ascribe to
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
135
it unbounded sovereignty and awful author
ity over the whole of the world within ; —
shows that attributes, well denoted by terms
significant of command and control, are, in
fact, inseparable from it, or rather constitute
its very essence; and justifies those ancient
moralists who represent it as alone securing,
if not forming the moral liberty of man.
When afterwards the religious principle is
evolved, Conscience is clothed with the su
blime character of representing the divine
purity and majesty in the human soul. Its
title is not impaired by any number of
defeats; for every defeat necessarily dis
poses the disinterested and dispassionate
by-stander to wish that its force were
strengthened : and though it may be doubt
ed whether, consistently with the present
constitution of human nature, it could be so
invigorated as to be the only motive to ac
tion, yet every such by-stander rejoices at
all accessions to its force; and would own,
that man becomes happier, more excellent,
more estimable, more venerable, in propor
tion as it acquires a power of banishing
malevolent passions, of strongly curbing all
the private appetites, and of influencing
and guiding the benevolent affections them
selves.
Let it be carefully considered whether the
same observations could be made with truth.
or with plausibility, on any other part or ele
ment of the nature of man. They are en
tirely independent of the question, whether
Conscience be an inherent, or an acquired
principle. If it be inherent, that circum
stance is, according to the common modes
of thinking, a sufficient proof of its title to
veneration. But if provision be made in the
constitution and circumstances of all men,
for uniformly producing it, by processes simi
lar to those which produce other acquired
sentiments, may not our reverence be aug
mented by admiration of that Supreme Wis
dom which, in such mental contrivances, yet
more brightly than in the lower world of mat
ter, accomplishes mighty purposes by instru
ments so simple ? Should these speculations
be thought to have any solidity by those who
are accustomed to such subjects, it would be
easy to unfold and apply them so fully, that
they may be thoroughly apprehended by
every intelligent person.
4, The most palpable defect of Butler's
scheme is, that it affords no answer to the
question, " What is the distinguishing quality
common to all right actions V If it were
answered, " Their criterion is, that they are
approved and commanded by Conscience,
the answerer would find that he was involved
in a vicious circle: for Conscience itself
could be no otherwise defined than as the
faculty which approves and commands righ
actions.
There are few circumstances more re
markable than the small number of Butler's
followers in Ethics; and it is perhaps stil
more observable, that his opinions were no,.
w» much rejected as overlooked. It is an in
stance of the importance of style. No thinker
so great was ever so bad a writer. Indeed,
the ingenious apologies which have been
lately attempted for this defect, amount to
no more than that his power of thought was
loo much for his skill in language. How
general must the reception have been of
truths so certain and momentous as those
contained in Butler's discourses, — with how
much more clearness must they have ap
peared to his own great understanding, if he
had possessed the strength and distinctness
with which Hobbes enforces odious false
hood, or the unspeakable charm of that trans
parent diction which clothed the unfruitful
paradoxes of Berkeley !
HUTCHESON.*
This ingenious writer began to try his own
strength by private letters, written in his
early youth to Dr. Clarke, the metaphysical
patriarch of his time ; on whom young phi
losophers seem to have considered them
selves as possessing a claim, which he had
too much goodness to reject. His corres
pondence with Hutcheson is lost; but we
may judge of its spirit by his answers to
Butler, and by one to Mr. Henry Home,t
afterwards Lord Kames, then a young ad
venturer in the prevalent speculations. Near
ly at the same period with Butler's first pub
lication^ the writings of Hutcheson began to
show coincidences with him, indicative of
the tendency of moral theory to assume a
new form, by virtue of an impulse received
from Shaftesbury, and quickened to greater
activity by the adverse system of Clarke.
Lord Molesworth, the friend of Shaftesbury,
patronised Hutcheson, and even criticised his
manuscript; and though a Presbyterian, he
was befriended by King, Archbishop of Dub
lin, himself a metaphysician ; and aided by
Mr. Synge, afterwards also a bishop, to whom
speculations somewhat similar to his own
had occurred.
Butler and Hutcheson coincided in the two
important positions, that disinterested affec
tions, and a distinct moral faculty, are essen
tial parts of human nature. Hutcheson is a
chaste and simple writer, who imbibed the
opinions, without the literary faults of his
master, Shaftesbury. He has a clearness of
expression, and fulness of illustration, which
are wanting in Butler. But he is inferior to
both these writers in the appearance at least
of originality, and to Butler especially in that
* Born in Ireland, 1694 ; died at Glasgow, 1747.
t Woodhouselee's Life of Lord Kames, vol. i.
Append. No. 3.
t The first edition of Butler's Sermons was
published in 1726, in which year also appeared the
second edition of Hutcheson's Inquiry into Beauty
and Virtue. The Sermons had been preached
some years before, though there is no likelihood
that the contents could have reached a young
teacher at Dublin. The place of Hutcheson's
birth is not mentioned in any account known to
me. Ireland may be truly said to be " incuriosa.
suorum."
136
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
philosophical courage which, when it disco
vers the fountains of truth and falsehood,
leaves others to follow the streams. He
states as strongly as Butler, that "the same
cause which determines us to pursue hap
piness for ourselves, determines us both to
esteem and benevolence on their proper oc
casions — even the very frame of our na
ture."* It is in vain, as he justly observes,
for the patrons of a refined selfishness to pre
tend that we pursue the happiness of others
for ihe sake of the pleasure which we derive
from it; since it is apparent that there could
be no such pleasure if there had been no
previous affection. "Had we no affection
distinct from self-love, nothing could raise a
desire of the happiness of others, but when
viewed as a mean of our own."f He seems
to have been the first who entertained just
notions of the formation of the secondary
desires, which had been overlooked by But
ler. " There must arise, in consequence of
our original desires, secondary desires of
every thing useful to gratify the primary de
sire. Thus, as soon as we apprehend the
use of wealth, or power, to gratify our origi
nal desires, we also desire them. From their
universality as means arises the general pre
valence of these desires of wealth and
power. "t Proceeding farther in his zeal
against the selfish system than Lord Shaftes-
bury, who seems ultimately to rest the rea
sonableness of benevolence on its subser
viency to the happiness of the'individual, he
represents the moral faculty to be. as well
as self-love and benevolence, a calm general
impulse, which may and does impel a good
man to sacrifice not only happiness, but even
life itself, to Virtue.
As Mr. Locke had spoken of " an internal
sensation ;" Lord Shaftesbury once or twice
of " a reflex sense," and once of "a moral
sense ;" Hutcheson, who had a steadier, if
not a clearer view of the nature of Con
science than Butler, calls it " a moral sense ;"
a name which quickly became popular, and
continues to be a part of philosophical lan
guage. By "sense" he understood a capa
city of receiving ideas, together with plea
sures and pains, from a class of objects: the
term " moral" was used to describe the par
ticular class in question. It implied only
that Conscience was a separate element in
our nature, and that it was not a state or act
of the Understanding. According to him, it
also implied that it was an original and im
planted principle ; but every other part of
his theory might be embraced by those who
hold it to be derivative.
The object of moral approbation, accord
ing to him, is general benevolence; and he
carries this generous error so far as to deny
that prudence, as long as it regards ourselves,
can be morally approved ; — an assertion con
tradicted by every man's feelings, and to
which we owe the Dissertation on the Na-
* Inquiry, p. 152.
t Essay on the Passions, p. 17. t Ibid. p. 8.
ture of Virtue, which Butler annexed to his
Analogy. By proving that all virtuous ac
tions produce generaf good, he fancied that
he had proved the necessity of regarding the
general good in every act of virtue ;• — an in
stance of that confusion of the theory of
moral sentiments with the criterion of moral
actions, against which the reader was warned
at the opening of this Dissertation, as fatal
to ethical philosophy. He is chargeable, like
Butler, with a vicious circle, in describing
virtuous acts as those which are approved
by the moral sense, while he at the same
time describes the moral sense as the faculty
which perceives and feels the morality of
actions.
Hutcheson was the father of the modern
school of speculative philosophy in Scotland ;
for though in the beginning of the sixteenth
century the Scotch are said to have been
known throughout Europe by their unmea
sured passion for dialectical subtilties,* and
though this metaphysical taste was nourish
ed by the controversies which followed the
Reformation, yet it languished, with every
other intellectual taste and talent, from the
Restoration, — first silenced by civil disorders,
and afterwards repressed by an exemplary,
but unlettered clergy, — till the philosophy
of Shaftesbury was brought by Hutcheson
from Ireland. We are told by the writer of
his Life (a fine piece of philosophical biogra
phy) that "he had a remarkable degree of
rational enthusiasm for learning, liberty, Re
ligion, Virtue, and human happiness ;"t that
he taught in public with persuasive elo
quence; that his instructive conversation
was at once lively arid modest ; and that he
united pure manners with a kind disposition.
What wonder that such a man should have
spread the love of Knowledge and Virtue
around him, and should have rekindled in
his adopted country a relish for the sciences
which he cultivated ! To him may also be
ascribed that proneness to multiply ultimate
and original principles in human naturer
which characterized the Scottish school till
the second extinction of a passion for meta-
* The character given of the Scotch by the fa
mous and unfortunate Servetus (edition of Ptole
my. 1533,) is in many respects curious: " Gallis
amicissimi, Anglorumque regi maxime infest!.**'
Subita ingenia, et in ultionem prona, ferociaque.**'
In bello fortes ; inedire, vigilise, algoris patientissi-
mi; decenti forma sed cultu negligentiori ; invidi
natura, et caeterorum mortalium contemptores;
ostentant plus nimio nobilitalem suam, et in summd
etiam egestale suum genus ad regiam slirpem re~
ferunt ; nee non dialecticis argutiis sibi Uandi-
untur." " Subita ingenia" is an expression equi
valent to the " Prrefervidum Scotorum ingenium"
of Buchanan. Churchill almost agrees in words
with Servetus :
" Whose lineage springs
From great and glorious, though forgotten kings."
The strong antipathy of the late King George III.
to what he called " Scotch Metaphysics," proves
the permanency of the last part of the national
character.
t Life by Dr. Leechman, prefixed to the Sys
tem of Moral Philosophy.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
137
physical speculation in Scotland. A careful
perusal of the writings of this now little stu
died philosopher will satisfy the well-quali
fied reader, that Dr. Adam Smith's ethical
speculations are not so unsuggested as they
are beautiful.
BERKELEY.*
This great metaphysician was so little a
moralist, that it requires the attraction of his
name to excuse its introduction here. His
Theory of Vision contains a great discovery
in mental philosophy. His immaterialism
is chiefly valuable as a touchstone of meta
physical sagacity; showing those to be alto
gether without it, who, like Johnson and
Beattie. believed that his speculations were
sceptical, that they implied any distrust in
the senses, or that they had the smallest
tendency to disturb reasoning or alter con
duct. Ancient learning, exact science, po
lished society, modern literature, and the
fine arts, contributed to adorn and enrich the
mind of this accomplished man. All his
contemporaries agreed with the satirist in
ascribing
" To Berkeley every virtue under heaven. "t
Adverse factions and hostile wits concurred
only in loving, admiring, and contributing to
advance him. The severe sense of Swift
endured his visions ; the modest Addison en
deavoured to reconcile Clarke to his ambi
tious speculations. His character converted
the satire of Pope into fervid praise ; even
the discerning, fastidious, and turbulent At-
terbury said, after an interview with him,
" So much understanding, so much kno\v-
ledge, so much innocence, and such humili
ty, I did not think had been the portion of
any but angels, till I saw this gentleman. "f
Lord Bathurst told me, that the members
of the Scriblerus Club being met at his house
at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley,
who was also his guest, on his" scheme at
Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened to
the many lively things they had to say, beg
ged to be heard in his turn, and displayed
his plan with such an astonishing and ani
mating force of eloquence and enthusiasm,
that they were struck dumb, and after some
pause, rose all up together, with earnestness
exclaiming, 'Let us set out with him imme
diately. ' "§ It was when thus beloved and
celebrated that he conceived, at the age of
forty-five, the design of devoting his life to
reclaim and convert the natives of North
America ; and he employed as much influ
ence and solicitation as common rnen do for
their most prized objects, iu obtaining leave
to resign his dignities and revenues, to quit
his accomplished and affectionate friends,
and to bury himself in what must have
seemed an intellectual desert. After four
* Born near Thomastown, in Ireland, 1684 ;
died at Oxford, 1753.
t Epilogue to Pope's Satires, dialogue 2.
$ Duncombe's Letters, pp. 106, 107.
§ Wharton on Pope, i. 199.
18
years' residence at Newport, in Rhode Is
land, he was compelled, by the refusal of go
vernment to furnish him with funds for his
College, to forego his work of heroic, or rather
godlike benevolence ; though not without
some consoling forethought of the fortune of
the country where he had sojourned.
Westward the course of empire takes its way,
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
TIME'S NOBLEST OFFSPRING IS ITS LAST.
Thus disappointed in his ambition of keep
ing a school for savage children, at a salary
of a hundred pounds by the year, he was re
ceived, on his return, with open arms by the
philosophical queen, at whose metaphysical
parties he made one with Sherlock, who, as
well as Smalridge, was his supporter, and
withHoadley, who, following Clarke, was his
antagonist. By her influence, he was made
bishop of Cloyne. It is one of his highest
boasts, that though of English extraction, he
was a true Irishman, and the first eminent
Protestant, after the unhappy contest at the
Revolution, who avowed his love for all his
countrymen. He asked, '-Whether their
habitations and furniture were not more sor
did than those of the savage Americans?"*
"Whether a scheme for the welfare of this
nation should not take in the whole inhabit
ants ?" and " Whether it was a vain attempt,,
to project the flourishing of our Protestant
gentry, exclusive of the bulk of the natives V'\
He proceeds to promote the reformation sug
gested in this pregnant question by a series
of Queries, intimating with the utmost skill
and address, every reason that proves the
necessity, and the safety, and the wisest
mode of adopting his suggestion. He con
tributed, by a truly Christian address to the
Roman Catholics of his diocese, to their
perfect quiet during the rebellion of 1745;:
and soon after published a letter to the
clergy of that persuasion, beseeching them
to inculcate industry among their flocks,
for which he received their thanks. He
tells them that it was a saying among the
negro slaves, "if negro were not negro,
Irishman would be negro." It is difficult
to read these proofs of benevolence and
foresight without emotion, at the moment
when, after a lapse of near a century, his
suggestions have been at length, at the close
of a struggle of twenty-five years, adopted,
by the admission of the whole Irish nation
to the privileges of the British constitution.!:
The, patriotism of Berkeley was not, like
that of Swift, tainted by disappointed ambi
tion, nor was it, like Swift's, confined to a
colony of English Protestants. Perhaps the
Querist contains more hints, then original,
and still unapplied in legislation and political
economy, than are to be found in any other
equal space. From the writings of his ad
vanced years, when he chose a medical
tract§ to be the vehicle of his philosophical
* See his Querist, 358 ; published in 1735.
t Ibid., 255. t April, 1829.
§ Siris, or Reflections on Tar Water.
M 2
13B
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
rejections, though it cannot be said that he
relinquished his early opinions, it is at least
apparent that his mind had received a new
bent, and was habitually turned from reason
ing towards contemplation. His immaterial-
isrn indeed modestly appears, but only to
purify and elevate our thoughts, and to fix
them on Mind, the paramount and primeval
principle of all things. " Perhaps," says he,
'-the truth about innate ideas may be. that
there are properly no ideas, or passive objects,
in the mind but what are derived from sense,
but that there are also, besides these, her'
own acts and operations, — such are notions;''
a statement which seems once more to admit
general conceptions, and which might have
served, as well as the parallel passage of
Leibnitz, as the basis of the modern philoso
phy of Germany. From these compositions
of his old age. he appears then to have recur
red with fondness to Plato and the later Plato-
nists j writers from whose mere reasonings
an intellect so acute could hardly hope for
an argumentative satisfaction of all its diffi
culties, and whom, he probably rather studied
as a means of inuring his mind to objects
beyond the "visible diurnal sphere," and of
attaching it, through frequent meditation, to
that perfect and transcendent goodness to
which his moral feelings always pointed,
and which they incessantly strove to grasp.
His mind, enlarging as it rose, at length re
ceives every theist, however imperfect his
belief, to a communion in its philosophic
piety. " Truth," he beautifully concludes.
" is the cry of all, but the game of a few!
Certainly, where it is the chief passion, it
does not give way to vulgar cares, nor is it
contented with a little ardour in the early
time of life ; active perhaps to pursue, but
not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would
make a real progress in knowledge, must
dedicate his age as well as youth, the later
growth as well as first fruits, at the altar
of Truth." So did Berkeley, and such were
almost his latest words.
His general principles of Ethics may be
shortly stated in his own words: — "As God
is a being of infinite goodness, His end is
the good of His creatures. The general well-
being of all men of all nations, of all ages
of the world, is that which He designs should
be procured by the concurring actions of
each individual." Having stated that this
end can be pursued only in one of two ways,
— either by computing the consequences of
each action, or by obeying rules which gene
rally tend to happiness, — and having shown
the first to be impossible, he rightly infers,
" that the end to which God requires the con
currence of human actions, must be carried
on by the observation of certain determinate
and universal rules, or moral precepts, which
in their own nature have a necessary ten
dency to promote the well-being of man
kind, taking in all nations and ages, from the
beginning to the end of the world."* A
* Sermon in Trinity College chapel, on Passive
Obedience, 1712.
romance, of which a journey to an Utopia,
in the centre of Africa, forms the chief part,
called "The Adventures of Signer Gaudentio
di Lucca." has been commonly ascribed to
him; probably on no other ground than its
union of pleasing invention with benevolence
and elegance.* Of the exquisite grace and
beauty of his diction, no man accustomed to
English composition can need to be informed.
His works are, beyond dispute, the finest
models of philosophical style since Cicero.
Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in
the wonderful art by which the fullest light
is thrown on the most minute and evanes
cent parts of the most subtile of human
conceptions. Perhaps, also, he surpassed
Cicero in the charm of simplicity, a quality
eminently found in Irish writers before the
end of the eighteenth century : — conspicuous
in the masculine severity of Swift, in the
Platonic fancy of Berkeley, in the native
tenderness and elegance of Goldsmith, and
not withholding its attractions from Hutche-
son and Leland, writers of classical taste,
though of inferior power. The two Irisn
philosophers of the eighteenth century may
be said to have co-operated in calling forth
the metaphysical genius of Scotland; for,
though Hulcheson spread the taste for, and
furnished the principles of such specula
tions, yet Berkeley undoubtedly produced the
scepticism of Hume, which stimulated the
instinctive school to activity, and was thought
incapable of confutation, otherwise than by
their doctrines.
DAVID HUME.t
The life of Mr. Hume, written by himself,
is remarkable above most, if not all writings
of that sort, for hitting the degree of inte
rest between coldness and egotism which
becomes a modest man in speaking of his
private history. Few writers, whose opin
ions were so obnoxious, have more perfectly
escaped every personal imputation. Very
few men of so calm a character have been
so warmly beloved. That he approached to
the character of a perfectly good and wise
man, is an affectionate exaggeration, for<
which his friend Dr. Smith, in the first mo
ments of his sorrow, may well be excused, i
But such a praise can never be earned with
out passing through either of the extremes
of fortune, — without standing the test of
temptations, dangers, and sacrifices. It may
be said with truth, that the private character
of Mr. Hume exhibited all the virtues which
a man of reputable station, under a mild
government, in the quiet times of a civilized
country, has often the opportunity to practise.
He showed no want of the qualities which
fit men for more severe trials. Though
others had warmer affections, no man was a
* See Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1777.
t Born at Edinburgh, 1711 ; died there, 1776.
t Dr. Smith's Letter to Mr. Strahan, annexed
to the Life of Hume.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 139
kinder relation, a more unwearied friend, or
more free from meanness and malice. His
character was so simple, that he did not
even affect modesty; but neither his friend
ships nor his deportment were changed by a
fame which filled all Europe. His good na
ture, his plain manners, and his active kind
ness, procured him in Paris the enviable
name of "the good David^ from a society
not so alive to goodness, as without reason
to place it at the head of the qualities of a
celebrated man.* His whole character is
faithfully and touchingly represented in the
story of 'La Roche,t where Mr. Mackenzie,
without concealing Mr. Hume's opinions,
brings him into contact with scenes of tender
piety, and yet preserves the interest inspired
by genuine and unalloyed, though moderated,
feelings and affections. The amiable and
venerable patriarch of Scottish literature, —
opposed, as he was to the opinions of the
philosopher on whom he has composed his
best panegyric. — tells us that he read his
manuscript to Dr. Smith, '• who declared that
he did not find a syllable to object to, but ad
ded, with his characteristic absence of mind,
that he was surprised he had never heard
of the anecdote before. "t So lively was
the delineation, thus sanctioned by the most
natural of all testimonies. Mr. Macken
zie indulges his own religious feelings by
modestly intimating, that Dr. Smith's answer
seemed to justify the last words of the tale,
'• that there were moments when the philo
sopher recalled to his mind the venerable
figure of the good La Roche, and wished
that he had never doubted." To those who
are strangers to the seductions of paradox,
to the intoxication of fame, and to the be
witchment of prohibited opinions, it must be
unaccountable, that he who revered bene
volence should, without apparent regret,
cease to see it on the throne of the Universe.
It is a matter of wonder that his habitual
esteem for every fragment and shadow of
moral excellence should not lead him to
envy those who contemplated its perfection
in that living and paternal character which
gives it a power over the human heart.
On the other hand, if we had no experi
ence of the power of opposite opinions in pro
ducing irreconcilable animosities, we might
have hoped that those who retained such
high privileges, would have looked with
more compassion than dislike on a virtuous
man who had lost them. In such cases it is
too little remembered, that repugnance to
hypocrisy and impatience of long conceal
ment, are the qualities of the best formed
minds, and that, if the publication of some
doctrines proves often painful and mischiev
ous, the habitual suppression of opinion is
injurious to Reason, and very dangerous to
sincerity. Practical questions thus arise, so
difficult and perplexing that their determi
nation generally depends on the boldness or
* See Note P. t Mirror, Nos. 42, 43, 44.
t Mackenzie's Life of John Home, p. 21.
timidity of the individual, — on his tender
ness for the feelings of the good, or his
greater reverence for the free exercise of
reason. The time is not yet come when the
noble maxim of Plato, "that every soul is
unwillingly deprived of truth." will be prac
tically and' heartily applied by men to the
honest opponents who differ from them most
widely.
It was in his twenty-seventh year that
Mr. Hume published at London the Treatise
of Human Nature, the first systematic attack
on all the principles of knowledge arid be
lief, and the most formidable, if universal
scepticism could ever be more than a mere
exercise of ingenuity.* This memorable
work was reviewed in a Journal of that
time,f in a criticism not distinguished by
ability, which affects to represent the style
of a very clear writer as unintelligible, —
sometimes from a purpose to insult, but
oftener from sheer dulness, — which is unac
countably silent respecting the consequences
of a sceptical system, but which concludes
with the following prophecy so much at va
riance with the general tone of the article,
that it \vould seem to be added by a differ
ent hand. '-'It bears incontestable marks
of a great capacity, of a soaring genius, but
young, and not yet thoroughly practised.
Time and use may ripen these qualities in the
author, and we shall probably have reason
to consider this, compared with his later
productions, in the same light as we view
the Juvenile works of Milton or the first
manner of Raphael."
The great speculator did not in this work
amuse himself, like Bayle, with dialectical
exercises, which only inspire a disposition
towards doubt, by showing in detail the un
certainty of most opinions. He aimed at
proving, not that nothing was known, but
that nothing could be known, — from the
structure of the Understanding to demon
strate that we are doomed for ever to dwell
in absolute and universal ignorance. It is
true that such a system of universal scepti
cism never can be more than an intellectual
amusement, an exercise of subtilty, of which
the only use is to check dogmatism, but
which perhaps oftener provokes and pro
duces that much more common evil. As
those dictates of experience which regulate
* Sextus, a physician of the empirical, i. e. anti-
theoretical school, who lived at Alexandria in the
reign of Antoninus Pius, has preserved the rea
sonings of the ancient Sceptics as they were to be
found in their most improved state, in the writings
of JEnesidemus, a Cretan, who was a professor
in the same city, soon after the reduction of Egypt
into a Roman province. The greater part of the
grounds of doubt are very shallow and popular :
there are, among them, intimations of the argu
ment against a necessary connection of causes
with effects, afterwards better presented by Glan-
ville in his Scepsis Scientifici. — See Note Q.
t The Works of the Learned for Nov. and
Dec. 1739, pp. 353—404. This review is attribu
ted by some (Chalmer's Biogr. Diet., voce Hume'*
to Warburton, but certainly without foundation-
140
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
conduct must be the objects of belief, all
objections which attack them in common
with the principles of reasoning, must be
utterly ineffectual. Whatever attacks every
principle of belief can destroy none. As
long as the foundations of Knowledge are
allowed to remain on the same level (be it
called of certainty or uncertainty), with the
maxims of life, the whole system of hu
man conviction must continue undisturbed.
When the sceptic boasts of having involved
the results of experience and the elements
of Geometry in the same ruin with the doc
trines of Religion and the principles of Phi
losophy, he may be answered, that no dog
matist ever claimed more than the same
degree of certainty for these various convic
tions and opinions, and that his scepticism,
therefore, leaves them in the relative condi
tion in which it found them. No man knew
better or owned more frankly than Mr.
Hume, that to this answer there is no seri
ous reply. Universal scepticism involves a
contradiction in terms : it is a belief that there
can be no belief. It is an attempt of the mind
to act without its structure, and by other
laws than those to which its nature has sub
jected its operations. To reason without
assenting to the principles on which reason
ing is founded, is not unlike an effort to feel
without nerves, or to move without muscles.
No man can be allowed to be an opponent
in reasoning, wTho does not set out with ad
mitting all the principles, without the admis
sion of which it is impossible to reason.*
It is indeed a puerile, nay, in the eye of
Wisdom, a childish play, to attempt either
to establish or to confute principles by argu
ment, which every step of that argument
must presuppose. The only difference be
tween the two cases is, that he who tries to
prove them can do so only by first taking
them for granted, and that 'he who attempts
to impugn them falls at the very first step
into a contradiction from which he never
can rise.
It must, however, be allowed, that uni
versal scepticism has practical consequences
of a very mischievous nature. This is be
cause its universality is not steadily kept in
view, and constantly borne in mind. If it
were, the above short and plain remark
would be an effectual antidote to the poison,
But in practice, it is an armoury from which
weapons are taken to be employed against
* This maxim, which contains a sufficient an
swer to all universal scepticism, or, in other
words, fo all scepticism properly so called, is sig
nificantly conveyed in the quaint title of an old
and rare book, entitled, " Scivi; sive Sceptices et
Scepticorum a Jure Disputationis Exclusio," by
Thomas White, the metaphysician of the English
Catholics in modern times. " Fortunately," says
the illustrious sceptic himself, "since Reason is
incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature her
self suffices for that purpose, and cures me of this
philosophical delirium." — Treat, of Hum. Nat.,
i. 467 ; almost in the sublime and immortal words
of Pascal: " La Raison confond les dogmatistes,
et la Nature les sceptiques,"
some opinions, while it is hidden from notice
that the same \veapon would equally cut
down every other conviction. It is thus that
Mr. Hume's theory of causation is used as
an answer to arguments for the existence of
the Deity, without warning the reader that
it would equally lead him not to expect that
the sun will rise to-morrow. It must also
be added, that those who are early accus
tomed to dispute first principles are never
likely to acquire, in a sufficient degree, that
earnestness and that sincerity, that strong-
love of Truth, and that conscientious solici
tude for the formation of just opinions, which
are not the least virtues of men, but of which
the cultivation is the more especial duty of
all who call themselves philosophers.*
It is not an uninteresting fact that Mr.
Hume, having been introduced by Lord
Kames (then Mr. Henry Home) to Dr /Butler,
sent a copy of his Treatise to that philoso
pher at the moment of his preferment to the
bishopric of Durham ; and that the perusal of
it did not deter the philosophic prelate from
" everywhere recommending Mr. Hume's
Moral arid Political Essays,"t published two
years afterwards: — essays which it would
indeed have been unworthy of such a man
not to have liberally commended j for they,
and those which followed them, whatever
may be thought of the contents of some of
them, must be ever regarded as the best
models in any language, of the short but full,
of the clear and agreeable, though deep dis
cussion of difficult questions.
Mr. Hume considered his Inquiry concern
ing the Principles of Morals as the best of
his writings. It is very creditable to his
character, that he should have looked back
with most complacency on a tract the least
distinguished by originality, and the least
tainted by paradox, among his philosophical
works; but deserving of all commendation
for the elegant perspicuity of the style, and
the novelty of illustration and inference with
which he unfolded to general readers a doc
trine too simple, too certain, and too im
portant, to remain till his time undiscovered
among philosophers. His diction has, indeed,
neither the grace of Berkeley, nor the strength
of Hobbes ; but it is without the verbosity of
the former, or the rugged sternness of the
latter. His manner is more lively, more easy,
more ingratiating, and, if the word may be so
applied, more amusing, than that of any other
metaphysical writer. t He knew himself too
* It would be an act of injustice to those readers
who are not acquainted with that valuable volume
entitled, " Essays on the Formation of Opinions,"
not to refer them to it as enforcing that neglected
part of morality. To it may be added, a masterly
article in the Westminster Review, vi. 1, occa
sioned by the Essays.
t Woodhouselee's Life of Kames, i. 86. 104.
t These commendations are so far from being
at variance with the remarks of the late most inge
nious Dr. Thomas Brown, on Mr. Hume's " mode
of writing," (Inquiry into the Relation of Cause
and Effect, 3d ed. p. 327,) that they may rather
be regarded as descriptive of those excellencies of
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 141
well to be, as Dr. Johnson asserted, an imi
tator of Voltaire ; who, as it were, embodied
in his own person all the wit and quickness
and versatile ingenuity of a people which
surpasses other nations in these brilliant
qualities. If he must be supposed to have
had an eye on any French writer, it would
be a more plausible guess, that he some
times copied, with a temperate hand, the
unexpected thoughts and familiar expres
sions of Fontenelle. Though he carefully
weeded his writings in their successive edi
tions, yet they still contain Scotticisms and
Gallicisms enough to employ the successors
of such critics as those who exulted over the
Patavinity of the Roman historian. His own
great and modest mind would have been
satisfied with the praise which cannot be
withheld from him, that there is no writer in
our language who, through long works, is
more agreeable ; and it is no derogation from
him, that, as a Scotsman, he did not reach
those native and secret beauties, character-
istical of a language, which are never at
tained, in elaborate composition, but by a
very small number of those who familiarly
•converse in it from infancy. The Inquiry af
fords perhaps the best specimen of his style.
In substance, its chief merit is the proof,
from an abundant enumeration of particulars,
that all the qualities and actions of the mind
which are generally approved by mankind
agree in the circumstance of being useful to
society. In the proof (scarcely necessary),
that benevolent affections and actions have
that tendency, he asserts the real existence
of these affections with unusual warmth;
and he well abridges some of the most forci
ble arguments of Butler,* whom it is re
markable that he does not mention. To show
the importance of his principle, he very un
necessarily distinguishes the comprehensive
duty of justice from other parts of Morality,
as an artificial virtue, for which our respect
is solely derived from notions of utility. If
all things were in such plenty that there
could never be a want, or if men were so
benevolent as to provide for the wants of
others as much as for their own, there would,
says he, in neither case be any justice, be
cause there would be no need for it. But it
is evident that the same reasoning is applica
ble to every good affection and right action.
None of them could exist if there were no
scope for their exercise. If there were no suf
fering, there could be no pity and no relief;
if there were no offences, there could be no
placability : if there were no crimes, there
could be no mercy. Temperance, prudence,
patience, magnanimity, are qualties of which
the value depends on the evils by which they
are respectively exercised.!
which the excess produced the faults of Mr. Hume,
as a mere searcher and teacher, justly, though per
haps severely, animadverted on by Dr. Brown.
* Inquiry, § ii- part, i., especially the concluding
paragraphs ; those which precede being more his
•own.
t " Si nobis, cum ex hac vita migraverimus, in
With regard to purity of manners, it must
be owned that Mr. Hume, though he con
troverts no rule, yet treats vice with too much
indulgence. It was his general disposition
to distrust those virtues which are liable to
exaggeration, and may be easily counter
feited. The ascetic pursuit of purity, and
hypocritical pretences to patriotism, had too
much withdrawn the respect of his equally
calm and sincere nature from these excellent
virtues ; more especially as severity in both
these respects was often at apparent variance
with affection, which can neither be long
assumed, nor ever overvalued. Yet it was
singular that he who, in his essay on Poly
gamy and Divorce,* had so well shown the
connection of domestic ties with the outward
order of society, should not have perceived
their deeper and closer relation to all the
social feelings of human nature. It cannot
be enough regretted, that, in an inquiry writ
ten with a very moral purpose, his habit of
making truth attractive, by throwing over
her the dress of paradox, should have given
him for a moment the appearance of weigh
ing the mere amusements of society and
conversation against domestic fidelity, which
is the preserver of domestic affection, the
source of parental fondness and filial regard,
and, indirectly, of all the kindness which
exists between human beings. That fami
lies are schools where the infant heart learns
to love, and that pure manners are the cement
which alone holds these schools together, are
truths so certain, that it is wonderful he
should not have betrayed a stronger sense
of their importance. No one could so well
have proved that all the virtues of that class,
in their various orders and degrees, minister
to the benevolent affections; and that every
act which separates the senses from the
affections tends, in some degree, to deprive
kindness of its natural auxiliary, and to les
sen its prevalence in the world. It did not
require his sagacity to discover that the
gentlest and tenderest feelings flourish only
under the stern guardianship of these se
vere virtues. Perhaps his philosophy was
beatorum insulis, ut fabulae ferunt, immortale
aevum degere liceret, quid opus esset elpquentia,
cum judicia nulla fierent ? aut ipsis etiam virtutibus ?
Nee enim fortitudine indigeremus, nullo proposito
aut labore aut periculo ; necjustitia, cum esset nihil
quod appeteretur alieni ; nee temperantia, quse re-
geret eas quas nullae essent libidines : ne prudentia
quidem egeremus, nullo proposito delectu bono-
rum et malorum. Una igitur essemus bead cog-
nitione rerum et scientia." — Frag. Cic. Hortens.
apud Augustine de Trinitate. Cicero is more ex
tensive, and therefore more consistent than Hume ;
but his enumeration errs both by excess and de
fect. He supposes Knowledge to render beings
happy in this imaginary state, without stooping to
inquire how. He omits a virtue which might well
exist in it, though we cannot conceive its forma
tion in such a state — the delight in each other's
well-being ; and he omits a conceivable though
unknown vice, that of unmixed ill-will, which
would render such a state a hell to the wretch who
harboured the malevolence.
* Essays and Treatises, vol. i.
142
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
loosened, though his life was uncorrupted,
by that universal and undistinguishing pro
fligacy which prevailed on the Continent,
from the regency of the Duke of Orleans to
the French Revolution; the most dissolute
period of European history, at least since the
Roman emperors.* At Rome, indeed, the
connection of licentiousness with cruelty,
which, though scarcely traceable in indi
viduals, is generally very observable in large
masses, bore a fearful testimony to the value
of austere purity. The alliance of these re
mote vices seemed to be broken in the time
of Mr. Hume. Pleasure, in a more improved
state of society, seemed to return to her more
natural union with kindness and tenderness,
as well as with refinement and politeness.
Had he lived fourteen years longer, however,
he would have seen, that the virtues which
guard the natural seminaries of the affections
are their only true and lasting friends. He
would also then have seen (the demand of
well-informed men for the improvement of
civil institutions, — and that of all classes
growing in intelligence, to be delivered from
a degrading inferiority, and to be admitted
to a share of political power proportioned to
their new importance, having been feebly,
yet violently resisted by those ruling castes
who neither knew how to yield, nor how to
withstand,) how speedily the sudden demoli
tion of the barriers (imperfect as they were)
of law and government, led to popular ex
cesses, desolating wars, and a military dic
tatorship, which for a long time threatened
to defeat the reformation, and to disappoint
the hopes of mankind. This tremendous
conflagration threw a fearful light on the
ferocity which lies hid under the arts and
pleasures of corrupted nations ; as earth
quakes and volcanoes disclose the rocks
which compose the deeper parts of our
planet, beneath a fertile and flowery surface.
A part of this dreadful result may be as
cribed, not improbably, to that relaxation of
domestic ties, which is unhappily natural
to the populace of all vast capitals, and was
at that time countenanced and aggravated
by the example of their superiors. Another
part doubtless arose from the barbarising
power of absolute government, or, in other
words, of injustice in high places. A nar
ration of those events attests, as strongly as
Roman 'history, though in a somewhat dif
ferent manner, the humanising efficacy of
the family virtues, by the consequences of
the want of them in the higher classes, whose
profuse and ostentatious sensuality inspired
the labouring and suffering portion of mankind
with contempt, disgust, envy, and hatred.
The Inquiry is disfigured by another speck
of more frivolous paradox. It consists in the
attempt to give the name of Virtue to quali
ties of the Understanding; and it would not
have deserved the single remark -about to be
made on it, had it been the paradox of an
inferior man. He has altogether omitted the
* See Note R.
circumstance on which depends the differ
ence of our sentiments regarding moral arid
intellectual qualities. We admire intellec
tual excellence; but we bestow no moral ap
probation on it. Such approbation has no
tendency directly to increase it, because it
is not voluntary. We cultivate our natural
disposition to esteem and love benevolence
and justice, because these moral sentiments,
and the expression of them, directly and ma
terially dispose others, as well as ourselves,
to cultivate these two virtues. We cultivate
a natural anger against oppression, which
guards ourselves against the practice of that
vice, and because the manifestation of it de
ters others from its exercise. The first rude
resentment of a child is against every instru
ment of hurt: we confine it to intentional
hurt, when we are taught by experience that
it prevents only that species of hurt ; arid at
last it is still further limited to wrong done
to ourselves or others, and in that case be
comes a purely moral sentiment. We morally
approve industry, desire of knowledge, love
of Truth, and all the habits by which the Un
derstanding is strengthened and rectified, be
cause their formation is subject to the Will ;*
but we do not feel moral anger against folly
or ignorance, because they are involuntary.
No one but the religious persecutor, — a mis
chievous and overgrown child, wreaks his
vengeance on involuntary, inevitable, com
pulsory acts or states of the Understanding,
which are no more affected by blame than
the stone which the foolish child beats for
hurting him. Reasonable men apply to every
thing which they wish to move, the agent
which is capable of moving it: — force to
outward substances, arguments to the Un
derstanding, and blame, together with all
other motives, whether moral or personal, to
the Will alone. It is as absurd to entertain
an abhorrence of intellectual inferiority or
error, however extensive or mischievous, as
it would be to cherish a warm indignation
against earthquakes or hurricanes. It is
singular that a philosopher who needed the
most liberal toleration should, by represent
ing states of the Understanding as moral or
immoral, have offered the most philosophical
apology for persecution.
That general utility constitutes a uniform
ground of moral distinctions, is a part of Mr.
Hume's ethical theory which never can be
impugned, until some example can be .pro
duced of a virtue generally pernicious, or of
a vice generally beneficial. The religious
philosopher who, with Butler, holds that be
nevolence must be the actuating principle of
the Divine mind, will, with Berkeley, main
tain that pure benevolence can prescribe no
rules of human conduct but such as are bene
ficial to men ; thus bestowing on the theory
of moral distinctions the certainty of demon
stration in the eyes of all who believe in God.
* "In hac quaestione primas tenet Voluntas,
qua., ut ait Angustinus, peccatur, et recte vivitur."
— Erasmus, Diatribe adversus Lutherum.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
143
The other question of moral philosophy
which relates to the theory of moral appro
bation, has been by no means so distinctly
and satisfactorily handled by Mr. Hume.
His general doctrine is. that an interest in the
well-being of others, implanted by nature,
which he calls "sympathy" in his Treatise
of Human Nature, and much less happily
fc benevolence" in his subsequent Inquiry,*
prompts us to be pleased with all generally
beneficial actions. In this respect his doc
trine nearly resembles that of Hutcheson.
He does not trace his principle through the
variety of forms which our moral sentiments
assume : there are very important parts of
them, of which it affords no solution. For
example, though he truly represents our ap
probation, in others, of qualities useful to
the individual, as a proof of benevolence, he
makes no attempt to explain our moral ap
probation of such virtues as temperance and
fortitude in ourselves. He entirely overlooks
that consciousness of the rightful supremacy
of the Moral Faculty over every other princi
ple of human action, without an explanation
of which, ethical theory is wanting in one of
its vital organs.
Notwithstanding these considerable de
fects, his proof from induction of the bene
ficial tendency of Virtue, his conclusive argu
ments for human disinterestedness, and his
decisive observations on the respective pro
vinces of Reason and Sentiment in Morals,
concur in ranking the Inquiry with the ethi
cal treatises of the highest merit in our lan
guage, — with Shaftesbury's Inquiry concern
ing Virtue, Butler's Sermons, and Smith's
Theory of Moral Sentiments.
ADAM SMITH.t
The great name of Adam Smith rests upon
the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of
the Wealth of Nations ; perhaps the only book
which produced an immediate, general, and
irrevocable change in some of the most im
portant parts of the legislation of all civilized
states. The works of Grotius, of Locke, and
of Montesquieu, which bear a resemblance
to it in character, and had no inconsiderable
analogy to it in the extent of their popular
influence, were productive only of a general
amendment, not so conspicuous in particular
instances, as discoverable, after a time, in
the improved condition of human affairs.
The work of Smith, as it touched those mat
ters which may be numbered, and measured,
and weighed, bore more visible and palpable
fruit. In a few years it began to alter laws
and treaties, and has made its way, through
out the convulsions of revolution and con
quest, to a due ascendant over the minds of
men, with far less than the average of those
obstructions of prejudice and clamour, which
ordinarily choke the channels through which
truth flows into practice. { The most emi-
* Essays and Treatises, vol. ii.
t Born, 1723 ; died, 1790. . J See Note S.
nent of those who have since cultivated and
improved the science will be the foremost to
address their immortal master,
Tenebris tantis tarn clarum extollere lumen
Qui primus potuisti, inlustrans commoda vitee,
Te sequor !*
In a science more difficult, because both
ascending to more simple genera] principles,
and running down through more minute ap
plications, though the success of Smith has
been less complete, his genius is not less
conspicuous. Perhaps there is no ethical
work since Cicero's Offices, of which an
abridgment enables the reader so inadequate
ly to estimate the merit, as the Theory of
Moral Sentiments. This is not chiefly owing
to the beauty of diction, as in the case of
Cicero ; but to the variety of explanations of
life and manners which embellish the book
often more than they illuminate the theory.
Yet, on the other hand, it must be owned
that, for purely philosophical purposes, few
books more need abridgment; for the most
careful reader frequently loses sight of prin
ciples buried under illustrations. The natu
rally copious and flowing style of the author
is generally redundant ; and the repetition
of certain formularies of the system is, in
the later editions, so frequent as to be weari
some, and sometimes ludicrous. Perhaps
Smith and Hobbes may be considered as
forming the two extremes of good style in
our philosophy; the first of graceful fulness
falling into flaccidity; while the masterly
concision of the second is oftener carried
forward into dictatorial dryness. Hume and
Berkeley, though they are nearer the ex
treme of abundance,! are probably the least
distant from perfection.
That mankind are so constituted as to
sympathize with each other's feelings, and
to feel pleasure in the accordance of these
feelings, are the only facts required by Dr.
Smith : and they certainly must be granted
to him. To adopt the feelings of another,
is to approve them. When the sentiments
of another are such as would be excited in
us by the same objects, we approve them as
morally proper. To obtain this accordance,
it becomes necessary for him who enjoys,
or suffers, to lower the expression of his
feeling to the point to which the by-stander
can raise his fellow-feelings; on this attempt
are founded all the high virtues of self-de
nial and self-command : and it is equally
necessary for the by-stander to raise his
sympathy as near as he can to the level
of the original feeling. In all unsocial pas
sions, such as anger, we have a divided
sympathy between him who feels them, and
those who are the objects of them. Hence
the propriety of extremely moderating them.
Pure malice is always to be concealed or
* Lucret. lib. iii.
t This remark is chiefly applicable to Hume's
Essays. His Treatise of Human Nature is more
Hobbian in its general tenor, though it has Cice
ronian passages.
144
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
disguised, because all sympathy is arrayed
against it. In the private passions, where
there is only a simple sympathy, — that with
the original passion, — the expression has
more liberty. The benevolent affections,
where there is a double sympathy, — with
those who feel them, and those who are their
•objects, — are the most agreeable, and may
be indulged with the least apprehension of
finding no echo in other breasts. Sympathy
with the gratitude of those who are benefited
by good actions, prompts us to consider them
as deserving of reward, and forms the sense
of merit : as fellow-feeling with the resent
ment of those who are injured by crimes
leads us to look on them as worthy of punish
ment, and constitutes the sense of demerit.
These sentiments require not only beneficial
actions, but benevolent motives ; being com
pounded, in the case of merit, of a direct
sympathy with the good disposition of the
benefactor, and an indirect sympathy with
the persons benefited ; in the opposite case,
with precisely opposite sympathies. He who
does an act of wrong to another to gratify
his own passions, must riot expect that the
spectators, who have none of his undue par
tiality to his own interest, will enter into his
feelings. In such a case, he knows that they
will pity the person wronged, and be full of
indignation against him. When he is cooled,
he adopts the sentiments of others on his
own crime, feels shame at the impropriety
of his former passion, pity for those who
have suffered by him, and a dread of punish
ment from general and just resentment.
Such are the constituent parts of remorse.
Our moral sentiments respecting ourselves
arise from those which others feel concern
ing us. We feel a self-approbation whenever
we believe that the general feeling of man
kind coincides with that state of mind in
which we ourselves were at a given time.
*•' We suppose ourselves the spectators of our
own behaviour, arid endeavour to imagine
what effect it would in this light produce in
us.'; We must view our own conduct with
the eyes of others before we can judge it.
The sense of duty arises from putting our
selves in the place of others, and adopting
their sentiments respecting our own conduct.
In utter solitude there could have been no
self-approbation. The rules of Morality are
a summary of those sentiments; and often
beneficially stand in their stead when the
self-delusions of passion would otherwise
hide from us the non-conformity of our state
of mind with that which, in the circum
stances, can be entered into and approved by
impartial by-standers. It is hence that we
learn to raise our mind above local or tem
porary clamour, and to fix our eyes on the
surest indications of the general and lasting
sentiments of human nature. "When we
approve of any character or action, our sen
timents are derived from four sources: first,
we sympathize with the motives of the
agent; secondly, we enter into the gratitude
of those who nave been benefited by his
actions ; thirdly, we observe that his conduct
has been agreeable to the general rules by
which those two sympathies generally act ;
and. last of all, when we consider such ac
tions as forming part of a system of beha
viour which tends to promote the happiness
either of the individual or of society, they
appear to derive a beauty from this utility,
not unlike that which we ascribe to any
well-contrived machine."*
REMARKS.
That Smith is the first who has drawn the
attention of philosophers to one of the most
curious and important parts of human na
ture, — who has looked closely and steadily
into the workings of Sympathy, its sudden
action and re-action, its instantaneous con
flicts and its emotions, its minute play and
varied illusions, is sufficient to place him
high among the cultivators of mental philo
sophy. He is very original in applications
and explanations ; though, for his principle,
he is somewhat indebted to Butler, move to
Hutcheson, and most of all to Hume. These
writers, except Hume in his original work,
had derived sympathy, or a great part of it,
from benevolence :t Smith, with deeper in
sight, inverted the order. The great part
performed by various sympathies in moral
approbation \vas first unfolded by him ; and
besides its intrinsic importance, it strength
ened the proofs ag-ainst those theories which
ascribe that great function to Reason. —
Another great merit of the theory of " sym
pathy" is, that it brings into the strongest
light that most important characteristic of
the moral sentiments which consist in their
being the only principles leading to action,
and dependent on emotion or sensibility, with
respect to the objects of which, it is not only
possible but natural for all mankind to agree. t
The main defects of this theory seem to
be the following.
1. Though it is not to be condemned for
declining inquiry into the origin of our fel-
low-feelinc, which, being one of the most
certain of ^all facts, might well be assumed
as ultimate in speculations of this nature, it
is evident that the circumstances to which
some speculators ascribe the formation of
sympathy at least contribute to strengthen
or impair, to contract or expand it. It will
appear, more conveniently, in the next ar
ticle, that the theory of " sympathy" has
suffered from the omission of these circum
stances. For the present, it is enough to ob
serve how much our compassion for various
* Theory of Moral Sentiments, Edinb. 1801, ii.
304.
t There is some confusion regarding this point
in Butler's first sermon on Compassion.
t The feelings of beauty, grandeur, and what
ever else is comprehended under the name of
Taste, form no exception, for they do not lead to
action, but terminate in delightful contemplation ;
which constitutes the essential distinction between
them and the moral sentiments, to which, in some
points of view, they may doubtless be likened.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 145
various races of men, are proportioned
resemblance which they bear to our
sorts of animals, and our fellow-feeling with
to the
ourselves,
to the frequency of our intercourse with
them, and to other causes which, in the opi
nion of some, afford evidence that sympathy
itself is dependent on a more general law.
2. Had Smith extended his view beyond
the mere play of sympathy itself, and taken
into account all its preliminaries, and ac
companiments, and consequences, it seems
improbable that he would have fallen into
the great error of representing the sympa
thies in their primitive state, without under
going any transformation, as continuing ex
clusively to constitute the moral sentiments.
He is not content with teaching that they
are the roots out of which these sentiments
grow, the stocks on which they are grafted,
the elements of which they are compounded ;
— doctrines to which nothing could be ob
jected but their unlimited extent. He tacitly
assumes, that if a sympathy in the begin
ning caused or formed a moral approbation,
so it must ever continue to do. He proceeds
like a geologist who should tell us that the
body of this planet had always been in the
state is a perplexity to the geologist. It
would perfectly resemble the destruction of
qualities, which is the ordinary effect of
chemical composition.
3. The same error has involved him in
another difficulty perhaps still more fatal.
The sympathies have nothing more of an
imperative character than any other emo
tions. They attract or repel like other feel
ings, according to their intensity. If, then,
the sympathies continue in mature minds to
constitute the whole of Conscience, it be
comes utterly impossible to explain the cha
racter of command and supremacy, which is
attested by the unanimous voice of mankind
to belong to that faculty, and to form its es
sential distinction. Had he adopted the
other representation, it would be possible to
conceive, perhaps easy to explain, lhat Con
science should possess a quality which be
longed to none of its elements.
4. It is to this representation that Smith's
theory owes that unhappy appearance of
rendering the rule of our conduct dependent
on the notions and passions of those who
surround us, of which the utmost efforts of
the most refined ingenuity have not been
same state, shutting his eyes to transition i able to divest it; This objection, or topic, is
states, and secondary formations; or like a often ignorantly urged • the answers are fre-
chemist who should inform us that no com
pound substance can possess new qualities
entirely different from those which belong
to its materials. His acquiescence in this
old and still general error is the more re
markable, because Mr. Hume's beautiful
Dissertation on the Passions* had just before
opened a striking view of some of the com
positions and decompositions which render
the mind of a formed man as different from
its original state, as the organization of a
complete animal is from the condition of the
first dim speck of vitality. It is from this
oversight (ill supplied by moral rules. — a
loose stone in his building) that he has ex
posed himself to objections founded on ex
perience, to which it is impossible to attempt
any answer. For it is certain that in many,
nay in most cases of moral approbation, the
adult man approves the action or disposition
merely as right, and with a distinct con
sciousness that no process of sympathy in
tervenes between the approval and its ob
ject. It is certain that an unbiassed person
would call it moral approbation, only as far
as it excluded the interposition of any reflec
tion between the conscience and the mental
state approved. Upon the supposition of an
unchanged state of our active principles, it
would follow that sympathy never had any
share in the greater part of them. Had he
Admitted the sympathies to be only elements
entering into the formation of Conscience,
their disappearance, or their appearance only
as auxiliaries, after the mind is mature,
would have been no more an objection to
his system, than the conversion of a sub
stance from a transitional to a permanent
* Essays and Treatises, vol. ii,
19
quently solid ; but to most men they must
always appear to be an ingenious and intri
cate contrivance of cycles and epicycles,
which perplex the mind too much to satisfy
it, and seem devised to evade difficulties
which cannot be solved. All theories which
treat Conscience as built up by circumstances
inevitably acting on all human minds, are,
indeed, liable to somewhat of the same mis
conception ; unless they place in the strongest
light (what Smith's theory excludes) the to
tal destruction of the scaffolding, which was
necessary only to the erection of the build
ing, after the mind is adult and mature, and
warn the hastiest reader, that it then rests
on its own foundation alone.
5. The constant reference of our own dis
positions and actions to the point of view
from which they are estimated by others,
seems to be rather an excellent expedient
for preserving our impartiality, than a funda
mental principle of Ethics. But impartiality,
which is no more than a removal of some
hinderance to right judgment, supplies no
materials for its exercise, and no rule, or
even principle, for its guidance. It nearly
coincides with'the Christian precept of u'do*
ing unto others as we would they should do
unto us;" — an admirable practical maxim,
but, as Leibnitz has said truly, intended only
as a correction of self-partiality.
6. Lastly, this ingenious system renders
all morality relative, by referring it to the
pleasure of an agreement of our feelings
with those of others, — by confining itself
entirely to the question of moral approba
tion, and by providing no place for the consi
deration of that quality which distinguishes
quality
all ba
all good from all bad actions ; — a defect
which will appear in the sequel to be more
N
146
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
immediately fatal to a theorist of the senti
mental, than to one of the intellectual school
Smith shrinks from considering utility in
that light, as soon as it presents itself, or
very strangely ascribes its power over our
moral feelings to admiration of the mere
f adaptation of means to ends, (which might
surely be as well felt for the production of
•wide-spread misery, by a consistent system
of wicked conduct,) — instead of ascribing it
to benevolence, with Hutcheson and Hume,
or to an extension of that very sympathy
which is his own first principle.
RICHARD PRICE.*
About the same time with the celebrated
work of Smith, but with a popular reception
very different, Dr. Richard Price, an excel
lent and eminent non-conformist minister,
published A Review of the Principal Ques
tions in Morals ;t — an attempt to revive the
intellectual theory of moral obligation, which
seemed to have fallen under the attacks of
Butler, Hutcheson, and Hume, and before
that of Smith. It attracted little observation
at first ; but being afterwards countenanced
by the Scottish school, it may seem tb de
serve some notice, at a moment when the
kindred speculations of the German meta
physicians have effected an establishment
in France, and are no longer unknown in
England.
The Understanding itself is, according to
Price, an independent source of simple ideas.
" The various kinds of agreement arid dis
agreement between our ideas, spoken of by
Locke, are so many new simple ideas."
u This is true of our ideas of proportion, of
our ideas of identity and diversity, existence,
connection; cause and effect, power, possi
bility, and of our ideas of right and wrong.'1
" The first relates to quantity, the last to
actions, the rest to all things." "Like all
other simple ideas, they are undefinable."
It is needless to pursue this theory farther,
till an answer be given to the observation
made before, that as no perception or judg
ment, or other unmixed act of Understand
ing, merely as such, and without the agency
of some intermediate emotion, can affect the
Will, the account given by Dr. Price of per
ceptions or judgments respecting moral sub
jects, does not advance one step towards the
explanation of the authority of Conscience
over the Will, which is the matter to be ex
plained. Indeed, this respectable writer felt
the difficulty so much as to allow, " that in
contemplating the acts of moral agents, we
have both a perception of the understanding
and a feeling of the heart." He even ad
mits, that it would have been highly perni
cious to us if our reason had been left with
out such support. But he has not shown
how, on such a supposition, we could have
acted on a mere opinion ; nor has he given
* Born, 1723 ; died, 1791.
t The third edition was published at London in
1787.
any proof that what he calls "support" is
not, in truth, the whole of what directly pro
duces the conformity of voluntary acts to Mo
rality.*
DAVID HARTLEY. t
The work of Dr. Hartley, entitled " Obser
vations on Man,"J is distinguished by an un
common union of originality with modesty,
in unfolding a simple and fruitful principle
of human nature. It is disfigured by the
absurd affectation of mathematical forms
then prevalent; and it is encumbered and
deformed by a mass of physiological specu
lations, — groundless, or at best uncertain,
and wholly foreign from its proper purpose,
— which repel the inquirer into mental phi
losophy from its perusal, and lessen the re
spect of the physiologist for the author's
judgment. It is an unfortunate example of
the disposition predominent among undis-
tinguishing theorists to class together all the
appearances which are observed at the same
time, and in the immediate neighbourhood
of each other. At that period, chemical
phenomena were referred to mechanical
principles; vegetable and animal life were
subjected to mechanical or chemical laws :
and while some physiologists^ ascribed the
vital functions of the Understanding, the
greater part of metaphysicians were dispos
ed, with a grosser confusion, to derive the
intellectual operations from bodily causes.
The error in the latter case, though less im
mediately perceptible, is deeper and more
fundamental than in the other ; since it over
looks the primordial arid perpetual distinc
tion between the being which thinks and the
thing which is thought of, — not to be lost
sight of, by the mind's eye, even for a twink
ling, without involving all nature in darkness
and confusion. Hartley and Condillac,!! who,
much about the same time, but seemingly
without any knowledge of each other's spe
culation s,1" began in a very similar mode to
* The following sentences will illustrate the
text, and are in truth applicable to all moral theo
ries on merely intellectual principles: "Reason
alone, did we possess it in a higher degree, would
answer all the ends of the passions. Thus there
would be no need of parental affection, were all
parents sufficiently acquainted with the reasons
for taking upon them the guidance and support of
those whom Nature has placed under their care,
and were they virtuous enough to be always deter
mined by those reasons." — Review, p. 121. A
very slight consideration will show, that without
the last words the preceding part would be utterly
false, and with them it is utterly insignificant.
t Born, 1705 ; died, 1757.
t London, 1749.
§ Among them was G. E. Stahl, born, 1660;
died, 1734 ; — a German physician and chemist of
deserved eminence.
II Born, 1715; died, 1780.
If Traite sur 1'Origine des Connoi?sances IIu-
maines, 1746 ; Traite des Systemes, 1749 ; Traite
des Sensations, 1754. Foreign books were then
little and slowly known in England. Hartley's
reading, except on theology, seerns confined to the
physical and mathematical sciences ; and his whole
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
147
simplify, but also to mutilate the system of
Locke, stopped short of what is called "ma
terialism," which consummates the con
fusion, but touched the threshold. Thither,
it must be owned, their philosophy pointed,
and thither their followers proceeded. Hart
ley and Bonnet.* still more than Condillac,
suffered themselves, like most of their con
temporaries, to overlook the important truth,
that all the changes in the organs which can
be likened to other material phenomena, are
nothing more than antecedents and prerequi
sites of perception, bearing riot the faintest
likeness to it, — as much outward in relation
to the thinking principle, as if they occurred
in any other part of matter; and that the
entire comprehension of those changes, if it
were attained, would not bring us a step
nearer to the nature of thought. They who
would have been the first to exclaim against
the mistake of a sound for a colour, fell into
the more unspeakable error of confounding
the perception of objects, as outward, with
the consciousness of our own mental opera
tions. Locke's doctrine, that "reflection"
was a separate source of ideas, left room for
this greatest of all distinctions; though with
much unhappiness of expression, and with
no little variance from the course of his own
speculations. Hartley, Condillac. and Bon
net, in hewing away this seeming deformity
from the system of their master, unwittingly
struck off the part of the building which,
however unsightly, gave it the power of
yielding some shelter and guard to truths, of
which the exclusion rendered it utterly un
tenable. They became consistent Nominal
ists ; in reference to whose controversy Locke
expresses himself with confusion and contra
diction : but on this subject they added no
thing to what had been taught by Hobbes
and Berkeley. Both Hartley and Condillact
have the merit of having been un seduced by
the temptations either of scepticism, or of
useless idealism ; which,even if Berkeley and
Hume could have been unknown to them,
must have been within sight. Both agree in
referring all the intellectual operations to the
"' association of ideas," and in representing
that association as reducible to the single law,
" that ideas which enter the mind at the same
time, acquire a tendency to call up each other,
which is in direct proportion to the frequen-
manner of thinking and writing is so different from
that of Condillac, that there* is not the least reason
to suppose the work of the one to have been
known to the other. The work of Hartley, as we
learn from the sketch of his life by his son, pre
fixed to the edition of 1791, was begun in 1730,
and finished in 1746.
* Born, 1720; died, 1793.
t The following note of Condillac will show
how much he differed from Hartley in his mode of
considering the Newtonian hypothesis of vibra-
lions, and how far he was in that respect superior to
him. " Je suppose ici et ailleurs que les percep
tions de 1'ame ont .pour cause physique 1'ebranle-
ment des fibres du cerveau ; -non que je regarde
celte liypolhese comme demontree, mais parcequ'elle
ext la plus commode pour expliquer ma pensee." —
CEuvres de Condillac, Paris, 1^98, i. 60.
cy of their having entered together." In
this important part of their doctrine they
seem, whether unconsciously or otherwise,
to have only repeated, and very much ex
panded, the opinion of Hobbes.* In its sim
plicity it is more agreeable than the system
of Mr. Hume, who admitted five independent
laws of association ; and it is in comprehen
sion far superior to the views of the same
subject by Mr. Locke, whose ill-chosen name
still retains its place in our nomenclature,
but who only appeals to the principle as ex
plaining some fancies and whimsies of the
human mind. The capital fault of Hartley
is that of a rash generalization, which may
prove imperfect, and which is at least pre
mature. All attempts to explain instinct by
this principle have hitherto been unavailing :
many of the most important processes of
reasoning have not hitherto been accounted
for by it.t It would appear by a close ex
amination, that even this theory, simple as
it appears, presupposes many facts relating to
the mind, of which its authors do not seem
to have suspected the existence. How many
ultimate facts of that nature, for example,
are contained and involved in Aristotle's
celebrated comparison of the mind in its first
state to a sheet of unwritten paper ! J The
texture of the paper, even its colour, the sort
of instrument fit to act on it, its capacity to
receive and to retain impressions, all its dif
ferences, from steel on the one hand to water
on the other, certainly presuppose some facts,
and may imply many, without a distinct
statement of which, the nature of writing
could not be explained to a person wholly
ignorant of it. How many more, as well as
greater laws, may be necessary to enable
mind to perceive outward objects ! If the
power of perception may be thus depend
ent, why may not what is called the " asso
ciation of ideas," the attraction between
thoughts, the power of one to suggest ano*-
ther, be affected by mental laws hitherto-
unexplored, perhaps unobserved "\
But, to return from this digression into the
intellectual part of man, it becomes proper
to say, that the difference between Hartley
and Condillac, and the immeasurable supe
riority of the former, are chiefly to be found
in the application which Hartley first made
of the law of association to that other un
named portion of our nature with which
Morality more immediately deals; — that
which feels pain and pleasure, — is influ
enced by appetites and loathings, by desires
and aversions, by affections and repugnances.
Condillac's Treatise on Sensation, published
five years after the work of Hartley, repro-
* Human Nature, chap. iv. v. vi. For more
ancient statements, see Note T.
t {i Ce que les logiciens ont dit des raisonne-
ments dans bien des volumes, me paroit entiere-
ment superflu, et de nul usage." — Condillac. i.
115 ; an assertion of which the gross absurdity
will be apparent to the readers of Dr. Whateley's
Treatise on Logic, one of the most important
works of the present age.
\ See Note U.
148
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
duces the doctrine of Hobbes, with its root,
namely, that love and hope are but trans
formed " sensations/'* (by which he means
perceptions of the senses,) and its wide
spread- branches, consisting in desires and
passions, which are only modifications of
self-love. " The words 'goodness' and 'beau
ty,' " says he, almost in the very words of
Hobbes, ''express those qualities of things
by which they contribute to our pleasure. ;'t
In the whole of his philosophical works, we
find no trace of any desire produced by as
sociation, of any disinterested principle, or
indeed of any distinction between the per
cipient and what, perhaps, we may venture
to call the emotive or the pathematic part of
human nature, for the present, until some
more convenient and agreeable name shall
be hit on by some luckier or more skilful
adventurer.
To the ingenuous, humble, and anxiously
conscientious character of Hartley himself,
we owe the knowledge that, about the year
1730, he was informed that the Rev. Mr.
Gay of Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge,
then living in the west of England, asserted
the possibility of deducing all our intellectual
pleasures and pains from association ; that
this led him (Hartley) to consider the power
of association ; and that about that time Mr.
Gay published his sentiments on this matter
in a dissertation prefixed to Bishop Law's
Translation of King's Origin of Evil.t No
writer deserves the praise of abundant fair
ness more than Hartley in this avowal. The
dissertation of which he speaks is mentioned
by no philosopher but himself. It suggested
nothing apparently to any other reader. The
general texture of it is that of homespun sel
fishness. The writer had the merit to see
and to own that Hutcheson had established
as a fact the reality of moral sentiments and
disinterested affections. He blames, per
haps justly, that most ingenious man,§ for
* Condillac, iii. 21 ; more especially Traite des
Sensations, part ii. chap. vi. "Its love for out- |
ward objects is only an effect of love for itself."
t Traite des Sensations, part iv. chap. iii.
t Hartley's preface to the Observations on Man.
The word "intellectual" is too narrow. Even
"mental" would be of very doubtful propriety.
The theory in its full extent requires a word such
as "inorganic" (if no better can be discovered),
extending to all gratification, not distinctly referred
to some specific organ, or at least to some assign
able part of the bodily frame.
§ It has not been mentioned in its proper place,
that Hutcheson appears nowhere to greater ad
vantage than in some letters on the Fable of the
Bees, published when he was very young, at Dub
lin, with the signature of " Hibernicus." " Pri
vate vices — public benefits," says he, " may sig
nify any one of these five distinct propositions :
1st. They are in themselves public benefits; or,
2d. They naturally produce public happiness ; or.
3d. They may be made to produce it ; or, 4th.
They may naturally flow from it ; or, 5th. At
least they may probably flow from it in our infirm
nature.' ' See a small volume containing Thoughts
on Laughter, and Remarks on the Fable oAhe
Bees, Glasgow, 1758, in which these letters are
republished.
assuming that these sentiments and affec
tions are implanted, and partake of the na
ture of instincts. The object of his disserta
tion is to reconcile the mental appearances
described by Hutcheson with the first princi
ple of the selfish system, that " the true prin
ciple of all our actions is our own happiness."
Moral feelings and social affections are, ac
cording to him, " resolvable into reason,
pointing out our private happiness; and
whenever this end is not perceived, they are
to be accounted for from the association of
ideas/' Even in the single passage in which
he shows a glimpse of the truth, he begins
with confusion, advances with hesitation, and
after holding in his grasp for an instant the
principle which sheds so strong a light around
it, suddenly drops it from his hand. Instead
of receiving the statements of Hutcheson
(his silence relating to Butler is unaccounta
ble) as enlargements of the science of man,
he deals with them merely as difficulties to
be reconciled with the received system of
universal selfishness. In the conclusion of
his fourth section, he well exemplifies the
power of association in forming the love of
money, of fame, of power, &c. ; but he still
treats these effects of association as aberra
tions and infirmities, the fruits of our forget-
fulness and shortsightedness, and not at all
as the great process employed to sow and
rear the most important principles of a social
and moral nature.
This precious mine may therefore be truly
said to have been opened by Hartley ; for he
who did such superabundant justice to the
hints of Gay, would assuredly not have
withheld the like tribute from Hutcheson,
had he observed the happy expression of
"secondary passions," which ought to have
led that philosopher himself farther than he
ventured to advance. The extraordinary
value of this part of Hartley's system has
been hidden by various causes, which have
also enabled writers, who have borrowed
from it, to decry it. The influence of his
medical habits renders many of his exam
ples displeasing, and sometimes disgusting,
He has none of that knowledge of the world,
of that familiarity with Literature, of that
delicate perception of the beauties of Nature
and Art, which not only supply the most
agreeable illustrations of mental philosophy,
but afford the most obvious and striking in
stances of its happy application to subjects
generally interesting. His particular appli
cations of the general law are often mistaken,
and are seldom more than brief notes and
hasty suggestions; — the germs of theories
which, while some might adopt them with
out' detection, others might discover without
being aware that they were anticipated. —
To which it may be added, that in spite m
the imposing forms of Geometry, the work
is not really distinguished by good method,
or even uniform adherence to that which had
been chosen. His style is entitled to no
praise but that of clearness, and a simplicity
of diction, through which is visible a sir>gu-
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
149
lar simplicity of mind. No book perhaps
exists which, with so few of the common
allurements, comes at last so much to please
by the picture it presents of the writer's cha
racter, — a character which kept him pure
from the pursuit, often from the conscious
ness of novelty, and rendered him a discove
rer in spite of his own modesty. In those
singular passages in which, amidst the pro
found internal tranquillity of all the Euro
pean nations, he foretells approaching con
vulsions, to be followed by the overthrow of
states and Churches, his quiet and gentle
spirit, elsewhere almost ready to inculcate
passive obedience for the sake of peace, is
supported under its awful forebodings by the
hope of that general progress in virtue and
happiness which he saw through the prepa
ratory confusion. A meek piety, inclining
towards mysticism, and sometimes indulg
ing in visions which borrow a lustre from his
fervid benevolence, was beautifully, and per
haps singularly^ blended in him with zeal
for the most unbounded freedom of inquiry,
flowing both from his own conscientious be
lief and his unmingled love of Truth. Who
ever can so far subdue his repugnance to
petty or secondary faults as to bestow a care
ful perusal on the work, must be unfortunate
if he does not see, feel, and own, that the
writer was a great philosopher and a good
man.
To those who thus study the work, it will
be apparent that Hartley, like other philoso
phers, either overlooked or failed explicitly
to announce that distinction between per
ception and emotion, without which no sys
tem of mental philosophy is complete. —
Hence arose the partial and incomplete view
of Truth conveyed by the use of the phrase
''association of ideas." If the word " asso
ciation," which rather indicates the connec
tion between separate things than the perfect
combination and fusion which occur in many
operations of the mind, must, notwithstand
ing its inadequacy, still be retained, the
phrase ought at least to be "association" of
thoughts with emotions, as well as with each
other. With that enlargement an objection
to the Hartleian doctrine would have been
avoided, and its originality, as well as supe
riority over that of Condillac, would have
appeared indisputable. The examples of
avarice and other factitious passions are very
well chosen ; first, because few will be found
to suppose that they are original principles
of human nature;* secondly, because the
process by which they are generated, being
subsequent to the age of attention and recol-
Jection, may be brought home to the under
standing of all men ; and, thirdly, because
* A very ingenious man, Lord Kames, whose
works had a great effect in rousing the mind of
his contemporaries and countrymen, has indeed
fancied that there is " a hoarding instinct" in man
and other animals. But such conclusions are not
so much objects of confutation, as ludicrous proofs
of the absurdity of the premises which lead to
them.
they afford the most striking instance of se
condary passions, which not only become in
dependent of the primary principles from
which they are derived, but hostile to them,
and so superior in strength as to be capable
of overpowering their parents. As soon as
the mind becomes familiar with the frequent
case of the man who first pursued money to
purchase pleasure, but at last, when he be
comes a miser, loves his hoard better than
all that it could purchase, and sacrifices all
pleasures for its increase, we are prepared
to admit that, by a like process, the affec
tions, when they are fixed on the happiness
of others as their ultimate object, without
any reflection on self, may not only be per
fectly detached from self-regard or private
desires, but may subdue these and every
other antagonist passion which can stand in
their way. As the miser loves money for
its own sake, so may the benevolent man
delight in the well-being of his fellows. His
good-will becomes as disinterested as if it
had been implanted and underived. The
like process applied to what is called " self-
love," or the desire of permanent well-being,
clearly explains the mode in which that prin
ciple is gradually formed from the separate
appetites, without whose previous existence
no notion of well-being could be obtained. —
In like manner, sympathy, perhaps itself the
result of a transfer of our own personal feel
ings by association to other sentient beings,
and of a subsequent transfer of their feelings
to our own minds, engenders the various so
cial affections, which at last generate in
most minds some regard to the well-being
of our country, of mankind, of all creatures
capable of pleasure. Rational Self-love con
trols and guides those far keener self-regard
ing passions of which it is the child, in the
same manner as general benevolence balan
ces and governs the variety of much warmer
social affections from which it springs. It is
an ancient and obstinate error of philosophers
to represent these two calm principles as be
ing the source of the impelling passions and
affections, instead of being among the last
results of them. Each of them exercises a
sort of authority in its sphere; but the do
minion of neither is co-existent with the
whole nature of man. Though they have
the power to quicken and check, they are
both too feeble to impel ] and if the primary
principles were extinguished, they would
both perish from want of nourishment. If
indeed all appetites and desires were de
stroyed, no subject would exist on which.
either of these general principles could act.
The affections, desires, and emotions,
having for their ultimate object the disposi
tions and actions of voluntary agents, which
alone, from the nature of their object, are
co-extensive with the whole of our active
nature, are. according to the same philoso
phy, necessarily formed in every human
mind by the transfer of feeling which is ef
fected by the principle of Association. Gra
titude, pity; resentment, and shame, seem to
N2
350
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
be the simplest; the most active, and the ' great, may be guarded against by the terror
most uniform elements in their composition. , of punishment. In the observation of the
It is easy to perceive how the complacency ; rules of justice consists duty ; breaches of
inspired by a benefit maybe transferred to a j them we denominate ^crimes." An abhor-
benefactor; — thence to all beneficent beings ' rence of crimes, especially of those which
and acts. The well-chosen instance of the ; indicate the absence of benevolence, as well
nurse familiarly exemplifies the manner in ' as of regard for justice, is strongly felt; be-
which the child transfers his complacency cause well-framed penal laws, 'being the
from the gratification of his senses to the lasting declaration of the moral indignation
cause of it: and thus learns an affection for i of many generations of mankind, as long as
her who is the source of his enjoyment. — ! they remain in unison with the sentiments
With this simple process concur, in the case ; of the age and country for which they are
of a tender nurse, and far more of a mother, i destined, exceedingly strengthen the same
a thousand acts of relief and endearment, the < feeling in every individual ; and this they do
complacency that results from which is fixed | wherever the laws do not so much deviate
on the person from whom they flow, and in j from the habitual feelings of the multitude
some degree extended by association to all jas to produce a struggle between law and
who resemble that person. So much of the I sentiment, in which" it is hard to say on
pleasure of early life depends on others, that 1 which side success is most deplorable. A
the like
Hence the origin
process is almost constantly repeated.
the oriin of benevolence ma be un-
may
derstood, and the disposition to approve all
benevolent, and disapprove all malevolent
acts. Hence also the same approbation and
disapprobation are extended to all acts which
we clearly perceive to promote or obstruct
the happiness of men. When the compla
cency is expressed in action, benevolence
may be said to be transformed into a part of
Conscience. The rise of sympathy may pro
bably be explained by the process of associ
ation, which transfers the feelings of others
to ourselves, and ascribes our own feelings to
•others, — at first, and in some degree always,
es-
it
man who performs his duties may be
teemed, but is not admired ; bee
requires no more than ordinary virtue to act
well where it is shameful and dangerous to do
otherwise. The righteousness of those who
act solely from such inferior motives, is little
better than that " of the Scribes and Phari
sees." Those only are just in the eye of the
moralist who act justly from a constant dis
position to render to every man his own.*
Acts of kindness, of generosity, of pity, of
placability, of humanity, when they are
long continued, can hardly fail mainly to
flow from the pure fountain of an excellent
nature. They are not reducible to rules;
in proportion as the resemblance of ourselves j and the attempt to enforce them by punish-
to others is complete. The likeness in the ment would destroy them. They are virtues,
-outward signs of emotion is one of the widest of which the essence consists in a good dis-
channels in this commerce of hearts. Pity I position of mind.
thereby becomes one of the grand sources of As we gradually transfer our desire from
benevolence, and perhaps contributes more praise to praiseworthiness, this principle also
largely than gratitude : it is indeed one of i is adopted into consciousness. On the other
the first motives to the conferring of those hand, when we are led by association to feel
benefits which inspire grateful affection. — 'a painful contempt for those feelings and
Sympathy with the sufferer, therefore, is j actions of our past self which we despise in
also transformed into a real sentiment, di- j others, there is developed in our hearts an-
rectly approving benevolent actions and dis- | other element of that moral sense. It is a
positions, and more remotely, all actions that i remarkable instance of the power of the
promote happiness. The anger of the suffer- i law of Association, that the contempt or ab-
er, first against all causes of pain, afterwards i horrence which we feel for the bad actions
against all intentional agents who produce it, ! of others may be transferred by it, in any
and finally against all those in whom the in- degree of strength, to our own past actions
fliction of pain proceeds from a mischievous of the like kind : and as the hatred of bad
disposition, when it is communicated toothers j actions is transferred to the agent, the same
by sympathy, and is so far purified by gra- ! transfer may occur in our own case in a
dual separation from selfish and individual i manner perfectly similar to that of which
interest as to be equally felt against all wrong- ! we are conscious in our feelings towards our
doers, — whether the wrong be done against
-ourselves, our friends, or our enemies. — is
the root out of which springs that which is
commonly and well called a " sense of jus
tice" — the most indispensable, perhaps, of
all the component -parts of the moral facul
ties.
This is the main guard
against Wrong.
It relates to that portion of Morality where
many of the outward acts are capable of
being reduced under certain rules, of which
the violations, wherever the rule is suffi
ciently precise, and the mischief sufficiently
fellow-creatures. There are many causes
which render it generally feebler ; but it is
perfectly evident that it requires no more
than a sufficient strength of moral feeling
to make it equal ; and that the most appa
rently hyperbolical language used by peni
* " Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas
suurn cuique tribuendi:" an excellent definition
in the mouth of the Stoical moralists, from whom
it is borrowed, but altogether misplaced by the
Roman jurists in a body of laws which deal only
with outward acts in their relation to the order
and interests of society.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
151
tents, in describing their remorse, may be
justified by the principle of Association.
At this step in our progress, it is proper to
observe, that a most important consideration
has escaped Hartley, as well as every other
philosopher.* The language of all mankind
implies that the Moral Faculty, whatever it
may be. and from what origin soever it may
spring, is intelligibly and properly spoken of
as ONE. It is as common in mind, as in
matter, for a compound to have properties
not to be found in any of its constituent
parts. The truth of this proposition is as
certain in the human feelings as in any ma
terial combination. It is therefore easily to
be understood, that originally separate feel
ings may be so perfectly blended by a pro
cess performed in each mind, that they can
no longer be disjoined from each other, but
must always co-operate, and thus reach the
only union which we can conceive. The
sentiment of moral approbation, formed by
association out of antecedent affections, may
become so perfectly independent of them,
that we are no longer conscious of the means
by which it was formed, and never can in
practice repeat, though we may in theory
perceive, the process by which it was gene
rated. It is in that mature and sound state
of our nature that our emotions at the view
of Right and Wrong are ascribed to Con
science. But why, it may be asked, do
these feelings, rather than others, run into
each other, and constitute Conscience ? The
answer seems to be what has already been
intimated in the observations on Butler. The
affinity between these feelings consists in
this, that while all other feelings relate to
outward objects, they alone contemplate ex
clusively the dispositions and actions of volun
tary agents. When they are completely
transferred from objects, and even persons,
to dispositions and actions, they are fitted,
by the perfect coincidence of their aim. for
combining to form that one faculty which is
directed only to that aim.
The words "Duty"' arid "Virtue," and the
word "ought," which most perfectly denotes
duty, but is also connected with Virtue, in
every well-constituted mind, in this state be
come the fit language of the acquired, per
haps, but universally and necessarily ac
quired, faculty of Conscience. Some account
of its peculiar nature has been attempted in
the remarks on Butler ; for a further one a
fitter occasion will occur hereafter. Some
light may however now be thrown on the
subject by a short statement of the hitherto
unobserved distinction between the moral
sentiments and another class of feelings
with which they have some qualities in
common. The "pleasures" (so called) of
imagination appear, at least in most cases,
to originate in association : but it is not till
the original cause of the gratification is ob
literated from the mind, that they acquire
their proper character. Order and propor-
* See supra, section on Butler.
tion may be at first chosen for their conve
nience : it is not until they are admired for
their own sake that they become objects of
taste. Though all the proportions for which
a horse is valued may be indications of
speed, safety, strength, and health, it is not
the less true that they only can be said to
admire the animal for his beauty, who leave
such considerations out of the account while
they admire. The pleasure of contempla
tion in these particulars of Nature and Art
becomes universal and immediate, being
entirely detached from all regard to indi
vidual beings. It contemplates neither use
nor interest. In this important particular
the pleasures of imagination agree with the
moral sentiments : hence the application of
the same language to both in ancient and
modem times ; — hence also it arises that they
may contemplate the very same qualities and
objects. There is certainly much beauty in
the softer virtues, — much grandeur in the
soul of a hero or a martyr : but the essential
distinction still remains; the purest moral
taste contemplates these qualities only with
quiescent delight or reverence ; it has no
further view; it points towards no action.
Conscience, on the contrary, containing in it
a pleasure in the prospect of doing right,
and an ardent desire to act well, having for
its sole object the dispositions and acts of
voluntary agents, is not, like moral taste, sa
tisfied with passive contemplation, but con
stantly tends to act on the will and conduct
of the man. Moral taste may aid it, may
be absorbed into it, and usually contributes
its part to the formation of the moral faculty;
but it is distinct from that faculty, and may
be disproportioned to it. Conscience, being
by its nature confined to mental dispositions
and voluntary acts, is of necessity excluded
from the ordinary consideration of all things
antecedent to these dispositions. The cir
cumstances from which such states of mind
may arise, are most important objects of
consideration for the Understanding; but
they are without the sphere of Conscience,
which never ascends beyond the heart of
the man. It is thus that in the eye of Con
science man becomes amenable to its autho
rity for all his inclinations as well as deeds;
that some of them are approved, loved, and
revered ; and that all the outward effects of
disesteem, contempt, or moral anger, are
felt to be the just lot of others.
But, to return to Hartley, from this per
haps intrusive statement of what does not
properly belong to him : he represents all
the social affections of gratitude, veneration,
and love, inspired by the virtues of our fel
low-men, as capable of being transferred
by association to the transcendent and un-
mingled goodness of the Ruler of the world,
and thus to give rise to piety, to which he
gives the name of " the theopathetic affec
tion." This principle, like all the former in
the mental series, is gradually detached from
the trunk on which it grew : it takes sepa
rate root, and may altogether overshadow
152
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the parent stock. As such a Being cannot
be conceived without the most perfect and
constant reference to His goodness, so piety
may not only become a part of Conscience,
but its governing and animating principle.
which, after long lending its own energy and
authority to every other, is at last described
by our philosopher as swallowing up all of
them in order to perform the same functions
more infallibly.
In" every stage of this progress we are
taught by Dr. Hartley that a new product
appears, which becomes perfectly distinct
from the elements which formed it, which
may be utterly dissimilar to them, and may
attain any degree of vigour, however superior
to theirs. Thus the objects of the private
desires disappear when we are employed
in the pursuit of our lasting welfare; that
which was first sought only as a means,
may come to be pursued as an end, and pre
ferred to the original end ; the good opinion
of our fellows becomes more valued than
the benefits for which it was at first courted ;
a man is ready to sacrifice his life for him
who has shown generosity, even to others;
and persons otherwise of common character
are capable of cheerfully marching in a for
lorn hope, or of almost instinctively leaping
into the sea to save the life of an entire
stranger. These last acts, often of almost
unconscious virtue, so familiar to the soldier
and the sailor, so unaccountable on certain
systems of philosophy, often occur without
a thought of applause and reward ; — too
quickly for the thought of the latter, too ob
scurely for the hope of the former; and they
are of such a nature that no man could be
impelled to them by the mere expectation
of either.
The gratitude, sympathy, resentment, and
shame, which are the principal constituent
parts of the Moral Sense, thus lose their
separate agency, and constitute an entirely
new faculty, co-extensive with all the dis
positions and actions of voluntary agents;
though some of them are more predominant
in particular cases of moral sentiment than
others, and though the aid of all continues to
be necessary in their original character, as
subordinate but distinct motives of action.
Nothing more evidently points out the dis
tinction of the Hartleian system from all sys
tems called "selfish," — not to say its superi
ority in respect to disinterestedness over all
moral systems before Butler and Hutcheson,
— than that excellent part of it which relates
to the " rule of life." The various principles
of, human action rise in value according to
the order in which they spring up after each
other. We can then only be in a state of
as much enjoyment as we are evidently ca
pable of attaining, when we prefer interest
to the original gratifications; honour to in
terest ; the pleasures of imagination to those
of sense; the dictates of Conscience to plea
sure, interest, and reputation; the well-being
of fellow-creatures to our own indulgences;
in a word, when we pursue moral good and
social happiness chiefly and for their own
sake. "With self-interest," says Hartley,
somewhat inaccurately in language, "man
must begin. He may end in self-annihila
tion. Theopathy, or piety, although the last
result of the purified and exalted sentiments,
may at length swallow up every other prin
ciple, and absorb the whole man." Even if
this last doctrine should be an exaggeration
unsuited to our present condition, it will the
more strongly illustrate the compatibility, or
rather the necessary connection, of this theo
ry with the existence and power of perfectly
disinterested principles of human action.
It is needless to remark on the secondary
and auxiliary causes which contribute to the
formation of moral sentiment; — education,
imitation, general opinion, laws, and govern
ment. They all presuppose the Moral Facul
ty : in an improved state of society they con
tribute powerfully to strengthen it, and on
some occasions they enfeeble, distort and
maim it ; but in all cases they must them
selves be tried by the test of an ethical stand
ard. The value of this doctrine will not be
essentially affected by supposing a greater
number of original principles than those as
sumed by Dr. Hartley. The principle of As
sociation applies as much to a greater as to a
smaller number. It is a quality common to
it with all theories, that the more simplicity
it reaches consistently with truth, the more
perfect it becomes. Causes are not to be
multiplied without necessity. If by a con
siderable multiplication of primary desires
the law of Association were lowered nearly
to the level of an auxiliary agent, the philo
sophy of human nature would still be under
indelible obligations to the philosopher who.
by his fortunate error, rendered the import
ance of that great principle obvious and
conspicuous.
ABRAHAM TUCKER.*
It has been the remarkable fortune of this
WTiter to have been more prized and more
disregarded by the cultivators of moral specu
lation, than perhaps any other philosopher.!
He had many of the qualities which might
be expected in an affluent country gentleman,
living in a privacy undisturbed by political
zeal, and with a leisure unbroken by the
calls of a profession, at a time when Eng
land had not entirely renounced her old taste
for metaphysical speculation. He was natu
rally endowed, not indeed with more than or-
* Born, 1705; died, 1774.
t "I have found in this writer more original
thinking and observation upon the several subjects
that he has taken in hand than in any other, — not
to say than in all others put together. His talent
also for illustration is unrivalled." — Paley, Pre
face lo Moral and Political Philosophy. See the
excellent preface to an abridgment, by Mr. Has-
litt, of Tucker's work, published in London in
1807. May I venture to refer also to my own
Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations,
London, 1799? Mr. Stewart treats Tucker and
Hartley with unwonted harshness.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
153
dinary acuteness or sensibility, nor with a
high degree of reach and range of mind, but
•with a singular capacity for careful observa
tion and original reflection, and with a fancy
perhaps unmatched in producing various and
happy illustration. The most observable
of his moral qualities appear to have been
prudence and cheerfulness, good-nature and
easy temper. The influence of his situation
and character is visible in his writings. In
dulging his own tastes arid fancies, like most
English squires of his time, he became, like
many of them, a sort of humourist. Hence
much of his originality and independence ;
hence the boldness with which he openly
employs illustrations from homely objects.
He wrote to please himself more than the
public. He had too little regard for readers,
either to sacrifice his sincerity to them, or to
curb his own prolixity, repetition, and ego
tism, from the fear of fatiguing them. Hence
he became as loose, as rambling, and as
much an egotist as Montaigne ; but not so
agreeably so, notwithstanding a considerable
resemblance of genius ; because he wrote on
subjects where disorder and egotism are un
seasonable, and for readers whom they dis
turb instead of amusing. His prolixity at
last so increased itself, when his work be
came long, that repetition in the latter parts
partly arose from forgetfulness of the former ;
and though his freedom from slavish defer
ence to general opinion is very commenda
ble, it must be owned, that his want of a
wholesome fear of the public renders the
perusal of a work which is extremely inter
esting, and even amusing in most of its parts,
on the whole a laborious task. He was by
early education a believer in Christianity, if
not by natural character religious. His calm
good sense and accommodating temper led
him rather to explain established doctrines
in a manner agreeable to his philosophy, than
to assail them. Hence he was represented
as a time-server by freethinkers, and as a
heretic by the orthodox.* Living in a coun
try where the secure tranquillity flowing
from the Revolution was gradually drawing
forth all mental activity towards practical
pursuits and outward objects, he hastened
from the rudiments of mental and moral
philosophy, to those branches of it which
touch the business of men.t Had he recast
without changing his thoughts, — had he de
tached those ethical observations for which
he had so peculiar a vocation, from the dis
putes of his country and his day, he might
* This disposition to compromise and accommo
dation, which is discoverable in Paley, was carried
to its utmost length by Mr. Hey. a man of much
acuteness, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
t Perhaps no philosopher ever stated more just
ly, more naturally, or more modestly than Tucker,
the ruling maxim of his life. " My thoughts,"
says he, " have taken a turn from my earliest
youth towards searching into the foundations and
measures of Right and Wrong; my love for re
tirement has furnished me with continual leisure ;
and the exercise of my reason has been my daily
employment."
20
have thrown many of his chapters into their
proper form of essays, and these might have
been compared, though not likened, to those
of Hume. But the country gentleman, philo
sophic as he was, had too much fondness for
his own humours to engage in a course of
drudgery and deference. It may, however,
be confidently added, on the authority of all
those who have fairly made the experiment,
that whoever, unfettered by a previous sys
tem, undertakes the labour necessary to dis
cover and relish the high excellences of this
metaphysical Montaigne, will find his toil
lightened as he proceeds, by a grow ing in
dulgence, if not partiality, for the foibles of
the humourist, and at last rewarded, in a
greater degree perhaps than by any other
writer on mixed and applied philosophy, by
being led to commanding stations and new
points of view, whence the mind of a moralist
can hardly fail to catch some fresh prospects
of Nature and duty.
It is in mixed, not in pure philosophy, that
his superiority consists. In the part of his
work which relates to the Intellect, he has
adopted much from Hartley, hiding but ag
gravating the offence by a change of techni
cal terms ; and he was ungrateful enough to
countenance the vulgar sneer which involves
the mental analysis of that philosopher in
the ridicule to which his physiological hypo
thesis is liable.* Thus, for the Hartleian term
'•'association'7 he substitutes that of "trans
lation," when adopting the same theory of
the principles which move the mind to ac
tion. In the practical and applicable part
of that inquiry he indeed far surpasses Hart
ley ; and it is little to add, that he unspeak
ably exceeds that bare and naked thinker
in the useful as well as admirable faculty
of illustration . In the strictly theoretical part
his exposition is considerably fuller • but the
defect of his genius becomes conspicuous
when he handles a very general principle.
The very term -'translation" ought to have
kept up in his mind a steady conviction that
the secondary motives to action become as
independent, and seek their own objects as
exclusively, as the primary principles. His
own examples are rich in proofs of this im
portant truth. But there is a slippery de
scent in the theory of human nature, by
which he, like most of his forerunners, slid
unawares into Selfishness. He was not pre
served from this fall by seeing that all the
deliberate principles which have self for
their object are themselves of secondary for
mation ; arid he was led into the general
error by the notion that pleasure, or, as he
calls it, "satisfaction," was the original and
* Light of Nature, vol. ii. chap, xviii., of which
the conclusion may be pointed out as a specimen
of unmatched fruitfulness, vivacity, and felicity of
illustration. The admirable sense of the conclu
sion of chap. xxv. seems to have suggested Paley's
good chapter on Happiness. The alteration of
Plato's comparison of Reason to a charioteer, and
the passions to the horses, in chap, xxvi., is of
characteristic and transcendent excellence.
154
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
sole object of all appetites and desires ; —
confounding this with the true, but very dif
ferent proposition, that the attainment of all
the objects of appetite and desire is produc
tive of pleasure. He did not see that, with
out presupposing desires, the word "plea
sure" would have no signification ; and that
the representations by which he was seduced
would leave only one appetite or desire in
human nature. He had no adequate and
constant conception, that the translation of
desire from being the end to be the means
occasioned the formation of a new passion,
which is perfectly distinct from, and alto-
¥3ther independent of, the original desire.
oo frequently (for he was neither obstinate
nor uniform in error) he considered these
translations as accidental defects in human
nature, not as the appointed means of sup
plying it with its variety of active principles.
He was too apt to speak as if the selfish
elements were not destroyed in the new
combination, but remained still capable of
being recalled, when convenient, like the
links in a chain of reasoning, which we pass
over from forget fulness, or for brevity. Take
him all in all, however, the neglect of his
writings is the strongest proof of the disin
clination of the English nation, for the last
half century, to metaphysical philosophy.*
WILLIAM PALEY.t
This excellent writer, who, after Clarke
and Butler, ought to be ranked among the
brightest ornaments of the English Church
in the eighteenth century, is, in the history
of philosophy, naturally placed after Tucker,
to whom, with praiseworthy liberality; he
owns his extensive obligations. It is a mis
take to suppose that he owed his system to
Hume, — a thinker too refined, and a writer
perhaps too elegant, to have naturally at
tracted him. A coincidence in the principle
of Utility, common to bolh with so many
other philosophers, affords no sufficient
ground for the supposition. Had he been
habitually influenced by Mr. Hume, who
has translated so many of the dark and crab
bed passages of Butler into his own trans
parent and beautiful language, it is not pos-
* Much of Tucker's chapter on Pleasure, and
of Paley's on Happiness (both of which are invalu
able), is contained in the passage of the Traveller,
of which the following couplet expresses the main
object :
" Unknown to them when sensual pleasures cloy,
To fill the languid pause with finer joy."
" An honest man," says Hume, (Inquiry con
cerning Morals, § ix.) "has the frequent satis
faction of seeing knaves betrayed by (heir own
rnaxims." " I used often to laugh at your honest
simple neighbour Flamborough, and one way or
another generally cheated him once a year: yet
still the honest man went forward without sus
picion, and grew rich, while I still continued
tricksy and cunning, and was poor, without the
consolation of being honest." — Vicar of Wake-
field, chap. xxvi.
t Born, 1743 ; died, 1805.
sible to suppose that such a mind as that of
Paley would have fallen into those princi
ples of gross selfishness of which Mr. Hume
is a uniform and zealous antagonist.
The natural frame of Pnley's under
standing fitted it more for business and the
world than for philosophy; and he accord
ingly enjoyed with considerable relish the
few opportunities which the latlerpart of his
life afforded of taking a part in the affairs of
his county as a magistrate. Penetration
and shrewdness, firmness and coolness, a
vein of pleasantry, fruitful though somewhat
unrefined, with an original homeliness and
significancy of expression, were perhaps more
remarkable in his conversation than the re
straints of authorship and profession allowed
them to be in his writings. Grateful re
membrance brings this assemblage of quali
ties with unfaded colours before the mind at
the present moment, after the long interval
of twenty-eight years. His taste for the
common business and ordinary amusements
of life fortunately gave a zest to the company
which his neighbours chanced to yield, with
out rendering him insensible to the pleasures
of intercourse with more enlightened society.
The practical bent of his nature is visible in
the language of his writings, which, on prac
tical matters, is as precise as the nature of
the subject requires, but, in his rare and
reluctant efforts to rise to first principles,
become indeterminate and unsatisfactory;
though no man's composition was more free
from the impediments which hinder a man's
meaning from being quickly and clearly seen.
He seldom distinguishes more exactly than is
required for palpable and direct usefulness.
He possessed that chastised acuteness of dis
crimination, exercised on the affairs of men,
and habitually looking to a purpose beyond
the mere increase of knowledge, which forms
the character of a lawyer's understanding,
and which is apt to render a mere lawyer
too subtile for the management of affairs,
and yet too gross for the pursuit of general
truth. His style is as near perfection in its
kind as any in our language. Perhaps no
words were ever more expressive and illus
trative than those in which he represents the
art of life to be that of rightly " setting our
habits."
The most original and ingenious of his
writings is the Horse Paulinas. The Evi
dences of Christianity are formed out of an
admirable translation of Butler's Analogy,
and a most skilful abridgment of Lardner's
Credibility of the Gospel History. He may
be said to have thus given value to two
works, of which the first was scarcely in
telligible to the majority of those who were
most desirous of profiting by it ; while the
second soon wearies out the larger part of
readers, though the more patient few have
almost always been gradually won over to
feel pleasure in a display of knowledge,
probity, charity, and meekness, unmatched
by any other avowed advocate in a case
deeply interesting his warmest feelings. His
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
155
Natural Theology is the wonderful work of a
man who, after sixty, had studied Anatomy
in order to write it; and it could only have
been surpassed by one who, to great origin
ality of conception and clearness of exposi
tion, adds the advantage of a high place in
the first class of physiologists.*
It would be unreasonable here to say
much of a work which is in the hands of so
many as his Moral and Political Philosophy.
A very few remarks on one or two parts of
it may be sufficient to estimate his value as
a moralist, and to show his defects as a me
taphysician. His general account of Virtue
may indeed be chosen for both purposes.
The manner in which he deduces the ne
cessary tendency of all virtuous actions to
promote general happiness, from the good
ness of the Divine Lawgiver, (though the
principle be not, as has already more than
once appeared, peculiar to him, but rather
common to most religious philosophers.) is
characterised by a clearness and vigour which
have never been surpassed. It is indeed
nearly, if not entirely, an identical proposi
tion, that a Being of unmixed benevolence
will prescribe those laws only to His crea
tures which contribute to their well-being.
When we are convinced that a course of
conduct is generally beneficial to all men,
we cannot help considering it as acceptable
to a benevolent Deity. The usefulness of
actions is the mark set on them by the
Supreme Legislator, by which reasonable
beings discover it to be His will that such
actions should be done. In this apparently
unanswerable deduction it is partly admit
ted, and universally implied, that the prin
ciples of Right and Wrong may be treated
apart from the manifestation of them in the
Scriptures. If it were otherwise, how could
men of perfectly different religions deal or
reason with each other on moral subjects'?
How could they regard rights and duties as
subsisting between them ? To what common
principles could they appeal in their differ
ences? Even the Polytheists themselves,
those worshippers of
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes are rage, revenge, or lust.t
by a happy inconsistency are compelled, how
ever irregularly and imperfectly, to ascribe
some general enforcement of the moral code
to their divinities. If there were no founda
tion for Morality antecedent to the Revealed
Religion, we should want that important test
of the conformity of a revelation to pure
morality, by which its claim to a divine
origin is to be tried. The internal evidence
of Religion necessarily presupposes such a
standard. The Christian contrasts the pre
cepts of the Koran with the pure and bene
volent morality of the Gospel. The Maho
metan claims, with justice, a superiority over
* See Animal Mechanics, by Mr. Charles Bell,
published by the Society for the diffusion of
Useful Knowledge.
t Essay on Man, Ep. iii.
the Hindoo, inasmuch as the Musselman re
ligion inculcates the moral perfection of one
Supreme Ruler of the world. The ceremonial
and exclusive character of Judaism has ever
been regarded as an indication that it was
intended to pave the way for an universal
religion, a morality seated in the heart, and
a worship of sublime simplicity. These
discussions would be impossible, unless
Morality were previously proved or granted
to exist. Though the science of Ethics is
thus far independent, it by no means follows
that there is any equality, or that there may
not be the utmost inequality, in the moral
tendency of religious systems. The most
ample scope is still left for the zeal and ac
tivity of those who seek to spread important
truth. But it is absolutely essential to ethi
cal science that it should contain principles,
the authority of which must be recognised
by men of every conceivable variety of reli
gious opinion.
The peculiarities of Paley's mind are
discoverable in the comparison, or rather
contrast, between the practical chapter on
Happiness, and the philosophical portion of
the chapter on Virtue. " Virtue is the doing
good to mankind, in obedience to the will of
God, and- for the sake of everlasting happi
ness."* It is not perhaps very important to
observe, that these words, wnich he offers
as a "definition," ought in propriety to have
been called a "proposition;" but it is much
more necessary to say that they contain a
false account of Virtue. According to this
doctrine, every action not done for the sake
of the agent's happiness is vicious. Now,
it is plain, that an act cannot be said to be
done for the sake of any thing which is not
present to the mind of the agent at the mo
ment of action : it is a contradiction in terms
to affirm that a man acts for the sake of any
object, of which, however it may be the ne
cessary consequence of his act, he is not at
the time fully aware. The unfelt conse
quences of his act can no more influence his
will than its unknown consequences. Nay,
further, a man is only with any propriety-
said to act for the sake of his chief object ;
nor can he with entire correctness be said to
act for the sake of any thing but his sole
object. So that it is a necessary consequence
of Paley's proposition, that every act which
flows from generosity or benevolence is a
vice ; — so also is every act of obedience to
the will of God, if it arises from any motive
but a desire of the reward which He will
bestow. Any act of obedience influenced
by gratitude, and affection, and veneration
towards Supreme Benevolence and Perfec
tion, is so far imperfect ; and if it arises
solely from these motives it becomes a vice.
It must be owned, that this excellent and
most enlightened man has laid the founda
tions of Religion and Virtue in a more intense
and exclusive selfishness than was avowed
by the Catholic enemies of Fenelon, when
Book i. chap. vii.
156
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
they persecuted him for his doctrine of a
pure and disinterested love of God.
In another province, of a very subordinate
kind, the disposition of Paley to limit his
principles to his own time and country, and
to look at them merely as far as they are
calculated to amend prevalent vices and
errors, betrayed him into narrow and false
views. His chapter on what he calls the
"Law of Honour" is unjust, even in its own
small sphere, because it supposes Honour to
allow what it does not forbid; though the
truth be, that the vices enumerated by him
are only not forbidden by Honour, because
they are not within its jurisdiction. He con
siders it as li a system of rules constructed
by people of fashion ;'? — a confused and tran
sient mode of expression, which may be un
derstood with difficulty by our posterity, and
which cannot now be exactly rendered per
haps in any other language. The subject,
however, thus narrowed arid lowered, is nei
ther unimportant in practice, nor unworthy
of the consideration of the moral philoso
pher. Though all mankind honour Virtue
and despise Vice, the degree of respect or
contempt is often far from being proportioned
to the place which virtues and vices occupy
in a just system of Ethics. Wherever higher
honour is bestowed on one moral quality
than on others of equal or greater moral
value, what is called a u point of honour" may
be said to exist. It is singular that so shrewd
an observer as Paley should not have ob
served a law of honour far more permanent
than that which attracted his notice, in the
feelings of Europe respecting the conduct of
men and women. Cowardice is riot so im
moral as cruelty, nor indeed so detestable ;
but it is more despicable and disgraceful :
the female point of honour forbids indeed a
great vice, but one not so great as many
others by which it is not violated. It is easy
enough to see, that where we are strongly
prompted to a virtue by a natural impulse.
we love the man who is constantly actuated
by the amiable sentiment; but we do not
consider that which is done without diffi
culty as requiring or deserving admiration
and distinction. The kind affections are
their own rich reward, and they are the ob
ject of affection to others. To encourage
kindness by praise would be to insult it, and
to encourage hypocrisy. It is for the con
quest of fear, it would be still more for the
conquest of resentment, — if that were not,
wherever it is real, the cessation of a state
of mental agony, — that the applause of man
kind is reserved. Observations of a similar
nature will easily occur to every reader re
specting the point of honour in the other
sex. The conquest of natural frailties, espe
cially in a case of far more importance to
mankind than is at first sight obvious, is well
distinguished as an object of honour, and the
contrary vice is punished by shame. Honour
is not wasted on those who abstain from acts
•which are punished by the law. These acts
may be avoided without a pure motive.
Wherever a virtue is easily cultivable by-
good men; wherever it is by nature attended
by delight : wherever its outward observance
is so necessary to society as to be enforced
by punishment, it is not the proper object
of honour. Honour and shame, therefore,
may be reasonably dispensed, without being
strictly proportioned to the intrinsic morality
of actions, if the inequality of their distribu
tion contributes to the general equipoise of
the whole moral system. A wide dispro
portion, however, or indeed any dispropor
tion not justifiable on moral grounds, would
be a depravation of the moral principle.
Duelling is among us a disputed case, though
the improvement of manners has rendered it
so much more infrequent, that it is likely in
time to lose its support from opinion. Those
who excuse individuals for yielding to a false
point of honour, as in the suicides of the
Greeks and Romans, may consistently blame
the faulty principle, and rejoice in its de
struction. The shame fixed on a Hindoo
widow of rank who voluntarily survives her
husband, is regarded by all other nations
with horror.
There is room for great praise and some
blame in other parts of Paley's work. His
political opinions were those generally adopt
ed by moderate Whigs in his own age. His
language on the Revolution of 1688 may be
very advantageously compared, both in pre
cision and in generous boldness,* to that of
Blackstone, — a great master of classical and
harmonious composition, but a feeble rea-
soner and a confused thinker, whose wri
tings are not exempt from the charge of
slavishness.
It cannot be denied that Paley was some-
limes rather a lax moralist, especially on
public duties. It is a sin which easily besets
men of strong good sense, little enthusiasm,
and much experience. They are naturally led
to lower their precepts to the level of their
expectations. They see that higher preten
sions often produce less good, — to say no
thing of the hypocrisy, extravagance, and
turbulence, which they may be said to fos
ter. As those who claim more from men
often gain less, it is natural for more sober
and milder casuists to present a more ac
cessible Virtue to their followers. It was
thus that the Jesuits began, till, strongly
tempted by their perilous station as the mo
ral guides of the powerful, some of them by
degrees fell into that absolute licentiousness
for which all, not without injustice, have
* " Government maybe too secure. The greatest
tyrants have bedn those whose titles were the
most unquestioned. Whenever, therefore, the
opinion of right becomes too predominant and su
perstitious, it is abated by breaking the custom.
Thus the Revolution broke the custom of suc
cession, and thereby moderated, both in the prince
and in the people, those lofty notions of hereditary
right, which in the one were become a continual
incentive to tyranny, a <d disposed the other to
invite servitude, by u'^ne compliances and dan
gerous concessions." — Book vi. chap. 2.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 157
been cruelly immortalized by Pascal. In
dulgence, which is a great virtue in judg
ment concerning the actions of others, is too
apt, when blended in the same system with
the precepts of Morality, to be received as a
licence for our own offences. Accommoda
tion, without which society would be pain
ful, and arduous affairs would become im
practicable, is more safely imbibed from
temper and experience, than taught in early
and systematic instruction. The middle re-
fion between laxity and rigour is hard to be
efined ; and it is still harder steadily to re
main within its boundaries. Whatever may
be thought of Paley's observations on politi
cal influence and ecclesiastical subscription
to tests, as temperaments and mitigations
which may preserve us from harsh judg
ment, they are assuredly not well qualified
to form a part of that discipline which ought
to breathe into the opening souls of youth,
at the critical period of the formation of
character, those inestimable virtues of sin
cerity, of integrity, of independence, \vhich
will even guide tnem more safely through
life than will mere prudence: while they
provide an inward fountain of pure delight,
immeasurably more abundant than all the
outward sources of precarious and perishable
pleasure.
JEREMY BENTHAM.*
The general scheme oPthis Dissertation
would be a sufficient reason for omitting the
name of a living writer. The devoted attach
ment and invincible repugnance which an
impartial estimate of Mr. Bentham has to
encounter on either side, are a strong induce
ment not to deviate from* that scheme in his
case. But the most brief sketch of ethical
controversy in England would be imperfect
without it j and perhaps the utter hopeless
ness of finding any expedient for satisfying
his followers, or softening his opponents, may
enable a writer to look steadily and solely
at what he believes to be the dictates 01
Truth and Justice. He who has spoken of
former philosophers with unreserved free
dom, ought perhaps to subject his courage
and honesty to the severest test by an at
tempt to characterize such a contemporary.
Should the very few who are at once enlight
ened and unbiassed be of opinion that Jus
firmness and equity have stood this trial,
they will be the more disposed to trust his
fairness where the exercise of that quality
may have been more easy.
The disciples of Mr. Bentham are more
like the hearers of an Athenian philosopher
lhan the pupils of a modern professor, or the
cool proselytes of a modern writer. They
are in general men of competent age, of su
perior understanding, who voluntarily em-%
brace the laborious study of useful and noble
sciences ; who derive their opinions, not so
much from the cold perusal of his writings,
* Born, 1748 ; died, 1832.—Ed,
as from familiar converse with a master from
whose lips these opinions are recommended
by simplicity, disinterestedness, originality,
and vivacity, — aided rather than impeded
by foibles not unamiable, — enforced of late
by the growing authority of years and of
fame, and at all times strengthened by that
undoubting reliance on his own judgment
which mightily increases the ascendant of
such a man over those who approach him.
As he and they deserve the credit of braving
vulgar prejudices, so they must be content
to incur the imputation of falling into the
neighbouring vices of seeking distinction by
singularity, — of clinging to opinions, because
they are obnoxious, — of wantonly wounding
the most respectable feelings of mankind, —
of regarding an immense display of method
and nomenclature as a sure token of a corres
ponding increase of knowledge. — arid of con
sidering themselves as a chosen few, whom
an initiation into the most secret mysteries
of Philosophy entitles to look down with pity,
if not contempt, on the profane multitude.
Viewed with aversion or dread by the pub
lic, they become more bound to each other
and to their master ; while they are provoked
into the use of language which more and
more exasperates opposition to them. A
hermit in the greatest of cities, seeing only
his disciples, and indignant that systems of
government and law which he believes to be
perfect, are disregarded at once by the many
and the powerful, Mr. Bentham has at length
been betrayed into the most unphilosophica]
hypothesis, that all the ruling bodies who
guide the community have conspired to stifle
and defeat his discoveries. He is too little
acquainted with doubts to believe the honest
doubts of others, and he is too angry to mako
allowance for their prejudices and habits.
He has embraced the most extreme party in
practical politics ; — manifesting more dislike
and contempt towards those who are mo
derate supporters of popular principles than
towards their most inflexible opponents. To
the unpopularity of his philosophical and
political doctrines, he has added the more
general and lasting obloquy due to the un
seemly treatment of doctrines and principles
which, if there were no other motives for
reverential deference, ought, from a regard
to the feelings of the best men, to be ap
proached with decorum and respect.
Fifty-three years have passed since the
publication of Mr. Bentham's first work, A
Fragment on Government, — a considerable
octavo volume, employed in the examination
of a short paragraph of Blackstone. unmatch
ed in acute hypercriticism, but conducted
with a severity which leads to an unjust esti
mate of the writer criticised, till the like ex
periment be repeated on other waitings. It
was a waste of extraordinary power to em
ploy it in pointing out flaws and patches in
the robe occasionally stolen from the philoso
phical schools, which hung loosely, arid not
unbecomingly, on the elegant commentator.
This volume, and especially the preface,
0
158
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
abounds in fine, original, and just observa
tion ; it contains the germs of most of his
subsequent productions, and it is an early
example of that disregard for the method,
proportions, and occasion of a writing which,
with all common readers, deeply affects its
power of interesting or instructing. Two
years after, he published a most excellent
tract on the Hard Labour Bill, which., con
curring with the spirit excited by Howard's
inquiries, laid the foundation of just reason
ing on reformatory punishment. The Letters
on Usury,* are perhaps the best specimen
of the exhaustive discussion of a moral or
political question, leaving no objection, how
ever feeble, unanswered, and no difficulty,
however small, unexplained ; — remarkable
also, as they are. for the clearness and spirit
of the style, for the full exposition which
suits them to all intelligent readers, and for
the tender and skilful hand with which pre
judice is touched. The urbanity of the apo
logy for projectors, addressed to Dr. Smith,
whose temper and manner the author seems
for a time to have imbibed, is admirable.
The Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Politics, printed before the Letters, but
published after them, was the first sketch
of his system, and is still the only account
of it by himself. The great merit of this
work, and of his other writings in relation to
Jurisprudence properly so called, is not within
our present scope. To the Roman jurists be
longs the praise of having alloted a separate
portion of their Digest to the signification of
the words of the most frequent use in law
and legal discussion.! Mr. Bentham not
only first perceived and taught the great
value of an introductory section, composed
of the definitions of general terms, as subser
vient to brevity and precision in every part of
* They were addressed to Mr. George Wilson,
who retired from the English bar to his own coun
try, and died at Edinburgh in 1816 ; — an early
friend of Mr. Bentham, and afterwards an intimate
one of Lord Ellenborough, of Sir Vicary Gibbs,
and of all the most eminent of his professional
contemporaries. The rectitude of judgment, purity
of heart, elevation of honour, the sternness only
in integrity, the scorn of baseness, and indulgence
towards weakness, which were joined in him with
a gravity exclusive neither of feeling nor of plea
santry, contributed still more than his abilities and
attainments of various sorts, to a moral authority
with his friends, and in his profession, which few
men more amply possessed, or more usefully
exercised. The same character, somewhat soft
ened, and the same influence, distinguished his
closest friend, the late Mr. Lens. Both were in
flexible and incorruptible friends of civil and reli
gious liberty, and both knew how to reconcile the
warmest zeal for that sacred cause, with a charity
towards their opponents, which partisans, often
more violent than steady, treated as lukewarm.
The present writer hopes that the good-natured
reader will excuse him for having thus, perhaps
unseasonably, bestowed heartfelt commendation
on tho-u who were above the pursuit of praise, and
the reni..;'nbranoe of whose good opinion and good
will help to support him under a deep sense of
faults and vices.
t Digest, lib. i. tit. 16. De Verborum Significa-
tione.
a code ; but he also discovered the unspeak
able importance of naiural arrangement in Ju
risprudence, by rendering the mere place of a
proposed law in such an arrangement a short
and easy test of the fitness of the proposal.*
But here he does not distinguish between
the value of arrangement as scaffolding, and
the inferior convenience of its being the very
frame-work of the structure. He, indeed, is
much more remarkable for laying down de
sirable rules for the determination of rights,
and the punishment of wrongs, in general,
than for weighing the various circumstances
which require them to be modified in differ
ent countries and times, in order to render
them either more useful, more easily intro
duced, more generally respected, or more
certainly executed. The art of legislation
consists in thus applying the principles of
Jurisprudence to the situation, wants, inter
ests, feelings, opinions, and habits, of each
distinct community at any given time. It
bears the same relation to Jurisprudence
which the mechanical arts bear to pure
Mathematics. Many of these considerations
serve to show, that the sudden establishment
of new codes can seldom be practicable or
effectual for their purpose ; and that reforma
tions, though founded on the principles of
Jurisprudence, ought to be not only adapted
to the peculiar interests of a people, but en
grafted on their previous usages, and brought
into harmony with those national dispositions
on which the execution of laws depends.!
The Romans, under Justinian, adopted at
least the true principle, if they did not apply
it with sufficient freedom and boldness. They
considered the multitude of occasional laws,
and the still greater mass of usages, opinions,
and determinations1, as the materials of legis
lation, not precluding, but demanding a sys
tematic arrangement of the whole by the
supreme authority. Had the arrangement
* See a beautiful article on Codification, in the
Edinburg Review, vol. xxix. p. 217. It need no
longer be concealed that it was contributed by
Sir Samuel Romilly. The steadiness with which
he held the balance in weighing the merits of his
friend against his unfortunate defects, is an exam
ple of his union of the most commanding moral
principle with a sensibility so warm, that, if it
had been released from that stern authority, it
would not so long have endured the coarseness
and roughness of human concerns. From the
tenderness of his feelings, and from an anger never
roused but by cruelty and baseness, as much as
from his genius and his pure taste, sprung that
original and characteristic eloquence, which was
the hope of the afflicted as well as the terror of
the oppressor. If his oratory had not flowed so
largely from this moral source, which years do
not dry up, he would not perhaps have been the
only example of an orator who, after the age of
sixty, daily increased in polish, in vigour, and in
splendour.
t An excellent medium between those who
absolutely require new codes, and those who ob
stinately adhere to ancient usages, has been point
ed out by M. Meyer, in his most justly celebrated
work, Esprit, &c. des Institutions Judiciares des
Principaux Pays de 1'Europe, La Haye, 1819.
tome i. Introduction, p. 8.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 159
been more scientific, had there been a bolder
examination and a more free reform of many
particular branches, a model would have
been offered for liberal imitation by modern
lawgivers. It cannot be denied, without in
justice and ingratitude, that Mr. Bentham
has done more thai/ any other writer to rouse
the spirit of juridical reformation, which is
now gradually examining every part of law,
and which, when further progress is facili
tated by digesting the present laws, will
doubtles's proceed to the improvement of all.
Greater praise it is given to few to earn : it
ought to satisfy him for the disappointment
of hopes which were not reasonable, that
Russia should receive a code from him, or
that North America could be brought to re
nounce the variety of her laws and institu
tions, on the single authority of a foreign
philosopher, whose opinions had not worked
their wray, either into legislation or into gene
ral reception, in his own country. It ought
also to dispose his followers to do fuller jus
tice to the Romillys and Broughams, without
whose prudence and energy, as well as rea
son and eloquence, the best plans of refor
mation must have continued a dead letter ;
— for whose sake it might have been fit to
reconsider the obloquy heaped on their pro
fession, and to show more general indul
gence to all those whose chief offence seems
to consist in their doubts whether sudden
changes, almost always imposed by violence
on a community, be the surest road to lasting
improvement.
It is unfortunate that ethical theory, with
which we are now chiefly concerned, is not
the province in which Mr. Bentham has
reached the most desirable distinction. It
may be remarked, both in ancient and in
modern times, that whatever modifications
prudent followers may introduce into the
system of an innovator, the principles of.the
master continue to mould the habitual dis
positions, and to influence the practical ten
dency of the school. Mr. Bentham preaches
the principle of Utility with the zeal of a
discoverer. Occupied more in reflection
than in reading, he knew not, or forgot, how
often it had been the basis, and how gene
rally an essential part, of all moral sys
tems.* That in which he really differs from
others, is in the Necessity which he teaches,
and the example which he sets, of constant
ly bringing that principle before us. This
peculiarity appears to us to be his radical
error. In an attempt, of which the constitu
tion of human nature forbids the success, he
seems to us to have been led into funda
mental errors in moral theory, and to have
given to his practical doctrine a dangerous
direction.
The confusion of moral approbation with
the moral qualities which are its objects,
common to Mr. Bentham with many other
philosophers, is much more uniform and
prominent in him than in most others. This
* See Note V,
general error, already mentioned at the open-
ng of this Dissertation, has led him more
;han others to assume, that because the prin
ciple of Utility forms a necessary part of
jvery moral theory, it ought therefore to be
he chief motive of human conduct. Now
t is evident that this assumption, rather
acitly than avowedly made, is wholly gra-
uitous. No practical conclusion can be de
duced from the principle, but that we ought
;o cultivate those habitual dispositions which
are the most effectual motives to useful ac-
ions. But before a regard to our own in-
erest, or a desire to promote the welfare of
men in general, be allowed to be the exclu
sive, or even the chief regulators of human
conduct, it must be shown that they are the
nost effectual motives to such useful actions :
t is demonstrated by experience that they
are not. It is even owned by the most in
genious writers of Mr. Bentham's school,
that desires which are pointed to general and
distant objects, although they have their
proper place and their due value, are com
monly very faint and ineffectual inducements
to action. A theory founded on Utility,
therefore, requires that we should cultivate,
as excitements to practice, those other ha
bitual dispositions which we know by expe
rience to be generally the source of actions
beneficial to ourselves and our fellows; —
habits of feeling productive of habits of vir
tuous conduct, and in their turn strengthened
by the re-action of these last. What is the
result of experience on the choice of the
objects of moral culture? Beyond all dis
pute, that we should labour to attain that
state of mind in which all the social affec
tions are felt with the utmost warmth, giving
birth to more comprehensive benevolence,
but not supplanted by it ; — when the Moral
Sentiments most strongly approve what is
right and good, without being perplexed by
a calculation of consequences, though not
incapable of being gradually rectified by
Reason, whenever they are decisively proved
by experience not to correspond in some of
their parts to the universal and perpetual ef
fects of conduct. It is a false representation
of human nature to affirm that "courage" is
only " prudence."* They coincide in their
effects, and it is always prudent to be cou
rageous: but a man who fights because he
thinks it more hazardous to yield, is not brave.
He does not become brave till he feels.cow-
ardice to be base and painful, and till he is
no longer in need of any aid from prudence.
Even if it were the interest of every man to
be bold, it is clear that so cold a considera-
* Mill, Analysis of" the Human Mind, vol. ii.
p. 237. It would be unjust not to say that this
book, partly perhaps from a larger adoption of the
principles of Hartley, holds or.t fairer opportuni
ties of negotiation with natural feelings and the
doctrines of former philosophers, than any other
production of the same school. But this very as
sertion about courage clearly shows at least a for-
getfulness that courage, even if it were the off
spring of prudence, would not for that reason be
a species of it.
160
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
tion cannot prevail over the fear of danger.
Where it seems to do so, it must be the un
seen power either of the fear of shame, or
of some other powerful passion, to which it
lends its name. It was long ago with strik
ing justice observed by Aristotle, that he
who abstains from present gratification under
a distinct apprehension of its painful conse
quences, is only prudent, and that he must
acquire a disrelish for excess on its own ac
count, before he deserves the name of a
temperate man. It is only when the means
are firmly and unalterably converted into
ends, that the process of forming the mind
is completed. Courage may then seek, in
stead of avoiding danger : Temperance may
prefer abstemiousness to indulgence: Pru
dence itself may choose an orderly govern
ment of conduct, according to certain rules,
without regard to the degree in which it
promotes welfare. Benevolence must desire
the happiness of others, to the exclusion of
the consideration how far it is connected
with that of the benevolent agent ; and those
alone can be accounted just who obey the
.dictates of Justice from having thoroughly
learned an habitual veneration for her strict
rules and for her larger precepts. In that
complete state the mind possesses no power
of dissolving the combinations of thought
and feeling which impel it to action. Nothing
in this argument turns on the difference be
tween implanted and acquired principles.
As no man can cease, by any act of his, to
see distance, though the power of seeing it
be universally acknowledged to be an acqui
sition, so no man has the power to extinguish
the affections and the moral sentiments,
(however much they may be thought to be
acquired,) anymore than that of eradicating
the bodily appetites. The best writers of
Mr. Bentham's school overlook the indisso-
lubility of these associations, and appear not
to bear in mind that their strength and rapid
action constitute the perfect state of a moral
agent.
The pursuit of our own general welfare,
or of that of mankind at large, though from
their vagueness and coldness they are unfit
habitual motives and unsafe ordinary guides
of conduct, yet perform functions of essen
tial importance in the moral system. The
former, which we call " self-love," preserves
the balance of all the active principles which
regard ourselves ultimately, and contributes
to subject them to the authority of the moral
principles.* The latter, which is general
benevolence, regulates in like manner the
equipoise of the narrower affections, — quick
ens the languid, and checks the encroach
ing, — borrows strength from pity, and even
from indignation, — receives some compensa
tion, as it enlarges, in the addition of beauty
and grandeur, for the weakness which arises
from dispersion, — enables us to look on all
men as brethren, and overflows on every
sentient being. The general interest of man-
* See Note W.
kind, in truth, almost solely affects us through
the affections of benevolence and sympathy;
for the coincidence of general with indivi
dual interest, — even where it is certain, — is
too dimly seen to produce any emotion which
can impel to, or restrain from action. As a
general truth, its value consists in its com
pleting the triumph of Morality, by demon
strating the absolute impossibility of forming
any theory of human nature which does not
preserve the superiority of Virtue over Vice ;
— a great, though not a directly practical
advantage.
The followers of Mr. Bentham have car
ried to an unusual extent the prevalent fault
of the more modern advocates of Utility,
who have dwelt so exclusively on the out
ward advantages of Virtue as to have lost
sight of the delight which is a part of vir
tuous feeling, and of the beneficial influence
of good actions upon the frame of the mind.
u Benevolence towards others," says Mr.
Mill, "produces a return of benevolence
from them." The fact is true, and ought to
be stated : but how unimportant is it in com
parison with that which is passed over in
silence, — the pleasure of the affection itself,
which, if it could become lasting and in
tense, would convert the heart into a heaven !
No one who has ever felt kindness, if he
could accurately recall his feelings, could
hesitate about their infinite superiority. The
cause of the general neglect of this consi
deration is, that it is only when a gratifica
tion is something distinct from a state of
mind, that we can easily learn to consider it
as a pleasure. Hence the great error re
specting the affections, where the inherent
delight is not duly estimated, on account of
that very peculiarity of its being a part of
a state of mind which renders it unspeakably
more valuable as independent of every thing
without. The social affections are the only
principles of human nature which have no
direct pains: to have any of these desires is
to be in a state of happiness. The malevo
lent passions have properly no pleasures ;
for that attainment of their purpose which is
improperly so called, consists only in healing
or assuaging the torture which envy, jealousy,
and malice, inflict on the malignant mind.
It might with as much propriety be said that
the toothache and the stone have pleasures,
because their removal is followed by an
agreeable feeling. These bodily disorders,
indeed, are often cured by the process which
removes the sufferings ; but the mental dis
tempers of envy and revenge are nourished
by every act of odious indulgence which for
a moment suspends their pain.
The same observation is applicable to
every virtuous disposition, though not so ob
viously as to the benevolent affections. That
a brave man is, on the whole, far less ex
posed to danger than a coward, is not the
chief advantage of a courageous temper.
Great dangers are rare; but the constant
absence of such painful and mortifying sen
sations as those of fear, and the steady con-
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
161
eciousness of superiority to what subdues
ordinary men, are a perpetual source of in
ward enjoyment. No man who has ever
been visited by a gleam of magnanimity, can
place any outward advantage of fortitude in
comparison with the feeling of being always
able fearlessly to defend a righteous cause.*
Even humility, in spite of first appearances,
is a remarkable example : — though it has of
late been unwarrantably used to signify that
painful consciousness of inferiority which is
the first stage of erivy.t It is a term conse
crated in Christian Ethics to denote that dis
position which, by inclining towards a modest
estimate of our qualities, corrects the preva
lent tendency of human nature to overvalue
our merits and to overrate our claims. What
can be a less doubtful, or a much more con
siderable blessing than this constant seda
tive, which soothes and composes the irrita
ble passions of vanity and pride 1 What is
more conducive to lasting peace of mind
than the consciousness of proficiency in that
most delicate species of equity which, in
the secret tribunal of Conscience, labours to
be impartial in the comparison of ourselves
with others'? What can so perfectly assure
us of the purity of our Moral Sense, as the
habit of contemplating, not that excellence
which we have reached, but that which is
still to be pursuedjt — of not considering how
far we may outrun others, but how far we
are from the goal ?
Virtue has often outward advantages, and
always inward delights : but the last, though
constant, strong, inaccessible and inviolable,
are not easily considered by the common
observer as apart from the form with which
they are blended. They are so subtile and
evanescent as to escape the distinct contem
plation of all but the very few who meditate
on the acts of the mind. The outward ad
vantages, on the other hand, — cold, uncer
tain, dependent and precarious as they are. —
yet stand out to the sense and to the memory,
may be as it were handled and counted, and
are perfectly on a level with the general ap
prehension. Hence they have become the
almost exclusive theme of all moralists who
profess to follow Reason. There is room for
suspecting that a very general illusion pre
vails on this subject. Probably the smallest
part of the pleasure of Virtue, because it is
the most palpable, has become the sign and
mental representative of the whole : the
* According to Cicero's definition of fortitude,
"Virtus pugnans pro aequitate." The remains
of the original sense of " virtus," manhood, give
a beauty and force to these expressions, which
cannot be preserved in our language. The Greek
"tfSTjf," and the German " tugend," originally
denoied "strength," afterwards "courage," and
at last " virtue." But the happy derivation of
"virtus" from " vir" gives an energy to the
phrase of Cicero, which illustrates the use of ety
mology in the hands of a skilful writer.
t Anal. Hum. Mind, vol. ii. p. 222.
t For a description of vanity, by a great orator,
see the Rev. R. Hall's Sermon on Modern Infi
delity.
21
outward and visible sign suggests only in
sensibly the inward and mental delight.
Those who are prone to display chiefly the
external benefits of magnanimity and kind
ness, would speak with far less fervour, and
perhaps less confidence, if their feelings
were not unconsciously affected by the men
tal state which is overlooked in their state
ments. But when they speak of what is
without, they feel what was within, and their
words excite the same feeling in others.
Is it not probable that much of our love of
praise may be thus ascribed to humane and
sociable pleasure in the sympathy of others
with us ? Praise is the symbol which repre
sents sympathy, and which the mind insen
sibly substitutes for it in recollection and in
language. Does not the desire of posthu
mous fame, in like manner, manifest an
ambition for the fellow-feeling of our race,
when it is perfectly unproductive of any
advantage to ourselves? In this point of
view, it may be considered as the passion the
very existence of which proves the mighty
power of cfisinterested desire. Every other
pleasure from sympathy is derived from con
temporaries : the love of fame alone seeks
the sympathy of unborn generations, and
stretches the chain which binds the race of
man together, to an extent to which Hope
sets no bounds. There is a noble, even if
unconscious union of Morality with genius in
the mind of him who sympathizes with the
masters who lived twenty centuries before
him, in order that he may learn to command
the sympathies of the countless generations
who are to come.
In the most familiar, as wrell as in the
highest instances, it would seem, that the
inmost thoughts and sentiments of men are
more pure than their language. Those who
speak of "a regard to character," if they be
serious, generally infuse into that word, una
wares, a large portion of that sense in which
it denotes the frame of the mind. Those
who speak of "honour" very often mean a
more refined and delicate sort of conscience,
which ought to render the more edf3ted
classes of society alive to such smaller
wrongs as the laborious and the ignorant
can scarcely feel. What heart does not
warm at the noble exclamation of the an
cient poet : " Who is pleased by false hon
our, or frightened by lying infamy, but he
who is false and depraved !"* Every un-
corrupted mind feels unmerited praise as a
bitter reproach, and regards a consciousness
of demerit as a drop of poison in the cup
of honour. How different is the applause
which truly delights us all, a proof that the
consciences of others are in harmony with
our own! "What," says Cicero, "is glory
but the concurring praise of the good, the
unbought approbation of those who judge
aright of excellent Virtue !"t A far greater
* Horat. Epistol. lib. i. 16.
t Probably quoted memoriterfrom De Fin. lib.
iv. cap. 23.— Ed.
02
162
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
than Cicero rises from the purest praise of
marij to more sublime contemplations.
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
But lives and spreads aloft, by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove.*
Those who have most earnestly inculcated
the doctrine of Utility have given another
notable example of the very vulgar preju
dice which treats the unseen as insignificant.
Tucker is the only one of them who occa
sionally considers that most important effect
of human conduct which consists in its ac
tion on the frame of the mind, by fitting its
faculties and sensibilities for their appointed
purpose. A razor or a penknife would well
enough cut cloth or meat ; but if they were
often so used, they would be entirely spoiled.
The same sort of observation is much more
strongly applicable to habitual dispositions,
which, if they be spoiled, we have no cer
tain means of replacing or mending. What
ever act. therefore, discomposes the moral
machinery of Mind, is more injurious to
the welfare of the agent than most disas
ters from without can be : for the latter are
commonly limited and temporary ; the evil
of the former spreads through the whole of
life. Health of mind, as well as of body, is
not only productive in itself of a greater
amount of enjoyment than arises from other
sources, but is the only condition of our
frame in which we are capable of receiving
pleasure from without. Hence it appears
how incredibly absurd it is to prefer, on
grounds of calculation, a present interest to
the preservation of those mental habits on
which our well-being depends. When they
are most moral, they may often prevent us
from obtaining advantages : but it would be
as absurd to desire to lower them for that
reason, as it would be to weaken the body,
lest its strength should render it more liable
to contagious disorders of rare occurrence.
It is, on the other hand, impossible to com
bine the benefit of the general habit with the
advantages of occasional deviation; for every
such deviation either produces remorse, or
weakens the habit, and prepares the way for
its gradual destruction. He who obtains a
fortune by the undetected forgery of a will,
may indeed be honest in his other acts ; but
if he had such a scorn of fraud before as he
must himself allow to be generally useful,
he must suffer a severe punishment from
contrition: and he will be haunted with the
fears of one who has lost his own security
for his good conduct. In all cases, if they be
well examined, his loss by the distemper of
his mental frame will outweigh the profits
of his vice.
By repeating the like observation on simi
lar occasions, it will be manifest that the
infirmity of recollection, aggravated by the
defects of language, gives an appearance of
more selfishness to man than truly belongs
to his nature ; and that the effect of active
Lycidas, 1. 78.
agents upon the habitual state of mind, —
one of the considerations to which the epi
thet " sentimental-"' has of late been applied
in derision, — is really among the most seri
ous and reasonable objects of Moral Philoso
phy. When the internal pleasures and pains
which accompany good and bad feelings, or
rather form a part of them, and the internal
advantages and disadvantages which follow
good and bad actions, are sufficiently con
sidered, the comparative importance of out
ward consequences will be more and more
narrow; so that the Stoical philosopher may
be thought almost excusable for rejecting
it altogether, were it not an almost indis
pensably necessary consideration for those
in whom right habits of feeling are not suffi
ciently strong. They alone are happy, or
even truly virtuous, who have little need
of it.
The later moralists who adopt the princi
ple of Utility, have so misplaced it, that in
their hands it has as great a tendency as any
theoretical error can have, to lessen the in
trinsic pleasure of Virtue, and to unfit our
habitual feelings for being the most effectual
inducements to good conduct. This is the
natural tendency of a discipline which brings
Utility too closely and frequently into contact
with action. By this habit, in its best state,
an essentially weaker motive is gradually
substituted for others which must always be
of more force. The frequent appeal to Utility
as the standard of action tends to introduce
an uncertainty with respect to the conduct
of other men, which would render all inter
course with them insupportable. It affords
also so fair a disguise for selfish and malig
nant passions, as often to hide their nature
from him who is their prey. Some taint
of these mean and evil principles will at
least spread itself, and a venomous anima
tion, not its own, will be given to the cold
desire of Utility. Moralists who take an
active part in those affairs which often call
out unamiable passions, ought to guard with
peculiar watchfulness against such self-de
lusions. The sin that must most easily beset
them, is that of sliding from general to par
ticular consequences, — that of trying single
actions, instead of dispositions, habits, and
rules, by the standard of Utility, — that of
authorizing too great a latitude for discretion
and policy in moral conduct, — that of readily
allowing exceptions to the most important
rules, — that of too lenient a censure of the-
use of doubtful means, when the end seems
to them good, — and that of believing unphi-
losophically, as well as dangerously, that
there can be any measure or scheme so use
ful to the world as the existence of men who
would not do a base thing for any public
advantage. It was said of Andrew Fletcher,
u that he would lose his life to serve his
country, but would not do a base thing to
save it." Let those preachers of Utility who
suppose that such a man sacrifices ends- to
means, consider whether the scorn of base
ness be not akin to the contempt of danger;
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
163
and whether a nation composed of such men
would not be invincible. But theoretical
principles are counteracted by a thousand
causes, which confine their mischief as well
as circumscribe their benefits. Men are
never so good or so bad as their opinions. All
that can be with reason apprehended is, that
these last may always produce some part of
their natural evil, and that the mischief will
be greatest among the many wrho seek ex
cuses for their passions. Aristippus found
in the Socratic representation of the union
of virtue and happiness a pretext for sensu
ality ; and many Epicureans became volup
tuaries in spite of. the example of their
master, — easily dropping by degrees the
limitations by which he guarded his doc
trines. In proportion as a man accustoms
himself to be influenced by the utility of
particular acts, without regard to rules, he
approaches to the casuistry of the Jesuits,
and to the practical maxims of Caesar Borgia.
Injury on this, as on other occasions, has
been suffered by Ethics, from their close
affinity to Jurisprudence. The true and
eminent merit of Mr. Bentham is that of a
reformer of Jurisprudence : he is only a mo
ralist with a view to being a jurist : and he
sometimes becomes for a few hurried mo
ments a metaphysician with a view to lay
ing the foundation of both the moral sciences.
Both he and his followers have treated Ethics
too juridically : they do not seem to be aware,
or at least they do not bear constantly in
mind, that there is an essential difference in
the subjects of these two sciences.
The object of law is the prevention of
actions injurious to the community : it con
siders the dispositions from which they flow
only indirectly) to ascertain the likelihood of
their recurrence, and thus to determine the
necessity and the means of preventing them.
The direct object of Ethics is only mental
disposition : it considers actions indirectly as
the signs by which such dispositions are
manifested. If it were possible for the mere
moralist to see that a moral and amiable
temper was the mental source of a bad
action, he could not cease to approve and
love the temper, as we sometimes presume
to suppose may be true of the judgments of
the Searcher of Hearts. Religion necessarily
coincides with Morality in this respect ; and
it is the peculiar distinction of Christianity
that it places the seat of Virtue in the heart.
Law and Ethics are necessarily so much
blended, that in many intricate combinations
the distinction becomes obscure : but in all
strong cases the difference is evident. Thus,
law punishes the most sincerely repentant •
but wherever the soul of the penitent can be
thought to be thoroughly purified, Religion
and Morality receive him with open arms.
It is needless, after these remarks, to ob
serve, that those whose habitual contempfaL-
tiori is directed to the rules of action, are
likely to underrate the importance of feeling
and disposition ; — an error of very unfortu
nate consequences, since the far greater part
of human actions flow from these neglected
sources ; while the law interposes only in
cases which may be called exceptions, which
are now rare, and ought to be less frequent.
The coincidence of Mr. Bentham's school
with the ancient Epicureans in the disregard
of the pleasures of taste and of the arts de
pendent on imagination, is a proof both of
[he inevitable adherence of much of the
popular sense of the words "interest'"7 and
"pleasure/'' to the same words in their
philosophical acceptation, and of the perni
cious influence of narrowing Utility to mere
visible and tangible objects, to the exclusion
of those which form the larger part of human
enjoyment.
The mechanical philosophers who, under
Descartes and Gassendi, began to reform
Physics in the seventeenth century, attempt
ed to explain all the appearances of nature
by an immediate reference to the figure of
particles of matter impelling each other in
various directions, and with unequal force,
but in all other points alike. The commu
nication of motion by impulse -they conceived
to be perfectly simple and intelligible. It
never occurred to them, that the movement
of one ball when another is driven against
it, is a fact of which no explanation can be
given which will amount to more than a
statement of its constant occurrence. That
no body can act where it is not, appeared to
them as self-evident as that the whole is
equal to all the parts. By this axiom they
understood that no body moves another with
out touching it. They did not perceive, that
it was only self-evident where it means that
no body can act where it has not the power
of acting; and that if it be understood more
largely, it is a mere assumption of the pro
position on which their whole system rested.
Sir Isaac Newton reformed Physics, not by
simplifying that science, but by rendering
it much more complicated. He introduced
into it the force of attraction, of which he
ascertained many laws, but which even he
did not dare to represent as being as intelli
gible, and as conceivably ultimate as impul
sion itself. It was necessary for Laplace to
introduce intermediate laws, and to calculate
disturbing forces, before the phenomena of
the heavenly bodies could be reconciled even
to Newton's more complex theory. In the
present state of physical and chemical know •
ledge, a man who should attempt to refer all
the immense variety of facts to the simple
impulse of the Cartesians, would have no
chance of serious confutation. The number
of laws augments with the progress of know
ledge.
The speculations of the followers of Mr.
Bentham are not unlike the unsuccessful
attempt of the Cartesians. Mr. Mill, for ex
ample, derives the whole theory of Govern
ment* from the single fact, that every man
pursues his interest when he knows it ;
which he assumes to be a sort of self-evi-
Encyc. Brit., article " Government."
164
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
dent practical principle, — if such a phrase
be not contradictory. That a man's pur
suing the interest of another, or indeed any
other object in nature, is just as conceivable
as that he should pursue his own interest, is
a proposition which seems never to have oc
curred to this acute and ingenious writer.
Nothing, however, can be more certain than
its truth, if the term " interest" be employed
in its proper sense of general well-being,
which is the only acceptation in which it can
serve the purpose of his arguments. If, indeed,
the term be employed to denote the gratifi
cation of a predominant desire, his proposi
tion is self-evident, but wholly unserviceable
in his argument ; for it is clear that individu
als and multitudes often desire what they
know to be most inconsistent with their gene
ral welfare. A nation, as much as an indi
vidual, and sometimes more, may not only
mistake its interest, but, perceiving it clearly,
may prefer the gratification of a strong passion
to it.* The whole fabric of his political rea
soning seems to be overthrown by this single
observation ; and instead of attempting to ex
plain the immense variety of political facts
by the simple principle of a contest of inter
ests, we are reduced to the necessity of once
more referring them to that variety of pas
sions, habits, opinions, and prejudices, which
we discover only by experience. Mr. MilPs
essay on Education! affords another example
of the inconvenience of leaping at once from
the most general laws, to a multiplicity of
minute appearances. Having assumed, or
at least inferred from insufficient premises,
that the intellectual and moral character is
.entirely formed by circumstances, he pro
ceeds, in the latter part of the essay, as if it
were a necessary consequence of that doc
trine that we might easily acquire the power
-of combining and directing circumstances in
such a manner as to produce the best possi
ble character. Without disputing, for the
present, the theoretical proposition, let us
consider what would be the reasonableness
of similar expectations in a more easily in
telligible case. The general theory of the
winds is pretty well understood ; we know
that they proceed from the rushing of air
from those portions of the atmosphere which
are more condensed, into those which are
more rarefied: but how great a chasm is
there between that simple law and the great
variety of facts which experience exhibits !
The constant winds between the tropics are
large and regular enough to be in some mea
sure capable of explanation : but who can
tell "why, in variable climates, the wind
blows to-day from the east, to-morrow from
the west ? Who can foretell what its shift
ing and variations are to be ? Who can ac
count for a tempest on one day. and a calm
on another ? Even if we could foretell the
irregular and infinite variations, how far
* The same mode of reasoning has been adopt
ed by the writer of a late criticism, on Mr Mill's
Essay. See Edinburgh Review, vol. xlix. p. 159.
t Encyc. Brit., article " Education."
might we not still be from the power of com
bining and guiding their causes? No man
but the lunatic in the story of Rasselas ever
dreamt that he could command the weather.
The difficulty plainly consists in the multi
plicity and minuteness of the circumstances
which act on the atmosphere : are those
which influence the formation of the human
character likely to be less minute and inuhi-
plied ?
The style of Mr. Bentham underwent a
more remarkable revolution than perhaps
befell that of any other writer. In his early
works, it was clear, free, spirited, often and
seasonably eloquent : many passages of his
later writings retain the inimitable stamp of
genius ; but he seems to have been oppressed
by the vastness of his projected works, — to
have thought that he had no longer more
than leisure to preserve the heads of them, —
to have been impelled by a fruitful mind to
new plans before he had completed the old.
In this state of things, he gradually ceased
to use words for conveying his thoughts to
others, but merely employed them as a sort
of short-hand to preserve his meaning for his
own purpose. It was no wonder ^that his
language should thus become obscure and
repulsive. Though many of his technical
terms are in themselves exact and pithy, yet
the overflow of his vast nomenclature was
enough to darken his whole diction.
It was at this critical period that the ar
rangement and translation of his manuscripts
were undertaken by M. Dumont, a generous
disciple, who devoted a genius formed for
original and lasting works, to diffuse the
principles, and promote the fame of his mas
ter. He whose pen Mirabeau did not dis
dain to borrow, — who, in the same school
with Romilly, had studiously pursued the
grace as well as the force of composition,
was perfectly qualified to strip of its uncouth-
ness a philosophy which he understood and
admired. As he wrote in a general language,
he propagated its doctrines throughout Eu
rope, where they were beneficial to Juris
prudence, but perhaps injurious to the cause
of reformation in Government. That they
became more popular abroad than at home,
is partly to be ascribed to the taste and
skill of M. Dumont ; partly to that tendency
towards free speculation and bold reform
which was more prevalent among nations
newly freed, or impatiently aspiring to free
dom, than in a people such as ours, long
satisfied with their government, but not yet
aware of the imperfections and abuses in
their laws ; — to the amendment of which last
a cautious consideration of Mr. Bentham's
works will undoubtedly most materially con
tribute.
DUGALD STEWART.*
Manifold are the discouragements rising
up at every step in that part of this Disserta-
* Born, 1753 ; died, 1828.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
165
tion which extends to very recent times.
No sooner does the writer escape from the
angry disputes of the living, than he may
feel his mind clouded by the name of a de
parted friend. But there are happily men
whose fame is brightened by free discussion,
and to whose memory an appearance of belief
that they needed tender treatment would be
a grosser injury than it could suffer from a
respectable antagonist.
Dugald Stewart was the son of Dr. Matthew
Stewart, Professor of Mathematics in the
University of Edinburgh, — a station immedi
ately before filled by Maclaurin, on the re
commendation of Newton. Hence the poet*
spoke of "the philosophic sire and son."
He was educated at Edinburgh, and he heard
the lectures of Reid at Glasgow. He was
early associated with his father in the duties
of the mathematical professorship ; and dur
ing the absence of Dr. Adam Ferguson as
secretary to the commissioners sent to con
clude a peace with North America, he oc
cupied the chair of Moral Philosophy. He
was appointed to the professorship on the
resignation of Ferguson, — not the least dis
tinguished among the modern moralists in
clined to the Stoical school.
This office, filled in immediate succession
by Ferguson, Stewart, and Brown, received a
lustre from their names, which it owed in no
degree to its modest exterior or its limited
advantages; and was rendered by them the
highest dignity, in the humble, but not ob
scure, establishments of Scottish literature.
The lectures of Mr. Stewart, for a quarter of
a century, rendered it famous through every
country where the light of reason was al
lowed to penetrate. Perhaps few men ever
lived, who poured into the breasts of youth
a more fervid and yet reasonable love of
liberty, of truth, and of virtue. How many
are still alive, in different countries, and in
every rank to which education reaches, who,
if they accurately examined their own minds
and lives, would not ascribe much of what
ever goodness and happiness they possess,
to the early impressions of his gentle and
persuasive eloquence ! He lived to see his
disciples distinguished among the lights and
ornaments of the council and the senate. t
He had the consolation, to be sure, that no
* Burns.
t As an example of Mr. Stewart's school may
be mentioned Francis Homer, a favourite pupil,
and, till his last moment, an affectionate friend.
The short life of this excellent person is worthy
of serious contemplation, hy those more especially,
who, in circumstances like his, enter on the slip
pery path of public affairs. Without the aids of
birth or fortune, in an assembly where aristocrati-
cal propensities prevail, — by his understanding,
indusiry, pure taste, and useful information, — siill
more by modest independence, by steadiness and
sincerity, joined to moderation, — by the stamp of
unbending integrity, and by the conscientious con-
siderateness which breathed through his well-
chosen language, he raised himself, af the early ase
of thirty-six, to a moral authority which, without
these qualities, no brilliancy of tafents or power of
reasoning could have acquired. No eminent speak-
words of his promoted the growth of an im
pure taste, of an exclusive prejudice, or of
a malevolent passion. Without delegation
from his writings, it may be said that his
disciples were among his best works. He,
indeed, who may justly be said to have cul
tivated an extent of mind which would other
wise have lain barren, and to have contribu
ted to raise virtuous dispositions where the
natural growth might have been useless or
xious, is not less a benefactor of man
kind, and may indirectly be a larger con
tributor to knowledge, than the author of
great works, or even the discoverer of im
portant truths. The system of conveying
scientific instruction to a large audience by
lectures, from which the English universities
have in a great measure departed, renders
his qualities as a lecturer a most important
part of his merit in a Scottish university
which still adheres to the general method of
European education. Probably no modern
ever exceeded him in that species of elo
quence which springs from sensibility to lite
rary beauty and moral excellence, — which
neither obscures science by prodigal orna
ment, nor disturbs the serenity of patient at
tention, — but though it rather calms and
soothes the feelings, yet exalts the genius,
and insensibly inspires a reasonable enthusi
asm for whatever is good and fair.
He embraced the philosophy of Dr. Reid,
a patient, modest, and deep thinker,* who,
er in Parliament owed so much of his success to
his moral character. His high place was therefore
honourable to his audience and to his country.
Regret for his death was expressed with touching
unanimity from every part of a divided assembly,
unused to manifestations of sensibility, abhorrent
from theatrical display, and whose tribute on such
an occasion derived its peculiar value from their
general coldness and sluggishness. The tears of
those to whom he was unknown were shed over
him ; and at the head of those by whom he was
"praised, wept, and honoured," was one, whose
commendation would have been more enhanced
in the eye of Mr. Homer, by his discernment
and veracity, than by the signal proof of the con
currence of all orders, as well as parties, which
was afforded by the name of Howard.
* Those who may doubt the justice of this de
scription will do well to weigh the words of the
most competent of judges, who, though candid and
even indulgent, was not prodigal oi praise. " It
is certainly very rare that a piece so deeply philo
sophical is wrote with so much spirit, and affords
so much entertainment to the reader. Whenever
I enter into your ideas, no man appears to express
himself with greater perspicuty. Your style is so
correct and so good English, that I found not any
thing worth the remarking. I beg my compli
ments to my friendly adversaries Dr. Campbell
and Dr. Gerard, and also to Dr. Gregory, whom
I suspect to be of the same disposition, though he
has not openly declared himself such." — Letter
from Mr. Hume to Dr. Reid: Stewart's Biogra
phical Memoirs, p. 417. The latter part of the
above sentences (written after a perusal of Dr.
Reid's Inquiry, but before its publication) suffi
ciently shows, that Mr. Hume felt no displeasure
against Reid and Campbell, undoubtedly his most
formidable antagonist, however he might resent
the language of Dr. Beattie, an amiable man, an
elegant and tender poet, and a good writer on
166
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
in his first work (Inquiry into the Human
Mind), deserves a commendation more de
scriptive of a philosopher than that bestowed
upon him by Professor Cousin, — of having
made " a vigorous protest against scepticism
on behalf of common sense." Reid's obser
vations on Suggestion, on natural signs, on
the connection between what he calls " sen
sation" and " perception," though perhaps
suggested by Berkeley (whose idealism he
had once adopted), are marked by the genu
ine spirit of original observation. As there
are too many who seem more wise than they
are, so it was the more uncommon fault with
Reid to appear less a philosopher than he
really was. Indeed his temporary adoption
of Berkeleianism is a proof of an unpreju
diced and acute mind. Perhaps no man ever
rose finally above the seductions of that sim
ple and ingenious system, who had not some
times tried their full effect by surrendering
his whole mind to them.
But it is never with entire impunity that
philosophers borrow vague and inappropri
ate terms from vulgar use. Never did any
man afford a stronger instance of this danger
than Reid, in his two most unfortunate terms,
"common sense" and "instinct." Common
sense is that average portion of understand
ing, possessed by most men, which, as it is
nearly always applied to conduct, has ac
quired an almost exclusively practical sense.
Instinct is the habitual power of producing
effects like contrivances of Reason, yet so far
beyond the intelligence and experience of
the agent, as to be utterly inexplicable by
reference to them. No man, if he had been
in search of improper words, could have dis
covered any more unfit than these two, for
denoting that law, or state, or faculty of Mind,
which compels us to acknowledge certain
simple and very abstract truths, not being
identical propositions, to lie at the foundation
of all reasoning, and to be the necessary
ground of all belief.
Long after the death of Dr. Reid, his phi
losophy was taught at Paris by M. Royer
Collard,* who on the restoration of free de
bate, became the most philosophical orator
of his nation, and now! fills, with impartiali
ty and dignity, the chair of the Chamber of
Deputies. His ingenious and eloquent scho
lar, Professor Cousin, dissatisfied with what
he calls -'the sage and timid" doctrines of
Edinburgh, which he considered as only a
vigorous protest, on behalf of common sense.
against the scepticism of Hume, sought in
Germany for a philosophy of l: such a mascu
line and brilliant character as might com
mand the attention of Europe, and be able
miscellaneous literature in prose, but who, in his
Essay on Truth, — (an unfair appeal to the multi
tude of philosophical questions) indulged himself
in the personalities and invectives of a popular
pamphleteer.
* Fragments of his lectures have been recently
published in a French translation of Dr. Reid, by
M. JonfTroy : CEuvres Completes de Thomas
Reid, vol iv. Paris, 1828.
1 1831.— ED.
to struggle with success on a great theatre,
against the genius of the adverse school."*
It may be questioned whether he found in
Kant more than the same vigorous protest,
under a more systematic form, with an im
mense nomenclature, and constituting a phi
losophical edifice of equal symmetry and
vastness. The preference of the more boast
ful system, over a philosophy thus chiefly
blamed for its modest pretensions, does not
seem to be entirely justified by its permanent
authority even in the country which gave it
birth: where, however powerful its influence
still continues to be, its doctrines do not ap
pear to have now many supporters. Indeed,
the accomplished professor himself has ra
pidly shot through Kantianism, and now ap
pears to rest or to stop at the doctrines of
Schelling and Hegel, at a point so high, that
it is hard to descry from it any distinction be
tween objects, — even that indispensable dis
tinction between reality and illusion. As the
works of Reid, and those of Kant, otherwise
so different, appear to be simultaneous efforts
of the conservative power of philosophy to
expel the mortal poison of scepticism, so the
exertions of M. Royer Collard and M. Cousin,
however at variance in metaphysical princi
ples, seem to have been chiefly roused by
the desire of delivering Ethics from that fatal
touch of personal, and, indeed, gross interest,
which the science had received in France at
the hands of the followers of Cond iliac,—
especially Helvetius, St. Lambert, and Caba-
nis. The success of these attempts to render
speculative philosophy once more popular in
the country of Descartes, has already been
considerable. The French youth, whose de
sire of knowledge and love of liberty afford
an auspicious promise of the succeeding age,
have eagerly received doctrines, of which
the moral part is so much more agreeable to
their liberal spirit, than is the Selfish theory,
generated in the stagnation of a corrupt,
cruel; and dissolute tyranny.
These agreeable prospects bring us easily
back to our subject j for though the restora
tion of speculative philosophy in the country
of Descartes is due to the precise statement
and vigorous logic of M. Royer Collard, the
modifications introduced by him into the
doctrine of Reid coincide with those of Mr.
Stewart, and would have appeared to agree
more exactly, if the forms of the French phi
losopher had not been more dialectical, and
the composition of Mr. Stewart had retained
less of that oratorical character, which be
longed to a justly celebrated speaker. Amidst
excellencies of the highest order, the writings
of the latter, it must be confessed, leave
some room for criticism. He took precau
tions against offence to the feelings of his
contemporaries, more anxiously and fre
quently than the impatient searcher for truth
may deem necessary. For the sake of pro
moting the favourable reception of philosophy
* Coursde Philosophic, parM. Cousin, legonxii.
Paris, 1828.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 167
itself, he studies, perhaps too visibly, to avoid
whatever might raise up prejudices against
it. His gratitude and native modesty dic
tated a superabundant care in softening and
excusing his dissent from those who had
been his own instructors, or who were the
objects of general reverence. Exposed by
his station, both to the assaults of political
prejudice, and to the religious animosities
of a country where a few sceptics attacked
the slumbering zeal of a Calvinistic people,
it would have been wonderful if he had not
betrayed more weariness than would have
been necessary or becoming in a very differ
ent position. The fulness of his literature
seduced him too much into multiplied illus
trations. Too many of the expedients hap
pily used tosallure the young may unneces
sarily swell his volumes. Perhaps a succes
sive publication in separate parts made him
more voluminous than he would have been
if the whole had been at once before his
eyes. A peculiar susceptibility and delicacy
of taste produced forms of expression, in
themselves extremely beautiful, but of which
the habitual use is not easily reconcilable
with the condensation desirable in works
necessarily so extensive. If, however, it
must be owned that the caution incident to
his temper, his feelings, his philosophy, and
his station, has somewhat lengthened his
composition, it is not less true, that some of
the same circumstances have contributed to
wards those peculiar beauties which place
him at the head of the most adorned writers
on philosophy in our language.
Few writers rise with more grace from a
plain groundwork, to the passages which re
quire greater animation or embellishment.
He gives to narrative, according to the pre
cept of Bacon, the colour of the time, by a
selection of happy expressions from original
writers. Among the secret arts by which he
diffuses elegance over his diction, may be
remarked the skill which, by deepening or
brightening a shade in a secondary term,
and by opening partial or preparatory glimp
ses of a thought to be afterwards unfolded,
unobservedly heightens the import of a word,
and gives it a new meaning, without any
offence against old use. It is in this manner
that philosophical originality may be recon-
'Ciled to purity and stability of speech, and
that we may avoid new terms, which are
the easy resource of the unskilful or the in
dolent, and often a characteristic mark of
writers who love their language too little to
feel its peculiar excellencies, or to study the
art of calling forth its powers.
He reminds us not unfrequently of the
character given by Cicero to one of his con
temporaries, "who expressed refined and
abstruse thought in soft and transparent dic
tion." His writings are a proof that the
mild sentiments have their eloquence as
well as the vehement passions. It would
be difficult to name works in which so much
refined philosophy is joined with so fine
••a fancy; — so much elegant literature, with
which throw much light
such a delicate perception of the distinguish
ing excellencies of great writers, and with
an estimate in general so just of the services
rendered to Knowledge by a succession of
philosophers. They are pervaded by a philo
sophical benevolence, which keeps up the
ardour of his genius, without disturbing the
serenity of his mind, — which is felt equally
in the generosity of his praise, and in 'the
tenderness of his censure. It is still more
sensible in the general tone with which he
relates the successful progress of the human
understanding, among many formidable ene
mies. Those readers are not to be envied
who limit their admiration to particular parts,
or to excellencies merely literary, without
being wrarmed by the glow of that honest
triumph in the advancement of Knowledge,
and of that assured faith in the final preva
lence of Truth and Justice, which breathe
through every page of them, and give the
unity and dignity of a moral purpose to the
whole of these classical works.
In quoting poetical passages, some of
on our mental ope
rations, if he sometimes prized the moral
common-places of Thomson and the specu
lative fancy of Akenside more highly than,
the higher poetry of their betters, it was not
to be wondered at that the metaphysician
and the moralist should sometimes prevail
over the lover of poetry. His natural sensi
bility was perhaps occasionally cramped, by
the cold criticism of an unpoetical age ] and
some of his remarks may be thought to indi
cate a more constant and exclusive regard to
diction than is agreeable to a generation
wrhich has been trained by tremendous events
to a passion for daring inventions, and to an
irregular enthusiasm, impatient of minute
elegancies and refinements. Many of those
beauties which his generous criticism de
lighted to magnify in the works of his con
temporaries, have already faded under the
scorching rays of a fiercer sun.
Mr. Stewart employed more skill in con
triving, and more care in concealing his very
important reforms of Reid's doctrines, than
others exert to maintain their claims to origi
nality. Had his well-chosen language of
"laws of human thought or belief" been at
first adopted in that school, instead of "in
stinct" arid "common sense," it would have
escaped much of the reproach (which Dr.
Reid himself did not merit) of shallowness
and popularity. Expressions so exact, em
ployed in the opening, could not have failed
to influence the whole system, and to have
given it, not only in the general estimation,
but in the minds of its framers, a more scien
tific complexion. In those parts of Mr.
Stewart's speculations in which he farthest
departed from his general principles, ne
seems sometimes, as it were, to be suddenly
driven back by what he unconsciously shrinks
from as ungrateful apostasy, arid to be desi
rous of making amends to his master, by
more harshness, than is otherwise natural to
him towards the writers whom ho has insen-
168
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
sibly approached. Hence perhaps the un
wonted severity of his language towards
Tucker and Hartley. It is thus at the very
time when he largely adopts the principle
of Association in his excellent Essay on the
Beautiful,* that he treats most rigidly the
latter of these writers, to whom, though
neither the discoverer nor the sole advocate
of that principle, it surely owes the greatest
illustration and support.
In matters of far other importance, causes
perhaps somewhat similar may have led to
the like mistake. When he absolutely con
tradicts Dr. Reid, by truly stating that " it is
more philosophical to resolve the power of
habit into the association of ideas, than to
resolve the association of ideas into habit,"t
he, in the sequel of the same volume,! re
fuses to go farther than to own, that u the
theory of Hartley concerning the origin of
our affections, and of the Moral Sense, is a
most ingenious refinement on the Selfish sys
tem, and that by means of it the force of
many of the common reasonings against that
system is eluded ;" though he somewhat in
consistently allows, that " active principles
which, arising from circumstances in which
all the situaiions of mankind must agree,
are therefore common to the whole species,
at whatever period of life they may appear,
are to be regarded as a part of human nature,
no less than the instinct of suction, in the
same manner as the acquired perception of
distance, by the eye, is to be ranked among
the perceptive powers of man, no less than
the original perceptions of the other sen
ses.'^ In another place also he makes a
remark on mere beauty, which might have
led him to a more just conclusion respecting
the theory of the origin of the affections and
the Moral Sense: "It is scarcely necessary
for me to observe, that, in those instances
where association operates in heightening''
(or he might have said creates) " the plea
sure we receive from sight, the pleasing
emotion continues still to appear, to our con
sciousness, simple and uncompounded."H~
To this remark he might have added, that
until all the separate pleasures be melted
into one, — as long as any of them are dis
cerned and felt as distinct from each other, —
the associations are incomplete, and the
qualities which gratify are not called by the
name of u beauty." In .like manner, as has
been repeatedly observed, it is only when
all the separate feelings, pleasurable and
painful, excited by the contemplation of vo
luntary action, are lost in the general senti
ments of approbation or disapprobation, —
when these general feelings retain no trace
* Philosophical Essays, part ii. essay i., espe
cially chap. vi. The condensation, if not omission,
of the discussion of the theories of Buffier, Rey
nolds, Burke, and Price, in this essay, would have
lessened that temporary appearance which is un
suitable to a scientific work.
t Elements of the Philosophy of the Human
Mind (1792, 4to.), vol. i. p. 281.
t Ibid. p. 383. $Ibid. p. 385.
IT Philosophical Essays, part ii. essay i. chap. xi.
of the various emotions which originally at
tended different actions, — when they are
held in a state of perfect fusion by the ha
bitual use of the words used in every lan
guage to denote them, that Conscience can
be said to exist, or that we can be considered
as endowed with a moral nature. The
theory which thus ascribes the uniform for
mation of the Moral Faculty to universal
and paramount laws, is not a refinement of
the Selfish system, nor is it any modification
of that hypothesis. The partisans of Sel
fishness maintain, that in acts of Will the
agent must have a view to the pleasure or
happiness which he hopes to reap fiom it:
the philosophers who regard the social affec
tions and the Moral Sentiments as formed by
a process of association, on the other hand,
contend that these affections and sentiments
must work themselves clear from every par
ticle of self-regard, before they deserve the
names of benevolence and of Conscience.
In the actual state of human motives the
two systems are not to be likened, but to be
contrasted to each other. It is remarkable
that Mr. Stewart, who admits the "question
respecting the origin of the affections to be
rather curious than important,"* should have
held a directly contrary opinion respecting
the Moral Sense, t to which these words, in
his sense of them, seem to be equally appli
cable. His meaning in the former affirma
tion is, that if the affections be acquired, yet
they are justly called natural; and if their
origin be personal, yet their nature may and
does become disinterested. What circum
stance distinguishes the former from the
latter case ? With respect to the origin of
the affections, it must not be overlooked that
his language is somewhat contradictory. For
if the theory on that subject from which
he dissents were merely "a refinement on
the Selfish system," its truth or falsehood
could riot be represented as subordinate;
since the controversy would continue to re
late to the existence of disinterested motives
of human conduct.! It may also be ob
served, that he uniformly represents his op
ponents as deriving the affections from l self-
love,' which, in its proper sense, is not the
source to which they refer even avarice, and
which is itself derived from other antecedent
principles, some of which are inherent, and
some acquired. If the object of this theory
of the rise of the most important feelings of
human nature were, as our philosopher sup
poses, " to elude objections against the Sel
fish system," it would be at best worthless.
* Outlines of Moral Philosophy, p. 93.
t Outlines, p. 117. " This is the most impor
tant question that can be stated with respect to
the theory of Morals."
\ In the Philosophy of the Active and Moral
Powers of Man (vol. i. p. 164.), Mr. Stewart has
done more manifest injustice to the Hartleian
theory, by calling it " a doctrine fundamentally
the same with the Selfish system," and especially
by representing Hartley, who ought to be rather
classed with Butler and Hume, as agreeing with
Gay, Tucker, and Paley.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
169
Its positive merits are several. It affirms the
actual disinterestedness of human motives,
as strongly as Butler himself. The explana
tion of the mental law, by which benevo
lence and Conscience are formed habitually,
when it is contemplated deeply, impresses
on the mind the truth that they not only are
but must be disinterested. It confirms, as it
were, the testimony of consciousness, by
exhibiting to the Understanding the means
employed to insure the production of disin
terestedness. It affords the only effectual
answer to the prejudice against the disinte
rested theory, from the multiplication of ulti
mate facts and implanted principles, which,
under all its other forms, it seems to require.
No room is left for this prejudice by a repre
sentation of disinterestedness, which ulti
mately traces its formation to principles al
most as simple as those of Hobbes himself.
Lastly, every step in just generalization is
an advance in philosophy. No one has yet
shown, either that Man is not actually dis
interested, or that he may not have been
destined to become so by such a process as
has been described : the cause to which the
effects are ascribed is a real agent, which
seems adequate to the appearance ; and if
future observation should be found to require
that the theory shall be confined within nar
rower limits, such a limitation will not de
stroy its value.
The acquiescence of Mr. Stewart in Dr.
Reid's general representation of our mental
constitution, led him to indulge more freely
the natural bent of his understanding, by
applying it to theories of character and
manners/ of life and literature, of taste and
the arts, rather than to the consideration of
those more simple principles which rule over
human nature under every form. His chief
work, as he frankly owns, is indeed rather a
collection of such theories, pointing toward
the common end of throwing light on the
structure and functions of the mind, than a
systematic treatise, such as might be ex
pected from the title of '•'* Elements." It is
in essays of this kind that he has most sur
passed other cultivators of mental philosophy.
His remarks on the effects of casual associa
tions may be quoted as a specimen of the most
original and just thoughts, conveyed in the
best manner.* In this beautiful passage, he
proceeds from their power of confusing spe
culation to that of disturbing experience and
of misleading practice, and ends with their
extraordinary effect in bestowing on trivial,
and even ludicrous circumstances, some por
tion of the dignity and sanctity of those
sublime principles with which they are as
sociated. The style, at first only clear, af
terwards admitting the ornaments of a calm
and grave elegance, and at last rising to as
high a strain as Philosophy will endure, (all
the parts, various as their nature is, being
held together by an invisible thread of gentle
transition,) affords a specimen of adaptation
* Elem. Philos. Hum. Mind, vol. i. pp. 340—352.
22
of manner to matter which it will be hard
to match in any other philosophical writing.
Another very fine remark, which seems to
be as original as it is just, may be quoted as
a sample of those beauties with which his
writings abound. "The apparent coldness
and selfishness of mankind may be traced, in
a great measure, to a want of attention and a
want of imagination. In the case of those mis
fortunes which happen to ourselves or our
near connections, neither of these powers is
necessary to make us acquainted with our
situation. But without an uncommon degree
of both, it is impossible for any man to com
prehend completely the situation of his neigh
bour, or to have an idea of the greater part of
the distress which exists in the world. If we
feel more for ourselves than for others, in the
former case the facts are more fully before
us than they can be in the latter."* Yet
several parts of his writings afford the most
satisfactory proof, that his abstinence from
what is commonly called metaphysical spe
culation, arose from no inability to pursue it
with signal success. As examples, his ob
servations on "general terms," and on "cau
sation," may be appealed to with perfect
confidence. In the first two dissertations of
the volume bearing the title " Philosophical
Essays," he with-equal boldness and acute-
ness grapples with the most extensive and
abstruse questions of mental philosophy, and
points out both the sources and the utter
most boundaries of human knowledge with
a Verulamean hand. In another part of his
writings, he calls what are usually deno
minated first principles of experience, " fun
damental laws of human belief, or primary
elements of human reason;"! which last
form of expression has so close a resemblance
to the language of Kant, that it should have
protected the latter from the imputation of
writing jargon.
The excellent volume entitled "Outlines
of Moral Philosophy," though composed only
as a text-book for the use of his hearers, is
one of the most decisive proofs that he was
perfectly qualified to unite precision with
ease, to be brief with the utmost clearness,
and to write with becoming elegance in a
style where the meaning is not overladen by
ornaments. This volume contains his pro
perly ethical theory.J which is much ex
panded, but not substantially altered, in his
Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers,
— a work almost posthumous, and composed
under circumstances which give it a deeper
interest than can be inspired by any desert
in science. Though, with his usual modesty,
he manifests an anxiety to fasten his ethical
theory to the kindred speculations of other
philosophers of the "Intellectual school,"
especially to those of Cud worth, — recently
clothed in more modern phraseology by
Price, — yet he still shows that independence
and originality which all his aversion from
parade could not entirely conceal. "Right,"
* Ibid. vol. i. p. 502.
\ pp. 76—148.
t Ibid. vol. ii. p. 57.
170
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
"duty," "virtue." "moral obligation," and
the like or the opposite forms of expression,
represent, according to him. certain thoughts,
which arise necessarily and instantaneously
in the mind, (or in the Reason, if we take
that word in the large sense in which it de
notes all that is not emotive) at the contem
plation of actions, and which are utterly
incapable of all resolution, and consequent
ly of all explanation, and which can be
known only by being experienced. These
"thoughts" or "ideas." by whatever name
they may be called, are followed, — as inex
plicably as inevitably, — by pleasurable and
painful emotions, which suggest the concep
tion of moral beauty', — a quality of human
actions distinct from their adherence to. or
deviation from rectitude^ though generally
coinciding with it. The question which a
reflecting reader will here put is, whether
any purpose is served by the introduction
of the intermediate mental process between
the particular thoughts and the moral emo
tions? How would the view be darkened
or confused, or indeed in any degree changed,
by withdrawing that process, or erasing the
words which attempt to express it ? No ad
vocate of the intellectual origin of the Moral
Faculty has yet stated a case in which a
mere operation of Reason or Judgment, un
attended by emotion, could, consistently with
the universal opinion of mankind, as it is
exhibited by the structure of language, be
said to have the nature or to produce the
effects of Conscience. Such an example
would be equivalent to an experimentum cru-
cis on the side of that celebrated theory.
The failure to produce it, after long chal
lenge, is at least a presumption against it,
nearly approaching to that sort of decisively
discriminative experiment. It would be vain
to restate what has already been too often
repeated, that all the objections to the Selfish
philosophy turn upon the actual nature, not
upon the original source, of our principles of
action, and that it is by a confusion of these
very distinct questions alone that the confu
tation of Hobbes can be made apparently to
involve Hartley. Mr. Stewart appears, like
most other metaphysicians, to have blended
the inquiry into the nature of our Moral
Sentiments with that other which only seeks
a criterion to distinguish moral from immoral
habits of feeling and action ; for he considers
the appearance of the Moral Sentiments at
an early age, before the general tendency of
actions can be ascertained, as a decisive ob
jection to the origin of these sentiments in
Association, — an objection which assumes
that, if utility be the criterion of Morality,
associations with utility must be the mode
by which the Moral Sentiments are formed :
but this no skilful advocate of the theory of
Association will ever allow. That the main,
if not sole object of Conscience is to govern
our voluntary exertions, is manifest : but how
oould it perform this great function if it did
not impel the Will ? and how could it have
the latter effect as a mere act of Reason, or,
ndeed, in any respect otherwise than as it
s made up of emotions'? Judgment and
Reason are therefore preparatory to Consci
ence, — not properly a part of it. The asser
tion that the exclusion of Reason reduces
Virtue to be a relative quality, is another in
stance of the confusion of the two questions
in moral theory : for though a fitness to
excite approbation may be only a relation
of objects to our susceptibility, yet the pro
position that all virtuous actions are benefi
cial, is a proposition as absolute as any other
within the range of our understanding.
A delicate state of health, and an ardent
desire to devote himself exclusively to study
and composition, induced Mr. Stewart, while
in the full, blaze of his reputation as a lec
turer, to retire, in 1810, from the labour of
public instruction. This retirement, as he
himself describes it, was that of a quiet but
active life. Three quarto and two octavo
volumes, besides the magnificent Disserta
tion prefixed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
were among its happy fruits. This Disser
tation is, perhaps, the most profusely orna
mented of any of his compositions ; — a pecu
liarity which must in part have arisen from
a principle of taste, which regarded decora
tion as more suitable to the history of philo
sophy than to philosophy itself. But the
memorable instances of Cicero, of Milton,
and *still more those of Dryden and Burke,
seem to show that there is some natural
tendency in the fire of genius to burn more
brightly, or to blaze more fiercely, in the
evening than in the morning of human life.
Probably the materials which long experi
ence supplies to the imagination, the bold
ness with which a more established reputa
tion arms the mind, and the silence of the
low but formidable rivals of the higher prin
ciples, may concur in producing this unex
pected and little observed effect.
It was in the last years of his life, when
suffering under the effects of a severe attack
of palsy, with which he had been afflicted
in 1822, that Mr. Stewart most plentifully
reaped the fruits of long virtue and a well-
ordered mind. Happily for him, his own
cultivation and exercise of every kindly
affection had laid up a store of that domestic
consolation which none who deserve it ever
want, and for the loss of which, nothing be
yond the threshold can make amends. The
same philosophy which he had cultivated
from his youth upward, employed his dying
hand ; aspirations after higher and brighter
scenes of excellence, always blended with
his elevated morality, became more earnest
and deeper as worldly passions died away,
and earthly objects vanished from his sight.
THOMAS BROWN.*
A writer, as he advances in life, ought to
speak with diffidence of systems which he
has only begun to consider with care after
* Born, 1778; died, 1820.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 171
the age in which it becomes hard for his
thoughts to flow into new channels. A reader
cannot be said practically to understand a
theory, till he has acquired the power of
thinking, at least for a short time, with the
theorist. Even a hearer, with all the helps
of voice in the instructor, and of countenance
from him and from fellow-hearers, finds it
difficult to perform this necessary process,
without either being betrayed into hasty and
undistinguishing assent, or falling while he
is in pursuit of an impartial estimate of opi
nions, into an indifference about their truth.
I have felt this difficulty in reconsidering old
opinions : but it is perhaps more needful to
own its power, and to warn the reader against
its effects, in the case of a philosopher well
known to me, and with \vhom common friend
ships stood in the stead of much personal
intercourse, as a cement of kindness. I
very early read Brown's Observations on the
Zoonomia of Dr. Darwin, — the perhaps un
matched work of a boy in the eighteenth
year of his age.* His first tract on Causa
tion appeared to me to be the finest model
of discussion in mental philosophy since
Berkeley and Hume, — with this superiority
over the latter, that its aim is that of a phi
losopher who seeks to enlarge knowledge, —
not that of sceptic, who — even the most
illustrious — has no better end than that of
displaying his powers in confounding and
darkening truth, — and the happiest efforts of
whose scepticism cannot be more leniently
described than as brilliant fits of mental de
bauchery. t From a diligent perusal of his
succeeding works at the time of their publi
cation, I was prevented by pursuits and du
ties of a very different nature. These causes,
together with ill health and growing occupa
tion, hindered me from reading his Lectures
with due attention, till it has now become a
duty to consider with care that part of them
which relates to Ethics.
Dr. Brown was bom of one of those fami-
* Welsh's Life of Brown, p. 43 ; — a pleasingly
affectionate work, full of analytical spirit and meta
physical reading, — of such merit, in short, that I
could wish to have found in it no phrenology.
Objections a priori in a case dependent on facts
are, indeed, inadmissible: even the allowance of
presumptions of that nature would open so wide a
door for prejudices, that at most they can be con
sidered only as maxims of logical prudence, which
fortify the watchfulness of the individual. The
fatal objection to phrenology seems to me to be,
that what is new in it, or peculiar to it, has no
approach to an adequate foundation in experience.
t " Bayle, a writer who, pervading human na
ture at his ease, struck into the province of paradox,
as an exercise for the unwearied vigour of his mind ;
who, with a soul superior to the sharpest attacks
of fortune, and a heart practised to the best philo
sophy, had not enough of real greatness to over
come that last foible of superior minds, the temp
tation of honour, which the academic exercise of
wit is conceived to bring to its professor." So says
Warburton (Divine Legation, book i. sect. 4),
speaking of Bayle, but perhaps in part excusing
himself, in a noble strain, of which it would have
been more agreeable to find the repetition than the
contrast in his language towards Hume.
ies of ministers in the Scottish Church, who,
after a generation or two of a humble life
spent in piety and usefulness, with no more
than needful knowledge, have more than
once sent forth a man of genius from their
;ool and quiet shade, to make his fellows
viser or better by tongue or pen, by head or
hand. Even the scanty endowments and
constant residence of that Church, by keep
ing her ministers far from the objects which
awaken turbulent passions and disperse the
understanding on many pursuits, affords
some of the leisure and calm of monastic
life, without the exclusion of the charities
of family and kindred. It may be well
doubted whether this undissipated retire
ment, which during the eighteenth century
was very general in Scotland, did not make
full amends for the loss of curious and orna
mental knowledge, by its tendency to qualify
men for professional duty ; with its opportu
nities for the cultivation of the reason for the
many, and for high meditation, and concen
tration of thought on worthy objects for the
few who have capacity for such exertions.*
An authentic account of the early exercises
of Brown's mind is preserved by his biogra
pher,! from which it appears that at the age
of nineteen he took a part with others (some
of whom ^became the most memorable men
of their time), in the foundation of a private
society in Edinburgh, under the name of
"the Academy of Physics."!
The character of Dr. Brown is very at
tractive, as an example of one in whom
the utmost tenderness of affection, and the
indulgence of a flowery fancy, were not
repressed by the highest" cultivation, and by
* See Sir H. Moncreiff's Life of the Reverend
Dr. Erskine.
t Welsh's Life of Brown, p. 77, and App. p.
498.
t A part of the first day's minutes is here bor
rowed from Mr. Welsh :— " 7th January, 1797.—
Present, Mr. Erskine, President,— Mr. Broug
ham, Mr. Reddie, Mr. Brown, Mr. Birbeck, Mr.
Leyden," &c. who were afterwards joined by
Lord Webb Seymour, Messrs. Homer, Jeffrey,
Sidney Smith, &c. Mr. Erskine, who thus ap
pears at the head of so remarkable an association,
and whom diffidence and untoward circumstances
have hitherto withheld from the full manifestation
of his powers, continued to be the bosom friend
of Brown to the last. He has shown the con
stancy of his friendship for others by converting
all his invaluable preparations for a translation of
Sultan Baber's Commentaries, (perhaps the best,
certainly the most European work of modern
Eastern prose) into the means of completing the
imperfect attempt of Leyden, with a regard
equally generous to the fame of his early friend,
and to the comfort of that friend's surviving rela
tions. The review of Baber's Commentaries, by
M. Silvestre de Sacy, in the Journal des Savans
for May and June 1829, is perhaps one of the best
specimens extant of the value of literary commen
dation when it is bestowed with conscientious
calmness, and without a suspicion of bias, by one
of the greatest orientalists, in a case where he
pronounces every thing to have been done by
Mr. Erskine " which could have been performed
by the most learned and the most scrupulously
conscientious of editors and translators."
172
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
a perhaps excessive refinement of intellect.
His mind soared and roamed through every
region of philosophy and poetry ; but his
untravelled heart clung to the hearth of his
father, to the children who shared it with
him, and after them, first to the other part
ners of his childish sports, and then almost
solely to those companions of his youthful
studies who continued to be the friends of
his life. Speculation seemed to keep his
kindness at home. It is observable, that
though sparkling with fancy, he does not
seem to have been deeply or durably touch
ed by those affections which are lighted at
its torch, or at least tinged with its colours.
His heart sought little abroad, but content
edly dwelt in his family and in his study.
He was one of those men of genius who re
paid the tender care of a mother by rocking
the cradle of her reposing age. He ended
a life spent in searching for truth, and exer
cising love, by desiring that he should be
buried in his native parish, with his "dear
father and mother." Some of his delightful
qualities were perhaps hidden from the ca
sual observer in general society, by the want
of that perfect simplicity of manner which
is doubtless their natural representative.
Manner is a better mark of the state of a
mind, than those large and deli berate actions
which form what is called conduct ; it is the
constant and insensible transpiration of cha
racter. In serious acts a man may display
himself
the thousand nameless acts
which compose manner, the mind betrays
its habitual bent. But manner is then only
an index of disposition, when it is that of
men who live at ease in the intimate famili
arity of friends and equals. It may be di
verted from simplicity by causes which do
not reach so deep as the character ; — by bad
models, or by a restless and wearisome
anxiety to shine, arising from many circum
stances, — none of which are probably more
common than the unseasonable exertions of
a recluse student in society, and the unfortu
nate attempts of some others, to take by
violence the admiration of those with whom
they do not associate with ease. The asso
ciation with unlike or superior companions
which least distorts manners, is that which
takes place with those classes whose secure
dignity generally renders their own manners
easy, — with whom the art of pleasing or of
not displeasing each other in society is a
serious concern, — who have leisure enough
to discover the positive and negative parts
of the smaller moralities, and who, being
trained to- a watchful eye on what is ludi
crous, apply the lash of ridicule to affectation,
the most ridiculous of faults. The busy in
every department of life are too respectably
occupied to form these manners: they are the
frivolous work of polished idleness ; and per
haps their most serious value consists in the
war which they wage against affectation, —
though even there they betray their origin
in punishing it, not as a deviation from na
ture, but as a badge of vulgarity.
The prose of Dr. Brown is brilliant to ex»
cess : it must not be denied that its beauty
is sometimes womanly, — that it too often
melts down precision into elegance, — that it
buries the main idea under a load of illustra
tion, of which every part is expanded and
adorned with such visible labour, as to with
draw the mind from attention to the thoughts
which it professes to introduce more easily
into the understanding. It is darkened by
excessive brightness ; it loses ease and live
liness by over-dress; and, in the midst of its
luscious sweetness, we wish for the striking
and homely illustrations of Tucker, and for
the pithy and sinewy sense of Paley ; — either
of whom, by a single short metaphor from a
familiar, perhaps a low object, could at one
blow set the two worlds of Reason and Fancy
in movement.
It would be unjust to censure severely the
declamatory parts of his Lectures : they are
excusable in the first warmth of composi
tion; they might even be justifiable allure
ments in attracting young hearers to abstruse
speculations. Had he lived, he would pro
bably have taken his thoughts out of the
declamatory forms of spoken address, and
given to them the appearance, as well as
the reality, of deep and subtile discussion.
The habits, indeed, of so successful a lec
turer, and the natural luxuriance of his mind,
could not fail to have somewhat affected all
his compositions : but though he might still
have fallen short of simplicity, he certainly
would have avoided much of the diffusion7
and even common-place, which hang heavily
on original and brilliant thoughts : for it must
be owned, that though, as a thinker, he is
unusually original, yet when he falls among
the declaimers, he is infected by their com
mon-places. In like manner, he would as
suredly have shortened, or left out, many of
the poetical quotations which he loved to re
cite, and which hearers even beyond youth
hear with delight. There are two very differ
ent sorts of passages of poetry to be found in
works on philosophy, which are as far asun
der from each other in value as in matter.
A philosopher will admit some of those won
derful lines or words which bring to light the
infinite varieties of character, the furious
bursts or wily workings of passion, the wind
ing approaches of temptation, the slippery
path to depravity, the beauty of tenderness,
and the grandeur of what is awful and holy
in Man. In every such quotation, the moral
philosopher, if he be successful, uses the
best materials of his science; for what are
they but the results of experiment and ob
servation on the human heart, performed by
artists of far other skill and power than his?
They are facts which could have only been
ascertained by Homer, by Dante, by Shak-
speare, by Cervantes, by Milton. Every year
of admiration since the unknown period
when the Iliad first gave delight, has extort
ed new proofs of the justness of the picture
of human nature, from the responding hearts
of the admirers. Every strong feeling which
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 173
these masters have excited, is a successful
repetition of their original experiment, and
a continually growing evidence of the great
ness of their discoveries. Quotations of this
nature may be the most satisfactory, as well
as the most delightful, proofs of philosophical
positions. Others of inferior merit are not to
be interdicted : a pointed maxim, especially
when familiar, pleases, and is recollected. I
cannot entirely conquer my passion for the
Roman and Stoical declamation of some pas
sages in Lucan and Akenside : but quota
tions from those who have written on philo
sophy in verse, or, in other words, from those
who generally are inferior philosophers, and
voluntarily deliver their doctrines in the
most disadvantageous form, seem to be un
reasonable. It is agreeable, no doubt, to the
philosopher, and still more to the youthful
student, to meet his abstruse ideas clothed
in the sonorous verse of Akenside ; the sur
prise of the unexpected union of verse with
science is a very lawful enjoyment : but such
slight and momentary pleasures, though they
may tempt the writer to display them, do
not excuse a vain effort to obtrude them on
the sympathy of the searcher after truth in
after-times. It is peculiarly unlucky that
Dr. Brown should have sought supposed or
nament from the moral common-places of
Thomson, rather than from that illustration
of philosophy which is really to be found 'in
his picturesque strokes.
Much more need not be said of Dr. Brown's
own poetry, — somewhat voluminous as it is,
— than that it indicates fancy and feeling,
and rises at least to the rank of an elegant
accomplishment. It may seem a paradox,
but it appears to me that he is really most
poetical in those poems and passages which
have the most properly •metaphysical charac
ter. For every varied form of life and nature,
when it is habitually contemplated, may in
spire feeling ; and the just representation of
these feelings may be poetical. Dr. Brown
observed Man, and his wider world, with
the eye of a metaphysician ; and the dark
results of such contemplations, when he re
viewed them, often filled his soul with feel
ings which, being both grand and melan
choly, were truly poetical. Unfortunately,
however, few readers can be touched with
fellow-feelings. He sings to few, and must
be content with sometimes moving a string
in the soul of the lonely visionary, who, in
the day-dreams of youth, has felt as well as
meditated on the mysteries of nature. His
heart has produced charming passages in all
his poems : but, generally speaking, they are
only beautiful works of art and imitation.
The choice of Akenside as a favourite and a
model may, without derogation from that
writer, be considered as no proof of a poeti
cally formed mind.* There is more poetry
* His accomplished friend Mr. Erskine con
fesses that Brown's poems " are not written in
the language of plain and gross emotion. The
string touched is too delicate for general sympa
thy. They are in an unknown tongue to one
in many single lines of Cowper than in vo
lumes of sonorous verses such as Akenside's.
Philosophical poetry is very different from
versified philosophy : the former is the high
est exertion of genius; the latter cannot be
be ranked above the slighter amusements
of ingenuity. Dr Brown's poetry was, it
must be owned, composed either of imita
tions, which, with some exceptions, may be
produced and read without feeling, or of
effusions of such feelings only as meet a
rare and faint echo in the human breast.
A few words only can here be bestowed
on the intellectual part of his philosophy. It
is an open revolt against the authority of
Reid; and, by a curious concurrence, he be
gan to lecture nearly at the moment when
the doctrines of that philosopher came to be
taught with applause in France. Mr. Stew
art had dissented from the language of Reid,
and had widely departed from his opinions
on several secondary theories: Dr. Brown
rejected them entirely. He very justly con
sidered the claim of Reid to the merit of de
tecting the universal delusion which had
betrayed philosophers into the belief that
ideas which were the sole objects of know
ledge had a separate existence, as a proof
of his having mistaken their illustrative lan
guage for a metaphysical opinion ;* but he
does not do justice to the service which Reid
really rendered to mental science, by keep
ing the attention of all future speculators in
a state of more constant watchfulness against
the transient influence of such an illusion.
His choice of the term " feeling"! to denote
the operations which we usually refer to the
Understanding, is evidently too wide a de
parture from its ordinary use, to have any
probability of general adoption. No definition
can strip so familiar a word of the thoughts
and emotions which have so long accompa
nied it, so as to fit it for a technical term of
the highest abstraction. If we can be said
to have a feeling " of the equality of the
angle of forty-five to half the angle of ninety
degrees,"! we may call Geometry and Arith
metic sciences of "feeling." He has very
forcibly stated the necessity of assuming
u the primary universal intuitions of direct
belief," which, in their nature, are incapable
of all proof. They seem to be accurately
described as notions which cannot be con
ceived separately, but without which nothing
can be conceived. They are not only neces
sary to reasoning and to belief, but to thought
itself. It is equally impossible to prove or to
disprove them. He has very justly blamed
the school of Reid for "an extravagant and
ridiculous" multiplication of those principles
which he truly represents as inconsistent
with sound philosophy. To philosophize is in
deed nothing more than to simplify securely.^
half" (he might have said nineteen twentieths) " of
the reading part of the community." — Welsh's
Life of Brown, p. 431.
* Brown's Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 1 — 49.
t Ibid. vol. i. p. 220. t Ibid. vol. i. p. 222.
$ Dr. Brown always expresses himself best
P2
174
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
The substitution of "suggestion"5 for the
former phrase of "association of ideas,"
would hardly deserve notice in so cursory a
view, if it had not led him. to a serious mis
conception of the doctrines and deserts of
other philosophers. The fault of the latter
phrase is rather in the narrowness of the last
than in the inadequacy of the first word.
'Association' presents the fact in the light
of a relation between two mental acts : l sug
gestion' denotes rather the power of the one
to call up the other. But whether we say
that the sight of ashes i suggests' fire, or that
the ideas of fire and ashes are 'associated^
we mean to convey the same fact, and, in
both cases, an exact thinker means to ac
company the fact with no hypothesis. Dr.
Brown has supposed the word "'association"
as intended to affirm that there is some "in
termediate process"* between the original
succession of the mental acts and the power
which they acquired therefrom of calling up,
each other. This is quite as much to raise
up imaginary antagonists for the honour of
conquering them, as he justly reprehends
Dr. Reid for doing in the treatment of pre
ceding philosophers. He falls into another
more important and unaccountable error, in
representing his own reduction of Mr. Hume's
principles of association ( — resemblance,
contrariety, causation, contiguity in time or
place) to the one principle of contiguity, as a
discovery of his own, by which his theory is
distinguished from " the universal opinion
of philosophers.''! Nothing but too exclu
sive a consideration of the doctrines of the
Scottish school could have led him to speak
thus of what was hinted by Aristotle, dis
tinctly laid down by Hobbes, and fully un
folded both by Hartley and Condillac. He
has, however, extremely enlarged the proof
and the illustration of this law of mind, by
the exercise of "a more subtile analysis''
and the disclosure of "a finer species of
proximity. "t As he has thus aided and
confirmed, though he did not discover, the
general law, so he has rendered a new and
very important service to mental science, by
drawing attention to what he properly calls
"secondary laws of Suggestion"§ or Asso
ciation, which modify the action of the gene
ral law, and must be distinctly considered,
in order to explain its connection with the
phenomena. The enumeration and exposi
tion are instructive, and the example is wor
thy of commendation. For it is in this lower
where he is short and familiar. "An hypothesis
is nothing more than a reason for making one ex
periment or observation rather than another." —
Lectures, vol. i. p. 170. In 1812, as the present
writer observed to him that Reid and Hume dif
fered more in words than in opinion, he answered,
" Yes, Reid bawled out, we must believe an out
ward world, but added in a whisper, we can give
no reason for our belief: Hume cries out, V6*«an
give no reason for such a notion, and whispers, I
awn we cannot get rid of it."
* Brown's Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 335 — 347.
+ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 349. \ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 218.
$ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 270.
region of the science that most remains to
be discovered • it is that which rests most
on observation, and least tempts to contro
versy : it is by improvements in this part of
our knowledge that the foundations are se-
ured, and the whole building so repaired as
to rest steadily on them. The distinction
of common language between the head and
the heart, which, as we have seen, is so
often overlooked or misapplied by metaphy
sicians, is, in the system of Brown, signified
by the terms "mental states" and "emo
tions." It is unlucky that no single word
could be found for the former, and that the
addition of the generic term " feeling" should
disturb its easy comprehension, when it is
applied more naturally.
In our more proper province Brown fol
lowed Butler (who appears to have been
chiefly known to him through the writings
of Mr. Stewart), in his theory of the social
affections. Their disinterestedness is en
forced by the arguments of both these phi
losophers, as well as by those of Hutcheson.*
It is observable, however, that Brown ap
plies the principle of Suggestion, or Associa
tion, boldly to this part of human nature, and
seems inclined to refer to it even Sympathy
itself.f It is hard to understand how, with
such a disposition on the subject of a princi
ple so generally thought ultimate as Sympa
thy, he should, inconsistently with himself,
follow Mr. Stewart in representing the theory
which derives the affections from Associa
tion as "a modification of the Selfish sys
tem, "t He mistakes that theory when he
states, that it derives the affections from our
experience that our own interest is connect
ed with that of others ; since, in truth, it
considers our regard to our own interest as
formed from the same original pleasures by
association, which, by the like process, may
and do directly generate affections towards
others, without passing through the channel
of regard to our general happiness. But, says
he, this is only an hypothesis, since the form
ation of these affections is acknowledged to
belong to a time of which there is no re
membrance^ — an objection fatal to every
theory of any mental functions, — subversive,
for example, of Berkeley's discovery of ac
quired visual perception, and most strangely
inconsistent in the mouth of a philosopher
whose numerous simplifications of mental
theory are and must be founded on occur
rences which precede experience. It is in
all other cases, and it must be in this, suffi
cient that the principle of the theory is really
existing, — that it explains the appearances,
— that its supposed action resembles what we
know to be its action in those similar cases
of which we have direct experience. Last
ly, he in express words admits that, accor
ding to the theory to which he objects, we
have affections which are at present disin-
* Brown's Lectures, vol. iii. p. 248.
t Ibid. vol. iv. p. 82. t Ibid. vol. iii. p. 282.
§ Ibid. vol. iv. p. 87.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
175
terested.* Is it not a direct contradiction in
terms to call such a theory "a modification
of the Selfish system V} His language in
the sequel clearly indicates a distrust of his
own statement, and a suspicion that he is
not only inconsistent with himself; but alto
gether mistaken. t
As we enter farther into the territory of
Ethics, we at length discover a distinction,
originating with Brown, the neglect of which
by preceding speculators \ve have more than
once lamented as productive of obscurity
and confusion. "The moral affections,"
says he, "which I consider at present. I con
sider rather physiological))''37 (or, as ne else
where better expresses it, " psychologically")
" than ethically, as parts of our mental con
stitution, not as involving the fulfilment or
violation of duties.^ He immediately, how
ever, loses sight of this distinction, and rea
sons inconsistently with it, instead of follow
ing its proper consequences in his analysis
of Conscience. Perhaps, indeed, (for the
•words are capable of more than one sense)
he meant to distinguish the virtuous affec
tions from those sentiments which have
Morality exclusively in view, rather than to
distinguish the theory of Moral Sentiment
from the attempt to ascertain the character
istic quality of right action. Friendship is
conformable in its dictates to Morality ; but
it may, and does exist, without any view7 to
it : he who feels the affections, and performs
the duties of friendship, is the object of that
distinct emotion which is called "moral ap
probation."
It is on the subject of Conscience that, in
imitation of Mr. Stewart, and with the argu
ments of that philosopher, he makes his
chief stand against the theory which con
siders the formation of that master faculty
itself as probably referable to the necessary
and universal operation of those laws of hu
man nature to which he himself ascribes
almost every other state of mind. On both
sides of this question the supremacy of Con
science is alike held to be venerable and ab
solute. Once more, be it remembered, that
the question is purely philosophical, and is
only whether, from the impossibility of ex
plaining its formation by more general laws,
we are reduced to the necessity of consider
ing it as an original fact in human nature, of
which no further account can be given. Let
it, however, be also remembered, that we
are not driven to this supposition by the mere
circumstance, that no satisfactory explana
tion has yet appeared ; for there are many
analogies in an unexplained state of mind
to states already explained, wrhich may jus
tify us in believing that the explanation re
quires only more accurate observation, and
more patient meditation, to be brought to
that completeness which it probably will
attain.
* Brown's Leclures, vol. iv. p. 87.
t Ibid. vol. iv. pp. 94—97.
I Ibid. vol. iii. p. 231.
SECTION VII.
GENERAL REMARKS.
THE oft-repeated warning with which the
foregoing section concluded being again pre
mised, it remains that we should offer a few
observations, which naturally occur on the
consideration of Dr. Brown's argument in
support of the proposition, that moral appro
bation is not only in its mature state inde
pendent of, and superior to, any other prin
ciple of human nature (regarding which there
is no dispute), but that its origin is altogether
inexplicable, and that its existence is an ulti
mate fact in mental science. Though these
observations are immediately occasioned by
the writings of Brown, they are yet, in the
main, of a general nature, and might have
been made without reference to any particu
lar writer.
The term ".suggestion," which might be
inoffensive in describing merely intellectual
associations, becomes peculiarly unsuitable
when it is applied to those combinations of
thought with emotion, and to those unions
of feeling, which compose the emotive na
ture of Man. Its common sense of a sign
recalling the thing signified, always embroils
the new sense vainly forced upon it. No one
can help owning, that if it were consistently
pursued, so as that we were to speak of
" suggesting a feeling" or " passion," the
language would be universally thought ab
surd. To "suggest love" or "hatred" is a
mode of expression so manifestly incongru
ous, that most readers would choose to un
derstand it as suggesting reflections on the
subject of these passages. " Suggest" would
not commonly be understood as synonymous
wnth "revive" or "rekindle." Defects of
the same sort may indeed be found in the
parallel phrases of most, if not all, philoso
phers ; and all of them proceed from the er
roneous but prevalent notion, that the law of
Association produces only such a close union
of a thought and a feeling, as gives one the
power of reviving the other : — the truth being
that it forms them into a new compound, in
which the properties of the component parts
are no longer discoverable, and which may
itself become a substantive principle of hu
man nature. They supposed the condition,
produced by the power of that law, to re
semble that of material substances in a state
of mechanical separation ; whereas in reality
it may be better likened to a chemical com
bination of the same substances, from which
a totally new product arises. Their language
involves a confusion of the question which
relates to the origin of the principles of hu
man activity, with the other and far more
important question which relates to their
nature; and as soon as this distinction is
hidden, the theorist is either betrayed into
the Selfish system by a desire of clearness
and simplicity, or tempted to the needless
multiplication of ultimate facts by mistaken
anxiety for what he supposes to be tho
176
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
guards of our social and moral nature. The
defect is common to Brown with his prede
cessors, but in him it is less excusable ; for
he saw the truth and recoiled from it. It is
the main defect of the term "association"
itself, that it does not, till after long use, con
vey the notion of a perfect union, but rather
leads to that of a combination which may be
dissolved, if not at pleasure, at least with the
help of care and exertion ; which is utterly
and dangerously false in the important cases
where such unions are considered as consti
tuting the most essential principles of human
nature. Men can no more dissolve these
unions than they can disuse their habit of
judging of distance by the eye, and often by
the ear. But " suggestion" implies, that
what suggests is separate from what is sug
gested, and consequently negatives that unity
in an active principle which the whole an
alogy of nature, as well as our own direct
consciousness, shows to be perfectly com
patible with its origin in composition.
Large concessions are, in the first place,
to be remarked, which must be stated, be
cause they very much narrow the matter in
dispute. Those who, before Brown, con
tended against " beneficial tendency" as the
standard of Morality, have either shut their
eyes on the connection of Virtue with gene
ral utility, or carelessly and obscurely al
lowed, without further remark, a connection
which is at least one of the most remarkable
and important of ethical facts. He acts more
boldly, and avowedly discusses " the rela
tion of Virtue to Utility." He was compelled
by that discussion to make those concessions
which so much abridge this controversy.
"Utility and Virtue are so related, that there
is perhaps no action generally felt to be vir
tuous, which it would not be beneficial that
all men in similar circumstances should
imitate."* "In every case of benefit or in
jury willingly done, there arise certain emo
tions of moral approbation or disapproba
tion."! "The intentional produce of evil,
as pure evil, is always hated, and that of
good, as pure good, always loved. "J All
virtuous acts are thus admitted to be univer
sally beneficial; Morality and the general
benefit are acknowledged always to coincide.
It is hard to say, then, why they should not
be reciprocally tests of each other, though in
a very different way ; — the virtuous feelings,
fitted as they are by immediate appearance,
by quick and power'ful action, to be sufficient
tests of Morality in the moment of action,
and for all practical purposes; while the
* Lectures, vol. iv. p. 45. The unphilosophical
word " perhaps" must be struck out of the propo
sition, unless the whole be considered as a mere
conjecture ; it limits no affirmation, but destroys
it, by converting it into a guess. See the like con-
cession, vol. iv. p. 33, with some words interlard
ed, which betray a sort of reluctance and fluctua
tion, indicative of the difficulty with which Brown
struggled to withhold his assent from truths which
he unreasonably dreaded.
* Ibid. vol. iii. p. 567. I Ibid. vol. iii, p. 621.
consideration of tendency of those acts to
contribute to general happiness, a more ob
scure and slowly discoverable quality, should
be applied in general reasoning, as a test of
the sentiments and dispositions themselves.
In cases where such last-mentioned test has
been applied, no proof has been attempted
that it has ever deceived those who used it
in the proper place. It has uniformly served
to justify our moral constitution, and to show
how reasonable it is for us to be guided in
action by our higher feelings. At all events
it should be, but has not been considered,
that from these concessions alone it follows,
that beneficial tendency is at least one con
stant property of Virtue. Is not this, in ef
fect, an admission that beneficial tendency
does distinguish virtuous acts and disposi
tions from those which we call vicious 1 If
the criterion be incomplete or delusive, let
its faults be specified, and let some other
quality be pointed out, which, either singly
or in combination with beneficial tendency,
may more perfectly indicate the distinction.
But let us not be assailed by arguments
which leave untouched its value as a test,
and are in truth directed only against its fit
ness as an immediate incentive and guide to
right action. To those who contend for its
use in the latter character, it must be left to
defend, if they can, so untenable a position :
but all others must regard as pure sophistry
the use of arguments against it as a test,
which really show nothing more than its ac
knowledged unfitness to be a motive.
When voluntary benefit and voluntary in
jury are pointed out as the main, if not the
sole objects of moral approbation, and disap
probation, — when we are told truly, that the
production of good, as good, is always loved,
and that of evil, as such, always hated, can
we require a more clear, short, and unan
swerable proof, that beneficial tendency is
an essential quality of Virtue? It is indeed
an evidently necessary consequence of this
statement, that if benevolence be amiable in
itself, our affection for it must increase with
its extent, and that no man can be in a per
fectly right state of mind, who, if he consider
general happiness at all, is not ready to ac
knowledge that a good man must regard it
as being in its own nature the most desirable
of all objects, however the constitution and
circumstances of human nature may render
it unfit or impossible to pursue it directly as
the object of life. It is at the same time ap
parent that no such man can consider any
habitual disposition, clearly discerned to be
in its whole result at variance with general
happiness, as not unworthy of being culti
vated, or as not fit to be rooted out. It is
manifest that, if it were otherwise, he would
cease to be benevolent. As soon as we con
ceive the sublime idea of a Being who no1
only foresees, but commands, all the conse
quences of the actions of all voluntary agents,
this scheme of reasoning appears far more
clear. In such a case, if our moral senti
ments remain the same, they compel us to
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
177
attribute His whole government of the world
to benevolence. The consequence is as ne
cessary as in any process of reason • for if
our moral nature be supposed, it will appear
self-evident, that it is as much impossible for
us to love and revere such a Being, if we as
cribe to Him a mixed or imperfect benevo
lence, as to believe the most positive contra
diction in terms. Now, as Religion consists
in that love and reverence, it is evident that
it cannot subsist without a belief in benevo
lence as the sole principle of divine govern
ment. It is nothing to tell us that this is not
a process of reasoning, or, to speak more ex
actly, that the first propositions are assumed.
The first propositions in every discussion re
lating to intellectual operations must likewise
be assumed. Conscience is not Reason, but
it is not less an essential part of human na
ture. Principles which are essential to all its
operations are as much entitled to immediate
and implicit assent, as those principles which
stand in the same relation to the reasoning
faculties. The laws prescribed by a bene
volent Being to His creatures must necessa
rily be founded on the principle of promoting
their happiness. It would be singular indeed,
if the proofs of the goodness of God, legible
in every part of Nature, should not. above
all others, be most discoverable and 'conspi
cuous in the beneficial tendency of His moral
laws.
But we are asked, if tendency to general
welfare be the standard of Virtue, why is it
not always present to the contemplation of
every man who does or prefers a virtuous
action 1 Must not Utility be in that case
"the felt essence of Virtue?"* Why are
other ends, besides general happiness, fit to
be morally pursued ?
These questions, which are all founded on
that confusion of the theory of actions with
the theory of sentiments, against which the
reader was so early warned,t might be dis
missed with no more than a reference to that
distinction, from 'the forgetfulness of which
they have arisen. By those advocates of the
principle of Utility, indeed, who hold it to be
a necessary part of their system, that some
glimpse at least of tendency to personal or
general well-being is an essential part of the
motives which render an action virtuous,
these questions cannot be satisfactorily an
swered. Against such they are arguments
of irresistible force: but against the doctrine
itself, rightly understood and justly bounded,
they are altogether powerless. The reason
why there may, and must be many ends mo
rally more fit to be pursued in practice than
general happiness, is plainly to be found in
the limited capacity of Man. A perfectly
good Being, who foresees and commands all
the consequences of action, cannot indeed be
conceived by us to have any other end in
view than general well-being. Why evil
exists under that perfect government, is a
* Lectures, vol. iv. p. 38.
t See supra, p. 97.
23
question towards the solution of which the
human understanding can scarcely advance
a single step. But all who hold the evil to
exist only for good, and own their inability
to explain why or how, are perfectly exempt
from any charge of inconsistency in their
obedience to the dictates of their moral na
ture. The measure of the faculties of Man
renders it absolutely necessary for him to
have many other practical ends; the pursuit
of all of which is moral, "when it actually
tends to general happiness, though that last
end never entered into the contemplation of
the agent. It is impossible for us to calcu
late the effects of a single action, any more
than the chances of a single life. But let it
not be hastily concluded, that the calculation
of consequences is.impossible in moral sub
jects. To calculate the general tendency of
every sort of human action, is a possible,
easy, and common operation. The general
good effects of temperance, prudence, forti
tude, justice, benevolence, gratitude, vera
city, fidelity, of the affections of kindred,
and of love for our country, are the subjects
of calculations which, taken as generalities,
are absolutely unerring. They are founded
on a larger and firmer basis of more uniform
experience, than any of those ordinary cal
culations which govern prudent men in the
whole business of life. An appeal to these
daily and familiar transactions furnishes at
once a decisive answer, both to those advo
cates of Utility who represent the considera
tion of it as a necessary ingredient in virtu
ous motives, as well as moral approbation,
and to those opponents who turn the unwar
rantable inferences of unskilful advocates
into proofs of the absurdity into which the
doctrine leads.
The cultivation of all the habitual senti
ments from which the various classes of vir
tuous actions flow, the constant practice of
such actions, the strict observance of rules
in all that province of Ethics which can be
subjected to rules, the watchful care of all
the outworks of every part of duty, and of
that descending series of useful habits which,
being securities to Virtue, become themselves
virtues, — are so many ends which it is abso
lutely necessary for man to pursue and to
seek for their own sake. " I saw D'Alem-
bert," says a very late writer, "congratulate
a young man very coldly, who brought him
a solution of a problem The young man
said, ' I have done this in order to have a seat
in the Academy.' 'Sir,' answered D'Alem-
bert, l with such dispositions you never
will earn one. Science must be loved for
its own sake, and not for the advantage to
be derived. No other principle will enable
a man to make progress in the sciences.' "*
It is singular that D'Alembert should not
perceive the extensive application of this
truth to the whole nature of Man. No man
can make progress in a virtue who does
not seek it for its own sake. No man is a
Memoires de Montlosier, vol. i. p. 50.
178
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
friend, a lover of his country, a kind father,
a dutiful sd"n, who does not consider the culti
vation of affection and the performance of
duty in all these cases, respectively, as in
cumbent on him for their own sake, and
not for the advantage to be derived from
them. Whoever serves another with a view
of advantage to himself is universally ac
knowledged not to act from affection. But
the more immediate application of this truth
to our purpose is, that in the case of those
virtues which are the means of cultivating
and preserving other virtues, it is necessary
to acquire love and reverence for the se
condary virtues for their own sake, without
which they never will be effectual means of
sheltering and strengthening those intrinsi
cally higher qualities to which they are ap
pointed to minister. Every moral act must
be considered as an end, and men must ba
nish from their practice the regard to the
most naturally subordinate duty as a means.
Those who are perplexed by the supposition
that secondary virtues, making up by the
extent of their beneficial tendency for what
in each particular instance they may want
in magnitude, may become of as great im
portance as the primary virtues themselves,
would do well to consider a parallel though
very homely case. A house- is useful for
many purposes : many of these purposes
are in themselves, for the time, more im
portant than shelter. The destruction of the
house may, nevertheless, become a greater
evil than the defeat of several of these pur
poses, because it is permanently convenient,
and indeed necessary to the execution of
most of them. A floor is made for warmth,
for dryness, — to support tables, chairs, beds',
and all the household implements which
contribute to accommodation and to plea
sure. The floor is valuable only as a means ;
but, as the only means by which many ends
are attained, it may be much more valuable
than some of them. The table might be,
and generally is, of more valuable timber
than the floor ; but the workman who should
for that reason lake more pains in making
the table strong, than the floor secure, would
not long be employed by customers of com
mon sense.
The connection of that part of Morality
which regulates the intercourse of the sexes
with benevolence, affords the most striking
instance of the very great importance which
may belong to a virtue, in itself secondary,
but on which the general cultivation of the
highest virtues permanently depends. Deli
cacy and modesty may be thought chiefly
worthy of cultivation, because they guard
purity; but they must be loved for'their
own sake, without which they cannot flou
rish. Purity is the sole school of domestic
fidelity, and domestic fidelity is the only
nursery of the affections between parents
and children, from children towards each
, other, and, through these affections, of all
the kindness which renders the world ha
bitable. At each step in the progress, the
appropriate end must be loved for its own
sake ; and it is easy to see how the only
means of sowing the seeds of benevolence,
in all its forms, may become of far greater
importance than many of the modifications
and exertions even of benevolence itself.
To those who will consider this subject, it
will not long seem strange that the sweetest
and most gentle affections grow up only
under the apparently cold and dark shadow
of stern duty. The obligation is strength
ened, not weakened, by the consideration
that it arises from human imperfection ;
which only proves it to be founded on the
nature of man. It is enough that the pursuit
of all these separate ends leads to general
well-being, the promotion of which is the
final purpose of the Creation.
The last and most specious argument
against beneficial tendency, even as a test,
is conveyed in the question, Why moral ap-
Erobation is not bestowed on every thing
eneficial, instead of being confined, as it
confessedly is, to voluntary acts? It may
plausibly be said, that the establishment of
the beneficial tendency of all those voluntary
acts which are the objects of moral approba
tion, is not sufficient; — since, if such ten
dency be the standard, it ought to follow, that
whatever is useful should also be morally
approved. To answer, as has before been
done,* that experience gradually limits mo
ral approbation and disapprobation to volun
tary acts, by teaching us that they influence
the Will, but are wholly wasted if they be
applied to any other object, — though the
fact be true, and contributes somewhat to
the result, — is certainly not enough. It is
at best a partial solution. Perhaps, on recon
sideration, it is entitled only to a secondary
place. To seek a foundation for universal,
ardent, early, and immediate feelings, in pro
cesses of an intellectual nature, has, since
the origin of philosophy, been the grand
error of ethical inquirers into human nature.
To seek for such a foundation in Association,
— an early and insensible process, which
confessedly mingles itself with the compo
sition of our first and simplest feelings, and
which is common to both parts of our nature,
is not liable to the same animadversion. If
Conscience be uniformly produced by the
regular and harmonious co-operation of many
processes of association, the objection is in
reality a challenge to produce a complete
theory of it, founded on that principle, by
exhibiting such a full account of all these
processes as may satisfactorily explain why
it proceeds thus far and no farther. This
would be a very arduous attempt, and per
haps it may be premature. But something
may be more modestly tried towards an
outline, which, though it may leave many
particulars unexplained, may justify a rea
sonable expectation that they are not incapa
ble of explanation, and may even now assign
such reasons for the limitation of approbation
* See supra, p. 142.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
to voluntary acts, as may convert the objec
tion derived from that fact into a corrobora-
tion of the doctrines to which it has been
opposed as an insurmountable difficulty.
Such an attempt will naturally lead to the
close of the present Dissertation. The at
tempt has indeed been already made,* but
not without great apprehensions on the part
of the author that he has not been clear
enough, especially in those parts which ap
peared to himself to owe most to his own
reflection. He will now endeavour, at the
expense of some repetition, to be more satis
factory.
There must be primary pleasures, pains,
and even appetites, which arise from no
prior state of mind, and which, if explained
at all, can be derived only from bodily
organization ; for if there were not, there
could be no secondary desires. What the
number of the underived principles may be,
is a question to which the answers of phi
losophers have been extremely various, and
of which the consideration is not necessary
to our present purpose. The rules of phi
losophizing, however, require that causes
should not be multiplied without necessity.
Of two explanations, therefore, which give
an equally satisfactory account of appear
ances, that theory is manifestly to be pre
ferred which supposes the smaller number
of ultimate and inexplicable principles. This
maxim, it is true, is subject to three indis
pensable conditions : — 1st, That the princi
ples employed in the explanation should be
known really to exist; in which consists the
main distinction between hypothesis and
theory. Gravity is a principle universally
known to exist ; ether and a nervous fluid
are mere suppositions. — 2dly, That these
principles should be known to produce ef
fects like those which are ascribed to them
in the theory. This is a further distinction
between hypothesis and theory; for there
are an infinite number of degrees of likeness,
from the faint resemblances which have led
some to fancy that the functions of the
nerves depend on electricity, to the remark
able coincidences between the appearances
of projectiles on earth, and the movements
of the heavenly bodies, which constitutes
the Newtonian system, — a theory now per
fect, though exclusively founded on analogy,
and in which one of the classes of pheno
mena brought together by it is not the sub
ject of direct experience. — 3dly, That it
should correspond, if not with all the facts
to be explained, at least with so great a ma
jority of them as to render it highly proba
ble that means will in time be found of re
conciling it to all. It is only on this ground
that the Newtonian system justly claimed
the title of a legitimate theory during that
long period when it was unable to explain
many celestial appearances, before the la
bours of a century, and the genius of La
place, at length completed it by adapting it
* See suvra p. 149, et seq.
to all the phenomena. A theory may be
just before it is complete.
In the application of these canons to the
theory which derives most of the principles
of human action from the transfer of a small
number of pleasures, perhaps organic ones?
by the law of Association to a vast variety
of new objects, it cannot be denied, 1st,
That it satisfies the first of the above condi
tions, inasmuch as Association is really one"
of the laws of human nature ; 2dly, Tnat it
also satisfies the second, for Association cer
tainly produces effects like those which are
referred to it by this theory; — otherwise
there would be no secondary desires, no
acquired relishes and dislikes, — facts uni
versally acknowledged, which are, and can
be explained only by the principle called by
Hobbes "Mental Discourse," — by Locke.,
Hume, Hartley, Condillac, and the majority
of speculators, as well as in common speech,
"Association,"— by Tucker, "Translation,"
— and by Brown, "Suggestion." The facts
generally referred to the principle resemble
those facts which are claimed for it by the
theory in this important particular, that in
both cases equally, pleasure becomes at
tached to perfectly new things, — so that the
derivative desires become perfectly inde
pendent of the primary. The great dissimi
larity of these two classes of passions has
been supposed to consist in this, that the for
mer always regards the interest of the indi
vidual, while the latter regards the welfare
of others. The philosophical world has been
almost entirely divided into two sects, — the
partisans of Selfishness, comprising mostly
all the predecessors of Butler, and the greater
part of his successors, and the advocates of
Benevolence, who have generally contended"
that the reality of Disinterestedness depends
on its being a primary principle. Enough
has been said by Butler against the more
fatal heresy of Selfishness : something also
has already been said against the error of the
advocates of Disinterestedness, in the pro
gress of this attempt to develope ethical
truths historically, in the order in which
inquiry and controversy brought them out
with increasing brightness. The analogy of
the material world "is indeed faint, and often
delusive ; yet we dare not utterly reject that
on which the whole technical language of
mental and moral science is necessarily
grounded. The whole creation teem» with
instances where the most powerful agents
and the most lasting bodies are the acknow
ledged results of the composition, sometimes
of a few, often of many elements. These
compounds often in their turn become the
elements of other substances; and it is with
them that we are conversant chiefly in the
pursuits of knowledge, and solely in the con
cerns of life. No man ever fancied, that
because they were compounds, they were
therefore less real. It is impossible to con
found them with any of the separate ele
ments which contribute towards their forma
tion. But a much more close resemblance
180
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
presents itself: every secondary desire, or
acquired relish, involves in it a transfer of
pleasure to something which was before in
different or disagreeable. Is the new plea
sure the less real for being acquired ? Is it
not often preferred to the original enjoyment ?
Are not many of the secondary pleasures in
destructible ? Do not many of them survive
primary appetites "? Lastly, the important
Srinciple of regard to our own general wel-
ire, which disposes us to prefer it to imme
diate pleasure (unfortunately called "Self-
love," — as if, in any intelligible sense of the
term "love." it were possible fora man to
love himself), is perfectly intelligible, if its
origin be ascribed to Association, but utterly
incomprehensible, if it be considered as prior
to the appetites and desires, which alone
furnish it with materials. As happiness con
sists of satisfactions, Self-love presupposes
appetites and desires which are to be satis
fied. If the order of time were important,
the affections are formed at an earlier period
than many self-regarding passions, and they
always precede the formation of Self-love.
Many of the later advocates of the Disin
terested system, though recoiling from an
apparent approach to the Selfishness into
which the purest of their antagonists had
occasionally fallen, were gradually obliged
to make concessions to the Derivative system,
though clogged with the contradictory asser
tion, that it was only a refinement of Selfish
ness : and we have seen that Brown, the last
and not the least in genius of them, has
nearly abandoned the greater, though not
indeed the most important, part of the terri
tory in dispute, and scarcely contends for any
nnderived principle but the Moral Faculty.
This being the state of opinion among the
very small number in Great Britain who still
preserve some remains of a taste for such
speculations, it is needless here to trace the
application of the law of Association to the
formation of the secondary desires, whether
private or social. For our present purposes,
the explanation of their origin may be as
sumed to be satisfactory. In what follows,
it must, however, be steadily borne in mind,
that this concession involves an admission
that the pleasure derived from low objects
may be transferred to the most pure. — that
from a part of a self-regarding appetite such
a pleasure may become a portion of a per
fectly disinterested desire, — and that the
disinterested nature and absolute indepen
dence of the latter are not in the slightest
degree impaired by the consideration, that
it is formed by one of those grand mental
processes to which the formation of the other
habitual states of the human mind have
been, with great probability, ascribed.
When the social affections are thus form
ed, they are naturally followed in every in
stance by the will to do whatever can pro
mote their object. Compassion excites a
voluntary determination to do whatever re
lieves the person pitied : the like process
must occur in every case of gratitude, gene
rosity, and affection. Nothing so uniformly
follows the kind disposition as the act of
Will, because it is the only means by which
the benevolent desire can be gratified. The
result of what Brown justly calls "a finer
analysis," shows a mental contiguity of the
affection to the volition to be much closer
than appears on a coarser examination of this
part of our nature. No wonder, then, that
the strongest association, the most active
power of reciprocal suggestion, should sub
sist between them. As all the affections are
delightful, so the volitions, — voluntary acts
which are the only means of their gratifica
tion, — become agreeable objects of contem
plation to the mind. The habitual disposi
tion to perform them is felt in ourselves, and
observed in others, with satisfaction. As
these feelings become more lively, the ab
sence of them may be viewed in ourselves
with a pain, — in others with an alienation
capable of indefinite increase. They become
entirely independent sentiments, — still, how
ever, receiving constant supplies of nourish
ment from their parent affections, — which, in
well-balanced minds, reciprocally strengthen
each other; — unlike the unkind passions>
which are constantly engaged in the most
angry conflicts of civil war. In this state we
desire to experience the beneficient volitions,
to cultivate a disposition towards them, and
to do every correspondent voluntary act :
they are for their own sake the objects of
desire. They thus constitute a large portion
of those emotions, desires, and affections,
which regard certain dispositions of the mind,
and determinations of the Will as their sole
and ultimate end. These are what are called
the "Moral Sense," the "Moral Sentiments,"
or best, though most simply, by the ancient
name of Conscience, — which has the merit,
in our language, of being applied to no other
purpose, — which peculiarly marks the strong
working of these feelings on conduct, — and
which, from its solemn and sacred character,
is well adapted to denote the venerable au
thority of the highest principle of human
nature.
Nor is this all : it has already been seen,
that not only sympathy with the sufferer,
but indignation against the wrong-doer, con
tributes a large and important share towards
the moral feelings. We are angry at those
who disappoint our wish for the happiness
of others ; we make the resentment of the
innocent person wronged our own : our mo
derate anger approves all well-proportioned
punishment of the wrong-doer. We hence
approve those dispositions and actions of
voluntary agents which promote such suit
able punishment, and disapprove those which
hinder its infliction, or destroy its effect ; at
the head of which may be placed that excess
of punishment beyond the average feelings
of good men which turns the indignation of
the calm by-stander against the culprit into
pity. In this state, when anger is duly mo
derated, — when it is proportioned to the
wrong, — when it is detached from personal
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 181
considerations, — when dispositions and actions
are its ultimate objects, it becomes a sense of
justice, and is so purified as to be fitted to
be a new element of Conscience. There is
no part of Morality which is so directly aided
by a conviction of the necessity of its observ
ance to the general interest, as Justice. The
connection between them is discoverable by
the most common understanding. All pub
lic deliberations profess the public welfare
to be their object ] all laws propose it as their
end. This calm principle of public utility
serves to mediate between the sometimes
repugnant feelings which arise in the punish
ment of criminals, by repressing undue pity
on one hand, and reducing resentment to its
proper level on the other. Hence the un-.
speakable importance of criminal laws as a
part of the moral education of mankind.
Whenever they carefully conform to the Mo
ral Sentiments of the age and country, — when
they are withheld from approaching the
limits within which the disapprobation of
good men would confine punishment, they
contribute in the highest degree to increase
the ignominy of crimes, to make men recoil
from the first suggestions of criminality, and
to nourish and mature the sense of justice,
which lends new vigour to the conscience
with which it has been united.
Other contributary streams present them
selves : qualities which are necessary to Vir
tue, but may ba» subservient to Vice, may,
independently of that excellence, or of that
defect, be in themselves admirable : courage,
energy, decision, are of this nature. In their
wild state they are often savage and destruc
tive: when they are tamed by the society
of the affections, and trained up-in obedience
to the Moral Faculty, they become virtues
of the highest order, and, by their name of
" magnanimity." proclaim the general sense
of mankind that they are the characteristic
qualities of a great soul. They retain what
ever was admirable in their unreclaimed
state, together with all that they borrow from
their new associate and their high ruler.
Their nature, it must be owned, is prone to
evil ; but this propensity does not hinder
them from being rendered capable of being
ministers of good, when in a state where the
gentler virtues require to be vigorously
guarded against the attacks of daring de
pravity. It is thus that the strength of the
well-educated elephant is sometimes em
ployed in vanquishing the fierceness of the
tiger, and sometimes used as a means of de
fence against the shock of his brethren of the
same species. The delightful contempla
tion, however, of these qualities, when purely
applied, becomes one of the sentiments of
which the dispositions and actions of volun
tary agents are the direct and final object.
By this resemblance they are associated with
the other moral principles, and with them
contribute to form Conscience, which, as the
master faculty of the soul, levies such large
contributions on every province of human
nature.
It is important, in this point of view, to
consider also the moral approbation which
is undoubtedly bestowed on those dispositions
and actions of voluntary agents which termi
nate in their own satisfaction, security, and
well-being. They have been called "duties
to ourselves," as absurdly as a regard to our
own greatest happiness is called " sell-love."
But it cannot be reasonably doubted, that in
temperance, improvidence, timidity, — even
when considered only in relation to the indi
vidual, — are riot only regretted as imprudent,
but blamed as morally wrong. It was ex
cellently observed by Aristotle, that a man
is not commended as temperate, so long as it
costs him efforts of self-denial to persevere
in the practice of temperance, but only when
he prefers that virtue for its own sake. He is
not meek, nor brave, as long as the most
vigorous self-command is necessary to bridle
his anger or his fear. On the same princi
ple, he may be judicious or prudent, but he
is not benevolent, if he confers benefits with
a view to his own greatest happiness. In.
like manner, it is ascertained by experience,
that all the masters of science and of art, —
that all those who have successfully pursued
Truth and Knowledge, love them for their
own sake, without regard to the generally
imaginary dower of interest, or even to the
dazzling crown which Fame may place on
their heads.* But it may still be reasonably
asked, why these useful qualities are morally
improved, and how they become capable of
being combined with those public and disin
terested sentiments which principally con
stitute Conscience ? The answer is, because
they are entirely conversant with volitions
and voluntary actions, and in that respect
resemble the other constituents of Con
science, with which they are thereby fitted to
mingle and coalesce. Like those other prin
ciples, they may be detached from what is
personal and outward, and fixed on the dis
positions and actions,' which are the only
means of promoting their ends. The se
quence of these principles and acts of Will
becomes so frequent, that the association
between both may be as firm as in the for-
* See the Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficul
ties, a discourse forming the first part of the third
volume of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge,
London, 1829. The author of this essay, for it
can be no other than Mr. Brougham, will by
others be placed at the head of those who, in the
midst of arduous employments, and surrounded
by all the allurements of society, yet find leisure
for exerting the unwearied vigour of their minds
in every mode of rendering permanent service to
the human species; more especially in spreading
a love of knowledge, and diffusing useiul truth
among all classes of men. These voluntary occu
pations deserve our attention still less as examples
of prodigious power than as proofs of an intimaie
conviction, which binds them by unity of purpose
with his public duties, that (to use the almost dying
words of an excellent person) '' man can neither be
happy without virtue, nor actively virtuous without
liberty, nor securely free without rational know
ledge."— Close of Sir VV. Jones' last Discourse
to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta.
a
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
mer cases. All those sentiments of which
the final object is a state of the Will, become
thus intimately and inseparably blended ;
.and of that perfect state of solution (if such
words may be allowed) the result is Con-
^scierice — the judge and arbiter of human
conduct — which, though it does not super
sede ordinary motives of virtuous feelings and
habits (equally the ordinary motives of good
actions), yet exercises a lawful authority
even over them, and ought to blend with
them. Whatsoever actions and dispositions
are approved by Conscience acquire the name
of virtues or duties: they are pronounced to
deserve commendation; and we are justly
considered as under a moral obligation to prac
tise the actions and cultivate the dispositions.
The coalition of the private and public
feelings is very remarkable in two points of
view, from which it seems hitherto to have
been' scarcely observed. 1st. It illustrates
very forcibly all that has been here offered
to prove, that the peculiar character of the
Moral Sentiments consists in their exclusive
reference to states of Will, and that every
jfeelihg which has that quality, when it is
purified from all admixture with different
.objects, becomes capable of being absorbed
into Conscience, and of being assimilated to
it, so as to become a part of it. For no feel-
jngs can be more unlike each other in their
.object, than the private and the social;
and yet, as both employ voluntary actions
as their sole immediate means, both may
be transferred by association to states of the
Will, in which case they are transmuted into
moral sentiments. No example of the coali-
Jion of feelings in their general nature less
widely asunder, could afford so much sup
port to this position. 2d. By raising quali
ties useful to ourselves to the rank of virtues,
it throws a strong light on the relation of
Virtue to individual interest ; very much as
justice illustrates the relation of Morality to
general interest. The coincidence of Mo
rality with individual interest is an impor
tant truth in Ethics: it is most manifest in
that part of the science which we are now
considering. A calm regard to our general
interest is indeed a faint and infrequent mo
tive to action. Its chief advantage is, that
it is regular, and that its movements may be
.calculated. In deliberate conduct it may
often be relied on, though perhaps never I
safely without knowledge of the whole tem
per and character of the agent. But in moral
reasoning at least, the fore-named coinci
dence is of unspeakable advantage. If there
be a miserable man who has cold affections,
a weak sense of justice, dim perceptions of
right and wrong, and faint feelings of them. —
if, still more wretched, his heart be con
stantly torn and devoured by malevolent pas
sions — the vultures of the soul, we have one
resource still left, even in cases so dreadful.
Even he still retains a human principle, to
which we can speak : he must own that he
"jfias some wish for his own lasting welfare.
We can prove to him that his state of mind
is inconsistent with it. It may be impossible
indeed to show, that while his disposition
continues the same, he can derive any en
joyment from the practice of virtue: but it
may be most clearly shown, that every ad
vance in the amendment of that disposition
is a step towards even temporal happiness.
If he do not amend his character, we may
compel him to own that he is at variance
with himself and offend's against a principle
of which even he must recognise the reason
ableness.
The formation of Conscience from so many
elements, and especially from the combina
tion of elements so unlike as the private de
sires and the social affections, early con
tributes to give it the appearance of that
simplicity and independence which in its
mature state really distinguish it. It be
comes, from these circumstances, more diffi
cult to distinguish its separate principles;
and it is impossible to exhibit them in sepa
rate action. The affinity of these various
passions to each other, which consists in
their having no object but states of the Will,
is the only common property which strikes
the mind. Hence the facility with which
the general terms, first probably limited to
the relations between ourselves and others,
are gradually extended to all voluntary acts
and dispositions. Prudence and temperance
become the objects of moral approbation.
When imprudence is immediately disap
proved by the by-stander, without deliberate
consideration of its consequences, it is not
only displeasing, as being pernicious, but is
blamed as wron^ though with a censure so
much inferior to mat bestowed on inhumani
ty and injustice, as may justify those writers
who use the milder term i improper .' At
length, when the general words come to sig
nify the objects of moral approbation, and
the reverse, they denote merely the power to
excite feelings, which are as independent as
if they were underived, and which coalesce
the more perfectly, because they are de
tached from objects so various and unlike as
to render their return to their primitive state
very difficult.
The question,* Why we do not morally
approve the useful qualities of actions which
are altogether involuntary? may now be
shortly and satisfactorily answered: — be
cause Conscience is in perpetual contact, as
it were, with all the dispositions and actions
of voluntary agents, and is by that means in-
dissolubly associated with them exclusively.
It has a direct action on the Will, and a
constant mental contiguity to it. It has
no such mental contiguity to involuntary
changes. It has never perhaps been ob
served, that an operation of the conscience
precedes all acts deliberate enough to be in
the highest sense voluntary and does so as
much when it is defeated as when it pre
vails. In either case the association is re
peated. It extends to the whole of the ac-
* See supra, p. 178.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 183
live man. All passions have a definite out
ward object to which they tend, and a limited
sphere within which they act. But Con
science has no object but a state of Will ;
and as an act of Will is the sole means of
gratifying any passion, Conscience is co-ex
tensive with the whole man, and without en
croachment curbs or aids every feeling, —
even within the peculiar province of that
feeling itself. As . Will is the universal
means, Conscience, which regards Will, must
.be a universal principle. As nothing is in
terposed between Conscience and the Will
when the mind is in its healthy state, the
dictate of Conscience is followed by the de
termination of the Will, with a promptitude
and exactness which very naturally is likened
to the obedience of an inferior to the lawful
commands of those whom he deems to be
rightfully placed over him. It therefore
seems clear, that on the theory which has
been attempted, moral approbation must be
limited to voluntary operations, and Con
science must be universal, independent, and
commanding.
One remaining difficulty may perhaps be
objected to the general doctrines of this Dis
sertation, though it does- not appear at any
time to have been urged against other modi
fications of the same principle. "If moral
approbation," it may be said, "involve no
perception of beneficial tendency, whence
arises the coincidence between that princi
ple and the Moral Sentiments'?" It may
seem at first sight, that such a theory rests
the foundation of Morals upon a coincidence
altogether mysterious, and apparently ca
pricious and fantastic. Waiving all other
answers, let us at once proceed to that which
seems conclusive. It is true that Conscience
rarely contemplates so distant an object as
the welfare of all sentient beings; — but to
what point is every one of its elements di
rected ? What, for instance, is the aim of
all the social affections? — Nothing but the
production of larger or smaller masses of
happiness among those of our fellow-crea
tures who are the objects of these affections.
In every case these affections promote hap
piness, as far as their foresight and their
power extend. What can be more condu
cive, or even necessary, to the being and
well-being of society, than the rules of jus
tice ? Are not the angry passions themselves,
as far as they are ministers of Morality, em
ployed in removing hindrances to the welfare
of ourselves and others, and so in indirectly
promoting it ? The private passions termi
nate indeed in the happiness of the indi
vidual, which, however, is a part of general
happiness, and the part over which we have
most power. Every principle of which Con
science is composed has some portion of hap
piness for its object : to that point they all
converge. General happiness is not indeed
one of the natural objects of Conscience, be
cause our voluntary acts are not felt and per
ceived to affect it. But how small a step is
left for Reason ! It only casts up the items
of the account. It has only to discover that
the acts of those who labour to promote sepa
rate portions of happiness must increase the
amount of the whole. It may be truly said,
that if observation and experience did not
clearly ascertain that beneficial tendency is
the constant attendant and mark of all virtu
ous dispositions and actions, the same great
truth would be revealed to us by the voice
of Conscience. The coincidence, instead of
being arbitrary, arises necessarily from the
laws of human nature, and the circumstances
in which mankind are placed. We perform
and approve virtuous actions, partly because
Conscience regards them as right, partly be
cause we are prompted to them by good af
fections. All these affections contribute
towards general well-being, though it is not
necessary, nor would it be fit, that the agent
should be distracted by the contemplation of
that vast and remote object.
The various relations of Conscience to Re
ligion we have already been led to consider
on the principles of Butler, of Berkeley, of
Paley, and especially of Hartley, who was
brought by his own piety to contemplate as
the last and highest stage of virtue and hap
piness, a sort of self-annihilation, which,
however unsuitable to the present condition
of mankind, yet places in the strongest light
the disinterested character of the system, of
which it is a conceivable, though perhaps
not attainable, result. The completeness
and rigour acquired by Conscience, when all
its dictates are revered as the commands of
a perfectly wise and good Being, are so ob
vious, that they cannot be questioned by any
reasonable man, however extensive his in
credulity may be. It is thus that she can
add the warmth of an affection to the in
flexibility of principle and habit. It is true
that, in examining the evidence of the divine
original of a religious system, in estimating
an imperfect religion, or in comparing the
demerits of religions of human origin, hers
must be the standard chiefly applied : but it
follows with equal clearness, that those who
have the happiness to find satisfaction and
repose in divine revelation are bound to con
sider all those precepts for the government
of the Will, delivered by her, which are
manifestly universal, as the rules to which
all their feelings and actions should conform.
The true distinction between Conscience and
a taste for moral beauty has already been
pointed out;* — a distinction which, notwith
standing its simplicity, has been unobserved
by philosophers, perhaps on account of the
frequent co-operation and intermixture of
the two feelings. Most speculators have
either denied the existence of the taste, or
kept it out of view in their theory, or exalted
it to the place which is rightfully filled only
by Conscience. Yet it is perfectly obvious
that, like all the other feelings called " plea
sures of imagination," it terminates in de
lightful contemplation, while the Moral
* See supra, p. 151.
184
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Faculty always aims exclusively at voluntary
action. Nothing can more clearly show that
this last quality is the characteristic of Con
science, than its being thus found to distin
guish that faculty from the sentiments which
most nearly resemble it, most frequently at
tend it, and are most easily blended with it.
Some attempt has now been made to de-
velope the fundamental principles of Ethical
theory, in that historical order in which me
ditation and discussion brought them suc
cessively into a clearer light. That attempt,
as far as it regards Great Britain, is at least
chronologically complete. The spirit of bold
speculation, conspicuous among the English
of the seventeenth century, languished after
the earlier part of the eighteenth, and seems,
from the time of Hutcheson, to have passed
into Scotland, where it produced Hume, the
greatest of sceptics, and Smith, the most
eloquent of modern moralists ; besides^iving
rise to that sober, modest, perhaps timid phi
losophy which is commonly called Scotch,
and which has the singular merit of having
first strongly and largely inculcated the abso
lute necessity of admitting certain principles
as the foundation of all reasoning, and the
indispensable conditions of thought itself.
In the eye of the moralist all the philoso
phers of Scotland, — Hume and Smith as
much as Reid, Campbell, and Stewart. — have
also the merit of having avoided the Selfish
system, and of having, under whatever va
riety of representation, alike maintained the
disinterested nature of the social affections
and the supreme authority of the Moral
Sentiments. Brown reared the standard of
revolt against the masters of the Scottish
School, and in reality still more than in words,
adopted those very doctrines against which
his predecessors, after their war against
scepticism, uniformly combated. The law
of Association, though expressed in other
language, became the nearly universal prin
ciple of his system ; and perhaps it would
have been absolutely universal, if he had not
been restrained rather by respectful feelings
than by cogent reasons. With him the love
of speculative philosophy, as a pursuit, ap
pears to have expired in Scotland. There
are some symptoms, yet however very faint,
of the revival of a taste for it among the Eng
lish youth : while in France instruction in it
has been received with approbation from M.
Royer Collard, the scholar of Stewart more
than of Reid, and with enthusiasm from his
pupil and successor M. Cousin, who has
clothed the doctrines of the Schools of Ger
many in an unwonted eloquence, which al
ways adonis, but sometimes disguises them.
The history of political philosophy, ev-?n
if its extent and subdivisions were better
defined, would manifestly have occupied
another dissertation, at least equal in length
to the present. The most valuable parts of
it belong to civil history. It has too much
of the spirit of faction and turbulence in
fused into it to be easily combined with the
calmer history of the progress of Science, or
even with that of the revolutions of specu
lation. In no age of the world were its prin
ciples so interwoven with political events,
and so deeply imbued with the passions and
divisions excited by them, as in the eigh
teenth century.
It was at one time the purpose, or rather
perhaps the hope, of the writer, to close this
discourse by an account of the Ethical sys
tems which have prevailed in Germany
during the last half century; — which, main
taining the same spirit amidst great changes
of technical language, and even of specula
tive principle, have now exclusive possession
of Europe to the north of the Rhine. — have
been welcomed by the French youth with
open arms, — have roused in some measure
the languishing genius of Italy, but are still
little known, and unjustly estimated by the
mere English reader. He found himself
however, soon reduced to the necessity of
either being superficial, arid by consequence
uninstructive, or of devoting to that subject
a far longer time than he can now spare, and
a much larger space than the limits of this
work would probably allow. The majority
of readers will, indeed, be more disposed
to require an excuse for the extent of what
has been done, than for the relinquishment
of projected additions. All readers must
agree that this is peculiarly a subject on
which it is better to be silent than to say too
little.
A very few observations, however, on the
German philosophy, as far as relates to its
ethical bearings and influence, may perhaps
be pardoned. These remarks are not so
much intended to be applied to the moral
doctrines of that school, considered in them
selves, as to those apparent defects in the
prevailing systems of Ethics throughout Eu
rope, which seem to have suggested the ne
cessity of their adoption. Kant has himself
acknowledged that his whole theory of the
percipient and intellectual faculty was in
tended to protect the first principles of human
knowledge against the assaults of Hume.
In like manner, his Ethical system is evi
dently framed for the purpose of guarding
certain principles, either directly governing,
or powerfully affecting practice, which seem
ed to him to have been placed on unsafe
foundations by their advocates, and which
were involved in perplexity and confusion,
especially by those who adapted the results
of various and sometimes contradictory sys
tems to the taste of multitudes, — more eager
to know than prepared to be taught. To the
theoretical Reason the former superadded the
Practical Reason, which had peculiar laws
and principles of its own, from which all the
rules of Morals may be deduced. The Prac
tical Reason cannot be conceived without
these laws ; therefore they are inherent. It
perceives £hem to be necessary and universal.
Hence, by a process not altogether dissimilar,
at least in its gross results, to that which was
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
185
employed for the like purpose by Cudworth
and Clarke, by Price, and in some degree by
Stewart, he raises the social affections, and
still more the Moral Sentiments, above the
sphere of enjoyment, and beyond that series
of enjoyments which is called happiness.
The performance of duty, not the pursuit of
happiness, is in this system the chief end of
man. By the same intuition we discover
that Virtue deserves happiness; and as this
desert is not uniformly so requited in the
present state of existence, it compels us to
believe a moral government of the world,
and a future state of existence, in which all
the conditions of the Practical Reason will
be realized ; — truths, of which, in the opinion
of Kant, the argumentative proofs were at
least very defective, but of which the reve
lations of the Practical Reason afforded a
more conclusive demonstration than any pro
cess of reasoning could supply. The Un
derstanding, he owned, saw nothing in the
connection of motive with volition different
from what it discovered in every other uni
form sequence of a cause and an effect. But
as the moral law delivered by the Practical
Reason issues peremptory and inflexible
commands, the power of always obeying
them is implied in their very nature. All
individual objects, all outward things, must
indeed be viewed in the relation of cause
and effect : these last are necessary condi
tions of all reasoning. But the acts of the
faculty which wills, of which we are imme
diately conscious, belong to another province
of mind, and are not subject to these laws of
the Theoretical Reason. The mere intellect
must still regard them as necessarily con
nected ; but the Practical Reason distinguish
es its own liberty from the necessity of nature,
conceives volition without at the same time
conceiving an antecedent to it, and regards
all moral beings as the original authors of
their own actions.
Even those who are unacquainted with
this complicated and comprehensive system,
will at once see the slightness of the above
sketch: those who understand it, will own
that so brief an outline could not be other
wise than slight. It will, however, be suf
ficient for the present purpose, if it render
what follows intelligible.
With respect to what is called the " Prac
tical Reason," the Kantian system varies
from ours, in treating it as having more re
semblance to the intellectual powers than to
sentiment and emotion : — enough has al-
r^ady been said on that question. At the
next step, however, the difference seems to
resolve itself into a misunderstanding. The
character and dignity of the human race
surely depend, not on the state in which
they are born, but on that which they are all
destined to attain, or to approach. No man
would hesitate in assenting to this observa
tion, when applied to the intellectual facul
ties. Thus, the human infant comes into
the world imbecile and ignorant ; but a vast
majority acquire some vigour of reason and
24
extent of knowledge. Strictly, the human
infant is born neither selfish nor social ; but
a far greater part acquire some provident
regard to their own welfare, and a number,
probably not much smaller, feel some sparks
of affection towards others. On our princi
ples, therefore, as much as on those of Kant,
human nature is capable of disinterested
sentiments. For we too allow and contend
that our Moral Faculty is a necessary part of
human nature, — that it universally exists in
human beings, — and that we cannot conceive
any moral agents without qualities which
are either like, or produce the like effects.
It is necessarily regarded by us as co-exten
sive with human, and even with moral nature.
In what other sense can universality be pre
dicated of any proposition not identical ?
Why should it be tacitly assumed that all
these great characteristics of Conscience
should necessarily presuppose its being un
formed and underived ? What contradiction
is there between them and the theory of
regular and uniform formation ?
In this instance it would seem that a ge
neral assent to truth is chiefly, if not solely,
obstructed by an inveterate prejudice, arising
from the mode in which the questions relat
ing to the affections and the Moral Faculty
have been discussed among ethical philo
sophers. Generally speaking, those who
contend that these parts of the mind are
acquired, have also held that they are, in
their perfect state, no more than modifica
tions of self-love. On the other hand, phi
losophers "of purer fire," who felt that Con
science is sovereign, and that affection is
disinterested, have too hastily fancied that
their ground was untenable, without con
tending that these qualities were inherent or
innate, and absolutely underived from any
other properties of Mind. If a choice were
necessary between these two systems as
masses of opinion, without any freedom of
di.scriminat.ion and selection. I should un
questionably embrace that doctrine which
places in the clearest light the reality of
benevolence and the authority of the Moral
Faculty. But it is surely easy to apply a
test which may be applied to our conceptions
as effectually as a decisive experiment is
applied to material substances. Does not
he who, whatever he may think of the origin
of these parts of human nature, believes
that actually Conscience is supreme, and af
fection terminates in its direct object, retain
all that for which the partisans of the un
derived principles value and cling to their
system'? "But they are made," these phi
losophers may say, " by this class of our
antagonists, to rest on insecure foundations :
unless they are underived, we can see no
reason for regarding them as independent."
In answer, it may be asked, how is conneo
tion between these two qualities established ?
It is really assumed. It finds its way easily
into the mind under the protection of another
coincidence, which is of a totally different
nature. The great majority of those specu-
Q2
186
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
lators who have represented the moral and
social feelings as acquired, have also consi
dered them as being mere modifications of
self-love, and sometimes as being casually
formed and easily eradicated, like local and
temporary prejudices. But when the nature
of our feelings is thoroughly explored, is it
not evident that this coincidence is the result
of superficial confusion ? The better moralists
observed accurately, and reasoned justly, on
the province of the Moral Sense and the
feelings in the formed and mature man : they
reasoned mistakenly on the origin of these
principles. But the Epicureans were by no
means right, even on the latter question ;
and they were totally wrong on the olher,
and far more momentous, part of the subject :
their error is more extensive, and infinitely
more injurious. But what should now hin
der an inquirer after truth from embracing,
but amending their doctrine where it is par
tially true, and adopting without any change
the just description of the most important
principles of human nature which we owe
to their more enlightened as well as more
generous antagonists ?
Though unwilling to abandon the argu
ments by which, from the earliest times,
the existence of the Supreme and Eternal
Mind has been established, we, as well as
the German philosophers, are entitled to call
in the help of our moral nature to lighten
the burden of those tremendous difficulties
which cloud His moral government. The
moral nature is an actual part of man, as
much on our scheme as on theirs.
Even the celebrated questions of Liberty
and Necessity may perhaps be rendered
somewhat less perplexing, if we firmly bear
in mind that peculiar relation of Conscience
to the Will which we have attempted to il
lustrate. It is impossible for Reason to con
sider occurrences otherwise than as bound
together by the connection of cause and ef
fect ; and in this circumstance consists the
strength of the Necessitarian system. But
Conscience, which is equally a constituent
part of the mind, has other laws. It is com
posed of emotions and desires, which contem
plate only those dispositions which depend on
the Will. Now, it is the nature of an emotion
to withdraw the mind from the contemplation
of every idea but that of the object which
excites it : while every desire exclusively
looks at the object which it seeks. Every
attempt to enlarge the mental vision alters
the tftate of mind, weakens the emotion, or
dissipates the desire, and tends to extin
guish both. If a man, while he was pleased
with the smell of a rose, were to reflect on
the chemical combinations from which it
arose, the condition of his mind would be
changed from an enjoyment of the senses
to an exertion of the Understanding. If,
in the view of a beautiful scene, a man
were suddenly to turn his thoughts to the
disposition of water, vegetables, and earths,
on which its appearance depended, he might
enlarge his knowledge of Geology, but he
must lose the pleasure of the prospect. The
anatomy and analysis of the flesh and blood
of a beautiful woman necessarily suspend
admiration and affection. Many analogies
here present themselves. .When life is in
danger either in a storm or a battle, it is cer
tain that less fear is felt by the commander
or the pilot, and even by the private soldier
actively engoged/ or the common seaman la
boriously occupied, than by those viho are
exposed to the peril, but not employed in
the means of guarding against it. The rea
son is not that the one class believe the dan
ger to be less: they are likely in many in
stances to perceive it more clearly. But
having acquired a habit of instantly turning
their thoughts to means of counteracting the
danger, their minds are thrown into a state
which excludes the ascendency of fear. —
Mental fortitude entirely depends on this
habit. The timid horseman is haunted by
the fear of a fall : the bold and skilful thinks
only about the best way of curbing or sup
porting his horse. Even when all means of
avoiding danger are in both cases evidently
unavailable, the brave man still owes to his
fortunate habit that he does not suffer the
agony of the coward. Many cases have
been known where fortitude has reached
such strength that the faculties, instead of
being confounded by danger, are never raised
to their highest activity by a less violent
stimulant. The distinction between such
men and the coward does not depend on dif
ference of opinion about the reality or extent
of the danger, but on a state of mind \\hich
renders it more or less accessible to fear.
Though it must be owned that the Moral
Sentiments are very different from any other
human faculty, yet the above observations
seem to be in a great measure applicable to
every state of mind. The emotions and de
sires which compose Conscience, while they
occupy the mind, must exclude all contem
plation of the cause in which the object of
these feelings may have originated. To their
eye the voluntary dispositions and actions,
their sole object, must appear to be the first
link of a chain : in the view of Conscience
these have no foreign origin, and her view,
constantly associated as she is with all voli
tions, becomes habitual. Being always pos
sessed of some, and capable of intense
warmth, it predominates over the habits of
thinking of those few who are employed in
the analysis of mental occupations.
The reader who has in any degree been
inclined to adopt the explanations attempted
above, of the imperative character of Con
science, may be disposed also to believe that
they afford some foundation for that convic
tion of the existence of a power to obey its
commands, which (it ought to be granted to
the German philosophers) is irresistibly sug
gested by the commanding tone of all its
dictates. * If such an explanation should be
thought worthy of consideration, it must be
very carefully distinguished from that illu
sive sense by which some writers have la-
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 1ST
boured to reconcile the feeling of liberty with
the reality of necessity.* In this case there
is no illusion ; nothing is required but the
admission, that every faculty observes its
own laws, and that when the action of the
one fills the mind, that of every other is sus
pended. The ear cannot see, nor can the
eye hear : why then should not the greater
powers of Reason and Conscience have dif
ferent habitual modes of contemplating vo
luntary actions ? How strongly do experience
and analogy seem to require the arrange
ment of motive and volition under the class
of causes and effects! With what irresisti
ble power, on the other hand, do all our mo
ral sentiments remove extrinsic agency from
view, and concentrate all feeling in the agent
himself ! The one manner of thinking may
predominate among the speculative few in
their short moments of abstraction ; the other
will be that of all other men, and of the
speculator himself when he is called upon
to act, or when his feelings are powerfully
excited by the amiable or odious disposi
tions of his fellow-men. In these work
ings of various faculties there is nothing
that can be accurately described as contra
riety of opinion. An intellectual state, and
a feeling, never can be contrary to each
other: they are too utterly incapable of com
parison to be the subject of contrast; they
are agents of a perfectly different nature,
acting in different spheres. A feeling can
no more be called true or false, than a de
monstration, considered simply in itself,
can be said to be agreeable or disagreeable.
It is true, indeed, that in consequence of
the association of all mental acts with each
other, emotions and desires may occasion
habitual errors of judgment : but liability to
error belongs to every exercise of human
reason ; it arises from a multitude of causes ;
it constitutes, therefore, no difficulty peculiar
to the case before us. Neither truth nor
falsehood can be predicated of the percep
tions of the senses, but they lead to false
opinions. An object seen through different
mediums may by the inexperienced be
thought to be no longer the same. All men
long concluded falsely, from what they saw,
that the earth was stationary, and the sun
in perpetual motion around it : the greater
part of mankind still adopt the same error.
Newton and Laplace used the same language
with the ignorant, and conformed, — if we
may not say to their opinion, — at least to
their habits of thinking on all ordinary occa
sions, and during the far greater part of their
lives. Nor is this all : the language which
represents various states of mind is very
vague. The word which denotes a com
pound state is often taken from its principal
fact, — from that which is most conspicuous,
most easily called to mind, most warmly felt,
or most frequently recurring. It is some
times borrowed from a separate, but, as it
* Lord Kames, in his Essays on Morality and
Natural Religion, and in his Sketches of the His
tory of Man.
were, neighbouring condition of mind. The
jrand distinction between thought and feei
ng is so little observed, that we are pecu-
iarly liable to confusion on this subject. —
Perhaps when we use language which indi
cates an opinion concerning the acts of the
Will, we may mean little more than to ex
press strongly and warmly the moral senti-
.nents which voluntary acts alone call up. It
would argue disrespect for the human un
derstanding, vainly employed for so many
centuries in reconciling contradictory opi
nions, to propose such suggestions without
peculiar diffidence ; but before they are alto
gether rejected, it may be well to consider,
whether the constant success of the advo
cates of Necessity on one ground, and of the
partisans of Free Will on another, does not
seem to indicate that the two parties con
template the subject from different points of
view, that neither habitually sees more than
one side of it, and that they look at it through
the medium of different states of mind.
It should be remembered that these hints
of a possible reconciliation between seeming
ly repugnant opinions are proposed, not as
perfect analogies, but to lead men's minds
into the inquiry, whether that which certain
ly befalls the mind, in many cases on a small
scale, may not, under circumstances favour
able to its development, occur with greater
magnitude and more important consequen
ces. The coward and brave md,n, as has
been stated, act differently at the approach
of danger, because it produces exertion in the
one, and fear in the other. But very brave
men must, by force of the term, be few :
they have little aid in their highest acts,
therefore, from fellow-feeling. They are
often too obscure for the hope of praise ; and
they have seldom been trained to cultivate
courage as a virtue. The very reverse oc
curs in the different view taken by the Un
derstanding and by Conscience, of the nature
of voluntary actions. The conscientious
view must, in some degree, present itself to
all mankind ; it is therefore unspeakably
strengthened by general sympathy. All men
respect themselves for being habitually
guided by it : it is the object of general com
mendation ; and moral discipline has no other
aim but its cultivation. Whoever does not
feel more pain from his crimes than from
his misfortunes, is looked on with general
aversion. And when it is considered that a
Being of perfect wisdom and goodness esti
mates us according to the degree in which
Conscience governs our voluntary acts, it is
surely no wonder that, in this most impor
tant discrepancy between the great faculties
of our nature, we should consider the best
habitual disposition to be that which the cold
est Reason shows us to be most conducive
to well-doing and well-being.
On every other point, at least, it would
seem that, without the multiplied supposi
tions and immense apparatus of the German
school, the authority of Morality may bo
vindicated, the disinterestedness of human
188
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
nature asserted, the first principles of know
ledge secured, and the hopes and consola
tions of mankind preserved. Ages may yet
be necessary to give to ethical theory all the
forms and language of a science, and to ap
ply it to the multiplied and complicated facts
and rules which are within its province. In
the mean time, if the opinions here unfolded,
or intimated, shall be proved to be at vari
ance with the reality of social affections, and
with the feeling of moral distinction, the
author of this Dissertation will be the first to
relinquish a theory which will then show
itself inadequate to explain the most indis
putable, as well as by far the most import
ant, parts of human nature. If it shall be
shown to lower the character of Man, to
cloud his hopes, or to impair his sense of
duty, he will be grateful to those who may
point out his error, and deliver him from the
poignant regret of adopting opinions which
lead to consequences so pernicious.
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
.NOTE A. page 103.
THE remarks of Cicero on the Stoicism of Cato
are perhaps the most perfect specimen of that re
fined raillery which attains the object of the ora
tor without general injustice to the person whose
authority is for the moment to be abated : —
" Accessit his tot doctrina non moderata, nee
mitis, sed, ut mihi videtur, paulo asperior et durior
quam aut veritas aut natura patiatur." After an
enumeration of the Stoical paradoxes, he adds :
" Hffic homo ingeniosissimus, M. Cato, auctoribus
eruditissimis inductus, arripuit ; neque disputandi
causa, ut magna pars, sed ita vivendi . . . Nostri
autem isti (fatebor enim, Cato, me quoque in ado-
lescentia diffisum ingenio meo quaesisse adjumenta
doclrinae) nostri, inquam, illi a Platone atque Aris-
totele moderati homines et temperati aiunt apud
sapientem valere aliquando gratiam ; viri boniesse
misereri; . . . omnesvirtutes mediocritate quadam
esse moderatas. Hos ad magistros si qua te for-
tuna, Cato, cum isia natura detulisset, non tu qui-
dem yir melior esses, nee fortior, nee temperantior,
nee justior (neque enim esse poles), sed paulo ad
lenitatem propensior." — Pro Murena. — Cap. xxix.
— xxxi.
NOTE B. page 106. \. •'
The greater part of the following extract from
Grotius' History of the Netherlands is inserted
as the best abridgment of the ancient history of
these still subsisting controversies known in our
time. I extract also the introduction as a model
of the manner in which an historian may state a
religious dispute which has influenced political af
fairs ; but far more because it is an unparalleled
example of equity and forbearance in the narra
tive of a contest of which the historian was him
self a victim : —
" Habuit hie annus (1608) haud spernendi quoque
rnali semina, vix ut arma desierant, exorto pub
lics religionis dissidio, latentibus initiis, sed ut
paulatim in majus erumperet. Lugduni sacras
literas docebant viri eruditione praestantes Goma-
rus et Arminius ; quorum ille aeterna Dei lego
fixurri memorabat, cui hominum salus destinaretur,
q\iis in exttium tenderet; inde alios ad piefatem
Irani, et tractos custodiri ne elabantur; relinqni
alios communi humanitatis vitio et suis criminibus
involutes: hie vero contra integrum judicem, sed
eundem optimum patrem. id reorum fecisse dis-
crimen, ut peccandi pertaesisfiduciamque in Chris
tum reponentibus veniam ac vitam daret, contu-
macibus poenam ; Deoque gratum, ut omnes re-
jipiscant, ac meiiora edocti retineant; sed cogi
neminem. Accusabantque invicem ; Arminius
Gomarum, quod peccandi causas Deo ascriberet,
ac fati persuasione teneret immobiles animos;
Gomarus Arminium, quod longius ipsis Roman-
ensium scitis hominem arrogantia impieret, nee
pateretur soli Deo acceptam Jerri, rem maximam,
bonam mentem. Cpnstat his queis cura legere
veterum libros, antiques Christianorum tribuisse
hominum voluntati vim liberam, tarn in accep-
tanda, quam in retinenda disciplina; unde sua
pragma's ac suppliciis aequitas. Neque iidem tarnen
omisere cuncta divinam ad boriitatem referre,
cujus munere salutare semen ad nos pervenisset,
ac cujus singular! auxilio pericula nostra indigerent.
Primus omnium Augustinus, ex quo ipsi cum Pe-
lagio et eum secutis certamen (nam ante aliter et
ipse senseret), acer disputandi, ita libertatis vocem
relinquere, ut ei decreta quaBdam Dei prasponeret,
quae vim ipsam destruere viderentur. At per Graa-
ciam quidem Asiamque retenta vetus ilia ac sim-
plicior sententia. Per Occidentem magnum Au-
gustini nomen multostraxitin consensum, repertis
tamen per Galliam et alibi qui se opponerent, pos-
tcrioribus soeculis, cum schola non alio magis
quam Augustino doctore uteretur, quis ipsi sensus,
quis dexter pugnare visa conciliandi modus, diu
inter Francisci et Dominici familiam disputato,
doctissimi Jesuitarum, cum exaction subtilitate
nodum solvere laborassent, Romse accusati aagre
damnationem effugere. At Proteslantium prin-
ceps, Lutherus, egressus monasterio quod Augus-
tini ut nomen, ita sensus sequebatur, parte Au-
gustini arrepta, id quod is reliquerat, libertatis
nomen, ccepit exscindere ; quod tarn grave Eras-
mo visum, ut cum caetera ipsius aut probaret aut
silentio transmitteret, hie objiciat sese : cujus ar-
gumentis motus Philippus Melanchthon, Lutheri
adjutor, qua3 prius scripserat immutavit, auctorque
fuit Luthero, quod mulii volunt, certe quod con-
stat Lutheranis, deserendi decreta rigida et con-
ditionem respuentia ; sic tamen ut libertatis vo-
cabulum quam rem magis perhorrescerent. At
in altera Protestantium parte dux Calyinus, primis
Lutheri dictis in hac controversia inhasrescens,
novis ea fulsit praesidiis, addiditque intactum Au
gustine, veram ac salutarem fidem rem esse per-
petuam et amitti nesciam : cujus proinde qui sibi
essent conscii, eos aeternae felicitatis jam nunc
certos esse, quos interim in crirnina, quantumvis
gravia, prolabi posse non diffitebatur. Auxit sen-
tentiae rigorem Genevae Beza, per Germaniam
Zanchius, Ursinus, Piscator, saepe eo usque pro-
vecti, ut, quod alii anxie vitaverant, apertius non-
nunquam traderent, etiam pecrandi necessitatem a
prima causa pendere : quae ampla Lutheranis cri-
minandi materia."— Lib. xvii. p. 552.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
189
NOTE C. page 106.
The Calvinism, or rather Augustinianism, of
Aquinas is placed beyond all doubt by the follow
ing passages: "Praedestinatio est causa gratia? et
gloriae."— Opera, (Paris, 1664.) vol. vii. p. 356.
*' Numerus praedestinatorum certus est." — p. 363.
" Praescientia meritorum nullo modo est causa
prsedestinationis divinas." — p. 370. "Liberum
arbitrium est facultas qua bonum eligitur, gratia
assistente, vel malum, eadem desistente." — vol.
viii. p. 222. " Deus inclinat ad bonum adminis-
trando virtntem agendi et monendo ad bonum.
Sed ad malum diciturinclinarein quantum gratiam
non praebet, per quam aliquis a malo retrahere-
tur." — p. 364. On the other side: " Accipitur
fides pro eo quo creditur, et est virtus, et pro eo
quod creditur, et non est virtus. Fides qua credi
tur, si cum caritate sit, virtus est." — vol. ix. p.
236. "Divina bonitas est primum principium
communicationis totius quam Deus creaturis lar-
gitur." " Quamvis omne quod Deus vult justum
sit, non tamen ex hoc justum dicitur quod Deus
illud vult."— p. 697.
NOTE D. page 106.
The Augustinian doctrine is, with some hesita
tion and reluctance, acquiesced in by Scotus, in
that milder form which ascribes election to an ex
press decree, and considers the rest of mankind as
only left to the deserved penalties of their trans
gressions. " In hujus quaastionis solutione mallem
alios audire quam docere."— Opera, Lugd. 1639.
vol. v. p. 1329. This modesty and prudence is
foreign to the dogmatical genius of a Schoolman ;
and these qualities are still more apparent in the
very remarkable language which he applies to the
tremendous doctrine of reprobation. " Eorum
autem non miseretur (scil. Deus) quibus gratiam
non prcebendam esse cequitate occultissima et ab
humanis sensibus remotissimd judicat." — p. 1329.
In the commentary on Scotus which follows, it
appears that his acute disciple Ockham disputed
very freely against the opinions of his master.
" Mala fieri bonum est" is a startling paradox,
quoted by Scotus from Augustin. — p. 1381. It
appears that Ockham saw no difference between
election and reprobation, and considered those
who embraced only the former as at variance with
themselves. — p. 1313. Scotus, at great length,
contends that our thoughts (consequently our
opinions) are not subject to the will. — vol. vi. pp.
1054 — 1056. One step more would have led him
to acknowledge that all erroneous judgment is in
voluntary, and therefore inculpable and unpunish
able, however pernicious. His attempt to recon
cile foreknowledge with contingency (vol. v. pp.
1300 — 1327), is a remarkable example of the power
of human subtlety to keep up the appearance of a
struggle where it is impossible to make one rea"
effort. But the most dangerous of all the devia
tions of Scotus from the system of Aquinas is
that he opened the way to the opinion that the
distinction of right and wrong depends on the
mere will of the Eternal Mind. The absolute
power of the Deity, according to him, extends to
all but contradictions. His regular power (ordinata
is exercised conformably to an order esta^blishec
by himself: "si placet voluntati, sub qua libera
est, recta est lex." — p. 1368, et seq.
NOTE E. page 106.
Plat. Op. (Bipont. 1781.) vol. ii. p. 224
— Ha.<rwi djuvariof dfAzQiw «v*/. — p. 227. Plato i_
quoted on this subject by Marcus Aurelius, in a
manner which shows, if there had been any doubt
the meaning to be, that all error is involuntary
TT/r/l-x* .Lfi*Y/U nfvr.Il/T/* /Tfrtt\tt(Tftt rT-tt/» /Vi nAtlr*/- ^*? 1G*\A
Tw. Every mind is unwillingly led from
ruth. — Epict. Dissert, lib. i. cap. xxviii. Augustin
loses the long line of ancient testimony to the in-
oluntary character of error : " Quis est qui velit
ecipi ? Fallere nolunt boni ; falli autem nee boni
olunt nee mali." — Sermo de Verbo.
• NOTE F. page 106.
From a long, able, and instructive dissertation
»y the commentator on Scotus, it appears that this
nimoral dogma was propounded in terms more
>old and startling by Ockham, who openly affirm-
•d, that " moral evil was only evil because it was
irohibited." — Ochamus, qui putat quod nihil pos-
et esse malum sine voluntate prohibitiva Dei,
lancque voluntatem esse liberam ; sic ut posset
sam non habere, et consequenter ut posset fieri
}uod nulla prorsus essent mala." — Scot. Op. vol.
ii. p. 859. But, says the commentator, " Dico
rimo legem naturalem non consistere in jussione
ilia quae sit actus voluntatis Dei. Haec est com-
munissima theologorum sententia." — p. 858. And
ndeed the reason urged against Ockham complete-
y justifies this approach to unanimity. " For," he
asks, " why is it right to obey the will of God ?
:s it because our moral faculties perceive it to be
right ? But they equally perceive and feel the
authority of all the primary principles of morality ;
and if this answer be made, it is obvious that those
who make it do in effect admit the independence
of moral distinctions on the will of God." " If
jrod," said Ockham, " had commanded his crea-
ures to hate himself, hatred of God would have
been praiseworthy." — Domin. Soto de Justitiaet
Jure, lib. ii. quaest. 3. " Ulrum praecepta Deca-
logi sint dispensabitia ;" — a book dedicated to
Don Carlos, the son of Phillip II. Suarez, the
ast scholastic philosopher, rejected the Ockhami-
cal doctrine, but allowed will to be a part of the
foundation of Morality. " Voluntas Dei non est
tola ratio bonitatis aut malitiae. — De Legibus,
(Lond. 1679.) p. 71. As the great majority of the
Schoolmen supported their opinion of this subject
by the consideration of eternal and immutable
ideas of right and wrong in the Divine Intellect, it
was natural that the Nominalists, of whom Ock
ham was the founder, who rejected all general
ideas, should also have rejected those moral dis
tinctions which were then supposed to originate
in such ideas. Gerson was a celebrated Nomi
nalist ; and he was the more disposed to follow
the opinions of his master because they agreed in
maintaining the independence of the State on the
Church, and the superiority of the Church over the
Pope.
NOTE G. page 107.
It must be premised that Charitas among the
ancient divines corresponded with Epac of the Pla-
tonists, and with the yi\ia. of later philosophers,
as comprehending the love of all that is loveworthy
in the Creator or his creatures. It is the theologi
cal virtue of charity, and corresponds with no term
in use among modern moralists. " Cum objectum
amoris sit bonum, dupliciter potest aliquis tendere
in bonum alicujus rei ; uno modo, quod bonum
illius rei ad alterum referat, sicut amat quis vinum
in quantum dulcedinem vini peroptat ; et hie amor
vocatur a quibusdam amor concupiscentiae. Amor
autem iste non terminatur ad rem qua dicitur amari,
sed reflectitur ad rem illam cui optatur bonum illius
rei. Alio modo amor fortior in bonum alicujus rei,
ita quod ad rem ipsam terminatur; et hie est amor
benevolent!®. Qua bonum nostrum in Deo perfec-
tum est, sicut in causa universali bonorum ; ideo bo
num in ipso esse magis naturaliter complacet quam
in nobis ipsis : et ideoetiam amore amicitiae natu
raliter Deus ab homine plus seipso diligitur." The
above quotations from Aquinas will probably be
sufficient for those who are acquainted with theso
100
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
questions, and they will certainly be thought too
large by those who are not. In the next question
he inquires, whether in the love of God there can
be any view to reward. He appears to consider
himself as bound by authority to answer in the
affirmative ; and he employs much ingenuity in
reconciling a certain expectation of reward with
the disinterested character ascribed by him to piety
in common with all the affections which terminate
in other beings. " Nikil aliud est merces nostra
quam perfrui Deo* Ergo charitas non solum non
excludit, sed etiam facit habere oculum ad mer-
cedem." In this answer he seems to have anti
cipated the representations of Jeremy Taylor
(Sermon on Growth in Grace), of Lord Shanes-
bury (Inquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part iii.
sect. 3), of Mr. T. Erskine (Freeness of the Gos
pel, Edin. 1828), and more especially of Mr. John
Smith (Discourses, Lond. 1660). No extracts
could convey a just conception of the observations
which follow, unless they were accompanied by a
longer examination of the technical language of
the Schoolmen than would be warranted on this
occasion. It is clear that he distinguishes well
the affection of piety from the happy fruits, which,
as he cautiously expresses it, "are in the nature
of a reward ;" — just as the consideration of the
pleasures and advantages of friendship may enter
into the affection and strengthen it, though they
are not its objects, and never could inspire such a
feeling. It seems to me aK<o that he had a dim
mer view of another doctrine, by which we are
taught, that though our own happiness be not the
end which we pursue in loving others, yet it may
be the final cause of the insenion of disinterested
affections into the nature of man. " Ponere mer-
cedem aliquam finem amoris ex parte amati, est
contra rationem amicitia?. Sed ponere mercedem
esse finem amoris ex parte amantis, non tamen
ultimam, prout scilicet ipse amor est quaedam
operatio amantis, non est contra rationem amicitiae.
Possum operationem amoris amare propter aliquid
aliud, salva amicitia. Potest habeas charitatem
habere oculum ad mercedem, uli ponat beatitudinem
creatam finem amoris, non aulem finem amati.'1
Upon the last words rny interpretation chiefly de
pends. The immediately preceding sentence
must be owned to have been founded on a distinc
tion between viewing the good fruits of our own
affections as enhancing their intrinsic pleasures,
and feeling love for another on account of the ad
vantage to be derived from him ; which last is in
conceivable.
NOTE H. p. 107.
" Potestas spirituals et secularis utraque de-
ducitur a potestate divina; ideo in tantum secu
laris est sub spiritual!, in quantum est a Deo
supposita ; scilicet, in his qua ad salutem animae
pertinent. In his autem qua? ad bonum civile
epectant, est magis obediendum potestati secu-
lari ; sicut illud Matthaei, ' Reddite quae sunt C&-
saris Csesari.' " What follows is more doubtful.
"... Nisi/or«e potestati spiritual! etiam potestas
eecularis conjungatur, ut in Papa, qui utriusque
potestatis apicem tenet." — Op. vol. viii. p. 435.
Here, says the French editor, it may be doubted
whether Aquinas means the Pope's temporal
power in his own dominions, or a secular autho
rity indirectly extending over all for the sake of
religion. My reasons for adopting the more ra
tional construction are shortly these: — 1. The
text of Matthew is so plain an assertion of the in
dependence of both powers, that it would be the
height of extravagance to quote it as an authority
for the dependence of ihe stale. At mo?t it could
only be represented as reconcilable with such a
dependence in one case. 2. The word 'forte*
seems manifestly to refer to the territorial sove
reignty acquired by the Popes. If they have a
general power in secular affairs, it must be be
cause it is necessary to their spiritual authority \
and in that case to call it fortuitous would be ta
ascribe to it an adjunct destructive of its nature*
3. His former reasoning on the same question
seems to be decisive. The power of«he Pope
over bishops, he says, is not founded merely in
his superior nature, but in their authority being
altogether derived from his, as the proconsular
power from the imperial. Therefore he infers
that this case is not analagous to the relation be
tween the civil and spiritual power, which are
alike derived from God. 4. Had an Italian monk
of the twelfth century really intended to affirm
the Pope's temporal authority, he probably would
have laid it down in terms more explicit and more
acceptable at Rome. Hesitaiion and ambiguity-
are here indications of unbelief. Mere veneration
for the apostolical See might present a more pre
cise determination against it, as it caused the quo
tation which follows, respecting the primacy of
Peter. — A mere abridgment of these very cu
rious passages might excite a suspicion that I had
tinctured Aquinas unconsciously with a colour of
my own opinions. Extracts are very difficult,
from the scholastic method of stating objections
and answers, as well as from the mixture of theo
logical authorities with philosophical reasons.
NOTE I. page 108.
The debates in the first assembly of the Coun
cil of Trent (A. D. 1546) between the Dominicans
who adhered to Aquinas, and the Franciscans who*
followed Scotuson Original Sin, Justification, and
Grace, are to be found in Fra Paolo (Istoria del
Concilio Tridentino, lib. ii.) They show how much
metaphysical controversy is hid in a theological
form; how many disputes of our times are of no
very ancient origin, and how strongly the whole
Western Church, through all the divisions into
which it has been separated, has manifested the
same unwillingness to avow the Augustinian sys
tem, and the same fear of contradicting it. To
his admirably clear and short statement of these
abstruse controversies, must be added that of his
accomplished opponent Cardinal Pallavicino (Isto
ria, &c. lib. vii. et viii.), who shows still more
evidently the strength of the Augustinian party,
and the disposition of the Council to tolerate
opinions almost Lutheran, if not accompanied by
revolt from the Church. A little more compro
mising disposition in the Reformers might have
betrayed reason to a prolonged thraldom. We
must esteem Erasmus and Me tench thon, but we
should reserve our gratitude for Luther and Cal
vin. The Scotists maintained their doctrine of
merit of congruity, waived by the Council, and
soon after condemned by the Church of England ;
by which they meant that they who had good dis
positions always received the Divine grace, not
indeed as a reward of which they were worthy,
but as aid which they were fit and willing to re
ceive. The Franciscans denied that belief was in
the power of man. " I Francescani lo negavano
seguendo Scoto, qual vupl'e che srccome dalle
dimostrazioni per necessita nasce la scienza, cos-
dalle persuasioni nasca la fede ; e ch' essa e nell' in-
telletlo, il quale e agente naturale, e mosso natural-
mente dall' oggetto. Allegavano 1' esperienza, che
nessuno puo credere quello che vuole, ma quello che
gli par vero." — Fra. Paolo, Istoria, &c. (Helm-
stadf, 1763, 4to.), vol. i. p. 193. Cardinal Sforza
Pallavicino, a learned and very able Jesuit, was
appointed, according to his own account, in 1651,
many years after the death of Fra Paolo, to write
a true history of the Council of Trent, as a cor
rective of the misrepresentations of the celebrated
Venetian. Algernon Sidney, who knew this court
historian at Rome, and who may he believed when
he speaks well of a Jesuit and a cardinal, com
mends the work in a letter to his father, Lord
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
191
Leicester. At the end of Pallavicino'a work is
a list of three hundred and sixty errors in matters
of fact, which the Papal party pretended to have
detected in the independent historian, whom they
charge with heresy or infidelity, and in either
case, with hypocrisy.
NoxEK. page 110.
" Hoc tempore, Ferditiando et Isabella rognan-
tibus, in academia Salmamina jac'a sun? robusti-
oris theologiae semina; ingentis etiim fatnae vir
Franciscus de Victoria, non tain lucuhraiionibus
editis, quamvis hasc non magnac molis aut maiMii
pretii sint, sed doctissimorum theologorum edu-
catione. quamdiu fuerit sacrae sci«:-niia3 honos inter
mortales, vehementer laudabiiur." — Anionio, Bi-
bliotheca Hispanica Nova, (Madrid, 1783,) in prasf
" Si ad morum instructoresrespicias, Sotusiterum
nominabitur. " — Ibid.
NOTE L. page 110.
The title of the published account of the con
ference at Valladolid is, " The controversy be
tween the Bishop of Chiapa and Dr. Sepulveda ;
in which the Doctor contended that the conquest
of the Indies from the natives was lawful, and the
Bishop maintained that it was unlawful, tyran
nical, and unjust, in the presence of many theolo
gians, lawyers, and other learned men assembled
by his Majesty. :'-Bibl. Hisp. Nova, torn. i. p. 192.
Las Casas died in 1566, in the 92d year of his
age; Sepulveda died in 1571, in his 82d year.
Sepulveda was the scholar of Pomponatius, and a
friend of Erasmus, Cardinal Pole, Aldus Manu-
tius, &c. In his book " De Justis Belli Causis
contra Indos suscepti," he contended only that
the king ought justly "ad ditionem Indos, non
herilem sedregiam etcivilem, lege belli redigere."
— Antonio, voce Sepulveda, Btbl. Hisp. Nova,
torn. i. p. 703. But this smooth and specious lan
guage concealed poison. Had it entirely pre
vailed, the cruel consequence of the defeat of the
advocate of the oppressed would alone have re
mained ; the limitations and softenings em
by their opponent to obtain success would have
been speedily disregarded and forgotten. Covar-
ruvias, another eminent Jurist, was sent by Phi
lip II. to the Council of Trent, at its renewal in
1560, and, with Cardinal Buoncampagni, drew up
the decrees of reformation. Francis Sanchez, the
father of philosophical grammar, published his
Minerva at Salamanca in 1587 ; — so active was
the cultivation of philosophy in Spain in the age
of Cervantes.
NOTE M. page 120.
" Alors en repassant dans mon esprit les di verses
opinions qui m'avoient tour-a-tour entraine depuis
ma nai?sance, je vis que bien qu'aucune d'elles ne
fut assez evidente pour produire immediatement
la conviction, elles avoient divers degres de vrai-
semblarice, et que Passentiment interieur s'y pre-
toit ou s'y refusoit a differentes mesures. Sur
cette premiere observation, comparant entr'elles
toutes ces differentes idees dans le silence des
prejuges, je trouvai que la premiere, et la plus
commune, etoit aussi la plus simple et la plus rai-
sonnable ; et qu'il ne lui manquoit, pour reunir
tons les suffrages, qued'avoir ele proposee la der-
riiere. Imagines tons vos philosophies anciens et
rnodernes. ayant d'ahord epuise leur bizarres sys-
ternes de forces, de chances, de fatalite, de neces-
site, d'atomes. de monde anime, de matiere vi-
vante, de materialisme de toute espece ; et apres
eux tons I'illustre Clarke, eclairant le monde,
annoncant enfin 1'Etre des etres, et le di^pensa-
teur des choses. Avec quelle universelle admi
ration, avec quel applaudissement unanime n'eut
point eie regu ce nouveau sysieme si grand, si
consolant, si sublime, si propre a clever Tame, a
dormer une base a la verm, et en meme terns si
fnppaiit, si lumineux, si simple, et, ce me sernble,
offrant moins de choses incornprelif nsibles a
I'esprit humain. qu'il n'en trouve d'absurdes en
tout autre systeme ! Je me disois, les objections
insolubles sont communes a tous, parceque I'es
prit de I'homme esi trop borne pour les resondre;
elles ne prouvent done rien contre aucun par pre
ference : mais quelle difference entre les preuves
directes!" — Rousseau. GSuvres, tome ix. p. 25.
NOTE N. page 128.
" Est autem jus quaedam potentia moralis, et
olIiiTutio necessitas rnoralis. Moralem autem in*
telligo. quae apud virum bonum aequipollet natu-
rali : Nam ut praeclare jurisconsultus Romanus
ait, quce contra bonos mores sunt, ea nee facer e nos
posse crtdendum est. Vir bonus autem est, qui
amat omnes, quantum ratio permittit. Justitiam
igitur, quae virtus est hujus affectus rectrix, quern
<fox«ti'9»ar7r/*!> Graeci vpcant, commodissime, ni
fallor, definiemus caritatem sapientis, hoc est,
sequentem sapientiae dictata. Itaque, quod Car-
neades dixisse fertur, Justitiam esse summam stul-
titiam, quia alienis utilitatibus consuli jubeat, ne-
glectis propriis, ex ignorata ejus definitipne natum
est. Caritas est benevolentia universalis, et bene-
volentia amandi sive diligendi habitus. Amare
autem sive diligere est felicitate aherius delectari,
vel, quod eodem redit, felicitaiem alienam adscis-
cere in suam. Unde difficilis nodus solvitur,
magni etiam in Theologia momenti, quomodo
amor non mercenarius detur, qui sit a spe metuque
et omni utilitatis respectu separatus : scilicet, quo
rum utilitas delectat, eorum felicitas nostram in-
greditur; nam quos delectant, per se expetuntur.
Et uti pulchrorum contemplatio ipsa jucunda est,
pictaque tabula Raphaelis intelligentem afficit, etsi
nullos census ferat, adeo ut in oculis deliciisque
feratur, quodam simulacro amoris ; ita quum res
pulchra simul etiam felicitatis est capax, transit
affectus in verum amorem. Superat autem di-
vinus amor alios amores, quos Deus cum maximo
successu amare potest, quando Deo simul et feli-
cius nihil est, et nihil pulchrius felicitateque dig-
nius intelligi potest. Et quum idem sit poteniia3
sapientiasque summae, felicitas ejus non tantum
ingreditur nostram (si sapimus, id est, ipsum.
amamus), sed et facit. Quia auiem sapientia cari
tatem dirigere debet, hujus quoque definitione opus
erit. Arbitror autem notioni hotninum op'imesatis-
fieri, si sapientiam nihil aliud esse dicamus, quarn
ipsam scientiam felicitatis." — Leibnitii Opera, vol.
iv. pars iii. p. 294. " Et jus quidem merum sive
strictum nascitur ex principio servandae pacis ;
sequitas sive caritas ad majus aliquid contendit, ut,
dum quisque alteri prodest, quantum potest, feli-
citatem suam augeat in aliena ; et, ut verbo dicam,
jus strictum miseriam vitat, jus superius ad felici-
tatem tendif , sed qualis in hanc mortalitatem cadit,
Quod vero ipsam vitam, et quicquid hanc vitarn
expetendam facit, magno commodo alieno postha-
bere debeamus, ita ut maximos etiam dolores in
aliorum graiiam perferre oporteat ; magis pulchre
praecipitur a philosophis quam solide demonstra-
tur. Nam decus et gloriam, et animi sui virtute
gaudentis sensum, ad qnae sub honestatis nomine
provocant, coffitationis sive mentis bona esse con-
stat, magna qiiidem, sed non omnibus, nee omni
malorum acerbitati praevalitura, quando non om
nes seque imaginando afficiuntur; prapseriim quos
neque educatio liberalis, neque consuetudo vivendi
ingenua, vel vitas sectaeve disciplina ad honoris
cBStimationem, vel animi bona seniienda apsuefecit.
Ut vero universal] demonstration! connViatui,
omne honestum esse utile, et omne turpe damno
sum, aspumendaesf immortalitas anitnas et rehtor
universi Deus. Ita fit, ut omnes in civitate per-
192
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
fectissima vivere intelligamur, sub monarcha, qui
nee ob sapientiam fallt, nee ob poteniiam vitari
potest ; idemque tam amabilis est, ut felicitas sit
tali domino servire. Huic igitur qui animam im-
pendit, Christo dpcente, earn lucratur. Hujus
potentia providentiaque effic-iur, ut omne jus in
facium transeat, ut nemo laedatur nisi aseipso, ut
nihil recte gestum sine praemio sit, nullum pecca-
tum sine poena." — p. 296.
NOTE O. page 130.
The writer of this Discourse was led, on a for
mer occasion, by a generally prevalent notion, to
confound the theological doctrine of Predestination
with the philosophical opinion which supposes the
determination of the Will to be, like other events,
produced by adequate causes. (See a criticism on
Mr. Stewart's Dissertation, EHinb. Review, vol.
xxxvi. p. 225.) More careful reflection has cor
rected a confusion common to him with most writ
ers on the subject. What is called " Sublapsarian
Calvinism," which was the doctrine of the most
eminent men, including Augustin and Calvin him
self, ascribed to God, and to man before the Fall,
what is called " free-will." which they even own
Still to exist in all the ordinary acts of life, though
it be lost with respect to religious morality. The
decree of election, on this scheme, arises from
God's foreknowledge that man was to fall, and
that all men became thereby with justice liable to
eternal punishment. The election of some to sal
vation was an act of Divine goodness, and the pre-
terition of the rest was an exercise of holiness and
justice. This Sublapsarian predestination is evi
dently irreconcilable with the doctrine of Neces
sity, which considers free-will, or volitions not
caused by motives, as absolutely inconsistent with
the definition of an intelligent being, — which is,
that he acts from a motive, or, in other words,
with a purpose. The Supralapsarian scheme,
which represents the Fall itself as fore-ordained,
may indeed be built on necessitarian principles.
But on that scheme original sin seems wholly to
lose that importance which the former system
gives it as a revolution in the state of the world,
requiring an interposition of Divine power to re
medy a part of its fatal effects. It becomes no
more than the first link in the chain of predestined
offences. Yet both Catholic and Protestant pre-
destinarians have borrowed the arguments and
distinctions of philosophical necessitarians. One
of the propositions of Jansenius, condemned bv
the bull of Innocent X. in 1653, is, that " to merit
or demerit in a stale of lapsed naiure, it is not
necessary that there should be in man a liberty
free from necessity ; it is sufficient that there be a
liberty free from constraint." — Dupin, Histoire de
1'Eglise en abrege, livre iv. chap. viii. Luther, in
his once famous treatise De Servo Arbitrio against
Erasmus (printed in 1526), expresses himself as
follows: " Hie est fidei summus gradus, credere
ilium esse clementem qui tam paucos salvat, tam
multos damnat ; credere justum qui sua" voluntate
nos necessario damnabiles facit, ut videatur, ut
Erasmus refert, delectari cruciatibus miserorum,
et odio potius quam amore dignus." (My copy
of this stern and abusive book is not paged.) In
another passage, he states the distinction between
co-action and necessity as familiar a hundred and
thirty years before it was proposed by Hobbes, or
condemned in the Jansenists. " Necessario di-
co, non coacte, sed, ut illi dicur.t, necessitate im-
mutabilitatis, non coactionis ; hoc est, homo, cum
vocat Spiritus Dei, non quidem violentia, velut
raptus obtorto collo, nolens facit malum, quemad-
modum fur aut latro nolens ad poanam ducitur,
sed sponte et libera voluntate facit " He uses
also the illustration of Hobbes, from the difference
between a stream forced out of its course, and
freely flowing in its channel.
[The following is the whole of the passage in
the Edinburgh Review, referred to above : the
reader, while bearing in mind ihe modification of
opinion ihere announced, may still find sufficient
interest in the general statement of the argument
to justify iis admission here. — ED.]
"...It would be inexcusable to revive the
mention of such a controversy as that which re
lates to Liberty and Necessity, for any other pur
pose than to inculcate mutual candour, and to
censure the iniroduction of invidious topics. If
there were any hope of terminating that endless
and fruitless controversy, the most promising ex
pedient would be a general agreement to banish
the technical terms hitherto employed on both
sides from philosophy, and to limit ourselves rigor
ously to a statement of those facts in which all
men agree, expressed in language perfecily puri
fied from all tincture of system. The agreement
in facts would then probably be found to be much
more extensive than is often suspected by either
party. Experience is, and indeed must be, equally
appealed to by both. All mankind feel and own,
that their actions are at least very much affected
by their situation, their opinions, their feelings,
and their habits ; yet no man would deserve the
compliment of confutation, who seriously profess
ed to doubt the distinction between right and
wrong, the reasonableness of moral approbation
and disapprobaiion, the propriety of praising and
censuring voluntary actions, and the justice of re
warding or punishing them according to their in
tention and tendency. No reasonable person, in
whatever terms he may express himself concern
ing the Will, has ever meant to deny that man
has powers and faculties which jusiify the moral
judgments of the human race. Every advocate
of Free Will admits the fact of the influence of
motives, from which the Necessarian infers the
truth of his opinion. Every Necessarian must
also admit those attributes of moral and responsi
ble agency, for the sake of which the advocate of
Liberty considers his own doctrine as of such
unspeakable importance. Both parlies ought
equally to own, that the matter in dispute is a
question of fact relating to the mind, which must
be ultimately decided by its own consciousness.
The Necessarian is even bound to admit, that no
speculation is tenable on this subject, which is not
reconcilable to the general opinions of mankind,
and which does not afford a satisfactory expla
nation of that part of common language which at
first sight appears to be most at variance with it.
" After the actual antecedents of volition had
been thus admitted by one party, and its moral
consequences by another, the subject of conten
tion would be reduced to the question, — What is
the state of the mind in the interval which passes
between motive and action ? or, to speak with still
more strict propriety, By what words is that state
of the mind most accurately described? If this habit
of thinking could be steadily and long preserved,
so evanescent a subject of dispute might perhaps in
the end disappear, and the contending parties might
at length discover that they had been only looking
at opposite sides of the same truth. But the terms
"Liberty" and " Necessity" embroil the contro
versy, inflame the temper of disputants, and in
volve them in clouds of angry zeal, which render
them incapable not only of perceiving their nume
rous and important coincidences, but even of
clearly discerning the single point in which they
differ. Every generous sentiment, and every hos
tile passion of human nature, have for ages been
connected with these two words. They are the
badges of the oldest, the widest, and the most
obstinate warfare waged by metaphysicians. —
Whoever refuses to try the experiment of re
nouncing them, at least for a time, can neither be
a peace- maker nor a friend of dispassionate dis
cussion; and, if he stickles for mere words, he
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
193
may be justly suspected of being almost aware
that he is contending for nothing but words.
" But if projects of perpetual peace should be
as Utopian in the schools as in the world, it is the
more necessary to condemn the use of weapons
which exasperate animosity, without contributing
to decide the contest. Of this nature, in pur
opinion, are the imputations of irreligion and im
morality which have for ages been thrown on those
divines and philosophers who have espoused Ne
cessarian opinions. Mr. Stewart, though he anx
iously acquits individuals of evil intention, has too
much lent the weight of his respectable opinion to
these useless and inflammatory charges. We are
at a loss to conceive how he could imagine that
there is the slightest connection between the doc
trine of Necessity and the system of Spinoza.
That the world is governed by a Supreme Mind,
\vhich is invariably influenced by the dictates of
its own wisdom and goodness, seems to be the
very essence of theism ; and no man who sub
stantially dissents from that proposition, can de
serve the name of a pure theist. But this is pre
cisely the reverse of the doctrine of Spinoza,
which, in spite of all its ingenious disguises, un
doubtedly denies the supremacy of mind. This
objection, however, has already been answered,
not only by the pious and profound Jonathan Ed
wards (Inquiry, part iv. chap. 7.), an avowed Ne
cessarian, but by Mr. Locke, (whose opinions,
however, about this question are not very distinct,)
and even by Dr. Clarke himself, the ablest and
most celebrated of the advocates of liberty. (De
monstration of the Being and Attributes of God.)
" The charge of immoral tendency, however,
deserves more serious consideration, as it has
been repeatedly enforced by Mr. Stewart, and
brought forward also by Dr. Copplestone.* (Dis
courses, Lond. 1821), — the only writer of our time
who has equally distinguished himself in paths so
distant from each other as classical literature, po
litical economy, and metaphysical philosophy. His
general candour and temperance give weight to
his accusation ; and it is likely to be conveyed to
posterity by a volume, which is one of the best
models of philosophical style that our age has pro
duced, — a Sermon of Archbishop King, repub-
lished by Mr. Wha»ely,t an ingenious and learned
member of Oriel College. The Sermons of Dr.
Copplestone do indeed directly relate to theology ;
but, in this case, it is impossible to separate that
eubjecl from philosophy. Necessity is a philoso
phical opinion relating to the human will : Pre
destination is a theological doctrine, concerning
the moral government of the world. But since
the writings of Leibnitz and Jonathan Edwards,
all supporters of Predestination endeavour to
show its reasonableness by the arguments of the
Necessarian. It is possible, and indeed very com
mon, to hold the doctrines of Necessity, without
adopting many of the dogmas which the Calvinist
connects with it : but it~is not possible to make
any argumentative defence of Calvinism, which
is not founded on the principle of Necessity. The
moral consequences of both (whatever they may
be) must be the same ; and both opinions are, ac
cordingly, represented by their opponents as tend
ing, in a manner very similar, to weaken the mo
tives to virtuous action.
" There is no topic which requires such strong
grounds to justify its admission into controversy,
as that of moral consequences ; for, besides its
incurable tendency to inflame the angry passions,
and to excite obloquy against individuals, which
renders it a practical restraint on free inquiry, the
employment of it in dispute seems to betray ap
prehensions derogatory from the dignity of Morals,
and not consonant either to the dictates of Reason
* Afterwards Bishop of Llandaff. — ED.
t Afterwards Archbishop of Dublin.— ED.
25
or to the lessons of experience. The rules of
Morality are too deeply rooted in human nature,
to be shaken by every veering breath of metaphy
sical theory. Our Moral Sentiments spring from
no theory : they are as general as any part of our
nature ; the causes which generate, or unfold and
nourish them, lie deep in the unalterable interests
of society, and in those primitive feelings of the
human heart which no circumstance can eradicate.
The experience of all ages teaches, that these
deep-rooted principles are far less affected than is
commonly supposed, by the revolutions of philo
sophical opinion, which scarcely penetrate beyond
the surface of human nature. Exceptions there
doubtless are : the most speculative opinions are
not pretended to be absolutely indifferent in their
moral tendency ; and it is needless to make an
express exception of those opinions which directly
relate to practice, and which may have a consider
able moral effect. But, in general, the power of
the moral feelings, and the feebleness of specula
tive opinions, are among the most striking pheno
mena in the history of mankind. What teacher,
either philosophical or religious, has ever been
successful in spreading his doctrines, who did not
reconcile them to our moral sentiments, and even
recommend them by pretensions to a purer and
more severe morality ? Wherever there is a seem
ing, or a real repugnance between speculative
opinions and moral rules, the speculator has al
ways been compelled to devise some compromise
which, with whatever sacrifice of consistency,
may appease the alarmed conscience of mankind.
The favour of a few is too often earned by flatter
ing their vicious passions ; but no immoral system
ever acquired popularity. Wherever there is a
contest, the speculations yield, and the principles
prevail. The victory is equally decisive, whether
the obnoxious doctrine be renounced, or so modi
fied as no longer to dispute the legitimate authority
of Conscience.
" Nature has provided other guards for Virtue
against the revolt of sophistry and the inconstancy
of opinion. The whole system of morality is of
great extent, and comprehends a variety of prin
ciples and sentiments. — of duties and virtues.
Wherever new and singular speculation has been
at first sight thought to weaken some of the mo
tives of moral activity, it has almost uniformly
been found, by longer experience, that the same
speculation itself makes amends, by strengthen
ing other inducements to right conduct. There
is thus a principle of compensation in the opinions,
as in the circumstances of man ; which, though
not sufficient to level distinction and to exclude
preference, has yet such power, that it ought to
appease our alarms, and to soften our controver
sies. A moral nature assimilates every specula
tion which it does not reject. If these general
reasonings be just, with what increased force do
they prove the innocence of error, in a case where,
as there seems to be no possibility of difference
about facts, the mistake of either party must be
little more than verbal !
" We have much more ample experience re
specting the practical tendency of religious than
of philosophical opinions. The latler were for
merly confined to the schools, and are still limited
to persons of some education. They are generally
kept apart from our passions and our business,
and are entertained, as Cicero said of the Stoical
paradoxes, " more as a subject of dispute than as
a rule of life." Religious opinions, on the con
trary, are spread over ages and nations; they are
felt perhaps most strongly by the more numerous
classes of mankind ; wherever they are sincerely
entertained, they must be regarded as the most
serious of all concerns; they are often incorpo
rated with the warmest passions of which the hu
man heart is capable ; and, in this state, from
their eminently social and sympathetic nature,
R
194
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
they are capable of becoming the ruling principle
of action in vast multitudes. Let us therefore
appeal to experience, on the moral influence of
Necessarian opinions in their theological form.
By doing so, we shall have an opportunity of con
templating the principle in its most active state,
operating upon the greatest masses, and for the
longest time. Predestination, or doctrines much
inclining towards it, have, on the whole, prevailed
in the Christian churches of the West since the
days of Augustine and Aquinas. Who were the
first formidable opponents of these doctrines in
the Church of Rome ? The Jesuits — the con
trivers of courtly casuistry, and the founders of
lax morality. Who, in the same Church, inclined
to the stern theology of Augustine ? The Jan-
senists — the teachers and the models of austere
morals. What are we to think of the morality
of Calvinistic nations, especially of the most nu
merous classes of them, who seem, beyond all
other men, to be most zealously attached to their
religion, and most deeply penetrated with its
spirit ? Here, if any where, we have a practical
and a decisive test of the moral influence of a
belief in Necessarian opinions. In Protestant
Switzerland, in Holland, in Scotland, among the
English Nonconformists, and the Protestants of
the north of Ireland, in the New England States,
Calvinism long was the prevalent faith, and is
probably still the faith of a considerable majority.
Their moral education was at least completed, and
their collective character formed, during the preva
lence of Calvinistic opinions. Yet where are
communities to be found of a more pure and ac
tive virtue ? Perhaps these, and other very strik
ing facts, might justify speculations of a somewhat
singular nature, and even authorize a retort upon
our respectable antagonists. But we have no such
purpose. It is sufficient for us to do what in us
lies to mitigate the acrimony of controversy, to
teach disputants on both sides to respect the sacred
neutrality of Morals, and to show that the provi
dent and parental care of Nature has sufficiently
provided for the permanent security of the princi
ples of Virtue.
" If we were to amuse ourselves in remarks on
the practical tendency of opinions, we might with
some plausibility contend, that there was a ten
dency in infidelity to produce Toryism. In Eng
land alone, we might appeal to the examples of
Hobbes, Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon ; and
to the opposite cases of Milton, Locke, Addison,
Clarke, and even Newton himself; for the last
of these great men was also a Whig. The only
remarkable example which now occurs to us of a
zealous believer who was a bigoted Tory, is that of
Dr. Johnson ; and we may balance against him the
whole, or the greater part of the life of his illus
trious friend, Mr. Burke. We would not, how
ever, rest much on observations founded on so
small an experience, that the facts may arise from
causes wholly independent of the opinion. But
another unnoticed coincidence may serve as an
introduction to a few observations on the scepti
cism of the eighteenth century.
" The three most celebrated sceptics of modern
times have been zealous partisans of high autho
rity in government. It would be rash to infer,
from the remarkable examples of this coincidence,
in Montaigne, Bayle, and Hume, that there is a
natural connection between scepticism and Tory
ism ; or, even, if there were a tendency to such a
connection, that it might not be counteracted by
more powerful circumstances, or by stronger prin
ciples of human nature. It is more worth while,
therefore, to consider the particulars in the history
of these three eminent persons, which may have
strengthened or created this propensity.
" Montaigne, who was methodical in nothing,
does not indeed profess systematic scepticism. He
was a freethinker who loosened the ground about
received opinions, and indulged his humour in
arguing on both sides of most questions. But the
sceptical tendency of his writings is evident ; and
there is perhaps nowhere to be found a more vigor
ous attack on popular innovations, than in the lat
ter part of the 22d Essay of his first book. But
there is no need of any general speculations to
account for the repugnance to change, felt by a
man who was wearied and exasperated by the
horrors of forty years' civil war.
" The case of Bayle is more remarkable.
Though banished from France as a Protestant,
he published, without his name, a tract, entitled,
"Advice to the Refugees," in the year 1690,
which could be considered in no other light than
that of an apology for Louis XIV., an attack on
the Protestant cause, and a severe invective
against his companions in exile. He declares, in
this unavowed work, for absolute power and pas
sive obedience, and inveighs, with an intemper
ance scarcely ever found in his avowed writings,
against "the execrable doctrines of Buchanan,"
and the " pretended sovereignty of the people,"
without sparing even the just and glorious Revo
lution, which had at that moment preserved the
constitution of England, the Protestant religion,
and the independence of Europe. It is no wonder
therefore, that he was considered as a partisan of
France, and a traitor to the Protestant cause ; nor
can we much blame King William for regarding
him as an object of jealous policy. Many years
after, he was represented to Lord Sunderland as
an enemy of the Allies, and a detractor of their
great captain, the Duke of Marlborough. The
generous friendship of the illustrious author of the
Characteristics, — the opponent of Bayle on almost
every question of philosophy, government, and,
we may add, religion, — preserved him, on that
occasion, from the sad necessity of seeking a new
place of refuge in the very year of his death. The
vexations which Bayle underwent in Holland from
the Calvinist ministers, and his long warfare
against their leader Jurieu, who was a zealous as-
sertor of popular opinions, may have given this
bias to his mind, and disposed him to "fly from
petty tyrants to the throne." His love of para
dox may have had its share ; for passive obedi
ence was considered as a most obnoxious paradox
in the schools and societies of the oppressed Cal-
vinists. His enemies, however, did not fail to
impute his conduct to a design of paying his court
to Louis XIV., and to the hope of being received
with open arms in France ; — motives which seem
to be at variance both with the general integrity
of his life, and with his favourite passion for the
free indulgence of philosophical speculation. The
scepticism of Bayle must, however, be distin
guished from that of Hume. The former of
these celebrated writers examined many ques
tions in succession, and laboured to show that
doubt was, on all of them, the result of examina
tion. His, therefore, is a sort of inductive scepti
cism, in which general doubt was an inference
from numerous examples of uncertainty in par
ticular cases. It is a kind of appeal to experience,
whether so many failures in the search of truth
ought not to deter wise men from continuing the
pursuit. Content with proving, or seeming to
himself to prove, that we have not attained cer
tainty, he does not attempt to prove that we can-
not reach it.
" The doctrine of Mr. Hume, on the other hand,
is not that we have not reached truth, but that we
never can reach it. It is an absolute and universal
system of scepticism, professing to be derived from
the very structure of the Understanding, which,
if any man could seriously believe it, would
render it impossible for him to form an opinion
upon any subject, — to give the faintest assent to
any proposition, — 'to ascribe any meaning to thc-
words ' truth' and ' falsehood,'— to believe, to in-
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.
195
quiro, or to reason, and, on the very same ground,
to disbelieve, fo dissent, or to doubt, — to adhere
to his own principle of universal doubt, and lastly,
if he be consistent with himself, even to think. It
is not easy to believe that speculations so shadowy,
which never can pretend to be more than the
amusements of idle ingenuity, should have any in
fluence on the opinions of men of great understand
ing, concerning the most important concerns of
human life. But perhaps it may be reasonable to
allow, that the same character which disposes men
to scepticism, may dispose them also to acquiesce in
considerable abuses, and even oppressions, rather
than to seek redress in forcible resistance. Men
of such a character have misgivings in every en
terprise ; their acuteness is exercised in devising
objections, — in discovering difficulties, — in fore
seeing obstacles ; they hope little from human
wisdom and virtue, and are rather secretly prone
to that indolence and indifference which forbade
the Epicurean sage to hazard his quiet for the
doubtful interests of a contemptible race. They
do not lend a credulous ear to the Utopian projec
tor ; they doubt whether the evils of change will
be so little, or the benefits of reform so great, as
the sanguine reformer foretells that they will be.
The sceptical temper of Mr. Hume may have thus
insensibly moulded his political opinions. But
causes still more obvious and powerful had proba
bly much more share in rendering him so zealous
a partisan of regal power. In his youth, the Pres
byterians, to whose enmity his opinions exposed
him, were the zealous and only friends of civil
liberty in Scotland ; and the close connection of
liberty with Calvinism, made both more odious to
him. The gentry in most parts of Scotland, ex
cept in the west, were then Jacobites ; and his
early education was probably among that party.
The prejudices which he perhaps imbibed in
P'rance against the literature of England, extended
to her institutions ; and in the state of English
opinion, when his history was published, if he
sought distinction by paradox, he could not so
effectually have obtained his object by the most
startling of his metaphysical dogmas, as by his
doubts of the genius of Shakespeare, and the vir
tue of Hampden."
NOTE P. page 139.
Though some parts of the substance of the fol
lowing Tetter have already appeared in various
forms, perhaps the account of Mr. Hume's illness,
in the words of his friend and physician Dr. Cul-
len, will be acceptable to many readers. I owe
it to the kindness of Mrs. Baillie, who had the
goodness to copy it from the original, in the col
lection of her late learned and excellent husband,
Dr. Baillie. Some portion of what has been for
merly published I do not think it necessary to
reprint.
FROM DR. CULLEN TO DR. HUNTER.
"My DEAR FRIEND, — I was favoured with
yours by Mr. Halket on Sunday, and have an
swered some part of it by a gentleman whom I
was otherwise obliged to write by ; but as I was
not certain how soon that might come to your
hand, I did not answer your postscript; in doing
which, if I can oblige you, a part of the merit must
be that of the information being early, and I there
fore give it you as soon as I possibly could. You
desire an account of Mr. Hume's last days, and I
give it you with some pleasure ; for though I could
not look upon him in his illness without much
concern, yet the tranquillity and pleasantry which
he constantly discovered did even then give me
satisfaction, and, novv that the curtain is dropped,
allows me to indulge the less allayed reflection.
He was truly an example des grands homines qui
sont marts en plaiaantant. . . . For many weeks
before his death he was very sensible of his gradual
decay ; and his answer to inquiries after his health
was, several times, that he was going as fast as
his enemies could wish, and as easily as his friends
could desire. He was not, however, without a
frequent recurrence of pain and uneasiness ; but he
passed most part of the day in his drawing-room,
admitted the visits of his friends, and. with his
usual spirit, conversed with them upon literature,
politics, or whatever else was accidentally started.
In conversation he seemed to be perfectly at ease,
and to the last abounded with that pleasantry, and
those curious and entertaining anecdotes, which
ever distinguished him. This, however, I always
considered rather as an effort to be agreeable ; and
he at length acknowledged that it became too
much for his strength. For a few days before his
death, he became more averse to receive visits ;
speaking became more and more difficult for him,
and for twelve hours before his death his speech
failed altogether. His senses and judgment did
not fail till the last hour of his life. He constantly
discovered a strong sensibility to the attention and
care of his friends ; and, amidst great uneasiness
and langour, never betrayed any peevishness or
impatience. This is a general account of his last
days ; but a particular fact or two may perhaps
convey to you a still better idea of them.
* * * *
" About a fortnight before his death, he added
a codicil to his will, in which he fully discovered
his attention to his friends, as well as his own
pleasantry. What little wine he himself drank
was generally port, a wine for which his friend
the poet [John Home] had ever declared the
strongest aversion. David bequeaths to his friend
John one bottle of port ; and, upon condition of
his drinking this even at two down-sittings, be
stows upon him twelve dozen of his best claret.
He pleasantly adds, that this subject of wine was
the only one upon which they had ever differed.
In the codicil there are several other strokes of
raillery and pleasantry, highly expressive of the
cheerfulness which he then enjoyed. He even
turned his attention to some of the simple amuse
ments with which he had been formerly pleased.
In the neighbourhood of his brother's house in
Berwickshire is a brook, by which the access in
time of floods is frequently interrupted. Mr. Hume
bequeaths 1001. for building a bridge over this
brook, but upon the express condition that none of
the stones for that purpose shall be taken from a
quarry in the neighbourhood, which forms part of
a romantic scene in which, in his earlier days,
Mr. Hume took particular delight :— otherwise
the money to go to the poor of the parish.
" These are a few particulars which may per
haps appear trifling ; but to me no particulars seem
trifling that relate to so great a man. It is per
haps from trifles that we can best distinguish the
tranquillity and cheerfulness of the philosopher,
at a time when the most part of mankind are under
disquiet, anxiety, and sometimes even horror. . . .
I had gone so far when I was called to the country ;
and I nave returned only so long before the post
as to say, that I am most affectionately yours,
" WILLIAM CULLEN.
" Edinburgh, llth September, 1776."
NOTE Q. page 139.
Pyrrho was charged with carrying his scepti
cism so far as not to avoid a carriage if it was
driven against him. ^Enesidemus, the most fa
mous of ancient sceptics, with great probability
vindicates the more ancient doubter from such
lunacy, of which indeed his having lived to the
age of ninety seems sufficient to acquit him. Am-
%v; teyiv, [J.H fjwm yt aTrKcpirl; 'UiFTct
196
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Diogenes Laertius, lib. ix. sect. 62. Brief and
imperfect as our accounts of ancient scepticism are,
it does appear that their reasoning on the subject
of causation had some resemblance to that of Mr.
Hume. ^Aysufouiri t)s TO aUTisy ZJy TO ctirtov T^ir ftp;
Tt \7Tl, T*:? yap TV O-lTtCtT^ t9"Tl' TO. efg Trpf Tt t7riVCt7-
u7rdf%u is ou* licit TO O.ITICV ovv vrtfootto uv
v. — Ibid. sec. 97. It is perhaps impossible to
translate the important technical expression TO, nfa
Tt. It comprehends two or more things as related
to each other; both the relative and correlative
being taken together as such. Fire considered as
having the power of burning wood is TO nfa Tt.
The words of Laertius may therefore be nearly
rendered into the language of modern philosophy
as follows: "Causation they take away thus: —
A cause is so only in relation to an effect. What
is relative is only conceived, but does not exist.
Therefore cause is a mere conception." The first
attempt to prove the necessity of belief in a Divine
revelation, by demonstrating that natural reason
leads to universal scepticism, was made by Alga-
zel, a professor at Bagdad, in the beginning of the
twelfth century of our era ; whose work entitled
the " Destruction of the Philosopher" is known
to us only by the answer of Averroes, called "De
struction of the Destruction." He denied a necessa
ry connection between cause and effect ; for of two
separate things, the affirmation of the existence of
one does not necessarily contain the affirmation of
the existence of the other ; and the same may be
said of denial. It is curious enough that this argu
ment was more especially pointed against those
Arabian philosophers who, from the necessary
connection of causes and effects, reasoned against
the possibility of miracles ; — thus anticipating one
doctrine of Mr. Hume, to impugn another.— Ten-
nemann, Geschichte der Philosophic, vol. viii. p.
387. The same attempt was made by the learned
but unphilosophical Huet, bishop of Avranches. —
(Qua3stiones Alnetanae, Caen, 1690, and Traite
de la Foiblesse de 1'Esprit Humain, Amsterdam,
1723.) A similar motive urged Berkeley to his
attack on Fluxions. The attempt of Huet has
been lately renewed by the Abbe Lamennais, in
his treatise on Religious Indifference ; — a fine
writer whose apparent reasonings amount to little
more than well- varied assertions, and well-dis
guised assumptions of the points to be proved.
To build religion upon scepticism is the most ex
travagant of all attempts ; for it destroys the proofs
of a divine mission, and leaves no natural means
of distinguishing between revelation and imposture.
The Abbe Lamennais represents authority as the
sole ground of belief. Why ? If any reason can be
given, the proposition must be false ; if none, it is
obviously a mere groundless assertion.
NOTE R. page 142.
Casanova, a Venetian doomed to solitary im
prisonment in the dungeons at Venice in 1755,
thus speaks of the only books which for a time he
was allowed to read. The title of the first was
" La Cite Mystique de Soeur Marie de Jesus, ap-
pellle d'Agrada." " J'y lus tout ce que peut en-
ianter 1'imagination exaltee d'une vierge Espag-
nole extravagamment devote, cloitree, melancho-
lique, ayant des directeurs de conscience, ignprans,
faux, et devots. Amoureuse et amie tres intime
de la Sainte Vierge, elle avail rec,u ordre de Dieu
m8me d'ecrire la vie de sa divine mere. Les in
structions necessaires lui avaient ete fournies par
le Saint Esprit. Elle commencoit la vie de Marie,
non pas du jour de sanaissance, mais du moment
de^son immaculee conception dans le sein de sa
mere Anne. Apres avoir narre en detail tout ce
que sa divine heroine fit les neuf mois qu'elle a
passe dans le sein maternel, elle nous apprend
qu'a rage de trois ans elle bnlayoit la maison,
nidee par neuf cents domestrques, tous anges, j
commanded par leur prropre Prince Michel. Ce
qui frappe dans ce livre est I'assurance que tout
est dit de bonne foi. Ce sont les visions d'un es
prit sublime, qui, sans aucune ombre d'orgueil,
ivre de Dieu, croit ne reveler que ce que 1'Esprit
Saint lui inspire." — Memoires de Casanova (Leip-
sic, 1827), vol. iv. p. 343, A week's confinement
to this volume produced such an effect on Casa
nova, an unbeliever and a debauchee, but who was
then enfeebled by melancholy, bad air, and bad
food, that his sleep was haunted, and his waking
hours disturbed by its horrible visions. Many
years after, passing through Agrada in Old Cas
tile, he charmed the old priest of that village by
speaking of the biographer of the virgin. The
priest showed him all the spots which were con
secrated by her presence, and bitterly lamented
that the Court of Rome had refused to canonize
her. It is the natural reflection of Casanova that
the book was well qualified to turn a solitary pri
soner mad, or to make a man at large an atheist.
It ought not to be forgotten, that the inquisitors
of state at Venice, who proscribed this book, were
probably of the latter persuasion. It is a striking
instance of the infatuation of those who, in their
eagerness to rivet the bigotry of the ignorant, use
means which infallibly tend to spread utter unbe
lief among the educated. The book is a disgust
ing, but in its general outline seemingly faithful,
picture of the dissolute manners spread over the
Continent of Europe in the middle of the eighteenth
century.
NOTE S. page 143.
" The Treatise on the Law of War and Peace,
the Essay on Human Understanding, the Spirit
of Laws, and the Inquiry into the Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, are the works which have
most directly influenced the general opinion of
Europe during the two last centuries. They are
also the most conspicuous landmarks in the pro
gress of the sciences to which they relate. It is
remarkable that the defects of all these great
works are very similar. The leading notions of
none of them can, in the strictest sense, be said to
be original, though Locke and Smith in that re
spect surpass their illustrious rivals. All of them
employ great care in ascertaining those laws which
are immediately deduced from experience, or di
rectly applicable to practice ; but apply metaphy
sical and abstract principles with considerable
negligence. Not one pursues the order of science,
beginning with first elements, and advancing to
more and more complicated conclusions ; though
Locke is perhaps less defective in method than
the rest. All admit digressions which, though
often intrinsically excellent, distract attention and
break the chain of thought. Not one of them is
happy in the choice, or constant in the use, of
technical terms ; and in none do we find much of
that rigorous precision which is the first beauty
of philosophical language. Grotius and Montes
quieu were imitators ol Tacitus, — the first with
more gravity, the second with more vivacity ; but
both were tempted to forsake the simple diction
of science, in pursuit of the poignant brevity which
that great historian has carried to a vicious excess.
Locke and Smith chose an easy, clear, and free,
but somewhat loose and verbose style, — more
concise in Locke, — more elegant in Smith,— in
both exempt from pedantry, but not void of am
biguity and repetition. Perhaps all these apparent
defects contributed in some degree to the specific
usefulness of these great works ; and, by render
ing their contents more accessible and acceptable
to the majority of readers, have more completely
blended their principles with the common opinions
of mankind." — Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxvi. p.
244. [This is a further extract from the article
alluded to at p. 192. -ED.]
As?
NOTES T— U. p. 147.
tv yp*ju/u.x.Ttia> %
Aristotle. " De Anima," Opera, (Paris, 1639)
tome ii. p. 50. A little before, in the same treatise,
appears a great part of the substance of the famous
maxim, Nil est in intellects, quod non priusfuit in
sensu. "HSt 9*vrx<rix. *iv»<rts *ts 3ix.x Weti, **i dx.
DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. 197
owever, been vain : I have discovered no trace
f that or of any similar speculation. My edition
s in Latin by Elzevir, at Amsterdam, in 1650,
he year of Descartes' death. I am obliged,
therefore, to conjecture, that Mr. Coleridge, hav-
ng mislaid his references, has, by mistake, quo-
ed the discourse on Method, instead of another
vork ; which would affect hts inference from the
riority of Descartes to Hobbes. It is not to
e denied, that the opinion of Aristotle, repeated
jy so many commentators, may have found its
way into the mind of Hobbes, and also of Hume ;
hough neither might be aware of its source, or
ven conscious that it was not originally his own.
fet the very narrow view of Association taken
jy Locke, his apparently treating it as a novelty,
md the silence of common books respecting it,
fford a presumption that the Peripatetic doctrine
,vas so little known, that it might have escaped
he notice of these philosophers ; — one of whom
>oasted that he was unread, while the other is
iot liable to the suspicion of unacknowledged
ivavrcv, « TOU
0.1 & «*iV6«Vs»? yiyvty-Qxt. — Ibid. p. 47. In the tract
on Memory and Reminiscence we find his enu^
meration ot the principles of association. A/a K.AI
TO'J VUV H aAXCW T/VCf,
f>ve)yvs- — Ibid. p. 86.
If the latter word be applied to time as well as
space, and considered as comprehending causa
tion, the enumeration will coincide with that of
Hume. The term d-vpt'Jta is as significant as if it
had been chosen by Hobbes. But it is to be ob
served, that these principles are applied only to
explain memory.
Something has been said on the subject, and
something on the present writer, by Mr. Cole
ridge, in his unfortunately unfinished work called
" Biographia Literaria," chap, v., which seems to
.justify, if not to require, a few remarks. That
learned gentleman seems to have been guilty of
an oversight in quoting as a distinct work the
" Parva Naturalia," which is the collective name
given by the scholastic translators to those trea
tises of Aristotle which form the second volume
of Duval's edition of his works, published at Paris
in 1639. I have already acknowledged the striking
resemblance of Mr. Hume's principles of associa
tion to those of Aristotle. In answer, however,
to a remark of Mr. Coleridge, I must add, that
the manuscript of a part of the Aquinas which I
bought many years ago (on the faith of a booksel
ler's catalogue) as being written by Mr. Hume,
was not a copy of the Commentary on the " Parva
Naturalia," but of Aquinas' own " Secunda Se-
cundae ;" and that, on examination, it proves not
to be the handwriting of Mr. Hume, and to con
tain nothing written by him. It is certain that,
in the passages immediately preceding the quota
tion, Aristotle explains recollection as depending
on a general law, — that the idea of an object will
remind us of the objects which immediately pre
ceded or followed when originally perceived. But
what Mr. Coleridge has not told us is, that the
Stagyrite confines the application of this law ex
clusively to the phenomena of recollection alone,
without any glimpse of a more general opera
tion extending to all connections of thought and
feeling, — a wonderful proof, indeed, even so limit
ed, of the sagacity of the great philosopher, but
which for many ages continued barren of further
consequences. The illustrations of Aquinas throw
light on the original doctrine, and show that it
was unenlarged in his time. " When we recollect
Socrates, the thought of Plato occurs 'as like
him.' When we remember Hector, the thought
of Achilles occurs ' as contrary.' The idea of "
father is followed by that of a son ' as near.' "•
Opera, vol. i. pars ii. p. 62. et sea. Those of Lu-
dovicus Vives, as quoted by Mr. Coleridge, ex
tend no farther. But if Mr. Coleridge will coni-
pare the parts of Hobbes on Human Nature which
relate to this subject, with those which explain
general terms, he will perceive that the philoso
pher of Malmesbury builds on these two founda
tions a general theory of the human understanding
of which reasoning is only a particular case. Ii
consequence of the assertion of Mr. Coleridge
that Hobbes was anticipated by Descartes in his
excellent and interesting discourse on Method,
have twice reperused the latter's work in quest o
this remarkable anticipation, though, as I thought
well acquainted by my old studies with the wri
ting's of that great philosopher. My labour has
)orrowng.
To Mr. Coleridge, who distrusts his own power
f building a bridge by which his ideas may pass
nto a mind so differently trained as mine, 1 ven-
ure to suggest, with that sense of his genius
vhich no circumstance has hindered me from
seizing every fit occasion to manifest, that more __
of my early years were employed in contempla-
ions of an abstract nature, than of those of the
majority of his readers, — that there are not, even,
now, many of them less likely to be repelled from
doctrines by singularity or uncouthness ; or many
more willing to allow that every system has caught
an advantageous glimpse of some side or corner
of the truth ; or many more desirous of exhibit'
ng this dispersion of the fragments of wisdom by
attempts to translate the doctrine of one school
nto the language of another ; or many who when
.hey cannot discover a reason for an opinion, con
sider it more important to discover the causes of
its adoption by the philosopher ;— believing, as I
do, that one of the most arduous and useful offices
of mental philosophy is to explore the subtile illu
sions which enable great minds to satisfy them
selves by mere words, before they deceive others
by payment in the same counterfeit coin. My
habits, together with the natural influence of my
age and avocations, lead me to suspect that in
speculative philosophy I am nearer to indifference
than to an exclusive spirit. I hope that it can
neither be thought presumptuous nor offensive in
me to doubt, whether the circumstance of its being
found difficult to convey a metaphysical doctrine
to a person who, at one part of his life, made such
studies his chief pursuit, may not imply either
error in the opinion, or defect in the mode of com
munication.
NOTE V. page 159.
A very late writer, who seems to speak for Mr.
Bentham with authority, tells us that " the first
time the phrase of ' the principle of utility' was
brought decidedly into notice, was in the ' Essays,'
by David Hume, published about the year 1742.
In that work it is mentioned as the name of a prin
ciple which might be made the foundation of a sys
tem of morals, in opposition to a system then in
vogue, which was founded on what ivas called the
' moral sense.' The ideas, however, there at
tached to it, are vague, and defective in practical
application." — Westminster Review, vol. xi. p.
258. If these few sentences were scrutinised
with the severity and minuteness of Bentham's
Fragment on Government, they would be found
to contain almost as many misremembrances as
assertions. The principle of Utility is not " men-
lioned," but fully discussed, in Mr. Hume's dis
course. It is seldom spoken of by " name." In-
R 2
198
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
stead of charging the statements of it with " vague- \
ness," it would be more just to admire the preci
sion which it combines with beauty. Instead of
being ''defective in practical application,1' per- j
haps the desire of rendering it popular has crowd- ;
ed it with examples and illustrations taken from >
life. To the assertion that " it was opposed to the j
moral sense," no reply can be needful but the fol- j
lowing words extracted from the discourse itself: \
"I am apt to suspect that reason and sentiment ]
concur in almost all moral determinations and j
conclusions. The final sentence which pronounces j
characters and actions amiable or odious, probably j
depend* on some internal sense or feeling, which
nature has made universal in the whole species." —
Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, sect.
i. The phrase " made universal," which is here
used instead of the more obvious and common
word " implanted," shows the anxious and perfect
precision of language, by which a philosopher
avoids the needless decision of a controversy not
at the moment before him.
[Dr. Whewell puts the case against the present
mis-denomination assumed by the disciples of Mr.
Bentham thus neatly : — " If the word from which
Deontology is derived had borrowed its meaning
from the notion of utility alone, it is not likely that
it would have become more intelligible by being
translated out of Latin into Greek. But the term
' Deontology' expresses moral science (and ex
presses it well), precisely because it signifies the
science of duty, and contains no reference to Utility.
Mackintosh, who held that TO sfsov, — what men
ought to do — was the fundamental notion of mo
rality, might very probably have termed the
science " Deontology." The system of which
Mr. Bentham is the representative, — that of those
who make morality dependent on the production
of happiness, — has long been designated in Ger
many by the term ' Eudemonism,' derived from
the Greek word for happiness (a/Jat^uovi*). If we
were to adopt this term we should have to oppose
the Deontological to the Eudemonist school; and
we must necessarily place those who hold a pecu
liar moral faculty, — Butler, Stewart, Brown, and
Mackintosh, — in the former, and those who are
usually called Utilitarian philosophers in the latter
class." — Preface to this Dissertation, 8vo, Edin-
burg, 1837. ED.]
NOTE VV. page 160.
A writer of consummate ability, who has failed
in little but the respect due to the abilities and
character of his opponents, has given too much
countenance to the abuse and confusion of lan
guage exemplified in the well-known verse of
Pope,
Modes of self-love the Passions we may call.
"We know," says he, "no universal proposition
respecting human nature which is true but one, — •
that men always act from self-interest." — Edin
burgh Review, vol. xlix. p. 185. It is manifest
from the sequel, that the writer is not the dupe of
the confusion ; but many of his readers may be so.
If, indeed, the word ' self-interest' could with pro-
Kriety be used for the gratification of every preva-
5nt desire, he has clearly shown that this change
in the signification of terms would be of no ad
vantage to the doctrine which he controverts. It
would make as many sorts of self-interest as there
are appetites, and it is irreconcilably at variance
with the system of association embraced by Mr.
Mill. To the word ' self-love' Hartley properly
assigns two significations: — 1. gross self-love,
which consists in the pursuit of the greatest plea
sures, from all those desires which look to indi
vidual gratification ; or, 2. refined self-love, which
seeks the greatest pleasure which can arise from
all the desires of human nature, — the latter of
which is an invaluable, though inferior principle.
The admirable writer whose language has occa
sioned this illustration, — who at an early age has
mastered every species of composition, — will
doubtless hold fast to simplicity, which survives
all the fashions of deviation from it, and which a
man of a genius so fertile has few temptations to
forsake.
AN ACCOUNT
OF
THE PARTITION OF POLAND.'
LITTLE more than fifty years have passed
since Poland occupied a high place among
the Powers of Europe. Her natural means
of wealth and force were inferior to those of
few states of the second order. The surface
of the country exceeded that of France ; and
the number of its inhabitants was estimated
at fourteen millions, — a population probably
exceeding that of the British Islands, or of
the Spanish Peninsula, at that time. The
climate was nowhere unfriendly to health,
or unfavourable to labour; the soil was fer-
* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxvii., p.
463,
tile, the produce redundant : a large portion
of the country, still uncleared, afforded am
ple scope for agricultural enterprise. Great
rivers afforded easy means of opening an in
ternal navigation from the Baltic to the
Mediterranean. In addition to these natural
advantages, there were many of those cir
cumstances in the history and situation of
Poland which render a people fond and proud
of their country, and foster that national
spirit which is the most effectual instrument
either of defence or aggrandisement. Till
the middle of the seventeenth century, she
had been the predominating power of the
North. With Hungary, and the ^maritime
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
199
strength of Venice, she had formed the east
ern defence of Christendom against the Turk
ish tyrants of Greece ; and, on the north-east,
she had been long its sole barrier against the
more obscure barbarians of Muscovy. A
nation which thus constituted a part of the
vanguard of civilization, necessarily became
martial, and gained all the renown in arms
which could be acquired before war had be
come a science. The wars of the Poles,
irregular, romantic, full of personal adven
ture, depending on individual courage and
peculiar character, proceeding little from the
policy of Cabinets, but deeply imbued by
those sentiments of chivalry which may
pervade a nation, chequered by extraordi
nary vicissitudes, and carried on against bar
barous enemies in remote and wild provinces,
were calculated to leave a deep impression
on the feelings of the people, and to give
every man the liveliest interest in the glories
and dangers of his country. Whatever ren
ders the members of a community more like
each other, and unlike their neighbours,
usually strengthens the bonds of attachment
between them. The Poles were the only
representatives of the Sarmatian race in the
assembly of civilized nations. Their lan
guage and their national literature — those
great sources of sympathy and objects of
national pride — were cultivated with no small
success. They contributed, in one instance,
signally to the progress of science ; and they
took no ignoble part in those classical studies
which composed the common literature of
Europe. They were bound to their country
by the peculiarities of its institutions and
usages, — perhaps, also, by those dangerous
privileges, and by that tumultuary indepen
dence which rendered their condition as
much above that of the slaves of an absolute
monarchy, as it was below the lot of those
who inherit the blessings of legal and moral
freedom. They had once another singu
larity, of which they might justly have been
proud, if they had not abandoned it in times
which ought to have been more enlightened.
Soon after the Reformation, they had set the
first example of that true religious liberty
which equally admits the members of all
sects to the privileges, the offices, and dig
nities of the commonwealth. For nearly a
century they had afforded a secure asylum
to those obnoxious sects of Anabaptists and
Unitarians, whom all other states excluded
from toleration : and the Hebrew nation,
proscribed every where else, found a second
country, with protection for their learned and
religious establishments, in this hospitable
and tolerant land. A body, amounting to
about half a million, professing the equality
of gentlemen amidst the utmost extremes of
affluence and poverty, forming at once the
legislature and the army, or rather constitut
ing the commonwealth, were reproached,
perhaps justly, with the parade, dissipation,
and levity, which generally characterise the
masters of slaves : but their faculties were
roused by ambition ] they felt the dignity of
conscious independence ; and they joined to
the brilliant valour of their ancestors, an un
common proportion of the accomplishments
and manners of a polished age. Even in the
days of her decline, Poland had still a part
allotted to her in the European system. By
her mere situation, without any activity on
her own part, she in some measure prevent
ed the collision, and preserved the balance,
of the three greatest military powers of the
Continent. She constituted an essential mem
ber of the federative system of France ; and,
by her vicinity to Turkey, and influence on
the commerce of the Baltic, directly affected
the general interest of Europe. Her pre
servation was one of the few parts of conti
nental policy in which both France and Eng
land were concerned; and all Governments
dreaded the aggrandisement of her neigh
bours. In these circumstances, it might
have been thought that the dismemberment
of the territory of a numerous, brave, an
cient, and renowned people, passionately
devoted to their native land, without colour
of right or pretext of defence, in a period of
profound peace, in defiance of the law of
nations, and of the common interest of all
states, was an event not much more proba
ble, than that it should have been swallowed
up by a convulsion of nature. Before that
dismemberment, nations, though exposed to
the evils of war and the chance of conquest,
in peace placed some reliance on each other's
faith. The crime has, however, been tri
umphantly consummated. The principle of
the balance of power has perished in the
Partition of Poland.
The succession to the crown of Poland
appears, in ancient times, to have been go
verned by that rude combination of inherit
ance and election which originally prevailed
in most European monarchies, where there
was a general inclination to respect heredi
tary claims, and even the occasional elec
tions were confined to the members of the
reigning family. Had not the male heirs of
the House of Jagellon been extinct, or had
the rule of female succession been intro
duced, it is probable that the Polish mon
archy would have become strictly heredi
tary. The inconveniences of the elective
principle were chiefly felt in the admission
of powerful foreign princes as candidates for
the crown : but that form of government
proved rather injurious to the independence,
than to the internal peace of the country.
More than a century, indeed, elapsed before
the mischief was felt. In spite of the as
cendant acquired by Sweden in the affairs
of the North, Poland still maintained her
high rank. Her last great exertion, when
John Sobieski, in 1683, drove the Turks
from the gates of Vienna, was worthy of her
ancient character as the guardian of Chris
tendom.
His death, in 1696, first showed that the
admission of such competition might lead
to the introduction of foreign influence, and
even arms. The contest which then oc-
200
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
curred between the Prince of Conti and Au
gustus, Elector of Saxony, had been decided
in favour of the latter by his own army, and
by Russian influence, when Charles XII.,
before he had reached the age of twenty,
having already compelled Denmark to sub
mit, and defeated a great Russian army, en
tered Warsaw in triumph, deposed him as
an usurper raised to the royal dignity by
foreign force, and obliged him, by express
treaty, to renounce his pretensions to the
crown. Charles was doubtless impelled to
these measures by the insolence of a youth
ful conqueror, and by resentment against the
Elector ; but he was also influenced by those
rude conceptions of justice, sometimes de
generating into cruelty, which were blended
with his irregular ambition. He had the
generosity, however, to spare the territory
of the republic, and the good sense to pro
pose the son of the great Sobieski to fill the
vacant throne ; — a proposal which, had it
been successful, might have banished for
eign factions, by gradually conferring on a
Polish family an hereditary claim to the
crown. But the Saxons, foreseeing such a
measure, carried away young Sobieski a
prisoner. Charles then bestowed it on Sta
nislaus Leczinski, a Polish gentleman of
worth and talent, but destitute of the genius
and boldness which the public dangers re
quired, and by the example of a second king
enthroned by a foreign army, struck another
blow at the independence of Poland. The
treaty of Alt-Ranstadt was soon after an
nulled by the battle of Pultowa; and Au
gustus, renewing the pretensions which he
had solemnly renounced, returned triumph
antly to Warsaw. The ascendant of the
Czar was for a moment suspended by the
treaty of Pruth. in 1711, where the Turks
compelled Peter to swear that he would
withdraw his troops from Poland, and never
to interfere in its internal affairs ; but as soon
as the Porte were engaged in a war with
Austria, he marched an army into it ; and
the first example of a compromise between
the King and the Diet, under the mediation
of a Russian ambassador, and surrounded by
Russian troops, was exhibited in 1717.
The death of Augustus, in 1733, had near
ly occasioned a general war throughout Eu
rope. The interest of Stanislaus, the deposed
king, was espoused by France, partly per
haps because Louis XV. had married his
daughter, but chiefly because the cause of
the new Elector of Saxony, who was his
competitor, was supported by Austria, the
ally of England, and by Russia, then closely
connected with Austria. The court of Pe-
tersburgh then set up the fatal pretext of a
guarantee of the Polish constitution, found
ed on the transactions of 1717. A guarantee
of the territories and rights of one indepen
dent state against others, is perfectly com
patible with justice : but a guarantee of the
institutions of a people against themselves,
is but another name for its dependence on the
foreign power which enforces it. In pursu
ance of this pretence, the country was invad
ed by sixty thousand Russians, who ravaged
with fire and sword every district which
opposed their progress; and a handful of
gentlemen, some of them in chains, whom
they brought together in a forest near War
saw, were compelled to elect Augustus III.
Henceforward Russia treated Poland as a
vassal. She indeed disappeared from the
European system, — was the subject of wars
and negotiations, but no longer a party en
gaged in them. Under Augustus III., she
was almost as much without government at
home as without influence abroad, slumber
ing for thirty years in a state of pacific anar
chy, which is almost without example in
history. The Diets were regularly assem
bled, conformably to the laws ; but each one
was dissolved, without adopting a single
measure of legislation or government. Tins
extraordinary suspension of public authority
arose from the privilege which each nuncio
possessed, of stopping any public measure,
by declaring his dissent from it, in the well
known form of the Liberum Veto. To give a
satisfactory account of the origin and pro
gress of this anomalous privilege, would
probably require more industrious and criti
cal research than were applied to the subject
when Polish antiquaries and lawyers exist
ed.* The absolute negative enjoyed by each
member seems to have arisen from the prin
ciple, that the nuncios were not representa
tives, but ministers ; that their power was
limited by the imperative instructions of the
provinces ; that the constitution was ralher
a confederacy than a commonwealth; and
that the Diet was not so much a deliberative
assembly, as a meeting of delegates, whose
whole duty consisted in declaring the deter
mination of their respective constituents.
Of such a state of things, unanimity seemed
the natural consequence. But, as the sove
reign power was really vested in the gentry,
they were authorised, by the law, to inter
fere in public affairs, in a manner most in
convenient and hazardous, though rendered
in some measure necessary by the unreason
able institution of unanimity. This interfer
ence was effected by that species of legal
insurrection called a " confederation," in
which any number of gentlemen subscribing
the alliance bound themselves to pursue, by
force of arms, its avowed object, either of
defending the country, or preserving the
laws, or maintaining the privileges of any
class of citizens. It was equally lawful for
another body to associate themselves against
the former; and the war between them was
legitimate. In these confederations, the so
vereign power released itself from the re
straint of unanimity; and in order to obtain
that liberty, the Diet sometimes resolved
itself into a confederation, and lost little by
being obliged to rely on the zeal of voluntary
* The information on this subject in Lengnich
(Jus Publicum Polonice) is vague and unsatisfac
tory.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
201
adherents, rather than on the legal obedience
of citizens.
On the death of Augustus III., it pleased
the Empress Catharine to appoint Stanislaus
Poniatowski, a discarded lover, to the vacant
throne, — a man who possessed many of the
qualities and accomplishments which are
attractive in private life ; but who, when he
was exposed to the tests of elevated station
and public danger, proved to be utterly void
of all dignity and energy. Several circum
stances in the state of Europe enabled her
to bestow the crown on him without resist
ance from foreign powers. France was un
willing to expose herself so early to the
hazard of a new war, and was farther re
strained by her recent alliance with Austria;
and the unexpected death of the Elector of
Saxony deprived the Courts of Versailles and
Vienna of the competitor whom they could
have supported with most hope of success
against the influence of the Czarina. Fred
eric II., abandoned, or (as he himself with
reason thought) betrayed by England,* found
himself, at the general peace, without an
ally, exposed to the deserved resentment of
Austria, and no longer with any hope of aid
from France, which had become the friend
of his natural enemy. In this situation, he
thought it necessary to court the friendship
of Catharine, and in the beginning of the
year 1764, concluded a defensive alliance
with her. the stipulations of which with re
spect to Poland were, that they were to op
pose every attempt either to make that crown
hereditary or to strengthen the royal power ;
that they were to unite in securing the elec
tion of Stanislaus; and that they were to
protect the Dissidents of the Greek and Pro
testant communions, who, since the year
1717, had been deprived of that equal admis-
sibility to public office which was bestowed
on them by the liberality of the ancient laws.
The first of these stipulations was intended
to perpetuate the confusions of Poland, and
to insure her dependence on her neighbours ;
while the last would afford a specious pre
text for constant interference. In a declara
tion delivered at Warsaw, Catharine assert
ed, " that she did nothing but in virtue of the
right of vicinage, acknowledged by all na
tions j"t and, on another occasion, observed,
"that justice and humanity were the sole
rules of her conduct ; and that her virtues
alone had placed her on the throne:"! while
Frederic declared, that " he should con
stantly labour to defend the states of the
republic in their integrity ;" and Maria The
resa, a sovereign celebrated for piety and
justice, assured the Polish Government of
* Memoiresde Frederic II. 1763 — 1775. Intro
duction. Frederick charges the new Administra
tion of Geo. III., not with breach of treaty in
making peace without him, but with secretly
offering to regain Silesia for Maria Theresa, and
with labouring to embroil Peter III. wiih Prussia.
t Rulhiere, Histoire de 1'Anarchie de Pologne,
vol. ii. p. 41.
t Ibid. p. 151.
26
"her resolution to maintain the republic in
all her rights, prerogatives, and possessions."
Catharine again, when Poland, for the first
time, acknowledged her title of Empress of
all the Russias, granted to the republic a
solemn guarantee of all its possessions !*
Though abandoned by their allies and dis
tracted by divisions, the Poles made a gallant
stand against the appointment of the dis
carded lover of a foreign princess to be their
King. One party, at the head of which was
the illustrious house of Czartorinski, by sup
porting the influence of Russia, and the elec
tion of Stanislaus, hoped to obtain the power
of reforming the constitution, of abolishing the
veto, and giving due strength to the crown.
The other, more generous though less en
lightened, spurned at foreign interference,
and made the most vigorous efforts to assert
independence, but were unhappily averse to
reforms of the constitution, wedded to ancient
abuses, and resolutely determined to exclude
their fellow-citizens of different religions
from equal privileges. The leaders of the
latter party were General Branicki, a veteran
of Roman dignity and intrepidity, arid Prince
Radzivil, a youth of almost regal revenue and
dignity, who, by a singular combination of
valour and generosity with violence and
wildness, exhibited a striking picture of a
Sarmatian grandee. The events which pass
ed in the interregnum, as they are related
by Rulhiere, form one of the most interest
ing parts of modern history. The variety of
character, the elevation of mind, and the
vigour of talent exhibited in the fatal strug
gle which then began, afford a memorable
proof of the superiority of the worst aristo
cracy over the best administered absolute
monarchy. The most turbulent aristocracy,
with all its disorders and insecurity, must
contain a certain number of men who re
spect themselves, and who have some scope
for the free exercise of genius and virtue.
In spite of all the efforts of generous pa
triotism, the Diet, surrounded by a Russian
army, were compelled to elect Stanislaus.
The Princes Czartorinski expected to reign
under the name of their nephew. They had
carried through their reforms so dexterously
as to be almost unobserved; but Catharine
had too deep an interest in the anarchy of
Poland not to watch over its preservation.
She availed herself of the prejudices of the
party most adverse to her, and obliged the
Diet to abrogate the reforms. Her ambassa
dors were her viceroys. Keyserling. a crafty
and smooth German jurist. Saldern, a des
perate adventurer, banished from Holstein
for forgery, and Repnin, a haughty and brutal
Muscovite, were selected, perhaps from the
variety of their character, to suit the fluctu
ating circumstances of the country: but all
of them spoke in that tone of authority which
has ever since continued to distinguish Rus
sian diplomacy. Prince Czartorinski was
* Ferrand, Histoire des trois Demembrementfl
de la Pologne (Paris, 1820), p. 1.
202
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
desirous not to be present in the Diet when
his measures were repealed ] but Repnin told
him, that if he was not, his palaces should
be burnt, and his estates laid waste. Under
standing this system of Muscovite canvass, he
submitted to the humiliation of proposing to
abrogate those reformations which he thought
essential to the existence of the republic.
In September of the same year, the Rus
sian and Prussian ministers presented notes
in favour of the Dissidents,* and afterwards
urged the claims of that body more fully to
the Diet of 1766, when they were seconded
with honest intentions, though perhaps with
a doubtful right of interference, by Great
Britain, Denmark, and Sweden, as parties to,
or as guarantees of, the Treaty of Oliva, the
foundation of the political system of the north
of Europe. The Diet, influenced by the un
natural union of an intolerant spirit with a
generous indignation against foreign interfer
ence, rejected all these solicitations, though
undoubtedly agreeable to the principle of
of them
pro
the treaty, and though some
ceeded from powers which could not be sus
pected of unfriendly intention*. The Dissi
dents were unhappily prevailed upon to enter
into confederations for the recovery of their
ancient rights, and thus furnished a pretext
for the armed interference of Russia. Catha
rine now affected to espouse the cause of
the Republicans, who had resisted the elec
tion of Stanislaus. A general confederation
of malcontents was formed under the au
spices of Prince Radzivil at Radom, but sur
rounded by Russian troops, and subject to
the orders of the brutal Repnin. This ca
pricious barbarian used his power with such
insolence as soon to provoke general resist
ance. He prepared measures for assembling
a more subservient Diet by the utmost ex
cesses of military violence at the elections,
and by threats of banishment to Siberia
held out to every one whose opposition he
dreaded.
This Diet, which met on the 4th of Octo
ber, 1767, showed at first strong symptoms
of independence,! but was at length intimi
dated ; and Repnin obtained its consent to a
treaty} stipulating for the equal admission
of all religious sectaries to civil offices, con-
taininga reciprocal guarantee " of the integri
ty of the territories of both powers in the most
solemn and sacred manner," confirming the
constitution of Poland, especially the fatal
law of unanimity, with a few alterations re
cently made by the Diet, and placing this
£i constitution, with the government, liberty,
and rights of Poland, under the guarantee of
her Imperial Majesty, who most solemnly
promises to preserve the republic for ever
entire." Thus, again, under the pretence
of enforcing religious liberty, were the dis
order and feebleness of Poland perpetuated ;
«,nd by the principle of the foreign guarantee
* Martens, Recueil de Traites, vol. i. p. 340.
t Rulhiere, vol. ii. pp. 466. 470.
t Martens, vol. iv. p. 582.
was her independence destroyed. Frederick
II., an accomplice in these crimes, describes
their immediate effect with the truth and
coolness of an unconcerned spectator. aSo
many acts of sovereignty/' says he, " exer
cised by a foreign power on the territory of
the republic, at length excited universal in
dignation : the offensive measures were not
softened by the arrogance of Prince Repnin :
enthusiasm seized the minds of all. and the
grandees availed themselves of the fanati
cism of their followers and serfs, to throw off
a yoke which had become insupportable."
In this temper of the nation, the Diet rose on
the 6th of March following, and with it ex
pired the Confederation of Radom, which
furnished the second example, within five
years, of a Polish party so blind to experi
ence as to become the dupes of Russia.
Another confederation was immediately
formed at Bar, in Podolia, for the preserva
tion of religion and liberty,* which, in a mo
ment, spread over the whole kingdom. The
Russian officers hesitated for a moment
whether they could take apart in this intes
tine war. Repnin, by pronouncing the word
"Siberia," compelled those members of the
Senate who were at Warsaw to claim the
aid of Russia, notwithstanding the dissent of
the Czartorinskis and their friends, who pro
tested against that inglorious and ruinous
determination. The Mar that followed pre
sented, on the part of Russia, a series of acts
of treachery, falsehood, rapacity, and cruelty,
not unworthy of Caesar Borgia. The resist
ance of the Poles, an undisciplined and al
most unarmed people, betrayed by their
King and Senate, in a country without fast
nesses or fortifications, and in which the
enemy had already established themselves
at every important point, forms one of the
most glorious, though the most unfortunate,
of the struggles of mankind for their rights.
The council of the confederation established
themselves at Eperies, within the frontier
of Hungary, with the connivance and secret
favour of Austria. Some French officers, and
aid in money from Versailles and Constan
tinople, added something to their strength,
and more to their credit. Repnin enter
ed into a negotiation with them, and pro
posed an armistice, till he cpuld procure re
inforcements. Old Pulaski, the first leader
of the confederation, objected : — " There is
no word," said he, " in the Russian language
for honour." Repnin. as soon as he was re
inforced, laughed at the armistice, fell upon
the confederates, and laid waste the lands of
all true Poles with fire and sword. The
Cossacks brought to his house at Warsaw,
Polish gentlemen tied to the tails of their
horses, and dragged in this manner along
the ground.! A Russian colonel, named
Drewitz, seems to have surpassed all his
comrades in ferocity. Not content with mas
sacring the gentlemen to whom quarter had
* See their Manifesto, Martens, vol. i. p. 456.
t Rulhiere, vol. iii. p. 55.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
203
been given, he inflicted on them the punish
ments invented in Russia for slaves; some
times tying them to trees as a mark for his
soldiers to fire at ; sometimes scorching cer
tain parts of their skin, so as to represent
the national dress of Poland ; sometimes dis
persing them over the provinces, after he had
cut off their hands, arms, noses, or ears, as
living examples of the punishment to be suf
fered by those who should love their coun
try.* It is remarkable, that this ferocious
monster, then the hero of the Muscovite
army, was deficient in the common quality
of military courage. Peter had not civilized
the Russians ; that was an undertaking be
yond his genius, and inconsistent with his fe
rocious character : he had only armed a bar
barous people with the arts of civilized war.
But no valour could have enabled the
Confederates of Bar to resist the power of
Russia for four years, if they had not been
seconded by certain important changes in
the political system of Europe, which at first
raised a powerful diversion in their favour,
but at length proved the immediate cause
of the dismemberment of their country.
These changes may be dated from the al
liance of France with Austria in 1756. and
still more certainly from the peace of 1762.
On the day on which the Duke de Choiseul
signed the preliminaries of peace at Fontaine-
bleau, he entered into a secret convention
with Spain, by which it was agreed, that the
•war should be renewed against England in
eight years, — a time which was thought suf
ficient to repair the exhausted strength of
the two Bourbon monarchies."!" The hostility
of the French Minister to England was at
that time extreme. " If I was master," said
he, " we should act towards England as Spain
did to the Moors. If we really adopted that
system, England would, in thirty years, be
reduced and destroyed."! Soon after, how
ever, his vigilance was directed to other
quarters by projects which threatened to
deprive France of her accustomed and due
influence in the North and East of Europe.
He was incensed with Catharine for not re
suming the alliance with Austria, and the
war which had been abruptly suspended by
the caprice of her unfortunate husband.
She, on the other hand, soon after she was
seated on the throne, had formed one of
those vast and apparently chimerical plans
to which absolute power and immense terri
tory have familiarised the minds of Russian
sovereigns. She laboured to counteract the
influence of France, which she considered
as the chief obstacle to her ambition, on all
the frontiers of her empire, in Sweden, Po-
* Rulhiere, vol. iii. p. 124.
t Ferrand, vol. i. p. 76. The failure of this
perfidious project is to be ascribed to the decline
of Choiseul's influence. The affair of the Falk
land Islands wns a fragment of the design.
t Despatch from M. de Choiseul to M. D'Os-
sun at Madrid, 5th April. Flassan. Histoire de
la Diplomatic Fran9aise, vol. vi. p. 466. About
thirty years afterwards, the French monarchy
was destroyed !
land, and Turkey, by the formation of a
great alliance of the North, to consist of
England, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, and
Poland, — Russia being of course the head
of the league.* Choiseul exerted himself in
every quarter to defeat this project, or rather
to be revenged on Catharine for attempts
which were already defeated by their own
extravagance. In Sweden his plan for reduc
ing the Russian influence was successfully
resisted; but the revolution accomplished
by Gustavus III. in 1772. re-established the
French ascendant in that kingdom. The
Count de Vergennes, ambassador at Con
stantinople, opened the eyes of the Sultan to
the ambitious projects of Catharine in Swe
den, in Poland, and in the Crimea, and held
out the strongest assurances of powerful aid,
wh/ch, had Choiseul remained in power,
would probably have been carried into ef
fect. By all these means, Vergennes per
suaded the Porte to declare war against
Russia on the 30th of October, 1768.t
The Confederates of Bar, who had esta
blished themselves in the neighbourhood of
the Turkish, as well as of the Austrian pro
vinces, now received open assistance from
the Turks. The Russian arms were fully
occupied in the Turkish war; a Russian fleet
entered the Mediterranean ; and the agents
of the Court of St. Petersburgh excited a
revolt among the Greeks, whom they after
wards treacherously and cruelly abandoned
to the vengeance of their Turkish tyrants.
These events suspended the fate of Poland.
French officers of distinguished merit and
gallantry guided the valour of the undis
ciplined Confederates: Austria seemed to
countenance, if not openly to support them.
Supplies and reinforcements from France
passed openly through Vienna into Poland ;
and Maria Theresa herself publicly declared,
that there was no principle or honour in that
country, but among the Confederates. But
the Turkish war. which had raised up an
important ally for the struggling Poles, was
in the end destined to be the cause of their
destruction.
The course of events had brought the Rus
sian armies into the neighbourhood of the
Austrian dominions, and began to fill the
Court of Vienna with apprehensions for the
security of Hungary. Frederic had no desire
that his ally should become stronger; while
both the great powers of Germany were
averse to the extension of the Russian terri
tories at the expense of Turkey. Frederic
was restrained from opposing it forcibly by
his treaty with Catharine, who continued to
be his sole ally ; but Kaunitz, who ruled the
councils at Vienna, still adhered to the French
alliance, seconding the French negotiations
* Rulhiere, vol. ii. p. 310. Ferrand, vol. i. p. 75.
t Flassan, vol. iii. p. 83. Vergennes was im
mediately recalled, notwithstanding this success,
for having lowered (deconsidere) himself by mar
rying the daughter of a physician. He brought
back with him the three millions which had been
remitted to him to bribe the Divan. Catharine
called him " Mustapha's Prompter."
204
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
at Constantinople. Even so late as the month,
of July, 1771, he entered into a secret treaty
with Turkey, by which Austria bound her
self to recover from Russia, by negotiation
or by force, all the conquests made by the
latter from the Porte. But there is reason
to think that Kaunitz, distrusting the power
and the inclination of France under the fee
ble government of Louis XV., and still less
disposed to rely on the councils of Versailles
after the downfal of Choiseul in December,
1770, though he did not wish to dissolve the
alliance, was desirous of loosening its ties,
and became gradually disposed to adopt any
expedient against the danger of Russian ag
grandisement, which might relieve him from
the necessity of engaging in a war, in which
his chief confidence must necessarily have
rested on so weak a stay as the French Go
vernment. Maria Theresa still entertained
a rooted aversion for Frederic, whom she
never forgave for robbing her of Silesia;
and openly professed her abhorrence of the
vices and crimes of Catharine, whom she
never spoke of but in a tone of disgust, as
''•that woman." Her son Joseph, however,
affected to admire, and, as far as he had
power, to imitate the King of Prussia ; and
in spite of his mother's repugnance, found
means to begin a personal intercourse with
him. Their first interview occurred at Neiss,
in Silesia, in August, 1769, where they en
tered into a secret engagement to prevent
the Russians from retaining Moldavia and
Wallachia. In September, 1770, a second
took place at Neustadt in Moravia, where
the principal subject seems also to have
been the means of staying the progress of
Russian conquest, and where despatches
were received from Constantinople, desiring
the mediation of both Courts in the nego
tiations for peace.* But these interviews,
though lessening mutual jealousies, do not
appear to have directly influenced their sys
tem respecting Poland. t The mediation,
however, then solicited, ultimately gave rise
to that fatal proposition.
* Memoires de Frederic II.
t It was at one lime believed, that .the project
of Partition was first suggested to' Joseph by
Frederic at Neustadt, if not at Neiss. Goertz's
papers (Memoires et Actes Authentiques relatifs
aux Negotiations qui out precedees le Partage de
la Pologne, Weimar, 1810) demonstrate the con
trary. These papers are supported by Viomenil
(Lettres),^ by the testimony of Prince Henry,
by Rulhiere, and by the narrative of Frederic.
Dohm (Denkwiirdigkeiten meiner Zeit) and
Schoell (Histoire Abregee des Traites des Paix)
have also shown the impossibility of this supposi
tion. Mr. Coxe (History of the House of Austria,
vol. iii. p. 499) has indeed adopted it, and endea
vours to support it by the declarations of Hertz-
berg to himself: but when he examines the
above authorities, the greater part of which have
appeared since his work, he will probably be
satisfied that he must have misunderstood the
Prussian minister; and he may perhaps follow
the example of the excellent abbreviator Koch,
who, in the last edition of his useful work, has
altered that part of his narrative which ascribed
the first plan of partition to Frederic.
Frederic had proposed a plan for the paci
fication of Poland, on condition of reasonable
terms being made with the Confederates,
and of the Dissidents being induced to mo
derate their demands. Austria had assented
to this plan, and was willing that Russia
should make an honourable peace, but insist
ed on the restitution of Moldavia and Walla-
chia, and declared, that if her mediation were
slighted, she must at length yield to the
instances of France, and take an active part
for Poland and Turkey. These declarations
Frederic communicated to the Court of Pe-
tersburgh j* and they alone seem sufficient
to demonstrate that no plan of partition was
then contemplated by that monarch. To
these communications Catharine answei-jsd,
in a confidential letter to the King, by a plan
of peace, in which she insisted on the inde
pendence of the Crimea, the acquisition of
a Greek island, and of a pretended indepen
dence for Moldavia and Wallachia, which
should make her the mistress of these pro
vinces. She spoke of Austria with great
distrust and alienation; but; on the other
hand, intimated her readiness to enter into a
closer intimacy with that Court, if it were
possible to disengage her from her present
absurd system, and to make her enter into
their views ; by which means Germany
would be restored to its natural state, and
the House of Austria would be diverted, by
other prospects, from those views on his
Majesty's possessions, which her present con
nections kept up.t This correspondence con
tinued during January and February, 1771 ;
Frederic objecting, in very friendly language,
to the Russian demands, and Catharine ad
hering to them.!' In January, Panin notified
to the Court of Vienna his mistress' accept
ance of the good offices of Austria towards
the pacification, though she declined a for
mal mediation. This despatch is chiefly
remarkable for a declaration,§ " that the Em
press had adopted^ as an invariable maxim?
never to desire any aggrandisement of her
states." When the Empress communicated
her plan of peace to Kaunitz in May, that
minister declared that his Court could not
propose conditions of peace, which must be
attended with ruin to the Porte, and with
great danger to the Austrian monarchy.
In the summer of the year 1770, Maria
Theresa had caused her troops to take pos
session of the county of Zipps, a district an
ciently appertaining to Hungary, but which
had been enjoyed by Poland for about three
hundred and sixty years, under a mortgage
made by Sigismond, king of Hungary, on the
strange condition that if it was not redeemed
•by a fixed time, it could only be so by pay
ment of as many times the original sum as
there had years elapsed since the appointed
* Frederic to Count Solms, his Minister at Pe-
tersburgh, 12th Sept. and 13th Oct. 1770. Goertz,
pp. 100—105.
t Ibid. pp. 107. 128. The French alliance is
evidently meant.
t Ibid. pp. 129—146. $ Ibid. p. 9.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
205
term. So unceremonious an adjudication to
herself of this territory, in defiance of such
an ancient possession, naturally produced a
remonstrance even from the timid Stanis
laus, which, however, she coolly overruled.
In the critical state of Poland, it was impos
sible that such a measure should not excite
observation ; and an occasion soon occurred,
when it seems to have contributed to pro
duce the most important effects.
Frederic, embarrassed and alarmed by the
difficulties of the pacification, resolved to
send his brother Henry to Petersburgh. with
no other instructions than to employ all his
talents and address in bringing Catharine to
such a temper as might preserve Prussia
from a new war. Henry arrived in that
capital on the 9th December; and it seems
now to be certain, that the first open pro
posal of a dismemberment of Poland arose
in his conversations with the Empress,
and appeared to be suggested by the diffi
culty of making peace on such terms as
would be adequate to the successes of Rus
sia, without endangering the safety of her
neighbours.* It would be difficult to guess
who first spoke out in a conversation about
such a matter between two persons of great
adroitness, and who were, doubtless, both
equally anxious to throw the blame on each
other. Unscrupulous as both were, they
were not so utterly shameless that each party
would not use the utmost address to bring
the dishonest plan out of the mouth of the
other. A look, a smile, a hint, or a question
were sufficiently intelligible, The best ac
counts agree, that in speaking of the entrance
of the Austrian troops into Poland, and of a
report that they had occupied the fortress of
Czentokow, Catharine smiling, and casting
down her eyes, said to Henry, "It seems
that in Poland you have only to stoop and
take;" that he seized on the expression ; and
that she then, resuming an air of indiffer
ence, turned the conversation to other sub
jects. At another time, speaking of the sub
sidy which Frederic paid to her by treaty,
she said, " I fear he will be weary of this
burden, and will leave me. I wish I could
secure him by some equivalent advantage."
"Nothing," replied Henry, "will be more
easy. You have only to give him some ter
ritory to which he has pretensions, and which
will facilitate the communication between
his dominions." Catharine, without appear
ing to understand a remark, the meaning of
which could not be mistaken, adroitly re
joined, " that she would willingly consent, if
the balance of Europe was not disturbed ;
and that she wished for nothing."! In a
conversation with Baron Saldern on the terms
of peace, Henry suggested that a plan must
be contrived which would detach Austria
from Turkey, and by which the three powers
would gain. "Very well," replied the for
mer, " provided that it is not at the expense
of Poland ;" — "as if," said Henry afterwards,
when he told the story, "there were any
other country about which such plans could
be formed." Catharine, in one of the con
ferences in which she said to the Prince, "I
will frighten Turkey and flatter England ; it
is your business to gain Austria, that she
may lull France to sleep," became so eager,
that she dipped her finger into ink, and drew
with it the lines of partition on a map of Po
land which lay before them. "The Em
press," says Frederic, "indignant that any
other troops than her own should give la >\* to
Poland, said to Prince Henry, that if the
Court of Vienna wished to dismember Po
land, the other neighbours had a right to do
as much."* Henry said that there were no
other means of preventing a general war; —
" Pour prevenir ce malheur il n'y a qu'un
moyen^ — de mettre trois tetes dans un bonnet ;
et cela ne pent pas se faire qu'aux depens d'un
quart." It is hard to settle the order and
time of these fragments of conversation.
,vhich, in a more or less imperfect state, have
found their way to the public. The proba
bility seems to be, that Henry, who was not
inferior in address, and who represented the
weaker party, would avoid the first proposal
in a case where, if it was rejected, the at
tempt might prove fatal to the objects of his
mission. However that may be, it cannot
be doubted that before he left Petersburg on
the 30th of January, 1771, Catharine and he
had agreed on the general outline to be pro
posed to his brother.
On his return to Berlin, he accordingly dis
closed it to the King, who received it at first
with displeasure, and even with indignation,
as either an extravagant chimera, or a snare
held out to him by his artful and dangerous
ally. For twenty-four hours this anger lasted.
It is natural to believe that a ray of con
science shot across so great a mind, during
one honest day ; or, if then too deeply tainted
by habitual king-craft for sentiments worthy
of his native superiority, that he shrunk for
a moment from disgrace, and felt a transient,
but bitter, foretaste of the lasting execration
of mankind. On the next day, however, he
embraced his brother, as if inspired, and de
clared that he was a second time the saviour
of the monarchy.! He was still, however,
not without apprehensions from the incon
stant councils of a despotic government, in
fluenced by so many various sorts of favour
ites, as that of Russia. Orlow, who still held
the office of Catharine's lover, was desirous
of continuing the war. Panin desired peace,
but opposed the Partition, which he probably
* Rulhiere, vol. iv. p. 209.
t Ferrand, vol. i. p. 140.
* Memoires. This account is very much con
firmed by the well-informed writer who has pre
fixed his Recollections to the Letters of Viomenit,
who probably was General Grimouard. His ac
count is from Prince Henry, who told it to him at
Paris in 1788, calling the news of the Austrian
proceedings in Poland, and Catharine's observa
tions on it, a fortunate accident, which suggested
the plan of partition.
t Ferrand, vol. i. p. 149.
S
206
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
considered as the division of a Russian pro
vince. But the great body of lovers and
courtiers who had been enriched by grants
of forfeited estates in Poland, were favoura
ble to a project which would secure their for
mer booty, and, by exciting civil war, lead
to new and richer forfeitures. The Czernit-
cheffs were supposed not to confine their
hopes to confiscation, but to aspire to a prin
cipality to be formed out of the ruins of the
republic. It appears that Frederic, in his
correspondence with Catharine, urged, per
haps sincerely, his apprehension of general
censure : her reply was, — " I take all the
blame upon myself."*
The consent of the Court of Vienna, how
ever, was still to be obtained ; where the
most formidable and insuperable obstacles
were still to be expected in the French alli
ance, in resentment towards Prussia, and in
the conscientious character of Maria Theresa.
Prince Henry, on the day of his return to
Berlin, in a conversation with Van' Swieten
the Austrian minister, assured him, on the
part of Catharine, "that if Austria w'ould fa
vour her negotiations with Turkey, she would
consent to a considerable augmentation of
the Austrian territory." On Van Swieten
asking " where ?" Henry replied. "You know
as well as I do what your Court might take,
and what it is in the power of Russia and
Prussia to cede to her." The cautious min
ister was silent } but it was impossible that
he should either have mistaken the meaning
of Henry, or have failed to impart such a de
claration to his Court. t As soon as the Court
of Petersburgh had vanquished the scruples
or fears of Frederic, they required that he
should sound that of Vienna, which he im
mediately did through Van Swieten. j The
state of parties there was such, that Kaunitz
thought it ..necessary to give an ambiguous
answer. That celebrated coxcomb, who had
growrn old in the ceremonial of courts and
the intrigues of cabinets, and of whom we
are told that the death of his dearest friend
never shortened his toilet nor retarded his
dinner, still felt some regard to the treaty
with France, which was his own work ; and
was divided between his habitual submis
sion to the Empress Queen and the court
which he paid to the young Emperor. It
was a difficult task to minister to the ambi
tion of Joseph, without alarming the con
science of Maria Theresa. That Princess
had, since the death of her husband, " passed
several hours of every day in a funeral apart-
* This fact was communicated by Sabatier, the
French resident at Petersburgh, to his Court in a
despatch of ihe llth February, 1774. (Ferrand,
vol. i. p. 152.) It transpired at that time, on occa
sion of an angry correspondence between the two
Sovereigns, in which the King reproached the
Empress with having desired the Partition, and
quoted the letter in which she had offered to take
on herself the whole blame.
t Ferrand, vol. i. p. 149.
t Memoires de Frederic II. The Kins does
not give the dates of this communication. It pro
bably was in April. 1771.
ment, adorned by crucifixes and death's
heads, and by a portrait of the late Empe
ror, painted when he had breathed his last,
and by a picture of herself, as it was sup
posed she would appear, when the paleness
and cold of death should take from her coun
tenance the remains of that beauty which
made her one of the finest women of her
age."* Had it been possible, in any case, to
rely on the influence of the conscience of a
sovereign over measures of state, it might
be supposed that a princess, occupied in the
practice of religious austerities, and in the
exercise of domestic affections, advanced
in years, loving peace, beloved by her sub
jects, respected in other countries, professing
remorse for the bloodshed which her wars
had occasioned, and with her children about
to ascend the greatest thrones of Europe,
would not have tarnished her name by co
operating with one monarch whom she de
tested, and another whom she scorned and
disdained, in the most faithless and shame
less measures which had ever dishonoured
the Christian world. Unhappily, she was des
tined to be a signal example of the insecu
rity of such a reliance. But she could not
instantly yield ] and Kaunitz was obliged to
temporize. On the one hand, he sent Prince
Lobkowitz on an embassy to Petersburgh,
where no minister of rank had of late repre
sented Austria ; while, on the other, he con
tinued his negotiation for a defensive alliance
with Turkey. After having first duly noti
fied to Frederic that his Court disapproved
the impracticable projects of Partition, and
was ready to withdraw their troops from the
district which they had occupied in virtue of
an ancient claim, t he soon after proposed
neutrality to him, in the event of a war be
tween Austria and Russia. Frederic an
swered, that he was bound by treaty to sup
port Russia ; but intimated that Russia might
probably recede from her demand of Molda
via and Wallachia. Both parts of the an
swer seemed to have produced the expected
effect on Kaunitz, who now saw his country
placed between a formidable war and a profit
able peace. Even then, probably, if he could
have hoped for effectual aid from France, he
might have chosen the road of honour. But
the fall of the Due de Choiseul, and the pu
sillanimous rather than pacific policy of his
successors, destroyed all hope of French suc
cour, and disposed Kaunitz to receive more
favourably the advances of the Courts of Ber
lin and Petersburgh. He seems to have em
ployed the time, from June to October, in
surmounting the repugnance of his Court to
the new system.
The first certain evidence of a favourable
disposition at Vienna towards the plan of the
* Rulhiere, vol. iv. p. 167.
t The want of dates in the King of Prussia's
narrative is the more unfortunate, because the
Count, de Goertz has not published the papers re
lating to the negotiations between Austria and
Prussia, — an omission which must be owned to
be somewhat suspicious.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
207
two Powers, is in a despatch of Prince Galit-
zin at Vienna to Count Panin, on the 25th of
October,* in which he gives an account of a
conversation with Kaunitz on the day before.
The manner of the Austrian minister was
more gracious and cordial than formerly ;
and, after the usual discussions about the
difficulties of the terms of peace. Galitzin at
last asked him — "What equivalent do you
propose for all that you refuse to allow us 1
It seems to me that there can be none/'
Kaunitz, suddenly assuming an air of cheer
fulness, pressed his hand, and said "Sir,
since you point out the road, I will tell you,
— but in such strict comidence, that it must
be kept a profound secret at your Court ; for
if it were to transpire and be known even
to the ally and friend of Russia, my Court
would solemnly retract and disavow this
communication." He then proposed a mo
derate plan of peace, but added, that the
Court of Vienna could not use its good offices
to cause it to be adopted, unless the Court
of Petersburgh would give the most positive
assurances that she would not subject Poland
to dismemberment for her own advantage,
or for that of any other ; provided always,
that their Imperial Majesties were to retain
the county of Zipps, but to evacuate every
other part of the Polish territory which the
Austrian troops might have occupied. Galit
zin observed, that the occupation of Zipps
had much the air of a dismemberment. This
Kaunitz denied; but said, that his Court
would co-operate with Russia in forcing the
Poles to put an end to their dissensions. The
former observed, that the plan of pacification
showed the perfect disinterestedness of her
Imperial Majesty towards Poland, and that
no idea of dismemberment had ever entered
into her mind, or into that of her ministers.
"I am happy," said Kaunitz, "to hear you
say so." Panin, in his answer, on the 16th
of December,! to Galitzin, seems to have
perfectly well understood the extraordinary
artifice of the Austrian minister. "The
Court -of Vienna," says he, "claims the thir
teen towns, and disclaims dismemberment :
but there is no state which does not keep
claims open against its neighbours, and the
right to enforce them when there is an op
portunity; and there is none which does not
feel the necessity of the balance of power to
secure the possession of each. To be sincere,
we must not conceal that Russia is also in a
condition to produce well-grounded claims
against Poland, and that we can with con
fidence say the same of our ally the King
of Prussia ; and if the Court of Vienna finds
it expedient to enter into measures with us
and our ally to compare and arrange our
claims, we are ready to agree." The fears
of Kaunitz for the union of France and Eng
land were unhappily needless. These great
Powers, alike deserters of the rights of na
tions, and betrayers of the liberties of Europe,
* Goertz, p. 75.
t Ibid. p. 153.
saw the crime consummated without stretch
ing forth an arm to prevent it.
In the midst of the conspiracy, a magnifi
cent embassy from France arrived at Vienna
early in January, 1772.* At the head of it
was the Prince de Rohan, then appointed to
grace the embassy by his high birth ; while
the business continued to be in the hands of
M. Durand, a diplomatist of experience and
ability. Contrary to all reasonable expecta
tion, the young prince discovered the secret
which had escaped the sagacity of the vete
ran minister. Durand. completely duped by
Kaunitz, warned Rohan to hint no suspicions
of Austria in his despatches to Versailles.
About the end of February, Rohan received
information of the treachery of the Austrian
court so secretly,t that he was almost obliged
to represent it as a discovery made by his
own penetration. He complained to Kaunitz,
that no assistance was given to the Polish
confederates, \vho had at that moment bril
liantly distinguished themselves by the
capture of the Castle of Cracow. Kaunitz
assured him, that "the Empress Queen
never would suffer the balance of power to
be disturbed by a dismemberment which
would give too much preponderance to neigh
bouring and rival Courts." The ambassador
suspected the intentions that lurked beneath
this equivocal and perfidious answer, and
communicated them to his Court, in a des
patch on the 2d of March, giving an account
of the conference. But the Due d'Aiguillon,
either deceived, or unwilling to appear sor
rebuked the Prince for his officiousness, ob
serving, that " the ambassador's conjectures
being incompatible with the positive assur
ances of the Court of Vienna, constantly
repeated by Count Mercy, the ambassador
at Paris, and with the promises recently
made to M. Durand, the thread which could
only deceive must be quitted." In a private
letter to M. d'Aiguillon, to be shown only to
the King, referring to a private audience
with the Empress, he says : — " I have indeed
seen Maria Theresa weep over the misfor
tunes of oppressed Poland : but that Princess,
practised in the art of concealing her design sr
has tears at command. With one hand she
lifts her handkerchief to her eyes to wipe
away tears j with the other she wields the
sword for the Partition of Poland. "t
* Memoiresde 1'Abbe Georgel, vol. i. p. 219.
t The Abbe Georgel ascribes the detection to
his master the ambassador ; but it is more pro
bably ascribed by M. Shoell (Histoire de Traites,
vol. xiv. p. 76,) to a young native of Strasburg,
named Earth, the second secretary of the French
Legation, who, by his knowledge of German, and
intimacy with persons in inferior office, detected
the project, but required the ambassador to con
ceal it even from Georgel. Schoell quotes a
passage of a letter from Barth to a friend at Stras
burg, which puts his early knowledge of it beyond
dispute.
t Georgel. vol. i. p. 264. The letter produced
some remarkable effects. Madame du Barri got
possession of it, and read the above passage aloud
at one of her supper parties. An enemy of Rohan,
208
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
In February and March, 1772, the three
Powers exchanged declarations, binding
themselves to adhere to the principle of
equality in the Partition. In August follow
ing, the treaties of dismemberment were
executed at Petersburgh ; and in September,
the demands and determinations of the com
bined Courts were made known at Warsaw.
It is needless to characterize papers which
have been universally regarded as carried to
the extremity of human injustice and effront
ery. An undisputed possession of centu
ries, a succession of treaties, to which all
the European states were either parties
or guarantees, — nay, the recent, solemn, and
repeated engagements of the three Govern
ments themselves, were considered as form
ing no title of dominion. In answer, the
Empress Queen and the King of Prussia
appealed to some pretensions of their pre
decessors in the thirteenth century : the
Empress of Russia alleged only the evils
suffered by neighbouring states from the
anarchy of Poland.* The remonstrances
of the Polish Government, and their appeals
to all those states who were bound to protect
them as guarantees of the Treaty of Olivia,
were equally vain. When the Austrian am
bassador announced the Partition at Ver
sailles, the old King said, '{ If the other man
(Choiseul) had been here, this would not
have happened. "t But in truth, both France
and Great Britain had, at that time, lost all
who was present, immediately told theDauphiness
of this attack on her mother. The young Princess
was naturally incensed at such language, espe
cially as she had been given to understand that the
letter was written to Madame du Barri. She
became the irreconcilable enemy of the Prince,
afterwards Cardinal de Rohan, who, in hopes of
conquering her hostility, engaged in the strange
adventure of the Diamond Necklace, one of the
secondary agents in promoting the French Revo
lution, and not the least considerable source of
the popular prejudices against the Queen.
* Martens, vol. i. p. 461.
t It has been said that Austria did not accede to
the Partition till France had refused to co-operate
against it. Of this M. de Segur tells us, that he
was assured by Kaunitz, Cobentzel, and Vergen-
nes. The only circumstance which approaches to
a confirmation of his statement is, that there are
traces in Ferrand of secret intimations conveyed
by D'Aiguillon to Frederic, that there was no
likelihood of France proceeding to extremities in
favour of Poland. This clandestine treachery is,
however, very different from a public refusal. It
has, on the other hand, been stated (Coxe, vol. ii.
p. 516.) that the Due d'Aiguillon proposed to
Lord Rochfort, that an English or French fleet
.should be sent to the Baltic to prevent the dis
memberment. But such a proposal, it' it occurred
at all, must have related to transactions long an
tecedent to the Partition, and to the administration
of D'Aiguillon, for Lord Rochfort was recalled
from the French embassy in 1768, to be made
Secretary of State, on the resignation of Lord
Shelburne. Neither can the application have
been to him as Secretary of State ; for France
was not in his department. It is to be regretted
that Mr. Coxe should, in the same place, have
quoted a writer so discredited as the Abbe Soulavie
(M6moires de Louis XVI.), from whom he quotes
A memorial, without doubt altogether imaginary,
of D'Aiguillon to Louis XV.
influence in the affairs of Europe : — France,
from the imbecility of her Government, and
partly, in the case of Poland, from reliance
on the Court of Vienna j Great Britain, in
consequence of her own treachery to Prus
sia, but in a still greater degree from the
unpopularity of her Government at home,
and the approaches of a revolt in the noblest
part of her colonies. Had there been a
spark of spirit, or a ray of wise policy in the
councils of England and France, they would
have been immediately followed by all the
secondary powers whose very existence de
pended on the general reverence for justice.
The Poles made" a gallant stand. The Go
vernment was compelled to call a Diet j and
the three Powers insisted on its unanimity
in the most trivial act. In spite, however,
of every species of corruption and violence,
the Diet, surrounded as it was by foreign
bayonets, gave powers to deputies to negoti
ate with the three Powers, by a majority of
only one; and it was not till September,
1773, that it was compelled to cede, by a
pretended treaty, some of her finest provin
ces, with nearly five millions of her popula
tion. The conspirators were resolved to de
prive the remains of the Polish nation of all
hope of re-establishing a vigorous govern
ment, or attaining domestic tranquillity;
and the Liberum Veto, the elective monar
chy, and all the other institutions which
tended to perpetuate disorder, were again
imposed.
Maria Theresa had the merit of confessing
her fault. On the 19th of February, 1775.
when M. de Breteuil, the ambassador of
Louis XVI., had his first audience, after some
embarrassed remarks on the subject of Po
land, she at length exclaimed, in a tone of
sorrow, " I know. Sir, that I have brought a
deep stain on my reign, by what has been
done in Poland ; but I am sure that I should
be forgiven, if it could be known what re
pugnance I had to it, and how many circum
stances combined against my principles."*
The guilt of the three parties to the^artition
was very unequal. Frederic, the weakest,
had most to apprehend, both from a rupture
with his ally, and from the accidents of a
general war; while, on the other hand, somo
enlargement seemed requisite to the defence
of his dominions. The House of Austria en
tered late and reluctantly into the conspira
cy, which she probably might have escaped,
if France had been under a more vigorous
Government. Catharine was the great crimi
nal. She had for eight years oppressed, be
trayed, and ravaged Poland, — had imposed
on her King, — had prevsnted all reformation
of the government, — had fomented divisions
among the nobility, — in a word, had created
and maintained that anarchy, which she at
length used as a pretence for the dismem
berment. Her vast empire needed no acces
sion of territory for defence, or, it might
have been hoped, even for ambition. Yet,
by her insatiable avidity, was occasioned the
* Flassan. vol. vii. p. 125.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
209
pretended necessity for the Partition. To
prevent her from acquiring the Crimea, Mol
davia, and Wallachia, the Courts of Vienna
and Berlin agreed to allow her to commit an
equivalent robbery on Poland. Whoever
first proposed it, Catharine was the real cause
and author of the whole monstrous transac
tion ; and, should any historian, — dazzled by
the splendour of her reign, or more excusa
bly seduced by her genius, her love of letters,
uer efforts in legislation, and her real servi
ces to her subjects. — labour to palliate this
great offence, he will only share her infamy
in the vain attempt to extenuate her guilt.
The defects of the Polish government pro
bably contributed to the loss of independ
ence most directly by their influence on the
military system. The body of the gentry
retaining the power of the sword, as well as
the authority of the state in their own hands,
were too jealous of the Crown to strengthen
the regular army; though even that body
was more in the power of the great officers
named by the Diet, than in that of the King.
They continued to serve on horseback as in
ancient times, and to regard the Pospolite, or
general armament of the gentry, as the im
penetrable bulwark of the commonwealth.
Nor, indeed, unless they had armed their
slaves, would it have been possible to have
established a formidable native infantry.
Their armed force was adequate to the short
irruptions or sudden enterprises of ancient
war; but a body of noble cavalry was alto
gether incapable of the discipline, which is
of the essence of modern armies; and their
military system was irreconcilable with the
acquisition of the science of war. In war
alone, the Polish nobility were barbarians;
while war was the only part of civilization
which the Russians had obtained. In one
country, the sovereign nobility of half a mil
lion durst neither arm their slaves, nor trust
a mercenary army : in the other, the Czar
naturally employed a standing army, re
cruited, without fear, from the enslaved pea
santry. To these military conscription was
a reward, and the station of a private soldier
a preferment ; and they were fitted by their
previous condition to be rendered, by mili
tary discipline, the most patient and obedient
of soldiers, — without enterprise, but without
fear, and equally inaccessible to discontent
and attachment, passive and almost insensi
ble members of the great military machine.
There are many circumstances in the insti
tutions and destiny of a people, which seem
to arise from original pecularities of national
character, of which it is often impossible to
explain the origin, or even to show the nature.
Denmark and Sweden are countries situated
in the same region of the globe, inhabited
by nations of the same descent, language,
and religion, and very similar in their man
ners, their ancient institutions, and modern
civilization: yet he would be a bold specu
lator who should attempt to account for the
talent, fame, turbulence, and revolutions of
the former ; and for the quiet prosperity and
27
obscure mediocrity, which have formed the
character of the latter.
There is no political doctrine more false or
more pernicious than that which represents
vices in its internal government as an ex
tenuation of unjust aggression against a coun
try, and a consolation to mankind for the
destruction of its independence. As no go
vernment is without great faults, such a doc
trine multiplies the grounds of war, gives an
unbounded scope to ambition, and furnishes
benevolent pretexts for every sort of rapine.
However bad the government of Poland may
have been, its bad qualities do not in the
least degree abate the evil consequence of
the Partition, in weakening, by its example,
the security of all other nations. An act of
robbery on the hoards of a worthless miser,
though they be bestowed on the needy and
the deserving, does not the less shake the
common basis of property. The greater
number of nations live under governments
which are indisputably bad ; but it is a less
evil that they should continue in that state,
than that they should be gathered under a
single conqueror, even with a chance of im
provement in their internal administration.
Conquest and extensive empire are among
the greatest evils, and the division of man
kind into independent communities is among
the greatest advantages, which fall to the lot
of men. The multiplication of such com
munities increases the reciprocal control of
opinion, strengthens the principles of gene
rous rivalship, makes every man love his
own ancient and separate country with a
warmer affection, brings nearer to all man
kind the objects of noble ambition, and adds
to the incentives to which we owe works of
genius and acts of virtue. There are some
peculiarities in the condition of every civili
zed country which are peculiarly favourable
to some talents or good qualities. To de
stroy the independence of a people, is to an
nihilate a great assemblage of intellectual
and moral qualities, forming the character
of a nation, and distinguishing it from other
communities, which no human skill can bring
together. As long as national spirit exists,
there is always reason to hope that it will
work real reformation : when it is destroyed,
though better forms may be imposed by a
conqueror, there is no farther hope of those
only valuable reformations which represent
the sentiments, and issue from the heart of
a people. The barons at Runnymede con
tinued to be the masters of slaves; but the
noble principles of the charter shortly began
to release these slaves from bondage. Those
who conquered at Marathon and Plataea were
the masters of slaves; yet, by the defeat of
Eastern tyrants, they preserved knowledge,
liberty, and civilization itself, and contributed
to that progress of the human mind which
will one day banish slavery from the world.
Had the people of Scotland been conquered
by Edward II. or by Henry VIII., a common
observer would have seen nothing in the
event but that a race of turbulent barbarian*
s2
210
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
was reduced to subjection by a more civili
zed state.
After this first Partition was completed in
1776, Poland was suffered for sixteen years
to enjoy an interval of more undisturbed
tranquillity than it had known for a century.
Russian armies ceased to vex it : the dispo
sitions of other foreign powers became more
favourable. Frederic II. now entered on that
honourable portion of his reign, in which he
made a just war for the defence of the in
tegrity of Bavaria, and of the independence
of Germany. Still attempts were not want
ing to seduce him into new enterprises
against Poland. When, in the year 1782,
reports were current that Potemkin was to
be made King of Poland, that haughty and
profligate barbarian told the Count de Goertz,
then Prussian ambassador at Petersburgh,
that he despised the Polish nation too much
to be ambitious of reigning over them.* He
desired the ambassador to communicate to
his master a plan for a new Partition, ob
serving " that the first was only child's play,
and that if they had taken all, the outcry
would not have been greater." Every man
who feels for the dignity of human nature,
will rejoice that the illustrious monarch
firmly rejected the proposal. Potemkin read
over his refusal three times before he could
believe his eyes, and at length exclaimed,
in language very common among certain
politicians, "I never could have believed
that King Frederic was capable of romantic
ideas. "t As soon as Frederic returned to
counsels worthy of himself, he became unfit
for the purposes of the Empress, who, in
1780, refused to renew her alliance with
him, and found more suitable instruments in
the restless character, and shallow under
standing, of Joseph II., whose unprincipled
ambition was now released from the restraint
which his mother's scruples had imposed on
it. The project of re-establishing an Eastern
empire now occupied the Court of Peters-
burgh, and a portion of the spoils of Turkey
was a sufficient lure to Joseph. The state
of Europe tended daily more and more to
restore some degree of independence to the
remains of Poland. Though France, her
most ancient and constant ally, was then ab
sorbed in the approach of those tremendous
convulsions which have for more than thirty
years agitated Europe, other Powers now
adopted a policy, the influence of which was
favourable to the Poles. Prussia, as she re
ceded from Russia, became gradually con
nected with England, Holland, and Sweden ;
and her honest policy in the case of Bavaria
placed her at the head of all the independent
members of the Germanic Confederacy. Tur-
* Dohm, vol. ii. p. 45.
t It was about this time that Goertz gave an ac
count of the Court of Russia to the Prince Royal of
Prussia, who was about to visit Petersbugh, of
which the following passage is a curious speci
men : — " Le Prince Bariatinski est reconnu scele-
rat, et meme comme tel employe encore de terns
en terns." — Dohm, vol. ii. p. 32.
key declared war against Russia. The Aus
trian Government was disturbed by the dis
content and revolts which the precipitate in
novations of Joseph had excited in various
provinces of the monarchy. A formidable
combination against the power of Russia was
in time formed. In the treaty between
Prussia and the Porte, concluded at Constan
tinople in January, 1790, the contracting par
ties bound themselves to endeavour to obtain
from Austria the restitution of those Polish
provinces, to which she had given the name
of Galicia.*
During the progress of these auspicious
changes, the Poles began to entertain the
hope that they might at length be suffered
to reform their institutions, to provide for
their own quiet and safety, and to adopt that
policy which might one day enable them to
resume their ancient station among European
nations. From 1778 to 1788, no great mea
sures had been adopted, but no tumults dis
turbed the country- while reasonable opi
nions made some progress, and a national
spirit was slowly reviving. The nobility pa
tiently listened to plans for the establishment
of a productive revenue and a regular army ;
a disposition to renounce their dangerous
right of electing a king made perceptible
advances; and the fatal law of unanimity
had been so branded as an instrument of
Russian policy, that in the Diets of these ten
years, no nuncio was found bold enough to
employ his negative. At the breaking out
of the Turkish war, the Poles ventured to
refuse not only an alliance offered by Catha
rine, but even permission to her to raise a
body of cavalry in the territories of the re
public. t
In the midst of these excellent symptoms
of public sense and temper, a Diet assem
bled at Warsaw in October, 1788, from whom
the restoration of the republic was hoped,
and by whom it would have been accom
plished, if their prudent and honest mea
sures had not been defeated by one of the
blackest acts of treachery recorded in the
annals of mankind. Perhaps the four years
wrhich followed present more signal examples
than any other part of history, — of patience,
moderation, wisdom, and integrity, in a po
pular assembly, — of spirit and unanimity
among a turbulent people, — of inveterate
malignity ift an old oppressor. — and of the
most execrable perfidy in a pretended friend.
The Diet applied itself with the utmost dili
gence and caution to reform the state, watch
ing the progress of popular opinion, and pro
posing no reformation till the public seemed
ripe for its reception. While the spirit of
the French Revolution was every where pre
valent, these reformers had the courageous
prudence to avoid whatever was visionary
in its principles, or violent in their execu
tion. They refused the powerful but peri
lous aid of the enthusiasm which it excited
* Schoell, vol. xiv. p. 473.
t Ferrand, vol. ii. p. 336.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
211
long before its excesses and atrocities had
rendered it odious. They were content to
be reproached by their friends for the slow
ness of their reformatory measures ; and to
be despised for the limited extent of these
by many of those generous minds who then
aspired to bestow a new and more perfect
liberty on mankind. After having taken
measures for the re-establishment of the
finances and the army, they employed the
greater part of the year 1789 in the" discus
sion of constitutional reforms.* A committee
appointed in September, before the. conclu
sion of the year, made a report which con
tained an outline of the most necessary alte
rations. No immediate decision was made
on these propositions; but the sense of the
Diet was, in the course of repeated discus
sions, more decisively manifested. It was
resolved, without a division, that the Elector
of Saxony should be named successor to the
crown; which determination, — the prelude
to the establishment of hereditary monar
chy, — was confirmed by the Dietines, or
electoral assemblies. The elective franchise,
formerly exercised by all the nobility, was
limited to landed proprietors. Many other
fundamental principles of a new constitution
were perfectly understood to be generally
approved, though they were not formally
established. In the mean time, as the Diets
were biennial, the assembly approached to
the close of its legal duration ; and as it was
deemed dangerous to intrust the work of re
formation to an entirely new one, and equally
so to establish the precedent of an existence
prolonged beyond the legal period, an expe
dient was accordingly adopted, not indeed
sanctioned by law, but founded in constitu
tional principles, the success of which afford
ed a signal proof of the unanimity of the
Polish nation. New writs were issued to all
the Dietines requiring them to choose the
same number of nuncios as usual. These
elections proceeded regularly ; and the new
members being received by the old. formed
with them a double Diet. Almost all the
Dietines instructed their new representatives
to vote for hereditary monarchy, and de
clared their approbation of the past conduct
of the Diet.
On the 16th of December, 1790, this double
Diet assembled with a more direct, deliber
ate, formal, and complete authority, from the
* Schoell, vol. xiv. p. 117. On the 12th of
October, 1788, the King of Prussia had offered,
by Buckholz, his minister at Warsaw, to guaran
tee the integrity of the Polish territory. — Ferrand,
vol. ii. p. 452. On the 19th of November, he ad
vises them not to be diverted from " ameliorating
their form of government ;" and declares, " that
he will guarantee their independence without
mixing in their internal affairs, or restraining the
liberty of their discussions, which, on the contrary,
he will guarantee." — Ibid. p. 457. The negotia
tions of Prinre Czartorinski at Berlin, and the
other notes of Buckholz, seconded by Mr. Hailes,
the English minister, agree entirely in language
and principles with the passages which have been
cited.
great majority of the freemen, to reform the
abuses of the government, than perhaps any
other representative assembly in Europe
ever possessed. They declared the pretend
ed guarantee of Russia in 1776 to be '•' null,
an invasion of national independence, incom
patible with the natural rights of every civi
lized society, and with the political privileges
of every free nation."* They felt the ne
cessity of incorporating, in one law, all the
reforms which had passed, and all those
which had received the unequivocal sanction
of public approbation. The state of foreign
affairs, as well as the general voice at home,
loudly called for the immediate adoption of
such a measure : and the new Constitution
was presented to the Diet on the 3d of May
following,! after being read and received the
night before with unanimous and enthusias
tic applause by far the greater part of the
members of both Houses, at the palace of
Prince Radzivil. Only twelve dissentient
voices opposed it in the Diet. Never were
debates and votes more free ; these men, the
most hateful of apostates, were neither at
tacked, nor threatened, nor insulted. The
people, on this great and sacred occasion,
seemed to have lost all the levity and turbu
lence of their character, and to have already
learnt those virtues which are usually the
slow fruit of that liberty which they were
then only about to plant.
This constitution confirmed the rights of
the Established Church, together with reli
gious liberty, as dictated by the charity which
religion inculcates and inspires. It establish
ed an hereditary monarchy in the Electoral
House of Saxony ; reserving to the nation the
nght of choosing a new race of Kings, in
case of the extinction of that family. The
executive power was vested in the King,
whose ministers were responsible for its ex
ercise. The Legislature was divided into
two Houses, — the Senate and the House of
Nuncios, with respect to whom the ancient
constitutional language and forms were pre
served. The necessity of unanimity was
taken away, and, with it, those dangerous
remedies of confederation and confederate
Diets which it had rendered necessary. Each
considerable town received new rights, with
a restoration of all their ancient privileges.
The burgesses recovered the right of elect
ing their own magistrates. All their pro
perty within their towns were declared to
be inheritable and inviolable. They were
empowered to acquire land in Poland, as
they always had done in Lithuania. All the
offices of the state, the law, the church, and
the army, were thrown open to them. The
larger towns were empowered to send depu
ties to the Diet, with a right to vote on all
* Ferrand, vol. iii. p. 55. The absence of dates
in this writer obliges us to fix the time of this de
cree by conjecture.
t The particular events of the 3d of May are
related fully by Ferrand, and shortly in the An
nual Register of 1791, — a valuable narrative,
though not without considerable mistakes.
212
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
local and commercial subjects, and to speak
on all questions whatsoever. All these depu
ties became noble, as did every officer of the
rank of captain, and every lawyer who filled
the humblest office of magistracy, and every
burgess who acquired a property in land,
paying 5/. of yearly taxes. Two hundred
burgesses were ennobled at the moment, and
a provision was made for ennobling thirty at
every future Diet. Industry was perfectly
unfettered. Immunity from arrest till after
conviction was extended to the burgesses ; —
the extension of which most inconvenient '
privilege was well adapted to raise traders
to a level with the gentry. The same object
was promoted by a provision, that no noble
man, by becoming a merchant, a shopkeeper,
or artisan, should forfeit his privileges, or be
deemed to derogate from his rank. Nume
rous paths to nobility were thus thrown open :
and every art was employed to make the
ascent easy. The wisdom and liberality of
the Polish gentry, if they had not been de
feated by flagitious enemies, would, by a
single act of legislation, have accomplished
that fusion of the various orders of society,
which it has required the most propitious
circumstances, in a long course of ages, to
effect, in the freest and most happy of the Eu
ropean nations. Having thus communicated
political privileges to hitherto disregarded
freemen, the new constitution extended to
all serfs 'the full protection of law, which be
fore was enjoyed only by those of the royal
demesnes; while it facilitated and encour
aged voluntary manumission, by ratifying all
contracts relating to it, — the first step to be
taken in every country towards the acconj-
plishment of the highest of all the objects of
human legislation.
The course of this glorious revolution was
not dishonoured by popular tumult, by san
guinary excesses, or by political executions.
So far did the excellent Diet carry its wise
regard to the sacredness of property, that,
though it was in urgent need of financial re
sources, it postponed, till after the death of
present incumbents, the application to the
relief of the state of the income of those
ecclesiastical offices which were no longer
deemed necessary. History will one day do
justice to that illustrious body, and hold out
to posterity their work, as the perfect model
of a most arduous reformation.
The storm which demolished this noble
edifice came from abroad. On the 29th of
March, of the preceding year, a treaty of alli
ance had been concluded at Warsaw between
the King of Prussia and the Republic, con
taining, among others, the following stipula
tion : — " If any foreign Power, in virtue of
any preceding acts and stipulations whatso
ever, should claim the right of interfering in
the internal affairs of the republic of Poland,
at what time or in what manner soever, his
Majesty the King of Prussia will first employ
his good offices to prevent hostilities in con
sequence of such pretension j but, if his good
offices should be ineffectual, and that hostili
ties against Poland should ensue, his Majesty
the King of Prussia, considering such arj
event as a case provided for in this treaty,
will assist the republic according to the tenor
of the fourth article of the present treaty."*
The aid here referred to was, on the part of
Prussia, twenty-two thousand or thirty thou
sand men, or, in case of necessity, all its dis
posable force. The undisputed purpose of
the article had been to guard Poland against
an interference in her affairs by Russia, un
der pretence of the guarantee of the Polish
constitution in 1775.
Though the King of Prussia had, after the
conclusion of the treaty, urgently pressed the
Diet for the cession of the cities of Dantzick
and Thorn, his claim had been afterwards
withdrawn and disavowed. On the 13th of
May, in the present year, Goltz, then Prus
sian Charge d' Affaires at Warsaw, in a con
ference with the Deputation of the Diet for
Foreign Affairs, said, " that he had received
orders from his Prussian Majesty to express
to them his satisfaction at the happy revolu
tion which had at length given to Poland a
wise and regular constitution."! On the 23d
of May, in his answer to the letter of Stanis
laus, announcing the adoption of the consti
tution, the same Prince, after applauding the
establishment of hereditary monarchy in the
House of Saxony, (which, it must be particu
larly borne in mind, was a positive breach
of the constitution guaranteed by Russia in
1775,) proceeds to say, "I congratulate my
self on having contributed to the liberty
and independence of Poland ; and my most
agreeable care will be, to preserve and
strengthen the ties which unite us." On the
21st of June, the Prussian minister, on occa
sion of alarm expressed by the Poles that
the peace with Turkey might prove danger
ous to them, declares, that if such dangers
were to arise, " the king of Prussia, faithful
to all his obligations, will have it particularly
at heart to fulfil those xvhich were last year
contracted by him." If there was any reli
ance in the faith of treaties, or on the honour
of kings, Poland might have confidently
hoped, that, if she was attacked by Russia,
in virtue of the guarantee of 1775; her inde
pendence and her constitution would be de
fended by the whole force of the Prussian
monarchy.
The remaining part of the year 1791 passed
in quiet, but not without apprehension. On
the 9th of January, 1792, Catharine conclud
ed a peace with Turkey at Jassy; and being
thus delivered from all foreign enemies, be
gan once more to manifest intentions of inter
fering in the affairs of Poland. Emboldened
by the removal of Herztberg from the coun
cils of Prussia, and by the death of the Em
peror Leopold, a prince of experience and
* Martens, vol. iii. pp. 161 — 165.
t Ferrand, vol. iii. p. 121. See the letter of the
King of Prussia to Goltz, expressing his admira
tion and applause of the new constitution. Segur,
vol. iii. p. 252.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
213
prudence, she resolved to avail herself of the
disposition then arising in all European Go
vernments, to sacrifice every other object to
a preparation for a contest with the princi
ples of the French Revolution. A small
number of Polish nobles furnished her with
that very slender pretext, with which she
was always content. Their chiefs were Rze-
wuski, who. in 1768, had been exiled to Si
beria, and Felix Potocki, a member of a po
tent and illustrious family, which was invio
lably attached to the cause of the republic.
These unnatural apostates deserting their
long-suffering country at the moment when,
for the first time, hope dawned on her, were
received by Catharine with the honours due
from her to aggravated treason in the per
sons of the Confederates of Targowitz. On
the 18th of May the Russian minister at
Warsaw declared, that the Empress, " called
on by many distinguished Poles who had con
federated against the pretended constitution
of 1791, would, in virtue of her guarantee,
march an army into Poland to restore the
liberties of the republic." The hope, mean
time, of help from Prussia was speedily and
cruelly deceived. Lucchesini, the Prussian
minister at Warsaw, in an evasive answer to
a communication made to him respecting the
preparations for defence against Russia, said
coldly, '' that his master received the com
munication as a proof of the esteem of the
King and Republic of Poland; but that he
could take no cognisance of the affairs which
occupied the Diet." On Stanislaus himself
claiming his aid, Frederic on the 8th of June
answered : — "In considering the new consti
tution which the republic adopted, without
my knowledge and without my concurrence,
I never thought of supporting or protecting
it." So signal a breach of faith is not to be
found in the modern history of great states.
It resembles rather the vulgar frauds and
low artifices, which, under the name of
" reason of state," made up the policy of
the petty tyrants of Italy in the fourteenth
century.
Assured of the connivance of Prussia, Ca
tharine now poured an immense army into
Poland, along the whole line of frontier, from
the Baltic to the neighbourhood of the Eux-
irie. But the spirit of the Polish nation was
unbroken . A series of brilliant actions occu
pied the summer of 1792, in which the Po
lish army, under Poniatowski and Kosciusko,
alternately victorious and vanquished, gave
equal proofs of unavailing gallantry.
Meantime Stanislaus, who had remained
in his capital, willing to be duped by the
Russian and Prussian ambassadors, whom he
still suffered to continue there, made a vain
attempt to disarm the anger of the Empress,
by proposing that her grandson Constantine
should be the stock of the new constitutional
dynasty ; to which she haughtily replied, that
he must re-establish the old constitution, and
accede to the Confederation of Targowitz ; —
" perhaps," says M. Ferrand, " because a
throne acquired without guilt or perfidy might
have few attractions for her."* Having on
the 4th of July published a proclamation,
declaring "that he would not survive his
country," on the 22d of the same month,
as soon as he received the commands of Ca
tharine, this dastard prince declared his ac
cession to the Confederation of Targowitz. and
thus threw the legal authority of the republic
into the hands of that band of conspirators.
The gallant army, over whom the Diet had
intrusted their unworthy King with absolute
authority, were now compelled, by his trea
cherous orders, to lay down their arms amidst
the tears of their countrymen, and the inso
lent exultation of their barbarous enemies.t
The traitors of Targowitz were, for a mo
ment, permitted by Russia to rule over the
country which they had betrayed, to prose
cute the persons and lay waste the property
of all good citizens, and to re-establish every
ancient abuse.
Such was the unhappy state of Poland du
ring the remainder of the year 1792, a period
which will be always memorable for the in
vasion of France by a German army, their
ignominious retreat, the eruption of the
French forces into Germany and Flanders,
the dreadful scenes which passed in the in
terior of France, and the apprehension pro
fessed by all Governments of the progress of
the opinions to which these events were
ascribed. The Empress of Russia, among
the rest, professed the utmost abhorrence of
the French Revolution, made war against it
by the most vehement manifestoes, stimula
ted every other power to resist it. but never
contributed a battalion or a ship to the con
federacy against it. Frederic-William also
plunged headlong into the coalition against
the advice of his wisest counsellors. £ At the
moment of the Duke of Brunswick's entry
into France, in July, — if we may believe M.
Ferrand, himself a zealous royalist, who had
evidently more than ordinary means of in
formation, — the ministers of the principal
European powers met at Luxemburg, pro
vided with various projects for new arrange
ments of territory, in the event which they
* Ferrand, vol. iii. p. 217.
t A curious passage of De Thou shows the ap
prehension early entertained of the Russian power.
" Livpnis prudente et reipublicze Christian® utili
consilio navigatio illuc interdicta fuerat, ne com-
mercio nostrorum Barbari varias artes ipsis ignotas,
et quae ad rem navalem et militarem pertinent, edo-
cerentur. Sic enim eximistabant Moscos, qui
rnaximam Septentrionis partem tenerent, Narvae
condito emporip, et constructp armamentario, non
solum in Livoniam, sed etiam in Germaniam effuso
exercim penetraturos." — Lib. xxxix. cap. 8.
I Prince Henry and Count Hertzberg, who
agree perhaps in nothing else. — Vie du Prince
Henri, p. 297. In the same place, we have a very
curious extract from a letter of Prince Henry, of
the 1st of November, 1792, in which he says,
that " every year of war will make the conditions
of peace worse for the Allies." Henry was not
a Democrat, nor even a Whig. His opinions
were confirmed by all the events of the first war,
and are certainly not contradicted by occurrences
towards the close of a second war, twenty years
afterwards, and in totally new circumstances.
214
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
thought inevitable, of the success of the in
vasion. The Austrian ministers betrayed
the intention of their Court, to renew its at
tempt to compel the Elector of Bavaria to
exchange his dominions for the Low Coun
ties ; which, by the dissolution of their trea
ties with France, they deemed themselves
entitled again to propose. The King of
Prussia, on this alarming disclosure, showed
symptoms of an inclination to abandon an
enterprise, which many other circumstances
combined to prove was impracticable, at
least with the number of troops with which
he had presumptuously undertaken it. These
dangerous projects of the Court of Vienna
made him also feel the necessity of a closer
connection with Russia; and in an interview
with the Austrian and Russian ministers at
Verdun, he gave them to understand, that
Prussia could not continue the war without
being assured of an indemnity. Russia
eagerly adopted a suggestion which engaged
Prussia more completely in her Polish
schemes : and Austria willingly listened to
a proposal which would furnish a precedent
and a justification for similar enlargements
of her own dominions : while both the Impe
rial Courts declared, that they would acqui
esce in the occupation of another portion of
Poland by the Prussian armies.*
Whether in consequence of 'the supposed
agreement at Verdun or not, the fact at least
is certain, that Frederic-William returned
from his French disgraces to seek consola
tion in the plunder of Poland. Nothing is
more characteristic of a monarch without
ability, without knowledge, without resolu
tion, whose life had been divided between
gross libertinism and abject superstition, than
that, after flying before the armies of a pow
erful nation, he should instantly proceed to
attack an oppressed, and, as he thought, de
fenceless people. In January. 1793, he en
tered Poland ; .and, while Russia was charg
ing the Poles with the extreme of royalism,
he chose the very opposite pretext, that they
propagated anarchical principles, and had
established Jacobin clubs. Even the crimi
nal Confederates of Targowitz were indig
nant at these falsehoods, and remonstrated,
at Berlin and Petersburg^, against the entry
of the Prussian troops. But the complaints
of such apostates against the natural results
of their own crimes were heard with con
tempt. The Empress of Russia, in a Decla
ration of the 9th of April, informed the world
that, acting in concert with Prussia, and
with the consent of Austria, the only means
of controlling the Jacobinism of Poland was
" by confining it within more narrow limits,
and by giving it proportions which better
suited an intermediate power." The King
of Prussia, accordingly, seized Great Poland ;
and the Russian army occupied all the other
provinces of the republic. It was easy,
therefore, for Catharine to determine the ex
tent of her new robbery.
* Ferrand, vol. iii. pp. 252—255
In order, however, to give it some shadow
of legality, the King was compelled to call a
Diet, from which every one was excluded
who was not a partisan of Russia, and an ac
complice of the Confederates of Targowitz.
The unhappy assembly met at Grodno in
June; and. in spite of its bad composition,
showed still many sparks of Polish spirit.
Sieve rs, the Russian ambassador., a man ap
parently worthy of his mission, had recourse
to threats, insults, brutal violence, military
imprisonment, arbitrary exile, and every
other species of outrage and intimidation
which, for near thirty years, had constituted
the whole system of Russia towards the
Polish legislature. In one note, he tells
them that, unless they proceed more rapidly,
"he shall be under the painful necessity of
removing all incendiaries, disturbers of the
public peace, and partisans of the 3d of May,
from the Diet."* In another, he apprises
them, that he must consider any longer de
lay "as a declaration of hostility; in which
case, the lands, possessions, and dwellings
of the malcontent members, must be subject
to military execution." "If the King ad
heres to the Opposition, the military execu
tion must extend to his demesnes, the pay
of the Russian troops will be stopped, and
they will live at the expense of the unhappy
peasants."'! Grodno was surrounded by
Russian troops: loaded cannon were pointed
at the palace of the King and the hall of the
Diet; four nuncios were carried away pri
soners by violence in the night ; and all the
members were threatened with Siberia. In
these circumstances, the captive Diet was
compelled, in July and September, to sign
two treaties with Russia and Prussia, stipu
lating such cessions as the plunderers were
pleased to dictate, and containing a repeti
tion of the same insulting mockery which
had closed every former act of rapine, — a
guarantee of the remaining possessions of
the republic.} It had the consolation of
being allowed to perform one act of justice,
I — that of depriving the leaders of the Con
federation of Targowitz. Felix Potocki, Rze-
wuski, and Bianeki, of the great offices
which they dishonoured. It may hereafter
be discovered, whether it be actually true
that Alsace and Lorraine were to have been
the compensation to Austria for forbearing
to claim her share of the spoils of Poland at
this period of the second Partition. It is al
ready well known that the allied army re
fused to receive the surrender of Strasburgh
in the name of Louis XVII., and that Valen
ciennes and Conde were taken in the name
of Austria.
In the beginning of 1794, a young officer
named Madalinski, who had kept together,
at the disbanding of the army, eighty gentle
men, gradually increased his adherents, till
they amounted to a force of about four thou
sand men, and began to harass the Russian
* Ferrand, vol. iii. p. 369. t Ibid. p. 372.
I Martens, vol. v. pp. 162. 202.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
215
posts. The people of Cracow expelled the
Russian garrison ; and, on the night of the
28th of March, the heroic Kosciusko, at the
head of a small body of adherents, entered
that city, and undertook its government and
defence. Endowed with civil as well as
military talents, he established order among
the insurgents, and caused the legitimate
constitution to be solemnly proclaimed in
the cathedral, where it was once more hailed
with genuine enthusiasm. He proclaimed a
national confederation, arid sent copies of
his manifesto to Petersburgh, Berlin, and
Vienna- treating the two first courts with
deserved severity, but speaking amicably of
the third, whose territory he enjoined his
army to respect. These marks of friend
ship, the Austrian resident at Warsaw pub
licly disclaimed, imputing to Kosciusko and
his friends " the monstrous principles of the
French Convention;" — a language which
plainly showed that the Court of Vienna,
which had only consented to the last Parti
tion, was willing to share in the next. Kos
ciusko was daily reinforced ; and on the 17th
of April rose on the Russian garrison of War
saw, and compelled Igelstrom the com
mander, after an obstinate resistance of
thirty-six hours, to evacuate the city with a
loss of two thousand men wounded. The
citizens of the capital, the whole body of a
proud nobility, and all the friends of their
country throughout Poland, submitted to the
temporary dictatorship of Kosciusko, a pri
vate gentleman only recently known to the
public, and without any influence but the
reputation of his virtue. Order and tran
quillity generally prevailed; some of the
burghers, perhaps excited by the agents of
Russia, complained to Kosciusko of the in
adequacy of their privileges. But this ex
cellent chief, instead of courting popularity,
repressed an attempt which might lead to
dangerous divisions. Soon after, more crimi
nal excesses for the first time dishonoured
the Polish revolution, but served to shed a
brighter lustre on the humanity and intre
pidity of Kosciusko. The papers of the
Russian embassy laid open proofs of the ve
nality of many of the Poles who had betray
ed their country. The populace of Warsaw,
impatient of the slow forms of law. appre
hensive of the lenient spirit which prevailed
among the revolutionary leaders, and instigat
ed by the incendiaries, who are always ready
to flatter the passions of a multitude, put to
death eight of these persons, and, by their
clamours, extorted from the tribunal a pre
cipitate trial and execution of a somewhat
smaller number. Kosciusko did not content
himself with reprobating these atrocities.
Though surrounded by danger, attacked by
the most formidable enemies, betrayed by
his own Government, and abandoned by all
Europe, he flew from his camp to the capi
tal, brought the ringleaders of the massacre
to justice, and caused them to be imme
diately executed. We learn, from very re
spectable authority, that during all the
perils of his short administration, he per
suaded the nobility to take measures for a
more rapid enfranchisement of the peasant
ry, than the cautious policy of the Diet had
by the advance of Austrian,
hazarded.*
Harassed
Prussian, and" Russian armies, Kosciusko
concentrated the greater part of his army
around Warsaw, against which Frederic-
William advanced at the head of forty thou
sand disciplined troops. With an irregular
force of twelve thousand he made an obsti
nate resistance for several hours on the 8th
of June, and retired to his entrenched camp
before the city. The Prussians having taken
possession of Cracow, summoned the capital
to surrender, under pain of all the horrors of
an assault. After two months employed in
vain attempts to reduce it, the King of Prus
sia was compelled, by an insurrection in his
lately acquired Polish province, to retire with
precipitation and disgrace. But in the mean
time, the Russians were advancing, in spite
of the gallant resistance of General Count
Joseph Sierakowski, one of the most faithful
friends of his country; and on the 4th of
October, Kosciusko, with only eighteen thou
sand men, thought it necessary to hazard a
battle at Macciowice, to prevent the junction
of the two Russian 'divisions of Suwarrow
and Fersen. Success was long and valiantly
contested. According to some narrations,
the enthusiasm of the Poles would have pre
vailed, but for the treachery or incapacity
of Count Poninski.t Kosciusko, after the
most admirable exertions of judgment and
courage, fell, covered with wounds; and the
Polish army fled. The Russians and Cos
sacks were melted at the sight of their gal
lant enemy, who lay insensible on the field.
When he opened his eyes, and learnt the
full extent of the disaster, he vainly im
plored the enemy to put an end to his suf
ferings. The Russian officers, moved with
admiration and compassion, treated him
with tenderness, and sent him, with due
respect, a prisoner of war to Petersburgh,
where Catharine threw him into a dungeon ;
from which he was released by Paul on his
succession, perhaps partly from hatred to his
mother, and partly from one of those par
oxysms of transient generosity, of which that
brutal lunatic was not incapable.
From that moment the farther defence of
Poland became hopeless. Suwarrow ad
vanced to the capital, and stimulated his
army to the assault of the great suburb of
Praea, by the barbarous promise of a license
to pillage for forty-eight hours. A dreadful
contest ensued on the 4th of November, in
which the inhabitants performed prodigies of
useless valour, making a stand in every street,
and almost at every house. All the hor-
* Segur, Regne de Frederic- Guillaume II.,
tome iii. p. 169. These important measures are
not mentioned in any other narration which I
have read.
t Segur, vol. iii. p. 171.
216
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS,
rors of war, which the most civilized armies
practised on such occasions, were here seen
with tenfold violence. No age or sex, or
condition, was spared ; the murder of chil
dren forming a sort of barbarous sport for the
assailants. The most unspeakable outrages
were offered to the living and the dead.
The mere infliction of death was an act of
mercy. The streets streamed with blood.
Eighteen thousand human carcasses were
carried away after the massacre had ceased.
Many were burnt to death in the flames
which consumed the town. Multitudes
were driven by the bayonet into the Vistula.
A great body of fugitives perished by the
fall of the great bridge over which they fled.
These tremendous scenes closed the resist
ance of Poland, and completed the triumph
of her oppressors. The Russian army en
tered Warsaw on the 9th of November. 1794.
Stanislaus was suffered to amuse himself
with the formalities of royalty for some
months longer, till, in obedience to the order
of Catharine, he abdicated on the 25th of
November, 1795, — a day which, being the
anniversary of his coronation, seemed to be
chosen to complete his humiliation. Quar
rels about the division of the booty retarded
the complete execution of the formal and
final Partition, till the beginning of the next
year.
Thus fell the Polish people, after a wise
and virtuous attempt to establish liberty,
and a heroic struggle to defend it, by the fla
gitious wickedness of Russia, by the foul
treachery of Prussia, by the unprincipled ac
cession of Austria, and by the short-sighted,
as well as mean-spirited, acquiescence of all
the other nations of Europe. Till the first
Partition, the right of every people to its
own soil had been universally regarded as
the guardian principle of European inde
pendence. But in the case of Poland, a na
tion was robbed of its ancient territory with
out the pretence of any wrong which could
justify war. and without even those forms
of war which could bestow on the acquisi
tion the name of conquest. It is a cruel
and bitter aggravation of this calamity, that
the crime was perpetrated, under the pre
tence of the wise and just principle of main
taining the balance of power; — as if that
principle had any value but its tendency to
prevent such crimes; — as if an equal divi
sion of the booty bore any resemblance to a
joint exertion to prevent the robbery. In the
case of private highwaymen and pirates, a
fair division of the booty tends, no doubt, to
the harmony of the gang and the safety of
its members, but renders them more formi
dable to the honest and peaceable part of
mankind.*
For about eleven years the name of Po
land was erased from the map of Europe.
* The sentiments of wise men on the first Par
tition are admirably stated in the Annual Register
of 1772, in the Introduction to the History of Eu
rope, which could scarcely have been written by
any man but Mr. Burke.
By the Treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, the Prussian
part of that unfortunate country was re
stored to as much independence as could
then be enjoyed, under the name of the
rand Duchy of Warsaw ; and this revived
state received a considerable enlargement
n 1809, by the treaty of Shoenbrunn, at the
expense of Austria.
When Napoleon opened the decisive cam
paign of 1812, in what he called in his pro
clamations "the Second Polish War," he
published a Declaration, addressed to the
Poles, in which he announced that Poland
would be greater than she had been under
Stanislaus, and that the Archduke, who then
governed Wurtsburg, was to be their sove
reign ; and when on the 12th of July in that
year, Wybicki, at the head of a deputation
of the Diet, told him, at Wilna, with truth,
The interest of your empire requires the
re-establishment of Poland; the honour of
France is interested in it," — he replied,
that he had done all that duty to his sub
jects allowed him to restore their country ;
that he would second their exertions ; and
that he authorized them to take up arms,
every where but in the Austrian provinces,
of which he had guaranteed the integrity,
and which he should not suffer to be dis
turbed." In his answer, — too cold and
guarded to inspire enthusiasm, — he pro
mised even less than he had acquired the
the power of performing ; for, by the secret
articles of his treaty with Austria, concluded
in March, provision had been made for an
exchange of the Illyrian provinces (which
he had retained at his own disposal) for
such a part of Austrian Poland as would be
equivalent to them.* What his real designs
respecting Poland were, it is not easy to con
jecture. That he was desirous of re-esta
blishing its independence, and that he looked
forward to such an event as the result of his
success, cannot be doubted. But he had
probably grown too much of a politician and
an emperor, to trust, or to love that national
feeling and popular enthusiasm to which he
had owed the splendid victories of his youth.
He was now rather willing to owe every thing
to his policy and his army. Had he thrown
away the scabbard in this just cause, — had
he solemnly pledged himself to the restora
tion of Poland, — had he obtained the ex
change of Galicia for Dalmatia, instead of
secretly providing for it, — had he considered
Polish independence, not merely as the con
sequence of victory, but as one of the most
powerful means of securing it, — had he, in
short, retained some part of his early faith
in the attachment of nations, instead of rely
ing exclusively on the mechanism of armies,
perhaps the success of that memorable cam
paign might have been more equally ba
lanced. Seventy thousand Poles were then
fighting under his banners. t Forty thousand
are supposed to have fallen in ihe French
armies from the destruction of Poland to the
* Schoell, vol. x. p. 129. t Ibid. p. 139.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARTITION OF POLAND.
217
battle of Waterloo.* There are few instances
of the affection of men for their country more
touching than that of these gallant Poles,
who, in voluntary exile, amidst every priva
tion, without the hope of fame, and when
all the world had become their enemies,
daily sacrificed themselves in the battles of
a foreign nation, in the faint hope of its one
day delivering their own from bondage.
Kosciusko had originally encouraged his
countrymen to devote themselves to this
chance ; but when he was himself offered a
command in 1807. this perfect hero refused
to quit his humble retreat, unless Napoleon
would pledge himself for the restoration of
Poland.
When Alexander entered France in 1814;
as the avowed patron of liberal institutions,
Kosciusko addressed a letter to him,t in which
he makes three requests, — that the Emperor
would grant an universal amnesty, a free con
stitution, resembling, as nearly as possible,
that of England, with means of general edu
cation, and, after the expiration of ten years,
an emancipation of the peasants. It is but
justice to Alexander to add, that when Kos-
cinsko died, in 1817, after a public and pri
vate life, worthy of the scholar of Washing
ton, the Emperor, on whom the Congress of
Vienna had then bestowed the greater part
of the duchy of Warsaw, with the title of
King of Poland, allowed his Polish subjects
Julien, Notice Biographique sur Kosciusko.
r Published in M. Julien's interesting little
t Published in M.
work.
to pay due honours to the last of their heroes ;
and that Prince Jablonowski was sent to
attend his remains from Switzerland to Cra
cow, there to be interred in the only spot of
the Polish territory w^hich is now not dis
honoured by a foreign master. He might have
paid a still more acceptable tribute to his
memory, by executing his pure intentionsj
and acceding to his disinterested prayers.
The Partition of Poland was the model of
all those acts of rapine which have been com
mitted by monarchs or republicans during,
the wars excited by the French Revolution.
No single cause has contributed so much to
alienate mankind from ancient institutions,
and loosen their respect for established go
vernments. When monarchs show so signal
a disregard to immemorial possession and
legal right, it is in vain for them to hope that
subjects will not copy the precedent. The
law of nations is a code without tribunals,
without ministers, and without arms, which
rests only on a general opinion of its useful
ness, and on the influence of that opinion in
the councils of states, and most of all, per
haps, on a habitual reverence, produced by
the constant appeal to its rules even by those
who did not observe them, and strengthened
by the elaborate artifice to which the proud
est tyrants deigned to submit, in their at
tempts to elude an authority which they did
not dare to dispute. One signal triumph over
such an authority was sufficient to destroy its
power. Philip II. and Louis XIV. had often
violated the law of nations ; but the spoilers
of Poland overthrew it.
SKETCH
OF
THE ADMINISTRATION AND FALL
OF
STRUENSEE.*
ON the arrival of Charles VII. of Sweden,
at Altona, in need of a physician, — an atten
dant whom his prematurely broken constitu
tion made peculiarly essential to him even
at the age of nineteen, — Struensee, the son
of a Lutheran bishop in Holstein. had just
begun to practise medicine, after having been
for some time employed as the editor of a
newspaper in that city. He was now ap
pointed physician to the King, at the moment
* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xliv. p.
366.— ED.
28
when he was projecting a professional esta
blishment at Malaga, or a voyage to India,
which his imagination, excited by the peru
sal of the elder travellers, had covered with
"barbaric pearl and gold." He was now
twenty-nine years old, arid appears to have
jbeen recommended to the royal favour by
an agreeable exterior, pleasing manners, and
some slight talents and superficial know
ledge, with the subserviency indispensable
in a favourite, and the power of amusing
his listless and exhausted master. His name
T
218
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
appears in the publications of the time as
" Doctor Struensee," among the attendants
of his Danish Majesty in England ; and he
received, in that character, the honorary
degree of Doctor of Medicine from, the Uni
versity of Oxford.
Like all other minions, his ascent was
rapid, or rather his flight to the pinnacle of
power was instantaneous ; for the passion of
an absolute prince on such occasions knows
no bounds, and brooks no delay. Immedi
ately after the King's return to Copenhagen.
Struensee was appointed a Cabinet Minister'.
While his brother was made a counsellor of
justice, he appointed Brandt, another adven
turer, to superintend the palace and the im
becile King ; and intrusted Ranlzau, a dis
graced Danish minister, who had been his
colleague in the editorship of the Altona
Journal, with the conduct of foreign affairs.
He and his friend Brandt were created Earls.
Stolk, his predecessor in favour, had fomented
and kept up an animosity between the King
and Queen: Struensee (unhappily for him
self as well as for her) gained the confidence
of the Queen, by restoring her to the good
graces of her husband. Caroline Matilda,
sister of George III., who then had the mis
fortune to be Queen of Denmark, is described
by Falkenskiold* as the handsomest woman
of the Court, as of a mild and reserved cha
racter, and as one who was well qualified to
enjoy and impart happiness, if it had been
her lot to be united to an endurable husband.
Brandt seems to have been a weak coxcomb,
and Rantzau a turbulent and ungrateful in
triguer.
The only foreign business which Struensee
found pending on his entrance into office,
was a negotiation with Russia, concerning
the pretensions of that formidable competitor
to a part of Holstein, which Denmark had
unjustly acquired fifty years before. Peter
III., the head of the house of Holstein, was
proud of his German ancestry, and ambitious
of recovering their ancient dominions. After
his murder, Catharine claimed these posses
sions, as nominal Regent of Holstein, during
the minority of her son. The last act of
Bernstorff's administration had been a very
* General Falkenskiold was a Danish gentle
man of respectable family, who, after having
served in the French army during the Seven
Years' War, and in the Russian army during the
first war of Catharine II. against the Turks, was
recalled to his country under the administration
of Struensee, to take a part in the reform of the
military establishment, and to conduct the nego
tiation at Petersburgh, respecting the claims of the
Imperial family to the dutchy of Holstein. He
was involved in the fall of Siruensee, and was,
without trial, doomed to imprisonment for life at
Munkholm, a fortress situated on a rock opposite
to Drontheim. After five years' imprisonment he
was released, and permitted to live, first at Mont-
pellier, and afterwards at Lausanne, at which last
city (wilh the exception of one journey to Copen
hagen) he past the latter part of his life, and where
he died in September, 1820. in the eighty-third
year of his age. He left his Memoirs for publica
tion to his friend, M. Secretan, First Judge of the
canton of Vaud.
prudent accommodation, in which Russia
agreed to relinquish her claims on Holstein,
in consideration of the cession to her by Den
mark of the small principality of Oldenburg,
the very ancient partimoriy of the Danish
Royal Family. Rantzau. who in his exile
had had some quarrel wilh the Russian Go
vernment, prevailed on the inexperienced
Struensee to delay the execution of this po
litic convention, and aimed at establishing
the influence of France and Sweden at Co
penhagen instead of that of Russia, which
was then supported by England. He even
entertained the chimerical project of driving
the Empress from Petersbuigh. Falken
skiold, who had been sent on a mission to
Petersburgh, endeavoured, after his return,
to disabuse Struensee, and to show him the
ruinous tendency of such rash counsels, pro
posing to him even to recall Bernstorff, to fa
cilitate the good understanding which could
hardly be re-restored as long as Counts Osten
and Rantzau, the avowed enemies of Russia,
were in power. Struensee, like most of
those who must be led by others, was ex
ceedingly fearful of being thought to be so.
When Falkenskiold warned him against
yielding to Rantzau, his plans were shaken :
out when the same weapon was turned
against Falkenskiold, Struensee returned to
his obstinacy. Even after Rantzau had be
come his declared enemy, he adhered to the
plans of that intriguer, lest he should be sus
pected of yielding to Falkenskiold. Where-
ever there were only two roads, it was easy
to lead Struensee, by exciting his fear of be
ing led by the opposite party.
Struensee's measures of internal policy ap
pear to have been generally well-meant, but
often ill-judged. Some of his reforms were
in themselves excellent: but he showed, on
the whole, a meddling and restless spirit, im
patient of the necessary delay, often employ
ed in petty change, choosing wrong means,
braving prejudices that might have been sof
tened, and offending interests that might have
been conciliated. He was a sort of inferior
Joseph II. ; like him, rather a servile copyist
than an enlightened follower of Frederic II.
His dissolution of the Guards (in itself a pru
dent measure of economy) turned a numer
ous body of volunteers into the service of his
enemies. The removal of Bernstorff was a
very blamable means of strengthening him
self. The suppression of the Privy Council,
the only feeble restraint on despotic power,
was still more reprehensible in itself, and
excited the just resentment of the Danish
nobility. The repeal of a barbarous law, in
flicting capital punishment on adultery, was
easily misrepresented to the people as a
mark of approbation of that vice.
Both Struensee and Brandt had embraced
the infidelity at that time prevalent among
men of the world, which consisted in little
more than a careless transfer of implied faith
from Luther to Voltaire. They had been ac
quainted with the leaders of the Philosophi
cal party at Paris, and they introduced the
ADMINISTRATION AND FALL OF STRUENSEE.
219
conversation of their masters at Copenhagen.
In the same school they were taught to see
clearly enough the distempers of European
society; but they were not taught (for their
teachers did not know) which of these ma
ladies were to be endured, which were to be
palliated, and what were the remedies and
regimen by which the remainder might, in
due time, be effectually and yet safely re
moved. The dissolute manners of the Court
contributed to their unpopularity; rather, per
haps, because the nobility resented the in
trusion of upstarts into the sphere of their
priviledged vice, than because there was any
real increase of licentiousness.
It must not be forgotten that Struensee
was the first minister of an absolute monar
chy who abolished the torture; and that he
patronized those excellent plans for the
emancipation of the enslaved husbandmen,
which were first conceived by Reverdil, a
Swiss, and the adoption of which by the se
cond Bernstorff has justly immortalized that
statesman. He will be honoured by after
ages for what offended the Lutheran clergy,
— the free exercise of religious worship grant
ed to Calvinists, to Moravians, and even to
Catholics; for the Danish clergy were ambi
tious of retaining the right to persecute, not
only long after it was impossible to exercise
it, but even after they had lost the disposi
tion to do so ; — at first to overawe, afterwards
to degrade non-conformists ; in both stages,
as a badge of the privileges and honour of an
established church.
No part, however, of Struensee's private
or public conduct can be justly considered
as the cause of his downfall. His.irreligion,
his immoralities, his precipitate reforms, his
parade of invidious favour, were only the in
struments or pretexts by which his competi
tors for office were able to effect his destruc
tion. Had he either purchased the good-will,
or destroyed the power of his enemies at
Court, he might long have governed Den
mark, and perhaps have been gratefully re
membered by posterity as a reformer of politi
cal abuses. He fell a victim to an intrigue for
a change of ministers, which, under such a
King, was really a struggle for the sceptre.
His last act of political imprudence illus
trates both the character of his enemies, and
the nature of absolute government. When
he was appointed Secretary of the Cabinet,
he was empowered to execute such orders
as were very urgent, without the signature
of the King, on condition, however, that they
should be weekly laid before him, to be con
firmed or annulled under his own hand. This
liberty had been practised before his admin
istration ; and it was repeated in many thou
sand instances after his downfall. Under
any monarchy, the substantial fault would
have consisted rather in assuming an inde
pendence of his colleagues, than in encroach
ing on any royal power which was real or
practicable. Under so wretched a pageant
as the King of Denmark, Struensee showed
his folly in obtaining, by a formal order, the
power which he might easily have continued
to execute without it. But this order was
the signal of a clamour against him, as an
usurper of royal prerogative. The Guards
showed symptoms of mutiny : the garrison
of the capital adopted their resentment. The
populace became riotous. Rantzau, partly
stimulated by revenge against Struensee, for
having refused a protection to him against his
creditors, being secretly favoured by Count
Osten. found means of gaining overGuldberg,
an ecclesiastic of obscure birth, full of pro
fessions of piety, the preceptor of the King's
brother, who prevailed on that prince and the
Queen-Dowager to engage in the design of
subverting the Administration. Several of
Struensee's friends warned him of his dan
ger; but, whether from levity or magnanimi
ty, he neglected their admonitions. Rant
zau himself, either jealous of the ascendant
acquired by Guldberg among the conspira
tors, or visited by some compunctious remem
brances of friendship and gratitude, spoke
to Falkenskiold confidentially of the preva
lent rumours, and tendered his services for
the preservation of his former friend. Fal
kenskiold distrusted the advances of Rant
zau, and answered coldly, " Speak to Stru
ensee:" Rantzau turned away, saying, "He
will not listen to me."
Two days afterwards, on the 16th of Janu
ary, 1772, there was a brilliant masked ball
at Court, where the conspirators and their
victims mingled in the festivities (as was
observed by some foreign ministers present)
with more than usual gaiety. At four o'clock
in the morning, the Queen-Dowager, who
was the King's step-mother, her son, and
Count Rantzau, entered the King's bedcham
ber, compelled his valet to awaken him, and
required him to sign an order to apprehend
the Queen, the Counts Struensee and Brandt,
who, with other conspirators, they pretended
were then engaged in a plot to depose, if not
to murder him. Christian is said to have
hesitated, from fear or obstinacy, — perhaps
from some remnant of humanity and moral
restraint: but he soon yielded ; and his ver
bal assent, or perhaps a silence produced by
terror, was thought a sufficient warrant.
Rantzau, with ^three officers, rushed with
his sword drawn into the apartment of the
Queen, compelled her to rise from her bed,
and. in spite of her tears and threats, sent
her, half-dressed, a prisoner to the fortress of
Cronenbourg, together with her infant daugh
ter Louisa, whom she was then suckling, and
Lady Mostyn, an English lady who attended
her. Struensee and Brandt were in the same
night thrown into prison, and loaded with
irons. On the next day, the King was pa
raded through the streets in a carriage drawn
by eight milk-white horses, as if triumphing
after a glorious victory over his enemies, in
which he had saved his country: the city
was illuminated. The preachers of the Es
tablished Church are charged by several
concurring witnesses with inhuman and un
christian invectives from the pulpit against
220
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the Queen and the fallen ministers ; the good,
doubtless, believing too easily the tale of the
victors, the base paying court to the dispen
sers of preferment, and the bigoted greedily
swallowing the most incredible accusations
against unbelievers. The populace, inflamed
by these declamations, demolished or pil
laged from sixty to a hundred houses.
The conspirators distributed among them
selves the chief offices. The King was suf
fered to fall into his former nullity: the for
mality of his signature was dispensed with ;
and the affairs of the kingdom were conducted
in his name, only till his son was of an age
to assume the regency. Guldberg, under
the modest title of " Secretary of the Cabi
net," became Prime Minister. Kantzau was
appointed a Privy Councillor; and Osten re
tained the department of Foreign £ffairs:
but it is consolatory to add, that, after a few
months, both were discarded at the instance
of the Court of Petersburgh, to complete the
desired exchange of Holstein for Oldenburgh.
The object of the conspiracy being thus
accomplished, the conquerors proceeded, as
usual, to those judicial proceedings against
the prisoners, which are intended formally
to justify the violence of a victorious faction,
but substantially aggravate its guilt. A com
mission was appointed to try the accused :
its leading members were the chiefs of the
conspiracy. Guldberg, one of them, had to
determine, by the sentence which he pro
nounced, whether he was himself a rebel.
General Eichstedt, the president, had per
sonally arrested several of the prisoners, and
•was, by his judgment on Struensee, who had
been his benefactor, to decide, that the crimi
nality of that minister was of so deep a die
as to cancel the obligations of gratitude. To
secure his impartiality still more, he was ap
pointed a minister, and promisee! the office
of preceptor of the hereditary prince, — the
permanence of which appointments must
have partly depended on the general con
viction that the prisoners were guilty.
The charges against Struensee and Brandt
are dated on the 21st of April. The defence
of Struensee was drawn up by his counsel
on the 22d ; that of Brandt was prepared on
the 23d. Sentence was pronounced against
both on the 23d. On the 27th, it was ap
proved, and ordered to be executed by the
King. On the 28th, after their right hands had
been cut off on the scaffold, they were be
headed. For three months they had been
closely and very cruelly imprisoned. The
proceedings of the commission were secret :
the prisoners were not confronted with each
other; they heard no witnesses: they read
no depositions; they did not appear to have
seen any counsel till they had received the
indictments. It is characteristic of this scene
to add, that the King went to the Opera on
the 25th, after signifying his approbation of
the sentence j and that on the 27th, the day of
its solemn confirmation, there was a masked
ball at Court. On the day of the execution,
the King again went to the Opera. The pas
sion which prompts an absolute monarch to
raise an unworthy favourite to honour, is
still less disgusting than the levity and hard
ness with which, on the first alarm, he always
I abandons the same favourite to destruction.
It may be observed, that the very persons
who had represented the patronage of operas
and masquerades as one of the offences of
Struensee, were the same nvho thus unsea
sonably paraded their unhappy Sovereign
through a succession of such amusements.
The Memoirs of Falkenskiold contain the
written answers of Struensee to the prelimi
nary questions of the commission, the sub
stance of the charges against him, and the
defence made by his counsel. The first
were written on the 14th of April, when he
was alone in a dungeon, with irons on his
hands and feet, and an iron collar fastened
to the wall round his neck. The Indictment
is prefaced by a long declamatory invective
against his general conduct and character;
such as still dishonour the criminal proceed
ings of most nations, and from which Eng
land has probably been saved by the scho
lastic subtlety and dryness of her system
of what is called "special pleading." Lay
ing aside his supposed connection with the
Queen, which is reserved for a few separate
remarks, the charges are either perfectly
frivolous, or sufficiently answered by his
counsel, in a defence which he was allowed
only one day to prepare, and which bears
evident marks of being written with the fear
of the victorious faction before the eyes of
the feeble advocate. One is, that he caused
the young Prince to be trained so hardily as
to endanger his life ; in answer to which, he
refers to the judgment of physicians, appeals
to the restored health of the young Prince,
and observes, that even if he had been wrong,
his fault could have been no more than an
error of judgment. The truth is, that he was
guilty of a ridiculous mimicry of the early
education of Emile, at a time when all Eu
rope was intoxicated by the writings of
.Rousseau. To the second charge, that he
had issued, on the 21st of December preced
ing, unknown to the King, an order for the
incorporation of the Foot Guards with the
troops of the line, and on their refusal to
obey, had, on the 24th, obtained an order
from him for their reduction, he answered,
that the draught of the order had been read
and approved by the King on the 21st, signed
and sealed by him on the 23d, and finally
confirmed by the order for reducing the re
fractory Guards, as issued by his Majesty on
the 24th ; so that he could scarcely be said to
have been even in form guilty of a two days*
usurpation. It might have been added, that
it was immediately fully pardoned by the
royal confirmation : that Rantzau, and others
of his enemies, had taken an active share in
it \ and that it was so recent, that the con
spirators must have resolved on their mea
sures before its occurrence. He was further
charged with taking or granting exorbitant
pensions ; and he answeredj seemingly wilk
ADMINISTRATION AND FALL OF STRUENSEE.
221
truth, that they were not higher than those
of his predecessors. He was accused also
of having falsified the public accounts ; to
which his answer is necessarily too detailed
for our purpose, but appears to be satisfac
tory. Both these last offences, if they had
been committed, could not have been treated
as high treason in any country not wholly
barbarous; and the evidence on which the
latter and more precise of the charges rested,
was a declaration of the imbecile and im
prisoned King on an intricate matter of ac
count reported to him by an agent of the
enemies of the prisoner.
Thus stands the case of the unfortunate
Struensee on all the charges but one, as it
appears in the accusation which his enemies
had such time and power to support, and on
the defence made for him under such cruel
disadvantages. That he was innocent of
the political offences laid to his charge, is
rendered highly probable by the Narrative
of his Conversion, published soon after his
execution by Dr. Munter, a divine of Copen
hagen, appointed by the Danish Government
to attend him :* a composition, which bears
the strongest marks of the probity and sin
cerity of the writer, and is a perfect model
of the manner in which a person, circum
stanced like Struensee, ought to be treated
by a kind and considerate minister of religion.
Men of all opinions, who peruse this narra
tive, must own that it is impossible, with
more tenderness, to touch the wounds of a
sufferer, to reconcile the agitated penitent to
himself, to present religion as the consoler,
not as the disturber of his dying moments,
fently to dispose him to try his own actions
y a higher test of morality, to fill his mind
with indulgent benevolence towards his fel
low-men, and to exalt it to a reverential love
of boundless perfection. Dr. Munter deserved
the confidence of Struensee, and seems en
tirely to have won it. The unfortunate man
freely owned his private licentiousness, his
success in corrupting the principles of the
victims of his desires, his rejection not only
of religion, but also in theory, though not
quite in feeling, of whatever ennobles and
elevates the mind in morality, the impru
dence and rashness by which he brought
ruin on his friends, and plunged his parents
in deep affliction, and the ignoble and im
pure motives of all his public actions, which,
in the eye of reason, deprived them of that
pretension to virtuous character, to which
their outward appearance might seem to
entitle them. He felt for his friends with
unusual tenderness. Instead of undue con
cealment from Munter, he is, perhaps, charge
able with betraying to him secrets which
were not exclusively his own : but he denies
the truth of the political charges against him
— more especially those of peculation anc
falsification of accounts.
The charges against Brandt would be alto-
* Reprinted by the late learned and exemplary
Mr. Rennell of Kensington. London, 1824.
gether unworthy of consideration, were it
lot for the light which one of them throws
n the whole of this atrocious procedure.
?he main accusation against him was, that
le had beaten, flogged, and scratched the
acred person of the King. His answer was,
hat the King, who had a passion for wrest
ing and boxing, had repeatedly challenged
iim to a match, ^and had severely beaten
lim five or six times ; that he did not gratify
lis master's taste till after these provoca-
ions; that two of the witnesses against him,
servants of the King, had indulged their mas-
er in the same sport ; and that he received
iberal gratifications, and continued to enjoy
he royal favour for months after this pre-
ended treason. The King inherited this
perverse taste in amusements from his father,
hose palace had been the theatre of the like
dngly sports. It is impossible to entertain
he least doubt of the truth of this defence :
t affords a natural and probable explanation
)f a fact which would be otherwise incom
prehensible.
A suit for divorce was commenced against
he Queen, on the ground of criminal con
nection with Struensee, vyho was himself
onvicted of high treason for that connec
tion. This unhappy princess had been sac
rificed, at the age of seventeen, to the brutal
caprices of a husband who, if he had been
a private man, would have been deemed in
capable of the deliberate consent which is
essential to marriage. She had early suf
fered from his violence, though she so far
complied with his fancies as to ride with
him in male apparel, — an indecorum for
which she had been sharply reprehended by
her mother, the Princess-Dowager of Wales,
in a short interview between them, during a
visit which the latter had paid to her brother
at Gotha, after an uninterrupted residence
of thirty-four years in England. The King
had suffered the Russian minister at Copen
hagen to treat her with open rudeness ; and
had disgraced his favourite cousin, the Prince
of Hesse, for taking her part. He had never
treated her with common civility, till they
were reconciled by Struensee, at that period
of overflowing good-nature when that minis
ter obtained the recall from banishment of
the ungrateful Rantzau.
The evidence against her consisted of a
number of circumstances (none of them in
capable of an innocent explanation) sworn to
by attendants, who had been employed as
spies on her conduct. She owned that she
had been guilty of much imprudence; but
in her dying moments she declared to M.
Roques, pastor of the French church at Zell,
that she never had been unfaithful to her
husband.* It is true, that her own signature
affixed to a confession was alleged against
her : but if General Falkenskiold was rightly
informed (for he has every mark of honest
intention), that signature proves nothing but
* Communicated by him to M. Secretan on the
7th of March, 1780.
T 2
222
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the malice and cruelty of her enemies.
Schack, the counsellor sent to interrogate
her at Cronenbourg, was received by her
with indignation when he spoke to her of
connection with Struensee. YVhen he showed
Struensee's confession to her, he artfully in
timated that the fallen minister would be
subjected to a very cruel death if he was
found to have falsely criminated the Queen.
'•'What!" she exclaimed, "do you believe
that if I was to confirm this declaration, I
should save the life of that unfortunate
man1?" Schack answered by a profound
bow. The Queen took a pen, wrote the first
syllable of her name, and fainted away.
Schack completed the signature, and carried
away the fatal document in triumph.
Struensee himself, however, had confessed
his intercourse to the Commissioners. It is
said that this confession was obtained by
threats of torture, facilitated by some hope
of life, and influenced by a knowledge that
the proceeding against the Queen could not
be carried beyond divorce. But his repeated
and deliberate avowals to Dr. Munter do not
(it must be owned) allow of such an expla
nation. Scarcely any supposition favourable
to this unhappy princess remains, unless it
should be thought likely, that as Dr. Mun-
ter's Narrative was published under'the eye
of her oppressors, they might have caused
the confessions of Struensee to be inserted
in it by their own agents, without the con
sent — perhaps without the knowledge — of
Munter ; whose subsequent life is so little
known, that we cannot determine whether
he ever had the means of exposing the falsi
fication. It must be confessed, that internal
evidence does not favour this hypothesis ;
for the passages of the Narrative, which* con
tain the avowals of Struensee. have a striking
appearance of genuineness. ' If Caroline be
trayed her sufferings to Struensee, — if she
was led to a dangerous familiarity with a
pleasing young man who had rendered es
sential services to her, — if mixed motives of
confidence, gratitude, disgust, and indigna
tion, at last plunged her into an irretrievable
fault, the reasonable and the virtuous will
reserve their abhorrence for the conspirators
who, for the purposes of their own ambition,
punished her infirmity by ruin, endangered
the succession to the crown, and disgraced
their country in the eyes of Europe. It is
difficult to contain the indignation which
naturally arises from the reflection, that at
this very time, and with a full knowledge of
the fate of the Queen of Denmark, the Royal
Marriage Act was passed in England, for the
avowed purpose of preventing the only mar
riages of preference, which a princess, at
least, has commonly the opportunity of form
ing. Of a monarch, who thought so much
more of the pretended degradation of his
brother than of the cruel misfortunes of his
sister, less cannot be said than that he must
have had more pride than tenderness. Even
the capital punishment of Struensee, for such
an offence will be justly condemned by all
but English lawyers, who ought to be silenced
by the consciousness that the same barbar
ous disproportion of a penalty to an offence is
sanctioned in the like case by their own Jaw.
Caroline Matilda died at Zell about three
years after her imprisonment. The last
tidings which reached the Princess-Dowa
ger of Wales on her death-bed, was the im
prisonment of this ill-fated daughter, which
was announced to her in a letter dictated to
the King of Denmark by his new masters,
and subscribed with his own hand. Two
days before her death, though in a state of
agony, she herself wrote a letter to the nomi
nal sovereign, exhorting him to be at least
indulgent and lenient towards her daughter.
After hearing the news from Copenhagen she
scarcely swallowed any nourishment. The
intelligence was said to have accelerated her
death; but the dreadful malady* under
which she suffered, neither needed the co
operation of sorrow, nor was of a nature to
be much affected by it.
What effects were produced by the inter
ference of the British Minister for the Queen ?
— How far the conspirators were influenced
by fear of the resentment of King George III.'?
— and. In what degree that monarch himself
may have acquiesced in the measures finally
adopted towards his sister? — are questions
which must be answered by the historian
from other sources than those from which we
reason on the present occasion. The only
legal proceeding ever commenced against
the Queen was a suit for a divorce, which
was in form perfectly regular : for in all
Protestant countries but England, the offend
ed party is entitled to release from the bands
of marriage by the ordinary tribunals. It
is said that two legal questions were then
agitated in Denmark, and "even occasioned
great debates among the Commissioners : —
1st. Whether the Queen, as a sovereign,
could be legally tried by her subjects ~} and,
2dly, Whether, as a foreign princess, she
was amenable to the law of Denmark?"
But it is quite certain on general principles,
(assuming thai no Danish law had made their
Queen a partaker of the sovereign power, or
otherwise expressly exempted her from legal
responsibility.) that however high in dignity
and honour, she was still a subject ; and that
as such, she, as well as every other person
wherever born, resident in Denmark, was,
during her residence at least, amenable to
the laws of that country.
It was certain that there was little proba
bility of hostility from England. Engaged
in a contest with the people at home, and
dreading the approach of a civil \var with
America, Lord North was not driven from an
inflexible adherence to his pacific system by
the Partition of Poland itself. An address
for the production of the diplomatic corres
pondence respecting the French conquest,
or purchase of Corsica, was moved in the
* An affection of the throat which precluded
the passage of all nourishment. — ED.
ADMINISTRATION AND FALL OF STRUENSEE.
223
House of Commons on the 17th of November,
1768, for the purpose of condemning that
unprincipled transaction, and with a view
indirectly to blame the supineness of the
English ministers respecting it. The motion
•was negatived by a majority of 230 to 84, on
the same ground as that on which the like
motions respecting Naples and Spain were
resisted in 1822 and 1823 ; — that such pro
posals were too little if war was intended,
and too much if it was not. The weight ot
authority, however, did not coincide with
the power of numbers. Mr. Greenville, the
most experienced statesman, and Mr. Burke,
the man of greatest genius and wisdom in
the House, voted in the minority, and argued
in support of the motion. ( Such,7 said the
latter, ' was the general zeal for the Corsican,
that if the Ministers would withdraw the
Proclamation issued by Lord Bute's Govern
ment, forbidding British subjects to assist
the Corsican " rebels," ' (a measure similar
to our Foreign Enlistment Act), i private in
dividuals would supply the brave insurgents
with sufficient means of defence.' The
young Duke of Devonshire, then at Florence,
had sent 400L to Corsica, and raised 2000/.
more for the same purpose by a subscription
among the English in Italy.* A Government
which looked thus passively at such breaches
of the system of Europe on occasions when
the national feeling wras favourable to a more
generous, perhaps a more wise policy, would
hardly have been diverted from its course by
any indignities or outrages which a foreign
Government could offer to an individual of
however illustrious rank. Little, however,
as the likelihood of armed interference *by
England was, the apprehension of it might
have been sufficient to enable the more wary
of the Danish conspirators to contain the rage
of their most furious accomplices. The abi
lity and spirit displayed by Sir Robert Mur
ray Keith on behalf of the Queen was soon
after rewarded by his promotion to the em
bassy at Vienna, always one of the highest
places in English diplomacy. His vigorous
remonstrances in some measure compensated
for the timidity of his Government ; and he
powerfully aided the cautious policy of Count
Osten, who moderated the passions of his
colleagues, though giving the most specious
colour to their acts in his official correspon
dence with foreign Powers.
Contemporary observers of enlarged minds
considered these events in Denmark not so
much as they affected individuals, or were
connected with temporary policy, as in the
higher light in which they indicated the
character of nations, and betrayed the pre
valence of dispositions inauspicious to the
* These particulars are not to be found in the
printed debate, which copies the account of this
discussion given in the Annual Register by Mr.
Burke, written, like his other abstracts of Parlia
mentary proceedings, with the brevity and reserve,
produced by his situation as one of the most im
portant parties in the argument, and by the severe
notions then prevalent on such publications.
prospects of mankind. None of the un-
avowed writings of Mr. Burke, and perhaps
few of his acknowledged ones, exhibit more
visible marks of his hand than the History
of Europe in the Annual Register of 1772;
which opens with a philosophical and elo
quent vindication of the policy which watch
ed over the balance of power, and with a
prophetic display of the evils which were to
flow from the renunciation of that policy by
France and England, in suffering the parti
tion of Poland. The little transactions of
Denmark, which were despised by many as
a petty and obscure intrigue, and affected
the majority only as a part of the romance
or tragedy of real life, appeared to the phi
losophical statesman pregnant with melan
choly instruction. "It has," says he, "been
too hastily and too generally received as an
opinion with the most eminent writers, and
from them too carelessly received by the
world, that the Northern nations, at all times
and without exception, have been passionate
admirers of liberty, and tenacious to an ex
treme of their rights. A little attention will
show that this opinion ought to be received
with many restrictions. Sweden and Den
mark have, within little more than a century,
given absolute demonstration to the contrary ;
and the vast nation of the Russes, who over
spread so great a part of the North, have,
at all times, so long as their name has been
known, or their acts remembered by history,
been incapable of any other than a despotic
government. And notwithstanding the con
tempt in which we hold the Eastern nations,
and the slavish disposition we attribute to
them, it may be found, if we make a due
allowance for the figurative style and man
ner of the Orientals, that the official papers,
public acts, and speeches, at the Courts of
Petersburgn, Copenhagen, and Stockholm,
are in as unmanly a strain of servility and
adulation as those of the most despotic of the
Asiatic governments."
It was doubtless an error to class Russia
with the Scandinavian nations, merely be
cause they were both comprehended within
the same parallels of latitude. The Russians
differ from them in race. — a circumstance
always to be considered, though more liable
to be exaggerated or underrated, than any
other which contributes to determine the
character of nations. No Sarmatian people
has ever been free. The Russians profess a
religion, founded on the blindest submission
of the understanding, which is, in their mo
dern modification of it, directed to their
temporal sovereign. They were for ages the
slaves of Tartars ; the larger part of their
dominions is Asiatic; and they were, till
lately, with justice, more regarded as an
Eastern than as a Western nation. But the
nations of Scandinavia were of that Teutonic
race, who were the founders of civil liberty:
they early embraced the Reformation, which
ought to have taught them the duty of exer
cising reason freely on every subject: and
their spirit has never been broken by a
224
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
foreign yoke. Writing in the year when
despotism w£s established in Sweden, and
its baneful effects so strikingly exhibited in
Denmark, Mr. Burke may be excused for
comparing these then unhappy countries
with those vast regions of Asia which have
been the immemorial seat of slavery. The
revolut'on which we have been considering,
shows the propriety of the parallel in all its
parts. If it only proved that absolute power
corrupts the tyrant, there are many too de
based to dread it on that account. But it
shows him at Copenhagen, as at Ispahan,
reduced to personal insignificance, a pageant
occasionally exhibited by his ministers, or
a tool in their hands, compelled to do what
ever suits their purpose, without power to
save the life even of a minion, and without
security, in cases of extreme violence, for
his own. Nothing can more clearly prove
that under absolute monarchy, good laws,
if they could by a miracle be framed, must
always prove utterly vain ; that civil cannot
exist without political liberty; and that the
detestable distinction, lately attempted in
this country by the advocates of intolerance,*
between freedom and political power, never
can be allowed in practice without, in the
first instance, destroying all securities for
good government, and very soon introducing
every species of corruption and oppression.
The part of Mr. Burke's History, which
we have quoted, is followed by a memorable
passage which seems, in later times, to have
escaped the notice both of his opponents and
adherents, and was probably forgotten by
himself, After speaking of the final victory
of Louis XV. over the French Parliaments,
of whom he says, '•' that their fate seems to
be finally decided, t and the few remains of
public liberty that were preserved in these
illustrious bodies are now no more," he pro
ceeds to general reflection on the condition
and prospects of Europe. "In a word, if
we seriously consider the mode of support
ing great standing armies, which becomes
daily more prevalent, it will appear evident,
that nothing less than a convulsion that will
shake the globe to its centre, can ever restore
the European nations to that liberty by which
they were once so much distinguished. The
Western world was its seat until another
more western was discovered : and that other
will probably be its asylum when it is hunted
down in every other part of the world. Happy
it is that the worst of times may have one
refuge left for humanity."
This passage is not so much a prophecy
of the French Revolution, as a declaration
that without a convulsion as deep and dread
ful as that great event, the European nations
had no chance of being restored to their an-
* This was written in 1826. — ED.
$ They were re-established four years after-
"wards : but as this arose, not from the spirit of
the nation, but from the advisers of the young
King, who had full power to grant or withhold
their lestoration, the want of foresight is rather
apparent than substantial.
cient dignity and their natural rights. Had
it been written after, or at least soon after
the event, it might have been blamed as in
dicating too litile indignation against guilt,
and compassion for suffering. Even when con
sidered as referring to the events of a distant
futurity, it may be charged with a pernicious
exaggeration, which seems to extenuate re
volutionary horrors by representing them as
inevitable, and by laying it down falsely that
Wisdom and Virtue can find no other road to
Liberty. It would, however, be very unjust
to charge such a purpose on Mr. Burke, or
indeed to impute such a tendency to his de
sponding anticipations. He certainly appears
to have foreseen that the progress of despo
tism would at length provoke a general and
fearful resistance, the event of which, with
a wise scepticism, he does not dare to foretel;
rather, however, as a fond, and therefore
fearful, lover of European liberty, foreboding
that she will be driven from her ancient
seats, and leave the inhabitants of Europe
to be numbered with Asiatic slaves. The
fierceness of the struggle he clearly saw,
and most distinctly predicts; for he Itnew
that the most furious passions of human na
ture would be enlisted on both sides. He
does not conclude, from this dreadful pros
pect, that the chance of liberty ought to be
relinquished rather than expose a country to
the probability or possibility of such a con
test; but, on the contrary, very intelligibly
declares by the melancholy tone in which he
adverts to the expulsion of Liberty, that
every evil is to be hazarded for her preser
vation. It would be well if his professed
adherents would bear in mind, that such is
the true doctrine of most of those whom
they dread and revile as incendiaries. The
friends of freedom only profess that those
who have recourse to the only remaining
means of preserving or acquiring liberty,
are not morally responsible for the evils
which may arise in an inevitable combat.
The Danish dominions continued to be
administered in the name of Christian VII.,
for the long period of thirty-six years after
the deposition of Struensee. The mental
incapacity under which he always laboured,
was not formally recognised till the associa
tion of his son, now King of Denmark, with
him in the government. He did not cease
to breathe till 1808, after a nominal reign of
forty-three years, and an animal existence
of near sixty. During the latter part of that
period, the real rulers of the country were
wise and honest men. It enjoyed a consi
derable interval of prosperity under the ad
ministration of BernstorfT, whose merit in
forbearing to join the coalition against France
in 1793, is greatly enhanced by his personal
abhorrence of the Revolution. His adoption
of ReverdiPs measures of enfranchisement,
sheds the purest glory on his name.
The fate of Denmark, after the ambition
of Napoleon had penetrated into the North, —
the iniquity with which she was stripped by
Russia of Norway, for adherence to an al-
CASE OF DONNA MARIA.
225
liance which Russia had compelled her to
join, and as a compensation to Sweden for
Finland, of which Sweden had been robbed
by Russia, are events too familiarly known
to be recounted here. She is now no more
than a principality, whose arms are still sur
mounted by a royal crown. A free and po
pular government, under the same wise ad
ministration, might have arrested many of
these calamities, and afforded a new proof
that the attachment of a people to a govern
ment in which they have a palpable interest
and a direct share, is the most secure foun
dation of defensive strength.
The political misfortunes of Denmark dis
prove the commonplace opinion, that all en
slaved nations deserve their fate : for the
moral and intellectual qualities of the Danes
seem to qualify them for the firm and pru
dent exercise of the privileges of freemen.
All those by whom they are well known,,
commend their courage, honesty, and indus
try. The information of the labouring classes
has made a considerable progress since their
enfranchisement. Their literature, like that
of the Northern nations, has generally been
dependent on that of Germany, with which
country they are closely connected in lan
guage and religion. In the last half century,
they have made persevering efforts to build
up a national literature. The resistance of
their fleet in 180], has been the theme of
many Danish poets ; but we believe that
they have been as unsuccessful in their bold
competition with Campbell, as their mariners
in their gallant contest with Nelson. How
ever, a poor and somewhat secluded country,
with a small and dispersed population, which
has produced Tycho Brahe, Oehlenschlaeger,
and Thorwaldsen, must be owned to have
contributed her full contingent to the intel
lectual greatness of Europe.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
DONNA MARIA DA GLORIA,
AS
A CLAIMANT TO THE CROWN OF PORTUGAL.*
BEFORE the usurpation of Portugal by
Philip II. of Spain in 1580, the Portuguese
nation, though brilliantly distinguished in
arts and arms, and as a commercial and
maritime power, in some measure filling up
the interval between the decline of Venice
and the rise of Holland, had not yet taken a
place in the political system of Europe.
From the restoration of her independence
under the House of Braganza in 1640, to the
peace of Utrecht, Spain was her dangerous
enemy, and France, the political opponent
of Spain, was her natural protector. Her re
lation to France was reversed as soon as a
Bourbon King was seated on the throne of
Spain. From that moment the union of the
two Bourbon monarchies gave her a neigh
bour far more formidable than the Austrian
princes who had slumbered for near a cen
tury at the Escurial. It became absolutely
necessary for her safety that she should
strengthen herself against this constantly
threatening danger by an alliance, which,
being founded in a common and permanent
interest, might be solid and durable. Eng
land, the political antagonist of France,
* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xlv. p.
202.— ED.
29
whose safety would be endangered by every
aggrandizement of the House of Bourbon,
and who had the power of rapidly succour
ing Portugal, without the means of oppress
ing her independence, was evidently the
only state from which friendship and aid, at
once effectual, safe, and lasting, could be
expected : — hence the alliance between Eng
land and Portugal, and the union, closer than
can be created by written stipulations, be
tween these two countries.
The peril, however, was suspended during
forty years of the dissolute and unambitious
government of Louis XV. till the year 1761,
when, by the treaty known under the name
of the ' Family Compact,' the Due de Choiseul
may be justly said (to borrow the language
of Roman ambition) to have reduced Spain
to the form of a province. A separate and
secret convention was executed on the same
day ( 15th of August), by which it was agreed ,
that if England did not make peace with
France by the 1st of May, 1762, Spain should
then declare war against the former power.
The sixth article fully disclosed the magni
tude of the danger which, from that moment
to this, has hung over the head of Portugal.
His Most Faithful Majesty was to be desired
to accede to the convention ; " it not being
226
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
•just," in the judgment of these royal jurists,
" that he should remain a tranquil spectator
of the disputes of the two Courts with Eng
land, and continue to enrich the enemies of
the two Sovereigns, by keeping his ports
open to them." The King of Portugal re
fused to purchase a temporary exemption
from attack by a surrender of his independ
ence. The French and Spanish Ministers
declared, " that the Portuguese alliance with
England, though called ' defensive.' became
in reality offensive, from the situation of the
Portuguese dominions, and from the nature
of the English power."* A war ensued, —
being probably the first ever waged against
a country, on the avowed ground of its geo
graphical position. It was terminated by
the Treaty of Paris in 1763, without, how
ever, any proposition on the part of France
and Spain that Portugal should be cut away
from the Continent, and towed into the
neighbourhood of Madeira, — where perhaps
she might re-enter on her right as an inde
pendent state to observe neutrality, and to
provide for her security by defensive alli
ances. This most barefaced act of injustice
might be passed over here in silence, if it
did not so strongly illustrate the situation of
Portugal, since Spain became a dependent
ally of France ; and if we could resist the
temptation of the occasion to ask whether
the authors of such a war were as much less
ambitious than Napoleon, as they were be
neath him in valour and genius.
In the American war, it does not appear
that any attempt was made, on principles of
geography, to compel Portugal to make war
on England.! The example of the Family
Compact, however, was not long barren. As
soon as the French Republic had re-esta
blished the ascendant of France at Madrid,
they determined to show that they inherited
the principles as well as the sceptre of their
monarchs. Portugal, now overpowered, was
compelled to cede Olivenza to Spain, and to
shut her ports on English ships.! Thus ter
minated the second war made against her
to oblige her to renounce the only ally capa
ble of assisting her, and constantly interested
in her preservation. But these compulsory
treaties were of little practical importance,
being immediately followed by the Peace of
Amiens. They only furnished a new proof
that the insecurity of Portugal essentially
arose from the dependence of Spain on France,
and could not be lessened by any change in
the government of the latter country.
When the war, or rather wars, against
universal monarchy broke out, the Regent
of Portugal declared the neutrality of his do-
* Note of Don Joseph Torrero and Don Jac
ques O'Dun, Lisbon, 1st April, 1762.— Annual
Register.
t Portugal did indeed accede to the Armed
Neutrality ; but it was not till the 15th of July,
1782, on the eve of a general peace. — Martens,
Recueil de Traites, vol. ii. p. 208.
t By the Treaty between France and Spain of
the 19th August, 1796.— Martens, vol. vi. p. 656.
minions.* For four years he was indulged
in the exercise of this right of an independ
ent prince, in spite of the geographical posi
tion of the kingdom. At the end of that
period the 'geographical principle' was en
forced against him more fully and vigor
ously than on the former instances of its ap
plication. The Portuguese monarchy was
confiscated and partitioned in a secret con
vention between France and Spain, executed
at Fontainebleau on the 27th of October,
1807, by which considerable parts of its con
tinental territory were granted to the Prince
of the Peace, and to the Spanish Princess,
then called Queen of Etruria, in sovereignty,
but as feudatories of the crown of Spain. f
A French army under Junot marched against
Portugal, arid the Royal Family were com
pelled, in November following, to embark for
Brazil; a measure which was strongly sug
gested by the constant insecurity to which
European Portugal was doomed by the Fa
mily Compact, and which had been seriously
entertained by the Government since the
treaty of Badajoz.
The events which followed in the Spanish
Peninsula are too memorable to be more
than alluded to. Portugal was governed by
a Regency nominated by the King. The
people caught .the generous spirit of the
Spaniards, took up arms against the con
querors, and bravely aided the English army
to expel them. The army, delivered from
those unworthy leaders to whom the abuses
of despotism had subjected them, took an
ample share in the glorious march from
Torres Vedras to Toulouse, which forms one
of the most brilliant pages in history.
The King opened the ports of his American
territories to all nations ; — a measure in him
of immediate necessity, but fraught with mo
mentous consequences. He cemented his
ancient relations with Great Britain (which
geography no longer forbade) by new trea
ties ; and he bestowed on Brazil a separate
administration, with the title of a kingdom.
The course of events in the spring of 1814
had been so rapid, that there was no minis
ter in Europe authorized to represent the
Court of Rio Janeiro at the Treaty of Paris :
but so close was the alliance with England
then deemed, that Lord Castlereagh took it
upon him, on the part of Portugal, to stipu
late for the restoration of French Guiana,
which had been conquered by the Portuguese
arms. At the Congress of Vienna in the fol
lowing year, the Portuguese plenipotentiaries
protested against the validity of this restora
tion, and required the retrocession of Oliven
za, which had been wrested from them at
Badajoz, in a war in which they had been
the allies of England. The good offices of
the European powers to obtain this last resto-
* Treaties of Badajoz, 6th of June; of Madrid,
20th of September, 1801.— Martens, Supplement,
vol. ii. pp. 340, 539.
t Schoell, Histoire Abregee des Traites de
Paix, &c., vol. ix. p. 110.
CASE OF DONNA MARIA.
227
ration were then solemnly promised, but have
hitherto been in vain.
In 1816, John VI. refused to return to Lis
bon, though a squadron under Sir John Be-
resford had been sent to convey him thither ;
partly because he was displeased at the dis
regard of his rights, shown by the Congress
of Vienna; partly because the unpopularity
of the Commercial Treaty had alienated him
from England ; but probably still more, be
cause he was influenced by the visible
growth of a Brazilian party which now aimed
at independence. Henceforward, indeed, the
separation manifestly approached. The Por
tuguese of Europe began to despair of seeing
the seat of the monarchy at Lisbon ; the Re
gency were without strength; all appoint
ments were obtained from the distant Court
of Rio Janeiro ; men and money were drawn
away for the Brazilian war on the Rio de la
Plata ; the army left behind was unpaid : in
fine, all the materials of formidable discon
tent were heaped up in Portugal, when, in
the beginning of 1820, the Spanish Revolu
tion broke out. Six months elapsed without
a spark having fallen in Portugal. Marshal
Beresford went to Rio Janeiro to solicit the
interference of the King : but that Prince
made no effort to prevent the conflagration ;
and perhaps no precaution would then have
been effectual.
In August, the garrison of Oporto declared
for a revolution ; and being joined on their
march to the Capital by all the troops on
their line, were received with open arms by
the garrison of Lisbon. It was destined to
bestow on Portugal a still more popular con
stitution than that of Spain. With what
prudence or justice the measures of the
popular leaders in the south of Europe were
conceived or conducted, it is happily no part
of our present business to inquire. Those
who openly remonstrated against their errors
when they seemed to be triumphant, are
under no temptation to join the vulgar cry
against the fallen. The people of Portugal,
indeed, unless guided by a wise and vigor
ous Government, were destined by the very
nature of things, in any political change made
at that moment, to follow the course of Spain.
The Regency of Lisbon, by the advice of a
Portuguese Minister,* at once faithful to his
Sovereign, and friendly to the liberty of his
country, made an attempt to stem the tor
rent, by summoning an assembly of the
Cortes. The attempt was too late; but it
pointed to the only means of saving the
monarchy.
The same Minister, on his arrival in Bra
zil, at the end of the year, advised the King
to send his eldest son to Portugal as Viceroy,
with a constitutional charter; recommend
ing also the assembling of the most respect
able Brazilians at Rio Janeiro, to consider of
the improvements which seemed practicable
in Brazil. But while these honest, and not
unpromising counsels, were the objects of
Count Palmella— ED.
onger discussions than troublous times allow,
a revolution broke out in Brazil, in the spring
of 1821, the first professed object of which
was, not the separation of that country, but
the adoption of the Portuguese Constitution,
[t was acquiesced in by the King, and es
poused with the warmth of youth, by his
eldest son Don Pedro. But in April, trie King,
disquieted by the commotions which encom
passed him, determined to return to Lisbon,
and to leave the conduct of the American
revolution to his son. Even on the voyage
he was advised to stop at the Azores, as a
place where he might negotiate with more
independence : but he rejected this counsel ;
and on his arrival in the Tagus, on the 3d of
July, nothing remained but a surrender at
discretion. The revolutionary Cortes were
as tenacious of the authority of the mother
country, as the Royal Administration ; and
they accordingly recalled the Heir-apparent
to Lisbon. But the spirit of independence
arose among the Brazilians, who, encouraged
by the example of the Spanish-Americans,
presented addresses to the Prince, beseech
ing him not to yield to the demands of the
Portuguese Assembly, who desired to make
him a prisoner, as they had made his father;
but, by assuming the crown of Brazil, to pro
vide for his own safety, as well as for their
liberty. In truth it is evident, that he neither
could have continued in Brazil without ac
ceding to the popular desire, nor could have
then left it without insuring the destruction
of monarchy in that country. He acquiesced
therefore in the prayer of these flattering
petitions : the independence of Brazil was
proclaimed ; and the Portuguese monarchy
was finally dismembered.
In the summer of 1823, the advance of the
French army into Spain, excited a revolt of
the Portuguese Royalists. The infant Don
Miguel, the King's second son. attracted
notice, by appearing at the head of a bat
talion who declared against the Constitution ;
and the inconstant soldiery, equally ignorant
of the object of their revolts against the King
or the Cortes, were easily induced to over
throw the slight work of their own hands.
Even in the moment of victory, however,
John VI. solemnly promised a free govern
ment to the Portuguese nation.* A few
weeks afterwards, he gave a more delibe
rate and decisive proof of what was then
thought necessary for the security of the
throne, and the well-being of the people, by
a Royal Decree,f which, after pronouncing
the nullity of the constitution of the Cortes,
proceeds as follows: — "Conformably to my
feelings, and the sincere promises of my
Proclamations, and considering that the an
cient fundamental laws of the monarchy can
not entirely answer my paternal purposes,
without being accommodated to the present
state of civilization, to the mutual relations
* Proclamations from Villa Francha of the 31s*
of May and 3d of June.
t Of the 18th of June.
228
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of the different parts which compose the
monarchy, and to the form of representative
governments established in Europe, I have
appointed a Junta to prepare the plan of a
charter of the fundamental laws of the Portu
guese monarchy, which shall be founded on
the principles of public law, and open the
way to a progressive reformation of the ad
ministration. ';
Count Palmella was appointed President
of this Junta, composed of the most dis
tinguished men in the kingdom. They com
pleted their work in a few months ] and pre
sented to the King the plan of a Constitu
tional Charter, almost exactly the same with
that granted in 1826 by Don Pedro. John
VI. was favourable to it, considering it as
an adaptation of the ancient fundamental
laws to present circumstances. While the
revolution was triumphant, the more reason
able Royalists regretted that no attempt had
been made to avoid it by timely concession ]
and in the first moment of escape, the re
mains of the same feelings disposed the
Court to concede something. But after a
short interval of quiet, the possessors of au
thority relapsed into the ancient and fatal
error of their kind, — that of placing their
security in maintaining the unbounded power
which had proved their ruin. A resistance
to the form of the constitution, which grew
up in the interior of the Court, was fostered
by foreign influence, and after a struggle of
some months, prevented the promulgation
of the charter.
In April 1824, events occurred at Lisbon,
on which we shall touch as lightly as possi
ble. It is well known that part of the gar
rison of Lisbon surrounded the King's palace,
and hindered the access of his servants to
him ; that some of his ministers were im
prisoned ; that the diplomatic body, including
the Papal Nuncio, the French Ambassador,
and the Russian as well as English Ministers,
wrere the means of restoring him to some
degree of liberty, which was however so
imperfect and insecure, that, by the advice
of the French Ambassador, the King took
refuge on board an English ship of war lying
in the Tagus, from whence he was at length
able to assert his dignity and re-establish his
authority. Over the part in these transac
tions, into which evil counsellors betrayed
the inexperience of Don Miguel, it is pecu
liarly proper to throw a veil, in imitation of
his father, who forgave these youthful faults
as ' involuntary errors.' This proof of the
unsettled state of the general opinion and
feeling respecting the government, suggest
ed the necessity of a conciliatory measure,
which might in some measure compensate
for the defeat of the Constitutional Charter in
the preceding year. The Minister who,
both in Europe and in America, had attempt
ed to avert revolution by reform, was not
wanting to his sovereign arid his country at
this crisis. Still counteracted by foreign in
fluence, and opposed by a colleague who
was a personal favourite of the King, he
could not again propose the Charter, nor
even obtain so good a substitute for it as
he desired : but he had the merit of being
always ready to do the best practicable. By
his counsel, the King issued a Proclamation
on the 4th of June, for restoring the ancient
constitution of the Portuguese monarchy,
with assurances that an assembly of the
Cortes, or Three Estates of the Realm, should
be speedily held with all their legal rights,
and especially with the privilege of laying
before the King, for his consideration, the
heads of such measures as they might deem
necessary for the public good. To that as
sembly was referred the consideration of the
periodical meetings of succeeding Cortes,
and 'the means of progressively ameliorating
the administration of the state.' The pro
clamation treats this re-establishment of the
ancient constitution as being substantially
the same with the Constitutional Charter
drawn up by the Junta in the preceding
year ; and it was accordingly followed by a
Decree, dissolving that Junta, as having per
formed its office. Though these represen
tations were not scrupulously true, yet when
we come to see what the rights of the Cortes
were in ancient times, the language of the
Proclamation will riot be found to deviate
more widely into falsehood than is usual in
the preambles of Acts of State. Had the
time for the convocation of the Cortes been
fixed, the restoration of the ancient constitu
tion might, without much exaggeration, have
been called the establishment of liberty. For
this point the Marquis Palmella made a
struggle : but the King thought that he had
done enough, in granting such a pledge to
the Constitutionalists, and was willing to
soothe the Absolutists, by reserving to him
self the choice of a time. On the next day
he created a Junta, to prepare, c without loss
of time,' the regulations necessary ( for the
convocation of the Cortes, and for the elec
tion of the members.' As a new proof of
the growing conviction that a free constitu
tion was necessary, and as a solemn promise
that it should be established, the Declaration
of the 4th of June is by no means inferior in
force to its predecessors. Nay, in that light,
it may be considered as deriving additional
strength from those appearances of reserve
and reluctance which distinguish it from the
more ingenious, and really more politic De
clarations of 1823. But its grand defect was
of a practical nature, and consisted in the
opportunity which indefinite delay affords,
for evading the performance of a promise.
Immediately after the counter-revolution
in 1823, John VI. had sent a mission to Rio
Janeiro, requiring the submission of his son
and his Brazilian subjects. But whatever
might be the wishes of Don Pedro, he had
no longer the power to transfer the allegiance
of a people wrho had tasted independence, —
who were full of the pride of their new ac
quisition, — who valued it as their only secu
rity against the old monopoly, and who may
well be excused for thinking it more advan-
CASE OF DONNA MARIA.
229
tageous to name at home the officers of their
own government, than to receive rulers and
magistrates from the intrigues of courtiers at
Lisbon. Don Pedro could not restore to
Portugal her American empire ; but he might
easily lose Brazil in the attempt. A nego
tiation was opened at London, .in the year
1825, under the mediation of Austria and
England. The differences between the two
branches of the House of Braganza were, it
must be admitted, peculiarly untractable.
Portugal was to surrender her sovereignty,
or Brazil to resign her independence. Union,
on equal terms, was equally objected to by
both. It was evident that no amicable issue
of such a negotiation was possible, which did
not involve acquiescence in the separation ;
and the very act of undertaking the media
tion, sufficiently evinced that this event was
contemplated by the mediating Powers.
The Portuguese minister in London, Count
Villa-Real, presented projects wrhich seemed
to contain every concession short of inde
pendence : but the Brazilian deputies who,
though not admitted to the conference, had
an unofficial intercourse with the British
Ministers, declared, as might be expected,
that nothing short of independence could be
listened to. It was agreed, therefore, that
Sir Charles Stuart, who was then about to
go to Rio Janeiro to negotiate a treaty be
tween England and Brazil, should take Lis
bon on his way, and endeavour to dispose
the Portuguese Government to consent to a
sacrifice which could no longer be avoided.
He was formally permitted by his own Go
vernment to accept the office of Minister
Plenipotentiary from Portugal to Brazil, if it
should be proposed to him at Lisbon. Cer
tainly no man could be more fitted for this
delicate mediation, both by his extraordinary
knowledge of the ancient constitution of
Portugal, and by the general confidence
which he had gained while a minister of the
Regency during the latter years of the war.
After a series of conferences with the Count
de Porto Santo, Minister for Foreign Affairs,
which continued from the 5th of April to the
23d of May, and in the course of which two
points were considered as equally under
stood, — that John VI. should cede to Don
Pedro the sovereignty of Brazil, and that
Don Pedro should preserve his undisputed
right as heir of Portugal, — he set sail for Rio
Janeiro, furnished with full powers, as well
as instructions, and more especially with
Royal Letters- Patent of John VI., to be de
livered on the conclusion of an amicable ar
rangement, containing the following import
ant and decisive clause : — " And as the suc
cession of the Imperial and Royal Crowns
belongs to my beloved son Don Pedro, I do,
by these Letters- Patent, cede and transfer to
him the full exercise of sovereignty in the
empire of Brazil, which is to be governed by
him ; nominating him Emperor of Brazil,
and Prince Royal of Portugal and the Al-
garves."
A treaty was concluded on the 29th of
August, by Sir Charles Stuart, recognising
the independence and separation of Brazil ;
acknowledging the sovereignty of that coun
try to be vested in Don Pedro ; allowing the
King of Portugal also to assume the Imperial
title; binding the Emperor of Brazil to reject
the offer of any Portuguese colony to be in
corporated with his dominions ; and contain
ing some other stipulations usual in treaties
of peace. It \vas ratified at Lisbon, on the 5th
of November following, by Letters- Patent,*
from which, at the risk of some repetition, it
is necessary to extract two clauses, the de
cisive importance of which will be shortly
seen. " I have ceded and transferred to my
beloved son Don Pedro de Alcantara, heir
and successor of these kingdoms, all my
rights over that country, recognising its in
dependence with the title of empire." "We
recognise our said son Don Pedro de Alcan
tara, Prince of Portugal and the Algarves, as
Emperor, and having the exercise of sove
reignty in the whole empire."
The part of this proceeding which is in
tended to preserve the right of succession to
the crown of Portugal to Don Pedro, is
strictly conformable to diplomatic usage, and
to the principles of the law of nations.
Whatever relates to the cession of a claim is
the proper subject of agreement between
the parties, and is therefore inserted in the
treaty. The King of Portugal, the former
Sovereign of Brazil, cedes his rights or pre
tensions in that country to his son. He re
leases all his former subjects from their alle
giance. He abandons those claims which
alone could give him any colour or pretext
for interfering in the internal affairs of that
vast region. Nothing could have done this
effectually, solemnly, and notoriously, but
the express stipulation of a treaty. Had Don
Pedro therefore been at the same time un
derstood to renounce his right of succession
to the crown of Portugal, an explicit stipula
tion in the treaty to that effect would have
been necessary: for such a renunciation
would have been the cession of a right. Had
it even been understood, that the recognition
of his authority as an independent monarch
implied the abdication of his rights as heir-
apparent to the Portuguese crown, it would
have been consonant to the general tenor of
the treaty, explicitly to recognise this abdica
tion. The silence of the treaty is a proof
that none of the parties to it considered these
rights as taken away or impaired, by any-
previous or concomitant circumstance. Sti
pulations \vere necessary when the state of
regal rights was to be altered; but they
would be at least impertinent where it re
mained unchanged. Silence is in the latter
case sufficient: since, where nothing is to
be done, nothing needs be said. There is
no stipulation in the treaty, by which Don
Pedro acknowledges the sovereignty of his
father in Portugal; because that sovereignty
is left in the same condition in which it was
Gazeta de Lisbon, of the 15th of November,
U
230
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
before. For the very same reason the treaty
has no article for the preservation of Don
Pedro's right of succession to Portugal. Had
Don Pedro required a stipulation in the treaty
for the maintenance of these rights, he would
have done an act which would have tended
more to bring them into question, than to
strengthen them. As they were rights which
John VI. could not take away, it was fit and
wise to treat them also as rights which no
act of his could bestow or confirm.
But though a provision for the preservation
of these rights in the treaty was needless,
and would have been altogether misplaced,
there were occasions on which the recogni
tion of them was fit, and, as a matter of
abundant caution, expedient. These occa
sions are accordingly not passed over. The
King of Portugal styles Don Pedro the heir
of Portugal, both in the first Letters-Patent,
addressed to his Brazilian subjects, in which
he recognises the independence of Brazil,
and in the second, addressed to his Portu
guese subjects, where he ratifies the treaty
which definitively established that independ
ence. Acknowledged to be the monarch,
and for the time the lawgiver of Portugal^
and necessarily in these acts, claiming the
same authority in Brazil, he announces to
the people of both countries that the right
of his eldest son to inherit the crown was, in
November 1525, inviolate, unim paired, un
questioned.
The ratifications are, besides, a portion of
the treaty ; and when they are exchanged,
they become as much articles of agreement
between the parties, as any part of it which
bears that name. The recognition repeated
in this Ratification proceeded from John VI.,
and was accepted by Don Pedro. Nothing
but express words could have taken away
so important a right as that of succession to
the crown : in this case, there are express
words which recognise it. Though it has
been shown that silence would have been
sufficient, the same conclusion would un
answerably follow, if the premises were far
more scanty. The law of nations has no
established forms, a deviation from which is
fatal to the validity of the trasactions to which
they are appropriated. It admits no merely
technical objections to conventions formed
under its authority, and is bound by no .posi
tive rules in the interpretation of them.
Wherever the intention of contracting par
ties is plain, it is the sole interpreter of a
contract. Now, it is needless to say that, in
the Treaty of Rio Janeiro, taken with the
preceding and following Letters-Patent, the
manifest intention of John VI. was not to im
pair, but to recognise the rights of his eldest
son to the inheritance of Portugal.
On the 10th of March 1826, John VI. died
at Lisbon. On his death-bed, however, he
had made provision for the temporary admi
nistration of the government. By a Royal
Decree, of the 6th,* he committed the go-
* Gazeta de Lisbon, of the 7th of March.
vernment to his daughter, the Infanta Donna
Isabella Maria, assisted by a council during
his illness, or, in the event of his death, till
" the legitimate heir and successor to the crown
should make other provision in this respect."
These words have no ambiguity. In every
hereditary monarchy they must naturally,
and almost necessarily, denote the eldest son
of the King, when he leaves a son. It would,
in such a case, require the strongest evidence
to warrant the application of them to any
other person. It is clear that the King must
have had an individual in view, unless we
adopt the most extravagant supposition that,
as a dying bequest to his subjects, he meant
to leave them a disputed succession arid a
civil war. Who could that individual be,
but Don Pedro, his eldest son, whom, ac
cording to the ancient order of succession to
the crown of Portugal, he had himself called
" heir and successor^ on the 13th of May and
5th of November preceding. Such, accord
ingly, was the conviction, and the corres
pondent conduct of all whose rights or in
terests were concerned. The Regency was
immediately installed, and universally obey
ed at home, as well as acknowledged, with
out hesitation or delay, by all the Powers of
Europe. The Princess Regent acted in the
name, and on the behalf of her brother, Don
Pedro. It was impossible that the succession
of any Prince to a throne could be more quiet
and undisputed.
The Regency, without delay, notified the
demise of the late King to their new Sove
reign : and then the difficulties of that
Prince's situation began to show themselves.
Though the treaty had not weakened his
hereditary right to Portugal, yet the main
object of it was to provide, not only for the
independence of Brazil, but for its "separa
tion" from Portugal, which undoubtedly im
ported a separation of the crowns. Possess
ing the government of Brazil, and inheriting
that of Portugal, he became bound by all the
obligations of the treaty between the two
states. Though he inherited the crown of
Portugal by the laws of that country, yet he
was disabled by treaty from permanently
continuing to hold it with that of Brazil. But
if, laying aside unprofitable subtilties, we
consult only conscience and common sense,
we shall soon discover that these rights and
duties are not repugnant, but that, on the
contrary, the legal right is the only means
of performing the federal duty. The treaty
did not expressly determine which of the
two crowns Don Pedro was bound to re
nounce j it therefore left him to make an
option between them. For the implied obli
gations of a contract extend only to those
acts of the parties which are necessary to
the attainment of its professed object. If
he chose, — as he has chosen, — to retain the
crown of Brazil, it could not, by reasonable
implication, require an instantaneous abdica
tion of that of Portugal- because such a
limitation of time was not necessary, and
might have been very injurious to the object.
CASE OF DONNA MARIA.
231
It left the choice of time, manner, and con
ditions to himself, requiring only good faith,
and interdicting nothing bin fraudulent delay.
Had he not (according to the principle of
all hereditary monarchs) become King of
Portugal at the instant of his father's demise,
there would have been no person possessed
of the legal and actual power i.i both coun
tries necessary to carry the treaty of separa
tion into effect. If the Portuguese had not
acquiesced in his authority, they must have
voluntarily chosen anarchy ; for no one could
have the power to discharge the duty im
posed by treaty, or to provide for any of the
important changes which it might occasion.
The most remarkable example of this latter
sort, was the order of succession. The sepa
ration of the two crowns rendered it abso
lutely impossible to preserve that order in
both monarchies; for both being hereditary,
the legal order required that both crowns
should descend to the same person, the eldest
son of Don Pedro — the very union which it
was the main or sole purpose of the treaty
to prevent. A breach in the order of suc
cession became therefore inevitable, either
in Portugal or Brazil. Necessity required
the deviation. But the same necessity vested
in Don Pedro, as a king and a father, the
power of regulating in this respect, the rights
of his family ; and the permanent policy of
monarchies required that he should carry
the deviation no farther than the necessity.
As the nearer female would inherit before
the more distant male, Don Miguel had no
right which was immediately involved in
the arrangement to be adopted. It is ac
knowledged, that the two daughters of John
VI., married and domiciled in Spain, had
lost their rights as members of the Royal
Family. Neither the Queen, nor indeed any
other person, had a legal title to the regency,
which in Portugal, as in France and Eng
land, was a case omitted in the constitutional
laws, and, as no Cortes had been assembled
for a century, could only be provided for by
the King, who, of necessity, was the tempo
rary lawgiver. The only parties who could
be directly affected by the allotment of the
two crowns, were the children of Don Pedro,
the eldest of whom was in her sixth year
The more every minute part of this case is
considered, the more obvious and indisputa
ble will appear to be the necessity, that Don
Pedro should retain the powers of a King
of Portugal, until he had employed them
for the quiet and safety of both kingdoms
as far as these might be endangered by the
separation. He held, and holds, that crown
as a trustee for the execution of the treaty
To hold it after the trust is performed, wouk
be usurpation : to renounce it before tha
period, would be treachery to the trust.
That Don Pedro should have chosen Brazil
must have always been foreseen ; for hi;
election was almost determined by his pre
ceding conduct. He preferred Brazil, where
he had been the founder of a state, to Por
tugalj where the most conspicuous measures
)f his life could be viewed with no more
han reluctant acquiescence. The next ques-
;ion which arose was, whether the inevitable
Dreach in the order of succession was to be
made in Portugal or Brazil ; or, in other
words, of which of these two disjointed king
doms, the Infant Don Sebastian should be
he heir-apparent. The father made the
same choice for his eldest son as for himself.
As Don Sebastian preserved his right of suc
cession in Brazil, the principle of the least
possible deviation from the legal order re
quired that the crown of Portugal should
devolve on his sister Donna Maria, the next
n succession of the Royal Family.
After this exposition of the rights and du
ties of Don Pedro, founded on the principles
of public law, and on the obligations of
treaty, and of the motives of policy which
have influenced him in a case where he was
left free to follow the dictates of his own
judgment, let us consider very shortly what
a conscientious ruler W7ould, in such a case,
deem necessary to secure to both portions of
his subjects all the advantages of their new
position. He would be desirous of softening
the humiliation of one. of effacing the recent
animosities between them, and of reviving
their ancient friendship, by preserving every
tie which reminded them of former union
and common descent. He would therefore,
even if he wrere impartial, desire that they
should continue under the same Royal Family
which had for centuries ruled both. He
would labour, as far as the case allowed, to
strengthen the connections of language, of
traditions, of manners, and of religion, by
the resemblance of laws and institutions.
He would clearly see that his Brazilian sub
jects never could trust his fidelity to their
limited monarchy, if he maintained an abso
lute government in Portugal ; and that the
Portuguese people would not long endure to
be treated as slaves, while those whom they
were not accustomed to regard as their su
periors were thought worthy of the most
popular constitution. However much a mon
arch was indifferent or adverse to liberty,
these considerations would lose nothing of
their political importance : for a single false
step in this path might overthrow monarchy
in Brazil, and either drive Portugal into a re
volution, or seat a foreign army in her pro
vinces, to prevent it. It is evident that po
pular institutions can alone preserve mon
archy in Brazil from falling before the prin
ciples of republican America; and it will
hardly be denied, that, though some have
questioned the advantage of liberty, no peo
ple were ever so mean-spirited as not to be
indignant at being thought unworthy of it, as
a privilege. Viewing liberty with the same
cold neutrality, a wise statesman would have
thought it likely to give stability to a new
government in Portugal, and to be received
there as some consolation for loss of dominion.
Portugal, like all the other countries between
the Rhine and the Mediterranean, had been
convulsed by conquest and revolution. Am-
232
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
bition and rapacity, fear and revenge, politi
cal fanaticism and religious bigotry, — all the
ungovernable passions which such scenes
excite, still agitated the minds of those who
had been actors or victims of them. Expe
rience has proved, that no expedient can ef
fectually allay these deep-seated disorders,
but the institution of a government in which
all interests and opinions are represented, —
which keeps up a perpetual negotiation be
tween them, — which compels each in its
turn to give up some part of it? pretensions, —
and which provides a safe field of contest in
those cases where a treaty cannot be con
cluded. Of all the stages in the progress of
human society, the period which succeeds
the troubles of civil and foreign war is that
which most requires this remedy: for it is
that in which the minds of men are the most
dissatisfied, the most active, and the most
aspiring. The experiment has proved most
eminently successful in the Netherlands,
now beyond all doubt the best governed
country of the Continent. It ought to be
owned, that it has also in a great measure
succeeded in France, Italy, and Spain. Of
these countries we shall now say nothing
but that, being occupied by foreign armies,
they cannot be quoted. If any principle be
now universally received in government, it
seems to be, that the disorders of such a
country must either be contained by foreign
arms, or composed by a representative con
stitution.
But there were two circumstances which
rendered the use of this latter remedy pecu
liarly advisable in Portugal. The first is,
that it was so explicitly, repeatedly, and
solemnly promised by John VI. In the se
cond place, the establishment of a free con
stitution in Portugal, afforded an opportunity
of sealing a definitive treaty of peace be
tween the most discordant parties, by open
ing (after a due period of probation) to the
Prince whom the Ultra-Royalist faction had
placed in their front, a prospect of being one
day raised to a higher station, under the
system of liberty, than he could have ex
pected to reach if both Portugal and Brazil
had continued in slavery.*
It is unworthy of a statesman, or of a phi
losopher, to waste time in childishly regret
ting the faults of a Prince's personal character.
The rulers of Portugal can neither create
circumstances, nor form men according to
their wishes. They must take men and
things as they find them ; and their wisdom
will be shown, by turning both to the best
account. The occasional occurrence of great
personal faults in princes, is an inconveni
ence of hereditary monarchy, which a wise
limitation of royal power may abate and
mitigate. Elective governments are not alto
gether exempt from the same evils, besides
* This was written in the month of December,
182G, before the plan for conciliating the two op
posite political parties by means of a matrimonial
alliance between Donna Maria and her uncle was
Abandoned. — ED.
being liable to others. All comparison of
the two systems is, in the present case, a
mere exercise of ingenuity: for it is appa-
parent, that liberty has at this time no chance
of establishment in Portugal, in any other
form than that of a limited monarchy. The
situation of Don Miguel renders it possible to
form the constitution on an union between
him, as the representative of the Ultra-Roy
alists, and a young Princess, whose rights
will be incorporated with the establishment
of liberty.
As soon as Don Pedro was informed of his
father's death, he proceeded to the perform
ance of the task which had devolved on him.
He began, on the 20th of April, by granting
a Constitutional Charter to Portugal. On the
26th, he confirmed the Regency appointed
by his father, till the proclamation of the
constitution. On the 2d of May he abdica
ted the crown in favour of his daughter,
Donna Maria ; on condition, however, - that
the abdication should not be valid, and the
Princess should not quit Brazil, until it be
made officially known to him, that the con
stitution had been sworn to, according to his
orders; and that the espousals of the Prin
cess with Don Miguel should have been
made, and the marriage concluded ; and that
the abdidation and cession should not take
place if either of these two conditions should
fail."* On the 26th of April. Letters-Patent,
or writs of summons, had issued, addressed
to each of those who were to form' the House
of Peers, of which the Duke de Cadaval was
named President, and the Patriarch Elect of
Lisbon Vice-President. A Decree had also
been issued on the same day, commanding
the Regency of Portugal to take the neces
sary measures for the immediate election of
members of the other House, according to
the tenor of the constitutional law.t When.
these laws and decrees were received at
Lisbon, the Regency proceeded instantly to
put them into execution ; in consequence of
which, the Constitution was proclaimed, the
Regency installed, the elections commenced,
and the Cortes were finally assembled at
Lisbon on the 30th of October.
Whether the Emperor of Brazil had. by
the laws of Portugal, the power to regulate
the affairs of that kingdom, had hitherto
given rise to no question. All parties with
in and without Portugal had treated his right
of succession to his father in the throne of
that kingdom as undisputed. But no sooner
had he exercised that right, by the grant of
a free constitution, than it was discovered
by some Ultra-Royalists, that he had for
feited the right itself; that his power over
Portugal was an usurpation, and his constitu
tional law an absolute nullity ! Don Miguel,
whose name was perpetually in the mouth
of these writers, continued at Vienna. The
Spanish Government and its officers breathed
menace and invective. Foreign agency
* Diario Fluminense, of the 20th of May.
t Ibid. 3d of May.
CASE OF DONNA MARIA.
233
manifested itself in Portugal; and some
bodies of troops, both on the northern and
southern frontier, were excited to a sedition
for slavery. "All foreigners," say the ob
jectors," are, by the fundamental laws of
Portugal, excluded from the succession to
the crown. This law passed at the foun
dation of the monarchy, by the celebrated
Cortes of Lamego, in 1143, was confirmed,
strengthened, and enlarged by the Cortes of
1641 ; and under it, on the last occasion, the
King of Spain was declared an usurper, and
the House of Braganza were raised to the
throne. Don Pedro had, by the treaty which
recognised him as Emperor of Brazil, be
come a foreign sovereign, and was therefore,
at the death of his father, disqualified from
inheriting the crown of Portugal."
A few years after the establishment of the
Normans in England, Henry, a Burgundian
Prince, who served under the King of Castile
in his wrars against the Moors, obtained from
that monarch, as a fief, the newly conquer
ed territory between the rivers Douro and
Minho. ' His son Alfonso threw off the su
periority of Castile, and, after defeating the
Moors at the great battle of Campo Ouriquez,
in 1139, was declared King by the Pope, and
acknowledged in that character by an as
sembly of the principal persons of the com
munity, held at Lamego, in 1143, composed
of bishops, nobles of the court, and, as it
should seem, of procurators of the towns.
The crown, after much altercation, was made
hereditary, first in males and then in females ;
but on condition -that the female should
always marry a man of Portugal, that the
kingdom might not fall to foreigners; and
that if she should marry a foreign prince,
she should not be Queen ;" — " because we will
that our kingdom shall go only to the Portu
guese^ u-ho, by their bravery, have made us
King without foreign aid.'' On being asked
whether the King should pay tribute to the
King of Leon, they all rose up, and. with
naked swords uplifted, and answered,' "Our
King is independent ; our arms have delivered
us; the King who consents to such things
shall die." The King, with his drawn sword
in his hand, said, "If any one consent to
such, let him die. If he should be my son,
let him not reign."
The Cortes of 1641, renewing the laws of
Lamego, determined that, according to these
fundamental institutions, the Spanish Princes
had been usurpers, and pronounced John,
Duke of Braganza, who had already beeri
seated on the throne by a revolt of the whole
people, to be the rightful heir. This Prince,
though he appears not to have had any pre
tensions as a male heir, yet seems to have
been the representative of the eldest female
who had not lost the right of succession by
marriage to a foreigner ; and, consequently,
he was entitled to the crown, according to
the order of succession established at Lame-
go. The Three Estates presented the Heads
of laws to the King, praying that effectual
means might be taken to enforce the exclu-
30
sion of foreigners from the throne, according
to the laws passed at Lamego. But as the
Estates, according to the old constitution of
Portugal, presented their Chapters severally
to the King, it was possible that they might
differ; and they did so, in some respects, on
this important occasion, — not indeed as to
the end, for which they were equally zeal
ous, but as to the choice of the best means
of securing its constant attainment. The
answer of the King to the Ecclesiastical Es
tate was as follows: — "On this Chapter, for
which I thank you, I have already answered
to the Chapters of 'the States of the .People
and of the Nobles, in ordaining a law to be
made in conformity to that ordained by Don
John IV., with the declarations and modifi
cations which shall be most conducive to the
conservation and common good of the king
dom." Lawyers were accordingly appointed
to draw up the law ; but it is clear that the
reserve of the King left him ample scope for
the exercise of his own discretion, even if it
had not been rendered necessary by the va
riation between the proposals of the three
Orders, respecting the means of its execu
tion. But, in order to give our opponents
every advantage, as we literally adopt their
version, so we shall suppose (for the sake
of argument) the royal assent to have been
given to the Chapter of the Nobles without
alteration, and in all its specific provisions;
it being that on which the Absolutists have
chosen to place their chief reliance. The
Chapter stands thus in their editions : — " The
State of the Nobility prays your Majesty to
enact a law, ordaining that the succession
to the kingdom may never fall to a foreign
Prince, nor to his children, though they may
be the next to the last in possession ; and
that, in case the King of Portugal should be
called to the succession of another crown, or
of a greater empire, he be compelled to live
always there ; and that if he has two or more
male children, the eldest son shall assume
the reins in the foreign country, and the
second in Portugal, and the latter shall be
the only recognised heir and legitimate suc
cessor : and, in case there should be only
one child to inherit these two kingdoms,
these said kingdoms shall be divided be
tween the children of the latter, in the order
and form above mentioned. In case there
shall be daughters only, the eldest shall suc
ceed in this kingdom, with the declaration
that she marry here with a native of the
country, chosen and named by the Three
Estates assembled in Cortes : should she
marry without the consent of the States, she
and her descendants shall be declared in
capable, and be ousted of the succession;
and the Three Estates shall be at liberty to
choose a King from among the natives, if
there be no male relation of the Royal Fami
ly to whom the succession should devolve."
Now the question is, whether Pedro IV. as
the monarch of Brazil, a country separated
from Portugal by treaty, became a foreign
prince, in the sense intended by these an-
u2
234
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
cient Jaws, and was thereby disabled from
inheriting the crown of Portugal on the de
cease of John VI. ?
This question is not to be decided by ver
bal chicane. The mischief provided against
in these laws was twofold: — the supposed
probability of mal-administ ration through the
succession of a foreigner, ignorant of the
country and not attached to it ; and the loss
of domestic government, if it fell by inheri
tance to the sovereign of another, especially
a greater country. The intention of the law
giver to guard against both these occurrences
affords the only sure means of ascertaining
the meaning of his words. But the present
case has not- even the slightest tendency to
expose the country to either danger. Pedro
IV. is a native Portuguese, presumed to have
as much of the knowledge and feelings be
longing to that character as any of his pre
decessors. The danger to Portuguese inde
pendence arises from the inheritance of the
crown devolving in perpetuity, and without
qualification, to a foreign sovereign. Such
was the evil actually experienced under
Philip II. King of Spain, and his two succes
sors; and the most cursory glance over the
law of 1641 shows that the Cortes had that
case in view. Had the present resembled it
in the important quality of a claim to un
conditional inheritance, the authority would
have been strong. But, instead of being an
nexed to a foreign dominion, Pedro IV. takes
it only for the express purpose of effectually
and perpetually disannexing his other terri
tories from it ; — a purpose which he imme
diately proceeds to carry into execution, by
establishing a different line of succession
for the crowns of both countries, and by an
abdication, which is to take effect as soon as
he has placed the new establishment in a
state of security. The case provided against
by the law is, that of permanent annexation
to a foreign crown : the right exercised by
Pedro IV. is, that of a guardian and adminis
trator of the kingdom, during an operation
which is necessary to secure it against such
annexation. The whole transaction is con
formable to the spirit of the two laws, and
not repugnant to their letter.
That a temporary administration is per
fectly consistent with these laws, is evident
from the passage : — -If the King of Portugal
should be called to the succession of another
crown, and there should be only one child to
inherit the two kingdoms, these said king
doms shall be divided among the children
of the latter" — meaning after his death, and
if he should leave children. Here then is a
case of temporary administration expressly
provided for. The father is to rule both king
doms, till there should be at least two chil
dren to render the division practicable. He
becomes, for an uncertain, and possibly a
long period, the provisional sovereign of
both ; merely because he is presumed to be
the most proper regulator of territories which
are to be divided between his posterity.
Now, the principle of such an express excep
tion is, by the rules of fair construction, ap
plicable to every truly and evidently parallel
case ; and there is precisely the same reason
for the tutelary power of Pedro IV. as there
would be for that of a father, in the event
contemplated by the law of 1641.
The effect of the Treaty of Rio Janeiro
cannot be inconsistent with this temporary
union. Even on the principle of our oppo
nents, it must exist for a shorter or longer
time. The Treaty did not deprive Pedro of
his option between Portugal and Brazil : he
must have possessed both crowns, when he
was called upon to determine which of them
he would lay down. But if it be acknow
ledged that a short but actual union is ne
cessary, in order to effect the abdication,
how can it be pretended that a longer union
may not be equally justifiable, for the honest
purpose of quiet and amicable separation ?
The Treaty of Rio de Janeiro would have
been self-destructive, if it had taken from
Pedro the power of sovereignty in Portugal
immediately on the death of his father : for
in that case no authority would exist capable
of carrying the Treaty into execution. It
must have been left to civil war to determine
who was to govern the kingdom ; while, if
we adopt the principle of Pedro's hereditary
succession by law, together with his obliga
tion by treaty to separate the kingdoms, the
whole is consistent with itself, and every
measure is quietly and regularly carried into
effect.
To these considerations we must add the
recognition of Pedro "as heir and successor"
in the Ratification. Either John VI. had
power to decide this question, or he had not.
If he had not. the Treaty is null ; for it is
impossible to deny that the recognition is
really a condition granted to Brazil, which is
a security for its independence, and the
breach of which would annul the whole
contract. In that case, Portugal and Brazil
are not legally separated. Pedro IV. cannot
be called a "foreign prince;" and no law
forbids him to reside in the American pro
vinces of the Portuguese dominions. In that
case also, exercising all the power of his im
mediate predecessors, his authority in Por
tugal becomes absolute ; he may punish the
Absolutists as rebels, according to their own
principles ; and it will be for them to show,
that his rights, as supreme lawgiver, can
be bounded by laws called ( fundamental.'
But. — to take a more sober view, — can it bo
doubted, that, in a country where the mo
narch had exercised the whole legislative
power for more than a century, his authori
tative interpretation of the ancient laws, es
pecially if it is part of a compact with another
state, must be conclusive? By repeatedly
declaring in the introduction to the Treaty,
and in the Ratification of it, that Pedro IV.
was "heir and successor" of Portugal, and
that he was not divested of that character by
the Treaty, which recognised him as Sove
reign of Brazil, John VI. did most deliber
ately and solemnly determine; that his eldest
CHARLES, FIRST MARQUIS CORNWALLIS.
235
son was not a "foreign prince" in the sense
in which these words are used by the ancient
laws. Such too seems to have been the
sense of all parties, even of those the most
bitterly adverse to Pedro IV., and most deep
ly interested in disputing his succession, till
he granted a Constitutional Charter to the
people of Portugal.
John VI., by his decree for the re-esta
blishment of the ancient constitution of Por
tugal, had really abolished the absolute mo
narchy, and in its stead established a govern
ment, which, with all its inconveniences and
defects, was founded on principles of liberty.
For let it not be supposed that the ancient
constitution of Portugal had become forgot
ten or unknown by disuse for centuries, like
those legendary systems, under cover of
which any novelty 'may be called a restora
tion. It was perfectly well known; it was
long practised; and never legally abrogated.
Indeed the same may be affirmed, with
equal truth, of the ancient institutions of
the other inhabitants of the Peninsula, who
were among the oldest of free nations, but
who have so fallen from their high estate as
to be now publicly represented as delighting
in their chains and glorying in their shame.
In Portugal, however, the usurpation of ab
solute power was not much older than a cen
tury. We have already seen, that the Cortes
of Lamego, the founders of the monarchy,
proclaimed the right of the nation in a spirit
as generous, and in a Latinity not much
more barbarous, than that of the authors of
Ma/rna Charta about seventy years later.
The Infant Don Miguel has sworn to ob
serve and maintain the constitution. In the
act of his espousals he acknowledges the so
vereignty of the young Queen, and describes
himself as only her first subject. The muti
nies of the Portuguese soldiers have ceased ;
but the conduct of the Court of Madrid still
continues to keep up agitation and alarm :
for no change was ever effected which did
not excite discontent and turbulence enough
to serve the purposes of a neighbour strain
ing every nerve to vex and disturb a country.
The submission of Don Miguel to his brother
and sovereign are, we trust, sincere. He
will observe his oath to maintain the consti
tution, and cheerfully take his place as the
first subject of a limited monarchy. The
station to which he is destined, and the in
fluence which must long, and may always
belong to it, form together a more attractive
object of ambition than any thing which he
could otherwise have hoped peaceably and
lawfully to attain. No man of common pru
dence, whatever may be his political opi
nions, will advise the young Prince to put
such desirable prospects to hazard. He will
be told by all such counsellors of every party
that he must now adapt himself to occur
rences which he may learn to consider as
fortunate; that loyalty to his brother and
his country would now be his clearest inter
est, if they were not his highest duty ; that
he must forget all his enmities, renounce all
his prejudices, and even sacrifice some of his
partialities ; and that he must leave full time
to a great part of the people of Portugal to
recover from those prepossessions and re
pugnances which they may have contracted.
CHARACTER
OF
CHARLES, FIRST MARQUIS CORNWALLIS.'
CHARLES, Marquis Cornwall is, the repre
sentative of a family of ancient distinction,
and of no modern nobility, had embraced
in early youth the profession of arms. The
sentiments which have descended to us from
ancient times have almost required the sa
crifice of personal ease, and the exposure
of personal safety, from those who inherit
distinction. All the superiority conferred
by society must either be earned by pre
vious services, or at least justified by subse
quent merit. The most arduous exertions
* This character formed the chief part of a dis
course delivered at Bombay soon after the de
cease of Lord Cornwallis.
are therefore imposed on those who enjoy
advantages which they have not earn eel.
Noblemen are required to devote themselves
to danger for the safety of their fellow-citi
zens, and to spill their blood more readily
than others in the public cause. Their
choice is almost limited to that profession
which derives its dignity from the contempt
of danger and death, and which is preserved
from mercenary contamination by the severe
but noble renunciation of every reward ex
cept honour.
In the early stages of his life there were
no remarkable events. His sober and well-
regulated mind probably submitted to that
industry which is the excellence of a subor
236
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
dinate station, and the basis of higher useful
ness in a more elevated sphere. The bril
liant irregularities which are the ambiguous
distinctions of the youth of others found no
place in his. He first appeared in the eye
of the public during the unhappy civil \var
between Great Britain and her Colonies,
which terminated in the division of the em
pire. His share in that contest was merely
military : in that, as well as in every subse
quent part of his life, he was happily free
from those conflicts of faction in which the
hatred of one portion of our fellow-citizens is
insured by those acts wrhich are necessary
to purchase the transient and capricious at
tachment of the other. A soldier, more for
tunate, deserves, and generally receives, the
unanimous thanks of his country.
It would be improper here to follow him
through all the vicissitudes of that eventful
war. There is one circumstance, however,
which forms too important a part of his cha
racter to be' omitted, — he was unfortunate.
But the moment of misfortune was, perhaps,
the most honourable moment of his life.
So unshaken was the respect felt, that ca
lamity did not lower him in the eyes of that
public which is so prone to estimate men
merely by the effect of their councils. He
was not received with those frowns which
often undeservedly await the return of the
unsuccessful general : his country welcomed
him with as much honour as if fortune had
attended his virtue, and his sovereign be
stowed on him new marks of confidence and
favour. This was a most signal triumph.
Chance mingles with genius and science in
the most renowned victories j but merit and
well-earned reputation alone can preserve
an unfortunate general from sinking in popu
lar estimation.
In 1786 his public life became more con
nected with that part of the British Empire
which we now inhabit. This choice was
made under circumstances which greatly
increased the honour. No man can recollect
the situation of India at that period, or the
opinions concerning it in Great Britain, with
out remembering the necessity, universally
felt and acknowledged, for committing the
government of our Asiatic territories to a
person peculiarly and conspicuously distin
guished for prudence, moderation, integrity,
and humility. On these grounds he was
undoubtedly selected; and it will not be
disputed by any one acquainted with the
history of India that his administration justi
fied the choice.
Among the many wise and honest mea
sures which did honour to his government,
there are two which are of such importance
that they cannot be passed over in silence.
The first was, the establishment of a fixed
land-rent throughout Bengal, instead of those
annually varying, and often arbitrary, exac
tions to which the landholders of that great
province had been for ages subject. This
reformation, one of the greatest, perhaps,
ever peaceably effected in an extensive and
opulent country, has since been followed in
the other British territories in the East ; and
it is the first certain example in India of a
secure private property in land, which the
extensive and undefined territorial claims of
Indian Princes had, in former times, render
ed a subject of great doubt and uncertainty.
The other distinguishing measure of his go
vernment was that judicial system which
was necessary to protect and secure the pro
perty thus ascertained, and the privileges
thus bestowed. By the combined influence
of these two great measures, he may confi
dently be said to have imparted to the sub
jects of Great Britain in the East a more
perfect security of person and property, and
a fuller measure of all the advantages of civil
society, than had been enjoyed by the natives
of India within the period of authentic histo
ry j — a portion of these inestimable benefits
larger than appears to have been ever pos
sessed by any people of Asia, and probably
not much inferior to the share of many flour
ishing states of Europe in ancient and modern
times. It has sometimes been objected to
these arrangements, that the revenue of the
sovereign was sacrificed to the comfort and
prosperity of the subject. This would have
been impossible : the interests of both are
too closely and inseparably connected. The
security of the subject will always enrich
him ; and his wealth will always overflow
into the coffers of his sovereign. But if the
objection were just in point of policy, it
would be the highest tribute to the virtue of
the governor. To sacrifice revenue to the
well-being of a people is a blame of which
Marcus Aurelius would have been proud !*
The war in which he was engaged during
his Indian government it belongs to the his
torian to describe: in this place it is suffi
cient to say that it was founded in the just
defence of an ally, that it was carried on
with vigour, and closed with exemplary mo
deration.
In 1793 Lord Cornwall's returned to Eu
rope, leaving behind him a greater and purer
name than that of any foreigner who had
ruled over India for centuries.
It is one of the most remarkable circum
stances in the history of his life, that great
* The facility with which he applied his sound
and strong understanding to subjects the most dis
tant from those which usually employed it is prov
ed in a very striking manner by a fact which ought
not to be forgotten by those who wish to form an
accurate estimate of this venerable nobleman. The
Company's extensive investment from Bengal de
pended in a great measure on manufactures, which
had fallen into such a state of decay as to be al
most hopeless. The Court of Directors warmly
recommended this very important part of their in
terest to Marquis Cornwallis. He applied his
mind to the subject with that conscientious zeal
which always distinguished him as a servant of the
public. He became as familiarly acquainted with
its most minute details as most of those who had
made it the business of their lives ; and he has the
undisputed merit of having retrieved these manu
factures from a condition in which they were
thought desperate.
CHARLES, FIRST MARQUIS CORNWALLIS.
237
offices were scarcely ever bestowed on him
in times when they could be mere marks of
favour, or very desirable objects of pursuit ;
but that he was always called upon to under
take them in those seasons of difficulty when
the acceptance became a severe and painful
duty. One of these unhappy occcasions
arose in the year 1798. A most dangerous
rebellion had been suppressed in Ireland,
without extinguishing the disaffection that
threatened future rebellions. The prudence,
the vigilance, the unspotted humanity, the
inflexible moderation of Marquis Cornwallis.
pointed him out as the most proper person
to compose the dissensions of that generous
and unfortunate people. He was according
ly chosen for that mission of benevolence,
and he most amply justified the choice. Be
sides the applause of all good men and all
lovers of their country, he received the still
more unequivocal honour of the censure of
violent, and the clamours of those whose un
governable resentments he refused to gratify.
He not only succeeded in allaying the ani
mosities of a divided nation, but he was hap
py enough to be instrumental in a measure
which, if it be followed by moderate and
healing counsels, promises permanent quiet
and prosperity : under his administration
Ireland was united to Great Britain. A pe
riod was at length put to the long misgovern-
ment and misfortunes of that noble island,
and a new era of justice, happiness, and se
curity opened for both the great members of
the British Empire.
The times were too full of difficulty to suf
fer him long to enjoy the retirement which
followed his Irish administration. A war,
fortunate and brilliant in many of its sepa
rate operations, but unsuccessful in its grand
objects, was closed by a treaty of peace,
which at first was joyfully hailed by the
feelings of the public, but which has since
given rise to great diversity of judgment. It
may be observed, without descending into
political contests, that if the terms of the
treaty* were necessarily not flattering to na
tional pride, it was the more important to
choose a negotiator who should inspire pub
lic confidence, and whose character might
shield necessary concessions from unpopu
larity. Such was unquestionably the prin
ciple on which Lord Cornwallis was selected j
and such (whatever judgment may be form
ed of the treaty) is the honourable testimony
which it bears to his character.
The offices bestowed on him were not
matters of grace : every preferment was a
homage to his virtue. He was never invited
to the luxuries of high station : he was always
summoned to its most arduous and perilous
duties. India once more needed, or was
thought to need, the guardian care of him
who had healed the wounds of conquest, and
bestowed on her the blessings of equitable
and paternal legislation. Whether the opi
nion held in England of the perils of our
* Of Amiens.
Eastern territories was correct or exaggera
ted, it is not for us in this place to inquire.
It is enough to know that the alarm was
great and extensive, and that the eyes of the
nation were once more turned towards Lord
Cornwallis. Whether the apprehensions were
just or groundless, the tribute to his charac
ter was equal. He once more accepted the
government of these extensive dominions,
with a full knowledge of his danger, and
with no obscure anticipation of the probabi
lity of his fate. He obeyed his sovereign,
nobly declaring, li that if he could render
service to his country, it was of small mo
ment to him whether he died in India or in
Europe ;" and no doubt thoroughly convinced
that it was far better to die in the discharge
of great duties than to add a few feeble in
active years to life. Great Britain, divided
on most public questions, was unanimous in
her admiration of this signal sacrifice ; and
British India, however various might be the
political opinions of her inhabitants, welcom
ed the Governor General with only one sen
timent of personal gratitude and reverence.
Scarcely had he arrived when he felt the
fatal influence of the climate which, with a
a clear view of its terrors, he had resolved to
brave. But he neither yielded to the lan
guor of disease, nor to the infirmity of age.
With all the ardour of youth, he flew to the
post where he was either to conclude an
equitable peace, or, if that were refused, to
prosecute necessary hostilities with rigour.
His malady became more grievous, and for
some time stopped his progress. On the
slightest alleviation of his symptoms he re
sumed his journey, though little hope of re
covery remained, with an inflexible resolu
tion to employ wrhat was left of life, in the
performance of his duty to his country. He
declared to his surrounding friends, :-that he
knew no reason to fear death ; and that if he
could remain in the world but a short time
longer to complete the plans of public service
in which he was engaged, he should then
cheerfully resign his life to the Almighty
Giver;" — a noble and memorable declara
tion, expressive of the union of every private,
and civil, and religious excellence, in which
the consciousness of a blameless and meri
torious life is combined with the affectionate
zeal of a dying patriot, and the meek sub
mission of a pious Christian. But it pleased
God, " whose ways are not as our ways," to
withdraw him from this region of the uni
verse before his honest wishes of usefulness
could be accomplished, though doubtless not
before the purposes of Providence were ful
filled. He expired at Gazeepore, in the pro
vince of Benares, on the 5th of October, 1805,
— supported by the remembrance of his vir
tue, and by the sentiments of piety which
had actuated his whole life.
His remains are interred on the spot where
he died, on the banks of that famous river,
which washes no country not either blessed
by his government, or visited by his renown ;
and in the heart of that province so long the
238
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
chosen seat of religion and learning in India,
which under the influence of his beneficent
system, and under the administration of
good men whom he had chosen, had risen
from a state of decline and confusion to one
of prosperity probably unrivalled in the hap
piest times of its ancient princes. -'His
body is buried in peace, and his name liveth
for evermore."
The Christian religion is no vain supersti
tion, which divides The worship of God from
the service of man. Every social duty is a
Christian grace. Public and private virtue
is considered by Christianity as the purest
arid most acceptable incense which can as
cend before the Divine Throne. Political
duties are a most momentous part of morali
ty, and morality is the most momentous part
of religion. When the political life of a
great man has been guided by the rules of
morality, and consecrated by the principles
of religion, it may, and it ought to be com
memorated, that the survivors may admire
and attempt to copy, not only as men and
citizens, but as Christians. It is due to the
honour of Religion and Virtue, — it is fit for
the confusion of the impious and the de
praved, to show that these, sacred principles
are not to be hid in the darkness of humble
life to lead the prejudiced and amuse the
superstitious, but that they appear with their
proper lustre at the head of councils, of
armies, and of empires, — the supports of va
lour, — the sources of active and enlightened
beneficence, — the companions of all real
policy, — and the guides to solid and durable
glory.
A distinction has been made in our times
among statesmen, between Public and Pri
vate Virtue : they have been supposed to be
separable. The neglect of every private ob
ligation, has been supposed to be compatible
with public virtue, and the violation of the
most sacred public trust has been thought
not inconsistent with private worth : — a de
plorable distinction, the creature of corrupt
sophistry, disavowed by Reason and Morals,
and condemned by all the authority of Reli
gion. No such disgraceful inconsistency, or
flagrant hypocrisy, disgraced the character of
the venerable person of whom I speak, — of
whom we may, without suspicion of exagge
ration, say, that he performed with equal
strictness every office of public or private
life ; that his public virtue was not put on
for parade, like a gaudy theatrical dress, but
that it was the same integrity and benevo
lence which attended his most retired mo
ments; that with a simple and modest cha
racter, alien to ostentation, and abhorrent
from artifice, — with no pursuit of popularity,
and no sacrifice to court favour, — by no
other means than an universal reputation for
good sense, humanity, and honesty, he gain
ed universal confidence, and was summoned
to the highest offices at every call of danger.
He has left us an useful example of the
true dignity of these invaluable qualities,
and has given us new reason to thank God
that we are the natives of a country yet so
uncorrupted as to prize them thus highly.
He has left us an example of the pure states
man, — of a paternal governor, — of a warrior
who loved peace, — of a hero without ambi
tion, — of a conqueror who showed unfeigned
moderation in the moment of victory, — and
of a patriot who devoted himself to death for
his country. May this example be as fruit
ful, as his memory will be immortal ! May
the last generations of Britain aspire to copy
and rival so pure a model ! And when the
nations of India turn their eyes to his monu
ment, rising amidst fields which his paternal
care has restored to their ancient fertility,
may they who have long suffered from the
violence of those who are unjustly called
'Great,' at length learn to love and reve
rence the Good.
CHARACTER.
or THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE CANNING.'
WITHOUT invidious comparison, it may be
safely said that, from the circumstances in
which he died, his death was more gene-
* Contributed to the " Keepsake of 1828, under
the title of ' ' Sketch of a Fragment of the History
of the Nineteenth Century/' in which, as the
Author announces in a notice prefixed to it, the
temper of the future historian of the present times
is affected. — ED.
] rally interesting among civilized nations than
that of any other English statesman had ever
been. It "was an event in the internal his
tory of every country. From Lima to Athens,
every nation struggling for independence or
existence, was filled by it with sorrow and
dismay. The Miguelites of Portugal, the
Apostolicals of Spain, the Jesuit faction m
France, and the Divan of Constantinople,
CHARACTER OF MR. CANNING.
239
raised a shout of joy at the fall of their
dreaded enemy. He was regretted by all
who, heated by no personal or party resent
ment, felt for genius struck down in the act
of attempting to heal the revolutionary dis
temper, and to render future improvements
pacific, on the principle since successfully
adopted by more fortunate, though not more
deserving, ministers, — that of an honest
compromise between the interests and the
opinions, — the prejudices and the demands,
— of the supporters of establishments, and
the followers of reformation.
*****
The family of Mr. Canning, which for
more than a century had filled honourable
stations in Ireland, was a younger branch of
an ancient one among the English gentry.
His father, a man of letters, had been disin
herited for an imprudent marriage ; and the
inheritance went to a younger brother, whose
son was afterwards created Lord Garvagh.
Mr. Canning was educated at Eton and Ox
ford, according to that exclusively classical
system, which, whatever may be its defects,
must be owned, when taken with its con
stant appendages, to be eminently favourable
to the cultivation of sense and taste, as well
as to the development of wit and spirit.
From his boyhood he was the foremost
among very distinguished contemporaries,
and continued to be regarded as the best
specimen, and the most brilliant representa
tive, of that eminently national education.
His youthful eye sparkled with quickness
and arch pleasantry; and his countenance
early betrayed that jealousy of his own dig
nity, and sensibility to suspected disregard,
which \vere afterwards softened, but never
quite subdued. Neither the habits of a great
school, nor those of a popular assembly, were
calculated to weaken his love of praise and
passion for distinction : but, as he advanced
in years, his fine countenance was ennobled
by the expression of thought and feeling;
he more pursued that lasting praise, which
is not to be earned without praise worthiness;
and, if he continued to be a lover of fame,
he also passionately loved the glory of his
country. Even he who almost alone was
entitled to look down on fame as l that last
infirmity of noble minds,' had not forgotten
that it was —
" The spur that the clear spirit doth raise,
To scorn delights, and live laborious days."*
The natural bent of character is, perhaps,
better ascertained from the undisturbed and
unconscious play of the mind in the common
intercourse of society, than from its move
ments under the power of strong interest or
warm passions in public life. In social in
tercourse Mr. Canning was delightful. Hap
pily for the true charm of his conversation
he was too busy not to treat society as more
fitted for relaxation than for display. It is
but little to say, that he was neither disputa
tious, declamatory, nor sententious, — neither
Lycidas.
a dictator nor a jester. His manner was
simple and unobtrusive ; his language always
quite familiar. If a higher thought stole
from his mind, it came in its conversational
undress. From this plain ground his plea
santry sprang with the happiest effect ; and
it was nearly exempt' from that alloy of taunt
and banter, which he sometimes mixed with
more precious materials in public contest.
He may be added to the list of those emi
nent persons who pleased most in their
friendly circle. He had the agreeable quality
of being more easily pleased in society than
might have been expected from the keen
ness of his discernment, and the sensibility
of his temper : still he was liable to be dis
composed, or even silenced, by the presence
of any one whom he did not like. His man
ner in company betrayed the political vexa
tions or anxieties which preyed on his mind :
nor could he conceal that sensitiveness to
public attacks which their frequent recur
rence wears out in most English politicians.
These last foibles may be thought interesting
as the remains of natural character, not
destroyed by refined society and political
affairs. He was assailed by some adversa
ries so ignoble as to wound him through his
filial affection, which preserved its respectful
character through the whole course of his
advancement.
The ardent zeal for his memory, which
appeared immediately after his death, attests
the warmth of those domestic affections
which seldom prevail where they are not
mutual. To his touching epitaph on his son,
parental love has given a charm which is
wanting in his other verses. It was said of
him, at one time, that no man had so little
popularity and such affectionate friends ; and
the truth was certainly more sacrificed to
point in the former than in the latter mem
ber of the contrast. Some of his friendships
continued in spite of political differences
(which, by rendering intercourse less un
constrained, often undermine friendship:)
and others were remarkable for a warmth,
constancy, and disinterestedness, which,
though chiefly honourable to those who
were capable of so pure a kindness, yet re
dound to the credit of him who was the ob
ject of it. No man is thus beloved who is
not himself formed for friendship.
Notwithstanding his disregard for money,
he was not tempted in youth by the exam
ple or the kindness of affluent friends much
to overstep his little patrimony. He never
afterwards sacrificed to parade or personal
indulgence ; though his occupations scarcely
allowed him to think enough of his private
affairs. Even from his moderate fortune, his
bounty was often liberal to suitors to whom
official relief could not be granted. By a
sort of generosity still harder for him to prac
tise, he endeavoured, in cases where the
suffering was great, though the suit could
not be granted, to satisfy the feelings of the
suitor by a full explanation in writing of the
causes which rendered compliance impracti-
240
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
cable. Wherever he took an interest, he
showed it as much by delicacy to the feel
ings of those whom he served or relieved, as
by substantial consideration for their claims ;
— a rare and most praiseworthy merit among
men in power.
In proportion as the opinion of a people
acquires influence over public affairs, the
faculty of persuading men to support or op
pose political measures acquires importance.
The peculiar nature of Parliamentary debate
contributes to render eminence in that pro
vince not so imperfect a test of political
ability as it might appear to be. Recited
speeches can seldom show more than powers
of reasoning and imagination; which have
little connection with a capacity for affairs.
But the unforeseen events of debate, and the
necessity of immediate answer in unpreme
ditated language, afford scope for the quick
ness, firmness, boldness, wariness, presence
of mind, and address in the management of
men, which are among the qualities most
essential to a statesman. The most flour
ishing period of our Parliamentary eloquence
extends for about half a century, — from the
maturity of Lord Chatham's genius to the
death of Mr. Fox. During the twenty years
•which succeeded, Mr. Canning was some
times the leader, and always the greatest
orator, of the party who supported the Ad
ministration ; in which there were able men
•who supported, without rivalling him, against
opponents also not thought by him inconsi
derable. Of these last, one, at least, was felt
by every hearer, and acknowledged in pri
vate by himself, to have always forced his
faculties to their very uttermost stretch.*
Had he been a dry and meagre speaker,
he would have been universally allowed to
have been one of the greatest masters of
argument ; but his hearers were so dazzled
by the splendour of his diction, that they did
not perceive the acuteness and the occasion
ally excessive refinement of his reasoning ;
a consequence which, as it shows the inju
rious influence of a seductive fault, can with
the less justness be overlooked in the esti
mate of his understanding. Ornament, it
must be owned, when it only pleases or
amuses, without disposing the audience to
adopt the sentiments of the speaker, is an
offence against the first law of public speak
ing ; it obstructs instead of promoting its only
reasonable purpose. But eloquence is a
\videly extended art, comprehending many
sorts of excellence ; in some of which orna
mented diction is more liberally employed
than in others; and in none of which the
highest rank can be attained, without an ex
traordinary combination of mental powers.
Among our own orators, Mr. Canning seems
to have been the best model of the adorned
style. The splendid and sublime descrip
tions of Mr. Burke, — his comprehensive and
profound views of general principle,— though
* Mr. (now Lord) Brougham is the person al
luded to.— ED.
they must ever delight and instruct the rea
der, must be owned to have been digressions
wrhich diverted the mind of the hearer from
the object on which the speaker ought to have
kept it steadily fixed. Sheridan, a man of
admirable sense, and matchless wit, laboured
to follow Burke into the foreign regions of feel
ing and grandeur. The specimens preserved
of his most celebrated speeches show too
much of the exaggeration and excess to
which those are peculiarly liable who seek
by art and effort what nature has denied.
By the constant part which Mr. Canning took
in debate, he was called upon to show a
knowledge which Sheridan did not possess,
and a readiness which that accomplished
man had no such means of strengthening and
displaying. In some qualities of style, Mr.
Canning surpassed Mr. Pitt. His diction was
more various, — sometimes more simple, —
more idiomatical, even in its more elevated
parts. It sparkled with imagery, and was
brightened by illustration ; in both of which
Mr. Pitt, for so great an orator, was defec
tive.
No English speaker used the keen and
brilliant weapon of wit so long, so often, or
so effectively, as Mr. Canning.' He gained
more triumphs, and incurred more enmity,
by it than by any other. Those whose im
portance depends much on birth and for
tune are impatient of seeing their own arti
ficial dignity, or that of their order, broken
down by derision; and perhaps few men
heartily forgive a successful jest against
themselves, but those who are conscious of
being unhurt by it. Mr. Canning often used
this talent imprudently. In sudden flashes
of wit, and in the playful description of men
or things, he was often distinguished by that
natural felicity which is the charm of plea
santry ; to which the air of art and labour is
more fatal than to any other talent. Sheri
dan was sometimes betrayed by an imitation
of the dialogue of his master, Congreve, into
a sort of laboured and finished jesting, so
balanced and expanded, as sometimes to vie
in tautology and monotony with the once
applauded triads of Johnson ; and which,
even in its most happy passages, is more
sure of commanding serious admiration than
hearty laughter. It cannot be denied that
Mr. Canning's taste was, in this respect,
somewhat influenced by the example of his
early friend. The exuberance of fancy and
wit lessened the gravity of his general man
ner, and perhaps also indisposed the audi
ence to feel his earnestness where it clearly
showed itself. In that important quality he
was inferior to Mr. Pitt, —
" Deep on whose front engraven,
Deliberation sat, and public care ;"*
and no less inferior to Mr. Fox, whose fervid
eloquence flowed from the love of his coun
try, the scorn of baseness, and the hatred of
cruelty, which were the ruling passions of
his nature.
* Paradise Lost, Book II.— ED.
CHARACTER OF MR. CANNING.
241
On the whole, it may be observed, that
the range of Mr. Canning's powers as an
orator was wider than that in which he usu
ally exerted them. When mere statement
only was allowable, no man of his age was
more simple. When infirm health com
pelled him to be brief, no speaker could
compress his matter with so little sacrifice
of clearness, ease, and elegance. In his
speech on Colonial Reformation, in 1823, he
seemed to have brought down the philoso
phical principles and the moral sentiments of
Mr. Burke to that precise level where they
could be happily blended with a grave and
dignified speech, intended as an introduction
to a new system of legislation. As his ora
torical faults were those of youthful genius,
the progress of age seemed to purify his elo
quence, and every year appeared to remove
some speck which hid, or, at least, dimmed,
a beauty. He daily rose to larger views,
and made, perhaps, as near approaches to
philosophical principles as the great dif-
ence between the objects of the philoso
pher and those of the orator will commonly
allow.
Mr. Canning possessed, in a high degree,
the outward advantages of an orator. His
expressive countenance varied with the
changes of his eloquence : his voice, flexi
ble and articulate, had as much compass as
his mode of speaking required. In the calm
part of his speeches, his attitude and gesture
might have been selected by a painter to
represent grace rising towards dignity.
When the memorials of his own time, —
the composition of which he is said never to
have interrupted in his busiest moments, —
are made known to the public, his abilities
as a writer may be better estimated. His
only known writings in prose are State Pa
pers, which, when considered as the compo
sition of a Minister for Foreign Affairs, in
one of the most extraordinary periods of
European history, are undoubtedly of no
small importance. Such of these papers as
were intended to be a direct appeal to the
judgment of mankind combine so much
precision, with such uniform circumspection
and dignity, that they must ever be studied
as models of that very difficult species of
composition. His Instructions to ministers
abroad, on occasions both perplexing and
momentous, will be found to exhibit a rare
union of comprehensive and elevated views,
with singular ingenuity in devising means
of execution ; on which last faculty he some
times relied perhaps more confidently than
the short and dim foresight of man will war
rant. "Great affairs," says Lord Bacon, "are
commonly too coarse and stubborn to be
worked upon by the fine edges and points of
wit."* His papers in negotiation were occa
sionally somewhat too controversial in their
tone : they were not near enough to the man
ner of an amicable conversation about a dis-
* It may be proper to remind the reader, that
here the word " wit" is used in its ancient sense.
31
puted point of business, in which a negotia
tor does not so much draw out his argument,
as hint his own object, and sound the inten
tion of his opponent. He sometimes seems
to have pursued triumph more than advan
tage, and not to have remembered that to
leave the opposite party satisfied with what
he has got, and in good humour with him
self, is not one of the least proofs of a nego
tiator's skill. Where the papers were in
tended ultimately to reach the public through
Parliament, it might have been prudent to
regard chiefly the final object ; and when
this excuse was wanting, much must be par
doned to the controversial habits of a Parlia
mentary life. It is hard for a debater to be
a negotiator : the faculty of guiding public,
assemblies is very remote from the art of
dealing with individuals.
MiOCanning's power of writing verse may
rather be classed with his accomplishments,
than numbered among his high and noble
faculties. It would have been a distinction
for an inferior man. His verses were far
above those of Cicero, of Burke, and of Ba
con. The taste prevalent in his youth led
him to feel more relish for sententious de-
claimers than is shared by lovers of the true
poetry of imagination and sensibility. In
some respects his poetical compositions were
also influenced by his early intercourse with
Mr. Sheridan, though he was restrained by
his more familiar contemplation of classical
models from the glittering conceits of that
extraordinary man. Something of an artifi
cial and composite diction is discernible in
the English poems of those who have ac
quired reputation by Latin verse, — more
especially since the pursuit of rigid purity
has required so timid an imitation as not
only to confine itself to the words, but to
adopt none but the phrases of ancient poets.
Of this effect Gray must be allowed to fur
nish an example.
Absolute silence about JV^jf. Canning's writ
ings as a political satirist, — which were for
their hour so popular, — might be imputed to
undue timidity. In that character he yielded
to General Fitzpatrick in arch stateliness and
poignant raillery ; to Mr. Moore in the gay
prodigality with which he squanders his
countless stores of wit; and to his own
friend Mr. Frere in the richness of a native
vein of original and fantastic drollery. In
that ungenial province, where the brightest
of laurels are apt very soon to fade, and
where Dryden only boasts immortal lays, it
is perhaps hi« best praise to record that
there is no writing of his, which a man of
honour might not have avowed as soon a?
the first heat of contest was past.
In some of the amusements or tasks of his
boyhood there are passages which, without
much help from fancy, might appear to con
tain allusions to his greatest measures of
policy, as well as to the tenor of his life,
and to the melancholy splendour which sur
rounded his death. In the concluding line
of the first English verses written by him at
242
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Eton, he expressed a wish, which has been
singularly realised, that he might
"Live in a blaze, and in a blaze expire."
It is a striking coincidence, that the states
man, whose dying measure was to mature
an alliance for the deliverance of Greece,
should, when a boy, have written English
verses on the slavery of that country ; and
that in his prize poem at Oxford, on the Pil
grimage to Mecca. — a composition as much
applauded as a modern Latin poem can as
pire to be — he should have as bitterly deplo
red the lot of other renowned countries, now
groaning under the same barbarous yoke, —
" Nunc Satrapae imperio et sosvosubditaTurcaj."*
To conclude : — he was a man of fine and
brilliant genius, of warm affections, of a high
and generous spirit, — a statesman who, at
home, converted most of his opponents into
warm supporters ; who, abroad, was the sole
hope and trust of all who sought an orderly and
legal liberty ; and who was cut off in the midst
of vigorous and splendid measures, which, if
executed by himself, or with his own spirit,
promised to place his name in the first class
of rulers, among the founders of lasting peace?
and the guardians of human improvement.
* Iter ad Meccam, Oxford, 1789.
PREFACE
TO A REPRINT OF
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW
OF 1755.*
IT is generally known that two numbers
of a Critical Journal were published at Edin
burgh in the year 1755, under the title of the
" Edinburgh Review1." The following vo
lume contains an exact reprint of that Re
view, now become so rare that it is not to be
found in the libraries of some of the most
curious collectors. To this reprint are added
the names of the writers of the most impor
tant articles. Care has been taken to authen
ticate the list of names by reference to well-
informed persons, and by comparison with
copies in the possession of those who have
derived their information from distinct and
independent sources. If no part of it should
be now corrected by those Scotchmen of let
ters still living, who may have known the
fact from the writers themselves, we may
regard this literary secret as finally discover
ed, with some gratification to the curious
reader, and without either pain to the feel
ings, or wrong to the character of any one.
There are few anonymous writers the dis
covery of whose names would be an object
of curiosity after the lapse of sixty years :
there are perhaps still fewer whose secret
might be exposed to the public after that
long period with perfect security to their
reputation for equity and forbearance.
The mere circumstance that this volume
contains the first printed writings of Adam
Smith and Robertson, and the only known
publication of Lord Chancellor Rosslyn, will
* Published in 1816.— ED.
probably be thought a sufficient reason for
its present appearance.
Of the eight articles which appear to have
been furnished by Dr. Robertson, six are on
historical subjects. Written during the com
position of the History of Scotland, they show
evident marks of the wary understanding,
the insight into character, the right judgment
in affairs, and the union of the sober specu
lation of a philosopher with the practical
prudence of a statesman, as well as the
studied elegance and somewhat ceremonious
stateliness of style which distinguish his
more elaborate writings. He had already
succeeded in guarding his diction against
the words and phrases of the dialect which
he habitually spoke ; — an enterprise in which
he had no forerunner, and of which the diffi
culty even now can only be estimated by a
' native of Scotland. The dread of inelegance
I in a language almost foreign kept him, as it
has kept succeeding Scotch writers, at a dis-
j tance from the familiar English, the perfect use
I of which can be acquired only by conversation
I from the earlist years. Two inaccurate ex
pressions only are to be found in these early
! and hasty productions of this elegant writer.
Instead of "individuals" he uses the Galli-
' cism " particulars ;" and for " enumeration"
he employs "induction," — a term properly
j applicable only with a view to the general in
ference which enumeration affords. In the
review of the History of Peter the Great it is
not uninteresting to find it remarked, that the
violence and ferocity of that renowned barba-
PREFACE TO A REPRINT OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW OF 1755. 243
rian perhaps partly fitted him to be the reform
er of a barbarous people ; as it was afterwards
observed in the Histories of Scotland and of
Charles V., that a milder and more refined
character might have somewhat disqualified
Luther and Knox for their great work. Two
articles being on Scottish affairs wfere natu
ral relaxations for the historian of Scotland.
In that which relates to the Catalogue of
Scottish Bishops we observe a subdued smile
at the eagerness of the antiquary and the
ecclesiastical partisan, qualified indeed by a
just sense of the value of the collateral infor
mation which their toil may chance to throw
up, but which he was too cautious and de
corous to have hazarded in his avowed writ
ings. That he reviewed Douglas' Account
of North America was a fortunate circum
stance, if we may suppose that the recollec
tion might at a distant period have contribut
ed to suggest the composition of the History
of America. None of these writings could
have justified any expectation of his histori
cal fame j because they furnished no occa
sion for exerting the talent for narration, —
the most difficult but the most necessary
attainment for an historian, and one in which
he has often equalled the greatest masters
of his art. In perusing the two essays of a
literary sort ascribed to him, it may seem
that he has carried lenient and liberal criti
cism to an excess. His mercy to the vicious
style of Hervey may have been in some
measure the result of professional prudence :
but it musf be owned that he does not seem
enough aware of the interval between Gray
and Shenstone, and that he names versifiers
now wholly forgotten. Had he and his asso
ciates, however, erred on the opposite ex
treme, — had they underrated and vilified
works of genius, their fault would now ap
pear much more offensive. To overrate
somewhat the inferior degrees of real merit
which are reached by contemporaries is
indeed the natural disposition of superior
minds, when they are neither degraded by
jealousy nor inflamed by hostile prejudice.
The faint and secondary beauties of contem
poraries are aided by novelty; they are
brought near enough to the attention by cu
riosity ; and they are compared with their
competitors of fhe same time instead of being
tried by the test of likeness to the produce
of all ages and nations. This goodnatured
exaggeration encourages talent, and gives
pleasure to readers as well as writers, with
out any permanent injury to the public taste.
The light which seems brilliant only because
it is near the eye, cannot reach the distant
observer. Books which please for a year,
which please for ten years, and which please
for ever, gradually take their destined sta
tions. There is little need of harsh criti
cism to forward this final justice. The very
critic who has bestowed too prodigal praise,
if he long survives his criticism, will survive
also his harmless error. Robertson never
ceased to admire Gray: but he lived long
enough probably to forget the name of Jago.
In the contributions of Dr. Adam Smith
it is easy to trace his general habits both of
thinking and writing. Among the inferior
excellencies of this great philosopher, it is
not to be forgotten that in his full and flow
ing composition he manages the English
language with a freer hand and with more
native ease than any other Scottish writer.
Robertson avoids Scotticisms: but Smith
might be taken for an English writer not
peculiarly idiomatical. It is not improbable
that the early lectures of Hutcheson, an elo
quent native of Ireland, and a residence at
Oxford from the age of seventeen to that of
twenty-four, may have aided Smith in the
attainment of this more free and native style.
It must however be owned, that his works,
confined to subjects of science or specula
tion, do not afford the severest test of a
writer's familiarity with a language. On
such subjects it is comparatively easy, with
out any appearance of constraint or parade,
to avoid the difficulties of idiomatical expres
sion by the employment of general and tech
nical terms. His review of Johnson's Dic
tionary is chiefly valuable as a proof that
neither of these eminent persons was well
qualified to write an English dictionary.
The plan of Johnson and the specimens of
Smith are alike faulty. At that period, in
deed, neither the cultivation of our old litera
ture, nor the study of the languages from
which the English springs or to which it is
related, nor the habit of observing the gene
ral structure of language, was so far advanced
as to render it possible for this great work to
approach perfection. His parallel between
French and English writers* is equally just
and ingenious, and betrays very little of that
French taste in polite letters, especially in
dramatic poetry to which Dr. Smith and
his friend Mr. Hume were prone. The ob
servations on the life of a savage, which
when seen from a distance appears to be di
vided between Arcadian repose and chival
rous adventure, and by this union is the most
alluring object of general curiosity and the
natural scene of the golden age both of the
legendary, and of the paradoxical sophist,
are an example of those original speculations
on the reciprocal influence of society and
opinions which characterize the genius of
Smith. The commendation of Rousseau's
eloquent Dedication to the Republic of Ge
neva, for expressing "that ardent and passion
ate esteem \vhieh it becomes a good citizen to
entertain for the government of his country
and the character of his countrymen," is an
instance of the seeming exaggeration of just
principles, arising from the employment of
the language of moral feeling, as that of ethi
cal philosophy, which is very observable in
the Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Though the contributions of Alexander
Wedderburn, afterwards Earl of Rosslyri. af
forded little scope for the display of mental
superiority, it is not uninteresting to examino
* Letter to the Editor, at the end of the volume,
244
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the first essays in composition of a man whose
powers of reason and eloquence raised him
to the highest dignity of the state. A Greek
grammar and two law books were allotted to
him as subjects of criticism. Humble as
these subjects are, an attentive perusal will
discover in his remarks on them a distinct
ness of conception and a terseness as well as
precision of language which are by no means
common qualities of writing. One error in
the use of the future tense deserves notice
only as it shows the difficulties which he
had to surmount in acquiring what costs an
Englishman no study. The praise bestowed
in his Preface on Buchanan for an " un
daunted spirit of liberty," is an instance of
the change which sixty years have produced
in political sentiment. Though that great
writer was ranked among the enemies of
monarchy,* the praise of him, especially in
Scotland, was a mark of fidelity to a govern
ment which, though monarchical, was found
ed on the principles of the Revolution, and
feared no danger but from the partisans of
hereditary right. But the criticisms and the in
genious and judicious Preface show the early
taste of a man who at the age of twenty-two
withstands every temptation to unseason
able display. The love of letters, together
with talents already conspicuous, had in the
preceding year (1754) placed him in the
chair at the first meeting of a literary society
of which Hume and Smith were members.
The same dignified sentiment attended him
through a long life of activity and ambition,
and shed a lustre over his declining years. It
was respectably manifested by fidelity to the
literary friends of his youth, and it gave him
a disposition, perhaps somewhat excessive,
to applaud every shadow of the like merit in
others.
The other writers are only to be regarded
as respectable auxiliaries in such an under
taking. Dr. Blair is an useful example, that
a station among good writers may be attained
by assiduity and good sense, with the help
of an uncorrupted taste ; while for the want
of these qualities, it is often not reached by
others whose powers of mind may be allied
to genius.
The delicate task of reviewing the theolo
gical publications of Scotland was allotted to
Mr. Jardine, one of the ministers of Edin
burgh, whose performance of that duty
would have required no particular notice, had
it not contributed with other circumstances
to bring the work to its sudden and unex
pected close. At the very moment when
Mr. Wedderburn (in his note at the end of
the second number) had announced an in
tention to enlarge the plan, he and his col
leagues were obliged to relinquish the work.
The temper of the people of Scotland was
at that moment peculiarly jealous on every
question that approached the boundaries of
theology. A popular election of the paro-
* He is usually placed with Languet and Althu-
pen among the Monarchomists.
chial clergy had been restored with Presby
tery by the Revolution. The rights of Pa
trons had been reimposed on the Scottish
Church in the. last years of Queen Anne,
by Ministers who desired, if they did not
meditate, the re-establishment of Episco
pacy. But for thirty years afterwards this
unpopular right was either disused by the
Patrons or successfully resisted by the people.
The zealous Presbyterians still retained the
doctrine and spirit of the Covenanters; and
their favourite preachers, bred up amidst the
furious persecutions of Charles the Second,
had rather learnt piety and fortitude than ac
quired that useful and ornamental learning
which becomes their order in times of quiet.
Some of them had separated from the Church
on account of lay Patronage, among other
marks of degeneracy. But besides these
Seceders, the majority of the Established
clergy were adverse to the law of Patronage,
and disposed to connive at resistance to its
execution. On the other hand, the more
lettered and refined ministers of the Churctu
who had secretly relinquished many parts 01
the Calvinistic system, — from the unpopu
larity of their own opinions arid modes of
preaching, from their connection with the
gentry who held the rights of Patronage,
and from repugnance to the vulgar and illite
rate ministers whom turbulent elections had
brought into the Church, — became hostile to
the interference of the people, and zealously
laboured to enforce the execution of a law
which had hitherto remained almost dormant.
The Orthodox party maintained the rights of
the people against a regulation imposed on
them by their enemies; and the party which
in matters of religion claimed the distinction
of liberality and toleration, contended for the
absolute authority of the civil magistrate to
the destruction of a right which more than
any other interested the conscience of the
people of Scotland. At the head of this last
party was Dr. Robertson, one of the contribu
tors to the present volume, who about the
time of its appearance was on the eve of
effecting a revolution in the practice of the
Church, by at length compelling the stubborn
Presbyterians to submit to the authority of a
law which they abhorred.
Another circumstance rendered the time
very perilous for Scotch reviewers of eccle
siastical publications. The writings of Mr.
Hume, the intimate friend of the leader of
the tolerant clergy, very naturally excited
the alarm of the Orthodox party, who, like
their predecessors of the preceding age, were
zealous for the rights of the people, but con
fined their charity within the pale of their
own communion, and were much disposed
to regard the impunity of heretics and infidels
as a reproach to a Christian magistrate. In
the year 1754 a complaint to the General
Assembly against the philosophical writings
of Mr. Hume and Lord Kames was with dif
ficulty eluded by the friends of free discus
sion. The writers of the Review were aware
of the danger to which they were exposed by
ON THE WRITINGS OF MACHIAVEL.
245
these circumstances. They kept the secret
of their Review from Mr. Hume, the most
intimate friend of some of them. They for
bore to notice in it his History of the Stuarts,
of which the first volume appeared at Edin
burgh two months before the publication of
the Review ] though it is little to say that it
was the most remarkable work which ever
issued from the Scottish press.
They trusted that the moderation and well-
known piety of Mr. Jardine would conduct
them safely through the suspicion and jeal
ousy of jarring parties. Nor does it in fact ap
pear that any part of his criticisms is at va
riance with that enlightened reverence for
religion which he was known to feel : but he
wras somewhat influenced by the ecclesiasti
cal party to which he adhered. He seems to
have thought that he might securely assail the
opponents of Patronage through the sides of
Erskine, Boston, and other popular preachers,
who were either Seceders, or divines of the
same school. He even ventured to use the
weapon of ridicule against their extravagant
metaphors, their wire-drawn allegories, their
mean allusions, and to laugh at those who
complained of " the connivance at Popery,
the toleration of Prelacy, the pretended rights
of Lay Patrons, — of heretical professors in the
universities, and a lax clergy in possession
of the churches." as the crying evils of the
time.
This species of attack, at a moment when
the religious feelings of the public were thus
susceptible, appears to have excited general
alarm. The Orthodox might blame the writ
ings criticised without approving the tone
assumed by the critic : the multitude were
exasperated by the scorn with which their
favourite writers were treated : and many
who altogether disapproved these writings
might consider ridicule as a weapon of
doubtful propriety against language habitu
ally employed to convey the religious and
moral feelings of a nation. In these circum
stances the authors of the Review did not
think themselves bourtd to hazard their quiet,
reputation, and interest, by perseverance in
their attempt to improve the taste of their
countrymen.
It will not be supposed that the remarks
made above on the ecclesiastical parties in
' Scotland sixty years ago can have any refer-
I ence to their political character at the present
| day. The principles of toleration now seem
j to prevail among the Scottish clergy more
than among any other established church in
Europe. A public act of the General As-
| sembly may be considered as a renunciation
! of that hostility to the full toleration of Catho
lics which was for a long time the disgrace
I of the most liberal Protestants. The party
called 'Orthodox' are purified from the in
tolerance which unhappily reigned among
their predecessors, and have in general
I adopted those principles of religious liberty
which the sincerely pious, when consistent
J with themselves, must be the foremost to
maintain. Some of them also, even in these
! times, espouse those generous and sacred
principles of civil liberty which distinguished
the old Puritans, and which in spite of their
faults entitle them to be ranked among the
first benefactors of their country.*
* " The precious spark of liberty had been kin
dled and was preserved by the Puritans alone :
and it was to this sect, whose principles appear so
frivolous and habits so ridiculous, that the English
owe the whole freedom of their constitution." —
Hume, History of England, chap. xl. This testi
mony to the merits of the Puritans, from the
mouth of their enemy, must be owned to be
founded in exaggeration. But if we allow them
to have materially contributed to the preservation
of English liberty, we must acknowledge that the
world owes more to the ancient Puritans than to
any other sect or party among men.
ON THE
WETTINGS OF MACHIAVEL.
LITERATURE, which lies much nearer to
the feelings of mankind than science, has
the most important effect on the sentiments
with which the sciences are regarded, the
activity with which they are pursued, and
the mode in which they are cultivated. It
is the instrument, in particular, by which
ethical science is generally diffused. As the
useful arts maintain the general honour of
physical knowledge, so polite letters allure
* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvii. p.
207.-ED.
the world into the neighbourhood of the
sciences of morals and of mind. Wherever
the agreeable vehicle of literature does not
convey their doctrines to the public, they re
main as the occupation of a few recluses in
the schools, with no root in the general feel
ings, and liable to be destroyed by the dis
persion of a handful of doctors, and the
destruction of their unlamented seminaries.
Nor is this all : — polite literature is not only
the true guardian of the moral sciences, and
the sole instrument of spreading their bene
fits among men, but it becomes, from these
v 2
246
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
very circumstances, the regulator of their
cultivation and their progress. As long as
they are confined to a small number of men
in scholastic retirement, there is no restraint
upon their natural proneness to degenerate
either into verbal subtilties or shadowy
dreams. As long as speculation remained
in the schools, all its followers were divided
into mere dialecticians, or mystical visiona
ries, both alike unmindful of the real world,
and disregarded by its inhabitants. The re
vival of literature produced a revolution at
once in the state of society, arid in the mode
of philosophizing. It attracted readers from
the common ranks of society, who were
gradually led on from eloquence and poetry,
to morals and philosophy. Philosophers and
moralists, after an interval of almost a thou
sand years, during which they had spoken
only to each other, once more discovered
that they might address the great body of
mankind, with the hope of fame and of use
fulness. Intercourse with this great public,
supplied new materials, and imposed new
restraints: the feelings, the common sense,
the ordinary affairs of men, presented them
selves again to the moralist ; and philosophers
were compelled to speak in terms .intelligible
and agreeable to their new hearers. Before
this period, little prose had been written in
any modern language, except chronicles or
romances. Boccacio had indeed acquired a
classical rank, by compositions of the latter
kind ; and historical genius had risen in Frois-
sart and Comines to a height which has not
been equalled among the same nation in
times of greater refinement. But Latin was
still the language in which all subjects then
deemed of higher dignity, and which occu
pied the life of the learned by profession,
were treated. This system continued till
the Reformation, which, by the employment
of the living languages in public worship,
gave them a dignity unknown before, and,
by the versions of the Bible, and the practice
of preaching and writing on theology and
morals in the common tongues, did more
for polishing modern literature, for diffusing
knowledge, and for improving morality, than
all the other events and discoveries of that
active age.
Machiavel is the first still celebrated writer
who discussed grave questions in a modern
language. This peculiarity is the more wor
thy of notice, because he was not excited by
the powerful stimulant of the Reformation.
That event was probably regarded by him
as a disturbance in a barbarous country, pro
duced by the novelties of a vulgar monk,
unworthy of the notice of a man wholly oc
cupied with the affairs of Florence, and the
hope of expelling strangers from Italy ; and
having reached, at the appearance of Luther,
the last unhappy period of his agitated life.
The Prince is an account of the means by
which tyrannical power is to be acquired and
preserved : it is a theory of that class of
phenomena in the history of mankind. It is
essential to its purpose, therefore, that it
should contain an enumeration and exposi
tion of tyrannical arts ; and, on that account,
it may be viewed and used as a manual of
such arts. A philosophical treatise on poi
sons, would in like manner determine the
quantity of each poisonous substance capable
of producing death, the circumstances favour
able or adverse to its operation, and every
other information essential to the purpose of
the poisoner, though not intended for his use.
But it is also plain, that the calm statement
of tyrannical arts is the bitterest of all satires
against them. The Prince must therefore
have had this double aspect, though neither
of the objects which they seem to indicate
had been actually in the contemplation of
the author. It may not be the object of the
chemist to teach the means of exhibiting an
tidotes, any more than those of administer
ing poisons ; but his readers may employ his
discoveries for both objects. Aristotle* had
long before given a similar theory of tyranny,
without the suspicion of an immoral inten
tion. Nor was it any novelty in more recent
times, among those who must have been the
first teachers of Machiavel. The School
men followed the footsteps of Aristotle too
closely, to omit so striking a passage ; and
Aquinas explains it, in his commentary, like
the rest, in the unsuspecting simplicity of his
heart. To us accordingly, we confess, the
plan of Machiavel seems, like those of for
mer writers, to have been purely scientific ;
and so Lord Bacon seems to have understood
him, where he thanks him for an exposition
of immoral policy. In that singular passage,
where the latter lays down the theory of the
advancement of fortune (which, when com
pared with his life, so well illustrates the
fitness of his understanding, and the unfitness
of his character for the affairs of the world),
he justifies his application of learning to such
a subject, on a principle which extends to
The Prince : — " that there be not any thing
in being or action which should not be drawn
and collected into contemplation and doc
trine."
Great defects of character, we readily ad
mit, are manifested by the writings of Ma
chiavel : but if a man of so powerful a genius
had shown a nature utterly depraved, it would
have been a painful, and perhaps single, ex
ception to the laws of human nature. And
no depravity can be conceived greater than
a deliberate intention to teach perfidy and
cruelty. That a man who was a warm lover
of his country, who bore cruel sufferings for
her liberty, and who was beloved by the best
of his countrymen,! should fall into such un
paralleled wickedness, may be considered
* Politics, lib. v. c. iii.
t Among other proofs of the esteem in which
he was held by those who knew his character, we
may refer to the affectionate letters of Guicciar-
dini, who, however independent his own opinions
were, became, by his employment under the Popes
of the House of Medici, the supporter of their
authority, and consequently a political opponent
of Machiavel, the most zealous of the Republi<
ON THE WRITINGS OF MACHIAVEL.
247
as wholly incredible. No such depravity is
consistent with the composition of the History
of Florence. It is only by exciting moral
sentiment, that the narrative of human ac
tions can be rendered interesting. Divested
of morality, they lose their whole dignity,
and all their power over feeling. History
would be thrown aside as disgusting, if it did
not inspire the reader with pity for the suf
ferer, — with anger against the oppressor, —
with anxiety for the triumph of right ; — to
say nothing of the admiration for genius, and
valour, and energy, which, though it disturbs
the justice of our historical judgments, par
takes also of a moral nature. The author of
The Prince, according to the common notion
of its intention, could never have inspired
these sentiments, of which he must have
utterly emptied his own heart. To pos
sess the power, however, of contemplating
tyranny with scientific coldness, and of ren
dering it the mere subject of theory, must
be owned to indicate a defect of moral sen
sibility. The happier nature, or fortune, of
Aristotle, prompted him to manifest distinct
ly his detestation of the flagitious policy which
he reduced to its principles.
As another subject of regret, not as an
excuse for Machiavel, a distant approach to
the same defect may be observed in Lord
Bacon's History of Henry the Seventh; where
we certainly find too little reprehension of
falsehood and extortion, too cool a display of
the expedients of cunning, sometimes digni
fied by the name of wisdom, and through
out, perhaps, too systematic a character given
to the measures of that monarch, in order to
exemplify, in him, a perfect model of king
craft; pursuing safety and power by any
means, — acting well in quiet times, because
it was most expedient, but never restrained
from convenient crimes. This History would
have been as delightful as it is admirable, if
he had felt the difference between \visdom
and cunning as warmly in that work, as he
has discerned it clearly in his philosophy.
Many historical speculators have indeed
incurred some part of this fault. Enamoured
of their own solution of the seeming contra
dictions of a character, they become indul
gent to the character itself; and, when they
have explained its vices, are disposed, un
consciously, to write as if they had excused
them. A writer who has made a successful
exertion to render an intricate character in
telligible, who has brought his mind to so
singular an attempt as a theory of villany,
and has silenced his repugnance and indig
nation sufficiently for the purposes of rational
examination, naturally exults in his victory
over so many difficulties, delights in contem
plating the creations of his own ingenuity,
and the order which he seems to have intro
duced into the chaos of malignant passions,
and may at length view his work with that
complacency which diffuses clearness and
calmness over the language in which he
communicates his imagined discoveries.
It should also be remembered, that Ma
chiavel lived in an age when the events of
every day must have blunted his moral feel
ings, and wearied out his indignation. In so
far as we acquit the intention of the writer,
his work becomes a weightier evidence of
the depravity which surrounded him. In this
state of things, after the final disappointment
of all his hopes, when Florence was subjected
to tyrants, and Italy lay under the yoke of
foreigners, — having undergone torture for the
freedom .of his country, and doomed to beg
gary in his old age. after a life of public ser
vice, it is not absolutely unnatural that he
should have resolved to compose a theory of
the tyranny under which he had fallen, and
that he should have manifested his indigna
tion against the cowardly slaves who had
yielded to it, by a stern and cold description
of its maxims.
His last chapter, in which he seems once
more to breathe a free air, has a character
totally different from all the preceding ones.
His exhortation to the Medici to deliver Italy
from foreigners, again speaks out his ancient
feelings. Perhaps he might have thought it
possible to pardon any means employed by
an Italian usurper to expel the foreign mas
ters of his country. This ray of hope might
have supported him in delineating the means
of usurpation ; by doing which he might have
had some faint expectation that he could en
tice the usurper to become a deliverer. —
Knowing that the native governments were
too base to defend Italy, and that all others
were leagued to enslave her. he might, in his
despair of all legitimate rulers, have hoped
something for independence, and perhaps at
last even for liberty, from the energy and
genius of an illustrious tyrant.
From Petrarch, with some of whose pa-
theUic verses Machiavel concludes, to Alfieri,
the national feeling of Italy seems to have
taken refuge in the minds of her writers.
They write more tenderly of their country
as it is more basely abandoned by their coun
trymen. Nowhere has so much been well
said, or so little nobly done. While we blame
the character of the nation, or lament the
fortune which in some measure produced it,
we must, in equity, excuse some irregulari
ties in the indignation of men of genius, when
they see the ingenious inhabitants of their
beautiful and renowned country now appa
rently for ever robbed of that independence
which is enjoyed by obscure and barbarous
communities.
The dispute about the intention of The
Prince has thrown into the shade the merit
of the Discourses on Livy. The praise be-
stowed on them by Mr. Stewart* is scanty:
that "they furnish lights to the school of
Montesquieu" is surely inadequate com
mendation. They are the first attempts in a
new science — the philosophy of history; and,
as such, they form a brilliant point in the pro
gress of reason. For this Lord Bacon com-
* In the Dissertation prefixed to the EncycJo
paedia Britannica. — ED.
248
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
mends him : — " the form of writing which is
the fittest for this variable argument of ne
gotiation, is that which Machiavel chose
wisely and aptly for government, namely,
discourse upon histories or examples: for,
knowledge drawn freshly, and in our view,
out of particulars, findeth its way best to
particulars again ; and it hath much greater
life on practice when the discourse attendeth
upon the example, than when the example
attendeth upon the discourse." It is ob
servable, that the Florentine Secretary is the
only modern writer who is named in that
part of the Advancement of Learning which
relates to civil knowledge. The apology of
Albericus Gentilis for the morality of The
Prince, has been often quoted, and is cer
tainly weighty as a testimony, when we con
sider that the writer was born within twenty
years of the death of Machiavel, and edu
cated at no great distance from Florence. It
is somewhat singular, that the context of this
passage should never have been quoted: —
" To the knowledge of history must be added
that part of philosophy which treats of mo
rals and politics; for this is the soul of his
tory, which explains the causes of the ac
tions and sayings of men, and of the events
which befall them: and on this subject I
am not afraid to name Nicholas Machiavel,
as the most excellent of all writers, in his
golden Observations on Livy. He is the
writer whom I now seek, because he reads
history not with the eyes of a grammarian,
but with those of a philosopher/''*
It is a just and refined observation of Mr.
Hume, that the mere theory of Machiavel
(to waive the more important consideration
of morality) was perverted by the atrocities
which, among the Italians, then passed un
der the name of 'policy.' The number of
men who took a part in political measures in
the republican governments of Italy, spread
the taint of this pretended policy farther, and
made it a more national quality than in the
Transalpine monarchies. But neither the
civil wars of France and England, nor the
administrations of Henry the Seventh, Ferdi
nand and Louis the Eleventh (to say nothing
of the succeeding religious wars), will allow
us to consider it as peculiarly Italian. It
arose from the circumstances of Europe in
those times. In every age in which contests
are long maintained by chiefs too strong, or
bodies of men too numerous for the ordinary
control of law, for power, or privileges, or
possessions, or opinions to which they are
ardently attached, the passions excited by
such interests, heated by sympathy, and in
flamed to madness by resistance, soon throw
off moral restraint in the treatment of ene
mies. Retaliation, which deters individuals,
provokes multitudes to new cruelty : and the
atrocities which originated in the rage of arn-
bitiori and fanaticism, are at length thought
necessary for safety. Each party adopts the
cruelties of the enemy, as we now adopt a
* De Legal, lib. iii. c. ix.
1 new discovery in the art of war. The craft
and violence thought necessary for existence
are admitted into the established policy of
such deplorable times.
But though this be the tendency of such
circumstances in all times, it must be owned
that these evils prevail among different na
tions, and in different ages, in a very unequal
degree. Some part of these differences may
depend on national peculiarities, which can
not be satisfactorily explained : but, in the
greater part of them, experience is striking
and uniform. Civil wars are comparatively
regular and humane, under circumstances
that may be pretty exactly defined ; — among
nations long accustomed to popular govern
ment, to free speakers and to free writers;
familiar with all the boldness and turbulence
of numerous assemblies; not afraid of ex
amining any matter human or divine; where
great numbers take an interest in the con
duct of their superiors of every sort, watch
it, and often censure it; where there is a
public, and where that public boldly utters
decisive opinions; where no impassable lines
of demarcation destine the lower classes to
eternal servitude, and the higher to envy
and hatred and deep curses from their infe
riors; where the administration of law is so
purified by the participation and eye of the
public, as to become a grand school of hu
manity and justice ; and where, as the con
sequence of all, there is a general diffusion
of the comforts of life, a general cultivation
of reason, and a widely diffused feeling of
equality and moral pride. The species seems
to become gentler as all galling curbs are
gradually disused. Quiet, or at least com
parative order, is promoted by the absence
of all the expedients once thought essential
to preserve tranquillity. Compare Asia with
Europe; — the extremes are there seen. But
if all the immediate degrees be examined,
it will be found that civil wars are milder,
in proportion to the progress of the body of
the people in importance and well-being.
Compare the civil wars of the two Roses
with those under Charles the First : compare
these, again, with the humanity and wisdom
of the Revolution of sixteen hundred and
eighty-eight. Examine the civil war which
led to the American Revolution : we there
see anarchy without confusion, and govern
ments abolished and established without
spilling a drop of blood. Even the progress
of civilization, when unattended by the bless
ings of civil liberty, produces many of the
same effects. When Mr. Hume wrote the
excellent observations quoted by Mr. Stew
art, Europe had for more than a century
been exempt from those general convulsions
which try the moral character of nations,
and ascertain their progress towards a more
civilized state of mind. We have since
been visited by one of the most tremendous
of these tempests; and our minds are yet
filled with the dreadful calamities, and the
ambiguous and precarious benefits, which
have sprung from it. The contemporaries
REVIEW OF THE LIVES OF MITON'S NEPHEWS.
249
of such terrific scenes are seldom in a tem
per to contemplate them calmly : and yet,
though the events of this age have disap
pointed the expectations of sanguine bene
volence concerning the state of civilization
in Europe, a dispassionate posterity will pro
bably decide that it has stood the test of
general commotions, and proved its progress
by their comparative mildness. One period
of frenzy has been, indeed, horribly distin
guished, perhaps beyond any equal time in
history, by popular massacres and judicial
murders, among a people peculiarly sus
ceptible of a momentary fanaticism. This
has been followed by a -war in which one
party contended for universal dominion, and
all the rest of Europe struggled for exist
ence. But how soon did the ancient laws
of war between European adversaries re
sume the ascendant, which had indeed been
suspended more in form than in fact ! How
slight are the traces which the atrocities of
faction and the manners of twenty years'
invasion and conquest have left on the senti
ments of Europe! On a review of the dis
turbed period of the French Revolution, the
| mind is struck by the disappearance of
classes of crimes which have often attended
such convulsions; — no charge of poison ; few
assassinations, properly so called ; no case
hitherto authenticated of secret execution !
If any crimes of this nature can be proved,
the truth of history requires that the proof
should be produced. But those who assert
them without proof must be considered as
calumniating their age, and bringing into
question the humanizing effects of order
and good government.
REVIEW OF MR. GODWIN'S LIVES
OF
EDWARD AND JOHN PHILIPS, &c. &c/
THE public would have perhaps welcomed
Mr. Godwin's reappearance as an author,
most heartily, if he had chosen the part of a
novelist. In that character his name is high,
and his eminence undisputed. The time is
long past since this would have been thought
a slight, or even secondary praise. No ad
dition of more unquestionable value has
been made by the moderns, to the treasures
of literature inherited from antiquity, than
those fictions which paint the manners and
character of the body of mankind, and affect
the reader by the relation of misfortunes
which may befall himself. The English
nation would have more to lose than any
other, by undervaluing this species of compo
sition. Richardson has perhaps lost, though
unjustly, a part of his popularity at home;
but he still contributes to support the fame
of his country abroad. The small blemishes
of his diction are lost in translation ; and the
changes of English manners, and the occa
sional homeliness of some of his represen
tations, are unfelt by foreigners. Fielding
will for ever remain the delight of his coun
try, and will always retain his place in the
libraries of Europe, notwithstanding the un
fortunate grossness, — the mark of an un
cultivated taste, — which if not yet entirely
excluded from conversation, has been for
* From the Edinb. Rev. vol. xxv. p. 485.— ED.
32
some time banished from our writings, where,
during the best age of our national genius,
it prevailed more than in those of any other
polished nation. It is impossible in a Scot
tish journal, to omit Smollett, even if there
had not been much better reasons for the
mention of his name, than for the sake of
observing, that he and Arbuthnot are suffi
cient to rescue Scotland from the imputation
of wanting talent for pleasantry : though, it
must be owned, we are grave people, hap
pily educated under an austere system of
morals ; possessing, perhaps, some humour,
in our peculiar dialect, but fearful of taking
the liberty of jesting in a foreign language
like the English ; prone to abstruse specula
tion, to vehement dispute, to eagerness in
the pursuit of business and ambition, and to
all those intent occupations of mind which
rather indispose it to unbend in easy play
fulness.
Since the beautiful tales of Goldsmith and
Mackenzie, the composition of novels has
been almost left to women; and, in the dis
tribution of literary labour, nothing seems
more natural, than that, as soon as the talents
of women are sufficiently cultivated, this
task should be assigned to the sex which
has most leisure for the delicate observa
tion of manners, and whose importance de
pends on the sentiments which most usually
checker common life with poetical incidents.
250
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
They have performed their part with such
signal success, that the literary works of
women, instead of receiving the humiliating
praise of being gazed at as wonders and pro
digies, have, for the first lime, composed a
considerable part of the reputation of an
ingenious nation in a lettered age. It ought
to be added, that their delicacy, co-operating
with the progress of refinement, has contri
buted to efface from these important fictions
the remains of barbarism which had dis
graced the vigorous genius of our ancestors.
Mr. Godwin has preserved the place of
men in this branch of literature. Caleb
Williams is probably the finest novel pro
duced by a man, — at least since the Vicar
of Wakefield. The sentiments, if not the
opinions, from which it arose, were transient.
Local usages and institutions were the sub
jects of its satire, exaggerated beyond the
usual privilege of that species of writing.
Yet it has been translated into most lan
guages ] and it has appeared in various forms,
on the theatres, not only in England, but of
France arid Germany. There is scarcely a
Continental circulating library in which it is
not one of the books which most quickly re
quire to be replaced. Though written with a
temporary purpose, it will be read with intense
interest, and with a painful impatience for
the issue, long after the circumstances which
produced its original composition shall cease
to be known to all but to those who are well
read in history. There is scarcely a fiction in
any language which it is so difficult to lay by.
A young person of understanding and sensi
bility, not familiar with the history of its
origin, nor forewarned of its connection with
peculiar opinions, in whose hands it is now
put for the first time, will peruse it with
perhaps more ardent sympathy and trem
bling curiosity, than those who read it when
their attention was divided, and their feel
ings disturbed by controversy and specula
tion. A building thrown up for a season, has
become, by the skill of the builder, a durable
edifice. It is a striking, but not a solitary
example, of the purpose of the writer being
swallowed up by the interest of the work,
— of a man of ability intending to take part
in the disputes of the moment, but led by
the instinct of his talent to address himself
to the permanent feelings of human nature.
It must not, however, be denied, that the
marks of temporary origin and peculiar opi
nion, are still the vulnerable part of the book.
A fiction contrived to support an opinion is
a vicious composition. Even a fiction con
trived to enforce a maxim of conduct is not
of the highest class. And though the vigor
ous powers of Mr. Godwin raised him above
his own intention, still the marks of that
intention ought to be effaced as marks of
mortality; and nothing ought to remain in
the book which will not always interest the
reader. The passages which betray the me
taphysician, more than the novelist, ought
to be weeded out with more than ordinary
care. The character of Falkland is a beau
tiful invention. That such a man could have
become an assassin, is perhaps an improba
bility ; and if such a crime be possible for a
soul so elevated, it may be due to the dignity
of human nature to throw a veil over so hu
miliating a possibility, except when we are
compelled to expose it by its real occurrence.
In a merely literary view, however, the im
probability of this leading incident is more
than compensated, by all those agitating and
terrible scenes of which it is the parent : and
if the colours had been delicately shaded, if
all the steps in the long progress from chi
valrous sentiment to assassination had been
more patiently traced, and more distinctly
brought into view, more might have been
lost by weakening the contrast, than would
have been gained by softening or removing
the improbability. The character of Tyrrel,
is a grosser exaggeration : and his conduct
is such as neither our manners would pro
duce, nor our laws tolerate. One or two
monstrous examples of tyranny, nursed and
armed by immense wealth, are no authority
for fiction, which is a picture of general na
ture. The descriptive power of several parts
of this novel is of the highest order. The
landscape in the morning of Caleb's escape
from prison, and a similar escape from a Span
ish prison in St. Leon, are among the scenes
of fiction which must the most frequently and
vividly reappear in the imagination of a rea
der of sensibility. His disguises and escapes
in London, though detailed at too great length,
have a frightful reality, perhaps nowhere pa
ralleled in our language, unless it be in some
paintings of Daniel De Foe,* with whom it is
distinction enough to bear comparison. There
are several somewhat similar scenes in the
Colonel Jack of that admirable writer, which,
among his novels, is indeed only the second ;
but which could be second to none but Ro
binson Crusoe, — one of those very few books
which are equally popular in every country
of Europe, and which delight every reader
from the philosopher to the child. Caleb
Williams resembles the novels of De Foe,
in the austerity with which it rejects the
agency of women and the power of love.
It would be affectation to pass over in
silence so remarkable a work as the Inquiry
into Political Justice ; but it is not the time
to say much of it. The season of contro
versy is past, and the period of history is not
yet arrived. Whatever may be its mistakes,
which we shall be the last to underrate, it is
certain that works in which errors equally
dangerous are maintained with far less inge
nuity, have obtained for their authors a con
spicuous place in the philosophical history
of the eighteenth century, tfut books, as
well as men, are subject to what is called
•fortune.' The same circumstances which
* A great-grandson of Daniel De Foe, of the
same name, is now a creditable tradesman in
Hnngerford Market in London. His manners
give a favourable impression of his sense and mo
rals. He is neither unconscious of his ancestor's
fame, nor ostentatious of it.
REVIEW OF THE LIVES OF MILTON'S NEPHEWS.
251
favoured its sudden popularity, have since
unduly depressed its reputation. Had it ap
peared in a metaphysical age, and in a period
of tranquillity, it would have been discussed
by philosophers, and might have excited ac
rimonious disputes; but these would have
ended, after the correction of erroneous
speculations, in assigning to the author that
station to which his eminent talents had en
titled him. It would soon have been ac
knowledged, that the author of one of the
most deeply interesting fictions of his age,
and of a treatise on metaphysical morals
which excited general alarm, whatever else
he might be. must be a person of vigorous
and versatile powers. But the circumstances
of the times, in spite of the author's in
tention, transmuted a philosophical treatise
into a political pamphlet. It seemed to be
thrown up by the vortex of the French Revo
lution, and it sunk accordingly as that whirl
pool subsided ; while by a perverse fortune,
the honesty of the author's intentions con
tributed to the prejudice against his work.
With the simplicity and good faith of a re
tired speculator, conscious of no object but
the pursuit of truth, he followed his reason
ings wherever they seemed to him to lead,
without looking up to examine the array of
sentiment and institution, as well as of in
terest and prejudice, which he was about to
encounter. Intending no mischief, he con
sidered no consequences ; and, in the eye of
the multitude, was transformed into an in
cendiary, only because he was an undesign-
ing speculator. The ordinary clamour was
excited against him: even the liberal sacri
ficed him to their character for liberality. — a
fate not very uncommon for those who, in
critical times, are supposed to go too far; and
many of his own disciples, returning into the
world, and, as usual, recoiling most violently
from their visions, to the grossest worldly-
mindedness, offered the fame of their master
as an atonement for their own faults. For a
time it required courage to brave the pre
judice excited by his name. It may, even
now perhaps, need some fortitude of a differ
ent kind to write, though in the most impar
tial temper, the small fragment of literary
history which relates to it. The moment
for doing full and exact justice will come.
All observation on the personal conduct of
a writer, when that conduct is not of a pub
lic nature, is of dangerous example ; and,
when it leads to blame, is severely repre
hensible. But it is but common justice to
say, that there are few instances of more re
spectable conduct among writers, than is ap
parent in the subsequent works of Mr. God
win. He calmly corrected what appeared to
him to be his own mistakes ; and he proved
the perfect disinterestedness of his correc
tions, by adhering to opinions as obnoxious
to the powerful as those which he relinquish
ed. Untempted by the success of his scho
lars in paying their court to the dispensers
of favour, he adhered to the old and rational
principles of liberty, — violently shaken as
:hese venerable principles had been, by the
:empest which had beaten down the neigh
bouring erections of anarchy. He continued
to seek independence and reputation, with
that various success to which the fashions
of literature subject professed writers; and
0 struggle with the difficulties incident to
other modes of industry, for which his pre
vious habits had not prepared him. He has
thus, in our humble opinion, deserved the
respect of all those, whatever may be their
opinions, who still wish that some men in
England may think for themselves, even at
the risk of thinking wrong; but more espe
cially of the friends of liberty, to whose
cause he has courageously adhered.
The work before us, is a contribution to
the literary history of ihe seventeenth cen
tury. It arose from that well-grounded re
verence for the morality, as well as the ge
nius, of Milton, which gives importance to
every circumstance connected with him.
After all that had been written about him, it
appeared to Mr. Godwin, that there was still
an unapproached point of view, from which
Milton's character might be surveyed, — the
history of those nephews to whom he had
been a preceptor and a father. "It was ac
cident." he tells us, " that first threw in my
way two or three productions of these wri
ters, that my literary acquaintance,* whom
1 consulted, had never heard of. Dr. Johnson
had told me, that the pupils of Milton had
given to the world ' only one genuine pro
duction.' Persons better informed than Dr.
Johnson, could tell me perhaps of half a
dozen. How great was my surprise, when I
found my collection swelling to forty or
fifty !" Chiefly from these publications, but
from a considerable variety of little-known
sources, he has collected, with singular in
dustry, all the notices, generally incidental,
concerning these two persons, which are
scattered over the writings of their age.
Their lives are not only interesting as a
fragment of the history of Milton, but curi
ous as a specimen of the condition of pro
fessed authors in the seventeenth century.
If they had been men of genius, or con
temptible scribblers, they would not in either
case have been fair specimens of their class.
Dryden and Flecknoe are equally exceptions.
The nephews of Milton belonged to that
large body of literary men who are destined
to minister to the general curiosity ; to keep
up the stock of public information ; to com
pile, to abridge, to translate ; — a body of im
portance in a great country, being necessary
to maintain, though they cannot advance, its
literature. 'The degree of good sense, good
taste, and sound opinions diffused among this
class of writers, is of no small moment to
* This plural use of ' acquaintance' is no doubt
abundantly warranted by the example of Dryden,
the highest authority in a case of diction, of any
single English writer: but as the usage is divided,
the convenience of distinguishing the plural from
the singular at first sight seems to determine, that
the preferable plural is " acquaintances."
252
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the public reason and morals; and we know
not where we should find so exact a repre
sentation of the literary life of two authors,
of the period between the Restoration and
the Revolution, as in this volume. The com
plaint, that the details are too multiplied and
minute for the importance of the subject, will
be ungracious in an age distinguished by a
passion for bibliography, and a voracious ap
petite for anecdote. It cannot be denied,
that great acuteness is shown in assembling
and weighing all the very minute circum
stances, from \vhich their history must often
be rather conjectured than inferred. It may
appear singular, that we. in this speculative
part of the island, should consider the di
gressions from the biography, and the pas
sages of general speculation, as the part of
the work which might, with the greatest ad
vantage, be retrenched : but they are cer
tainly episodes too large for the action, and
have sometimes the air of openings of chap
ters in an intended history of England.
These two faults, of digressions too expand
ed, and details too minute, are the principal
defects of the volume ; which, however,
must be considered hereafter as a necessary
part of all collections respecting the biogra
phy of Milton.
Edward and John Philips were the sons
of Edward Philips of Shrewsbury, Secondary
of the CrowTn Office in the Court of Chancery,
by Anne, sister of John Milton. Edward
was born in London in 1630, and John in
1631. To this sister the first original English
verses of Milton were addressed, — which he
composed before the age of seventeen, — to
soothe her sorrow for the loss of an infant son.
His first published verses were the Epitaph on
Shakespeare. To perform the offices of do
mestic tenderness, and to render due honour
to kindred genius, were the noble purposes by
which he consecrated his poetical power at
the opening of a life, every moment of which
corresponded to this early promise. On his
return from, his travels, he found his ne
phews, by the death of their father, become
orphans. He took them into his house, sup
porting and educating them ; which he was
enabled to do by the recompense which he
received for the instruction of other pupils,
And for this act of respectable industry, and
generous affection, in thus remembering the
humblest claims of prudence and kindness
amidst the lofty ambition and sublime con
templations of his mature powers, he has
been sneered at by a moralist, in a work
which, being a system of our poetical bio
graphy, ought especially to have recom
mended this most moral example to the imi
tation of British youth.
John published very early a vindication
of his uncle%s Defence of the People of Eng
land. Both brothers, in a very few years,
Aveary of the austere morals of the Republi
cans, quitted the party of Milton, and adopted
the politics, with the wit and festivity, of the
young Cavaliers : but the elder, a person
of gentle disposition and amiable manners,
more a man of letters than a politician, retain
ed at least due reverence and gratitude for his
benefactor, and is conjectured by Mr. God
win, upon grounds that do not seem improba
ble, to have contributed to save his uncle at
the' Restoration. Twenty years after the
death of Milton, the first Life of him was
published by Edward Philips; upon which
all succeeding narratives have been built.
This Theatrum Poetarum will be always
read with interest, as containing the opinions
concerning poetry and poets, which he pro
bably imbibed from Milton. This amiable
writer died between 1694 and 1698.
John Philips, a coarse buffoon, and a vul
gar debauchee, was, throughout life, chiefly
a political pamphleteer, who turned with
every change of fortune and breath of popu
lar clamour, but on all sides preserved a con
sistency in violence, scurrility, and servility
to his masters, whether they were the fa
vourites of the Court, or the leaders of the
rabble. Having cried out for the blood of
his former friends at the Restoration, he in
sulted the memory of Milton, within two
years of his death. He adhered to the cause
of Charles II. till it became unpopular; and
disgraced the then new name of Whig by
associating with the atrocious Titus Gates.
In his vindication of that execrable wretch,
he adopts the maxim, "that the attestations
of a hundred Catholics cannot be put in bal
ance with the oath of one Protestant ;"-
which, if ' our own party 'were substituted
for 'Protestant,' and 'the opposite one' for
' Catholic,' may be regarded as the general
principle of the jurisprudence of most tri
umphant factions. He was silenced, or driven
to literary compilation, by those fatal events
in 1683, which seemed to be the final tri
umph of the Court over public liberty. His
servile voice, however, hailed the accession
of James II. The Revolution produced a
new turn of this weathercock ; but, happily
for the kingdom, no second Restoration gave
occasion to another display of his incon
stancy. In 1681 he had been the associate
of Oates, and the tool of Shaflesbury : in
1685 he thus addresses James II. in doggerel
scurrility :
; Must the Faith's true Defender bleed to death,
A sacrifice to Cooper's wrath?"
In 1695 he took a part in that vast mass of
bad verse occasioned by the death of Queen
Mary; and in 1697 he celebrated King Wil
liam as Augustus Britannicus. in a poem on
the Peace of Ryswick. From the Revolu
tion to his death, about 1704, he was use
fully employed as editor of the Monthly
Mercury, a journal which was wholly, or
principally, a translation from Le Mercure
Historique, published at the Hague, by some
of those ingenious and excellent Protestant
refugees, whose writings contributed to ex-
ite all Europe against Louis XIV. Mr.
Godwin at last, very naturally, relents a lit
tle towards him : he is unwilling to part on
bad terms with one who has been so long a
REVIEW OF THE LIVES OF MILTON'S NEPHEWS.
253
companion. All, however, that indulgent
ingenuity can discover in his favour is, that
he was an indefatigable writer; and that,
during his last years, he rested, after so
many vibrations, in the opinions of a consti
tutional Whig. But, in a man like John
Philips, the latter circumstance is only one
of the signs of the times, and proves no more
than that the principles of English liberty
were patronized by a government which
owed to these principles its existence.
The above is a very slight sketch of the
lives of these two persons, which Mr. God
win, with equal patience and acuteness of
research, has gleaned from publications, of
which it required a much more than ordi
nary familiarity with the literature of the last
century, even to know the existence. It is
somewhat singular, that no inquiries seem to
have been made respecting the history of the
descendants of Milton's brother, Sir Christo
pher ; and that it has not been ascertained
whether either of his nephews left children.
Thomas Milton, the son of Sir Christopher,
was, it seems, Secondary to the Crown Office
in Chancery ; and it could not be very diffi
cult fora resident in London to ascertain the
period of his death, and perhaps to discover
his residence and the state of his family.
Milton's direct descendants can only exist,
if they exist at all, among the posterity of his
youngest and favourite daughter Deborah,
afterwards Mrs. Clarke, a woman of cultiva
ted understanding, and not unpleasing man
ners, who was known to Richardson and
Professor Ward, and was patronized by Ad
dison.* Her affecting exclamation is well
known, on seeing her father's portrait for the
first time more than thirty years after his
death: — "Oh my father, my dear father!"
'• She spoke of him," says Richardson, "with
great tenderness; she said he was delight
ful company, the life of the conversation,
not only by a flow of subject, but by unaf
fected cheerfulness and civility." This is
the character of one whom Dr. Johnson re
presents as a morose tyrant, drawn by a
supposed'victim of his domestic oppression.
Her daughter, Mrs. Foster, for whose benefit
Dr. Newton and Dr. Birch procured Comus
to be acted, survived all her children. The
only child of Deborah Milton, of whom we
have any accounts besides Mrs. Foster, was
Caleb Clarke, who went to Madras in the
first years of the eighteenth century, and
who then vanishes from the view of the bio
graphers of Milton. We have been enabled,
by accident, to enlarge a very little this ap
pendage to his history. It appears from an
examination of the parish register of Fort St.
George, that Caleb Clarke, who seems to
have been parish-clerk of that place from
1717 to 1719, was buried there on the 26th
of October of the latter year. By his wife
Mary, whose original surname does not ap
pear, he had three children born at Madras;
* Who intended to have procured a permanent
provision for her. She was presented with fiity
guineas by Queen Caroline.
— Abraham, baptized on the 2d of June,
1703 ; Mary, baptized on the 17th of March,
1706, and buried on December 15th of the
same year; and Isaac, baptized 13th of Feb
ruary, 1711. Of Isaac no farther account
appears. Abraham, the great-grandson of
Milton, in September, 1725, married Anna
Clarke; and the baptism of their daughter
Mary is registered on the 2d of April, 1727.
With this all notices of this family cease.
But as neither Abraham, nor any of his fami
ly, nor his brother Isaac, died at Madras, and
as he was only twenty-four years of age at
the baptism of his daughter, it is probable
that the family migrated to some other part
of India, and that some trace of them might
yet be discovered by examination of the
parish registers of Calcutta and Bombay. If
they had returned to England, they could not
have escaped the curiosity of the admirers
and historians of Milton. We cannot apolo
gize for the minuteness of this genealogy, or
for the eagerness of our desire that it should
be enlarged. We profess that superstitious
veneration for the memory of the greatest of
poets, which would regard the slightest relic
of him as sacred ; and we cannot conceive
either true poetical sensibility, or a just sense
of the glory of England, to belong to that
Englishman, who would not feel the strong
est emotions at the sight of a descendant
of Milton, discovered in the person even of
the most humble and unlettered of human
beings.
While the grandson of Milton resided at
Madras, in a condition so humble as to make
the office of parish-clerk an object of ambi
tion, it is somewhat remarkable that the
elder brother of Addison should have been
the Governor of that settlement. The ho
nourable Galston Addison died there in the
year 1709. Thomas Pitt, grandfather to
Lord Chatham, had been his immediate pre
decessor in the government.
It was in the same year that Mr. Addison
began those contributions to periodical es
says, which, as long as any sensibility to
the beauties of English style remains, must
be considered as its purest and most perfect
models. But it was not until eighteen months
afterwards, — when, influenced by fidelity to
his friends, and attachment to the cause of
liberty, he' had retired from office, and when,
with his usual judgment, he resolved to re
sume the more active cultivation of literature,
as the elegant employment of his leisure, —
that he undertook the series of essays on
Paradise Lost ; — not, as has been weakly
supposed, with the presumptuous hope o'f
exalting Milton, but with the more reasonable
intention of cultivating the public taste, and
instructing the nation in the principles of just
criticism, by observations on a work already
acknowledged to be the first of English
poems. If any doubt could be entertained
respecting the purpose of this excellent wri
ter, it must be silenced by the language in
which he announces his criticism : — " As the
first place among our English poets is due to
254
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Milton," says he, "I shall enter into a regu
lar criticism upon his Paradise Lost." &c. It
is clear that he takes for granted the para
mount greatness of Milton j and that his I
object was not to disinter a poet who had
been buried in unjust oblivion, but to illus
trate the rules of criticism by observations
on the writings of him whom all his readers
revered as th.3 greatest poet of their country.
This passage might have been added by Mr.
Godwin to the numerous proofs by which he |
has demonstrated the ignorance and riegii- |
gence, if not the malice, of those who would
persuade us that the English nation could
have suspended their admiration of a poem.
— the glory of their country, and the boast
of human genius. — till they were taught its
excellences by critics, and enabled by politi
cal revolutions to indulge their feelings with
safety. It was indeed worthy of Lord Somers
to have been one of its earliest admirers;
and to his influence and conversation it is
not improbable that we owe, though indi
rectly, the essays of Addison. The latter's
criticism manifests and inspires a more genu
ine sense of poetical beauty than others of
more ambitious pretensions, and now of
greater name. But it must not be forgotten
that Milton had subdued the adverse preju
dices of Dryden and Atterbury, long before
he had extorted from a more acrimonious
hostility, that unwilling but noble tribute of
justice to the poet, for which Dr. Johnson
seems to have made satisfaction to his hatred
by a virulent libel on the man.*
It is an excellence of Mr. Godwin's narra
tive, that he thinks and feels about the men
and events of the age of Milton, in some
measure as Milton himself felt and thought.
Exact conformity of sentiment is neither pos
sible nor desirable : but a Life of Milton,
written by a zealous opponent of his princi
ples, in the relation of events which so much
exasperate the passions, almost inevitably
degenerates into a libel. The constant hos
tility of a biographer to the subject of his
narrative, whether it be just or not. is teazing
and vexatious: the natural frailty of over-
partiality is a thousand times more agreeable.
* The strange misrepresentations, long preva
lent among ourselves respecting the slow "progress
of Milton's reputation, sanctioned as they were
both by Johnson and by Thomas Warton, have
produced ridiculous effects abroad. On the 16ih
of November, 1814, a Parisian poet named Cam-
penon was, in the present unhappy state of French
literature, received at the Academy as the succes
sor of the Abbe Delille. In his Discours de
Reception, he speaks of the Abbe's translation
" de ce Paradis Perdu, dont 1'Agleterre est si
fiere depuis qu'elle acesse d'en ignorer le merite."
The president M. Regnault de St. Jean d' Angely
said that M. Delille repaid our hospitality by trans
lating Milton, — " en doublant ainsi la celebrite du
Poete ; dont le genie a inspire a 1'Angleterre un
si tardif mais si Tegitime orgueil."
REVIEW
OF
ROGERS' POEMS.
IT seems very doubtful, whether the pro
gress and the vicissitudes of the elegant arts
can be referred to the operation of general
laws, with the same plausibility as the exer
tions of the more robust faculties of the
human mind, in the severer forms of science
and of useful art. The action of fancy and
of taste seems to be affected by causes too
various and minute to be enumerated with
sufficient completeness for the purposes of
philosophical theory. To explain them, may
appear to be as hopeless an attempt, as to
account for one summer being more warm
and genial than another. The difficulty
would be insurmountable, even in framing
the most general outline of a theory, if the
various forms assumed by imagination, in
the fine arts, did not depend on some of the
most conspicuous, as well as powerful agents
in the moral world. But these arise from
revolutions of popular sentiments, and are
connected with the opinions of the age, and
with the manners of the refined class, as
certainly, though not in so great a degree, as
with the passions of the multitude. The
comedy of a polished monarchy never can
be of the same character with that of a bold
and tumultuous democracy. Changes of re
ligion and of government, civil or foreign
wars, conquests which derive splendour from
distance, or extent, or difficulty. long tran
quillity. — all these, and indeed every con
ceivable modification of the state of a com
munity, show themselves in the tone of its
poetry, and leave long and deep traces on
every part of its literature. Geometry is the
same, not only at London and Paris, but in
the extremes of Athens and Samarcand : but
the state of the general feeling in England,
at this moment, requires a different poetry
from that which delighted our ancestors in
the time of Luther or Alfred.
During the greater part of the eighteenth
century, the connection of the character of
REVIEW OF ROGERS' POEMS.
255
English poetry with the state of the country,
was very easily traced. The period which
extended from the English to the French
Revolution, was the golden age of authentic
history. Governments were secure, nations
tranquil, improvements rapid, manners mild
beyond the example of any former age. The
English nation which possessed the greatest
of all human blessings, — a wisely constructed
popular government, necessarily enjoyed the
largest share of every other benefit. The
tranquillity of that fortunate period was not
disturbed by any of those calamitous, or even
extraordinary events, which excite the imagi
nation and inflame the passions. No age
was more exempt from the prevalence of
any species of popular enthusiasm. Poetry,
in this state of things, partook of that calm,
argumentative, moral, and directly useful
character into which it naturally subsides,
when there are no events to call up the
higher passions, — when every talent is al
lured into the immediate service of a pros
perous and improving society, — and when
wit, taste, diffused literature, and fastidious
criticism, combine to deter the young writer
from the more arduous enterprises of poetical
genius. In such an age, every art becomes
rational. Reason is the power which presides
in a calm. But reason guides, rather than
impels; and, though it must regulate every
exertion of genius, it never can rouse it to
vigorous action.
The school of Dryden and Pope, which
prevailed till a very lats period of the last
century, is neither the most poetical nor the
most national part of our literary annals.
These great poets sometimes indeed ventur
ed into the regions of pure poetry : but their
general character is, that "not in fancy's
maze they wandered long;" and that they
rather approached the elegant correctness of
our Continental neighbours, than supported
the daring flight, which, in the former age,
had borne English poetry to a sublimer ele
vation than that of any other modern people
of the West.
Towards the middle of the century, great,
though quiet changes, began to manifest
themselves in the republic of letters in every
European nation which retained any portion
of mental activity. About that time, the ex
clusive authority of our great rhyming poets
began to be weakened ; while new tastes and
fashions began to show themselves in the
political world. A school of poetry must
have prevailed long enough, to be probably
on the verge of do\vnfal, before its practice
is embodied in a correspondent system of
criticism.
Johnson was the critic of our second poet
ical school. As far as his prejudices of a po
litical or religious kind did not disqualify him
for all criticism, he was admirably fitted by
nature to be the critic of this species of poe
try. Without more imagination, sensibility,
or delicacy than it required,— not always
with perhaps quite enough for its higher
parts, — he possessed sagacity, shrewdness,
experience, knowledge of mankind, a taste
for rational and orderly compositions, and a
disposition to accept, instead of poetry, that
lofty and vigorous declamation in harmo
nious verse, of which he himself was capa
ble, and to which his great master sometimes
descended. His spontaneous admiration
scarcely soared above Dryden. li Merit of a
loftier class he rather saw than felt." Shake
speare has transcendent excellence of every
sort, and for every critic, except those who
are repelled by the faults which usually at
tend sublime virtues, — character and man
ners, morality and prudence, as well as ima
gery and passion. Johnson did indeed per
form a vigorous act of reluctant justice to
wards Milton ; but it was a proof, to use his
own words, that
" At length our mighty Bard's victorious'Iays
Fill the loud voice of universal prai?e ;
And bafflt d Spite, with hopeless anguish dumb,
Yields to renown the centuries to come '.''*
The deformities of the Life of Gray ought
not to be ascribed to jealousy, — for Johnson's
mind, though coarse, was not mean, — but to
the prejudices of his university, his political
faction, and his poetical sect : and this last
bigotry is the more remarkable, because it is
exerted against the most skilful and tasteful
of innovators, who, in reviving more poetical
subjects and a more splendid diction, has
employed more care and finish than those
who aimed only at correctness.
The interval which elapsed between the
death of Goldsmith and the rise of Cowper,
is perhaps more barren than any other twelve
years in the history of our poetry since the
accession of Elizabeth. It seemed as if the
fertile soil was at length exhausted. But it
had in fact only ceased to exhibit its accus
tomed produce. The established poetry had
worn out either its own resources, or the con
stancy of its readers. Former attempts to
introduce novelty had been either too weak
or too early. Neither the beautiful fancy of
Collins, nor the learned and ingenious indus
try of Warton, nor even the union of sublime
genius with consummate art in Gray, had
produced a general change in poetical com
position. But the fulness of time was ap
proaching ; and a revolution has been accom
plished, of which the commencement nearly
coincides — not, as we conceive, accidental
ly — with that of the political revolution which
has changed the character as well as the
condition of Europe. It has been a thousand
times observed, that nations become weary
even of excellence, and seek a new way of
writing, though it should be a worse. 'But
besides the operation of satiety — the general
cause of literary revolutions — several par
ticular circumstances seem to have affected
the late changes of our poetical taste ; of
which, two are more conspicuous than the
rest.
In the natural progress of society, the songs
which are the effusion of the feelings of a
* Prologue to Comus.— ED.
256
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
rude tribe, are gradually polished into a form
of poetry still retaining the marks of the na
tional opinions, sentiments, and manners,
from which it originally sprang. The plants
are improved by cultivation ; but they are
still the native produce of the soil. The
only perfect example which we know, of
this sort, is Greece. Knowledge and useful
art. and perhaps in a great measure religion,
the Greeks received from the East : but as
they studied no foreign language, it was im
possible that any foreign literature should in
fluence the progress of theirs. Not even the
name of a Persian, Assyrian, Phenician, or
Egyptian poet is alluded to by any Greek
writer: The Greek poetry was, therefore,
wholly national. The Pelasgic ballads were
insensibly formed into Epic, and Tragic, and
Lyric poems: but the heroes, the opinions,
and the customs, continued as exclusively
Grecian, as they had been when the Helle
nic minstrels knew little beyond the Adriatic
and the JEgean. The literature of Rome
was a copy from that of Greece. When the
classical studies revived amid the chivalrous
manners and feudal institutions of Gothic
Europe, the imitation of ancient poets strug
gled against the power of modern sentiments,
with various event, in different times and
countries. — but every where in such a man
ner, as to give somewhat of an artificial and
exotic character to poetry. Jupiter and the
Muses appeared in the poems of Christian
nations. The feelings and principles of de
mocracies were copied by the gentlemen of
Teutonic monarchies or aristocracies. The
sentiments of the poet in his verse, were not
those which actuated him in his conduct.
The forms and rules of composition were
borrowed from antiquity, instead of sponta
neously arising from the manner of thinking
of modern communities. In Italy, when let
ters first revived, the chivalrous principle
was too near the period of its full vigour, to
be oppressed by his foreign learning. An
cient ornaments were borrowed ; but the ro
mantic form was prevalent : arid wrhere the
forms were classical, the spirit continued to
be romantic. The structure of Tasso's poem
was that of the Grecian epic ; but his heroes
were Christian knights. French poetry
having been somewhat unaccountably late
in its rise, and slow in its progress, reached
its most brilliant period, when all Europe had
considerably lost its ancient characteristic
principles, and was fully imbued with classi
cal ideas. Hence it acquired faultless ele
gance : — hence also it became less natural, —
more timid and more imitative, — more like
a feeble translation of Roman poetry. The
first age of English poetry, in the reign of
Elizabeth, displayed a combination, — fantas
tic enough, — of chivalrous fancy and feeling
with classical pedantry; but, upon the whole,
its native genius was unsubdued. The poems
of that age, with all their faults, and partly
perhaps from their faults, are the most na
tional part of our poetry, as they undoubtedly
contain its highest beauties. From the ac
cession of James, to the Civil War, the glory
of Shakespeare turned the whole national
genius to the drama ; and, after the Restora
tion, a new and classical school arose, under
whom our old and peculiar literature was
abandoned, and almost forgotten. But all
imported tastes in literature must be in some
measure superficial. The poetry which once
grew in the bosoms of a people, is always
capable of being revived by a skilful hand.
When the brilliant and poignant lines of
Pope began to pall on the public ear, it was
natural that we should revert to the cultiva
tion of our indigenous poetry.
Nor was this the sole, or perhaps the chief
agent which was working a poetical change.
As the condition and character of the former
age had produced an argumentative, di
dactic, sententious, prudential, and satirical
poetry ] so the approaches to a new order (or
rather at first disorder) in political society,
were attended by correspondent movements
in the poetical world. Bolder speculations
began to prevail. A combination of the
science and art of the tranquil period, with
the hardy enterprises of that which suc
ceeded, gave rise to scientific poems, in which
a bold attempt wras made, by the mere force
of diction, to give a political interest and
elevation to the coldest parts of knowledge,
and to those arts which have been hitherto
considered as the meanest. Having been
forced above their natural place by the won
der at first elicited, they have not yet reco
vered from the subsequent depression. Nor
will a similar attempt be successful, without
a more temperate use of power over style,
till the diffusion of physical knowledge ren
ders it familiar to the popular imagination,
and till the prodigies worked by the mechani
cal arts shall have bestowed on them a cha
racter of grandeur.
As the agitation of men's minds approach
ed the period of an explosion, its effects on
literature became more visible. The desire
of strong emotion succeeded to the solici
tude to avoid disgust. Fictions, both dra
matic and narrative, were formed according
to the school of Rousseau and Goethe. The
mixture of comic and tragic pictures once
more displayed itself, as in the ancient and
national drama. The sublime and energetic
feelings of devotion began to be more fre
quently associated with poetry. The ten
dency of political speculation concurred in
directing the mind of the poet to the intense
and undisguised passions of the uneducated ;
which fastidious politeness had excluded
from the subjects of poetical imitation. The
history of nations unlike ourselves, the fan
tastic mythology and ferocious superstition
of distant times and countries, or the legends
of our own antique faith, and the romances
of our fabulous and heroic ages, became
themes of poetry. Traces of a higher order
of feeling appeared in the contemplations in
which the poet indulged, and in the events
and scenes which he delighted to describe.
The fire with which a chivalrous tale was
REVIEW OF ROGERS' POEMS.
257
told, made the reader inattentive to negli
gences in the story or the style. Poetry be
came more devout, more contemplative, more
mystical, more visionary, — more alien from
the taste of those whose poetry is only a
polished prosaic verse, — more full of antique
superstition, afld more prone to daring inno
vation, — painting both coarser realities and
purer imaginations, than she had before ha
zarded, — sometimes buried in the profound
quiet required by the dreams of fancy, —
sometimes turbulent and martial, — seeking
li fierce wars and faithful loves" in those
times long past, when the frequency of the
most dreadful dangers produced heroic ener
gy and the ardour of faithful affection.
Even the direction given to the traveller
by the accidents of war has not been with
out its influence. Greece, the mother of
freedom and of poetry in the West, which
had long employed only the antiquary, the
artist, and the philologist, was at length des
tined, after an interval of many silent and
inglorious ages, to awaken the genius of a
poet. Full of enthusiasm for those perfect
forms of heroism and liberty, which his
imagination had placed in the 'recesses of
antiquity, he gave vent to his impatience of
the imperfections of living men and real in
stitutions, in an original strain of sublime
satire, which clothes moral anger in imagery
of an almost horrible grandeur ; and which,
though it cannot coincide with the estimate
of reason, yet could only flow from that
wrorship of perfection, which is the soul of
all true poetry.
The tendency of poetry to become na
tional, was in more than one case remarkable.
While the Scottish middle age inspired the
most popular poet perhaps of the eighteenth
century, the national genius of Ireland at
length found a poetical representative, whose
exquisite ear, and flexible fancy, wantoned
in all the varieties of poetical luxury, from
the levities to the fondness of love, from
polished pleasantry to ardent passion, and
from the social joys of private life to a
tender and mournful patriotism, taught by
the melancholy fortunes of an illustrious
country, — with a range adapted to every
nerve in the composition of a people sus
ceptible of all feelings which have the colour
of generosity, and more exempt probably
than any other from degrading and unpoeti-
cal vices.
The failure of innumerable adventurers is
inevitable, in literary, as well as in political,
revolutions. The inventor seldom perfects
his invention. The uncouthness of the no
velty, the clumsiness with which it is ma
naged by an unpractised hand, and the dog
matical contempt of criticism natural to the
pride and enthusiasm of the innovator, com
bine to expose him to ridicule, and generally
terminate in his being admired (though
warmly) by a few of his contemporaries, —
remembered only occasionally in after times,
— and supplanted in general estimation by
more cautious and skilful imitators. With
33
the very reverse of unfriendly feelings, we
observe that erroneous theories respecting
poetical diction, — exclusive and prescriptive
notions in criticism, which in adding new
provinces to poetry would deprive her of an
cient dominions and lawful instruments of
rule, — and a neglect of that extreme regard
to general sympathy, and even accidental
prejudice, which is necessary to guard poeti
cal novelties against their natural enemy the
satirist, — have powerfully counteracted an
attempt, equally moral and philosophical.
made by a writer of undisputed poetical
genius, to enlarge the territories of art, by un
folding the poetical interest which lies latent
in the common acts of the humblest men.
and in the most ordinary modes of feeling, as
well as in the most familiar scenes of nature.
The various opinions which may naturally
be formed of the merit of individual writers,
form no necessary part of our consideration.
We consider the present as one of the most
flourishing periods of English poetry : but
those who condemn all contemporary poets,
need not on that account dissent from our
speculations. It is sufficient to have proved
the reality, and in part perhaps to have ex
plained the origin, of a literary revolution.
At no time does the success of writers bear
so uncertain a proportion to their genius, as
when the rules of judging and the habits of
feeling are unsettled.
It is not uninteresting, even as a matter of
speculation, to observe the fortune of a poem
which, like the Pleasures -of Memory, ap
peared at the commencement of this literary
revolution, without paying court to the revo
lutionary tastes, or seeking distinction by re
sistance to them. It borrowed no aid either
from prejudice or innovation. It neither co
pied the fashion of the age which was pass
ing away, nor offered any homage to the
rising novelties. It resembles, only in mea
sure, the poems of the eighteenth century,
which were written in heroic rhyme. Neither
the brilliant sententiousness of Pope, nor the
frequent languor and negligence perhaps in
separable from the exquisite nature of Gold
smith, could be traced in a poem, from which
taste and labour equally banished mannerism
and inequality. It was patronized by no sect
or faction. It was neither imposed on the
public by any literary cabal, nor forced into
notice by the noisy anger of conspicuous
enemies. Yet, destitute as it was of every
foreign help, it acquired a popularity origi
nally very great; and which has not only
continued amidst extraordinary fluctuation
of general taste, but has increased amid a
succession of formidable competitors. No
production, so popular, wras probably ever so
little censured by criticism : and thus is com
bined the applause of conremporaries with the
suffrage of the representatives of posterity.
It is needless to make extracts from a
poem which is familiar to every reader. In
selection, indeed, no two readers would pro
bably agree : but the description of the
Gipsies,— of the Boy quitting his Father's
w2
258
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
house. — and of the Savoyard recalling the
mountainous scenery of his country, — and
the descriptive commencement of the tale in
Cumberland, have remained most deeply
impressed on our minds. We should be dis
posed to quote the following verses, as not
surpassed, in pure and chaste elegance, by
any English lines :—
" When Joy's bright sun has shed his evening
ray.
And Hope's delusive meteors cease to play ;
When clouds on clouds the smiling prospect
close,
Still through the gloom thy star serenely glows :
Like yon fair orb she gilds the brow of Night
With the mild magic of reflected light."
The conclusion of the fine passage on the
Veterans at Greenwich and Chelsea, has a
pensive dignity which beautifully corres-
ponds»\vith the scene : —
" Long have ye known Reflection's genial ray
Gild the calm close of Valour's various day."
And we cannot resist the pleasure of quo
ting the moral, tender, and elegant lines
which close the Poem : —
" Lighter than air, Hope's summer-visions fly,
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky ;
If but a beam of sober Reason play,
Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away !
But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power,
Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour?
These, when the trembling spirit wings her
flight,
Pour round her path a stream of living light;
And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest,
Where Virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest!"
The descriptive passages require indeed a
closer inspection, and a more exercised eye,
than those of some celebrated contempora
ries who sacrifice elegance to effect, and
whose figures stand out in bold relief, from
the general roughness of their more unfin
ished compositions : and in the moral parts,
there is often discoverable a Virgilian art,
which suggests, rather than displays, the
various and contrasted scenes of human life,
and adds to the power of language by a cer
tain air of reflection and modesty, in the
preference of measured terms to those of
more apparent energy.
In the View from the House.* the scene is
neither delightful from very superior beauty,
nor striking by singularity, nor powerful from
reminding us of terrible passions or memo
rable deeds. It consists of the more ordinary
of the beautiful features of nature, neither
exaggerated nor represented with curious
minuteness, but exhibited with picturesque
elegance, in connection with those tranquil
emotions which they call up in the calm
order of a virtuous mind, in every condition
of society and of life. The verses on the
Torso, are in a more severe style. The
Fragment of a divine artist, which awakened
the genius of Michael Angelo, seems to dis
dain ornament. It would be difficult to
name two small poems, by the same writer,
* In the Epistle to a Friend.— ED.
in which he has attained such high degrees
of kinds of excellence so dissimilar, as are
seen in the Sick Chamber and the Butterfly.
The first has a truth of detail, which, con
sidered merely as painting, is admirable;
but assumes a higher character, when it is
felt to be that minute remembrance, with
which affection recollects every circumstance
that could have affected a beloved sufferer.
Though the morality which concludes the
second, be in itself very beautiful, it may be
doubted whether the verses would not have
left a more unmixed delight, if the address
had remained as a mere sport of fancy, with
out the seriousness of an object, or an appli
cation. The verses written in Westminster
Abbey are surrounded by dangerous recol
lections ; they aspire to commemorate Fox,
and to copy some of the grandest thoughts
in the most sublime work of Bossuet. No
thing can satisfy the expectation awakened
by such names: yet we are assured that
there are some of them which would be en
vied by the best writers of this age. The
scenery of Loch Long is among the grandest
in Scotland ; and the description of it shows
the power of feeling and painting. In this
island, the taste for nature has grown with
the progress of refinement. It is most alive
in those who are most brilliantly distinguish
ed in social and active life. It elevates the
mind above the meanness which it might
contract in the rivalship for praise ; and pre
serves those habits of reflection and sensi
bility, which receive so many rude shocks
in the coarse contests of the world. Not
many summer hours can be passed in the
most mountainous solitudes of Scotland, with
out meeting some who are worthy to be
remembered with the sublime objects of
nature, which they had travelled so far to
admire.
The most conspicuous of the novelties of
this volume is the poem or poems, entitled
''Fragments of the Voyage of Columbus."
The subject of this poem is, politically or
philosophically considered, among the most
important in the annals of mankind. The in
troduction of Christianity (humanly viewed),
the irruption of the Northern barbarians, the
contest between the Christian and Mussul
man nations in Syria, the two inventions of
gunpowder and printing, the emancipation
of the human understanding by the Refor
mation, the discovery of America, and of a
maritime passage to Asia in the last ten
years of the fifteenth century, are the events
which have produced the greatest and most
durable effects, since the establishment of
civilization, and the consequent commence
ment of authentic history. But the poetical
capabilities of an event bear no proportion to
historical importance. None of the conse
quences that do not strike the senses or the
fancy can interest the poet. The greatest
of the transactions above enumerated is ob
viously incapable of entering into poetry.
The Crusades were not without permanent
effects on the state of men : but their poeti-
REVIEW OF ROGERS' POEMS.
259
cal interest does not arise from these effects ;
and it immeasurably surpasses them.
Whether the voyage of Columbus be des
tined to be for ever incapable of becoming
the subject of an epic poem,. is a question
which we have scarcely the means of answer
ing. The success of great writers has often
so little corresponded with the promise of
their subject, that we might be almost tempt
ed to think the choice of a subject indifferent.
The story of Hamlet, or of Paradise Lost,
would beforehand have been pronounced to
be unmanageable. Perhaps the genius of
Shakespeare and of Milton has rather com
pensated for the incorrigible defects of un
grateful subjects, than conquered them . The
course of ages may produce the poetical
genius, the historical materials and the na
tional feelings, for an American epic poem.
There is yet but one state in America, and
that state is hardly become a nation. At
some future period, when every part of the
continent has been the scene of memorable
events, when the discovery and conquest
have receded into that legendary dimness
which allows fancy to mould them at her
pleasure, the early history of America may
afford scope for the genius of a thousand
national poets ; and while some may soften
the cruelty which darkens the daring energy
of Cortez arid Pizarro, — while others may,
in perhaps new forms of poetry, ennoble the
pacific conquests of Penn, — and while the
genius, the exploits, and the fate of Raleigh,
may render his establishments probably the
most alluring of American subjects, every
inhabitant of the new world will turn his
eyes with filial reverence towards Columbus,
an(fr regard, with equal enthusiasm, the
voyage which laid the foundation of so many
states, and peopled a continent with civilized
men. Most epic subjects, but especially
such a subject as Columbus, require either
the fire of an actor in the scene, or the reli
gious reverence of a very distant posterity.
Homer, as wrell as Enjilla and Camoens.
show what may be done by an epic poet
who himself feels the passions of his heroes.
It must not be denied that Virgil has bor
rowed a colour of refinement from the court
of Augustus, in painting the age of Priam
and of Dido. Evander is a solitary and ex
quisite model of primitive manners, divest
ed of grossness, without losing their sim
plicity. But to an European poet, in this age
of the world, the Voyage of Columbus is too
naked and too exactly defined by history.
It has no variety, — scarcely any succession
of events. It consists of one scene, during!
which two or three simple passions continue j
in a state of the highest excitement. It is a '
voyage with intense anxiety in every bosom,
controlled by magnanimous fortitude in the
leader, and producing among his followers
a fear, — sometimes submissive, sometimes
mutinous, always ignoble, ft admits of no
variety of character, — no unexpected revolu
tions. And even the issue, though of un
speakable importance, and admirably adapt
ed to some kinds of poetry, is not an event
of such outward dignity and splendour as
ought naturally to close the active and bril
liant course of an epic poem.
It is natural that the Fragments should
give a specimen of the marvellous as well
as of the other constituents of epic fiction.
We may observe, that it is neither the inten
tion nor the tendency of poetical machinery
to supersede secondary causes, to fetter the
will, and to make human creatures appear
as the mere instruments of destiny. It is
introduced to satisfy that insatiable demand
for a nature more exalted than that wrhich
we know by experience, which creates all
poetry, and which is most active in its high
est species, and in its most perfect produc
tions. It is not to account for thoughts and
feelings, that superhuman agents are brought
down upon earth : it is rather for the con
trary purpose, of lifting them into a myste
rious dignity beyond the cognizance of rea
son. There is a material difference between
the acts which superior beings perform, and
the sentiments which they inspire. It is
true, that when a god fights against men,
there can be no uncertainty or anxiety, and
consequently no interest about the event, —
unless indeed in the rude theology of Homer,
where Minerva may animate the Greeks,
while Mars excites the Trojans: but it is
quite otherwise with these divine persons
inspiring passion, or represented as agents in
the great phenomena of nature. Venus and
Mars inspire love or valour; they give a
noble origin and a dignified character to
these sentiments : but the sentiments them
selves act according to the laws of our na
ture ; and their celestial source has no ten
dency to impair their power over human
sympathy. No event, which has not too much
modern vulgarity to be susceptible of alliance
with poetry, can be incapable of being enno
bled by that eminently poetical art which
ascribes it either to the Supreme Will, or to
the agency of beings who are greater than
human. The wisdom of Columbus is neither
less venerable, nor less his own, because it
is supposed to flow more directly than that
of other wise men, from the inspiration of
heaven. The mutiny of his seamen is not
less interesting or formidable because the
poet traces it to the suggestion of those ma-
ligTiant spirits, in whom the imagination? in
dependent of all theological doctrines, is
naturally prone to personify and embody the
causes of evil.
Unless, indeed, the marvellous be a part
of the popular creed at the period of the
action, the reader of a subsequent age will
refuse to sympathize with it. His poetical
faith is founded in sympathy with that of th 3
poetical personages. Still more objectionable
is a marvellous influence, neither believed in
by the reader nor by the hero ; — like a great
part of the machinery of the Henriade and
the Lusiad, which indeed is not only ab
solutely ineffective, but rather disennobles
heroic fiction, by association with light and
260
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
frivolous ideas. Allegorical persons (if the
expression may be allowed) are only in the
way to become agents. The abstraction has
received a faint outline of form } but it has
not yet acquired those individual marks and
characteristic peculiarities, which render it
a really existing being. On the other hand,
the more sublime parts of our own religion,
and more especially those which are common
to all religion, are too awful and too philoso
phical for poetical effect. If we except Pa
radise Lost, where all is supernatural, and
where the ancestors of the human race are
not strictly human beings, it must be owned
that no successful attempt has been made to
ally a human action with the sublimer prin
ciples of the Christian theology. Some opi
nions, which may perhaps, without irrever
ence, be said to be rather appendages to the
Christian system, than essential parts of it,
are in that sort of intermediate state which
fits them for the purposes of poetry j — suffi
ciently exalted to ennoble.the human actions
with which they are blended, but not so
exactly defined, nor so deeply revered, as to
be inconsistent with the liberty of imagina
tion. The guardian angels, in the project of
Dryden, had the inconvenience of having
never taken any deep root in popular belief :
the agency of evil spirits was firmly believed
in the age of Columbus. With the truth of
facts poetry can have no concern ; but the
truth of manners is necessary to its persons.
If the minute investigations of the Notes to
this poem had related to historical details,
they would have been insignificant ; but they
are intended to justify the human and the
supernatural parts of it, by an appeal to the
mariners and to the opinions of the age.
Perhaps there is no volume in our language
of which it can be so truly said, as of the
present, that it is equally exempt from the
frailties of negligence and the vices of affec
tation. Exquisite polish of style is indeed
more admired by the artist than by the peo
ple. The gentle and elegant pleasure which
it imparts, can only be felt.by a calm reason,
an exercised taste, and a mind free from tur
bulent passions. But these beauties of exe
cution can exist only in combination with
much of the primary beauties of thought and
feeling ; and poets of the first rank depend
on them for no small part of the perpetuity
of their fame. In poetry, though not in elo
quence, it is less to rouse the passions of a
moment, than to satisfy the taste of all
ages.
In estimating the poetical rank of Mr.
Rogers, it must not be forgotten that popu
larity never can arise from, elegance alone.
The vices of a poem may render it popular •
and virtues of a faint character may be suffi
cient to preserve a languishing and cold re
putation. But to be both popular poets and
classical writers, is the rare lot of those few
who are released from all solicitude about
their literary fame. It often happens to suc
cessful writers, that the lustre of their first
productions throws a temporary cloud over
some of those which follow. Of all literary
misfortunes, this is the most easily endured,
and the most speedily repaired. It is gene
rally no more than a momentary illusion
produced by disappointed admiration, which
expected more from the talents of the ad
mired writer than any talents could perform.
Mr. Rogers has long passed that period of
probation, during which it may be excusable
to feel some painful solicitude about the re
ception of every new work. Whatever may
be the rank assigned hereafter to his ^Til
ings, when compared with each other, the
writer has most certainly taken his place
among the classical poets of his country.
REVIEW
MADAME DE STAEL'S 'DE L'ALLEMAGNE
TILL the middle of the eighteenth century,
Germany was, in one important respect, sin
gular among the great nations of Christendom .
She had attained a high rank in Europe by
discoveries and inventions, by science, by
abstract speculation as well as positive know
ledge, by the genius and the art of war,
and above all, by the theological revolution,
which unfettered the understanding in one
* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxii. p.
168. — ED.
part of Europe, and loosened its chains in
the other; but she was without a national
literature. The country of Guttenberg, of
Copernicus, of Luther, of Kepler, and of
Leibnitz, had no writer in her own language,
whose name was known to the neighbouring
nations. German captains and statesmen,
philosophers and scholars, were celebrated ;
but German writers were unknown. The
nations of the Spanish peninsula formed the
exact contrast to Germany. ' She had every
mark of mental cultivation but a vernacular
REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE.
261
literature : they, since the Reformation; had |
ceased to exercise their reason ] and they j
retained only their poets, whom they were ;
content to admire, without daring any longer j
to emulate. In Italy, Metastasio was the '
only renowned poet j and sensibility to the
arts of design had survived genius : but the
monuments of ancient times still kept alive
the pursuits of antiquities and philology ; and
the rivalship of small states, and the glory
of former ages, preserved an interest in lite
rary history. The national mind retained
that tendency towards experimental science,
which it perhaps principally owed to the
fame of Galileo ; and began also to take some
part in those attempts to discover the means
of bettering the human condition, by inquiries
into the principles of legislation and political
economy, which form the most honourable
distinction of the eighteenth century. France
and England abated nothing of their activity.
Whatever may be thought of the purity of
taste, or of the soundness of opinion of Mon
tesquieu and Voltaire, Buffon and Rousseau,
no man will dispute the vigour of their genius.
The same period among us was not marked
by the loss of any of our ancient titles to
fame; and it was splendidly distinguished
by the rise of the arts, of history, of oratory,
and (shall we not add?) of painting. But
Germany remained a solitary example of a
civilized, learned, and scientific nation, with
out a literature. The chivalrous ballads of
the middle age, and the efforts of the Silesian
poets in the beginning of the seventeenth
century, were just sufficient to render the
general defect more striking. French was
the language of every court ; and the number
of courts in Germany rendered this circum
stance almost equivalent to the exclusion of
German from every society of rank. Phi
losophers employed a barbarous Latin, — as
they had throughout all Europe, till the
Reformation had given dignity to the ver
nacular tongues, by employing them in the
service of Religion, and till Montaigne, Gali
leo, and Bacon, broke down the barrier
between the learned and the people, by phi
losophizing in a popular language ; and the
German language continued to be the mere
instrument of the most vulgar intercourse of
life. Germany had, therefore, no exclusive
mental possession : for poetry and eloquence
may, and in some measure must be national ;
but knowledge, which is the common patri
mony of civilized men, can be appropriated
by no people.
A great revolution, however, at length
began, which in the course of half a century
terminated in bestowing on Germany a litera
ture, perhaps the most characteristic pos
sessed by any European nation. It had the
important peculiarity of being the first which
had its birth in an enlightened age. The
imagination and sensibility of an infant poe
try were in it singTilarly blended with the
refinements of philosophy. A studious and
learned people, familiar with the poets of
other nations, with the first simplicity of
nature and feeling, were too .often tempted
to pursue the singular, the excessive, and the
monstrous. Their fancy was attracted to
wards the deformities and diseases of moral
nature ; — the wildness of an infant literature,
combined with the eccentric and fearless
speculations of a philosophical age. Some
of the qualities of the childhood of art were
united to others which usually attend its de
cline. German literature, various, rich, bold,
and at length, by an inversion of the usual
progress, working itself into originality, was
tainted with the exaggeration natural to the
imitator, and to all those who know the pas
sions rather by study than by feeling.
Another cause concurred to widen the
chasm which separated the German writers
from the most polite nations of Europe.
While England and France had almost re
linquished those more abstruse speculations
which had employed them in the age of
Gassendi and Hobbes, and. with a confused
mixture of contempt and despair, had tacitly
abandoned questions which seemed alike
inscrutable and unprofitable, a metaphysical
passion arose in Germany, stronger and more
extensive than had been known in Europe
since the downfall of the Scholastic philoso
phy. A system of metaphysics appeared,
which, with the ambition natural to that
science, aspired to dictate principles to every
part of human knowledge. It was for a long
time universally adopted. Other systems,
derived from it, succeeded each other with
the rapidity of fashions in dress. Metaphy
sical publications were multiplied almost to
the same degree, as political tracts in the
most factious period of a popular government.
The subject was soon exhausted, and the
metaphysical passion seems to be nearly ex
tinguished: for the small circle of, dispute
respecting first principles, must be always
rapidly described ; and the speculator, who
thought his course infinite, finds himself al
most instantaneously returned to the point
from which he began. But the language
of abstruse research spread over the v. hole
German style. Allusions to the most subtile
speculations were common in popular writ
ings. Bold metaphors, derived from their
peculiar philosophy, became familiar in ob
servations on literature and manners. The
style of Germany at length differed from
that of France, and even of England, more
as the literature of the East differs from that
of the West, than as that of one European
people from that of their neighbours.
Hence it partly arose, that while physical
and political Germany was so familiar to
foreigners, intellectual and literary Germany
continued almost unknown. Thirty years
ago,* there were probably in London as
many Persian as German scholars. Neither
Goethe nor Schiller conquered the repug
nance. Political confusions, a timid and
exclusive taste, and the habitual neglect of
foreign languages, excluded German litera-
* Written in 1813.— ED.
262
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ture from France. Temporary and permanent
causes contributed to banish it; after a short pe
riod of success, from England. Dramas, more
remarkable for theatrical effect, than dramati
cal genius, exhibited scenes and characters of
a paradoxical morality (on which no writer
has animadverted with more philosophical
and moral eloquence than Mad. de Stael), —
unsafe even in the quiet of the schools, but
peculiarly dangerous in the theatre, where
it comes into contact with the inflammable
passions of ignorant multitudes, — and justly
alarming to those who, with great reason,
considered domestic virtue as one of the
privileges and safeguards of the English na
tion. These moral paradoxes, which were
chiefly found among the inferior poets of
Germany, appeared at the same time with
the political novelties of the French Revolu
tion, and underwent the same fate. German
literature was branded as the accomplice of
freethinking philosophy and revolutionary
politics. It happened rather whimsically,
that we now began to throw out the same
reproaches against other nations, which the
French had directed against us in the begin
ning of the eighteenth century. We were
then charged by our polite neighbours with
the vulgarity and turbulence of rebellious
upstarts, who held nothing sacred in religion,
or stable in government j whom —
" No king could govern, and no God could
please ;''*
and whose coarse and barbarous literature
could excite only the ridicule of cultivated
nations. The political part of these charges
we applied to America, which had retained as
much as she could of our government and
laws ; and the literary part to Germany, where
literature had either been formed on our mo
dels, or moved by a kindred impulse, even
where it assumed somewhat of a different
form. The same persons who applauded
wit, and pardoned the shocking licentious
ness of English comedy, were loudest in
their clamours against the immorality of the
German theatre. In our zeal against a few
scenes, dangerous only by over-refinement,
we seemed to have forgotten the vulgar
grossness which tainted the whole brilliant
period from Fletcher to Congreve. Nor did
we sufficiently remember, that the most
daring and fantastical combinations of the
German stage, did not approach to that union
of taste and sense in the thought and expres
sion, with wildness and extravagance in the
invention of monstrous character and horrible
incident, to be found in some of our earlier
dramas, which, for their energy and beauty,
the public taste has lately called from oblivion.
The more permanent causes of the slow
and small progress of German literature in
France and England, are philosophically de
veloped in two beautiful chapters of the
present work.! A translation from German
* Absalom and Achitophel. — ED.
t Partii., chap. 1, 2.
into a language so different in its structure
and origin as French, fails, as a piece of
music composed for one sort of instrument
when performed on another. In Germany,
style, and even language, are not yet fixed.
In France, rules are despotic : " the reader
will not be amused at the expense of his
literary conscience; there alone he is scru
pulous." A German writer is above his
public, and forms it: a French writer dreads
a public already enlightened and severe ; he
constantly thinks of immediate effect ; he is
in society, even while he is composing ; and
never loses sight of the effect of his writings
on those whose opinions and pleasantries he
is accustomed to fear. The German writers
have, in a higher degree, the first requisite
for writing — the power of feeling with viva
city and force. In France, a book is read
to be spoken of, and must therefore catch
the spirit of society : in Germany, it is read
by solitary students, who seek instruction or
emotion j and, -''in the silence of retirement,
nothing seems more melancholy than the
spirit of the world." The French require a
clearness which may sometimes render their
writers superficial : arid the Germans, in the
pursuit of originality and depth, often convey
obvious thoughts in an obscure style. In
the dramatic art, the most national part of
literature, the French are distinguished in
whatever relates to the action, the intrigue,
and the interest of events : but the Germans
surpass them in representing the impressions
of the heart, and the secret storms of the
strong passions.
This work will make known to future ages
the state of Germany in the highest degree
of its philosophical and poetical activity, at
the moment before the pride of genius was
humbled by foreign conquest, or the national
mind turned from literary enthusiasm by
struggles for the restoration of independence.
The fleeting opportunity of observation at so
extraordinary a moment, has happily been
seized by one of those very few persons,
who are capable at once of observing and
painting manners, — of estimating and ex
pounding philosophical systems, — of feeling
the beauties of the most dissimilar forms of
literature, — of tracing the peculiarities -of
usages, arts, and even speculations, to their
common principle in national character, —
and of disposing them in their natural place
as features in the great portrait of a people.
The attainments of a respectable travel
ler of the second class, are, in the present
age, not uncommon. Many persons are per
fectly well qualified to convey exact infor
mation, wherever the subject can be exactly
known. But the most important objects in
a country can neither be numbered nor
measured. The naturalist gives no picture
of scenery by the most accurate catalogue
of mineral and vegetable produce ; and, after
all that the political arithmetician can tell us
of wealth and population, we continue igno
rant of the spirit which actuates them, and
of the character which modifies their appli-
REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE.
263
cation. The genius of the philosophical and
poetical traveller is of a higher order. It is
founded in the power of catching, at a rapid
glance, the physiognomy of man and of na
ture. It is, in one of its parts, an expansion
of that sagacity which seizes the character
of an individual, in his features, in his ex
pression, in his gestures, in his tones, — in
every outward sign of his thoughts and feel
ings. The application of this intuitive power
to the varied mass called a "nation," is one
of the most rare efforts of the human intel
lect. The mind and the eye must co-ope
rate, with electrical rapidity, to recall what
a nation has been, to sympathize with their
present sentiments and passions, and to trace
the workings of national character in amuse
ments, in habits, in institutions and opinions.
There appears to be an extemporaneous fa
cility of theorizing, necessary to catch the
first aspect of a new country, — the features
of which would enter the mind in absolute
confusion, if they were not immediately re
ferred to some principle, and reduced to
some system. To embody this conception,
there must exist the power of painting both
scenery and character, — of combining the
vivacity of first impression with the accuracy
of minute examination, — of placing a nation,
strongly individualized by every mark of its
mind and disposition, in the midst of ancient
monuments, clothed in its own apparel, en
gaged in its ordinary occupations and pas
times amidst its native scenes, like a grand
historical painting, with appropriate drapery,
and with the accompaniments of architecture
and landscape, which illustrate and charac
terize, as well as adorn.
The voice of Europe has already applaud
ed the genius of a national painter in the
author of Corinne. But it was there aided
by the power of a pathetic fiction, by the
variety and opposition of national character,
and by the charm of a country which unites
beauty to renown. In the work before us,
she has thrown off the aid of fiction ; she de
lineates a less poetical character, and a coun
try more interesting by expectation than by
recollection. But it is not the less certain
that it is the most vigorous effort of her
genius, and probably the most elaborate and
masculine production of the faculties of wo
man. What other woman, indeed,- (and we
may add how many men,) could have pre
served all the grace and brilliancy of Parisian
society in analyzing its nature, — explained
the most abstruse metaphysical theories of
Germany precisely, yet perspicuously and
agreeably, — and combined the eloquence
which inspires exalted sentiments of virtue,
with the enviable talent of gently indicating
the defects of men or of nations, by the skil
fully softened touches of a polite and merci
ful pleasantry "?
In a short introduction, the principal na
tions of Europe are derived from three races,
— the Sclavonic, the Latin, and the Teutonic
The imitative 'and feeble literature, — the
recent precipitate and superficial civilization
of the Sclavonic nations, sufficiently distin
guish them from the two great races. The
Latin nations, who inhabit the south of Eu
rope, are the most anciently civilized : social
"nstitutions, blended with Paganism, pre
ceded their reception of Christianity. They
have less disposition than their northern
icighbours to abstract reflection ; they un
derstand better the business arid pleasures
of the world ; they inherit the sagacity of
he Eomans in civil affairs ; and " they alone,
like those ancient masters, know how to
practice the art of domination." The Ger
manic nations, who inhabit the north of Eu
rope and the British islands, received their
ivilization with Christianity : chivalry and
the middle ages are the subjects of their
traditions and legends; their natural genius
is more Gothic than classical; they are dis
tinguished by independence and good faith,
by seriousness both in their talents and
character, rather than by address or vivacity.
" The social dignity which the English owe
to their political constitution, places them at
the head of Teutonic nations, but does not
exempt them from the character of the race."
The literature of the Latin nations is copied
from the ancients, and retains the original
colour of their polytheism: that of the na
tions of Germanic origin has a chivalrous
basis, and is modified by a spiritual religion.
The French and Germans are at the two ex
tremities of the chain; the French con
sidering outward objects, and the Germans
thought and feeling, as the prime movers of
the moral world. "The French, the most
cultivated of Latin nations, inclines to a clas
sical poetry : the English, the most illustri
ous of Germanic ones, delights in a poetry
more romantic and chivalrous."
The theory which \ve have thus abridged
is most ingenious, and exhibits in the live
liest form the distinction between different
systems of literature and manners. It is
partly true ; for the principle of race is
doubtless one of the most important in the
history of mankind ; and the first impressions
on the susceptible character of rude tribes
may be traced in the qualities of their most
civilized descendants. But, considered as
an exclusive and universal theory, it is not
secure against the attacks of sceptical inge
nuity. The facts do not seem entirely to
correspond with it. It was among the Latin
nations of the South, that chivalry and ro
mance first flourished. Provence was the
earliest seat of romantic poetry. A chival
rous literature predominated in Italy during
the most brilliant period of Italian genius.
The poetry of the Spanish peninsula seems
to have been more romantic and less sub
jected to classical bondage than that of any
other part of Europe. On the contrary, chi
valry, which was the refinement of the mid
dle age, penetrated more slowly into the
countries of the North. In general, the
character of the literature of each European
nation seems extremely to depend upon the
period at which it had reached its highest
264
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
point of cultivation. Spanish and Italian
poetry flourished while Europe was still chi
valrous. French literature attained its high
est splendour after the Grecian and Roman
writers had become the object of universal
reverence. The Germans cultivated their
poetry a hundred years later, when the study
of antiquity had revived the knowledge of
the Gothic sentiments and principles. Na
ture produced a chivalrous poetry in the six
teenth century; — learning in the eighteenth.
Perhaps the history of English poetry reflects
the revolution of European taste more dis
tinctly than that of any other nation. We
have successively cultivated a Gothic poetry
from nature, a classical poetry from imita
tion, and a second Gothic from the study of
our own ancient poets.
To this consideration it must be added,
that Catholic and Protestant nations must
differ in their poetical system. The festal
shows and legendary polytheism of the Ca
tholics had the effect of a sort of Christian
Paganism. The Protestant poetry was spirit
ualized by the genius of their worship, and
was undoubtedly exalted by the daily peru
sal of translations of the sublime poems of
the Hebrews. — a discipline, without which it
is probable that the nations of the West
never could have been prepared to endure
Oriental poetry. In justice, however, to the
ingenious theory of Mad. de Stael, it ought
to be observed, that the original character
ascribed by her to the Northern nations,
must have disposed them to the adoption of
a Protestant faith and worship: while the
Popery of the South was naturally preserved
by an early disposition to a splendid ceremo
nial, and a various and flexible mythology.
The work is divided into four parts: — on
Germany and German Manners; on Litera
ture and the Arts; on Philosophy and Mo
rals; on Religion and Enthusiasm.
The first is the most perfect in its kind,
belongs the most entirely to the genius of
the writer, and affords the best example of
the talent for painting nations which we
have attempted to describe. It seems also.
as far as foreign critics can presume to de
cide, to be in the most finished style of any
composition of the author, and more se
curely to bid defiance to that minute criti
cism, which, in other works, her genius
rather disdained than propitiated. The Ger
mans are a just, constant, and sincere peo
ple ; with great power of imagination and
reflection ; without brilliancy in society, or
address in affairs; slow, and easily intimi
dated in action ; adventurous and fearless in
speculation ; often uniting enthusiasm for
the elegant arts with little progress in the
manners and refinements of life; more ca
pable of being inflamed by opinions than by
interests; obedient to authority, rather from
an orderly and mechanical character than
from servility ; having learned to value li
berty neither by the enjoyment of it. nor by
severe oppression; divested by the nature
of their governments^ and the division of
their territories, of patriotic pride : too prone
in the relations of domestic life, to substitute
fancy and feeling for positive duty ; not un-
frequently combining a natural character
writh artificial manners, and much real feel
ing with affected enthusiasm: divided by
the sternness of feudal demarcation into an
unlettered nobility, unpolished scholar, and a
depressed commonalty; and exposing them
selves to derision, when, with their grave and
clumsy honesty, they attempt to copy the
lively and dexterous profligacy of their South
ern neighbours.
In the plentiful provinces of Southern Ger
many, where religion, as well as government,
shackle the activity of speculation, the peo
ple have sunk into a sort of lethargic comfort
and stupid enjoyment. It is a heavy and
monotonous country, with no arts, except the
national art of instrumental music. — no lite
rature, — a rude utterance, — no society, or
only crowded assemblies, which seemed to
be brought together for ceremonial, more
than for pleasure, — "an obsequious polite
ness towards an aristocracy without ele
gance." In Austria, more especially, are
seen a calm and languid mediocrity in sensa
tions and desires, — a people mechanical in
their very sports, " whose existence is neither
disturbed nor exalted by guilt or genius, by
intolerance or enthusiasm," — a phlegmatic
administration, inflexibly adhering to its an
cient course, and repelling knowledge, on
\vhich the vigour of states must now depend,
— great societies of amiable and respectable
persons — which suggest the reflection, that
" in retirement monotony composes the soul;
but in the world it wearies the mind.'"
In the rigorous climate and gloomy towns
of Protestant Germany only, the national
mind is displayed. There the whole litera
ture and philosophy are assembled. Berlin
is slowly rising to be the capital of enlight
ened Germany. The Duchess of Weimar,
who compelled Napoleon to respect her in
the intoxication of victory, has changed her
little capital into a seat of knowledge and
elegance, under the auspices of Goethe,
Wieland, and Schiller. No European pa
lace has assembled so refined a society since
some of the small Italian courts of the six
teenth century. It is only by the Protestant
province's of the North that Germany is known
as a lettered and philosophical country.
Moralists and philosophers have often re
marked, that licentious gallantry is fatal to
love, and destructive of the importance of
women. "I will venture to assert," says
Mad. de Stael, "against the received opinion,
that France was perhaps, of all the countries
of the world, that in which women had the
least happiness in love. It was called the
'paradise' of women, because they enjoyed
the greatest liberty; but that liberty arose
from the negligent profligacy of the other
sex." The observations* which follow this
remarkable testimony are so beautiful and
* Part i. chap. 4.
REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE.
265
forcible, that they ought to be engraven on
the mind of every woman disposed to mur
mur at those restraints which maintain the
dignity of womanhood.
Some enthusiasm, saj-s Mad. de Stael, or,
in other words, some high passion, capable
of actuating multitudes, has been felt by
every people, at those epochs of their na
tional existence, which are distinguished by
great acts. Four periods are very remark
able in the progress of the European world :
the heroic ages which founded civilization j
republican patriotism, which was the glory
of antiquity; chivalry, the martial religion
of Europe ; and the love of liberty, of which
the history began about the period of the
Reformation. The chivalrous impression is
worn out in Germany; and, in future, says
this 'jf.'nerous and enlightened writer, "no
thing great will be accomplished in that
country, but by the liberal impulse which
has in Europe succeeded to chivalry."
The society and manners of Germany are
continually illustrated by comparison or con
trast with those of France. Some passages
and chapters on this subject, together with
the author's brilliant preface to the thoughts
of the Prince de Ligne. may be considered
as the first contributions towards a theory of
the talent — if we must not say of the art —
of conversation, which affords so considerable
a part of the most liberal enjoyments of re
fined life. Those, indeed, who affect a Spar
tan or monastic severity in their estimate of
the society of capitals, may almost condemn
a talent, which in their opinion only adorns
vice. But that must have a moral tendency
which raises society from slander or intoxi
cation, to any contest and rivalship of mental
power. Wit and grace are perhaps the only
means which could allure the thoughtless
into the neighbourhood of reflection, and
inspire them with some admiration for supe
riority of mind. Society is the only school
in which the indolence of the great will
submit to learn. Refined conversation is at
least sprinkled with literature, and directed,
more often than the talk of the vulgar, to
objects of general interest. That talent can
not really be frivolous which affords the
channel through which some knowledge, or
even some respect for knowledge, may be'in-
sinuated into minds incapable of labour, and
whose tastes so materially influence the com
munity. Satirical pictures of the vices of a
great society create a vulgar prejudice against
their most blameless and virtuous pleasures.
But, whatever may be the vice of London or
Paris, it is lessened, not increased, by the
cultivation of every liberal talent which in
nocently fills their time, and tends, in some
measure, to raise them above malice and sen
suality. And there is a considerable illusion
in the provincial estimate of the immoralities
of the capital. These immoralities are public,
from the rank of the parties ; and they are
rendered more conspicuous by the celebrity,
or perhaps by the talents, of some of them.
Men of letters, and women of wit. describe
34
their own sufferings with eloquence, — the
faults of others, and sometimes their own,
with energy : their descriptions interest every
reader, and are circulated throughout Eu
rope. But it does not follow that the mise
ries or the faults are greater or more frequent
than those of obscure and vulgar persons,
whose sufferings and vices are known to
nobody, and would be uninteresting if they
were known.
The second, and most generally amusing,
as well as the largest part of this work, is
an animated sketch of the literary history
of Germany, with criticisms on the most
celebrated German poets and poems, inter
spersed with reflections equally original and
beautiful, tending to cultivate a comprehen
sive taste in the fine arts, and to ingraft the
love of virtue on the sense of beauty. Of the
poems criticised, some are well known to
most of our readers. The earlier pieces of
Schiller are generally read in translations of
various merit, though, except the Robbers,
they are not by the present taste of German v
placed in the first class of his works, luo
versions of Leonora, of Oberon, of Wallen-
stein, of Nathan, and of Iphigenia in Tauris,
are among those which do the most honour
to English literature. Goetz of Berlichingen
has been vigorously rendered by a writer,
whose chivalrous genius, exerted upon some
what similar scenes of British history, has
since rendered him the most popular poet of
his age.
An epic poem, or a poetical romance, has
lately been discovered in Germany, entitled
1 Niebelungen,' on the Destruction of the
Burgundians by Attila; and it is believed,
that at least some parts of it were composed
not long after the event, though the whole
did not assume its present shape till the
completion of the vernacular languages about
the beginning of the thirteenth century. Lu
ther's version of the Scriptures was an epoch
in German literature. One of the innumera
ble blessings of the Reformation was to
make reading popular by such translations,
and to accustom the people to weekly at
tempts at some sort of argument or declama
tion in their native tongue. The vigorous
mind of the great Reformer gave to his trans
lation an energy and conciseness, which made
it a model in style, as well as an authority
in language. Hagedorn, Weiss, and Gellert,
copied the French without vivacity ; and
Bodrner imitated the English without genius.
At length Klopstock, an imitator of Milton,
formed a German poetry, and Wieland im
proved the language and versification : though
this last accomplished writer has somewhat
suffered in his reputation, by the recent zeal
of the Germans against the imitation of any
foreign, but especially of the French school,
" The genius of Klopstock was inflamed by
the perusal of Milton and Young." This
combination of names is astonishing to an
English ear. It creates a presumption against
the poetical sensibility of Klopstock, to find
that he combined two poets, placed at an
266
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
immeasurable distance from each other ; and
whose whole superficial resemblance arises
from some part of Milton's subject, and from
the doctrines of their theology, rather than
the spirit of their religion. Through all the
works of Young, written with such a variety
of temper and manner, there predominates
one talent. — inexhaustible wit, \vith little
soundness of reason or depth of sensibility.
His melancholy is artificial : and his combi
nations are as grotesque and fantastic in his
Night Thoughts as in his Satires. How ex
actly does a poet characterise his own talent,
who opens a series of poetical meditations
on death and immortality, by a satirical epi
gram against the selfishness of the world ?
Wit and ingenuity are the only talents which
Milton disdained. He is simple in his con
ceptions, even when his diction is overloaded
with gorgeous learning. He is never gloomy
but when he is grand. He is the painter of
love, as well as of terror. He did not aim at
mirth; but he is cheerful whenever he de
scends from higher feelings: and nothing
tenus more to inspire a calm and constant
delight, than the contemplation of that ideal
purity and grandeur which he, above all
poets, had the faculty of bestowing on every
form of moral nature. Klopstock's ode on
the rivalship of the muse of Germany with
the muse of Albion, is elegantly translated
by Mad. de Stael : and we applaud her taste
for preferring prose to verse in French trans
lations of German poems.
After having spoken of Winkelmann and
Lessing, the most perspicuous, concise, and
lively of German prose-\vriters; she proceeds
to Schiller and Goethe, the greatest of Ger
man poets. Schiller presents only the genius
of a great poet, and the character of a vir
tuous man. The original, singular, and rather
admirable than amiable mind of Goethe, —
his dictatorial power over national literature,
— his inequality, caprice, originality, and fire
in conversation, — his union of a youthful
imagination with exhausted sensibility, and
the impartiality of a stern sagacity, neither
influenced by opinions nor predilections, are
painted with extraordinary skill.
Among the tragedies of Schiller which
have appeared since we have ceased to trans
late German dramas, the most celebrated are,
Mary Stuart, Joan of Arc, and William Tell.
Such subjects as Mary Stuart generally ex
cite an expectation which cannot be grati
fied. We agree with Madame de Stael in
admiring many scenes of Schiller's Mary,
and especially her noble farewell to Leices
ter. But the tragedy would probably dis
please English readers, to say nothing of spec
tators. Our political disputes have given a
more inflexible reality to the events of Eliza
beth's reign, than history would otherwise
have bestowed on facts equally modern.
Neither of our parties could endure a Mary
who confesses the murder of her husband, or
an Elizabeth who instigates the assassination
of her prisoner. In William Tell, Schiller
has avoided the commonplaces of a repub
lican conspiracy, and faithfully represented
the indignation of an oppressed Helvetian
Highlander.
Egmont is considered by Mad. de Stael as
the finest of Goethe's tragedies, written, like
Werther, in the enthusiasm of his youth. It
is rather singular that poets have availed
themselves so little of the chivalrous charac
ter, the illustrious love, and the awful mala
dy of Tasso. The Torquato Tasso of Goethe
is the only attempt to convert this subject to
the purposes of the drama. Two men of ge
nius, of very modern times, have suffered in
a somewhat similar manner: but the habits
of Rousseau's life were vulgar, and the suf
ferings of Cowper are both recent and sacred.
The scenes translated from Faust well repre
sent the terrible energy of that most odious
of the works of genius, in which the whole
power of imagination is employed to dispel
the charms which poetry bestows on human
life, — where the punishment of vice proceeds
from cruelty without justice, and "where
the remorse seems as infernal as the guilt."
Since the death of Schiller, and the deser
tion of the drama by Goethe, several tragic
writers have appeared, the most celebrated
of whom are Werner, the author of Luther
and of Attila, Gerstenberg, Klinger, Tieck,
Collin, and Oehlenschlager, a Dane, who has
introduced into his poetry the terrible my
thology of Scandinavia.
The result of the chapter on Comedy
seems to be, that the comic genius has not
yet arisen in Germany. German novels have
been more translated into English than other
works of literature j and a novel by Tieck,
entitled 'Sternbald,' seems to deserve trans
lation. Jean Paul Richter. a popular novel
ist, but too national to bear translation, said,
" that the French had the empire of the land,
the English that of the sea, and the Germans
that of the air."
Though Schiller wrote the History of the
Belgic Revolt, and of the Thirty Years' War,
with eloquence and the spirit of liberty, the
only classical writer in this department is
J. de Muller, the historian of Switzerland.
Though born in a speculative age, he has
chosen the picturesque and dramatic manner
of ancient historians : and his minute erudi
tion in the annals of the Middle Aires sup
plies his imagination with the particulars
which characterise persons and actions. He
abuses his extent of knowledge and power
of detail; he sometimes affects the senten-
tiousness' of Tacitus; and his pursuit of
antique phraseology occasionally degenerates
into affectation. But his diction is in general
grave and severe ; and in his posthumous
Abridgment of Universal History, he has
I shown great talents for that difficult sort of
composition, — the powder of comprehensive
outline, of compression without obscurity, of
painting characters by few and grand strokes,
and of disposing events so skilfully, that
their causes and effects are seen without
being pointed out. Like Sallust, another
affecter of archaism, and declaimer against
REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE.
267
his age, his private and political life is said
to have been repugnant to his historical mo
rality. "The reader of Muller is desirous
of believing that of all the virtues which he
strongly felt in the composition of his works,
there were at least some which he perma
nently possessed."
The estimate of literary Germany wxrnld
not be complete, without the observation that
it possesses a greater number of laborious
scholars, and of useful books, than any other
country. The possession of other languages
may open more literary enjoyment : the Ger
man is assuredly the key to most knowledge.
The works of Fulleborn, Buhle, Tiedemann,
and Tennemann, are the first attempts to
form a philosophical history of philosophy, of
which the learned compiler Brucker had no
more conception than a monkish annalist of
rivalling Hume. The philosophy of literary
history is one of the most recently opened
fields of speculation. A few beautiful frag
ments of it are among the happiest parts of
Hume's Essays. The great work of Madame
de Stael On Literature, was the first attempt
on a bold and extensive scale. In the neigh
bourhood of her late residence,* and perhaps
not uninfluenced by her spirit, two writers of
great merit, though of dissimilar character,
have very recently treated various parts of
this wide subject; M. de Sismondi, in his
History of the Literature of the South, and
M. de Barante, in his Picture of French
Literature during the Eighteenth Century.
Sismondi, guided by Bouterweck and Schle-
gel, hazards larger views, indulges his talent
for speculation, and seems with difficulty to
suppress that bolder spirit, and those more
liberal principles, which breathe in his His
tory of the Italian Republics. Barante, more
thoroughly imbued with the elegancies and
the prejudices of his national literature, feels
more delicately the peculiarities of great
writers, and traces with a more refined saga
city the immediate effects of their writings.
But his work, under a very ingenious dis
guise of literary criticism, is an attack on the
opinions of the eighteenth century; and it
will assuredly never be honoured by the dis
pleasure either of Napoleon, or of any of his
successors in absolute power.
One of our authoress' chapters is chiefly
employed on the works and system of Wil
liam and Frederic Schlegel; — of whom Wil
liam is celebrated for his Lectures on Dra
matic Poetry, for his admirable translation
of Shakespeare, and for versions, said to be
of equal excellence, of the Spanish dramatic
poets ; and Frederic, besides his other merits,
has the very singular* distinction of having
acquired the Sanscrit language, and studied
the Indian learning and science in Europe,
chiefly by the aid of a British Orientalist,
long detained as a prisoner at Paris. The
general tendency of the literary system of
these critics, is towards the manners, poetry,
and religion of the Middle Ages. They have
* Coppet, near Geneva.
reached the extreme point towards which
the general sentiment of Europe has been
impelled by the calamities of a philosophical
revolution, and the various fortunes of a
twenty years' universal war. They are pe
culiarly adverse to French literature, which,
since the age of Louis XIV., has, in their
opinion, weakened the primitive principles
common to all Christendom, as well as di
vested the poetry of each people of its origi
nality and character. Their system is exag
gerated and exclusive : in pursuit of national
originality, they lose sight of the primary and
universal beauties of art. The imitation of
our own antiquities may be as artificial as
the copy of a foreign literature. Nothing is
less natural than a modern antique. In a
comprehensive system of literature, there is
sufficient place for the irregular works of
sublime genius, and for the faultless models
of classical taste. From age to age, the
multitude fluctuates between various and
sometimes opposite fashions of literary ac
tivity. These are not all of equal value ; but
the philosophical critic discovers and admires
the common principles of beauty, from which
they all derive their power over human
nature.
The Third Part of this work is the most
singular. An account of metaphysical sys
tems by a woman, is a novelty in the history
of the human mind ; and whatever may be
thought of its success in some of its parts, it
must be regarded on the wThole as the boldest
effort of the female intellect. It must, how
ever, not be forgotten, that it is a contribution
rather to the history of human nature, than
to that of speculation ; and that it considers
the source, spirit, and moral influence of
metaphysical opinions, more than their truth
or falsehood. " Metaphysics are at least
the gymnastics of the understanding." The
common-place clamour of mediocrity will
naturally be excited by the sex, and even
by the genius of the author. Every example
of vivacity and grace, every exertion of fancy,
every display of eloquence, every effusion
of sensibility, will be cited as a presumption
against the depth of her researches, and the
accuracy of hep statements. On such prin
ciples, the evidence against her would doubt
less be conclusive. But dulness is not
accuracy; nor are ingenious and elegant
writers therefore superficial : and those who
are best acquainted writh the philosophical
revolutions of Germany, will be most aston
ished at the genera] correctness of this short,
clear, and agreeable exposition.
The character of Lord Bacon is a just and
noble tribute to his genius. Several eminent
writers of the Continent have, however,
lately fallen into the mistake of ascribing
to him a system of opinions respecting the
origin and first principles of human know
ledge. .What distinguishes him among great
philosophers is, that he taught no peculiar
opinions, but wholly devotedThimself to the
improvement of the method of philosophising.
He belongs neither to the English nor any
268
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
other school of metaphysics ; for he was not
a metaphysician. Mr. Locke was not a
moralist' and his collateral discussions of
ethical subjects are not among the valuable
parts of his great work. "The works of
Dugald Stewart contain so perfect a theory
of the intellectual faculties, that it may be
considered as the natural history of a moral
being." The French metaphysicians of the
eighteenth century, since Condillac, deserve
the contempt expressed for them, by their
shallow, precipitate, and degrading misap
plications of the Lockian philosophy. It is
impossible to abridge the abridgment here
given of the Kantian philosophy, or of those
systems which have arisen from it. and
which continue to dispute the supremacy of
the speculative world. The opinions of Kant
are more fully stated, because he has changed
the general manner of thinking, and has given
a new direction to the national mind. Those
of Fichte, Schelling, and his other successors,
it is of less importance to the proper purpose
of this work to detail ; because, though their
doctrines be new, they continue and produce
the same effect on national character, and
the same influence on sciences and arts.
The manner of philosophising remains the
same in the Idealism of Fichte, and in the
Pan theism of Schelling. Under various names
and forms, it is the general tendency of the
German philosophy to consider thought not
as the produce of objects, or as one of the
elasses of phenomena, but as the agent which
exhibits the appearance of the outward world,
and which regulates those operations which
it seems only to represent. The philosophy
of the human understanding is, in all coun
tries, acknowledged to contain the principles
of all sciences; but in Germany, metaphysi
cal speculation pervades their application to
particulars.
The subject of the Fourth Part is the state
of religion, and the nature of all those disin
terested and exalted sentiments which are
here comprehended under the name of 'en
thusiasm.' A contemplative people like the
Germans have in their character the principle
which disposes men to religion. The Re
formation, which was their Revolution, arose
from ideas. (i Of all the great men whom
Germany has produced, Luther has the most
German character. His firmness had some
thing rude ; his conviction made him opinion
ated ; intellectual boldness was the source
of his courage ; in action, the ardour of his
passions did not divert him from abstract
studies; and though he attacked certain dog
mas and practices, he was not urged to the
attack by incredulity, but by enthusiasm."
'•' The right of examining wrhat we ought
to believe, is the foundation of Protestanism."
Though each of the first Reformers esta
blished a practical Popery in his own church,
opinions were gradually liberalised, and the
temper of sects was softened. Little open
incredulity had appeared in Germany; and
even Lessing speculated with far more cir
cumspection than had been observed by a
series of English writers from Hobbes to
Bolingbroke. Secret unbelievers were friend
ly to Christianity and Protestantism,as institu
tions beneficial to mankind, and far removed
from that anti-religious fanaticism which was
more naturally provoked in France by the
intolerant spirit and invidious splendour of a
Catholic hierarchy.
The reaction of the French Revolution has
been felt throughout Europe, in religion as
well as in politics. Many of the higher
classes adopted some portion of those religi
ous sentiments of which they at first assumed
the exterior, as a badge of their hostility to
the fashions of France. The sensibility of
the multitude, impatient of cold dogmatism
and morality, eagerly sought to be once more
roused by a religion which employed popular
eloquence, and spoke to imagination and
emotion. The gloom of general convulsions
and calamities created a disposition to seri
ousness, and to the consolations of piety ; and
the disasters of a revolution allied to incredu
lity, threw a more than usual discredit and
odium on irreligious opinions. In Great
Britain, these causes have acted most con
spicuously on the inferior classes; though
they have also powerfully affected many en
lightened and accomplished individuals of a
higher condition. In France, they have pro
duced in some -men of letters the play of a
sort of poetical religion round the fancy : but
the general effect seems to have been a dis
position to establish a double doctrine, — a
system of infidelity for the initiated, with a
contemptuous indulgence .and even active
encouragement of superstition among the
vulgar, like that which prevailed among the
ancients before the rise of Christianity. This
sentiment (from the revival of which the
Lutheran Reformation seems to have pre
served Europe), though not so furious and
frantic as the atheistical fanaticism of the
Reign of Terror, is, beyond any permanent
condition of human society, destructive of
ingenuousness, good faith, and probity, — of
intellectual courage, and manly character. —
and of that respect for all human beings,
without which there can be no justice or
humanity from the powerful towards the
humble.
In Germany the effects have been also very
remarkable. Some men of eminence in lite
rature have become Catholics. In general,
their tendency is towards a pious mysticism,
which almost equally loves every sect where
a devotional spirit prevails. They have re
turned rather to sentiment than to dogma, —
more to religion than to theology. Their
disposition to religious feeling, which they
call : religiosity,' is, to use the words of a
strictly orthodox English theologian, "a love
of divine things for the beauty of their moral
qualities." It is the love of the good and
fair, wherever it exists, but chiefly when ab
solute and boundless excellence is contem
plated in " the first good, first perfect, first
fair." This moral enthusiasm easily adapts
itself to the various ceremonies of worship,
REVIEW OF DE L'ALLEMAGNE.
269
and even systems of opinion prevalent among
mankind. The devotional spirit, contemplat
ing different parts of the order of nature, or
influenced by a different temper of mind,
may give rise to very different and apparently
repugnant theological doctrines. These doc
trines are considered as modification* of
human nature, under the influence of the re
ligious principle, — not as propositions which
argument can either establish or confute, or
reconcile with each other. The Ideal phi
losophy favours this singular manner of con
sidering the subject. As it leaves no reality
but in the mind, it lessens the distance be
tween belief and imagination; and disposes
its adherents to regard opinions as the mere
play of the understanding, — incapable of
being measured by any outward standard,
and important chiefly from reference to the
sentiment, from which they spring, and on
which they powerfully react. The union of
a mystical piety, with a philosophy verging
towards idealism, has accordingly been ob
served in periods of the history of the human
understanding, very distant from each other,
and, in most of their other circumstances,
extremely dissimilar. The same language,
respecting the annihilation of self, and of the
world, may be used by the sceptic and by
the enthusiast. Among the Hindu philoso
phers in the most ancient times, — among the
Sufis in modern Persia, — during the ferment
of Eastern arid Western opinions, which pro
duced the latter Platonism, — in Malebranche
and his English disciple Norris, — and in
Berkeley himself, though in a tempered and
mitigated state, — the tendency to this union
may be distinctly traced. It seems, how
ever, to be fitted only for few men ; and for
them not long. Sentiments so sublime, and
so distant from the vulgar affairs and boister
ous passions of men, may be preserved for a
time, in the calm solitude of a contemplative
visionary ; but in the bustle of the world
they are likely soon to evaporate, when they
are neither embodied in opinions, nor adorned
by ceremonies, nor animated by the attack
and defence of controversy. When the ar
dour of a short-lived enthusiasm has subsided,
the poetical philosophy which exalted fancy
to the level of belief, may probably leave the
same ultimate result with the argumentative
scepticism which lowered belief to the level
of fancy.
An ardent susceptibility of every disinte
rested sentiment, — more especially of every
social affection, — blended by the power of
imagination with a passionate love of the
beautiful, the grand, and the good, is, under
the name of l enthusiasm,' the subject of the
conclusion, — the most eloquent part (if we
perhaps except the incomparable chapter on
1 Conjugal Love,) of a work which, for variety
of knowledge, flexibility of power, elevation
of view, and comprehension of mind, is un
equal among the works of women; and
which, in the union of the graces of society
and literature with the genius of philosophy,
•s not surpassed by many among those of
men. To affect any tenderness in pointing
out its defects or faults, would be an absurd
assumption of superiority : it has no need
of mercy. The most obvious and general
objection will be, that the Germans are too
much praised. But every writer must be
allowed to value his subject somewhat higher
than the spectator : unless the German feel
ings had been adopted, they could not have
been forcibly represented. It will also be
found, that the objection is more apparent
than real. Mad. de Stael is indeed the most
generous of critics: but she almost always
speaks the \vhole truth to intelligent ears ;
though she often hints the unfavourable parts
of it so gently and politely, that they may
escape the notice of a hasty reader, and be
scarcely perceived by a gross understanding.
A careful reader, who brings together all
the observations intentionally scattered over
various parts of the book, will find sufficient
justice (though administered in mercy) in
whatever respects manners or literature. It
is on subjects of philosophy that the admi
ration will perhaps justly be considered as
more undistinguishing. Something of the
wonder excited by novelty in language and
opinion still influences her mind. Many
writers have acquired philosophical celebrity
in Germany, who, if they had written with
equal power, would have been unnoticed or
soon forgotten in England. Our theosophists,
the Hutchinsonians, had as many men of
talent among them, as those whom M. de
Stael has honoured by her mention among
the Germans : but they have long since irre
coverably sunk into oblivion. There is a
writer now alive in England,* who has pub
lished doctrines not dissimilar to those which
Mad. de Stael ascribes to Schelling. Not
withstanding the allurements of a singular
character, and an unintelligible style, his
paradoxes are probably not known to a dozen
persons in this busy country of industry and
ambition. In a bigoted age, he might have
suffered the martyrdom of Vanini or Bruno :
in a metaphysical country, where a new
publication was the most interesting event,
and where twenty universities, unfettered
by Church or State, were hotbeds of specu
lation, he might have acquired celebrity as
the founder of a sect.
In this as in the other writings of Mad. de
Stael, the reader (or at least the lazy English
reader) is apt to be wearied by too constant
a demand upon his admiration. It seems
to be part of her literary system, that the
pauses of eloquence must be filled up by
ingenuity. Nothing plain and unornamented
is left in composition. But we desire a plain
groundwork, from which wit or eloquence is
to arise, when the occasion calls them forth.
The effect would be often greater if the ta -
lent were less. The natural power of inte
resting scenes or events over the heart, is
somewhat disturbed by too uniform a colour
* Probably Mr. William Taylor, of Norwich.
—ED.
x2
270
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of sentiment, and by the constant pursuit of
uncommon reflections or ingenious turns.
The eye is dazzled by unvaried brilliancy.
We long for the grateful vicissitude of repose.
In the statement of facts and reasonings,
no style is more clear than that of Mad. de
Stael ; — what is so lively must indeed be
clear : bat in the expression of sentiment
she has been often thought to use vague lan
guage. In expressing either intense degrees,
or delicate shades, or intricate combinations
of feeling, the common reader will seldom
understand that of which he has never been
conscious; and the writer placed on the ex
treme frontiers of human nature, is in dan
ger of mistaking chimeras for realities, or of
failing in a struggle to express what language
does not afford the means of describing.
There is also a vagueness incident to the
language of feeling, which is not so properly
a defect, as a quality which distinguishes it
from the language of thought. Very often
in poetry, and sometime^ in eloquence, it is
the office of words, not so much to denote a
succession of separate ideas, as, like musical
sounds, to inspire a series of emotions, or to
produce a durable tone of sentiment. The
terms -perspicuity' and ( precision,' which
denote the relations of language to intellec
tual discernment, are inapplicable to it when
employed as the mere vehicle of a succes
sion of feelings. A series of words may, in
this manner, be very expressive, where few
of them singly convey a precise meaning :
and men of greater intellect than suscepti
bility, in such passages as those of Mad. de
Stael, — where eloquence is employed chiefly
to inspire feeling, — unjustly charge their own
defects to that cfeep, moral, and poetical sen
sibility with which they are unable to sym
pathise.
The few persons in Great Britain who
continue to take an interest in speculative
philosophy, will certainly complain of some
injustice in her estimate of German meta
physical systems. The moral painter of
nations is indeed more authorised than the
speculative philosopher to try these opinions
by their tendencies and results. When the
logical consequences of an opinion are false,
the opinion itself must also be false : but
whether the supposed pernicious influence
of the adoption, or habitual contemplation
of an opinion, be a legitimate objection to
the opinion itself, is a question which has
not yet been decided to the general satis
faction, nor perhaps even stated with suffi
cient precision.
There are certain facts in human nature,
derived either from immediate consciousness
or unvarying observation, which are more
certain than the conclusions of any abstract
reasoning, and which metaphysical theories
are destined only to explain. That a theory
is at variance with such facts, and logically
leads to the denial of their existence, is a
trictly philosophical objection to the theory:
— that there is a real distinction between
right and wrong, in some measure appre
hended and felt by all men, — that moral
sentiments and disinterested affections, how
ever originating, are actually a part of our
nature. — that praise and blame, reward and
punishment, may be properly bestowed on
actions according to^their moral character. —
are principles as much more indubitable as
they are more important than any theoretical
conclusions. Whether they be demonstrated
by reason, or perceived by intuition, or re
vealed by a primitive sentiment, they are
equally indispensable parts of every sound
mind. But the mere inconvenience or dan
ger of an opinion can never be allowed as
an argument against its truth. It is indeed
the duty of every good man to present to
the public what he believes to be truth, in
such a manner as may least wound the feel
ings, or disturb the principles of the simple
and the ignorant : and that duty is not always
easily reconcilable with the duties of sincer
ity and free inquiry. The collision of such
conflicting duties is the painful and inevitable
consequence of the ignorance of the mul
titude, and of the immature state, even in
the highest minds, of the great talent for
presenting truth under all its aspects, and
adapting it to all the degrees of capacity or
varieties of prejudice which distinguish men.
That talent must one day be formed ; and
wre may be perfectly assured that the whole
of truth can never be injurious to the whole
of virtue. In the mean time philosophers
would act more magnanimously, and there
fore, perhaps, more wisely, if they were to
suspend, during discussion,* their moral
anger against doctrines which they deem
pernicious; and, while they estimate actions,
habits, and institutions, by their tendency.
to weigh opinions in the mere balance of
reason. Virtue in action may require the
impulse of sentiment, and even of enthu
siasm : but in theoretical researches, her
champions must not appear to decline the
combat on any ground chosen by their ad
versaries, and least of all on that of intellect.
To call 'in the aid of popular feelings in
philosophical contests, is some avo\val of
weakness. It seems a more magnanimous
wisdom to defy attack from every quarter,
and by every weapon; and to use no topics
which can be thought to imply an unworthy
doubt whether the principles of virtue be
impregnable by argument, or to betray an
irreverent distrust of the final and perfect
harmony between morality and truth.
* The observation may be applied to Ciceio and
Stewart, as well as to Mad. de. Stael.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
271
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES
OF
THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
CHAPTER I.
General state of affairs at home — Abroad. —
Characters of the Ministry. — Sunderland. —
Rochester. — Halifax, — Godolphin. — Jef
freys. — Fever sham. — His conduct after the
victory of Sedgcmoor. — Kirke. — Judicial
proceedings in the West. — Trials of Mrs.
Lisle. — Behaviour of the King. — Trial of
Mrs. Gaunt and others. — Case of Hampden.
— Prideaux, — Lord Brandon, — Dclamere.
THOUGH a straggle with calamity strength
ens and elevates the mind, the necessity of
passive submission to long adversity is rather
likely to weaken and subdue it : great mis
fortunes disturb the understanding perhaps
as much as great success • and extraordinary
vicissitudes often produce the opposite vices
of rashness and tearfulness by inspiring a
disposition to trust too much to fortune, and
to yield to it too soon. Few men experienced
more sudden changes of fortune than James
II. ; but it was unfortunate for his character
that he never owed his prosperity, and not
always his adversity, to himself. The affairs
of his family seemed to be at the lowest ebb
a few months before their triumphant restora
tion. Four years before the death of his
brother, it appeared probable that he would
be excluded from the succession to the
crown ; and his friends seemed to have no
other means of averting that doom, than by
proposing such limitations of the royal pre
rogative as would have reduced the govern
ment to a merely nominal monarchy. But
the dissolution by which Charles had safely
and successfully punished the independence
of his last Parliament, the destruction of some
of his most formidable opponents, and the
general discouragement of their adherents,
paved the way for his peaceable, and even
popular, succession : the defeat of the revolts
of Monmouth and Argyle appeared to have
fixed his throne on immovable foundations ;
and he was then placed in circumstances
more favourable than those of any of his
predecessors to the extension of his power,
or, if such had been his purpose, to the un
disturbed exercise of his constitutional autho
rity. The friends of liberty, dispirited by
events which all, in a greater or less degree,
brought discredit upon their cause, were
confounded with unsuccessful conspirators
and defeated rebels : they seemed to be at
the mercy of a prince, who, with reason,
considered them as the irreconcilable ene
mies of his designs. The zealous partisans
i of monarchy believed themselves on the eve
! of reaping the fruits of a contest of fifty
I years' duration, under a monarch of mature
I experience, of tried personal courage, who
! possessed a knowledge of men, and a capa-
Icity as well as an inclination for biujmess ;
whose constancy, intrepidity, and sternness
were likely to establish their political prin
ciples ; and from whose prudence, as well as
I gratitude and good faith, they were willing
! to hope that he would not disturb the secu
rity of their religion. The turbulence of the
preceding times had more than usually dis
posed men of pacific temper to support an
j established government. The multitude,
pleased with a new reign, generally disposed
j to admire vigour and to look with compla-
' cency on success, showed many symptoms
I of that propensity which is natural to them,
i or rather to mankind, — to carry their ap-
I plauses to the side of fortune, and to imbibe
1 the warmest passions of a victorious part}'.
The strength of the Tories in a Parliament
assembled in such a temper of the nation,
was aided by a numerous reinforcement of
members of low condition and subservient
character, whom the forfeiture of the char
ters of towns enabled the Court to pour into
the House of Commons.* In Scotland the
prevalent party had ruled with such barba
rity that the absolute power of the King
seemed to be their only shield against the
resentment of their countrymen. The Irish
nation, devotedly attached to a sovereign of
their own oppressed religion, offered inex
haustible means of forming a brave and en
thusiastic army, ready to quell revolts in
every part of his dominions. His revenue
was ampler than that of any former King of
England : a disciplined army of about twenty
thousand men was, for the first time, esta-
* " Clerks and gentlemen's servants." Evelyn,
Memoirs, vol. i. p. 558. The Earl of Bath carried
fifteen of the new charters with him into Corn
wall, from which he was called the " Prince Elec
tor." "There are not 135 in this House who sat
in the last," p. 562. By the lists in the Parliq
mentary History they appear to be only 128.
272
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
blished during peace in this island ; and a
formidable fleet was a more than ordinarily
powerful weapon in the hands of a prince
whose skill and valour in maritime war had
endeared him to the seamen, and recom
mended him to the people.
The condition of foreign affairs was equally
favourable to the King. Louis XIV. had. at
that moment, reached the zenith of his great
ness • his army was larger and better than
any which had been known in Europe since
the vigorous age of the Roman empire ; h's
marine enabled him soon after to cope with
the combined forces of the only two mari
time powers : he had enlarged his dominions,
strengthened his frontiers, and daily medita
ted new conquests : men of genius applauded
his munificence, and even some men of virtue
contributed to the glory of his reign. This
potent monarch was bound to James by closer
ties than those of treaty, — by kindred, by
religion, by similar principles of government,
by the importance of each to the success of
the designs of the other ; and he was ready
to supply the pecuniary aid required by the
English monarch, on condition that James
shoulci not subject himself to the control of
his Parliament, but should acquiesce in the
schemes of France against her neighbours.
On the other hand, the feeble Government
of Spain was no longer able to defend her
unwieldy empire ; while the German branch
of the Austrian family had, by their intole
rance, driven Hungary into revolt, and thus
opened the way for the Ottoman armies twice
to besiege Vienna. Venice, the last of the
Italian states which retained a national cha
racter, took no longer any part in the contests
of Europe, content with the feeble lustre
which conquests from Turkey shed over the
evening of her greatness. The kingdoms of
the North were confined within their own
subordinate system : Russia was riot num
bered among civilized nations : and the Ger
manic states "were still divided between their
fears from the ambition of France, and their
attachment to her for having preserved them
from the yoke of Austria. Though a power
ful party in Holland was still attached to
Fiance, there remained, on the Continent, no
security against the ambition of Louis, — no
hope for the liberties of mankind but the
power of that great republic, animated by
the unconquerable soul of the Prince of
Orange. All those nations, of both religions,
who trembled at the progress of France,
turned their eyes towards James, and courted
his alliance, in hopes that he might still be
detached from his connection Math Louis,
fcnd that England might resume her ancient
and noble station, as the guardian of the
independence of nations. Could he have
varied his policy, that bright career was still
open to him : he, or rather a man of genius
and magnanimity in his situation, might have
livalled the renown of Elizabeth, and anti
cipated the glories of Marlborough. He was
courted or dreaded by all Europe. Who
could, then, have presumed to foretell that
this great monarch, in the short space of four
years, would be compelled to relinquish his
throne, and to fly from his country, without
struggle and almost without disturbance, by
the mere result of his own system of mea
sures, which, unwise and unrighteous as it
was, seemed in every instance to be crowned
with success till the very moment of its over
throw.
The ability of *his ministers might have
been considered as among the happy parts
of his fortune. It was a little before this
time that the meetings of such ministers be
gan to be generally known by the modern
name of the "Cabinet Council."* The
Privy Council had been originally a selection
of a similar nature; but when seats in that
body began to be given or left to those who
did not enjoy the King's confidence, and it
became too numerous for secrecy or des
patch, a committee of its number, which is
now called the " Cabinet Council," was in
trusted with the direction of confidential
affairs ; leaving to the body at large business
of a judicial or formal nature, — to the greater
part of its members an honourable distinc
tion instead of an office of trust. The mem
bers of the Cabinet Council were then, as
they still are, chosen from the Privy Council
by the King, without any legal nomination,.
and generally consisted of the ministers at
the head of the principal departments of
public affairs. A short account of the cha
racter of the members of the Cabinet will
illustrate the events of the reign of James II.
Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, who
soon acquired the chief ascendancy in this
administration, entered on public life with
all the external advantages of birth and for
tune. His father had fallen in the royal
army at the battle of Newbury, with those
melancholy forebodings of danger from the
victory of his own party which filled the
breasts of the more generous royalists, and
which, on the same occasion, saddened the
dying moments of Lord Falkland. His mo
ther was Lady Dorothy Sidney, celebrated
by Waller under the name of Sacharissa. He
was early employed in diplomatic missions,
where he acquired the political knowledge,
insinuating address, and polished manners,
wrhich are learnt in that school, together
with the subtilty, dissimulation, flexibility of
principle, indifference on questions of con
stitutional policy, and impatience of the re
straints of popular government, which have
been sometimes contracted by English am
bassadors in the course of a long intercourse
with the ministers of absolute princes. A
faint and superficial preference of the gene
ral principles of civil liberty was blended in
a manner not altogether unusual with his
diplomatic vices. He seems to have secured
the support of the Duchess of Portsmouth to
the administration formed by the advice of
Sir William Temple, and to have then also
218.
North, Life of Lord Keeper Guildford, p.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
273
gained for himself the confidence of that in
comparable person, who possessed all the
honest arts of a negotiator.* He gave an
early earnest of the inconstancy of an over-
refined character by fluctuating between the
exclusion of the Duke of York and the limi
tations of the royal prerogative. He \vas
removed from his administration for his vote
on the Exclusion Bill ; but the love of office
soon prevailed over his feeble spirit of inde
pendence, and he made his peace with the
Court through the Duke of York, who had
long been well disposed to him,t and of the
Duchess of Portsmouth, who found no diffi
culty in reconciling to a polished as well as
pliant courtier, an accomplished negotiator,
and a minister more versed in foreign affairs
than any of his colleagues. f Negligence and
profusion bound him to office by stronger
though coarser ties than those of ambition :
he lived in an age when a delicate purity in
pecuniary matters had not begun to have a
general influence on statesmen, and when a
sense of personal honour, growing out of long
habits of co-operation and friendship, had not
yet contributed to secure them against politi
cal inconstancy. He was one of the most dis
tinguished of a species of men who perform
a part more important than noble in great
events; who, by powerful talents, captiva
ting manners, and accommodating opinions,
— by a quick discernment of critical mo
ments in the rise and fall of parties, — by not
deserting a cause till the instant before it is
universally discovered to be desperate, and
by a command of expedients and connec
tions which render them valuable to every
new possessor of power, find means to cling
to office or to recover it, and who, though
they are the natural offspring of quiet and
refinement, often creep through stormy revo
lutions without being crushed. Like the
best and most prudent of his class, he ap
pears not to have betrayed the secrets of the
friends whom he abandoned, and never to
have complied with more evil than was
necessary to keep his power. His temper
was without rancour ; and he must be acquit
ted of prompting, or even preferring the
cruel acts which were perpetrated under his
administration. Deep designs and premedi
tated treachery were irreconcilable both with
his indolence and his impetuosity ; and there
is some reason to believe, that in the midst
of total indifference about religious opinions,
he retained to the end some degree of that
preference for civil liberty which he might
have derived from the example of his ances
tors, and the sentiments of some of his early
connections.
* Temple, Memoirs, &c. part iii.
+ " Lord Sunderland knows I have always been
very kind to him." — Duke of York to Mr. Legge,
23d July, 1679. Legge MSS.
t Some of Lord Sunderland's competitors in
this province were not formidable. His successor,
Lord Conway, when a foreign minister spoke to
him of the Circles of the Empire, said, " he won
dered what circles should have to do with politics."
Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, the
younger son of the Earl of Clarendon, was
Lord Sunderland's most formidable competi
tor for the chief direction of public affairs.
He owed this importance rather to his posi
tion and connections than to his abilities,
which, however, were by no means con
temptible. He was the undisputed leader
of the Tory party, to whose highest princi
ples in Church and State he showed a con
stant, and probably a conscientious attach
ment. He had adhered to James in every
variety of fortune, and was the uncle of the
Princesses Mary and Anne, who seemed like
ly in succession to inherit the crown. He was
a fluent speaker, and appears to have pos
sessed some part of his father's talents as a
writer. He was deemed sincere and upright ;
and his private life was not stained by any
vice, except violent paroxysms of anger,
and an excessive indulgence in wine, then
scarcely deemed a fault. '; His infirmities,"
says one of the most zealous adherents of
his party, '-'were passion, in which he would
swear like a cutter, and the indulging him
self in wine. But his party was that of the
Church of England, of whom he had the
honour, for many years, to be accounted the
head."* The impetuosity of his temper
concurred with his opinions on government
in prompting him to rigorous measures. He
disdained the forms and details of business ;
and it was his maxim to prefer only Tories,
without regard to their qualifications for
office. " Do you not think," said he to Lord
Keeper Guildford, " that I could understand
any business in England in a month'?"
u Yes, my lord," answered the Lord Keeper,
" but I believe you would understand it bet
ter in two months." Even his personal de
fects and unreasonable maxims were calcu
lated to attach adherents to him as a chief;
and he was well qualified to be the leader
of a party ready to support all the pretensions
of any king who spared the Protestant esta
blishment.
Sir George Saville. created Marquis of
Halifax by Charles IL. claims the attention
of the historian rather by his brilliant genius,
by the singularity of his character, and by
the great part which he acted in the events
which preceded and followed, than by his
political importance during the short period
in which he held office under James. In his
youth he appears to have combined the
opinions of a republicant with the most re
fined talents of a polished courtier. The
fragments of his writings which remain show
such poignant and easy wit, such lively
sense, so much insight into character, and
so delicate an observation of manners, as
could hardly have been surpassed by any of
his contemporaries at Versailles. His politi
cal speculations being soon found incapable
* North, p. 230.
t " I have long looked upon Lord Halifax and
Lord Essex as men who did not love monarchy,
such as it is in England." — Duke of York to Mr.
Legge, supra.
274
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of being reduced to practice, melted away
in the royal favour : the disappointment of
visionary hopes led him to despair of great
improvements; to despise the moderate ser
vices which an individual may render to the
community, and to turn with disgust from
public principles to the indulgence of his
own vanity and ambition. The dread of his
powers of ridicule contributed to force him
into office,* and the attractions of his lively
and somewhat libertine conversation were
among the means by which he maintained
his ground with Charles It.; of whom it was
said by Dryderi, that " whatever his favour
ites of state might be, yet those of his af
fection were men of wjt."t Though we
have no remains of his speeches, we cannot
doubt the eloquence of him who, on the Ex
clusion Bill, fought the battle of the Court
against so great an orator as Shaftesbury.J
Of these various means of advancement, he
availed himself for a time with little scruple
and with some success. But he never ob
tained an importance which bore any pro
portion to his great abilities; — a failure
which, in the time of Charles II. ? may be in
part ascribed to the remains of his opinions,
but which, from its subsequent recurrence,
must be still more imputed to the defects of
his character. He had a stronger passion for
praise than for power, and loved the display
of talent more than the possession of autho
rity. The unbridled exercise of wit exposed
him to lasting animosities, and threw a shade
of levity over his character. He was too
acute in discovering difficulties, — too inge
nious in devising objections. He had too
keen a perception of human weakness and
folly not to find many pretexts and tempta
tions for changing his measures, and desert
ing his connections. The subtilty of his
genius tempted him to projects too refined
to be understood or supported by numerous
bodies of men. His appetite for praise,
when sated by the admiration of his friends,
was too apt to seek a new and more stimu
lating gratification in the applauses of his
opponents. His weaknesses and even his
talents contributed to betray him into incon
sistency ] which, if not the worst quality of a
statesman, is the most fatal to his perma
nent importance. For one short period, in
deed, the circumstances of his situation suit
ed the peculiarities of his genius. In the last
years of Charles his refined policy had found
full scope in the arts of balancing factions,
of occasionally leaning to the vanquished,
and always tempering the triumph of the
victorious party, by which that monarch then
* Temple, Memoirs, part iii.
t Dedication to King Arthur.
\ Jotham, of piercing wit and pregnant, thought,
Endued by nature and by learning taught
To move assemblies ; who but only tried
The worse awhile, then chose the better side ;
Nor chose alone, but turned the balance too.
Absalom and Achitophel.
Lord Halifax says, " Mr. Dryden told me that
he was offered money to write against me." —
Fox MSS.
consulted the repose of his declining years.
Perhaps he satisfied himself with the reflec
tion, that his compliance with all the evil
which was then done was necessary to enable
him to save his country from the arbitrary and
bigoted faction which was eager to rule it.
We know from the evidence of the excel
lent Tillotson,* that Lord Halifax '-showed a
compassionate concern for Lord Russeli. and
all the readiness to save him that could be
wished ;" and that Lord Russell desired Til-
lotson "to give thanks to Lord Halifax for
his humanity and kindness :" and there is
some reason to think that his intercession
might have been successful, if the delicate
honour of Lord Russell had not refused to
second their exertions, by softening his
language, on the lawfulness of resistance, a
shade more than scrupulous sincerity would
warrant.! He seems unintentionally to have
contributed to the death of Sidney, i by
having procured a sort of confession from
Monmouth, in order to reconcile him to his
father, and to balance the influence of the
Duke of York, by Charles' partiality for his
son. The compliances and refinements of
that period pursued him with, perhaps, too
just a retribution during the remainder of
his life. James was impatient to be rid of
him who had checked his influence during
the last years of his brother ; and the friends
of liberty could never place any lasting trust
in the man who remained a member of the
Government which put to death Russell and
Sidney.
The part performed by Lord Godolphin at
this time was not so considerable as to re
quire a full account of his character. He
was a gentleman of ancient family in Corn
wall, distinguished by the accomplishments
of some of its members, and by their suffer
ings in the royal cause during the civil war.
He held offices at Court before he was em
ployed in the service of the State, and he
always retained the wary and conciliating
manners, as well as the profuse dissipation
of his original school. Though a royalist
and a courtier he voted for the Exclusion
Bill. At the accession of James, he was not
considered as favourable to absolute depen
dence on France, nor to the system of govern
ing without Parliaments. But though a
member of the Cabinet, he was, during the
whole of this reign, rather a public officer,
who confined himself to his own department,
than a minister who took a part in the direc
tion of the State. § The habit of continuing
* Lords' Journals, 20th Dec. 1689. The Duch
ess of Portsmouth said to Lord Montague, " that
if others had been as earnest as my Lord Halifax
with (he King, Lord Russell might have been
saved." — Fox MSS. Other allusions in these
MSS., which I ascribe to Lord Halifax, show that
his whole fault was a continuance in office after
the failure of his efforts to save Lord Russell.
t Life of Lord Russell, by Lord John Russell,
p. 215.
t Evidence of Mr. Hampden and Sir James
Forbes.— Lords' Journals, 20th Dec. 1689.
$ "Milord Godolphin, quoiqu'il est du secret
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
275
some officers in place under successive ad
ministrations, for the convenience of busi
ness, then extended to higher persons than
it has usually comprehended in more recent
times.
James had. soon after his accession, intro
duced into the Cabinet Sir George Jeffreys,
Lord Chief Justice of England,* a person
\vhose office did not usually lead to that sta
tion, and whose elevation to unusual honour
and trust is characteristic of the Government
which he served. His origin was obscure,
his education scanty, his acquirements no
more than what his vigorous understanding
gathered in the course of business, his pro
fessional practice low, and chiefly obtained
from the companions of his vulgar excesses,
whom he captivated by that gross buffoonery
which accompanied him to the most exalted
stations. But his powers of mind were ex
traordinary ; his elocution was flowing and
spirited; and, after his highest preferment,
in the few instances where he preserved
temper and decency, the native vigour of his
intellect shone forth in his judgments, and
threw a transient dignity over the coarse
ness of his deportment. He first attracted
notice by turbulence in the petty contests
of the Corporation of London ; and having
found a way to Court through some of
those who ministered to the pleasures of
the King, as well as to the more ignomi
nious of his political intrigues, he made his
value known by contributing to destroy the
charter of the capital of which he had been
the chief law officer. His services as a
counsel in the trial of Russell, and as a judge
in that of Sidney, proved still more accepta
ble to his masters. On the former occasion,
he caused a person who had collected evi
dence for the defence to be turned out of
court, for making private suggestions. — pro
bably important to the ends of justice, — to
Lady Russell, while she was engaged in her
affecting duty.t The same brutal insolence
shown in the trial of Sidney, was. perhaps,
thought the more worthy of reward, because
it was foiled by the calm heroism of that
great man. The union of a powerful under
standing with boisterous violence and the
basest subserviency singularly fitted him to
be the tool of a tyrant. He wanted, indeed,
the aid of hypocrisy, but he was free from
its restraints. He had that reputation for
boldness which many men preserve, as long
as they are personally safe, by violence in
their counsels and in their language. If he
at last feared danger, he never feared shame,
which much more frequently restrains the
n'a pas grand credit, et songe seulement a se con-
server par une conduite sage et moderee. Je ne
pense pas que s'll en etoit cru, on prit des liaisons
avec V. M. qui pussent aller a se passer entiere-
nient de parlement, et a rompre net-tement avec
le Prince d'Orange." — Barillon to the King, 16th
April. 1685. Fox, Flistory of James II., app. Ix.
* North, p. 234. (After the Northern Circuit,
1684, — in our computation. 1685.)
t Examination n{ John Tisard. — Lords' Jour
nals, 20th Dec. 1690.
powerful. Perhaps the unbridled fury of
his temper enabled him to threaten and in
timidate with more effect than a man of
equal wickedness, with a cooler character.
His religion, which seems to have consisted
in hatred to Nonconformists, did not hinder
him from profaneness. His native fierceness
was daily inflamed by debauchery ; his ex
cesses were too gross and outrageous for the
decency of historical relation ;* and his court
was a continual scene of scurrilous invective,
from which none were exempted but his su
periors. A contemporary, of amiable dispo
sition and Tory principles, who knew him
well, sums up his character in few words, —
" he was by nature cruel, and a slave of the
Court. "t
It was after the defeat of Monmouth that
James gave full scope to his policy, arid be
gan that system of measures which charac
terises his reign. Though Feversham was,
in the common intercourse of life, a good-
natured man. his victory at Sedgemoor was
immediately followed by some of those acts
of military license which usually disgrace
the suppression of a revolt, when there is no
longer any dread of retaliation, — when the
conqueror sees a rebel in every inhabitant,
and considers destruction by the sword as
only anticipating legal execution, and when
he is generally well assured, if not positively
instructed, that he can do nothing more ac
ceptable to his superiors than to spread a
deep impression of terror through a disaf
fected province. A thousand were slain in
a pursuit of a small body of insurgents for a
few miles. Feversham marched into Bridge-
water on the morning after the battle (July
7th), with a considerable number tied to
gether like slaves ; of whom twenty-two
were hanged by his orders on a sign-post
by the road-side, and on gibbets which he
caused to be erected for the occasion. One
of them was a wounded officer, named Ad-
lam, who was already in the agonies of
death. Four were hanged in chains, with a
deliberate imitation of the barbarities of re
gular law. One miserable wretch, to whom
life had been promised on condition of his
keeping pace for half a mile with a horse at
full speed (to which he was fastened by a
rope which went round his neck), was exe
cuted in spite of his performance of the feat.
Feversham was proceeding thus towards dis
armed enemies, to whom he had granted
quarter, when Ken, the bishop of the diocese,
a zealous royalist, had the courage to rush
into the midst of this military execution,
calling out. " My Lord, this is murder in law.
* See the account of his behaviour at a ball in
the city, soon after Sidney's condemnation ; Eve
lyn, vol. i. p. 531 ; and at the dinner at Dun-
combe's, a rich citizen, where the Lord Chancel
lor (Jeffreys) and the Lord Treasurer (Rochester)
were with difficulty prevented from appearing na
ked in a balcony, to drink loyal toasts, Reresby,
Memoirs, p. 231, and of his "flaming" drunken
ness at the Privy Council, when the King was
present. — North, p. 250.
t Evelyn, vol. i. p. 579.
276
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
These poor wretches, now the battle is over,
must be tried before they can be put to
death."* The interposition of this excellent
prelate, however, only suspended the cruel
ties of the conquerors. Feversham was
called to court to receive the thanks and
honours due to his services.
Kirke, whom he was directed to leave with
detachments at Bridge water and Taunton,t
imitated, if he did not surpass, the lawless
violence of his commander. When he en
tered the latter town, on the third day after
the battle, he put to death at least nine of
his prisoners, with so little sense of impro
priety or dread of disapprobation, that they
were entered by name as executed for high
treason in the parish register of their inter
ment, t Of the other excesses of Kirke we
have no satisfactory account. The experi
ence of like cases, however, renders the tra
dition not improbable, that these acts of law
less violence were accompanied by the in
sults and mockeries of military debauchery.
The nature of the service in which the de
tachment was principally engaged, required
more than common virtue in a commander
to contain the passions of the soldiery. It
was his principal duty to search for rebels.
He was urged to the performance of this
odious task by malicious or mercenary in
formers. The friendship, or compassion, or
political zeal of the inhabitants, was active
in favouring escapes, so that a constant and
cruel struggle subsisted between the sol
diers and the people abetting the fugitives. §
Kirke's regiment, when in garrison at Tan
gier, had had the figure of a lamb painted
on their colours as a badge of their warfare
against the enemies of the Christian name.
The people of Somersetshire, when they
saw those who thus bore the symbols of
meekness and benevolence engaged in the
performance of such a task, vented the bit
terness of their hearts against the soldiers,
by giving them the ironical name of Kirke's
" lambs." The unspeakable atrocity impu-
puted to him, of putting to death a person
whose life he had promised to a young wo
man, as the price of compliance with his
desires, it is due to the honour of human na-
* For the principal part of the enormities of Fe
versham, we have the singular advantage of the
testimony of two eye-witnesses, — an officer in the
royal army, Kennet, History of England, vol. iii.
p. 432, and Oldmixon, History of England, vol.
i. p. 704. See also Locke's Western Rebellion.
t Lord Sunderland's letter to Lord Feversham,
8th July.— State Paper Office.
t Toulrnin's Taunton, by Savage, p. 522, where,
after a period of near one hundred and forty years,
the authentic evidence of this fact is for the first
time published, together with other important par
ticulars of Monmputh's revolt, and of the military
and judicial cruelties which followed it. These nine
,are by some writers swelled to nineteen, probably
from confounding them with that number executed
at Taunton by virtue of Jeffreys' judgments. The
number of ninety mentioned on this occasion by
others seems to be altogether an exaggeration.
$ Kirke to Lord Sunderland. Taunton, 12th
Aug.— State Paper Office.
ture to disbelieve, until more satisfactory
evidence be produced than that on which it
has hitherto rested.* He followed the ex
ample of ministers and magistrates in sell
ing pardons to the prisoners in his district ;
which, though as illegal as his executions,
enabled many to escape from the barbarities
which were to come. Base as this traffic
was, it would naturally lead him to threaten
more evil than he inflicted. It deserves to be
remarked, that, five years after his command
at Taunton, the inhabitants of that place gave
an entertainment, at the public expense, to
celebrate his success. This fact seems to
countenance a suspicion that we ought to
attribute more to the nature of the service
in which he was engaged than to any pre
eminence in criminality, the peculiar odium
which has fallen on his name, to the ex
clusion of other officers, whose excesses ap
pear to have been greater, and are certainly
more satisfactorily attested. But whatever
opinion may be formed of the degree of
Kirke's guilt, it is certain that he was rather
countenanced than discouraged by the Gov
ernment. His illegal executions were early
notorious in London. t The good Bishop
Ken, who then corresponded with the King
himself, on the sufferings of his diocese.t
could not fail to remonstrate against those
excesses, which he had so generously inter
posed to prevent ] and if the accounts of
the remonstrances of Lord Keeper Guildford,
against the excesses of the West, have any
foundation, § they must have related exclu
sively to the enormities of the soldiery, for
the Lord Keeper died at the very opening
of Jeffreys' circuit. Yet, \vith this know
ledge, Lord Sunderland instructed Kirke " to
secure such of his prisoners as had not been
* This story is told neither by Oldmixon nor Bur-
net, nor by the humble writers of the Bloody Assi
zes or the Quadriennium Jacobi. Echard and Ken-
net, who wrote long after, mentioned it only as a
report. It first appeared in print in 1699, in Pom-
fret's poem of Cruelty and Lust. The next men
tion is in the anonymous Life of William III.,
published in 1702. A story very similar is told
by St. Augustine of a Roman officer, and in the
Spectator, No. 491, of a governor of Zealand,
probably from a Dutch chronicle or legend. The
scene is laid by some at Taunton, by others at
Exeter. The person executed is said by some to
be the father, by others to be the husband, and
by others again to be the brother of the unhappy
young woman, whose name it has been found im
possible to ascertain, or even plausibly to conjec
ture. The tradition, which is still said to prevail
at Taunton, may well have originated in a publi
cation of one hundred and twenty years old.
T Narcissus Luttrell, MS. Diary, 15th July;
six days after their occurrence.
t Ken's examination before the Privy Council,
in 1696. — Biographia Britannica, Article Ken.
§ North, p. 260. This inaccurate writer refers
the complaint to Jeffreys' proceedings, which is
impossible, since Lord Guildford died in Oxford
shire, on the 5th September, after a long illness.
Lady Lisle was executed on the 3d ; and her exe
cution, the only one which preceded the death of
the Lord Keeper, could scarcely have reached him
in his dying moments.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
277
executed, in order to trial,"* at a time when
there had been no legal proceedings, and
when all the executions to which he adverts,
without disapprobation, must have been con
trary to law. Seven days after, Sunderlarid
informed Kirke that his letter had been
communicated to the King, " who was very
well satisfied with the proceedings. "t In
subsequent despatches,! he censures Kirke
for setting some rebels at liberty (alluding,
doubtless, to those who had purchased their
lives) j but he does not censure that officer
for having put others to death. Were it not
for these proofs that the King knew the acts
of Kirke, and that his Government officially
sanctioned them, no credit would be due to
the declarations afterwards made by such a
man, that his severities fell short of the
orders which he had received. § Nor is this
the only circumstance which connects the
Government with these enormities. On the
10th of August, Kirke was ordered to come
to court to give information on the state of
the West. His regiment was soon after
wards removed ; and he does not appear to
have been employed there during the re
mainder of that season. ||
Colonel Trelawney succeeded ; but so little
was Kirke's conduct thought to be blama-
ble, that on the 1st of September three per
sons were executed illegally at Taunton for
rebellion, the nature and reason of their
death openly avowed in the register of their
interment. IF In military executions, how
ever atrocious, some allowance must be
made for the passions of an exasperated
soldiery, and for the habits of officers accus
tomed to summary and irregular acts, who
have not been taught by experience that the
ends of justice cannot Be attained otherwise
than by the observance of the rules of law.**
The lawless violence of an army forms no
precedent for the ordinary administration of
public affairs ; and the historian is bound to
relate with diffidence events which are gen
erally attended with confusion and obscurity,
which are exaggerated by the just resent
ment of an oppressed party, and where we
can seldom be guided by the authentic evi
dence of records. Neither the conduct of a
Government which approves these excesses,
* 14th July.— State Paper Office.
t 21st July.— Ibid.
t 25th and 28th July, and 3d August. — State
Paper Office.
4 Oldmixpn, vol. i. p. 705.
II Papers in the War Office. MS.
IT Savage, p. 525.
* Two years after the suppression of the West
ern revolt, we find Kirke treated with favour by
the King; — " Colonel Kirke is made housekeeper
of Whitehall, in the room of his kinsman, de
ceased." — Narcissus Luttrell, Sept. 1687. lie was
nearly related to, or perhaps the son of George
Kirke, groom of the bedchamber to Charles I.,
one of whose beautiful daughters, Mary, a maid
of honour, was the Warmestre of Count Hamil
ton, (Notes to Memoires de Grammont), and the
other, Diana, was the wife of the last Earl of Ox
ford, of the house of De Vere. — Dugdale's Ba
ronage, tit. Oxford.
however, nor that of judges who imitate or
surpass them, allows of such extenuations or
requires such caution in relating and cha
racterising facts. The judicial proceedings
which immediately followed these military
atrocities may be related with more confi
dence, and must be treated with the utmost
rigour of historical justice.
The commencement of proceedings on the
Western Circuit, which comprehends the
whole scene of Monmouth's operations, was
postponed till the other assizes were con
cluded, in order that four judges, who were
joined with Jeffreys in the commission, might
be at liberty to attend him.* An order was
also issued to all officers in the West. :<to
furnish such parties of horse and foot, as
might be required by the Lord Chief Justice
on his circuit, for securing prisoners, and to
perform that service in such manner as he
should direct."! After these unusual and
alarming preparations, Jeffreys began his
circuit at Winchester, on the 27th of August,
by the trial of Mrs. Alicia Lisle, who was
charged with having sheltered in her house,
for one night, two fugitives from Monmouth7s
routed army, — an office of humanity which
then was and still is treated as high treason
by the law of England. This lady, though
unaided by counsel, so deaf that she could
very imperfectly hear the evidence, and oc
casionally overpowerrd by those lethargic
slumbers which are incident to advanced
age, 'defended herself with a coolness which
formed a striking contrast to the deportment
of her judge. t The principal witness, a man
who had been sent to her to implore shelter
for one Hickes, and who guided him and
Nelthrope to her house, betrayed a natural
repugnance to disclose facts likely to affect
a life which he had innocently contributed
to endanger. Jeffreys, at the suggestion of
the counsel for the crown, took upon himself
the examination of this unwilling witness, and
conducted it with a union of artifice, men
ace, and invective, which no well-regulated
tribunal would suffer in the advocate of a
Srisoner, when examining the witness pro-
uced by the accuser. With solemn ap
peals to Heaven for his own pure intentions,
ne began in the language of candour and
gentleness to adjure the witness to discover
all that he knew. His nature, however,
often threw off this disguise, and broke out
into the ribaldry and scurrility of his accus
tomed style. The Judge and three counsel
poured in questions upon the poor rustic in
rapid succession. Jeffreys said that he trea
sured up vengeance for such men, and added,
" It is infinite mercy that for those falsehoods
* Lord Chief Baron Montague, Levison, Wat-
kins, and Wright, of whom the three former sat
on the subsequent trials of Mr. Cornish and Mrs.
Gaunt.
t This order was dated on the 24th August,
1685. — Papers in the War Office. From this cir
cumstance originated the story, that Jeffreys had
a commission as Commcxnaer-in- Chief.
t State Trials, vol. xi. p. 298.
278
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of thine, God does not immediately strike
thee into hell." Wearied, overawed, and
overwhelmed by such an examination, the
witness at length admitted some facts which
afforded reason to suspect, rather than to
believe, that the unfortunate lady knew the
men whom she succoured to be fugitives
from Monmouth's army. She said in her
defence, that she knew Mr. Hickes to be a
Presbyterian minister, and thought he ab
sconded because there were warrants out
against him on that account. All the pre
cautions for concealment which were urged
as proofs of her intentional breach of law
were reconcilable with this defence. Orders
had been issued at the beginning of the
revolt to seize all "disaffected and suspi
cious persons, especially all Nonconformist
ministers;"* and Jeffreys himself unwit
tingly strengthened her case by declaring
his conviction, that all Presbyterians had
a hand in the rebellion. He did not go
through the formality of repeating so pro
bable a defence to the jury. They how
ever hesitated : they asked the Chief Justice,
whether it were as much treason to receive
Hickes before as after conviction ? He told
them that it was, which was literally true ;
but he wilfully concealed from them that by
the law, such as it was, the receiver of a
traitor could not be brought to trial till the
principal traitor had been convicted or out
lawed ; — a provision, indeed, so manifestly
necessary to justice, that without the obser
vance of it Hickes might be acquitted of
treason after Mrs. Lisle had been execu-
te,d for harbouring him as a traitor. t Four
judges looked silently on this suppression of
truth, which produced the same effect with
positive falsehood, and allowed the limits of
a barbarous law to be overpassed, in order
to destroy an aged woman for an act of
charity. The jury retired, and remained so
long in deliberation, as to provoke the wrath
of the Chief Justice, When they returned
into court, they expressed their doubt,
whether the prisoner knew that Hickes had
been in Monmouth's army : the Chief Jus
tice assured them that the proof was com
plete. Three times they repeated their
doubt : the Chief Justice as often reiterated
his declaration with growing impatience and
rage. At this critical moment of the last
appeal of the jury to the Court, the defence
less female at the bar made &n effort to
speak. Jeffreys, taking advantage of for
malities, instantly silenced her, and the jury
were at length overawed into a verdict of
"guilty." He then broke out into a need
less insult to the strongest affections of
nature, saying to the jury, "Gentlemen, had
I been among you, and if she had been
mv own mother, I should have found her
guilty." On the next morning, when he
* Despatch from Lord Sunderland to Lord-
Lieutenants of Counties. 20th June, 1685.
t Hale, Pleas of the Crown, part i. c. 22.
Foster, Discourse on Accomplices, chap. 1.
had to pronounce sentence of death, he could
not even then abstain from invectives against
Presbyterians, of whom he supposed Mrs.
Lisle to be one ; yet mixing artifice with his
fury, he tried to lure her into discoveries, by
ambiguous phrases, which might excite her
hopes of life without pledging him to obtain
pardon. He directed that she should be
burnt alive in the afternoon of the same
day ; but the clergy of the cathedral of
Winchester successfully interceded for an
interval of three days. This interval gave
time for an application to the King : and that
application was made by persons, and with
circumstances, which must have strongly
called his attention to the case. Mrs. Lisle
was the widow of Mr. Lisle, who was one
of the judges of Charles the First ; and this
circumstance, which excited a prejudice
against her, served in its consequences to
show that she had powerful claims on the
lenity of the King. Lady St. John and Lady
Abergavenny wrote a letter to Lord Claren
don, then Privy Seal, which he read to the
King, bearing testimony, " that she had been
a favourer of the King's friends in their
greatest extremities during the late civil
war." and among others, of these ladies
themselves; and on these grounds, as well
as for her general loyalty, earnestly recom
mending her to pardon. Her son had served
in the King's army against Monmouth; she
often had declared that she shed more tears
than any woman in England on the day of
the death of Charles the First ; arid after
the attainder of Mr. Lisle, his estate was
granted to her at the intercession of Lord
Chancellor Clarendon, for her excellent con
duct during the prevalence of her husband's
party. Lord Feversham, also, who had been
promised a thousand pounds for her pardon,
used his influence to obtain it. But the King
declared that he would not reprieve her for
one day. It is said, that he endeavoured to
justify himself, by alleging a promise to
Jeffreys that Mrs. Lisle should not be
spared ; — a fact which, if true, shows tha
conduct of James to have been as deliberate
as it seems to be, and that the severities of
the circuit arose from a previous concert be
tween him and Jeffreys. On the following
day the case was again brought before him
by a petition from Mrs. Lisle, praying that
her punishment might be changed into be
heading, in consideration of her ancient and
honourable descent. After a careful search
for precedents, the mind of James was once
more called to the fate of the prisoner by
the signature of a warrant to authorise the
infliction of the mitigated punishment. This
venerable matron accordingly suffered death
on the 2d of September, supported by that
S;ety which had been the guide of her life,
er understanding was so undisturbed, that
she clearly instanced the points in which she
had been wronged. No resentment troubled
the composure of her dying moments; and
she carried her religious principles of alle
giance and forgiveness so far, as to pray on
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
279
the scaffold for the prosperity of a prince
from whom she had experienced neither
mercy, gratitude, nor justice. The trial of
Mrs. Lisle is a sufficient specimen of the
proceedings of this circuit. When such
was the conduct of the judges in a single
trial of a lady of distinction for such an
offence, with a jury not regardless of justice,
•where there was full leisure for the consi
deration of every question of fact and law, and
where every circumstance was made known
to the Government and the public, it is easy
to imagine what the demeanour of the same
tribunal must have been in the trials of seve
ral hundred insurgents of humble condition,
crowded into so short a time that the wisest
and most upright judges could hardly have
distinguished the innocent from the guilty.*
As the movements of Monmouth's army
had been confined to Dorset and Somerset,
the acts of high treason were almost entirely
committed there, and the prisoners appre
hended elsewhere were therefore removed
for trial to these counties. t That unfortu
nate district was already filled with dismay
and horror by the barbarities of the troops ;
the roads leading to its principal towns
were covered with prisoners under military
guards ; and the display and menace of war
like power were most conspicuous in the
retinue of insolent soldiers and trembling
culprits who followed the march of the
judges, forming a melancholy contrast to the
parental confidence which was wont to per
vade the administration of the unarmed
laws of a free people. Three hundred and
twenty prisoners were arraigned at Dor
chester, of whom thirty-five pleaded "not
guilty;" and on their trial five were acquit
ted and thirty were convicted. The Chief
Justice caused some intimation to be con
veyed to the prisoners that confession was
the only road to mercy ; and to strengthen
the effect of this hint, he sent twenty-nine
of the persons convicted to immediate exe
cution, — though one of them at least was so
* By the favour of the clerk of assize, I have
before me many of the original records of this
circuit. The account of it by Lord Lonsdale was
written in 1688. The Bloody Assizes, and the
Life of Jeffreys, were published in 1689. They
were written by one Shirley, a compiler, and by
Pitts, a surgeon in Monmouth's army. Six thou
sand copies of the latter were sold. — Life of John
Dunton, vol. i. p. 184. Roger Coke, a contem
porary, and Oldmixon, almost an eye-witness,
vouch for their general fairness ; and I have found
an unexpected degree of coincidence between
them and the circuit records. Burnet came to
reside at Salisbury in 1689, and he and Kennet
began to relate the facts about seventeen years
after they occurred. Father Orleans, and the
writer of James' Life, admit the cruelties, while
they vainly strive to exculpate the King from any
share in them. From a comparison of those
original authorities, and from the correspondence,
hitherto unknown, in the State Paper Office, the
narrative of the text has been formed.
t There were removed to Dorchester ninety-
four from Somerset, eighty-nine from Devon, fifty-
five from Wilts, and twenty-three from London. —
Circuit Records.
innocent that had there been time to examine
his case, he might even then have been par
doned.* The intimation illustrated by such
a commentary produced the intended effect :
two hundred and eight at once confessed.!
Eighty persons were, according to contem
porary accounts, executed at Dorchester ;
and though the records state only the execu
tion of fifty, yet as they contain no entry of
judgment in two hundred and fifty cases,
their silence affords no presumption against
the common accounts.
The correspondence of Jeffreys with the
King and the minister appears to have begun
at Dorchester. From that place he wrote
on the 8th of September, in terms of enthu
siastic gratitude to Sunderland, to return
thanks for the Great Seal.f Two days after
wards he informed Sunderland, that though
" tortured by the stone." he had that day
"despatched ninety-eight rebels. "§ Sunder
land assured him in answer, that the King
approved all his proceedings, of which very
minute accounts appear to have been con
stantly transmitted by Jeffreys directly to the
King himself.ll In the county of Somerset
more than a thousand prisoners were ar
raigned for treason at Taunton and Wells, of
whom only six ventured to put themselves
on their trial by pleading ••' not guilty." A
thousand and forty confessed themselves to
be guilty; — a proportion of confessions so
little corresponding to the common chances
of precipitate arrests, of malicious or mis
taken charges, and of escapes on trial, — all
which were multiplied in such violent and
hurried proceedings, — as clearly to show that
the measures of the circuit had already ex
tinguished all expectation that the judges
would observe the rules of justice. Submis
sion afforded some chance of escape : from
trial the most innocent coukl no longer have
any hope. Only six days were allowed in
this county to find indictments against a thou
sand prisoners, to arraign them, to try the few
who still ventured to appeal to law, to record
the confessions of the rest, and to examine
the circumstances which ought,- in each case,
to aggravate or extenuate the punishment.
The names of two hundred arid thirty-nine
persons executed there are preserved :1[ but
as no judgments are entered,** we do not
know how many more may have suffered.
In order to diffuse terror more widely, these
executions were directed to take place in
thirty-six towns and villages. Three were
executed in the village of Wrington, the birth
place of Mr. Locke, whose writings were one
* Bragg, an attorney. Bloody Assizes. Western
Rebellion.
t Calendar for Dorsetshire summer assizes,
1685.
t The Great Seal had only been vacant three
days, as Lord Keeper Guildford died at his seat
at Wroxton, on the 5th.
§ 8th and 10th Sept.— State Paper Office.
II Windsor, 14th Sept.— Ibid.
IT Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys.
(London, 1689.)
** Circuit Records.
280
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
day to lessen the misery suffered by man
kind from cruel laws and unjust judges.
The general consternation spread by these
proceedings has prevented a particular ac
count of many of the cases from reaching
us. In some of those more conspicuous in
stances which have been preserved, we see
what so great a body of obnoxious culprits
must have suffered in narrow and noisome
prisons, where they were often destitute of
the common necessaries of life, before a
judge whose native rage and insolence Avere
stimulated by daily intoxication, and in
flamed by the agonies of an excruciating dis
temper, from the brutality of soldiers, and
the cruelty of slavish or bigoted magistrates;
while one part of their neighbours were hard
ened against them by faction, and the other
deterred from relieving them by fear. The
ordinary executioners, unequal to so exten
sive a slaughter, were aided by novices, whose
unskilfulness aggravated the horrors of that
death of torture which was then the legal
punishment of high treason. Their lifeless
remains were treated with those indignities
and outrages which still* continue to disgrace
the laws of a civilized age. They were be
headed and quartered, and the heads and
limbs of the dead were directed to be placed
on court-houses, and in all conspicuous ele
vations in streets, high roads, and churches.
The country was filled with the dreadful
preparations necessary to fit these inanimate
members for such an exhibition; and the
roads were covered by vehicles conveying
them to great distances in every direction.!
There was not a hamlet in which the poor
inhabitants were not doomed hourly to look
on the mangled remains of a neighbour or a
relation. ••' All the high roads of the country
were no longer to be travelled, while the
horrors of so many quarters of men and the
offensive stench of them lasted. ';t
While one of the most fertile and cheerful
provinces of England was thus turned into a
scene of horror by the mangled remains of
the dead, the towns resounded with the cries,
and the streets streamed with the blood of
men, and even women and children, who
were cruelly whipped for real or pretended
sedition. The case of John Tutchin, after
wards a noted political writer, is a specimen
of these minor cruelties. He was tried at
Dorchester, under the assumed name of
Thomas Pitts, for having said that Hamp
shire was up in arms for the Duke of Mon-
* 1822.— ED.
t " Nothing could be liker hell lhan these
parts : cauldrons hissing, carcasses boiling, pitch
and tar sparkling and glowing, bloody limbs hoil-
msr, and tearing, and mangling." — Bloody Assizes.
" England is now an Aceldama. The country
for sixty miles, from Bristol to Exeter, had a new
terrible sort of sign-posts, gibbets, heads and
quarters of its slaughtered Inhabitants." — Old-
mixon, vol. i. p. 707.
t Lord Lonsdale, (Memoirs of the Reign of
James II., p. 13,) confirms the testimony of the
two former more ardent partisans, both of whom,
however, were eye-witnesses.
mouth, and, on his conviction, was sentenced
to be whipped through every market town
in the county for seven years. The females
in court burst into tears; and even one of
the officers of the court ventured to observe
to the Chief Justice, that the culprit was very
young, and that the sentence would reach
to once a fortnight for seven years. These
symptoms of pity exposed the prisoner to
new brutality from his judge. Tutchin is
said to have petitioned the King for the more
lenient punishment of the gallows. He was
seized with the small-pox in prison ; and,
whether from unwonted compassion, or fjoni
the misnomer in the indictment, he appears
to have escaped the greater part of the bar
barous punishment to which he was doomed .*
These dreadful scenes are relieved by
some examples of generous virtue in indi
viduals of the victorious party. Harte. a
clergyman of Taunton, following the excel
lent example of the Bishop, interceded for
some of the prisoners with Jeffreys in the
full career of his cruelty. The intercession
was not successful; but it compelled him to
honour the humanity to which he did not
yield, for he soon after preferred Harte to
be a prebendary of Bristol. Both Ken and
Harte, who were probably at the moment
charged W'ith disaffection, sacrificed at a sub
sequent period their preferments, rather than
violate the allegiance which they thought
still to be due to the King; while Mew,
Bishop of Winchester, who was on the field
of battle at Sedgemoor, and who ordered that
his coach horses should drag forward the
artillery of the royal army, preserved his rich
bishopric by compliance with the govern
ment of King William. The army of M'ori-
mouth also afforded instructive proofs, that
the most furious zealots are not always the
most consistent adherents. Ferguson and
Hooke, two Presbyterian clergymen in that
army, passed most of their subsequent lives
in Jacobite intrigues, either from incorrigible
habits of conspiracy, or from resentment at
the supposed ingratitude of jheir own party,
or from the inconstancy natural to men of
unbridled passions and distempered minds.
Daniel De Foe, one of the most original
writers of the English nation, served in the
army of Monmouth ; but we do not know
the particulars of his escape. A great satirist
had afterwards the baseness to reproach
both Tutchin and De Foe with sufferings,
which were dishonourable only to those who
inflicted thern.f
In the mean time, peculiar circumstances
rendered the correspondence of Jeffreys in
Somersetshire with the King and his minister
more specific and confidential than it had
been in the preceding parts of the circuit.
Lord Sunderland had apprised Jeffreys of the
King's pleasure to bestow a thousand con-
* Savage, p. 509. Western Rebellion. Dor
chester Calendar, summer assizes, 1685.
t " Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe,
And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge
below.'' Dunciad, book u.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
281
victs on several courtiers; and one hundred
on a favourite of the Queen,* on these per
sons finding security that the prisoners should
be enslaved for ten years in some West India
island ; — a limitation intended, perhaps, only
to deprive the convicts of the sympathy of
the Puritan colonists of New England, but
which, in effect, doomed them to a miserable
and lingering death in a climate where field-
labour is fatal to Europeans. Jeffreys, in
his answer to the King, remonstrates against
this disposal of the prisoners, who, he says,
would be worth ten or fifteen pounds a-
piece ;f and, at the same time, returns thanks
for his Majesty's gracious acceptance of his
services. In a subsequent letter from Bristol, t
he yields to the distribution of the convicts;
boasts of his victory over that most factious
city, where he had committed the mayor and
an alderman, under pretence of their having
sold to the plantations men whom they had
unjustly convicted with a view to such a
sale: and pledges himself "that Taunton,
and Bristol, and the county of Somerset,
should know their duty both to God and
their King before he leaves them." He
entreats the King not to be surprised into
pardons.
James, being thus regularly apprised of
the most minute particulars of Jeffreys' pro
ceedings, was accustomed to speak of them
to the foreign ministers under the name of
"Jeffreys' campaign. "§ He amused himself
with horse-races at Winchester, the scene of
the recent execution of Mrs. Lisle, during
the hottest part of Jeffreys' operations.il He
was so fond of the phrase of "Jeffreys' cam
paign," as to use it twice in his correspond
ence with the Prince of Orange ; and, on the
latter occasion, in a tone of exultation ap
proaching to defiance.!" The excellent Ken
had written to him a letter of expostulation
on the subject. On the 30th of September,
on Jeffreys' return to court, his promotion to
the office of Lord Chancellor was announced
in the Gazette, with a panegyric on his ser
vices very unusual in the cold formalities of
official appointment. Had James been dis
satisfied with the conduct of Jeffreys, he had
the means of repairing some part of its con
sequences, for the executions in Somerset
shire were not concluded before the latter
part of November ; and among the persons
who suffered in October was Mr. Hickes,
a Nonconformist clergyman, for whom his
brother, the learned Dr. Hickes, afterwards
a sufferer in the cause of James, sued in
* 14th and 15th Sept.— State Paper Office. 200
to Sir Robert White, 200 to Sir William Booth,
TOO to Sir C. Musgrave, 100 to Sir W. Stapleton,
100 to J. Kendall, 100 to Triphol, 100 to a
merchant. " The Queen has asked 100 more of
the rebels."
t Taunton, 19th Sept.— Ibid.
t 22d Sept.— Ibid.
$ Burnet, History of his Own Time, (fol.) vol. i.
p. 648.
!1 14th to 18th Sept.— London Gazettes.
IT 10th and 24th Sept.— Dalrymple, Memoirs of
Great Britain, appendix to part i. book ii.
36
vain for pardon.* Some months after, when
Jeffreys had brought on a fit of dangerous
illness by one of his furious debauches, the
King expressed great concern, and declared
that his Joss could not be easily repaired. f
The public acts and personal demeanour
of the King himself agreed too well with
the general character of these judicial se
verities. An old officer, named Holmes,
who was taken in Monmouth's army, being
brought up to London, was admitted to an
interview with the King, who offered to spare
his life if he would promise to live quietly.
He answered, that his principles had been
and still were " republican," believing that
form of government to be the best ; and that
he was an old man, whose life was as little
worth asking as it was worth giving, — an
answer which so displeased the King, that
Holmes was removed to Dorchester, where
he suffered death with fortitude and piety. t
The proceedings on the circuit seem, indeed,
to have been so exclusively directed by the
King and the Chief Justice, that even Lord
Sunderland, powerful as he was, could not
obtain the pardon of one delinquent. Yet
the case was favourable, and deserves to be
shortly related, as characteristic of the times.
Lord Sunderland interceded repeatedly^ with
Jeffreys for a youth named William Jenkins,
who was executed II in spite of such powerful
solicitations. He was the son of an eminent
Nonconformist clergyman, who had recently
died in Newgate after a long imprisonment,
inflicted on him for the performance of his
clerical duties. Young Jenkins had distri
buted mourning rings, on which was inscribed
" William Jenkins, murdered in Newgate."
He was in consequence imprisoned in the
jail of Ilchester, and, being released by
Monmouth's army, he joined his deliverers
against his oppressors.
* The Pere d' Orleans, who wrote under the
eye of James, in 1695, mentions the displeasure
of the King at the sale of pardons, and seems to
refer to Lord Sunderland's letter to Kirke, who,
we know from Oldmixon, was guilty of that prac
tice ; and, in other respects, rather attempts to
account for, than to denv, the acquiescence of the
King in the cruelties. — Revolutions d'Angleterre,
liv. xi. The testimony of Roger North, if it has
any foundation, cannot be applied to this part of
the subject. The part of the Life of James II.
which relates to it is the work only of the anony
mous biographer, Mr. Dicconson of Lancashire,
and abounds with the grossest mistakes. The
assertion of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham in
the Account of the Revolution, that Jeffreys dis
obeyed James' orders, is disproved by the corres
pondence already quoted. There is, on the whole,
no colour for the assertion of Macpherson, (His
tory of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 453), or for the
doubts of Dalrymple.
t Barillon, 4th Feb. 1686.— Fox MSS.
I Lord Lonsdale, p. 12. Calendar for Dorset
shire. Bloody Assizes. The account of Colonel
Holmes by the anonymous biographer (Life of
James II. vol. ii. p. 43,) is contradicted by all these
authorities. It is utterly improbable, and is not
more honourable to James than that here adopted.
$ Lord Sunderland to Lord Jeffreys, 12th Sept.
—State Paper Office.
I! At Taunton, 30th Sept.— Western Rebellion.
Y2
282
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Vain attempts have been made to excul
pate James, by throwing part of the blame
of these atrocities upon Pollexfen, an eminent
Whig lawyer, who was leading counsel in
the prosecutions;* — a wretched employment,
which he probably owed, as a matter of
course, to his rank as senior King's counsel
on the circuit. His silent acquiescence in
the illegal proceedings against Mrs. Lisle
must, indeed, brand his memory with in
delible infamy; but, from the King's perfect
knowledge of the circumstances of that case,
it seems to be evident that Pollexfen's inter
position would have been unavailing : and
the subsequent proceedings were carried on
with such utter disregard of the forms, as
well as the substance of justice, that counsel
had probably no duty to perform, and no op
portunity to interfere. To these facts may
be added, what, without such preliminary
evidence, would have been of little weight,
the dying declaration of Jeffreys himself,
who, a few moments before he expired, said
to Dr. Scott, an eminent divine who attended
him in the Tower, " Whatever I did then I
did by express orders ; and I have this farther
to say for myself, that I was not half bloody
enough for him who sent me thither."!
Other trials occurred under the eye of
James in London, where, according to an
ancient and humane usage, no sentence of
death is executed till the case is laid before
the King in person, that he may determine
whether there be any room for mercy. Mr.
Cornish, an eminent merchant, charged with
a share in the Rye House Plot, was appre
hended, tried, and executed within the space
of ten days, the court having refused him
the time which he alleged to be necessary
to bring up a material witness.! Colonel
Rumsey, the principal witness for the Crown,
owned that on the trial of Lord Russell he
had given evidence which directly contra
dicted his testimony against Cornish. This
avowal of perjury did not hinder his convic
tion and execution ; but the scandal was so
great, that James was obliged, in a few days,
to make a tardy reparation for the precipi
tate injustice of his judges. The mutilated
limbs of Cornish were restored to his rela
tions, and Rumsey was confined for life to
St. Nicholas' Island, at Plymouth,^ a place
of illegal imprisonment, still kept up in defi
ance of the Habeas Corpus Act. This vir
tual acknowledgment by the King of the
falsehood of Rurasey's testimony assumes an
importance in history, when it is considered
as a proof of the perjury of one of the two
* Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 44.
t Burnet (Oxford. 1823), vol. iii. p. 61. Speaker
Onslow's Note. Onslow received this informa
tion from Sir J. Jekyll, who heard it from Lord
Somers, to whom it was communicated by Dr.
Scott. The account of Tutchin, who stated that
Jeffreys had made the same declaration to him in
the Tower, is thus confirmed by indisputable evi
dence.
t State Trials, vol. xi. p. 382.
$ Narcissus Luttrell, 19th April, 1686.
witnesses against Lord Russell, — the man of
most unspotted virtue who ever suffered on
an English scaffold. Ring, Fernley, and
Elizabeth Gaunt, persons of humble condi
tion in life, were tried on the same day with
Cornish, for harbouring some fugitives from
Monmouth's army. One of the persons to
whom Ring afforded shelter was his near
kinsman. Fernley was convicted on the sole
evidence of Burton, whom he had concealed
from the search of the public officers. When
a witness was about to be examined for
Fernley, the Court allowed one of their own
officers to cry out that the witness was a
Whig; while one of the judges, still more
conversant with the shades of party, sneered
at another of his witnesses as a Trimmer.
WThen Burton was charged with being an
accomplice in the Rye House Plot, Mrs.
Gaunt received him, supplied him with
money, and procured him a passage to Hol
land. After the defeat of Monmouth, with
whom he returned, he took refuge in the
house of Fernley, where Mrs. Gaunt visited
him, again supplied him with money, and
undertook a second time to save his life, by
procuring the means of his again escaping
into Holland. When Burton was appre
hended, the prosecutors had their choice, if
a victim was necessary, either of proceed
ing against him, whom they charged with
open rebellion and intended assassination, or
against Mrs. Gaunt, whom they could ac
cuse only of acts of humanity and charity
forbidden by their laws. They chose to
spare the wretched Burton, in order that he
might swear away the lives of others for
having preserved his own. Eight judges,.
of whom Jeffreys was no longer one, sat on
these deplorable trials. Roger North, known
as a contributor to our history, was an active
counsel against the benevolent and courage
ous Mrs. Gaunt. William Perm was present
when she was burnt alive,* and having
familiar access to James, is likely to have
related to him the particulars of that and of
the other executions at the same time. At
the stake, she disposed the straw around her,
so as to shorten her agony by a strong and
quick fire, with a composure which melted
the spectators into tears. She thanked God
that he had enabled her to succour the deso
late ; that " the blessing of those who were
ready to perish" came upon her; and that,
in the act for which she was doomed by men
to destruction, she had obeyed the sacred
precepts which commanded her " to hide the
outcast, and not to betray him that wander-
eth." Thus was this poor and uniristructed
woman supported under a death of cruel
torture, by the lofty consciousness of suffer
ing for righteousness, and by that steadfast
faith in the final triumph of justice which
can never visit the last moments of the op
pressor. The dying speeches of the prisoners
executed in London were suppressed, and
the outrages offered to the remains of the
* Clarkson, Life of Penn, vol. i. p. 448,
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
283
dead were carried to an unusual degree.*
The body of Richard Rumbold, who had
been convicted and executed at Edinburgh,
under a Scotch law. was brought up to Lon
don. The sheriffs of London were com
manded, by a royal warrant, to set up one of
the quarters on one of the gates of the city,
and to deliver the remaining three to the
sheriff of Hertford, who was directed by
another warrant to place them at or near
Rumbold's late residence at the Rye House ;t
— impotent but studied outrages, which often
manifest more barbarity of nature than do
acts of violence to the living.
The chief restraint on the severity of Jef
freys seems to have arisen from his rapacity.
Contemporaries of all parties agree that there
were few gratuitous pardons, and that wealthy
convicts seldom sued to him in vain. Kiffin,
a Nonconformist merchant, had agreed to
give 3000L to a courtier for the pardon of
two youths of the name of Luson, his grand
sons, who had been in Monmouth's army.
But Jeffreys guarded his privilege of selling
pardons, by unrelenting rigour towards those
prisoners from whom mercy had thus been
sought through another channel.!: He was
attended on his circuit by a buffoon, to whom,
as a reward for his merriment in one of his
hours of revelry, he tossed the pardon of a
rich culprit, expressing his hope that it might
turn to good account. But this traffic in
mercy was not confined to the Chief Justice :
the King pardoned Lord Grey to increase the
value of the grant of his life-estate, which
had been made to Lord Rochester. The
young women of Taunton, who had pre
sented colours and a Bible to Monmouth,
were excepted by name from the general
pardon, in order that they might purchase
separate ones. To aggravate this indecency,
the money to be thus extorted from them
was granted to persons of their own sex, —
the Queen's maids of honour; and it must
be added with regret, that William Penn,
sacrificing other objects to the hope of ob
taining the toleration of his religion from the
King's favour, was appointed an agent for the
maids of honour, and submitted to receive
instructions "to make the most advantage
ous composition he could in their behalf."§
The Duke of Somerset in vain attempted to
persuade Sir Francis Warre, a neighbouring
gentleman, to obtain 7000L from the young
women, without which, he said, the maids
of honour were determined to prosecute
them to outlawry. Roger Hoare. an eminent
trader of Bridgewater, saved his life by the
payment to them of 1000/. ; but he was kept
in suspense respecting his pardon till he came
* Narcissus Luttrell, 16th Nov., 1685.
t Warrants, 27th and 28th October, 1685.— -State
Paper Office. One quarter was to be put up at
Aldgate ; the remaining three at Hoddesdon, trfe
Rye, and Bishop's Stortford,
t Kiffin' s Memoirs, p. 54. See answer of Kiffin
to James, ibid. p. 159.
$ Lord Sunderland to William Penn, 13th Feb.
1686.— State Paper Office,
to the foot of the gallows, for no other con
ceivable purpose than that of extorting the
largest possible sum. This delay caused the
insertion of his execution in the first narra
tives of these events : but he lived to take
the most just revenge on tyrants, by con
tributing, as representative in several Par
liaments for his native town, to support that
free government which prevented the re
storation of tyranny.
The same disposition was shown by the
King and his ministers in the case of Mr.
Hampden, the grandson of him who, forty
years before, had fallen in battle for the lib
erties of his country. Though this gentle
man had been engaged in the consultations
of Lord Russell and Mr. Sidney, yet there
being only one witness against him. he was
not tried for treason, but was convicted of a
misdemeanor, and on the evidence of Lord
Howard condemned to pay a fine of 40,000?.
His father being in possession of the family
estate, he remained in prison till after Mon
mouth's defeat, when he was again brought
to trial for the same act as high treason,
under pretence that a second witness had
been discovered.* It had been secretly ar
ranged, that if he pleaded guilty he should
be pardoned on paying a large sum of money
to two of the King's favourites. At the ar
raignment, both the judges and Mr. Hamp
den performed the respective parts which
the secret agreement required ; he humbly
entreating their intercession to obtain the
pardon which he had already secured by
more effectual means, and they extolling the
royal mercy, and declaring that the prisoner,
by his humble confession, had taken the best
means of qualifying himself to receive it.
The result of this profanation of the forms
of justice and mercy was, that Mr. Hampden
was in a few months allowed to reverse his
attainder, on payment of a bribe of 6000L
to be divided between Jeffreys and Father
Petre, the two guides of the King in the per
formance of his duty to God and his people. t
Another proceeding, of a nature still more
culpable, showed the same union of merce
nary with sanguinary purposes in the King
and his ministers. Prideaux, a gentleman
of fortune in the West of England, was ap
prehended on the landing of Monmouth, for
no other reason than that his father had been
attorney-general under the Commonwealth
and the Protectorate. Jeffreys, actuated
here by personal motives, employed agents
through the prisons to discover evidence
against Prideaux. The lowest prisoners
were offered their lives, and a sum of 500Z.
if they would give evidence against him.
Such, however, was the inflexible morality
of the Nonconformists, who formed the bulk
of Monmouth's adherents, that they remained
unshaken by these offers, amidst the military
* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 479.
t Lords' Journals, 20th Dec. 1689. This docu
ment has been overlooked by all historians, who,
in consequence, have misrepresented the conduct
of Mr. Hampden,
284
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
violence which surrounded them, and in spite
of the judicial rigours which were to follow.
Prideaux was enlarged. Jeffreys himself,
however, was able to obtain some informa
tion, though not upon oath, from two convicts
under the influence of the terrible proceed
ings at Dorchester;* and Prideaux was again
apprehended. The convicts were brought
to London • and one of them was conducted
to a private interview with the Lord Chan
cellor, by Sir Roger L'Estrange, the most
noted writer in the pay of the Court. Pri
deaux, alarmed at these attempts to tamper
with witnesses, employed the influence of
his friends to obtain his pardon. The motive
for Jeffreys' unusual activity was then dis
covered. Prideaux's friends were told that
nothing could be done for him, as '•' the King-
had given him" (the familiar phrase for a
grant of an estate either forfeited or about to
be forfeited) to the Chancellor, as a reward
for his services. On application to one Jen
nings, the avowed agent of the Chancellor
for the sale of pardons, it was found that
Jeffreys, unable to procure evidence on
which he could obtain the \vhole of Pri-
deaux's large estates by a conviction, had
now resolved to content himself with a bribe
of 10,OOOZ. for the deliverance of a man so
innocent, that by the formalities of law, per
verted as they then were, the Lord Chancel
lor could not effect his destruction. Payment
of so large a sum was at first resisted ; but
to subdue this contumacy, Prideaux's friends
were forbidden to have access to him in pri
son, and his ransom wras raised to 15,OOOZ.
The money was then publicly paid by a
banker to the Lord Chancellor of England by
name. Even in the administration of the
iniquitous laws of confiscation, there are
probably few instances where, with so much
premeditation and effrontery, the spoils of
an accused man were promised first to the
judge, who might have tried him, and after
wards to the Chancellor who was to advise
the King in the exercise of mercy. t
Notwithstanding the perjury of Rumsey in
the case of Cornish, a second experiment
was made on the effect of his testimony by
producing him, together with Lord Grey and
one Saxton, as a witness against Lord Bran
don on a charge of treason.; The accused
was convicted, and Rumsey was still allowed
to correspond confidentially writh the Prime
Minister,^ to whom he even applied for
money. But when the infamy of Rumsey
became notorious, and when Saxton had per
jured himself on the subsequent trial of Lord
Delamere, it was thought proper to pardon
Lord Brandon, against whom no testimony
remained but that of Lord Grey, who, when
* Sunderland to Jeffreys, 14th Sept. 1685.—
State Paper Office.
t Commons' Journals, 1st May, 1689.
$ Narcissus Luttrell, 25th Nov. ,1685; which,
though very short, is more full than any published
account of Lord Brandon's trial.
$ Rumsey to Lord Sunderland, Oct. 1685, and
Jan. 1686.— State Paper Office.
he made his confession, is said to have stipu
lated that no man should be put to death on
his evidence. But Brandon was not enlarged
on bail till fourteen months, nor was his par
don completed till two years after his trial. *
The only considerable trial which remained
was that of Lord Delamere, before the Lord
Steward (Jeffreys) and thirty peers. Though
this nobleman was obnoxious and formidable
to the Court, the proof of the falsehood and
infamy of Saxton, the principal witness
against him, was so complete, that he was
unanimously acquitted ; — a remarkable and
almost solitary exception to the prevalent
proceedings of courts of law at that time,
arising partly from a proof of the falsehood
of the charge more clear than can often be
expected, and partly perhaps from the fel
low-feeling of the judges with the prisoner,
and from the greater reproach to which an
unjust judgment exposes its authors, when
in a conspicuous station.
The administration of justice in state pro
secutions is one of the surest tests of good
government. The judicial proceedings which
have been thus carefully and circumstantially
related afford a specimen of those evils from
which England was delivered by the Revo
lution. As these acts were done with the
aid of juries, and without the censure of Par
liament, they also afford a fatal proof that
judicial forms and constitutional establish
ments may be rendered unavailing by the
subserviency or the prejudices of those who
are appointed to carry them into effect. The
wisest institutions may become a dead letter,
and may even, for a time, be converted "into
a shelter and an instrument of tyranny, when
the sense of justice and the love of liberty
are weakened in the minds of a people.
CHAPTER II.
Dismissal of Halifax. — Meeting of Parlia
ment. — Debates on the Address. — Proroga
tion of Parliament. — Habeas Corpus Act. —
State of the Catholic Party.— Character of
the Queen. — Of Catherine Scdlcy. — Attempt
to Support the Dispensing Power by a Judg
ment of a Court of Law. — Godden V. Hales.
— Consideration of the Arguments. — Attack
on the Church. — Establishment of the Court
of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes. —
Advancement of Catholics to Offices. — Inter
course with Rome.
THE general appearance of submission
which followed the suppression of the revolt,
and the punishment of the revolters, encour
aged the King to remove from office the
Marquis of Halifax, with whose liberal opi
nions he had recently as wrell as early been
dissatisfied, and whom he suffered to remain
in place at his accession, only as an example
that old opponents might atone for their of-
* Narcissus Luttrell, Jan. and Oct. 1687.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
285
fences by compliance.* A different policy
•was adopted in a situation of more strength.
As the King found that Halifax would not
comply with his projects, he determined
to dismiss him before the meeting of Par
liament ; — an act of vigour which it was
thought would put an end to division in his
councils, and prevent discontented ministers
from countenancing a resistance to his mea
sures. When he announced this resolution
to Barillon, he added, that i: his design was
to obtain a repeal of the Test and Habeas
Corpus Acts, of which the former was de
structive of the Catholic religion, arid the
other of the royal authority; that Halifax
had not the firmness to support the good
cause, and that he would have less power
of doing harm if he were disgraced."! James
had been advised to delay the dismissal till
after the session, that the opposition of Hali
fax might be modeiated, if not silenced, by
the restraints of high office ; but he thought
that his authority would be more strength
ened, by an example of a determination to
keep no terms with any one who did not
show an unlimited compliance with his
wishes. "I do not suppose," said the King
to Barillon with a smile, c:that the King your
master will be sorry for the removal of Hali
fax. I know that it will mortify the minis
ters of the allies." Nor was he deceived in
either of these respects. The news was
received with satisfaction by Louis, and with
dismay by the ministers of the Empire, of
Spain, and of Holland, who lost their only
advocate in the councils of England.! It
excited wonder and alarm among those Eng
lishmen who were zealously attached to their
religion and liberty. § Though Lord Halifax
had no share in the direction of public affairs
since the King's accession, his removal was
an important event in the eye of the public,
arid gave him a popularity which he pre
served by independent and steady conduct
during the sequel of James' reign.
It is remarkable that, on the meeting of
Parliament (9th November) little notice was
taken of the military and judicial excesses
in the West. Sir Edward Seymour applaud
ed the punishment of the rebels ; and Wal
ler alone, a celebrated wit, an ingenious
poet : the father of parliamentary oratory, and
one of 4he refiners of the English language,
though now in his eightieth year, arraigned
the violence of the soldiers with a spirit still
unextinguished. He probably intended to
excite a discussion which might gradually
have reached the more deliberate and inex
cusable faults of the judges. But the opi
nions and policy of his audience defeated his
generous purpose. The prevalent party look
ed with little disapprobation on seventies
which fell on Nonconformists and supposed
* Barillon, 5th March, 1685.— Fox, app. p. xlvii.
[Tn these dates the new style only is observed. —
ED.]
t Barillon, 20th October. — Ibid. p. cxxvii.
| BariUon, 5th November. — Ibid. p. cxxx.
$ Barillon) 1st March. — Ibid. p. xxxviii.
Republicans. Many might be base enough
to feel little compassion for sufferers in the
humbler classes of society ; some were pro
bably silenced by a pusillanimous dread of
being said to be the abbettors of rebels ; and
all must have been, in some measure, influ
enced by an undue and excessive degree of
that wholesome respect for judicial proceed
ings, which is one of the characteristic vir
tues of a free country. This disgraceful
silence is, perhaps, somewhat extenuated by
the slow circulation of intelligence at that
period ; by the censorship Avhich imposed
silence on the press, or enabled the ruling
party to circulate falsehood through its
means ; and by the eagerness of all parties
for a discussion of the alarming tone and
principles of the speech from the throne.
The King began his speech by observing
that the late events must convince every
one that the militia was not sufficient, and
that nothing but a good force of well-disci
plined troops, in constant pay, could secure
the government against enemies abroad and
at home; and that for this purpose he had
increased their number, and now asked a
supply for the great charge of maintaining
them. Cv' Let no man lake exception," he
continued, " that there are some officers in
the army not qualified, according to the late
tests, for their employments ; the gentlemen
are, I must tell you, most of them well known
to me: they have approved the loyalty of
their principles by their practice : and I will
deal plainly with you, that after having had
the benefit of their services in such a time
of need and danger, I will neither expose
them to disgrace, nor myself to the want of
them, if there should be another rebellion to
make them necessary to me." Nothing but
the firmest reliance on the submissive dis
position of the Parliament could have induced
James to announce to them his determina
tion to bid defiance to the laws. He probably
imagined that the boldness with which he
asserted the power of the crown would be
applauded by many, and endured by most
of the members of such a Parliament. But
never was there a more remarkable example
of the use of a popular assembly, however
ill composed, in extracting from the disunion,
jealousy, and ambitition of the victorious
enemies of liberty, a new opposition to the
dangerous projects of the Crown. The vices
of politicians were converted into an imper
fect substitute for virtue ; and though the
friends of the constitution were few and fee
ble, the inevitable divisions of their oppo
nents in some degree supplied their place.
The disgrace of Lord Halifax disheartened
and even "offended some supporters of Go
vernment. Sir Thomas Clarges, a determin
ed Tory, was displeased at the merited re
moval of his nephew, the Duke of Albemarle,
from the command of the army against Mon-
mouth. Nottingham, a man of talent and
ambition, more a Tory than a courtier, was
dissatisfied with his own exclusion from
office, and jealous of Rochester's ascendency
286
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
over the Church party. His relation Finch,
though solicitor-general, took a part against
the Court. The projects of the Crown were
thwarted by the friends of Lord Dauby, who
had forfeited all hopes of the King's favour
by communicating the Popish Plot to the
House of Commons, and by his share in the
marriage of the Princess Mary with the
Prince of Orange. Had the King's first at
tack been made on civil liberty, the Oppo
sition might have been too wreak to embolden
all these secret and dispersed discontents to
display themselves, and to combine together.
But the attack on the exclusive privileges of
the Church of England, while it alienated
the main force of the Cro\vn, toucKed a point
on wh'ich all the subdivisions of discontented
Tories professed to agree, and afforded them
a specious pretext for opposing the King,
\vithout seeming to deviate from their an
cient principles. They were gradually dis
posed to seek or accept the assistance of the
defeated Whigs, and the names of Sir Rich
ard Temple, Sir John Lowther, Sergeant
Maynard. and Mr. Hampden, appear at last
more and more often in the proceedings.
Thus admirably does a free constitution not
only command the constant support of the
wise and virtuous, but often compel the low
jealousies and mean intrigues of disappointed
ambition to contend for its preservation. The
consideration of the King's speech was post
poned for three days, in spite of a motion for
its immediate consideration by Lord Preston,
a secretary of state.
In the committee of the whole House on
the speech, which occurred on the 12th, two
resolutions wrere adopted, of which the first
was friendly, and the second was adverse,
to the Government. It was resolved " that
a supply be granted to his Majesty," and
"that a bill be brought in to render the
militia more useful." The first of these
propositions has seldom been opposed since
the government has become altogether de
pendent on the annual grants of Parliament ;
it was more open to debate on a proposal for
extraordinary aid, and it gave rise to some
important observations. Clarges declared he
had voted against the Exclusion, because he
did not believe its supporters when they fore
told that a Popish king would have a Popish
army. "I am afflicted greatly at this breach
of our liberties ; what is struck at here is our
all." Sir Edward Seymour observed, with
truth, that to dispense with the Test was to re
lease the King from all law. Encouraged by
the bold language of these Tories, old Serjeant
Maynard said, that the supply was asked for
the maintenance of an army which was to be
officered against a law made, not for the pun
ishment of Papists, but for the defence of Pro
testants. The accounts of these important
debates are so scanty, that we may, without
much presumption, suppose the venerable
lawyer to have at least alluded to the recent
origin of the Test (to which the King had dis
paragingly adverted in his speech), as the
strongest reason for its strict observance. Had
it been an ancient law, founded on general
considerations of policy, it might have been
excusable to relax its rigour from a regard to
the circumstances and feelings of the King.
But having been recently provided as a
security against the specific dangers appre
hended from his accession to the throne, it
was to the last degree unreasonable to re
move or suspend it at the moment when
those very dangers had reached their highest
pitch. Sir Richard Temple spoke waimly
against standing armies, and of the necessity
of keeping the Crown dependent on parlia
mentary grants. He proposed the resolution
for the improvement of the militia, with
which the courtiers concurred. Clarges
moved as an amendment on the vote of sup
ply, the words, for the additional forces," —
to throw odium on the ministerial vote ; but
this adverse amendment was negatived by a
majority of seventy in a house of three hun
dred and eighty-one. On the 13th, the minis
ters proposed to instruct the committee of the
whole House on the King's speech, to con
sider, first, the paragraph of the speech which
contained the demand of supply. They
were defeated by a majority of a hundred
and eighty-three to a hundred and eighty-
two : and the committee resolved to take
into consideration, first, the succeeding para
graph, which related to the officers illegally
employed.* On the 16th; an address was
brought up from the committee, setting forth
the legal incapacity of the Catholic officers,
which could only be removed by an Act of
Parliament, offering to indemnify them from
the penalties they had incurred, but, as their
continuance would be taken to be a dis
pensing with the lawr, praying that the King
would be pleased not to continue them in
their employments. The House, having
substituted the milder words, "that he would
give such directions therein as that no ap
prehensions or jealousies might remain in
the hearts of his subjects," unanimously
adopted the address. A supply of seven
hundred thousand pounds was voted ; — a
medium between twelve hundred thousand
required by ministers, and two hundred
thousand proposed by the most rigid of their
opponents. The danger of standing armies
to liberty, and the wisdom of such limited
grants as should compel the Crown to recur
soon and often to the House of Commons,
were the general argument^ used for the
smaller sum. The courtiers' urged the ex-
* " The Earl of Middleton, ihen a secretary of
state, seeing many go out upon the division against
the Court who were in the service of Government,
went down to the bar and reproached them to
their faces for voting as they did. He said to a
Captain Kendal, ' Sir, have you not a troop of
horse in his Majesty's service ?' ' Yes, sir,' said
the other: 'but my brother died last night, and
has left me seven hundred pounds a year.' This
I had from my uncle, the first Lord Onslow, who
was then a member of the House, and present.
This incident upon one vote very likely saved the
nation. — Burnet (Oxford, 1823), vol. iii. p. 86,
Note by Speaker Onslow.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
287
ample of the late revolt, the superiority of
disciplined troops over an inexperienced
militia, the necessity arising from the like
practice of all other states, and the revolution
in the art of war. which had rendered pro
ficiency in it unattainable, except by those
who studied and practised it as the profes
sion of their lives. The most practical ob
servation was that of Sir William Trumbull,
who suggested that the grant should be
annual, to make the existence of the army
annually dependent on the pleasure of Par
liament. The ministers, taking advantage
of the secrecy of foreign negotiations, ven
tured to assert that a formidable army in the
hands of the King was the only check on the
ambition of France ; though they knew that
their master was devoted to Louis XIV., to
whom he had been recently suing for a
secret subsidy in the most abject language
of supplication.* When the address was pre
sented, the King answered, with a warmth
and anger very unusual on such occasions.!
that "he did not expect such an address;
that he hoped his reputation would have
inspired such a confidence in him ; but that,
whatever they might do, he should adhere
to all his promises." The reading of this
answer in the House the next day produced
a profound silence for some minutes. A
motion was made by Mr. Wharton to take it
into consideration, on which Mr. John Cooke
said, "We are Englishmen, and ought not to
be frightened from our duty by a few hard
words."! Both these gentlemen were Whigs,
who were encouraged to speak freely by the
symptoms of vigour which the House had
shown ; but they soon discovered that they
had mistaken the temper of their colleagues ;
for the majority, still faithful to the highest
pretensions of the Crown whenever ihe Esta
blished Church was not averse to them, com
mitted Mr. Cooke to the Tower, though he
disavowed all disrespectful intention, and
begged pardon of the King and the House.
Notwithstanding tho King's answer, they
proceeded to provide means of raising the
supply, and they resumed the consideration
of a bill for the naturalisation of French Pro
testants, — a tolerant measure, the introduc
tion of which the zealous partisans of the
Church had, at first, resisted, as they after
wards destroyed the greater part of its bene
fit by confining it to those who should con
form" to the Establishment. § The motion
for considering the King's speech was not
pursued, which, together with the proceed
ing on supply, seemed to imply a submission
* Barillon, 16th Julv. 1635. — Fox, app. p. cix.
" Le Roi me dit qne si V. M. avoit quelque chose
a dosirer de lui. il iroit au devant de tout ce qui
pent plaire a V. M. ; qu'il avoit ete eleve en
France, et mange le pain de V. M. ; que son coRitr
etoit Francois." Only six weeks before (30th
May), James had told his parliament that " he
had a true English heart."
t Rereshy, p. 218. Sir John Reresby, being a
member of the House, was probably present.
J Commons' Journals, 18th Nov.
t Ibid., 16th June, 1st July.
to the menacing answer of James ; arising
principally from the subservient character
of the majority, but, probably, in some, from
a knowledge of the vigorous measures about
to be proposed in the House of Lords.
At the opening of the Session, that House
had contented themselves with general thanks
to the King for his speech, without any allu
sion to its contents. Jeffreys, in delivering
the King's answer, affected to treat this par
liamentary courtesy as an approval of the
substance of the speech. Either on that or
on the preceding occasion, it was said by
Lord Halifax or Lord Devonshire (for it is
ascribed to both), " that they had now more
reason than ever to give thanks to his Majesty
for having dealt so plainly with them." The
House, not called upon to proceed as the
other House was by the demand of supply,
continued inactive for a few days, till they
were roused by the imperious answer of the
King to the Commons. On the 19th, the
day of that answer, Lord Devonshire moved
to take into consideration the dangerous con
sequences of an army kept up ag-ainst law.
He was supported by Halifax, by Notting
ham, and by Anglesea, who, in a very ad
vanced age, still retained that horror of the
yoke of Rome, which he had found means
to reconcile with frequent acquiescence in
the civil policy of Charles and James. Lord
Mordaunt, more known as Earl of Peter
borough, signalised himself by the youthful
spirit of his speech. " Let us not," he said,
" like the House of Commons, speak of jea
lousy and distrust : ambiguous measures in
spire these feelings. What we now see is
not ambiguous. A standing army is on foot,
filled with officers, who cannot be allowed
to serve without overthrowing the laws. To
keep up a standing army when there is
neither civil nor foreign war, is to establish
that arbitrary government which Englishmen
hold in such just abhorrence." Compton,
Bishop of London, a prelate of noble birth
and military spirit, who had been originally
an officer in the Guards, spoke for the mo
tion in the name of all his brethren on the
episcopal bench, who considered the security
of the Church as involved in the issue of the
question. He was influenced not only by the
feelings of his order, but by his having been
the preceptor of the Princesses Mary and
Anne, who were deeply interested in the
maintenance of the Protestant Church, as
well as conscientiously attached to it. Jef
freys was the principal speaker on the side
of the Court. He urged the thanks already
voted as an approval of the speech. His scur
rilous invectives, and the tones and gestures
of menace with which he was accustomed
to overawe juries, roused the indignation, in
stead of commanding the acquiescence, of
the Lords. As this is a deportment which
cuts off all honourable retreat, the contempo
rary accounts are very probable which repre
sent him as sinking at once from insolence
to meanness. His defeat must have been
signal ; for; in an unusually full House of
288
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Lords,* after so violent an opposition by the
Chancellor of England, the motion for taking
the address into consideration W7as, on the
23d, carried without a division. t
On the next day the King prorogued the
Parliament ; which never again was assem
bled but for the formalities of successive
prorogations, by which its legal existence
was prolonged for t\vo years. By this act
he lost the subsidy of seven hundred thou
sand pounds : but his situation had become
difficult. Though money was employed to
corrupt some of the opponents of his mea
sures, the Opposition was daily gaining
strength j By rigorous economy, by divert
ing parliamentary aids from the purposes for
which they were granted, the King had the
means of maintaining the army, though his
ministers had solemnly affirmed that he had
not.§ He was full of maxims for the neces
sity of firmness and the dangers of conces
sion, which were mistaken by others, and
perhaps by himself, for proofs of a vigorous
character. He had advanced too far to re
cede with tolerable dignity. The energy
manifested by the House of Lords would
have compelled even the submissive Com
mons to co-operate with them, which might
have given rise to a more permanent coalition
of the High Church party with the friends of
liberty. A suggestion had been thrown out in
the Lords to desire the opinion of the judges
on the right of the King to commission the Ca
tholic officers ;ll arid it was reared that the
terrors of impeachment might, during the sit
ting of Parliament, draw an opinion from these
magistrates against the prerogative, which
might afterwards prove irrevocable. To re
concile Parliament to the officers became
* The attendance was partly caused by a call of
the House, ordered for the trials of Lords Stam
ford and De'.amere. There were present on the
19th November, seventy-five temporal and twenty
spiritual lords. On the call, two days before, it
appeared that forty were either minors, abroad, or
confined by sickness ; six had sent proxies; two
were prisoners for treason ; and thirty absent with
out any special reason, of whom the great majority
were disabled as Catholics : so that very few peers,
legally and physically capable of attendance, were
absent.
t Barillon, 3d Dec.— Fox MSS. This is the
only distinct narrative of the proceedings of this
important and decisive day. Burnet was then on
the Continent, but I have endeavoured to com
bine his account with that of Barillon.
t Barillon, 26ih Nov. — Fox, app. p. cxxxix.
$ Barillon, 13th Dec.— Fox MSS. The expen
ses of the army of Charles had been 280,OOOL;
that of James was 600,0007. The difference of
320?OOOZ. was, according to Barillon, thus provided
for: 100,OOOL, the income of James as Duke of
York, which he still preserved ; 800,OOOZ. granted
to pay the debts of Charles, which, as the Ki?ig
was to pay the dehls as he thought fit, would yield
for some years 100,OOOZ.; 800,000?. granted for the
navy and the arsenals, on which the King might
proceed slowly, or even do nothbig; 400,OOOZ. for
the suppression of the rebellion. As these last
funds were not to come into the Exchequer for
some years, they were estimated as producing an
nually more than sufficient to cover the deficiency.
II Barillon, 10th Dec.— Fox MSS.
iaily more hopeless : to sacrifice those who
had adhered to the King in a time of need
appeared to be an example dangerous to all
his projects, whether of enlarging his pre
rogative, or of securing, and, perhaps, finally
establishing, his religfon.
Thus ended the active proceedings of a
Parliament, which, in all that did not concern
the Church, justified the most sanguine hopes
that James could have formed of their sub
mission to the Court, as well as their attach
ment to the monarchy. A body of men so
subservient as that House of Commons could
hardly be brought together by any mode of
election or appointment; and James was
aware that, by this angry prorogation, he
had rendered it difficult for himself for a long
time to meet another Parliament. The Ses
sion had lasted only eleven days; during
which the eyes of Europe had been anxious
ly turned towards their proceedings. Louis
XIV., not entirely relying on the sincerity or
steadiness of James, was fearful that he might
yield to the Allies or to his people, and in
structed Barillon in that case to open a negoti
ation with leading members of the Commons,
that they might embarrass the policy of the
King, if it became adverse to France.* Spain
and Holland, on the other hand, hoped, that
any compromise between the King and Par
liament would loosen the ties that bound the
former to France. It was even hoped that
he might form a triple alliance with Spain
and Sweden, and large sums of money were
secretly offered to him to obtain his acces
sion to such an alliance.! Three days before
the meeting of Parliament, had arrived in
London Monsignor D'Adda, a Lombard pre
late of distinction, as the known, though then
unavowed, minister of the See of Rome,!
which was divided between the interest of
the Catholic Church of England and the ani
mosity of Innocent XI. against Louis XIV.
All these solicitudes, and precautions, and
expectations, were suddenly dispelled by
the unexpected rupture between James and
his Parliament.
From the temper and -opinions of that Par
liament it is reasonable to conclude, that the
King would have been more successful if he
had chosen to make his first attack on the
Habeas Corpus Act, instead of directing it
against the Test. Both these laws were then
only of a few years' standing; and he, as
well as his brother, held them both in ab
horrence. The Test gave exclusive privi
leges to the Established Church, and was,
therefore, dear to the adherents of that pow
erful body. The Habeas Corpus Act was
not then the object of that attachment and
veneration which experience of its unspeaka
ble benefits for a hundred and fifty years has
since inspired. The most ancient of our
fundamental laws had declared the princi-
* Louis to Barillon, 19th Nov. — Fox, app. p.
cxxxvi.
t Barillon, 26th Nov.— Fox, app. p. cxxxix.
1 D'Adda to the Pope 19th Nov.— D'Adda
MSS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
289
pie that no freeman could be imprisoned
without legal authority.* The immemorial
antiquity of the writ of Habeas Corpus, — an
order of a court of justice to a jailer to bring
the body of a prisoner before them, that
there might be an opportunity of examining
whether his apprehension and detention
Were legal, — seems to prove that this princi
pal was coeval with the law of England. In
irregular times, however, it had been often
violated ; and the judges under Charles I.
pronounced a judgment,! which, if it had
not been condemned by the Petition of
Right,} would have vested in the Crown a
legal power of arbitrary imprisonment. By
the statute which abolished the Star Cham
ber, the Parliament of 1641§ made some im
portant provisions to facilitate deliverance
from illegal imprisonment. For eleven years
Lord Shaflesbury struggled to obtain a law
which should complete the securities of per
sonal liberty; and at length that great though
not blameless man obtained the object of his
labours, and bestowed on his country the most
perfect security against arbitrary imprison
ment which has ever been enjoyed by any
society of men. II It has banished that most
dangerous of all modes of oppression from
England. It has effected that great object
as quietly as irresistibly; it has never in a
single instance been resisted or evaded ; and
it must be the model of all nations who aim
at securing that personal liberty without
which no other liberty can subsist. But in
the year 1685, it appeared to the predominant
party an odious novelty, an experiment un
tried in any other nation, — carried through,
in a period of popular frenzy, during the short
triumph of a faction hostile to Church and
State, and by him who was the most ob
noxious' of all the demagogues of the age.
There were then, doubtless, many, — perhaps
the majority. — of the partisans of authority
who believed, with Charles and James, that
to deprive a government of all power to im
prison the suspected and the dangerous, un
less there was legal ground of charge against
them, was incompatible with the peace of
society ; and this opinion was the more dan
gerous because it was probably conscien
tious.! In this state of things it may seem
singular that James did not first propose the
repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act, by which
* Magna Charta, c. 29.
t The famous case of commitments "by the
special command of the King," which last words
the Court of King's Bench determined to be a suf
ficient cause for detaining a prisoner in custody,
•without any specification of an offence. — State
Trials, vol. iii. p. 1.
I 3 Car. I. c. i. $ 16 Car. I. c. 10.
II 31 C. II. c. 2.
IT James retained this opinion till his death. —
"It was a great misfortune to the people, as well
as to the Crown, the passing of the Habeas Cor
pus Act, since it obliges the Crown to keep a
greater force on foot to preserve the government
and encourages disaffected, turbulent, and unquie
spirits to carry on their wicked designs : it was
contrived and carried on by the Earl of Shaftes
bury to that intent." — Life, vol. ii. p. 621.
37
ie would have gained the means of silencing
>pposition to all his other projects. What the
brtunate circumstances were which pointed
lis attack against the Test, we are not en-
bled by contemporary evidence to ascertain.
He contemplated that measure with peculiar
resentment, as a personal insult to himself,
and as chiefly, if not solely, intended as a
safeguard against the dangers apprehended
Vom h's succession. He considered it as the
most urgent object of his policy to obtain a
•epeal of it; which would enable him to put
he administration, and especially the army,
nto the hands of those who were devoted
Dy the strongest of all ties to his service, and
whose power, honour, and even safety, were
involved in his success. An army composed
of Catholics must have seemed the most
effectual of all the instruments of power in
tiis hands ; and it is no wonder that he should
hasten to obtain it. Had he been a lukewarm
or only a professed Catholic, an armed force,
whose interests were the same with his own,
-night reasonably have been considered as
that which it was in the first place necessary
to secure. Charles II., with a loose belief in
Popery, and no zeal for it, was desirous of
strengthening its interests, in order to enlarge
his own power. As James was a conscien
tious and zealous Catholic, it is probable that
he was influenced in every measure of his
government by religion, as well as ambition.
Both these motives coincided in their object :
his absolute power was the only security for
his religion, and a Catholic army was the most
effectual instrument for the establishment of
absolute power. In such a case of combined
motives, it might have been difficult for him
self to determine which predominated on any
single occasion. Sunderland, whose sagacity
and religious indifference are alike unques
tionable, observed to Barillon, that on mere
principles of policy James could have no
object more at heart than to strengthen the
Catholic religion ;* — an observation which,
as long as the King himself continued to be
a Catholic, seems, in the hostile temper which
then prevailed among all sects, to have had
great weight.
The best reasons for human actions are
often not their true motives : but, in spite of
the event, it does not seem difficult to de
fend the determination of the King on those
grounds, merely political, which, doubtless,
had a considerable share in producing it. It
is not easy to ascertain how far his plans in
favour of his religion at that time extended.
A great division of opinion prevailed among
the Catholics themselves on this subject.
The most considerable and opulent laymen
of that communion, willing to secure mode
rate advantages, and desirous to employ their
superiority with such forbearance as might
provoke no new severities under a Protestant
successor, would have been content with a
repeal of the penal laws, without insisting
on an abrogation of the Test. The friends
Barillon, 16th July.— Fox, app. p. ciii.
Z
290
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of Spain and Austria, with all the enemies
of the French connection, inclined strongly
to a policy which, by preventing a rupture
between the King and Parliament, might
enable, and, perhaps, dispose him to espouse
the cause of European independence. The
Sovereign Pontiff himself was of this party ;
and the wary politicians of the court of Rome
advised their English friends to calm and
slow proceedings : though the Papal minister,
with a circumspection and reserve required
by the combination of a theological with a
diplomatic character, abstained from taking
any open part in the division, where it would
have been hard for him to escape the impu
tation of being either a lukewarm Catholic
or an imprudent counsellor. The Catholic
lords who were ambitious of office, the
Jesuits, and especially the King's confessor,
together with all the partisans of France,
supported extreme counsels better suited to
the temper of James, whose choice of poli
tical means was guided by a single maxim,
• — that violence (which he confounded with
vigour) was the only safe policy for an Eng
lish monarch. Their most specious argument
was the necessity of taking such decisive
measures to strengthen the Catholics during
the King's life as would effectually secure
them against the hostility of his successor.*
The victory gained by this party over the
moderate Catholics, as well as the "Protestant
Tories, was rendered more speedy and deci
sive by some intrigues of the Court, which
have not hitherto been fully known to histo
rians. Mary of Este, the consort of James,
was married at the age of fifteen, and had
been educated in such gross ignorance, that
she never had heard of the name of England
until it was made known to her on that occa
sion. She had been trained to a rigorous ob
servance of all the practices of her religion,
which sunk more deeply into her heart, and
more constantly influenced her conduct, than
was usual among the Italian princesses. On
her arrival in England, she betrayed a child
ish aversion to James, which was quickly
converted into passionate fondness. But nei
ther her attachment nor her beauty could fix
the heart of that inconstant prince, who re
conciled a warm zeal for his religion with an
habitual indulgence in those pleasures which
it most forbids. Her life was embittered by
the triumph of mistresses, and by the fre
quency of her own perilous and unfruitful
pregnancies. Her most formidable rival, at the
period of the accession, was Catherine Sedleyj
a woman of few personal attractions,! who
inherited the wit and vivacity of her father,
* Barillon, 12th Nov. — Fox, app. p. cxxxiv. —
Barillon, 31st Dec.— Fox MSS. Burnet, vol. i. p.
€61. The coincidence of Burnet with the more
ample account of Barillon is an additional confir
mation of the substantial accuracy of the honest
prelate.
t " Elle a beaucoup d'esprit et de la vivacite,
mais elle n'a plus aucune beaute, et est d'une ex
treme maigreur." Barillon, 7th Feb. 1686. — Fox
MSS. The insinuation of decline is somewhat
singular, as her father was' then only forty-six.
Sir Charles Sedley, which she unsparingly
exercised on the priests and opinions of her
royal lover. Her character was frank, her
deportment bold, and her pleasantries more
amusing than refined.* Soon after his ac
cession, James was persuaded to relinquish
his intercourse with her; and, though she
retained her lodgings in the palace, he did not
see her for several months. The connection
was then secretly renewed, and, in the first
fervour of a revived passion, the King offered
to give her the title of Countess of Dorches
ter. She declined this invidious distinction,
assuring him that, by provoking the anger
of the Queen and of the Catholics, it would
prove her ruin. He, however, insisted ; and
she yielded, upon condition that, if he was
ever again prevailed upon to dissolve their
connection, he should come to her to an
nounce his determination in person. t The
title produced the effects she had foreseen.
Mary, proud of her beauty, still enamoured
of her husband, and full of religious horror
at the vices of Mrs. Sedley. gave way to the
most clamorous excesses of sorrow and anger
at the promotion of her competitor. She
spoke to the King with a violence for which
she long afterwards reproached herself as a
grievous fault. At one time she said to him,
;:Is it possible that you are ready to sacrifice
a crown for your faith, and cannot discard a
mistress for it ? Will you for such a passion
lose the merit of your sacrifices'?" On an
other occasion she exclaimed, "Give me my
dowry, make her Queen of England, and let
me never see her more."j Her transports
of grief sometimes betrayed her to foreign
ministers; and she neither ate nor spoke
with the King at the public dinners of the
Court.§ The zeal of the Queen for the Ca
tholic religion, and the profane jests of Lady
Dorchester against its doctrines and minis
ters, had rendered them the leaders of the
Popish and Protestant parties at Court. The
Queen was supported by the Catholic clergy,
who, with whatever indulgence their order
had sometimes treated regal frailty, could
not remain neuter in a contest between an
orthodox Queen and an heretical mistress.
These intrigues early mingled with the de
signs of the two ministers, who still appeared
* These defects are probably magnified in the
verses of Lord Dorset :
" Dorinda's sparkling wit and eyes
United, cast too fierce a light,
Which blazes high, but quickly dies,
Pains not the heart, but hurts the sight.
" Love is a calmer, gentler joy ;
Smooth are his looks, and soft his pace :
Her Cupid is a blackguard boy,
That runs his link full in your face."
t D'Adda to Cardinal Cybo, 1st Feb.— D'Adda
MSS.
t Memoires Historiques de la Reine d'Angle-
terre, a MS. formerly in possession of the nuns
of Chaillot, since in the Archives Generates de
France.
$ Bonrepaux, 7th Feb. 1686, MSS. Evelyn,
vol. i. p. 584.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
291
to have equal influence in the royal counsels.
Lord Rochester, who had felt the decline
of the King's confidence from the day of
Monmouth's defeat, formed the project of
supplanting Lord Sunderland, and of reco
vering his ascendant in public affairs through
the favour of the mistress. Having lived in
a court of mistresses, and maintained him
self in office by compliance with them,* he
thought it unlikely that wherever a favourite
mistress existed she could fail to triumph
over a queen. As the brother of the first
Duchess of York, Mary did not regard him
with cordiality : as the leader of the Church
party, he was still more obnoxious to her.
He and his lady were the principal counsel
lors of the mistress. They had secretly ad
vised the King to confer on her the title of
honour, — probably to excite the Queen to
such violence as might widen the rupture
between her and the King: and they de
clared so openly for her as to abstain for
several days, during the heat of the contest,
from paying their respects to the Queen ; —
a circumstance much remarked at a time
when the custom was still observed, which
had been introduced by the companionable
humour of Charles, for the principal nobility
to appear almost daily at Court. Sunder
land, already connected with the Catholic
favourites, was now more than ever com
pelled to make common cause with the
Queen. His great strength lay in the priests;
but he also called in the aid of Madame
Mazarin, a beautiful woman, of weak under
standing, but practised in intrigue, who had
been sought in marriage by Charles II. dur
ing his exile, refused by him after his Resto
ration, and who, on her arrival in England,
ten years after, failed in the more humble
attempt to become his mistress.
The exhortations of the clergy, seconded
by the beauty, the affection, and the tears
of the Queen, prevailed, after a severe strug
gle, over the ascendant of Lady Dorchester.
James sent Lord Middleton, one of his secre
taries of state, to desire that she would leave
Whitehall, and go to Holland, to which coun
try a yacht was in readiness to convey her.
In a letter written by his own hand, he ac
knowledged that he violated his promise*
but excused himself by saying, that he was
conscious of not possessing firmness enough
to stand the test of an interview. She im
mediately retired to her house in St. James'
Square, and offered to go to Scotland or Ire
land, or to her father's estate in Kent ; but
protested against going to the Continent,
where means might be found of immuring
her in a convent for life. When threatened
with being forcibly carried abroad, she ap-
pea'ed to the Great Charter against such an
invasion of the liberty of the subject. The
contest continued for some time ; and the
King's advisers consented that she should
* Carte, Life of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 553. The
old duke, high-minded as he was, commended
the prudent accommodation of Rochester.
go to Ireland, where Rochester's brother was
Lord Lieutenant. She warned the King of
his danger, and freely told him; that, if he
followed the advice of Catholic zealots, he
would lose his crown. She represented her
self as the Protestant martyr; and boasted,
many years afterwards, that she had neither
changed her religion, like Lord Sunderland,
nor even agreed to be present at a disputa
tion concerning its truth, like Lord Roches
ter.* After the complete victory of the
Queen, Rochester still preserved his place,
and affected to represent himself as wholly
unconcerned in the affair. Sunderland kept
on decent terms with his rival, and dissem
bled his resentment at the abortive intrigue
for his removal. But the effects of it were
decisive: it secured the power of Sunder
land, rendered the ascendency of the Ca
tholic counsellors irresistible, gave them a
stronger impulse towards violent measures,
and struck a blow at the declining credit of
Rochester, from which it never recovered.
The removal of Halifax was the first step
towards the new system of administration ;
the defeat of Rochester was the second. In
the course of these contests, the Bishop of
London was removed from the Privy Coun
cil for his conduct in the House of Peers;
several members of the House of Commons
were dismissed from military as well as civil
offices for their votes in Parliament; and the
place of Lord President of the Council was
bestowed on Sunderland, to add a dignity
which was then thought wanting to his effi
cient office of Secretary of State. t
The Government now attempted to obtain,
by the judgments of courts of law, that power
of appointing Catholic officers which Parlia
ment had refused to sanction. Instances had
occurred in which the Crown had dispensed
with the penalties of certain laws ; and the
recognition of this dispensing power, in the
case of the Catholic officers, by the judges,
appeared to be an easy mode of establishing
the legality of their appointments. The King
was to grant to every Catholic officer a dis
pensation from the penalties of the statutes
which, when adjudged to be agreeable to
law by a competent tribunal, might supply
the place of a repeal of the Test Act. To
obtain the judgment, it was agreed that an
action for the penalties should be collusively
brought against one of these officers, which
would afford an opportunity to the judges to
determine that the dispensation was legal.
The plan had been conceived at an earlier
period, since (as has been mentioned) one
of the reasons of the prorogation was an
* Halifax MSS.
t These intrigues are very fully related by Bon-
repaux, a French minister of lalent, at that time
sent on a secret mission to London, and by Baril-
lon in his ordinary communications to the King.
The despatches of the French ministers afford a
new proof of the good information of Burnet ; but
neither he nor Reresby was aware of the connec
tion of the intrigue with the triumph of Sunder
land over Rochester.
292
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
apprehension lest the terrors of Parliament
might obtain from the judges an irrevocable
opinion against the prerogative. No doubt
seems to have been entertained of the com
pliance of jnagistrates, who owed their sta
tion to the King, who had recently incurred
so much odium in his service, and who were
removable at his pleasure.* He thought it
necessary, however, to ascertain their senti
ments. His expectations of their unanimity
were disappointed. Sir John Jones, who had
presided at the trial of Mrs. Gaunt, Mon
tague, who had accompanied Jeffreys in his
circuit, Sir Job Charlton, a veteran royalist
of approved zeal for the prerogative, together
with Neville, a baron of the Exchequer, de
clared their inability to comply with the de
sires of the King. Jones answered him with
dignity worthy of more spotless conduct : —
" I am not sorry to be removed. It is a re
lief to a man old and worn out as I am. But
I am sorry that your Majesty should have
expected a judgment from me which none
but indigent, ignorant, or ambitious men
could give." James, displeased at this
freedom, answered, that he would find
twelve judges of his opinion. "Twelve
judges, Sir," replied Jones, " you may find;
but hardly twelve lawyers." However
justly these judges are to be condemned
for their former disregard to justice and hu
manity, they deserve great commendation
for having, on this critical occasion, retained
their respect for law. James possessed that
power of dismissing his judges which Louis
XIV. did not enjoy; and he immediately
exercised it by removing the uncomplying
magistrates, together with two others who
held the same obnoxious principles. On the
21st of April, the day before the courts were
to assemble in Westminster for their ordi
nary term, the new judges were appointed ;
among whom, by a singular hazard, was
a brother of the immortal John Milton,
named Christopher, then in the seventieth
year of his age, who is not known to have
had any other' pretension except that of
having secretly conformed to the Church of
Rome.t
Sir Edward Hales, a Kentish gentleman
who had been secretly converted to Popery
at Oxford by his tutor, Obadiah Walker, of
University College (himself a celebrated
convert), was selected to be the principal
actor in the legal pageant for which the
Bench had' been thus prepared.. He was
publicly reconciled to the Church of Rome
" Les juges declareront qu'il est la preroga
tive da Roi de dispenser des peines portees par la
loi."f Barillon, 3d Dec.— Fox MSS.
t The conversion of. Sir Christopher is, indeed,
denied by Dodd, the very accurate historian of the
English Catholics. — Church History, vol. iii. p.
416. To the former concurrence of all contempo
raries we may now add that of Evelyn (vol. i. p.
590,) and Narcissus Luttrell. " All the judges,"
says the latter, " except Mr. Baron Milton, took
the oaths in the Court of Chancery. But he, it
Baid, owns himself a Roman Catholic." — MSS.
Diary, 8th June.
| on the llth of November, 1685;* he was
appointed to the command of a regiment on
the 28th of the same month; and a dispen
sation passed the Great Seal on the 9th of
January following, to enable him to hold his
commission without either complying with
the conditions or incurring the penalties of
the statute. On the 16th of June, the case
was tried in the Court of King's Bench in
the form of an action brought against him
by Godden, his coachman, to recover the
penalty granted by the statute to a common
informer, for holding a military commission
without having taken the oaths or the sacra
ment. The facts were admitted; the de
fence rested on the dispensation, and the
case turned on its validity. Northey, the
counsel for Godden, argued the case so faintly
and coldly, that he scarcely dissembled his
desire and expectation of a judgment against
his pretended client. Sir Edward Herbert,
the Chief Justice, a man of virtue, but with
out legal experience or knowledge, who had
adopted the highest monarchical principles,
had been one of the secret advisers of the
exercise of the dispensing power: in his
court he accordingly treated the validity of
the dispensation as a point of no difficulty,
but of such importance that it was proper
for him to consult all the other judges re
specting it. On the 21st of June, after only
five days of seeming deliberation had been
allowed to a question on the decision of
which the liberties of the kingdom at that
moment depended, he delivered the opinion
of all the judges except Street, — who finally
dissented from his brethren, — in favour of
the dispensation. At a subsequent period,
indeed, two other judges, Powell and Atkyns,
affirmed that they had dissented, and another,
named Lutwych, declared that he had only
assented with limitations.! But as these
magistrates did not protest at the time against
Herbert's statement, — as they delayed" their
public dissent until it had become dishonour
able, and perhaps unsafe, to have agreed with
the majority, no respect is due to their con
duct, even if their assertion should be believed.
Street, who gained great popularity by his
strenuous resistance,!' remained a judge du
ring the whole reign of James; he was not
admitted to the presence of King William, §
nor re-appointed after the Revolution : — cir
cumstances which, combined vrith some
intimations unfavourable to his general cha
racter, suggest a painful suspicion, that the
only judge who appeared faithful to his trust
was, in truth, the basest of all, and that his dis
sent was prompted or tolerated by the Court,
* Dodd, vol. iii. p. 451.
t Commons' Journals, 18th June, ]689.
t " Mr. Justice Street has lately married a
wife, with a good fortune, since his opinion on
the dispensing power." — Narcissus Luttrell, Oct.
1686.
$ " The Prince of Orange refused to see Mr.
Justice Street. Lord Coote said he was a very
ill man." — Clarendon, Diary, 27th December,
1688.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
293
in order to give a false appearance of inde
pendence to the acts of the degraded judges.
In shortly stating the arguments which
were employed on both sides of this ques
tion, it is not within the province of the his
torian to imitate the laborious minuteness
of a lawyer: nor is it consistent with the
faith of history to ascribe reasons to the
parties more refined and philosophical than
could probably have occurred to them, or
influenced the judgment of those whom
they addressed. The only specious argu
ment of the advocates of prerogative arose
from certain cases in which the dispensing
power had been exercised by the Crown
and apparently sanctioned by courts of jus
tice. The case chiefly relied on was a dis
pensation from the ancient laws respecting
the annual nomination of sheriffs; the last
of which, passed in the reign of Henry VI.,*
subjected sheriffs, who continued in office
longer than a year, to certain penalties, and
declared all patents of a contrary tenor, even
though they should contain an express dis
pensation, to be void. Henry VII., in defi
ance of this statute, had granted a patent to
the Earl of Northumberland to be sheriff of
that county for life; and the judges in the
second year of his reign declared that the
Earl's appointment was valid. It has been
doubted whether there was any such deter
mination in that case ; and it has been urged,
with great appearance of reason, that, if
made, it proceeded on some exceptions in
the statute, and not on the unreasonable
doctrine, that an Act of Parliament, to which
the King was a party, could not restrain his
prerogative. These are, however, conside
rations which are rather important to the
character of those ancient judges than to the
authority of the precedent. If they did
determine that the King had a right to dis
pense with a statute, which had by express
words deprived him of such a right, so egre-
giously absurd a judgment, probably pro
ceeding from base subserviency, was more
fit to be considered as a warning, than as a
precedent by the judges of succeeding times.
Two or three subsequent cases were cited in
aid of this early precedent. But they either
related to the remission of penalties in of
fences against the revenue, which stood on
a peculiar ground, or they were founded on
the supposed authority of the first case, and
must fall with that unreasonable determina
tion. Neither the unguarded expressions of
Sir Edward Coke, nor the admissions inci
dentally made by Serjeant Glanville, in
the debates on the Petition of Right, on
a point not material to his argument, could
deserve to be seriously discussed as authori
ties on so momentous a question. Had the
precedents been more numerous, and less
unreasonable, — had the opinions been more
deliberate, and more uniform, they never
could be allowed to decide such a case.
Though the constitution of England had been
* 23 Hen. VI. c. 7.
from the earliest times founded on the prin
ciples of civil and political liberty, the prac
tice of the government, and even the admi
nistration of the law had often departed very
widely from these sacred principles. In the
best times, and under the most regular go
vernments, we find practices to prevail which
cannot be reconciled with the principles of a
free constitution. During the dark and tu
multuous periods of English history, kings
had been allowed to do many acts, which,
if they were drawn into precedents, would
be subversive of public liberty. It is by an
appeal to such precedents, that the claim to
dangerous prerogatives has been usually jus
tified. The partisans of Charles I. could not
deny that the Great Charter had forbidden
arbitrary imprisonment, and levy of money
without the consent of Parliament. But in
the famous cases of imprisonment by the
personal command of the King, and of levy
ing a revenue by writs of Ship-money, they
thought that they had discovered a means,
without denying either of these principles,
of universally superseding their application.
Neither in these great cases, nor in the
equally memorable instance of the dispensing
po\ver, were the precedents such as justified
the conclusion. If law could ever be allowed
to destroy liberty, it would at least be neces
sary that it should be sanctioned by clear,
frequent, and weighty determinations, by
general concurrence of opinion after free and
full discussion, and by the long usage of
good times. But, as in all doubtful cases
relating to the construction of the most un
important statute, we consider its spirit and
object ; so, when the like questions arise on
the most important part of law, called the
constitution, we must try obscure and con
tradictory usage by constitutional principles,
instead of sacrificing these principles to such
usage. The advocates of prerogative, in
deed, betrayed a consciousness, that they
were bound to reconcile their precedents
with reason ; for they, too, appealed to prin
ciples which they called "constitutional/7
A dispensing power, they said, must exist
somewhere, to obviate the inconvenience
and oppression which might arise from the
infallible operation of law; and where can
it exist but in the Crown, which exercises
the analogous power of pardon 1 It was
answered, that the difficulty never can exist
in the English Constitution, where all neces
sary or convenient powers may be either ex
ercised or conferred by the supreme authority
of Parliament. The judgment in favour of
the dispensing power was finally rested by
the judges on still more general propositions,
which, if they had any meaning, were far
more alarming than the judgment itself.
They declared, that " the Kings of England
are sovereign princes; that the laws of Eng
land are the King's laws; that, therefore, it
is an inseparable prerogative in the King of
England to dispense with penal laws in par
ticular cases, and on particular necessary
reasons, of which reasons and necessities ho
z 2
294
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
is the sole judge; that this is not a trust
vested in the King, but the ancient remains
of the sovereign power of the Kings of Eng
land, which never yet was taken from them,
nor can be."* These propositions had either
no meaning pertinent to the case, or they led
to the establishment of absolute monarchy.
The laws were, indeed, said to be the King's,
inasmuch as he was the chief and represen
tative of the commonwealth — as they were
contradistinguished from those of any other
State, — and as he had a principal part in
their enactment, and the whole trust of their
execution. These expressions were justi
fiable and innocent, as long as they were
employed to denote that decorum and cour
tesy which are due to the regal magistracy :
but if they are considered in any other light,
they proved much more than the judges
dared to avow. If the King might dispense
with the laws, because they \vere his laws,
he might for the same reason suspend, re
peal, or enact them. The application of
these dangerous principles to the Test Act
was attended with the peculiar absurdity of
attributing to the King a power to dispense
with provisions of a law, which had been
framed for the avowed and sole purpose of
limiting his authority. The law had not
hitherto disabled a Catholic from filling the
throne. As soon, therefore, as the next per
son in succession to the Crown was discovered
to be a Catholic, it was deemed essential to
the safety of the Established religion to take
away from the Crown the means of being
served by Catholic ministers. The Test Act
was passed to prevent a Catholic successor
from availing himself of the aid of a party,
whose outward badge was adherence to the
Roman Catholic religion, and who were se
conded by powerful allies in other parts of
Europe, in overthrowing the Constitution, the
Protestant Church, and at last even the li
berty of Protestants to perform their worship
and profess their faith. To ascribe to that
very Catholic successor the right of dispen
sing with all the securities provided against
such dangers arising from himself, was to
impute the most extravagant absurdity to
the laws. It might be perfectly consistent
with the principle of the Test Act, which
was intended to provide against temporary
dangers, to propose its repeal under a Pro
testant prince: but it is altogether impossible
that its framers could have considered a
power of dispensing with its conditions as
being- vested in the Catholic successor whom
it was meant to bind. Had these objections
been weaker, the means employed by the
King to obtain a judgment in his favour
rendered the whole of this judicial proceed
ing a gross fraud, in \vhich judges professing
impartiality had been named by one of the
parties to a question before them, after he
had previously ascertained their partiality to
him, and effectually secured it by the ex
ample of the removal of more independent
* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1199.
ones. The character of Sir Edward Herbert
makes it painful to disbelieve his assertion,
that he was unacquainted with these undue
practices ] but the notoriety of the facts seem
to render it quite incredible. In the same
defence of his conduct which contains this
assertion, there is another unfortunate de
parture from fairness. He rests his defence
entirely on precedents, and studiously keeps
out of view the dangerous principles which
he had laid down from the bench as the
foundation of his judgment. Public and
selemn declarations, which ought to be the
most sincere, are, unhappily, among the most
disingenuous of human professions. This cir
cumstance, which so much weakens the
bonds of faith between men, is not so much
to be imputed to any peculiar depravity in
those who conduct public affairs, as to the
circumstances in which official declarations
are usually made. They are generally re
sorted to in times of difficulty, if not of
danger, and are often sure of being counte
nanced for the time by a numerous body of
adherents. Public advantage covers false
hood with a more decent disguise than mere
private interest can supply; and the vague
ness of official language always affords the
utmost facilities for reserve and equivocation.
But these considerations, though they may,
in some small degree, extenuate the disin-
genuousness of politicians, must, in the same
proportion, lessen the credit which is due to
their affirmations.*
After this determination, the judges on
their circuit were not received with the ac
customed honours.t Agreeably to the me
morable observations of Lord Clarendon in
the case of Ship-money, they brought dis
grace upon themselves, and weakness upon
the whole government, by that base com
pliance which \vas intended to arm the
monarch with undue and irresistible strength.
The people of England, peculiarly distin
guished by that reverence for the law, and
its upright ministers, which is inspired by
the love of liberty, have always felt the most
cruel disappointment, and manifested the
warmest indignation, at seeing the judges
converted into instruments of oppression or
usurpation. These proceedings were viewed
in a very different light by the ministers of
absolute princes. D'Adda only informed the
Papal Court that the King had removed from
office some contumacious judges, who had
refused to conform to justice and reason on
the subject of the King's dispensing power :J
and so completely was the spirit of France
then subdued, that Barillon, the son of the
President of the Parliament of Paris, — the
* The arguments on this question are contained
in the tracts of Sir Edward Herbert, Sir "Robert
Atkyns, and Mr. Attwood, published after the
Revolution. — State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1200. That
of Attwood is the most distinguished for acute-
ness and research. Sir Edward Herbert's ia
feebly reasoned, though elegantly written.
t Narcissus Luttrell, 16th August, 1686.
t D'Adda, 3d May.— MS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
295
native of a country where the independence
of the great tribunals had survived every
other remnant of ancient liberty, — describes
the removal of judges for their legal opinions
as coolly as if he were -speaking of the dis
missal of an exciseman.*
The King, having, by the decision of the
judges, obtained the power of placing the
military and civil authority in the hands of
his own devoted adherents, now resolved to
exercise that power, by nominating Catholics
to stations of high trust, and to reduce the
Church of England to implicit obedience by-
virtue of his ecclesiastical supremacy. Both
these measures were agreed to at Hampton
Court on the 4th of July; at which result he
showed the utmost complacency. t It is
necessary to give some explanation of the
nature of the second, which formed one of
the most effectual and formidable measures
of his reign.
When Henry VIII. was declared at the
Reformation to be the supreme head of the
Church of England, no attempt was made to
define, with any tolerable precision, the au
thority to be exercised by him in that cha
racter. The object of the lawgiver was to
shake off the authority of the See of Rome,
and to make effectual provision that all ec
clesiastical power and jurisdiction should be
administered, like every other part of the
public justice of the kingdom, in the name
and by the authority of the King. That ob
ject scarcely required more than a declaration
that the realm was as independent of foreign
power in matters relating to the Church as
in any other branch of its legislation. J That
simple principle is distinctly intimated in
several of the statutes passed on that occa
sion, though not consistently pursued in any
of them. The true principles of ecclesiasti
cal polity were then nowhere acknowledged.
The Court of Rome was far from admitting
the self-evident truth, that all coercive and
penal jurisdiction exercised by the clergy
was, in its nature, a branch of the civil
power delegated to them by the State, and
that the Church as such could exercise only
that influence (metaphorically called "au
thority") over the understanding and con
science which depended on the spontaneous
submission of its members : the Protestant
sects were not willing to submit their pre
tensions to the control of the magistrate :
and even the Reformed Church of England,
though the creature of statute, showed, at
various times, a disposition to claim some
rights under a higher title. All religious
communities were at that time alike intole
rant, and there was, perhaps, no man in
Europe who dared to think that the State
neither possessed, nor could delegate, nor
could recognise as inherent in another body
any authority over religious opinions. Nei-
* Barillon, 29th April.— Fox MSS.
t D'Adda, 20th July.— MS.
t 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12. 25 Hen. VIII. c. 21.
See especially the preambles to these two sta
tutes.
ther was any distinction made in the laws
to which we have adverted, between the ec
clesiastical authority which the King might
separately exercise and that which required
the concurrence of Parliament. From igno-
ance, inattention, and timidity, in regard to
hese important parts of the subject, arose
he greater part of the obscurity which still
langs over the limits of the King's ecclesi
astical prerogative and the means of carrying
t into execution. The statute of the first of
Elizabeth, which established the Protestant
Church of England, enacted that the Crown
should have power, by virtue of that act. to
exercise its supremacy by Commissioners
for Ecclesiastical Causes, nominated by the
sovereign, and vested with uncertain and
questionable, but very dangerous powers, for
the execution of a prerogative of which nei
ther lav/ nor experience had defined the
limits. Under the reigns of James and
harles this court had become the auxiliary
and rival of the Star Chamber; and its abo
lition was one of the wisest of those mea
sures of reformation by which the Parliament
of 1641 had signalised the first and happiest
period of their proceedings.* At the Resto
ration, when the Church of England was re
established, a part of the Act for the Aboli
tion of the Court of High Commission, taking
away coercive power from all ecclesiastical
judges and persons, was repealed ; but the
clauses for the abolition of the obnoxious
court, and for prohibiting the erection of any
similar court, were expressly re-affirmed .t
Such was the state of the law on this sub
ject when James conceived the design of em
ploying his authority as head of the Church
of England, as a means of subjecting that
Church to his pleasure, if not of finally de
stroying it. It is hard to conceive how he
could reconcile to his religion the exercise
of supremacy in a heretical sect, and thus
sanction by his example the usurpations of
the Tudors on the rights of the Catholic
Church. It is equally difficult to conceive
how he reconciled to his morality the em
ployment, for the destruction of a commu
nity, of a power with which he was intrusted
by that community for its preservation. But
the fatal error of believing it to be lawful to
use bad means for good ends was not pecu
liar to James, nor to the zealots of his com
munion. He, indeed, considered the eccle
siastical supremacy as placed in his hands
by Providence to enable him to betray the
Protestant establishment. "God," said he
to Barillon, " has permitted that all the laws
made to establish Protestantism now serve
as a foundation for my measures to re-esta
blish true religion, and give me a right to
exercise a more extensive power than other
Catholic princes possess in the ecclesiastical
affairs of their dominions. "t He found legal
advisers ready with paltry expedients for
evading the two statutes of 1641 and 1660,
* 17 Car. I. c. 11. t 13 Car. II. c. 12.
t Barillon, 22d July, 1686.— Fox MSS.
296
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
under the futile pretext that they forbad only
a court vested with such powers of corporal
punishment as had been exercised by the
old Court of High Commission; and in con
formity to their pernicious counsel, he issued,
in July, a commission to certain ministers,
prelates, and judges, to act as a Court of
Commissioners in Ecclesiastical Causes. The
first purpose of this court was to enforce di
rections to preachers, issued by the King,
enjoining them to abstain from preaching on
controverted questions. It must be owned
that an enemy of the Protestant religion,
placed at the head of the Church, could not
adopt a more perfidious measure. He well
knew that the Protestant clergy alone could
consider his orders as of any authority : those
of his own persuasion, totally exempt from
his supremacy, would pursue their course,
secure of protection from him against the
dangers of penal law. The Protestant clergy
were forbidden by their enemy to maintain
their religion by argument, Avhen they justly
regarded it as being in the greatest danger :
they disregarded the injunction, and carried
on the controversy against Popery with equal
ability and success.
Among many others, Sharpe, Dean of
Norwich, had distinguished himself; and he
was selected for punishment, on pretence
that he had aggravated his disobedience by
intemperate language, and by having spoken
contemptuously of the understanding of all
who could be seduced by the arguments
for Popery, including of necessity the King
himself, — as if it were possible for a man
of sincerity to speak on subjects of the deep
est importance without a correspondent zeal
and waYmth. The mode of proceeding to
punishment was altogether summary and ar
bitrary. Lord Sunderland communicated to
the Bishop of London the King's commands,
to suspend Sharpe from preaching. The
Bishop answered that he could proceed only
in a judicial manner. — that he must hear
Sharpe in his defence before such a suspen
sion, but that Sharpe was ready to give
every proof of deference to the King. The
Court, incensed at the parliamentary conduct
of the Bishop, saw, with great delight, that
he had given them an opportunity to humble
and mortify him. Sunderland boasted to the
Papal minister, that the case of that Bishop
would be a great example.* He was sum
moned before the Ecclesiastical Commission,
and required to answer why he had not
obeyed his Majesty's commands to suspend
Sharpe for seditious preaching.f The Bishop
conducted himself with considerable address.
After several adjournments he tendered a
plea to the jurisdiction, founded on the ille-
"II Re, sommamente intento a levare gli os-
tacolL clie possono impedire I'avanzamenfo della
religione Cattolica, a trovato il mezzo piu atto a
mortificare il maltalento di Vescovo di Londra.
Sara un gran buono e un gran esempio, come mi
ha detto Milord Sunderland." D'Adda, 12th
July.— MSS.
t State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1158.
gality of their commission ; and he was
heard by his counsel in vindication of his
refusal to suspend an accused clergyman
until he had been heard in his own defence.
The King took a warm interest in the pro
ceedings, and openly showed his joy at be
ing in a condition to strike bold strokes of
authority. He received congratulations on
that subject with visible pleasure, and assured
the French minister that the same vigorous
system should be inflexibly pursued.* He
did not conceal his resolution to remove any
of the commissioners who should not do il his
duty."f The princess of Orange interceded in
vain with the King for her preceptor, Comp-
ton. The influence of the Church party was
also strenuously exerted for that prelate.
They were not. indeed, aided by the Primate
Sancroft, who, instead of either attending as
a commissioner to support the Bishop of
London, or openly protesting against the
illegality of the court, petitioned for and
obtained from the King leave to be excused
from attendance on the ground of age and
infirmities. J By this irresolute and equivocal
conduct the Archhishop deserted the Church
in a moment of danger, and yet incurred the
displeasure of the King. Lord Rochester re
sisted the suspension, and was supported by
Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Edward
Herbert. Even Jeffreys, for the first time,
inclined towards the milder opinion: for nei
ther his dissolute life, nor his judicial cruelty,
however much at variance with the princi
ples of religion, were, it seems, incompatible
with that fidelity to the Church, which on
this and some subsequent occasions prevailed
over his zeal for prerogative. A majority of
the commissioners were for some time fa
vourable to Compton : Sunderland, and Crew,
Bishop of Durham, were the only members
of the commission who seconded the projects
of the King.§ The presence or protest of the
Primate might have produced the most de
cisive effects. Sunderland represented the
authority of Government as interested in the
judgment, which, if it were not rigorous,
would secure a triumph to a disobedient
prelate, who had openly espoused the cause
of faction. Rochester at length yielded, in
the presence of the King, to whatever his Ma
jesty might determine, giving it to be under
stood that he acted against his own convic-
* Barillon, 29th July.— Fox MSS.
t Barillon, 1st August.— Fox MSS.
t This petition (in the appendix to Clarendon's
Diary) is without a date ; but it is a formal one,
which seems to imply a regular summons. No
such summons could have issued before the 14th
July, on which day Evelyn, as one of the Com
missioners of the Privy Seal, affixed it to the
Ecclesiastical Commission. Bancroft's ambigious
petition was therefore subsequent to his knowledge
of Compton's danger, so that the excuse of Dr.
D'Oyley (Life of Sancroft, vol. i. p. 225,) cannot
be allowed.
§ " L'Archevesque de Canterbury s'etoit ex
cuse de se trouver a la Commission Ecclesiastique
BUT sa mauvaise sante et son grand age. On a
pris aussi ce pretexte pour 1'exclure de la seance
de conseil." Barillon, 21st Oct.— Fox MSS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
297
tion.* His followers made no longer any stand,
after seeing the leader of their party, and the
Lord High Treasurer of England, set the ex
ample of sacrificing his opinion as a judge, in
favour of lenity, to the pleasure of the King;
and the court finally pronounced sentence of
suspension on the Bishop against the declared
opinion of three fourths of its members.
The attempts of James to bestow tolera
tion on his Catholic subjects would, doubt
less, in themselves, deserve high commenda
tion, if we could consider them apart from
the intentions which they manifested, and
from the laws of which they were a contin
ued breach. But zealous Protestants, in the
peculiar circumstances of the time, were,
with reason, disposed to regard them as
measures of hostility against their religion ;
and some of them must always be consid
ered as daring or ostentatious manifestations
of a determined purpose to exalt prerogative
above law. A few days after the resolution
of the Council for the admission of Catholics
to high civil trust, the first step was made to
its execution by the appointment of the Lords
Powys, Arundel, Bellasis, and Dover to be
Privy Councillors. In a short time afterwards
the same honour was conferred on Talbot. who
was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and destined
to be the Catholic Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Sheffield. Earl of Mulgrave, a man who pro
fessed indifference in religion, but who ac
quiesced in all the worst measures of this
reign, was appointed a member of the Ec
clesiastical Commission. t Cartwright, Dean
of Ripon, whose talents were disgraced by
peculiarly infamous vices, was raised to the
vacant bishopric of Chester, in spite of the
recommendation of Sancroft, who, when con
sulted by James, proposed Jeffreys, the Chan
cellor's brother, for that See.t But the merit
of Cartwright, which prevailed even over that
connection, consisted in having preached a
sermon, in which he inculcated the courtly
doctrine, that the promises of kings were
declarations of a favourable intention, not to
be considered as morally binding. A reso
lution was taken to employ Catholic minis
ters at the two important stations of Paris
and the Hague; — "it being." said James to
Barillon, " almost impossible to find an Eng
lish Protestant who had not too great a con
sideration for the Prince of Orange. "§ White,
an Irish Catholic of considerable ability, who
had received the foreign title of Marquis
D' Abbeville, was sent to the Hague, partly,
perhaps, with a view to mortify the Prince
of Orange. It was foreseen that the known
character of this adventurer would induce
the Prince to make attempts to gain him;
* Barillon, 16th Sept. and 23d Sept.— Fox MSS.;
a full and apparently accurate account of these
divisions among the commissioners.
t D'Adda, in his letter, 1st Nov. represents
Mulgrave as favourable to the Catholics. — MS.
t D'Oyley, Life of Sancroft, vol. i. p. 235,
where the Archbishop's letter to the King (dated
29th July, 1685.) is printed.
$ Barillon, 22d July.— Fox MSS.
38
but Barillon advised his master to make
liberal presents to the new minister, who
would prefer the bribes of Louis, because
the views of that monarch agreed with those
of his own sovereign and the interests of the
Catholic religion.* James even proposed to
the Prince of Orange to appoint a Catholic
nobleman of Ireland, Lord Carlingford, to
the command of the British regiments: —
a proposition, which, if accepted, would em
broil that Prince with all his friends in Eng
land, and if rejected, as it must have been
known that it would be, gave the King a
new pretext for displeasure, to be avowed at
a convenient season.
But no part of the foreign policy of the
King is so much connected with our present
subject as the renewal of that open inter
course with the See of Rome which was pro
hibited by the unrepealed laws passed in the
reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. D'Adda
had arrived in England before the meeting
of Parliament, as the minister of the Pope,
but appeared at court, at first, only as a pri
vate gentleman. In a short time, James in
formed him that he might assume the public
character of his Holiness' minister, with the
privilege of a chapel in his house, and the
other honours and immunities of that cha
racter, without going through the formalities
of a public audience. The assumption of
this character James represented as the more
proper, because he \vas about to send a
solemn embassy to Rome as his Holiness'
most obedient son.t D'Adda professed great
admiration for the pious zeal and filial obedi
ence of the King, and for his determination,
as far as possible, to restore religion to her
ancient splendour;! but he dreaded the pre
cipitate measures to which James \vaa
prompted by his own disposition and by
the party of zealots who surrounded him.
He did not assume the public character till
two months afterwards, when he received in
structions to that effect from Rome. Hitherto
the King had coloured his interchange of
ministers with the Roman Court under the
plausible pretext of maintaining diplomatic
intercourse with the government of the Ec
clesiastical State as much as with the other
princes of Europe. But his zeal soon be
came impatient of this slight disguise. In a
few days after D'Adda had announced his
intention to assume the public character
of a minister, Sunderland came to him to
convey his Majesty's desire that he might
take the title of Nuncio, which would, in
* " M. le Prince d' Orange fera ce qu'il pourra
pour la gager ; mais je suis persuade qu'il aimera
mieux etre dans les interets de votre Majeste,
sachant bien qu'ils sont confbrmes a ceux du Roi
son maitre, et que c'est 1'avantage de la religion
Catholique." Four thousand livres, which Ba
rillon calculates as then equivalent to three hun
dred pounds sterling, were given to D' Abbeville
in London. Two thousand more were to be ad
vanced to him at the Hague. Barillon, 2d Sept.
—Fox MSS.
t D'Adda 14th Dec. 1685.— MS.
t Ibid. 31st. Dec.
298
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
a more formal and solemn manner, dis
tinguish him from other ministers as the
representative of the Apostolic See. D'Adda
was surprised at this rash proposal ;* about
which the Court of Rome long hesitated,
from aversion to the foreign policy of James,
from a wish to moderate rather than encou
rage the precipitation of his domestic coun
sels, and from apprehension of the insults
which might be offered to the Holy See, in
the sacred person of his Nuncio, by the tur
bulent and heretical populace of London.
The King had sent the Earl of Castlemaine,
the husband of the Duchess of Cleveland, as
his ambassador to Rome. "It seemed sin
gular," said Barillon, '-'that he should have
chosen for such a mission a man so little
known on his own account, and too well
known on that of his wife."t The ambas-
dor, who had been a polemical writer in the
defence of the Catholics,t and who was
almost the only innocent man acquitted on
the prosecutions for the Popish Plot, seems
to have listened more to zeal and resentment
than to discretion in the conduct of his deli
cate negotiation. He probably expected to
find nothing but religious zeal prevalent in
the Papal councils : but Innocent -XL was
influenced by his character as a temporal
sovereign. He considered James not solely
as an obedient son of the Church, but rather
as the devoted or subservient ally of Louis
XtV. As Prince of the Roman state, he re
sented the outrages offered to him by that
monarch, and partook with all other states
the dread justly inspired by his ambition and
his power. Even as head of the Church, the
merits of Louis as the persecutor of the Pro-
testants$ did not, in the eye of Innocent, atone
for his encouraging the Gallican Church in
their recent resistance to the unlimited au
thority of the Roman Pontiff. These dis
cordant feelings and embroiled interests,
which it would have required the utmost ad
dress and temper to reconcile, were treated
by Castlemaine with the rude hand of an
inexperienced zealot. Hoping, probably, to
be received with open arms as the forerun
ner of the reconciliation of a great kingdom,
he was displeased at the reserve and cold
ness with which the Pontiff treated him ;
and instead of patiently labouring to over
come obstacles which he ought to have fore
seen, he resented them with a violence more
than commonly foreign to the decorum of
the Papal court. He was instructed to so
licit a cardinal's hat for Prince Rinaldo of
Este, the Queen's brother; — a moderate suit.
* D'Adda, 22d Feb. 1686. " lo resto alquanto
sorpreso da questa ambasciata."
t Barillon, 29ih Oct. 1685.— Fox, app. p. cxxii.
t Dodd, vol. iii. p. 450.
$ It appears by the copy of a letter in my pos
session from Don Pedro Ronquillo, the Spanish
ambassador in London, to Don Francesco Ber-
nado de Quixos, (dated 5th April, 1686,) that In
nocent, though he publicly applauded the zeal of
Louis, did not in truth approve the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes.
the consent to which was for a considerable
time retarded by an apprehension of strength
ening the French interest in the Sacred Col
lege. The second request was that the Pope
would confer a titular bishopric* on Edward
Petre, an English Jesuit of noble family,
who, though not formally the King's con-
fessor,t had more influence on his mind
than any other ecclesiastic. This honour
was desired in order to qualify this gentle
man for performing with more dignity the
duties of Dean of the Chapel Royal. Inno
cent declined, on the ground that the Jesuits
were prohibited by their institution from ac
cepting bishopricks, and that he would sooner
make a Jesuit a cardinal than a bishop. But
as the Popes had often dispensed with this
prohibition, Petre himself rightly conjectured
that the ascendant of the Austrian party at
Rome, — who looked on him with an evil eye
as a partisan of France, — -was the true cause
of the refusal.! The Kingmfterwards so
licited for his favourite the higher dignity of
cardinal : but he was finally refused, though
with profuse civility,§ from the same mo
tive, but under the pretence that there had
been no Jesuit cardinal since Bellarmine. the
great controversialist of the Roman Catholic
Church. II Besides these personal objects,
Castlemaine laboured to reconcile the Pope to
Louis XIV., and to procure the interposition
of Innocent for the preservation of the gen
eral peace. But of these objects, specious
as they were, the attainment of the first
would strengthen France, and that of the
second imported a general acquiescence in
her unjust aggrandizement. Even the tri
umph of monarchy and Popery in England,
together with the projects already enter
tained for the suppression of the "Northern
heresy," as the Reformation was then called,
and for the conquest of Holland, which was
considered as a nest of heretics, could not
fail to alarm the most zealous of those Ca
tholic powers who dreaded the power of
Louis, and who were averse to strengthen
his allies. It was impossible that intelli
gence of such suggestions at Rome should
not immediately reach the courts of Vienna
and Madrid, or should not be communicated
by them to the Prince of Orange. Castle
maine suffered himself to be engaged in
contests for precedency with the Spanish
minister, which served, and were perhaps
intended, to embroil him more deeply with
the Pope. James at first resented the re
fusal to promote Petre51F and for a time
seemed to espouse the quarrel of his am
bassador. D'Adda was obliged, by his sta
tion, and by his intercourse with Lord Sun-
* In pariibus infidelium," as it is called. Baril
lon, 27th June.— Fox MSS.
t This office was held by a learned Jesuit,
named Warner.— Dodd, vol. iii. p. 491.
t Barillon, 20th Dec. 1686.— Fox MSS.
i Dodd, vol. iii. p. 511, where the official cor
respondence in 1687 is published.
II D'Adda, 8th August, 1687.— MS.
IT Barillon, 2d Dec. 1686.— Fox MSS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
299
derland, to keep up friendly appearances
\vith Petre ; but Barillon easily discovered
that the Papal minister disliked that Jesuit
and his order, whom he considered as de
voted to France.* The Pope instructed
his minister to complain of the conduct of
Castlemaine, as very ill becoming the repre
sentative of so pious and so prudent a king:
and D'Adda made the representation to
James at a private audience where the
Queen and Lord Sunderland were present.
That zealous princess, with more fervour
than dignity, often interrupted his narrative
by exclamations of horror at the liberty with
which a Catholic minister had spoken to the
successor of St. Peter. Lord Sunderland said
to him, " The King will do whatever you
please." James professed the most un
bounded devotion to the Holy See, and as
sured D'Adda that he would write a letter
to his Holiness, to express his regret for the
unbecoming conduct of his ambassador.!
When this submission was made, Innocent
formally forgave Castlemaine for his indis
creet zeal in promoting the wishes of his
sovereign;}: and James publicly announced
the admission of his ambassador at Rome
into the Privy Council, both to console the
unfortunate minister, and to show the more
how much he set at defiance the laws which
forbade both the embassy and the prefer
ment. §
CHAPTER III.
State of the Army. — Attempts of the King to
Convert it. — The Princess Anne. — Dryden.
— Lord Middleton and others. — Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. — Attempt to convert
Rochester. — Conduct of the Queen. — Religi
ous Conference. — Failure of the attempt. —
His Dismissal.
DURING the summer of 1686, the King had
assembled a body of 15,000 troops, who were
encamped on Hounslow Heath ; — a spectacle
new to the people of England, who, though
full of martial spirit, have never regarded
with favour the separate profession of arms. II
* Barillon, 17th Jnne, 1686, — 10th March,
1687.— Fox MSS.
t D'Adda, 30th May,— 6th June, 1687.— MS.
t Letter of Innocent to James, 16th Aug. —
Dodd, vol. iii. p. 511.
§ London Gazette, 26th Sept.
I! The army, on the 1st of January, 1685,
amounted to 19,979. — Accounts in the War Of
fice. The number of the army in Great Britain
in 1824 is 22, 019 (Army Estimates), the population
being 14,391,681 (Population Returns); which
gives a proportion of nearly one out of every 654
persons, or of one soldier out of every 160 men
of the fighting age. The population of England
and Wales, in 1685, not exceeding five millions,
the proportion of the army to it was one soldier to
every 250 persons, or of one soldier to every sixty-
nve men of the fighting age. Scotland, in 1685,
had a separate establishment. The army of James,
at his accession, therefore, was more than twice
I He viewed this encampment with a compla
cency natural to princes, and he expressed
his feelings to the Prince of Orange in a tone
of no friendly boast.* He caressed the offi
cers, and he openly declared that he should
keep none but those on whom he could rely.t
A Catholic chapel was opened in the camp,
and missionaries were distributed among the
soldiers. The numbers of the army rendered
it an object of very serious consideration.
Supposing them to be only 32,000 in England
and Scotland alone, they were twice as many
I as were kept up in Great Britain in the year
1792, when the population of the island had
certainly more than doubled. As this force
was kept on foot without the consent of Par
liament, there was no limit to its numbers,
but the means of supporting it possessed by
the King ; \fhich might be derived from the
misapplication of funds granted for other
purposes, or be supplied by foreign powers
interested in destroying the liberties of the
kingdom. The means of governing it were
at first a source of perplexity to the King,
but, in the sequel, a new object of apprehen
sion to the people. The Petition of Right.J
in affirmance of the ancient laws, had for
bidden the exercise of martial law within
the kingdom ; and the ancient mode of esta
blishing those summary jurisdictions and
punishments which seem to be necessary
to secure the obedience of armies was, in a
great measure, wanting. The servile inge
nuity of aspiring lawyers was, therefore, set
at work to devise some new expedient for
more easily destroying the constitution, ac
cording to the forms of law. For this purpose
they revived the provisions of some ancient
statutes, § which had made desertion a capital
felony j though these were, in the opinion of
the best lawyers, either repealed, or confined
to soldiers serving in the case of actual or
immediately impending hostilities. Even
this device did not provide the means of
punishing the other military offences, which
are so dangerous to the order of armies, that
there can be little doubt of their having been
actually punished by other means, however
confessedly illegal. Several soldiers were
tried, convicted, and executed for the felony
of desertion ; and the scruples of judges on
the legality of these proceedings induced the
King more than once to recur to his ordinary
measure for the purification of tribunals by
the removal of the judges. Sir John Holt,
who was destined, in better times, to be one
of the most inflexible guardians of the laws,
was also then dismissed from the recorder-
ship of London.
and a half greater in comparison with the popula
tion than the present force (1822). The compara
tive wealth, if it could be estimated, would proba
bly afford similar results.
* James to the Prince of Orange, 29th June.-
Dalrymple, app. to books iii. & iv.
t Barillon, 8th July. Ibid.
t 3 Car. I. c. 1.
§ 7 Hen. VII. c. 1. 3 Hen. VIII. c. 5 ; & 2 &
3 Edw. VI. c. 2. See Hale, Pleas of the Crown,
book i. c. 63.
300
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
The only person who ventured to express
the general feeling respecting the army was
Mr. Samuel Johnson, who had been chaplain
to Lord Russell and who was then in prison
for a work which he had published some
years before against the succession of James,
under the title of " Julian the Apostate."*
He now wrote, and sent to an agent to be
dispersed (for there was no proof of actual
dispersion or salef), an address to the army,
expostulating with them on the danger of
serving under illegally commissioned officers,
and for objects inconsistent with the safety
of their country. He also wrote another
paper, in which he asserted that " resistance
may be used in case our religion or our rights
should be invaded." For these acts he was
tried, convicted, and sentenced to pay a
small fine, to be thrice pilloried, and to be
whipped by the common hangman from
Newgate to Tyburn. For both these publica
tions, his spirit was, doubtless, deserving of
the highest applause. The prosecution in the
first case can hardly be condemned, and the
conviction still less : but the cruelty of the
punishment reflects the highest dishonour on
the judges, more especially on Sir Edward
Herbert, whose high pretensions to morality
and humanity deeply aggravate the guilt of
his concurrence in this atrocious judgment.
Previous to its infliction, he was degraded
from his sacred character by Crew, Sprat,
and White, three bishops authorised to exer
cise ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the diocese
of London during the suspension of Compton.
When, as part of the formality, the Bible
was taken out of his hands, he struggled to
preserve it, and bursting into tears, cried
out, " You cannot take from me the consola
tion contained in the sacred volume." The
barbarous judgment was "executed with
great rigour and cruelty. "t In the course
of a painful and ignominous progress of two
miles through crowded streets, he received
three hundred and seventeen stripes, inflicted
with a whip of nine cords knotted. It will
be a consolation to the reader, as soon as he
has perused the narrative of these enormities.
to learn, though \vith some disturbance of
the order of time, that amends were in some
measure made to Mr. Johnson, and that
his persecutors were reduced to the bitter
mortification of humbling themselves before
their victim. After the Revolution, the judg
ment pronounced on him was voted by the
House of Commons to be illegal and cruel. §
Crew, Bishop of Durham, one of the com
missioners who deprived him, made him a
considerable compensation in money ;!l arid
* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1339.
t In fact, however, many were dispersed. —
Kennet, History, vol. iii. p. 450.
t Commons' Journals, 24th June, 1690. These
are the words of the Report of a Committee who
examined evidence on the case, and whose reso
lutions were adopted by the House. They suf
ficiently show that Echard's extenuating state
ments are false.
$ Ibid.
it Narcissus Luttrell, February, 1690.
Withins, the Judge who delivered the sen
tence, counterfeited a dangerous illness, and
pretended that his dying hours were disturbed
by the remembrance of what he had done,
in order to betray Johnson, through his hu
mane and Christian feelings, into such a
declaration of forgiveness as might contribute
to shelter the cruel judge from further ani
madversion.*
The desire of the King to propagate his
religion was a natural consequence of zealous
attachment to it. But it was a very dangerous
quality in a monarch, especially when the
principles of religious liberty were not adopt
ed by any European government. The royal
apostle is seldom convinced of the good faith
of the opponent whom he has failed to con
vert : he soon persuades himself that the
pertinacity of the heretic arises more from
the depravity of his nature than from the
errors of his judgment. He first shows dis
pleasure to his perverse antagonists ; he then
withdraws advantages from them ] he. in
many cases, may think it reasonable to bring
them to reflection by some degree of hard
ship; and the disappointed disputant may at
last degenerate into the furious persecutor.
The attempt to convert the army was pecu
liarly dangerous to the King's own object.
He boasted of the number of converts in one
of his regiments of Guards, without consider
ing the consequences of teaching controversy
to an army. The political canvass carried
on among the officers, and the controversial
sermons preached to the soldiers, probably
contributed to awaken that spirit of inquiry
and discussion in his camp which he ought
to have dreaded as his most formidable
enemy. He early destined the revenue of
the Archbishop of York to be a provision for
converts,! — being probably sincere in his
professions, that he meant only to make it
one for those who had sacrificed interest to
religion. But experience shows how easily
such a provision swells into a reward, and
how naturally it at length becomes a pre
mium for hypocrisy. It was natural that his
passion for making proselytes should show
itself towards his own children. The Pope,
in his conversations with Lord Castlemainej
said, that without the conversion of the Prin
cess Anne, no advantage obtained for the
Catholic religion could be permanently se
cured. t The King assented to this opinion,
and had, indeed, before attempted to dispose
his daughter favourably to his religion, in
fluenced probably by the parental kindness,
which was one of his test qualities. § He
must have considered as hopeless the case
of his eldest daughter, early removed from
her father, and the submissive as well as
affectionate wife of a husband of decisive
character, who was also the leader of the
Protestant cause. To Anne, therefore, his
attention was turned : but with her he found
* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1354.
t D'Adda, 10th May, 1686.— MS.
t Barillon, 27th June.— Fox MSS.
§ D'Adda, supra.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
301
insurmountable difficulties. Both these prin
cesses, after their father had become a Ca
tholic, were considered as the hope of the
Protestant religion, and accordingly trained
in the utmost horror of Popery. Their par
tialities and resentments were regulated by
difference of religion • their political import
ance and their splendid prospects were de
pendent on the Protestant Church. Anne
was surrounded by zealous Churchmen ; she
was animated by her preceptor Compton j
her favourites Lord and Lady Churchill had
become determined partisans of Protestant
ism ; and the King found in the obstinacy of
his daughter's character, a resistance hardly
to be apprehended from a young princess of
slight understanding.* Some of the reasons
of this zeal for converting hef clearly show
that, whether the succession was actually
held out to her as a lure or not, at least there
was an intention, if she became a Catholic,
to prefer her to the Princess of Orange. Bon
repos. a minister of ability, had indeed, at a
somewhat earlier period, tried the effect of
that temptation on her husband, Prince
George. t He ventured to ask his friend the
Danish envoy, " whether the Prince had any
ambition to raise his consort to the throne at
the expense of the Princess Mary, which
seemed to be practicable if he became a
Catholic." The envoy hinted this bold sug
gestion to the Prince, who appeared to receive
it well, and even showed a willingness to
be instructed on the controverted questions.
Bonrepos found means to supply the Princess
Anne with Catholic books, which, for a mo
ment, she showed some willingness to con
sider. He represented her to" his Court as
timid and silent, but ambitious and of some
talent, with a violent hatred for the Queen.
He reported his attempts to the King, who
listened to him with the utmost pleasure •
and the subtile diplomatist observes, that,
though he might fail in the conversion, he
should certainly gain the good graces of
James by the effort, which his knowledge
of that monarch's hatred of the Prince of
Orange had been his chief inducement to
hazard.
The success of the King himself, in his
attempts to make proselytes, was less than
might have been expected from his zeal and
influence. Parker, originally a zealous Non
conformist, aftewards a slanderous buffoon,
and an Episcopalian of persecuting principles,
earned the bishopric of Oxford by showing
a strong disposition to favour, if not to be
reconciled to, the Church of Rome. Two
bishops publicly visited Mr. Leyburn the
Catholic prelate, at his apartments in St.
James' Palace, on his being made almoner
to the King, when it was, unhappily, impos
sible to impute their conduct to liberality or
charity.J Walker, the Master of University
* Barillon, supra.
t Bonrepos, 28th March.— Fox MSS.
\. D'Adda, 21st January, 1686,— MS. The
King and Queen took the sacrament at St. James'
Chapel " Monsigre Vescovo Leyburn, passato
College in Oxford, and three of the fellows
of that society, were the earliest and most
noted of the few open converts among the
clergy. L'Estrange, though he had for five-
and-twenty years written all the scurrilous
libels of the Court, refused to abandon the
Protestant Church. Dryden, indeed, con
formed to the doctrines of his master;* and
neither the critical time, nor his general cha
racter, have been sufficient to deter some of
the admirers of that great poet from seriously
maintaining that his conversion was real.
The same persons who make this stand for
the conscientious character of the poet of
a profligate Court, have laboured with all
their might to discover and exaggerate those
human frailties from which fervid piety arid
intrepid integrity did not altogether preserve
Milton, in the evil days of his age, and
poverty, and blindness.! The King failed
in a personal attempt to convert Lord Dart
mouth, whom he considered as his most
faithful servant for having advised him to
bring Irish troops into England, such being
more worthy of trust than others;! — a re
markable instance of a man of honour ad
hering inflexibly to the Church of England,
though his counsels relating to civil affairs
were the most fatal to public liberty. Mid-
dleton, one of the secretaries of state, a man
of ability, supposed to have no strong prin
ciples of religion, was equally inflexible. The
Catholic divine who was sent to him began
by attempting to reconcile his understanding
to the mysterious doctrine of transubstantia-
tion. '•' Your Lordship," said he, 'c believes
the Trinity."—- Who told you so ] " answer
ed Middleton ; " you are come here to prove
your own opinions, not to ask about mine."
The astonished priest is said to have imme
diately retired. Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave,
is also said to have sent away a monk who
came to convert him by a jest upon the same
doctrine : — "I have convinced myself," said
he, " by much reflection that God made man j
but I cannot believe that man can make
God." But though there is no reason to doubt
da alcuni giorni nell' apartamento de St. James
destinato al gran Elimosiniere de S. M. in habito
lungo nero portando la croce nera, si fa vedere in
publico visitando i ministri del Principe e altri:
furono un giorno per fargli una visita due vescovi
Protestanti." As this occurred before the pro
motion of the two profligate prelates, Parker and
Cart Wright, one of these visitors must have been
Crew, and the other. was, too probably, Spratt.
The former had been appointed Clerk of the
Closet, and Dean of the Chapel Royal, a few
days before.
* " Dryden, the famous play-writer, and his
two sons, and Mrs. Nelly, were said to go to
mass. Such proselytes were no great loss to the
Church." Evelyn, vol. i. p. 594. The rumour,
as far as it related to Mrs. Gwynne, was calumni
ous.
t Compare Dr. Johnson's biography of Milton
with his generally excellent life of Dryden.
t D'Adda, 10th May.— MS. " Diceva il Re
che il detto Milord veramente gli aveva dato con
sigh molto fedeli, uno di quelli era stato di far ve
nire truppi Irlandesi in Inghilterra, nelli quail
poteva S. M. meglio fidarsi die negli altri."
2A
302
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
his pleasantry or profaneness, his integrity
is more questionable.* Colonel Kirke. from
vrhom strong scruples were hardly to be ex
pected; is said to have answered the King's
desire, that he would listen to Catholic di
vines, by declaring, that when he was at
Tangier he had engaged himself to the Em
peror of Morocco, if ever he changed his
religion, to become a Mahometan. Lord
Churchill, though neither insensible to the
kindness of James, nor distinguished by a
strict conformity to the precepts of Religion,
withstood the attempts of his generous bene
factor to bring him over to the Church of
Rome. He said of himself, "that though he
could not lead the life of a saint, he was re
solved, if there was ever occasion for it. to
show the resolution of a martyr. "t So much
constancy in religious opinion may seem
singular among courtiers and soldiers: but
it must be considered, that the inconsistency
of men's actions \vith their opinions is more
often due to infirmity than to insincerity ;
that the members of the Protestant party
were restrained from deserting it by princi
ples of honour; and that the disgrace of de
sertion was much aggravated by the general
unpopularity of the adverse cause, and by
the violent animosity then raging between
the two parties who divided England and
Europe.
Nothing so much excited the abhorrence
of all Protestant nations against Louis XIV.,
as the measures which he adopted against
his subjects of that religion. As his policy
on that subject contributed to the downfall
of James, it seems proper to state it more
fully than the internal occurrences of a fo
reign country ought generally to be treated
in English history. The opinions of the Re
formers, which triumphed in some countries
of Europe, and were wholly banished from
others, had very early divided France and
Germany into two powerful but unequal
parties. The wars between the princes of
the Empire which sprung from this source,
after a period of one hundred and fifty years,
were finally composed by the treaty of West
phalia. In France, where religious enthusi
asm wras exasperated by the lawless charac
ter and mortal animosities of civil war, these
* He had been made Lord Chamberlain imme
diately after Jeffreys' circuit, and had been ap
pointed a member of the Ecclesiastical Commis
sion, in November, 1685, when Bancroft refused
to act, in which last office he continued to the last.
He held out hopes that he might be converted to
a very late period of the reign, (Barillon, 30ih
August, 1687,) and he was employed by James to
persuade Sir George Mackenzie t"o consent to the
removal of the Test.— (Halifax MSS.) He brought
a patent for a marquisate to the King half-an-hour
before King James went away. — (Ibid.) In Oc
tober. 1688, he thought, it necessary to provide
against the approaching storm by obtaining a gene
ral pardon. Had not Lord Mujgrave written some
memoirs of his own time, his importance as a
statesman would not have deserved so full an ex
posure of his political character.
t Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborouo-h,
vol. i. p. 27.
hostilities raged for nearly forty years with
a violence unparalleled in any civilized age
or country. As soon as Henry IV. had esta
blished his authority by conformity to the
worship of the majority of his people, the
first object of his paternal policy was to se
cure the liberty of the Protestants, and to
restore the quiet of the kingdom by a general
law on this equally arduous and important
subject. The contending opinions in their
nature admitted no negotiation or concession.
The simple and effectual expedient of per
mitting them all to be professed with equal
freedom was then untried in practice, and al
most unknowm in speculation. The toleration
of error, according to the received principles
of that age, differed little from the permis
sion of crimes. Amidst such opinions it was
extremely difficult to frame a specific law
for the government of hostile sects: and the
Edict of Nantes, passed by Henry for that
purpose in the year 1598, must be consider
ed as honourable to the wisdom and virtue
of his Catholic counsellors. This Edict,*
said to be composed by the great historian
De Thou, was based on the principle of a
treaty of peace between belligerent parties,
sanctioned and enforced by the royal autho
rity. Though the transaction was founded
merely in humanity and prudence, without
any reference to religious liberty, some of
its provisions were conformable to the legiti
mate results of that great principle. All
Frenchmen of the reformed religion were
declared to be admissible to every office,
civil and military, in the kingdom; and they
were received into all schools and colleges
without distinction. Dissent from -the Esta
blished Church was exempted from all pen
alty or civil inconvenience. The public ex
ercise of the Protestant religion was confined
to those cities and towns where it had been
formerly granted, and to the mansions of the
gentry who had seignorial jurisdiction over
capital crimes. It might, however, be prac
tised in other places by the permission of the
Catholics, who were lords of the respective
manors. Wherever the worship of the Pro
testants was lawful, their religious books
might freely be bought and sold. They
might inhabit any part of the kingdom with
out molestation for their opinion ; and private
worship was everywhere protected by the
exemption of their houses from all legal
search on account of religion. These restric
tions, though they show the Edict to have
been a pacification between parties, with
little regard to the conscience of individuals,
yet do not seem in practice to have much
limited the religious liberty of French Pro
testants. To secure an impartial adminis
tration of justice, Chambers, into which Pro
testants and Catholics were admitted in equal
numbers, were established in the principal
parliaments. t The Edict wras declared to be
* The original is to be found inBenoit, Histoire
de 1'Edit de Nantes, vol. i. app. pp. 62 — 85.
t Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux.
The Chamber of the Edict at Paris took cogni-
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
303
a perpetual and irrevocable law. By a sepa
rate grant executed at Nantes, the King-
authorised the Protestants, for eight years,
to garrison the towns and places of which
they were at that time in military possession,
and to hold them under his authority and
obedience. The possession of these places
of security was afterwards continued from
time to time, and the expense of their garri
sons defrayed by the Crown. Some cities also,
where the majority of the inhabitants were
Protestants, and where the magistrates, by
the ancient constitution, regulated the armed
force, with little dependence on the Crown,
such as Nismes. Rochelle, and Montauban,*
though not formerly garrisoned by the Reform
ed, still constituted a part of their military se
curity for the observance of the Edict. An
armed sect of dissenters must have afforded
many plausible pretexts for attack ; and Car
dinal Richelieu had justifiable reasons of
policy for depriving the Protestants of those
important fortresses, the possession of which
gave them the character of an independent
republic, and naturally led them into dan
gerous connection with Protestant and rival
states. His success in accomplishing that
important enterprise is one of the most splen
did parts of his administration; though he
owed the reduction of Rochelle to the fee
bleness and lukewarmness, if not to the
treachery; of the Court of England. Riche
lieu discontinued the practice of granting the
royal licence to the Protestant body to hold
political assemblies; and he adopted it as a
maxim of permanent policy, that the highest
dignities of the army and the state should be
granted to Protestants only in cases of ex
traordinary merit. In other respects that
haughty minister treated them as a mild
conqueror. When they were reduced to en
tire submission, in 1629, an edict of pardon
was issued at Nismes, confirming all the
civil and religious principles which had been
granted by the Edict of Nantes.t At the
moment that they were reduced to the situa
tion of private subjects; they disappear from
the history of France. They are not men
tioned in the dissensions which disturbed
the minority of Louis XIV., nor are they
named by that Prince in the enumeration
which he gives of objects of public anxiety
at the period which preceded his assumption
of the reins of government, in 1660. The
great families attached to them by birth and
honour during the civil wars were gradually
allured to the religion of the Court ; while
those of inferior condition, like the members
of other sects excluded from power, applied
zanre of all causes where Protestants were parties
in Normandy and Brittany.
* Cautionary Towns.—" La Rochelle surtout
nvait des traites avec les Rois de France qui la
rendoient presque independante." — Benoit, vol. i.
p. 251.
t Benoit, vol. ii. app. 92. Madame de Duras,
the sister of Turenne, was so zealous a Protestant
that she wished to educate as a minister, her son,
who afterwards went to England, and became
Lord Feversham. — Vol. iv. p. 129.
themselves to the pursuit of wealih, and
were patronised by Colbert as the most in
genious manufacturers in France. A decla
ration, prohibiting the relapse of converted
Protestants under pain of confiscation, indi
cated a disposition to persecute, \A hich that
prudent minister had the good forlurie to
check. An edict punishing emigration with
death, though long after turned into the
sharpest instrument of intolerance, seems
originally to have flowed solely from the
general prejudices on that subject, which
have infected the laws and policy of most
states. Till the peace of Nimeguen, when
Louis had reached the zenith of his power,
the French Protestants experienced only
those minute vexations from which secta
ries, discouraged by a government, are sel
dom secure.
The immediate cause of a general and
open departure from the moderate system,
under which France had enjoyed undis
turbed quiet for half a century, is to be dis
cerned only in the character of the King,
and the inconsistency of his conduct with
his opinions. Those conflicts between his
disorderly passions and his unenlightened
devotion, which had long agitated his mind,
were at last composed under the ascendant
of Madame de Maintenon ; and in this situ
ation he was seized with a desire of signal
izing his penitence, and atoning for his sins,
by the conversion of his heretical subjects.*
Her prudence as well as moderation prevent
ed her from counselling the employment of
violence against the members of her former
religion ; nor do such means appear to have
been distinctly contemplated by the King; —
still she dared not moderate the zeal on
which her greatness was founded. But the
passion for conversion, armed with absolute
power, fortified by the sanction of mistaken
conscience, intoxicated by success, exaspe
rated by resistance, anticipated and carried
beyond its purpose by the zeal of subaltern
agents, deceived by their false representa
tions, often irrevocably engaged by their
rash acts, and too warm to be considerate in
choosing means or weighing consequences,
led the government of France, under a prince
of no cruel nature, by an almost unconscious
progress, in the short space of six years,
from a successful system of toleration to the
most unprovoked and furious persecution
ever carried on against so great, so innocent,
and so meritorious a body of men. The
Chambers of the Edict were suppressed on
general grounds of judicial reformation, and
because the concord between the two reli
gions rendered them no longer necessary.
By a series of edicts the Protestants were
excluded from all public offices, and from
all professions which were said to give them
a dangerous influence over opinion. They
were successively rendered incapable of
* " Le Roi pense serieusement a la conver
sion des heretiques, et dans peu on y travaillera
tout de bon.'5 — Mad. de Maintenon, Oct. 28th,
1679.
304
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
being judges, advocates, attorneys, notaries,
clerks, officers, or even attendants of courts
of law. They were banished in multitudes
from places in the revenue, to which their
habit of method and calculation had directed
their pursuits. They were forbidden to ex
ercise the occupations of printers and book
sellers.1* Even the pacific and neutral pro
fession of medicine, down to its humblest
branches, was closed to their industry. They
were prohibited from intermarriage with
Catholics, and from hiring Catholic domes
tics, without exception of convenience or
necessity. Multitudes of men were thus
driven from their employments, without any
regard to the habits, expectations, and plans,
which they had formed on the faith of the
laws. Besides the misery which immedi
ately flowed from these acts of injustice,
they roused and stimulated the bigotry of
those, who need only the slightest mark of
the temper of government to inflict on their
dissenting countrymen those minute but
ceaseless vexations which embitter the daily
course of human life.
As the Edict of Nantes had only permitted
the public worship of Protestants in certain
places, it had often been a question whether
particular churches were erected conformably
to that law. The renewal and multiplication
of suits on this subject furnished the means of
striking a dangerous blow against the Reform
ed religion. Prejudice and servile tribunals
adjudged multitudes of churches to be demo
lished by decrees which \vere often illegal,
and always unjust. By these judgments a
hundred thousand Protestants were, in fact,
prohibited from the exercise of their religion.
They were deprived of the means of educa
ting their clergy by the suppression of their
flourishing colleges at Sedan, Saumur, and
Montauban, which had long been numbered
among the chief ornaments of Protestant
Europe. Other expedients were devised to
pursue them into their families, and harass
them in those situations where the disturb
ance of quiet inflicts the deepest wounds on
human nature. The local judges were au
thorised and directed to visit the death-beds
of Protestants, and to interrogate them whe
ther they determined to die in obstinate
heresy. Their children \vere declared com
petent to abjure their errors at the age of
seven ; and by such mockery of conversion
they might escape, at that age, from the
affectionate care of their parents. Every
childish sport was received as evidence of
abjuration; and every parent dreaded the
presence of a Catholic neighbour, as the
means of ensnaring a child into irrevocable
alienation. Each of these disabilities or se
verities was inflicted by a separate edict;
and each was founded on the allegation of
some special grounds, which seemed to
guard against any general conclusion at va
riance with the privileges of Protestants.
* It is singular that they were not excluded
from the military service by sea or land.
On the other hand, a third of the King's
savings on his privy purse was set apart to
recompense converts to the Established reli
gion. The new converts were allowed a
delay of three years for the payment of their
debts ; and they were exempted for the same
period from the obligation of affording quar
ters to soldiers. This last privilege seems to
have suggested to Louvois, a minister of
great talent but of tyrannical character, a
new and more terrible instrument of conver
sion. He despatched regiments of dragoons
into the Protestant provinces, with instruc
tions that they should be almost entirely
quartered on the richer Protestants. This
practice, which afterwards, under the name
of c- Dragonnades^ became so infamous
throughout Europe, was attended by all the
outrages and barbarities to be expected from
a licentious soldiery let loose on those whom
they considered as the enemies of their King,
and the blasphemers of their religion. Its
effects became soon conspicuous in the
feigned conversion of great cities and ex
tensive provinces; which, instead of open
ing the eyes of the Government to the atro
city of the policy adopted under its sanction,
served, only to create a deplorable expecta
tion of easy, immediate, and complete suc
cess. At Nismes, 60.000 Protestants abjured
their religion in three days. The King was
informed by one despatch that all Poitou
was converted, and that in some parts of
Dauphine the same change had been pro
duced by the terror of the dragoons without
their actual presence.*
All these expedients of disfranchi semen t;
chicane, vexation, seduction, and military
license, almost amounting to military execu
tion, were combined with declarations of
respect for the Edict of Nantes, and of reso
lutions to maintain the religious rights of the
new churches. Every successive edict spoke
the language of toleration and liberality :
every separate exclusion was justified on a
distinct ground of specious policy. The
most severe hardships were plausibly repre
sented as necessarily arising from a just in
terpretation and administration of the law.
Many of the restrictions were in themselves
small ; many tried in one province; and
slowly extended to all; some apparently
excused by the impatience of the sufferers
under preceding restraints. In the end,
however, the unhappy Protestants saw them
selves surrounded by a persecution which,
in its full extent, had probably never been
contemplated by the author; and, after all
the privileges were destroyed, nothing re
mained but the formality of repealing the
law by which these privileges had been con
ferred.
At length, on the 18th of October, 1685,
the Government of France, not unwillingly
* Lemontey, Nouveaux Memoiresde Dangeau,
p. 19. The fate of the province of Beam was
peculiarly dreadful. It may be seen in Rulhiere
(Eclaircissemens, &c. chap, xv.), and Benoit, liv.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
305
deceived by feigned conversions, and, as it
now appears, actuated more by sudden im
pulse than long-premeditated design, revoked
the Edict of Nantes. In the preamble of
the edict of revocation it was alleged, that.
as the better and greater part of those who
professed the pretended Reformed religion
had embraced the Catholic faith, the Edict
of Nantes had become unnecessary. The
ministers of the Reformed faith were banish
ed from France in fifteen days, under pain
of the galleys. All Protestant schools were
shut up; and the unconverted children, at
first allowed to remain in France without
annoyance on account of their religion. Were
soon afterwards ordered to be taken from
their parents, and committed to the care of
their nearest Catholic relations, or, in default
of such relations, to the magistrates. The
return of the exiled ministers, and the at
tendance on a Protestant church for religious
worship, were made punishable with death.
Carrying vengeance beyond the grave, an
other edict enjoined, that if any new con
verts should refuse the Catholic sacraments
on their death-bed, when required to receive
them by a magistrate, their bodies should
be drawn on a hurdle along the public way,
and then cast into the common sewers.
The conversion sought by James with most
apparent eagerness was that of Lord Roches
ter. Though he had lost all favour, and even
confidence, James long hesitated to remove
him from office. The latter was willing, but.
afraid to take a measure which would involve
a final rupture with the Church of England.
Rochester's connection with the family of
Hyde, and some remains perhaps of gratitude
for past services, and a dread of increasing
the numbers of his enemies, together with
the powerful influence of old habits of inti
macy, kept his mind for some time in a state
of irresolution and fluctuation. His dissa
tisfaction with the Lord Treasurer became
generally known in the summer, and appears
to have been considerably increased by the
supposed connection of that nobleman with
the episcopalian administration in Scotland ;
of whose removal it will become our duty
presently to speak.* The sudden return o*f
Lady Dorchester revived the spirits of his
adherents. t But the Queen, a person of
great importance in these affairs, was, on
this occasion, persuaded to repress her anger,
and to profess a reliance on the promise made
by the King not to see his mistress."}' For
merly, indeed, the violence of the Queen's
temper is said to have been one source of
her influence over the King; and her as
cendency was observed to be always greatest
after those paroxysms of rage to which she
was excited by the detection of his infideli
ties. Bur, in circumstances so critical, her
experienced advisers dissuaded her from re-
* Barillon, 18th July.— Fox MSS.
t Id. 2d Sept.— Ibid.
t Report of an agent of Louis XIV. in London,
in 1686, of which a copy is in my possession.
39
peating hazardous experiments;* and the
amours of her husband are said, at this
time, to have become so vulgar and obscure
as to elude her vigilance. She was mild and
submissive to him; but she showed her sus
picion of the motive of Lady Dorchester's
journey by violent resentment against Cla
rendon, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whom
she believed to be privy to it, and who in
vain attempted to appease her anger by the
most humble — not to say abject — submis
sions. t She at this moment seemed to have
had more than ordinary influence, and was
admitted into the secret of all affairs.? Sup
ported, if riot instigated by her, Sunderland
and Petre, with the more ambitious and tur
bulent part of the Catholics, represented to
the King that nothing favourable to the
Catholics was to be hoped from Parliament
as long as his Court and Council were divi
ded, and as long as he was surrounded by a
Protestant cabal, at the head of which was
the Lord Treasurer, professing the most ex
travagant zeal for the English Church ; that,
notwithstanding the pious zeal of his Ma
jesty, nothing important had yet been done
for religion ; that not one considerable person
had declared himself a Catholic: that no
secret believer would avow himself, and no
well-disposed Protestant would be reconciled
to the Church, till the King's administration
was uniform, and the principles of govern
ment more decisive ; and that the time was
now come when it was necessary for his Ma
jesty to execute the intention which he had
long entertained, either to bring the Treasu
rer to more just sentiments, or to remove
him from the important office which he filled,
and thus prove to the public that there was
no means of preserving power or credit but
by supporting the King's measures for the
Catholic religion. § They reminded him of
the necessity of taking means to perpetuate
the benefits which he designed for the Catho
lics, arid of the alarming facility with which
the Tudor princes had made and subverted
religious revolutions. Even the delicate
question of the succession was agitated,
and some had the boldness of throwing
out suggestions to James on the most ef
fectual means of insuring a Catholic suc
cessor. These extraordinary suggestions
appear to have been in some measure known
to Van Citters, the Dutch minister, who ex-
* In a MS. among the Stuart papers in posses
sion of his Majesty, which was written by Sheri
dan, Secretary for Ireland under Tyrconnel, we
are told that Petre and Sunderland agreed to dis
miss Mrs. Sedley, under pretence of morality, but
really because she was thought the support of Ro
chester ; and that it was effected by Lady Powis
and Bishop GifTard, to the Queen's great joy. —
See farther Barillon, 5th Sept.— Fox MSS.
t Letters of Henry, Earl of Clarendon.
t Barillon, 23d Sept.— Fox MSS.
$ The words of Barillon, " pour 1'etablissemeni
de la religion Catholique," being capable of two
senses, have been translated in the text in a man
ner which admits of a double interpretation. The
context removes all ambiguity in this case.
2 A2
306
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
pressed his fears that projects were forming
against the rights of the Princess of Orange.
The more affluent and considerable Catho
lics themselves became alarmed, seeing, as
clearly as their brethren, the dangers' to
•which they might be exposed under a Pro
testant successor. But they thought it wiser
to entitle themselves to his favour by a mo
derate exercise of their influence, than to
provoke his hostility by precautions so un
likely to be effectual against his succession
or his religion. Moderation had its usual
fate : the faction of zealots, animated by the
superstition, the jealousy, and the violence
of the Queen, became the most powerful.
Even at this time, however, the Treasurer
was thought likely to have maintained his
ground for some time longer, if he had en
tirely conformed to the King's wishes. His
friends Ormonde, Middleton, Feversham,
Dartmouth, and Preston were not without
hope that he might retain office. At last, in
the end of October, James declared that Ro
chester must either go to mass, or go out of
office.* His advisers represented to him
that it was dangerous to leave this alterna
tive to the Treasurer, which gave him the
means of saving his place by a pretended
conformity. The King replied that he haz
arded nothing by the proposal, for he knew
that Rochester would never conform. If
this observation was sincere, it seems to have
been rash; for some of Rochester's friends
still believed he would do whatever was ne
cessary, and advised him to keep his office
at any price. f The Spanish and Dutch am
bassadors expressed their fear of the fall of
their last friend in the Cabinet ;J and Louis
XIV. considered the measure as certainly
favourable to religion and to his policy,
whether it ended in the conversion of Ro
chester or in his dismissal ; in acquiring a
friend, or in disabling an enemy. §
It was agreed that a conference on the
questions in dispute should be held in the
presence of Rochester, by Dr. Jane and Dr.
Patrick on behalf of the Church of England,
and by Dr. Giffard and Dr. Tilden II on the
part of the Church of Rome. It is not easy
to believe that the King or his minister
should have considered a real change of
opinion as a possible result of such a dis
pute. Even if the influence of attachment,
of antipathy, of honour, and of habit on the
human mind were suspended, the conviction
of a man of understanding on questions of
great importance, then the general object of
study and discussion, could hardly be con-
* Barillon, 4th Nov.— Fox MSS. It is curious
that the report of Rochester's dismissal is men
tioned by Narcissus Luttrell on the same day on
which Barillon's despatch is dated.
t Id. 9th Dec.— Ibid.
t Id. 18th Nov.— Ibid.
§ The King to Barillon. Versailles, 19th Oct.—
Ibid.
II This peculiarly respectable divine assumed
the name of Godden ; — a practice to which Catho
lic clergymen were then sometimes reduced to
elude persecution.
ceived to depend on the accidental superi
ority in skill and knowledge exhibited by
!.he disputants of either party in the course
of a single debate. But the proposal, if made
by one party, was too specious and popular
to be prudently rejected by the other: they
were alike interested in avoiding the impu
tation of shrinking from an argumentative
examination of their faith. The King was
desirous of being relieved from his own in
decision by a signal proof of Rochester's ob
stinacy; arid in the midst of his fluctuations
he may sometimes have indulged a linger
ing hope that the disputation might supply
a decent excuse for the apparent conformity
of his old friend and servant. In all pro
longed agitations of the mind, it is in succes
sion affected by motives not very consistent
with each other. Rochester foresaw that
his popularity among Protestants would be
enhanced by his triumphant resistance to the
sophistry of their adversaries; and he gave
the King, by consenting to the conference, a
pledge of his wish to carry compliance to the
utmost boundaries of integrity. He hoped
to gain time; he retained the means of pro
fiting by fortunate accidents ; at least he
postponed the fatal hour of removal ; and
there were probably moments in which his
fainting virtue looked for some honourable
pretence for deserting a vanquished party.
The conference took place on the 30th of
November.* Each of the contending par
ties, as usual, claimed the victory. The
Protestant writers, though they agree that
the Catholics were defeated, vary from each
other. Some ascribe the victory to the two
divines; others to the arguments of Roches
ter himself; and one of the disputants of the
English Church said that it was unnecessary
for them to do much. One writer tells us
that the King said he never saw a good cause
so ill defended ; and all agree that Roches
ter closed the conference with the most de
termined declaration that he was confirmed
in his religion.t Giffard, afterwards a Catho
lic prelate of exemplary character, published
an account of the particulars of the contro
versy, which gives a directly opposite account
of it. In the only part of it which can in any
degree be tried by historical evidence, the
Catholic account of the dispute is more pro
bable. Rochester, if we may believe Giffard,
at the end of the conference, said — " The
disputants have discoursed learnedly, and I
desire time to consider. "t Agreeably to this
statement, Barillon, after mentioning the
dispute, told his Court that Rochester still
* Dodd, vol. iii. p. 419. Barillon's short ac
count of ihe conference is dated on the 12ih De
cember, which, after making allowance for the
difference of calendars, makes the despatch to be
written two days after the conference, which de
serves to be mentioned as a proof of Dodd's singu
lar exactness.
t Burnet, Echard, and Kennet. There are other
contradictions in the testimony of these historians,
and it is evident that Burnet did not implicitly be
lieve Rochester's own story.
t Dodd, vol. iii. p. 420.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
307
showed a disposition to be instructed with
respect to the difficulties which prevented
him from declaring himself a Catholic, and
added that some even then expected that he
would determine for conformity.* This des
patch was written two days after the dispu
tation by a minister who could neither be
m isinformed. nor have any motive to deceive.
Some time afterwards, indeed, Rochester
made great efforts to preserve his place, and
laboured to persuade the moderate party
among the Catholics that it was their interest
to support him.f He did not, indeed, offer
to sacrifice his opinions • but a man who, after
the loss of all confidence and real power,
clung with such tenacity to mere office,
under a system of whicn he disapproved
every principle, could hardly be supposed
to be unassailable. The violent or decisive
politicians of the Catholic party dreaded that
Rochester might still take the King at his
word, and defeat all their plans by a feigned
compliance. James distrusted his sincerity,
suspected that his object was to amuse and
temporise, and at length, weary of his own
irresolution, took the decisive measure of re
moving the only minister by whom the Pro
testant party had a hold on his councils.
The place of Lord Rochester was accord
ingly supplied on the 5th of January, 1687,
by commissioners, of whom two were Catho
lics, Lord Bellasis of the cautious, and Lord
Dover of the zealous party; and the remain
ing three. Lord Godolphin, Sir John Ernley,
and Sir Stephen Fox, were probably chosen
for their capacity and experience in the af
fairs of finance. Two days afterwards Par
liament, in which the Protestant Tories, the
followers of Rochester, predominated, was
prorogued. James endeavoured to soften
the removal of his minister by a pension of
40001. a year on the Post Office for a term
of years, together with the polluted grant of
a perpetual annuity of 1700/. a year out of
the forfeited estate of Lord Gray,t for the
sake of which the King, under a false show
of mercy, had spared the life of that noble
man. The King was no longer, however, at
pains to conceal his displeasure. He told
Barillon that Rochester favoured the French
Protestants, whom, as a term of reproach, he
called "Calvinists," and added that this was
one of many instances in which the senti
ments of the minister were opposite to those
of his master. § He informed D'Adda that
the Treasurer's obstinate perseverance in
error had at length rendered his removal in
evitable ; but that wary minister adds, that
they who had the most sanguine hopes of
the final success of the Catholic cause were
obliged to own that, at that moment, the
public temper was inflamed and exasperated,
and that the cry of the people was, that
since Rochester was dismissed because he
would not become a Catholic, there must
* Barillon. 12tli Dec.— Fox MSS.
r Id. 30th Dec.— Ibid.
t Evelyn, vol. i. p. 595
* Barillon, 13ih Jan. 1687.— Fox MSS.
be a design to expel all Protestants from
office.*
The fall of Rochester was preceded, and
probably quickened, by an important change
in the administration of Scotland, and it was
also connected with a revolution in the go
vernment of Ireland, of both -which events it
is now necessary to relate the most important
particulars.
CHAPTER IV.
Scotland. — Administration of Queensberry. —
Conversion of Perth. — Measures contem
plated by the King. — Debates in Parliament
on the King's letter. — Proposed bill of tole
ration — unsatisfactory to James. — Adjourn
ment of Parliament. — Exercise of prero
gative.
Ireland. — Character of Tyrconnel. — Review
of the state of Ireland. — Arrival of Tyr
connel. — His appointment as Lord Deputy.
— Advancement of Catholics to offices. —
Tyrconnel aims at the sovereign power in
Ireland. — Intrigues with France.
THE government of Scotland, under the
Episcopal ministers of Charles II., was such,
that, to the Presbyterians, who formed the
majority of the people, " their native country
had, by the prevalence of persecution and
violence, become as insecure as a den of
robbers, "t The chief place in the adminis
tration had been filled for some years by
Queen sberry, a man of ability, the leader of
the Episcopal party, who, in that character
as well as from a matrimonial connection
between their families, was disposed to an
union of councils with Rochester.! Adopting
the principles of his English friends, he
seemed ready to sacrifice the remaining
liberties of his country, but resolved to ad
here to the Established Church. The acts
of the first session in the reign of James are
such as to have extorted from a great histo
rian of calm temper, and friendly to the
house of Stuart, the reflection that " nothing
could exceed the abject servility of the
Scotch nation during this period but the ar
bitrary severity of the administration. "§ Not
content with servility and cruelty for the
moment, they laid down principles which
would render slavery universal and perpe
tual, by assuring the King " that they abhor
and detest all principles and positions which
are contrary or derogatory to the King's sa
cred, supreme, absolute power and authority,
which none, whether persons or collective
bodies, can participate of. in any manner or
on any pretext, but in dependence on him
and by commission from him."||
* D'Adda. 10th Jan. 1687.— MS.
t Hume, History of England, chap. Ixix.
t His son had married the niece of Lady Ro
chester.
§ Hume, chap. Ixx.
il Acts of Parliament, vol. viii. p. 459.
308
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
But the jealousies between the King's
party and that of the Church among the
Scotch ministers were sooner visible than
those between the corresponding factions in
the English council; and they seem, in some
degree, to have limited the severities which
followed the revolt of Argyle. The Privy
Council, at the intercession of some ladies
of distinction, prevented the Marquis of
Athol from hanging Mr. Charles Campbell,
then confined by a fever, at the gates of his
father's castle of Inverary:* and it was pro
bably by their representations that James
\vas induced to recall instructions which he
had issued to the Duke of Queensberry for
the suppression of the name of Campbell ;f
which would have amounted to a proscrip
tion of several noblemen, a considerable
body of gentry, and the most numerous and
powerful tribe in the kingdom. They did not,
however, hesitate in the execution of the
King's orders to dispense with the Test in
the case of four peers and twenty-two gen
tlemen, who were required by law to take it
before they exercised the office of commis
sioners to assess the supply in their respective
counties.!
The Earl of Perth, the Chancellor of Scot
land, began now to attack Queensberry by
means somewhat similar to those employed
by Sunderland against Rochester. Queens-
berry had two years before procured the ap
pointment of Perth, as it was believed, by a
present of a sum of 27.000/. of public money
to the Duchess of Portsmouth. Under a new
reign, when that lady was by no means a
favourite, both Queensberry and Perth ap
prehended a severe inquisition into this mis
application of public money ;§ Perth, whether
actuated by fear or ambition, made haste to
consult his security and advancement by
conforming to the religion of the Court, on
which Lord Halifax observed, that a his faith
had made him whole." Queensberry ad
hered to the Established Church.
The Chancellor soon began to exercise
that ascendency which he acquired by his
conversion, in such a manner as to provoke
immediate demonstrations of the zeal against
the Church of Rome, which the Scotch Pres
byterians carried farther than any other Re
formed community. He issued an order
against the sale of any books without license,
which was universally understood as intend
ed to prevent the circulation of controversial
writings against the King's religion. Glen,
a bookseller in Edinburgh, when he received
this warning, said, that he had one book
which strongly condemned Popery, and de
sired to know whether he might continue to
sell it. Being asked what the book was, he
answered, "The Bible. "|| Shortly afterwards
the populace manifested their indignation at
(he public celebration of mass by riots, in
* Fountainhall, Chronicle, vol. i. p. 366.
t Warrant, 1st June, 1685. — State Paper Office.
$ Warrant, 7th Dec.— Ibid.
$ Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 189. II Ibid. p. 390.
the suppression of which several persons
were killed. A law to inflict adequate pe
nalties on such offences against the security
of religious worship would have been per
fectly just. But as the laws of Scotland had,
however unjustly, made it a crime to be
present at the celebration of,, mass, it was
said, with some plausibility, that the rioters
had only dispersed an unlawful assembly.
The lawyers evaded this difficulty by the
ingenious expedient of keeping out of view
the origin and object of the tumults, and
prosecuted the offenders, merely for rioting
in violation of certain ancient statutes,' some
of which rendered that offence capital. They
were pursued wTith such singular barbarity,
that one Keith, who was riot present at the
tumult, was executed for having said, that
he would have helped the rioters, and for
having drank confusion to all Papists j though
he at the same time drank the health of the
King, and though in both cases he only fol
lowed the example of the witnesses on whose
evidence he was convicted. Attempts were
vainly made to persuade this poor man to
charge Queensberry with being accessory to
the riots, which lie had freely ridiculed in
private. That nobleman was immediately
after removed from the office of Treasurer,
but he was at the same time appointed Lord
President of the Council with a pension, that
the Court might retain some hold on him
during the important discussions at the ap
proaching session of Parliament.
The King communicated to the secret com
mittee of the Scotch Privy Council his in
tended instructions to the Commissioners
relative to the measures to be proposed to
Parliament. They comprehended the repeal
of the Test, the abrogation of the sanguinary
laws as far as they related to Papists, the
admission of these last to all civil and mili
tary employments, and the confirmation of
all the King's dispensations, even in the
reigns of his successors, unless they were
recalled by Parliament. On these terms he
declared his willingness to assent to any law
(not repugnant to these things) for securing
the Protestant religion, and the personal dig
nities, offices, and possessions of the clergy,
and for continuing all laws against fanati
cism.* The Privy Council manifested some
unwonted scruples about these propositions :
James answered them angrily .t Perplexed
by this unexpected resistance, as well as by
the divisions in the Scottish' councils, and
the repugnance shown by the Episcopalian
party to any measure which might bring the
privileges of Catholics more near to a level
with their own, he commanded the Duke of
Hamilton and Sir George Lockhart, Presi
dent of the Court of Session, to come to Lon
don, with a view to ascertain their inclina
tions, and to dispose them favourably to his
objects, but under colour of consulting them
on the nature of the relief which it might be
* 4th March, 1686.— State Paper Office,
t 18th March.— Ibid.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
309
prudent to propose for the members of his
own communion.* The Scotch negotiators
(for as such they seem to have acted) con
ducted the discussion with no small discre
tion and dexterity. They professed their
readiness to concur in the repeal of the penal
and sanguinary laws against Catholics ; ob
serving, however, the difficulty of proposing
to confine such an indulgence to one class
of dissidents, and the policy of moving for a
general toleration, which it would be as much
the interests of Presbyterians as of Catholics
to promote. They added, that it might be
more politic not to propose the repeal of the
Test as a measure of government, but either
to leave it to the spontaneous disposition of
Parliament, which would very probably re
peal a law aimed in Scotland against Pres
byterians as exclusively as it had in England
been intended to exclude Catholics, or to
trust to the King's dispensing power, which
was there undisputed ; — as indeed every part
of the prerogative was in that country held
to be above question, and without limits. t
These propositions embarrassed James and
his more zealous counsellors. The King
struggled obstinately against the extension
of the liberty to the Presbyterians. The
Scotch councillors required, that if the Test
was repealed, the King should bind himself
by the most solemn promise to attempt no
farther alteration or abridgment of the privi
leges of the Protestant clergy. James did
not conceal from them his repugnance thus
to confirm and to secure the establishment
of a heretical Church. He imputed the per
tinacity of Hamilton to the insinuations of
Rochester^ and that of Lockhart to the still
more obnoxious influence of his father-in-law.
Lord Wharton.t
The Earl of Moray, a recent convert to the
Catholic religion, opened Parliament on the
29th of April, and laid before it a royal let
ter, exhibiting traces of the indecision and
ambiguity which were the natural conse
quence of the unsuccessful issue of the con
ferences in London. The King begins with
holding out the temptation of a free trade
with England, and after tendering an ample
amnesty, proceeds to state, that while he
shows these acts of mercy to the enemies of
his crown and royal dignity, he cannot be
unmindful of his Roman Catholic subjects,
who had adhered to the Crown in rebellions
and usurpations, though they lay under dis
couragements hardly to be named. He re
commends them to the care of Parliament,
and desires that they may have the protec
tion of the laws and the same security with
other subjects, without being laid under ob
ligations which their religion will not admit
of. "This love," he says, "we expect ye
will show to your brethren, as you see we
are an indulgent father to you all."§
At the next sitting an answer was voted,
* Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 410.
tBarillon, 22d April.— Fox MSS.
t Id. 29th April— Ibid.
§ Acts of Parliament, vol. viii. p. 580.
thanking the King for his endeavours to pro
cure a free trade with England ; expressing
the utmost admiration of the offer of amnesty
to such desperate rebels against so merciful
a prince ; declaring, " as to that part of your
Majesty's letter which relates to your sub
jects of the Roman Catholic persuasion, we
shall, in obedience to your Majesty's com
mands, and in tenderness to their persons,
take the same into our serious and dutiful
consideration, and go as great lengths therein
as our consciences will allow ;" and conclu
ding with these words, which were the more
significant because they were not called for
by any correspondent paragraph in the King's
letter: — "Not doubting that your Majesty
will be careful to secure the Protestant reli
gion established by law." Even this answer,
cold and guarded as it was, did not pass with
out some debate, important only as indica
ting the temper of the assembly. The words,
"subjects of the Roman Catholic religion."
were objected to, "as not to be given by
Parliament to individuals, whom the law
treated as criminals, and to a Church which
Protestants could not, without inconsistency,
regard as entitled to the appellation of Catho
lic." Lord Fountainhall proposed as an
amendment, the substitution of "those com
monly called Roman Catholics." The Earl
of Perth called this nicknaming the King,
and proposed, "those subjects your Majesty
has recommended." The Archbishop of
Glasgow supported the original answer, upon
condition of an entry in the Journals, declar
ing that the words were used only out of
courtesy to the King, as a repetition of the
language of his letter. A minority of fifty-
six in a house of one hundred and eighty-
two voted against the original words, even
though they were to be thus explained.*
Some members doubted whether they could
sincerely profess a disposition to go any far
ther lengths in favour of the Romanists, be
ing convinced that all the laws against the
members of that communion ought to con
tinue in force. The Parliament having been
elected under the administration of Queens-
berry, the Episcopal party was very power
ful both in that assembly and in the com
mittee called the "'Lords of the Articles,"
with whom alone a bill could originate. The
Scottish Catholics were an inconsiderable
body : and the Presbyterians, though com
prehending the most intelligent, moral, and
religious part of the people, so far from having
any influence in the legislature, were pro
scribed as criminals, and subject to a more
cruel and sanguinary persecution at the hands
of their Protestant brethren than either of
these communions had ever experienced from
Catholic rulers. t Those of the prelates who
preferred the interest of their order to their
* Fountainhal!, vol. i. p. 413.
t Wodrow, History of the Church of Scotland,
&c., vol. ii. p. 498: — an avowed partisan, but a
most sincere and honest writer, to whom great
thanks are due for having preserved that collection
of facts and documents which will for ever render
310
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
own were dissatisfied even with the very
limited measure of toleration laid before the
Lords of the Articles, which only proposed
to exempt Catholics from punishment on ac
count of the private exercise of their reli
gious worship .* The Primate was alarmed
by a hint thrown out by the Duke of Hamil
ton, that a toleration so limited might be
granted to dissenting Protestants ;t nor, on
the other hand, was the resistance of the
prelates softened by the lure held out by the
King in his first instructions, that if they
would remove the Test against Catholics
they should be indulged in the persecution
of their fellow Protestants. The Lords of
the Articles were forced to introduce into the
bill two clauses ; — one declaring their deter
mination to adhere to the established religion,
the other expressly providing, that the im
munity and forbearance contemplated should
not derogate from the laws which required
the oath of allegiance and the test to be taken
by all persons in offices of public trust. t
The arguments on both sides are to be
found in pamphlets then printed at Edin
burgh; those for the Government publicly
and actively circulated, those of the oppo
site party disseminated clandestinely^ The
principal part, as in all such controver
sies, consists in personalities, recriminations,
charges of inconsistency, and addresses to
prejudice, which scarcely any ability can
render interesting after the passions from
which they spring have subsided and are
forgotten. It happened, also, that temporary
circumstances required or occasioned the
best arguments not to be urged by the dis
putants. Considered on general principles,
the bill, like every other measure of tolera
tion, was justly liable to no permanent ob
jection but its incompleteness and partiality.
But no Protestant sect was then so tolerant
as to object to the imperfection of the relief
to be granted to Catholics; and the ruling
party were neither entitled nor disposed to
complain, that the Protestant Non-conform
ists, whom they had so long persecuted,
were not to be comprehended in the tolera
tion. The only objection which could rea
sonably be made to the tolerant principles,
now for the first time inculcated by the
advocates of the Court, was, that they were
not proposed with good faith, or for the re
lief of the Catholics but for the subversion
of the Protestant Church, and the ultimate
it impossible to extenuate the tyranny exercised
over Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolu
tion.
* Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 594.
t Fountainhall, vol. i. p 415.
t Wodrow, vol. ii. app.
§ Ibid. Wodrow ascribes the Court pamphlet
to Sir Roger L' Estrange, in which he is followed
by Mr. Laing, though, in answer to it, it is said to
have been written by a clergyman who had
preached before the Parliament. L'Estrange was
then in Edinburgh, probably engaged in some
more popular controversy. The tract in question
seems more likely to have been written by Pater-
6on, Bishop of Edinburgh.
establishment of Popery, with all the hor
rors which were to follow in its train. The
present effects of the bill were a subject of
more urgent consideration than its general
character. It was more necessary to ascer
tain the purpose which it was intended and
calculated to promote at the instant, than to
examine the principles on which such a
measure, in other circumstances and in
common' times, might be perfectly wise and
just. Even then, had any man been liberal
and bold enough to propose universal and
perfect liberty of worship, the adoption of
such a measure would probably have afforded
the most effectual security against the de
signs of the Crown. But very few enter
tained so generous a principle : and of these,
some might doubt the wisdom of its applica
tion in that hour of peril, while no one could
have proposed it with any hope that it could
be adopted by the majority of such a Parlia
ment. It can hardly be a subject of wonder,
that the Established clergy, without any root
in the opinions and affections of the people,
on whom they were imposed by law, and
against whom they were maintained by per
secution, should not in the midst of con
scious weakness have had calmness and
fortitude enough to consider the policy of
concession, but trembling for their unpopular
dignities and invidious revenues, should re
coil from the surrender of the most distant
outpost which seemed to guard them, and
struggle with all their might to keep those
who threatened to become their most formi
dable rivals under the brand at least, — if not
the scourge, — of penal laws. It must be
owned, that the language of the Court wri
ters was not calculated either to calm the
apprehensions of the Church, or to satisfy
the solicitude of the friends of liberty. They
told Parliament, " that if the King were ex
asperated by the rejection of the bill, he
might, without the violation of any law,
alone remove all Protestant officers and
judges from the government of the State,
and all Protestant bishops and ministers
from the government of the Church;"* — a
threat the more alarming, because the dis
pensing power seemed sufficient to carry it
into effect in civil offices, and the Scotch
Act of Supremacy, passed in one of the
paroxysms of servility which were frequent
in the first years of the Restoration,t ap
peared to afford the means of fully accom
plishing it against the Church.
The unexpected obstinacy of the Scottish
Parliament alarmed and offended the Court.
Their answer did not receive the usual com
pliment of publication in the Gazette. —
Orders were sent to Edinburgh to remove
two Privy Councillors.}: to displace Seton, a
judge, and to deprive the Bishop of Dunkeld
of a pension, for their conduct. Sir George
Mackenzie, nimself, the most eloquent and
accomplished Scotchman of his age, was for
* Wodrow, vol. ii. app. t 1669.
J The Earl of Glencairn and Sir W. Bruce.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
311
the same reason dismissed from the office of
Lord Advocate.* It was in vain that he had
dishonoured his genius by being for ten years
the advocate of tyranny and the minister of
* " Sir George Mackenzie was the grandson
of Kenneth, first Lord Mackenzie of Kintail, and
the nephew of Colin and George, first and second
Earls of Seaforth. He was born at Dundee in
1636. and alter passing through the usual course;
of education in his own country, he was sent for
three years to the University of Bourges, at that
time, as he tells us, called the ' Athens of Law
yers;' — as in later times the Scotch lawyers usually
repaired to Utrecht and Leyden. He was called
to the Bar, and began to practise before the Resto
ration ; immediately af'er which he was appointed
one of the justices-depute — criminal judges, who
exercised that jurisdiction which was soon after
vested in five lords of session under the denomi
nation of ' commissioners of justiciary.' Misname
appears in the Parliamentary proceedings as coun
sel in almost every important cause, fie repre
sented the county of Ross for the four sessions of
the Parliament which was called in 1669. In 1677
he was appointed Lord Advocate ; and was in
volved by that preferment, most unhappily for his
character, in the worst acts of the Scotch adminis
tration of Charles II. At the Revolution he ad
hered to the fortunes of his master. Being elected
a member of the Convention, he maintained the
pretensions of James with courage and ability
against Sir John Dalrymple and Sir James Mont
gomery, who were the most considerable of the
Revolutionary party; and remaining in his place
after the imprisonment of Balcarras and the escape
of Dundee, he was one of the minority of five in
the memorable division on the forfeiture of the
crown. When the death of Dundee destroyed
the hopes of his party in Scotland, he took refuge
at Oxford, — the natural asylum of so learned and
inveterate a Tory. Under the tolerant govern
ment of William he appears to have enjoyed his
ample fortune, — the fruit of his professional la
bours, — with perfect comfort as well as security.
He died in St. James' Street in May, 1691 ; and
his death is mentioned as that of an extraordinary
person by several of those who recorded the
events of their time, before the necrology of this
country was so undistinguishinsr as it has now
become. The pomp and splendour of his inter
ment at Edinburgh affords farther evidence how
little the administration of William was disposed
to discourage the funeral honours paid to his most
inflexible opponents. The writings of Sir Georsfe
Mackenzie are literary, legal, and political. His
Miscellaneous Essays, both in prose and verse,
may now be dispensed with, or laid aside, without
difficulty; They have not vigour enough for long
life. But if they be considered as the elegant
amusements of a statesman and lawyer, who had
little leisure for the cultivation of letters, they
afford a striking proof of the variety of his accom
plishments, and of the refinement of his taste.
In several of his Moral Essays, both the subject
and the manner betray an imitation of Cowley,
who was at that moment beginning the reforma
tion of English style. Sir George Mackenzie
was probably tempted, by the example of this
great master, to write in praise of Solitude : and
Evelyn answered by a panegyric on Active life.
It seems singular that Mackenzie, plunged in the
harshest labours of ambition, should be the advo
cate of retirement ; and that Evelyn, compara
tively a recluse, should have commended that
mode of life which he did not choose. Both
works were, however, rhetorical exercises, in
which a puerile ingenuity was employed on ques
tions which admitted no answer, and were not
therefore the subject of sincere opinion. Before
we can decide whether a retired or a public life
persecution : all his ignominious claims \vere
cancelled by the independence of one day.
It was hoped that such examples might strike
terror.* Several noblemen, who held com
missions in the army, were ordered to repair
to their posts. Some members were threat
ened with the avoidance of their elections. t
A prosecution was commenced against the
Bishop of Ross; and the proceedings were stu
diously protracted, to weary out the poorer
part of those who refused to comply w7iih the
Court. The ministers scrupled at no expe
dient for seducing, or intimidating, or harass
ing. But these expedients proved ineffectual.
The majority of the Parliament adhered to
their principles ; and the session lingered for
about a month in the midst of ordinary or
unimportant affairs.}" The Bill for Tolera
tion was not brought up by the Lords of the
Articles. The commissioners, doubting whe
ther it would be carried, and probably in
structed by the Court that it would neither
satisfy the expectations nor promote the
purposes of the King, in the middle of June
adjourned the Parliament, which was never
again to assemble.
It was no wonder that the King should
have been painfully disappointed by the
failure of his attempt; for after the conclu
sion of the session, it was said by zealous
and pious Protestants, that nothing less than
a special interposition of Providence could
have infused into such an assembly a stead
fast resolution to withstand the Court. § The
royal displeasure was manifested by mea
sures of a very violent sort. The despotic
supremacy of the King over the Church was
exercised by depriving Bruce of his bishopric
of Dunkeld ;li — a severity which, not long af
ter, was repeated in the deprivation of Cairn -
cross. Archbishop of Glasgow, for some sup-
be best, we must ask, — best for whom? The
absurdity of these childish generalities, which
exercised the wit of our forefathers, has indeed
been long acknowledged. Perhaps posterity may
discover, that many political questions which agi
tate our times are precisely of the same nature ;
and that it would be almost as absurd to attempt
the establishment of a democracy in China as
the foundation of a nobility in Connecticut." —
Abridged from the " Edinburgh Review," vol.
xxxvi. p. 1. ED.
* Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 414.
t Ibid. p. 419.
t Among the frivolous but characteristic trans
actions of this session was the " Bore Brieve,"
or authenticated pedigree granted to the Marquis
de Seignelai, as a supposed descendant of the an
cient family of Cuthbert of Castlehill, in Inverness-
shire. His lather, the great Colbert, who appears
to have been the son of a reputable woollen-draper
of Troyes, had attempted to obtain the same cer
tificate of genealogy, but such was the pride of
birth at that time in Scotland, that his attempts
were vain. It now required all the influence of
the Court, set in motion by the solicitations of
Barillon, to obtain it for Seignelai. By an elabo
rate display of all the collateral relations of the
Cuthberts, the " Bore Brieve" connects Seignelai
with the Royal Family, and with all the nobility
and gentry of the kingdom. — Acts of Parliament,
vol. iii. p. 611.
§ Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 419. II Ibid. p. 416.
312
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
posed countenance to an obnoxious preacher,
though that prelate laboured to avert it by
promises of support to all measures favour
able to the King's religion.* A few days |
after the prorogation. Queensberry was dis
missed from all His offices, and required not
to leave Edinburgh until he had rendered an
account of his administration of the treasury.!
Some part of the royal displeasure fell upon Sir
George Mackenzie, the Lord Register, lately
created Lord Cromarty, the most submissive
servant of every government, for having flat
tered the King, by too confident assurances
of a majority as obsequious as himself. The
connection of Rochester with Queensberry
now aggravated the offence of the latter, and
prepared the way for the downfall of the
former. Moray, the commissioner, promised
positive proofs, but produced at. last only
such circumstances as were sufficient to con
firm the previous jealousies of James, that
the Scotch Opposition were in secret corres
pondence with Pensionary Fagel, and even
with the Prince of Orange. J Sir George
Mackenzie, whose unwonted independence
seems to have speedily faltered, was refused
an audience of the King, when he visited
London with the too probable purpose of
making his peace. The most zealous Pro
testants being soon afterwards removed from
the Privy Council, and the principal noble
men of the Catholic communion being in
troduced in their stead, James addressed a
letter to the Council, informing them that
his application to Parliament had not arisen
from any doubt of his own power to stop the
severities against Catholics; declaring his
intention to allow the exercise of the Catholic
worship, and to establish a chapel for that
purpose in his own palace of Holyrood House ;
ami intimating to the judges, that they were
to receive the allegation of this allowance as
a valid defence, any law to the contrary not
withstanding. § The warm royalists, in their
proposed answer, expressly acknowledge the
King's prerogative to be a legal security : but
the Council, in consequence of an objection
of the Duke of Hamilton, faintly asserted
their independence, by substituting " suffi
cient" instead of u legal. ;'H
The determination was thus avowed of
pursuing the objects of the King's policy in
Scotland by the exercise of prerogative, at
least until a more compliant Parliament could
be obtained, which would not only remove
all doubt for the present, but protect the
Catholics against the recall of the dispen
sations by James' successors. The means
principally relied on for the accomplishment
of that object was the power now assumed
* Fonntainhall, vol i. p. 441. Skinner, Ecclesi
astical History, vol. ii. p. 503.
t Tbid. p. 420.
t Barillon, 1st— 22d July, 1686 —Fox MSS.
It will appear in the sequel, that, these suspicions
are at variance with probability, and unsupported
by evidence.
$ Wodrow, vol. ii. p. 598.
II Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 424.
by the King to stop the annual elections in
burghs, to nominate the chief magistrates,
and through them to command the election by
more summary proceedings than those of the
English courts. The choice of ministers cor
responded with the principles of administra
tion. The disgrace of the Duke of Hamilton,
a few months later,* completed the transfer
of power to the party which professed an
unbounded devotion to the principles of their
master in the government both of Church
and State. The measures of the Government
did not belie their professions. Sums of mo
ney, considerable when compared with the
scanty revenue of Scotland, were employed
in support of establishments for the main
tenance and propagation of the Roman Ca
tholic religion. A sum of 1400Z. a year was
granted, in equal portions, to the Catholic
missionaries, to the Jesuit missionaries, to
the mission in the Highlands, to the Chapel
Royal, arid to each of the Scotch colleges at
Paris, Douay, and Rome.f The Duke of
Hamilton, Keeper of the Palace, was com
manded to surrender the Chancellor's apart
ments in Holyrood House to a college of
Jesuits.! By a manifest act of partiality,
two-thirds of the allowance made by Charles
the Second to indigent royalists were directed
to be paid to Catholics; and all pensions and
allowances to persons of that religion were
required to be paid in the first place, in pre
ference to all other pensions. § Some of these
grants, it is true, if they had been made by a
liberal sovereign in a tolerant age, were in
themselves justifiable; but neither the cha
racter of the King, nor the situation of the
country, nor the opinions of the times, left
any reasonable man at liberty then to doubt
their purpose : and some of them were at
tended by circumstances which would be
remarkable as proofs of the infatuated im
prudence of the King and his counsellors, if
they were not more worthy of observation
as symptoms of that insolent contempt with
which they trampled on the provisions of law,
and on the strongest feelings of the people.
The government of Ireland, as well as
that of England and Scotland, was, at the
accession of James, allowed to remain in the
hands of Protestant Tories. The Lord-lieu
tenancy was, indeed, taken from the Duke
of Ormonde, then far advanced in years, but
it was bestowed on a nobleman of the same
party, Lord Clarendon, whose moderate un
derstanding added little to those claims </n
high office, which he derived from his birth,
connections, and opinions. But the feeble
and timid Lord Lieutenant was soon held in
check by Richard Talbot, then created Earl
* Fountainnall, vol. i. p. 449—451. Letter (in
State Paper Office,) 1st March, 1687, expressing
the King's displeasure at the conduct of Hamilton,
and directing the names of his sons-in-law, Pan-
mure and Dunmore, to be struck out of the list of
the Council.
t Warrants in the State Paper Office, dated
19th May, 1687.
I Ibid. 15th August. $ Ibid. 7th January, 1688.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
313
of Tyrconnel, a Catholic gentleman of an
cient English extraction, who joined talents
and spirit to violent passions, boisterous
manners, unbounded indulgence in every
excess, and a furious zeal for his religious
party.* His character was tainted by that
disposition to falsehood and artifice, which,
however seemingly inconsistent with violent
passions, is often combined W7ith them ; and
lie possessed more of the beauty and bravery
than of the wit or eloquence of his unhappy
nation. He had been first introduced to
Charles II. and his brother before the Resto
ration, as one who was willing to assassinate
Cromwell, and had made a journey into
England with that resolution. He soon after
received an appointment in the household of
the Duke of York, arid retained the favour
of that prince during the remainder of his
life. In the year 1666. he was imprisoned
for a few days by Charles II., for having re
solved to assassinate the Duke of Ormonde,
with whose Irish administration he was dis
satisfied. t He did not, however, even by the
last of these criminal projects, forfeit the
patronage of either of the royal brothers, and
at the accession of James held a high place
among his personal favourites. He was in
duced, both by zeal for the Catholic party,
and by animosity against the family of Hyde,
to give effectual aid to Sunderland in the
overthrow of Rochester, and required in re
turn that the conduct of Irish aiFairs should
be left to him.} Sunderland dreaded the
temper of Tyrconnel, and was desirous of
performing his part of the bargain with as
little risk as possible to the quiet of Ireland.
The latter at first contented himself with the
rank of senior General Officer on the Irish
staff; in which character he returned to
Dublin in June, 1686, as the avowed favourite
of the King, and \vith pow-ers to new-model
the army. His arrival, however, had been
* The means hy which Talbot obtained the fa
vour of James, if we may believe the accounts of
his enemies, were somewhat singular. " Cla
rendon's daughter had been got with child in
Flanders, on a pretended promise of marriage, by
the Duke of York, who was forced by the King,
at her father's importuniiy, to marry her, after he
had resolved the contrary, and got her reputation
blasted by Lord Fiixharding and Colonel Talbot,
who impudently affirmed that they had received
the last favours from her." — Sheridan MS.
Stuart Papers. " 5th July 1694. Sir E. Harley
told us, that, when the Duke of York resolved on
putting away his first wife, particularly on disco
very of her commerce with , she by her
father's advice turned Roman Catholic, and there
by secured herself from reproach, and that the
pretence of her father's opposition to it was only
to act a part, and secure himself from blame." —
MSS. in the handwriting of Lord Treasurer Ox
ford, in the possession of the Duke of Portland.
The latter of these passages from the concluding
part must refer to the time of the marriage. But
it must not be forgotten that both the reporters
were the enemies ol Clarendon, and that Sheridan
was the bitter enemy of Tyrconnel.
t Clarendon, Continuation of History (Oxford,
1759). p. 362.
J Sheridan MS. Stuart Papers.
40
preceded by reports of extensive changes in
the government of the kingdom.* The State,
the Church, the administration, and the pro
perty of that unhappy island, were bound
together by such unnatural ties, and placed
on such weak foundations, that every rumour
of alteration in one of them spread the deepest
alarm for the safety of the whole.
From the colonization of a small part of
the eastern coast under Henry II.. till the
last years of the reign of Elizabeth, an un
ceasing and cruel warfare was waged by the
English governors against the princes and
chiefs of the Iiish tribes, with little other
effect than that of preventing the progiesa
of civilization among the Irish, of replunging
many of the English into barbarism, and of
generating that deadly animosity between
the natives and the invaders, under the
names of Irishry and Englishry, which, as
suming various forms, and exasperated by a
fatal succession of causes, has continued
even to our days the source of innumerable
woes. During that dreadful period of four
hundred years, the laws of the English co
lony did riot punish the murder of a man of
Irish blood as a crime. t Even so late as the
year 1547, the Colonial Assembly, called a
u Parliament." confirmed the insolent laws
which prohibited the English aof the pale"
from marrying persons of Irish blood. J Re
ligious hostility inflamed the hatred of these
mortal foes. 'The Irish, attached to their
ancient opinions as well as usages, and little
addicted to doubt or inquiry, rejected the
reformation of religion offered to them by
their enemies. The Protestant worship be
came soon to be considered by them as the
odious badge of conquest and oppression ;§
while the ancient religion was endeared by
persecution, and by its association with the
name, the language, and the manners of their
country. The island had long been repre
sented as a fief of the See of Rome ; the
Catholic clergy, and even laity, had no un
changeable friend but the Sovereign Pontiff;
and their chief hope of deliverance from a
hostile yoke was long confined to Spain, the
* Clarendon's Letters, passim-
t Sir J. Davies, Discoverie, &c., pp. 102—112.
" They were so far out of the protection of the
laws that it was often adjudged no felony to kill a
mere Irishman in time of peace," — except he
were of the five privileged tribes of the O'Neils
of Ulster, the O'Malaghlins of Meath, the O'Con
nors of Connaught, the O'Briens of Thomond,
and the MacMurroughs of Leinster ; to whom
are to be added the Oastmen of the city of Wa-
terford. — See also Leland, History of Ireland,
book i. cjiap. 3.
t 28 Hen. VIII. c. 13. " The English," says
Sir W. Petty, "before Henry VII. 's time, lived
in Ireland as the Europeans do in America." —
Political Anatomy of Ireland, p. 112.
§ That the hostility of religion was, however,
a secondary prejudice superinduced on hostility
between nations!, appears very clearly from the
laws of Catholic sovereigns against the Irish, even
after the Reformation, particularly the Irish statute
of 3 & 4 Phil. & Mar. c. 2, against the O' Mores,
and O'Dempsies, and O'Connors, "and others
of the Irishry."
2B
314
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
leader of the Catholic party in the European
commonwealth. The old enmity of Irish ry
and Englishry thus appeared with redoubled
force under the new names of Catholic and
Protestant. The necessity of self-defence
compelled Elizabeth to attempt the complete
reduction of Ireland, which, since she had
assumed her station at the head of Protest
ants, became the only vulnerable part of
her dominions, and a weapon in the hands
of her most formidable enemies. But few
of the benefits which sometimes atone for
conquest were felt by Ireland. Neither the
success with which Elizabeth broke the bar
baric power of the Irish chieftains, nor the
real benevolence and seeming policy of in
troducing industrious colonies under her suc
cessor, counterbalanced the dreadful evil
which was then for the first time added to
her hereditary sufferings. The extensive for
feiture of the lands of the Catholic Irish,
and the grant of these lands to Protestant
natives of Great Britain, became a new source
of hatred between these irreconcilable fac
tions, Forty years of quiet, however, fol
lowed, in which a Parliament of all dis
tricts, and of both religions, was assembled.
The administration of the Earl of Strafford
bore the stamp of the political vices which
tarnished his genius, and which often pre
vailed over those generous affections of
which he was not incapable towards those
who neither rivalled nor resisted him. The
state of Ireland abounded with tempta
tions, — to a man of daring and haughty
spirit, intent on taming a turbulent people,
and impatient of slow discipline of law and
justice. — to adopt those violent and sum
mary measures, the necessity of which his
nature prompted him too easily to believe.*
When his vigorous arm was withdrawn,
the Irish were once more excited to revolt
by the memory of the provocations which
they had received from him and from his
predecessors, by the feebleness of their go
vernment, and by the confusion and distrac
tion which announced the approach of civil
war iii Great Britain. This insurrection,
which broke out in 1641, and of which the
atrocities appear to have been extravagantly
exaggerated! by the writers of the victorious
party, was only finally subdued by the genius
of Cromwell, who. urged by the general an
tipathy against the Irish,J and the peculiar
* See Carte's Life of Ormonde, and the confes
sions nf Clarendon, together with the evidence on
the Trial of Strafford.
t Evidence of this exaggeration is to be found
in Carte and Leland, in the Political Anatomy of
Ireland, by Sir VV. Petty, — to say nothing of
Curry's Civil Wars, which, though the work of
an Irish Catholic, deserves the serious considera
tion of every historical inquirer. Sir W. Petty
limits the number of Protestants killed throughout
the island, in the first year of the war, to thirty-
seven thousand. The massacres were confined to
Ulster, and in that province were imputed only to
the detachment of insurgents under Sir Phelim
O'Neal.
i Even Milton calls the Irish Catholics, or, in
animosity of his own followers towards Ca
tholics, exercised more than once in his Irish
campaigns the most odious rights or practices
of war, departing from the clemency which
usually distinguished him above most men
who have obtained supreme power by vio
lence. The confiscation which followed
Cromwell's victories, added to the forfeitures
under Elizabeth and James, transferred more
than two-thirds of the land of the kingdom
to British adventurers.* "Not only all the
Irish nation (with very few exceptions) were
found guilty of the rebellion, and forfeited
all their estates, but all the English Catholics
of Ireland were declared to be under the
same guilt. "f The ancient proprietors con
ceived sanguine hopes, that confiscations by
usurpers would not be ratified by the restored
government. But their agents were inex
perienced, indiscreet, and sometimes mer
cenary : while their opponents, who were in
possession of power and property, chose the
Irish House of Commons, and secured the
needy and rapacious courtiers of Charles II.
by large bribes. t The Court became a mart
at which much of the property of Ireland
was sold to the highest bidder ] — the inevit
able result of measures not governed by rules
of law, but loaded with exceptions and con
ditions, where the artful use of a single word
might affect the possession of considerable
fortunes, and where so many minute particu
lars relating to unknown and uninteresting
subjects were necessarily introduced, that
none but parties deeply concerned had the
patience to examine them. Charles was de
sirous of an arrangement which should give
him the largest means of -quieting, by profuse
grants, the importunity of his favourites. He
began to speak of the necessity of strength-
eningthe English interest in Ireland, and he
represented the "settlement7' rather as a
matter of policy than of justice. The usual
and legitimate policy of statesmen and law
givers is, doubtless, to favour every measure
which quiets present possession, and to dis
courage all retrospective inquisition into the
tenure of property. But the Irish Govern
ment professed to adopt a principle of com
promise, and the general object of the statute
called the "'Act of Settlement," was to secure
the land in the hands of its possessors, on
condition of their making a certain compen
sation to those classes of expelled proprietors
who were considered as innocent of the re
bellion. Those, however, were declared not
to be innocent who had accepted the terms
of peace granted by the King in 1648, who
had paid contributions to support the insur
gent administration, or who enjoyed any real
or personal property in the districts occupied
by the rebel army. The first of these con-
other words, the Irish nation, " Conscelerata et
barbara colluvies."
* Petty, pp. 1—3.
t Life of Clarendon (Oxford, 1759), vol. ii.p. 115.
t Ca-ne, Life of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 295. Tal-
bot, afterwards Earl of Tyrconnel, returned »o
Ireland with 18,000?.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
315
ditions was singularly unjust ; the two latter
must have comprehended many who were
entirely innocent ; and all of them were in
consistent with those principles of compro
mise and provision for the interest of all on
which the act was professedly founded. Or
monde, however, restored to his own great
estates, and gratified by a grant of 30,OOOZ.
from the Irish Commons, acquiesced in this
measure, and it was not opposed by his friend
Clarendon; — circumstances which naturally,
though perhaps not justly, have rendered the
memory of these celebrated men odious to
the Irish Catholics. During the whole reign
of Charles II. they struggled to obtain a re
peal of the Act of Settlement. But Time
opposed his mighty power to their labours.
Every new year strengthened the rights of
the possessors, and furnished additional ob
jections against the claims of the old owners.
It is far easier to do mischief than to repair
it ; and it is one of the most malignant pro
perties of extensive confiscation that it is
commonly irreparable. The land is shortly
sold to honest purchasers ; it is inherited by
innocent children; it becomes the security
of creditors ; its safety becomes interwoven,
by the complicated transactions of life, witn
all the interests of the community. One act
of injustice is not atoned for by the commis
sion of another against parties who may be
equally unoffending. In such cases the most
specious plans for the investigation of con
flicting claims lead either to endless delay,
attended by the entire suspension of the en
joyment of the disputed property, if not by
a final extinction of its value, or to precipi
tate injustice, arising from caprice, from
favour, from enmity, or from venality. The
resumption of forfeited property, and the
restoration of it to the heirs of the ancient
owners, may be attended by all the mis
chievous consequences of the original con
fiscation ; by the disturbance of habits, and
by the disappointment of expectations ; and
by an abatement of that reliance on the in
violability of legal possession, which is the
mainspring of industry, and the chief source
of comfort.
The arrival of Tyrconnel revived the hopes
of the Catholics. They were at that time
estimated to amount to eight hundred thou
sand souls; the English Episcopalians, the
English Nonconformists, and the Scotch Pres
byterians, each to one hundred thousand.*
There was an army of three thousand men,
which in the sequel of this reign was raised
to eight thousand. The net revenue afforded
a yearly average of 300,000/.t Before the
* Petty, p. 8. — As Sir William Petty exagge
rates the population of England, which "he rates at
six millions, considerably more than its amount in
1700 (Population Returns, 1821, Introduction), it
is probable he may have overrated that of Ireland ;
but there is no reason to suspect a mistake in the
proportions.
t Supposing the taxes then paid by England and
Wales to have been about three millions, each in
habitant contributed ten shillings, while each Irish
man paid somewhat more than five.
civil war of 1641, the disproportion of num
bers of Catholics to Protestants had been
much greater; and by the consequences of
that event, the balance of property had boon
entirely reversed.* "In playing of this game
or match" (the war of 1641) " upon so great
odds, the English," says Sir William Petty,
"won, and have a gamester's right at least
to their estates."! On the arrival of Tyr
connel, too, were redoubled the fears of the
Protestants for possessions always invidious,
and now, as it seemed, about to be preca
rious. The attempt to give both parties a
sort of representation in the government, and
to balance the Protestant Lord Lieutenant by
a Catholic commander of the army, unsettled
the minds of the two communions. The
Protestants, though they saw that the rising
ascendant of Tyrconnel would speedily be
come irresistible, were betrayed into occa
sional indiscretion by the declarations of the
Lord Lieutenant; and the Catholics, aware of
their growing force, were only exasperated by
Clarendon's faint and fearful show of zeal for
the established laws. The contemptuous dis
regard, or rather indecent insolence manifest
ed by Tyrconnel in his conversations with Lord
Clarendon, betrayed a consciousness of the
superiority of a royal favourite over a Lord
Lieutenant, who had to execute a system to
which he was disinclined, and was to remain
in office a little longer only as a pageant of
state. He indulged all his habitual indecen
cies and excesses; he gave loose to every
passion, and threw off every restraint of good
manners in these conversations. It is diffi
cult to represent them in a manner compati
ble with the decorum of history : yet they
are too characteristic to be passed over.
"You must know, my Lord," said Tyrconnel,
"that the King is a 'Roman Catholic, and re
solved to employ his subjects of that religion,
and that he will not keep one man in his
service who ever served under the usurpers.
The sheriffs you have made are generally
rogues and old Cromweliians. There has
not been an honest man sheriff in Ireland
these twenty years." Such language, inter
mingled with oaths, and uttered in the bois
terous tone of a braggart youth, somewhat
intoxicated, in a military guard-house, are
specimens of the manner in which Tyrconnel
delivered his opinions to his superior on the
gravest affairs of state. It was no wonder
that Clarendon told his brother Rochester, —
" If this Lord continue in the temper he is
in, he will gain here the reputation of a mad
man ; for his treatment of people is scarce to
be described. "i The more moderate of his
own communion, comprehending almost all
laymen of education or fortune, he reviled
as trimmers. He divided the Catholics, and
embroiled the King's affairs still farther by a
violent prejudice against the native Irish,
whom he contemptuously called the "O's
* Petty, p. 24. t Ibid.
t Correspondence of Clarendon and Roches
ter, vol. ii. Clarendon, Diary, 5th — 14th June,
1686.
316
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
and Macs."* To the letter of the King's
public declarations, or even positive instruc
tions to the Lord Lieutenant, he paid very
little regard. He was sent by James " to do
the rough work" of remodelling the army
and the corporations. With respect to the
army, the King professed only to admit all
his subjects on an equal footing without re
gard to religion ; but Tyrconnel's language,
and, when he had the power, his measures,
led to the formation of an exclusively Catho
lic force. t The Lord Lieutenant reasonably
understood the royal intentions to be no more
than that the Catholic religion should be no
bar to the admission of persons otherwise
qualified into corporations: Tyrconnel disre
garded such distinctions, and declared, with
one of his usual oaths, " I do not know what
to say to that; I would have all the Catholics
in."J Three unexceptionable judges of the
Protestant persuasion were, by the King's
command, removed from the bench to make
way for three Catholics, — Daly, Rice, and
Nugent, — also, it ought to be added, of un
objectionable character and competent learn
ing in their profession. § Officious sycophants
hastened to prosecute those incautious Pro
testants who, in the late times of zeal against
Popery, had spoken with freedom against
the succession of the Duke of York ; though
it is due to justice to remark, that the Catho
lic council, judges, and juries, discouraged
these vexatious prosecutions, and prevented
them from producing any very grievous
effects. The King had in the beginning
solemnly declared his determination to ad
here to the Act of Settlement; but Tyrcon
nel, with his usual imprecations, said to the
Lord Lieutenant, ''These Acts of Settlement,
and this new interest, are cursed things." It
The coarseness and insolence of Tyrconnel
could not fail to offend the Lord Lieutenant :
but it is apparent, from the latter's own de
scription, that he was still more frightened
than provoked ; and perhaps more decorous
language would not have so suddenly and
completely subdued the little spirit of the
demure lord. Certain it is that these scenes
of violence were immediately followed by
the most profuse professions of his readiness
to do whatever the King required, without
any reservation even of the interest of the
Established Church. These professions were
not merely formularies of that ignoble obse
quiousness which degrades the inferior too
much to exalt the superior: they were ex
plicit and precise declarations relating to the
particulars of the most momentous measures
then in agitation. In speaking of the re
formation of the army he repeated his assur-
* Sheridan MS.
t Sheridan MS. It should be observed, that the
passages relating to Ireland in the Life of James
II., vol. ii. pp. 59—63, were not written by the
King, and do not even profess to be founded on
the authority of his MSS. They are merely a
statement made by Mr. Dicconson, the compiler
of that work.
t Clarendon, 20th— 31st July.
$ Ibid. 19th June. If Ibid. 8th June.
ance to Sunderland, " that the King may
have every thing done here which he has a
mind to: and it is more easy to do things
quietly than in a storm."* He descended
to declare even to Tyrconnel himself, that
•' it was not material how many Roman
Catholics were in the army, if the King
would have it so; for whatever his Majesty
would have should be made easy as far as
lay in me."t
In the mean time Clarendon had incurred
the displeasure of the Queen by his supposed
civilities to Lady Dorchester during her resi
dence in Ireland. The King was also dis
pleased at the disposition which he imputed
to the Lord Lieutenant rather to traverse
than to forward the designs of Tyrconnel in
favour of the Catholics.? It was in vain that
the submissive viceroy attempted to disarm
these resentments by abject declarations of
deep regret and unbounded devotednes$,§
The daily decline of the credit of Rochester
deprived his brother of his best support; and
Tyrconnel, who returned to Court in August,
1686, found it easy to effect a change in the
government of Ireland. But he found more
difficulty in obtaining that important govern
ment for himself. Sunderland tried every
means but the resignation of his own office
to avert so impolitic an appointment. He
urged the declaration of the King, on the re
moval of Ormonde, that he would not bestow
the lieutenancy on a native Irishman : he re
presented the danger of alarm ing all Protest
ants, by appointing to that office an acknow
ledged enemy of the Act of Settlement, and
of exciting the apprehensions of all English
men, by intrusting Ireland to a man so de
voted to the service of Louis XIV : he offered
to make Tyrconnel a Major General on the
English staff, with a pension of 5000/. a year,
and with as absolute though as secret au
thority in the affairs of Ireland, as Lauderdale
had possessed in those of Scotland : he pro
mised that after the abrogation of the penal
laws in England, Tyrconnel, if he pleased,
might be appointed Lord Lieutenant in the
room of Lord Powis, who was destined for
the present to succeed Clarendon. Tyrconnel
turned a deaf ear to these proposals, and
threatened to make disclosures to the King
and Queen which might overthrow the policy
and power of Sunderland. The latter, wheii
he was led by his contest with Rochester to
throw himself into the arms of the Roman
Catholics, had formed a more particular con
nection with Jermyn and Talbot, as the
King's favourites, and as the enemies of the
family of Hyde : Tyrconnel now threatened
to disclose the terms and objects of that
league, the real purpose of removing Lady
Dorchester, and the declaration of Sunder
land, when this alliance was formed, " that
the King could only be governed by a woman
or a priest, and that they must therefore
* Clarendon, 20th July. t Ibid. 30th July,
t Ibid. 6th Oct.
i Clarendon to the King, 6th Oct. ; to Lord
Rochester, 23d Oct.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
317
combine the influence of the Queen with
that of Father Petre." Sunderland appears
to have made some resistance even after this
formidable threat; and Tyrconnel proposed
that the young Duke of Berwick should
marry his daughter, and be created Lord
Lieutenant, while he himself should enjoy
the power under the more modest title of
"Lord Deputy."* A council, consisting of
Sunderland, Tyrconnel, and the Catholic
ministers, was held on the affairs of Ireland
in the month of October. The members
who gave their opinions before Tyrconnel
maintained the necessity of conforming to
the Act of Settlement ; but Tyrconnel ex
claimed against them for advising the King
to an act of injustice ruinous to the interests
of religion. The conscience of James was
alarmed, and he appointed the next day to
hear the reasons of state which Sunderland
had to urge on the opposite side. Tyrconnel
renewed his vehement invectives against the
iniquity and impiety of the counsels which
he opposed ; and Sunderland, who began as
he often did with useful advice, ended, as
usual, with a hesitating and ambiguous sub
mission to his master's pleasure, trusting to
accident and his own address to prevent or
mitigate the execution of violent measures.!
These proceedings decided the contest for
office j and Tyrconnel received the sword of
state as Lord' Deputy on the 12th February,
1687.
The King's professions of equality and
impartiality in the distribution of office be
tween the two adverse communions were
speedily and totally disregarded. The Lord
Deputy and the greater part of the Privy
Council, the Lord Chancellor with three
fourths of the judges, all the King's counsel
but one, almost all the sheriffs, and a ma
jority of corporators and justices, were, in
less than a year, Catholics: — numbers so
disproportioned to the relative property, edu
cation, and ability for business, to be found
in the two religions, that even if the appoint
ments had not been tainted with the inex
piable blame of defiance to the laws, they
must still have been regarded by the Pro
testants with the utmost apprehension, as
indications of sinister designs. Fitten, the
Chancellor, was promoted from the King's
Bench prison, where he had been long a
prisoner for debt ; and he was charged,
though probably without reason, by his op
ponents, with forgery, said to have been
committed in a long suit with Lord Mac-
clesfield. His real faults were ignorance
and subserviency. Neither of these vices
could be imputed to Sir Richard Nagle,
the Catholic Attorney General, who seems
chargeable only with the inevitable fault of
being actuated by a dangerous zeal for his
* London Gazette. All these particulars are to
be found in Sheridan's MS. It is but fair to add
that, in a few months after Sheridan accompanied
Tyrconnel to Ireland, they became violent ene
mies.
t D'Adda, 15th Nov. 1687.— MS.
own suffering party. It does not appear
that the Catholic judges actually abused
their power. We have already seen that,
instead of seeking to retaliate for the mur
ders of the Popish Plot, they discounte
nanced prosecutions against their adversa
ries with a moderation and forbearance very
rarely to be discovered in the policy of
parties in the first moments of victory over
Jong oppression. It is true that these Ca
tholic judges gave judgment against the
charters of towns ; but in these judgments
they only followed the example of the most
eminent of their Protestant brethren in Eng
land.* The evils of insecurity and alarm
were those which were chiefly experienced
by the Irish Protestants. These mischiefs,
very great in themselves, depended so much
on the character, temper, and manner, of the
Lord Deputy, on the triumphant or sometimes
threatening conversation of their Catholic
neighbours, on the recollection of bloody
civil wars, and on the painful consciousness
which haunts the possessors of recently con
fiscated property, that it may be thought
unreasonable to require any other or more
positive proof of their prevalence. Some
visible fruits of the alarm are pointed out.
The Protestants, who were the wealthiest
traders as well as the most ingenious arti
sans of the kingdom, began to emigrate : the
revenue is said to have declined: the greater
part of the Protestant officers of the army,
alarmed by the removal of their brethren,
sold their commissions for inadequate prices,,
and obtained military appointments in Hol
land, then the home of the exile and the
refuge of the oppressed. t But that which
Tyrconnel most pursued, and the Protestants
most dreaded, was the repeal of the Act of
Settlement. The new proprietors were not,
indeed, aware how much cause there was
for their alarms. Tyrconnel boasted that he
had secured the support of the Queen by the
present of a pearl necklace worth 10.000/.,
which Prince Rupert had bequeathed to his
mistress. In all extensive transfers of pro
perty not governed by rales of law, where
both parties to a corrupt transaction have a
great interest in concealment, and where
there can seldom be any effective respoasi-
k Our accounts of Tyrconnel's Irish administra
tion before the Revolution are peculiarly imperfect
and suspicious. King, afterwards Archbishop of
Dublin, whose State of the Protestants has been
usually quoted as authority, was the most zealous
of Irish Protestants, and his ingenious antago
nist, Leslie, was the most inflexible of Jacobites.
Though both were men of great abilities, their
attention was so much occupied in personalities
and in the discussion of controverted opinions,
that they have done little to elucidate matters of
fact. Clarendon and Sheridan's MS. agree so
exactly in their picture of Tyrconnel, and have
such an air of truth in their accounts of him, that
it is not easy to refuse them credit, though they
were both his enemies.
t " The Earl of Donegal," says Sheridan,
" sold for 600 guineas a troop of horse which, two
years before, cost him 1800 guineas." — Sheri
dan MS, '
2B2
318
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
bility either judicial or moral, the suspicion
of bribery must be incurred, and the tempta
tion itself must often prevail. Tyrconnel
asked Sheridan, his secretary, whether he
did not think the Irish would give 50,OOOZ.
for the repeal of the Act of Settlement: —
"Certainly," said Sheridan, "since the new
interest paid three times that sum to the
Duke of Ormonde for passing it." Tyrconnel
then authorised Sheridan to offer to Lord
Sunderland 50,0001. in money, or 5000/. a-
year in land for the repeal. Sunderland pre
ferred the 50.0001.; but with what serious
ness of purpose cannot be ascertained, for the
repeal was not adopted, and the money was
never paid ;* and he seems to have contin
ued to thwart and traverse a measure which
he did not dare openly to resist. The abso
lute abrogation of laws under which so much
property was held seemed to be beset with
such difficulty, that in the autumn of the
following year Tyrconnel, on his visit to
England, proposed a more modified mea
sure, aimed only at affording a partial relief
to the ancient proprietors. In the temper
which then prevailed, a partial measure pro
duced almost as much alarm as one more
comprehensive, arid was thought to be in
tended to pave the way for total resumption.
The danger consisted in inquiry : the object
of apprehension was any proceeding which
brought this species of legal possession into
question: and the proprietors dreaded the
approach even of discussion to their invi
dious and originally iniquitous titles. It
would be hard to expect that James should
abstain from relieving his friends lest he
might disturb the secure enjoyment of his
enemies. Motives of policy, however, and
some apprehensions of too sudden a shock
to the feelings of Protestants in Great Britain,
retarded the final adoption of this measure.
It could only be carried into effect by the Par
liament of Ireland ; and it was not thought
wise to call it together till every part of the
internal policy of the kingdom which could
influence the elections of that assembly
should be completed. Probably, however,
the delay principally arose from daring pro
jects of separation and independence, which
\vere entertained by Tyrconnel : and of which
a short statement (in its most important parts
hitherto unknown to the public) will conclude
the account of his administration.
In the year 1666, towards the close of the
first Dutch war, Louis XIV. had made pre
parations for invading Ireland with an army
of twenty thousand men, under the Due de
Beaufort, — assured by the Irish ecclesiastics,
that he would be joined by the Catholics,
then more than usually incensed by the con
firmation of the Act of Settlement, and by
the English statutes against the importation
of the produce of Ireland. To this plot,
(which was discovered by the Queen-Mother
at Paris, and by her disclosed to Charles II.,)
it is not probable that so active a leader as
* Sheridan MS.
Tyrconnel could have been a stranger.* We
are informed by his secretary, that, during
his visits to England in 1686, he made no
scruple to avow projects of the like nature,
when, after some remarks on the King's de
clining age, and on the improbability that
the Queen's children, if ever she had any,
should live beyond infancy, he declared,
" that the Irish would be fools or madmen
if they submitted to be governed by the
Prince of Orange, or by Hyde's grand-daugh
ters ; that they ought rather lo take that
opportunity of resolving no longer to be the
slaves of England, but to set up a king of
their own under the protection of France7
which he was sure would be readily grant
ed ;" and added that " nothing could be more
advantageous to Ireland or ruinous to Eng
land." f His reliance on French support
was probably founded on the general policy
of Louis XIV., on his conduct towards Ireland
in 1666, and, perhaps, on information from.
Catholic ecclesiastics in France ; but he was
not long content with these grounds of assur
ance. During his residence in England in
the autumn of 1687, he had recourse to de
cisive arid audacious measures for ascertain
ing how far he might rely on foreign aid in
the execution of his ambitious schemes. A
friend of his at Court (whose name is con
cealed, but who probably was either Henry
Jermyn or Father Petre) applied on his be
half to Bonrepos (then employed by the
Court of Versailles in London, on a special
mission, )t expressing his desire, in case of
the death of James II., to take measures to
prevent Ireland from falling under the domi
nation of the Prince of Orange, and to place
that country under the protection of the Most
Christian King. Tyrconnel expressed his
desire that Bonrepos would go to Chester for
the sake of a full discussion of this important
proposition ; but the wary minister declined
a step which should have amounted to the
opening of a negotiation, until he had autho
rity from his Government. He promised,
however, to keep the secret, especially from
Barillon, who it was feared would betray it
to Sunderland, then avowedly distrusted by
the Lord Deputy. Bonrepos, in communi
cating this proposition to his Court, adds,
that he very certainly knew the King of Eng-
* There are obscure intimations of this intended
invasion in Carte, Life of Ormonde, vol. ii. p. 328.
The resolutions of the Parliament of Ireland con
cerning it are to be found in the Gazette, 25th —
28th December, 1665. Louis XIV. himself tells
us, that he had a correspondence with those whom
he calls the " remains of Cromwell " in England,
and " with the Irish Catholics, who, always dis
contented with their condition, seem ever ready
to join any enterprise which may render it more
supportable." — Oeuvres de Louis XIV., vol. ii.
p. 203. Sheridan's MS. contains more particu
lars. It is supported by the printed authorities as
far as they so ; and being written at St. Germains,
probably differed little in matters of fact from the
received statements of the Jacobite exiles.
t Sheridan MS.
J Bonrepos to Seignelai, 4th Sept. 1G87. — Fox
MSS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
319
land's intention to be to deprive his pre
sumptive heir of Ireland, to make that coun
try an asylum, for all his Catholic subjects,
and to complete his measures on that subject
in the course of five years, — a time which
Tyrconnel thought much too long, and ear
nestly besought the King to abridge ; and
that the Prince of Orange certainly appre
hended such designs. James himself told
the Nuncio that one of the objects of the ex
traordinary mission of Dykveldt was the
affair of Ireland, happily begun by Tyrcon
nel ;* and the same prelate was afterwards
informed by Sunderland, that Dykveldt had
expressed a fear of some general designs
against the succession of the Prince and
Princess of Orange. t Bbnrepos was speedily
instructed to inform Tyrconnel, that if on the
dea.th of James he could maintain himself in
Ireland, he might rely on effectual aid from
Louis to preserve the Catholic religion, and
to separate that country from England, when
under the dominion of a Protestant sove
reign. t Tyrconnel is said to have agreed,
without the knowledge of his own master,
to put four Irish sea-ports, Kinsale. Water-
ford, Limerick, and either Gal way or Cole-
raine, into the hands of France. § The re
maining particulars of this bold and hazard
ous negotiation were reserved by Bonrepos
till his return to Paris ; but he closes his last
despatch with the singular intimation that
several Scotch lords had sounded him on the
succour they might expect from France, on
the death of James, to exclude the Prince
and Princess of Orange from the throne of
Scotland. Objects so far beyond the usual
aim of ambition, and means so much at vari
ance with prudence as \vell as duty, could
hardly have presented themselves to any
mind whose native violence had not been
inflamed by an education in the school of
conspiracy and insurrection ; — nor even to
such but in a country which, from the divi
sion of its inhabitants, and the impolicy of
its administration, had constantly stood on
the brink of the most violent revolutions;
where quiet seldom subsisted longbut as the
bitter fruit of terrible examples of cruelty
and rapine ; and where the majority of the
people easily listened to offers of foreign aid
against a government which they considered
as the most hostile of foreigners.
CHAPTER V.
Rupture with the Protestant Tories. — Increas
ed decision of the King's designs. — En
croachments on the Church establishment. —
Charter- House. — Oxford, University Col
lege. — Christ Church. — Exeter College,
Cambridge. — Oxford. Magdalen College. —
* D'Adda, 7th Feb. 1687.— MS.
t Id. 20th June.
} Seignelai to Bonrepos, 29th Sept. — Fox MSS.
$ Sheridan MS.
Declaration of liberty of conscience. — Simi
lar attempts of Charles. — Proclamation at
Edinburgh. — Resistance of the Church. —
Attempt to conciliate the Nonconformists.
— Review of their sufferings. — Barter. —
B uny an. — Presbyterians. — Independents. —
Baptists. — Quakers. — Addresses of thanks
for the declaration.
IN the beginning of the year 1687 the
rupture of James with the powerful party
who were ready to sacrifice all but the
Church to his pleasure appeared to be irrepa
rable. He had apparently destined Scotland
to set the example of unbounded submission,
under the forms of the constitution; and he
undoubtedly hoped that the revolution in
Ireland would supply him with the means
of securing the obedience of his English sub
jects by intimidation or force. The failure
of his project in the most Protestant part of
his dominions, and its alarming success in
the most Catholic, alike tended to widen the
breach between parties in England. The
Tories wrere alienated from the Crown by the
example of their friends in Scotland, as well
as by their dread of the Irish. An unre
served compliance with the King's designs
became notoriously the condition by which
office was to be obtained or preserved : and,
except a very few instances of personal
friendship, the public profession of the Ca
tholic faith was required as the only security
for that compliance. The royal confidence
and the direction of public affairs were trans
ferred from the Protestant Tories, in spite of
their services and sufferings during half a
century, into the hands of a faction, who, as
their title to power was zeal for the advance
ment of Popery, must be called "Papists;"
though some of them professed the Protest
ant religion, and though their maxims of
policy, both in Church and State, were dread
ed and resisted by the most considerable of
the English Catholics.
It is hard to determine, — perhaps it might
have been impossible for James himself to
say, — how far his designs for the advance
ment of the Roman Catholic Church extend
ed at the period of his accession to tho
throne. It is acreeable to the nature of such
projects that he should not, at first, have
dared to avow to himself any intention be
yond that of obtaining relief for his religion,
and of placing it in a condition of safety and
honour; but it is altogether improbable that
he had even then steadily fixed on a secure
toleration as the utmost limit of his endea
vours. His schemes \vere probably vague
and fluctuating, assuming a greater distinct
ness wTith respect to the removal of grievous
penalties and disabilities, but always ready
to seek as much advantage for his Church as
the progress of circumstances should render
attainable; — sometimes drawn back to toler
ation by prudence or fear, and on other oc
casions impelled to more daring counsels by
the pride of success, or by anger at resist
ance. In this state of fluctuation it is no'
320
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
altogether irreconcilable with the irregu
larities of human nature that he might have
sometimes yielded a faint and transient as
sent to those principles of religious liberty
\vhich he professed in his public acts; though
even this superficial sincerity is hard to be
reconciled with his share in the secret treaty
of 1670. — with his administration of Scotland,
where he carried his passion for intolerance
so far as to be the leader of one sect of here
tics in the bloody persecution of another, —
and with his language to Barillon, to whom,
at the very moment of his professed tolera
tion, he declared his approbation of the cruel
ties of Louis XIV. against his own Protestant
subjects.* It would be extravagant to ex
pect that the liberal maxims which adorned
his public declarations had taken such a hold
on his mind as to withhold him from endea
vouring to establish his own religion as soon
as his sanguine zeal should lead him to think
it practicable ; or that he should not in pro
cess of time go on to guard it by that code
of disabilities and penalties which was then
enforced by every state in Europe except
Holland, and deemed indispensable security
for then religion by every Christian com
munity, except the obnoxious sects of the
Socinians, Independents, Anabaptists, and
Quakers. Whether he meditated a violent
change of the Established religion from the
beginning, or only entered on a course of
measures which must terminate in its sub
version, is rather a philosophical than a poli
tical question. In both cases, apprehension
arid resistance were alike reasonable; and
in neither could an appeal to arms be war
ranted until every other means of self-de
fence had proved manifestly hopeless.
Whatever opinions may be formed of his
intentions at an earlier period, it is evident
that in the year 1687 his resolution was
taken : though still no doubt influenced by
the misgivings and fluctuations incident to
vast and perilous projects, especially when
they are entertained by those whose charac
ter is not so daring as their designs. All the
measures of his internal government, during
the eighteen months which ensued, were
directed to the overthrow of the Established
Church, — an object which was to be attained
by assuming a power above law, and could
only be preserved by a force sufficient to
bid defiance to the repugnance of the nation.
An absolute monarchy, if not the first instru
ment of his purpose, must have been the
last result of that series of victories over the
people which the success of his design re
quired. Such, indeed, were his conscientious
opinions of the constitution, that he thought
the Habeas Corpus Act inconsistent with it ]
"J'ai dit au Roi que V. M. n'avoit plus au
coeur que de voir prosperer les soins qu'il prends
ici pour y etablir la religion Catholique. S. M. B.
me dit en me quittan,, ' Vous voyez que je
n'omots rien de ce qui est en mon pouvoir. J'es-
pere que le Roi votre maitre nraidera, et que nous
ferons de concert des grandes choses pour la re
ligion.' " Barillon, 12th May, 1687.— Fox MSS.
and so strong was his conviction of the ne
cessity of military force to his designs at that
time, that in his dying advice to his son,
written long afterwards, in secrecy and soli
tude, after a review of his own government,
his injunction to the Prince is, — "Keep up a
considerable body of Catholic troops, with
out which you cannot be safe."* The liberty
of the people, and even the civil constitu
tion, were as much the objects of his hos
tility as the religion of the great majority,
and were their best security against ultimate
persecution.
The measures of the King's domestic po
licy, indeed, consisted rather in encroach
ments on the Church than in measures of
relief to the Catholics. He had, in May,
1686, granted dispensations to the curate of
Putney, a convert to the Church of Rome,
enabling him to hold his benefices, and re
lieving him from the performance of all the
acts inconsistent with his new religion, which
a long series of statutes had required clergy
men of the Church of England to perform. t
By following this precedent, the King might
have silently transferred to ecclesiastics of
his own communion many benefices in every
diocese in which the bishop had not the
courage to resist the dispensing power. The
converted incumbents would preserve their
livings under the protection of that preroga
tive, and Catholic priests might be presented
to benefices without any new ordination ; for
the Church of England. — although she treats
the ministers of any other Protestant commu
nion as being only in pretended holy orders,
— recognises the ordination of the Church of
Rome, which she sometimes calls '•'• idola
trous," in order to maintain, even through
such idolatrous predecessors, that unbroken
connection with the apostles which she deems
essential to the power of conferring the sacer
dotal character. This obscure encroachment,
however, escaped general observation.
The first attack on the laws to which resist
ance was made was a royal recommendation
of Andrew Popham, a Catholic, to the Gover
nors of the Charter House (a hospital school,
founded by a merchant of London, named
Sutton, on the site of a Carthusian monas
tery), to be received by them as a pensioner
on their opulent establishment, without taking
the oaths required both by the general law
and by a private statute passed for the go
vernment of that foundation.! Among the
* Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 621.
t Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, vol. i. p. 290, and
Reresby, p. 233. Sclater publicly recanted the
Romish religion on the 5th of May, 1689, — a
pretty rapid retreat. — Account of E. Sclafer's Re
turn to the Church of England, by Dr. Horneck.
London, 1689. It is remarkable that Sancroft so
far exercised his archiepiscopal jurisdiction as to
authorise Sclater's admission to the Protestant
communion on condition of public recantation, at
which Burnet preached : yet the pious Horneck
that the juncture of time tempted
him to
owns
smile.
\ Relation of the Proceedings at the Charter
House, London, 1689.— Carte, Life of Ormonde,
vol. ii. p. 246.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
321
Governors were persons of the highest dis
tinction in Church, and State. The Chan
cellor, at their first meeting, intimated the
necessity of immediate compliance with the
King's mandate. Thomas Burnet, the Mas
ter, a man justly celebrated for genius, elo
quence, and learning, had the courage to
maintain the authority of the laws against
an opponent so formidable. He was sup
ported by the aged Duke of Ormonde, and
Jeffreys' motion was negatived. A second
letter to the same effect was addressed to
the Governors, which they persevered in re
sisting; assigning their reasons in an answer
to one of the Secretaries of State, which was
subscribed by the Archbishop of Canterbury,
the Bishop of London, Ormonde, Halifax,
Nottingham, and Danby. This courageous
resistance by a single clergyman, counte
nanced by such weighty names, induced the
Court to pause till experiments were tried in
other places, where politicians so important
could not directly interfere. The attack on
the Charter House was suspended and never
afterwards resumed. To Burnet, who thus
threw himself alone into the breach, much
of the merit of the stand which followed
justly belongs. He was requited like other
public benefactors; his friends forgot the
service, and his enemies were excited by
the remembrance of it to defeat his promo
tion, on the pretext of his free exercise of
reason in the interpretation of the Scriptures,
— which the Established Clergy zealously
maintained in vindication of their own sepa
ration from the Roman Church, but treated
with little tenderness in those who dissented
from their own creed.
Measures of a bolder nature were resorted
to on a more conspicuous stage. The two
great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge,
the most opulent and splendid literary insti
tutions of Europe, were from their foundation
under the' government of the clergy, — the
only body of men who then possessed suffi
cient learning to conduct education. Their
constitution had not been much altered at
the Reformation : the same reverence which
spared their monastic regulations happily
preserved their rich endowments from ra
pine ; and though many of their members
suffered at the close of the Civil War from
their adherence to the vanquished party, the
corporate property was undisturbed, and their
studies flourished both under the Common
wealth and the Protectorate. Their fame as
seats of learning, their station as the eccle
siastical capitals of the kingdom, and their
ascendant over the susceptible minds of all
youth of family and fortune, now rendered
them the chief scene of the decisive contest
between James and the Established Church.
Obacliah Walker, Master of University Col
lege, Oxford, a man of no small note for
ability and learning, and long a concealed
Catholic, now obtained for himself, and two
of his fellows, a dispensation from all those
acts of participation in the Protestant wor
ship which the laws since the Reformation
41
required, together with a license for the pub
lication of books of Catholic theology.* He
established a printing press, and a Catholic
chapel in his college, which was henceforth
regarded as having fallen into the hands of
the Catholics. Both these exertions of the
prerogative had preceded the determination
of the judges, which was supposed by the
King to establish its legality.
Animated by that determination, he (con
trary to the advice of Simderland, who
thought it safer to choose a well-affected
Protestant.) proceeded to appoint one Mas-
sey, a Catholic, who appears to have been a
layman, to the high station of Dean of
Christ Church, by which he became a dig
nitary of the Church as well as the ruler of
the greatest college in the University. A
dispensation and pardon had been granted
to him on the 16th of December, 1686, dis
pensing with the numerous statutes standing
in the way of his promotion, one of which
was the Act of Uniformity,— the only foun
dation of the legal establishment of the
Church. t His refusal of the oath of supre
macy was recorded ; but he was, notwith
standing, installed in the deanery without
resistance or even remonstrance, by Aldrich.
the Sub-Dean, an eminent divine of the High
Church party, who, on the part of the Col
lege, accepted the dispensation as a substi
tute for the oaths required by law. Massey
appears, to have attended the chapter offi
cially on several occasions, and to have pre
sided at the election of a Bishop of Oxford
near two years afterwards. Thus did that
celebrated society, overawed by power, or
still misled by their extravagant principle of
unlimited obedience, or, perhaps, not yet
aware of the extent of the King's designs,
recognise the legality of his usurped power
by the surrender of an academical office of
ecclesiastical dignity into hands which the
laws had disabled from holding it. It was
no wonder, that the unprecedented vacancy
of the archbishopric of York for two years
and a half was generally imputed to the
King's intending it for Father Petre : — a sup
position countenanced by his frequent appli
cation to Rome to obtain a bishopric and a
cardinal's hat for that Jesuit :t for if he had
been a Catholic bishop, and if the chapter
of York were as submissive as that of Christ
Church, the royal dispensation would have
seated him on the archiepiscopal throne.
The Jesuits were bound by a vow§ not to
accept bishoprics unless ct mpelled byapre-
* Gutch, Collectanea Curiufca, vol. i. p. 287.
Athena? Oxoniensis, vol. iv. p. 438. Dodd, Church
History, vol. iii. p. 454.
t Gutch, vol. ii. p. 294. The dispensation to
Ma?sey contained an ostentatious enumeration of
the laws which it sets at defiance.
t Dodd, vol. iii. p. 511. D'Adda MSS.
§ Imposed by Ignatius, at the suggestion of
Claude Le Jay, an original member of the order,
who wished to avoid a bishopric, probably from
humility ; but the regulation afterwards prevented
the Jesuits from looking for advancement any
where but to Rome.
322
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
cept from the Pope, so that his interference
was necessary to open the gates of the En
glish Church to Petre.
An attempt was made on specious grounds
to take possession of another college by a
suit before the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.
in which private individuals were the appa
rent parties. The noble family of Petre (of
whom Father Edward Petre was one), in
January, 1687, claimed the right of nomina
tion to seven fellowships in Exeter College,
which had been founded there by Sir Wil
liam Petre, in the reign of Elizabeth. It
was acknowledged on trie part of the College,
that Sir William and his son had exercised
that power, though the latter, as they con
tended, had nominated only by sufferance.
The Bishop of Exeter, the Visitor, had, in
the reign of James I., pronounced an opinion
against the founder's descendants; and a
judgment had been obtained against them
in the Court of Common Pleas about the
same time. Under the sanction of these
authorities, the College had for seventy years
nominated without disturbance to these fel
lowships. Allibone, the Catholic lawyer,
contended, that this long usage," which would
otherwise have been conclusive, deserved
little consideration in a period of such ini
quity towards Catholics that they were de
terred from asserting their civil rights. Lord
Chief Justice Herbert observed, that the ques
tion turned upon the agreement between Sir
William Petre and Exeter College, under
which that body received the fellows on
his foundation. Jeffreys, perhaps, fearful of
violent measures at so early a stage, and
taking advantage of the non-appearance of
the Crown as an ostensible party, declared
his concurrence with the Chief Justice : and
the Court determined that the suit was a
civil case, dependent on the interpretation
of a contract, and therefore not within their
jurisdiction as Commissioners of Ecclesiasti
cal Causes. Sprat after\vards took some
merit to himself for having contributed to
save Exeter College from the hands of the
enemy : but the concurrence of the Chan
cellor and Chief Justice, and the technical
ground of the determination, render the
vigour and value of his resistance very
doubtful.*
The honour of opposing the illegal power
of the Crown devolved on Cambridge, second
to Oxford in rank and magnificence, but then
more distinguished by zeal for liberty ; — a
distinction probably originating in the long
residence of Charles I. at Oxford, and in the
prevalence of the Parliamentary party at the
same period, in the country around Cam
bridge. The experiment was made now on
the whole University ; but it was of a cautious
and timid nature, and related to a case im
portant in nothing but the principle which it
* Sprat's Letter to Lord Dorset, p. 12. This
case is now published from the Records of Exeter
College, for the first time, through the kind per
mission of Dr. Jones, the present [1826] Rector
(?.f that society.
would have established. Early in February,
of this year, the King had recommended
Alban Francis, a Benedictine monk (said to
have been a missionary employed to convert
the young scholars to the Church of Rome?
on whom an academical honour could hardly
have been conferred without some appear
ance of countenancing his mission) to be ad
mitted a master of arts. — which was a com
mon act of kingly authority \ and had granted
him a dispensation from the oaths appointed
by law to be taken on such an admission.*
Peachell, the Vice-Chancellor, declared, that
he could not tell what to do, — to decline
his Majesty's letter or his laws. Men of
more wisdom and courage persuaded him to
choose the better part : and he refused the
degree without the legal condition.! On the
complaint of Francis he was summoned
before the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to
answer for his disobedience, and (though
vigorously supported by the University, vho
appointed deputies to attend him to the bar
of the hostile tribunal), after several hearings
was deprived of his Vice-Chancellorship, and
suspended from his office of Master of Mag
dalen College. Among those deputies at trie
bar. and probably undistinguished from the
rest by the ignorant and arrogant Chancellor,
who looked down upon them all with the
like scorn, stood Isaac Newton, Professor of
Mathematics in the University, then employ
ed in the publication of a work which will
perish only with the world, but who showed
on that, as on every other fit opportunity in
his life, that the most sublime contempla
tions and the most glorious discoveries could
not withdraw him from the defence of the
liberties of his country.
But the attack on Oxford, which imme
diately ensued, was the most memorable of
all. The Presidency of Magdalen College,
one of the most richly endowed communities
of the English Universities, had become va
cant at the end of March, which gave occa
sion to immediate attempts to obtain from
the King a nomination to that desirable
office . Smith, one of the fellows, paid his
court, with this view, to Parker, the treache
rous Bishop of Oxford, who, after having
sounded his friends at Court, warned him
" that the King expected the person to be
recommended should be favourable to his
religion." Smith answered by general ex
pressions of loyalty, which Parker assured
him " would not do." A few days after
wards, Bancroft anxiously asked Smith who
was to be the President • to which he an
swered, "Not I; I never will comply with
the conditions." Some rumours of the pro-
* State Trials, vol. xi. p. 1350. Narcissus Lut-
trell, April and May, 1687.— MS.
t Pepys, Memoirs, vol. ii. Correspondence, p.
79. He consistently pursued the doctrine of pas
sive obedience. " If," says he, " his Majesty,
in his wisdom, and according to his supreme
power, contrive other methods to satisfy himself,
I shall be no murmurer or complainer, but can he
no abettor." — Ibid., p. 81.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
323
jects of James having probably induced the
fellows to appoint the election for the 13th
of April, on the 5th of that month the King
issued his letter mandatory, commanding
thorn to make choice of Anthony Farmer,*
— not a member of the College, and a recent
convert to the Church of Rome, " any statute
or custom to the contrary notwithstanding."
On the 9th, the fellows agreed to a petition to
the King, which was delivered the next day
to Lord Sunderland, to be laid before his
Majesty, in which they alleged that Farmer
was legally incapable of holding the office,
and prayed either that they might be left to
make a free election, or that the King would
recommend some person fit to be preferred.
On the nth, the mandate arrived, and on
the 1 3th the election was postponed to the
15th, — the last day on which it could by the
statutes be held, — to allow time for receiving
an answer to the petition. On that day they
were informed that the King '''expected to
be obeyed." A small number of the senior
fellows proposed a second petition ; but the
larger and younger part rejected the propo
sal with indignation, and proceeded to the
election of Mr. Hough, after a discussion
more agreeable to the natural feelings of in
jured men than to the principles of passive
obedience recently promulgated by the Uni
versity. t The fellows were summoned, in
June, before the Ecclesiastical Commission,
to answer for their contempt of his Majesty's
commands. On their appearance, Fairfax,
one of their body, having desired to know
the commission by which the Court sat. Jef
freys said to him, "What commission have
you to be so impudent in court? This man
ought to be kept in a dark room. Why do
you suffer him without a guardian ?"j On
the 22d of the same month, Hough's elec
tion was pronounced to be void, and the
Vice-President, with two of the fellows, were
suspended. But proofs of such notorious and
vulgar profligacy had been produced against
Farmer, that it was thought necessary to
withdraw him in August; and the fellows
were directed by a new mandate to admit
Parker, Bishop of Oxford, to the presidency.
This man was as much disabled by the sta
tutes of the College as Farmer; but as ser
vility and treachery, though immoralities
often of a deeper dye than debauchery, are
neither so capable of proof nor so easily
stripped of their disguises, the fellows were
by this recommendation driven to the neces
sity of denying the dispensing power. Their
inducements, however, to resist him, were
* State Trials, vol. xii. p. 1.
t " Hot debates arose about the King's letter,
and horrible rude reflections were made upon his
authority, that he had nothing to do in our affair,
and things of a far worse nature and consequence.
I told one of them that the spirit of Ferguson had
got into him." — Smith's Diary, State Trials, vol.
xii. p. 58.
t In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Jeffreys is made
to say of Fairfax, "He is filter to be in a mad
house."
strengthened by the impossibility of repre
senting them to the King. Parker, origi
nally a fanatical Puritan, became a bigoted
Churchman at the Restoration, and disgraced
abilities not inconsiderable by the zeal with
which he defended the persecution of his
late brethren, and by the unbridled ribaldry
with which he reviled the most virtuous men
among them. His labours for the Church of
England were no sooner rewarded by the
bishopric of Oxford, than he transferred his
services, if not his faith, to the Church of
Rome, which then began to be openly pa
tronised by the Court, and seems to have re
tained his station in the Protestant hierarchy
in order to contribute more effectually to its
destruction. The zeal of those who are more
anxious to recommend themselves than to
promote their cause is often too eager : and
the convivial enjoyments of Parker often
betrayed him into very imprudent and un
seemly language.* Against such an intru
der the College had the most powerful mo
tives to make a vigorous resistance. They
were summoned into the presence of the
King, when he arrived at Oxford in Septem
ber, and was received by the body of the
University with such demonstrations of loy
alty as to be boasted of in the Gazette.
i: The King chid them very much for their
disobedience," says one of his attendants,
" and with a much greater appearance of
anger than ever I perceived in his Majesty ;
who bade them go away and choose the
Bishop of Oxford, or else they should cer
tainly feel the weight of their Sovereign's
displeasure."! They answered respectfully,
but persevered. They further received pri
vate warnings, that it was better to acquiesce
in the choice of a head of suspected religion,
such as the Bishop, than to expose them
selves to be destroyed by the subservient
judges, in proceedings of quo warranto (for
which the inevitable breaches of their innu
merable statutes would supply a fairer pre
text than was sufficient in the other corpora
tions), or to subject themselves to innovations
in their religious worship which might be
imposed by the King in virtue of his unde
fined supremacy over the Church. t
These insinuations proving vain, the King
issued a commission to Cartwright, Bishop
of Chester, Chief Justice Wright, and Baron
Jenner, to examine the state of the College,
with full power to alter the statutes and
frame new ones, in execution of the autho
rity which the King claimed as supreme
visitor of cathedrals and colleges, and which
was held to supersede the powers of their
ordinary visitors. The commissioners ac
cordingly arrived at Oxford on the 20th of
October, for the purpose of this royal visita-
* Athense Oxonienses, vol. ii. p. 814. It ap
pears that he refused on his death-bed to declare
himself a Catholic, which Evelyn justly thinks
stranse. — Memoirs, vol. i. p. 605.
t Blathwayt, Secretary of War, Pepys, vol. ii
Correspondence, p. 86.
1 State Trials, vol. xii. p. 19.
324
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
tion ; and the object of it was opened by
Cartwright in a speech full of anger arid
menace. Hough maintained his own rights
and those of his College with equal decorum
and firmness. On being asked whether he
submitted to the visitation, he answered,
" We submit to it as far as it is consistent
with the laws of the land and the statutes
of the College, but no farther. There neither
is nor can be a President as long as I live
and obey the statutes." The Court cited
five cases of nomination to the Presidency by
the Crowrn since the Reformation, of which
he appears to have disputed only one. But he
was unshaken: he refused to give up posses
sion of his house to Parker; and wrhen, on
the second day they deprived him of the
Presidency, and struck his name off the
books, he came into the hall, and protested
'•against all they had done in prejudice of
his right, as illegal, unjust, and null." The
strangers and young scholars loudly ap
plauded his courage, which so incensed the
Court, that the Chief Justice bound him to
appear in the King's Bench in a thousand
pounds. Parker having been put into pos
session by force, a majority of the fellows
were prevailed on to submit, "as far as was
lawful and agreeable to the statutes of the
College." The appearance of compromise,
to wThich every man feared that his com
panion might be tempted to yield, shook
their firmness for a moment. Fortunately
the imprudence of the King set them again
at liberty. The answer with which the com
missioners were willing to be content did
not satisfy him. He required a written sub
mission, in which the fellows should acknow
ledge their disobedience, and express their
sorrow for it. On this proposition they with
drew their former submission, and gave in a
writing in which they finally declared "that
they could not acknowledge themselves to
have done any thing amiss." The Bishop
of Chester, on the 16th of November, pro
nounced the judgment of the Court; by
which, on their refusal to subscribe a hum
ble acknowledgment of their errors, they
were deprived and expelled from their fel
lowships. Cartwright, like Parker, had origi
nally been a Puritan, and was made a Church
man by the Restoration ; and running the
same race, though with less vigorous pow
ers, he had been made Bishop of Chester for
a sermon, inculcating the doctrine, that the
promises of kings were not binding.* Within
a few months after these services at Oxford,
he was rebuked by the King, for saying in
his cups that Jeffreys and Sunderland would
deceive him.t Suspected as he was of more
opprobious vices, the merit of being useful
in an odious project was sufficient to cancel
* The King hath, indeed, promised to govern by
law ; but the safety of the people (of which he is
judge) is an exception implied in every monarchial
promise." — Sermon at Ripon, 6th February, 1686.
See also his sermon on the 30th January, 1682, at
Holyrood House, before the Lady Anne.
t Narcissus Luttrell, February, 1688. — MS.
all private guilt; and a design wras even
entertained of promoting him to the see of
London, as soon as the contemplated depriva
tion of Compton should be carried into execu
tion.*
Early in December, the recusant fellows
were incapacitated from holding any benefice
or preferment in the Church by a decree
of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which
passed that body, however, only by a majo
rity of one ; — the minority consisting of Lord
Mulgrave, Lord Chief Justice Herbert, Baron
Jenner, and Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, who
boasts, that he laboured to make the Com
mission, which he countenanced by his pre
sence, as little mischievous as he could. f
This rigorous measure was probably adopted
from the knowledge, that many of the no
bility and gentry intended to bestow livings
on many of the ejected fellows. t The King
told Sir Edward Seymour, that he had heard
that he and others intended to take some of
them into their houses, and added that he
should look on it as a combination against
himself. § But in spite of these threats con
siderable collections were made for them ;
and when the particulars of the transaction
were made known in Holland, the Princess
of Orange contributed two hundred pounds
to their relief. II It was probably by these
same threats that a person so prudent as
well as mild was so transported beyond her
usual meekness as to say to D'Abbeville,
James' minister at the Hague, that if she
ever became Queen, she would signalise her
zeal for the Church more than Elizabeth.
The King represented to Barillon the ap
parently triumphant progress which he had
just made through the South and West of
England, as a satisfactory proof of the popu
larity of his person and government.!" But
that experienced statesman, not deceived by
these outward shows, began from that mo
ment to see more clearly the dangers which
James had to encounter. An attack on the
most opulent establishment for education of
the kingdom, the expulsion of a body of
learned men from their private property
without any trial kno\vn to ihe laws, and for
no other offence than obstinate adherence to
their oaths, and the transfer of 'their great
endowments to the clergy of the King's per
suasion, who were legally unable to hold
them, even if he had justly acquired the
power of bestowing them, were measures of
bigotry and rapine, — odious and alarming
without being terrible, — by which the King
lost the attachment of many friends, without
* Johnstone (son of Warriston) to Burnet, 8th
December, 1687.— Welbeck MS. Sprat, in his
Letter to Lord Dorset, speaks of "farther pro
ceedings" as being meditated against Compton.
t Johnstone, ibid. He does not name the ma
jority : they, probably, were Jeffreys, Sunderland,
the Bishops of Chester and Durham, and Lord
Chief Justice Wright.
t Johnstone, 17th November. — MS.
$ Id. 8th December.— MS.
II Smith's Diary, State Trials, vol. xii. p. 73.
IT Barillon, 23d— 29th Sept —Fox MSS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
325
inspiring his opponents with much fear. The
members of Magdalen College were so much
the objects of general sympathy and respect
that though they justly obtained the honours
of martyrdom, they experienced little of its
sufferings. It is hard to imagine a more un
skilful attempt to persecute, than that which
thus inflicted sufferings most easily relieved
on men who were most generally respected.
In corporations so great as the University the
wrongs of every member were quickly felt
and resented by the whole body ; and the
prevalent feeling was speedily spread over
the kingdom, every part of which received
from thence preceptors in learning and teach
ers of religion, — a circumstance of peculiar
importance at a period when publication still
continued to be slow and imperfect. A con
test for a corporate right has the advantage
of seeming more generous than that for indi
vidual interest: and corporate spirit itself is
one of the most steady and inflexible prin
ciples of human action. An invasion of the
legal possessions of the Universities was an
attack on the strong holds as well as palaces
of the Church, where she was guarded by
the magnificence of art, and the dignity and
antiquity of learning, as well as by respect
for religion. It was made on principles which
tended directly to subject the whole property
of the Church to the pleasure of the Crown ;
and as soon as, in a conspicuous and exten
sive instance, the sacredness of legal pos
session is intentionally violated, the security
of all property is endangered. Whether
such proceedings were reconcilable to law,
and could be justified by the ordinary au
thorities and arguments of lawyers, was a
question of very subordinate importance.
At an early stage of the proceedings
against the Universities, the King, not con
tent with releasing individuals from obedi
ence to the law by dispensations in particular
cases, must have resolved on altogether sus
pending the operation of penal laws relating
to religion by one general measure. He had
accordingly issued, on the 4th of April, '• A
Declaration for Liberty of Conscience;"
which, after the statement of those princi
ples of equity and policy on which religious
liberty is founded, proceeds to make provi
sions in their own natures so wise and just
that they want nothing but lawful authority
and pure intention to render them worthy
of admiration. It suspends the execution
of all penal laws for nonconformity, and of
all laws which require certain acts of con
formity, as qualifications for civil or military
office ; it gives leave to all men to meet and
serve God after their own manner, publicly
and privately ; it denounces the royal dis
pleasure and the vengeance of the land
against all who should disturb any religious
worship; and, finally, "in order that his
loving subjects may be discharged from all
penalties, forfeitures, and disabilities, which
they may have incurred, it grants them a
free pardon for all crimes by them committed
against the said penal laws." This Declara
tion, founded on the supposed power of sus
pending laws, was, in several respects, of
more extensive operation than the exercise
of the power to dispense with them. The
laws of disqualification only became penal
when the Nonconformist was a candidate for
office, and not necessarily implying immo
rality in the person disqualified, might, ac
cording to the doctrine then received, be the
proper object of a dispensation. But some
acts of nonconformity, which might be com
mitted by all men, and which did not of ne
cessity involve a conscientious dissent, were
regarded as in themselves immoral, and to
them it was acknowledged that the dispen
sing power did not extend. Dispensation?,
however multiplied, are presumed to be
grounded on the special circumstances of
each case. But every exercise of the power
of indefinitely suspending a whole class of
laws which must be grounded on general
reasons of policy, without any consideration
of the circumstances of particular individu
als, is evidently a more undisguised assump
tion of legislative authority. There were
practical differences of considerable import
ance. No dispensation could prevent a legal
proceeding from being commenced and car
ried on as far as the point where it was regu
lar to appeal to the dispensation asa defence.
But the declaration which suspended the
laws stopped the prosecutor on ihe threshold;
and in the case of disqualification it seemed
to preclude the necessity of all subsequent
dispensations to individuals. The dispensing
power might remove disabilities, and protect
from punishment; but the exemption from
expense, and the security against vexation,
were completed only by this exercise of the
suspending power.
Acts of a similar nature had been twice
attempted by Charles II. The first was the
Declaration in Ecclesiastical Affairs, in the
year of his restoration ; in which, after many
concessions to Dissenters, which might be
considered as provisional, and binding only
till the negotiation for a general union in re
ligion should be closed, he adds. "We hereby
renew what we promised in our Declaration
from Breda, that no man should be disquieted
for difference of opinion in matters of religion,
which do not disturb the peace of ihe king
dom."* On the faith of that promise the
English Nonconformist shad concurred in the
Restoration; yet the Convention Parliament
itself, in which the Presbyterians were
powerful, if not predominant, refused, though
by a small majority, to pass a bill to render
this tolerant Declaration effectual.! But the
next Parliament, elected under the preva
lence of a different spirit, broke the public
faith by the Act of Uniformity, which pro
hibited all public worship and religions in
struction, except such as were conformable to
* Kennet, History, vol. iii. p. 242.
t Commons' Journals, 28th November, 1660.
On the second reading the numbers were, ayes.
157; noes, 183. Sir G. Booth, a teller for the
ayes, was a Presbyterian leader.
2C
326
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the Established Church.* The zeal of that
assembly had, indeed, at its opening, been
stimulated by Clarendon, the deepest stain
on whose administration was the renewal of
intolerance. t Charles, whether most actu
ated by love of quiet, or by indifference to
religion, or by a desire to open the gates to
Dissenters, that Catholics might enter, made
an attempt to preserve the public faith,
which he had himself pledged, by the exer
cise of his dispensing power, In the end of
1662 he had published another Declaration, f
in which he assured peaceable Dissenters,
who were only desirous modestly to perform
their devotions in their own way, that he
would make it his special care to incline the
wisdom of Parliament to concur with him in
making some act which, he adds, " may
enable us to exercise, with a more universal
satisfaction, the dispensing power which we
conceive to be inherent in us." In the
speech with which he opened the next ses
sion, he only ventured to say, "I could
heartily wish I had such a power of indul
gence." The Commons, however, better
royalists or more zealous Churchmen than
the King, resolved " that it be represented
to his Majesty, as the humble advice of this
House, that no indulgence be granted to
Dissenters from the Act of Uniformity ;"§
and an address to that effect was presented
to him, which had been drawn up by Sir
Heneage Finch, his own Solicitor-General.
The King, counteracted by his ministers,
almost silently acquiesced; and the Parlia
ment proceeded, in the years which immedi
ately followed, to enact that series of perse
cuting laws which disgrace their memory,
and dishonour an administration otherwise
not without claims on our praise. It was not
till the beginning of the second Dutch war,
that "a Declaration for indulging Noncon
formists in matters ecclesiastical" was ad
vised by Sir Thomas Clifford, for the sake of
Catholics, and embraced by Shaftesbury for
the general interests of religious liberty. I! A
* 14 Car. II. c. iv.
t Speeches, 8th May, 1661, and 19th May,
1662. " The Lords Clarendon and Southampton,
together with the Bishops, were the great oppo-
sers of the King's intention to grant toleration to
Dissenters, according to the promise at Breda." —
Life of James II. vol. i. p. 391. These, indeed,
are not the words of the King; but for more than
twelve years on this part of his Life, the compiler,
Mr. Dicconson, does not quote James' MSS.
i Kennet, Register, p. 850. — The concluding
paragraph, relating to Catholics, is a model of that
stately ambiguity under which the style of Claren
don gave him peculiar facilities of cloaking an un
popular proposal.
$ Journals, 25th Feb., 1663.
II " We think ourselves obliged to make use of
that supreme power in ecclesiastical matters which
is inherent in us. We declare our will and plea
sure, that the execution of all penal laws in mat
ters ecclesiastical be suspended ; and we shall
allow a sufficient number of places of worship as
ihey shall be desired, for the use of those who do
not conform to the Church of England : — without
allowing public worship to Roman Catholics."
Most English historians tell us that Sir Orlando
considerable debate on this Declaration took
place in the House of Commons, in which
Waller alone had the boldness and liberality
to contend for the toleration of the Catholics ;
but the principle of freedom of conscience,
and the desire to gratify the King, yielded to
the dread of prerogative and the enmity to
the Church of Rome. An address was pre
sented to the King, •' to inform him that
penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical can
not be suspended but by Act of Parlia
ment;" to which the King returned an eva
sive answer. The .House presented another
address, declaring " that the King was very
much misinformed, no such power having
been claimed or recognised by any of his
predecessors, and if admitted, might tend to
altering the legislature, which has always
been acknowledged to be in your Majesty
and your two Houses of Parliament ;" — in
answer to which the King said, "If any
scruple remains concerning the suspension
of the penal laws, I hereby faithfully promise
that what hath been done in that particular
shall not be drawn either into consequence
or example." The Chancellor and Secretary
Coventry, by command of the King, acquaint
ed both Houses separately, on the same day,
that he had caused the Declaration to be can
celled in his presence ; on which both Houses
immediately voted, and presented in a body,
an unanimous address of thanks to his
Majesty, " for his gracious, full, and satis
factory answer."* The whole of this trans
action undoubtedly amounted to a solemn
and final condemnation of the pretension to
a suspending power by the King in Parlia
ment : it was in substance not distinguishable
from, a declaratory law ; and the forms of a
statute seem to have been dispensed with
only to avoid the appearance of distrust or
discourtesy towards Charles. We can dis
cover, in the very imperfect accounts which
are preserved of the debates of 1673, that
the.advocates of the Crown had laid main
stress on the King's ecclesiastical supremacy;
it being, as they reasoned, evident that the
head of the Church should be left to judge
when it was wise to execute or suspend the
laws intended for its protection. They relied
also on the undisputed right of the Crown to
stop the progress of each single prosecution
which seemed to justify, by analogy, a more
general exertion of the same power.
James, in his Declaration of Indulgence,
disdaining any appeals to analogy or to su
premacy, chose to take a wider and higher
ground, and concluded the preamble in the
tone of a master: — "We have thought fit,
by virtue of our royal prerogative, to issue
Bridgman refused to put the Great Seal to this
Declaration, and that Lord Shaftesbury was made
Chancellor to seal it. The falsehood of this state
ment is proved by the mere inspection of the
London Gazette, by which we see that the De
claration was issued on the 15th of March, 1672,
when Lord Shaftesbury was not yet appointed.
— See Locke's Letter from a Person of Quality,
and the Life of Shaftesbury (unpublished), p. 247.
* Journals, 8th March, 1673.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 327
forth this our Declaration of Indulgence,
making no doubt of the concurrence of our
two Houses of Parliament, when we shall
think it convenient for them to meet." His
Declaration was issued in manifest defiance of
the parliamentary condemnation pronounced
on that of his brother, and it was introduced
in language of more undefined and alarming
extent. On the other hand, his measure was
countenanced by the determination of the
judges, and seemed to be only a more com
pendious and convenient manner of effecting
what these perfidious magistrates had de
clared he might lawfully do. Their iniqui
tous decision might excuse many of those
who were ignorant of the means by which it
was obtained ; but the King himself, who
had removed judges too honest to concur in
it. and had neither continued nor appointed
any whose subserviency he had not first as
certained, could plead no such authority in
mitigation. He had dictated the oracle which
he affected to obey. It is very observable
that he himself, or rather his biographer (for
it is not just to impute this base excuse to
himself), while he claims the protecting au
thority of the adjudication, is prudently silent
on the unrighteous practices by which that
show of authority was purchased.*
The way had been paved for the English
Declaration by a Proclamationt issued at
Edinburgh, on the 12th of February, couched
in loftier language than was about to be
hazarded in England: — uWe, by our sove
reign authority, prerogative royal, and abso
lute power, do hereby give and grant our
royal toleration. We allow and tolerate the
moderate Presbyterians to meet in their
private houses, and to hear such ministers
as have been or are willing to accept of our
indulgence; but they are not to build meet
ing-houses, but to exercise in houses. We
tolerate Quakers to meet in their form in any
place or places appointed for their worship.
We, by our sovereign authority, &c. suspend,
stop, and disable, all laws or Acts of Parlia
ment made or executed against any of our
Roman Catholic subjects, so that they shall
be free to exercise their religion and to enjoy
all ; but they are to exercise in houses or
chapels. And we cass, annul, and discharge
all oaths by wrhich our subjects are disabled
from holding offices." He concludes by con
firming the proprietors of Church lands in
their possession, which seemed to be wholly
unnecessary while the Protestant establish
ment endured ; and adds an assurance more
likely to disquiet than to satisfy, athat he
will not use force against any man for the
Protestant religion." In a short time after
wards he had extended this indulgence to
those Presbyterians who scrupled to take the
Test or any other oath; and in a few months
more, on the 5th of July, all restrictions on
toleration had been removed, by the per-
* Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 81. " He," says
the biographer, "had no other oracle to apply to
for exposition of difficult and intricate points."
t Wodrow, vol. ii. app.
mission granted to all to serve God in their
own manner, whether in private houses or
chapels, or houses built or hired for the pur-
jose :* or, in other words, he had established,
3y his own sole authority, the most unbound
ed liberty of worship and religious instruc
tion in a country where the laws treated
every act of dissent as one of the most
heinous crimes. There is no other example,
perhaps, of so excellent an object being pur
sued by means so culpable, or for purposes
in which evil was so much blended with
ood.
James was equally astonished and incensed
at the resistance of the Church of England.
Their warm professions of loyalty, their ac
quiescence in measures directed only against
civil liberty, their solemn condemnation of
forcible resistance to oppression (the lawful
ness of which constitutes the main strength
of every opposition to misgqvernment), had
persuaded him that they would look patiently
on the demolition of all the bulwarks of their
n wealth, and greatness, and power, and
submit in silence to measures which, alter
stripping the Protestant religion of all its
temporal aid, might at length leave it exposed
to persecution. He did not distinguish be
tween legal opposition and violent resistance.
He believed in the adherence of multitudes
to professions poured forth in a moment of
enthusiasm ; and he was so ignorant of hu
man nature as to imagine, that speculative
opinions of a very extravagant sort, even if
they could be stable, were sufficient to su
persede interest and habits, to bend the pride
of high establishments, and to stem the pas-
sions'of a nation in a state of intense excite
ment. Yet James had been admonished by
the highest authority to beware of this de
lusion. Morley, Bishop of Winchester, a
veteran royalist and Episcopalian, whose
fidelity had been tried, but whose judgment
had been informed in the Civil War, almost
with his dying breath desired Lord Dart
mouth to warn the King, that if ever he de
pended on the doctrine of Nonresistance he
would find himself deceived ; for that most
of the Church would contradict it in their
practice, though not in terms. It was to no
purpose that Dartmouth frequently reminded
James of Morley's last message ; for he an
swered, -'that the Bishop was a good man,
but grown old and timid. "t
It"must be owned, on the other hand, that
there were not wanting considerations which
excuse the expectation and explain the dis
appointment of James. Wiser men than he
have been the dupes of that natural preju
dice, which leads us to look for the same
consistency between the different parts of
conduct which is in some degree found to
prevail among the different reasonings and
opinions of every man of sound mind. It
cannot be denied that the Church had done
* Wodrow. vol. ii. app. Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 463.
t Burnet, (Oxford, 1823), vol. ii. p. 428. Lord
Dartmouth's note.
328
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
much to delude him. For they did not con
tent themselves with never controverting, nor
even confine themselves to calmly preaching
the doctrine of Nonresistance (which might
be justified and perhaps commended) ; but it
was constantly and vehemently inculcated.
The more furious preachers treated all who
doubted it with the fiercest scurrility,* and
the most pure and gentle were ready to intro
duce it harshly and unreasonably ;t and they
all boasted of it, perhaps with reason, as a pe
culiar characteristic which distinguished the
Church of England from other Christian com
munities. Nay, if a solemn declaration from
an authority second only to the Church, as
sembled in a national council, could have
been a security for their conduct, the judg
ment of the University of Oxford, in their Con
vocation in 1683, may seem to warrant the
utmost expectations of the King. For among
other positions condemned by that learned
body, one was, "that if lawful governors be
come tyrants, or govern otherwise than by
the laws of God or man they ought to do.
they forfeit the right they had unto their
government, t Now, it is manifest, that,
according to this determination, if the King
had abolished Parliaments, shut the courts
of justice, and changed the laws according
to his pleasure, he would nevertheless retain
the same rights as before over all his sub
jects ; that any part of them -who resisted
him would still contract the full guilt of re
bellion ; and that the co-operation of the
sounder portion to repress the revolt would
be a moral duty and a lawful service. How,
then, could it be reasonable to withstand him
in far less important assaults on his sub
jects, and to turn against him laws which
owed their continuance solely to his good
pleasure ? Whether this last mode of rea
soning be proof against all objections or not.
it was at least specious enough to satisfy the
King, when it agreed with his passions and
supposed interest. Under the influence of
these natural delusions, we find him filled
with astonishment at the prevalence of the
ordinary motives of human conduct over an
extravagant dogma, and beyond measure
amazed that the Church should oppose the
* South, passim.
t Tillotson, On the Death of Lord Russell.
About a year before the time to which the text
alludes, in a visitation sermon preached before
Bancroft by Kfittlewell, an excellent man, in
whom nothing was stern but this doctrine, it is in
culcated to such an extent as, according to the
usual interpretation of the passage in P, nil's Epis
tle to the Romans (xiii. 2.), to prohibit resistance
to Nero ; " who," says nevertheless the preacher,
" invaded honest men's estates to supply his own
profusion, and embrued his hands in the blood of
any he had a pique against, without any regard to
law or justice." The Homily, or exhortation to
obedience, composed under Edward VI., in 1547,
by Cranmer, and sanctioned by authority of the
Church, asserts it to be "the calling of God's
people to render obedience to governors, although
they be wicked or wrong-doers, and in no case to
resist.'"
t Collier, Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 902.
Crown after the King had become the ene
my of the Church. " Is this your Church of
England loyalty?" he cried to the fellows
of Magdalen College ; while in his confiden
tial conversations he now spoke with the
utmost indignation of this inconsistent and
mutinous Church. Against it, he told the
Nuncio, that he had by his Declaration struck
a blow which would resound through the
country } — ascribing their unexpected resist
ance to a consciousness that, in a general
liberty of conscience, '•' the Anglican religion
would be the first to decline.7'1* Sunderland,
in speaking of the Church to the same min
ister, exclaimed, "Where is now their boast
ed fidelity7? The Declaration has mortified
those who have resisted the King's pious and
benevolent designs. The Anglicans are a
ridiculous sect, who affect a sort of modera
tion in heresy, by a compound and jumble
of all other persuasions: and who. notwith
standing the attachment which they boast
of having maintained to the monarchy and
the royal family, have proved on this occa
sion the most insolent and contumacious of
men."t After the refusal to comply with
his designs, on the ground of conscience, by
Admiral Herbert, a man of loose life, loaded
with the favours of the Crown, and supposed
to be as sensible of the obligations of honour
as he was negligent of those of religion and
morality, James declared to(Barillon, that he
never could put confidence in any man, how
ever attached to him, who affected the cha
racter of a zealous Protestant. t
The Declaration of Indulgence, however,
had one important purpose beyond the asser
tion of prerogative, the advancement of the
Catholic religion, or the gratification of anger
against the unexpected resistance of the
Church: it was intended to divide Protest
ants, and to obtain the support of the Non
conformists. The same policy had, indeed,
failed in the preceding reign; but it was not
unreasonably hoped by the Court, that the
sufferings of twenty years had irreconcilably
inflamed the dissenting sects against the
Establishment, and had at length taught
them to prefer their own personal and reli
gious liberty to vague and speculative oppo
sition to the Papacy, — the only bond of union
between the discordant communities who
were called Protestants. It was natural
enough to suppose, that they would show no
warm interest in universities from which
they were excluded, or for prelates who had
excited persecution against them; and that
they would thankfully accept the blessings
of safety and repose, without anxiously ex
amining whether the grant of these advan
tages was consistent with the principles of a
constitution which treated them as unworthy
of all trust or employment. Certainly the
penal law from which the Declaration ten-
* D'Adda. 21st March, 1687; " un colpo stre-
pitoso." " Perche la religione Anglicana sarebbe
stata la prima a declinare in questa mutazione."
t D'Adda, 4th— 18th April.
t Barillon, 24th March.— Fox MSS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
329
dered relief, was not such as to dispose them
to be very jealous of the mode of its removal.
An Act in the latter years of Elizabeth*
had made refusal to attend the established
worship, or presence at that of Dissenters,
punishable by imprisonment, and, unless
atoned for by conformity within three months,
by perpetual banishment,"!" enforced by death
if the offender should return. Within three
years after the solemn promise of liberty of
conscience from Breda, this barbarous law,
which had been supposed to be dormant,
was declared to be in force, by an Act I which
subjected every one attending any but the
established worship, where more than five
were present, on the third offence, to trans
portation for seven years to any of the colo
nies (except New England and Virginia, —
the only ones where they might have been
consoled by their fellow-religionists, and
where labour in the fields was not fatal to an
European) ; and which doomed them in case
of their return, — an event not very probable,
after having laboured for seven years as the
slaves of their enemies under the sun of Bar-
badoes, — to death. Almost every officer,
civil or military, was empowered and en
couraged to disperse their congregations as
unlawful assemblies, and to arrest their ring-
* leaders. A conviction before two magis
trates, and in some cases before one, without
any rjght of appeal or publicity of proceed
ing, was sufficient to expose a helpless or
obnoxious Nonconformist to these tremen
dous consequences. By a refinement in per
secution, the jailer was instigated to disturb
the devotions of his prisoners ; being subject
to a fine if he allowed any one who was at
large to join them in their religious worship.
The pretext for this statute, which was how
ever only temporary, consisted in some riots
and tumults in Ireland and in Yorkshire,
evidently viewed by the ministers them
selves with more scorn than fear.§ A per
manent law, equally tyrannical, was passed
in the next session. II By it every dissenting
clergyman was forbidden from coming within
five miles of his former congregation, or of
any corporate town or parliamentary borough,
under a penalty of forty pounds, unless he
should take the following oath : — " I swear
that it is not lawful, upon any pretence what
soever, to take up arms against the King, or
those commissioned by him, and that I will
not at any time endeavour any alteration of
government in Church or State." In vain
did Lord Southampton raise his dying voice
against this tyrannical act, though it was
almost the last exercise of the ministerial
* 35 Eliz. c. 1, (1593.)
t A sort of exile, called, in our old law, " ab
juring the realm," in which the offender was to
banish himself.
t 16 Car. IT. c. 4.
§ Ralph, History of England, vol. ii. p. 97.
" As these plots," says that writer, " were con
temptible or formidable, we must acquit or con
demn this reign."
11 17 Car. II. c. 2.
42
power of his friend and colleague Clarendon ;
— vehemently condemning the oath, which,
royalist as he was, he declared that neither
he nor any honest man could take.* A faint
and transient gleam of indulgence followed
the downfall of Clarendon. But, in the year
1670, another Act was passed, reviving that
of 1664, with some mitigations of punish-
ment; and with amendments in the form of
proceeding ;t but with several provisions of
a most unusual nature, which, by their mani
fest tendency to stimulate the bigotry of ma
gistrates, rendered it a sharper instrument
of persecution. Of this nature was the de
claration, that the statute was to be construed
most favourably for the suppression of con
venticles, and for the encouragement of those
engaged in carrying it into effect ; the ma
lignity of which must be measured by its
effect in exciting all public officers, especial
ly the lowest, to constant vexation and fre
quent cruelty towards the poorer Noncon
formists, marked by such language as the
objects of the fear and hatred of the legisla
ture.
After the defeat of Charles' attempt to re
lieve all Dissenters by his usurped preroga
tive, the alarms of the House of Commons
had begun to be confined to the Catholics;
and they had conceived designs of union
with the more moderate of their Protestant
brethren, as well as of indulgence towards
those whose dissent was irreconcilable. But
these designs proved abortive : the Court re
sumed its animosity against the Dissenters,
when it became no longer possible to employ
them as a shelter for the Catholics. The
laws were already sufficient for all practical
purposes of intolerance, and their execution
was in the hands of bitter enemies, from the
Lord Chief Justice to the pettiest constable.
The temper of the Established clergy was
such, that even the more liberal of them
' gravely reproved the victims of such laws
for complaining of persecution.! The in
ferior gentry, who constituted the magistracy,
— ignorant, intemperate, and tyrannical, — •
treated dissent as rebellion, and in their con
duct to Puritans were actuated by no princi
ples but a furious hatred of those whom they
thought the enemies of the monarchy. The
whole jurisdiction, in cases of Nonconformity,
was so vested in that body, as to release
I them in its exercise from the greater part of
the restraints of fear and shame. With the
I sanction of the legislature, and the counte-
| nance of the Government, what indeed could
! they fear from a proscribed party, consisting
chiefly of the humblest and poorest men ?
From shame they were effectually secured,
since that which is not public cannot be
made shameful. The particulars of the con
viction of a Dissenter might be unknown
beyond his village; the evidence against
* Locke, Letter from a Person of Quality,
t 22 Car. II. c. 1.
t Stillingfleet, Sermon on the Mischief of Se
paration.
2c2
330
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
him, if any, might be confined to the room
where he was convicted : and in that age of
slow communication, few men would incur
the trouble or obloquy of conveying to their
correspondents the hardships inflicted, with
the apparent sanction of law, in remote and
ignorant districts, on men at once obscure
an:1, odious, and often provoked by their suf
ferings into intemperance and extravagance.
Imprisonment is, of all punishments, the
most quiet and convenient mode of persecu
tion. The prisoner is silently hid from the
public eye ; his sufferings, being unseen,
speedily cease to excite pity or indignation :
he is soon doomed to oblivion. As it is
always the safest punishment for an op
pressor to inflict, so it was in that age, in
England, perhaps the most cruel. Some esti
mate of the suffering from cold, hunger, and
nakedness, in the dark and noisome dun
geons, then called prisons, may be formed
from the remains of such buildings, which
industrious benevolence has not yet every
where demolished. Being subject to no re
gulation, and without means for the regular
sustenance of the prisoners, they were at
once the scene of debauchery and famine.
The Puritans, the most severely moral men
of any age, were crowded in cells with the
profligate and ferocious criminals with whom
the kingdom then abounded. We learn from
the testimony of the legislature itself, that
"needy persons committed to jail many times
perished before their trial."* We are told
by Thomas Ellwood, the Quaker, a friend of
Milton, that when a prisoner in Newgate for
his religion, he saw the heads and quarters
of men who had been executed for treason
kept for some time close to the cells, and
the heads tossed about in sport by the hang
man and the more hardened malefactors ;t
and the description given by George Fox,
the founder of the Quakers, of1 his own treat
ment when a prisoner at Launceston, too
clearly exhibits the unbounded power of his
jailers, and its most cruel exercise. t It was
no wonder that, when prisoners were brought
to trial at the assizes, the contagion of jail
fever should often rush forth with them from
these abodes of all that was loathsome and
hideous, and sweep away judges, and jurors,
and advocates, with its pestilential blast.
The mortality of such prisons must have
surpassed the imaginations of more civilized
times ; and death, if it could be separated
from the long sufferings which led to it, might
* 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 9. Evidence more con
clusive, from its being undesignedly dropped, of
the frequency of such horrible occurrences in the
jail of Newgate, transpires in a controversy be
tween a Catholic and Protestant clergyman, about
the religious sentiments of a dying criminal, and
is preserved in a curious pamphlet, called " The
Pharisee Unmasked," published in 1687.
t " This prison, where are so many, suffocateth
the spirits of aged ministers."— -Life of Baxter
(Calamy's Abridgment), part iii. p. 200.
t Journal, p. 186, where the description of the
dungeon called " Doomsdale" surpasses all imagi
nation.
perhaps be considered as the most merciful
part of the prison discipline of that age. It
would be exceedingly hard to estimate the
amount of this mortality, even if the diffi
culty were not enhanced by the prejudices
which led either to its extenuation or aggra
vation. Prisoners were then so forgotten,
that a record of it wras not to be expected ;
and the very nature of the atrocious wicked
ness which employs imprisonment as the in
strument of murder, would, in many cases;
render it impossible distinctly and palpably
to show the process by which cold and hunger
beget mortal disease. But computations have
been attempted, and, as was natural, chiefly
by the sufferers. William Penn, a man of
such virtue as to make his testimony weighty,
even when borne to the sufferings of his
own party, publicly affirmed at the time, that
since the Restoration umore than five thou
sand persons had died in bonds for matters
of mere conscience to God.';* Twelve hun
dred Quakers were enlarged by James. f
The calculations of Neale, the historian of
the Nonconformists, would carry the num
bers still farther ; and he does not appear, on
this point, to be contradicted by his zealous
and unwearied antagonist. t But if we reduce
the number of deaths to one half of Penn's
estimate, and suppose that number to be the
tenth of the prisoners, it will afford a dread
ful measure of the sufferings of twenty-five
thousand prisoners ; and the misery within
the jails will too plainly indicate the beg
gary^ banishment, disquiet, vexation, fear,
and horror, which were spread among the
wrhole body of Dissenters.
The sufferings of two memorable men
among them, differing from each other still
more widely in opinions and disposition than
in station and acquirement, may be selected
as proofs that no character was too high to
be beyond the reach of this persecution, and
no condition too humble to be beneath its
notice. Richard Baxter, one of the most
acute and learned as well as pious and ex
emplary men of his age, was the most cele
brated divine of the Presbyterian persua
sion. He had been so well known for his
moderation as well as his general merit, that
at the Restoration he had been made chap
lain to the King, and»a bishopric had been
offered to him, which he declined, not be
cause he deemed it unlawful, but because it
might engage him in severities against the
conscientious, and because he was unwilling
to give scandal to his brethren by accepting
preferment in the hour of their affliction. I!
He joined in the public worship of the
* Good Advice to the Church of England.
t Address of the Quakers to James II. — Clark-
son, Life of William Penn, vol. i. p. 492. Lon
don Gazette, 23d and 26th May, 1687.
\ Grey, Examination of Neale.
§ " Fifteen thousand families ruined." — Good
Advice, &c. In this tract, very little is said of
the dispensing power ; the far greater part con
sisting of a noble defence of religious liberty,
applicable to all ages and communions
II Life of Baxter, part iii. p. 281.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
331
Church of England, but himself preached
to a small congregation at Acton, where he
soon became the friend of his neighbour, Sir
Matthew Hale, who, though then a magis
trate of great dignity, avoided the society of
those who might be supposed to influence
him, and from his jealous regard to inde
pendence, chose a privacy as simple and
frugal as that of the pastor of a persecuted
flock. Their retired leisure was often em
ployed in high reasoning on those sublime
subjects of metaphysical philosophy to which
both had been conducted by their theological
studies, and which, indeed, few contempla
tive men of elevated thought have been de
terred by the fate of their forerunners from
aspiring to comprehend. Honoured as he was
by such a friendship, esteemed by the most
distinguished persons of all persuasions, and
consulted by the civil and ecclesiastical au
thorities in every project of reconciliation
and harmony, Baxter was five times in fif
teen years dragged from his retirement, and
thrown into prison as a malefacter. In 1669
two subservient magistrates, one of whom
was the steward of the Archbishop of Can
terbury, summoned him before them for
preaching at a conventicle ; at hearing of
which, Hale, too surely foreknowing the
event, could scarcely refrain from tears.
He was committed to prison for six months;
but, after the unavailing intercession of his
friends with the King, was at length enlarg
ed in consequence of informalities in the
commitment.* Twice afterwards he escaped
by irregularities into which the precipitate
zeal of ignorant persecutors had betrayed
them ; and once, when his physician made
oath that imprisonment would be dangerous
to his life, he owed his enlargement to the
pity or prudence of Charles II. At last, in
the year '1685, he was brought to trial for
some supposed libels, before Jeffreys, in the
Court of King's Bench, in which his vener
able friend had once presided, — where two
Chief Justices, within ten years, had exem
plified the extremities of human excellence
and depravity, and where he, whose misfor
tunes had almost drawn tears down the aged
cheeks of Hale was doomed to undergo the
most brutal indignities from Jeffreys.
The history and genius of Bunyan were as
much more extraordinary than those of Bax
ter as his station and attainments were infe
rior. He is probably at the head of unlettered
men of genius ; and perhaps there is no other
instance of any man reaching fame from so
abject an origin. For other extraordinary
men who have become famous without edu
cation, though they were without what is
called "learning," have had much reading
and knowledge ; and though they were re
pressed by poverty, were not, like him, sul
lied by a vagrant and disreputable occupa
tion. By his trade of a travelling tinker, he
had been from his earliest years placed in
:he midst of profligacy, and on the verge of
dishonesty. He was for a time a private in the
* Life of Baxter, part iii. pp. 47—51.
parliamentary army, — the only military ser
vice which was likely to elevate his senti
ments and amend his life. Having embraced
the opinions of the Baptists, he was soon ad
mitted to preach in a community which did
not recognise the distinction between the
clergy and the laity.* Even under the Pro
tectorate he had been harassed by some busy
magistrates, who took advantage of a parlia
mentary ordinance, excluding from toleration
those who maintained the unlawfulness of
infant baptism. t But this officiousness was
checked by the spirit of the government ; and
it was not till the return of intolerance with
Charles II. that the sufferings of Bunyan be
gan. Within five months after the Restora
tion, he was apprehended under the statute
35th of Elizabeth, and was thrown into a pri
son, or rather dungeon, at Bedford, where he
remained for twelve years. The narratives of
his life exhibit remarkable specimens of the
acuteness and fortitude with which he with
stood the threats and snares of the magistrates,
and clergymen, and attorneys, who beset
him, — foiling them in every contest of argu
ment, especially in that which relates to the
independence of religion on civil authority,
which he expounded with clearness and
exactness ; for it was a subject on which his
naturally vigorous mind was better educated
by his habitual meditations than it could
have been by the most skilful instructor. In
the year after his apprehension, he had made
some informal applications for release to the
judges of assize, in a petition presented by
his wife, who was treated by one of them,
Twisden, with brutal insolence. His col
league, Sir Mathew Hale, listened to her
with patience and goodness, and with con
solatory compassion pointed out to her the
only legal means of obtaining redress. It is
a singular gratification thus to find a human
character, which, if it be met in the most
obscure recess of the history of a bad time,
is sure to display some new excellence. The
conduct of Hale on this occasion can be as
cribed only to strong and pure benevolence ;
for he was unconscious of Bunyan's genius,
he disliked preaching mechanics, and he
partook the general prejudice against Ana
baptists. In the long years which followed;
the time of Bunyan wras divided between the
manufacture of lace, which he learned in
order to support his family, and the compo
sition of those works which have given cele
brity to his sufferings. He was at length re
leased, in 1672, by Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln;
* See Grace Abounding.
t Scobell's Ordinances, chap. 114. This excep
tion is omitted in a subsequent Ordinance against
blasphemous opinions, (9th August, 1650), direct
ed chiefly against the Antinomians, who were
charged with denying the obligation of morality,
— the single case where the danger of nice dis
tinction is the chief objection to the use of punish
ment against the promulgation of opinions. Reli
gious liberty was afterwards carried much nearer
to its just limits by the letter of Cromwells'
constitution, and probably to its full extent by
its spirit. — See Humble Petition and Advice,
sect. xi.
332
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
but not till the timid prelate had received an
injunction from the Lord Chancellor* to that
effect. He availed himself of the Indulgence
of James II. without trusting it, and died
unmolested in the last year of that prince's
government. His Pilgrim's Progress, an alle
gorical representation of the Calvinistic the
ology, at first found readers only among those
of that persuasion, but, gradually emerging
from this narrow circle, by the natural power
of imagination over the uncorrupted feelings
of the majority of mankind, has at length
rivalled Robinson Crusoe in popularity. The
bigots and persecutors have sank into ob
livion ; the scoffs of witst and worldlings
have been unavailing; while, after the lapse
of a century, the object of their cruelty and
scorn has touched the poetical sympathy, as
well as the piety, of Cowper ; his genius has
subdued the opposite prejudices of Johnson
and of Franklin; and his name has been
uttered in the same breath with those of
Spenser and Dante. It should seem, from
this statement, that Lord Castlemaine, him
self a zealous Catholic, had some colour for
asserting, that the persecution of Protestants
by Protestants, after the Restoration, was
more violent than that of Protestants by
Catholics under Mary; and that the perse
cution then raging against the Presbyterians
in Scotland was not so much more cruel, as
it was more bloody, than that which silently
consumed the bowels of England.
Since the differences between Churchmen
and Dissenters, as such, have given way to
other Controversies, a recital of them can
have no other tendency than that of dispos
ing men to pardon each other's intolerance,
and to abhor the fatal error itself, which all
communions have practised, and of which
some malignant roots still lurk among all.
Without it, the policy of the King, in his at
tempt to form an alliance with the latter,
could not be understood. The general body
of Nonconformists were divided into four
parties, on whom the Court acted through
different channels, and who were variously
affected by its advances..
The Presbyterians, the more wealthy and
educated sect, were the descendants of the
ancient Puritans, who had been rather de
sirous of reforming the Church of England
than of separating from it ; and though the
breach was widened by the Civil War, they
might have been reunited at the Restoration
by moderate concession in the form of wor
ship, and by limiting the episcopal authority
agreeably to the project of the learned Usher,
and to the system of superintendency esta
blished among the Lutherans. Gradually,
indeed, they learned to prefer the perfect
* Probably Lord Shaftesbury, who received the
Great Seal in November, 1672. The exact date
of Bunyan's complete liberation is not ascertained ;
but he was twelve years a prisoner, and had been
apprehended in November, 1660. Ivimey (Life
of Bunyan, p. 289) makes his enlargement to be
about the close of 1672.
t Hudibras, part i. canto ii. Grey's notes.
equality of the Calvinistic clergy ; but they
did not profess that exclusive zeal for it
which actuated their Scottish brethren, who
had received their Reformation from Geneva.
Like men of other communions, they had
originally deemed it the duty of the magis
trate to establish true religion, and to punish
the crime of rejecting it. In Scotland they
continued to be sternly intolerant; while in
England they reluctantly acquiesced in im
perfect toleration. Their object was now
what was called a " comprehension," or such
an enlargement of the terms of communion
as might enable them to unite with the
Church; — a measure which would have
broken the strength of the Dissenters, as a
body, to the eminent hazard of civil liberty.
From them the King had the least hopes.
They were undoubtedly much more hostile
to the Establishment after twenty-five years'
persecution ; but they were still connected
with the tolerant clergy ; and as they con
tinued to aim at something besides mere
toleration, they considered the royal Decla
ration, even if honestly meant, as only a
temporary advantage.
The Independents, or Congregation alists;
were so called from their adoption of the
opinion, that every congregation or assembly
for worship was a church perfectly indepen
dent of all others, choosing and changing
their own ministers, maintaining with others
a fraternal intercourse, but acknowledging
no authority in all the other churches of
Christendom to interfere with its internal
concerns. Their churches were merely vo
luntary associations, in which the office of
teacher might be conferred and withdrawn
by the suffrages of the members. These
members were equal, and the government
was perfectly democratical ; if the term "go
vernment" may be applied to assemblies
which endured only as long as the members
agreed in judgment, and which, leaving all
coercive power to the civil magistrate, exer
cised no authority but that of admonition, cen
sure, and exclusion. They disclaimed the
qualification of " national" as repugnant to the
nature of a "church."* The religion of the
Independents, therefore, could not, without
destroying its nature, be established by law.
They never could aspire to more than reli
gious liberty; and they accordingly have the
honour of having been the first, and long the
only, Christian community who collectively
adopted that sacred principle.! It is true,
* " There is no true visible Church of Christ
but a particular ordinary congregation only. Every
ordinary assembly of the faithful hath power to
elect and ordain, deprive and depose, their minis
ters. The pastor must have others joined with
him by the congregation, to exercise ecclesiastical
jurisdiction ; neither ought he and they to perform
any material act without the free consent of the
congregation." — Christian Offer of a Conference
tendered to Archbishops, Bishops, &c. London,
1606.)
t An Humble Supplication for Toleration and
Liberty to James I. (London, 1609): — a tract
which affords a conspicuous specimen of the ability
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
333
that in the beginning they adopted the per
nicious and inconsistent doctrine of limited
toleration ; excluding Catholics, as idolaters,
and in New England (where the great ma
jority were of their persuasion), punishing,
even capitally, dissenters from what they ac
counted as fundamental opinions.* But; as
intolerance could promote no interest of
theirs, real or imaginary, their true princi
ples finally worked out the stain of these
dishonourable exceptions. The government
of Cromwell, more influenced by them than
by any other persuasion, made as near ap
proaches to general toleration as public pre
judice would endure; and Sir Henry Vane,
an Independent, was probably the first who
laid down, with perfect precision, the invio
lable rights of conscience, and the exemption
of religion from all civil authority. Actuated
by these principles, and preferring the free
dom of their worship even to political liberty,
it is not wonderful that many of this persua
sion gratefully accepted the deliverance from
persecution which was proffered by the King.
Similar causes produced the like disposi-
si lions among the Baptists, — a simple and
pious body of men, generally unlettered, ob
noxious to all other sects for their rejection
of infant baptism, as neither enjoined by the
New Testament nor consonant to reason, and
in some degree, also, from being called by
the same name with the fierce fanatics who
had convulsed Lower Germany in the first
age of the Reformation. Under Edward VI.
and Elizabeth many had suffered death for
their religion. At the Restoration they had
been distinguished from other Nonconform
ists by a brand in the provision of a statute,!
which excluded every clergyman who had
opposed infant baptism from re-establish
ment in his benefice ; and they had during
Charles' reign suffered more than any other
persuasion. Publicly professing the principles
of religious liberty, J and, like the Indepen
dents, espousing the cause of republicanism,
they appear to have adopted also the congre
gational system of ecclesiastical polity. More
incapable of union with the Established
Church, and having less reason to hope for
toleration from its adherents than the Inde
pendents themselves, — many, perhaps at
first most of them, eagerly embraced the In
dulgence. Thus, the sects who maintained
the purest principles of religious liberty, and
had supported the most popular systems of
government, were the most disposed to fa
vour a measure which would have finally
buried toleration under the ruins of political
freedom.
But of all sects, those who needed the
royal Indulgence most, and who could accept
and learning of the ancient Independents, often
described as unlettered fanatics.
* The Way of the Churches in New England,
by Mr. J. Cotton (London, 1645); and the Way
of Congregational Churches, by Mr. J. Cotton
(London, 1648) ; — in answer to Principal Baillie.
t 12 Car. II. c. 17.
t Crosby, History of English Baptists, &c.,
vol. ii. pp. 100—144.
it most consistently with their religious prin
ciples, were the Quakers. Seeking perfec
tion, by renouncing pleasures, of which the
social nature promotes kindness, and by con
verting self-denial, a means of moral disci
pline, into one of the ends of life. — it was
their more peculiar and honourable error,
that by a literal interpretation of that affec
tionate and ardent language in which the
Christian religion inculcates the pursuit of
peace and the practice of beneficence, they
struggled to extend the sphere of these most
admirable virtues beyond the boundaries of
nature. They adopted a peculiarity of lan
guage, and a uniformity of dress, indicative
of humility and equality, of brotherly love —
the sole bond of their pacific union, and of
the serious minds of men who lived only for
the performance of duty, — taking no part in
strife, renouncing even defensive aims, and
utterly condemning the punishment of death.
George Fox had, during the Civil War,
founded this extraordinary community. At
a time when personal revelation was gene
rally believed, it was a pardonable self-delu
sion that he should imagine himself to be
commissioned by the Deity to preach a sys
tem which could only be objected to as too
pure to be practised by man.* This belief,
and an ardent temperament, led him and
some of his followers into unseasonable at
tempts to convert their neighbours, and into
unseemly intrusions into places of worship
for that purpose, which excited general hos
tility against them, and exposed them to
frequent and severe punishments. One or
two of them, in the general fermentation of
men's minds at that time, had uttered what
all other sects considered as blasphemous
opinions; and these peaceable men became
the objects of general abhorrence. Their
rejection of most religious rites, their refusal
to sanction testimony by a judicial oath, or
to defend their country in the utmost danger,
gave plausible pretexts for representing them
as alike enemies to religion and the common
wealth ; and the fantastic peculiarities of
their language and dress seemed to be the
badge of a sullen and morose secession from
human society. Proscribed as they were by
law and prejudice, the Quakers gladly re
ceived the boon held out by the King. They
indeed were the only consistent professors of
passive obedience : as they resisted no wrong,
and never sought to disarm hostility other
wise than by benevolence, they naturally
yielded with unresisting submission to the
injustice of tyrants'. Another circumstance
also contributed, still more perhaps than these
general, causes, to throw them into the arms
of James. Although their sect, like most
other sects, had sprung from among the
humbler classes of society, — who, from their
* Journal of the Life of George Fox, by him-
self: — one of the most extraordinary and instruc
tive narratives in the world, which no reader of
competent judgment can peruse without revering
the virtue of the writer, pardoning his self-delu
sion, and ceasing to smile at his peculiarities.
334
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
numbers and simplicity, are alone suscepti
ble of those sudden and simultaneous emo
tions which change opinions and institutions,
— they had early been joined by a few per
sons of superior rank and education, who. in
a period of mutation in government and re
ligion, had long contemplated their benevo
lent visions with indulgent complacency; and
had at length persuaded themselves that this
pure system of peace and charity might be
realised, if not among all, at least among a few
of the wisest and best of men. Such a hope
would gradually teach the latter to tolerate,
and in time to adopt, the peculiarities of their
simpler brethren, and to give the most rational
interpretation to the language and pretensions
of their founders; — consulting reason in their
doctrines, and indulging enthusiasm only in
their hopes and affections.* Of the first who
thus systematised, and perhaps insensibly
softened, their creed, was Barclay ; whose
Apology for the Quakers — a masterpiece of
ingenious reasoning, and a model of argu
mentative composition — extorted praise from
Bayle, one of the most acute and least fana
tical of men.t
But the most distinguished of their con
verts was William Penn, whose father, Ad
miral Sir William Penn, had been a personal
friend of the King, and one of his instructors
in naval affairs. This admirable person had
employed his great abilities in support of
civil as well as religious liberty, and had both
acted and suffered for them under Charles
II. Even if he had not founded the common
wealth of Pennsylvania as an everlasting
memorial of his love of freedom, his actions
and writings in England would have been
enough to absolve him from the charge of
intending to betray the rights of his country
men. But though, as the friend of Algernon
Sidney, he had never ceased to intercede,
through his friends at Court, for the perse
cuted,! still an absence of two years in
America, and the consequent distraction of
his mind, had probably loosened his connec
tion with English politicians, and rendered
him less acquainted with the principles of
the government. On the accession of James
he was received by that prince with favour ;
and hopes of indulgence to his suffering bre
thren were early held out to him. He was
soon admitted to term3 of apparent intimacy,
and was believed to possess such influence
that two hundred suppliants were often seen
at his gates, imploring his intercession with
the King. That it really was great, appears
from his obtaining a promise of pardon for
his friend Mr. Locke, which that illustrious
man declined, because he thought that the
•acceptance of it would have been a confes
sion of criminality .$ Penn appears in 1679,
* Mr. Swinton, a Scotch judge during the Pro
tectorate, was one of the earliest of these con
verts.
t Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres,
Avril, 1684.
t Clarkson, Life of William Penn, vol. i. p. 248.
$ CJarkson, vol. i. pp. 433, 438. Mr. Clarkson is
through his influence with James when in
Scotland, to have obtained the release of all
the Quakers who were imprisoned there ;*
and he subsequently obtained the release of
many hundred English ones,t as well as pro
cured letters to be addressed by Lord Sun-
derland to the various Lord Lieutenants in
England in favour of his persuasion.! several
months before the Declaration of Indulgence.
It w-as no wonder that he should have been
gained over by this power of doing good.
The very occupations in which he was en
gaged brought daily before his mind the
general evils of intolerance, and the suffer
ings of his own unfortunate brethren. Though
well stored with useful and ornamental know
ledge, he was unpractised in the wiles of
courts; and his education had not trained
him to dread the violation of principle so
much as to pity the infliction of suffering.
It cannot be doubted that he believed the
King's object to be universal liberty in re
ligion, and nothing further : and as his own
sincere piety taught him to consider religious
liberty as unspeakably the highest of human
privileges, he was too just not to be desirous
of bestowing on all other men that which he
most earnestly sought for himself. One who
refused to employ force in the most just de
fence, must have felt a singular abhorrence
of its exertion to prevent good men from
following the dictates of their conscience.
Such seem to have been the motives which
induced this excellent man to lend himself
to the measures of the King. Compassion,
friendship, liberality, and toleration, led him
to support a system the success of which
would have undone his country; and he
afforded a remarkable proof that, in the com
plicated combinations of political morality, a
virtue misplaced may produce as much im
mediate mischief as a vice. The Dutch
minister represents "the arch-quaker" as
travelling over the kingdom to gain proselytes
to the dispensing power ; § while Duncombe;
a banker in London, and (it must in justice,
though in sorrow, be added) Penn, are stated
to have been the two Protestant counsellors
of Lord Sunderland.il Henceforward, it be
an-ions; the few writers from whom I should ven
ture to adopt a fact for which the original authority
is not mentioned. By his own extraordinary ser
vices to mankind he has deserved to be the bio
grapher of William Penn.
* Address of Scotch Quakers, 1687,
t George Fox, Journal, p. 550.
\ State Paper Office, November and Decem
ber, 1686.
$ Van Citters to the States General, 14th Oct.
1687.
II Johnstone, 25th Nov. 1687. — MS. John-
stone's connections afforded him considerable
means of information. Mrs. Dawson, an attend
ant of the Queen, was an intimate friend of his
sister, Mrs. Baillie of Jerviswood : another of his
sisters was the wife of General Drummond, who
was deeply engaged in the persecution of the
Scotch Presbyterians, and the Earl of Melfort's
son had married his niece. His letters were to 01
for Burnet, his cousin, and intended to be read by
the Prince of Orange, to both of whom he had
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
335
came necessary for the friends of liberty to
deal with him as with an enemy, — to be
resisted when his associates possessed, and
watched after they had lost power.
Among the Presbyterians, the King's chief
agent was Alsop, a preacher at Westminster,
who was grateful to him for having spared
the life of a son convicted of treason. Bax
ter, their venerable patriarch, and Howe, one
of their most eminent divines, refused any
active concurrence in the King's projects.
But Lobb, one of the most able of the Inde
pendent divines, warmly supported the mea
sures of James: he was favourably received
at Court, and is said to have been an adviser
as well as an advocate of the King.* An
elaborate defence of the dispensing power,
by Philip Nye; a still more eminent teacher
of the same persuasion, who had been dis
abled from accepting office at the Restoration,
written on occasion of Charles' Declaration
of Indulgence in 1672, was now republished
by his son, with a dedication to James. t
Kiffin, the pastor of the chief congregation
of the Baptists, and at the same time an opu
lent merchant in London, who, with his pas
toral office, had held civil and military stations
under the Parliament, withstood the preva
lent disposition of his communion towards
compliance. The few fragments of his life
that have reached us illustrate the character
of the calamitous limes in which he lived.
Soon after the Restoration, he had obtained
a pardon for twelve persons of his persuasion,
who were condemned to death at the same
assize at Aylesbury, under the atrocious
statute of the 35th of Elizabeth, for refus
ing either to abjure the realm or to conform
to the Church of England. J Attempts were
made to ensnare him into treason by anony
mous letters, inviting him to take a share in
plots which had no existence ; and he was
harassed by false accusations, some of which
made him personally known to Charles II.
arid also to Clarendon. The King applied to
him personally for the loan of 40,OOOL : this he
declined, offering the gift of 10;OOOL. and on
its being accepted, congratulated himself on
having saved 30.000?. Two of his grandsons,
although he had offered 3000Z. for their pre
servation, suffered death for being engaged
in Monmouth's revolt; and Jeffreys, on the
trial of one of them, had declared, that had
their grandfather been also at the bar, he
would have equally deserved death. James,
at one of their interviews, persuaded him,
partly through his fear of incurring a ruinous
fine in case of refusal, in spite of his plead
ing his inability through age (he was then
the strongest inducements to give accurate infor
mation. He had frequent and confidential inter
course with Halifax, Tillotson, and Stillingfleet.
* Wilson, History and Antiquities of Dissent-
ingr Churches, &c. — (London, 1808), vol. iii. p.
436.
t Wilson, vol. iii. p. 71. The Lawfulness of
the Oath of Supremacy asserted, &c., by Philip
Nye. ' (London, 1687'.)
t Orme, Life of Kiffin, p. 120. Crosby, vol. ii.
p. 181, &c.
! seventy years old, and could not speak of
his grandsons without tears) to accept the
office of an a.lderman under the protection
of the dispensing and suspending power.
Every means were employed to excite
1 the Nonconformists to thank the King for
his Indulgence. He himself assured D'Adda
that it would be of the utmost service to
trade and population, by recalling the nu
merous emigrants " who had been driven
! from their country by the persecution of the
Anglicans;"* and his common conversation
now turned on the cruelty of the Church of
England towards the Dissenters, which he
declared that he would have closed sooner,
had he not been restrained by those who
promised favour to his own religion, if they
were still suffered to vex the latter. t This
last declaration was contradicted by the par
ties whom he named ; and their denial might
be credited with less reserve, had not one of
the principal leaders of the Episcopal party
in Scotland owned that his friends would
have been contented if they could have been
assured of retaining the power to persecute
Presbyterians. t The King even ordered an
inquiry to be instituted into the suits against
Dissenters in ecclesiastical courts, and the
compositions which they paid, in order to
make a scandalous disclosure of the extortion
and venality practised under cover of the
penal la\vs.§ — assuring (as did also Lord
Sunderland) the Nuncio, that the Established
clergy traded in such compositions.il The
most just principles of unbounded freedom
in religion were now the received creed at
St. James'. Even Sir Roger L'Estrange
endeavoured to save his consistency by de
claring, that though he had for twenty years
resisted religious liberty as a right of the
people, he acquiesced in it as a boon from
the King.
On the other hand, exertions were made
to warn the Dissenters of the snare which
was laid for them : while the Church began
to make tardy efforts to conciliate them,
especially the Presbyterians. The King was
agitated by this canvass, and frequently
trusted the Nunciol" with his alternate hopes
and fears about it. Burnet, then at the
Hague, published a letter of warning, in
which he owns and deplores '• the persecu
tion," acknowledging " the temptation under
which the Nonconformists are to receive
every thing which gives them present ease
with a little too much kindness," blaming
more severely the members of the Church
who applauded the Declaration, but entreat-
* D'Adda, llth April, 1687.— MS.
t Burner, (Oxford, 1823), vol. iii. p. 175.
t " If it had not been for the fears of encourag
ing by such a liberty the fanatics, then almost en
tirely ruined, few would have refused to comply
with all your Majesty's demands." — Balcarras,
t Account of the Affairs of Scotland, p. 8.
§ Burnet, supra.
11 D'Adda, 18th April.— MS— Ministri Angli-
cani che facevano mercanzia sopra le leggi fatti
contro le Nonconformisti.
IT D'Adda, 2d May, 4th April.— MS
336
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ing the former not to promote the designs of
the common enemy.* The residence and
connections of the writer bestowed on this
publication the important character of an ad
monition from the Prince of Orange. He
had been employed by some leaders of the
Church party to procure the Prince's inter
ference with the Dissenting body:t and
Dykveldt, the Dutch minister, assured both
of his master's resolution to promote union
between them, and to maintain the common
interest of Protestants. Lord Halifax also
published, on the same occasion, a Letter to
a Dissenter, — the most perfect model, per
haps, of a political tract. — which, although
its whole argument, unbroken by diversion
to general topics, is brought exclusively to
bear with concentrated force upon the ques
tion, the parties, and the moment, cannot be
read, after an interval of a century and a
half, without admiration at its acuteness,
address, terseness, and poignancy.!
The Nonconformists were thus acted upon
by powerful inducements and dissuasives.
The preservation of civil liberty, the interest
of the Protestant religion, the secure enjoy
ment of freedom in their own worship, were
irresistible reasons against compliance. Gra
titude for present relief, remembrance of
recent wrongs, and a strong sense of the obli
gation to prefer the exercise of religion to
every other consideration, were very strong
temptations to a different conduct. Many
of them owed their lives to the King, and
the lives of others were still in his hands.
The remembrance of Jeffreys' campaign was
so fresh as perhaps still rather to produce
fear than the indignation and distrust which
appear in a more advanced stage of recovery
from the wounds inflicted by tyranny. The
private relief granted to some of their minis
ters by the Court on former occasions afforded
a facility for exercising adverse influence
through these persons, — the more dangerous
because it might be partly concealed from
themselves under the disguise of gratitude.
The result of the action of these conflicting
motives seerns to have been, that the far
greater part of all denominations of Dissen
ters availed themselves of the Declaration so
far as to resume their public worship ;§ that
the most distinguished of their clergy, and
the majority of the Presbyterians, resisted
the solicitations of the Court to sanction the
dispensing power by addresses of thanks for
this exertion of it ; and that all the Quakers,
* State Tracts from Restoration to Revolution
(London, 1639), vol. ii. p. 289.
t Burnet, Reflections on a Book called "Rights,
&c. of a Convocation," p. 16.
t Halifax. Miscellanies, p. 233.
$ Bates' Life of Philip Henry, in Wordsworth's
Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. vi. p. 290. " They
rejoiced with trentfiling." Henry refused to give
in a return of the money levied on him in his suf
ferings, having, as he said, " long since from his
heart forgiven all the agents in that matter."
" Mr. Banyan clearly saw through the designs of
the Court, though he accepted the Indulgence
with a holy fear." — Ivim-ey, Life of Bunyan. p. 297.
the greater part of the Baptists, and perhaps
also of the Independents, did not scruple to
give this perilous token of their misguided
gratitude, though many of them confined
themselves to thanks for toleration, and
solemn assurances that they would not
abuse it.
About a hundred and eighty of these
addresses were presented within a period
of ten months, of which there are only
seventy-seven exclusively and avowedly
from Nonconformists. If to these be added
a fair proportion of such as were at first
secretly and at last openly corporators and
grand jurors, and a larger share of those
who addressed under very general descrip
tions, it seems .probable that the numbers
were almost equally divided between the
Dissenting communions and the Established
Church.*" We have a specimen of these
last mentioned by Evelyn, in the address of
the Churchmen and dissenters of Coventry, t
and of a small congregation in the Isle of
Ely, called the "Family of Love." His
corriplainti that the Declaration had thinned
his own parish church of Deptford, and had
sent a great concourse of people to the meet
ing-house, throws light on the extent of the
previous persecution, and the joyful eager
ness to profit by their deliverance.
The Dissenters were led astray not only
by the lights of the Church, but by the pre
tended guardians of the laws. Five bishops,
Crew, of Durham, with his chapter, Cart-
wright of Chester, with his chapter, Barlow,
of Lincoln, Wood, of Lichfield, and Watson,
of St. David's, with the clergy of their dio
ceses, together with the Dean and Chapter
of Ripon, addressed the King, in terms
which were indeed limited to his assurance
of continued protection to the Church, but
at a time which rendered their addresses a
sanction of the dispensing power ] Croft, of
Hereford, though not an addresser, was a
zealous partisan of the measures of the
Court ; while the profligate Parker was un
able to prevail on the Chapter or clergy of
Oxford to join him, and the accomplished
Sprat was still a member of the Ecclesiasti-
* The addresses from bishops and their clergy
were seven ; those from corporations and grand
juries seventy-five ; those from inhabitants, &c.,
fourteen ; two from Catholics, and two from the
Middle and Inner Temple. If six addresses from
Presbyterians and Quakers in Scotland, Ireland,
and New England be deducted, as it seems that
they ought to be, the proportion of Dissenting
addresses was certainly less than one half. Some
of them, we know, were the produce of a sort of
personal canvass, when the King made his pro
gress in the autumn of 1687, "to court the com
pliments of the people ;" and one of them, in
which Philip Henry joined, "was not to offer
lives and fortunes to him, but to thank him for
the liberty, and to promise to demean themselves
quietly in the use of it " — Wordsworth, vol. v'..
p. 292. Address of Dissenters of Nantwich,
Wem, and Whitchurch. London Gazette, 29th
August.
t Evelyn, vol. i. Diary, 16th June.
t Ibid. 10th April.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
337
cal Commission, in which character he held
a high command in the adverse ranks : — so
that a third of the episcopal order refused to
concur in the coalition which the Church
was about to form with public liberty. A
bold attempt was made to obtain the appear
ance of a general Concurrence of lawyers
also in approving the usurpations of the
Crown. From two of the four societies,
called "Inns of Court," who have the exclu
sive privilege of admitting advocates to prac
tise at the bar, the Middle and Inner Temple,
addresses of approbation were published ;
though, from recent examination of the re
cords of these bodies, they do not appear to
have been ever voted by either. That of the
former, eminent above the others for fulsome
servility, is traditionally said to have been
the clandestine production of three of the
benchers, of whom. Chauncy, the historian
of Hertfordshire, was one. That of the
Inner Temple purports to have been the act
of certain students and the '-comptroller." —
an office of whose existence no traces are
discoverable. As Roger North had been
Treasurer of the Middle Temple three years
before, and as the crown lawyers were mem
bers of these societies, it is scarcely possible
that the Government should not have been
apprised of the imposture which they coun
tenanced by their official publication of these
addresses.* The necessity of recurring to
such a fraud, and the silence of the other
law societies, may be allowed to afford some
proof that the independence of the Bar was
not yet utterly extinguished. The subservi
ency of the Bench was so abject as to tempt
the Government to interfere \vith private
suits, which is one of the last and rarest
errors of statesmen under absolute mo
narchies. An official letter is still extantt
from Lord Sunderland, as Secretary of State,
to Sir Francis Watkins, a judge of assize,
recommending him to show all the favour to
Lady Shaftesbury, in the despatch of her
suit, to be tried at Salisbury, which the jus
tice of her cause should deserve : — so deeply
degraded were the judges in the eyes of the
ministers themselves.
CHAPTER VI.
D^Adda publicly received as the Nuncio. — Dis
solution of Parliament. — Find breach. —
Preparations for a new Parliament. — Neiv
charters. — Removal of Lord Lieutenants. —
Patronage of the Crown. — Moderate views
of Sunderland. — House of Lords. — Royal
progress. — Pregnancy of the Queen. — Lon
don has the appearance of a Catholic city.
THE war between Religious parties had
not yet so far subsided as to allow the
avowed intercourse of Princes of Protestant
communions with the See of Rome. In the
* London Gazette, June 9th.
t 24th February.— State Paper Office.
43
first violence of hostility, indeed, laws were
passed in England forbidding, under pain of
death, the indispensable correspondence of
Catholics with the head of their Church, and
even the bare residence of their priests
within the realm.* These laws, never to be
palliated except as measures of retaliation
in a warfare of extermination, had been often
executed without necessity and with slight
provocation. It was most desirable to pre
vent their execution and to procure their re
peal. But the object of the King in his
embassy to Rome was to select these odious
enactments, as the most specious case, in
which he might set an example of the osten
tatious contempt with which he was resolved
to trample on every law which stood in the
way of his designs. A nearer and more
signal instance than that embassy was re
quired by his zeal or his political projects.
D'Adda was accordingly obliged to undergo
a public introduction to the King at Windsor
as Apostolic Nuncio from the Pope ; and his
reception, — being an overt act of high trea
son, — was conducted with more than ordi
nary state, and announced to the public like
that of any other foreign minister. t The
Bishops of Durham and Chester were per
haps the most remarkable attendants at the
ceremonial. The Duke of Somerset, the
second Peer of the kingdom, was chosen
from the Lords of the Bedchamber as the
introducer; and his attendance in that cha
racter had been previously notified to the
Nuncio by the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord
Chamberlain : but, on the morning of the
ceremony, the Duke besought his Majesty
to excuse him from the performance of an
act which might expose him to the most
severe, animadversion of the law.J The
King answered, that he intended to confer
an honour upon him, by appointing him to
introduce the representative of so venerable
a potentate; and that the royal power of
dispensation had been solemnly determined
to be a sufficient warrant for such acts. —
The King is said to have angrily asked, " Do
you not know that I am above the law ?"§
to which the Duke is represented by the
same authorities to have replied. " Your
Majesty is so, but I am not;" — an answer
which was perfectly correct, if it be under
stood as above punishment by the law. The
Duke of Grafton introduced the Nuncio ; and
it was observed, that while the ambassadors
of the Emperor, and of the crowns of France
and Spain, were presented by Earls, persons
of superior dignity were appointed to do
the same office to the Papal minister; —
a singularity rather rendered alarming than
acceptable by the example of the Court
of France, which was appealed to by the
courtiers on this occasion. The same cere-
* 13 Eliz. c. 2.— 35 Eliz. c. 1.
t D'Adda, llth July.— MS. London Gazette,
4th to 7th July.
t Van Citters, 15th July.— MS.
$ Perhaps saying, or meaning to say, "in this
respect."
2D
338
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
monions introduction to the Queen Dowager
immediately followed. The King was very
desirous of the like presentation being made
to the Princess Anne, to whom it was cus
tomary to present foreign ministers ; but the
Nuncio declined a public audience of an
heretical princess :* and though we learn that.
a few days after, he \vas admitted by her to
what is called "a public audience,"! yet, as
it was neither published in the Gazette, nor
adverted to in his own letter, it seems pro
bable that she only received him openly as
a Roman prelate, who \vas to be treated
with the respect due to his rank, and with
whom it was equally politic to avoid the ap
pearance of clandestine intercourse and of
formal recognition. The King said to the
"Duke of Somerset, '•' As you have not chosen
to obey my commands in this case, I shall
not trouble you with any other;'7 and imme
diately removed him from his place in the
Household, from his regiment of dragoons,
and the Lord-lieutenancy of his county, —
continuing for some time to speak with indig
nation of this act of contumacy, and telling
the Nuncio, that the Duke's nearest relations
had thrown themselves at his feet, and as
sured him. that they detested the disobe
dience of their kinsman. t The importance
of the transaction consisted in its being a
decisive proof of how little estimation were
the judicial decisions in favour of the dis
pensing power in the eyes of the most loyal
and opulent of the nobility. §
The most petty incidents in the treatment
of the Nuncio \vere at this time jealously
watched by the public. By the influence
of the new members placed by James in the
corporation, he had been invited to a festival
annually given by the city of London, at
which the diplomatic body were then, as
now, accustomed to be present. Fearful of
insult, and jealous of his precedence, he con
sulted Lord Sunderland, and afterwards the
King, on the prudence of accepting the in
vitation. II The King pressed him to go,
also signifying to all the other foreign min
isters that their attendance at the festival
would be agreeable to him. The DutchlF
and Swedish ministers were absent. The
Nuncio was received unexpectedly well by
the populace, and treated with becoming
courtesy by the magistrates. But though
the King honoured the festival with his pre
sence, he could not prevail even on the alder
men of his own nomination to forbear from
the thanksgiving, on the 5th of November,
for deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot.**
On the contrary, Sir John Shorter, the Pres
byterian mayor, made haste to atone for the
invitation of D'Adda, by publicly receiving
* D'Adda, 16th July.— MS.
t Van Citters, 22d July.— MS.
t D'Adda, supra.
$ Barillon, 21st Julv.— Fox MSS.
II D'Adda, 7th— 14th Nov.— MS.
IT According to the previous instructions of the
States General, and the practice of their ministers
at the Congresses of Munster and Nimeprten.
** Narcissus Luttrell, Nov. 1687.— MS.
the communion according to the rites of the
hurch of England ;* — a strong mark of dis
trust in the dispensing power, and of the de
termination of the Presbyterians to adhere to
the common cause of Protestants.!
Another occasion offered itself, then es
teemed a solemn one,^or the King, in his
royal capacity, to declare publicly against
the Established Church. The kings of Eng
land had, from very ancient times, pretend
ed to a power of curing scrofula by touching
those who were afflicted by that malady;
and the Church had retained, after the Refor
mation, a service for the occasion, in which
her ministers officiated. James, naturally
enough, employed the mass book, and the
aid of the Roman Catholic clergy, in the
exercise of this pretended power of his
crowrn, according to the precedents in the
reign of Mary.f As we lind no complaint
from the Established clergy of the perver
sion of this miraculous prerogative, we are
compelled to suspect that they had no firm.
faith in the efficacy of a ceremony which
they solemnly sanctioned by their prayers. §
On the day before the public reception of
the Nuncio, the dissolution of Parliament had
announced a final breach between the Crown
and the Church. All means had been tried
to gain a majority in the House of Commons :
persuasion, influence, corruption, were in
adequate; the example of dismissal failed
to intimidate, — the hope of preferment to
allure. Neither the command obtained by
the Crown over the corporations, nor the
division among Protestants excited by the
Toleration, had sufficiently weakened the
opposition to the measures of the Court. It
was useless to attempt the execution of pro
jects to subdue the resistance of the Peers
by newr creations, till the other House was
either gained or removed. The unyielding
temper manifested by an assembly formerly
so submissive, seems, at first sight, unac
countable. It must, however, be borne in
mind, that the elections had taken place
under the influence of the Church party ;
that the interest of the Church had defeated
the ecclesiastical measures of the King in
the two former sessions; a«d that the im-
* Van Citters. 24th Nov.— MS.
t Catharine Shorter, the daughter and heiress
of this Presbyterian mayor, became, long after,
the wife of Sir Robert Walpole.
t Van Citters, 7th June, 1686.— MS.
§ It is well known that Dr. Samuel Johnson
was, when a child, touched for the scrofula by
Queen Anne. The princes of the House of Bruns
wick relinquished the practice. Cane, the his
torian, was so blinded by his zeal for the House
of Stuart as to assure the public that one Lovel, a
native of Bristol, who had gone to Avignon to be
touched by the son of James II. in 1716, was
really cured by that prince. A small piece of gold
was tied round the patient's neck, which explains
the number of applications. The gold sometimes
amounted to 3000Z. a year. Louis XIV. touched
sixteen hundred patients on Easter Sunday, 1686.
— See Barrington's Observations on Ancient
Statutes, pp. 108, 109. Lovel relapsed after Carte
had seen him. — General Biographical Dictionary,
article " Carte."
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
339
mense influence of the clergy over general
opinion, now seconded by the zealous ex
ertions of the friends of liberty, was little
weakened by the servile ambition of a few
of their number, who, being within the reach
of preferment, and intensely acted upon by
its attraction, too eagerly sought their own
advancement to regard the dishonour of de
serting their body. England was then fast
approaching to that state in which an opinion
is so widely spread, and the feelings arising
from it are so ardent, that dissent is account
ed infamous, and considered by many as
unsafe. It is happy when such opinions
(however inevitably alloyed by base ingre
dients, and productive of partial injustice)
are not founded in delusion, but on princi
ples, on the whole, beneficial to the commu
nity. The mere influence of shame, of fear,
of imitation, or of sympathy, is, at such mo
ments, sufficient to give to many men the
appearance of an integrity and courage little
to be hoped from their ordinary conduct.
The King had, early in the summer, as
certained the impossibility of obtaining the
consent of a majority of the House of Com
mons to a repeal of the Test and penal laws.
and appears to have shown a disposition to
try a new Parliament.* His more moderate
counsellors,"!" however, headed, as it appears,
by the Earl of Sunderland,t did not fail to
represent to him the mischiefs and dangers
of that irrevocable measure. u It was," they
said, "a perilous experiment to dissolve the
union of the Crown with the Church, and
to convert into enemies an order which
had hilherto supported unlimited autho
rity, and inculcated unbounded submission.
The submission of the Parliament had no
bounds except the rights or interests of
the Church. The expense of an increas
ing army would speedily require parliamen
tary aid , the possible event of the death of
the King of Spain without issue might in
volve all Europe in war :§ for these purposes,
* Van Citters, 13th June.— MS.
tBarillon, 12th June.— Fox MSS.
t D'Adda, 7th— 22d August.— M.S.
§ The exact coincidence, in this respect, of Sun-
derland's public defence, nearly two years after
wards, with the Nuncio's secret despatches of the
moment, is worthy of consideration : —
"I hindered the dissolu
tion several weeks, by tell- " DalP altra parte
ing the King that the Parlia- si poteva promettere
ment would do every thine he S. M. del medesimo
could desire but the taking off parlamento ogni as-
the tests ; that another Parlia- sistenza maggiore de
ment would probably not re- denaro, si S. M. fosse
peal these laws: and, if they obligate di entrare in
did, would do nothing else for una guerra straniera,
the support /if government. I ponderando il caso
said often, if the King of Spain possibile della morte
died, his Majesty could not pre- del Re di Spagria sen-
Bervft the peace of Europe; za successione. Ques-
that he rnicht be sure of all ti e simili vantaggi
the help and service he could non doverse attendere
wish from the present Parlia- d'un nuovo parlamen-
ment, but if he dissolved it he to composto di Non-
must give up all thoughts of conformist!, nutrendo,
foreign affairs, for no other per li principi, senti-
would ever assist him but on menti totalmerite con-
such terms as would ruin the trarii alia monarchia.
monarcny." — Lord Sunder- "D'ADDA."
land's Letter, licensed 23d
March, 1689.
and for every other that concerned the
honour of the Crown, this loyal Parliament
were ready to grant the most liberal sup
plies. Even in ecclesiastical matters, though
they would not at once yield all. they would
in time grant much : when the King had
quieted the alarm and irritation of the mo
ment, they would, without difficulty, repeal
all the laws commonly called "penal." The
King's dispensations, sanctioned by the de
cisions of the highest authority of the law,
obviated the evil of the laws of disability j
and it would be wiser for the Catholics to
leave the rest to time and circumstances,
than to provoke severe retaliation by the
support of measures which the immense
majority of the people dreaded as subversive
of their religion and liberty. What hope of
ample supply or steady support could the
King entertain from a Parliament of Non
conformists, the natural enemies of kingly
power ? What faith could the Catholics place
in these sectaries, the most Protestant of
Protestant communions, of whom the larger
part looked on relief from persecution, when
tendered by Catholic hands, with distrust
and fear: and who believed that the friend
ship of the Church of Rome for them would
last no longer than her inability to destroy
them?" To this it was answered, " that it was
now too late to inquire whether a more wary
policy might not have been at first more ad
visable • that the King could not stand where
he was; that he would soon be compelled to
assemble a Parliament : and that, if he pre
served the present, their first act would be
to impeach the judges, who had determined
in favour of the dispensing power. To call
them together, would be to abandon to their
rage all the Catholics who had accepted office
on the faith of the royal prerogative. If the
Parliament were not to be assembled, they
were at least useless; and their known dis
position would, as long as they existed, keep
up the spirit of audacious disaffection: if
they were assembled, they would, even
during the King's life, tear away the shield
of the dispensing power, which, at all events,
never would be stretched out to cover Catho
lics by the hand of the Protestant successor.
All the power gained by the monarchy over
corporations having been used in the last
election by Protestant Tories, was now acting
against the Crown : by extensive changes in
the government of counties and corporations,
a more favourable House of Commons, and
if an entire abrogation should prove imprac
ticable, a better compromise, might be ob
tained."
Sunderland informed the Nuncio that the
King closed these discussions by a declara
tion that, having ascertained the determina
tion of the present Parliament not to concur
in his holy designs, and having weighed all
the advantages of preserving it. he consider
ed them as far inferior to his 'great object,
which was the advancement of the Catholic
religion. Perhaps, indeed, this determina
tion, thus apparently dictated by religious
zeal, was conformable to the maxims of civil
340
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
prudence, unless the King was prepared to
renounce his encroachments, and content
himself with that measure of toleration for
his religion which the most tolerant states
then dealt out to their dissenting subjects.
The next object was so to influence the
elections as to obtain a more yielding ma
jority. At an early period Sunderland had
represented two hundred members of the
late House "as necessarily dependent on the
Crown ;"* — probably not so much a sanguine
hope as a political exaggeration, which, if
believed, might realise itself. He was soon
either undeceived or contradicted : the King
desired all bound to him, either by interest
or attachment, to come singly to private au
diences in his clo'set,f that he might ask their
support to his measures; and the answers
which he received were regarded by by
standers as equivalent to a general refusal. J
This practice, then called "closeting." was,
it must be owned, a very unskilful species
of canvass, where the dignity of the King
left littls room for more than a single ques
tion a'nd answer, and where other parties
were necessarily forewarned of the subject
of the interview, which must have soon be
come so generally known as to expose the
more yielding part of them to the admoni
tions of their more courageous friends. It
was easy for an eager monarch, on an occa
sion which allowed so little explanation, to
mistake evasion, delay, and mere courtesy,
for an assent to his proposal. But the new
influence, and, indeed, power, which had
been already gained by the Crown over the
elective body seemed to be so great as to
afford the strongest motives for assembling a
new Parliament.
In the six years which followed the first
judgments of forfeiture, two hundred and
forty-two newr charters of incorporation had
passed the seals to replace those which had
been thus judicially annulled or voluntarily
resigned. § From this number, however,
must be deducted those of the plantations
on the continent and islands of America,
some new incorporations on grounds of gene
ral policy,!! and several subordinate corpora
tions in cities and towns, — though these last
materially affected parliamentary elections.
The House then consisted of five hundred
and five members, of whom two hundred
and forty-four were returned on rights of
election altogether or in part corporate; this
required only a hundred and twenty-two
new charters. But to many corporations more
than one charter had been issued, after the
extorted surrenders of others, to rivet them
more firmly in their dependency ; and if any
were spared, it can only have been because
* D'Adda, 10th Oct. 1686.— 7th Feb. 1687 —
MS.
t Id. 24th Jan.— MS.
I Van Citters, 24th Jan.— MS.
$ Lords' Journals, 20th Dec. 1689.
II Of these, those of the College of Physicians
and the town of Bombay, are mentioned by Nar
cissus Luttrell.
they were considered as sufficiently enslaved,
and some show of discrimination was con
sidered as politic. In six years, therefore, it
is evident, that by a few determinations of
servile judges, the Crown had acquired the
direct, uncontrolled, and perpetual nomina
tion of nearly one half of the House of Com
mons : and when we recollect the independ
ent and ungovernable spirit manifested by
that assembly in the last fifteen years of
Charles II., we may be disposed to conclude
that there is no other instance in history of
so great a revolution effected in so short a
time by the mere exercise of judicial au
thority. These charters, originally contrived
so as to vest the utmost power in the Crown,
might, in any instance where experience
showed them to be inadequate, be rendered
still more effectual, as a power of substituting
others \vas expressly reserved in each.* In
order to facilitate the effective exercise of
this powTer, commissioners were appointed to
be "regulators" of corporations, with full
authority to remove and appoint freemen and
corporate officers at their discretion. The
Chancellor, the Lords Powis, Sunderland,
Arundel, and Castlemaine, with Sir Nicholas
Butler and Father Petre, were regulators of
the first class, who superintended the whole
operation. t Sir Nicholas Butler and Dun-
combe, a banker, " regulated" the corpora
tion of London, from which they removed
nineteen hundred freemen ; and yet Jeffreys
incurred a reprimand, from his impatient
master, for want of vigour in changing the
corporate bodies, and humbly promised to
repair his fault : for " every Englishman who
becomes rich," said Barillon, "is more dis
posed to favour the popular party than the
designs of the King. '''I These regulators
wrere sent to every part of the country, and
were furnished with letters from the Secre
tary of State, recommending them to the aid
of the Lord lieutenants of counties.^
When the election was supposed to be
near, circular letters were sent to the Lord
lieutenants, and other men of influence, in
cluding even the Chief Justice of the King's
Bench, recommending them to procure the
election of persons mentioned therein by
name, to the number of more than a hun
dred. Among them wTere eighteen members
for counties, and many for those towns which,
as their rights of election were not corporate,
wrere not yet subjected to the Crown by le
gal judgments. II In this list we find the un
expected name of John Somers, probably se
lected from a hope that his zeal for religious
liberty might induce him to support a Go-
* Reign of James II. p. 21. — Parliamentum
Pacificum, (London, 1688,) p. 29. The latter
pamphlet boasts of these provisions. The Pro
testant Tories, says the writer, cannot question a
power by which many of themselves were brought
into the House.
t Lords' Journals, supra.
t Barillon, 8th Sept.— MS.
$ Dated 21st July.— State Paper Office.
II Lord Sunderland's Letters, Sept. — Ibid.
REVIEW OF THE PAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
341
vernment which professed so comprehensive
a toleration: but it was quickly discovered
that he was too wise to be ensnared, and the
clerk of the Privy Council was six days after
judiciously substituted in his stead. It is
due to James and his minister to remark,
that these letters are conceived in that official
form which appears to indicate established
practice: and, indeed, most of these prac
tices were not only avowed, but somewhat
ostentatiously displayed as proofs of the
King's confidence in the legitimacy and suc
cess of his measures. Official letters* had
also been sent to the Lord lieutenants, di
recting them to obtain answers from the de
puty-lieutenants and justices of the peace of
their respective counties, to the questions, —
Whether, if any of them were chosen to
serve in Parliament, they would vote for the
repeal of the penal laws and the Test ? and
Whether they would contribute to the elec
tion of other members of the like disposi
tion ? and also to ascertain what corporations
in each county were well affected, what in
dividuals had influence enough to be elect
ed, and what Catholics and Dissenters were
qualified to be deputy-lieutenants or justices
of the peace.
Several refused to obey so unconstitutional
a command : their refusal had been fore
seen ; and so specious a pretext as that of
disobedience was thus found for their re
moval from office.! Sixteen Lieutenancies,!
held by fourteen Lieutenants, were imme
diately changed ; the majority of whom
were among the principal noblemen of the
kingdom, to whom the government of the
most important provinces had, according to
ancient usage, been intrusted. The removal
of Lord Scarsdale§ from his Lieutenancy of
Derbyshire displayed the disposition of the
Princess Anne, and furnished some scope
for political dexterity on her part and on that
of her father. Lord Scarsdale holding an
office in the household of Prince George, the
Princess sent Lord Churchill to the King
from herself and her husband, humbly de
siring to know his Majesty's pleasure how
they should deal with one of the Prince's
servants who had incurred the King's dis
favour. The King, perceiving that it was
intended to throw Scarsdale's removal from
their household upon him, and extremely
solicitous that it should appear to be his
daughter's spontaneous act, and thus seem
a proof of her hearty concurrence in his
measures, declared his reluctance to pre
scribe to them in the appointment or dis
missal of their officers. The Princess (for
Prince George was a cipher) contented her
self with this superficial show of respect,
and resolved that the sacrifice of Scarsdale,
if ever made, should appear to be no more
* Dated 5th Oct.— State Paper Office. Van
Citters' account exactly corresponds with the
original document.
t Barillon, 8th Dec— MS. " II alloit faire cette
tentative pour avoir un pretexte de les changer."
t Id. 18th Dec. $ Id. 15th Dec.
than the bare obedience of a subject and a
daughter. James was soon worsted in this
conflict of address, and was obliged to notify
his pleasure that Scarsdale should be re
moved, to avoid the humiliation of seeing
his daughter's court become the refuge of
those whom he had displaced.* The vacant
Lieutenancies were bestowed on Catholics,
with the exception of Mulgrave, (who had
promised to embrace the King's faith, but
whose delays begot suspicions of his sin
cerity,) and of Jeffreys, Sunderland, and
Preston; who, though they continued to pro
fess the Protestant religion, were no longer
members of the Protestant party. Five co
lonels of cavalry, two of infantry, and four
governors of fortresses, (some of whom were
also Lord lieutenants, and most of them of
the same class of persons,) were removed
from their commands. Of thirty-nine new
sheriffs, thirteen were said to be Roman Ca
tholics. t Alihough the proportion of gentry
among the Nonconformists was less, yet
their numbers being much greater, it cannot
be doubted that a considerable majority of
these magistrates were such as the King
thought likely to serve his designs.
Even the most obedient and zealous Lord
lieutenants appear to have been generally
unsuccessful : the Duke of Beaufort made
an unfavourable report of the principality of
Wales; arid neither the vehemence of Jef
freys, nor the extreme eagerness of Roches
ter, made any considerable impression in
their respective counties. Lord Waldegrave,
a Catholic, the King's son-in-law, found in
surmountable obstacles in Somersetshire^
Lord Molyneux, also a Catholic, appointed
to the Lieutenancy of Lancashire, made an
unfavourable report even of that county,
then the secluded abode of an ancient Ca
tholic gentry; and Dr. Leyburn, who had
visited every part of England in the dis
charge of his episcopal duty, found little to
encourage the hopes and prospects of the
King. The most general answer appears to
have been, that if chosen to serve in Parlia
ment, the individuals to whom the questions
were put would vote according to their con
sciences, after hearing the reasons on both
sides ; that they could not promise to vote
in a manner which their own judgment after
discussion might condemn ; that if they en
tered into so unbecoming an engagement,
they might incur the displeasure of the
House of Commons for betraying its privi
leges; and that they would justly merit con
demnation from all good men for disabling
themselves from performing the duty of
* Barillon, 30ih August.— Fox MSS.
t The names are marked in a handwriting ap
parently contemporary, on the margin of the list,
in a copy of the London Gazette now before me.
Van Citters (14th Nov.) makes the sheriffs almost
all either Roman Catholics or Dissenters, — pro
bably an exaggeration. In his despatch of 16th
Dec., he states the sheriffs to be thirteen Catho
lics, thirteen Dissenters, and thirteen submissive
Churchmen.
t D'Adda, 12th Dec.— MS.
2o 2
342
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
faithful subjects by the honest declaration
of their judgment on those arduous affairs
on which they were to advise and aid the
King. The Court was incensed by these
answers ; but to cover their defeat, and
make their resolution more known, it was
formally notified in the London Gazette.*
that " His Majesty, being resolved to main
tain the Declaration of Liberty of Conscience,
and to use the utmost endeavours that it may
pass into a law, and become an established
security for after ages, has thought fit to re
view the lists of deputy-lieutenants and jus
tices of the peace; that those may continue
who are willing to contribute to so good and
necessary a work, and such others be added
from whom he may reasonably expect the
like concurrence."
It is very difficult to determine in what
degree the patronage of the Crown, military,
civil and ecclesiastical, at that period, influ
enced parliamentary elections. The colonies
then scarcely contributed to it.f No offices
in Scotland and few in Ireland, were bestow
ed for English purposes. The revenue was
small compared with that of after times,
even after due allowance is made for the
subsequent change in the value of money :
but it was collected at such a needless ex
pense as to become, from the mere ignorance
and negligence of the Government, a source
of influence much more than proportioned
to its amount. The Church was probably
guarded for the moment by the zeal and
honour of its members, against the usual
effects of royal patronage ; and even the
mitre lost much of its attractions, while the
see of York was believed to be kept vacant
for a Jesuit. A standing army of thirty
thousand men presented new means of pro
vision, and objects of ambition to the young
gentry, who then monopolized military ap
pointments. The revenue, small as it now
seems, had increased in proportion to the
national wealth, more in the preceding half
century than in any equal time since ; and
the army had within that period come into
existence. It is not easy to decide whether
the novelty and rapid increase of these means
of bestowing gratification increased at the
same time their power over the mind, or
whether it was not necessarily more feeble,
until long experience had directed the eyes
of the community habitually towards the
Crown as the source of income and advance
ment. It seems reasonable to suppose that
it rniyht at first produce more violent move-
ments; and in the sequel more uniform sup
port. All the offices of provincial adminis
tration were then more coveted than they
are now. Modern legislation and practice
had not yet withdrawn any part of that ad
ministration from lieutenants, deputy-lieu-
tents, sheriffs, coroners, which had been
placed in their hands by the ancient laws.
* Of the llth Dec.
t Chamberlayne, Present State of England.
London, 1674.)
A justice of the peace exercised a power over
his inferior never controlled by public opinion,
and for the exercise of which he could hardly
be said to be practically amenable to law.
The influence of Government has abated as
the powers of these officers have been con
tracted, or their exercise more jealously
watched. Its patronage cannot be justly
estimated, unless it be compared with the
advantage to be expected from other objects
of pursuit. The professions called "learn
ed" had then fewer stations and smaller in
comes than in subsequent periods : in com
merce, the disproportion was immense : there
could hardly be said to be any manufactures;
and agriculture was unskilful, and opulent
farmers unheard of. Perhaps the whole
amount of income and benefits at the dis
posal of the Crown bore a larger proportion
to that which might be earned in all the
other pursuits raised above mere manual
labour than might at first sight be supposed :
how far the proportion was less than at pre
sent it is hard to say. But patronage in the
hands of James was the auxiliary of great
legal power through the Lord lieutenants,
and of the direct nomination of the members
for the corporate towns. The grossest spe
cies of corruption had been practised among
members ;* and the complaints which were
at that time prevalent of the expense of
elections, render it very probable that bribery
was spreading among the electors. Expen
sive elections have, indeed, no other neces
sary effect than that of throwing the choice
into the hands of wealthy candidates ; but
they afford too specious pretexts for the
purchase of votes, not to be employed in
eager contests, as a disguise of that prac
tice.
The rival, though sometimes auxiliary, influ
ence of great proprietors, seems to have been
at that time, at least, as considerable as at any
succeeding moment. The direct power of
nominating members must have been vested
in many of them by the same state of suf
frage and property which confer it on them
at present, t while" they were not rivalled in
more popular elections by a moriied interest.
The power of landholders over their tenants
was not circumscribed ; and in all country
towns they were the only rich customers
of tradesmen who had then only begun to
emerge from indigence and dependence. The
majority of these landholders were Tories,
and now adhered to the Church; the mino
rity, consisting of the most opulent and noble,
were the friends of liberty, who received
with open arms their unwonted allies.
From the naturally antagonist force of
popular opinion little was probably dreaded
by the Court. The Papal, the French, and
the Dutch ministers, as well as the King and
Lord Sunderland, in' their unreserved confer
ences with the first two, seem to have point
ed all their expectations and solicitudes to
wards the uncertain conduct of powerful in-
* Pension Parliament. t 1826.— ED.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
343
dividuals. The body of the people could not
read : one portion of them had little knowledge
of the sentiments of another ; no publication
\vas tolerated, on a level with the information
then possessed even by the middle classes :
and the only channel through which they
could be acted upon was the pulpit, which
the King had vainly, though perfidiously,
endeavoured to shut up. Considerable im
pediments stood in the way of the King's
direct power over elections, in the difficulty
of finding- candidates for Parliament not alto-
f ether disreputable, and corporators whose
clelity might be relied on. The moderate
Catholics reluctantly concurred in the preci
pitate measures of the Court. They were
disqualified, by long exclusion from business,
for those offices to which their rank and for
tune gave them a natural claim ; and their
whole number was so small, that they could
contribute no adequate supply of fit persons
for inferior stations.* The number of the
Nonconformists were, on the other hand,
considerable ; amounting, probably, to a six
teenth of the whole people, without includ
ing the compulsory and occasional Conform
ists, whom the Declaration of Indulgence
had now encouraged to avow their real sen
timents. f Many of them had acquired
wealth by trade, which under the Republic
and the Protectorate began to be generally
adopted as a liberal pursuit; but they were
confined to the great towns, and were chiefly
of the Presbyterian persuasion, who were ill
affected to the Court. Concerning the greater
number, who were to form the corporations
throughout the country, it was difficult to
obtain accurate information, and hard to be
lieve that in the hour of contest, they could
forget their enthusiastic animosity against
the Church of Rome. As the project of in
troducing Catholics into the House of Com
mons by an exercise of the dispensing power
had been abandoned, nothing could be ex
pected from them but aid in elections ; and
if one eighth — a number so far surpassing
their natural share — should be Nonconform
ists, they would still bear a small proportion
to the whole body. These intractable diffi
culties, founded in the situation, habits, and
opinions of men, over which measures of
policy or legislation have no direct or sudden
power, early suggested to the more wary of the
King's counsellors the propriety of attempting
some compromise, by which he might imme
diately gain more advantage and security for
the Catholics than could have been obtained
* By Sir William Petty's computation, which
was the largest, the number of Catholics in Eng
land and Wales, about the accession of James,
M-as thirty-two thousand. The survey of bishops
in 1676, by order of Charles II., made it twenty-
seven thousand. Barlow (Bishop of Lincoln.) Ge
nuine Remains, (London, 1693,) p. 312. " George
Fox," said Petty, " made five times more Qua
kers in forty-four years than the Pope, with all
his greatness, has made Papists.1'
t Barlow, supra. — About two hundred and fifty
thousand, when the population was little more
than lour millions.
from the Episcopalian Parliament, and open
the way for further advances in a more fa
vourable season.
Shortly after the dissolution, Lord Sunder-
land communicated to the Nuncio his opin
ions on the various expedients by which the
jealousies of the Nonconformists might be
satisfied.* " As we have wounded the An
glican party," said he, "we must destroy it,
and use every means to strengthen as well
as conciliate the other, that the whole nation
may not be alienated, and that the army may
not discover the dangerous secret of the
exclusive reliance of the Government upon
its fidelity." "Among the Nonconformists
were," he added, " three opinions relating
to the Catholics : that of those w ho would re
peal all the penal laws against religious wor
ship, but maintain the disabilities for office
and Parliament: that of those who would
admit the Catholics to office, but continue
their exclusion from both Houses of Par
liament; and that of a still more indul
gent party, who would consent to remove
the recent exclusion of the Catholic peers,
trusting to the oath of supremacy in the
reign of Elizabeth, as a legal, though it had
not proved in practice a constant, bar against
their entrance into the House of Commons: —
to say nothing of a fourth project, entertained
by zealous Catholics and thorough courtiers,
that Catholic peers and commoners should
claim their seats in both Houses by virtue
of royal dispensations, which would relieve
them from the oaths and declarations against
their religion required by law, — an attempt
which the King himself had felt to be too
hazardous, as being likely to excite a general
commotion on the first day of the session, to
produce an immediate rupture with the newr
Parliament, and to forfeit all the advantage
which had been already gained by a deter
mination of both Houses against the validity
of the dispensations." He further added,
that " he had not hitherto conferred on these
weighty matters with any but the King, that
he wished the Nuncio to consider them, and
was desirous to govern his own conduct by
that prelate's decision." At the same time
he gave DrAdda to understand, that he was
inclined to some of the above conciliatory
expedients, observing, "that it was better to
go on step by step, than obstinately to aim
at all with the risk of gaining nothing;" and
hinting, that this pertinacity was peculiarly
dangerous, where all depended on the life
of James. Sunderland's purpose was to in
sinuate his own opinions into the mind of the
Nuncio, who was the person most likely to
reconcile the King and his priests to only
partial advantages. But a prelate of the
Roman Court, however inferior to Sunder-
land in other respects, was more than his
match in the art of evading the responsi
bility which attends advice in perilous con
junctures. With many commendations of
his zeal. D'Adda professed "his incapacity
D'Adda, 7th August.— MS.
344
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of judging in a case which involved the
opinions and interests of so many individu-
ils and classes; hut he declared, that the
fervent prayers of his Holiness, and his own
feeble supplications, would be offered to God,
for light and guidance to his Majesty and his
ministers in the prosecution of their wise arid
pious designs."
William Perm proposed a plan different
from any of the temperaments mentioned
above ; which consisted in the exclusion of
Catholics from the House of Commons, and
the division of all the public offices into three
equal parts, one of which should belong to
the Church, another should be open to the
Nonconformists, and a third to the Catho
lics:* — an extremely unequal distribution,
if it implied the exclusion of the members
of the Church from two thirds of the stations I
in the public service; and not very mode
rate, if it should be understood only as pro
viding against the admission of the dissidents
to more than two thirds of these offices.
Eligibility to one third would have been a
more equitable proposition, and perhaps bet
ter than any but that which alone is perfect
ly reasonable, — that the appointment to office
should be altogether independent of religious
opinion. An equivalent for the Test was
held out at the same time, which had a very
specious and alluring appearance. It was
proposed that an Act for the establishment
of religious liberty should be passed ; that
all men should be sworn to its observance;
that it should be made a part of the corona
tion oath, and rank among the fundamental
laws, as the Magtia Chart a of Conscience ;
and that any attempt to repeal it should be
declared to 'be a capital crime. t
The principal objections to all these miti
gated or attractive proposals arose from dis
trust in the King's intention. It did not de
pend on the conditions offered, and was as
fatal to moderate compromise as to unclis-
tinguishing surrender. The nation were now
in a temper to consider every concession
made to the King as an advantage gained by
an enemy, which mortified their pride, as
well as lessened their safety : they regarded
negotiation as an expedient of their adver
saries to circumvent, disunite, and dishearten
them.
The state of the House of Lords was a very
formidable obstacle. Two lists of the pro
bable voles in that assembly on the Test and
penal laws were sent to Holland, and one to
France, which are still extant. t These vary
in some respects from each other, according
to the information of the writers, and proba
bly according to the fluctuating disposition
of some Peers. The greatest division ad
verse to the Court which they present, is
"T Johnstone, 13th Jan. 1688.— MS.
t •' Good Advice." " Parliamentum Pacifi-
cum."
t The reports sent to Holland were communi
cated to me by the Duke of Portland. One of
them purports to be drawn by Lord Willoughby,
That sent by Barillon is from the Depot des Af
f'aires Etrangeres at Paris.
ninety-two against the repeal of the penal
and disabling laws to thirty-five for it, be
sides twenty whose votes are called "doubt
ful," and twenty-three disabled as Catholics :
the least is eighty-six to thirty-three, besides
ten doubtful and twenty-one Catholic. Singu
lar as it may seem, Rochester, the leader of
the Church party, is represented in all the
lists as being for the repeal. From this
agreement, and from his officious zeal as
Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, it cannot
be doubted that he had promised his vote
to the King; and though it is hard to say
whether his promise was sincere, or whether
treachery to his parly or insincerity to his
old master would be most deserving of
blame, he cannot be acquitted of a grave
offence either against political or personal
morality. His brother Clarendon, a man of
ess understanding and courage, is numbered
n one list as doubtful, and represented by
mother as a supporter of the Court. Lord
Churchill is stated 1o be for the repeal, —
irobably from the confidence of the writers
.hat gratitude would in him prevail over
every other motive ; for it appears that on
his subject he had the merit of not having
lissembled his sentiments to his royal bene
factor.* Lord Godolphin, engaged rather in
ordinary business than in political councils,
was numbered in the ranks of official sup
porters. As Lord Dartmouth, Lord Preston,
ind Lord Feversham never fluctuated on
religion, they deserve the credit of being
•ather blinded by personal attachment, than
tempted by interest or ambition, in their
support of the repeal. t Howard of Escrick
and Grey de Werke, who had saved their
own lives by contributing to take away those
of their friends, appear in the minority as
slaves of the Court. Of the bishops only
bur had gone so far as to be counted in all
the lists as voters for the King.!' Wood of
Lichfield appears to be with the four in one
list, and doubtful in another. The compli
ancy of Sprat had been such as to place him
perhaps unjustly in the like situation. Old
Barlow of Lincoln was thought doubtful.
The other aged prelate, Crofts of Hereford,
though he deemed himself bound to obey
the King as a bishop, claimed the exercise
of his own judgment as a lord of Parliament.
Sunderland, who is marked as a disabled
Catholic in one of the lists, and as a doubtful
voter in another, appears to have obtained
* Coxe, Memoirs, &c. vol. i. pp. 23—29, where
the authorities are collected, to which may be ad
ded the tesiimony of Johnstone : — " Lord Church
ill swears he will not do what the King requires
from him."— Letter 12th Jan. 1688.— MS.
t Johnstone, however, who knew them, did
not ascribe their conduct to frailties so generous :
" Lord Feversham and Lord Dartmouth are de
sirous of acting honourably : but the first is mean-
gpirited ; and the second has an empty purse, yet
aims at living grandly. Lord Preston desires to
be an honest man ; but if he were not your friend
and my relation, I should say that he is both Fe
versham and Dartmouth." — Ibid.
t Durham (Crew), Oxford (Parker), Chester
(Cartwright), and St. David's (Watson).
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
345
the royal consent to a delay of his public
profession, of the Catholic religion, that he
might retain his ability to serve it by his vote
in Parliament.* Mulgrave was probably in
the same predicament. If such a majority
was to continue immovable, the counsels of
the King must have become desperate, or he
must have had recourse to open force : but
this perseverance was improbable. Among
the doubtful there might have been some
who concealed a determined resolution under
the exterior of silence or of hesitation. Such,
though under a somewhat different disguise^
was the Marquis of Winchester, who in
dulged and magnified the eccentricities of
an extravagant character; counterfeited, or
rather affected a disordered mind, as a secu
rity in dangerous times, like the elder Brutus
in the legendary history of Rome; and tra
velling through England in the summer of
1687, with a retinue of four coaches and a
hundred horsemen, slept during the day,
gave splendid entertainments in the night,
and by torch-light, or early dawn, pursued
the sports of hunting and hawking.t But
the majority of the doubtful must have been
persons who assumed that character to en
hance their price, or who lay in wait for the
turns of fortune, or watched for the safe
moment of somewhat anticipating her deter
mination: of such men the powerful never
despair. The example of a very few would
be soon followed by the rest, and if they or
many of them were gained, the accession of
strength could not fail to affect the timid and
mercenary who are to be found in all bodies,
and whose long adherence to the Opposition
was already wonderful. .
But the subtile genius of Lord Sunderland,
not content with ordinary means of seduc
tion and with the natural progress of deser
tion, had long meditated an expedient for
quickening the latter, and for supplying in
some measure the place of both. He had
long before communicated to the Nuncio a
plan for subduing the obstinacy of the Upper
House by the creation of the requisite num
ber of new Peerst devoted to his Majesty's
measures. He proposed to call up by writ
the elder sons of friendly Lords; which
would increase his present strength, without
the incumbrance of new peerages, whose
future holders might be independent. Some
of the Irish, § and probably of the Scotch no
bility, whose rank made their elevation to
the English peerage specious, and whose
fortunes disposed them to dependency on
royal bounty, attracted his attention, as they
did that of those ministers who carried his
project into execution twenty-five years after
wards. He was so enamoured of this plan,
* " Ministers and others about, the King, who
have civen him grounds to expect that they will
turn Papists, say, that if they change before the
Parliament they cannot be useful ~to H. M. in
Parliament, as the Test will exclude them." —
Johnstone, 8th Dec. 1687.— MS.
t Reresby, p. 247.
JD'Adda, llth October, 1686.— MS.
§ Johnstone, 27th Feb. 1688.— MS.
44
that in a numerous company, where the re
sistance of the Upper House was said to be
formidable, he cried out to Lord Churchill,
"0 silly ! why, your troop of guards shall be
called to the House of Lords !??* On another
occasion (if it be not a different version of
the same anecdote) he declared, that sooner
than not gain a majority in the House of
Lords, he would make all Lord Feversham's
troop Peers. f The power of the Crown was
in this case unquestionable. The constitu
tional purpose for which the prerogative of
creating Peers exists, is, indeed, either to
reward public service, or to give dignity to
important offices, or to add ability and know
ledge to a part of the legislature, or to repair
the injuries of time, by the addition of new
wealth to an aristocracy which may have
decayed. But no law limits its exercise. t
By the bold exercise of the prerogative of
creating Peers, and of the then equally un
disputed right of granting to towns the privi
lege of sending members to Parliament, it is
evident that the King possessed the fullest
means of subverting the constitution by law.
The obstacles to the establishment of despo
tism consisted in his own irresolution or un-
skilfulness, in the difficulty of finding a suffi
cient number of trustworthy agents, and in
such a determined hostility of the body of
the people as led sagacious observers to for-
bode an armed resistance. § The firmness
of the Lords has been ascribed to their fears
of a resumption of the Church property con
fiscated at the Reformation : but at the dis
tance of a century and a half, and after the
dispersion of much of that property by suc
cessive sales, such fears were too groundless
to have had a considerable influence. But
though they ceased to be distinctly felt, and
to act separately, it cannot be doubted that
the remains of apprehensions once so strong,
still contributed to fortify that dread of Po
pery, which was an hereditary point of ho
nour among the great families aggrandized
and enriched under the Tudors.
At the same time the edge of religious
animosity among the people at large was
* Burnet, (Oxford, 1823), vol. iii. p. 249; Lord
Dartmouth's note.
t Halifax MSS. The turn of expression would
seem to indicate different conversations. At all
events, Halifax affords a strong corroboration.
t It is, perhaps, not easy to devise such a limi
tation, unless it should be provided that no newly
created Peer should vote till a certain period after
his creation ; which, in cases of signal service,
would be ungracious, and in those of official dig
nity inconvenient.
§ On suivra ici le projet d'avoir un parliament
tant qu'il ne paroitra pas impraticable ; mais s'il
ne reussit pas, le Roi d'Angleterre pretendra lairo
par son autorite ce qu'il n'aura pas obtenu pai la
voie d'un parliament. C'est en ce cas la qu'il
aurabesoin de ses amis au dedans et au dehors, et
il recevra alors des oppositions qui approcheront
fort d'une rebellion ouverte. On ne doit pas
douter qu'elle ne soit soutenue par M. le Prince
d' Orange, et que beaucoup de gens quiparoissent
attaches au Roi d'Angleterre ne lui manquenf au
besoin ; cette epreuve sera fort perilleuse."— Ba-
rillon, Windsor, 9th October, 1687.— MS.
346
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
sharpened by the controversy then revived
between the divines of the two Churches.
A dispute about the truth of their religion
\vas insensibly blended with contests con
cerning the safety of the Establishment ; and
complete toleration brought with it that
hatred which is often fiercer, and always
more irreconcilable, against the opponents
of our religious opinions than against the
destroyers of our most important interests.
The Protestant Establishment and the cause
of liberty owed much, it must be owned, to
this dangerous and odious auxiliary; while
the fear, jealousy, and indignation of the peo
ple were more legitimately excited against a
Roman Catholic Government by the barbar
ous persecution of the Protestants in France,
and by the unprovoked invasion of the val
leys of Piedmont ; — both acts of a monarch
of whom their own sovereign was then be
lieved to be, as he is now known to have
been, the creature.
The King had, in the preceding year, tried
the efficacy of a progress through a part of
the kingdom, to conciliate the nobility by
personal intercourse, and to gratify the peo
ple by a royal visit to their remote abodes;
which had also afforded an opportunity of
rewarding compliance by smiles, and of
marking the contumacious. With these
views he had again this autumn meditated a
journey to Scotland, and a coronation in that
kingdom : but he confined himself to an
excursion through some southern and wes
tern counties, beginning at Portsmouth, and
proceeding through Bath (at which place
the Queen remained during his journey)
to Chester, where he had that important
interview with Tyrconnel. of which we
have already spoken. James was easily
led to consider the courtesies of the nobility
due to his station, and the acclamations of
the multitude naturally excited by his pre
sence, as symptoms of an inflexible attach
ment to his person, and of a general acqui
escence in his designs. These appearances,
however, were not considered as of serious
importance, either by the Dutch minister,
who dreaded the King's popularity, or by
the French ambassador, who desired its in
crease, or by the Papal Nuncio, \vho \vas so
friendly to the ecclesiastical policy of the
Court, and so adverse to its foreign connec
tions as to render him in some measure an
impartial observer. The journey was at
tended by no consequences more important
than a few addresses extorted from Dissent
ers by the importunity of personal canvass,
and the unseemly explosion of royal anger
at Oxford against the fellows of Magdalen
College.* Scarcely any of the King's mea
sures seem to have had less effect on general
opinion, and appear less likely to have in-
. fluenced the election for which he v.as
I preparing.
But the Royal Progress was speedily fol-
• lowed by an occurrence which strongly
I excited the hopes and fears of the public,
j and at length drove the opponents of the
King to decisive resolutions. Soon after the
return of the Court to Whitehall,*' it began
to be whispered that the Queen was preg
nant. This event in the case of a young
princess, and of a husband still in the vigour
of life, might seem too natural to have ex
cited surprise. But five years had elapsed
since her last childbirth, and out of eleven
children who were born to James by both
his \vives, only two had outlived the years
of infancy. Of these, the Princess of Orange
was childless, and the Princess Anne, who
had had six children, lost five within the
first year of their lives, while the survivor
only reached the age of eleven. Such an
apparent peculiarity of constitution, already
transmitted from parent to child, seemed to
the credulous passions of the majority, un
acquainted as they were with the latitude
and varieties of nature, to be a sufficient
security against such an accession to the
royal progeny as should disturb the order of
succession to the crown. The rumour of the
Queen's condition suddenly dispelled this
security. The Catholics had long and fer
vently prayed for the birth of a child, who
being educated in their communion, might
prolong the blessings which they were begin*
riing to enjoy. As devotion, like other warm
emotions, is apt to convert wishes into hopes,
they betrayed a confidence in the efficacy
of their prayers, which early excited sus
picions among their opponents that less
pure means might be employed for the at
tainment of the object. Though the whole
importance of the pregnancy depended upon
a contingency so utterly beyond the reach
of human foresight as the sex of the child,
the passions of both parties were too much
excited to calculate probabilities; and the
fears of the Protestants as well as the hopes
of the Catholics anticipated the birth of a
male heir. The animosity of the former
imputed to the Roman Catholic religion, that
unscrupulous use of any means for the at
tainment of an object earnestly desired,
which might more justly be ascribed to in
flamed zeal for any religious system, or with
still greater reason to all those ardent pas
sions of human nature, which, when shared
by multitudes, are released from the re
straints of fear or shame. In the latter end
of November a rumour that the Queen had
The King has returned from his progress so
far as Oxford, on his way to the Bath, and we do
not hear that his observations or his journey can
give him any great encouragement. Besides
the considerations of conscience and the public
interest, it is grown into a point of honour uni
versally received by the nation not to change
tbeir opinions, which will make all attempts
f.:
to the contrary ineffectual." — Halifax to the
Prince of Orange, 1st Sept. Dalrymple, app. to
book v.
* James rejoined the Queen at Bath on the 6th
September. On the 16th he returned to Windsor,
where the Queen came on the 6th October. On
the llth of that month they went to Whitehall. —
London Gazettes.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
347
been pregnant for two months became gene
rally prevalent;* and early in December,
surmises of imposture began to circulate at
Court.t Time did not produce its usual
effect of removing uncertainty, for, in the
middle of the same month, the Queen's
symptoms were represented by physicians
as still ambiguous, in letters, which trie care
ful balance of facts on both sides, and the
cautious abstinence from a decisive opinion,
seem to exempt from the suspicion of bad
faith-i On the 23d of December, a general
thanksgiving for the hope of increasing the
royal family was ordered; but on the loth
of the next month, when that thanksgiving
was observed in London, Lord Clarendon
remarked with winder, "that not above two
or three in the church brought the form of
prayer with them ; and that it was strange
to see how the Queen's pregnancy was every
where ridiculed, as if scarce any body be
lieved it to be true/' The Nuncio early
expressed his satisfaction at the pregnancy,
as likely to contribute " to the re-establish
ment of the Catholic religion in these king
doms;'^ and in the following month, he
pronounced to her Majesty the solemn bene
diction of the Sovereign Pontiff, on a preg
nancy so auspicious to the Church. II Of the
other ministers most interested in this event,
Barillon, a veteran diplomatist, too cool and
experienced to be deluded by his wishes,
informed his master, "that the pregnancy
was not believed to be true in London ; and
that in the country, those who spread the
intelligence were laughed at ;"1T while the
Republican minister, Van Citters, coldly
communicated the report, with some of the
grounds of it, to the States-General, without
hazarding an opinion on a matter so delicate.
The Princess Anne, in confidential letters**
to her sister at the Hague, when she had no
motive to dissemble, signified her unbelief,
which continued even after the birth of the
child, and was neither subdued by her
father's solemn declarations, nor by the testi
mony which he produced.tt On the whole,
the suspicion, though groundless and cruel,
was too general to be dishonest : there is no
* Narcissus Luttrell, 28th Nov. — MS.
t Johnstone, 8th Dec. — MS.
t Johnstone, 16th Dec. — MS., — containing a
statement of the symptoms by Sir Charles Scar
borough, and another physician whose name I
have been unable to decipher.
$ D'Adda, 2dDec— MS.
II Id. 20th Feb. 1688 —MS.
IT Barillon, llth Dec.— MS.
:* March 14th— 20th, 1688.— Dalrymple, app.
to book v. " Her being so positive it will be a
son, and the principles of that religion being such
that they will stick at nothing, be it ever so
wicked, it it will promote their interest, gave
some cause to fear that there is foul play intended."
On the 18th June, she says, "Except they give
very plain demonstration, which seems almost
impossible now, I shall ever be of the number of
unbelievers." Even the candid and loyal Evelyn
(Diary, 10th and 17th of June) very intelligibly
intimates his suspicions.
tt Clarendon, Diary, 31st Oct.
evidence that the rumour originated in the
contrivance of any individuals; and it is for
that reason more just, as well as perhaps in
itself more probable, to conclude that it arose
spontaneously in the minds of many, influ
enced by the circumstances and prejudices
of the time. The currency of the like ru
mours, on a similar occasion, five years
before, favours the opinion that they arose
from the obstinate prejudices of the people
rather than from the invention of design
ing politicians.* The imprudent confidence
of the Catholics materially contributed to
strengthen suspicion. When the King and
his friends ascribed the pregnancy to his
own late prayers at St. Winifred's well,f or
to the vows while living, and intercession
after death of the Duchess of Modena, the
Protestants suspected that effectual mea
sures would be taken to prevent the inter
position of Heaven from being of no avail
to the Catholic cause ; and their jealous appre
hensions were countenanced by the expecta
tion of a son, which was indicated in the pro
clamation for thanksgiving,! and unreserv
edly avowed in private* conversation. As
straws shows the direction of the wind, the
writings of the lowest scribblers may some
times indicate the temper of a party; and
one such writing, preserved by chance, may
probably be a sample of the multitudes which
have perished. Mrs. Behn, a loose and paltry
poetastress of that age, was bold enough in
the title page of what she calls " A Poem to
their Majesties," to add, "on the hopes of
all loyal persons for a Prince of Wales," and
ventures in her miserable verses already to
hail the child of unknown sex; as " Royal
Boy."§ The lampooners of the opposite
party, in verses equally contemptible, show
ered down derision on the Romish imposture,
and pointed the general abhorrence and alarm
towards the new Perkin Warbeck whom the
Jesuits were preparing to be the instrument
of their designs.
While these hopes and fears agitated the
multitude of both parties, the ultimate ob
jects of the King became gradually more
definite, while he at the same time delibe
rated, or perhaps, rather decided, about the
choice of his means. His open policy as
sumed a more decisive tone : Castlemaine,
who in his embassy had acted with the
most ostentatious defiance of the laws, and
Petre, the most obnoxious clergyman of the
Church of Rome, were sworn of the Privy
* "If it had pleased God to have given his
Highness the blessing of a son, as it proved a
daughter, you were prepared to make a Perkin
of him." — L'Estrange, Observator, 23d August,
1682.
t Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 129.
t The object of the thanksgiving was indicated
more plainly in the Catholic form of prayer on that
occasion : — " Concede propifius ut famula tua re-
gina nostra Maria partu felici prolem edat tibi
fideliter servituram."
$ State Poems, vol. iii. and iv.; a collection at
once the most indecent and unpoetical probably
extant in any language.
348
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Council.* The latter was even promoted to
an ecclesiastical office in the household of a
prince, who still exercised all the powers of
the supreme head of a Protestant Church.
Corker, an English Benedictine, the superior
of a monastery of that order in London, had
an audience of the King in his ecclesiastical
habits, as envoy from the Elector of Cologne.!
doubtless by a secret understanding between
James and that prince ; — an act, which Louis
XIV. himself condemned as unexampled in
Catholic countries, and as likely to provoke
heretics, whose prejudices ought not to be
wantonly irritated. i As the animosity of
the people towards the Catholic religion in
creased, the designs of James for its re-es
tablishment became bolder and more open.
The monastic orders, clad in garments long
strange and now alarming to the people, filled
the streets: and the King prematurely exulted
that his capital had the appearance of a Ca
tholic city,§ — little aware of the indignation
with which that obnoxious appearance in
spired the body of his Protestant subjects.
He must now have felt that his contest had
reached that point in which neither party
would submit without a total defeat.
The language used or acquiesced in by
him in the most confidential intercourse.
does not leave his intention to be gathered
by inference. For though the words, " to
establish the Catholic religion," may denote
no more than to secure its free exercise,
another expression is employed on this sub
ject for a long time, and by different persons,
in correspondence with him, which has no
equivocal sense, and allows no such limita
tion. On the 12th of May, 1687, Barillon
had assured him, that the most Christian
King "had nothing so much at heart as to
see the success of his exertions to re-establish
the Catholic religion." Far from limiting
this important term, James adopted it in its
full extent, answering, " You see that I omit
nothing in my power;" and not content with
thus accepting the congratulation in its ut
most latitude, he continued, " I hope the King
your master will aid me ; and that we shall,
in concert, do great things for religion." In
a few months afterwards, when imitating
another part of the policy of Louis XIV., he
had established a fund for rewarding converts
to his religion, he solicited pecuniary aid
from the Pope for that very ambiguous pur
pose. The Nuncio, in answer, declared the
sorrow of his Holiness, at being disabled by
the impoverished state of his treasury from
contributing money, notwithstanding " his
paternal zeal for the promoting, in every
way, the re-establishment of the Catholic
religion in these kingdoms;"]! as he had
shortly before expressed his hope, that the
* London Gazette, 25ih Sept. and llth Nov.
1687; in the last Petre is styled " Clerk of the
Closet."
t Narcissus Luttrell, Jan. 1688. — MS.
t The King to Barillon, 26th Feb.— MS
$ D'Adda, 9th March.— MS.
II Ibid. 2d Jan. 1688.— MS.
Queen's pregnancy would insure " the re-
establishment of the true religion in these
kingdoms."* Another term in familiar use
at Court for the final object of the royal pur
suit was "the great work," — a phrase bor
rowed from the supposed transmutation of
metals by the alchemists, which naturally
signified a total change, and which never
could have been applied to mere toleration
by those who were in system, if not in prac
tice, the most intolerant of an intolerant age.
The King told the Nuncio, that Holland was
the main obstacle to the establishment of the
Catholic religion in these kingdoms: and
D'Abbeville declared, that without humbling
the pride of that republic, there could be no
hope of the success "of the great work."t
Two years afterwards, James, after review
ing his whole policy and its consequences,
deliberately and decisively avows the extent
of his own designs : — "Our subjects opposed
our government, from the fear that we should
introduce the orthodox faith, which we were,
indeed, labouring to accomplish when the
storm began, and which we have done in
our kingdom of Ireland. "J Mary of Este,
during the absence of her husband in Ireland,
exhorts the Papal minister, "to earn the
glorious title of restorer of the faith in the
British kingdoms," and declares, that she
"hopes much from his administration for the
re-establishment both of religion and the
royal family. "§ Finally, the term "re-estab
lish," which can refer to no time subsequent
to the accession of Elizabeth, had so much
become the appropriate term, that Louis
XIV., assured the Pope of his determination
to aid "the King of England, arid to re-estab
lish the Catholic religion in that island "||
None of the most discerning friends or op
ponents of the King seem at this time to have
doubted that he meditated no less than to
transfer to his own religion the privileges of
an Established Church. Gourville, one of
the most sagacious men of his age, being
asked by the Duchess of Tyrconnel, when
about to make a journey to London, what
she should say to the King if he inquired
about the opinion of his old frie'nd Gourville,
of his measures for the "re-establishment"
of the Catholic religion in England, begged
her to answer, — "If I were Pope/I should
have excommunicated him for exposing all
the English Catholics to the risk of being
hanged. I have no doubt, that what he sees
done in France is his model ; but the circum
stances are very different. In my opinion,
he ought to be content with favouring the
Catholics on every occasion, in order to aug
ment their number, and he should leave to
his successors the care of gradually subject
ing England altogether to the authority of
* D'Adda, 2d Dec. 1687.— MS.
t Ibid. 22d August, 1687.— MS.
t James II. to Cardinal Ottoboni. Dublin,
15th Feb. 1690.— Papal MSS.
§ Mary to Ottoboni, St. Germains, 4th — 15th
Dec. 1689.— Papal MSS.
II Louis to the Pope, 17th Feb. 1689.— MS,
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
349
the Pope."* Bossuet, the most learned,
vigorous, and eloquent of controversialists,
ventured at this critical time to foretel, that
the pious efforts of James would speedily be
rewarded by the reconciliation of the British
islands to the Universal Church, and their
filial submission to the Apostolic See t
If Gourville considered James an injudi
cious imitator of Louis XIV., it is easy to
imagine what was thought on the subject in
England, at a time when one of the mildest,
not to say most courtly, writers, in the quiet
ness and familiarity of his private diary,
speaks of " the persecution raging in France,"
and so far forgets his own temper, and the
style suitable to such writings, as to call
Louis "the French tyrant."! Lord Halifax,
Lord Nottingham, and Lord Danby, the three
most important opponents of the King's mea
sures, disagreeing as they did very consi
derably in opinion and character, evidently
agreed in their apprehension of the extent
of his designs.^ They advert to them as
too familiar to themselves and their corres
pondent to require proof, or even develop
ment j they speak of them as being far more
extensive than the purposes avowed ; and
they apply terms to them which might be
reasonable in the present times, when many
are willing to grant and to be contented with
religious liberty, but which are entirely fo
reign to the conceptions of an age when
toleration (a term then synonomous with
connivance) was the ultimate object of no
great party in religion, but was sometimes
sought by Dissenters as a step towards es
tablishment, and sometimes yielded by the
followers of an Established Church under
the pressure of a stern necessity. Some
even of those who, having been gained over
by the King, were most interested in main
taining his sincerity, were compelled at length
to yield to the general conviction. Colonel
Titus, a veteran politician, who had been
persuaded to concur in the repeal of the
penal laws (a measure agreeable to his
general principles), declared " that he would
have no more to do with him ; that his ob
ject was only the repeal of the penal laws ;
that his design was to bring in his religion
right or wrong, — to model the army in order
to effect that purpose ; and, if that \vas not
sufficient, to obtain assistance from France. "II
* Memoires de Gourville, vol. ii. p. 254.
t Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protest
ants, liv. vii.
t Evelyn, vol. i. Diary, 3d Sept. 1687.— 23d
Feb. 1688.
§ Lord Halifax to the Prince of Orange, 7th
Dec. 1686--18th Jan.— 31st May, 1687. " Though
there appears the utmost vigour to pursue the
object which has been so long laid, there seemeth
to be no less firmness in the nation and aversion
to change." — " Every day will give more light to
what is intended ; though it is already no more a
mystery." — Lord Nottingham to the Prince, 2d
Sent. 1687. " For though the end at which they
aim is very plain and visible, the methods of ar
riving at that end have been variable and uncer
tain." — Dalrymple, app. to book v.
II Johnstone 16th Feb —MS.
The converts to the religious or political
party of the King were few and discreditable.
Lord Lorn, whose predecessors and succes
sors were the firmest supporters of the reli
gion and liberty of his country, is said to
have been reduced by the confiscation of
his patrimony to the sad necessity of pro
fessing a religion which he must have re
garded with feelings more hostile than those
of mere unbelief.* Lord Salisbury, whose
father had been engaged with Russell and
Sydney in the consultation called the " Rye-
house Plot," and whose grandfather had sat
in the House of Commons after the abolition
of the monarchy and the peerage, embraced
the Catholic religion, and adhered to it during
his life. The offices of Attorney and Solici
tor-general, which acquire a fatal importance
in this country under Governments hostile to
liberty, were newly filled. Sawyer, who had
been engaged in the worst prosecutions of
the preceding ten years, began to tremble
for his wealth, and retired from a post of
dishonourable danger. He was succeeded
by Sir Thomas Powis, a lawyer of no known
opinions or connections in politics, who acted
on the unprincipled maxim, that, having had
too little concern for his country to show
any preference for public men or measures,
he might as lawfully accept office under any
Government, as undertake the defence of any
client. Sir William Williams, the confiden
tial adviser of Lord Russell, on whom a fine
of 1G,000/. had been inflicted, for having
authorised, as Speaker of the House of Com
mons, a publication, though solemnly pledged
both to men and measures in the face of the
public, now accepted the office of Solicitor-
general, without the sorry excuse of any of
those maxims of professional ethics by which
a powerful body countenance each other in
their disregard of public duty. A project
was also in agitation for depriving the Bishop
of London by a sentence of the Ecclesiasti
cal Commissioners for perseverance in his
contumacy ;t but Cartwright, of Chester, his
intended successor, having, in one of his
drunken moments, declared the Chancellor
and Lord Sunderland to be scoundrels who
would betray the King (which he first de
nied by his sacred order, but was at last re
duced to beg pardon for in tearsj). the plan
of raising him to the see was abandoned.
Crew, Bishop of Durham, was expected to be
come a Catholic, and Parker of Oxford, — the
only prelate whose talents and learning, se
conded by a disregard of danger and disgrace,
qualified him for breaking the spirit of the
clergy of the capital, — though he had support
ed the Catholic party during his life, refused
to conform to their religion on his death-bed ;§
leaving it doubtful, by his habitual aliena
tion from religion and honour, to the linger-
* Narcissus Luttrell.lst April. — MS.: — "ar
rested for 3000Z. declares himself a Catholic."
t Johnstone, 8th Dec. 1687.— MS.
t Johnstone, 27th Feb. — MS. Narcissus Lut
trell, llth Feb.— MS.
$ Evelyn, vol. i. Diary. 23d March.
2E
350
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ing remains or the faint revival of which of
these principles the unwonted delicacy of
his dying moments may be most probably
ascribed.
CHAPTER VII.
Remarkable quiet. — Its peculiar causes. — Coa
lition of Nottingham and Halifax. — Fluc
tuating counsels of the Court. — i: Parlia
ment urn Paci/icum.''' — Bill for liberty of
conscience. — Conduct of Sunderland. — Je
suits.
ENGLAND perhaps never exhibited an ex
ternal appearance of more undisturbed and
profound tranquillity than in the momentous
seven months which elapsed from the end
of the autumn of 1687 to the beginning of
the following summer. Not a speck in the
heavens seemed to the common eye to fore
bode a storm None of the riots now oc
curred which were the forerunners of the
civil war under Charles I. : nor were there
any of those numerous assemblies of the
people which affright by their force, when
they do not disturb by their violence, and
are sometimes as terrific in disciplined in
action, as in tumultuous outrage. Even the
ordinary marks of national disapprobation,
which prepare and announce a legal resist
ance to power, were wanting. There is no
trace of any public meetings having been
held in counties or great towns where such
demonstrations of public opinion could have
been made. The current of flattering ad
dresses continued to flow towards the throne,
uninterrupted by a single warning remon
strance of a more independent spirit, or
even of a mere decent servility. It does not
appear that in the pulpit, where alone the
people could be freely addressed, political
topics were discussed ; though it must be
acknowledged that the controversial sermons
against the opinions of the Church of Rome,
which then abounded, proved in effect the
most formidable obstacle to the progress of
her ambition.
Various considerations will serve to lessen
our wonder at this singular state of silence
and inactivity. Though it would be idle to
speak gravely of the calm which precedes
the storm, and thus to substitute a trite illus
tration for a reason, it is nevertheless true,
that there are natural causes which com
monly produce an interval, sometimes, in
deed, a very short one, of more than ordinary
quiet between the complete operation of the
measures which alienate a people, arid the
final resolution which precedes a great
change. Amidst the hopes and fears which
succeed each other in such a state, every
man has much to conceal ; and it requires
some time to acquire the boldness to disclose
it. Distrust and suspicion, the parents of
silence, which easily yield to sympathy in
ordinary and legal opposition, are called into
full activity by the first secret consciousness
of a disposition to more daring designs. It
is natural for men in such circumstances to
employ time in watching their opponents, as
well as in ascertaining the integrity and
courage of their friends. When human na
ture is stirred by such mighty agents, the
understanding, indeed, rarely deliberates;
but the conflict and alternation of strong
emotions, which assume the appearance and
receive the name of deliberation, produce
naturally a disposition to pause before irre
vocable action. The boldest must occasion
ally contemplate their own danger with ap
prehension ; the most sanguine must often
doubt their success ; those who are alive to
honour must be visited by the sad reflection,
that if they be unfortunate they may be in
sulted by the multitude for whom they sacri
fice themselves; and good men will be fre
quently appalled by the inevitable calamities
to which they expose their country for !ho
uncertain chance of deliverance. When the
fluctuation of mind has terminated in bold
resolution, a farther period of reserve must
be employed in preparing the means of co
operation and maturing the plans of action.
But there were some circumstances pecu
liar to the events now under consideration,
which strengthened and determined the ope
ration of general causes. In 1640, the gentry
and the clergy had been devoied to the
Court, while the higher nobility and the great
townsadhered to the Parliament. The people
distrusted their divided superiors, and the
tumultuous display of their force (the natural
result of their angry suspicions) served to
manifest their own inclinations, while it
called forth their friends and intimidated
their enemies among the higher orders. In
1688, the state of the country was reversed.
The clergy and gentry were for the first time
discontented with the Crown ; and the ma
jority of the nobility, and the growing strength
of me commercial classes, reinforced by
these unusual auxiliaries, and by all who
either hated Popery 01 loved liberty, were
fully as much disaffected to the King as the
great body of the people. The nation trusted
their natural leaders, who, perhaps, gave,
more than they received, the impulse on this
occasion. No popular chiefs were necessary,
and none arose to supply the place of their
authority with the people, who reposed in
quiet and confidence till the signal for action
was made. This important circumstance
produced another effect : the whole guidance
of the opposition fell gradually into fewer and
fewer hands; it became every day easier to
carry it on more calmly ; popular commotion
could only have disturbed councils where
the people did not suspect their chiefs of
lukewarmness, and the chiefs were assured
of the prompt and zealous support of the
peop.le. It was as important now to restrain
the impetuosity of the multitude, as it might
be necessary in other circumstances to in
dulge it. Hence arose the facility of caution
and secrecy at one timej of energy and
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
351
speed at another, of concert and co-operation
throughout, which are indispensable in en
terprises so perilous. It must not be for
gotten that a coalition of parties was neces
sary on this occasion. It was long before the
Tories could be persuaded to oppose the
monarch; and there was always some rea
son to apprehend, that he might by timely
concessions recal them to their ancient
standard : it was still longer before they
could so far relinquish their avowed princi
ples as to contemplate, without horror, any
resistance by force, however strictly defen
sive. Two parties, who had waged war
against each other in the contest between
monarchy and popular government, during
half a century, even when common danger
tauirht them the necessity of sacrificing their
differences, had still more than common rea
son to examine each other's purposes before
they at last determined on resolutely and
heartily acting together; and it required
some time after a mutual belief in sincerity,
before habitual distrust could be so much
subdued as to allow reciprocal communica
tion of opinion. In these moments of hesi
tation, the friends of liberty must have been
peculiarly desirous not to alarm the new
born zeal of their important and unwonted
confederates by turbulent scenes or violent
councils. The state of the succession to the
crown had also a considerable influence, as
will afterwards more fully appear. Suffice
it for the present to observe, that the expec
tation of a Protestant successor restrained
the impetuosity of the more impatient Ca
tholics, and disposed the more moderate
Protestants to an acquiescence, however
sullen, in evils which could only be tempo
rary. The rumour of the Queen's pregnancy
had roused the passions of both parties; but
as soon as the first shock had passed, the
uncertain result produced an armistice, dis
tinguished by the silence of anxious expecta
tion, during which each eagerly but resolutely
waited for the event, which might extinguish
the hopes of one. and release the other from
the restraint of fear.
It must be added, that to fix the precise
moment when a wary policy is to be ex
changed for bolder measures, is a problem
so important, that a slight mistake in the
attempt to solve it may be fatal, and yet so
difficult, that its solution must generally de
pend more on a just balance of firmness and
caution in the composition of character, than
on a superiority of any intellectual faculties.
The two eminent persons who were now at
the head of the coalition against the Court,
afforded remarkable examples of this truth.
Lord Nottingham, who occupied that leading
station among the Tories, which the timidity
if not treachery of Rochester had left vacant,
was a man of firm and constant character,
but solicitous to excess for the maintenance
of that uniformity of measures and language
which, indeed, is essential to the authority
of a decorous and grave statesman. Lord
Halifax, sufficiently pliant, or perhaps fickle,
though the boldest of politicians in specula
tion, became refined, sceptical, and irreso
lute, at the moment of action. Both hesi
tated on the brink of a great enterprise : Lord
Nottingham pleaded conscientious scruples,
and recoiled from the avowal of the prin
ciples of resistance which he had long re
probated ; Lord Halifax saw difficulty too
clearly, and continued too long lo advise
delay. Those who knew the state of the
latter's mind, observed "the war between
his constitution and his judgment;"* in
which, as usual, the former gained the as
cendant for a longer period than, in the
midst of the rapid progress of great events,
was conducive to his reputation.
Some of the same causes which restrained
the manifestation of popular discontent, con
tributed also to render the counsels of the
Government inconstant. The main subject
of deliberation, regarding the internal affairs
of the kingdom, continued to be the possibi
lity of obtaining the objects sought for by a
compliant Parliament, or the pursuit of them
by means of the prerogative and the army.
On these questions a more than ordinary
fluctuation prevailed. Early in the preceding
September, Bonrepos, who, on landing, met
the King at Portsmouth, had been surprised
at the frankness with which he owned, that
the repairs and enlargements of that import
ant fortress were intended to strengthen it
against his subjects :t and at several periods
the King and his most zealous advisers had
spoken of the like projects writh as little re
serve. In October it was said, " that if no
thing could be done by parlimentary means,
the King would do all by his prerogative ;'; —
an attempt from which Barillon expected that
insurrection would ensue. J Three months
after, the bigoted Romanists, whether more
despairing of a Parliament or more confident
in their own strength, and incensed at resist
ance, no longer concealed their contempt. for
the Protestants of the Royal Family, and the
necessity of recurring to arms.§ The same
temper showed itself at the eve of the birth
of a Prince. The King then declared, that,
rather than desert, he should pursue his ob
jects without a Parliament, in spite of any
laws which might stand in his way ; — a pro
ject which Louis XIV., less bigoted and more
politic, considered "as equally difficult and
dangerous. "II But the sea might as well cease
* Johnstone, 4th April,— MS.
• Bonrepos to Seignelai, 4th Sept.— Fox MSS.
t Barillon, 10th Oct. Bonrepos to Seignelai
same date. — Fox MSS.
§ Johnstone, 29th Jan.— MS. Lady Melfort
overheard the priests speak to her husband of
" blood," probably with reference to foreign war,
as well as to the suppression of the disaffected at
home. — " Sidney vous fera savoir qn'apres des
grandes contestations on est enfin rcsolu de faire
leurs affaires sans un parlement."
II Barillon, 6th May. The King to Barillon,
14th May. — Fox MSS. — " Le projet que fait la
cour on vous etes de renverser toutes les lois
d'Angleterre pour parvenir au but qu'elle se pro
pose, me paroit d'une difficile et perilleuse execu
tion."
352
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
to ebb and flow, as a council to remain for so
many months at precisely the same point in
regard to such hazardous designs. In the
interval between these plans of violence,
hopes were sometimes harboured of obtaining
from the daring fraud of returning officers,
such a House of Commons as could not be
hoped for from the suffrages of any electors ;
but the prudence of the Catholic gentry, who
were named sheriffs, appears to have speed
ily disappointed this expectation.* Neither
do the Court appear to have even adhered
for a considerable time to the bold project
of accomplishing their purposes without a
Parliament. In moments of secret misgiv
ing, when they shrunk from these despe
rate counsels, they seem frequently to have
sought refuge in the flattering hope, that
their measures to fill a House of Commons
with their adherents, though hitherto so ob
stinately resisted, would in due time prove
successful. The meeting of a Parliament
was always held out to the public, and was
still sometimes regarded as a promising expe
dient :t while a considerable time for sound
ing and moulding the public temper yet re
mained before the three years within which
the Triennial Act required that assembly to
be called together, would elapse • and it
seemed needless to cut off all retreat to le
gal means till that time should expire. The
Queen's pregnancy affected these consulta
tions in various modes. The boldest consi
dered it as likely to intimidate their enemies,
and to afford the, happiest opportunity for
immediate action. A Parliament might, they
said, be assembled, that would either yield
to the general joy at the approaching birth
of a prince, or by their sullen and mutinous
spirit justify the employment of more decisive
measures. The more moderate, on the other
hand, thought, that if the birth of a prince
was followed by a more cautious policy, and
if the long duration of a Catholic government
were secured by the parliamentary esta
blishment of a regency, there was a better
chance than before of gaining all important
objects in no very long time by the forms of
Jaw and without hazard to the public quiet.
Penn desired a Parliament, as the only mode
of establishing toleration without subverting
the laws, and laboured to persuade the King
to spare the Tests, or to offer an equivalent
for such parts of them as he wished to take
away.t Halifax said to a friend, who argued
for the equivalent, " Look at my nose; it is
a very ugly one, but I would not take one
five hundred times better as an equivalent,
because my own is fast to my face ;"§ and
made a more serious attack on these danger
ous and seductive experiments, in his mas
terly tract, entitled "The Anatomy of an
* Johhstone, 8th Dec.— MS. "Many of the
Popish sheriffs have estates, and declare that
whoever expects false returns from them will be
deceived."
t Ibid. 21st Feb.— MS.
t Ibid. 6th Feb.— MS.
$ Ibid. 12th March.— MS.
Equivalent." Another tract was published
to prepare the way for what was called " A
Healing Parliament," which, in the midst
of tolerant professions and conciliatory lan-
uage, chiefly attracted notice by insult and
menace. In this publication, which, being
licensed by Lord Sunderland,* was treated
as the act of the Government, the United
Provinces were reminded, that " their com
monwealth was the result of an absolute
rebellion, revolt, and defection, from their
prince ;" and they were apprised of the re
spect of the King for the inviolability of their
territory, by a menace thrown out to Burnet,
that he <•' might be taken out of their country,
and cut up alive in England," in imitation
of a supposed example in the reign of Eliza
beth jt — a threat the more alarming because
it was well known that the first part of such
a project had been long entertained, and
that attempts had already been made for its
execution. Van Citters complained of this
libel in vain : the King expressed wonder
and indignation, that a complaint should be
made of the publication of an universally
acknowledged truth, — confounding the fact
of resistance with the condemnation pro
nounced upon it by the opprobrious terms,
which naturally imported and were intended
to affirm that the resistance was criminal. t
Another pamphlet, called "A New Test of
the Church of England's Loyalty,"§ expos
ed with scurrility the inconsistency of the
Church's recent independence with her long
professions and solemn decrees of nori-resist-
ance, and hinted that " His Majesty would
withdraw his royal protection, which was
promised upon the account of her constant
fidelity." Such menaces were very serious,
at a moment when D' Abbeville, James' mi
nister at the Hague, told the Prince of Orange,
that "upon some occasions princes must for
get their promises ;" and being " reminded
by William, that the King ought to have more
regard to the Church of England, which was
the main body of the nation," answered,
" that the body called the < Church of Eng
land' w^ould riot have a being in two years. "||
The great charter of conscience was now
drawn up, in the form of a biJl, and prepared
to be laid before Parliament. It was entitled
" An Act for granting of Liberty of Con
science, without imposing of Oaths and
Tests." The preamble thanks the King for
the exercise of his dispensing power, and
recognises it as legally warranting his sub
jects to enjoy their religion and their offices
during his reign : but, in order to perpetuate
his pious and Christian bounty to his people,
the bill proceeds to enact, that all persons
professing Christ may assemble publicly or
privately, without any licence, for the exer
cise of their religious worship, and that all
laws against nonconformity and recusancy,
* Johnstone, 15th Feb.
t Parliamentum Pacificum, p. 57.
t Barillon, 19th April.— MS.
$ Somers' Tracts, vol. ix. p. 195.
II Burnet, vol. Hi. p. 207.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
353
or exacting oaths, declarations, or tests, or
imposing disabilities or penalties on religion,
shall be repealed ; and more especially in
order " that his Majesty may not be debarred
of the service of his subjects, which by the
law of nature is inseparably annexed to his
person, and over which no Act of Parliament
can have any control, any further than he is
pleased to allow of the same/''* it takes away
the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and
the tests and declarations required by the
25th and 30th of the late king, as qualifica
tions to hold office, or to sit in either House
of Parliament. It was, moreover, provided
that meetings for religious worship should
be open and peacealle; that notice of the
place of assembly should be given to a jus
tice ot the peace ; that no seditious sermons
should be preached in them ; and that in
cathedral and collegiate churches, parish
churches, and chapels, no persons shall offi
ciate but such as are duly authorised accord
ing to the Act of Uniformity, and no worship
be used but what is conformable to the Book
of Common Prayer therein established; for
the observance of which provision, — the only
concession made by the bill to the fears of
the Establishment, — it was further enacted,
that the penalties of the Act of Uniformity
should be maintained against the contraven
tion of that statute in the above respects. Had
this bill passed into a law, and had such a
law been permanently and honestly execu
ted, Great Britain would have enjoyed the
blessings of religious liberty in a degree un-
imagined by the statesmen of that age, and
far surpassing all that she has herself gained
during the century and a half of the subse
quent progress of almost all Europe towards
tolerant principles. But such projects were
examined by the nation with a view to the
intention of their authors, and to the ten
dency of their provisions in the actual cir
cumstances of the time and country ; and the
practical question was, whether such inten
tion and tendency were not to relieve the
minority from intolerance, but to lessen the
security of the great majority against it. The
speciousness of the language, and the libe
rality of the enactments, in which it rivalled
the boldest speculations at that time hazard
ed by philosophers, were so contrary to the
opinions, and so far beyond the sympathy,
of the multitude, that none of the great divi
sions of Christians could heartily themselves
adopt, or could prudently trust each other's
* This language seems to have been intention
ally equivocal. The words " allow of the same,"
may in themselves mean till he gives his royal
assent to the Act. But in this construction the
paragraph would be an unmeaning boast, since no
bill can become an Act of Parliament till it re
ceives the royal assent; and, secondly, it would
be inconsistent with the previous recognition of
the legality of the King's exercise of the dispens
ing power ; Charles II. having given his assent
to the Acts dispensed with. It must therefore be
understood to declare, that Acts of Parliament
disabling individuals from serving the public, re
strain the King only till he dispenses with them.
45
' sincerity in holding them forth : they were
regarded not as a boon, but as a snare. From
the ally of Louis XIV., three years after the
persecution of the Protestants, they had the
appearance of an insulting mockery ; even
though it was not then known that James
had during his whole reign secretly congratu
lated that monarch on his barbarous mea
sures.
The general distrust of the King's designs
arose from many circumstances, separately
too small to reach posterity, but, taken to
gether, sufficient to entitle near observers to
form an estimate <?f his character. When,
about 1679, he had visited Amsterdam, he
declared to the magistrates of that liberal and
tolerant city, that he (i never was for oppres
sing tender consciences. '/:* The sincerity
of these tolerant professions was soon after
tried when holding a Parliament as Lord
High Commissioner at Edinburgh, in 1681,
he exhorted that assembly to suppress the
conventicles, or, in other words, the religious
worship of the majority of the Scottish peo-
ple.t It being difficult for the fiercest zealots
to devise any new mode of persecution which
the Parliament had not already tried, he was
content to give the royal assent to an act
confirmatory of all those edicts of blood
already in force against the proscribed Pres
byterians, i But very shortly after, when the
Earl of Argyle, acting evidently from the
mere dictates of conscience, added a modest
and reasonable explanation to an oath re
quired of him, which without it would have
been contradictory, the Lord Commissioner
caused that nobleman to be prosecuted for
high treason, and to be condemned to death
on account of his conscientious scruples. §
To complete the evidence of his tolerant
spirit, it is only necessary to quote one pas
sage which he himself has fortunately pre
served. He assures us that, in his confi
dential communication with his brother, he
represented it as an act of " imprudence to
have proposed in Parliament the repeal of
the 35th of Elizabeth,'5 II— a statute almost
as sanguinary as those Scottish acts which
he had sanctioned. The folly of believing
his assurances of equal toleration was at the
time evinced by his appeal to those solemn
declarations of a resolution to maintain the
Edict of Nantz, with which Louis XIV. had
accompanied each of his encroachments on it.
* Account of James II. 's visit to Amsterdam,
by William Carr, then English consul (said by
mistake to be in 1681). — Gentleman's Magazine,
vol. lix. part 2. p. 659.
t Life of James II., vol. i. p. 694. The words
of his speech are copied from his own MS. Me
moirs.
t Acts of Parliament, vol. viii. p. 242.
§ State Trials, vol. viii. p. 843. Wodrow, vol.
i. pp. 205 — 217, — a narrative full of interest, and
obviously written with a careful regard to truth.
Laing, vol. iv. p. 125, — where the moral feelings
of that upright and sagacious historian are con*
spicuous.
II Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 656, verbatim
from the King's Memoirs.
354
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Where a belief prevailed that a law was
passed without an intention to observe it all
scrutiny of its specific provisions became
needless : — yet it ought to be remarked, that
though it might be fair to indemnify those
who acted under the dispensing power, the
recognition of its legality was at least a wan
ton insult to the Constitution, and appeared
to betray a wish to reserve that power for
further and more fatal measures. The dis
pensation which had been granted to the
incumbent of Putney showed the facility
with which such a prerogative might be
employed to elude the whole proviso of the
proposed bill in favour of the Established
Church. It contained no confirmation of the
King's promises to protect the endowments
of the Protestant clergy : and instead of com
prehending, as all wise laws should do, the
means of its own execution, it would have
facilitated the breach of its own most im
portant enactments. If it had been adopted
by the next Parliament, another still more
compliant would have found it easier, instead
of more difficult, to establish the Catholic
religion, arid to abolish toleration. This
essential defect was confessed rather than
obviated by the impracticable remedies re
commended in a tract,* which, for the secu
rity of the great charter of religious liberty
about to be passed, proposed -( that every
man in the kingdom should, on obtaining the
age of twenty-one, swear to observe it ; that
no Peer or Commoner should take his seal
in either House of Parliament till he had
taken the like oath ; and that all sheriffs, or
others, making false returns, or Peers or
Commoners, presuming to sit in either House
without taking the oath, or who should move
or mention any thing in or out of Parliament
that might tend to the violating or altering
the liberty of conscience, should be hanged
on a gallows made out of the timber of his
own house, which was for that purpose to
be demolished.''! It seems not to have
occurred to this writer that the Parliament
whom he thus proposes to restrain, might
have begun their operations by repealing his
oenal laws.
Notwithstanding the preparations for con
vening a Parliament, it was not believed, by
the most discerning and well-informed, that
any determination was yet adopted on the
subject. Lord Nottingham early thought
that, in case of a general election, " few Dis
senters would be chosen, and that such as
were, would not, in present circumstances ,
concur in the repeal of so much as the penal
laws; because to do it might encourage the
Papists to greater attempts. "t Lord Halifax,
* A New Test instead of the Old One. By
G. S. Licensed 24th March, 1688.
t The precedent alleged for this provision is the
decree of Darius, for rebuilding the temple of
Jerusalem: — "And I have made a decree that
whoever shall alter this word, let timber be pulled
down from his house, and being set up, let him
hfi hanged thereon." — Ezra, chap. vi. v. 11.
$ Lord Nottingham to the Prince of Orange,
2d Sept. 1687.— Dalrymple, app. to book v.
at a later period, observes. c' that the mode
rate Catholics acted reluctantly; that the
Court, rinding their expectations not answer
ed by the Dissenters, had thoughts of return
ing to their old friends'the High Churchmen;
and that he thought a meeting of Parliament
impracticable, and continued as much an
unbeliever for October, as he had before been
for April."* In private, he mentioned, as
one of the reasons of his opinion, that some
of the courtiers had declined to take up a
bet for five hundred pounds, which he had
offered, that the Parliament would not meet
in October; and that, though they liked him
very little, they liked his money as well as
any other man's. f
The perplexities and variations of the
Court were multiplied by the subtile and
crooked policy of Sunderland, who, though
willing to purchase his continuance in office
by unbounded compliance, was yet extreme
ly solicitous, by a succession of various pro
jects and reasonings adapted to the circum
stances of each moment, to divert the mind
of James as long as possible from assembling"
Parliament, or entering on a foreign war, or
committing any acts of unusual severity or
needless insult to the Constitution, or under
taking any of those bold or even decisive
measures, the consequences of which to his
own power, or to the throne of his sove
reign, no man could foresee. Sunderland
had gained every object of ambition : he
could only lose by change, and instead of
betraying James by violent counsels, he ap
pears to have better consulted his own inte
rest, by offering as prudent advice to him as
he could venture without the risk of incur
ring the royal displeasure. He might lose
his greatness by hazarding too good counsel,
and he must lose it if his master was ruined.
Thus placed between two precipices, and
winding his course between them, he could
fintj safety only by sometimes approaching
one, and sometimes the other. Another cir
cumstance contributed to augment the seem
ing inconsistencies of the minister: — he was
sometimes tempted to deviate from his own
path by the pecuniary gratifications which,
after the example of Charles and James, he
clandestinely received from France: — an in
famous practice, in that age very prevalent
| among European statesmen, and regarded
I by many of them as little more than forming
! part of the perquisites of office.! It will ap-
j pear in the sequel that, like his master, he
received French money only for doing what
he otherwise desired to do : and that it rather
induced him to quicken or retard, to enlarge
I or contract, than substantially to alter his
| measures. But though he was too prudent
I to hazard the power which produced all his
emolument for a single gratuity, yet this
dangerous practice must have multiplied the
* Lord Halifax to the Prince of Orange, 12th
April, 168d. — Dalrymple, app. to book v.
t Johnstone, 27th Feb.— MS.
t D'Avaux, passim. See Lettres de De Witt,
vol. iv., and Ellis, History of the Iron Mask.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
355
windings of his course ; and from these de
viations arose, in some measure, the fluc
tuating counsels and varying language of
the Government of which he was the chief.
The divisions of the Court, and the variety
of tempers and opinions by which he was
surrounded, added new difficulties to the
game which he played. This was a more
simple one at first, while he coalesced with
the Queen arid the then united Catholic
party, and professed moderation as his sole
defence against Rochester and the Protestant
Tories; but after the defeat of the latter, and
the dismissal of their chief, divisions began
to show themselves among the victorious
Catholics, which gradually widened as the
moment of decisive action seemed to ap
proach. It was then* that he made an effort
to strengthen himself by the revival of the
office of Lord Treasurer in his own person;
— a project in which ha endeavoured to en
gage Father Petre by proposing that Jesuit
to be his successor as Secretary of State, and
in which he obtained the co-operation of Sir
Nicholas Butler, a new convert, by suggest
ing that he should be Chancellor of the Ex
chequer. The King, however, adhered to
his determination that the treasury should
be in commission notwithstanding the ad
vice of Butler, and the Queen declined to
interfere in a matter where her husband ap
peared to be resolute. It should seem, from
the account of this intrigue by James him
self, that Petre neither discouraged Sunder-
land in his plan, nor supported it by the ex
ercise of his own ascendency over the mind
of the King.
In the spring of 1688. the Catholics formed
three separate~and unfriendly parties, whose
favour it was not easy for a minister to pre
serve at ths same time. The nobility and
gentry of England were, as they continued
to the last, adverse to those rash courses
which honour obliged them apparently to
support, but which they had always dreaded
as dangerous to their sovereign and their re
ligion. Lords Powis, Bellasis. and Arundel.
vainly laboured to inculcate their wise max
ims on the mind of James : while the remains
of the Spanish influence, formerly so power
ful among British Catholics, were employed
by the ambassador, Don Pedro Ronquillo, in
support of this respectable party. Sunder
land. though he began, soon after his victory
over Rochester, to moderate and temper the
royal measures, was afraid of displeasing his
impatient master by openly supporting them.
The second party, which may be called the
Papal, was that of the Nuncio, who had at
first considered the Catholic aristocracy as
lukewarm in the cause of their religion, but
who, though he continued outwardly to coun
tenance all domestic efforts for the advance-
* " A little before Christmas." — Life of James
]T. vol. ii. p. 131 ; passages quoted from James'
Memoirs. The King's own Memoirs are always
deserving of great consideration, and in unmixed
cases of fact are, 1 am willing to hope, generally
conclusive.
ment of the faith, became at length more
hostile to the connection of James with
France, than zealous for the speedy accom
plishment of that Prince's ecclesiastical po
licy in England. To him the Queen seems
to have adhered, both from devotion to Rome,
and from that habitual apprehension of the
displeasure of the House of Austria which
an Italian princess naturally entertained to
wards the masters of Lombardy and Na
ples.* When hostility towards Holland was
more openly avowed, and when Louis XIV.,
no longer content with acquiescence, began
to require from England the aid of arma
ments and threats, if not co-operation in war,
Sunderland and the Nuncio became more
closely united, and both drew nearer to the
more moderate party. The third, known by
the name of the French or Jesuit party, sup
ported by Ireland and the clergy, and pos
sessing the personal favour and confidence
of the King, considered all delay in the ad
vancement of their religion as dangerous,
and were devoted to Fiance as the only ally
able and willing to insure the success of
their designs. Emboldened by the preg
nancy of the Queen, and by so signal a mark
of favour as the introduction of Father Petre
into the Council, — an act of folly which the
moderate Catholics would have resisted, if
the secret had riot been kept from them till
the appointment,t — they became impatient
of Sunderland's evasion and procrastination,
especially of his disinclination to all hostile
demonstrations against Holland. Their agent,
Skelton. the British minister at Paris, repre
sented the minister's policy to the French
Government, as "a secret opposition to all
measures against the interest of the Prince
of Orange;''J and though Barillon acquits
him of such treachery,§ it would seem that
from that moment he ceased to enjoy the
full confidence of the French party.
It was with difficulty that at the beginning
of the year Sunderland had prevailed on the
majority of the Council to postpone the call
ing a Parliament till they should be strength
ened by the recall of the English troops from
the Dutch service :|| and when, two months
later, just before the delivery of the Queen,
(in which they would have the advantage of
the expectation of a Prince of Wales,) the
King and the majority of the Council declared
for this measure, conformably to his policy of
delaying decisive, and perhaps irretrievable
* The King to Barillon, 2d June. — MS. Louis
heard of this partiality from his ministers at Ma
drid and Vienna, and desired Barillon to insinuate
to her that neither she nor her husband had any
thing to hope from Spain.
t The account of Petre's advancement by Dodd
is a specimen of the opinion entertained by the
secular clergy of the regulars, but especially of
the Jesuits.
t The King to Barillon, llth Dec. 1687.— MS.
$ Barillon to the King, 5th Jan. 1688.— MS.
II Johnstone, 16th Jan. — MS. " Sidney believes
that Sunderland has prevailed, after a great strug
gle, to dissuade the Council from a war or a Par
liament.''
356
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
steps, he again resisted it with success, on
the ground that matters were not ripe, that
it required much longer time to prepare the
corporations, and that, if the Nonconformists
in the Parliament should prove mutinous, an
opposition so nafional would render the em
ployment of any other means more hazard
ous.* Sunderland owed his support to the
Queen, who. together with the Nuncio, pro
tected him from the attack of Father Petre,
•who. after a considerable period of increasing
estrangement, had now declared against him
with violence.! In the meantime the French
Government, which had hitherto affected
impartiality in the divisions of the British
Catholics, had made advances to Petre as he
receded from Sunderland ; while the former
had. as long ago as January, declared in
Council, that the Kin^ ought to be solicitous
only for the friendship of France. $ James
now desired Barillon to convey the assurances
of his high esteem for the Jesuit ;§ and the
ambassador undertook to consider of some
more efficacious proof of respect to him,
agreeably to the King's commands. II
Henceforward the power of Sunderland
was seen to totter. It was thought that he
himself saw that it could not, even with the
friendship of the Queen, stand long, since
the French ambassador had begun to trim,
and the whole French party leant against
him. IF Petre, through whom Sunderland for
merly had a hold on the Jesuit party, became
now himself a formidable rival for power,
and was believed to be so infatuated by am
bition as to pursue the dignity of a cardinal,
that he might more easily become prime
minister of England.** At a later period,
Barclay, the celebrated Quaker, boasted of
having reconciled Sunderland to Melfort,
trusting that it would be the ruin of Petre ;tt
and Sunderland then told thetyuricio that he
considered it as the first principle of the
King's policy to frame all his measures with
a view to their reception by Parliament ;tt —
a strong proof of the aversion to extreme
measures, to which he afterwards adhered.
A fitter opportunity wall present itself here
after for relating the circumstances in which
he demanded a secret gratuity from France,
in addition to his pension from that Court of
60.000 livres yearly (2500L); of the skill
with which Barillon beat down his demands,
" D'Adda, 12th March.— MS. "II y avaient
beaucoup d'intrigues et de cabales de coursur cela
dirigees contre mi Lord Sunderland : la reine le
soutient, etil aemporte." — Barillon, Mazure, His-
toire de la Revolution, vol. ii. p. 399. Shrewsbury
to the Prince of Orange (communicating the dis
union), 14th March, 1688. Dalrymple, app. to
books v. and vi.
t Van Citters, 9t.h April.— MS.
t Barillon, 2d Feb.— MS.
$ The King to Barillon, 19th March.— MS.
II Barillon, 29th March.— MS.
If Johnstone, 12th March and 2d April.— MS.
** Lettre au Roi, 1 Aout, 1687, in the Depot des
Affaires Etrangeres at Paris, not signed, but pro
bably from Bonrepos.
tt Clarendon, Diary, 23d June.
M D' Adda, 4th June.— MS.
and made a bargain less expensive to his
Government j and of the address with which
Sunderland claimed the bribe for measures
on which he had before determined, — so that
he might seem rather to have obtained it
under false pretences, than to have been
diverted by it from his own policy. It is
impossible to trace clearly the serpentine
course of an intriguing minister, whose opi
nions were at variance with his language,
and whose craving passions often led him
astray from his interest: but an attempt to
discover it is necessary to the illustration of
the government of James. In general, then,
it seems to be clear that, from the beginning
of 1687, Sunderland had struggled in secret
to moderate the measures of the Govern
ment: and that it was not till the spring of
1688, when he carried that system to the
utmost, that the decay of his power became
apparent. As Halifax had lost his office by
liberal principles, and Sunderland had out
bidden Rochester for the King's favour, so
Sunderland himself was now on the eve of
being overthrown by the influence of Petre,
at a time when no successor of specious pre
tensions presented himself. He seems to
have made one attempt to recover strength,
by remodelling the' Cabinet Council. For a
considerable Time the Catholic counsellors
had been summoned separately, together
with Sunderland himself, on all confidential
affairs, while the more ordinary business only
was discussed in the presence of the Protest
ants: — thus forming t\vo Cabinets; one os
tensible, the other secret. He now proposed
to form them into one, in order to remove the
jealousy of the Protestant counsellors, and
to encourage them to promote the King's
designs. To this united Cabinet the affairs
of Scotland arid Ireland were to be commit
ted, which had been separately administered
before, with manifest disadvantage to uni
formity and good order. Foreign affairs, and
others requiring the greatest secrecy, were
still to be reserved to a smaller number.
The public pretences for this change were
specious: but the object was to curb the
power of Petre, who now ruled without con
trol in a secret cabal of his own communion
and selection.*
The party which had now the undisputed
ascendant were denominated u Jesuits." as
a term of reproach, by the enemies of that
famous society in the Church of Rome, as
well as by those among the Protestant com
munions. A short account of their origin
and character may facilitate a faint concep
tion of the admiration, jealousy, fear, and
hatred, — the profound submission or fierce
resistance, — which that formidable name
once inspired. Their institution originated
in pure zeal for religion, glowing in the breast
of Loyola, a Spanish soldier, — a man full of
imagination and sensibility, — in a country
where wars, rather civil than foreign, waged
against unbelievers for ages, had rendered a
D'Adda, 23d April— MS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF i688.
357
passion for spreading the Catholic faith a
national point of honour, and blended it with
the pursuit of glory as well as with the me
mory of past renown. The legislative fore
thought of his successors gave form and order
to the product of enthusiasm, and bestowed
laws and institutions on their society which
were admirably fitted to its various ends.*
Having arisen in the age of the Reformation,
they naturally became the champions of the
Church against her new enemies, — and in
that also of the revival of letters, instead of
following the example of the unlettered
monks, who decried knowledge as the mo
ther of heresy, they joined in the general
movement of mankind ; they cultivated polite
literature with splendid success; they were
the earliest and, perhaps, most extensive re
formers of European education, which, in
their schools, made a larger stride than it has
done at any succeeding moment ;t and, by
the just reputation of their learning, as well
as by the weapons with which it armed them,
they were enabled to carry on a vigorous
contest against the most learned impugners
of the authority of the Church. Peculiarly
subjected to the See of Rome by their con
stitution, they became ardently devoted to
its highest pre;ensions, in order to maintain a
monarchical power, the necessity of which
they felt for concert, discipline, and energy
in their theological warfare.
While the nations of the Peninsula hasten
ed with barbaric chivalry to spread religion
by the sword in the newly explored regions
of the East and West, the Jesuits alone, the
missionaries of that age. either repaired or
atoned for the evils caused by the misguided
zeal of their countrymen. In India, they
suffered martyrdom with heroic constancy. J
They penetrated through the barrier which
* Originally consisting of seven men, the so
ciety possessed, at the end of the sixteenth cen
tury, one thousand five hundred colleges, and con
tained twenty-two thousand avowed members.
Parts of their constitution were allowed (by Paul
IIL ) to be kept and to be altered, without the
privity of the Pope himself. The simple institu
tion of lay brethren, combined with the privilege
of secrecy, afforded the means of enlisting power
ful individuals, among whom Louis XIV. and
James II. are generally numbered.
t " For education," says Bacon, within fifty
years of the institution of the Order, "consult the
schools of the Jesuits. Nothing hitherto tried in
practice surpasses them.'' — De Augment. Scient.
lib. vi. cap. 4. " Education, that excellent part of
ancient discipline, has been, in some sorts, revived
of late times in the colleges of the Jesuits, of
whom, in regard of this and of some other points'
of human learning and moral matters, I may say,
" Talis cum sis utinam npster esses." — Advance
ment of Learning, book i. Such is the disinter
ested testimony of the wisest of men to the merit
of the Jesuits, to the unspeakable importance of
reforming education, and to the infatuation of those
who, in civilized nations, attempt to resist new
opinions by mere power, without calling in aid
such a show of reason, if not the whole substance
of reason, as cannot be maintained without a part
of the substance.
t See the Lettres Edifiantes, &c.
Chinese policy opposed to the entrance of
strangers, — cultivating the most difficult of
languages with such success as to compose
hundreds of volumes in it ; and, by the pub
lic utility of their scientific acquirements,
obtained toleration, patronage, and personal
honours, from that jealous government. The
natives of America, who generally felt the
comparative superiority of the European race
only in a more rapid or a more gradual de
struction, and to whom even the excellent
Quakers dealt out little more than penurious
justice, were, under the paternal rule of the
Jesuits, reclaimed from savage manners,
and instructed in the arts and duties of civi
lized life. At the opposite point of society,
they were fitted by their release from con
ventual life, arid their allowed intercourse
with the world, for the perilous office of
secretly guiding the conscience of princes.
They maintained the highest station as a
religions body in the literature of Catholic
countries. No other association ever sent
forth so many disciples who reached such
eminence in departments so various and un
like. While some of their number ruled
the royal penitents at Versailles or the Escu-
rial, others were teaching the use of the
spade and the shuttle to the naked savages
of Paraguay; a third body daily endangered
their lives in an attempt to convert the Hin
dus to Christianity; a fourth carried on the
controversy against the Reformers ; a portion
were at liberty to cultivate polite literature;
while the greater part continued to be em
ployed either in carrying on the education
of Catholic Europe, or in the government of
their society, and in ascertaining the ability
and disposition of the junior members, so
that well-qualified men might be selected
for the extraordinary variety of offices in their
immense commonwealth. The most famous
constitutionalists, the most skilful casuists,
the ablest schoolmasters, the most celebrated
professors, the best teachers of the humblest
mechanical arts, the missionaries who could
most bravely encounter martyrdom, or who
wTith most patient skill could infuse the rudi
ments of religion into the minds of ignorant
tribes or prejudiced nations, were the growth
of their fertile schools. The prosperous ad
ministration of such a society for two cen
turies, is probably the strongest proof afford
ed from authentic history that an artificially-
formed system of government and education
is capable, under some circumstances, of
accomplishing greater things than the gene
ral experience of it would warrant us in ex
pecting.
Even here, however, the materials were
supplied, and the first impulse given by en
thusiasm : and in this memorable instance
the defects of such a system are discover
able. The whole ability of the members
being constantly, exclusively, and intensely
directed to the various purposes of their
Order, their minds had not the leisure, or
liberty, necessary for works of genius, or
even for discoveries *in science, — to say no-
358
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
thing of the original speculations in philoso
phy which are interdicted by implicit faith.
That great society, which covered the world
for two hundred years, has no names wrhich
can be opposed to those of Pascal and Ra
cine, produced by the single community of
Port Royal, persecuted as it was during the
greater part of its short existence. But this
remarkable peculiarity amounts perhaps to
little more than that they were more emi
nent in active than in contemplative life.
A far more serious objection is the manifest
tendency of such a system, while it produces
the precise excellences aimed at by its mode
of cultivation, to raise up all the neighbour
ing evils with a certainty and abundance, —
a size and malignity, — unknown to the freer
growth of nature. The mind is narrowed by
the constant concentration of the understand
ing ; and those who are habitually intent on
one object learn at last to pursue it at the
expense of others equally or more important.
The Jesuits, the reformers of education,
sought to engross it, as well as to stop it at
their own point. Placed in the front of the
battle against the Protestants, they caught a
more than ordinary portion of that theolo
gical hatred against their opponents which
so naturally springs up where the greatness
of the community, the fame of the contro
versialist, and the salvation of mankind seem
to be at stake. Affecting more independence
in their missions than other religious orders,
they were the formidable enemies of episco
pal jurisdiction, and thus armed against them
selves the secular clergy, especially in Great
Britain, where they were the chief mission
aries. Intrusted with the irresponsible guid
ance of Kings, they were too often betrayed
into a compliant morality, — excused probably
to themselves, by the great public benefits
which they might thus obtain, by the nume
rous temptations which seemed to palliate
royal vices, and by the real difficulties of
determining, in many instances, whether
there was more danger of deterring such
persons from virtue by unreasonable auste
rity, or of alluring them into vice by unbe
coming relaxation. This difficulty is indeed
so great, that casuistry has, in general, vi
brated between these extremes, rather than
rested near the centre. To exalt the Papal
power they revived the scholastic doctrine
of the popular origin of government, — that
rulers might be subject to the people, while
the people themselves, on all questions so
difficult as those which relate to the limits
of obedience, were to listen with reverential
submission to the judgment of the Sovereign
Pontiff, the common pastor of sovereigns and
subjects, and the unerring oracle of riumble
Christians in all cases of perplexed con
science.* The ancient practice of excom-
* It is true that Mariana (De Rege et Regis In-
stituiione) only contends for the right of the people
to depose sovereigns, without building the autho
rity of the Pope on that principle, as the school
men have expressly done ; but his manifest appro
bation of the assassination of Henry III. by Cle-
munication, which, in its original principle,
was no more than the expulsion from a com
munity of an individual who did not observe
its rules, being stretched so far as to inter
dict intercourse writh offenders, and, by con
sequence, to suspend duty towards them,
became, in the middle age, the means of ab
solving nations from obedience to excommu
nicated sovereigns.* Under these specious
colours both Popes and Councils had been
guilty of alarming encroachments on the
civil authority. The Church had, indeed,
never solemnly adopted the principle of these
usurpations into her rule of faith or of life,
though many famous doctors gave them a
dangerous countenance: but she had not
condemned or even disavowed those equally
celebrated divines who resisted them : arid
though the Court of Rome undoubtedly pa
tronised opinions so favourable to its power,
the Catholic Church, which had never pro
nounced a collective judgment on them, was
still at liberty to disclaim them, without
abandoning her haughty claim of exemption
from fundamental error.!
On the Jesuits, as the most staunch of the
polemics who struggled to exalt the Church
above the State, and who ascribed to the
Supreme Pontiff an absolute power over the
Church, the odium of these doctrines princi
pally fell.t Among Reformed nations, and
especially in Great Britain, the greatest of
them, the whole Order were regarded as in
cendiaries who were perpetually plotting the
overthrow of all Protestant governments, and
as immoral sophists who employed their
subtle casuistry to silence the remains of
conscience in tyrants of their own persua
sion. Nor was the detestation of Protestants
rewarded by general popularity in Catholic
countries: all other regulars envied their
greatness; the universities dreaded their ac
quiring a monopoly of education ; while mo-
narchs the most zealously Catholic, though
they often favoured individual Jesuits, looked
with fear and hatred on a society which
would reduce them to the condition of vas
sals of the priesthood. In France, the ma-
I gistrates, who preserved their integrity and
dignity in the midst of general servility,
maintained a more constant conflict with
these formidable adversaries of the inde
pendence of the State and the Church. The
Kings of Spain and Portugal envied their
well-earned authority, in the missions of
merit, a fanatical partisan of the League, suffi
ciently discloses his purpose. See La Mennais,
La Religion considered dans ses Rapports avec
1'Ordre politique. (Paris, 1826.)
* Fleury, Discours sur 1'Histoire Ecclesiastique.
No. iii. sect. 18.
t " II est vrai que Gregoire VII. n'a jamais fait
aucune decision sur ce point. Dieu ne Vapas per-
wiis." — Ibid. It is evident that if such a determi
nation had, in Fleury's opinion, subsequently been
pronounced by the Church, the last words of this
passage would have been unreasonable.
t Bayle, Dictionnaire Historique, &c., article
" Bellarmine," — who is said by that unsuspected
judge to have had the best pen for controversy of
any man of that age.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
359
Paraguay and California, over districts which
they had conquered from the wilderness.
The impenetrable mystery in which a part
of their constitution was enveloped, though
it strengthened their association, and secured
the obedience of its members, was an irre
sistible temptation to abuse power, and justi
fied the apprehensions of temporal sove
reigns, while it opened an unbounded scope
for heinous accusations. Even in the eigh
teenth century, when many of their peculi
arities had become faint, and when they
were perhaps little more than the most ac
complished, opulent, and powerful of religi
ous orders, they were charged with spread
ing secret confraternities over France.* The
greatness of the body became early so in
vidious as to be an obstacle to the advance
ment of their members; arid it was generally
believed that if Bellarmine had belonged to
any other than the most powerful Order in
Christendom, he would have been raised to
the chair of Peter.t The Court of Rome
itself, for whom they had sacrificed all,
dreaded auxiliaries so potent that they might
easily become masters; and these cham
pions of the Papal monarchy were regarded
with jealousy by Popes whose policy they
aspired to dictate or control. But temporary
circumstances at this time created a more
than ordinary alienation between them.
In their original character of a force raised
for the defence of the Church against the
Lutherans, the Jesuits always devoted them
selves to the temporal sovereign who was at
the head of the Catholic party. They were
attached to Philip II., at the time when Sex-
tus V. dreaded his success; and they now
E laced their hopes on Louis XIV., in spite of
is patronage, for a time, of the independent
rnaxims of the Gallican Church. i On the
other hand, Odeschalchi, who governed the
Church under the name of Innocent XL,
feared the growing power of France, resent
ed the independence of the Gallican Church,
and was, to the last degree, exasperated by
the insults offered to him in his capital by
the command of Louis. He was born in the
Spanish province of Lombardy, and, as an
Italian sovereign, he could riot be indifferent
to the bombardment of Genoa, and to the
humiliation of that respectable republic, in
the required public submission of the Doge
at Versailles. As soon then as James be
came the pensioner and creature of Louis, the
resentments of Odeschalchi prevailed over
his zeal for the extension of the Church.
* Montlosier Mcmoire a consulter (Paris, 1826),
pp. 20, 22, — quoted only to prove that such accu
sations were made.
t Bayle, article "Bellarmine."
t Bayle, Nouvelles de la Republique des Let-
tres, April, 1686. " Aujourd'hui plus attaches a
la France qu'a 1'Espagne." — Ibid. Nov. They
were charged with giving secret intelligence to
Louis XIV. of the state of the Spanish Nether
lands. The French Jesuits suspended for a year
the execution of the Pope's order to remove
Father Maimbourg from their society, in conse
quence of a direction from the King.
The Jesuits had treated him and those of his
predecessors who hesitated between them
and their opponents with offensive liberty;*
but while they bore sway at Versailles and
St. James', they were, on that account, less
obnoxious to the Roman Court. Men of wit,
remarked at Paris, that things would never
go on well till the Pope became a Catho
lic, and King James a Huguenot.t Such
were the intricate and dark combinations of
opinions, passions, and interests which placed
the Nuncio in opposition to the most potent
Order of the Church, and completed the
alienation of the British nation from James,
by bringing on the party which now ruled
his councils, the odious" and terrible name
of Jesuits.
CHAPTER VIII.
Declaration of Indulgence renewed. — Order
that it should be read in Churches. — Delibe
rations of the Clergy. — Petition of the
Bishops to the King. — Their examination
before the Privy Council, Committal^ Trial,
and Acquittal. — Rejections. — Conversion of
Sundcrland. — Birth of the Prince of Wales.
—State of Affairs.
WHEN the changes in the secret councils
of the King had rendered them most irre
concilable to the national sentiments, and
wrhen the general discontent produced by
progressive encroachment had quietly grown
into disaffection, nothing was wanting to the
least unfortunate result of such an alienation,
but that an infatuated Government should ex
hibit to the public thus disposed one of those
tragic spectacles of justice violated, of reli
gion menaced, of innocence oppressed, of
unarmed dignity outraged, with all the con
spicuous solemnities of abused law, in the
persons of men of exalted rank and venerated
functions who encounter wrongs and indigni
ties with mild intrepidity. Such scenes, per
formed before a whole nation, revealed to
each man the hidden thoughts of his fellow-
citizens, added the warmth of personal feel
ing to the strength of public principle, ani
mated patriotism by the pity and indignation
which the sufferings of good men call forth,
and warmed every heart by the reflection of
the same passions from the hearts of thou
sands; until at length the enthusiasm of a
nation, springing up in the bosoms of the
generous and brave, breathed a momentary
spirit into the most vulgar souls, and dragged
* Ibid., Oct. and Nov.
t " Le chevalier de Silleri,
En parlant de ce Pape-ci,
Souhaitoit, pour la paix publiquo,
Qu'il se flit rendu Catholique,
Et le roi Jacques Huguenot."
La Fontaine to the Due de Vendome.
Racine (Prologue to Esther) expresses the same
sentiments in a milder form : —
" Et 1'enfer, couvrant tout de sesvapeursfunebres,
Sur les yeux les plus saints a jete les tenebres."
360
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
into its service the herd of the selfish, the
cold, the mean, and the cowardly. The com
bustibles were accumulated: a spark was
only wanting to kindle the flame. Accidents
in themselves trivial, seem on this occasion,
as in other times and countries, to have filled
up the measure of provocation. In such a
government as that of James, formed of ad
verse parties, more intent on weakening or
supplanting each other than on securing their
common foundation, every measure was too
much estimated by its bearing on these un-
avowed objects, to allow a calm considera
tion of its effect on the interest or even on
the temper of the public.
On the 27th of April, the King republished
his Declaration of the former year for Lib
erty of Conscience ; — a measure, apparently
insignificant,* which was probably proposed
by Sunderland, to indulge his master in a
harmless show of firmness, which might di
vert him from rasher councils.! To this
Declaration a supplement was annexed, de
claring, that the King was confirmed in his
purpose by the numerous addresses which
had assured him of the national concurrence :
that he had removed all civil and military
officers who had refused to co-operate with
him- and that he trusted that the people
would do their part, by the choice of fit
members to serve in Parliament, which he
was resolved to assemble in November " at
farthest." This last, and only important
part of the Proclamation, was promoted by
the contending parties in the Cabinet with
opposite intentions. The moderate Catho
lics, and Penn, whose fault was only an un
seasonable zeal for a noble principle, desired
a Parliament from a hope, that if its convo
cation were not too long delayed, it might
produce a compromise, in which the King-
might for the time be contented with an
universal toleration of worship. The Jesuiti
cal party also desired a Parliament ; but it
was because they hoped that it would pro
duce 'a final rupture, and a recurrence to
those more vigorous means which the age of
the King now required, and the safety of
which the expected birth of a Prince of
Wales appeared to warrant. I Snnderiand
acquiesced in the insertion of this pledge,
because he hoped to keep the violent in
check by the fear of the Parliament, and
partly, also, because he by no means had
determined to redeem the pledge. '-This
language is held," said he to Barillon (who
was alarmed at the sound of a Parliament).
il rather to show, that Parliament will not
meet for six months, than that it will be then
assembled, which must depend on the pub
lic temper at that time."§ For so far, it
* " The Declaration, so long spoken of, isipub-
lished. As nothing is said more than last year,
politicians cannot understand the reason of so ill
umed a measure." — Van Citters, llth May. (Se
cret Despatch.) MS.
t Barillon, 6ih May.— MS.
t Burnett, vol. iii. p. 211.
$ Barillon 13th May.— MS.
seems, did this ingenious statesman carry
his system of liberal interpretation, that he
employed words in the directly opposite
sense to that in which they were understood.
So jarring were the motives from which this
Declaration proceeded, and so opposite the
constructions of which its authors represent
ed it to be capable. Had no other step,
however, been taken but the publication, it
is not probable that it would have been at
tended by serious consequences.
But in a week afterwards, an Order was
made by the King in Council, commanding
the Declaration to be read at the usual time
of divine service, in all the churches in Lon
don on the 20th and 27th of May, and in all
those in the country on the 3d and 10th of
June.* Who was the adviser of this Order,
which has acquired such importance from its
immediate effects, has not yet been ascer
tained. It was publicly disclaimed by Sun
derland,! but at a time which would have
left no value to his declaration, but what it
might derive from being uncontradicted : and
it was agreeable to the general tenor of his
policy. It now appears, however, that he
and other counsellors disavowed it at the
time ] and they seem to have been believed
by keen arid watchful observers. Though it
was then rumoured that Petre had also disa
vowed this fatal advice, the concurrent tes
timony of all contemporary historians ascribe
it to him ; and it accords well with the policy
of that party, which received in some degree
from his ascendant over them the unpopular
appellation of Jesuits. It must be owned,
indeed, that it was one of the numerous
cases in which the evil effects of an impru
dent measure proved far greater than any
foresight could have apprehended. There
\vas considerable reason for expecting sub
mission from the Church.
The clergy had very recently obeyed a
similar order in two obnoxious instances. In
compliance with an Order made in Council
by Charles II. (officiously suggested to him,
it is said, by Sancroft himself),t they had
read from their pulpits that Prince's apology
for the dissolution of his two last Parliaments,
severally arraigning various Parliamentary
proceedings, and among others a Resolution
of the House of Commons against the per
secution of the Protestant Dissenters. § The
compliance of the clergy on this occasion
was cheerful, though they gave offence by it
to many of the people.!! Now, this seemed
to be an open interference of the ecclesiasti
cal order in the fiercest contests of political
* Letter from the Hague, 28th March, 1689.—
MS.
t Johnstone, 23d May. — MS. " Sunderland,
Melfbnt, Penn, and, they so?/, Petre, deny having
advised this Declaration*" But Van Citters. (25th
May), says that Petre is believed to have advised
the order.
t Burnet, vol. iii. p. 212.
$ London Gazette, 7th— llth April, 1681.
11 Kennet, History, vol. iii. p. 388. Echard,
History of England, vol. iii. p. 625.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
361
parties, which the duty of undistinguishing
obedience alone could warrant.* The same
principle appears still more necessary to jus
tify their reading the Declaration of Charles
ou the Rye House Plot,t published within
a week of the death of Lord Russell; when
it was indecent for the ministers of religion
to promulgate their approval of bloodshed,
arid unjust to inflame prejudice against those
who remained to be tried. This Declaration
had been immediately preceded by the
famous decree of the University of Oxford,
and had been followed by a persecution of
the Nonconformists, on whom it reflected as
the authors of the supposed conspiracy. t
These examples of compliance appeared to
De grounded on the undefined authority
claimed by the King, as supreme ordinary,
on the judicial determinations, which recog
nised his right in that character to make or
dinaries for the outward rule of the Church, §
and on the rubric of the Book of Common
Prayer (declared, by the Act of Uniformity, II
to be a part of that statute), which directs.
u that nothing shall be published in church
oy the minister, but what is prescribed by
this book, or enjoined by the King." These
reasonings and examples were at least suffi
cient to excuse the confidence with which
some of the Royal advisers anticipated the
obedience either of the whole Church, or of
so large a majority as to make it safe and
easy to punish the disobedient.
A variation from the precedents of a seem
ingly slight and formal nature seems to have
had some effect on the success of the mea
sure. The. bishops were now, for the first
time, commanded by the Order published in
the Gazette to distribute the Declaration in
their dioceses, in order to its being read by
the clergy. Whether the insertion of this
unusual clause was casual, or intended to
humble the bishops, it is now difficult to
conjecture : it was naturally received and
represented in the most offensive sense. T It
fixed the eyes of the whole nation on the
prelates, rendering the conduct of their clergy
visibly dependent solely on their determina
tion, and thus concentrating, on a small nurn-
* It was accompanied by a letter from the King
to Sancroft, which seems to imply a previous usage
in such cases. " Our will is, that you give such
directions as have been usual in such cases for the
reading of our said Declaration." — Kennet, supra.
Note from Lambeth MSS. D'Oyley, Life of
Sancroft, vol. i. p. 253. "Now," says Ralph,
(vol. i. p. 590), " the cry of Church and King was
echoed from one side of the kingdom to the other."
Immediately after began the periodical libels of
L'Estrange, and the invectives against Parliament,
under the form of loyal addresses.
. t London Gazette, 2d— 6th August, 1683. Ken-
net, vol. iii. p. 408. Echard, vol. iii. p. 695.
I This fact is reluctantly admitted by Roger
North. Examen, p. 369.
$ Cro. Jac. p. 87.
II 14 Car. If. chap. 4.
IT Van Citters, 15th— 25th May. MS One
of the objections was, that the Order was not
transmitted in the usual and less ostentatious man
ner, through the Primate, a^ in 1681.
46
ber, the dishonour of submission which would
have been lost by dispersion among the
whole body. So strongly did the belief that
insult was intended prevail, that Petre, to
whom it was chiefly ascribed, was said to
have declared it in the gross and contumeli-
o-us language used of old, by a barbarous in
vader, to the deputies of a besieged city.*
But though the menace be imputed to him
by most of his contemporaries,! yet, as they
were all his enemies, and as no ear- witness
is quoted, we must be content to be doubtful
whether he actually uttered ihe offensive
words, or was only so generally imprudent
as to make it easily so believed.
The first effect. of this Order was to place
the prelates who were then in the capital or
its neighbourhood in a situation of no small
perplexity. They must have been still more
taken by surprise than the more moderate
ministers ; and, in that age of slow convey
ance and rare publication, they were allowed
only sixteen days from the Order, and thir
teen from its official publication. I to ascertain
the sentiments of their brethren and of their
clergy, without the knowledge of which their
determination, whatever it was. might pro
mote that division which it was one of the
main objects of their enemies, by this mea
sure, to excite. Resistance could be formida
ble only if it were general. It is one of the
severest tests of human sagacity to call for
instantaneous judgment from a few leaders
when they have not support enough to be
assured of the majority of their adherents.
Had the bishops taken a single step without
concert, they would have been assailed by
charges of a pretension to dictatorship, —
equally likely to provoke the proud to deser
tion, and to furnish the cowardly with a
pretext for it. Their difficulties were in
creased by the character of the most distin
guished laymen whom it was fit to consult.
Rochester was no longer trusted : Clarendon
was zealous, but of small judgment : and
both Nottingham, the chief of their party,
and Halifax, with whom they were now
compelled to coalesce, hesitated at the mo
ment of decision. §
The first body whose judgment was to be
ascertained was the clergy of London, among
whom were, at that time, the lights aifd
ornaments of the Church. They at first
ventured only to converse and correspond
privately witli each other. || A meeting be-
* Rabshekah, the Assyrian general, to the ofh-
cers of Hezekiah, 2 Kings, xviii. 27.
t Burnet, Echard, Oldmixon, Ralph. The
earliest printed statement of this threat is proba
bly in a pamphlet, called, " An Answer from a
Country Clergyman to the Letter of his Brother
in the City" (Dr. Sherlock), which must have
been published in June, 1668. — Baldwin's Farther
State Tracts, p. 314. (London, 1692.)
t London Gazette, 7th April.
§ " Halifax and Nottingham wavered at first,
which had almost ruined the business." — John-
stone, 27th May. MS.
II Van Citters, 28th May. (Secret Despatch.)—
MS.
2F
362
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
came necessary, and was hazarded. A di
versity of opinions prevailed. It was urged
on one side that a refusal was inconsistent
•with the professions and practice of the
Church ; that it would provoke the King to
desperate extremities, expose the country to
civil confusions, and be represented to the
Dissenters as a proof of the incorrigible in
tolerance of the Establishment ; that the
reading of a Proclamation implied no assent
to its contents; and that it would be pre
sumption in the clergy to pronounce a judg
ment against the legality of the Dispensing
Power, which the competent tribunal had
already adjudged to be lawful. Those of
better spirit answered, or might have an
swered, that the danger of former examples
of obsequiousness was now so visible that
they were to be considered as warnings
rather than precedents : that compliance
\vould bring on them command after com
mand, till at last another religion would be
established ; that the reading, unnecessary
for the purpose of publication, would be un
derstood as an approval of the Declaration
by the contrivers of the Order, and by the
body of the people; that the Parliamentary
condemnations of the Dispensing Power were
a sufficient reason to excuse them from a
doubtful and hazardous act ; that neither
conscience nor the more worldly principle of
honour would suffer them to dig the grave
of the Protestant Church, and to desert the
cause of the nobility, the gentry, and the
whole nation ; and finally, that in the most
unfavourable event, it was better to fall then
under the King's displeasure, when support
ed by the consolation of having fearlessly
performed their duty, than to fall a little
later unpitied and despised, amid the curses
of that people whom their compliance had
ruined. From such a fall they would rise
no more.* One of those middle courses
was suggested which is very apt to captivate
a perplexed assembly : — it was proposed to
gain time, and smooth a way to a compro
mise, by entreating the King to revert to the
ancient methods of communicating his com
mands to the Church. The majority ap
peared at first to lean towards submission, or
evasion, which was only disguised and de
ferred submission ; when, happily, a decisive
answer was produced to the most plausible
argument of the compliant party. Some of
the chief ministers and laymen among the
Nonconformists earnestly besought the clergy
not to judge them by a handful of their num
ber who had been gained by the Court, but
to be assured that, instead of being alienated
from the Church, they would be drawn closer
to her, by her making a stand for religion
and liberty .t A clergyman present read a
note of these generous declarations, which
he was authorized by the Nonconformists to
exhibit to the meeting. The independent
portion of the clergy made up, by zeal and
* Sherlock's " Letter from a Gentleman in the
City to a Friend in the Country."-Baldwin, p. 309.
t Johnstone, 18th May.— MS.
activity, for their inferiority in numbers.
Fatal concession, however, seemed to be at
hand, when the spirit of an individual, mani
fested at a critical moment, contributed to
rescue his order from disgrace, arid his coun
try from slavery. This person, whose fortu
nate virtue has hitherto remained unknown,
was Dr. Edward Fowler, then incumbent of
a parish in London, who, originally bred a
Dissenter, had been slow to conform at the
Restoration, was accused of the crime of
Whiggism* at so dangerous a period as that
of Mon mouth's riot, and, having been pro
moted to the See of Gloucester, combined so
much charity with his unsuspected oithodoxy
as to receive the last breath of Firmin, the
most celebrated Unitarian of that period. f
When Fowler perceived that the courage
of his brethren faltered, he addressed them
shortly: — "I must be plain. There has
been argument enough : more only will heat
us. Let every man now say c Yea' or 'Nay.'
I shall be sorry to give occasion to schism,
but I cannot in conscience read the Declara
tion ; for that reading would be an exhortation
to my people to obey commands which I
deem unlawful." Stillingfieet declared, on
the authority of lawyers, that reading the
Declaration would be an offence, as the pub
lication of an unlawful document ; but ex
cused himself from being the first subscriber
to an agreement not to comply, on the ground
that he was already proscribed for the pro
minent part which he had taken in the con
troversy against the Romanists. Patrick
offered to be the first, if any man would
second him ; and Fowler answered to the
appeal which his own generosity had called
forth. t They were supported by Tjllotson,
though only recovering from an attack of
apoplexy, and by Sherlock, who then atoned
for the slavish doctrines of former times.
The opposite parly were subdued by this
firmness, declaring that they would not
divide the Church :§ and the sentiments of
more than fourscore of the London clergy!!
were made known to the Metropolitan.
At a meeting at Lambeth, on Saturday,
the 12th of May, where there were present,
besides San croft himself, only the Earl of
Clarendon, three bishops, Compton, Turner,
and White, together with Tenison, it was
resolved not to read the Declaration, to peti
tion the King that he would dispense with
that act of obedience, and to entreat all the
prelates within reach of London, to repair
thither to the aid of their brethren. If It was
fit to wait a short time for the concurrence
of these absent bishops. Lloyd of St. Asaph,
late of Chichester, Ken of Bath and Wells,
and Trelawriey, quickly complied with the
* Athens) Oxonienses, vol. ii. p. 1029.
t Birch, Life of Tillotson, p. 320.
t Rennet, vol. iii. p. 570, note. This narrative
reconciles Johnstone, Van Citters, and Kennet.
§ Johnstone, 23d May.— MS.
II This victory was early communicated to the
Dutch ambassador. Van Citters, 25th May.— MS.
IT Clarendon, 12th May.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
363
summons ; and were present at another and
more decisive meeting at the archiepiscopal
palace on Friday, the 18th, where, with the
assent of Tillotson. Stillingfleet, Patrick, Teni-
son, Grove, and Sherlock, it was resolved,
that a Petition, prepared and written by San-
croft, should be forthwith presented to His
Majesty. It is a calumny against the memory
of these prelates to assert, that they post
poned their determination till within two
days of the Sunday appointed for reading
the Declaration, in order to deprive the King
of time to retire from his purpose with dignity
or decency : for we have seen that the period
since the publication of the Order was fully
occupied by measures for concert and co
operation; and it would have been treachery
to the Church and the kingdom to have sa
crificed any portion of time so employed to
relieve their most formidable enemy.* The
Petition, after setting forth that " their averse-
ness to read the King's Declaration arose
neither from want of the duty and obedience
which the Church of England had always
practised, nor from want of tenderness to
Dissenters, to whom they were willing to
come to such a temper as might be thought
fit in Parliament and Convocation, but be
cause it was founded in a Dispensing Power
declared illegal in Parliament ; and that they
could not in prudence or conscience make
themselves so far parties to it as the publi
cation of it in the church at the time of
divine service must amount to in common
and reasonable construction," concludes, by
" humbly and earnestly beseeching His Ma
jesty not to insist on their distributing and
reading the said Declaration." It is easy to
observe the skill with which the Petition
distinguished the case from the two recent
examples of submission, in which the Royal
declarations, however objectionable, con
tained no matter of questionable legality.
Compton, being suspended, did not subscribe
the Petition ; and Sancroft, having had the
honour to be forbidden the Court nearly two
years, took no part in presenting it. Nor
was it thought proper that the private di-
* Life of James II., vol. ii. p. 158. But this is
the statement, not of the King, but of Mr. Dic-
conson the compiler, who might have been misled
by the angry traditions of his exiled friends. A
week is added to the delay, by referring the com
mencement of it to the Declaration of the 27ih of
April, instead of the Order of the 4th of May,
which alone called on the bishops to deliberate.
The same suppression is practised, and the same
calumny insinuated, in "An Answer to the
Bishops' Petition," published at the time. — So-
rners' Tracts, vol. ix. p. 119. In the extract made,
either by Carte or Macpherson, an insinuation
against the bishops is substituted for the bold
charge made by Dicconson. " The bishops' peti
tion on the 18th of May, against what they are to
read on the 20th " — (Macpherson, Original Pa
pers, vol. i. p. 151.) But as throughout that inac
curate publication no distinction is made between
•what was written by James, and what was added
by his biographer, the disgrace of the calumnious
insinuation is unjustly thrown on the Kings' me
mory.
vines, who were the most distinguished mem
bers of the meeting, should attend the pre
sentation.
With no needless delay, six Bishops pro
ceeded to Whitehall about ten o'clock in the
evening, — no unusual hour of audience at
the accessible courts of Charles and James.
They were remarked, as they came from
the landing-place, by the watchful eyes of
the Dutch ambassador.* who was not unin
formed of their errand. They had remained
at the house of Lord Dartmouth, till Lloyd
of St. Asaph, the boldest of their number,
should ascertain when and where the King
would receive them. He requested Lord
Sunderland to read the Petition, and to ac
quaint the King with its contents, that His
Majesty might not be surprised at it. The
wary minister declined, but informed the
King of the attendance of the Bishops, who
were then introduced into the bedchamber.t
When they had knelt down before the mo
narch, St. Asaph presented the Petition, pur
porting to be that "of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, with divers suffragan bishops of
his province, in behalf of themselves and
several of their absent brethren, and of the
clergy of their respective dioceses." The
King, having been told by the Bishop of
Chester, that they would desire no more than
a recurrence to the former practice of send
ing Declarations to chancellors and arch
deacons,? desired them to rise, and received
them at first graciously, saying, on opening
the Petition, "This is my Lord of Canter
bury's handwriting;" but when he read it
over, and after he had folded it up, he spoke
to them in another tone :§ — "This is a great
surprise to me. Here are strange words. I
did not expect this from you. This is a
standard of rebellion." St. Asaph replied,
"We have adventured our lives for Your
Majesty, and would lose the last drop of our
blood rather than lift up a finger against
you." The King continued: — "I tell you
this is a standard of rebellion. I never saw
such an address." Trelawney of Bristol,
falling again on his knees, said, "Rebellion,
Sir ! I beseech your Majesty not to say any
thing so hard of us. For God's sake, do not
believe we are or can be guilty of rebellion."
It deserves remark, that the two who uttered
these loud and vehement protestations were
the only prelates present who were conscious
of having harboured projects of more deci
sive resistance. The Bishops of Chichester
and Ely made professions of unshaken loy-
* Van Citters, 28th May.— MS.
t Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, vol. i. p. 335.
Clarendon, State Papers, vol. i. p. 287, and
D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 263.
t Burnet, iii. 216.
$ " S. M. rispose loro con ardezza." — D' Adda,
30th May ; or, as the same circumstance was
viewed by another through a different medium, —
" The King answered very disdainfully, and with
the utmost anger." — Van Citters, 1st June. The
mild Evelyn (Diary, 18th May) says, " the King
was so incensed, that, with threatening language,
he commanded them to obey at their peril."
364
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
alty, which they afterwards exemplified. The
Bishop of Bath and Wells pathetically and
justly said, "Sir. I hope you will give that
liberty to us, which you allow to all man
kind." He piously added, " We will honou
the King, but fear God.'7 James answered
at various times, "It tends to rebellion. Is
this what I have deserved from the Church
of England ? I will remember you who have
signed this paper. I will keep this paper: I
will not part with it. I did not expect this
from you, especially from some of you. I
will be obeyed." Ken, in the spirit of a
martyr, answered only with a humble voice.
"God's will be done." The ansrry monarch
called out, "What's that?" the Bishop,
and one of his brethren, repeated what had
been said. James dismissed them with the
same unseemly, unprovoked, and incoherent
language : — " If I think fit to alter my mind,
I will send to you. God has given me this
Dispensing Power, and I will maintain it. I
tell you, there are seven thousand men, and
of the Church of England too, that have not
bowed the knee to Baal." Next morning,
when, on his way to chapel, he said to the
Bishop of St. David's, "My Lord, your
brethren presented to me, yesterday, the
most seditious paper that ever was penned.
It is a trumpet of rebellion." He frequently
repeated what Lord Halifax said to him, —
" Your father suffered for the Church, not
the Church for him."*
The Petition was printed and circulated
during the night, certainly not by the Bishops,
who delivered to the King their only copy,
written in the hand of Sancroft, for the ex
press purpose of preventing publication, —
probably, therefore, by some attendant of
the Court, for lucre or from disaffection. In
a few days, six other prelates! had declared
their concurrence in the Petition ; and the
Bishop of Carlisle agreed to its contents, la
menting that he could not subscribe it, be
cause his diocese was not in the province of
Canterbury :t two others agreed to the mea
sure of not reading. § The archbishopric of
York had now been kept vacant for Petre
more than two years : and the vacancy
which delivered Oxford from Parker had not
yet been filled up. Lloyd of Bangor. who died
a few months afterwards, was probably pre
vented by age and infirmities from taking any
part in this transaction. The see of Lichfield,
though not vacant, was deserted by Wood,
who (having been appointed by the Duchess
of Cleveland, in consequence of his bestow
ing his neice, a rich heiress, of whom he
was guardian, on one of her sons,)l! had
openly and perpetually abandoned his dio
cese : for this he had been suspended by
Sancroft, and though restored on submission,
* Van Citters, 1st June.— MS.
t London, Norwich, Gloucester, Salisbury,
Winchester, and Exeter. — D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 269.
t Gutch, vol. i. p. 334.
$ Llandaffand Worcester. — Gutch.vol. i. p. 331.
II Kennet in Lansdowne MSS. in the British
Museum.— D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 193.
had continued to reside at Hackney, without
professing to discharge any duty, till his
death. Sprat, who would have honoured
the episcopal dignity by his talents, if he
had not earned it by a prostitution of
them,* Cartwright, who had already ap
proved himself the ready instrument of law
less power against his brethren, Crewe,
whose servility was rendered more conspi
cuously disgraceful by birth and wealth,
Watson, who, after a long train of offences,
was at length deprived of his see, together
with Croft, in extreme old age, and Barlow,
who had fallen into second childhood, were,
since the death of Parker, the only faithless
members of an episcopal body, which in its
then incomplete state amounted to twenty-
two.
On Sunday, the 20th, the first day ap
pointed for reading the Declaration in Lon
don, the Order was generally disobeyed;
though the administration of the diocese
during the suspension of the bishop, was
placed in the perfidious hands of Sprat and
Crewe. Out of a hundred, the supposed
number of the London clergy at that time,
seven were the utmost who are, by the
largest account, charged with submission.!
Sprat himself chose to officiate as Dean in
Westminster Abbey, where, as soon as he
gave orders for the reading, so great a mur
mur arose that nobody could hear it ; and,
before it was finished, no one was left in the
church but a few prebendaries, the choris
ters, and the Westminster scholars. He,
himself, could hardly hold the Proclamation
in his hands for trembling. J Even in the
chapel at Whitehall, it was read by a cho
rister. § At Serjeant's Inn, on the Chief
Justice desiring that it should be read, the
clerk said that he had forgotten it. II The
names of four complying clergymen only
are preserved, — Elliott, Martin, Thomson,
and Hall, — who, obscure as they were, may
be enumerated as specimens of so rare a
vice as the sinister courage which, for base
ends, can brave the most generous feelings
of all the spectators of their conduct. The
temptation on this occasion seems to have
been the bishopric of Oxford ; in the pursuit
of which, Hall, who had been engaged in
negotiations with the Duchess of Portsmouth
for the purchase of Hampden's pardon,! by
such connections and services prevailed over
his competitors. On the following Sunday
the disobedience was equally general ; and
the new reader at the Chapel Royal was so
agitated as to be unable to read the Declara-
* Narrative of the Rye House Plot.
t " La lettura non se essequi che in pochissimi
luoghi." D'Adda, 30ih May.— MS. Clarendon
states the number to be four; Kennet and Burnet,
ren. Perhaps the smaller number refers to pa
rochial clergy, and the larger to those of every de
nomination.
Burnet, vol. iii. p. 2J8, note by Lord Dart
mouth, then present as a Westminster scholar.
Evelyn, 20ih May.
I Van Citters, supra.— MS.
T Lords' Journals, 19th Dec. 1689.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
365
tion audibly.* In general, the clergy of the
country displayed the same spirit. In the
dioceses of the faithful bishops, the example
of the diocesan \vas almost universally fol
lowed; in that of Norwich, which contains
twelve hundred parishes, the Declaration
was not read by more than three or four.t
In Durham, on the other side, Crewe found
so great a number of his poor clergy more
independent than a vast revenue could
render himself, that he suspended many for
disobedience. The other deserters were
disobeyed by nineteen twentieths of their
clergy ; and not more than two hundred in
all are said to have complied out of a body
of ten thousand.* "The whole Church,"
says the Nuncio, " espouses the cause of the
Bishops. There is no reasonable expectation
of a division among the Anglicans, and our
hopes from the Nonconformists are vanish
ed. "§ Well, indeed, might he despair of
the Dissenters, since, on the 20th of May,
the venerable Baxter, above sectarian inte
rests, and unmindful of ancient wrongs, from
his tolerated pulpit extolled the Bishops for
their resistance to the very Declaration to
which he now owed the liberty of com
mending them. II
It was no wonder that such an appearance
of determined resistance should disconcert
the Government. No prospect now remained
of seducing some, and of punishing other
Protestants, and, by this double example, of
gaming the greater part of the rest. The
King, after so many previous acts of violence,
seemed to be reduced to the alternative of
either surrendering to exasperated antago
nists, or engaging in a mortal combat with
all his Protestant subjects. In the most
united and vigorous government, the choice
would have been among the most difficult
which human wisdom is required to make,
la the distracted councils of James, where
secret advisers thwarted responsible minis
ters, and fear began to disturb the judgment
of some, while anger inflamed the minds of
others, a still greater fluctuation and contra
diction prevailed, than would have naturally
arisen from the great difficulty of the situa
tion. Pride impelled the King to advance ;
Caution counselled him to retreat ; Calm
Reason, even at this day, discovers nearly
equal dangers in either movement. It is one
of the most unfortunate circumstances in
human affairs, that the most important ques
tions of practice either perplex "the mind so
much by their difficulty, as to be always
really decided by temper, or excite passions
too strong for such an undisturbed exercise
of the understanding as alone affords a pro
bability of right judgment. The nearer ap
proach of perils, both political and personal,
rendered the counsels of Sunderland more
* Van Citters.— MS.
t D'Oyley, vol. i. p. 270.
t Van Citters, 25th June.— MS.
§ D'Adda, llth June.— MS.
II Johnstone, 23d May.— MS.
decisively moderate -* in which he was sup
ported by the Catholic lords in office, con
formably to their uniform principles.! and
by Jeffreys, who. since he had gained the
prize of ambition, began more and more to
think of safety.! It appears, also, that those
who recoiled from an irreparable breach
with the Church, the nation, and the Pro
testants of the Royal Family, were now not
unwilling that their moderation should bo
known. Jeffreys spoke to Lord Clarendon of
'•moderate counsels," declared, that "some
men would drive the King to destruction,"
and made professions of " service to the
Bishops," which he went so far as to desire
him to communicate to them. William Penn,
on a visit, after a very long interval, to Cla
rendon, betrayed an inquietude, \vhich some
times prompts men almost instinctively to
acquire or renew friendships. § Sunderland
disclosed the nature and grounds of his own
counsels, very fully, both to the Nuncio and
to the French ambassador.il "The great
question," he said, u was how the punish
ment of the Bishops would affect the pro
bability of accomplishing the King's purpose
through a Parliament. Now, it was not to
be expected, that any adequate penalty could
be inflicted on them in the ordinary course
of law. Recourse must be had to the Eccle
siastical Commission, which \vas already
sufficiently obnoxious. Any legal proceed
ing would be long enough, in the present
temper of men, to agitate all England. The
suspension or deprivation by the Ecclesiasti
cal Commissioners, which might not exclude
the Bishops from their Parliamentary seats,
would, in a case of so extensive delinquency,
raise such a fear and cry of arbitrary power,
as to render all prospect of a Parliament des
perate, and to drive -the King to a reliance
on arms alone ; — a fearful resolution, not to
be entertained without fuller assurance that
the army was and would remain untainted."
He therefore advised, that "His Majesty
should content himself with publishing a de
claration, expressing his high and just resent
ment at the hardihood of the Bishops, in dis
obeying the supreme head of their Church,
and disputing a Royal prerogative recently
recognised by all the judges of England ; but
stating that, in consideration of the fidelity
of the Church of England in past times, from
which these prelates had been the first to
depart, his Majesty was desirous of treating
their offence with clemency, and would re
fer their conduct to the consideration of the
next Parliament, in the hope that their inter
mediate conduct might warrant entire for-
* D'Adda and Barillon, 3d June.— MS.
t " Lords Powis, Arundel, Dover, and Bellasis,
are very zealous for moderation." — Van Citters,
llth June.— MS.
t Clarendon, 14th and 27th June, 5th July, 13th
August.
$ Clarendon, 21st May. " The first time I had
seen him for a long time. He professed great
kindness."
I! D'Adda and Barillon, supra.
366
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
giveness." It was said, on the other hand,
" that the safety of the government depend
ed on an immediate blow ; that the impunity
of such audacious contumacy would embol
den every enemy at home and abroad ; that
all lenity would be regarded as the effect of
weakness and fear ; and that the opportu
nity must now or never be seized, of em
ploying the Ecclesiastical Commission to
strike down a Church, which supported the
Crown only as long as she dictated to it,
and became rebellious at the moment when
she was forbidden to be intolerant.''' To
strengthen these topics, it was urged " that
the factions had already boasted that the
Court would not dare to proceed juridically
against the Bishops."
Both the prudent ministers, to whom these
discussions were imparted, influenced proba
bly by their wishes, expected that modera
tion would prevail.* But, after a week of
discussion. Jeffreys, fearing that the King
could not be reconciled to absolute forbear
ance, and desirous of removing the odium
from the Ecclesiastical Commission, of which
he was the head,t proposed that the Bishops
should be prosecuted in the Court of King's
Bench, and the consideration of mercy or
rigour postponed till after judgment; — a com
promise probably more impolitic than either
of the extremes, inasmuch as it united a con
spicuous and solemn mode of proceeding,
and a form of trial partly popular, with room
for the utmost boldness of defence, some
probability of acquittal, and the least pun
ishment in case of conviction. On the even
ing of the 27th, the second Sunday appointed
for reading the Declaration, it was accord
ingly determined to prosecute them ; and
they were summoned to appear before the
Privy Council on the 8th of June, to answer a
charge of misdemeanour.
In obedience to this summons, the Bishops
attended at Whitehall on the day appointed,
about five o'clock in the afternoon, and being
called into the Council Chamber, were gra
ciously received by the King. The Chancel
lor asked the Archbishop, whether a paper
now shown to him was the Petition written
by him, and presented by the other Bishops
to his Majesty. The Archbishop, addressing
himself to the King, answered, " Sir, I am
called hither as a criminal, which I never
was before : since I have that unhappiness,
I hope your Majesty will not be offended that
* D'Adda and Barillon, llth June.— MS.
t Van Citters. llth June. — MS. The biogra
pher of James II. (Life, vol. ii. p. 158,) tells us
that the Chancellor advised the King to prosecute
the Bishops for tumultuous petitioning, ignoranily
supposing the statute passed at the Restoration
against such petitioning to be applicable to their
case. The passage in the same page, which
quotes the King's own MSS., is more naturally
referable to the secret advisers of the Order in
Council. The account of Van Citters. adopted
in the text, reconciles the Jacobite tradition fol
lowed by Dicconson with the language of Jeffreys
to Clarendon, and with the former complaints of
Catholics against his lukewarmness mentioned by
Barillon.
I am cautious of answering questions which
may tend to accuse myself." The King
called this chicanery ; adding, " I hope you
will not deny your own hand." The Arch
bishop said, " The only reason for the ques
tion is to draw an answer which may be
ground of accusation ;" and Lloyd, of St.
Asaph, added, "All divines of all Christian
churches are agreed that no man in our situ
ation is obliged to answer such questions :"
but the King impatiently pressing for an
answer, the Archbishop said, '^Sir, though
not obliged to answer, yet, if Your Majesty
commands it, we are willing to obey, trusting
to your justice and generosity that we shall
not suffer for our obedience." The King
said he should not command them, and
Jeffreys directed them to withdraw. On
their return, being commanded by the King
to answer, they owned the Petition. There
is some doubt whether they repeated the
condition on which they made their first
offer of obedience ;* but, if they did not,
their forbearance must have arisen from a
respectful confidence, which disposed them,
with reason, to consider the eilerice of the
King as a virtual assent to their unretracted
condition. A tacit acceptance of conditional
obedience is indeed as distinct a promise to
perform the condition as the most express
words. They were then again commanded
to withdraw; and on their return a third
time, they were told by Jeffreys that they
would be proceeded against, "but," he
added (alluding to the obnoxious Com mis-
mission), '-'with all fairness, in Westminister
Hall." He desired them to enter into a re
cognisance (or legal engagement) to appear.
They declared their readiness to answer,
whenever they were called upon, without it,
and, after some conversation, insisted on
their privilege as Peers not to be bound by
a recognisance in misdemeanour. After
several ineffectual attempts to prevail on
them to accept the offer of being discharged
on their own recognisances, as a favour,
they were committed to the Tower by a
warrant, which all the Privy Councillors
present (except Lord Berkeley and Father
Petre) subscribed; of whom it is observable,
that nine only were avowed Catholics, and
nine professed members of the English
Church, besides Sunderland, whose renun
ciation of that religion was not yet made
public. t The Order for the prosecution was.
however, sanctioned in the usual manner,
by placing the names of all Privy Council
lors present at its head.
The people who saw the Bishops as they
walked to the barges which were to conduct
* D'Oyley, (vol. i. p. 278,) seems on this point
to vary from the narrative in Gutch (vol. i. p. 351.)
It seems to me more probable that the condition
was repeated after the second entrance ; for Dr.
D'Oyley is certainly right in thinking that the
statement of the Archbishop's words, as having
been spoken " after the third or fourth coming
in," must be a mistake. It is evidently at vari
ance with the whole course of the examination.
t Gutch, vol. i. p. 353.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
367
them to the Tower, were deeply affected by
the spectacle, and, for the first time, manifest
ed their emotions in a manner which would
have still served as a wholesome admonition
to a wise Government. The demeanour of
the Prelates is described by eye-witnesses
as meek, composed, cheerful, betraying no
fear, and untainted by ostentation or defiance,
but endowed with a greater power over the
fellow-feeling of the beholders by the ex
hortations to loyalty, which were doubtless
uttered with undesigning sincerity by the
greater number of the venerable sufferers.*
The mode of conveyance, though probably
selected for mere convenience, contributed
to deepen and prolong the interest of the
scene. The soldiers who escorted them to
the shore had no need to make any demon
strations of violence ; for the people were too
much subdued by pity and reverence to vent
their feelings otherwise than by tears and
prayers. Having never before seen prelates
in opposition to the King, and accustomed to
look at them only in a state of pacific and
inviolate dignity, the spectators regarded
their fall to ths condition of prisoners and
the appearance of culprits with amazement,
awe. and compassion. The scene seemed to
be a procession of martyrs. ''Thousands,''
says Van Citters. probably an eye-witness,
'•begged their blessing."t Some ran into
the water to implore ilT Both banks of the
Thames were lined with multitudes, who,
when they were too distant to be heard,
manifested their feelings by falling down on
their knees, and raising up their hands, be
seeching Heaven to guard the sufferers for
religion and liberty. On landing at the Tower,
several of the guards knelt down to receive
their blessing; while some even of the offi
cers yielded to the general impulse. As the
Bishops chanced to land at the accustomed
hour of evening prayer, they immediately
repaired to the chapel ; where they heard,
in the ordinary lesson of the day. a remark
able exhortation to the primitive teachers of
Christianity, "to approve themselves the
ministers of God, in much patience, in
afflictions, in imprisonments.''! The Court
ordered the guard to be doubled.
On the following days multitudes crowded
to the Tower, § of \vhom the majority gazed
on the prison with distant awe, while a few
entered to offer homage and counsel to the
venerable prisoners. '-'If it be a crime to
lament," said a learned contemporary, in a
confidential letter, "innumerable are the
transgressors. The nobles of both sexes,
as it were, keep their court at the Tower,
whither a vast concourse daily go to beg the
holy men's blessing. The very soldiers act as
mourners. "II The soldiers on guard, indeed,
drank their healths, and though reprimanded
by Sir Edward Hales, now Lieutenant of the
Tower, declared that they would persevere.
* Rereshy. p. 261. t 18th June.— MS.
J 2 Corinthians, vi. 4, 5.
$ Clarendon, 9th, 10th, 12th June.
il Dr. Nelson, Gutch, vol. i. p. 360.
The amiable Evelyn did not fail to visit
them on the day previous to that on which
he was to dine with the Chancellor, appear
ing to distribute his courtesies with the neu
trality of Atticus:* but we now know that
Jeffreys himself, on the latter of these days,
had sent a secret message by Clarendon, as
suring the Bishops that he was much troubled
at the prosecution, and offering his services
to them.t None of their visiters were more
remarkable than a deputation of ten Non
conformist ministers, which so incensed the
King that he personally reprimanded them ;
but they answered, that they could not but
adhere to the Bishops, as men constant to
the Protestant religion, — an example of mag
nanimity rare in the conflicts of religious
animosities. The Dissenting clergy seem,
indeed, to have been nearly unanimous in
preferring the general interest of religious
liberty to the enlargement of their peculiar
privileges. f Alsop was full of sorrow for
his compliances in the former year. LuLb,
who was seized with so enthusiastic an at
tachment to James, that he was lonir after
known by the singular name of the "Jacob
ite Independent." alone persevered in de-
votedriess to the' Court; and when the King
asked his advice respecting the treatment
of the Bishops, advised that they should be
sent to the Tower. §
No exertion of friendship or of public zeal
was wanting to prepare the means of their
defence, and to provide for their dignity, in
every part of the proceeding. The Bishop
of London, Dr. Tennyson, and Johnstone, the
secret agent of the Prince of Orange, appear
to have been the most active of their friends.
Pemberton and Pollexfen. accounted the most
learned among the elder lawyers, were en
gaged in their cause. Sir John Holt, destined
to be the chief ornament of a bench purified
by liberty, contributed his valuable advice.
John Somers. then in the thirty-eight year
of his age, was objected to at one of their
consultations, as too young and obscure to be
one of their counsel; and. if we may believe
Johnstone, it was owing to him that this me
morable cause afforded the earliest opportu
nity of making known the superior intellect
of that great man. Twenty-eight peers were
prepared to bail them, if bail should be re
quired. II Stanley, chaplain to the Princess
of Orange, had already "assured Sancroft that
the Prince and Princess approved their firm
ness, and were deeply interested in their
fate. IF One of them, probably Trelawney,
a prelate who had served in the Civil War,
had early told Johnstone that if they were
sent to the Tower, he hoped the Prince of
* Diary, 13th— 14th June.
t Clarendon, 14th June.
t Johnstone, 13th June. — MS.
$ Johnstone, 13th June. — MS. "I told the
Archbishop of Canterbury, " says Johnstone,
" that their fate depended oh very mean persons."
— Burnet, vol. iii. p. 217.
II Gutch, vol. i. p. 357, where their names ap
pear.
IT Ibid. p. 307.
368
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Orange would take them out, which two re
giments and his authority would do;* and.
a little later, the Bishop of St.' Asaph assured
the same trusty agent, who was then collect
ing the opinions of several eminent persons
on the seasonableness of resistance, that "the
matter would be easily done."t This bold
Pi-elate had familiarised himself with extra
ordinary events, and was probably tempted
to daring counsels by an overweening confi
dence in his own interpretation of mysterious
prophecies, which he had long laboured to
illustrate by vain efforts of ability and learn
ing. He made no secret of his expectations ;
but, at his first interview with a chaplain of
the Archbishop, exhorted him to be of good
courage, and declared that the happiest re
sults were now to be hoped ; for that the people,
incensed by tyranny, were ready to take up
arms to expel the Papists from the kingdom,
and to punish the King himself, which was
to be deprecated, by banishment or death;
adding, that if the Bishops escaped from
their present danger, they would reform the
Church from the corruptions which had crept
into her frame, throw open her gates for the
joyful entrance of the sober and pious among
Protestant Dissenters, and relieve even those
who should continue to be pertinacious
in their Nonconformity from the grievous
yoke of penal laws.J During the imprison
ment, Sunderland and the Catholic lords, now
supported by Jeffreys, used every means of
art and argument to persuade James that the
birth of the Prince of Wales (which will pre
sently be related) afforded a most becoming
opportunity for signalising that moment of
national joy by a general pardon, which
would comprehend the Bishops, without in
volving any apparent concession to them.§
The King, as usual, fluctuated. A Proclama
tion, couched in the most angry and haughty
language, commanding all clergymen, under
pain of immediate suspension, to read the
Declaration, was several times sent to the
press, and as often withdrawn.il "The King,"
said Jeffreys. ': had once resolved to let the
proceedings fall; but some men would hurry
him to destruction. ;'1[ The obstinacy of
James, inflamed by bigoted advisers, and
supported by commendation, with proffered
aid from France, prevailed over sober coun
sels.
On the 15th of June, the prisoners were
* Johnstone, 27th May.— MS.
"f Johnstone, 18th June. — MS. The Bishop's
observation is placed between the opinions of Mr.
Hampden and Sir J. Lee, both zealous for imme
diate action.
t Diary of Henry Wharton, 25th June, 1686.
D'Oyley, vol. ii. p. 134. The term " ponteficious,"
which is rendered in the text by Papists, may per
haps be limited, by a charitable construction, to the
more devoted partisans of Papal authority. "The
Bishop of St. Asaph was a secret favourer of a
foreign interest." — Life of Kettlewell, p. 175,
compiled (London, 1718) from the papers of Hicks
and Nelson.
§ Johnstone, 13th June.— MS.
II Van Citters, 8th June.— MS.
1T Clarendon, 14th June.
brought before the Court of King's Bench by
a writ of Habeas Corpus. On leaving the
Tower they refused to pay the fees required
by Sir Edward Hales as lieutenant, whom
they charged with discourtesy. He so far
forgot himself as to say that the fees were
a compensation for the irons with which he
might have loaded them, and the bare walls
and floor to which he might have confined
their accommodation.* They answered,
"We lament the King's displeasure; but
every other man loses his breath who at
tempts to intimidate us." On landing from
their barge, they were received with in
creased reverence by a great multitude, who
made a lane for them, and followed them
into Westminster Hall.t The Nuncio, un
used to the slightest breath of popular feel
ing, was subdued by these manifestations of
enthusiasm, which he relates with more
warmth than any other contemporary. "Of
the immense concourse of people," says he,
" who received them on the bank of the
river, the majority in their immediate neigh
bourhood were on their knees: the Arch
bishop laid his hands on the heads of such
as he could reach, exhorting them to con
tinue stedfast in their faith ; they cried aloud
that all should kneel, while tears flowed
from the eyes of many.J In the court they
were attended by the twenty-nine Peers
who offered to be their sureties ; and it was
instantly filled by a crowd of gentlemen at
tached to their cause.
The return of the lieutenant of the Tower
to the writ set forth that the Bishops were
committed under a warrant signed by cer
tain Privy Councillors for a seditious libel.
The Attorney General moved, that the infor
mation should be read, and that the Bishops
should be called on to plead, or, in common
language, either to admit the fact, deny it,
or allege some legal justification of it. The
counsel for the Bishops objected to reading
the information, on the ground that they
were riot legally before the court, because
the warrant, though signed by Privy Coun
cillors, was not stated to be issued by them
in that capacity, and because the Bishops,
being Peers of Parliament, could not law
fully be committed for a libel. The Court
over-ruled these objections; — the first with
evident justice, because the warrant of com
mitment set forth its execution at the Council
Chamber, and in the presence of the King,
which sufficiently showed it to be the act
of the subscribing Privy Councillors acting
as such, — the second, with much doubt
touching the extent of privilege of Parlia
ment, acknowledged on both sides to exempt
from apprehension in all cases but treason,
felony, and breach of the peace, which last
term was said by the counsel for the Crown
to comprehend all such constructive offences
* Johnstone, 18th June. — MS. See a more
general statement to the same effect, in Evelyn's
Diary, 29th June.
t Clarendon, 15th June.
t D'Adda, 22d June.— MS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
369
against the peace as libels, and argued on
behalf of the Bishops, to be confined to
those acts or threats of violence which, in
common language, are termed u breaches
of the peace." The greatest judicial au
thority on constitutional law since the acces
sion of the House of Brunswick has pro
nounced the determination of the Judges in
1688 to be erroneous.* The question de
pends too much upon irregular usage and
technical subtilties to be brought under the
cognisance of the historian, who must be
content with observing, that the error was
not so manifest as to warrant an imputation
of bad faith in the Judges. A delay of
pleading till the next term, which is called
an " imparlance," was then claimed. The
officers usually referred to for the practice
of the Court declared such for the last
twelve years to have been that the defend
ants should immediately plead. Sir Robert
Sawyer. Mr. Finch, Sir Francis Pemberton,
and Mr.' Pollexfen, bore a weighty testimony,
from their long experience, to the more in
dulgent practice of the better times which
preceded; but Sawyer, covered with the
guilt of so many odious proceedings, Finch,
who was by no means free from participa
tion in them, and even Pemberton, who had
the misfortune to be Chief Justice in evil
days, seemed to contend against the prac
tice of their own administration with a bad
grace : the veteran Pollexfen alone, without
lear of retaliation, appealed to the pure age
of Sir Matthew Hale. The Court decided
that the Bishops should plead; but their
counsel considered themselves as having
gained their legitimate object by showing
that the Government employed means at
Jeast disputable against them.t The Bishops
then pleaded "Not guilty," and were en
larged, on their own undertaking to appear
on the trial, which wras appointed for the
29th of June.
As they left the court they were sur
rounded by crowds, who begged their bless
ing. The Bishop of St. Asaph, detained in
Palace Yard by a multitude, who kissed his
hands and garments, wras delivered from their
importunate kindness by Lord Clarendon,
who, taking him into his carriage, found it
necessary to make a circuit through the Park
to escape from the bodies of people by w7hom
the streets were obstructed. J Shouts and
huzzas broke out in the court, and were re
peated all around at the moment of the en-
* Lord Camden in Wilkes' case, 1763.
t State Trials, vol. xii. p. 183. The general
reader may be referred with confidence to the
excellent abridgment of the State Trials, by Mr.
Phillipps, — a work probably not to be paralleled
by the union of discernment, knowledge, imparti
ality, calmness, clearness, and precision, it exhibits
on questions the most angrily contested. It is,
indeed, far superior to the huge and most unequal
compilation of which it is an abridgment, — to say
nothing of the instructive observations on legal
questions in which Mr. Phillipps rejudges the
determinations of past times.
t Clarendon, 15th June.
47
largement. The bells of the Abbey Church of
Westminster had begun to ring a joyful peal,
when they were stopped by Sprat amidst the
execrations of the people.* " No one knew."
said the Dutch minister, "what to do for
joy." When the Archbishop landed at Lam
beth, the grenadiers of Lord Lichfield?s regi
ment, though posted there by his enemies,
received him with military honours, made a
lane for his passage from the river to his
palace, and fell on their knees to ask his
blessing.! In the evening the premature
joy at this temporary liberation displayed
itself in bonfires, and in some outrages to
Roman Catholics, as the supposed instigators
of the prosecution. I
No doubt was entertained at Court of the
result of the trial, which the King himself
took measures to secure by a private inter
view with Sir Samuel Astry, the officer
whose province it was to form the jury.§ It
was openly said that the Bishops would be
condemned to pay large fines, to be im
prisoned till payment, and to be suspended
from their functions and revenues. II A fund
would thus be ready for the King's liberality
to Catholic colleges and chapels; while the
punishment of the Archbishop would re
move the only licenser of the pressIF who
was independent of the Crown. Sunderland
still contended for the policy of being gene
rous after victory, and of not seeking to
destroy those who would be sufficiently de
graded ; and he believed that he had made
a favourable impression on the King.** But
the latter spoke of the feebleness which
had disturbed the reign of his brother, and
brought his father to the scaffold ; and Ba-
rillon represents him as inflexibly resolved
on rigour.tf which opinion seems to have
been justified by the uniform result of every
previous deliberation. Men of common
understanding are much disposed to con
sider the contrary of the last unfortunate
error as being always the sound policy;
they are incapable of estimating the various
circumstances which may render vigour or
caution applicable at different times and in
different stages of the same proceedings,
and pursue their single maxim, often founded
on shallow views, even of one case, with
headlong obstinacy. If they be men also
of irresolute nature, they are unable to re
sist the impetuosity of violent counsellors,
they are prone to rid themselves of the pain
* Van Citters, 25th June.— MS.
t Johnstone, 18th June.— MS.
t Narcissus Luttrell, MS. ; and the two last-
mentioned authorities.
$ Clarendon, 21st — 27th June, where an agent
of the Court is said to have busied himself in
striking the jury.
II Barillon, 1st July.— MS. Van Citters, 2d
July.— MS.
IT It appears from Wharton's Diary, that the
chaplains at Lambeth discharged this duty with
more regard even then to the feelings of the King
than to the rights of Protestant controversialists.
** D'Adda, 9th July.— MS.
tt Barillon, 1st July.— MS.
370
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of fluctuation by a sudden determination to
appear decisive, and they often take refuge
from past fears? and seek security from
danger to come, by a rash and violent blow.
"Lord Sunderland," says Barillon, "like a
good courtier and an able politician, every
where vindicates, with warmth and vigour,
the measures which he disapproved and had
opposed."*
The Bishops, on the appointed day, en
tered the court, surrounded by the lordst
and gentlemen who, on this solemn occa
sion, chose that mode of once more testify
ing their adherence to the public cause.
Some previous incident? inspired courage.
Levinz, one of the counsel retained, having
endeavoured to excuse himself from an ob
noxious duty, was compelled, by the threats
of attorneys, to perform it. The venerable
Serjeant Maynard, urged to appear for the
Crown, in the discharge of his duty as King's
Serjeant, boldly answered, that if he did he
was bound also to declare his conscientious
opinion of the case to the King's Judges. i
The appearance of the bench was not con
solatory to the accused. Powell was the
only impartial and upright Judge. Allibone,
as a Roman Catholic, was, in reality, about
to try the question whether he was himself
legally qualified for his office. Wright and
Holloway were placed there to betray the
law. Jeffreys himself, who had appointed
the Judges, now loaded them with the
coarsest reproaches,^— more, perhaps, from
distrust of their boldness than from appre
hension of their independence. Symptoms
of the overawing power of national opinion
are indeed perceptible in the speech of the
Attorney-General, which was not so much
the statement of an accusation as an apology
for a prosecution. He disclaimed all attack
on the Bishops in their episcopal character,
and did not now complain of their refusal to
read the King's Declaration ; but only charged
them with the temporal offence of composing
and publishing a seditious libel, under pre
tence of presenting a humble petition to His
Majesty. His doctrine on this head was, in
deed, subversive of liberty ; but it has often
been repeated in better times, though in
milder terms, and with some reservations.
"The Bishops," said he, "are accused of
censuring the government, and giving their
opinion about affairs of State. No man may
say of the great officers of the kingdom, fai
less of the King, that they act unreasonably,
for that may beget a desire of reformation,
* Barillon, 1st July.— MS.
t " Thirty-five lords." — (Johnstone, 2d July
MS.); probably about one half of the legally
qualified peers then in England and able to attend.
There were eighty-nine temporal lords who were
Protestants. Minority, absence from the king
clom, and sickness, may account for nineteen.
t Johnstone, 2d July.— MS.
§ " Rogues," ;* Knaves," " Fools."— Claren
don, 27th June— 5th July. He called Wright " a
beast;" but this, it must be observed, was after
his defeat.
and the last age will abundantly satisfy us
.vhitlier such a thing does tend."
The first difficulty arose as to the proof of
he handwriting, which seems to have been
lecisive against Bancroft, sufficient against
some others, and altogether wanting in the
cases of Ken and Lake. All the witnesses
m this subject gave their testimony with
he most evident'reluctance. The Court was
equally divided on the question \\hether
.here was sufficient proof of it to warrant the
•eading of the Petition in evidence against
he accused. The objection to its being so
read was groundless; but the answers to it
were so feeble as to betray a general irre
solution and embarrassment. The counsel
or the Crown were then driven to the ne
cessity of calling the clerk oi the Privy Coun
cil to prove the confessions before that body,
n obedience to the commands of the King.
When they were proved, Pemberton, with
considerable dexterity, desired the witness
to relate all the circumstances which at
tended these confessions. Blathwaite. the
clerk, long resisted, and evaded the ques
tion, of which he evidently felt the impor
tance; but he was at length compelled to
acknowledge that the Bishops had accom
panied their offer to submit to the Uoyal
command, with an expression of their hope
that no advantage would be taken of their
confession against them. He could not pre
tend that they had been previously warned
against such a hope; but he eagerly added,
that no promise to such an effect had been
made, — as if chicanery could be listened to
in a matter which concerned the personal
honour of a sovereign. Williams, the only
one of the counsel for the Crown who was
more provoked than intimidated by the pub
lic voice, drew the attention of the audience
to this breach of faith by the vehemence
with which he resisted the admission of the
evidence which proved it.
Another subtile question sprung from the
principle of English law, that crimes are
triable only in the county where they are
committed. It was said that the alleged
libel was written at Lambeth in Surrey, and
not proved to have been published in Middle
sex : so that neither of the offences charged
could be tried in the latter county. That it
could not have been written in Middlesex
was proved by the Archbishop, who was the
writer, having been confined by illness to
his palace for some months. The prosecutor
then endeavoured to show by the clerks of
the Privy Council,* that the Bishops had
owned the delivery of the Petition to the
King, which would have been a publication
in Middlesex: but the witnesses proved only
an admission of the signatures. On every
failure, the audience showed their feelings
by a triumphant laugh or a shout of joy.
The Chief Justice, who at first feebly repri-
* Pepys, the noted Secretary to the Admiralty,
was one of the witnesses examined. He was pro
bably a Privy Councillor.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
371
manded them, soon abandoned the attempt
to check them. In a long and irregular al
tercation, the advocates of the accused spoke
\vith increasing boldness, and those for the
prosecution with more palpable depression,
— except Williams, who vented the painful
consciousness of inconsistency, unvarnished
by success, in transports of rage which de
scended to the coarsest railing. The Court
had already, before the examination of the
latter witnesses, determined that there was
no evidence of publication; notwithstanding
which, and the failure of these last, the At
torney and Solicitor General proceeded to
argue that the case was sufficient, — chiefly,
it would seem, to prolong the brawl till the
arrival of Lord Sunderland, by whose testi
mony they expected to prove the delivery
of the Petition to the King. But the Chief
Justice, who could no longer endure such
wearisome confusion, began to sum up the
evidence to the Jury, whom, if he had ad
hered to his previous declarations, he must
have instructed to acquit the accused. Finch,
either distrusting the Jury, or excused, if not
justified, by the Judge's character, by the
suspicious solemnity of his professions of im
partiality, and by his own too long familiarity
with the darkest mysteries of state trials,
suspected some secret design, and respect
fully interrupted Wright, in order to ascer
tain whether he still thought that there was
no sufficient proof of writing in Middlesex,
or of publication any where. Wright, who
seemed to be piqued, said, ahe was sorry
Mr. Finch should think him capable of not
leaving it fairly to the Jury," — scarcely con
taining his exultation over his supposed in
discretion.* Pollexfen requested the Judge
to proceed ; and Finch pressed his interrup
tion no farther. But Williams, who, when
Wrijjhl had began to sum up, countermanded
his request for the attendance of Lord Sun
derland as too late, seized the opportunity of
this interruption to despatch a second mes
sage, urging him to come without delay, and
begged the Court to suspend the summing
up, as a person of great quality was about to
appear who would supply the defects in the
evidence, — triumphantly adding, that there
was a fatality in this case. Wright then said
to the accused's counsel, "You see what
comes of the interruption ; now we must
stay." All the bystanders condemned Finch
* "The C. J. said, 'Gentlemen, you do not
know your own business ; hut since you will he
heard, you shall be heard.' " Johnstone, 2d July.
— MS. He seems to have been present, and, as a
Scotchman, was not very likely to have invented
so afood an illustration of the future tense. It is
difficult not to suspect that Wright, after admitting
that there was no positive evidence of publication
in Middlesex, did not intend to tell the Jury that
there were circumstances proved from which they
might reasonably infer the fact. The only cir
cumstance, indeed, which could render it doubtful
that he would lay down a doctrine so well founded,
and so suitable to his purpose, at a time when he
could no longer be contradicted, is the confusion
which, on this trial, seems to have more than
usually clouded his weak understanding.
as much as he soon afterwards compelled
hem to applaud him. An hour was spent
in waiting for Sunderland. It appears to have
been during this fortunate delay that the
Bishops' counsel determined on a defence
founded on the illegality of the Dispensing
Power, from which they had before been
either deterred from an apprehension that
they would not be suffered to question an
adjudged point, or diverted at the moment
by the prospect that the Chief Justice would
sum up for an acquittal.* By this resolution,
the verdict, instead of only insuring the es
cape of the Bishops, became a triumph of
the constitution. At length Sunderland was
carried through Westminster in a chair, the
head of which was down : — no one saluting
him, and the multitude hooting arid hissing
and crying out '-Popish dog!" He was so
disordered by this reception that when he
came into court he trembled, changed colour,
and looked down, as if fearful of the coun
tenances of ancient friends, and unable to
bear the contrast between his own disgrace
ful greatness and the honourable calamity of
the Bishops. He only proved that the Bishops
came to him with a petition, which he de
clined to read ; and that he introduced them
immediately to the King, to whom he had
communicated the purpose for which they
prayed an audience.
The general defence then began, and the
counsel for the Bishops, without relinquish
ing their minor objections, arraigned the Dis
pensing Power, and maintained the right of
petition with a vigour and boldness which
entitles such of them as were only mere ad
vocates to great approbation, and those among
them who were actuated by higher principles
to the everlasting gratitude of their country.
When Sawyer began to question the legality
of the Declaration, Wright, speaking aside,
said, "I must not suffer them to dispute the
King's power of suspending laws." Powell
answered, " They must touch that point j for
if the King had no such power (as clearly he
hath not ,) the Petition is no attack on the
King's legal power, and therefore no libel."
Wright peevishly replied. •'' I know you are
full of that doctrine, but the Bishops shall
have no reason to say I did not hear them.
Brother, you shall have your way for once.
I will hear them. Let them talk till they are
weary." The substance of the argument was,
that a Dispensing Power was unknown to the
ancient constitution ; that the Commons, in
the reign of Richard II., had formally con
sented that the King should, with the as
sent of the Lords, exercise such a power re
specting a single law till the next Parlia-
t "They waited about an hour for Sunderland,
which luckily fell out, for in this time the Bishops'
lawyers recollected themselves, in order to what
followed." A minute examination of the trial
explains these words of Johnstone, and remark
ably proves his accuracy. From the eagerness of
Pollexfen that Wright should proceed wiih his
address to the Jury, it is evident that they did not
then intend to make the defence which was after
wards made.
372
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ment ;* that the acceptance of such a trust was
a Parliamentary declaration against the exist
ence of such a prerogative ; that though there
were many cases of dispensations from pen
alties granted to individuals, there never was
an instance of a pretension to dispense with
laws before the Restoration • that it was in
the reign of Charles II. twice condemned by
Parliament, twice relinquished, and once
disclaimed by the Crown ; that it was de
clared to be illegal by the House of Commons
in their very last session : and finally, that
the power to suspend was' in effect a power
to abrogate ; that it was an assumption of the
whole legislative authority, and laid the laws
and liberties of the kingdom at the mercy of
the King. Mr. Somers, whose research had
supplied the ancient authorities quoted by
his seniors, closed the defence in a speech
admirable for a perspicuous brevity well
adapted to the stage of the trial at which he
spoke ; in which, with a mind so unruffled
by the passions which raged around him as
even to preserve a beautiful simplicity of
expression, — rarely reconcilable with anxi
ous condensation, — he conveyed in a few
luminous sentences the substance of all that
had been dispersed over a rugged, prolix,
and disorderly controversy. "My Lord, I
would only mention the case respecting a
dispensation from a statute of Edward VI.,
wherein all the judges determined that there
never could be an abrogation or suspension
(which is a temporary abrogation) of an Act
of Parliament but by the legislative power.
It was, indeed, disputed how far the King
might dispense with the penalties of such a
particular law, as to particular persons ; but
it was agreed by all that the King had no
power to suspend any law. Nay, I dare ven
ture to appeal to Mr. Attorney-General, whe
ther, in the late case of Sir Edward Hales,
he did not admit that the King could not
suspend a law, but only grant a dispensation
from its observance to a particular person.
My Lord, by the law of all civilized nations,
if the prince requires something to be done,
which the person who is to do it takes to be
unlawful, it is not only lawful, but his duty,
rescribere principij — to petition the sove
reign. This is all that is done here ; and that
in the most humble manner that could be
thought of. Your Lordships will please to
observe how far that humble caution went :
how careful they were that they might not
in any way justly offend the King : they did
not interpose by giving advice as peers ;
they never stirred till it was brought home to
themselves tis bishops. When they made
this Petition, all they asked was, that it might
not be so far insisted on by his Majesty as
to oblige them to read it. Whatever they
thought of it, they do not take it upon them
* 15 Ric. II.
t This phrase of the Roman law, which at first
bight seems mere pedantry, conveys a delicate and
happy allusion to the liberty of petition, which was
allowed even under the despotism of the Em-
oerors of Rome.
to desire the Declaration to be revoked. My
Lord, as to the matters of fact alleged in the
Petition, that they are perfectly true we have
shown by the Journals of both Houses. In
every one of those years which are men
tioned in the Petition, this power was con
sidered by Parliament, and upon debate
declared to be contrary to law. There could
then be no design to diminish the prerogative,
for the King has no such prerogative. Sedi
tious, my Lord, it could not be, nor could it
possibly stir up sedition in the minds of the
people, because it was presented to the King
in private and alone ; false it could not be,
for the matter of it was true ; there could be
nothing of malice, for the occasion was not
sought, but the thing was pressed upon them ;
and a libel it could not be, because the in
tent was innocent, and they kept within the
bounds set up by the law that gives the sub
ject leave to apply to his prince by petition
when he is aggrieved.53
The Crown lawyers, by whom this ex
tensive and bold defence seems to have been
unforeseen, manifested in their reply their
characteristic faults. Powis was feebly tech
nical, and Williams was offensively violent.*
Both evaded the great question of the pre
rogative by professional common-places of
no avail with the Jury or the public. They
both relied on the usual topics employed by
their predecessors arid successors, that the
truth of a libel could not be the subject of in
quiry j and that the falsehood, as well as the
malice and sedition charged by the informa
tion, were not matters of fact to be tried by
the Jury, but qualifications applied by the
law to every writing derogatory to the go
vernment. Both triumphantly urged that
the Parliamentary proceedings of the last
and present reign, being neither acts nor
judgments of Parliament, were no proof of
the illegality of what they condemned, —
withow.t adverting to the very obvious con
sideration that thj Bishops appealed to them
only as such manifestations of the sense of
Parliament as it would be imprudent in them
to disregard. Williams, in illustration of
this argument, asked "Whether the name
of <a declaration in Parliament' could be
given to the Bill of Exclusion, because it had
passed the Commons (where he himself had
been very active in promoting it)?" This
indiscreet allusion was received with a gene
ral hiss.t He was driven to the untenable
position, that a petition from these prelates
was warrantable only to Parliament; and
that they were bound to delay it till Parlia
ment should be assembled.
* " Pollexfen and Finch took no small pains to
inveigh against the King's Dispensing power.
The counsel for the Crown waived that point,
ihousrh Mr. Solicitor was fiercely earnest against
the Bishops, and took the management upon him
self ; Mr. Attorney's province being to put a
smooth question now and then." — Mr. (after
wards Baron) Price to the Duke of Beaufort. —
Macpherson, Original Papers, vol. i. p. 266.
t Van Cillers, 9th July.— MS.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
373
Wright, waiving the question of the Dis
pensing Power,* instructed the Jury that a
delivery to the King was a publication ] and
that any writing which was adapted to dis
turb the government, or make a stir among
the people, was a libel ; — language of fearful
import, but not peculiar to him, nor confined
to his time. Holloway thought, that if the
intention of the Bishops was only to make
an innocent provision for their own security,
the writing could not be a libel. Powell de
clared that they were innocent of sedition, or
of any other crime, saying, "If such a Dis
pensing Power be allowed, there will need
no Parliament ; all the legislature will be in
the King. I leave the issue to God and to
your consciences." Allibone overleaped all
the fences of decency or prudence so far as
to affirm, li that no man can take upon him
self to write against the actual exercise of
the government, unless he have leave from
the government, but he makes a libel, be
what he writes true or false. The govern
ment ought not to be impeached by argu
ment. This is a libel. No private man can
write concerning the government at all, un
less his own interest be stirred, and then he
must redress himself by law. Every man
may petition in what relates to his private in
terest ; but neither the Bishops, nor any other
man, has a right to intermeddle in affairs of
government."
After a trial which lasted ten hours, the
Jury retired at seven o'clock in the evening
to consider their verdict. The friends of the
Bishops watched at the door of the jury-
room, and heard loud voices at midnight and
at three o'clock ; so anxious were they about
the issue, though delay be in such cases a
sure symptom of acquittal. The opposi
tion of one Arnold, the brewer of the King's
house, being at length subdued by the steadi
ness of the others, the Chief Justice was in
formed, at six o'clock in the morning, that
the Jury were agreed in their verdict. t The
Court met at nine o'clock. The nobility and
gentry covered the benches; and an im
mense concourse of people filled the Hall,
" The Dispensing Power is more effectually
knocked on the head than if an Act of Parliament
had been made against it. The Judges said no
thing about it, except Powell, who declared against
it: so it is given up in Westminster Hall. My
Lord Chief Justice is much blamed at Court for
allowing it to be debated." — Johnstone, 2d Julv-
—MS.
t Letter of Ince, the solicitor for the Bishops, to
Sancroft. Gutch, vol. i. p. 374. From this letter
we learn that the perilous practice then prevailed
of successful parties giving a dinner and money to
the jury. The solicitor proposed that the dinner
should be omitted, but that 150 or 200 guineas
should be distributed among twenty-two of the
panel who attended. " Most of them (i. e. the
panel of the Jury) are Church of England men ;
several are employed by the King in the navy and
revenue; and some are or once were of the Dis
senters' party." — Ellis, Original Letters, 2d se
ries, vol. iv. p. 105. Of this last class we are told by
Johnstone, that, " on being sounded by the Court
agents, they declared that if they were jurors,
they should act according to their conscience."
and blocked up the adjoining streets. Sir
Robert Langley, the foreman of the Jury,
being, according to established form, askeu
whether the accused were guilty or not
guilty, pronounced the verdict, " Not guilty."
No sooner were these words uttered than a
loud huzza arose from the audience in the
court. It was instantly echoed from without
by a shout of joy, which sounded like a crack
of the ancient and massy roof of Westminster
Hall.* It passed with electrical rapidity from
voice to voice along the infinite multitude
who waited in the streets, reaching the Tem
ple in a few minutes. For a short time no
man seemed to know where he was. No
business was done for hours. The Solicitor-
General informed Lord Sunderlarid, in the
presence of the Nuncio, that never within
the remembrance of man had there been
heard such cries of applause mingled with
tears of joy.t '-'The acclamations," says
Sir John Reresby, " were a very rebellion in
noise." In no long time they ran to the
camp at Hounslow, and were repeated with
an ominous voice by the soldiers in the hear
ing of the King, who. on being told that they
were for the acquittal of the Bishops, said,
with an ambiguity probably arising from
confusion, "So much the worse for them."
The Jury were every where received with
the loudest acclamations: hundreds, with
tears in their eyes, embraced them as de
liverers.! The Bishops, almost alarmed at
their own success, escaped from the huzzas
of the people as privately as possible, exhort
ing them to -'fear God and honour the King."
Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, had remained
in court during the trial unnoticed by any of
the crowd of nobility and gentry, and Sprat
met with little more regard. § The former,
in going to his carriage, was called a '• wolf
in sheep's clothing;" and as he was very
corpulent, the mob cried out, "Room for the
man with a pope in his belly !" They be
stowed also on Sir William "Williams very
mortifying proofs of disrespect.il
Money having been thrown among the
populace for that purpose, they in the evening
drank the healths of the King, the Bishops,
and the Jury together with confusion to the
Papists, amidst the ringing of bells, and
around bonfires blazing before the windows
of the King's palace :1F where the Pope was
burnt in effigy** by those who were not aware
of his lukewarm friendship for their enemies.
Bonfires were also kindled before the doors
of the most distinguished Roman Catholics,
who were required to defray the expense of
this annoyance. Lord Arundel. and others,
submitted : Lord Salisbury, with the zeal of
a new convert, sent his servants to disperse
the rabble ; but after having fired upon and
* Clarendon. 30th June,
t D'Adda, 16th July.— MS.
t Van Citters, 13th July.— MS.
§ Gutch, vol. i. p. 382.
II Van Citters, 13th July.— MS. IT Ibid.
** Johnstone, 2d July.— MS. Gerard, News
Letter, 4th July.
2G
374
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
killed only the parish beadle, who came to
quenc i the bonfire, they were driven back
into the house. All parties, Dissenters as
well as Churchmen, rejoiced in the acquittal :
the Bishops and their friends vainly laboured
to temper the extravagance with which their
joy was expressed.* The Nuncio, at first
touched by the effusion of popular feeling,
but now shocked by this boisterous triumph,
declared, (rthat the fires over the whole city,
the drinking in every street, accompanied by
cries to the health of the Bishops and confu
sion to the Catholics, with the play of fire
works, and the discharge of fire-arms, and
the other demonstrations of furious glad
ness, mixed with impious outrage against
religion, which were continued during the
night, formed a scene of unspeakable horror,
displaying, in all its rancour, the malignity
of this heretical people against the Church."f
The bonfires were kept up during the whole
of Saturday ; and the disorderly rejoicings of
the multitude did not cease till the dawn
of Sunday reminded them of the duties of
their religion.]: These same rejoicings spread
through the principal towns. The Grand
Jury of Middlesex refused to find indict
ments for a riot against some parties who
had tumultuously kindled bonfires, though
four times sent out with instructions to do so.§
The Court also manifested its deep feelings
on this occasion. In two days after the ac
quittal, the rank of a baronet was conferred
upon Williams ; while Powell for his honesty,
and Holloway for his hesitation, were re
moved from the bench. The King betrayed
the disturbance of his mind even in his
camp;|| and, though accustomed to unre
served conversation with Barillon, observed
a silence on the acquittal which that minister
\vas too prudent to interrupt.!"
In order to form a just estimate o^this
memorable trial, it is necessary to distinguish
its peculiar grievances from the evils vvhich
always attend the strict administration of
the laws against political libels. The doc
trine that every writing which indisposes
the people towards the administration of
the government, however subversive of all
political discussion, is not one of these pecu
liar grievances, for it has often been held in
* News Letter, 4th July.
t D'Adda, 16th July.— MS.
t Ellis, vol. iv. p. 110.
§ Reresby, p. 265. Gerard, News Letter, 7th
July.
II Reresby, supra.
IT " His Majesty has been pleased to remove
Sir Richard Holloway and Sir John Powell from
being justices of the King's Bench." London
Gazette, 6th July. In the Life of James II., (vol.
ii. p. 163.) it is said, that " the King gave no marks
of his displeasure to the Judges Holloway and
Powell." It is due to the character of James, to
say that this falsehood does not proceed from him ;
and justice requires it to be added, that as Dic-
conson, the compiler, thus evidently neglected
the most accessible means of ascertaining the
truth, very little credit is due to those portions of
his narrative for which, as in the present case, he
cites no auihority.
other cases, and perhaps never distinctly dis
claimed ; and the position that a libel may be
conveyed in the form of a petition is true,
though the case must be evident and fla
grant which would warrant its application.
The extravagances of Williams and Allibone
might in strictness be laid out of the case, as
peculiar to themselves, and not necessary to
support the prosecution, were it not that they
pointed out the threatening positions which
success in it might encourage and enable the
enemy to occupy. It was absolutely neces
sary for the Crown to contend that the matter
of the writing was so inflammatory as to
change its character from that of a petition
to that of a libel; that the intention in com
posing it was not to obtain relief, but to ex
cite discontent; and that it was presented to
the King to insult him. and to make its con
tents known to others. But the attempt to
extract such conclusions from the evidence
against the Bishops was an excess beyond
the furthest limits of the law of libel, as it
was even then received. The generous
feelings of mankind did not, however, so
scrupulously weigh the demerits of the pro
secution. The effect of this attempt was to
throw a strong light on all the odious quali
ties (hid from the mind in their common
state by familiarity) of a jealous and restric
tive legislation, directed against the free ex
ercise of reason and the fair examination of
the interests of the community. All the
vices of that distempered state in which a
Government cannot endure a fearless discus
sion of its principles and measures, appeared
in the peculiar evils of a single conspicuous
prosecution. The feelings of mankind, in
this respect more provident than their judg
ment,, saw, in the loss of every post, the
danger to the last entrenchments of public
liberty. A multitude of contemporary cir
cumstances, wholly foreign to its character
as a judicial proceeding, gave the trial the
strongest hold on the hearts of the people.
Unused to popular meetings, and little ac
customed to political writings, the whole
nation looked on this first public discussion
of their rights in a high place, surrounded
by the majesty of public justice, with that
new and intense interest which it is not easy
for those who are familiar with such scenes
to imagine. It was a prosecution of men of
the most venerable character and of mani
festly innocent intention, after the success
of which no good man could have been
secure. It was an experiment, in some
measure, to ascertain the means and proba
bilities of general deliverance. The Govern
ment was on its trial; and by the verdict of
acquittal, the King was justly convicted of a
conspiracy to maintain usurpation by oppres
sion.
The solicitude of Sunderland for modera
tion in these proceedings had exposed him
to such charges of lukewarmness, that he
deemed it necessary no longer to delay the
long-promised and decisive proof of his iden
tifying his interest with that of his master.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1C88.
375
Sacrifices of a purely religious nature cost
him little,* Some time before, he had com
pounded for his own delay by causing his
eldest son to abjure Protestantism ; '• choos
ing rather," says Barillon, " to expose his
son than himself to future hazard." The
specious excuse of preserving his vote in
Parliament had hitherto been deemed suffi
cient j while the shame of apostasy, and an
anxiety not to embroil himself irreparably
\vith a Protestant successor, were the real
motives for delay. But nothing less than a
public avowal of his conversion would now
suffice to shut the mouths of his enemies,
who imputed his advice of lenity towards
the Bishops to a desire of keeping measures
with the adherents of the Prince of Orange. t
It was accordingly in the week of the Bishops'
trial that he made public his renunciation
of the Protestant religion, but without any
solemn abjuration, because he had the year
before secretly performed that ceremony to
Father Petre.J By this measure he com
pletely succeeded in preserving or recovering
the favour of the King, wrho announced it
with the warmest commendations to his Ca
tholic counsellors, and told the Nuncio that
a resolution so generous and holy would very
much contribute to the service of God. " I
have, indeed, been informed," says that
minister, Ci that some of the most fanatical
merchants of the city have observed that the
Royal party must certainly be the strongest,
since, in the midst of the universal exaspera
tion of men's minds, it is thus embraced by
a man so wise, prudent, rich, and w^ell in-
formed."§ The Catholic courtiers also con
sidered the conversion as an indication of the
superior strength and approaching triumph
of their religion. Perhaps, indeed, the birth
of the Prince of Wales might have somewhat
encouraged him to the step; but it chiefly
arose from the prevalence of the present fear
for his place 6ver the apprehension of remote
consequences. Ashamed of his conduct, he
employed a friend to communicate his change
to his excellent wrife, who bitterly deplored
it. II His uncle, Henry Sidney, the most con-
* " On ne scait pas de quelle religion il est." —
Lettre d'un Anonyme (peut-etre Bonrepos) sur la
Conr de Londres, 1688, MSS. in the Depot des
Affaires Etrangeres, at Paris.
t " II a voulu fermer la bouche a ses ennemis,
et leur oter toute pretexte de dire qu'il peut entrer
dans sa conduite quelque management pour la
partie de M. le Prince d' Orange." — Barillon. 8th
July.— MS.
$ Ibid, supra. " Father Petre, though it was
irregular, was forced to say two masses in one
morning, because Lord Sunderland and Lord
Mulgrave were not to know of each other's con
version." — Halifax MSS. The French ambas
sador at Constantinople informed Sir William
Trumbull of the secret abjuration. — Ibid. " It is
now necessary," says Van Citters (6th July), " to
secure the King's favour; the Queen's, if she be
regent ; and his own place in the Council of Re
gency, if there be one."
§ D'Adda, 9th July.— MS.
II Evelyn, who visited Althorp a fortnight after
wards, thus alludes to it: "I wish from my soul
that the Lord her husband, whose parts are other-
fideritial agent of the Prince of Orange, was
incensed at his apostasy, and only expressed
the warmest wishes for his downfall.*
Two days after the imprisonment of the
Bishops, — as if all the events which were to
hasten the catastrophe of this reign, however
various in their causes or unlike in their na
ture, were to be crowded into the same scene,
— the Queen had been delivered in the palace
of St. James', of a son, whose birth had been
the object of more hopes and fears, and was
now the hinge on which greater events turned,
than that of any other Royal infant since hu
man affairs have been recorded in authentic
history. Never did the dependence of a
monarchical government on physical acci
dent more strikingly appear. On Trinity
Sunday, the 10th of June, between nine and
ten in the morning, the Prince of Wales was
born, in the presence of the Queen Dowager,
of most of the Privy Council, and of several
ladies of quality, — of all, in short, who were
the natural witnesses on such an occasion,
except the Princess Anne, who was at Bath,
and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was
a prisoner in the Tower. The cannons of
the Tower were fired ; a general thanksgiving
was ordered: and the Lord May or was en
joined to give directions for bonfires and
public rejoicing. Some addresses of con
gratulation followed; and compliments were
received on so happy an occasion from foreign
powers. The British ministers abroad, "in
due time, celebrated the auspicious birth, —
with undisturbed magnificence, at Rome, —
amidst the loudest manifestations of dissatis
faction and apprehension at Amsterdam.
From Jamaica to Madras, the distant de
pendencies, with which an unfrequent inter
course was then maintained by tedious
voyages, continued their prescribed rejoic
ings long after other feelings openly prevailed
in the mother country. The genius of Dryden,
which often struggled with the difficulty of
a task imposed, commemorated the birth of
the " son of prayer" in no ignoble verse,
but with prophecies of glory which were
speedily clouded, and in the end most sig
nally disappointed.!
The universal belief that the child was
supposititious is a fact which illustrates
wise conspicuous, were as worthy of her, as by a
fatal apostasy and court ambition he has made
'himselfunworlhy." — Diarv, 18th July.
* Johnstone, 2d July.— MS.
t " Born in broad daylight, that the ungrateful
rout
May find no room for a remaining doubt :
Truth, which itself is light, does darkness
shun,
And the true eaglet safely dares the sun.
Fain would the fiends have made a dubious
birth.
* * * *
No future ills, nor accidents, appear,
To sully or pollute the sacred infant's year.
* * * * •
But kings too tame are despicably good.
Be this the mixture of the regal child,
By nature manly, but by virtue mild."
Britannia Kedimva-.
376
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
several principles of human nature, and af
fords a needful and wholesome lesson of
scepticism, even in cases where many testi
monies seem to combine, and all judgments
for a time agree. The historians who wrote
while the dispute was still pending enlarge
on the particulars : in our age, the only cir
cumstances deserving preservation are those
which throw light on the origin and recep
tion of a false opinion which must be owned
lo have contributed to subsequent events.
Few births are so well attested as that of the
unfortunate Prince whom almost all English
Protestants then believed to be spurious.
The Queen had, for months before, alluded
to her pregnancy, in the most unaffected
manner, to the Princess of Orange.* The
delivery took place in the presence of many
persons of unsuspected veracity, a considera
ble number of whom were Protestants. Mes
sengers were eariy sent to fetch Dr. Cham
berlain, an eminent obstetrical practitioner,
and a noted Whig, who had been oppressed
by the King, and who would have been the
last person summoned to be present at a
pretended delivery.'!' But as not one in a
thousand had credited the pregnancy, the
public now looked at the birth with a strong
predisposition lo unbelief, which a very
natural neglect suffered for some time to
grow stronger from being uncontradicted.
This prejudice was provoked to greater vio
lence by the triumph of the Catholics; as
suspicion had before been awakened by their
bold predictions. The importance of the
event had, at the earlier period of the preg
nancy, produced mystery and reserve, — the
frequent attendants of fearful anxiety. —
which were eagerly seized on as presump
tions of sinister purpose. When a passionate
and inexperienced Queen disdained to take
any measures to silence malicious rumours,
her inaction was imputed to inability; and
when she submitted to the use of prudent
precautions, they were represented as be
traying the fears of conscious guilt. Every
act of the Royal Family had some handle by
which ingenious hostility could turn it against
them. Reason was employed only to dis
cover argument in support of the judgment
which passion had pronounced. In spite of
the strongest evidence, the Princess Anne
honestly persevered in her incredulity.!
Johnstone, who received minute information
of all the particulars of the delivery from one
of the Queen's attendants,§ could not divest
himself of suspicions, the good faith of which
seems to be proved by his not hazarding a
* Ellis, Original Letters, 1st series, vol. iii. p.
348. 21st Feb. 15th May, 6th— 13th July. The
last is decisive.
t Dr. Chamberlain's Letter to the Princess
Sophia. Dalrymple, app. to book v.
t Princess Anne to the Princess of Orange.
Ibid.
$ Mrs. Dawson, one of the gentlewomen of the
Queen's bedchamber, a Protestant, afterwards
examined before the Privy Council, who commu
nicated all the circumstances to her friend, Mrs.
Baillie, of Jerviswood, Johnstone's sister.
j positive judgment on the subject. By these
the slightest incidents of a lying-in room
were darkly coloured. No incidents in hu
man life could have stood the test of a trial
by minds so prejudiced, — especially as long
as adverse scrutiny had the advantages of
the partial selection and skilful insinuation
of facts, undisturbed by that full discussion
in which all circumstances are equally sifted.
When the before-mentioned attendant of the
Queen declared to a large company of gain-
sayers
that "she
lid
(as she
afterwards did " that the Queen had a child,"
it was immediately said, "How ambiguous
is her expression ! the child might have been
born dead." At one moment Johnstone boasts
of the universal unbelief: at another he is
content with saying that even wise men see
no evidence of the birth; that, at all events,
there is doubt enough to require a Parlia
mentary inquiry; and that the general doubt
may be lawfully employed as an argument
by those who, even if they do not share it,
did nothing to produce it. He sometimes
endeavours to stifle his own scepticism with
the public opinion, and on other occasions
has recourse to these very ambiguous maxims
of factious casuistry ; but the whole tenour
of his confidential letters shows the ground
less unbelief in the Prince's legitimacy to
have been as spontaneous as it was general.
Various, and even contradictory, accounts
of the supposed imposture were circulated :
it was said that the Queen was never preg
nant : that she had miscarried at Easter ; that
one child, and by some accounts two children
in succession, had been substituted in the
room of the abortion. That these tales con
tradicted each other, was a very slight ob
jection in the eye of a national prejudice :
the people were very slow in seeing the
contradiction ; some had heard only one story,
and some jumbled parts of more together.
The zealous, when beat out of one version,
retired upon another : the skilful chose that
which, like the abortion (of which there had
actually been a danger), had some apparent
support from facts. When driven succes
sively from every post, they took refuge in
the general remark, that so many stories
must have a foundation ; that they all coin
cided in the essential circumstance of a sup
posititious birth, though they differed in facts
of inferior moment; that the King deserved,
by his other breaches of faith, the humiliation
which he now underwent; and that the natu
ral punishment of those who have often de
ceived is to be disbelieved when they speak
truth. It is the policy of most parties not to
discourage zealous partisans. The multitude
considered every man who hesitated in think
ing the worst of an enemy, as his abettor;
and the loudness of the popular cry subdued
the remains of candid doubt in those who
had at first, from policy, countenanced,
though they did not contrive, the delusion.
In subsequent times, it was not thought the
part of a good citizen to aid in detecting a
prevalent error, which enabled the partisans
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
377
of inviolable succession to adhere to the
principles of the Revolution without incon
sistency during the reign of Anne,* and
through which the House of Hanover itself
were brought at least nearer loan hereditary
right. Johnstone on the spot, and at the
moment, almost worked himself into a belief
of it ; while Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, ho
nestly adhered to it many years afterwards. t
The collection of inconsistent rumours on
this subject by Burnet reflects more on his
judgment than any other passage of his his
tory; yet, zealous as he was, his conscience
would not allow him to profess his own be
lief in what was still a fundamental article
of the creed of his party. Echard, writing
under George I., intimates his disbelief, for
which he is almost rebuked by Kennet. The
upright and judicious Rapin, though a French
Protestant, and an officer in the army led by
the Prince of Orange into England, yet, in the
liberty of his foreign retirement, gave an
honest judgment against his prejudices.
Both parties, on this subject, so exactly
believed what they wished, that perhaps
scarcely any individual before him examined
it on grounds of reason. The Catholics were
right by chance, and by chance the Protest
ants were wrong. Had it been a case of
the temporary success of artful impostures,
so common an occurrence would have de
served no notice : but the growth of a general
delusion from the prejudice and passion of a
nation, and the deep root which enabled it
to keep a place in history for half -a century,
render this transaction worthy to be remem
bered by posterity.
The triumph of the Bishops did not termi
nate all proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Com
missioners against the disobedient clergy.
They issued an order} requiring the proper
officers in each diocese to make a return of
the names of those who had not read the
Royal Declaration. On the day before that
which was fixed for the giving in the return,
a meeting of chancellors and archdeacons
was held; of wrhom eight agreed to return
that they had no means of procuring the in
formation but at their regular visitation,
which did not fall within the appointed
time ; six declined to make any return at all,
and five excused themselves on the plea that
the order had not been legally served upon
them.§ The Commissioners, now content to
shut their eyes on lukewarmness. resistance,
or evasion, affected a belief in the reasons
assigned for non-compliance, and directed
* Caveat Against the Whigs, part ii. p. 50, —
where the question is left in doubt at the critical
period of 1712.
t See his account, adverted to by Burnet and
others, published by Oldmixon, vol. i. p. 734.
" The Bishop whom your friends know, bids me
tell them that he had met with neither man nor
woman who were so good as to believe the Prince
of Wales to be a lawful child." — Johnstone, 2d
July.- -MS. This bold bishop was probably
Compton.
t London Gazette, 12th July.
$ Sayers' News-Letter, 18th August.
48
another return to be made on the 6th of De
cember, appointing a previous day for a visi
tation.* On the day when the Board ex
hibited these symptoms of debility and decay,
it received a letter from Sprat, tendering the
resignation of his seat, which was universally
regarded as foreboding its speedy dissolu
tion ;t and the last dying effort of its usurped
authority was to adjourn to a day on which
it was destined never to meet. Such, indeed,
was the discredit into which these proceed
ings had fallen, that the Bishop of Chichester
had the spirit to suspend one of his clergy
for obedience to the King's order in reading
the Declaration.!
The Court and the Church now contended
with each other for the alliance of the Dis
senters, but with very unequal success. The
last attempt of the King to gain them, was
the admission into the Privy Council of three
gentlemen, who were either Nonconformists,
or well disposed towards that body. — Sir
John Trevor, Colonel Titus, and Mr. Vane,
the posthumous son of the celebrated Sir
Henry Vane.§ The Church took better means
to unite all Protestants against a usurpation
which clothed itself in the garb of religious
liberty; and several consultations were held
on the mode of coming to a better under
standing with the Dissenters.il The Arch
bishop and clergy of London had several
conferences with the principal Dissenting
ministers on the measures fit to be proposed
about religion in the next Parliament. TI The
Primate himself issued admonitions to his
clergy, in which he exhorted them to have
a very tender regard towards their Dissent
ing brethren, and to entreat them to join in
prayer for the union of all Reformed churches
"at home and abroad, against the common
enemy,"** conformably to the late Petition
of himself and his brethren, in which they
had declared their willingness to come into
such a temper as should be thought fit with
the Dissenters, whenever that matter should
be considered in Parliament and Convoca
tion. He even carried this new-born tender
ness so far as to renew those projects for
uniting the more moderate to the Church by
some concessions in the terms of worship,
and for exempting those whose scruples were
insurmountable from the severity of penal
laws, which had been foiled by his friends,
when they were negotiated by Hale and
Baxter hi the preceding reign, and which
* London Gazette, 16th August.
t Savers' News-Letter, 22d August. "The
secretary gave this letter to the Chancellor, who
s%vore that the Bishop was mad. He gave it to
the Lord President, but it was never read to the
Board." Such was then the disorder in their
minds and in their proceedings.
t Ibid. 19th Sept., Kennet, vol. iii. p. 515, note ;
in both which, the date of Sprat's letter is 15th
August, the day before the last meeting of the
Commissioners.
§ London Gazette, 6th July.
II Savers' News-Letter, 7th July.
IT Ibid. 21st July. Ellis, vol. iv. p. 117.
** D'Oyley, vol.i. p. 324.
378
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
were again within a few months afterwards
to be resisted, by the same party, and with
too much success. Among- the instances of
the disaffection of the Church the University
of Oxford refused so small a compliance as
that of conferring the degree of doctor of di
vinity on their Bishop, according to ihe royal
mandamus,* and hastened to elect the young-
Duke of Ormonde to be their Chancellor on
the death of his grandfather, in order to
escape the imposition of Jeffreys, in whose
favour they apprehended a recommendation
from the Court.
Several symptoms now indicated that the
national discontent had infected the armed
force. The seamen of the squadron at the
No re received some monks who were sent
to officiate among them with boisterous
marks of derision and aversion j and, though
the tumult was composed by the presence
of the King, it left behind dispositions favour
able to the purposes of disaffected officers.
James' proceedings respecting the army
were uniformly impolitic. He had, very
early, boasted of the number of his guards
who were converted to his religion j thus
disclosing to them the dangerous secret of
their importance to his designs.! The sensi
bility evinced at the Tower and at Lambeth,
betokened a pronenessto fellow-feeling with
the people, which Sunderland had before
intimated to the Nuncio, and of which he
had probably forewarned his master. After
the triumph of the predates, on which occa
sion the feelings of the army declared them
selves still more loudly, the King had re
course to the very doubtful expedient of
paying open court to it. He dined twice a
week in the camp,J and showed an anxiety
to ingratiate himself by a display of affability,
of precautions for the comfort, and pride in
the discipline and appearance of the troops.
Without the boldness which quells a muti
nous spirit, or the firmness which, where
activity would be injurious, can quietly look
at a danger till it disappears or may be sur
mounted, he yielded to the restless fearful-
ness which seeks a momentary relief in rash
and mischievous efforts, that rouse many re
bellious tempers and subdue none. A writ
ten test was prepared, which even the pri
vates were required to subscribe, by which
they bound themselves to contribute to the
repeal of the penal laws.§ It was first to be
tendered to the regiments who were most
confidentially expected to set a good example
to the others. The experiment was first
tried on Lord Lichfield's, and all who hesi
tated to comply with the King's commands
were ordered to lay down their arms : — the
whole regiment, except two captains and a
few catholic privates, actually did lay down
their arms. The King was thunderstruck;
and, after a gloomy moment of silence, or-
* Savers' News-Letter, 25th July,
t D'Adda, 5th Dec. 1687, MS.
t Ellis, vol. iv. p. 111.
$ JohnBtone, 2d July, MS. Oldmixon. vol. i.
p. 739.
dered them to take up their muskets, say
ing, :i that he should not again do them the
honour to consult' them.'-'* When the troops
returned from the encampment to their
quarters, another plan was attempted for se
curing their fidelity, by the introduction of
trustworthy recruits. With this view, fifty
Irish Catholics were ordered to be equally
distributed among the ten companies of the
Duke of Berwick's regiment at Portsmouth;
which, having already a colonel incapacita
ted by law, was expected to be better dis
posed to the reception of recruits liable to
the same objection. But the experiment
was too late, and was also conducted with a
slow formality alien to the genius of soldiers.
The officers were now actuated by the same
sentiments with their own class in society.
Beaumont, the lieutenant-colonel, and the
five captains who were present, positively
refused to comply. They were brought to
Windsor under an escort of cavalry, tried by
a council of \var; and sentenced to be cashier
ed. The King now relented, or rather fal
tered, offering pardon, on condition of obe
dience. — a fault as great as the original at
tempt :' they all refused. The greater part
of the other officers of the regiment threw
up their commissions; and. instead of inti
midation, a great and general discontent was
spread throughout the army. Thus, to the
odium incurred by an attempt to recruit it
from those who were deemed the most hos
tile of foreign enemies, was superadded the
contempt which feebleness in the execution
of obnoxious designs never fails to inspire.!
Thus, in the short space of three years
from the death of Monmouth and the de
struction of his adherents, when all who
were not zealously attached to the Crown
seemed to be dependent on its mercy, were
all ranks and parties of the English nation,
without any previous show of turbulence,
and with not much of that cruel oppression
of individuals which is usually necessary to
awaken the passions of a people, slowly and
almost imperceptibly conducted to the brink
of a great revolution. The appearance of
the Prince of Wales filled the minds of those
who believed his legitimacy with terror ;
while it roused the warmest indignation of
those who considered his supposed birth as
a flagitious imposture. Instead of the go
vernment of a Protestant successor, it pre
sented, after the death of James, both during
the regency of the Queen, and the reign of a
prince educated under her superintendence,
no prospect but an administration certainly
not more favourable than his to religion and
liberty. These apprehensions had been
* Kennet, vol. iii. p. 516. Ralph speaks doubt
fully of this scene, of which, indeed, no writer has
mentioned the place or time. The written test is
confirmed by Johnstone, and Kennet could hardly
have been deceived about the sequel. The place
must have been the camp at Hounslow, and the
time was probably about, the middle of July.
t Reresby, p. 270, who seems to have been a
captain in this regiment. Burnet, vol. iii. p. 272.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
379
brought home to the feelings of the people
by the trial of the Bishops, and had at last
affected even the army, the last resource of
power, — a tremendous weapon, which cannot
burst without threatening destruction to all
around, and which, if it were not sometimes
happily so overcharged as to recoil on him
who wields it, would rob all the slaves in the
world of hope,* and all the freemen of safety.
The state of the other British kingdoms
was not such as to abate the alarms of Eng
land. In Ireland the government of Tyrcon-
nel was always sufficiently in advance of
the English minister to keep the eyes of the
nation fixed on the course which their rulers
were steering.* Its influence in spreading
alarm and disaffection through the other do
minions of the King, was confessed by the
ablest and most zealous of his apologists.
Scotland was also a mirror in which the
English nation might behold their approach
ing doom. The natural tendency of the
Dispensing and Suspending Powers to ter
minate in the assumption of the whole au
thority of legislation, wras visible in the De
clarations of Indulgence issued in that king
dom. They did not, as in England, profess to
be founded on limited and peculiar preroga
tives of the King, either as the head of the
Church or as the fountain of justice, nor on
usages and determinations which, if they
sanctioned such acts of power, at least con
fined them within fixed boundaries, but upon
what the King himself displayed, in all its
amplitude and with all its terrors, as "our
sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and
absolute power, which all our subjects are
bound to obey without reservation. "t In
the exercise of this alarming power, not only
\vere all the old oaths taken away, but a new
one, professing passive obedience, was pro
posed as the condition of toleration. A like
Declaration in 1688, besides the repetition
of so high an act of legislative power as that
of "annulling" oaths which the legislature
had prescribed, proceeds to dissolve all the
courts of justice and bodies of magistracy in
that kingdom, in order that by their accept-
* " I do not vindicate all that Lord Tyrconnel,
and others, did in Ireland before the Revolution ;
which, most of any thing, brought it on. I am
sensible that their carriage gave greater occasion
to King James' enemies than all the other mal
administrations charged upon his government." —
Leslie, Answer to King's State of the Protestants,
p. 73. Leslie is the ablest of James' apologists.
He skilfully avoids all the particulars of Tyrcon-
nel's government before the Revolution. That
silence, and this general admission, may be con
sidered as conclusive evidence against it.
t Proclamation, 12th Feb. 1687. Wodrow, vol.
ii. app. no. cxxix. " We here in England see
what we must look to. A Parliament in Scotland
proved a little stubborn ; now absolute power comes
to set all right: so when the closeting has gone
round, we may perhaps see a Parliament here :
but if it chance to be untoward, then our reverend
judges will copy from Scotland, and will discover
to us this new mystery of absolute power, which
we are all obliged to obey without reserve " — Bur-
net, Reflections on Proclamation for Toleration.
ance of new commissions conformably to the
royal pleasure, they might renounce all for
mer oaths ; — so that every member of them
would hold his office under the Suspending
and even Annulling Powers, on the legiti
macy of which the whole judicature and ad
ministration of the realm would thus exclu
sively rest.* Blood had now ceased to flow
for religion : and the execution of Renwick,f
a pious and intrepid minister, who, according
to the principles of the Cameroriians, openly
denied James II. to be his rightful sovereign,
is rather an apparent than a real exception :
for the offence imputed to him was not of a
religious nature, and must have been punish
ed by every established authority; though
an impartial observer would rather regret the
imprudence than question the justice of such
a declaration from the mouths of these per
secuted men. Books against the King's re
ligion were reprehended or repressed by the
Privy Council.! Barclay, the celebrated
Quaker, was at this time in such favour,
that he not only received a liberal pension,
but had influence enough to procure an in
decent, but successful, letter from the King
to the Court of Session, in effect annulling a
judgment for a large sum of money which
had been obtained against Sir Ewen Came
ron, a bold and fierce chieftain, the brother-
in-law of the accomplished and pacific apolo
gist. § Though the clergy of the Established
Church had two years before resisted an un
limited toleration by prerogative, yet we are
assured by a competent witness, that their
opposition arose chiefly from the fear that it
would encourage the unhappy Presbyterians,
then almost entirely ruined and scattered
through the world. II The deprivation of two
prelates, Bruce, Bishop of Dunkeld, for his
conduct in Parliament, and Cairncross. Arch
bishop of Glasgow, in spite of subsequent
submission, for not censuring a preacher
against the Church of Rome,T showed the
English clergy that suspensions like that of
Compton might be followed by more decisive
measures; but seems to have silenced the
* Proclamation, 15th May. Wodrow, vol. ii.
app. no. cxxxviii. Fountainhall, vol. i. p. 504.
The latter writer informs us, that " this occasioned
several sheriffs to forbear awhile." Perth, the
Scotch Chancellor, who carried this Declaration
to Scotland, assured the Nuncio, before leaving
London, "that the royal prerogative was then so
extensive as not to require the concurrence of
Parliament, which was only an useful corrobora-
tion."— D'Adda, 21st May, MS.
t On the 17th Feb. 1688.
t A bookseller in Edinburgh was "threatened
for publishing an account of the persecution in
France."— Fountainhall, 8th Feb. 1688. Cock-
burn, a minister, was forbidden to continue a Re
view, taken chiefly from Le Clerc's Bibliotheque
Universelle, containing some extracts from Ma-
billon's Iter Italicum, which were supposed tore-
fleet on the Church of Rome.
^Fountainhall. 2d June.
II Balcarras, Affairs of Scotland, (London, 1714),
p. 8.
IT Skinner, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland
vol. ii. pp. 500—504.
380
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
complaints of the Scottish Church. From
that time, at least, their resistance to the
Court entirely ceased. It was followed by
symptoms of an opposite disposition ; among
which may probably be reckoned the other
wise inexplicable return, to the office of
Lord Advocate, of the eloquent Sir George
Mackenzie, their principal instrument in the
cruel persecution of the Presbyterians, — who
now accepted that station at the moment of
the triumph of those principles by opposing
which he had forfeited it two years before.*
The Primate prevailed on the University of
St. Andrews to declare, by an address to the
King, their opinion that he might take away
the penal laws without the consent of Par
liament, t No manifestation of sympathy
appears to have been made towards the Eng
lish Bishops, at the moment of their danger,
or of their triumph, by their brethren in
Scotland. At a subsequent period, when the
prelates of England offered wholesome and
honest counsel to their Sovereign, those of
Scotland presented an address to him, in
which they prayed that "God might give
him the hearts of his subjects and the necks
of his enemies. "t In the awful struggle in
wrhich the English nation and Church were
about to engage, they had to number the
Established Church of Scotland among their
enemies.
CHAPTER IX.
Doctrine of obedience. — Right of resistance. —
Comparison of foreign and civil war. —
Right of calling auxiliaries. — Relations of
the people of England and of Holland.
THE time was now come when the people
of England were called upon to determine,
whether they should by longer submission
sanction the usurpations and encourage the
further encroachments of the Crown, or take
up arms against the established authority of
their Sovereign for the defence of their legal
rights, as well as of those safeguards which
the constitution had placed around them.
Though the solution of this tremendous pro
blem requires the calmest exercise of reason,
the circumstances which bring it forward com
monly call forth mightier agents, wrhich dis
turb and overpower the action of the under
standing. In conjunctures so awful, where
men feel more than they reason, their con
duct is chiefly governed by the boldness or
wariness of their nature, by their love of
liberty or their attachment to quiet, by their
proneness or slowness to fellow-feeling with
their countrymen. The generous virtues and
turbulent passions rouse the brave and aspir
ing to resistance; some gentle virtues and
useful principles second the qualities of hu
man nature in disposing many to submis-
* Fountainhall, 23d February.
t Id. 29th March.
t Skinner, vol. ii. p. 513.
sion. The duty of legal obedience seems to
forbid that appeal to arms which the neces
sity of preserving law and liberty allows, or
rather demands. In such a conflict there is
little quiet left for moral deliberation. Yet
by the immutable principles of morality, and
by them alone, must the historian try the
conduct of all men, before he allows him
self to consider all the circumstances of
time, place, opinion, example, temptation,
and obstacle, which, though they never au
thorise a removal of the everlasting land
marks of right and wrong, ought to be well
weighed, in allotting a due degree of com
mendation or censure to human actions.
The English law, like that of most other
countries, lays down no limits of obedience.
The clergy of the Established Church, the
authorised teachers of public morality, car
ried their principles much farther than was
required by a mere concurrence with this
cautious silence of the law. Not content
with inculcating, in common with all other
moralists, religious or philosophical obedience
to civil government as one of the most essen
tial duties of human life, the English Church
perhaps alone had solemnly pronounced that
in the conflict of obligations no other rule of
duty could, under any circumstances, be
come more binding than that of allegiance.
Even the duty which seems paramount to
every other, — that which requires every citi
zen to contribute to the preservation of the
community, — ceased, according to their
moral system, to have any binding force,
whenever it could not be performed without
resistance to established government. Re
garding the power of a monarch as more
sacred than the paternal authority from which
they vainly laboured to derive it, they re
fused to nations oppressed by the most cruel
tyrants* those rights of self-defence which
no moralist or lawgiver had ever denied to
children against unnatural parents. To pal
liate the extravagance of thus representing
obedience as the only duty without an ex
ception, an appeal was made to the divine
origin of government; — as if every other
moral rule were not, in the opinion of all
theists, equally enjoined and sanctioned by
the Deity. To denote these singular doc
trines, it was thought necessary to devise the
terms of "passive obedience" and "non-re
sistance," — uncouth and jarring forms of
speech, not unfitly representing a violent de
parture from the general judgment of man
kind. This attempt to exalt submission so
high as to be always the highest duty, con
stituted the undistinguishing loyalty of which
the Church of England boasted as her ex
clusive attribute, in contradistinction to the
other Reformed communions, as well as to
the Church of Rome. At the dawn of the
Reformation it had been promulgated in the
Homilies or discourses appointed by the
Church to be read from the pulpit to the
* Interpretation of Romans, xiii. 1 — 7, written
under Nero. See, among many others, South,
Sermon on the 5th November, 1663.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
381
people ;* and all deviations from it had been
recently condemned by the University of
Oxford with the solemnity of a decree from
Rome or from Trent. t The Seven Bishops
themselves, in the very Petition which
brought the contest with the Crown to a
crisis, boasted of the inviolable obedience of
their Church, and of the honour conferred on
them by the King's repeated acknowledg
ments of it. Nay, all the ecclesiastics and
the principal laymen of the Church had re
corded their adherence to the same princi
ples, in a still more solemn arid authoritative
mode. By the Act of Uniformity,! which
restored the legal establishment of the Epis
copal Church, it was enacted that every
clergyman, schoolmaster, and private tutor
should subscribe a declaration, affirming that
"it was not lawful on any pretext to take up
arms against the King," which members of
corporations^ and officers of militiall were by
other statutes of the same period also com
pelled to swear ;— -to say nothing of the still
more comprehensive oath which the High-
Church leaders, thirteen years before the
trial of the Bishops, had laboured to impose
on all public officers, magistrates, ecclesias
tics, arid members of both Houses of Parlia
ment.
That no man can lawfully promise what
he cannot lawfully do is a self-evident pro
position. That there are some duties supe
rior to others, will be denied by no one:
and that when a contest arises the superior
ought to prevail, is implied in the terms by
which the duties are described. It can
hardly be doubted that the highest obliga
tion of a citizen is that of contributing to
preserve the community; and that every
other political duty, even that of obedience
to the magistrates, is derived from and must
be subordinate to it. It is a necessary conse
quence of these simple truths, that no man
who deems self-defence lawful in his own
case, can, by any engagement, bind himself
riot to defend his country against foreign or
domestic enemies. Though the opposite pro
positions really involve a contradiction in
terms, yet declarations of their truth were
imposed by law, and oaths to renounce the
defence of our country were considered as
binding, till the violent collision of such pre
tended obligations with the security of all
rights and institutions awakened the national
mind to a sense of their repugnance to the
first principles of morality. Maxims, so arti
ficial and over-strained, which have no more
root in nature than they have warrant from
reason, must always fail in a contest against
the affections, sentiments, habits, and inte
rests which are the mdtives of human con
duct, — leaving little more than compassion
ate indulgence to the small number who
conscientiously cling to them, and fixing the
injurious imputation of inconsistency on the
* Homilies of Edward VI. and -Elizabeth,
t Parliamentary History, 20th July, 1683.
1 14 Ch. II. c. 4.
§ 13 Ch. II. stat. ii. c. 1. II 14 Ch. II. c. 3.
great body who forsake them for better
guides.
The war of a people against a tyrannical
government may be tried by the same tests
which ascertain the morality of a war be
tween independent nations. The employ
ment of force in the intercourse of reasonable
beings is never lawful, but for the purpose
of repelling or averting wrongful force. Hu
man life cannot lawfully be destroyed, or
assailed, or endangered, ior any other object
than that of just defence. Such is the nature
and such the boundary of legitimate self-de
fence in the case of individuals. Hence the
right of the lawgiver to protect unoffending
citizens by the adequate punishment of
crimes : hence, also, the right of an inde
pendent state to take all measures necessary
to her safety, if it be attacked or threatened
from without : provided always that repara
tion cannot otherwise be obtained, that there
is a reasonable prospect of obtaining it by
arms, and that the evils of the contest are
not probably greater than the mischiefs of
acquiescence in the wrong • including, on
both sides of the deliberation, the ordinary
consequences of the example, as well as the
immediate effects of the act. If reparation
can otherwise be obtained, a nation has no
necessary, and therefore no just cause of
war • if there be no probability of obtaining
it by arms, a government cannot, with justice
to their own nation, embark it in war; and
if the evils of resistance should appear, on
the whole, greater than those of submission,
wise rulers will consider an abstinence from
a pernicious exercise of right as a sacred
duty to their own subjects, and a debt which
every people owes to the great common
wealth of mankind, of which they and their
enemies are alike members. A war is just
against the wrongdoer when reparation for
wrong cannot otherwise be obtained ; but it
is then only conformable to all the princi
ples of morality, when it is not likely to ex
pose the nation by whom it is levied to
greater evils than it professes to avert, and
when it does riot inflict on the nation which
has done the wrong sufferings altogether
disproportioned to the extent of the injury.
When the rulers of a nation are required to
determine a question of peace or war, the
bare justice of their case against the wrong
doer never can be the sole, and is not always
the chief matter on which they are morally
bound to exercise a conscientious delibera
tion. Prudence in conducting the affairs of
their subjects is, in them, a part of justice.
On the same principles the justice of a
war made by a people against their own
government must be examined. A govern
ment is entitled to obedience from the peo
ple, because without obedience it cannot
perform the duty, for which alone it exists,
of protecting them from each other's injus
tice. But when a government is engaged in
systematically oppressing a people, or in
destroying their securities against future op
pression, it commits the same species of
382
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
wrong towards them v\hich warrants an ap
peal to arms against a foreign enemy. A
magistrate who degenerates into a sytematic
oppressor shuts the gates of justice, and
thereby restores them to the original right
of defending them by force. As he with
holds the protection of law from them, he
forfeits his moral claim to enforce their obe
dience by the authority of law. Thus far
civil and foreign war stand on the same
moral foundation : the principles which de
termine the justice of both against the wrong
doer are, indeed, throughout the same.
But there are certain peculiarities, of great
importance in point of fact, which 'in other
respects permanently distinguish them from
each other. The evils of failure are greater
in civil than in foreign war. A state gene
rally incurs no more than loss in war : a body
of insurgents is exposed to ruin. The pro
babilities of success are more difficult to cal
culate in cases of internal contest than in a
war between states, where it is easy to com
pare those merely material means of attack
and defence which may be measured or
numbered. An unsuccessful revolt strength
ens the power and sharpens the cruelty of
the tyrannical ruler; while an unfortunate
war may produce little of the former evil
and of the latter nothing. It is almost pecu
liar to intestine war that success may be as
mischievous as defeat. The victorious lead
ers may be borne along by the current of
events far beyond their destination ; a go
vernment may be overthrown which ought to
have been only repaired ; and a new, perhaps
a more formidable, tyranny ma,y spring out
of victory. A regular government may stop
before its fall becomes precipitate, or check
a career of conquest when it threatens de
struction to itself: but the feeble authority
of the chiefs of insurgents is rarely able, in
the one case, to maintain the courage, in the
other to repress the impetuosity, of their
voluntary adherents. Finally, the cruelty
and misery incident to all warfare are greater
in domestic dissension than in contests with
foreign enemies. Foreign wars have little
effect on the feelings, habits, or condition of
the majority of a great nation, to most of
whom the worst particulars of them may be
unknown. But civil war brings the same or
worse evils into the heart of a country and
into the bosom of many families : it eradi
cates all habits of recourse to justice and
reverence for law ; its hostilities are not
mitigated by the usages which soften wars
between nations; it is carried on with the
ferocity of parties who apprehend destruc
tion from each other; and it may leave be
hind it feuds still more deadly, which may
render a country depraved and wretched
through a long succession of ages. As it
involves a wider waste of virtue and happi
ness than any other species of war, it can
only be warranted by the sternest and most
dire necessity. The chiefs of a justly dis
affected party are unjust 10 their fellows and
their followers, as well as to all the rest of
their countrymen, if they take up arms in a
case where the evils of submission are not
more intolerable, the impossibility of repa
ration by pacific means more apparent, and
the chances of obtaining it by arms greater
than are necessary to justify the rulers of a
nation in undertaking a foreign war. A
wanton rebellion, when considered with the
aggravation of its ordinary consequences, is
one of the greatest of crimes. The chiefs
of an inconsiderable and ill-concerted revolt,
however provoked, incur the most formida
ble responsibility to their followers and their
country. An insurrection rendered neces
sary by oppression, and warranted by a
reasonable probability of a happy termina
tion, is an act of public virtue, always en
vironed with so much peril as to merit ad
miration.
In proportion to the degree in which a
revolt spreads over a large body till it ap
proaches unanimity, the fatal peculiarities
of civil war are lessened. In the insurrec
tion of provinces, either distant or separated
by natural boundaries, — more especially if
the inhabitants, differing in religion and
language, are rather subjects of the same
government than portions of the same peo
ple, — hostilities which are waged only to
sever a legal tie may assume the regularity,
and in some measure the mildness, of foreign
war. Free men, carrying into insurrection
those habits of voluntary obedience to which
they have been trained, are more easily re
strained from excess by the leaders in whom
they have placed their confidence. Thus
far it may be affirmed, happily for mankind,
that insurgents are most humane where they
are likely to be most successful. But it is
one of the most deplorable circumstances in
the lot of man, that the subjects of despotic
governments, and still more those who are
doomed to personal slavery, though their
condition be the worst, and their revolt the
most just, are disabled from conducting it to
a beneficial result by the very magnitude of
the evils under which they groan : for the
most fatal effect of the yoke is, that it dark
ens the understanding and debases the soul :
and that the victims of long oppression, who
have never imbibed any noble principle of
obedience, throw off every curb when they
are released from the chain and the lash.
In such wretched conditions of society, the
rulers may, indeed, retain unlimited power
as the moral guardians of the community,
while they are conducting the arduous pro
cess of gradually transforming slaves into
men ; but they cannot justly retain it with
out that purpose, or longer than its accom
plishment requires : and the extreme diffi
culty of such a reformation, as well as the
dire effects of any other emancipation, ought
to be deeply considered, as proofs of the
enormous guilt of those who introduce any
kind or degree of unlimited power, as well
as of those who increase, by their obstinate
resistance, the natural obstacles to the paci
fic amendment of evils so tremendous.
REVIEW OF THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
383
The frame of the human mind, and the
structure of civilized society, have adapted
themselves to these important differences
between civil and foreign war. Such is the
force of the considerations which have been
above enumerated ; so tender is the regard
of good men for the peace of their native
country,— so numerous are the links of inter
est and habit which bind those of a more
common sort to an establishment, — so diffi
cult and dangerous is it for the bad and bold
to conspire against a tolerably vigilant ad
ministration, — the evils which exist in mode
rate governments appear so tolerable, and
those of absolute despotism so incorrigible,
that the number of unjust wars between
states unspeakably surpasses those of wan
ton rebellions against the just exercise of
authority. Though the maxim, that there
are no unprovoked revolts, ascribed to the
Due de Sully, and adopted by Mr. Burke.*
cannot be received without exceptions, it
must be owned that in civilized times man
kind have suffered less from a mutinous
spirit than from a patient endurance of bad
government.
Neither can it be denied that the objects
for which revolted subjects take up arms do,
in most cases, concern their safety and well-
being more deeply than the interests of stales
are in .general affected by the legitimate
causes of regular war. A nation may justly
make war for the honour of her flag, 'or for
dominion over a rock, if the one be insulted,
and the other be unjustly invaded; because
acquiescence in the outrage or the wrong
may lower her reputation, and thereby lessen
her safety. But if these sometimes faint
and remote dangers justify an appeal to
arms, shall it be blamed in a people who
have no other chance of vindicating the right
to worship God according to their con
sciences, — to be exempt from imprisonment
and exaction at the mere will and pleasure
of one or a few, and to enjoy as perfect a
security for their persons, for the free exer
cise of their industry, and for the undis
turbed enjoyment of its fruits, as can be de
vised by human wisdom under equal laws
and a pure administration of justice ? What
foreign enemy could do a greater wrong to a
community than the ruler who would reduce
them to hold these interests by no higher
tenure than the duration of his pleasure 1
What war can be more necessary than that
which is waged in defence of ancient laws
and venerable institutions, which, as far as
they are suffered to act, have for ages ap
proved themselves to be the guard of all
these sacred privileges. — the shield which
protects Reason in her fearless search of
truth, and Conscience in the performance of
her humble duty towards God, — the nur
sery of genius and valour, — the spur of pro
bity, humanity, and generosity, — of every
faculty of man.
As James was unquestionably an aggres-
* Thoughts on the Present Discontents.
sor, and the people of England drew their
swords only to prevent him from accom
plishing a revolution which would have
changed a legal and limited power iiilo a
lawless despotism, it is needless, on this
occasion, to moot the question, whether
arms may be as justly wielded to obtain as
to defend liberty. It may, however, be ob
served, that the rulers who obstinately per
sist in withholding from their subjects secu
rities for good government, obviously neces
sary for the permanence of that blessing,
generally desired by competently infoimed
men, and capable of being introduced with
out danger to public tranquillity, appear
thereby to place themselves in a state of
hostility against the nation whom they go
vern. Wantonly to prolong a state of inse
curity seems to be as much an act of nggres-
sion as to plunge a nation into it. When a
people discover their danger, they have a
moral claim on their governors for security
against it. As soon as a distemper is dis
covered to be dangerous, and a safe and
effectual remedy has been found, those who
withhold the remedy are as much morally
answerable for the deaths which may ensue
as if they had administered poison. But
though a reformatory revolt may in these
circumstances become perfectly just, it has
not the same likelihood of a prosperous issue
with those insurrections which are more
strictly and directly defensive. A defensive
revolution, the sole purpose of which is to
preserve and secure the laws, has a fixed
boundary, conspicuously marked out by the
well-defined object which it pursue?, and
which it seldom permanently over-reaches,
and it is thus exempt from that succession of
changes which disturbs all habits of peace
able obedience, and weakens every autho
rity not resting on mere force.
Whenever war is justifiable, it is lawful
to call in auxiliaries. But though always
legitimate against a foreign or domestic
enemy, it is often in civil contentions pecu
liarly dangerous to the wronged people
themselves. It must always hazard national
independence, and will therefore be the last
resource of those who love their country.
Good men, more especially if they are happy
enough to be the natives of a civilized, and
still more of a free country, religiously cul
tivate their natural repugnance to a remedy
of which despair alone can warrant the em
ployment. Yet the dangers of seeking fo
reign aid vary extremely in different circum
stances; and these variations are chiefly
regulated by the power, the interest, and the
probable disposition of the auxiliary to be
come an oppressor. The perils are the least
where the inferiority of national strength in
the foreign ally is such as to forbid all pro
jects of conquest, and where the indepen
dence and greatness of the nation to be suc
coured are the main or sole bulwarks of his
own.
These fortunate peculiarities were all to
be found in the relations between the people
384
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of England and the republic of the United
Provinces ; and the two nations were farther
united by their common apprehensions from
France, by no obscure resemblance of national
character, by the strong sympathies of reli
gion and liberty; by the remembrance of the
renowned reign in which the glory of Eng
land was founded on her aid to Holland,
and, perhaps, also by the esteem for each
other which both these maritime nations had
learnt in the fiercest and most memorable
combats, which had been then celebrated in
the annals of naval warfare. The British
people derived a new security from the dan-
| gers of foreign interposition from the situa
tion of him who was to be the chief of the
enterprise to be attempted for their deliver
ance, who had as deep an interest in their
safety and well-being as in those of the na
tion whose forces he was to lead to their
aid. William of Nassau, Prince of Orange,
Stadtholder of the republic of the United Pro
vinces, had been, before the birth of the
Prince of Wales, first Prince of the Blood
Royal of England ; and his consort the Lady
Mary, the eldest daughter of the King, was
at that period presumptive heiress to the
crown.
MEMOIR
OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND
A. D. 16S7— 1686.
THE Seven United Provinces which estab
lished their independence made little change
in their internal institutions. The revolt
against Philip's personal commands was long
carried on under colour of his own legal au
thority, conjointly exercised by his lieutenant,
the Prince of Orange, and by the States, —
composed of the nobility and of the deputies
of towns, — who had before shared a great
portion of it. But, being bound to each other
in an indissoluble confederacy, established
at Utrecht in 1579, the care of their foreign
relations and of all their common affairs was
intrusted to delegates, sent from each, who
gradually assumed that name of "States-
General," which had been originally be
stowed only on the occasional assemblies of
the whole States of all the Belgic provinces.
These arrangements, hastily adopted in times
of confusion, drew no distinct lines of demar
cation between the provincial and federal
authorities. Hostilities had been for many
years carried on before the authority of Philip
was finally abrogated ; and after that decisive
measure the States showed considerable
disposition to the revival of a monarchical
power in the person of an Austrian or French
prince, or of the Queen of England. William
I., seems about to have been invested with the
ancient legal character of Earl of Holland at
the moment of his murder.* He and his
successors were Stadtholders of the greater
provinces, and sometimes of all : they exer
cised in that character a powerful influence
on the election of1 the magistrates of towns;
they commanded the forces of the confede-
* Commentarii de Repuhlica Bataviensi (Ludg.
Bat. 1795), vol. ii. pp. 42, 43.
racy by sea and land; they combined the
prerogatives of their ancient magistracy with
the new powers, the assumption of which
the necessities of war seemed to justify ;
and they became engaged in constant dis
putes with the great political bodies, whose
pretensions to an undivided sovereignty were
as recent and as little defined as their own
rights. While Holland formed the main
strength of the confederacy, the city of Am
sterdam predominated in the councils of that
province. The provincial States of Holland,
and the patricians in the towns from whom
their magistrates were selected, were the
aristocratical antagonists of the stadtholde-
rian power, which chiefly rested on official
patronage, on military command, on the fa
vour of the populace, and on the influence
of the minor provinces in the States-General.
The House of Nassau stood conspicuous,
at the dawn of modern history, among the
noblest of the ruling families of Germany.
In the thirteenth century, Adolphus of Nas
sau succeeded Rodolph of Hapsburg in the
imperial crown, — the highest dignity of the
Christian world. A branch of this ancient
house had acquired ample possessions in the
| Netherlands, together with the principality of
Orange in Provence ; and under Charles V.,
| William of Nassau was the most potent lord of
the Burgundian provinces. Educated in the
palace and almost in the chamber of the Em
peror, he was nominated in the earliest years
of manhood to the government of Holland,*
and to the command of the imperial army, by
that sagacious monarch, who, in the memo-
* By the ancient name of " Stadthouder" (lieu
tenant). Kluit, Vetus Jus Pub. Belg. p. 364.
MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND.
385
rable solemnity of abdication, leant upon his
shoulder as the first of his Belgic subjects.
The same eminent qualities which recom
mended him to the confidence of Charles
awakened the jealousy of Philip, whose
anger, breaking through all the restraints of
his wonted simulation, burst into furious re
proaches against the Prince of Orange as the
fomenter of the resistance of the Flemings
to the destruction of their privileges. Among
the three rulers who, perhaps unconsciously,
were stirred up at the same moment to pre
serve the civil and religious liberties of man
kind, William I. must be owned to have
wanted the brilliant and attractive qualities
of Henry IV., and to have yielded to the com
manding genius of Elizabeth ; but his princi
ples were more inflexible than those of the
Amiable hero, and his mind was undisturbed
by the infirmities and passions which lowered
the illustrious queen. Though he perform
ed great actions with weaker means than
theirs, his course was more unspotted. Faith
ful to the King of Spain as long as the pre
servation of the commonwealth allowed, he
counselled the Duchess of Parma against all
the iniquities by which the Netherlands were
lost; but faithful also to his county, in his
dying instructions he enjoined his son to be
ware of insiduous offers of compromise from
the Spaniard, to adhere to his alliance with
France and England, to observe the privi
leges of the provinces and towns, and to con
duct himself in all things as became the
chief magistrate of the republic.* Advancing
a century beyond his contemporaries in civil
wisdom, he braved the prejudices of the
Calvinistic clergy, by contending for the
toleration of Catholics, the chiefs of whom
had sworn his dest ruction. t Thoughtful, of
unconquerable spirit, persuasive though taci
turn, of simple character, yet maintaining
due dignity and becoming magnificence in
his public character, an able commander and
a wise statesman, he is perhaps the purest
of those who have risen by arms from pri
vate station to supreme authority, and the
greatest of the happy few who have enjoyed
the glorious fortune of bestowing liberty upon
a people. t The whole struggle of this illus
trious prince was against foreign oppression.
His posterity, less happy, were engaged in
domestic broils, in part arising from their
undefined authority, and from the very com
plicated constitution of the commonwealth.
Maurice, the eldest Protestant son of Wil
liam, surpassed his father in military genius,
but fell far short of him in that moderation
of temper and principle which is the most
* D'Estrades, MSS. in the hands of his young
est son.
t Burnet, History of his own time (Oxford,
1823), vol. i. p. 547.
t Even Strada himself bears one testimony to
this great man, which outweighs all his vain re
proaches. "Nee postea mutavere (Hollandi) qui
videbant et gloriabantur ab unius hominis conatu,
caeptisque ill! utcunque infelicibus, assurgere in
dies Hollandicum nomen imperiumque." — Strada,
De Bello Belgico, dec. ii. lib. v.
49
indispensable virtue of the leader of a free
state. The blood of Barneveldt and the
dungeon of Grotius have left an indelible
stain on his memory ; nor is it without appa
rent reason that the aristocratical party have
charged him with projects of usurpation. —
natural to a family of republican magistrates
allied by blood to all the kings of Europe,
and distinguished by many approaches and
pretensions to the kingly power.* Henry
Frederic, his successor, was the son of Wil
liam I. by Louise de Coligny, — a woman
singular in her character as well as in her
destiny, who, having seen her father and the
husband of her youth murdered at the mas
sacre of Saint Bartholomew, was doomed to
witness the fall of a more illustrious husband
by the hand of an assassin of the same fac
tion, and who in her last widowhood won the
affection of William's children by former
wives, for her own virtuous son. Having
maintained the fame of his family in war.
he was happier than his more celebrated
brother in a domestic administration, which
was moderate, tolerant, and unsuspected. t
He lived to see the final recognition of Dutch
independence by the treaty of Munster, and
was succeeded by his son, William II.. who,
after a short and turbulent rule, died in 1650,
leaving his widow, the Princess Royal of
England, pregnant.
William III., born on the 14th of Novem
ber, 1650, eight days after the death of his
father, an orphan of feeble frame, with early
indications of disease, seemed to be involved
in the cloud of misfortune which then cover
ed the deposed and exiled family of his
mother. The patricians of the commercial
cities, who had gathered strength with their
rapidly increasing wealth, were incensed at
the late attack of William II. on Amsterdam ;
they were equally emboldened by the esta
blishment of a republic in England, and pre
judiced, not without reason, against the
Stuart family, whose absurd principle of the
divine right of kings had always disposed
James I. to regard the Dutch as no better
than successful rebels,! and had led his son,
in 1631, a period of profound peace and pro
fessed friendship, to conclude a' secret treaty
with Spain for the partition of the Republic,
in which England was to be rewarded for her
treachery ami rapine by the sovereignty of
Zealand. § They found no difficulty in per
suading the States to assume all the autho
rity hitherto exercised by the Stadtholder,
without fixing any period for conferring on
the infant Prince those dignities which had
been enjoyed by three generations of his
* Du Maurier, Memoires de la Hollande, p.
293. Vandervynkt, Troubles des Pays Bas, vol.
iii. p. 27.
t D'Estrades, Lettres (Lond. 1743), vol. i.
p. 55.
t "In his table discourse he pronounced the
Dutch to be rebels, and condemned their cause,
and said that Ostend belonged to the ArchduKe."
— Carte, History of England, vol. iii. p. 714.
§ Clarendon, Slate Papers, vol. i. p. 49, and
vol. ii. app. xxvii,
386
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
family. At the peace of 1654. the States of
Holland bound themselves by a secret article,
yielded with no great reluctance to the de
mands of Cromwell, never to choose the
Prince of Orange to be their Stadtholder, nor
to consent to his being appointed Captain-
General of the forces of the confederacy; —
a separate stipulation, at variance with the
spirit of the union of Utrecht, and disrespect
ful to the judgment, if not injurious to the
rights, of the weaker confederates.^ After
the Restoration this engagement lost its
power. But when the Prince of Orange had
nearly reached years of discretion, and the
brilliant operations of a military campaign
against England had given new vigour to the
republican administration, John De Witt, who,
under the modest title of "Pensionary" of
Holland, had long directed the affairs of the
confederacy with a success and reputation
due to his matchless honesty and prudence,
prevailed on the States of that province to
pass a " Perpetual Edict for the Maintenance
of Liberty.'7 By this law they abolished the
Stadtholdership in their own province, and
agreed to take effectual means to obtain from
their confederates edicts excluding all those
who might be Captain-Generals from the
Stadtholdership of any of the provinces; —
binding themselves and their successors by
oath to observe these provisions, and im
posing the like oath on all who might be
appointed to the chief command by land
or sea.t Guelderland, Utrecht, and Overys-
sell acceded. Friesland and Groningen, then
governed by a Stadtholder of another branch
of the family of Nassau, were considered as
not immediately interested in the question.
Zealand alone, devoted to the House of
Orange, resisted the separation of the su
preme military and civil officers. On this
footing De Witt professed his readiness to
confer the office of Captain-General on the
Prince, as soon as he should be of fit age.
He was allowed meanwhile to take his seat
in the Council of State, and took an oath to
observe the Perpetual Edict. His opponents
struggled to retard his military appointment,
to shorten its duration, and to limit its
powers. His partisans, on the other hand,
supported by England, and led by Amelia of
Solms, the widow of Prince Henry, — a wo
man of extraordinary ability, who had trained
the young Prince with parental tenderness,
— seized every opportunity of pressing for
ward his nomination, and of preparing the
way for the enlargement of his authority.
This contest might have been longer pro
tracted, if the Conspiracy of Louis and
* Cromwell was prevailed upon to content him
self with this separate stipulation, very imperfect
in form, but which the strength of the ruling: pro
vince rendered in substance sufficient. White-
lock, Memorials, 12th May, 1684.
t 3d August 1667. The immediate occasion of
this edict seems to have be«n a conspiracy, for
which one Buat, a spy employed by Lord Arling
ton, was executed. Histoire de J. D. De Witt
'Utrecht, 1709), liv. ii. chap. 2.
Charles, and the occupation of the greater
part of the country by the former, had not
brought undeserved reproach on the admi
nistration of De Witt. Fear and distrust
became universal; every man suspected his
neighbour; accusations were heard with
greedy credulity ; misfortunes were imputed
to treachery; and the multitude cried aloud
for victims. The corporate officers of the
great towns, originally chosen by the bur
ghers, had, on the usual plea of avoiding
tumult, obtained the right of filling up all
vacancies in their own number. They thus
strengthened their power, but destroyed their
security. No longer connected with the
people by election, the aristocratical families
received no fresh infusion of strength, and
had no hold on the attachment of the com
munity ; though they still formed, indeed,
the better part of the people. They had
raised the fishermen of a few marshy dis
tricts to be one of the greatest nations of
Europe: but the misfortunes of a moment
banished the remembrance of their services.
Their grave and harsh virtues were more
unpopular than so many vices; wrhile the
needs and disasters of war served to heighten
the plebeian clamour, and to strengthen the
military power, which together formed the
combined force of the Stadtholderian party.
It was then in vain that the Republicans en
deavoured to satisfy that party, and to gain
over the King of England by the nomination
of the Prince of Orange to be Captain-Gene
ral : Charles was engaged in deeper designs.
The progress of the French arms still farther
exasperated the populace, arid the Republi
cans incurred the reproach of treachery by a
disposition, — perhaps carried to excess, — to
negotiate with Louis XIV. at a moment when,
all negotiation wore the appearance of sub
mission. So it had formerly happened : —
Barneveldt was friendly to peace with Spain,
when Maurice saw no safety but in arms.
Men equally wise and honest may differ on
the difficult and constantly varying question,
whether uncompromising resistance, or a
reservation of active effort for a more favour
able season, be the best mode of dealing
with a formidable conqueror. Though the
war policy of Demosthenes terminated in
the destruction of Athens, we dare not affirm
that the pacific system of Phocion would
have saved it. In the contest of Maurice
with Barneveldt, and of De Wilt with the
adherents of the House of Orange, both
parties had an interest distinct from that of
the commonwealth ; for the influence of the
States grew in peace, and the authority of
the Captain-General was strengthened by
war. The populace now revolted against
their magistrates in all the towns, and the
States of Holland were compelled to repeal
the Edict, which they — called " Perpetual/'
to release themselves and all the officers
from the oath which they had taken to ob
serve it, and to confer, on the 4th of July,
1672, on the Prince the office of Stadtholder,
— which, then only elective for life, was,
MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND.
387
after two years more, made hereditary to
his descendants.
The commotions which accompanied this
revolution were stained by the murder of
John and Cornelius De Witt, — a crime per
petrated with such brutal ferocity, and en
countered with such heroic serenity, that it
may almost seem to be doubtful whether
the glory of having produced such pure suf
ferers may not in some degree console a
country for having given birth to assassins so
atrocious. These excesses are singularly
at variance with the calm and orderly cha
racter of the Dutch; — than whom perhaps no
free state has, in proportion to its magnitude,
contributed more amply to the amendment
of mankind by examples of public virtue.
The Prince of Orange, thus hurried to the
supreme authority at the age of twenty-two,
was ignorant of these crimes, and avowed
his abhorrence of them. They were perpe
trated more than a month after his highest
advancement, when they could produce no
effect but that of bringing odium upon his
party. But it must be for ever deplored that
the extreme danger of his position should
have prevented him from punishing the of
fences of his partisans, till it seemed too late
to violate that species of tacit amnesty which
time insensibly establishes. It would be im
possible ever to excuse this unhappy impu
nity, if we did not call to mind that Louis
XIV. was at Utrecht ; that it was the popu
lace of the Hague that had imbrued their
hands in the blood of the De Witts : and that
the magistrates of Amsterdam might be dis
posed to avenge on their country the cause
of their virtuous chiefs. Henceforward Wil
liam directed the counsels and arms of Hol
land, gradually forming and leading a confe
deracy to set bounds to the ambition of Louis
XIV., and became, by his abilities and dis
positions, as much as by his position, the
second person in Europe.
We possess unsuspected descriptions of
his character from observers of more than
ordinary sagacity, \vho had an interest in
watching its development, before it was sur
rounded by the dazzling illusions of power
and fame. Among the most valuable of
these witnesses were some of the subjects
and servants of Louis XIV. At the age of
eighteen the Prince's good sense, knowledge
of affairs, and seasonable concealment of
his thoughts, attracted the attention of Gour-
ville, a man of experience and discernment.
St. Evremond. though himself distinguished
chiefly by vivacity and accomplishments, saw
ihe superiority of William's powers through
his silence and coldness. After long inti
macy, Sir William Temple describes his
great endowments and excellent qualities,
his — then almost singular — combination of
"chanty and religious zeal," '-his desire —
rare in every asje — to grow great rather
by the service than the servitude of his
country;" — language so manifestly conside
rate, discriminating, and unexaggerated, as
to bear on it the inimitable stamp of truth,
in addition to the weight which it derives
from the probity of the writer. But there
is no testimony so important as that of
Charles II., who. in the early part of his
reign, had been desirous of gaining an as
cendant in Holland by the restoration of the
House of Orange, and of subverting the go
vernment of De Witt, whom he never for
gave for his share in the treaty with the Eng
lish Republic. Some retrospect is necessary,
to explain the experiment by which that mo
narch both ascertained and made known the
ruling principles of his nephew's mind.
The mean negotiations about the sale of
Dunkirk first betrayed to Louis XIV. the
passion of Charles for French money. The
latter had, at the same time, offered to aid
Louis in the conquest of Flanders, on condi
tion of receiving French succour against the
revolt of his own subjects,* and had strongly
expressed his desire of an offensive and de
fensive alliance to Ruvigni. one of the most
estimable of that monarch's agents. t But
the most pernicious of Charles' vices, never
bridled by any virtue, were often mitigated
by the minor vices of indolence and irreso
lution. Even the love of pleasure, which
made him needy and rapacious, unfitted him
for undertakings full of toil and peril. Pro
jects for circumventing each other in Hol
land, which Charles aimed at influencing
through the House of Orange, and Louis
hoped to master through the Republican
party, retarded their secret advances to an
entire union. De Witt was compelled to
consent to some aggrandisement of France,
rather than expose his country to a war
without the co-operation of the King of Eng
land, who was ready to betray a hated ally.
The first Dutch war appears to have arisen
from the passions of both nations, and their
pride of maritime supremacy, — employed
as instruments by Charles wherewith to ob
tain booty at sea, and supply from his Parlia
ment, — and by Louis wherewith to seize the
Spanish Netherlands. At the peace of Breda
July, 1667,) the Court of England seemed
or a moment to have changed its policy, by
the conclusion of the Triple Alliance, which
prescribed some limits to the ambition of
France, — a system which De Witt, as soon
as he met so honest a negotiator as Sir Wil
liam Temple, joyfully hastened to embrace.
Temple was, however, duped by his mas
ter. It is probable that the Triple Alliance
was the result of a fraudulent project, sug
gested originally by Gourville to ruin De
Witt, by embroiling him irreconcilably with
France. t Charles made haste to disavow
the intentions professed in it :§ and a nego-
* D'Estrades. vol. y. p. 450.
t Memoire de Ruvigni au Roi. Dalrymple,
Memoirs of Great Britain, &c. vol. ii. p. 11.
D'Estrades, vol. v., 20th Dec. 16G3. 18th Dec.
1664.
t Memoires de Gourville (Paris, 1724). vol. ii.
p. 14—18, 160.
$ Charles II. to the Duchess of Orleans, 13th
Jan. 1668.— Dalrymple, vol. ii. p. 5. [The olii
style is used throughout these references. — ED-]
388
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
tiation with France was immediately opened,
partly by the personal intercourse of Charles
with the French ministers at his court, but
chiefly through his sister, the Duchess of
Orleans, — an amiable princess, probably the
only person whom he ever loved. This cor
respondence, which was concealed from
those of his ministers who were not either
Catholics or well affected to the Catholic re
ligion, lingered on till May, 1670, when (on
the 22d) a secret treaty was concluded under
cover of a visit made by the Duchess to her
brother.*
The essential stipulations of this unparal
leled compact were three : that Louis should
advance money to Charles, to enable him the
more safely to execute what is called " a de
claration of his adherence to the Catholic
religion," and should support him with men
and money, if that measure should be re
sisted by his subjects; that both powers
should join their arms against Holland, the
islands of Walcheren and Cadsand being
alloted to England as her share of the prey
* It was signed by Lords Arlington and Arun-
del, Sir Thomas Clifford, and Sir Richard Bea-
ling, on the part of England, and by Colbert de
Croissy, the brother ot the celebrated financier,
on the part of France. Rose, Observations on
Fox's History, p. 51. Summary collated with
the original, in the hands of the present Lord Clif
ford. The draft of the same treaty, sent to Paris
by Arundel, does not materially differ. Dalrym-
ple, vol. i. p. 44. " The Life of James II. (vol.
i. pp. 440—450,) agrees, in most circumstances,
with these copies of the treaties, and wiih the cor
respondence. There is one important variation.
In the treaty it is stipulated that Charles' measures
in favour of the Catholic religion should precede
the war against Holland, according to the plan
which he had always supported. 'The Life'
says, that the resolution was taken at Dover to
begin with the war against Holland, and the des
patch of Colbert from Dover, 20th May (Dalrym-
ple, vol. ii. p. 57), almost justifies the statement,
which may refer to a verbal acquiescence of
Charles, probably deemed sufficient in these clan
destine transactions, where that prince desired
nothing but such assurances as satisfy gentlemen
in private life. It is true that the narrative of the
Life is not here supported by those quoiations from
the King's original Memoirs, on which the credit
of the compilation essentially depends. But as in
the eighteen years, 1660 — 1678, which exhibit no
such quotations, there are internal proofs that some
passages, at least, of the Life are taken from the
Memoirs, the absence of quotation does not dero
gate so much from the credit of this part of the
work as it would from that of any other." See
Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvi. pp. 402—430. This
treaty has been laid to the charge of the Cabinet
called the " Cabal," unjustly ; for, of the five
members of that administration, two only, Clif
ford and Arlington, were privy to the designs of
the Kins: and the Duke of York. Ashley an "
Lauderdale were too zealous Protestants to be
trusted with it. Buckingham (whatever might be
his indifference in religion) had too much levity to
be trusted with such secrets ; but he was so pene
trating that it was thought prudent to divert his
attention from the real negotiation, by engaging
him in negotiating a simulated treaty, in which the
articles favourable to the Catholic religion were
left out. On the other hand, Lord Arundel anc
Sir Richard Bealing, Catholics not of the " Ca
bal," were negotiators.
which clearly left the other territories of
he Republic at the disposal of Louis) ;
and that England should aid Louis in any
new pretensions to thf crown of Spain, or,
n other and plainer language, enable him,
>n the very probable event of Charles II.
>f Spain dying without issue,* to incorpo-
•ate with a monarchy already the greatest
n Europe the long-coveted inheritance of the
House of Burgundy, and the two vast penin
sulas of Italy and Spain. The strength of
l,ouis would thus have been doubled at one
)low. and all limitations to his farther pro
gress on the Continent must have been left
o his own moderation. It is hard to imagine
what should have hindered him from render-
ng his monarchy universal over the civilized
world. The port of Ostend, the island of
Minorca, and the permission to conquer
Spanish America, with a very vague promise
f assistance of France, were assigned to
England as the wages of her share of this
conspiracy against mankind. The fearful
stipulations for rendering the King of Eng
land independent of Parliament, by a secret
supply of foreign money, and for putting into
his hands a foreign military force, to be em
ployed against his subjects, were, indeed, to
take effect only in case of the avowal of his
reconciliation with the Church of Rome.
But as he himself considered a re-establish
ment of that Church as essential to the con
solidation of his authority, — which the mere
avowal of his religion would rather have
weakened, and the bare toleration of it could
little, if at all, have promoted; as he con
fessedly meditated measures for quieting the
alarms of the possessors of CHurch lands,
whom the simple letter of the treaty could
not have much disturbed ; as he proposed a
treaty with the Pope to obtain the cup for the
laity, and the mass in English, — concessions
which are scarcely intelligible without the
supposition thart the Church of Rome was to
be established ; as he concealed this article
from Shaftesbury, who must have known his
religion; and was then friendly to a toleration
of it ; and as other articles were framed for
the destruction of the only powerful Protest
ant state on the Continent, there cannot be
the slightest doubt that the real object of
this atrocious compact, however disguised
under the smooth and crafty language of
diplomacy, was the forcible imposition of a
hated religion upon the British nation, and
that the conspirators foresaw a national re
sistance, which must be stifled or quelled by
a foreign army.t It was evident that the
most tyrannical measures would have been
necessary for the accomplishment of such
purposes, and that the transfer of all civil,
military, and ecclesiastical power to the
members of a communion, who had no bar
rier against public hatred but the throne,
must have tended to render the power of
Charles absolute, and must have afforded
* Charles II., King of Spain, was then a feeble
and diseased child of nine years old.
t Dalrymple, vol. ii. p. 84.
MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND.
389
him the most probable means of effectually
promoting the plans of his ally for the sub
jugation of Europe.* If the foreign and do
mestic objects of this treaty be considered,
together with the means by which they were
to have been accomplished, and the dire con
sequences which must have flowed from
their attainment, it seems probable that so
much falsehood, treachery, and mercenary
meanness were never before combined, in
the decent formalities of a solemn compact
between sovereigns, with such premeditated
bloodshed and unbridled cruelty. The only
semblance of virtue in the dark plot was the
anxiety shown, to conceal it ; which, how
ever, arose more from the fears than the
shame of the conspirators. In spite of all
their precautions it transpired : the secret was
extorted from Turenne, in a moment of weak
ness, by a young mistress. t He also dis
closed some of the correspondence to Puf-
fendorf, the Swedish minister at Paris, to de
tach the Swedes from the Triple Alliance :t
and it wras made known by that minister, as
well as by De Groot. the Dutch ambassador
at Paris, to De Witt, who had never ceased
to distrust the sincerity of the Stuarts towards
Holland-^ The suspicions of Temple him
self had been early awakened ; and he seems
to have in some measure played the part of
a willing dupe, in the hope of entangling his
master in honest alliances. The substance
of the secret treaty was the subject of gene
ral conversation at the Court of England at
the time of Puffendorf's discovery.il A
pamphlet published, or at least printed, in
1673, intelligibly hints at its existence "about
four years before. "f Not long after, Louis
XIV., in a moment of dissatisfaction with
Charles II., permitted or commanded the
Abbate Primi to print a History of the Dutch
War at Paris, which derived credit from
being soon suppressed at the instance of the
English minister, and which gave an almost
verbally exact summary of the secret treat}',
with respect to three of its objects, — the par
tition of Holland, the re-establishment of the
Catholic religion in the British Islands, and
the absolute authority of the King.** The
* It is but just to mention, that Burnet calls it
only the "'toleration of popery," — vol. i. p. 522.
He had seen only Primi's history, and he seems
to speak of the negotiation carried on through
Buckingham, from whom we know that the full
extent of the plan was concealed.
t Ramsay, Histoire de Turenne (Paris, 1735),
vol. i. p. 429.
t Sir W. Temple to Sir Orlando Bridgman,
24th April, 1669.
§ De Witt observed to Temple, even in the
days of the Triple Alliance: — "A change of
councils in England would be our ruin. Since
the rei^n of Elizabeth there has been such a fluc
tuation in the English councils that it has been
impossible to concert measures with them for two
years."
I! Pepys' Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 336.
IF England's Appeal from the Private Cabal at
Whitehall.
** State Trials in the reign of Wm. III. (Lond.
1705), Introd. p. 10.
project for the dismemberment of Holland,
adopted by Charles I. in 1631 appears to have
been entertained by his eldest son till the
last years of his reign.*
As one of the articles of the secret treaty
had provided a petty sovereignty for the
Prince of Orange out of the ruins of his coun
try, Charles took the opportunity of his
nephew's visit to England, in October 1670,
to sound him on a project which was thus
baited for his concurrence. "All the Pro
testants," said the King, "are a factious
body, broken among themselves since they
have been broken from the main stock. Look
into these things better ; do not be misled by
your Dutch blockheads."! The King im
mediately imparted the failure of this at
tempt to the French ambassador: "I am
satisfied with the Prince's abilities, but I find
him too zealous a Dutchman and a Protest
ant to be trusted with the secret."! But
enough had escaped to disclose to the saga
cious youth the purposes of his uncle, and to
throw a strong light on the motives of all his
subsequent measures. The inclination of
Charles towards the Church of Rome could
never have rendered a man so regardless of
religion solicitous for a conversion, if he had
not considered it as subservient to projects
for the civil establishment of that Church, —
which, as it could subsist only by his favour,
must have been the instrument of his abso
lute power. Astonished as William was by
the discovery, he had the fortitude, during
the life of Charles, to conceal it from all but
one, or, at most, two friends. It was re
served for later times to discover that Charles
had the inconceivable baseness to propose
the detention of his nephew in England,
where the temptation of a sovereignty being
aided by the prospect of the recovery of his
freedom, might act more powerfully on his
mind ; and that this proposal was refused by
Louis, either from magnanimity, or from re
gard to decency, or, perhaps, from reluctance
to trust his ally with the sole disposal of so
important a prisoner.
Though — to return, — in 1672 the French
army had advanced into the heart of Hol
land, the fortitude of the Prince was un
shaken. Louis offered to make him sove
reign of the remains of the country, under
the protection of France and England :§ but
at that moment of extreme peril, he answer
ed with his usual calmness, " I never will
betray a trust, nor sell the liberties of my
country, which my ancestors have so long
defended." All around him despaired. —
One of his very few confidential friends,
after having long expostulated with him on
his fruitless obstinacy, at length asked him,
if he had considered how and where he
should live after Holland was lost. "I have
thought of that;" he replied ; " I am resolved
* Preston Papers in the possession of Sir James
Graham, of Netherby.
• Burnet, vol. i. p. 475.
t Dalrymple, vol. ii. p. 70. $ Ibid, p. 79-
2 H 2
390
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
to live on the lands I have left in Germany.
I had rather pass my life in hunting there,
than sell my country or my liberty to France
at any price. ?;* Buckingham and Arlington
were sent from England to try, whether, be
set by peril, the lure of sovereignty might
not seduce him. The former often said,
" Do you not see that the country is lost ?"
The answer of the Prince to the profligate
buffoon spoke the same unmoved resolution
with that which he had made to Zulestein
or Fagel; but it naturally rose a few degrees
towards animation : — " I see it is in great
danger, but there is a sure way of never
seeing it lost ; and that is, to die in the last
ditch."! The perfect simplicity of these
declarations may authorise us to rank them
among the most genuine specimens of true
magnanimity. Perhaps the history of the
world does not hold out a better example,
how high above the reach of fortune the
pure principle of obedience to the dictates
of conscience, unalloyed by interest, passion,
or ostentation, can raise the mind of a virtu
ous man. To set such an example is an un
speakably more signal service to mankind,
than all the outward benefits which flow to
them from the most successful virtue. It is
a principle independent of events, and one
that bums most brightly in adversity, — the
only agent, perhaps, of sufficient power to
call forth the native greatness of soul which
lay hid under the cold and unattractive de
portment of the Prince of Orange.
His present situation was calculated to as
certain whether his actions would correspond
with his declarations. Beyond the important
country extending from Amsterdam to Rot
terdam, — a district of about forty miles in
length, the narrow seat of the government,
wealth, and force of the commonwealth,
which had been preserved from invasion by
the bold expedient of inundation, and out of
which the cities and fortresses arose like
islands, — little remained of the republican
territory except the fortress of Maestricht,
the marshy islands of Zealand, and the se
cluded province of Friesland. A French
army of a hundred and ten thousand men,
encouraged by the presence of Louis, and
commanded by Conde and Turenne, had
their head-quarters at Utrecht, within twenty
miles of Amsterdam, and impatiently looked
forward to the moment when the ice should
form a road to the spoils of that capital of
the commercial world. On the other side,
the hostile flag of England was seen from
the coast. The Prince of Orange, a sickly
youth of twenty-two, without fame or expe
rience, had tc contend against such enemies
at the head rf a new government, of a di
vided people, and of a little army of twenty
thousand men, — either raw recruits or foreign
mercenaries, — whom the exclusively mari-
* Temple, Works vLund. 1721), vol. i. p 381.
This friend was probably his uncle Zulestein, for
the conversation passed before his intimacy with
Bentinck.
t Burnet, vol. i. p. 569.
time policy of the late administration had
left without officers of skill or name. His
immortal ancestor, when he founded the re
public about a century before, saw at the
lowest ebb of his fortune the hope of aid
from England and France : far darker were
the prospects of William III. The degene
rate successor of Elizabeth, abusing the as
cendant of a parental relation, sought to
tempt him to become a traitor to his country
for a share in her spoils. The successor of
Henry IV. offered him only the choice of be
ing bribed or crushed. Such was their fear
of France, that the Court of Spain did not
dare to aid him, though their only hope was
from his success. The German branch of
the House of Austria was then entangled in
a secret treaty with Louis, by which the
Low Countries were ceded to him. on con
dition of his guaranteeing to the Emperor
the reversion of the Spanish monarchy on
the death of Charles II. without issue. No
great statesman, no illustrious commander
but Montecucculi, no able prince but the
great Elector of Brandenburgh, was to be
found among the avowed friends or even
secret well-wishers of William. The terri
tories of Cologne and Liege, which presented
all the means of military intercourse between
the French and Dutch frontiers, were ruled
by the creatures of Louis. The final destruc
tion of a rebellious and heretical confederacy
was foretold with great, but not apparently
unreasonable confidence, by the zealots of
absolute authority in Church and State ; and
the inhabitants of Holland began seriously to
entertain the heroic project of abandoning an
enslaved country, and transporting the com
monwealth to their dominions in the Indian
islands.
At this awful moment Fortune seemed to
pause. The unwieldly magnificence of a
royal retinue encumbered the advance of the
French army. Though masters of Naerden,
which was esteemed the bulwark of Amster
dam, they were too late to hinder the open
ing of the sluices at Murden, which drowned
the country to the gates of that city. Louis,
more intoxicated with triumph than intent
on conquest, lost in surveying the honours of
victory the time which should have been
spent in seizing its fruits. Impatient of so
long an interruption of his pleasures, he
hastened to display at Versailles. the trophies
of a campaign of two months, in which
the conquest of three provinces, the capture
of fifty fortified places, and of twenty-four
thousand prisoners, were ascribed to him by
his flatterers. The cumbrous and tedious
formalities of the Dutch constitution enabled
the Stadtholder to gain some time without
suspicion. Even the perfidious embassy of
Buckingham and Arlington contributed some
what to prolong negotiations. He amused
them for a moment by appearing to examine
the treaties they had brought from London,
by which France was to gain all the fortres
ses which commanded the country, leaving
Zealand to England, and the rest of the
MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND.
391
country as a principality to himself.* Sub
mission seemed inevitable and speedy; still
the inundation rendered military movements
inconvenient and perhaps hazardous; and
the Prince thus obtained a little leisure for
the execution of his measures. The peo
ple, unable to believe the baseness of the
Court of London, were animated by the ap
pearance of the ministers who came to seal
their ruin : the Government, surrounded by
the waters, had time to negotiate at Madrid,
Vienna, and Berlin. The Marquis de Mon
terey. governor of the Catholic Netherlands,
without instructions from the Escurial, had
the boldness to throw troops into the import
ant fortresses of Dutch Brabant, — Breda,
Bergen-op-Zoom, and Bois-le-Duc, — under
pretence of a virtual guarantee of that terri
tory by Spain.
In England, the continuance of proroga
tions — relieving the King from parliamentary
opposition, but depriving him of sufficient
supply, — had driven him to resources alike
inadequate and infamous,! and had fore
boded that general indignation which, after
the combined fleets of England and France
had been worsted by the marine of Holland!
alone, at the very moment when the rem
nant of the Republic seemed about to be
swallowed up, compelled him to desist from
the open prosecution of the odious conspiracy
against her.§ The Emperor Leopold, roused
to a just sense of the imminent danger of
Europe, also concluded a defensive alliance
with the States-General ;|| as did the Ger
manic body generally, including Frederic
William of Brandenburgh, called the "Great
Elector."
Turenne had been meanwhile compelled
to march from the Dutch territory to ob
serve, and, in case of need, to oppose, the
Austrian and Brandenburgh troops ; and the
young Prince ceased to incur the risk and to
enjoy the glory of being opposed to that
great commander, who was the grandson of
William I.,1~ and had been trained to arms
under Maurice. The winter of 1672 was
unusually late and short. As soon as the
ice seemed sufficiently solid, Luxemburgh.
who was left in command at Utrecht, ad
vanced, in the hope of surprising the Hague ;
when a providential thaw obliged him to re-
* The official despatches of these ambassadors
are contained in a MS. volume, probably the pro
perty of Sir W. Trumbull, now in the hands of
his descendant, the Marquis of Downshire. These
despatches show that the worst surmises circulated
at the time of the purposes of this embassy were
scarcely so bad as the truth.
t Shutting up of the Exchequer, 2d January,
1672.
t Battle of Southwold Bay, 28th and 29ih May,
1672. In these memorable actions even the bio
grapher of James II. in effect acknowledges that
De Ruyter had the advantage. — Life, vol. i. pp.
457—476.
$ Peace concluded at Westminster, Feb. 19th,
1674.
II 25th July, 1672.
IT By Elizabeth of Nassau, Duchess of Bouil
lon.
tire. His operations were limited to the de
struction of two petty towns; and it seems
doubtful whether he did not owe his own
escape to the irresolution or treachery of a
Dutch officer intrusted with a post which
commanded the line of retreat. At the
perilous moment of Luxemburgh's advance,
look place William's long march through
Brabant to the attack of Charleroi. — under
taken probably more with a view of raising
the drooping spirits of his troops than in the
hope of ultimate success. The deliveiance
of Holland in 1672 was the most signal
triumph of a free people over mighty ai-
vaders, since the defeat of Xerxes.
In the ensuing year, William's offensive
operations had more outward and lasting
consequences. Having deceived Luxem
burgh, he recovered Naerden, and shortly
hazarding another considerable march be
yond the frontier, he captured the city of
Bonn, and thus compelled Turenne to pro
vide for the safety of his army by recrossing
the Rhine. The Spanish governor of the
Low Countries then declared war against
France ; and Louis was compelled to recall
his troops from Holland. Europe now rose
on all sides against the monarch who not
many months before appeared to be her un
disputed lord. So mighty were the effects
of a gallant stand by a small people, under
an inexperienced chief, without a council or
minister but the Pensionary Fag-el, — the pupil
and adherent of De Witt, who, actuated by
the true spirit of his great master, continued
faithfully to serve his country, in spite of the
saddest examples of the ingratitude of his
countrymen. In the six years of war which
followed, the Prince commanded in three
battles against the greatest generals of
France. At Senef,* it was a sufficient
honour that he was not defeated by Conde ;
and that the veteran declared, on reviewing
the events of the day, — '• The young Prince
has shown all the qualities of the most ex
perienced commander, except that he ex
posed his own person too much." He was
defeated without dishonour at Cassel.f by
Luxemburgh. under the nominal command
of ihe Duke of Orleans. He gained an ad
vantage over the same great general, after
an obstinate and bloody action, at St. Denis,
near Mons. This last proceeding was of
more doubful morality than any other of his
military life, the battle being fought four
days after the signature of a separate treaty
of peace by the Dutch plenipotentiaries at
Nirneguen.J It was not, indeed, a breach
of faith, for there was no armistice, and the
ratifications were not executed. It is un
certain, even, whether he had information
of what had passed at Nimeguen ; the official
despatches from the States-General reaching
him only the next morning. The treaty had
been suddenly and unexpectedly brought to
a favourable conclusion by the French minis
ters; and the Prince, who condemned it as
* llth August, 1674.
t 10th August, 1678.
t 11 April, 1677.
392
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
alike offensive to good faith and sound
policy, had reasonable hopes of obtaining
a victory, which, if gained before the final
signature, might have determined the fluc
tuating counsels of the States to the side of
vigour.and honour. The morality of soldiers,
even in our own age, is not severe in requir
ing proof of the necessity of bloodshed, if the
combat be fair, the event brilliant, and, more
particularly, if the commander freely exposes
his own life. His gallant enemies warmly
applauded this attack, distinguished, as it
seems eminently to have been, for the daring
valour, which was brightened by the gravity
and modesty of his character ; and they de
clared it to be ^the only heroic action of a
six years' war between all the great nations
of Europe." If the official despatches had
not hindered him from prosecuting the attack
on the next day with the English auxiliaries,
who must then have joined him, he was
likely to have changed the fortune of the
war.
The object of the Prince and the hope of
his confederates had been to restore Europe
to the condition in which it had been placed
by the treaty of the Pyrenees.* The result
of the negotiations at Nimeguen was to add
the province of Tranche Comte, and the most
important fortresses of the Flemish frontier.
to the cessions which Louis at Aix-la-Cha-
pellef had extorted from Spain. The Spanish
Netherlands were thus farther stripped of
their defence, the barrier of Holland weak
ened, and the way opened for the reduction
of all the posts which face the most defence
less parts of the English coast. The acqui
sition of Franche Comte broke the military
connection between Lombardy and Flanders,
secured the ascendant of France in Switzer
land, and, together with the usurpation of
Lorraine, exposed the German empire to new
aggression. The ambition of the French
monarch was inflamed, and the spirit of
neighbouring nations broken, by the ineffec
tual-resistance as much as by the long sub
mission of Europe.
The ten years which followed the peace
of Nimeguen were the period of his highest
elevation. The first exercise of his power
was the erection of three courts, composed
of his own subjects, and sitting by his autho
rity, at Brissac, Mentz, and Besanc,on, to de
termine whether certain territories ought not
to be annexed to France, which he claimed
as fiefs of the provinces ceded to him by the
Empire by the treaty of Westphalia. These
courts, called :- Chambers of Union," sum
moned the possessors of. these supposed fiefs
to answer the King's complaints. The justice
of the claim and the competence of the tri
bunals were disputed with equal reason.
The Chamber at Metz decreed the confisca
tion of eighty fiefs, for default of appearance
by the feudatories, among whom were the
Kings of Spain and Sweden, and the Elector
Palatine. Some petty spiritless princes ac-
7th Nov. 1659.
t 2d May, 1668.
tually did homage to Louis for territories,
said to have been anciently fiefs of the see
of Verdun •* and, under colour of a pretended
judgment of the Chamber at Brissac,t the
city of Strasburgh, a flourishing Protestant
republic, which commanded an important
pass on the Rhine, was surrounded at mid
night, in a time of profound peace, by a body
of French soldiers, who- compelled those
magistrates \vho had not been previously
corrupted to surrender the city to the crown
of France,}: amidst the consternation and
affliction of the people. Almost at the same
hour, a body of troops entered Casal, in con
sequence of a secret treaty with the Duke
of Mantua, a dissolute and needy }*rath. who
for a bribe of a hundred thousand pounds,
betrayed into the hands of Louis that fortress,
then esteemed the bulwark of Lombardy. §
Both these usurpations were in contempt of
a notice from the Imperial minister at Paris,
against the occupation of Strasburgh, an Im
perial city, or Casal, the capital of Mont-
ferrat, a fief of the Empire. I!
On the Belgic frontier, means were em
ployed more summary and open than pre
tended judgments or clandestine treaties.
Taking it upon himself to determine the ex
tent of territory ceded to him at Nimeguen,
Louis required from the Court of Madrid the
possession of such districts as he thought fit.
Much was immediately yielded. Some hesi
tation was shown in surrendering the town
and district of Alost. Louis sent his troops
into the Netherlands, there to stay till his
demands were absolutely complied with ;
and he notified to the governor, that the
slightest resistance would be the signal of
war. Hostilities soon broke out, which after
having made him master of Luxemburg, one
of the strongest fortresses of Europe, were
terminated in the summer of 1684, by a
truce for twenty years, leaving him in pos-
* Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, vol. vii. part ii.
p. 13.
t Flassan, Histoire de la Diplomatic Francaise,
vol. iv. pp. 59, 63.
t CEuvres de Louis XIV., vol. iv. p. 394, where
the original correspondence is published. The
pretended capitulation is dated on the 30th Sep
tember, 1681. The design against Strasburg
had been known in July. — MS. letters of Sir
Henry Saville (minister at Paris) to Sir Leoline
Jenkins. Dovvnshire Papers.
§ CEuvres de Louis XIV., vol. iv. pp. 216, 217.
The mutinous conscience of Catinat astonished
and displeased the haughty Louvois. Casal had
been ceded in 1678 by Matthioli, the Duke's mi
nister, who, either moved by remorse or by higher
bribes from the House of Austria, advised his
master not to ratify the treaty ; for which he was
carried prisoner into France, and detained there
in close and harsh custody. He was the famous
man with the Iron Mask, who died in the Bas-
tile. The bargain for Casal was disguised in the
diplomatic forms of a convention between the
King and the Duke. — Dumont, vol. vii. part ii.
p. 14. An army of one thousand five hundred
men was collected in Dauphiny, at the desire of
the Duke, to give his sale the appearance of ne
cessity. — Letter of Sir Henry Saville.
II Sir Henry Saville to Sir Leoline Jenkins.
Fontainbleau, 12th Sept. 1681.
MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND.
393
session of, and giving the sanction of Europe
to, his usurpations.
To a reader of the nineteenth century,
familiar with the present divisions of terri
tory in Christendom, and accustomed to re
gard the greatness of France as well adapted
to the whole state of the European system,
the conquests of Louis XIV. may seem to
have inspired an alarm disproportioned to
their magnitude. Their real danger, how
ever, will be speedily perceived by those
who more accurately consider the state of
surrounding countries, and the subdivision
of dominion in that age. Two monarchies
only of the first class existed on the conti
nent, as the appellation of " the two Crowns,"
thon commonly used in speaking of France
and Spain, sufficiently indicate. But Spain,
which, under the last Austrian king, had
perhaps reached the lowest point of her ex
traordinary fall, was in truth no longer able
to defend herself. The revenue of some
what more than two millions sterling was in
adequate to the annual expense.* Ronquillo,
the minister of this vast empire in London,
was reduced to the necessity of dismissing
his servants without payment.! An invader
who had the boldness to encounter the sha
dow of a great name had little to dread, ex
cept from the poverty of the country, which
rendered it incapable of feeding an army.
Naples. Lombardy, and the Catholic Nether
lands, though the finest provinces of Europe,
were a drain and a burden in the hands of a
government sunk into imbecile dotage, and
alike incapable of ruling and of maintaining
these envied possessions. While Spain, a
lifeless and gigantic body, covered the South
of Europe, the manly spirit and military skill
of Germany were rendered of almost as little
avail by the minute subdivisions of its terri
tory. From the Rhine to the Vistula, a hun
dred princes, jealous of each other, fearful
of offending the conqueror, and often com
petitors for his disgraceful bounty, broke into
fragments the strength of the Germanic race.
The houses of Saxony and Bavaria, Branden
burg and Brunswick, Wurtemburg, Baden,
and Hesse, though among the most ancient
and noble of the ruling families of Europe,
were but secondary states. Even the genius
of the late Elector of Brandenburg did not
exempt him from the necessity or the temp
tation of occasional compliance with Louis.
From the French frontier to the Baltic, no
one firm mass stood in the way of his arms.
Prussia was not yet a monarchy, nor Russia
an European state. In the south-eastern
provinces of Germany, where Rodolph of
Hapsburjj had laid the foundations of his
family, the younger branch had, from the
death of Charles V. formed a monarchy
which, aided by the Spanish alliance, the
* Memoires de Gourville, vol. ii. p. 82. An ac
count apparently prepared with care. I adopt the
proportion of thirteen Hvres to the pound sterling,
which is the rate of exchange given by Barillon,
in 1679.
t Ronquillo, MS. letter.
50
imperial dignity, and a military position on
the central frontier of Christendom, render
ing it the bulwark of the Empire against
the irruptions of the Turkish barbarians,
rose during the thirty years' war to such a
power, that it was prevented only by Gus-
tavus Adolphus from enslaving the whole of
Germany. France, which under Richelieu
had excited and aided that great prince and
his followers, was for that reason regarded
for a time as the protector of the German
States against the Emperor. Bavaria, the
Palatinate, and the three ecclesiastical Elec
torates, partly from remaining jealousy of
Austria, and partly from growing fear of
Louis, were disposed to seek his protection
and acquiesce in many of his encroach
ments.* This numerous, weak, timid, and
mercenary body of German princes, supplied
the chief materials out of which it was pos
sible that an alliance against the conqueror
might one day be formed. On the other
hand, the military power of the Austrian
monarchy was crippled by the bigotry and
tyranny of its princes. The persecution of
the Protestants, and the attempt to establish
an absolute government, had spread disaf
fection through Hungary and its vast depen
dencies. In" a contest between one tyrant
and many, where the people in a state of
personal slavery are equally disregarded by
both, reason and humanity might be neutral,
if reflection did not remind us, that even
the contests and factions of a turbulent aris
tocracy call forth an energy, and magna
nimity, and ability, which are extinguished
under the quieter and more fatally lasting
domination of a single master. The Emperor
Leopold I., instigated by the Jesuits, of which
order he was a lay member, rivalled and an
ticipated Louis XlV.t in his cruel prosecu
tion of the Hungarian Protestants, and there
by drove the nation to such despair that they
sought refuge in the aid of the common
enemy of the Christian name. Encouraged
by their revolt, and stimulated by the con
tinued intrigues of the Court of Versailles,!:
the Turks at length invaded Austria with a
* The Palatine, together with Bavaria, Mentz
and Cologne, promised to vote for Louis XIV. as
emperor in 1658. — Pfeflfel, Abrege Chronologi-
que, &c. (Paris, 1776), vol. ii. p. 360. A more
authentic and very curious account of this extra
ordinary negotiation, extracted from the French
archives, is published by Lemontey, (Monarchie
de Louis XIV. Pieces Justificative*, No. 2,) by
which it appears that the Elector of Metz betrayed
Mazarin, who had distributed immense bribes to
him and his fellows.
t He banished the Protestant clergy, of whom
two hundred and fifty, originally condemned to
be stoned or burnt to death, but having under
pretence, probably, of humanity, been sold to the
Spaniards, were redeemed from the condition of
galley slaves by the illustrious De Ruyter after
his victory over the French, on the coast of
Sicily. — Coxe, House of Austria, chap. 66.
t Sir William Trumbull, ambassador at Con
stantinople from August, 1687, to July, 1691,
names French agents employed in fomenting the
Hungarian rebellion, and negotiating with the
Vizier.— Downshire MSS.
394
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
mighty army, and would have mastered the
capital of the most noble of Christian sove
reigns, had not the seige of Vienna been
raised, after a duration of two months, by
John Sobieski, King of Poland, — the heroic
chief of a people, whom in less than a cen
tury the House of Austria contributed to
blot out of the map of nations. While
these dangers impended over the Austrian
monarchy, Louis had been preparing to de
prive it of the Imperial sceptre, which in his
own hands would have proved no bauble.
By secret treaties, to which the Elector of
Bavaria had been tempted to agree, in 1670,
by the prospect of matrimonial alliance with
the House of France, and which were im
posed on the Electors of Brandenburg and
Saxony in 1679. after the humiliation of Eu
rope at Nimeguen, these princes had agreed
to vote for Louis in case of the death of
the Emperor Leopold, — an event which his
infirm health had given frequent occasion
to expect. The four Rhenish electors,
especially after the usurpation of Stras-
burg and Luxemburg, were already in his
net.
At home the vanquished party, whose an
tipathy to the House of Orange had been
exasperated by the cruel fate of De Witt,
sacrificed the care of the national inde
pendence to jealousy of the Stadtholderian
princes, and carried their devotedness to
France to an excess which there was no
thing in the example of their justly revered
leader to warrant.* They had obliged the
Prince of Orange to accede to the unequal
conditions of Nimeguen ; they had prevented
him from makkig military preparations ab
solutely required by safety j and they had
compelled him to submit to that truce for
twenty years, which left the entrances of
Flanders, Germany, and Italy, in the hands
of France. They had concerted all mea
sures of domestic opposition with the French
minister at the Hague ; and, though there is
no reason to believe that the opulent and
creditable chiefs of the party, if they had
received French money at all, would have
deigned to employ it for any other than
what they had unhappily been misled to
regard as a public purpose, there is the ful
lest evidence of the employment of bribes
to make known at Versailles the most secret
counsels of the commonwealth. t Amster
dam had raised troops for her own defence,
declaring her determination not to contribute
towards the hostilities which the measures
* The speed and joy with which he and Temple
concluded the Triple Alliance seem, indeed, to
prove the contrary. That treaty, so quickly con
cluded by two wise, accomplished, and, above all,
honest men, is perhaps unparalleled in diplomatic
transactions. " Nulla dies unquam memori vox
eximel CRVO."
t D'Avaux, Negociations en Hollande (Paris,
1754), vol. i. pp. 13, 23, 25, &c.— examples of trea
chery, in some of which the secret was known
only to three persons. Sometimes, copies of
orders were obtained from the Prince's private
repositories, vol. ii. p. 53.
of the general government might occasion,
and had entered into a secret correspondence
with France. Friesland and Croningen had
recalled their troops from the common de
fence, and bound themselves, by a secret
convention with Amsterdam, to act in con
cert with that potent and mutinous city.
The provinces of Guelderland, Overyssell,
Utrecht, and Zealand, adhered, indeed, to
the Prince, and he still preserved a majority
in the States of Holland ; but this majority
consisted only of the order of nobles and of
the deputies of inconsiderable towns. Fagel7
his wise and faithful minister, appeared to
be in danger of destruction at the hands of
the Republicans, who abhorred him as a de
serter. But Heinsius. Pensionary of Delft,
probably the ablest man of that party, hav
ing, on a mission to Versailles, seen the
effects of the civil and religious policy of
Louis XIV., and considering consistency as
dependent, not on names, but on principles,
thought it the duty of a friend of liberty
also to join the party most opposed to that
monarch's designs. So trembling was the
ascendant of the Prince in Holland, that the
accession of individuals was, from their sit
uation or ability, of great importance to him.
His cousin, the Stadtholder of Friesland, was
gradually gained over • and Conrad Van Ben-
ningen, one of the chiefs of Amsterdam, an
able, accomplished, and disinterested Repub
lican, fickle from over-refinement, and be
trayed into French councils by jealousy of
the House of Orange, as soon as he caught a
glimpse of the abyss into which his country
was about to fall, recoiled from the brink.
Thus did the very Country where the Prince
of Orange held sway, fluctuate between him
and Louis; insomuch, indeed, that if that
monarch had observed any measure in his
cruelty towards French Protestants, it might
have been impossible, till it was too late, to
turn the force of Holland against him.
But the weakest point in the defences of
European independence was England. It
was not, indeed, like the continental states,
either attacked by other enemies, or weak
ened by foreign influence, or dwindling from
inward decay. The throne was filled by a
traitor; a creature of the common enemy
commanded this important post : for a quarter
of a century Charles had connived at the
conquests or Louis. During the last ten years
of his reign he received a secret pension ;
but when Louis became desirous of possess
ing Luxemburg, Charles extorted an addi
tional bribe for connivance at that new act
of rapine.* After he had sold the fortress,
he proposed himself to Spain as arbitrator in
the dispute regarding it jt and so notorious
was his perfidy, that the Spanish ministers
at Paris did not scruple to justify their re-
* " My Lord Hyde (Rochester) ne m'a pas
cache que si son avis est suivi le Roi s'en entrera
dans un concert secret pour avoir a V. M. la ville
de Luxemburg." — Barillon to Louis, 7th Nov.
1681.
t The same to the same, 15th Dec.
MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND.
395
fusal to his ambassador, by telling him, " that
they refused because they had no mind to
part with Luxemburg, which they knew
was to be sacrificed if they accepted the
offer."*
William's connection with the House of
Stuart was sometimes employed by France
to strengthen the jealous antipathy of the
Republicans against him ; while on other oc
casions he was himself obliged to profess a
reliance on that connection which he did
not feel, in order to gain an appearance of
strength. As the Dutch Republicans wrere
prompted to thwart his measures by a mis
applied zeal for liberty, so the English Whigs
were for a moment compelled to enter into a
correspondence with the common enemy by
the like motives. But in his peculiar rela
tions with England the imprudent violence
* Lord Preston to Secretary Jenkins, Paris,
16th Dec. 1682. Admitted within the domestic
differences of England, Louis had not scrupled to
make advances to the enemies of the court ; and
they, desirous of detaching their own sovereign
from France, and of thus depriving him of the
most effectual ally in his project for rendering
himself absolute, had reprehensibly accepted the
aid of Louis in counteracting a policy which they
had good reason to dread. They considered this
dangerous understanding as allowable for the pur
pose of satisfying their party, that in opposing
Charles they would not have to apprehend the
power of Louis, and disposing the King of France
to spare the English constitution, as some curb on
the irresolution and inconstancy of his royal de
pendent. To destroy confidence between the
Courts seemed to be an object so important, as to
warrant the use of ambiguous means ; and the
usual sophistry, by which men who are not de
praved excuse to themselves great breaches of
morality, could not be wanting. They could easily
persuade themselves that they could stop when
they pleased, and that the example could not be
dangerous in a case where the danger was too
great not to be of very rare occurrence. Some of
them are said by Barillon to have so far copied
their prince as to have received French money,
though they are not charged with being, like him,
induced by it to adopt any measures at variance
with their avowed principles. If we must be
lieve, that in an age of little pecuniary delicacy,
when large presents from sovereigns were scarcely
deemed dishonourable, and when many princes,
and almost all ministers, were in the pay of Louis
XIV., the statement may be true, it is due to the
haughty temper, not to say to the high principles
of Sidney, — it is due, though in a very inferior de
gree, to the ample fortunes of others of the per
sons named, also to believe, that the polluted gifts
were applied by them to elections and other public
interests of the popular party, which there might
be a fantastic: gratification in promoting by trea
sures diverted from the use of the Court. These
unhappy transactions, which in their full extent
require a more critical scrutiny of the original do
cuments than that to which they have been sub
jected, are not pretended to originate till ten years
after the concert of the two Courts, and were re
linquished as soon as that concert was resumed.
Yet the reproach brought upon the cause of
liberty by the infirmity of some men of great soul,
and of others of the purest virtue, is, perhaps, the
most wholesome admonition pronounced by the
warning voice of history against the employment
of sinister and equivocal means for the attainment
of the best ends.
of the latter party was as much an obstacle
in his way as their alienation or opposition.
The interest of Europe required that he
should never relinquish the attempt to detach
the English government from the conqueror.
The same principle, together with legitimate
ambition, prescribed that he should do no
thing, either by exciting enemies, or estrang
ing friends, which could endanger his own
and the Princess' right of succession to the
crown. It was his obvious policy, therefore, to
keep up a good understanding with the popu
lar party, on whom alone he could permanent
ly rely ; to give a cautious countenance to
tneir measures of constitutional opposition,
and especially to the Bill of Exclusion,* — a
more effectual mode of cutting asunder the
chains which bound England to the car of
Louis, than the proposed limitations on a Ca
tholic successor, which might permanently
weaken the defensive force of the monarchy;!
and to discourage and stand aloof from all
violent counsels, — likely either to embroil the
country in such lasting confusion as would
altogether disable it for aiding the sinking
fortunes of Europe, or, by their immediate
suppression, to subject all national interests
and feelings to Charles and his brother. As
his open declaration against the King or the
popular party would have been perhaps
equally dangerous to English liberty and
European independence, he was averse from
those projects which reduced him to so in
jurious an alternative. Hence his conduct
in the case of what is called the ic Rye House
Plot/' in which his confidential 'correspon
dence! manifests indifference and even dis
like to those who were charged with projects
of revolt ; all which might seem unnatural
if we did not bear in mind that at the mo
ment of the siege of Vienna, he must have
looked at England almost solely, as the
only counterpoise of France. His abstinence
from English intrigues was at this juncture
strengthened by lingering hopes that it was
still possible to lure Charles into those unions
which he had begun to form against farther
encroachment, under the modest and inoffen
sive name of " Associations to maintain the
Treaty of Nimeguen," which were in three
* Burnet, vol. ii. p. 245. Temple, vol. i.
p. 355. " My friendship with the Prince (says
Temple) I could think no crime, considering how
little he had ever meddled, to my knowledge, in
our domestic concerns since the first heats in Par
liament, though sensible of their influence on all
his nearest concerns at home ; the preservation
of Flanders from French conquests, and thereby
of Holland from absolute dependence on that
Crown."
t Letters of the Prince to Sir Leoline Jenkins,
July, 1680.— February, 1681. Dalrymple, Ap
pendix to Review.
t MS. letters from the Prince to Mr. Bentinck,
in England, July and August, 1683. By the
favour of the Duke of Portland, I possess copies
of the whole of the Prince's correspondence with
his friend, from 1677 to 1700 ; written with the
unreserved frankness of warm and pure friend
ship, in which it is quite manifest that there is
nothing concealed.
396
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
years afterwards completed by the League
of Augsburgh, and which, in 1689, brought
all Europe into the field to check the careei
of Louis XIV.
The death of Charles II. gave William
some hope of an advantageous change in
English policy. Many worse men and more
tyrannical kings than that prince, few per
sons of more agreeable qualities and brilliant
talents have been seated on a throne. But
his transactions with France probably afford
the most remarkable instance of a king with
no sense of national honour or of regal inde
pendence, — the last vestiges which departing
virtue might be expected to leave behind in
a royal bosom. More jealousy of dependence
on a foreign prince was hoped from the ster
ner temper of his successor. William accord
ingly made great efforts and sacrifices to
obtain the accession of England to the Euro
pean cause. He declared his readiness to
sacrifice his resentments, and even his per
sonal interests, and to conform his conduct
to the pleasure of the King in all things com
patible with his religion and with His duty
to the republic;* — limitations which must
have been considered as pledges of sincerity
by him to wrhom they were otherwise unac
ceptable. He declared his regret at the ap
pearance of opposition to both his uncles,
which had arisen only from the necessity of
resisting Louis, and he sent M. D'Auver-
querque to England to lay his submission
before the King. James desired that he
should relinquish communication with the
Duke of Monmouthjt dismiss the malcontent
* Davaux, 13th— 26th Feb., 1685. The last
contains an account of a conversation of William
with Fagel, overheard by a person who reported
ir to Davaux. A passage in which Davaux shows
his belief that the policy of the Prince now aimed
at gaining James, is suppressed in the printed
collection.
t During these unexpected advances to a re
newal of friendship, an incident occurred, which
has ever since, in the eyes of many, thrown some
shade over the sincerity of William. This was
the landing in England of the Duke of Monmouth,
with a small number of adherents who had em
barked with him at Amsterdam. He had taken
refuge in the Spanish Netherlands, and afterwards
in Holland, during the preceding year, in conse
quence of a misunderstanding between him and
the ministers of Charles respecting the nature and
extent of the confession concerning the reality of
the Rye House Plot, published by them in language
which he resented as conveying unauthorised im
putations on his friends. The Prince and Princess
of Orange received him with kindness, from per
sonal friendship, from compassion for his suffer
ings, and from his connection with the popular
and Protestant party in England. The transient
shadow of a pretension to the crown did not
awaken their jealousy. They were well aware
that whatever complaints might be made by his
ministers, Charles himself would not be displeased
by kindness shown towards his favourite son.
There is, indeed, little doubt, that in the last year
of his life, Charles had been prevailed on by Hali
fax to consult his ease, as well as his inclination,
by the recall of his son, as a counterpoise to the
Duke of York, and thus to produce the balance
of parties at court, which was one of the darling
refinements of that too ingenious statesman.
English Officers in the Dutch army7 and
adapt his policy to such engagements as
Reports were prevalent that Monmouih had pri
vately visited England, and that he was well
pleased with his journey. He was assured by
confidential letters, evidently sanctioned by his
father, that he should be recalled in February.
It appears also, that Charles had written with his
own hand a letter to the Prince of Orange, be
seeching him to treat Monmouth kindly, which
D'Auverquerque was directed to lay before James
as a satisfactory explanation of whatever might
seem suspicious in the unusual honours paid to
him. Before he left the Hague the Prince and
Princess approved the draft of a submissive letter
to James, which he had laid before them ; and
they exacted from him a promise that he would
engage in no violent enterprises inconsistent with
this submission. Despairing of clemency from
his uncle, he then appears to have entertained
designs of retiring into Sweden, or of serving in
the Imperial army against the Turks ; and he
listened for a moment to the projects of some
French Protestants, who proposed that he should
put himself at the head of their unfortunate bre
thren. He himself thought the difficulties of an
enterprise against England insuperable ; but the
importunity of the English and Scotch refugees
in Holland induced him to return privately there
to be present at their consultations. He found
the Scotch exiles, who were proportionately more
numerous and of greater distinction, and who felt
more bitterly from the bloody tyranny under which
their countrymen suffered, impatiently desirous to
make an immediate attempt for the delivery of
their country. Ferguson, the Nonconformist
preacher, either from treachery, or from rash
ness, seconded the impetuosity of his countrymen.
Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a man of heroic
spirit, and a lover of liberty even to enthusiasm,
who had just returned from serving in Hungary,
dissuaded his friends from an enterprise which his
political sagacity and military experience taught
tiim to consider as hopeless. In assemblies of
suffering and angry exiles it was to be expected
that rash counsels should prevail ; yet Monmouth
ippears to have resisted them longer than could
have been hoped from his judgment or temper,
[t was not till two months after the death of
harles II. (9th April, 1685,) that the vigilant
Davaux intimated his suspicion of a design to
'and in England. Nor was it till three weeks
hat he was able to transmit to his Court the par-
iculars of the 'equipment. It was only then that
Skelton, the minister of James, complained of
;hese petty armaments to the President of the
States-General and the magistratesof Amsterdam,
leither of whom had any authority in the case.
They referred him to the Admiralty of Amster
dam, the competent authority in such cases, who,
as soon as they were authorised by an order from
he States-General, proceeded to arrest the ves
sels freighted by Arsyle. But in consequence of
i mistake in Skelton's description of their station,
heir exertions were too late to prevent the sailing
)f the unfortunate expedition on the 5th of May.
The natural delays of a slow and formal go
vernment, the jealousy of rival authorities, ex
asperated by the spirit of party, and the license
shown in such a country to navigation and traffic,
ire sufficient to account for this short delay. If
here was in this case a more than usual indisposi-
ion to overstep the formalities of the constitution,
)r to quicken the slow pace of the administration,
t may be well imputed to natural compassion to
wards the exiles, and to the strong fellow-feeling
which arose from agreement in religious opinion,
especially with the Scotch. If there were proof
even of absolute connivance, it must be ascribed
olely to the magistrates and inhabitants of Am-
MEMOIR OF THE AFFAIRS OF HOLLAND.
397
the King should see fit to contract with his
neighbours. To the former conditions the
Prince submitted without reserve : the last,
couched in strong language by James to
Barillon, hid under more general expressions
by the English minister to Davaux, but im
plying in its mildest form an acquiescence in
trie projects of the conqueror, was probably
conveyed to the Prince himself in terms
capable of being understood as amounting
only to an engagement to avoid an interrup
tion of the general peace. In that inoffensive
sense it seems to have been accepted by the
Prince ; since the King declared to him that
his concessions, which could have reached
no farther, were perfectly satisfactory.*
Sidney was sent to Holland — a choice
which seemed to indicate an extraordinary
deference for the wishes of the Prince, and
which was considered in Holland as a deci
sive mark of good understanding between
the two governments. The proud and hostile
city of Amsterdam presented an address of
congratulation to William on the defeat of
Monmouth ; and the Republican party be
gan to despair of effectual resistance to the
power of the Stadtholder, now about to be
strengthened by the alliance with England.
The Dutch ambassadors in London, in spite
of the remonstrances of Barillon, succeeded
in concluding a treaty for the renewal of
the defensive alliance between England and
Holland, which, though represented to Louis
as a mere formality, was certainly a step
which required little more than that liberal
construction to which a defensive treaty is
always entitled, to convert it into an acces
sion by England to the concert of the other
states of Europe, for the preservation of their
rights and dominions. The connection be
tween the Dutch and English governments
answered alike the immediate purposes of
both parties. It overawed the malcontents
of Holland, as well as those of England ; and
James commanded his ministers to signify
to the magistrates of Amsterdam, that their
support of the Stadtholder would be accept
able to his Majesty.
William, who, from the peace of Nime-
guen, had been the acknowledged chief of
sferdam,— the ancient enemies of the House of
Orange, — who might look with favour on an
expedition which might prevent the Stadtholder
from being strengthened by his connection with
the King of England, and who, as we are told
by Davaux himself, were afterwards filled with
consternation when they learned the defeat of
Monmouth. We know little with certainty of
the particulars of his intercourse with his inex
orable uncle, from his capture till his execution,
except the compassionate interference of the
Queen Dowager in his behalf; but whatever it
was, from the King's conduct immediately after,
it tended rather to strengthen than to shake his
confidence in the Prince.
* James to the Prince of Orange, 6th, 16th, and
I7tb March. — Dalrymple, app. to part i.
the confederacy gradually forming to protect
the remains of Europe, had now slowly and
silently removed all the obstacles to its for
mation, except those which arose from the
unhappy jealousies of the friends of liberty
at home, and the fatal progress towards ab
solute monarchy in England. Good sense,
which, in so high a degree as his, is one of
the rarest of human endowments, had full
scope for its exercise in a mind seldom in
vaded by the disturbing passions of fear and
anger. With all his determined firmness,
no man was ever more solicitous not to
provoke or keep up needless enmity. It is
no wonder that he should have been influ
enced by this principle in his dealings with
Charles and James, for there are traces of it
even in his rare and transient intercourse
with Louis XIV. He caused it to be inti
mated to him ''that he was ambitions of
being restored to his Majesty's favour;7''* to
which it was haughtily answered, i: that
when such a disposition was shown in his
conduct, the King would see what was to be
done." Yet Davaux believed that the Prince
really desired to avoid the enmity of Louis,
as far as was compatible with his duties to
Holland, and his interests in England. In a
conversation with Gourville,t which affords
one of the most characteristic specimens of
intercourse between a practised courtier and
a man of plain inoffensive temper, when the
minister had spoken to him in more soothing
language, he professed his warm wish to
please the King, and proved his sincerity by
adding that he never could neglect the safety
of Holland, and that the decrees of re-union,
together with other marks of projects of uni
versal monarchy, were formidable obstacles
to good understanding. It was probably
after one of these attempts that he made the
remarkable declaration, — u Since I cannot
earn his Majesty's favour, I must endeavour
to earn his esteem." Nothing but an extra
ordinary union of wariness with persever
ance — two qualities which he possessed in a
higher degree, and united in juster propor
tions, perhaps, than any other man — could
have fitted him for that incessant, unwearied,
noiseless exertion which alone suited his
difficult situation. His mind, naturally dis
passionate, became, by degrees, steadfastly
and intensely fixed upon the single object
of his high calling. Brilliant only on the field
of battle ; loved by none but a few intimate
connections; considerate and circumspect in
council ; in the execution of his designs bold
even to rashness, and inflexible to the verge
of obstinacy, he held his onward way with
a quiet and even course, which wore down
opposition, outlasted the sallies of enthusi
asm, and disappointed the subtle contriv
ances of a refined policy.
* Davaux, vol. i. p. 5.
t Gourville, vol. ii. p. 204.
21
398
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
DISCOURSE
READ AT THE OPENING OF
THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY
[36th Nov. 1804.]
GENTLEMEN; — The smallest society, brought
together by the love of knowledge, is respect
able in the eye of Reason ; and the feeblest
efforts of infant Literature in barren and in
hospitable regions are in some respects more
interesting than the most elaborate works
and the most successful exertions of the hu
man mind. They prove the diffusion, at
least, if riot the advancement of science ;
and they afford some sanction to the hope,
that Knowledge is destined one day to visit
the whole earth, and, in her beneficial pro
gress, to illuminate and humanise the whole
race of man. It is, therefore, with singular
pleasure that I see a small but respectable
body of men assembled here by such a prin
ciple. I hope that we agree in considering
all Europeans who visit remote countries,
whatever their separate pursuits may be, as
detachments of the main body of civilized
men, sent out to levy contributions of know
ledge, as well as to gain victories over bar
barism.
When a large portion of a country so inte
resting as India fell into the hands of one of
the most intelligent and inquisitive nations
of the world, it was natural to expect that its
ancient and present state should at last be
fully disclosed. These expectations were,
indeed, for a time disappointed : during the
tumult of revolution and war it would have
been unreasonable to have entertained them ;
and when tranquillity was established in
that country, which continues to be the
centre of the British power in Asia.* it ought
not to have been forgotten that every Eng
lishman was fully occupied by commerce,
by military service, or by administration :
that we had among us no idle public of
readers, and, consequently, no separate pro
fession of writers; and that every hour be
stowed on study was to be stolen from the
leisure of men often harassed by business,
enervated by the climate, and more disposed
to seek amusement than new occupation, in
the intervals of their appointed toils.
It is, besides, a part of our national charac
ter, that we are seldom eager to display, and
not always ready to communicate, what we
have acquired. In this respect we differ
considerably from other lettered nations.
Our ingenious and polite neighbours on the
* Bengal.— ED.
continent of Europe, — to whose enjoyment
the applause of others seems more indispen
sable, and whose faculties are more nimble
and restless, if not more vigorous than ours,
— are neither so patient of repose, nor so
likely to be contented with a secret hoard of
knowledge. They carry even into their lite
rature a spirit of bustle and parade ; — a bus
tle, indeed, which springs from activity, and
a parade which animates enterprise, but
which are incompatible with our sluggish
and sullen dignity. Pride disdains ostenta
tion, scorns false pretensions, despises even
petty merit, refuses to obtain the objects of
pursuit by flattery or importunity, and scarce
ly values any praise but that which she has
the right to command. Pride, with which
foreigners charge us, and which under the
name of a "'sense of dignity' wre claim for
ourselves, is a lazy arid unsocial quality;
and is in these respects, as in most others,
the very reverse of the sociable and good-
humoured vice of vanity. It is not, there
fore, to be wondered at, if in India our na
tional character, co operating with local cir
cumstances, should have produced some real
and perhaps more apparent inactivity in
working the mine of knowledge of which we
had become the masters.
Yet some of the earliest exertions of pri
vate Englishmen are too important to be
passed over in silence. The compilation of
laws by Mr. Halhed, and the Ayeen Akba-
ree, translated by Mr. Gladwin, deserve
honourable mention. Mr. Wilkins gained
the memorable distinction of having opened
the treasures of a new learned language to
Europe.
But, notwithstanding the merit of these
individual exertions, it cannot be denied that
the era of a general direction of the mind of
Englishmen in this country towards learned
inquiries, was the foundation of the Asiatic
Society by Sir William Jones. To give such
an impulse to the public understanding is
one of the greatest benefits that a man can
confer on his fellow men. On such an occa
sion as the present, it is impossible to pro
nounce the name of Sir William Jones Math-
out feelings of gratitude and reverence. He
was among the distinguished persons who
adorned one of the brightest periods of Eng
lish literature. It was no mean distinction
to be conspicuous in the age of Burke and
OPENING OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY.
399
Johnson, of Hume and Smith, of Gray and
Goldsmith, of Gibbon and Robertson, of
Reynolds and Garrick. It was the fortune
of Sir William Jones to have been the friend
of the greater part of these illustrior.s men.
Without him, the age in which he lived
would have been inferior to past times in
one kind of literary glory : he surpassed all
his contemporaries, and perhaps even the
most laborious scholars of the two former
centuries, in extent and variety of attainment.
His facility in acquiring was almost prodi
gious: and he possessed that faculty of ar
ranging and communicating his knowledge
which these laborious scholars very generally
wanted. Erudition, which in them was
often disorderly and rugged, and had some
thing of an illiberal and almost barbarous
air, was by him presented to the world with
all the elegance and amenity of polite litera
ture. Though he seldom directed his mind
to those subjects the successful investigation
of which confers the name of a " philosopher/'
yet he possessed in a very eminent degree
that habit of disposing his knowledge in
regular and analytical order, which is one
of the properties of a philosophical under
standing. His talents as an elegant writer
in verse were among his instruments for at
taining knowledge, and a new example of
the variety of his accomplishments. In his
easy and flowing prose we justly admire that
order of exposition and transparency of lan
guage, which are the most indispensable
qualities of style, and the chief excellencies
of which it is capable, when it is employed
solely to instruct. His writings everywhere
breathe pure taste in morals as well as in
literature : and it may be said with truth,
that not a single sentiment has escaped him
which does not indicate the real elegance
and dignity which pervaded the most secret
recesses of his mind. He had lived, per
haps, too exclusively in the world of learning
for the cultivation of his practical under
standing. Olher men have meditated more
deeply on the constitution of society, and
have taken more comprehensive views of its
complicated relations and infinitely varied in
terests. Others have, therefore, often taught
sounder principles of political science ; but
no man more warmly felt, and no author is
better calculated to inspire, those generous
sentiments of liberty, without which the
most just principles are useless- and lifeless,
and which will, I trust, continue to flow
through the channels of eloquence and poe
try into the minds of British youth. It has,
indeed, been somewhat lamented that he
should have exclusively directed inquiry to
wards antiquities. But every man must be
allowed to recommend most strongly his
own favourite pursuits; and the chief diffi
culty as well as the chief merit is his. who
first raises the minds of men to the love of
any part of knowledge. When mental ac
tivity is once roused, its direction is easily
changed ; and the excesses of one writer, if
they are not checked by public reason, are
compensated by the opposite ones of his
successor. " Whatever withdraws us from
the dominion of the senses — whatever makes
the past, the distant, and the future, pre
dominate over the present, advances us in
the dignity of thinking beings."*
It is not for me to attempt an estimate of
those exertions for the advancement of know
ledge which have arisen from the example
and exhortations of Sir William Jones. In
all judgments pronounced on our contempo
raries it is so certain that we shall be ac
cused, and so probable that we may be
justly accused, of either partially bestowing,
or invidiously withholding praise, that it is
in general better to attempt no encroach
ment on the jurisdiction of Time, which
alone impartially and justly estimates the
works of men. But it would be unpardon
able not to speak of the College at Calcutta,
the original plan of which was doubtless the
most magnificent attempt ever made for the
promotion of learning in the East. I am not
conscious that I am biassed either by per
sonal feelings, or literary prejudices when I
say, that I consider that original plan as a
wise and noble proposition, the adoption of
which in its full extent would have had the
happiest tendency in securing the good go
vernment of India, as well as in promoting
the interest of science. Even in its present
mutilated state we have seen, at the last
public exhibition, Sanscrit declamation by
English youth;! — a circumstance so extra
ordinary, that, if it be followed by suitable
advances, it will mark an epoch in the his
tory of learning.
Among the humblest fruits of this spirit I
take the liberty to mention the project of
forming this Society, which occurred to me
before I left England, but which never could
have advanced even to its present state with
out your hearty concurrence, and which must
depend on your active co-operation for all
hopes of future success.
You will not suspect me of presuming to
dictate the nature and object of our common
exertions. To be valuable they must be
spontaneous; and no literary society can
subsist on any other principle than that of
equality. In the observations which I shall
make on the plan and subject of our in
quiries, I shall offer myself to you only as
the representative of the curiosity of Europe.
I am ambitious of no higher office than that
of faithfully conveying to India the desires
and \vants of the learned at home, and of
stating the subjects on which they wish and
expect satisfaction, from inquiries which can
be pursued only in India.
In fulfilling the duties of this mission, I
shall not be expected to exhaust so vast a
subject ; nor is it necessary that I should at
tempt an exact distribution of science. A
very general sketch is all that I can pro-
* Dr. Johnson at lona. — ED.
t It must be remembered that this was written
in 1804.— ED.
400
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
mise; in which I shall pass over many sub
jects rapidly, and dwell only on those parts
on which from my own habits of study I
may think myself least disqualified to offer
useful suggestions.
The objects of these inquiries, as of all
human knowledge, are reducible to two
classes, which, for want of more significant
and precise terms, we must be content to
call u Physical" and "Moral." — aware of
the laxity and ambiguity of these words, but
not affecting a greater degree of exactness
than is necessary for our immediate purpose.
The physical sciences afford so easy and
pleasing an amusement ; they are so directly
subservient to the useful arts; and in their
higher forms they so much delight our ima
gination and flatter our pride, by the display
of the authority of man over nature, that
there can be no need of arguments to prove
their utility, and no want of powerful and
obvious motives to dispose men to their cul
tivation. The wrhole extensive and beautiful
science of Natural History, which is the
foundation of all physical knowledge, has
many additional charms in a country where
so many treasures must still be unexplored.
The science of Mineralogy, which has
been of late years cultivated with great ac
tivity in Europe, has such a palpable con
nection with the useful arts of life, that it
cannot be necessary to recommend it to the
attention of the intelligent and curious. India
is a country which I believe no mineralogist
has yet examined, and which would doubt
less amply repay the labour of the first
scientific adventurers who explore it. The
discovery of new sources of wealth would
probably be the result of such an investiga
tion ; and something might perhaps be con
tributed towards the accomplishment of the
ambitious projects of those philosophers, who
from the arrangement of earths and minerals
have been bold enough to form conjectures
respecting the general laws which have go
verned the past revolutions of our planet,
and which preserve its parts in their present
order.
The Botany of India has been less ne
glected, but it cannot be exhausted. The
higher parts of the science, the structure,
the functions, the habits of vegetables, — all
subjects intimately connected with the first
of physical sciences, though, unfortunately,
the most dark and difficult, the philosophy
of life, — have in general been too much sa
crificed to objects of value, indeed, but of a
value far inferior: and professed botanists
have usually contented themselves with ob
serving enough of plants to give them a
name in their scientific language, and a
place in their artificial arrangement.
Much information also remains to be
gleaned on that part of natural history which
regards Animals. The manners of many
tropical races must have been imperfectly
observed in a few individuals separated
from their fellows, and imprisoned in the
unfriendly climate of Europe.
The variations of temperature, the state
of the atmosphere, all the appearances that
are comprehended under the words " wea
ther" and "climate," are the conceivable
subject of a science of which no rudiments
yet exist. It will probably require the ob
servations of centuries to lay the foundations
of theory on this subject. There can scarce
be any region of the wrorld more favourably
circumstanced for observation than India ;
for there is none in which the operation of
these causes is more regular, more power
ful, or more immediately discoverable in
their effect on vegetable and animal nature.
Those philosophers who have denied the in
fluence of climate on the human character
were not inhabitants of a tropical country.
To the members of the learned profession
of medicine, who are necessarily spread
over every part of India, all the above inqui
ries peculiarly, though not exclusively, be
long. Some of them are eminent for science;
many must be well-informed ] and their pro
fessional education must have given to all
some tincture of physical knowledge. With
even moderate preliminary acquirements
they may be very useful, if they will but
consider themselves as philosophical col
lectors, whose duty it is never to neglect
a favourable opportunity for observations on
weather and climate, to keep exact journals
of whatever they observe, and to transmit,
through their immediate superiors, to ihe
scientific depositories of Great Britain, speci
mens of every mineral, vegetable, or animal
production which they conceive to be singu
lar, or with respect to which they suppose
themselves to have observed any new and
important facts. If their previous studies
have been imperfect, they will, no doubt, be
sometimes mistaken: but these mistakes
are perfectly harmless. It is better that ten
useless specimens should be sent to Lon
don, than that one curious one should be
neglected.
But it is on another and still more im
portant subject that we expect the most
valuable assistance from our medical asso
ciates : — this is, the science of Medicine
itself. It must be allowed not to be quite
so certain as it is important. But though
every man ventures to ecoff at its uncer
tainty as long as he is in vigorous health, yet
the hardiest sceptic becomes credulous as
soon as his head is fixed to the pillow. Those
who examine the history of medicine with
out either scepticism or blind admiration,
will find that every civilized age, after all
the fluctuations of systems, opinions, and
modes of practice, has at length left some
balance, however small, of new truth to the
succeeding generation; and that the stock
of human knowledge in this as well as in
other departments is constantly, though, it
must be owned, very slowly, increasing.
Since my arrival here. I have had sufficient
reason to believe that the practitioners of
medicine in India ar-e not unworthy of their
enlightened and benevolent profession. —
OPENING OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY.
401
From them, therefore, I hope the public may
derive, through the medium of this Society,
information of the highest value. Diseases
and modes of cure unknown to European
physicians maybe disclosed to them; and
if the causes of disease are more active in
this country than in England, remedies are
employed and diseases subdued, at least in
some cases, with a certainty which might
excite the wonder of the most successful
practitioners in Europe. By full and faithful
narratives of their modes of treatment they
will conquer that distrust of new plans of
cure, and that incredulity respecting what
ever is uncommon, which sometimes prevail
among our English physicians ; which are
the natural result of much experience and
many disappointments; and which, though
individuals have often just reason to com
plain of their indiscriminate application, are
not ultimately injurious to the progress of
the medical art. They never finally pre
vent the adoption of just theory or of use
ful practice : they retard it no longer than is
necessary for such a severe trial as pre
cludes all future doubt. Even in their ex
cess, they are wholesome correctives of the
opposite excesses of credulity and dogma
tism ; they are safeguards against exaggera
tion and quackery ; they are tests of utility
and truth. A philosophical physician, who
is a real lover of his art. ought not, therefore,
to desire the extinction of these dispositions,
though he may suffer temporary injustice
from their influence.
Those objects of our inquiries which I
have called '-Moral" (employing that term
in the sense in which it is contradistinguished
from " Physical") will chiefly comprehend
the past and present condition of the inhabi
tants of the vast country which surrounds
us.
To begin with their present condition : —
I take the liberty of very earnestly recom
mending a kind of research, which has
hitherto been either neglected or only car
ried on for the information of Government,
— I mean the investigation of those facts
which are the subjects of political arithmetic
and statistics, and which are a part of the
foundation of the science of Political Econo
my. The numbers of the people ; the num
ber of births, marriages, and deaths ; the pro
portion of children who are reared to matu
rity ; the distribution of the people according
to 'their occupations and castes, and especi
ally according to the great division of agri
cultural and manufacturing; and the re
lative state of these circumstances at dif
ferent periods, which can only be ascertained
by permanent tables, — are the basis of this
important part of knowledge. No tables of
political arithmetic have yet been made pub
lic from any tropical country. I need not
expatiate on the importance of the informa
tion which such tables would be likely to
afford. I shall mention only as an example
of their value, that they must lead to a de
cisive solution of the problems with respect
51
to the influence of polygamy on population,
and the supposed origin of that practice in
the disproportioned number of the sexes.
But in a country where every part of the
system of manners and institutions differs
from those of Europe, it is impossible to
foresee the extent and variety of the new
results which an accurate survey might pre
sent to us.
These inquiries are naturally followed by
those which regard the subsistence of the
people; the origin and distribution of public
wealth; the wages of every kind of labour,
from the rudest to the most refined ; the
price of commodities, and especially of pro
visions, which necessarily regulates that of
all others; the modes of the tenure and
occupation of land ; the profits of trade ; the
usual and extraordinary rates of interest,
which is the price paid for the hire of
money; the nature and extent of domestic
commerce, everywhere the greatest and
most profitable, though the most difficult to
be ascertained ; those of foreign traffic, more
easy to be determined by the accounts of
exports and imports; the contributions by
which the expenses of government, of chari
table, learned, and religious foundations are
defrayed ; the laws and customs which regu
late all these great objects, and the fluctua
tion which has been 'observed in all or any
of them at different times and under different
circumstances. These are some of the points
towards which I should very earnestly wish
to direct the curiosity of our intelligent
countrymen in India.
These inquiries have the advantage of
being easy arid open to all men of good
sense. They do not, like antiquarian and
philological researches, require great previ
ous erudition and constant reference to ex
tensive libraries. They require nothing but
a resolution to observe facts attentively, and
to relate them accurately ; and whoever feels
a disposition to ascend from facts to princi
ples will, in genera], find sufficient aid to
his understanding in the great work of Dr.
Smith, — the most permanent monument of
philosophical genius which our nation has
produced in the present age.
They have the further advantage of being
closely and intimately connected with the
professional pursuits and public duties of
every Englishman who fills a civil office in
this country: they form the very science of
administration. One of the first requisites
to the right administration of a district is the
knowledge of its population, industry, and
wealth. A magistrate ought to know the
condition of the country which he superin
tends; a collector ougnt to understand its
revenue; a commercial resident ousht to be
thoroughly acquainted with its commerce.
We only desire that part of the knowledge
which they ought to possess should be com
municated to the world.*
o pi
rorl
[* " The English in India are too familiar with
that country to feel much wonder in most parts
2i2
402
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
I will not pretend to affirm that no part of
this knowledge ought to be confined to Go
of it, and are top transiently connected with it to
take a national interest in its minute description.
To these obstacles must be opposed both a sense
of duty and a prospect of reputation. The ser
vants of the Company would qualify themselves
for the performance of their public duties, by col
lecting the most minute accounts of the districts
which they administer. The publication of such
accounts must often distinguish the individuals,
and always do credit to the meritorious body of
which they are a part. Even the most diffident
magistrate or collector might enlarge or correct
the articles relating to his district and neighbour
hood, in the lately published Gazetteer of India;
and, by the communication of such materials, the
very laudable and valuable essay of Mr. Ham
ilton might, in successive editions, grow into a
complete system of Indian topography. . . . Meri
torious publications by servants of the East India
Company, have, in pur opinion, peculiar claims
to liberal commendation. The price which Great
Britain pays to the inhabitants of India for her do
minion, is the security that their government shall
be administered by a class of respectable men.
In fact, they are governed by a greater proportion
of sensible and honest men, than could fall to their
lot under the government of their own or of any
other nation. Without this superiority, and the
securities which exist for its continuance, in the
condition of the persons, in their now excellent
education, in their general respect for the public
opinion of a free country, in the protection af
forded, and the restraint imposed by the press and
by Parliament, all regulations for the adminis
tration of India would be nugatory, and the
wisest system of laws would be no more than
waste paper. The means of executing the laws,
are in the character of the administrators. To
keep that character pure, they must be taught to
respect themselves ; and they ought to feel, that
distant as they are, they will be applauded and
protected by their country, when they deserve
commendation, or require defence. Their public
is remote, and ought to make some compensation
for distance by promptitude and zeal. The prin
cipal object for which the East India Company
exists in the newly modified system [of 1813,— ED.]
is to provide a safe body of electors to Indian offi
cers. Both in the original appointments, and in
subsequent preferment, it was thought that there
was no medium between preserving their power,
or transferring the patronage to the Crown. Upon
the whole, it cannot be denied that they are toler
ably well adapted to perform these functions.
They are sufficiently numerous and connected
with the more respectable classes of the commu
nity, to exempt their patronage from the direct
influence of the Crown, and to spread their choice
so widely, as to afford a reasonable probability of
sufficient personal merit. Much — perhaps enough
— has been done by legal regulations, to guard
preferment from great abuse. Perhaps, indeed,
the spirit of activity and emulation may have been
weakened by precautions against the operation
of personal favour. But this is, no doubt, the safe
error. The Company, and indeed any branch of
the Indian administration in Europe, can do little
directly for India : they are far too distant for
much direct administration. The great duty
which they have to perform, is to control their
servants and to punish delinquency in deeds ; but
•as the chief principle of their administration — to
guard the privileges of these servants, to maintain
their dignity, to encourage their merits, to animate
those principles of self-respect and honourable am
bition, which are the true securities of honest and
effectual service to the public. In every govern
ment, the character of the subordinate officers is
vernment. I am not so intoxicated by phi
losophical prejudice as to maintain that the
safety of a state is to be endangered for the
gratification of scientific curiosity. Though
I am far from thinking that this is the de
partment in which secrecy is most useful,
yet I do not presume to exclude it. But let it
be remembered, that whatever information
is thus confined to a Government may, for
all purposes of science, be supposed not to
exist. As long as the secrecy is thought
important, it is of course shut up from most
of those who could turn it to best account ;
and when it ceases to be guarded with jea
lousy, it is as effectually secured from all
useful examination by the mass of official
lumber under which it is usually buried : for
this reason, after a very short time, it is as
much lost to the Government itself as it is
to the public. A transient curiosity, or the
necessity of illustrating some temporary mat
ter, may induce a public officer to dig for
knowledge under the heaps of rubbish that
encumber his office ; but I have myself
known intelligent public officers content
themselves with the very inferior informa
tion contained in printed books, while their
shelves groaned under the weight of MSS..
which would be more instructive if they
could be read. Further, it must be observed,
that publication is always the best security
to a Government that they are not deceived
by the reports of their servants ; and where
these servants act at a distance the import
ance of such a security for their veracity is
very great. For the truth of a manuscript
report they never can have a better warrant
than the honesty of one servant who pre
pares it, and of another who examines it;
but for the truth of all long-uncontested nar
rations of important facts in printed accounts,
published in countries where they may be
contradicted, we have the silent testimony
of every man who might be prompted by
interest, prejudice, or humour, to dispute
them if they were not true.
I have already said that all communica
tions merely made to Government are lost
to science; while, on the other hand, per
haps, the knowledge communicated to the
public is that of which a Government may
most easily avail itself, and on which it may
most securely rely. This loss to science is
very great; for the principles of political
economy have been investigated in Europe,
and the" application of them to such a coun
try as India must be one of the most curious
tests which could be contrived of their truth
and universal operation. Every thing here is
new ; and if they are found here also to be
the true principles of natural suDsistence and
wealth, it will be no longer possible to dis
pute that they are the general laws which
of great moment: but the privileges, the charac
ter and the importance of the civil and military
establishments, are, in the last result, the only con
ceivable security for the preservation and good
government of India." — Edinburgh Review, vol.
xxv. p. 435.— ED.]
OPENING OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY.
403
every where govern this important part of
the movements of the social machine.
It has been lately observed, that " if the
various states of Europe kept and published
annually an exact account of their popula
tion, noting carefully in a second column the
exact age at which the children die, this
second column would show the relative
merit of the governments and the compara
tive happiness of their subjects. A simple
arithmetical statement would then, perhaps,
be more conclusive than all the arguments
which could be produced." I agree with
the ingenious writers who have suggested
this idea, and I think it must appear per
fectly evident that the number of children
reared to maturity must be among the tests
of the happiness of a society, though the
number of children born cannot be so con
sidered, and is often the companion and
one of the causes of public misery. It may
be affirmed, without the risk of exaggera
tion, that every accurate comparison of the
state of different countries at the same time,
or of the same country at different times,
is an approach to that state of things in which
the manifest palpable interest of every Go
vernment will be the prosperity of its sub
jects, which never has been, and which
never will be, advanced by any other means
than those of humanity and justice. The
prevalence of justice would not indeed be
universally insured by such a conviction ;
for bad governments, as well as bad men, as
often act against their own obvious interest
as against that of others : but the chances
of tyranny must be diminished when tyrants
are compelled to see that it is folly. In the
mean time, the ascertainment of every new
fact, the discovery of every new principle,
and even the diffusion of principles known
before, add to that great body of slowly and
reasonably formed public opinion, which,
however weak at first, must at last, with a
gentle and scarcely sensible coercion, compel
every Government to pursue its own real
interest. This knowledge is a control on
subordinate agents for Government, as well
as a control on Government for their subjects :
and it is one of those which has not the
slightest tendency to produce tumult or con
vulsion. On the contrary, nothing more
clearly evinces the necessity of that firm
protecting power by which alone order can
be secured. The security of the governed
cannot exist without the security of the go
vernors.
Lastly, of all kinds of knowledge, Political
Economy has the greatest tendency to pro
mote quiet and safe improvement in the
general condition of mankind ; because it
shows that improvement is the interest of
the government, and that stability is the in
terest of the people. The extraordinary and
unfortunate events of our times have indeed
damped the sanguine hopes of good men,
and filled them with doubt and fear: but in
all possible cases the counsels of this science
are at least safe. They are adapted to all
| forms of government : they require only a
wise and just administration. They require,
as the first principle of all prosperity, that
1 perfect security of persons and property
I which can only exist where the supreme
authority is stable.
On these principles, nothing can be a
means of improvement which is not also a
means of preservation . It is not only absurd,
but contradictory, to speak of sacrificing the
present generation for the sake of posterity.
The moral order of the world is not so dis
posed. It is impossible to promote the in
terest of future generations by any measures
injurious to the present; and he who labours
industriously to promote the honour, the
safety, and the prosperity of his own coun
try, by innocent and lawful means, may be
assured that he is contributing, probably as
much as the order of nature will permit a
private individual, towards the welfare of all
mankind.
These hopes of improvement have sur
vived in my breast all the calamities of our
European world, and are not extinguished
by that general condition of national insecu
rity which is the most formidable enemy of
improvement. Founded on such principles,
they are at least perfectly innocent : they
are such as, even if they were visionary, an
admirer or cultivator of letters ought to be
pardoned for cherishing. Without them,
literature and philosophy can claim no more
than the highest rank among the amuse-
: ments and ornaments of human life. With
these hopes, they assume the dignity of being
1 part of that discipline under which the race
I of man is destined to proceed to the highest
degree of civilization, virtue, and happiness,
of which our nature is capable.
On a future occasion I may have the
honour to lay before you my thoughts on the
1 principal objects of inquiry in the geography,
ancient arid modern, the languages, the lite
rature, the necessary and elegant arts, the
I religion, the authentic history and the anti-
! quities of India j and on the mode in which
such inquiries appear to me most likely to
! be conducted with success.
404
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
(fifralluae.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
AND ITS
ENGLISH ADMIREKS,
AGAINST THE ACCUSATIONS OF THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE, INCLUDING SOME
STRICTURES ON THE LATE PRODUCTION OF MONS. DE CALONNE.
INTRODUCTION.
THE late opinions of Mr. Burke furnished
more matter of astonishment to those who
had distantly observed, than to those who
had correctly examined ; the system of his
former political life. An abhorrence for ab
stract politics, a predilection for aristocracy,
and a dread of innovation, have ever been
among the most sacred articles of his public
creed: and it was not likely that at his age
he should abandon, to the invasion of auda
cious novelties, opinions which he had re
ceived so early, and maintained so long. —
which had been fortified by the applause' of
the great, and the assent of the wise, — which
he had dictated to so many illustrious pupils,
and supported against so many distinguished
opponents. Men who early attain eminence,
repose in their first creed, to the neglect of
the progress of the human mind subsequent
to its adoption ; and when, as in the present
case, it has burst forth into action, they re
gard it as a transient madness, worthy only
of pity or derision. They mistake it for a
mountain torrent that will pass away with
the storm that gave it birth : they know not
that it is the stream of human opinion in
omne volubilis arum, which the accession of
every day wall swell, and which is destined
to sweep into the same oblivion the resist
ance of learned sophistry, and of powerful
oppression.
But there still remained ample matter of
astonishment in the Philippic of Mr. Burke.*
He might deplore the sanguinary excesses, —
he might deride the visionary policy, that
seemed to him to tarnish the lustre of the
Revolution- but it was hard to suppose that
he would exhaust against it every epithet of
contumely and opprobrium that language
* The speech on the Army Estimates, 9th Feb.
1 790.— ED.
can furnish to indignation j that the rage of
his declamation would not for one moment
be suspended, and that his heart would not
betray one faint glow of triumph, at the
splendid and glorious delivery of so great a
people. All wras invective : the authors and
admirers of the Revolution, — every man who
did not execrate it, even his own most en
lightened arid accomplished friends, — were
devoted to odium and ignominy. The speech
did not stoop to argument ; the whole was
dogmatical and authoritative : the cause
seemed decided without discussion, — the
anathema fulminated before trial.
But the ground of the opinions of this
famous speech, which, if we may believe a
foreign journalist, will form an epoch in the
history of the eccentricities of the human
mind, was impatiently expected in a work
soon after announced. The name of the
author, the importance of the subject, and
the singularity of his opinions, all contributed
to inflame the public curiosity, which, though
it languished in a subsequent delay, has been
revived by the appearance, and will be re
warded by the perusal of the work.*
It is certainly in every respect a perform
ance, of which to form a correct estimate
would prove one of the most arduous efforts
of critical skill
' ' We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much." f
Argument, every where dexterous and spe
cious, sometimes grave and profound, clothed
in the most rich and various imagery, and
aided by the most pathetic and picturesque
description, speaks the opulence and the
powers of that mind, of which age has
neither dimmed the discernment, nor en-
* The Reflections on the Revolution in France,
published in 1790.— ED.
t Retaliation. — ED.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
405
feebled the fancy — neither repressed the
ardour, nor narrowed the range. Virulent
encomiums on urbanity and inflammatory
harangues against violence, homilies of moral
and religious mysticism, better adapted to
the amusement than to the conviction of an
incredulous age, though they may rouse the
languor of attention, can never be dignified
by the approbation of the understanding.
Of the senate and people of France, Mr.
Burke's language is such as might have been
expected towards a country which his fancy
has peopled only with plots, assassinations,
and massacres, and all the brood of dire
chimeras which are the offspring of a prolific
imagination, goaded by an ardent and de
luded sensibility. The glimpses of benevo
lence, which irradiate this gloom of invec
tive, arise only from generous illusion, — from
misguided and misplaced compassion. His
eloquence is not at leisure to deplore the fate
of beggared artisans, and famished peasants,
— the victims of suspended industry, and
languishing commerce. The sensibility which
seems scared by the homely miseries of the
vulgar, is attracted only by the splendid sor
rows of royalty, and agonises at the slen
derest pang that assails the heart of sottish-
ness or prostitution, if they are placed by
fortune on a throne.* To the English friends
of French freedom, his language is contempt
uous, illiberal, and scurrilous. In one of the
ebbings of his fervour, he is disposed not to
dispute " their good intentions :" but he
abounds in intemperate sallies and ungene
rous insinuations, which wisdom ought to
have checked, as ebullitions of passion, —
which genius ought to have disdained, as
weapons of controversy.
The arrangement of his work is as singular
as the matter. Availing himself of all the
privileges of epistolary effusion, in their
utmost latitude and laxity, he interrupts,
dismisses, and resumes argument at plea
sure. His subject is as extensive as political
science : his allusions and excursions reach
almost every region of human knowledge.
It must be confessed that in this miscellane
ous and desultory warfare, the superiority
of a man of genius over common men is in-
* " The vulgar clamour which has been raised
with such malignant art against the friends of free
dom, as the apostles of turbulence and sedition,
has not even spared the obscurity of rny name.
To strangers I can only vindicate myself by de
fying the authors of such clamours to discover one
passage in this volume not in the highest degree
favourable to peace and stable government : those
to whom I am known would, I believe, be slow
to impute any sentiments of violence to a temper
which the partiality of my friends must confess to
be indolent, and the hostility of enemies will not
deny to be mild. I have been accused, by valuable
friends, of treating with ungenerous levity the mis
fortunes of the Royal Family of France. They
will not however suppose me capable of delibe
rately violating the sacredness of misery in a pa
lace or a cottage ; and I sincerely lament that I
should have been betrayed into expressions which
.admitted that construction." — (Advertisement to
4e third edition.} — ED.
finite. He can cover the most ignominious
retreat by a brilliant allusion ; he can parade
his arguments with masterly generalship,
where they are strong; he can escape from
an untenable position into a splendid decla
mation ] he can sap the most impregnable
conviction by pathos, and put to flight "a host
of syllogisms with a sneer; absolved from
the laws of vulgar method, he can advance
a group of magnificent horrors to make a
breach in our hearts, through which the most
undisciplined rabble of arguments may enter
in triumph.
Analysis and method, like the discipline
and armour of modern nations, correct in
some measure the inequalities of controver
sial dexterity, and level on the intellectual
field the giant and the dwarf. Let us then
analyse the production of Mr. Burke, and,
dismissing what is extraneous and ornament
al, we shall discover certain leading ques
tions, of which the decision is indispensable
to the point at issue. The natural order of
these topics will dictate the method of reply.
Mr. Burke, availing himself of the indefinite
and equivocal term 'Revolution,' has alto
gether reprobated that transaction. The first
question, therefore, that arises, regards the
general expediency and necessity of a Revo
lution in France. This is followed by the
discussion of the composition and conduct
of the National Assembly, of the popular ex
cesses which attended the Revolution, and
of the new Constitution that is to result from
it. The conduct of its English admirers
forms the last topic, though it is with rhetori
cal inversion first treated by Mr. Burke ; as
if the propriety of approbation should be de
termined before the discussion of the merit
or demerit of what was approved. In pur
suance of this analysis, the following sec
tions will comprise the substance of our refu
tation.
SECT. I. The General Expediency and Ne
cessity of a Revolution in France.
SECT. II. The Composition and Character of
the National Assembly considered.
SECT. III. The Popular Excesses which at
tended, or followed the Revolution.
SECT. IV. The new Constitution of France.
SECT. V. The Conduct of its English Admi
rers justijied.
With this reply to Mr. Burke will be
mingled some strictures on the late publica
tion of M. de Calonne.* That minister, who
has for some time exhibited to the eyes of
indignant Europe the spectacle of an exiled
robber living in the most splendid impunity,
has, with an effrontery that beggars invec
tive, assumed in his work the tone of afflicted
patriotism, and delivers his polluted Philip
pics as the oracles of persecuted virtue. His
work is more methodical than that of his
* De 1'Etat de la France. London, 1790.— ED.
406
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
coadjutor.* Of his financial calculations it
may be remaiked, that in a work professedly
popular they afford the strongest presump
tion of fraud. Their extent and intricacy
seem contrived to extort assent from public
indolence; for men will rather believe than
examine them. His inferences are so out
rageously incredible, that most men of sense
will think it more safe to trust their own
plain conclusions than to enter such a laby
rinth of financial sophistry. The only part
of his production that here demands reply,
is that which relates to general political
questions. Remarks on what he has offered
concerning them will naturally find a place
under the corresponding sections of the re
ply to Mr. Burke. Its most important view
is neither literary nor argumentative : it ap
peals to judgments more decisive than those
of criticism, and aims at wielding weapons
more formidable than those of logic. It is
the manifesto of a Counter-Revolution, and
its obvious object is to inflame every passion
and interest, real or supposed, that has re
ceived any shock in the establishment of
freedom. He probes the bleeding wounds
of the ^v'r"ves, the nobility, the priesthood,
and the great judicial aristocracy : he adjures
one body by its dignity degraded, another
by its inheritance plundered, and a third by
its authority destroyed, to repair to the holy
banner of his philanthropic crusade. Con
fident in the protection of all the monarchs
of Europe, whom he alarms for the security
of their thrones, and, having insured the
moderation of a fanatical rabble, by giving
out among them the savage war-whoop of
atheism, he already fancies himself in full
march to Paris, not to re-instate the deposed
despotism (for he disclaims the purpose, and
who would not trust such virtuous disavow
als !) but at the head of this army of priests,
mercenaries, and fanatics, to dictate, as the
tutelary genius of France, the establishment
of a just and temperate freedom, obtained
without commotion and without carnage, and
equally hostile to the interested ambition of
demagogues arid the lawless authority of
kings. Crusades were an effervescence of
chivalry, and the modern St. Francis has a
knight for the conduct of these crusaders,
who will convince Mr. Burke, that the age
of chivalry is not past, nor the glory of Europe
gone for ever. The Compte d' Artois,t that
scion worthy of Henry the Great, the rival
* It cannot be denied that the production of M.
de Calonne is ' eloquent, able,' and certainly very
' instructive ' in what regards his own character
and designs. But it contains one instance of his
torical ignorance so egregious, that I cannot resist
quoting it. In his long discussion of the preten
sions of the Assembly to the title of a ' National
Convention,' he deduces the origin of that word
from Scotland, where he informs us (p. 328), " On
lui donna le nom de Convention Ecossoise ; le
resultat de ses deliberations fut appelle ' Covenant,'
et ceux qui 1'avoient souscrit ou qui y adheroient
1 Covenanters ! ' '
t ' Ce digne rejeton du grand Henri.' — Calonne.
' Unnouveau modele de la Chevalerie Francoise.'
• Ibid. pp. 413—114.
of the Bayards and Sidneys, the new model
of French knighthood, is to issue from Turin
with ten thousand cavaliers, to deliver the
peerless and immaculate Antoinetta of Aus
tria from the durance vile in which she has
so long been immured in the Tuilleries, from
the swords of the discourteous knights of
Paris, and the spells of the sable wizards of
democracy.
SECTION I.
The General Expediency and Necessity of a
Revolution in France.
IT is asserted in many passages of Mr.
Burke's work, though no where with that
precision which the importance of the asser
tion demanded, that the French Revolution
was not only in its parts reprehensible, but
in the whole was absurd, inexpedient, and
unjust j yet he has nowhere exactly informed
us what he understands by the term. The
• French Revolution,' in its most popular
sense, perhaps, would be understood in Eng
land to consist of those splendid events that
formed the prominent portion of its exterior,
— the Parisian revolt, the capture of the
Bastile, and the submission of the King.
But these memorable events, though they
strengthened and accelerated, could not con
stitute a political revolution, which must in
clude a change of government. But the
term, even when limited to that meaning, is
equivocal and wide. It is capable of three
senses. The King's recognition of the rights
of the States-General to a share in the legis
lation, was a change in the actual govern
ment of France, where the whole legisla
tive and executive power had, ^without the
shadow of an interruption, for nearly two
centuries been enjoyed by the crown ] in.
that sense the meeting of the States-General
was the Revolution, and the 5th of May was
its sera. The union of the three Orders in
one assembly was a most important change
in the forms and spirit of the legislature ;
this too may be called the Revolution, and
the 23d of June will be its sera. This body,
thus united, are forming a new Constitution ;*
this may be also called a Revolution, because
it is of all the political changes the most im
portant, and its epoch will be determined by
the conclusion of the labours of the National
Assembly. Thus equivocal is the import of
Mr. Burke's expressions. To extricate them
from this ambiguity, a rapid survey of these
events will be necessary. It will prove, too,
the fairest and most forcible confutation of
his arguments. It will best demonstrate the
necessity and justice of all the successive
changes in the state of France, which formed
\vhat is called the i Revolution.' It will dis
criminate legislative acts from popular ex
cesses, and distinguish transient confusion
* The Vindicia3 GalicaB was published in April,
1791.— ED.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
407
from permanent establishment. It will evince
the futility and fallacy of attributing to the
conspiracy of individuals, or bodies, a Revo
lution which, whether it be beneficial or inju
rious, was produced only by general causes,
and in which the most conspicuous individual
produced little real effect.
The Constitution of France resembled in
the earlier stages of its progress the Gothic
governments of Europe. The history of its
decline and the causes of its extinction are
abundantly known. Its infancy and youth
were like these of the English government.
The Champ de Mars, and the Wittenas;e-
moti — the tumultuous assemblies of rude
conquerors, — were in both countries melted
down into representative bodies. But the
downfall of the feudal aristocracy happening
in France before commerce had elevated
any other class of citizens into importance,
its power devolved on the crown. From the
conclusion of the fifteenth century the powers
of the States-General had almost dwindled
into formalities. Their momentary re-ap
pearance under Henry III. and Louis XIII.
served only to illustrate their insignificance :
their total disuse speedily succeeded.
The intrusion of any popular voice was not
likely to be tolerated in the reign of Louis
XIV. — a reign which has been so often cele
brated as the zenith of warlike and literary
splendour, but which has always appeared
to me to be the consummation of whatever
is afflicting and degrading in the history of
the human race. Talent seemed, in that
reign, robbed of the conscious elevation, —
of the erect and manly port, which is its
noblest associate and its surest indication.
The mild purity of Fenelon, — the lofty spirit
of Bossuet, — the masculine mind of Boileau,
the sublime fervour of Corneille, — were con
founded by the contagion of ignominious and
indiscriminate servility. It seemed as if the
t representative majesty' of the genius and
intellect of man were prostrated before the
shrine of a sanguinary and dissolute tyrant,
who practised the corruption of courts with
out their mildness, and incurred the guilt of
wars without their glory. His highest praise
is to have supported the stage trick of Royalty
with effect : and it is surely difficult to con
ceive any character more odious and despica
ble, than that of a puny libertine, who, under
the frown of a strumpet, or a monk, issues
the mandate that is to murder virtuous citi
zens, — to desolate happy and peaceful ham
lets, — to wring agonising tears from widows
and orphans. Heroism has a splendour that
almost atones for its excesses : but what shall
we think of him. who, from the luxurious
and dastardly security in which he wallows
at Versailles, issues with calm and cruel
apathy his orders to butcher the Protestants
of Languedoc, or to lay in ashes the villages
of the Palatinate ? On the recollection of
such scenes, as a scholar, I blush for the
prostitution of letters,— as a man, I blush for
the patience of humanity.
But the despotism of this reign was preg-
\ nant with the great events which have sig-
: nalised our age : it fostered that literature
| which was one day destined to destroy it.
The profligate conquests of Louis have event
ually proved the acquisitions of humanity ;
and his usurpations have served only to add
a larger portion to the great body of freemen.
The spirit of his policy was inherited by his
successor : the rage of conquest, repressed
for a while by the torpid despotism of Floury,
burst forth with renovated violence in the
latter part of the reign of Louis XV. France,
exhausted alike by the misfortunes of one
war, and the victories of another, groaned
under a weight of impost and debt, which it
was equally difficult to remedy or to endure.
But the profligate expedients were exhausted
by which successive ministers had attempted
to avert the great crisis, in which the credit
and power of the government must perish.
The wise and benevolent administration
of M. Turgot,* though long enough for his
* " Louis XVI. called lo his councils the two
most virtuous men in his dominions, M. Turgot
and M. de Lamoignon Malesherhes. Few things
could have been more unexpected than that such
a promotion should have been made; and still
fewer have more discredited the sagacity and hum
bled the wisdom of man than that so little good
should ultimately have sprung from so glorious an
occurrence. M. Turgot appears beyond most
other men to have been guided in the exenion of
his original genius and comprehensive intellect by
impartial and indefatigable benevolence. He pre
ferred nothing to the discovery of truth but the
interest of mankind ; and he was ignorant of no
thing of which he did not forego the attninment,
that he might gain time for the practice of his duty.
Co-operating with the illustrious men who laid
the foundation of the science of political economy,
his writings were distinguished from theirs by the
simplicity, the geometrical order, and precision of
a mind without passion, intent only on the pro
gress of reason towards truth. The character of
M. Turgot considered as a private philosopher, or
as an inferior magistrate, seems to have approached
more near the ideal model of a perfect sage, than
that of any other man of the modern world. But
he was destined rather to instruct than to reform
mankind. Like Bacon (whom he so much re
sembled in the vast range of his intellect) he came
into a court, and like Bacon, — though from far
nobler causes, — he fell. The noble error of sup
posing men to be more disinterested and enlight
ened than they are, betrayed him. Though he
had deeply studied human nature, he disdained
that discretion and dexterity without which wis
dom must return to her cell, and leave the do
minion of the world to cunning. The instruments
of his benevolence depended on others : but the
sources of his own happiness were independent,
and he left behind him in the minds of his friends
that enthusiastic attachment and profound rever
ence with which, when superior attainments were
more rare, the sages of antiquity inspired their
disciples. The virtue of M. de Lamoignon was
of a less perfect but of a softer and more natural
kind. Descended from one of the most illustrious
families of the French magistracy, he was early
called to high offices. He employed his influence
chiefly in lightening the fetters which impeded the
free exercise of reason ; and he exerted his courage
and his eloquence in defending the people against
oppressive taxation. While he was a minister, he
had prepared the means of abolishing arbitrary
imprisonment. No part of science or art was
408
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
own glory, was too short, and perhaps too
early, for those salutary and grand reforms
which his genius had conceived, and his vir
tue would have effected. The aspect of
purity and talent spread a natural alarm
among the minions of a court ; and they easily
succeeded in the expulsion of such rare and
obnoxious intruders. The magnificent am
bition of M. de Vergennes, the brilliant, pro
fuse, and rapacious careerofM.de Calonne,
the feeble and irresolute violence of M. de
Brienne, — all contributed their share to swell
this financial embarrassment. The deficit,
or inferiority of the revenue to the expendi
ture, at length rose to the enormous sum of
115 millions of livres, or about 4.750,OOOL
annually.* This was a disproportion be
tween income and expense with which no
government, and no individual, could long
continue to exist.
In this exigency there was no expedient
left, but to guarantee the ruined credit of
bankrupt despotism by the sanction of the
national voice. The States-General were a
dangerous mode of collecting it : recourse
was, therefore, had to the Assembly of the
Notables : a mode we]] known in the History
of France, in which the King summoned a
number of individuals, selected, at his discre
tion, from the mass, to advise him in great
emergencies. They w^ere little better than
a popular Privy Council. They were neither
recognised nor protected by law : their pre
carious and subordinate existence hung on
the nod of despotism.
The Notables were accordingly called to
gether by M. de Calonne. who has now the in
consistent arrogance to boast of the schemes
which he laid before them, as the model of
the Assembly whom he traduces. He pro
posed, it is true, the equalisation of imposts
and the abolition of the pecuniary exemp
tions of the Nobility and Clergy; and the
difference between his system and that of
the Assembly, is only in what makes the
sole distinction in human actions — its end.
Tie would have destroyed the privileged Or
ders, as obstacles to despotism : they have
destroyed them, as derogations from free
dom. The object of his plans was to facili
tate fiscal oppression : the motive of theirs is
to fortify general liberty. They have levelled
all Frenchmen as men : he would have level
led them as slaves. The Assembly of the
foreign to his elegant leisure. His virtue was
without effort or system, and his benevolence was
prone to diffuse itsc-lf in a sort of pleasantry and
even drollery. In this respect he resembled Sir
Thomas More ; and it is remarkable that this play
fulness — the natural companion of a simple and
innocent mind — attended both these illustrious
men to the scaffold on which they were judicially
murdered." — MS. ED.
* For this we have the authority of M. de Ca
lonne himself, p. 56. This was the account pre
sented to the Notables in April, 1787. He, in
deed, makes some deductions on account of part
of this deficit being expirable : but this is of no
consequence to our purpose, which is to view the
influence of the -present urgency, — the political,
not the financial, state of the question.
Notables, however, soon gave a memorable
proof, how dangerous are all public meetings
of men, even without legal powers of con
trol, to the permanence of despotism. They
had been assembled by M. de Calonne to
admire the plausibility and splendour of his
speculations, and to veil the extent and atro
city of his rapine : but the fallacy of the one
and the profligacy of the other were detected
with equal ease. Illustrious orators, who
have since found a nobler sphere for their
talents, in a more free and powerful Assem
bly, exposed the plunderer. Detested by
the Nobles and Clergy, of whose privileges
he had suggested the abolition; undermined
in the favour of the Queen, by his attack on
one of her favourites (Breteuil) ; exposed to
the fury of the people, and dreading the
terrors of judicial prosecution, he speedily
sought refuge in England, without the recol
lection of one virtue, or the applause of one
party, to console his retreat. Thus did the
Notables destroy their creator. Little ap
peared to be done to a superficial observer :
but to a discerning eye, all was done ; for
the dethroned authority of Public Opinion
was restored.
The succeeding Ministers, uninstructed by
the example of their predecessors, by the
destruction of public credit, and by the fer
mentation of the popular mind, hazarded
measures of a still more preposterous and
perilous description. The usurpation of some
share in the sovereignty by the Parliament
of Paris had become popular and venerable,
because its tendency was useful, and its
exercise virtuous. That body had, as it is
well known, claimed a right, which, in fact,
amounted to a negative on all the acts of the
King : — they contended, that the registration
of his edicts by them was necessary to give
them force. They would, in that case, have
possessed the same share of legislation as
the King of England. It is unnecessary to
descant on the historical fallacy, arid political
inexpediency, of doctrines, which would vest
in a narrow7 aristocracy of lawyers, who had
bought their places, such extensive powers.
It cannot be denied that their resistance had
often proved salutary, and was some feeble
check on the capricious wantonness of des
potic exaction : but the temerity of the
Minister now assigned them a more important
part. They refused to register two edicts
for the creation of imposts, averring that the
power of imposing taxes was vested only in
the national representatives, and claiming
the immediate convocation of the States-
General of the kingdom: the Minister ba
nished them to Troyes. But he soon found
how much the French were changed from
that abject and frivolous people, which had
so often endured the exile of its magistrates:
Paris exhibited the tumult and clamour of a
London mob. The Cabinet, which coukt
neither advance nor recede with safety, had
recourse to the expedient of a compulsory
registration. The "Duke of Orleans, and the
magistrates who protested against this exe-
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
409
crable mockery, were exiled or imprisoned.
Bat all these hacknied expedients of despot
ism were in vain. These struggles, which
merit notice only as they illustrate the pro
gressive energy of Public Opinion, were fol
lowed by events still less equivocal. Lettres
de Cachet were issued against MM. d'Es-
premenil and Goeslard. They took refuge
in the sanctuary of justice, and the Parlia
ment pronounced them under the safeguard
of the law and the King. A deputation was
sent to Versailles, to entreat his Majesty to
listen to sage counsels; and Paris expected,
with impatient solicitude, the result. When
towards midnight, a body of two thousand
troops marched to the palace where the Par
liament were seated, and their Commander,
entering into the Court of Peers, demanded
his victims, a loud and unanimous acclama
tion replied, — "We are all d'Espremenil and
Goeslard !" These magistrates surrendered
themselves ; and the satellite of despotism
led them off in triumph, amid the execra
tions of an aroused and indignant people.
These spectacles were not without their
effect : the spirit of resistance spread daily
over France. The intermediate commission
of the States of Bretagne, the States of Dau
phine, and many other public bodies, began
to assume a new and menacing tone. The
Cabinet was dissolved by its own feebleness,
and M. Neckar was recalled.
That Minister, probably upright, and not
illiberal, but narrow, pusillanimous, and en
tangled by the habits of detail* in which he
had been reared, possessed not that erect
and intrepid spirit, — those enlarged and ori
ginal views, which adapt themselves to new
combinations of circumstances, and sway
in the great convulsions of human affairs.
Accustomed to the tranquil accuracy of com
merce, or the elegant amusements of litera
ture, he was called on to
" Ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm. "t
He seemed superior to his privacy while he
was limited to it, and would have been ad
judged by history equal to his elevation had
he never been elevated. t The reputation of
few men. it is true, has been exposed to so
severe a test; and a generous observer will
be disposed to scrutinize less rigidly the
claims of a statesman, who has retired with
the applause of no party, — who is detested
by the aristocracy as the instrument of their
ruin, and despised by the democratic leaders
for pusillanimous and fluctuating policy. But
* The late celebrated Dr. Adam Smith, always
held this opinion of Neckar, whom he had known
intimately when a banker in Paris. He predicted
the fall of his fame when his talents should be
brought to the test, and always emphatically said,
" He is but a man of detail." At a time when
the commercial abilities of Mr. Eden, the present
Lord Auckland, were the theme of profuse eulogy,
Dr. Smith characterized him in the same words.
t Addison, The Campaign. — ED.
t Major privato visus, dum privatus fuit, et om
nium consensu capax imperil, nisi imperasset. —
Tacitus, Hist. lib. i. cap. 49.
52
had the character of M. Neckar possessed
more originality or decision, it could have
had little influence on the fate of France.
The minds of men had received an impulse ;
and individual aid and individual opposition
were equally vain. His views, no doubt,
extended only to palliation; but he was in
volved in a stream of opinions and events,
of which no force could resist the current, and
no wisdom adequately predict the termina
tion. He is represented by M. de Calonne
as the Lord Sunderland of Louis XVI. seduc
ing the King to destroy his own power : but
he had neither genius nor boldness for such
designs.
To return to our rapid survey : — The au
tumn of 1788 was peculiarly distinguished by
the enlightened and disinterested patriotism
of the States of Dauphine. They furnished,
in many respects, a model for the future
senate of France. Like them they deliberated
amidst the terrors of ministerial vengeance
and military execution. They annihilated
the absurd and destructive distinction of
Orders ; the three estates were melted into
a Provincial Assembly ; they declared, that
the right of imposing taxes resided ultimately
in the States-General of France ; and they
voted a deputation to the King to solicit the
convocation of that Assembly. Dauphine
was emulously imitated by all the provinces
that still retained the shadow of Provincial
States. The States of Languedoc, of Velay,
and Vivarois, the Tiers Etat of Provence, and
all the Municipalities of Bretagne, adopted
similar resolutions. In Provence and Bre
tagne. where the Nobles and Clergy, trem
bling for their privileges, and the Parliaments
for their jurisdiction, attempted a feeble re
sistance, the fermentation was peculiarly
strong. Some estimate of the fervour of
public sentiment may be formed from the
reception of the Count de Mirabeau in his
native province, where the burgesses of Aix
assigned him a body-guard, where the citizens
of Marseilles crowned him in the theatre,
and where, under all the terrors of despot
ism, he received as numerous and tumult
uous proofs of attachment as ever were
bestowed on a favourite by the enthusiasm
of the most free people. M. Caraman, the
Governor of Provence, was even reduced to
implore his interposition with the populace,
to appease and prevent their excesses. The
contest in Bretagne was more violent and
sanguinary. She had preserved her inde
pendence more than any of those provinces
which had been united to the crown of
France. The Nobles and Clergy possessed
almost the whole power of the States, and
their obstinacy was so great, that their depu
ties did not take their seats in the National
Assembly till an advanced period of its pro
ceedings.
The return of M. Neckar, and the recall
of the exiled magistrates, restored a mo
mentary calm. The personal reputation of
the minister for probity, reanimated the
credit of France. But the finances were too
2K
410
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
irremediably embarrassed for palliatives;
and the fascinating idea of the States-Gene
ral, presented to the public imagination by
the unwary zeal of the Parliament, awaken
ed recollections of ancient freedom, arid
prospects of future splendour, which the
virtue or popularity of no minister could
banish. The convocation of that body was
resolved on: but many difficulties respecting
the mode of electing and constituting it re
mained, which a second Assembly of Nota
bles was summoned to decide.
The Third Estate demanded representa
tives equal to those of the other two Orders
jointly. They required that the number
should be regulated by the population of the
districts, and that the three Orders should
vote in one Assembly. All the committees
into which the Notables were divided, ex
cept that of which MONSIEUR was President,
decided against the Third Estate in every
one of these particulars. They were strenu
ously supported by the Parliament of Paris,
who, too late sensible of the suicide into
which they had been betrayed, laboured to
render the Assembly impotent, after they
were unable to prevent its meeting. But
their efforts were in vain : M. Neckar, whe
ther actuated by respect for justice, or desire
of popularity, or yielding to the irresistible
torrent of public sentiment, advised the King
to adopt the propositions of the Third Estate
in the two first particulars, and to leave the
last to be decided by the States-General
themselves.
Letters-Patent \vere accordingly issued on
the 24th of January, 1789, for assembling
the States-General, to which were annexed
regulations for the detail of their elections.
In the constituent assemblies of the several
provinces, bailliages, and constabularies of
the kingdom, the progress of the public mind
became still more evident. The Clergy and
Nobility ought not to be denied the praise
of having emulously sacrificed their pecu
niary privileges. The instructions to the re
presentatives breathed every where a spirit
of freedom as ardent, though not so liberal
and enlightened, as that which has since
presided in the deliberations of the National
Assembly. Paris was eminently conspi
cuous. The union of talent, the rapid com
munication of thought, and the frequency
of those numerous assemblies, where men
learn their force, and compare their wrongs,
ever make a great capital the heart that cir
culates emotion and opinion to the extremi
ties of an empire. No sooner had the convo
cation of the States-General been announced,
than the batteries of the press were opened.
Pamphlet succeeded pamphlet, surpassing
each other in boldness and elevation ; and
the advance of Paris to light and freedom
was greater in three months than it had been
in almost as many centuries. Doctrines
were universally received in May, which in
January would have been deemed treason
able, and which in March had been de
rided as the visions of a few deluded fa
natics.*
It was amid this rapid diffusion of light,
and increasing fervour of public sentiment,
that the States-General assembled at Ver
sailles on the 5th of May, 1789, — a day which
will probably be accounted by posterity one
of the most memorable in the annals of the
human race. Any detail of the parade and
ceremonial of their assembly would be
totally foreign to our purpose, which is not
to narrate events, but to seize their spirit,
and to mark their influence on the political
progress from which the Revolution was to
arise. The preliminary operation necessary
to constitute the Assembly gave rise to the
first great question, — the mode of authenti
cating the corn-missions of the deputies. It
was contended by the Clergy and Nobles,
that according to ancient usage, each Order
should separately scrutinize and authenti
cate the commissions of its owrn deputies. It
was argued by the Commons, that, on gene
ral principles, all Orders, having an equal
interest in the purity of the national repre
sentative, had an equal right to take cogni
zance of the authenticity of the commissions
of all the members who composed the body,
and therefore to scrutinize them in common.
To the authority of precedent it was an
swered, that it would establish too much;
for in the ancient States, their examination
of powers was subordinate to the revision
of Royal Commissaries, — a subjection too
degrading and injurious for the free and
vigilant spirit of an enlightened age.
This controversy involved another of more
magnitude and importance. If the Orders
united in this scrutiny, they were likely to
continue in one Assembly; the separate
voices of the two first Orders would be anni
hilated, and the importance of the Nobility
and Clergy reduced to that of their indivi
dual suffrages. This great revolution was
obviously meditated by the leaders of the
Commons. They were seconded in the
chamber of the Noblesse by a minority
eminently distinguished for rank, character,
and talent. The obscure and useful portion
of the Clergy were, from their situation, ac
cessible to popular sentiment, and naturally
coalesced with the Commons. Many who
favoured the division of the Legislature in
the ordinary arrangements of government,
were convinced that the grand and radical
reforms, which the situation of France de
manded, could only be effected by its union
as one Assembly.! So many prejudices were
* The principles of freedom had long been un
derstood, perhaps better than in any country of the
world, by the philosophers of France. It was as
natural that they should have been more diligently
cultivated in that kingdom than in England, as
that the science of medicine should be less under
stood and valued among simple and vigorous, than
among, luxurious and enfeebled nations. But the
progress which we have noticed was among the
less instructed part of society.
t " II n'est pas douteux que pour aujourd'hui,
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
411
to be vanquished, — so many difficulties to
be surmounted, such obstinate habits to be
extirpated, and so formidable a power to be
resisted, that there was an obvious necessity
to concentrate the force of the reforming
body. In a great revolution, every expedient
ought to facilitate change : in an established
government, every thing ought to render it
difficult.- Hence the division of a legislature,
which in an established government, may
give a beneficial stability to the laws, must,
in a moment of revolution, be proportioriably
injurious, by fortifying abuse and unnerving
reform. In a revolution, the enemies of
freedom are external, and all powers are
therefore to be united : under an establish
ment her enemies are internal, and power
is therefore to be divided. But besides this
general consideration, the state of France
furnished others of more local and tempo
rary cogency. The States-General, acting
by separate Orders, were a body from which
no substantial reform could be hoped. The
two first Orders were interested in the per
petuity of every abuse that was to be re
formed : their possession of two equal and
independent voices must have rendered the
exertions of the Commons impotent and nu
gatory. And a collusion between the As
sembly and the Crown would probably have
limited its illusive reforms to some sorry
palliatives, — the price of financial disembar
rassment. The state of a nation lulled into
complacent servitude by such petty conces
sions, is far more hopeless than that of those
who groan under the most galling despotism ;
and the condition of France would have been
more irremediable than ever.
Such reasonings produced an universal
conviction, that the question, whether the
States-General were to vote individually, or
in Orders, was a question, whether they were
or were not to produce any important benefit.
Guided by these views, and animated by
public support, the Commons adhered in-
flexibily to their principle of incorporation.
They adopted a provisory organization, but
studiously declined whatever might seem to
suppose legal existence, or to arrogate con
stitutional powers. The Nobles, less politic
or timid, declared themselves a legally con
stituted Order, and proceeded to discuss the
que pour cette premiere tenueune Chambre Unique
n'ait ete preferable et peut-etre necessaire; il y
avoit tant de difficultes a surmonter, tant de pre-
juges a vaincre, tant de sacrifices a faire, de si
vieilles habitudes a deraciner, une puissance si
forte a contenir, en un mot, tant a detruire et
presque tout a creer." — " Ce nouvel ordre de
choses que vous avez fait eclorre, tout cela vous
en etes bien surs n'a jamais pu naitre que de la
reunion de toutes les personnes, de tous les senti
ments, et de tous les coeurs." — Discours de M.
Lally-Tollendal a J'Assemblee Nationale, 31
Aout, 1789, dans ses Pieces Justificatifs, pp. 105,
106. This passage is in more than one respect
remarkable. It fully evinces the conviction of
the author, that changes were necessary great
enough to deserve the name of a Revolution, and,
considering the respect of Mr. Burke for his au
thority, ought to have weight with him.
great objects of their convocation. The
Clergy affected to preserve a mediatorial cha
racter, and to conciliate the discordant claims
of the two hostile Orders. The Commons,
faithful to their system, remained in a wise
and masterly inactivity, which tacitly re
proached the arrogant assumption of the
Nobles, while it left no pretext to calumniate
their own conduct, gave time for the increase
of the popular fervour, and distressed the
Court by the delay of financial aid. Several
conciliatory plans were proposed by the Mi
nister, and rejected by the haughtiness of
the Nobility and the policy of the Commons.
Thus passed the period between the 5th
of May and the 12lh of June, when the po
pular leaders, animated by public support, and
conscious of the maturity of their schemes,
assumed a more resolute tone. The Third
Estate then commenced the scrutiny of com
missions, summoned the Nobles and Clergy
to repair to the Hall of the States-General,
and resolved that the absence of the depu
ties of some districts and classes of citizens
could riot preclude them, who formed the
representatives of ninety-six hundredths of
the nation, from constituting themselves a
National Assembly.
These decisive measures betrayed the de
signs of the Court, and fully illustrate that
bounty and liberality for which Louis XVI.
has been so idly celebrated. That feeble
Prince, whose public character varied with
every fluctuation in his Cabinet, — the instru
ment alike of the ambition of Vergennes,
the prodigality of Calonne, and the ostenta
tious popularity of Neckar, — had hitherto
yielded to the embarrassment of the finances,
and the clamour of the people. The cabal
that retained its ascendant over his mind,
permitted concessions which they hoped to
make vain, and flattered themselves with
frustrating, by the contest of struggling Or
ders, all idea* of substantial reform. But no
sooner did the Assembly betray any symptom
of activity and vigour, than their alarms be
came conspicuous in the Royal conduct. The
Compte d'Artois, and the other Princes of the
Blood, published the boldest manifestoes
against the Assembly; the credit of M.
Neckar at Court declined every day; the
Royalists in the chamber of the Noblesse
spoke of nothing less than an impeachment
of the Commons for high-treason, and an
immediate dissolution of the States; and a
vast military force and a tremendous park
of artillery were collected from all parts of
the kingdom towards Versailles and Paris.
Under these menacing and inauspicious cir
cumstances, the meeting of the States-Gene
ral was prohibited by the King's order till a
Royal Session, which was destined for the
twenty-second but not held till the twenty-
third of June, had taken place. On repair
ing to their Hall on the twentieth, the Com
mons found it invested with soldiers, and
themselves excluded by the point of the
bayonet. They were summoned by their
President to a tennis-Court, where they were
412
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
reduced to hold their assembly, and which
they rendered famous as the scene of their
unanimous and memorable oath, — never to
separate till they had achieved the regenera
tion of France.
The Royal Session thus announced, cor
responded with the new tone of the Court.
Its exterior was marked by the gloomy and
ferocious haughtiness of despotism. The
Royal Puppet was now evidently moved by
different persons from those who had prompt
ed its Speech at the opening of the States.
He probably now spoke both with the same
spirit and the same heart, and felt as little
firmness under the cloak of arrogance, as he
had been conscious of sensibility amidst his
professions of affection ; he was probably as
feeble in the one as he had been cold in the
other: but his language is some criterion of
the system of his prompters. This speech was
distinguished by insulting condescension and
ostentatious menace. He spoke not as the
Chief of a free nation to its sovereign Legisla
ture, but as a Sultan to his Divan . He annulled
and prescribed deliberations at pleasure. He
affected to represent his will as the rule of
their conduct, and his bounty as the source
of their freedom. Nor was the matter of
his harangue less injurious than its manner
was offensive. Instead of containing any
concession important to public liberty, it in
dicated a relapse into a more lofty despotism
than had before marked his pretensions.
Tithes, feudal and seignorial rights, he con
secrated as the most inviolable property; and
of Lettres de Cachet themselves, by recom
mending the regulation, he obviously con
demned the abolition. The distinction of
Orders he considered as essential to the Con-
etitution of the kingdom, and their present
union as only legitimate by his permission.
He concluded with commanding them to
separate, and to assemble on the next day
in the Halls of their respective Orders.
The Commons, however, inflexibly ad
hering to their principles, and conceiving
themselves constituted as a National Asserrf-
bly. treated these threats and injunctions with
equal neglect. They remained assembled
in the Hall, which the other Orders had
quitted in obedience to the Royal command ;
and when the Marquis de Breze, the King's
Master of the Ceremonies, reminded them
of his Majesty's orders, he was answered by
M. Bailly, with Spartan energy, — " The Na
tion assembled has no orders to receive."
They proceeded to pass resolutions declara
tory of adherence to their former decrees,
and of the personal inviolability of the mem
bers. The Royal Session, which the Aristo
cratic party had expected with such triumph
and confidence, proved the severest blow to
their cause. Forty-nine members of the No
bility, at the head of whom was M. de Cler-
mont-Tonnerre, repaired on the 26th of June
to the Assembly.* The popular enthusiasm
* It. deserves remark, that in this number were
Noblemen who have ever been considered as of
was inflamed to such a degree, that alarms
were either felt or affected, for the safety of
the King, if the union of Orders was delayed
The union was accordingly resolved on; and
the Duke of Luxembourg, President of the
Nobility, was authorised by his Majesty to
announce to his Order the request and even
command of the King, to unite themselves
with the others. He remonstrated with the
King on the fatal consequences of this step.
"The Nobility," he remarked, "were not
fighting their own battles, but those of the
Crown. The support of the monarchy wTas
inseparably connected with the division of
the Slates-General : divided, that body was
subject to the Crown; united, its authority
was sovereign, and its force irresistible.'"*'
The King was not, however, shaken by these
considerations, and on the following day, no
tified his pleasure in an official letter to the
Presidents of the Nobility and the Clergy. A
gloomy and reluctant obedience was yielded
to this mandate, and the union of the Na
tional Representatives at length promised
some hope to France.
But the general system of the Government
formed a suspicious and tremendous con
trast with this applauded concession. New
hordes of foreign mercenaries were sum
moned to the blockade of Paris and Versail
les, from the remotest provinces ; an im
mense train of artillery \vas disposed in all
the avenues of these cities ; and seventy
thousand men already invested the Capital,
when the last blow was hazarded against
the public hopes, by the ignominious banish
ment of M. Neckar. Events followed, the
most unexampled and memorable in the
annals of mankind, which history will record
and immortalize, but, on which, the object
of the political reasoner is only to speculate.
France was on the brink of civil war. The
Provinces were ready to march immense
bodies to the rescue of their representatives.
The courtiers and their minions, princes
and princesses, male and female favourites,
crowded to the camps with which they had
invested Versailles, and stimulated the fe
rocious cruelty of their mercenaries, by ca
resses, by largesses, and by promises. Mean
time the people of Paris revolted ; the French
soldiery felt that they were citizens ; and the
fabric of Despotism fell to the ground.
These soldiers, whom posterity will cele
brate for patriotic heroism, are stigmatized
by Mr. Burke as "base hireling deserters,"
who sold their King for an increase of pay.t
the moderate party. Of these may be mentioned
MM. Lally, Virieu, and Clermont-Tonnerre,
none of whom certainly can be accused of demo
cratic enthusiasm.
* These remarks of M. de Luxembourg are
equivalent to a thousand defences of the Revolu
tionists against Mr. Burke. They unanswerably
prove that the division of Orders was supported
only as necessary to palsy the efforts of the Legis
lature against the Despotism.
t Mr. Burke is sanctioned in this opinion by an
authority not the most respectable, that of his late
countryman Count Dalton, Commander of tha
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
413
This position he every where asserts or in
sinuates : but nothing seems more false.
Had the defection been confined to Paris,
there might have been some speciousness
in the accusation. The exchequer of a fac
tion might have been equal to the corrup
tion of the guards : the activity of intrigue
might have seduced the troops cantoned in
the neighbourhood of the capital. But what
policy, or fortune, could pervade by their
agents, or donatives, an army of one hundred
and fifty thousand men, dispersed over so
great a monarchy as France. The spirit of
resistance to uncivic commands broke forth
at once in every part of the empire. The
garrisons of the cities of Rennes, Bourdeaux,
Lyons, and Grenoble, refused, almost at the
same moment, to resist the virtuous insur
rection of their fellow-citizens. No largesses
could have seduced, — no intrigues could
have reached so vast and divided a body.
Nothing but sympathy with the national
spirit could have produced their noble dis
obedience. The remark of Mr. Hume is
here most applicable, " that what depends
on a few may be often attributed to chance
(secret circumstances) j but that the actions
of great bodies must be ever ascribed to
general causes." It was the apprehension
of Montesquieu, that the spirit of increasing
armies would terminate in converting Europe
into an immense camp, in changing our arti
sans and cultivators into military savages,
and reviving the ajje of Attila and Genghis.
Events are our preceptors, and France has
taught us that this evil contains in itself its
own remedy and limit. A domestic army
cannot be increased without increasing the
number of its ties with the people, and of
the channels by which popular sentiment
may enter. Every man who is added to the
army is a new link that unites it to the na
tion. If all citizens were compelled to be
come soldiers, all soldiers must of necessity
adopt the feelings of citizens ; and despots
cannot increase their army without admit
ting into it a greater number of men inte
rested in destroying them. A small army
may have sentiments different from the great
body of the people, and no interest in com
mon with them, but a numerous soldiery
cannot. This is the barrier which Nature
lias opposed to the increase of armies. They
cannot be numerous enough to enslave the
ueople, without becoming the people itself.
The effects of this truth have been hitherto
conspicuous only in the military defection
of France, because the enlightened sense of
general interest has been so much more dif
fused in that nation than in any other des
potic monarchy of Europe : but they must
be felt by all. An elaborate discipline may
for a while in Germany debase and brutalize
soldiers too much to receive any impressions
Austrian troops in the Netherlands. In Septem
ber, 1789, he addressed the Regiment, de Ligne,
at Brussels, in these terms : — " J'espere que vous
n'imiterez jamais ces laches Fran§ois qui ont
abandonne leur Souverain ! "
from their fellow men : artificial and local
institutions are, however, too feeble to resist
the energy of natural causes. The consti
tution of man survives the transient fashions
of despotism ; and the history of the next
century will probably evince on how frail and
tottering a basis the military tyrannies of
Europe stand.
The pretended seduction of the troops by
the promise of increased pay, is in every
view contradicted by facts. This increase
of pay did not originate in the Assembly ; it
was not even any part of their policy : it was
prescribed to them by the instructions of
their constituents, before the meeting of the
Slates.* It could not therefore be the pro
ject of any cabal of demagogues to seduce
the army : it was the decisive and unani
mous voice of the nation ; and if there was
any conspiracy, it must have been that of
the people. What had demagogues to offer 1
The soldiery knew that the States must, in
obedience to their instructions, increase their
pay. This increase could, therefore, have
been no temptation to them; for of it they
felt themselves already secure, as the na
tional voice had prescribed it. It was in
fact a necessary part of the system which
was to raise the army to a body of respect
able citizens, from a gang of mendicant ruf
fians. An increase of pay must infallibly
operate to limit the increase of armies in the
North. This influence has been already felt
in the Netherlands, which fortune seems to
have restored to Leopold, that they might
furnish a school of revolt to German soldiers.
The Austrian troops have there murmured
at their comparative indigence, and have
supported their plea for increase of pay by
the example of France. The same example
must operate on the other armies of Europe :
and the solicitations of armed petitioners
must be heard. The indigent despots of
Germany and the North will feel a limit to
their military rage, in the scantiness of their
exchequer. They will be compelled to re
duce the number, and increase the pay of
their armies : and a new barrier will be op
posed to the progress of that depopulation
and barbarism, which philosophers have
dreaded from the rapid increase of military
force. These remarks on the spirit which
actuated the French army in their unexam
pled, misconceived, and calumniated con
duct, are peculiarly important, as they serve
to illustrate a principle, which cannot too
frequently be presented to view, — that in.
the French Revolution all is to be attributed
to general causes influencing the whole body
of the people, and almost nothing to the
schemes and the ascendant of individuals.
But to return to our rapid sketch : — it was
at the moment of the Parisian revolt, and of
the defection of the army, that the whole
power of France devolved on the National
Assembly. It is at that moment, therefore,
that the discussion commences, whether that
Calonne, p. 3M)
2K2
414
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
body ought to have re-established and re
formed the government which events had
subverted, or to have proceeded to the esta
blishment of a new constitution, on the gene
ral principles of reason and freedom. The
arm of the ancient Government had been
palsied, and its powei reduced to a mere
formality, by events over which the As
sembly possessed no control. It was theirs
to decide, not whether the monarchy was
to be subverted, for that had been already
effected, but whether, from its rains, frag
ments \vere to be collected for the recon
struction of the political edifice. They had
been assembled as an ordinary Legisla
ture under existing laws : they were trans
formed by these events into a National Con
vention, and vested with powers to organize
a government. It is in vain that their adver
saries contest this assertion, by appealing to
the deficiency of forms j* it is in vain to de
mand the legal instrument that changed their
constitution, and extended their powers.
Accurate forms in the conveyance of power
are prescribed by the wisdom of law, in the
regular administration of states: but great
revolutions are too immense for technical
formality. All the sanction that can be
hoped for in such events, is the voice of the
people, however informally and irregularly
expressed. This cannot be pretended to
have been wanting in France. Every other
species of authority was annihilated by popu
lar acts, but that of the States-General. On
them, therefore, devolved the duty of exer
cising their unlimited trust,t according to
their best views of general interest. Their
enemies have, even in their invectives, cori-
*"This circumstance is thus shortly stated by
Mr. Burke, (p. 242): — I can never consider this
Assembly as anything else than a voluntary asso
ciation of men, who have availed themselves of
circumstances to seize upon the power of the State.
They do not hold the authority they exercise under
any constitutional law of the State. They have
departed from the instructions of the people that
sent them." The same argument is treated by M.
de Calonne, in an expanded memorial of forty-
four pages, (314 — 358), against the pretensions of
the Assembly to be a Convention, with much
unavailing ingenuity and labour.
t A distinction made by Mr. Burke between the
abstract and moral competency of a Legislature
(p. 27), has been much extolled by his admirers.
To me it seems only a novel and objectionable
mode of distinguishing between a right and the ex
pediency of using it. But the rnpde of illustrating
the distinction is far more pernicious than a mere
novelty of phrase. This moral competence is sub
ject, says our author, to " faith, justice, and fixed
fundamental policy :" thus illustrated, the distinc
tion appears liable to a double objection. Ir is false
that the abstract competence of a Legislature ex
tends to the violation of faith and justice : it is false
that its moral competence does not extend to the
most fundamental policy. Thus to confound fun
damental policy with faith and justice, for the sake
of stigmatizing innovators, is to stab the vitals of
morality. There is only one maxim of policy
truly fundamental — the good of the governed ;
and the stability of that maxim, rightly understood,
demonstrates the mutability of all policy that is
subordinate to it.
fessed the subsequent adherence of the people,
for they have inveighed against it as the in
fatuation of a dire fanaticism. The authority
of the Assembly was then first conferred on
it by public confidence ; and its acts have
been since ratified by public approbation.
Nothing can betray a disposition to indulge
in puny and technical sophistry more strongly,
than to observe with M. de Calonne, " that
this ratification, to be valid, ought to have
been made by France, not in her new or
ganization of municipalities, but in her ancient
division of bailliages and provinces." The
same individuals act in both forms; the ap
probation of the men legitimatizes the govern
ment : it is of no importance, whether they
are assembled in bailliages or in municipali
ties.
If this latitude of informality, this subjec
tion of laws to their principle, and of govern
ment to its source, are not permitted in
revolutions, how are we to justify the assumed
authority of the English Convention of 1688?
" They did not hold the authority they exer
cised under any constitutional law of the
State." They were not even legally elected,
as, it must be confessed, was the case with
the French Assembly. An evident, though
irregular, ratification by the people, alone
legitimatized their acts. Yet they possessed,
by the confession of Mr. Burke, an authority
only limited by prudence and virtue. Had
the people of England given instructions to
the members of that Convention, its ultimate
measures would probably have departed as
much from those instructions as the French
Assembly have deviated from those of their
constituents; and the public acquiescence in
the deviation would, in all likelihood, have
been the same. It wTill be confessed by any
man who has considered the public temper
of England at the landing of William, that
the majority of those instructions would not
have proceeded to the deposition of James.
The first aspect of these great changes per
plexes and intimidates men too much for just
views and bold resolutions: it is by the pro
gress of events that their hopes are embold
ened, and their views enlarged. This influ
ence was felt in France. The people, in an
advanced period of the Revolution, virtually
recalled the instructions by which the feeble
ness of their political infancy had limited the
power of their representatives : for they sanc
tioned acts by wliich those instructions were
contradicted. The formality of instructions
was indeed wanting in England : but the
change of public sentiment, from the opening
of the Convention to its ultimate decision,
was as remarkable as the contrast which has
been so ostentatiously displayed by M. de
Calonne. between the decrees of the National
Assembly and the first instructions of their
constituents.
We now resume the consideration of this
exercise of authority by the Assembly, and
proceed to inquire, whether they ought to
have reformed, or destroj-ed their govern
ment ? The general question of innovation
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
415
is an exhausted common-place, to which the
genius of Mr. Burke. has been able to add
nothing but splendour of eloquence and feli
city of illustration. It has long been so
notoriously of this nature, that it is placed
by Lord Bacon among the sportive contests
which are to exercise rhetorical skill. No
man will support the extreme on either side :
perpetual change and immutable establish
ment are equally indefensible. To descend
therefore from these barren generalities to a
nearer view of the question, let us state it
more precisely : — Was the civil order in
France corrigible, or was it necessary to de
stroy it ? Not to mention the extirpation of
the feudal system, and the abrogation of the
civil and criminal code, we have first to con
sider the destruction of the three great cor
porations, of the Nobility, the Church, and
the Parliaments. These three Aristocracies
were the pillars which in fact formed the
government of France. The question then
of forming or destroying these bodies was
fundamental.
There is one general principle applicable
to them all adopted by the French legislators,
— that the existence of Orders is repugnant
to the principles of the social union. An
Order is a legal rank, a body of men com
bined and endowed with privileges by lawr.
There are two kinds of inequality: the one
personal, that of talent and virtue,* the source
of whatever is excellent and admirable in
society; the other, that of fortune, which
must exist, because property alone can
stimulate to labour, and labour, if it were
not necessary to the existence, would be in
dispensable to the happiness of man. But
though it be necessary, yet in its excess it is
the great malady of civil society. The ac
cumulation of that power which is conferred
by wealth in the hands of the few, is the
perpetual source of oppression and neglect to
the mass of mankind. The power of the
wealthy is farther concentrated by their ten
dency to combination, from which, number,
dispersion, indigence, and ignorance equally
preclude the poor. The wealthy are formed
into bodies by their professions, their differ
ent degrees of opulence (called ''ranks"), their
knowledge, and their small number. They
necessarily in all countries administer govern
ment, for they alone have skill and leisure
for its functions. Thus circumstanced, no
thing can be more evident than their inevita
ble preponderance in the political scale. The
preference of partial to general interests is.
however, the greatest of all public evils. It
should therefore have been the object of all
laws to repress this malady; but it has been
their perpetual tendency to aggravate it.
Not content with the inevitable inequality
uf fortune, they have superadded to it hono
rary and political distinctions. Not content
with the inevitable tendency of the wealthy
to combine, they have embodied them in
classes. They have fortified those conspira
cies against the general interest, which they
ought to have resisted, though they could
riot disarm. Laws, it is said, cannot equalize
men ; — No : but ought they for that reason
to aggravate the inequality which they can
not cure'? Laws cannot inspire unmixed
patriotism : but ought they for that reason to
foment that corporation spirit which is its
most fatal enemy? "All professional com
binations," said Mr. Burke, in one of his late
speeches in Parliament, "are dangerous in a
free state." Arguing on the same principle,
the National Assembly has proceeded fur
ther. They have conceived that the laws
ought to create no inequality of combination,
to recognise all only in their capacity of citi
zens, and to offer no assistance to the natural
preponderance of partial over general interest.
But, besides the general source of hostility
to Orders, the particular circumstances of
France presented other objections, which it
is necessary to consider more in detail.
It is in the first place to be remarked, that
all the bodies and institutions of the king
dom participated in the spirit of the ancient
government, and in that view were incapable
of alliance with a free constitution. They
w^ere tainted by the despotism of which they
had been either members or instruments.
Absolute monarchies, like every other con
sistent and permanent government, assimi
late every thing with which they are con
nected to their own genius. The Nobility,
the Priesthood, the Judicial Aristocracy, were
unfit to be members of a free government,
because their corporate character had been
formed under arbitrary establishments. To
have preserved these great corporations,
would be to have retained the seeds of re
viving despotism in the bosom of freedom.
This "remark may merit the attention of Mr.
Burke, as illustrating an important difference
between the French and English Revolu
tions. The Clergy, the Peerage, and Judi
cature of England had imbibed in some de
gree the sentiments inspired by a government
in which freedom had been eclipsed, but not
extinguished. They were therefore qualified
to partake of a more stable and improved
liberty. But the case of France was differ
ent. These bodies had there imbibed every
sentiment, and adopted every habit under
arbitrary power. Their preservation in Eng
land, and their destruction in France, may
in this view be justified on similar grounds.
It is absurd to regard the Orders as remnants
of that free constitution which France, in
common with the other Gothic nations' of
Europe, once enjoyed. Nothing remained
of these ancient Orders but the name. The
Nobility were no longer those haughty and
powerful Barons, who enslaved the people,
and dictated to the King. The Ecclesias
tics were no longer that Priesthood beforo
whom, in a benighted and superstitious age,
all civil power was impotent and mute.
They had both dwindled into dependents
on the Crown. Still less do the opulent and
enlightened Commons of France resemble
its servile and beggared populace in the six
teenth centmy. Two hundred years of uu-
416
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
interrupted exercise had legitimatized abso
lute authority as much as prescription can
consecrate usurpation. The ancient French
Constitution was therefore no farther a mo
del than that of any foreign nation which
was to be judged of alone by its utility, and
possessed in no respect the authority of esta
blishment. It had been succeeded by an
other government ; and if France was to re
cur to a period antecedent to her servitude
for legislative models, she might as well
ascend to the aera of Clovis or Charlemagne,
as be regulated by the precedents of Henry
III. or Mary of Medicis. All these forms of
government existed only historically.
These observations include all the Orders.
Let us consider each of them successively.
The devotion of the Nobility of France to
the Monarch was inspired equally by their
sentiments, their interests, and their habits.
li The feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty,"
so long the prevailing passion of Europe, was
still nourished in their bosoms by the mili
tary sentiments from which it first arose.
The majority of them had still no profession
but war, — no hope but in Royal favour. The
youthful and indigent filled the camps ; the
more opulent and mature partook the splen
dour and bounty of the Court : but they were
equally dependents on the Crown. To the
plenitude of the Royal power were attached
those immense and magnificent privileges,
which divided France into distinct nations;
which exhibited a Nobility monopolizing the
rewards and offices of the State, arid a peo
ple degraded to political helotism.* Men
do not cordially resign such privileges, nor
quickly dismiss the sentiments which they
have inspired. The ostentatious sacrifice of
pecuniary exemptions in a moment of gene
ral fermentation is a wretched criterion of
their genuine feelings. They affected to be
stow as a gift, what they would have been
speedily compelled to abandon as an usurpa
tion ; and they hoped by the sacrifice of a
part to purchase security for the rest. They
have been most justly stated to be a band of
political Janissaries;t — far more valuable to
a Sultan than mercenaries, because attached
to him by unchangeable interest and indeli
ble sentiment. Whether any reform could
have extracted from this bocly an element
which might have entered into the new Con
stitution is a question which we shall consi
der when that political system comes under
our review. Their existence, as a member
of the Legislature, is a question distinct from
their preservation as a separate Order, or
great corporation, in the State. A senate of
Nobles might have been established, though
the Order of the Nobility had been destroyed ;
and England would then have been exactly
copied. But it is of the Order that we now
speak; for we are now considering the de-
* I say political in contradistinction to civil, for
in the latter sense the assertion would have been
untrue.
r See Mr. Rons' excellent Thoughts on Go
vernment.
struction of the old, not the formation of the
new government. The suppression of the
Nobility has been in England most absurdly
confounded with the prohibition of titles.
The union of the Orders in one Assembly
was the first step towards the destruction of
a legislative Nobility: the abolition of their
feudal rights, in the memorable session of
the 4th of August, 1789, may be regarded as
the second. They retained after these mea
sures no distinction but what was purely
nominal ; and it remained to be determined
what place they were to occupy in the new
Constitution. That question was decided by
the decree of the 22d of December, in the
same year, which enacted, that the Electoral
Assemblies were to be composed without
any regard to rank j and that citizens of all
Orders were to vote in them indiscriminately.
The distinction of Orders was thus destroyed :
the Nobility were to form no part of the new
Constitution, and were stripped of all that
they had enjoyed under the old government,
but their titles.
Hitherto all had passed unnoticed, but no-
sooner did the Assembly, faithful to their
principles, proceed to extirpate the external
signs of the ranks, which they no longer
tolerated, than all Europe resounded with
clamours against their Utopian and levelling
madness. The " incredible''* decree of the
19th of June, 1790, for the suppression of
titles, is the object of all these invectives ; yet
without that measure the Assembly would
certainly have been guilty of the grossest in
consistency and absurdity. An untitled No
bility forming a member of the State, had
been exemplified in some commonwealths
of antiquity; — such were the Patricians in
Rome: but a titled Nobility, without legal
privileges, or political existence, would have
been a monster new in the annals of legisla
tive absurdity. The power was possessed
without the bauble by the Roman aristo
cracy : the bauble would have been reve
renced, while the power was trampled onr
if titles had been spared in France. A titled
Nobility is the most undisputed progeny of
feudal barbarism. Titles had in all nations
denoted offices: it was reserved for Gothic
Europe to attach them to ranks. Yet this
conduct of our remote ancestors admits ex
planation ; for with them offices were here
ditary, and hence the titles denoting them
became hereditary too. But we, who have
rejected hereditary office, retain an usage to
which it gave rise, and which it alone could
justify. So egregiously is this recent origin
of a titled Nobility misconceived, that it has
been even pretended to be necessary to the
order and existence of society ; — a narrow
and arrogant mistake, which would limit all
political remark to the Gothic states of Eu
rope, or establish general principles on events
that occupy so short a period of history, and
manners that have been adopted by so slen
der a portion of the human race. A titled
* So called by M. de Calonne.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
417
Nobility was equally unknown to the splen
did monarchies of Asia, and to the manly
simplicity of the ancient commonwealths.*
It arose from the peculiar circumstances of
modern Europe ; and yet its necessity is now
erected on the basis of universal experience,
as if these other renowned arid polished
states were effaced from the records of his
tory, and banished from the society of na
tions. "Nobility is the Corinthian capital
of polished states:" — the august fabric of
society is deformed and encumbered by
such Gothic ornaments. The massy Doric
that sustains it is Labour; and the splendid
variety of arts and talents that solace and
embellish life, form the decorations of its
Corinthian and Ionic capitals.
Other motives besides the extirpation of
feudality, disposed the French Legislature
to the suppression of titles. To give sta
bility to a popular government, a democratic
character must be formed, and democratic
sentiments inspired. The sentiment of
equality which titular distinctions have,
perhaps, more than any other cause, extin
guished in Europe, and without which
democratic forms are impotent and short
lived, was to be revived ; and a free govern
ment was to be established, by carrying the
spirit of equality and freedom into the feel
ings, the manners, and the most familiar
intercourse of men. The badges of ine
quality, which were perpetually inspiring
sentiments adverse to the spirit of the go
vernment, were therefore destroyed, as dis
tinctions which only served to unfit the
Nobility for obedience, and the people for
freedom, — to keep alive the discontent of
the one, and to perpetuate the servility of
the other, — to deprive the one of the mode
ration that sinks them into citizens, and to
rob the other of the spirit that exalts them
into free men. A single example can alone
dispel inveterate prejudices. Thus thought
our ancestors at the Revolution, when they
deviated from the succession, to destroy the
prejudice of its sanctity. Thus also did the
legislators of France feel, when, by the abo
lition of titles, they gave a mortal blow to
the slavish prejudices which unfitted their
country for freedom. It was a practical as
sertion of that equality which had been
consecrated in the Declaration of Rights,
but which no abstract assertion could have
conveyed into the spirits and the hearts of
men. It proceeded on the principle that
the security of a revolution of government
can only arise from a revolution of character.
* Aristocratic bodies did indeed exist in the an
cient world, but titles were unknown. Though
they possessed political privileges, yet as these
did not affect the manners, they had not the same
inevitable tendency to taint the public character
as titular distinctions. These bodies too being in
general open to property, or office, they are in no
respect to be compared to the Nobles of Europe.
They might affect the/bras of a free government
as much, but they did not in the same proportion
injure the spirit of freedom.
53
To these reasonings it has been opposed,
that hereditary distinctions are the moral
treasure of a state, by which ij; excites and
rewards public virtue and public service, and
which, without national injury or burden,
operates with resistless force on generous
minds. To this I answer, that of personal
distinctions this description is most true;
but that this moral treasury of honour is in
fact impoverished by the improvident profu
sion that has made them hereditary. The
possession of honours by that multitude,
who have inherited but not acquired them,
engrosses and depreciates these incentives
and rewards of virtue. Were they purely
personal, their value would be doubly en
hanced, as the possessors would be fewer
while the distinction was more honourable.
Personal distinctions then every wise state
will cherish as its surest and noblest re
source ; but of hereditary title, — at least in
the circumstances of France,* — the abolition
seems to have been just and politic.
The fate of the Church, the second great
corporation that sustained the French despo
tism, has peculiarly provoked the indigna
tion of Mr. Burke. The dissolution of the
Church as a body, the resumption of its
territorial revenues, and the new organiza
tion of the priesthood, appear to him to be
dictated by the union of robbery and irre-
ligion, to glut the rapacity of stockjobbers,
and to gratify the hostility of atheists. All
the outrages and proscriptions of ancient or
modern tyrants vanish, in his opinion, in
comparison with this confiscation of the pro
perty of the Gallican Church. Principles
had, it is true, been on this subject explored,
and reasons had been urged by men of ge
nius, which vulgar men deemed irresistible.
But with these reasons Mr. Burke will not
deign to combat. "You do not imagine,
Sir," says he to his correspondent, " that I
am going to compliment this miserable de
scription of persons with any long discus
sion ?"f What immediately follows this
contemptuous passage is so outrageously of
fensive to candour and urbanity, that an
* I have been grossly misunderstood by those
who have supposed this qualification an assumed
or affected reserve. I believe the principle only
as qualified by the circumstances of different na
tions.
t The Abbe Maury, who is not less remark
able for the fury of eloquent declamation, than
for the inept parade of historical erudition, at
tempted in the debate on this subject to trace the
opinion higher. Base lawyers, according to him.
had insinuated it to the Roman Emperors, and
against it was pointed the maxim of the civil
law, " Omnia tenes Caesar imperio, sed non
dominio." Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had, if
we may believe him, both been assailed by this
Machiavelian doctrine, and both had repulsed it
with ^ magnanimous indignation. The learned
Abbe committed only one mistake. The despots
of Rome and France had indeed been poisoned
with the idea that they were the immediate pro
prietors of their subjects' estates. That opinion
is execrable and flagitious ; but it is not, as we
shall see, the doctrine of the French legislator,
418
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
honourable adversary will disdain to avail
himself of it. The passage itself, however,
demands a pause. It alludes to an opinion,
of which I trust Mr. Burke did not know the
origin. That the Church lands were national
property was not first asserted among the
Jacobins, or in the Palais Royal. The au
thor of that opinion, — the master of that
wretched description of persons, whom Mr.
Burke disdains to encounter, was one whom
he might have combated with glory, — with
confidence of triumph in victory, and with
out fear or shame in defeat The author of
that opinion was Turgot ! a name now too
high to be exalted by eulogy, or depressed
by invective. That benevolent and philo
sophic statesman delivered it, in the article
"Foundation" of the Encyclopedic, as the
calm and disinterested opinion of a scholar,
at a moment when he could have no object
in palliating rapacity, or prompting irreligion.
It was no doctrine contrived for the occasion
by the agents of tyranny : it was a principle
discovered in pure and harmless specula
tion, by one of the best arid wisest of men.
I adduce the authority of Turgot, not to op
pose the arguments (if there had been any),
but to counteract the insinuations of Mr.
Burke. The authority of his assertions
forms a prejudice, which is thus to be re
moved before we can hope for a fair audi
ence at the bar of Reason. If he insinuates
the flagitiousness of these opinions by the
supposed vileness of their origin, it cannot
be unfit to pave the way for their reception,
by assigning to them a more illustrious
pedigree.
But dismissing the genealogy of doctrines,
let us. examine their intrinsic value, and
listen to no voice but that of truth. " Are
the lands occupied by the Church the pro
perty of its members?" Various considera
tions present themselves, which may eluci
date the subject.
It has not hitherto been supposed that any
class of public servants are proprietors. —
They are salaried* by the State for the per
formance of certain duties. Judges are paid
for the distribution of justice ; kings for the
execution of the laws; soldiers, where there
is a mercenary army, for public defence ;
and priests, where there is an established
religion, for public instruction. The mode
-of their payment is indifferent to the ques
tion. It is generally in rude ages by land,
and in cultivated periods by money. But a
territorial pension is no more property than
a pecuniary one. The right of the State to
regulate the salaries of those servants whom
it pays in money has not been disputed :
and if it has chosen to provide the revenue
of a certain portion of land for the salary of
another class of servants, wherefore is its
right more disputable, to resume that land,
and to establish a new mode of payment ?
* "Us sont ou salaries, ou meridians, ou vo-
leurs,"-— was the expression of M. Mirabeau re
specting the priesthood.
in the early history. of Europe, before fiefs
became hereditary, great landed estates
were bestowed by the sovereign, on condi
tion of military service. By a similar te
nure did the Church hold its lands. No
man can prove, that because the State has
intrusted its ecclesiastical servants with a
portion of land, as the source and security
of their pensions, they are in any respect
more the proprietors of it, than the other
servants of the State are of that portion of
the revenue from which they are paid.
The lands of the Church possess not the
most simple and indispensable requisites of
property. They are not even pretended to
be held for the benefit of those who enjoy
them. This is the obvious criterion between
private property and a pension for public
service. The destination of the first is avow
edly the comfort and happiness of the indi
vidual who enjoys it : as he is conceived to
be the sole judge of this happiness, he pos
sesses the most unlimited rights of enjoy
ment, of alienation, and even of abuse. But
the lands of the Church, destined for the
support of public servants, exhibited none
of these characters of property. They were
inalienable, because it would have been not
less absurd for the priesthood to have ex
ercised such authority over these lands, than
it would be for seamen to claim the property
of a fleet which they manned, or soldiers that
of a fortress they garrisoned.
It is confessed that no individual priest
was a proprietor, and that the utmost claim
of any one was limited to a possession for
life of his stipend. If all the priests, taken
individually, were not proprietors, the priest
hood, as a body, cannot claim any such right.
For what is a body, but an aggregate of indi
viduals? and what new right can be con
veyed by a mere change of name ? Nothing
can so forcibly illustrate this argument as
the case of other corporations. They are
voluntary associations of men for their own
benefit. Every member of them is an abso
lute sharer in their property : it is therefore
alienated arid inherited. Corporate property
is here as sacred as individual, because in
the ultimate analysis it is the same. But
the priesthood is a corporation, endowed by
the country, and destined for the benefit of
others: hence the members have no sepa
rate, nor the body any collective, right of
property. They are only intrusted with the
administration of the lands from which their
salaries are paid.*
It is from this last circumstance that the
legal semblance of property arises. In char
ters, bonds, and all other proceedings of law,
these salaries are treated with the same for
malities as real property. "They are iden
tified," says Mr. Burke. " with the mass of
* This admits a familiar illustration. If a land
holder chooses to pay his steward for the collec
tion of his rents, by permitting him to possess a
farm gratis, is he conceived to have resigned his
property in the farm? The case is precisely
similar.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
419
private property;" and it must be confessed,
that if we are to limit our view to form, this
language is correct. But the repugnance of
these formalities to legal truth proceeds from
a very obvious cause. If estates are vested
in the clergy, to them most unquestionably
ought to be intrusted the protection of these
estates in all contests at law ; and actions
for that purpose can only be maintained
with facility, simplicity, and effect, by the
fiction of their being proprietors. Nor is this
the only case in which the spirit and the
fovms of law are at variance respecting pro
perty. Scotland, where lands still are held
by feudal tenures, will afford us a remarka
ble example. There, if we extend our views
no further than legal forms, the "superior" is
to be regarded as the proprietor, while the
real proprietor appears to be only a tenant for
life. In this case, the vassal is formally
stript of the property which he in fact en
joys : in the other, the Church is formally
invested with a property, to which in reality
it had no claim. The argument of Prescrip
tion will appear to be altogether untenable:
for prescription implies a certain period
during which the rights of property have
been exercised ; but in the case before us
they never were exercised, because they
never could be supposed to exist. It must
be proved that these possessions were of the
nature of property, before it can follow that
they are protected by prescription ; and to
plead the latter is to take for granted the
question in dispute.*
When the British Islands, the Dutch Re
public, and the German and Scandinavian
States, reformed their ecclesiastical esta
blishments, the howl of sacrilege was the
only armour by which the Church attempted
to protect its pretended property: the age
* There are persons who may not relish the
mode of reasoning here adopted. They contend
that property, being the creature of civil society,
may be resumed by that public will which created
it ; and on this principle they justify the National
Assembly of France. But such a justification is
adverse to the principles of that Assembly, for they
have consecrated it as one of the first maxims of
their Declaration of Rights, " that the State can
not violate property, except in cases of urgent
necessity, and on condition of previous indemnifi
cation." This defence too will not justify their
selection of Church property, in preference of all
others, for resumption. It certainly ought in this
view to have fallen equally on all citizens. The
principle is besides false in the extreme to which
it is assumed. Property is indeed in some sense
created by an act of the public will: but it is by
one of those fundamental acts which constitute
society. Theory proves it to be essential to the
social state. Experience proves that it has, in
some degree, existed in every age and nation of
the world. But those public acts which form and
endow corporations are subsequent and subordi
nate ; they are only ordinary expedients oflegisla-
tion. The property of individuals is established
on a general principle, which seems coeval with
civil society itself: but corporate bodies are instru
ments fabricated by the legislator for a specijic
purpose, which ought to be preserved while they
are beneficial, amended when they are impaired,
and rejected when they become useless or injurious.
was too tumultuous and unlettered for dis
cussions of abstract jurisprudence. This
howl seems, however, to have fallen into
early contempt. The Treaty of Westphalia
secularised many of the most opulent bene
fices of Germany, under the mediation and
guarantee of the first Catholic powers of
Europe. In our own island, on the abolition
of episcopacy in Scotland at the Revolution,
the revenues of the Church peaceably de
volved on the sovereign, and he devoted a
portion of them to the support of the new
establishment. When, at a still later period,
the Jesuits were suppressed in most Catholic
monarchies, the wealth of that formidable
and opulent body was everywhere seized by
the sovereign. In all these memorable ex
amples, no traces are to be discovered of
the pretended property of the Church. The
salaries of a class of public servants were
resumed by the State, when it ceased to
deem their service, or the mode of it, useful.
That claim, now so forcibly urged by M. de
Calonne, was probably little respected by
him, when he lent his agency to the destruc
tion of the Jesuits with such peculiar activity
and rancour. The sacredness ^f their pro
perty could not have strongly impressed one
who was instrumental in degrading the mem
bers of that renowned and accomplished
society, the glory of Catholic Europe, from
their superb endowments to the rank of
scanty and beggarly pensioners. The reli
gious horror which the priesthood had at
tached to spoliation of Church property has
long been dispelled; and it was reserved for
Mr. Burke to renew that cry of sacrilege,
which, in the darkness of the sixteenth cen
tury, had resounded in vain. No man can
be expected to oppose arguments to epithets.
When a definition of sacrilege is given, con
sistent with good logic and plain English, it
will be time enough to discuss it. Till that
definition (with the Greek Calends) comes,
I should as soon dispute about the meaning
of sacrilege as about that of heresy or witch
craft.
The whole subject is indeed so clear that
little diversity of opinion could have arisen,
if the question of the inviolability of Church
property had not been confounded with the
claims of the present incumbents. The dis
tinction, though neither stated by Mr. Burke
nor M. de Calonne, is extremely simple.
The State is the proprietor of the Church
revenues; but its faith, it may be said, is
pledged to those who have entered into the
Church, for the continuance of the incomes,
for which they have abandoned all other
pursuits. The right of the State to arrange
at its pleasure the revenues of any futuro
priests may be confessed; while a doubt
may be entertained, whether it is competent
to change the fortune of those to whom it
has solemnly promised a certain income for
life. But these distinct subjects have been,
confounded, that sympathy with suffering;
individuals might influence opinion on a
general question,— that feeling for the de-
420
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
gradation of its hierarchy might supply the
place of argument to establish the property
of the Church. In considering this subject
distinctly, it cannot be denied, that the mild
est, the most equitable, and the most usual
expedient of civilized states in periods of
emergency, is the reduction of the salaries
of their servants, and the superfluous places.
This and no more has been done regarding
the Church of France. Civil, naval, and
military servants of the State are subject to
such retrenchments in a moment of diffi
culty. Neither the reform of a civil office,
nor the reduction of a regiment, can be
effected without wounding individuals.* But
all men who enter into the public service
must do so with the implied condition of sub
jecting their emoluments, and even their
official existence, to the exigencies of the
State. The great grievance of such de
rangements is the shock they give to family
sentiments. This was precluded in the in
stance under discussion by the compulsory
celibacy of the Romish Church ; and when
the debts of the clergy are incorporated with
those of the State, and their subsistence
insured by moderate incomes, though Sensi
bility may, in the least retrenchment, find
somewhat to lament, Justice will, in the
whole of these arrangements, discover little
to condemn. To the individual members of
the Church of France, whose hopes and en
joyments have been abridged by this resump
tion, no virtuous mind will refuse the tribute
of its sympathy and its regrets. Every man
of humanity must wish, that public exigen
cies had permitted the French Legislature to
spare the income of the present incumbents,
and more especially of those w^hom they still
continue in the discharge of active functions.
But these sentiments imply no sorrow at the
downfall of a great corporation, — the impla
cable enemy of freedom, — at the conversion
of an immense public property to national
use, — or at the reduction of a servile and
imperious priesthood to humble utility. The
attainment of these great objects console us
for the portion of evil that was, perhaps,
inseparable from it, and will be justly ap
plauded by a posterity too remote to be
moved by comparatively minute afflictions.
The enlightened observer of an age thus
distant will contemplate with peculiar asto
nishment the rise, progress, decay and down
fall of spiritual power in Christian Europe. f
It will attract his attention as an appearance
which stands alone in history. Its connection
in all stages of its progress with the civil
powder will peculiarly occupy his mind. He
will remark the unpresuming humility by
which it gradually gained the favour, and
divided the power, of the magistrate, — the
jf precisely the case of " damnum ab-
sque njuria."
t Did we not dread the ridicule of political pre
diction, it would not seem difficult to assign its
period. Church power (unless some Revolution,
auspicious to priestcraft, should replunge Europe
into ignorance) will certainly not survive the nine
teenth century.
haughty and despotic tone in which it after
wards gave law to sovereigns and their sub
jects, — the zeal with which, in the first
desperate moments of decline, it armed the
people against the magistrate, and aimed at
re-establishing spiritual despotism on the
ruins of civil order; and he will point out
the asylum which it at last found from the
hostilities of Reason in the prerogatives of
that temporal despotism, of which it had so
long been the implacable foe. The first and
last of these periods will prove, that the
priesthood are servilely devoted when they
are weak : the second and third, that they
are dangerously ambitious when strong. In
a state of feebleness, they are dangerous to
liberty : possessed of power, they are dan
gerous to civil government itself. But the
last period of their progress will be that
which will appear to have been peculiarly
connected with the state of France.
There can be no protection for the opulence
and even existence* of an European priest
hood in an enlightened period, but the throne.
It forms the only bulwark against the inroads
of reason : for the superstition which once
formed its power is gone. Around the throne
therefore they rally ; and to the monarch
they transfer the devotion which formerly
attached them to the Church; while the
fierceness of priestlyf zeal has been suc
ceeded by the more peaceful sentiments of
a courtly and polished servility. Such is, in
a greater or less degree, the present condi
tion of the Church in every nation of Europe.
Yet it is for the dissolution of such a body
that France has been reproached. It might
as well be maintained, that in her conquests
over despotism, she ought to have spared the
strongest fortresses and most faithful troops
of her adversary : — for such in truth were
the corporations of the Nobility and the
Church. The National Assembly have only
insured permanence to their establishments,
by dismantling the fortresses, and disbanding
the troops of their vanquished foe.
In the few remarks that are here made on
the Nobility and Clergy of France, we con
fine ourselves strictly to their political and
collective character : Mr. Burke, on the con
trary, has grounded his eloquent apology
purely on their individual and moral charac
ter. The latter, however, is totally irrele
vant; for we are not discussing what place
they ought to occupy in society as indivi
duals, but as a body. We are not consider
ing the demerit of citizens whom it is fit to
punish, but the spirit of a body which it is
politic to dissolve.
The Judicial Aristocracy formed by the
Parliaments, seems still less susceptible of
union with a free government. Their spirit
and claims were equally incompatible with
liberty. They had imbibed a spirit con<
genial to the authority under which they had
acted, and suitable to the arbitrary genius
of the laws which they had dispensed ; while
* I always understand their corporate existence,
t Odium Theologicum,
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
421
they retained those ambiguous and indefinite
claims to a share in the legislation, which the
fluctuations of power in the kingdom had in
some degree countenanced. The spirit of a
corporation was from the smallness of their
numbers more concentrated and vigorous in
them than in the Nobles and Clergy ; and
whatever aristocratic zeal is laid to the
charge of* the Nobility, was imputable with
tenfold force to the ennobled magistrates,
\vho regarded their recent honours'with an
enthusiasm of vanity, inspired by that bigoted
veneration for rank which is the perpetual
character of upstarts. A free people could
not form its tribunals of men who pretended
to any control on the legislature. Courts of
justice, in which seats were legally purchas
ed, had too long been endured : judges who
regarded the right of dispensing justice as a
marketable commodity, could neither be fit
organs of equitable laws, nor suitable magis
trates for a free state. It is vain to urge with
Mr. Burke the past services of these judicial
bodies. It is not to be denied that Montes
quieu is correct, when he states, that under
bad governments one abuse often limits an
other. Th.9 usurped authority of the Parlia
ments formed, it is true, some bulwark
against the caprice of the Court. But when
the abuse is destroyed, why preserve the
remedial evil ? Superstition certainly alle
viates the despotism of Turkey : but if a
rational government could be erected in that
empire, it might with confidence disclaim
the aid of the Koran, and despise the remon
strances of the Mufti. To such establish
ments, let us pay the tribute of gratitude for
past benefit ; but when their utility no longer
exists, let them be canonized by death, that
their admirers may be indulged in all the
plenitude of posthumous veneration.
The three Aristocracies — Military, Sacer
dotal, and Judicial — may be considered as
having formed the French Government. —
They have appeared, so far as we have con
sidered them, incorrigible. All attempts to
improve them would have been little better
than (to use the words of Mr. Burke) "mean
reparations on mighty ruins." They were
not perverted by the accidental depravity of
their members ; they were not infected by
any transient passion, which new circum
stances would extirpate : the fault was in
the essence of the institutions themselves,
which were irreconcilable with a free gov
ernment.
But, it is objected, these institutions might
have been gradually reformed :* the spirit
of freedom would have silently entered ;
the progressive wisdom of an enlightened
nation would have remedied, in process of
time, their defects, without convulsion. To
this argument I confidently answer, that these
institutions would have destroyed Liberty,
before Liberty had corrected their spirit.
Power vegetates with more vigour after
these gentle prunings. A slender reform
* Burke, pp. 248—252.
amuses and lulls the people : the popular
enthusiasm subsides; and the moment of
effectual reform is irretrievably lost. No
important political improvement was ever
obtained in a period of tranquillity. The
corrupt interest of the governors is so strong,
and the cry of the people so feeble, that it
were vain to expect it. If the effervescence
of the popular mind is suffered to pass away
without effect, it would be absurd to expect
from languor what enthusiasm has not ob
tained. If radical reform is not, at such a
moment, procured, all partial changes are
evaded and defeated in the tranquillity
which succeeds.* The gradual reform that
arises from the presiding principle exhibited
in the specious theory of Mr. Burke, is be
lied by the experience of all ages. What
ever excellence, whatever freedom is dis
coverable in governments, has been infused
into them by the shock of a revolution ; and
their subsequent progress has been only the
accumulation of abuse. It is hence that the
most enlightened politicians have recognised
the necessity of frequently recalling their
first principles; — a truth equally suggested
to the penetrating intellect of Machiavel, by
his experience of the Florentine democracy,
and by his research into the history of an
cient commonwealths. Whatever is good
ought to be pursued at the moment it is at
tainable. The public voice, irresistible in a
period of convulsion, is contemned with im
punity, when spoken during the lethargy
into which nations are lulled by the tranquil
course of their ordinary affairs. The ardour
of reform languishes in unsupported tedious-
ness : it perishes in an impotent struggle
with adversaries, who receive new strength
with the progress of the day. No hope of
great political improvement — let us repeat it
— is to be entertained from tranquillity;!
for its natural operation is to strengthen all
those who are interested in perpetuating
abuse. The National Assembly seized the
moment of eradicating the corruptions and
abuses which afflicted their country. Their
reform was total, that it might be commen
surate w'ith the evil : and no part of it was
delayed, because to spare an abuse at such
a period was to consecrate it ; and as the
enthusiasm which carries nations to such
enterprises is short-lived, so the opportunity
of reform, if once neglected, might be irre
vocably fled.
" Ignore-t-on que c'est en attaquant, en ren-
versant tons les abus a la fois, qu'on peut esperer
de s'en voir deiivre sans retour ; que les rcformes
[entes et partielles ont toujours fini par ne rieri re
former ; enfin, que 1'abus que 1'on conserve de-
vient 1'appui et bieniot le restaurateur de tous
ceux qu'on croioit avoir detruits?" — Adresse
aux Frangois, par 1'Eveque d'Autun, 11 Fevrier,
1790.
t The only apparent exception to this principle
is the case where sovereigns make important con
cessions to appease discontent, and avert convul
sion. This, however, rightly understood, is no
xception ; for it arises evidently from the same
causes, acting at a period less advanced in the
progress of popular interposition.
2 L
422
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Bat let us ascend to more general princi
ples, and hazard bolder opinions. Let us
grant that the state of France was not so
desperately incorrigible. Let us suppose
that changes far more gentle, — innovations
far less extensive, — would have remedied
the grosser evils of her government, and
placed it almost on a level with free and
celebrated constitutions. These concessions,
though too large for truth, will not convict
the Assembly. By what principle of reason,
or of justice/ were they precluded from as
piring to give France a government less im
perfect than accident had formed in other
states'? Who will be hardy enough to as
sert, that a better constitution is not attain
able than any which has hitherto appeared ?
Is the limit of human wisdom to be estimat
ed in the science of politics alone, by the
extent of its present attainments ? Is the
most sublime and difficult of all arts, — the
improvement of the social order, — the allevia
tion of the miseries of the civil condition of
man, — to be alone stationary, amid the rapid
progress of every other — liberal and vulgar
— to perfection 1 Where would be the atro
cious guilt of a grand experiment, to ascer
tain the portion of freedom and happiness,
that can be created by political institutions'?
That guilt (if it be guilt) is imputable to
the National Assembly. They are accused
of having rejected the guidance of experi
ence, — of having abandoned themselves to
the illusion of theory, — and of having sacri
ficed great arid attainable good to the magni
ficent chimeras of ideal excellence. If this
accusation be just, — if they have indeed
abandoned experience, the basis of human
knowledge, as well as the guide of human
action, — their conduct deserves no longer
any serious argument: but if (as Mr. Burke
more than once insinuates) their contempt
of it is avowed and ostentatious, it was
surely unworthy of him to have expended
so much genius against so preposterous an
insanity. But the explanation of terms will
diminish our wonder. Experience may,
both in the arts and in the conduct of human
life, be regarded in a double view, either as
finishing models, or principles. An artist
who frames his machine in exact imitation
of his predecessor, is in the first sense said
to be guided by experience. In this sense
all improvements of human life, have been
deviations from experience. The first vision
ary innovator was the savage who built a
cabin, or covered himself with a rug. If
this be experience, man is degraded to the
unimprovable level of the instinctive anir
mals. But in the second acceptation, an
artist is said to be guided by experience,
when the inspection of a machine discovers
to him principles, which teach him to im
prove it j or when the comparison of many,
both with respect to their excellences and
defects, enables him to frame one different
from any he had examined, and still more
perfect. In this latter sense, the National
Assembly have perpetually availed them
selves of experience. History is an im
mense collection of experiments on the na
ture and effect of the various parts of va
rious governments. Some institutions are
experimentally ascertained to be beneficial;
some to be most indubitably destructive ; a
third class, which produces partial good, ob
viously possesses the capacity of improve
ment. What, on such a survey, was the
dictate of enlightened experience 1 Not
surely to follow any model in which these
institutions lay indiscriminately mingled; but,
like the mechanic, to compare and generalize,
and. guided equally by experience, to imi
tate and reject. The process is in both cases
the same : the rights and the nature of man.
are to the legislator what the general pro
perties of matter are to the mechanic. — the
first guide, — because they are founded on the
widest experience. In the second class are
to be ranked observations on the excellences
and defects of all governments which have
already existed, that the construction of a
more perfect machine may result. But ex
perience is the basis of all : — not the puny
and trammelled experience of a statesman by
trade, who trembles at any change in the
tricks which he has been taught, or the routine
in which he has been accustomed to move;
but an experience liberal and enlightened,
which hears the testimony of ages and na
tions, and collects from it the general princi
ples which regulate the mechanism of so
ciety.
Legislators are under no obligation to re
tain a constitution, because it has been found
" tolerably to answer the common purposes
of government." It is absurd to expect, but
it is not absurd to pursue perfection. It is
absurd to acquiesce in evils, of which the
remedy is obvious, because they are less
grievous than those which are endured by
others. To suppose that social order is not
capable of improvement from the progress
of the human understanding, is to betray the
inconsistent absurdity of an arrogant confi
dence in our attainments, and an abject dis
trust of our powers. If, indeed, the sum of
evil produced by political institutions, even
in the least imperfect governments, were
small, there might be some pretence for this
dread of innovation — this horror at any re
medy. — which has raised such a clamour
over Europe. But, on the contrary, in an
estimate of the sources of human misery,
after granting that one portion is to be attri
buted to disease, and another to private vices,
it might perhaps be found that a third equal
part arose from the oppressions and corrup
tions of government, disguised under various
forms. All the governments that now exist
in the world (except that of the United States
of America) have been fortuitously formed :
they are not the work of art. They have
been altered, impaired, improved and de
stroyed by accidental circumstances, beyond
the foresight or control of wisdom. Their
parts thrown up against present emergencies
formed no systematic whole. It was cer-
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
423
tainly not to have been presumed, that these
fortuitous products should have surpassed
the works of intellect, and precluded all
nearer approaches to perfection. Their origin
without doubt furnishes a strong presump
tion of an opposite nature. It might teach
us to expect in them many discordant prin
ciples, many jarring forms, much unmixed
evil, and much imperfect good. — many in
stitutions which had long survived their mo
tive, and many of wrhich reason had never
been the author, nor utility the object. Ex
perience, even in the best of them, accords
with such expectations.
A government of art. the work of legisla
tive intellect, reared on the immutable basis
of natural right and general happiness, which
should combine the excellences, and exclude
the defects of the various constitutions which
chance has scattered over the wrorld, instead
of being precluded by the perfection of any
of those forms, was loudly demanded by the
injustice and absurdity of them all. It was
time that men should learn to tolerate nothing
ancient that reason does not respect, and to
shrink from no novelty to which reason may
conduct. It was time that the human powers,
so long occupied by subordinate objects, and
inferior arts, should mark the commence
ment of a new sera in history, by giving birth
to the art of improving government, and in
creasing the civil happiness of man. It was
time, as it has been wisely and eloquently
said, that legislators, instead of that riarrowr
and dastardly coasting which never ventures
to lose sight of usage and precedent, should,
guided by the polarity of reason, hazard a
bolder navigation, and discover, in unex
plored regions, the treasure of public felicity.
The task of the French legislators was,
however, less hazardous. The philosophers
of Europe had for a century cliscussed all
objects of public (Economy. 'The conviction
of a great'majority of enlightened men had,
after many controversies, become on most
questions of general politics, uniform. A
degree of certainty, perhaps nearly equal to
that which such topics will admit, had been
attained. The National Assembly were there
fore not called on to make discoveries : it was
sufficient if they were not uninfluenced by
the opinions, nor exempt from the spirit of
their age. They were fortunate enough to
live in a period when it \vas only necessary
to affix the stamp of laws to \vhat had been
prepared by the research of philosophy. They
will here, however, be attacked by a futile
common-place. The most specious theory,
it will be said, is often impracticable; and
any attempt to transfer speculative doctrines
into the practice of states is chimerical and
frantic. If by " theory" be understood vague
conjecture, the objection is not worth discus
sion : but if by theory be meant inference
from the moral nature and political state of
man, then I assert, that whatever such theory
pronounces to be true, must be practicable ;
and that whatever on the subject is imprac
ticable, must be false. To resume the illus
tration from the mechanical arts : — geometry,
it may be justly said, bears nearly the same
relation to mechanics that abstract reasoning
does to politics.* The moral forces which
are employed in politics are the passions and
interests of men, of which it is the province
of metaphysics to teach the nature and
calculate the strength, as mathematics do
those of the mechanical powers. Now sup
pose it had been mathematically proved, that
by a certain alteration in the structure of a
machine, its effect would be increased four
fold, would an instructed mechanic hesitate
about the change ? Would he be deterred,
because he was the first to discover it?
Would he thus sacrifice his own advantage
to the blindness of his predecessors, and the
obstinacy of his contemporaries'? Let us
suppose a whole nation, of which the arti
sans thus rejected theoretical improvement :
mechanics might there, as a science, be most
profoundly understood, while as an arf, it ex
hibited nothing but rudeness and barbarism.
The principles of Newton and Archimedes
might be taught in the schools, while the
architecture of the people might not have
reached beyond the cabins of New Holland,
or the ship-building of the Esquimaux. In
a state of political science somewhat similar
has Europe continued for a great part of the
eighteenth century. t
All the great questions of general politics
had, as we have remarked, been nearly de
cided, and almost all the decisions had been
hostile to established institutions ; yet these
institutions still flourished in all their vigour.
The same man who cultivated liberal science
in his cabinet \vas compelled to administer a
barbarous jurisprudence on the bench. The
same Montesquieu, who at Paris reasoned as
a philosopher of the eighteenth, was com
pelled to decide at Bourdeaux as a magistrate
of the fourteenth century. The apostles of
toleration and the ministers of the Inquisi
tion were cotemporaries. The torture con
tinued to be practised in the age of Becca-
ria : the Bastile devoured its victims in the
country of Turgot. The criminal code, even
where it was the mildest, was oppressive and
savage. The laws respecting religious opinion,
even where there was a pretended toleration,
* I confess my obligation for this parallel to a
learned friend, who though so justly admired in
the republic of letters for his excellent writings,
is still more so by his friends for the rich, original,
and masculine turn of thought that animates his
conversation. But the Continuator of the History
of Philip III. little needs my praise.
t Mechanics, because no passion or interest is
concerned in the perpetuity of abuse, always yield
to scientific improvement : politics, for the con
trary reason, always resist it. It was the remark
of Hobbes, " that if any interest or passion were
concerned in disputing the theorems of geometry,
different opinions would be maintained regarding
them." It has actually happened (as if to justify
the remark of that great man) that under the ad
ministration of Turgot a financial reform, ground
ed on a mathematical demonstration, has been
derided as visionary nonsense ! So much for the
sage preference of practice to theory.
424
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
outraged the most evident deductions of
reason. The true principles of commercial
policy, though they had been reduced to de
monstration, influenced the councils of no
states. Such was the fantastic spectacle pre
sented by tho European nations, who, philo
sophers in theory, and barbarians in practice,
exhibited to the observing eye two opposite
and inconsistent aspects of manners and opi
nions. But such a state of things carried in
itself the seeds of its own destruction. Men
will not long dwell in hovels, with the model
of a palace before their eyes.
Such was indeed in some measure the
position of th3 ancient world. But the art
of printing had not then provided a channel
by which the opinions of the learned pass
insensibly into live popular mind. A bulwark
then existed bat ween the body of mankind
and the reflecting few. Th?y were distinct
nations, inhabiting the same country; and
the opinions of the one (I speak comparatively
with modern times) had little influence on
those of the other. But that bulwark is now
levelled with the ground. The convictions
of philosophy insinuate themselves by a
slow, but certain progress, into popular sen
timent. It is vain for the arrogance of learn
ing to condemn the people to ignorance
by reprobating superficial knowledge. The
people cannot be profound; but the truths
which regulate the moral and political rela
tions of man, are at no great distance from
the surface. The great works in which dis
coveries are contained cannot be read by the
people ; but their substance passes through
a variety of minute and circuitous channels
to the shop and the hamlet. The conversion
of these works of unproductive splendour
into latent use and unobserved activity, re
sembles the process of nature in the external
world. The expanse of a noble lake, — the
course of a majestic river, imposes on the
imagination by every impression of dignity
and sublimity: but it is the moisture that
insensibly arises from them which, gradu
ally mingling with the soil, nourishes all the
luxuriancy of vegetation, and adorns the
surface of the earth.
It may then be remarked, that though li
beral opinions so long existed with defective
establishments, it was not natural that this
state of things should be permanent. The
philosophers of antiquity did not. like Archi-
meaes, want a spot on which to fix their
engines ; but they wanted an engine where
with to move the moral world. The press
is that engine, and has subjected the power
ful to the wise. The discussion of great
truths has prepared a body of laws for the
National Assembly: the diffusion of political
knowledge has almost prepared a people to
receive them ; and good men are at length
permitted to indulge the hope, that the mise
ries of the human race are about to be alle
viated. That hope may be illusive, for the
grounds of its enemies are strong, — the folly
and villany of men : yet they who entertain
it will feel no shame in defeat; and no envy
of the triumphant prediction of their adver
saries : — " Mehercule malim cum Platone
errare." Whatever be the ultimate fate of
the French Revolutionists, the friends of
freedom must ever consider them as tho
authors of the greatest attempt thai has hi
therto been made in the cause of man. They
never can cease to rejoice, that in the long
catalogue of calamities and crimes which
blacken human annals, the year 1789 pre
sents one spot on which the eye of humanity
may with complacence dwell.
SECTION II.
Of the composition and character of the Na
tional Assembly.
EVENTS are rarely separated by the histo
rian from the character of those who are
conspicuous in conducting them. From this
alone they often receive the tinge which de
termines their moral colour. What is admired
as noble pride in Sully, would be execrated
as intolerable arrogance in Richelieu. But
the degree of this influence varies with the
importance of the events. In the ordinary
affairs of state it is great, because in fact
they are only of importance to posterity, as
they illustrate the characters of those who
have acted distinguished parts on the theatre
of the world. But in events which them
selves are of immense magnitude, the cha
racter of those who conduct them becomes
of far less relative importance. No igno
miny is at the present day reflected on the
Revolution of 1688 from the ingratitude of
Churchill, or the treachery of Sunderland.
The purity of Somers, and the profligacy of
Spencer, are equally lost in the splendour of
that great transaction, — in the sense of its
benefits, and the admiration of its justice.
No moral impression remains on our mind,
but that whatever voice speaks truth, what
ever hand establishes freedom, delivers the
oracles and dispenses the gifts of God.
If this be true of the deposition of James
II. it is far more so of the French Revolution.
Among many circumstances which distin
guished that event, as unexampled in history,
it was none of the least extraordinary, that
it might truly be said to have been a Revo
lution without leaders. It was the effect of
general causes operating on the people. It
was the revolt of a nation enlightened from
a common source. Hence it has derived its
peculiar character; and hence the merits of
the most conspicuous individuals have had
little influence on its progress. The charac
ter of the National Assembly is of secondary
importance indeed : but as Mr. Burke has
expended so much invective against that
body, a few strictures on his account of it
will not be improper.
The representation of the Third Estate
was, as he justly states, composed of law
yers, physicians, merchants, men of letters^
tradesmen and farmers. The choice was,
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
425
indeed, limited by necessity ; for except men
of these ranks and professions, the people
had no objects of election, the army and
the Church being engrossed by the Nobility.
"No vestige of the landed interest of the
country appeared in this representation," for
an obvious reason ; — because the Nobility of
France, like the Gentry of England, formed
almost exclusively the landed interest of the
kingdom. These professions then could only
furnish representatives for the Tiers Etat.
They form the majority of that middle rank
among whom almost all the sense and virtue
of society reside. Their pretended incapa
city for political affairs is an arrogant fiction
of statesmen which the history of revolutions
has ever belied. These emergencies have
never failed to create politicians. The subtle
counsellors of Philip II. were baffled by the
Burgomasters of Amsterdam and Leyden.
The oppression of England summoned into
existence a race of statesmen in her colonies.
The lawyers of Boston, and the planters of
Virginia, were transformed into ministers
and negotiators, who proved themselves in
ferior neither in wisdom as legislators, nor in
dexterity as politicians. These facts evince
that, the powers of mankind have been un
justly depreciated, — the difficulty of political
affairs artfully magnified; arid that there
exists a quantity of talent latent among men,
which ever rises to the level of the great oc
casions that call it forth.
But the predominance of the profession of
the law. — that professsion which teaches
men ••' to augur misgovernment at a distance,
and snuff the approach of tyranny in every
tainted breeze,"* — was the fatal source from
which, if w^e may believe Mr. Burke, have
arisen the calamities of France. The ma
jority of the Third Estate was indeed coin-
posed of lawyers. Their talents of public
speaking, and their professional habits of
examining questions analogous to those of
politics, rendered them the most probable
objects of popular choice, especially in a
despotic country, where political speculation
was no natural amusement for the leisure of
opulence. But it does not appear that the
majority of them consisted of the unlearned,
mechanical, members of the profession. t
From the list of the States-General, it would
seem that the majority were provincial advo
cates. — a name of very different import from
" country attorneys.'''* arid wrhose importance is
not to be estimated by purely English ideas.
All forensic talent and eminence is here
concentrated in the capital : but in France, the
institution of circuits did not exist; the pro
vinces were imperfectly united ; their laws
various; their judicatures distinct, and almost
independent. Twelve or thirteen Parliaments
formed as many circles of advocates, who
nearly emulated in learning and eloquence
the Parisian Bar. This dispersion of talent
* Mr. Burke's Speech on American Affairs,
1775.
t See an accurate list of them in the Supple
ment to the Journal de Paris, 31st of May. 1789.
54
was in some respect also the necessary effect
of the immensity of the kingdom. No liberal
man will in England bestow on the Irish and
Scottish Bar the epithet "provincial " with a
view of disparagement. The Parliaments
of many provinces in France, presented as
wide a field for talent as the Supreme Courts
of Ireland and Scotland. The Parliament of
Rennes, for example, dispensed justice to a
province which contained two million three
hundred thousand inhabitants* — a popula
tion equal to that of some respectable king
doms of Europe. The cities of Bordeaux,
Lyons, and Marseilles, surpass in wealth and
population Copenhagen, Stockholm, Peters
burg, arid Berlin. Such were" the theatres
on which the provincial advocates of France
pursued professional fame. A general Con
vention of the British empire would yield,
perhaps, as distinguished a place to Curran
and Erskine, and the other eminent and ac
complished barristers of Dublin and Edin-
burg, as to those of the capital : and on the
same principles have the Thourets and Cha-
peliers of Rouen, and Rennes. acquired as
great an ascendant in the National Assem
bly as the Targets and Camus's of the Pari
sian Bar.
The proof that this '•' faculty influence," as
Mr. Burke chooses to phrase it, was not in
juriously predominant, is to be found in the
decrees of the Assembly respecting the judi
cial order. It must on his system have been
their object to have established what he calls
"a litigious constitution." The contrary has
so notoriously been the case, — all their de
crees have so obviously tended to lessen the
importance of lawyers, by facilitating arbi
trations, by the adoption of juries, by dimin
ishing the expense and tediousness of suits,
by the destruction of an intricate and barba
rous jurisprudence, and by the simplicity in
troduced into all judicial proceedings, that
their system has been accused of a direct
tendency to extinguish the profession of the
law. It is a system which may be con
demned as'1 leading to visionary excess, but
which cannot be pretended to bear very
strong marks of the supposed ascendant of
"chicane."
To the lawyers, besides the parochial
clergy, whom Mr. Burke contemptuously
styles " Country Curates,';f were added, those
Noblemen whom he so severely stigmatizes
as deserters from their Order. Yet the depu
tation of the Nobility who first joined the
Commons, and to whom therefore that title
best belongs, was not composed of men
whom desperate fortunes and profligate am
bition prepared for civil confusion. In that
number were found the heads of the most
ancient and opulent families in France, —
the Rochefoucaults, the Richelieus. the Mont-
morencies, the Noailles. Among them was
* See a Report of the Population of France to
the National Assembly, by M. Biron de la Tour,
Engineer and Geographer to the King, 1790.
t It is hardly necessary to remark that cure
means rector.
426
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
M. Lally, who has received such liberal
praise from Mr. Burke. It will be difficult
to discover in one individual of that body any
interest adverse to the preservation of order,
and the security of rank and wealth.
Having thus followed Mr. Burke in a very
short sketch of the classes of men who com
pose the Assembly, let us proceed to con
sider his representation of the spirit and
general rules which have guided it, and
which, according to him, have presided over
all the events of the Revolution. " A cabal
of philosophic atheists had conspired the abo
lition of Christianity. A monied interest,
who had grown into opulence from the ca
lamities of F/ance, contemned by the No
bility for their origin, and obnoxious to the
people by their exactions, sought the alliance
of these philosophers; by whose influence
on public opinion they were to avenge them
selves on the Nobility, and conciliate the
people. The atheists were to be gratified
with the extirpation of religion, and the
stock-jobbers with the spoils of the Nobles
and the Church. The prominent features of
the Revolution bear evidence of this league
of impiety fend rapine. The degraded es
tablishment of the Church is preparatory to
the abolition of Christianity; and all the
financial operations are designed to fill the
coffers of the monied capitalists of Paris."
Such is the theory of Mr. Burke respecting
the spirit and character of the French Revo
lution. To separate the portion of truth that
gives plausibility to his statement from the
falsehood that invests it with all its horrors,
will however neither be a tedious nor a diffi
cult task.
The commercial or monied interest has
in all nations of Europe (taken as a body)
been less prejudiced, more liberal, and more
intelligent than the landed gentry. Their
riews are enlarged by a wider intercourse
with mankind ; and hence the important in
fluence of commerce in liberalizing the mo
dern world. We cannot wonder then that
this enlightened class ever prove the most
ardent in the cause of freedom, and the most
zealous for political reform. It is not won
derful that philosophy should find in them
more docile pupils, and liberty more active
friends, than in a haughty and prejudiced
aristocracy. The Revolution in 1638 pro
duced the same division in England. The
monied interest long formed the strength of
Whig2,'ism, while a majority of the landed
gentlemen Ions' continued zealous Tories. It
is not unworthy of remark, that the pam
phleteers of Toryism accused the Whigs of
the same hostility to religion of which Mr.
Burke now supposes the existence in France.
They predicted the destruction of the Church,
and even the downfall of Christianity itself
from the influx of heretics, infidels, and athe
ists, which the new Government of England
protected. Their pamphlets have perished
with the topic which gave them birth ; but
the talents and fame of Swift have preserved
his; which furnish abundant proof of this co
incidence in clamour between the enemies of
the English, and the detractors of the French
Revolution.
That the philosophers, the other party in
this unwonted alliance between affluence
and literature, in this new union of authors
and bankers, did prepare the Revolution by
their writings, it is the glory of its admirers
to avow.* What the speculative opinions
of these philosophers were on remote and
mysterious questions is here of no import
ance. It is not as atheists, or theists. but as
political reasoners, that they are to be con
sidered in a political revolution. All their
writings, on the subjects of metaphysics and
theology, are foreign to the question. If
Rousseau has had any influence in promoting
the Revolution, it is not by his Letters from
the Mountains, but by his Social Contract.
If Voltaire contributed to spread liberality
in France, it was not by his Philosophical
Dictionary, but by his Defences of Toleration.
The obloquy of their atheism (if it existed)
is personal : it does not belong to the Revolu
tion ; for that event could neither have been
promoted nor retarded by abstract discus
sions of theology. The supposition of their
conspiracy for the abolition of Christianity, is
one of the most extravagant chimeras that
ever entered the human imagination. Let
us grant their infidelity in the fullest extent :
still their philosophy must have taught them
that the passions, whether rational or irra
tional, from which religion arises, could be
eradicated by no human power from the
heart of man ; while their incredulity must
have made them indifferent as to what par
ticular mode of religion might prevail. These
philosophers were not the apostles of any
new revelation that was to supplant the faith
of Christ : they knew that the heart can on
this subject bear no void, and they had no
interest in substituting the Vedam. or the
Koran for the Gospel. They could have no
reasonable motives to promote any revolu
tion in the popular faith : their purpose was
accomplished when the priesthood was dis
armed. Whatever might be the freedom of
their private speculations, it was not against
religion, but against the Church, that their
political hostility was directed.
But, says Mr. Burke, the degraded pen
sionary establishment, and the elective con-
* Mr. Burke's remark on the English Free-
thinkers is unworthy of him. It more resembles
the rant by which priests inflame the languid bi
gotry of iheir fanatical adherents, than the calm,
ingenuous, and manly criticism of a philosopher
and a scholar. Had he made extensive inquiries
among his learned friends, he must have found
many who have read and admired Collins' incom
parable tract on Liberty and Necessity. Had he
looked abroad into the world, he would have found
many who still read the philosophical works of
Bolingbroke, not as philosophy, but as eloquent
and splendid declamation. What he means by
" their successors," I will not conjecture: I will
not suppose that, with Dr. Hurd, he regards David
Hume as " a puny dialectician from the north !" —
yet it is hard to understand him in any other
sense.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
427
stitution of the new clergy of France is suf
ficient evidence of the design. The clergy
are to be made contemptible, that the popu
lar reverence for religion may be destroyed,
and the way thus paved for its abolition. It
is amusing to examine the different aspects
which the same object presents to various
minds. Mr. Hume vindicates the policy of
an opulent establishment, as a bube which
purchases the useful inactivity of the priest
hood. They have no longer, he supposes,
any temptation to court a dangerous domi
nion over the minds of the people, because
they are independent of it. Had that philo
sopher been now alive, he must on the same
principle have remarked, that an elective
clergy and a scantily endowed Church, had
a far greater tendency to produce fanaticism
than irreligion. If the priests depend on the
people, they can only maintain their influ
ence by cultivating those passions in the
popular mind, which gave them an ascend
ant over it : to inflame these passions is their
obvious ambition. Priests would be in a
nation of sceptics contemptible, — in a nation
of fanatics omnipotent. It has not therefore
been more uniformly the habit of a clergy
that depends on a court, to practise servility,
than it would evidently be the interest of a
clergy that depends on the people to culti
vate religious enthusiasm. Scanty endow
ments too would still more dispose them to
seek a consolation for the absence of worldly
enjoyments, in the exercise of a flattering
authority over the minds of men. Such
would have been the view of a philosopher
who was indifferent to Christianity, on the
new constitution of the Gallican Church.
He never would have dreamt of rendering
Religion unpopular by devoting her ministers
to activity, — contemptible by compelling
ihem to purity, — or unamiable by divesting
her of invidious splendour. He would have
seen in these changes the seeds, of enthu
siasm and not of laxity. But he would have
been consoled by the reflection, that the dis
solution of the Church as a corporation had
broken the strength of the priesthood ; that
religious liberty without limit would disarm
the animosity of sects; and that the diffu
sion of knowledge would restrain the extra
vagances of fanaticism.
I am here only considering the establish
ment of the Gallican Church as an evidence
of the supposed plan for abolishing Christi
anity : I am not discussing its intrinsic merits.
I therefore personate a philosophic infidel,
who, it would appear, must have discerned
the tendency of this plan to be directly the
reverse of that conceived by Mr. Burke.*
* The theory of Mr. Burke on the subject of re
ligious establishments, I am utterly at a loss to
comprehend. He will not adopt the impious rea
soning of Mr. Hume, nor does he suppose with
Warburton any "alliance between Church and
State ;" for he seems to conceive them to be origi
nally the same. When he or his admirers trans
late his statements (pp. 145, 146,) into a series of
propositions expressed in precise and unadorned
English, they may become the proper objects of
It is in truth rather a fanatical than an irre
ligious spirit which dictates the organization
of the Church of France. A Jansenist party
had been formed in the old Parliaments
through their long hostilities to the Jesuits
and the See of Rome ; members of which
party have in the National Assembly, by the
support of the inferior Clergy, acquired the
ascendant in ecclesiastical affairs. Of this
number is M. Camus. The new constitu
tion of the Church accords exactly with their
dogmas.* The clergy are, according to their
principles, to notify to the Bishop of Rome
their union in doctrine, but to recognise no
subordination in discipline. The spirit of a
dormant sect thus revived in a new shape at
so critical a period, — the unintelligible sub
tleties of the Bishop of Ypres thus influ
encing the institutions of the eighteenth cen
tury, might present an ample field of reflec
tion to an enlightened observer of human
affairs : but it is sufficient for our purpose to
observe the fact, and to remark the error of
attributing to the hostile designs of atheism
what in so great a degree has arisen from,
the ardour of religious zeal.
The establishment of the Church has not
furnished any evidence of that to which Mr.
Burke has attributed so much of the system,
of the National Assembly. Let us examine
whether a short review of their financial
operations will supply the defect. f
To the gloomy statement of French finance
offered by M. de Calonne, let us oppose the
report of M. de la Rochefoucault, from the
Committee of Finance, on the 9th of Decem
ber, 1790, which from premises that appear
indisputable, infers a considerable surplus
revenue in the present year. The purity of
that distinguished person has hitherto been
arraigned by no party. That understanding
must be of a singular construction which
could hesitate between the statements of the
Due de la Rochefoucault and M. de Calonne.
But without using this argumentum ad vere-
cundiam,) we remark, that there are radical
faults, which vitiate the whole calculations
of the latter, and the consequent reasonings
of Mr. Burke. They are taken from a year
of languishing and disturbed industry, and
absurdly applied to the future revenue of
argument and discussion. In their present state
they irresistibly remind one of the observations
of Lord Bacon : — " Pugnax enim philosophic
genus et sophisticum illaqueat intellectuam ; at
illud alterum phantasticum, et tumidum, et quasi
poeticum, magis blanditur intellectui. Inest enim
homini quoedam intellects ambitio non minor
quam voluntatis, praesertim in ingeniis altis et ele-
vaiis." — Novum Organum, sect. xlv.
* See the Speech of M. Sieyes on Religious
Liberty, where he reproaches the Ecclesiastical
Committee with abusing the Revolution for the
purpose of reviving the seminary of Port Royal.
See also M. Condorcet, Sur 1'Instruction Publique.
t It may be remarked, that on the subject of
finance I have declined all details. They were not
necessary to my purpose, which was to consider
the Assembly's arrangements of revenue, more
with a view to their supposed political profligacy,
than to their financial talents.
428
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
peaceful and flourishing periods; — from a
year in which much of the old revenue of
the state had been destroyed, and during
which the Assembly had scarcely com
menced its new scheme of taxation. It is
an error to assert that it was the Assembly
that destroyed the former oppressive taxes,
which formed so important a source of reve
nue : these taxes perished in the expiring
struggle of the ancient government. No
authority remaining in France could have
maintained them. Calculations cannot fail
of being most grossly illusive, which are
formed from a period when many taxes had
failed before they could be replaced by new
impost, and when productive industry itself,
the source of all revenue, was struck with a
momentary palsy.* Mr. Burke discussed
the financial merit of the Assembly before
it had begun its system of taxation. It is
still premature to examine its general scheme
of revenue, or to establish general maxims
on the survey of a period which may be
considered as an interregnum of finance.
The only financial operation which may be
regarded as complete is their emission of
assignats — the paper representative of the
national property ; which, while it facilitated
the sale of that property, should supply the
absence of specie in ordinary circulation. On
this, as well as most other topics, the predic
tions of their enemies have been completely
falsified. They predicted that no purchasers
would be found hardy enough to trust their
property on the tenure of a new and insecure
establishment : but the national property has
in all parts been bought with the greatest
avidity. They predicted that the estimate
of its value would prove exaggerated : but it
has sold uniformly for double and treble that
estimate. They predicted that the deprecia
tion of the assignats would in effect heighten
the price of the necessaries of life, and fall with
the most cruel severity on the most indigent
class of mankind : the event has however
been, that the assignats, supported in their
credit by the rapid sale of the property which
they represented, have kept almost at par;
that the price of the necessaries of life has
lowered ; and that the sufferings of the indi
gent have been considerably alleviated.
Many millions of assignats. already com
mitted to the flames, form the most unan
swerable reply to the objections urged against
them.f Many purchasers, not availing them
selves of that indulgence for gradual payment,
which in so immense a sale was unavoidable,
have paid the whole price in advance. This
has been peculiarly the case in the northern
* Mr. Burke exults in the deficiency confessed
by M. Vernet to amount in August, 1790, to eight
millions sterling. He follows it with an invective
against the National Assembly, which one simple
reflection would have repressed. The suppression
of the gabelle alone accounted for almost half of
that deficiency! Its produce was estimated at
sixty millions of livres, or about two millions and
a half sterling.
t At this moment nearly one-third.
provinces, where opulent farmers have been
the chief purchasers ; — a happy circumstance,
if it only tended to multiply that most useful
and respectable class of men, who are at
once proprietors and cultivators of the ground.
The evils of this emission in the circum
stances of France were transient; — the
beneficial effects permanent. Two great
objects \vfere to be obtained by it; — one of
policy, and another of finance. The first
was to attach a great body of proprietors to
the Revolution, on the stability of which
must depend the security of their fortunes.
This is what Mr. Burke terms, making them
accomplices in confiscation ; though it was
precisely the policy adopted by the English
Revolutionists, when they favoured the
growth of a national debt, to interest a body
of creditors in the permanence of their new
establishment. To render the attainment
of the other great object, — the liquidation of
the public debt, — improbable, M. de Calonne
has been reduced to so gross a misrepresenta
tion, as to slate the probable value of the
national property at only two milliards,
(about eighty-three millions sterling.) though
the best calculations have rated it at more
than double that sum. There is every proba
bility that this immense national estate will
spedily disburden France of the greatest part
of her national debt, remove the load of im
post under which her industry has groaned,
and open to her that career of prosperity for
which she was so evidently destined by the
bounty of Nature. With these great benefits,
with the acquittal of the public debt, and the
stability of freedom, this operation has, it
must be confessed, produced some evils. It
cannot be denied to have promoted, in some
degree, a spirit of gambling ; and it may give
an undue ascendant in the municipal bodies
to the agents of the paper circulation. But
these evils are fugitive: the moment that
witnesses the extinction of the assignats, by
the complete sale of the national lands, must
terminate them ; and that period, our past
experience renders probable is not very re
mote. There was one general view, which
to persons conversant with political economy,
would, from the commencement of the ope
ration have appeared decisive. Either the
assignats were to retain their value, or they
were not : if they retained their value, none
of the apprehended evils could arise : if
they were discredited, every fall in their
value was a new motive to their holders to
exchange them for national lands. No man
would retain depreciated paper who could
acquire solid property. If a great portion of
them should be thus employed, the value of
those left in circulation must immediately
rise, both because their number was dimin
ished, and their security become more obvi
ous. The failure, as a medium of circulation,
must have improved them as an instrument
of sale ; and their success as an instrument
of sale must in return have restored their
utility as a medium of circulation. This
action and re-action was inevitable, though
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
429
the slight depreciation of the assignats had
not made its effects very conspicuous in
France.
So determined is the opposition of Mr.
Burke to those measures of the Assembly
which regard the finances of the Church,
that even monastic institutions have in him
found an advocate. Let us discuss the argu
ments which he urges for the preservation
of these monuments of human, madness. In
support of an opinion so singular, he produces
one moral and one commercial reason :* — '• In
monastic institutions was found a great
power for the mechanism of politic benevo
lence ; to destroy any power growing wild
from the rank productive force of the human
mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral
worm, to the destruction of the apparently
active properties of bodies in the material."
In one word, the spirit and the institutions
of monachism were an instrument in the
hand of the legislator, which he ought to
have converted to some public use. I con
fess myself so far to share the blindness of
the National Assembly, that I cannot form
the most remote conjecture concerning the
various uses which " have suggested them
selves to a contriving mind." But without
expatiating on them, let us attempt to con
struct an answer to his argument on a broader
basis. The moral powers by which a legis
lator moves the mind of man are his pas
sions; and if the insane fanaticism which
first peopled the deserts of Upper Egypt
with anchorites, still existed in Europe, he
must attempt the direction of a spirit which
humanity forbids him to persecute, and wis
dom to neglect. But monastic institutions
have for ages survived the spirit which gave
them birth ; and it is not necessary for any
legislature to destroy " that power growing-
wild out of the rank productive force of the
human mind," from which monachism arose.
Being, like all other furious and unnatural
passions, in its nature transient, it languished
in the discredit of miracles and the absence
of persecution, and was gradually melted in
the sunshine of tranquillity and opulence so
long enjoyed by the Church. The soul which
actuated monachism had fled : the skeleton
only remained to deform society. The dens
of fanaticism, where they did not become
the recesses of sensuality, were converted
into the styes of indolence and apathy. The
moral power, therefore, no longer existed ;
for the spirit by which the legislator could
alone have moved these bodies was no more.
Nor had any new spirit succeeded which
might be an instrument in the hands of legis
lative skill. These short-lived phrenzies
leave behind them an inert product, in the
same manner as, when the fury and splen
dour of volcanic eruption is past for ages,
there still remains a mass of lava to encumber
the soil, and deform the aspect of the earth. t
* Burke, pp. 232— 241.
t It is urged by Mr. Burke, as a species of inci
dental defence of monachism, that there are many
modes of industry, from which benevolence would
The sale of the monastic estates is also
questioned by Mr. Burke on commercial
principles. The sum of his reasoning may
be thus expressed : — The surplus product of
the earth forms the income of the landed
proprietor; that surplus the expenditure of
some one must disperse; arid of what import
is it to society, whether it be circulated by
the expense of one landholder, or of a society
of monks? A very simple statement fur-
lishes an unanswerable reply to this defence.
The wealth of society is its stock of pro
ductive labour. There must, it is true, be
unproductive consumers, but, the fewer their
number, the greater (all things else being '
the same) must be the opulence of a state.
The possession of an estate by a society of
monks establishes, let us suppose forty, un
productive consumers : the possession of the
same estate by a single landholder only ne
cessarily produces one. It is therefore evi
dent that there is forty times the quantity of
labour subtracted from the public stock, in
the first case, than there is in the second.
If it be objected that the domestics of a land
holder are unproductive, let it be remarked
that a monastery has its servants ; and that
those of a lay proprietor are not profession
ally and perpetually unproductive, as many
of them become farmers and artisans, and
that, above all, many of them are married.
Nothing then can appear, on plain commer
cial views, more evident than the distinction
between lay and monkish landholders. It is
surely unnecessary to appeal to the motives
which have every where produced statutes
of mortmain, the neglect in which the land
of ecclesiastical corporations is suffered to
remain, and the infinite utility which arises
from changes of property in land. The face
of those countries where the transfers have
been most rapid, will sufficiently prove their
benefit. Purchasers seldom adventure with
out fortune ; and the novelty of their acqui
sition inspires them with the ardour of im
provement.
No doubt can be entertained that the
estates possessed by the Church will in
crease immensely in their value. It is vain
rather rescue men than from monastic quiet. This
must be allowed, in one view, to be true. But,
though the laws must permit the natural progress
which produces this species of labour, does it fol
low, that they ought to create monastic seclusion ?
Is the existence of one source of misery a reason
for opening another? Because noxious drudgery
must be tolerated, are we to sanction compulsory
inutility ? Instances of similar bad reasoning from
what society must suffer to what she ought to enact,
occur in other parts of Mr. Burke's "production.
We in England, he says, do not think ten thou
sand pounds a year worse in the hands of a bishop
than in those of a baronet or a 'squire. Excessive
inequality is in both cases an enormous evil. The
laws must permit property to grow as the course
of things effect it : but ought they to add a new
factitious evil to this natural and irremediable one ?
They cannot avoid inequality in the income of pro
perty, because they must permit property to dis
tribute itself: but they can remedy excessive ine
qualities in the income of office, because the income
and the office are their creatures.
430
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
to say that they will be transferred to Stock
jobbers. Situations, not names, are to b
considered in human affairs. He that ha
once tasted the indolence and authority of ;
landholder, will with difficulty return to th
comparative servility and drudgery of ;
monied capitalist. But should the usuriou
habits of the immediate purchaser be in
veterate, his son
imbibe other senti
ments from his birth. The heir of the stock
jobbing Alpheus may acquire as perfectl}
the habits of an active improver of his patri
monial estate, as the children of Cincirmatu
or Cato.
To aid the feebleness of these arguments
Mr. Burke has brought forward a panegyri
cal enumeration of the objects on which
monastic revenue is expended. On this
masterpiece of fascinating and magnificen
eloquence it is impossible to be too lavish
of praise. It would have been quoted by
Quintilian as a splended model of rhetorica1
common-place. But criticism is not our
object ; and all that the display of such
powers of oratory can on such a subjec
suggest, is embodied in a sentiment which
might perhaps have served as a character
istic motto to Mr. Burke's production :
Addidit invalidce robur Facundia causce,
SECTION III.
Popular excesses which attended the Revolu
tion.
THAT no great revolutions can be accom
plished without excesses and miseries at
which humanity revolts, is a truth which
cannot be denied. This unfortunately is
true in a peculiar manner of those Revolu
tions, which, like that of France, are strictly
popular. Where the people are led by a
faction, its leaders find no difficulty in the
re-establishment of that order, which must
be the object of their wishes, because it is
the sole security of their power. But when
a general movement of the popular mind
levels a despotism with the ground, it is far
less easy to restrain excess. There is more
resentment to satiate and less authority to
control. The passion which produced an
effect so tremendous, is too violent to sub
side in a moment into serenity and submis
sion.
The attempt to punish the spirit that ac
tuates a people, if it were just, would be
vain, and if it were possible, would be cruel.
No remedies are therefore left but the pro
gress of instruction, — the force of persuasion,
— the mild authority of opinion : and these
though infallible are of slow operation. In
the interval which elapses before a calm
succeeds the boisterous moments of a revo
lution, it is vain to expect that a people
inured to barbarism by their oppressors, and
which has ages of oppression to avenge, will
be punctiliously generous in their triumph,
nicely discriminative in their vengeance, or
cautiously mild in their mode of retaliation.
" They will break their chains on the heads
of their oppressors."*
Such was the state of France • and such
were the obvious causes of scenes which
the friends of freedom deplore as tarnishing
her triumphs. They feel these evils as men
of humanity : but they will not bestow this
name on that womanish sensibility, towards
which, even in the still intercourse of pri
vate life, love is not unmingled with indul
gence. The only humanity which, in the
great affairs of men, claims their respect, is
that manly and expanded sentiment, which
fixes its steady eye on the means of general
happiness. The sensibility which shrinks
at present evil, without extending its view
to future good, is not a virtue ; for it is not a
quality beneficial to mankind. It would ar
rest the arm of a surgeon in amputating a
gangrened limb, or the hand of a judge in
signing the sentence of a parricide. I do not
say (God forbid !) that a crime may be com
mitted for the attainment even of a good end :
such a doctrine would shake morals to thoir
centre. The man who would erect freedom
on the ruins of morals neither understands
nor loves either. But the case of the French
Revolutionists is totally different. Has any
moralist ever pretended, that we are to de
cline the pursuit of a good which our duty
prescribes to us, because we foresee that
Jome partial and incidental evil would arise
rom it? But the number of the French
eaders against whom such charges have
>een insinuated is so small, that supposing
what I do not believe) its truth, it only
iroves that some corrupt and ambitious men
vill mix with all great bodies. The ques-
ion with respect to the rest, is reducible to
his : — Whether they were to abstain from
stablishing a free government, because they
oresaw that it could not be effected without
onfusion and temporary distress, or to be
on soled for such calamities by the view of
hat happiness to which their labours were
o give ultimate permanence and diffusion ?
Minister is not conceived to be guilty of
ystematic immorality, because he balances
tie evils of the most 'just war with the ad-
antages of that national security which is
roduced by the reputation of spirit and
ower : — neither ought the patriot, who ba-
ancing the evils of transient anarchy against
le inestimable good of established liberty,
'nds the last preponderate in the scale.
Such, in fact, has ever been the reasoning
f the leaders in those insurrections which
ave preserved the remnant of freedom that
till exists among mankind. Holland, Eng-
1. and America, must have reasoned thus;
nd 'the different portions of liberty which
ley enjoy, have been purchased by the en-
urance of far greater calamities than have
en suffered by France. It is unnecessary
The eloquent expression of Mr. Curran in the
•ish House of Commons.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
431
to appeal to the wars which for almost a
century afflicted the Low Countries: but it
may not be so to remind England of the price
she paid for the establishment of the prin
ciples of the Revolution. The disputed suc
cession which arose from that event, pro
duced a destructive civil war in Ireland, two
rebellions in Scotland, and the consequent
slaughter arid banishment of thousands of
citizens, with the widest confiscation of their
properties; — not to mention the continental
connections and the foreign wars into which
it plunged us, and the necessity thus imposed
upon us of maintaining a standing army, and
accumulating an enormous public debt.*
The freedom of America was purchased
by calamities still more inevitable. The
authors of it must have foreseen them ; for
they were not contingent or remote, but
ready in a moment to burst on their heads.
Their case is most similar to that of France,
and best answers one of Mr. Burke's most
triumphant arguments. They enjoyed some
liberty, which their oppressors did not attack ;
and the object for which they resisted, was
conceded in the progress of the war: but
like France, after the concessions of her
King, they refused to acquiesce in an imper
fect liberty, when a more perfect one was
within their reach. They pursued what Mr.
Burke, — whatever were then his sentiments,
— on his present system, must reprobate as
a speculative and ideal good. They sought
their beloved independence through new
calamities, and the prolonged horrors of civil
war. Their resistance, from that moment,
li was against concession; and their blows
were aimed at a hand holding forth immu
nity and favours." Events have indeed jus
tified that noble resistance : America has
emerged from her struggle into tranquillity
and freedom, — into affluence and credit ; and
the authors of her Constitution have con
structed a great permanent experimental
answer to the sophisms and declamations of
the detractors of liberty.
But what proportion did the price she paid
for so great blessing bear to the transient
misfortunes which have afflicted France ?
The extravagance of the comparison shocks
every unprejudiced mind. No series of
events in history have probably been more
widely, malignantly, and systematically ex
aggerated than the French commotions. An
enraged, numerous, and opulent body of ex
iles, dispersed over Europe, have possessed
themselves of every venal press, and filled
the public ear with a perpetual buz of the
crimes and horrors that were acting in France.
Instead of entering on a minute scrutiny,
of which the importance would neither ex
piate the tediousness, nor reward the toil, let
us content ourselves with opposing one gene-
* Yet this was only the combat of reason and
freedom against one prejudice, — that of heredi
tary right ; whereas the French Revolution is,
as has been sublimely said by the Bishop of Au-
tun, " Le premier combat qui se soit jamais livre
entre tous les Principes et toutes les Erreurs ! "
ral fact to this host of falsehoods : — no com
mercial house of importance has failed in
France since the Revolution! How is this to
be reconciled with the tales that have been
irculated ? As well might the transfers of
the Royal Exchange be quietly executed in
the ferocious anarchy of Gondar, and the
peaceful opulence of Lombard-street flourish
amidst hordes of Galla and Agows.* Com
merce, which shrinks from the breath of civil
confusion, has resisted this tempest; and a
mighty Revolution has been accomplished
with less commercial derangement than
could arise from the bankruptcy of a second-
rate house in London or Amsterdam. The
manufacturers of Lyons, the merchants of
Bourdeaux and Marseilles, are silent amidst
the lamentations of the Abbe Maury, M.
de Calonne, and Mr. Burke. Happy is that
people whose commerce flourishes in ledg
ers, while it is bewailed in orations ; and
remains untouched in calculation, while it
expires in the pictures of eloquence. This
unquestionable fact is. on such a subject,
worth a thousand arguments, and to any
mind qualified to judge, must expose in their
true light those execrable fabrications, which
have sounded such a " senseless yell"
through Europe.
But let us admit for a moment their truth,
and take as a specimen of the evils of the
Revolution, the number of lives which have
been lost in its progress. That no possibility
of cavil may remain, let us surpass in an ex
aggerated estimate the utmost audacity of
falsehood : let us make a statement, from
which the most frontless hireling of M. de
Calonne would shrink. Let us for a moment
suppose, that in the course of the Revolution
twenty thousand lives have been lost. On
the comparison of even this loss with parallel
events in history, is there anything in it from
which a manly and enlightened humanity
will recoil ? Compare it with the expendi
ture of blood by which in ordinary wars so
many pernicious and ignoble objects are
fought. Compare it with the blood spilt by
England in the attempt to subjugate Ameri
ca : and if such be the guilt of the Revolu
tionists of France, for having, at the hazard
of this evil, sought the establishment of free
dom, what new name of obloquy shall be
applied to the Minister of England, who
with the certainty of a destruction so much
greater, attempted the establishment of ty
ranny ?
The illusion w'hich prevents the effects of
these comparisons, is not peculiar to Mr.
Burke. The massacres of war, and the mur
ders committed by the sword of justice, are
disguised by the solemnities which invest
them : but the wild justice of the people has
a naked and undisguised horror. Its slight
est motion awakens all our indignation ;
while murder and rapine, if arrayed in the
gorgeous disguise of acts of state; may with
impunity stalk abroad. We forget that the
* Abyssinian tribes.— ED.
432
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
evils of anarchy must be short-lived, while
those of despotism are fatally permanent.
Another illusion has, particularly in Eng
land, favoured the exaggeration of the exiles ]
— we judge of France by our own situation,
instead of comparing her conduct with that
of other nations in similar circumstances.
With us " the times may be moderate, and
therefore ought to be peaceable :"* but in
France the times were not moderate, and
could not be peaceable. Let us correct these
illusions of moral optics which make near
objects so disproportionately large. Let us
place the scene of the French Revolution in
a remote age, or in a distant nation, and then
let us calmly ask our own minds, whether
the most reasonable subject of wonder be
not its unexampled mildness, and the small
number of individuals crushed in the fall of
so vast a pile.
Such are the general reflections suggested
by the disorders of the French Revolution.
Of these, the first in point of time, as well
as of importance, was the Parisian insurrec
tion and the capture of the Bastile. The
mode in which that memorable event is
treated by Mr. Burke, is worthy of notice.
It occupies no conspicuous place in his work ;
it is only obscurely and contemptuously
hinted at as one of those examples of suc
cessful revolt, which have fostered a muti
nous spirit in the soldiery. •'• They have not
forgot the taking of the King's castles in
Paris and Marseilles. That they murdered
with impunity in both places the governors,
has not escaped their minds. "t Such is the
courtly circumlocution by which Mr. Burke
designates the Bastile — " the King's castle at
Paris /" such is the ignominious language in
which he speaks of the summary justice
executed on the titled ruffian who was its
governor; and such is the apparent art with
which he has thrown into the back-ground
invective and asperity, that, had they been
prominent, would have provoked the indig
nation of mankind ! " Je sais," says Mou-
nier, in the language of that frigid and scanty
approbation that is extorted from an enemy,
"qu'il est des circonstances qui legitiment
1'insurrection, et je mets dans ce nombre
celles qui ont cause le siege de la Bastile. "J
But the admiration of Europe and of
posterity, is not to be estimated by the
penurious applause of M. Mounier, nor re-
gressed by the insidious hostility of Mr.
urke. It will correspond to the splendour
of an insurrection, as much ennobled by hero
ism as it was justified by necessity, in
which the citizens of Paris, — the unwarlike
inhabitants of a voluptuous capital, — listen
ing to no voice but that of the danger which
menaced their representatives, their fami
lies, and their country, and animated, instead
of awed, by the host of disciplined merce
naries which invested them on every side,
attacked with a gallantry and success equally
* Junius.
t Expose, &c. p. 24.
t Burke, p. 307.
incredible, a fortress formidable from its
strength, and tremendous from its destina
tion, and changed the destiny of France.
To palliate or excuse such a revolt, would
be abject treachery to its principles. It was
a case in which revolt was the dictate of
virtue, and the path of duty; and in which
submission would have been the most das
tardly baseness, and the foulest crime. It
was an action not to be excused, but ap
plauded, — not to be pardoned, but admired.
I shall not therefore descend to vindicate
acts of heroism, which history will teach the
remotest posterity to revere, and of which
the recital is destined to kindle in unborn
millions the holy enthusiasm of freedom.
Commotions of another description follow
ed, partly arising from the general causes
before stated, and partly from others of more
limited and local operation. The peasantry
of the provinces, buried for so many ages in
the darkness of servitude, saw but indis
tinctly and confusedly, in the first dawn of
liberty, the boundaries of their duties and
their rights. It was no wonder that they
should little understand that freedom which
so long had been remote from their views.
The name conveyed to their ear a right to
reject all restraint, to gratify every resent
ment, and to attack all property. Ruffians,
mingling with the deluded peasants, in hopes
of booty, inflamed their ignorance and pre
judices, by forged authorities from the King
and the Assembly for their licentiousness.
Many country houses were burnt; and some
obnoxious persons were assassinated : but
one may without excessive scepticism doubt,
whether they had been the mildest masters
whose chateaux had undergone that fate ;
and the peasants had to avenge those silent
grinding oppressions which formed almost
the only intercourse of the rich with the in
digent, and which, though less flagrant than
those of Government, were perhaps produc
tive of more intolerable and diffused misery.
But whatever was the demerit of these
excesses, they can by no process of reason
ing be made imputable to the National As
sembly, or the leaders of the Revolution. In
what manner were they to repress them?
If they exerted against them their own au
thority writh rigour, they must have provoked
a civil war : if they invigorated the police and
tribunals of the deposed government, — be
sides incurring the hazard of the same ca
lamity, — they put arms into the hands of
their enemies. Placed in this dilemma,
they were compelled to expect a slow reme
dy from the returning serenity of the public
mind, and from the progress of the new go
vernment towards consistence and vigour.*
* If this statement be candid and exact, what
shall we think of the language of Mr. Burke, when
he speaks of the Assembly as " authorising trea
sons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters,
and burnings, throughout all their harassed land."
(p. 58.) In another place (p. 200,) he connects the
legislative extinction of the Order of Nobles with
the popular excesses committed against individual
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUT
That the conduct of the populace of Paris
towards them should not have been the most
decorous and circumspect. — that it should
have been frequently irregular and tumultu
ous, was, in the nature of things inevitable.
But the horrible picture which Mr. Burke has
drawn of that " stern necessity" under which
this "captive" Assembly votes, is neither
justified by this concession, nor by the state
of facts. It is the overcharged colouring of
a fervid imagination. Those to whom he
alludes as driven away by assassins, — M. M.
Lally and Mouriier, — might, surely, have
remained with perfect safety in an Assembly
in which such furious invectives are daily
bellowed forth with impunity against the
popular leaders. No man will deny, that
that member of the minority enjoyed liberty
of speech in its utmost plenitude, who called
M. Mirabeau " le phis vil de tons les assassins."
i:The terrors of the lamp-post and bayonet"
have hitherto been visionary. Popular fury
has hitherto spared the most furious declaim-
ers of Aristocracy ; and the only '• decree," so
far as I can discern, which has even been
pretended to have been materially influenced
by the populace, is that respecting the pre
rogatives of war and peace. That tumult
has frequently derogated from the dignity
which ought to distinguish the deliberations
of a legislative assembly, is not to be denied.
But that their debates have been tumultu
ous, is of little importance, if their decisions
have been independent. Even in this ques
tion of war and peace, " the highest bidder
at the auction of popularity"* did not suc
ceed. The scheme of M. Mirabeau, with
few amendments, prevailed, while the more
'• splendidly popular" propositions, which
vested in the legislature alone the preroga
tive of war and peace, were rejected.
We are now conducted by the course of
these strictures to the excesses committed at
Versailles on the 5th and 6th of October,
1789. After the most careful perusal of the
voluminous evidence before the Chatelet, of
the controversial pamphlets of M. M. (1; Or
leans and Mounier, and of the official report
of M. Chabroud to the Assembly, the details
of the affair seem to me so much involved
in obscurity and contradiction, that they
afford little on which a candid mind can with
confidence pronounce. They afford, indeed,
to frivolous and puerile adversaries the means
of convicting Mr. Burke of some minute
errors. M. Miomandre, the sentinel at the
Queen's gate, it is true, survives; but it is
no less true, that he was left for dead by his
assassins. On the comparison of evidence
it seems probable, that the Queen's chamber
was not broken into, — " that the asylum of
beauty and Majesty was not profaned."!
Noblemen, to load the Assembly with the accu
mulated obloquy ; — a mode of proceeding more
remarkable for controversial dexterity than for
candour.
* Burke, p. 353.
t The expression of M. Chabroud. Five wit
nesses assert that the ruffians did not break into
55
433
But these slight corrections palliate little the
atrocity, and alter not in the least t
ral complexion, of these flagitious scenes^
The most important question which
subject presents is, whether the Parisian
populace were the instruments of conspira
tors, or whether their fatal march to Ver
sailles was a spontaneous movement, pro
duced by real or chimerical apprehensions
of plots against their freedom. I confess
that I incline to the latter opinion. Natural
causes seem to me adequate to account for
the movement. A scarcity of provision is
not denied to have existed in Paris. The
dinner of the body-guards might surely have
provoked the people of a more tranquil city.
The maledictions poured forth against the
National Assembly, the insults offered to
the patriotic cockade, the obnoxious ardour
of loyalty displayed on that occasion, might
have awakened even the jealousy of a people
whose ardour had been sated by the long
enjoyment, and whose alarms had been
quieted by the secure possession, of liberty.
The escape of the King would be the in
fallible signal of civil war: the exposed
situation of the Royal residence was there
fore a source of perpetual alarm. These
causes, operating on that credulous jealousy
which is the malady of the public mind in
times of civil confusion, seeing hostility and
conspiracy on every side, would seem suffi
cient ones. The apprehensions of the people
in such a period torture the most innocent
and frivolous accidents into proofs of sangui
nary plots : — witness the war of conspiracies
carried on by the contending factions in the
reign of Charles the Second. The partici
pation of Queen Mary in Babington's plot
against Elizabeth, is still the subject of con
troversy. We, at the present day, dispute
about the nature of the connection which
subsisted between Charles the First and the
Catholic insurgents of Ireland. It has occu
pied the labour of a century to separate
truth from falsehood in the Rye-house Plot,
— the views of the leaders from the schemes
of the inferior conspirators. — and to discover
that Russell and Sydney had, indeed, con
spired a revolt, but that the underlings
alone had plotted the assassination of the
King.
It may indeed be sa d, that ambitious
leaders availed themselves of the inflamed
state of public feeling, — that by false ru
mours, and exaggerated truths, they stimu
lated the revenge, and increased the fears
of the populace, — that their emissaries, mix
ing with the mob, and concealed by its con
fusion, were to execute their flagitious pur
poses, and fanatics, as usual, were the dupes
of hypocrites. Such are the accusations
which have been made against M. M. d'Or-
the Queen's chamber. Two give the account fol
lowed by Mr. Burke, and to give this preponde
rance its due force, let it be recollected, that the
whole proceedings before the Chatelet were ex
parte. See Procedure Criminellefaitau Chatelet
de Paris, &c., 1790.
2M
434
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
leans and Mirabeau. The defence of profli
gate ambition is not imposed on the admirers
of the French Revolution; and to become
the advocate of individuals were to forget
the dignity of a discussion that regards the
rights and interests of an emancipated na
tion. Of their guilt, however. I will be bold
to say no evidence was collected, by the
malignant activity of an avowedly hostile
tribunal, which, for a moment, would have
suspended their acquittal by an English
jury. It will be no mean testimony to the
innocence of M. Mirabeau, that an oppo
nent, not the mildest in his enmity, nor the
most candid in his judgment, confessed, that
he saw no serious ground of accusation
against him.*
The project is attributed to them, of in
timidating the King into a flight, that there
might be a pretext for elevating the Duke
of Orleans to the office of Regent. But the
King could have had no rational hopes of
escaping ;t for he must have traversed two
hundred miles of a country guarded by a
people in arms, before he could reach the
nearest frontier of the kingdom. The object
was too absurd to be pursued by conspira
tors, to whom talent and sagacity have not
been denied by their enemies. That the
popular leaders in France did, indeed, desire
to fix the Royal residence at Paris, it is im
possible to doubt : the name, the person, and
the authority of the King, wrould have been
most formidable weapons in the hands of
their adversaries. The peace of their coun
try, — the stability of their freedom, called
on them to use every measure that could
prevent their enemies from getting posses
sion of that "Royal Figure." The name of
the King would have sanctioned foreign
powers in supporting the aristocracy. Their
interposition, which now would be hostility
against the King and kingdom, would then
have been only regarded as aid against re
bellion. Against all these dreadful conse
quences there seemed only one remedy, —
the residence of the King at Paris. Whether
that residence is to be called a "captivity."
or any other harsh name, I will not hesitate
to affirm, that the Parliament of England
would have merited the gratitude of their
country, and of posterity, by a similar pre
vention of the escape of Charles I. from
London. Fortunate would it have been for
England if the person of James II. had been
retained while his authority was limited.
She would then have been circumstanced as
France is now. The march to Versailles
seems to have been the spontaneous move
ment of an alarmed populace. Their views,
and the suggestions of their leaders, were
probably bounded by procuring the King to
change his residence to Paris ; but the colli
sion of armed multitudes terminated in un
foreseen excesses and execrable crimes.
* Discours de M. 1'Abbe Maury dans 1'As-
semblee Nationale, 1 Octobre, 1790.
t The circumstances of his late attempt [the
flight to Varennes— ED.] sanction this reasoning.
In the eye of Mr. Burke, however, these
crimes and excesses assume an aspect far
more important than can be communicated
to them by their own insulated guilt. They
form, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolu
tion, — a far more important one than any
mere change of government. — in which the
sentiments and opinions that have formed
the manners of the European nations are to
perish. "The age of chivalry is gone, and
the .glory of Europe extinguished ibr ever."
He follows this exclamation by an eloquent
eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy pre
dictions of the future state of Europe, when
the nation that has been so long accustomed
to give her the tone in arts and manners is
thus debased and corrupted. A caviller
might remark that ages, much more near
the meridian fervour of chivalry than ours,
have witnessed a treatment of queens as
little gallant and generous as that of the
Parisian mob. He might remind Mr. Burke,
that in the age and country of Sir Philip
Sidney, a Queen of France, whom no blind
ness to accomplishment. — no malignity of
detraction, can reduce to' the level of Marie
Antoinette, was, by "a nation of men of
honour and cavaliers," permitted to languish
in captivity and expire on a scaffold ; and he
might add, that the manners of a country
are more surely indicated by the systematic
cruelty of a sovereign than by the licentious
frenzy of a mob. He might remark, that
the mild system of modern manners which
survived the massacres with which fanati
cism had for a century desolated, and almost
barbarised Europe, might, perhaps, resist the
shock of one day's excesses committed by a
delirious populace. He might thus, perhaps,
oppose specious and popular topics to the
declamation of Mr. Burke.
But the subject itself is, to an enlarged
thinker, fertile in reflections of a different
nature. That system of manners which
arose among the Gothic nations of Europe,
and of which chivalry was more properly
the effusion than the source, is without doubt
one of the most peculiar and interesting ap
pearances in human affairs. The moral
causes which formed its character have not,
perhaps, been hitherto investigated with the
happiest success: but, — to confine ourselves
to the subject before us, — chivalry was cer
tainly one of the most prominent of its fea
tures and most remarkable of its effects.
Candour must confess, that this singular in
stitution was not admirable only as the cor
rector of the ferocious ages in which it flour
ished; but that in contributing to polish and
soften manners it paved the way for the dif
fusion of knowledge and the extension of
commerce, which afterwards, in some mea
sure, supplanted it. Society is inevitably
progressive. Commerce has overthrown the
" feudal and chivalrous system" under whose
shade it first grew ; while learning has sub
verted the superstition whose opulent en
dowments had first fostered it. Peculiar
circumstances connected with the manners
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
435
of chivalry favoured this admission of com
merce and this growth of knowledge ; while
the sentiments peculiar to it, already enfee
bled in the progress from ferocity and turbu
lence, were almost obliterated by tranquillity
and refinement. Commerce and diffused
knowledge have, in fact, so completely as
sumed the ascendant in polished nations, that
it will be difficult to discover any relics of
Gothic manners, but in a fantastic exterior,
which has survived the generous illusions
through which these manners once seemed
splendid and seductive. Their direct influ
ence has long ceased in Europe ; but their
indirect influence, through the medium of
those causes which would not perhaps have
existed but for the mildness which chivalry
created in the midst of a barbarous age, still
operates with increasing vigour. The man
ners of the middle age were, in the most
singular sense, compulsory: enterprising be
nevolence was produced by general fierce
ness, — gallant courtesy by ferocious rude
ness; and artificial gentleness resisted the
torrent of natural barbarism. But a less in
congruous system has succeeded, in wrhich
commerce, which unites men's interests, and
knowledge, which excludes those prejudices
that tend to embroil them, present a broader
basis for the stability of civilized and benefi
cent manners.
Mr. Burke, indeed, forbodes the most fatal
consequences to literature from events, which
he supposes to have given a mortal blow to
the spirit of chivalry. I have ever been pro
tected from such apprehensions by my belief
in a very simple truth, — " that diffused know
ledge immortalizes itself." A literature
which is confined to a few, may be destroyed
by the massacre of scholars and the confla
gration of libraries : but the diffused know
ledge of the present day could only be anni
hilated by the extirpation of the civilized
part of mankind.
Far from being hostile to letters, the French
Revolution has contributed to serve their
cause in a manner hitherto unexampled.
The political and literary progress of nations
has hitherto been simultaneous; the period
of their eminence in arts has also been the
era of their historical fame ; and no example
occurs in which their great political splendour
has been subsequent to the Augustan age of
a people. But in France, which is destined
to refute every abject and arrogant doctrine
that would limit the human powers, the
ardour of a youthful literature has been in
fused into a nation tending to decline; and
new arts are called forth when all seemed to
have passed their zenith. She enjoyed one
Augustan age, fostered by the favour of des
potism : she seems about to witness another,
created by the energy of freedom.
In the opinion of Mr. Burke, however, she
is advancing by rapid strides to ignorance
and barbarism.* " Already," he informs us,
"there appears a poverty of conception, a
* Burke, p. 118.
coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceed
ings of the Assembly, and of all their in
structors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their
science is presumptuous ignorance. Their
humanity is savage and brutal." To ani
madvert on this modest and courteous pic
ture belongs not to the present subject : and
impressions cannot be disputed, more espe
cially when their grounds are not assigned.
All that is left to us to do, is to declare op
posite impressions with a confidence autho
rised by his example. The proceedings of
the National Assembly of Fiance appear to
me to contain models of more splendid elo
quence, and examples of more profound po
litical research, than have been exhibited by
any public body in modern times. I cannot
therefore augur, from these proceedings, the
downfall of philosophy, or the extinction of
eloquence.
Thus various are the aspects which the
French Revolution, not only in its influence
on literature, but in its general tenor and
spirit, presents to minds occupied by various
opinions. To the eye of !Mr. Burke, it ex
hibits nothing but a scene of horror : in his
mind it inspires no emotion but abhorrence
of its leaders, commiseration for their victims,
and alarms at the influence of an event which
menaces the subversion of the policy, the
arts, and the manners of the civilized world.
Minds who view it through another medium
are filled by it with every sentiment of admi
ration and triumph, — of admiration due to
splendid exertions of virtue, and of triumph
inspired by widening prospects of happiness.
Nor ought it to be denied by the candour
of philosophy, that events so great are never
so unmixed as not to present a double aspect
to the acuteness and exaggeration of con
tending parties. The same ardour of pas
sion which produces patriotic and legislative
heroism becomes the source of ferocious re
taliation, of visionary novelties, and of pre
cipitate change. The attempt were hopeless
to increase the fertility, without favouring the
rank luxuriance of the soil. He that on such
occasions expects unmixed good, ought to
recollect, that the economy of nature has in-
variabl}' determined the equal influence of
high passions in giving birth to virtues and
to crimes. The soil of Attica was observed
to produce at once the most delicious fruits
and the most virulent poisons. It was thus
with the human mind : and to the frequency
of convulsions in the ancient commonwealths,
they owe those examples of sanguinary tu
mult and virtuous heroism, which distinguish
their history from the monotonous tranquillity
of modern states. The passions of a nation
cannot be kindled to the degree which renders
it capable of great achievements, without in
volving the commission of violence and crime.
The reforming ardour of a senate cannot be
inflamed sufficiently to combat and overcome
abuses, without hazarding the evils which
arise from legislative temerity. Such are the
immutable laws, which are more properly to
be regarded as libels on our nature than as
436
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
charges against the French Revolution. The
impartial voice of History ought, doubtless, to
record the blemishes as well as the glories of
that great event : and to contrast the delinea
tion of it which might have been given by the
specious and temperate Toryism of Mr. Hume,
with that which we have received from the
repulsive and fanatical invectives of Mr.
Burke, might still be amusing and instructive.
Both these great men would be averse to the
Revolution j but it would not be difficult to dis
tinguish between the undisguised fury of an
eloquent advocate, and the well-dissembled
partiality of a philosophical judge. The pas
sion of the latter would only feel the ex
cesses which have dishonoured the Revolu
tion : but the philosophy of the former would
instruct him, that our sentiments, raised by
such events so much above their ordinary
level, become the source of guilt and heroism
unknown before, — of sublime virtues and
splendid crimes.
SECTION IV.
Neiu Constitution of France .*
A DISSERTATION approaching to complete
ness on the new Constitution of France,
would, in fact, be a vast system of political
science. It would include a development
of the principles that regulate every portion
of government. So immense an attempt is
little suited to our present limits. But some
remarks on the prominent features of the
French system are exacted by the nature of
our vindication. They will consist chiefly
of a defence of their grand theoretic princi
ple, and their most important practical insti
tution.
The principle which has actuated the le
gislators of France has been, " that the ob
ject of all legitimate government is the as
sertion and protection of the natural rights
of man." They cannot indeed be absolved
from some deviationst from it ; — few, indeed,
compared with those of any other body of
whom history has preserved any record ; but
too many for their own glory, and for the
happiness of the human race. This princi
ple, however, is the basis of their edifice,
and if it be false, the structure must fall to
the ground. Against this principle, there
fore, Mr. Burke has, with great judgment,
directed his attack. Appeals to natural right
are, according to him, inconsistent and pre
posterous. A complete abdication and sur
render of all natural right is made by man
* I cannot help exhorting those who desire to
have accurate notions on the subject of this sec
tion, to peruse and study the delineation of the
French constitution which with a correctness so
admirable has been given by Mr. Christie. — (Let
ters on the Revolution in France, London, 1791.
ED.)
t I particularly allude to their colonial policy ;
but I think it candid to say, that I see in their full
force the difficulties of that embarrassing business.
n entering into society; and the only rights
tvhich he retains are created by the compact
which holds together the society of which
he is member. This doctrine he thus ex
plicitly asserts : — "The moment," says he,
" you abate any thing from the full rights of
men each to govern himself, and suffer any
artificial positive limitation on those rights,
from that moment the whole organization of
society becomes a consideration of conve
nience." "How can any man claim under
the conventions of civil society rights which
Jo not so much as suppose its existence, —
which are absolutely repugnant to it'?"* To
examine this doctrine, therefore, is of funda
mental importance. To this effect it is not
necessary to enter into any elaborate re
search into the metaphysical principles of
politics and ethics. A full discussion of the
subject would indeed demand such an in
vestigation :t — the origin of natural rights
must have been illustrated, and even their
existence proved against some theorists.
But such an inquiry would have been incon
sistent with the nature of a publication, the
object of which is to enforce conviction on
the people. We are besides absolved from
the necessity of it in a controversy with Mr.
Burke, who himself recognises, in the most
ample form, the existence of those natural
rights.
'Gf acting their existence, the discussion is
short. The only criterion by which we can
estimate the portion of natural right surren
dered by man on entering into society is the
object of the surrender. If more is claimed
than that object exacts, what was an object
becomes a pretext. Now the object for which
a man resigns any portion of his natural sove
reignty over his own actions is, that he may
be '"protected from the abuse of the same do
minion in other men. Nothing, therefore,
can be more fallacious than to pretend, that
we are precluded in the social state from
any appeal to natural right. t It remains in
* Burke, pp. 88 — 89. To the same purpose is
his whole reasoning from p. 86, to p. 92.
t It might, perhaps, not be difficult to prove,
that far from a surrender, there is not even a
diminution of the natural rights of men by their
entrance into society. The existence of some
union, with greater or less permanence and per
fection of public force for public protection (the
essence of government), might be demonstrated
to be coeval and co-extensive with man. All
theories, therefore, which suppose the actual ex
istence of any state antecedent to the social, might
be convicted of futility and falsehood.
t " Trouver une forme d'association qui defende
et protege de toute la force commune la personne
et les biens de chaque associe, et par laqueHe
chacun, s'unissant a tous, n'obcisse pourtant qu'a
lui-meme et reste aussi libre qu'auparavant ?"
—Rousseau, Contrat Social, livre i. chap. vi. I
am not intimidated from quoting Rousseau by the
derision of Mr. Burke. Mr. Hume's report of
his literary secrets seems most unfaithful. The
sensibility, the pride, the fervour of his character,
are pledges of his sincerity; and had he even
commenced with the fabrication of paradoxes, for
attracting attention, it would betray great igno
rance of human nature to suppose, that in the ar-
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
437
its full integrity and vigour, if we except
that portion of it which men have thus mu
tually agreed to sacrifice. Whatever, under
pretence of that surrender, is assumed be
yond what that object rigorously prescribes,
is an usurpation supported by sophistry, — a
despotism varnished by illusion. It follows
that the surrender of right must be equal in
all the members of society, as the object is to
all precisely the same. In effect, society, in
stead of destroying, realizes and substantiates
equality. In a state of nature, the equality
of right is an impotarit theory, which inequa
lities of strength and skill every moment
violate. As neither natural equality nor the
equality of the sum of right surrendered by
every individual is contested, it cannot be
denied that the remnant spared by the so
cial compact must be equal also. Civil in
equalities, or, more correctly, civil distinc
tion, must exist in the social body, because
it must possess organs destined for different
functions: but political inequality is equally
inconsistent with the principles of natural
right and the object of civil institution.*
Men, therefore, only retain a right to a
share in their own government, because the
exercise of the right by one man is not in
consistent with its possession by another.
This doctrine is not more abstractedly evi
dent than it is practically important. The
slightest deviation from it legitimatizes every
tyranny. If the only criterion of govern
ments be the supposed convention which
forms them, all are equally legitimate: for
the onjy interpreter of the convention is the
usage of the government, which is thus pre
posterously made its own standard. Gover
nors must, indeed, abide by the maxims of
the constitution they administer ; but what
that constitution is must be on this system
immaterial. The King of France is riot per
mitted to put out the eyes of the Princes of
the Blood; nor the Sophi of Persia to have
recourse to lettres de cachet. They must ty
rannize by precedent, and oppress in reve
rent imitation of the models consecrated by
dour of contest, and the glory of success, he must
not have become the dupe of his own illusions,
and a convert to his own imposture. It is, indeed,
not improbable, that when rallied on the eccen
tricity of his paradoxes, he might, in a moment of
gay effusion, have spoken of them as a sport of
fancy, and an experiment on the credulity of man
kind. The Scottish philosopher, inaccessible to
enthusiasm, and little susceptible of those depres
sions and elevations — those agonies and raptures.
so familiar to the warm and wayward heart of
Rousseau, neither knew the sport into which he
could be relaxed by gaiety, nor the ardour into
which he could be exalted by passion. Mr. Burke,
whose temperament is so different, might have
experimentally known such variation, and learnt
better to discriminate between effusion and deli
berate opinion.
* " But as to the share of power, authority, and
direction which each individual ought to have in
ihe management of a state, that I must deny to be
among the direct original rights of man in civil so
ciety." This is evidently denying the existence
of what has been called political, in contradistinc
tion to civil liberty.
the usage of despotic predecessors. But if
they adhere to these, there is no remedy for
the oppressed, since an appeal to the rights
of nature were treason against the principles
of the social union. If, indeed, any offence
against precedent, in the kind or degree of
oppression, be committed, this theory may
(though most inconsistently) permit resist
ance. But as long as the forms of any go
vernment are preserved, it possesses, in the
view of justice (whatever be its nature)
equal claims to obedience. This inference
is irresistible ; and it is thus evident, that
the doctrines of Mr. Burke are doubly re
futed by the fallacy of the logic which sup
ports them, and the absurdity of the conclu
sions to which they lead.
They are also virtually contradicted by
the laws of all nations. Were his opinions
true, the language of laws should be permis
sive, not restrictive. Had men surrendered
all their rights into the hands of the magis
trate, the object of laws should have to an
nounce the portion he was pleased to return
them, not the part of which he is compelled
to deprive them. The criminal code of all
nations consists of prohibitions: and what
ever is not prohibited by the law, men every
where conceive themselves entitled to do
with impunity. They act on the principle
which this language of law teaches them,
that they retain rights which no power can
impair or infringe, — which are not the boon
of society, but the attribute of their nature.
The rights of magistrates and public officers
are truly the creatures of society : they,
therefore, are guided not by what the law
does not prohibit, but by what it authori
ses or enjoins. Were the rights of citizens
equally created by social institution, the lan
guage of the civil code would be similar, and
the obedience of subjects would have the
same limits.
This doctrine, thus false in its principles,
absurd in its conclusions, and contradicted
by the avowed sense of mankind, is, lastly,
even abandoned by Mr. Burke himself. He
is betrayed into a confession directly repug
nant to his general principle: — "Whatever
each man. can do without trespassing on
others, he has a right to do for himself; and
he has a right to a fair portion of all that so
ciety, with all its combinations of skill and
force, can do for him." Either this right is
universal, or it is not: — if it be universal, it
cannot be the offspring of a convention; for
conventions must be as various as forms of
government, and there are many of them
which do not recognise this right, nor place
man in this condition of just equality. All
governments, for example, which tolerate
slavery neglect this right; for a slave is nei
ther entitled to the fruits of his own indus
try, nor to any portion of what the combined
force and skill of society produce. If it be
not universal it is no right at all ; and can
only be called a privilege accorded by some
governments, and withheld by others. I can
discern no mode of escaping from this di-
2M2
438
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
lemma, but the avowal that these civil claims
are the remnant of those {Cmetaphy sic rights"
which Mr. Burke holds in such abhorrence;
but which it seems the more natural object
of society to protect than destroy.
But it may be urged, that though all ap
peals to natural rights be not precluded by
the social compact, and though their integrity
and perfection in the civil state may theoreti
cally be admitted, yet as men unquestionably
may refrain from the exercise of their rights,
if they think their exertion unwise, and as
government is not a scientific subtlety, but a
practical expedient for general good, all re
course to these elaborate abstractions is frivo
lous and futile; and that the grand question
is not the source, but the tendency of go
vernment, — not a question of right, but a con
sideration of expediency. Political forms,
it may be added, are only the means of in
suring a certain portion of public felicity : if
the end be confessedly obtained, all discus
sion of the theoretical aptitude of the means
to produce it is nugatory and redundant.
To this I answer, first, that such reasoning
proves too much, and that, taken in its proper
extent, it impeaches the great system of
morals, of which political principles form
only a part. All morality is, no doubt, found
ed on a broad and general expediency; and
the sentiment —
" Ipsa utilitas justi prope mater et aequi,"*
may be safely adopted, without the reserve
dictated by the timid and inconstant philoso
phy of the poet. Justice is expediency, but
it is expediency speaking by general max
ims, into which reason has consecrated the
experience of mankind. Every general prin
ciple of justice is demonstrably expedient ;
and it is this utility alone that confers on it a
moral obligation. But it would be fatal to
the existence of morality, if the utility of
every particular act were to be the subject
of deliberation in the mind of every moral
agent. Political principles are only moral
ones adapted to the civil union of men.
When I assert that a man has a right to life,
liberty, &c. I only mean to enunciate a mo
ral maxim founded on the general interest,
which prohibits any attack on these posses
sions. In this primary and radical sense,
all rights, natural as well as civil, arise from
expediency. But the moment the moral
ediiice is reared, its basis is hid from the eye
for ever. The moment these maxims, which
are founded on an utility that is paramount
and perpetual, are embodied and consecra
ted, they cease to yield to partial and subor
dinate expediency. It then becomes the
perfection of virtue to consider, not whether
abaction be useful, but whether it be right.
The same necessity for the substitution of
general maxims exists in politics as in mo
rals. Those precise and inflexibile princi
ples, which yield neither to the seductions
of passion, nor to the suggestions of interest,
ought to be the guide of public as well as
* Horace, lib. ii. Sat, 3.— ED.
private morals. " Acting according to the
natural rights of men," is only another ex
pression for acting according to those general
maxims of social morals which prescribe
what is right and fit in human intercourse.
We have proved that the social compact does
not alter these maxims, or destroy these
rights; and it incontestably follows, from
the same principles which guide all mo
rality, that no expediency can justify their
infraction.
The inflexibility of general principles is.
indeed, perhaps more necessary in political
morals than in any other class of actions. If
the consideration of expediency be admitted,
the question recurs, — Who are to judge of
it ? The appeal is never made to the many
whose interest is at stake, but to the few,
whose interest is linked to the perpetuity of
oppression and abuse. Surely that judge
ought to be bound down by the strictest
rules, who is undeniably interested in the
decision : and he would scarcely be esteemed
a wise legislator^ who should vest in the next
heir to a lunatic a discretionary power to
judge of his sanity. Far more necessary,
then, is obedience to general principles, and
maintenance of natural rights, in politics than
in the morality of common life. The mo
ment that the slightest infraction of these
rights is permitted through motives of con
venience, the bulwark of all upright politics
is lost. If a small convenience will justify
a little infraction, a greater will expiate a
bolder violation : the Rubicon is past. Ty
rants never seek in vain for sophists : pre
tences are multiplied without difficulty and
without end. Nothing, therefore, but an in
flexible adherence to the principles of gene
ral right can preserve the purity, consistency,
and stability of a free state.
If we have thus successfully vindicated
the first theoretical principle of French legis
lation, the doctrine of an absolute surrender
of natural rights by civil and social man, has
been shown to be deduced from inadequate
premises. — to conduct to absurd conclusions,
to sanctify the most atrocious despotism, to
outrage the avowed convictions of men, and,
finally, to be abandoned, as hopelessly un
tenable by its own author. The existence
and perfection of these rights being proved,
the first duty of lawgivers and magistrates is
to assert and protect them. Most wisely and
auspiciously then did France commence her
regenerating labours with a solemn declara
tion of these sacred, inalienable, and impre
scriptible rights, — a declaration which must
be to the citizen the monitor of his duties, as
well as the oracle of his rights, and by a per
petual recurrence towrhich the deviations of
the magistrate will be checked, the tendency
of power to abuse corrected, arid every po
litical proposition (being compared with the
end of society) correctly and dispassionately
estimated. To the juvenile vigour of rea
son and freedom in the New World, — where
the human mind was unencumbered with
that vast mass of usage and prejudice; which
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
439
so many ages of ignorance had accumulated,
to load and deform society in Europe, —
France owed this, among other lessons.
Perhaps the only expedient that can be de
vised by human wisdom to keep alive public
vigilance against the usurpation of partial in
terests, is that of perpetually presenting the
general right and the general interest to the
public eye. Such a principle has been the
Polar Star, by which the National Assembly
has hitherto navigated the vessel of the state,
amid so many tempests howling destruction
around it.
There remains a much more extensive and
complicated inquiry, in the consideration of
their political institutions. As it is impossi
ble to examine all. we must limit our remarks
to the most important. To speak then gene
rally of their Constitution, it is a preliminary
remark, that the application of the word a de
mocracy" to it is fallacious and illusive. If
that word, indeed, be taken in its etymologi
cal sense, as the "power of the people," it is
a democracy ; and so are all legitimate go
vernments. But if it be taken in its historical
sense, it is not so ; for it does not resemble
those governments which have been called
democracies in ancient or modern times. In
the ancient democracies there was neither
representation nor division of powers : the
rabble legislated, judged and exercised every
political authority. I do not mean to deny
that in Athens, of which history has trans
mitted to us the most authentic monuments,
there did exist some feeble control. But it
has been well remarked, that a multitude, if
it was composed of Newtons, must be a
mob : their will must be equally unwise, un
just, and irresistible. The authority of a
corrupt and tumultuous populace has indeed
by the best writers of antiquity been regarded
rather as an ochlocracy than a democracy, —
as the despotism of the rabble, not the do
minion of the people. It is a degenerate
democracy : it is a febrile paroxysm of the
social body which must speedily terminate
in convalescence or dissolution. The new
Constitution of France is almost directly the
reverse of these forms. Jt vests the legisla
tive authority in the representatives of the
people, the executive in an hereditary First
Magistrate, and the judicial in judges, pe
riodically elected, and unconnected either
with the legislature or with the Executive
Magistrate. To confound such a constitution
with the democracies of antiquity, for the
purpose of quoting historical and experimental
evidence against it, is to recur to the most
paltry and shallow arts of sophistry.
In discussing it, the first question that
arises regards the mode of constituting the
legislature; the first division of which, re
lating to the ris'ht of suffrage, is of primary
importance. Here I most cordially agree
with Mr. Burke* in reprobating the impotent
and preposterous qualification by which the
Assembly has disfranchised every citizen
* Burke, p. 257.
who does not pay a direct contribution
equivalent to the price of three days' labour.
Nothing can be more evident than its ineffi-
cacy for any purpose but the display of in
consistency, and the violation of justice.
These remarks were made at the moment
of the discussion ; and the plan* was com
bated in the Assembly with all the force of
reason and eloquence by the most conspicu
ous leaders of the popular party,— MM. Mi-
rabeau, Target, and Petion. more particularly
distinguishing themselves by their opposition.
But the more timid and prejudiced members
of it shrunk from so bold an innovation in
political systems as justice. They fluctuated
between their principles and their prejudices :
and the struggle terminated in an illusive
;ompromise, — the constant resource of feeble
and temporizing characters. They were con
tent that little practical evil should in fact be
produced ; while their views were not suffi
ciently enlarged to perceive, that the inviola
bility of principles is the palladium of virtue
and of freedom. Such members do not, in
deed, form the majority of their own party;
but the aristocratic minority, anxious for
whatever might dishonour or embarrass the
Assembly, eagerly coalesced with them, and
stained the infant Constitution with this ab
surd usurpation.
An enlightened and respectable antagonist
of Mr. Burke has attempted the defence of
this measure. In a Letter to Earl Stanhope,
it is contended, that the spirit of this regula
tion accords exactly with the principles of
natural justice, because, even in an unsocial
state, the pauper has a claim only on charity,
and he who produces nothing has no right to
share in the regulation of what is produced
by the industry of others. But whatever be
the justice of disfranchising the unproductive
poor, the argument is, in point of fact, totally
misapplied. Domestic servants are excluded
by the decree though they subsist as evi
dently on the produce of their own labour as
any other class : and to them therefore the
argument of our acute and ingenious writer
is totally inapplicable. t But it is the conso
lation of the consistent friends of freedom,
that this abuse must be short-lived : the
spirit of reason and liberty, which has
achieved such mighty victories, cannot long
be resisted by this puny foe. The number
of primary electors is at present so great, and
the importance of their single votes so pro
portionally little, that their interest in resist
ing the extension of the right of suffrage is
insignificantly small. Thus much have I
spoken of the usurpation of the rights of suf-
* See the Proces Verbaux of the 27th and 29th
of October, 1789, and the Journal de Paris, No.
301, and Les Revolutions de Paris, No. 17, p. 73.
t It has been very justly remarked, that even
with reference to taxation, all men have equal
rights of election. For the man who is too poor
to pay a direct contribution, still pays a tax in the
increased price of his food and clothes. It is be
sides to be observed, that life and liberty are more
sacred than property, and that the right of suffrage
is the only shield that can guard them.
440
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
frage, with the ardour of anxious affection,
and with the freedom of liberal admiration.
The moment is too serious for compliment;
ami I leave untouched to the partisans of
despotism, their monopoly of blind and ser
vile applause.*
I must avow, with the same frankness,
equal disapprobation of the admission of ter
ritory and contribution as elements entering
into the proportion of representation. t The
representation of land or money is a mon
strous relic of ancient prejudice : men only
can be represented ; and population alone
ought to regulate the number of representa
tives which any district delegates,
The next consideration that presents itself
is. the nature of those bodies into which the
citizens of France are to be organized for the
performance of their political functions. In
this important part of the subject, Mr. Burke
has committed some fundamental errors: it
is more amply, more dexterously, and more
correctly treated by M. de Calonne : of whose
work this discussion forms the most interest
ing part. These assemblies are of four kinds:
— Municipal, Primary. Electoral, and Ad
ministrative.
To the Municipalities belong the care of
preserving ths police, and collecting the
revenue within their jurisdiction. An accu
rate idea of their nature and object may be
formed by supposing the country of England
uniformly divided, and governed, like its
cities and towns, by magistracies of popular
election.
The Primary Assemblies, the first elements
of the commonwealth, are formed by all citi
zens, who pay a direct contribution, equal to
the price of three days' labour, which may
be averaged at half-a-crown sterling. Their
functions are purely electoral. They send
representatives, in the proportion of one to
every hundred adult citizens, to the Assem
bly of the Department directly, and not
through the medium of the District, as was
originally proposed by the Constitutional
Committee, and has been erroneously stated
by Mr. Burke. They send, indeed, repre
sentatives to the Assembly of the District;
but it is for the purpose of choosing the Ad
ministrators of such District, not the Electors
of the Department. The Electoral Assem
blies of the Departments elect the members
" He who freely magnifies what has been
nobly done, and fears not to declare as freely what
might have been done better, gives you the best
covenant of his fidelity. His highest praise is not
flattery, and his plainest advice is praise." — Areo-
pnrjitica.
t Montesquieu, I think, mentions a federative
republic in Lycia, where the proportion of repre
sentatives deputed by each state was in a ratio
compounded of its population and its contribution.
There might be some plausibility in this institution
among confederated independent states; but it is
grossly absurd in a commonwealth, which is vitally
one. In such a state, the contribution of all being
proportioned to their capacity, it is relatively equal ;
and if it can confer any political claims, they must
he derived from equal rights.
of the legislature, the judges, the administra
tors, and the bishop of the Department. The
Administrators are every where the organs
and instruments of the executive power.
Against the arrangement of these Assem
blies, many subtle and specious objections
are urged, both by Mr. Burke and the exiled
Minister of France. The first and most for
midable is. '-the supposed tendency of it to
dismember France into a body of confede
rated republics." To this there are several
unanswerable replies. But before I state
them, it is necessary to make one distinc
tion : — these several bodies are, in a certain
sense, independent, in what regards subordi
nate and interior regulation ; but they are not
independent in the sense which the objec
tion supposes, — that of possessing a separate
will from that of the nation, or influencing,
but by their representatives, the general
system of the state. Nay. it may be dc n.on-
strated, that the legislators of France have
solicitously provided more elaborate precau
tions against this dismemberment than have
been adopted by any recorded government.
The first circumstance which is adverse to
it is the minuteness of the divided parts. They
are too small to possess a separate force. As
elements of the social order, as particles of a
great political body, they are something; but,
as insulated states, they would be impotent.
Had France been separated into great masses,
each might have been strong enough to claim
a separate will ; but, divided as she is, no
body of citizens is conscious of sufficient
strength to feel their sentiments of any im
portance, but as conslituent parts of the
general will. Survey the Primary, the Elec
toral, and the Administrative Assemblies,
and nothing will be more evident than their
impotence in individuality. The Munici
palities, surely, are not likely to arrogate
independence. A forty-eight thousandth
part of the kingdom has not energy sufficient
for separate existence; nor can a hope arise
in it of influencing, in a direct and dictatorial
manner, the councils of a great state. Even
the Electoral Assemblies of the Departments
do not, as we shall afterwards show, possess
force enough to become independent con
federated republics.
Another circumstance, powerfully hostile
to this dismemberment, is the destruction of
the ancient Provincial division of the king
dom. In no part of Mr. Burke's work have
his arguments been chosen with such infeli
city of selection as in what regards this
subject. He has not only erred : but his
error is the precise reverse of truth. He
represents as the harbinger of discord, what
is, in fact, the instrument of union. He mis
takes the cement of the edifice for a source
of instability and a principle of repulsion.
France was, under the ancient government,
an union of provinces, acquired at various
times and on different conditions, and differ
ing in constitution, laws, language, manners,
privileges, jurisdiction, and revenue. It had
the exterior of a simple monarchy; but it
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
44.
was in reality an aggregate of independent
states. The monarch was in one place King
of Navarre, in another Duke of Brittany, in
a third Count of Provence, in a fourth Dau
phin of Vienne. Under these various deno
minations he possessed, at least nominally,
different degrees of power, and he certainly
exercised it under different forms. The mass
composed of these heterogeneous and dis
cordant elements, was held together by the
compressing force of despotism. When that
compression was withdrawn, the provinces
must have resumed their ancient independ
ence, — perhaps in a form more absolute than
as members of a federative republic. Every
thing tended to inspire provincial and to ex
tinguish national patriotism. The inhabitants
of Brittany, or Guienne. felt themselves
linked together by ancient habitudes, by
congenial prejudices, by similar manners,
by the relics of their constitution, and the
common name of their country: but their
character as members of the French Empire,
could only remind them of long and igno
minious subjection to a tyranny, of which
they had only felt the strength in exaction,
and blessed the lenity in neglect. These
causes must have formed the provinces into
independent republics; and the destruction
of their provincial existence was indispensa
ble to the prevention of this dismemberment.
It is impossible to deny, that men united by
no previous habitude (whatever may be said
of the policy of the union in other respects)
are less qualified for that union of will and
force, which produces an independent re
public, than provincials, who were attracted
by every circumstance towards local and
partial interests, and from the common centre
of the national system. Nothing could have
been more inevitable than the independence
of those great provinces, which had never
been moulded into one empire ; and we may
boldly pronounce, in direct opposition to Mr.
Burke, that the new division of the kingdom
was the only expedient that could have pre
vented its dismemberment into a confederacy
of sovereign republics.
The solicitous and elaborate division of
powers, is another expedient of infallible
operation, to preserve the unity of the body
politic. The Municipalities are limited to
minute and local administration ; the Primary
Assemblies solely to election ; the Assemblies
of the District to objects of administration
and control of a superior class ; and the
Assemblies of the Departments possess func
tions purely electoral, exerting no authority
legislative, administrative, or judicial.
But whatever danger might be apprehend
ed of the assumption of power by these
formidable Assemblies, they are biennially
renewed : and their fugitive nature makes
systematic usurpation hopeless. What power,
indeed, can they possess of dictating to the
National Assembly ]* or what interest can
* I do not mean that their voice will not be
there respected : that would be to suppose the
56
the members of that Assembly have in obey
ing the mandates of those whose tenure of
power is as fugitive and precarious as their
own ? The provincial Administrators have
that amount of independence which the con
stitution demands; while the judges, who
are elected for six years, must feel them
selves independent of constituents, whom
three elections may so radically and com
pletely change. These circumstances, then,
— the minuteness of the divisions, the dis
solution of Provincial ties, the elaborate dis
tribution of powers, and the fugitive consti
tution of the Electoral Assemblies, — seem
to form an insuperable barrier against the
assumption of such powers by any of the
bodies into which France is organized) as
would tend to produce the federal foim.
The next objection to be considered is
peculiar to Mr. Burke. The subordination
of elections has been regarded by the ad
mirers of the French lawgivers as a master
piece of their legislative wisdom. It seemed
as great an improvement on representative
government, as representation itself was on
pure democracy. No extent of territory is
too great for a popular government thus
organized; and as the Primary Assemblies
may be divided to any degree of minuteness,
the most perfect order is reconcilable with
the widest diffusion of political right. De
mocracies were supposed by philosophers to
be necessarily small, and therefore feeble, —
to demand numerous assemblies, and to be
therefore venal and tumultuous. Yet this
great discovery, which gives force and order
in so high a degree to popular governments,
is condemned and derided by Mr. Burke.
An immediate connection between the re
presentative and the primary constituent, he
considers as essential to the idea of repre
sentation. As the electors in the Primary
Assemblies do not immediately elect their
lawgivers, he regards their rights of suffrage
as nominal and illusory.*
It will in the first instance be remarked,
from the statement which has already been
given, that in stating three interposed elec
tions between the Primary Electors and the
Legislature. Mr. Burke has committed a
most important error, in point of fact. The
original plan of the Constitutional Committee
was indeed agreeable to the statement of
Mr. Burke:— the Primary Assemblies were
to elect deputies to the District, — the District
to the Department. — and the Department to
the National Assembly. But this plan was
represented as tending to introduce a vicious
complexity into the system, and, by making
the channel through which the national will
passes into its public acts too circuitous, to
Legislature as indolently corrupt as that of a neigh
bouring nation. I only mean to assert, that they
cannot possess such a power as will enable them
to dictate instructions to their representatives as
authoritatively as sovereigns do to their ambas
sadors ; which is the idea of a confederated re
public.
* Burke, pp. 270—272.
442
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
enfeeble its energy under pretence of break
ing its violence ] and it was accordingly suc
cessfully combated. The series of three
elections was still preserved for the choice
of Departmental Administrators; but the
Electoral Assemblies in the Departments,
•who are the immediate constituents of the
Legislature, are directly chosen by the Pri
mary Assemblies, in the proportion of one
elector to every hundred active citizens.*
But, — to return to the general question,
which is, perhaps, not much affected by
these details, — I profess I see no reason why
the right of election is not as susceptible of
delegation as any other civil function, — why
a citizen may not as well delegate the right
of choosing lawgivers, as that of making-
laws. Such a gradation of elections, says
Mr. Burke, excludes responsibility and sub
stantial election, since the primary electors
neither can know nor bring to account the
members of the Assembly. This argument
has (considering the peculiar system of Mr.
Burke) appeared to rne to be the most singu
lar and inconsistent that he has urged in his
work. Representation itself must be con
fessed to be an infringement on the most
perfect liberty: for the best organized sys
tem cannot preclude the possibility of a vari
ance between the popular and the represen
tative will. Responsibility, strictly speak
ing, it can rarely admit ] for the secrets of
political fraud are so impenetrable, and the
line which separates corrupt decision from
erroneous judgment so indiscernibly minute.
that the cases where the deputies could be
made properly responsible are too few to be
named as exceptions. Their dismissal is the
only punishment that can be inflicted : and
all that the best constitution can attain is a
high probability of unison between the con
stituent and his deputy. This seems attain
ed in the arrangements of France. The
Electors of the Departments are so nume
rous, and so popularly elected, that there is
the highest probability of their being actu
ated in their elections, and re-elections, by
the sentiments of the Primary Assemblies.
They have too many points of contact with
the general mass to have an insulated opi
nion, and too fugitive an existence to have
a separate interest. This is true of those
cases, where the merits or demerits of can-
* For a charge of such fundamental inaccuracy
against Mr. Burke, the Public will most justly and
namrally expect the highest evidence. See the
Decret sur la nouvelle Division du Royaume, Art.
17, and the Proces Verbal of the Assembly for
the 22d Dec., 1789. If this evidence should de
mand any collateral aid, the authority of M. de
Calonne (which it is remarkable that Mr. Burke
should have overlooked) corroborates it most am
ply. " On prdonne que chacune de ces Assem
blies (Primaires) nommera un electeur a raison
de 100 citoyens actifs.". . . " Ces cinquantes mille
electeurs (des Departements) choisis de deux ans
en deux ans par les Assemblies Primaires," p.
360. The Ex-Minister, indeed, is rarely to be
detected in any departure from the solicitous ac
curacy of professional detail.
didates may be supposed to have reached
the Primary Assemblies : but in those far
more numerous cases, where they are too
obscure to obtain that notice, but by the
polluted medium of a popular canvass, this
delegation of the franchise is still more evi
dently wise. The peasant, or artisan, who
is a Primary Elector, knows intimately
among his equals, or immediate superiors,
many men who have information and hon
esty enough to choose a good representative,
but few who have genius, leisure, and ambi
tion for the situation themselves. Of De
partmental Electors he may be a disinter
ested, deliberate, and competent judge : but
were he to be complimented, or rather
mocked, with the direct right of electing
legislators, he must, in the tumult, venality,
and intoxication of an election mob. give his
suffrage without any possible just knowledge
of the situation, character, and conduct of
the candidates. So unfortunately false, in
deed, seems the opinion of Mr. Burke, that
this arrangement is the only one that sub
stantially, and in good faith, provides for the
exercise of deliberate discrimination in the
constituent.
This hierarchy of electors was, moreover,
obtruded on France by necessity. Had they
rejected it. they would have had only the
alternative of tumultuous electoral assem
blies, or a tumultuous Legislature. If the
primary electoral assemblies had been so
divided as to avoid tumult, their deputies
would have been so numerous as to have
made the national assembly a mob. If the
number of electoral assemblies had been re
duced to the number of deputies constitut
ing the Legislature, each of them would
have been too numerous. I cannot perceive
that peculiar unfitness which is hinted at by
Mr. Burke in the right of personal choice to
be delegated.* It is in the practice of all
states delegated to great officers, who are
intrusted with the power of nominating their
subordinate agents. It is in the most ordi
nary affairs of common life delegated, when
our ultimate representatives are too remote
from us to be within the sphere of our obser
vation. It is remarkable that M. de Calonne,
addressing his work to a people enlightened
by the masterly discussions to which these
subjects have given rise, has not, in all the
fervour of his zeal to criminate the new in
stitutions, hazarded this objection. This is
not the only instance in which the Ex-Minis
ter has shown more respect to the nation
whom he addresses, than Mr. Burke has paid
to the intellect and information of the Eng
lish public. t
* Burke, p. 271.
T Though it may, perhaps, be foreign to the
purpose, I cannot help thinking one remark on
this topic interesting. It will illustrate the differ
ence of opinion between even the Aristocratic
party in France and the rulers of England. M,
de Calonne (p. 383,) rightly states it to be the
unanimous instruction of France to her represen
tatives, to enact the equal admissibility of all citi-
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
443
Thus much, of the elements of the legisla
tive body. Concerning that body, thus con
stituted, various questions remain. Its unity
or division will admit of much dispute. It
•will be deemed of the greatest moment by
the zealous admirers of the English constitu
tion, to determine whether any semblance
of its legislative organization could have
been attained by France, if good, or ought
to have been pursued by her, if attainable.
Nothing has been asserted with more confi
dence by Mr. Burke than the facility with
which the fragments of the long subverted
liberty of France might have been formed
into a British constitution : but of this gene
ral position, he has neither explained the
mode, nor defined the limitations. Nothing-
is more favourable to the popularity of a
work than these lofty generalities which are
light enough to pass into vulgar currency,
and to become the maxims of a popular
creed. Proclaimed as they are by Mr. Burke,
they gratify the pride and indolence of the
people, who are thus taught to speak what
gains applause, without any effort of intel
lect, and imposes silence, without any la
bour of confutation; but touched by defini
tion, they become too simple and precise for
eloquence, — too cold and abstract for popu
larity. It is necessary to inquire with more
precision in what manner France could have
assimilated the remains of her ancient con
stitution to that of the English Legislature.
Three modes only seem conceivable : — the
preservation of the three Orders distinct ; the
union of the Clergy and Nobility in one upper
chamber ; or some mode of selecting from
these two Orders a body like the House of
Lords. Unless the insinuations of Mr. Burke
point to one or other of these schemes, I can
not divine their meaning.
The first mode would neither have been
congenial in spirit nor similar in form to the
constitution of England : — convert the Con
vocation into an integrant and co-ordinate
branch of our Legislature, and some faint
semblance of structure might be discovered.
But it would then be necessary to arm our
Clergy with an immense mass of property,
rendered still more formidable by the con
centration of great benefices in the hands of
a few, and to bestow on this clerico-military
aristocracy, in each of its shapes of Priest
and Noble, a separate and independent
voice. The Monarch would thus possess
three negatives, — one avowed and disused,
and two latent and in perpetual activity, —
on the single voice which impotent and illu
sive formality had yielded to the Third Es
tate.
zens to public employ ! England adheres to the
Test Act, ! The arrangements of M. Neckar for
elections to the States-General, and the scheme
of MM. Mourner and Lally-Tollendal for the new
constitution, included a representation of the peo
ple nearly exact. Yet the idea of it is regarded
with horror in England ! The highest Aristocrates
of France approach more nearly to the creed of
general liberty than the most popular politicians
of England.
Even under the reign of despotism the
second plan was proposed by M. de Ca
lonne,* — that the Clergy and Nobility should
form an Upper House, to exercise conjointly
with the King and the Commons the legisla
tive authority. That such a constitution
would have been diametrically opposite in
its spirit and principles to that of England,
will be evident to those who reflect how
different were the Nobility of each country.
In England they are a small body, united to
the mass by innumerable points of contact,
receiving from it perpetually new infusions,
and returning to it, undistinguished and un
privileged, the majority of their children. In
France they formed an immense caste, in
sulated by every barrier that prejudice or
policy could raise. The Nobles of England
are a senate of two hundred : the Noblesse
of France were a tribe of two hundred thou
sand . Nobility is in England only hereditary,
so far as its professed object — the support
of an hereditary senate — demands. Nobility
in France was as widely inheritable as its
real purpose — the maintenance of a privi
leged caste — prescribed. It was therefore
necessarily descendible to all male children.
The Noblesse of France were at once formi
dable from the immense property of their
body, and dependent from the indigence of
their patrician rabble of cadets, whom honour
inspired with servility, and servility excluded
from the path to independence. To this for
midable property were added the revenues
of the Church, monopolized by some of their
children; wrhile others had no patrimony
but their sword. If these last were generous,
the habits of military service devoted them,
from loyalty, — if they were prudent, the
hope of military promotion devoted them,
from interest, to the King. How immense
therefore and irresistible would the Royal
influence have been over electors, of whom
the majority were the servants and creatures
of the Crown ? What would be thought in.
England of a House of Lords, which, while
it represented or contained the whole landed
interest of the kingdom, should necessarily
have a majority of its members septennially
or triennially nominated by the King ? Yet
such a one would still yield to the French
Upper House of M. de Calonne : for the mo-
nied and commercial interests of England,
which wrould continue to be represented by
the Commons, are important and formidable,
while in France they are comparatively in
significant. The aristocracy could have been
strong only against the people, — impotent
against the Crown.
There remains only the selection of an
* See his Lettre au Roi, 9th February, 1789.
See also Sur 1'Etat de France, p. 167. It was
also, as we are informed by M. de Calonne, sug
gested in the Cahiers of the Nobility of Metz and
Montargis. It is worthy of incidental. The pro
position of such radical changes by the Nobility,
is incontestable evidence of the general conviction
that a total change was necessary, and is an un
answerable reply to Mr. Burke and M. de Ca
lonne.
444
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Upper House from among the Nobility and
Clergy : and to this there are insuperable
objections. Had the right of thus forming a
branch of the Legislature by a single act of
prerogative been given to the King, it must
nave strengthened his influence to a degree
terrible at any, — but fatal at this period.
Had any mode of election by the provinces.
or the Legislature, been adopted, or had any
control on the nomination of the Crown been
vested in. them, the new dignity would have
been sought with an activity of corruption
and intrigue, of which, in such a national
convulsion, it is impossible to estimate the
danger. No general principle of selection,
such as that of opulence or antiquity, would
have remedied the evil ; for the excluded
and degraded would have felt that nobility
was equally the patrimony of all. By the
abolition of nobility, no one was degraded ;
•for to '-'degrade" is to lower from'a rank
-that continues to exist in society.
So evident indeed was the impossibility of
what Mr. Burke supposes to have been at
tainable, that no party in the Assembly sug
gested the imitation of the English model.
The system of his oracles in French politics,
— MM. Lally and Mounier, — approached
more near to the constitution of the Ameri
can States. They proposed a Senate to be
chosen for life by the King, from candidates
offered to his choice by the provinces. This
Senate was to enjoy an absolute negative on
legislative acts, and to form the great national
court for the trial of public delinquents. In
effect, such a body would have formed a
far more vigorous aristocracy than the Eng-
Ash Peerage. The latter body only preserves
its dignity by a wise disuse of its power.
But the Senate of M. Mounier would have
been an aristocracy moderated and legalized,
which, because it appeared to have less in
dependence, would in fact have been em
boldened to exert more. Deriving their
rights equally with the Lower House from
the people, and vested with a more dignified
and extensive trust, they would neither
have shrunk from the conflict with the Com
mons nor the King. The permanence of
their authority must have given them a su
periority over the former; — the speciousriess
of their cause over the latter : and it seems
probable, that they would have ended in
subjugating both. Let those who suppose
that this Senate would not have been infect
ed by the "corporation spirit," consider ho\v
keenly the ancient judicatures of France had
been Actuated by it.
As'we quit the details of these systems, a
question arises for our consideration of a
more general and more difficult nature, —
Whether a simple representative legislature,
or a constitution of mutual control, be the
best form of government ?* To examine
* This question, translated into familiar lan
guage, may perhaps he thus expressed,—" Whe
ther the vigilance of the master, or the squabbles
of the servants, be the best security for faithful
service ?"
this question at length is inconsistent with
the object and limits of the present publica
tion (which already grows insensibly beyond
its intended size); but a few general princi
ples may be hinted, on which the decision
of the question chiefly depends.
It will not be controverted, that the object
of establishing a representative legislature is
to collect the general will. That will is one :
it cannot, therefore, without a solecism, be
doubly represented. Any absolute* negative
opposed to the national will, decisively
spoken by its representatives, is null, as an
usurpation of the popular sovereignty. Thus
far does the abstract principle of representa
tion condemn the division of the legislature.
All political bodies, as well as all systems
of law, foster the preponderance of partial
interests. A controlling senate would be
most peculiarly accessible to this contagious
.pirit : a representative body itself can only
be preserved from it by those frequent elec
tions which break combinations, and infuse
new portions of popular sentiments. Let us
ijant that a popular assembly may some
times be precipitated into unwise decision
by the seductions of eloquence, or the rage
of faction, and that a controlling senate might
remedy this evil : but let us recollect, that it
is better the public interest should be occa
sionally mistaken than systematically op
posed.
It is perhaps susceptible of proof, that
these governments of balance and control
have never existed but in the vision of theo
rists. The fairest example will be that of
England. If the two branches of the Legis
lature, w7hich it is pretended control each
other, are ruled by the same class of men,
the control must be granted to be imaginary.
The great proprietors, titled and untitled,
possess the whole force of both Houses of
Parliament that is not immediately dependent
on the Crown. The Peers have a great in
fluence in the House of Commons. All po
litical parties are formed by a confederacy
of the members of both Houses. The Court
party, acting equally in both, is supported by
a part of the independent aristocracy ; — the
Opposition by the remainder of the aristo
cracy, whether peers or commoners. Here
is every symptom of collusion, — no vestige
of control. The only case indeed, where
control could arise, is where the interest of
the Peerage is distinct from that of the other
great proprietors. But their separate inte
rests are so few and paltry, that the history
of England will not afford one undisputed
in stance. t
* The suspensive veto vested in the French
King is only an appeal to the people on the con
duct of their representatives. The voice of the
people clearly spoken, the negative ceases.
t" The rejection of the Peerage Bill of George
the First is urged with great triumph by De
Lolme. There it seems the Commons rejected
the Bill, purely actuated by their fears, that the
aristocracy would acquire a strength, through a
limitation of the number of Peers, destructive of
the balance of their respective powers. It is un-
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
445
" Through a diversity of members and in
terests," if we may "believe Mr. Burke,
" general liberty had as many securities as
there were separate views in the several
orders." If by "general liberty" be under
stood the power of the collective body of
these orders, the position is undeniable : but
if it means. — what it ought to mean, — the
liberty of mankind, nothing can be more
false. The higher class in society, — whether
their names be nobles, bishops, judges, or
possessors of landed and commercial wealth,
— has ever been united by common views,
far more powerful than those petty repug
nancies of interest to which this variety of
description may give rise. Whatever may
be the little conflicts of ecclesiastical with
secular, or of commercial with landed opu
lence, they have the one common interest of
preserving their elevated place in the social
order. There never was, and never will be,
in civilized society, but two grand interests. —
that of the rich and that of the poor. The
privileges of the several orders among the
former will be guarded, and Mr. Burke will
decide that general liberty is secure ! It is
thus that a Polish Palatine and the Assembly
of Jamaica profanely appeal to ths principles
of freedom. It is thus that Antiquity, with
all her pretended political philosophy, can
not boast one philosopher who questioned the
justice of servitude, — nor with all her pre
tended public virtue, one philanthropist who
deplored the misery of slaves.
One circumstance more concerning the pro
posed Legislature remains to be noticed. —
the exclusion of the King's Ministers from it.
This u Self-denying Ordinance" I unequivo
cally disapprove. I regard all disfranchise-
ment as equally unjust in its principle, de
structive in its example, and impotent in its
purpose. Their presence would have been
of great utility with a view to business, and
perhaps, by giving publicity to their opinions,
favourable on the whole to public liberty.
The fair and open influence of a Government
is never formidable. To exclude them from
the Legislature, is to devote them to the
purposes of the Crown, and thereby to enable
tham to use their indirect and secret influ
ence with more impunity and success. The
exclusion is equivalent to that of all men of
superior talent from the Cabinet : for no man
of genius will accept an office which banishes
him from the supreme assembly, which is the
natural sphere of his powers.
Of the plan of the Judicature, I have riot yet
presumed to form a decided opinion. It cer
tainly approaches to an experiment, whether
a code of laws can be formed sufficiently
simple and intelligible to supersede the ne-
fortunate that political theorists do not consult the
history as well as the letter of legislative proceed
ings. The rejection of that Bill was occasioned
by the secession of Walpole. The debate was
not guided by any general legislative principles.
It was simply an experiment on the strength of the
two parties contending for power, in a Parliament
to which we owe the Septennial Act.
cessity of professional lawyers.* Of all the
attempts of the Assembly, the complicated
relations of civilized society seem to render
this the most problematical. They have not,
however, concluded this part of their labours :
and the feebleness attributed to the elective
judicatures of the Departments may be re
medied by the dignity and force with which
they will invest the two high national tribu
nals, t
On the subject of the Executive Magis
tracy, the Assembly have been accused of
violating their own principles by the assump
tion of executive powers; and their advo
cates have pleaded guilty to the charge. It
has been forgotten that they had a double
function to perform : they were not only to
erect a new constitution, but they were to
guard it from destruction. Had a supersti
tious tenderness for a principle confined them
to theoretical abstractions which the breath
of power might destroy, they would indeed
have merited tl|e epithets of visionaries and
enthusiasts. We must not, as has been justly
observed, mistake for the new political edi
fice what is only the scaffolding necessary to
its erection. The powers of the First Magis
trate are not to be estimated by the debility
to which the convulsions of the moment
have reduced them, but by the provisions of
the future constitution.
The portion of power with which the
King of France is invested is certainly as
much as pure theory would demand for an
executive magistrate. An organ to collect
the public will, and a hand to execute it, are
the only necessary constituents of the social
union : the popular representative forms the
first, — the executive officer the second. To
the point where this principle would have
conducted them, the French have not ven
tured to proceed. It has been asserted by
Mr. Burke; that the French King is to have
no negative on the laws. This, however, is
not true. The minority who opposed any
species of negative in the Crown was only
one hundred out of eight hundred members.
The King possesses the power of withholding
his assent to a proposed law for two succes
sive Assemblies. This species of suspensive
veto is with great speciousness and ingenuity
contended by M. Neckar to be more efficient
than the obsolete negative of the English
princes.t A mild and limited negative may,
he remarked, be exercised without danger
or odium; while a prerogative, like the abso
lute vetOj must sink into impotence from its
invidious magnitude. Is not that negative
really efficient, which is only to yield to the
national voice, spoken after four years' de-
* The sexennial election of the Judges is strong
ly and ably opposed by M. de Calonne, — chiefly
on the principle, that the stability of judicial offices
is the only inducement to men to devote their
lives to legal study.
t The Cour de Cassation and the Haute Cour
Rationale.
t Rapport fait au Roi dans son Conseil, llth
Sept., 1789.
2N
444
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Upper House from among the Nobility and
Clergy : and to this there are insuperable
objections. Had the right of thus forming a
branch of the Legislature by a single act of
Ererogative been given to the King, it must
ave strengthened his influence to a degree
terrible at any, — but fatal at this period.
Had any mode of election by the provinces.
or the Legislature, been adopted, or had any
control on the nomination of the Crown been
vested in them, the new dignity would have
been sought with an activity of corruption
and intrigue, of which, in such a national
convulsion, it is impossible to estimate the
danger. No general principle of selection,
such as that of opulence or antiquity, would
have remedied the evil* for the excluded
and degraded would have felt that nobility
was equally the patrimony of all. By the
abolition of nobility, no one was degraded ;
•for to u degrade" is to lower from a rank
•that continues to exist in society.
So evident indeed was the impossibility of
what Mr. Burke supposes to have been at
tainable, that no party in the Assembly sug
gested the imitation of the English model.
The system of his oracles in French politics,
— MM. Lally and Mounier, — approached
more near to the constitution of the Ameri
can States. They proposed a Senate to be
chosen for life by the King, from candidates
offered to his choice by the provinces. This
Senate was to enjoy an absolute negative on
legislative acts, and to form the great national
court for the trial of public delinquents. In
effect, such a body would have formed a
far more vigorous aristocracy than the Eng-
Jsh Peerage. The latter body only preserves
its dignity by a wise disuse of its power.
But the Senate of M. Mounier would have
been an aristocracy moderated and legalized,
which, because it appeared to have less in
dependence, would in fact have been em
boldened to exert more. Deriving their
rights equally with the Lower House from
the people, and vested with a more dignified
and extensive trust, they would neither
have shrunk from the conflict with the Com
mons nor the King. The permanence of
their authority must have given them a su
periority over the former; — the speciousriess
of their cause over the latter : and it seems
probable, that they would have ended in
subjugating both. Let those who suppose
that this Senate would not have been infect
ed by the "corporation spirit," consider how
keenly the ancient judicatures of France had
been Actuated by it.
As* we quit the details of these systems, a
question arises for our consideration of a
more general and more difficult nature,—
Whether a simple representative legislature,
or a constitution of mutual control, be the
best form of government?* To examine
* This question, translated into familiar lan
guage, may perhaps be thus expressed, — " Whe
ther the vigilance of the master, or the squabbles
of the servants, be the best security for faithful
service ?"
this question at length is inconsistent with
the object and limits of the present publica
tion (which already grows insensibly beyond
its intended size); but a few general princi
ples may be hinted, on which the decision
of the question chiefly depends.
It will not be controverted, that the object
of establishing a representative legislature is
to collect the general will. That will is one :
it cannot, therefore, without a solecism, be
doubly represented. Any absolute* negative
opposed to the national will, decisively
spoken by its representatives, is null, as an
usurpation of the popular sovereignty. Thus
far does the abstract principle of representa
tion condemn the division of the legislature.
All political bodies, as well as all systems
of law, foster the preponderance of partial
interests. A controlling senate would be
most peculiarly accessible to this contagious
spirit : a representative body itself can only
be preserved from it by those frequent elec
tions which break combinations, and infuse
new portions of popular sentiments. Let us
grant that a popular assembly may some
times be precipitated into unwise decision
by the seductions of eloquence, or the rage
of faction, and that a controlling senate might
remedy this evil : but let us recollect, that it
is better the public interest should be occa
sionally mistaken than systematically op
posed.
It is perhaps susceptible of proof, that
these governments of balance and control
have never existed but in the vision of theo
rists. The fairest example will be that of
England. If the two branches of the Legis
lature, which it is pretended control each
other, are ruled by the same class of men,
the control must be granted to be imaginary.
The great proprietors, titled and untitled,
possess the whole force of both Houses of
Parliament that is not immediately dependent
on thp Crown. The Peers have a great in
fluence in the House of Commons. All po
litical parties are formed by a confederacy
of the members of both Houses. The Court
party, acting equally in both, is supported by
a part of the independent aristocracy ; — the
Opposition by the remainder of the aristo
cracy, whether peers or commoners. Here
is every symptom of collusion, — no vestige
of control. The only case indeed, where
control could arise, is where the interest of
the Peerage is distinct from that of the other
_reat proprietors. But their separate inte
rests are so few and paltry, that the history
of England will not afford one undisputed
instance.!
11 The suspensive veto vested in the French
King is only an appeal to the people on the con
duct of their representatives. The voice of the
people clearly spoken, the negative ceases.
t The rejection of the Peerage Bill of George
the First is urged with great triumph by De
Lolme. There it seems the Commons rejected
the Bill, purely actuated by their fears, that the
aristocracy would acquire a strength, through a
limitation of the number of Peers, destructive of
the balance of their respective powers. It is un-
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
445
" Through a diversity of members and in
terests," if we may believe Mr. Burke,
"general liberty had as many securities as
there were separate views in the several
orders." If by "general liberty" be under
stood the power of the collective body of
these orders, the position is undeniable : but
if it means, — what it ought to mean, — the
liberty of mankind, nothing can be more
false. The higher class in society, — whether
their names be nobles, bishops, judges, or
possessors of landed and commercial wealth,
— has ever been united by common views,
far more powerful than those petty repug
nancies of interest to which this variety of
description may give rise. Whatever may
be the little conflicts of ecclesiastical with
secular, or of commercial with landed opu
lence, they have the one common interest of
preserving their elevated place in the social
order. There never was, and never will be,
in civilized society, but two grand interests. —
that of the rich and that of the poor. The
privileges of the several orders among the
former will be guarded, and Mr. Burke will
decide that general liberty is secure ! It is
thus that a Polish Palatine and the Assembly
of Jamaica profanely appeal to the principles
of freedom. It is thus that Antiquity, with
all her pretended political philosophy, can
not boast one philosopher who questioned the
justice of servitude, — nor with all her pre
tended public virtue, one philanthropist who
deplored the misery of slaves.
One circumstance more concerning the pro
posed Legislature remains to be noticed; —
the exclusion of the King's Ministers from it.
This u Self-denying Ordinance" I unequivo
cally disapprove. I regard all disfranchise-
ment as equally unjust in its principle, de
structive in its example, and impotent in its
purpose. Their presence would have been
of great utility with a view to business, and
perhaps, by giving publicity to their opinions,
favourable on the whole "to public liberty.
The fair and open influence of a Government
is never formidable. To exclude them from
the Legislature, is to devote them to the
purposes of the Crown, and thereby to enable
them to use their indirect and secret influ
ence with more impunity and success. The
exclusion is equivalent to that of all men of
superior talent from the Cabinet : for no man
of genius will accept an office which banishes
him from the supreme assembly, which is the
natural sphere of his powers.
Of the plan of the Judicature. I have riot yet
presumed to form a decided opinion. It cer
tainly approaches to an experiment, whether
a code of laws can be formed sufficiently
simple and intelligible to supersede the ne-
fortunate that political theorists do not consult the
history as well as the letter of legislative proceed
ings. The rejection of that Bill was occasioned
by the secession of Walpole. The debate was
not guided by any general legislative principles.
It was simply an experiment on the strength of the
two parties contending for power, in a Parliament
to which we owe the Septennial Act.
cessity of professional lawyers.* Of all the
attempts of the Assembly, the complicated
relations of civilized society seem to render
this the most problematical. They have not,
however, concluded this part of their labours :
and the feebleness attributed to the elective
judicatures of the Departments may be re
medied by the dignity and force with which
they will invest the two high national tribu
nals.!
On the subject of the Executive Magis
tracy, the Assembly have been accused of
violating their own principles by the assump
tion of executive powers; and their advo
cates have pleaded guilty to the charge. It
has been forgotten that they had a double
function to perform : they were not only to
erect a new constitution, but they were to
guard it from destruction. Had a supersti
tious tenderness for a principle confined them
to theoretical abstractions which the breath
of power might destroy, they would indeed
have merited tl|e epithets of visionaries and
enthusiasts. We must not, as has been justly
observed, mistake for the new political edi
fice what is only the scaffolding necessary to
its erection. The powers of the First Magis
trate are not to be estimated by the debility
to which the convulsions of the moment
have reduced them, but by the provisions of
the future constitution.
The portion of power with which the
King of France is invested is certainly as
much as pure theory would demand for an
executive magistrate. An organ to collect
the public will, and a hand to execute it, are
the only necessary constituents of the social
union : the popular representative forms the
first, — the executive officer the second. To
the point where this principle would have
conducted them, the French have not ven
tured to proceed. It has been asserted by
Mr. Burkej that the French King is to have
no negative on the laws. This, however, is
not true. The minority who opposed any
species of negative in the Crown was only
one hundred out of eight hundred members.
The King possesses the power of withholding
his assent to a proposed law for two succes
sive Assemblies. This species of suspensive
veto is with great speciousness and ingenuity
contended by M. Neckar to be more efficient
than the obsolete negative of the English
princes.t A mild and limited negative may,
he remarked, be exercised without danger
or odium ; while a prerogative, like the abso
lute refo, must sink into impotence from its
invidious magnitude. Is not that negative
really efficient, which is only to yield to the
national voice, spoken after four years' de-
* The sexennial election of the Judges is strong
ly and ably opposed by M. de Calonne, — chiefly
on the principle, that the stability of judicial offices
is the only inducement to men to devote their
lives to legal study.
t The Cour de Cassation and the Haute Cour
Nationale.
t Rapport fait au Roi dans son Conseil, llth
Sept., 1789.
2N
448
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
it will probably be formed by rotation : a
certain period of military service will be ex
acted from every citizen, and may, as in
the ancient republics, be made a necessary
qualification for the pursuit of civil honours.
" Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivi-
mus,"* may again be the sentiment of our
children. The glory of heroism, and the
splendour of conquest, have long enough
been the patrimony of that great nation. It
is time that it should seek a new glory, and
a new splendour, under the shade of free
dom, in cultivating the arts of peace, and
extending the happiness of mankind. Happy
would it be for us all, if the example of that
"manifesto of humanity'5 which has been
adopted by the legislators of France, should
make an adequate impression on surround
ing nations.
Tune genus humanum positis sibi consulat armis,
Inque vicem gens omnis amet.t
SECTION V.
English admirers vindicated.
IT is thus that Mr. Burke has spoken of
the men and measures of a foreign nation,
where there was no patriotism to excuse his
.prepossession or his asperity, and no duty or
feeling to preclude him from adopting the
feelings of a disinterested posterity, and as
suming the dispassionate tone of a philoso
pher and a historian. What wonder then if
he should wanton in all the eloquence and
virulence of an advocate against fellow-citi
zens, to whom he attributes the flagitious
purpose of stimulating England to the imita
tion of such enormities. The Revolution and
Constitutional Societies, and Dr. Price, whom
he regards as their oracle and guide, are the
grand objects of his hostility. For them no
contumely is too debasing, — no invective too
intemperate, — no imputation too foul. Joy
at the downfall of despotism is the indelible
crime, for which no virtue can compensate,
and no punishment can atone. An incon
sistency, however, betrays itself not unfre-
quently in literary quarrels : — he affects to
despise those whom he appears to dread.
His anger exalts those whom his ridicule
would vilify ; and on those whom at one mo
ment he derides as too contemptible for re
sentment, he at another confers a criminal
eminence, as too audacious for contempt.
Their voice is now the importunate chirp of
the meagre shrivelled insects of the hour, —
now the hollow murmur, ominous of con
vulsions and earthquakes,' that are to lay the
fabric of society in ruins. To provoke against
the doctrines and persons of these unfortu
nate Societies this storm of execration and
* The expression of Tacitus (Agricola), quoted
by Mr. Burke in the Speech on the Army Esti
mates. — ED.
T Pharsalia, lib. i.
derision, it was not sufficient that the French
Revolution should be traduced; every re
cord of English policy and law is to be dis
torted.
The Revolution of 1688 is confessed to
have established principles by those who
lament that it has not reformed institutions.
It has sanctified the theory, if it has not in
sured the practice of a free government. It
declared, by a memorable precedent, the
right of the people of England to revoke
abused power, to frame the government, and
bestow the crown. There was a time, in
deed, when some wretched followers of'Fil-
mer and Black wood lifted their heads in op
position : but more than half a century had
withdrawn them from public contempt, to
the amnesty and oblivion which their in
noxious stupidity had purchased.
It was reserved for the latter end of the
eighteenth century to construe these innocent
and obvious inferences into libels on the con
stitution and the laws. Dr. Price has as
serted (I presume without i'ear of contradic
tion) that the House of Hanover owes the
crown of England to the choice of their peo
ple, and that the Revolution has established
our right " to choose our own governors, to
cashier them for misconduct, and to frame a
government for ourselves. "* The first pro
position, says Mr. Burke, is either false or
nugatory. If it imports that England is an
elective monarchy, "it is an unfounded,
dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional posi
tion." "If it alludes to the election of his
Majesty's ancestors to the throne, it no more
legalizes the government of England than
that of other nations, where the founders of
dynasties have generally founded their claims
on some sort of election." The first member
of this dilemma merits no reply. The people
may certainly, as they have done, choose an
hereditary rather than an elective monarchy :
they may elect a race instead of an individual.
It is vain to compare the pretended elections
in which a council of barons, or an army of
mercenaries, have imposed usurpers on en
slaved and benighted kingdoms, with the
solemn, deliberate, national choice of 1688.
It is, indeed, often expedient to sanction these
deficient titles by subsequent acquiescence
in them. . It is not among the projected in
novations of France to revive the claims of
any of the posterity of Pharamond and Clovis,
or to arraign the usurpations of Pepin or
Hugh Capet. Public tranquillity thus de
mands a veil to be drawn over the successful
crimes through which kings have so often
"waded to the throne." But wherefore
should we not exult, that the supreme ma
gistracy of England is free from this blot,—
that as a direct emanation from the sove
reignty of the people, it is as legitimate in its
origin as in its administration. Thus under-
* A Discourse on the Love of our Country, de
livered on Nov. 4th, 1789, at the Meeting-house
in Old Jewry, to the Society for commemorating
the Revolution in Great Britain. London, 1789.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
449
stood, the position of Dr. Price is neither false
nor nugatory. It is not nugatory, for it
honourably distinguishes the English mo
narchy among the governments of the world ]
and if it be false, the whole history of our
Revolution must be a legend. The fact was
shortly, that the Prince of Orange was elected
King of England, in contempt of the claims,
not only of the exiled monarch and his son,
but of the Princesses Mary and Anne, the
undisputed progeny of James. The title of
William III. was then clearly not by succes
sion ; and the House of Commons ordered
Dr. Burnet's tract to be burnt by the hands
of the hangman, for maintaining that it was
by conquest. There remains only election :
for these three claims to royalty are all that
are known among men. It is futile to urge,
that the Convention deviated only slightly
from the order of succession. The deviation
was indeed slight, but the principle was de
stroyed. The principle that justified the
elevation of William III. and the preference
of the posterity of Sophia of Hanover to those
of Henrietta of Orleans, would equally, in
point of right, have vindicated the election
of Chancellor Jeffreys or Colonel Kirke. The
choice was, like every other choice, to be
guided by views of policy and prudence ;
but it was a choice still.
From these views arose that repugnance
between the conduct and the language of
the Revolutionists, of which Mr. Burke has
availed himself. Their conduct was manly
and systematic : their language was conciliat
ing and equivocal. They kept measures
with a prejudice which they deemed neces
sary to the order of society. They imposed
on the grossness of the popular understand
ing, by a sort of compromise between the
constitution and the abdicated family. " They
drew a politic well-wrought veil," to use the
expression of Mr. Burke, over the glorious
scene which they had acted. They affected
to preserve a semblance of succession, — to
recur for the objects of their election to the
posterity of Charles and James, — that respect
and loyalty might with less violence to public
sentiment attach to the new Sovereign. Had
a Jacobite been permitted freedom of speech
in the Parliaments of William III. he might
thus have arraigned the Act of Settlement:
— "Is the language of your statutes to be at
eternal war with truth ? Not long ago you
profaned the forms of devotion by a thanks
giving, which either means nothing, or in
sinuates a lie : you thanked Heaven for the
preservation of a King and a Queen on the
throne of their ancestors, — an expression
which either alluded only to their descent,
which was frivolous, or insinuated their here
ditary right, which was false. With the
same contempt for consistency and truth, we
are this day called on to settle the crown of
England on a princess of Germany, 'because'
she is the granddaughter of James the First.
If that be, as the phraseology insinuates, the
true and sole reason of the choice, consistency
demands that the words after 'excellent
57
should be omitted, and in their place be in
serted 'Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy,
married to the daughter of the most excellent
Princess Henrietta, late Duchess of Orleans,
daughter of our late Sovereign Lord Charles I.
of glorious memory.' Do homage to royalty
n your actions, or abjure it in your words :
avow the grounds of your conduct, and your
manliness will be respected by those who
detest your rebellion/' What reply Lord
Somers, or Mr. Burke, could have devised to
this Philippic, I know not, unless they con
fessed that the authors of the Revolution had
one language for novices and another for
adepts. Whether this conduct was the fruit
of caution and consummate wisdom, or of a
narrow, arrogant, and dastardly policy, which
regarded the human race as only to be go
verned by beingduped, it isuseless to inquire,
and might be presumptuous to determine.
But it certainly was not to be expected, that
any controversy should have arisen by con
founding their principles with their pretexts :
with the latter the position of Dr. Price has
no connection : from the former, it is an in
fallible inference.
The next doctrine of this obnoxious Sermon
that provokes the indignation of Mr. Burke,
is, " that the Revolution has established our
right to cashier our governors for miscon
duct." Here a plain man could have foreseen
scarcely any diversity of opinion. To contend
that the deposition of a king for the abuse
of his powers did not establish a principle in
favour of the like deposition, when the like
abuse should again occur, is certainly one of
the most arduous enterprises that ever the
heroism of paradox encountered. He has,
however, not neglected the means of retreat.
"No government/' he tells us, " could stand
a moment, if it could be blown down with
anything so loose and indefinite as opinion of
misconduct." One might suppose, from the
dexterous levity with which the word "mis
conduct" is introduced, that the partisans
of democracy had maintained the expediency
of deposing a king for every frivolous and
venial fault. — of revolting against him for the
choice of his titled or nntitled valets, — his
footmen, or his Lords of the Bedchamber. It
would have been candid in Mr. Burke not to
have dissembled what he must know, that
by "misconduct" was meant that precise
species of misconduct for which James II.
was dethroned, — a conspiracy against the
liberty of his country.
Nothing can be more weak than to urge
the constitutional irresponsibility of kings or
parliaments. The law can never suppose
them responsible, because their responsibility
supposes the dissolution of society, which is
the annihilation of law. In the governments
which have hitherto existed, the power of
the magistrate is the only article in the social
compact : destroy it, and society is dissolved.
It is because they cannot be legally and con
stitutionally, that they must be morally and
rationally responsible. It is because there
are no remedies to be found within the pale
2N2
450
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of society, that we are to seek them in nature,
and throw our parchment chains in the face
of our oppressors. No man can deduce a
precedent of law from the Revolution ; for
Jaw cannot exist in the dissolution of govern
ment : a precedent of reason and justice only
can be established in it. And perhaps the
friends of freedom merit the misrepresenta
tion with which they have been opposed, for
trusting their cause to such frail and frivolous
auxiliaries, and for seeking in the profligate
practices of men what is to be found in the
sacred rights of nature. The system of law
yers is indeed widely different. They can
only appeal to usage, precedents, authorities,
and statutes. They display their elaborate
frivolity, and their perfidious friendship, in
disgracing freedom with the fantastic honour
of a pedigree. A pleader at the Old Bailey,
who would attempt to aggravate the guilt of
a robber or a murderer, by proving that King
John or King Alfred punished robbery and
murder, would only provoke derision. A
man who should pretend that the reason
why we had right to property is. because our
ancestors enjoyed that right four hundred
years ago, would be justly contemned. Yet
so little is plain sense heard in the mysterious
nonsense which is the cloak of political fraud,
that the Cokes, the Blackstones, and the
Burkes, speak as if our right to freedom de
pended on its possession by our ancestors.
In the common cases of morality we should
blush at such an absurdity. No man would
justify murder by its antiquity, or stigmatize
benevolence for being new. The genealogist
who should emblazon the one as coeval with
Cain, or stigmatize the other as upstart with
Howard, would be disclaimed even by the
most frantic partisan of aristocracy. This
Gothic transfer of genealogy to truth and jus
tice is peculiar to politics. The existence of
robbery in one age makes its vindication in
the next ; and the champions of freedom
have abandoned the stronghold of right for
precedent, which, when the most favourable,
is, as might be expected from the ages which
furnish it, feeble, fluctuating, partial, and
equivocal. It is not because we have been
free, but because we have a right to be free,
that we ought to demand freedom. Justice
and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth
nor age. It would be the same absurdity to
assert, that we have a right to freedom, be
cause the Englishmen of Alfred's reign \vere
free, as that three and three are six, because
they were so in the camp of Genghis Khan.
Let us hear no more of this ignoble and
ignominious pedigree of freedom. Let us
hear no more of her Saxon, Danish, or Nor
man ancestors. Let the immortal daughter
of Reason, of Justice, and of God, be no lon
ger confounded with the spurious abortions
that have usurped her name.
"But," says Mr. Burke, "we do not con
tend that right is created by antiquarian re
search. We are far from contending that
possession legitimates tyranny, or that fact
ought to be confounded with right, But (to
strip his eulogies on English wisdom of their
declamatory appendage) the impression of
antiquity endears and ennobles freedom, and
fortifies it by rendering it august and vene
rable in the popular mind." The illusion is
useful; the expediency of political impos
ture is the whole force of the argument : — a
principle odious to the friends of freedom, as
the grand bulwark of secular and spiritual
despotism. To pronounce that men are only
to be governed by delusion is to libel the
human understanding, and to consecrate the
frauds that have elevated despots and muftis,
pontiffs and sultans, on the ruin of degraded
and oppressed humanity. But the doctrine
is as false as it is odious. Primary political
truths are few and simple. It is easy to
make them understood, and to transfer to
government the same enlightened self-inte
rest that presides in the other concerns of
life. It may be made to be respected, not
because it is ancient, or because it is sacred,
— not because it has been established by
barons, or applauded by priests, — but because
it is useful. Men may easily be instructed
to maintain rights which it is their interest
to maintain, and duties which it is their in
terest to perform. This is the only principle
of authority that does not violate justice and
insult humanity: it is also the only one which
can possess stability. The various fashions
of prejudice and factitious sentiment which
have been the basis of governments, are
short-lived things. The illusions of chivalry,
and the illusions of superstition, which have
given to them splendour or sanctity, are in
their turn succeeded by new modes of opi
nion and new systems of manners. Reason
alone and natural sentiment are the denizens
of every nation, and the contemporaries of
every age. A conviction of the utility of
government affords the only stable and ho
nourable security for obedience.
Our ancestors at the Revolution, it is true,
were far from feeling the full force of these
sublime truths : nor was the public mind of
Europe, in the seventeenth century, suffi
ciently enlightened and matured for the
grand enterprises of legislation. The science
which teaches the rights of man, and the
eloquence that kindles the spirit of freedom,
had for ages been buried with the other
monuments of wisdom, and the other relics
of the genius of antiquity. The revival of
letters first unlocked, — but only to a few, —
the sacred fountain. The necessary labours
of criticism and lexicography occupied the
earlier scholars ; and some time elapsed be-
the spirit of antiquity was transfused into
its admirers. The first man of that period
who united elegant learning to original and
masculine thought was Buchanan ;* and he
* It is not a little remarkable, that Buchanan
puts into the mouth of his antagonist, Maitland,
the same alarms for the downfall of literature that
have been excited in the mind of Mr. Burke by
the French Revolution. We can smile at such
alarms on a retrospect of the literary history of
Europe for the seventeenth of eighteen centuries •
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
451
too seems to have been the first scholar who
caught from the ancients the noble flame of
republican enthusiasm. This praise is merit
ed by his neglected, though incomparable
tract, De Jure Regni, in which the principles
of popular politics, and the maxims of a free
government, are delivered with a precision,
and enforced with an energy, which no for
mer age had equalled, and no succeeding
one has surpassed. The subsequent pro
gress of the human mind was slow. The
profound views of Harrington were derided
as the ravings of a visionary ; and who can
wonder, that the frantic loyalty which de
pressed Paradise Lost, should involve in
ignominy the eloquent Apology of Milton for
the People of England against a feeble and
venal pedant. Sidney,
" By ancient learning to th' enlighten'd love
Of ancient freedom warm'd,"*
taught the principles which he was to seal
with his blood ; and Locke, whose praise is
less that of being bold and original, than of
being temperate, sound, lucid, and methodi
cal, deserves the immortal honour of having
systematized and rendered popular the doc
trines of civil and religious liberty. In Ire
land, Molyneux, the friend of Locke, pro
duced The Case of Ireland, — a production
of which it is sufficient praise to say, that it
was ordered to be burnt by the despotic
parliament. In Scotland, Andrew Fletcher,
the scholar of Algernon Sidney, maintained
the case of his deserted country with the
force of ancient eloquence, and the dignity
of ancient virtue. Such is a rapid enumera
tion of thjose who had before, or near the Re
volution, contributed to the diffusion of poli
tical light. But their number was small,
their writings were unpopular, their dogmas
were proscribed. The habits of reading had
only then begun to reach the great body of
mankind, whom the arrogance of rank and
letters has ignominiously confounded under
the denomination of the vulgar.
Many causes too contributed to form a
powerful Tory interest in England. The
remnant of that Gothic sentiment, the ex
tinction of which Mr. Burke so pathetically
deplores, which engrafted loyalty on a point
of honour in military attachment, formed one
part, which may be called the '• Toryism of
chivalry." Doctrines of a divine right in
kings, which are now too much forgotten
even for successful ridicule, were then sup
ported and revered ; — these may be called
the " Toryism of superstition." A third spe
cies arose from the great transfer of property
to an upstart commercial interest, which
drove the ancient gentry of England, for pro
tection against its inroads, behind the throne ;
— this may be called the " Toryism of landed
aristocracy."! Religious prejudices, outrages
and should our controversies reach the enlightened
scholars of a future age, they will probably, with
the same reason, smile at the alarms of Mr.
Burke.
* Thomson's Summer.
t Principle is respectable, even in its mistakes ;
on natural sentiments, which any artificial
system is too feeble to withstand, and the
stream of events which bore them along to
extremities \vhich no man could have fore
seen, involved the Tories in the Revolution,
and made it a truly national act : but their
repugnance to every shadow of innovation
was invincible.
Something the Whigs may be supposed to
have conceded for the sake of conciliation ;
but few even of their leaders, it is probable,
had grand and liberal views. What indeed
could have been expected from the delegates
of a nation, in which, a few years before, the
University of Oxford, representing the na
tional learning and wisdom, had, in a solemn
decree, offered their congratulations to Sir
George Mackenzie (infamous for the abuse
of brilliant accomplishments to the most
servile and profligate purposes) for having
confuted the abominable doctrines of Bu
chanan and Milton, and for having demon
strated the divine rights of kings to tyrannise
and oppress mankind ! It must be evident,
that a people who could thus, by the organ
of its most learned body, prostrate its reason
before such execrable absurdities, was too
young for legislation. Hence the absurd de
bates in the Convention about the palliative
phrases of a abdicate," "desert." &c., which
were better cut short by the Parliament of
Scotland, when they used the correct and
manly expression, that James II. had " for
feited the throne." Hence we find the Revo
lutionists perpetually belying their political
conduct by their legal phraseology: hence
their impotent and illusive reforms : hence
their neglect of foresight* in not providing
bulwarks against the natural tendency of a
disputed succession to accelerate most rapid
ly the progress of Royal influence, by ren
dering it necessary to strengthen so much
and these Tories of the last century were a party
of principle. There were accordingly among them
men of the most elevated and untainted honour.
Who will refuse that praise to Clarendon and
Southampton, to Ormonde and Montrose ? But
Toryism, as a party of principle, cannot now exist
'n England ; for the principles on which we have
seen it to be founded, exist no more. The Gothic
sentiment is effaced ; the superstition is exploded ;
and the landed and commercial interests are com
pletely intermixed. The Toryism of the present
day can only arise from an abject spirit, or a cor
rupt heart.
* This progress of Royal influence from a dis
puted succession has, in fact, most fatally taken
place. The Protestant succession was the sup
posed means of preserving our liberties ; and to
that means the end has been most deplorably
sacrificed. The Whigs, the sincere though timid
and partial friends of freedom, were forced to
cling to the throne as the anchor of liberty. To
preserve it from utter shipwreck, they were forced
to yield something to its protectors ; — hence a na
tional debt, a septennial Parliament, and a stand-
'ng army. The avowed reason of the two last
was Jacobitism ; — hence the unnatural coalition
between Whiggism and Kings during the reigns
of the two first princes of the House of Hanover,
which the pupilage of Leicester House so totally
broke.
452
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the possessor of the crown against the pre
tender to it.
But to elucidate the question more fully.
" let us listen to the genuine oracles of Revo
lution policy;" — not to the equivocal and
palliative language of their statutes, but to
the unrestrained effusion of sentiment in that
memorable conference between the Lords
and Commons, on Tuesday the 5th of Feb
ruary, 1688, which terminated in establish
ing the present government of England.
The Tories, yielding to the torrent in the
personal exclusion of James, resolved to em
barrass the Whigs, by urging that the decla
ration of the abdication and vacancy of the
throne, was a change of the government,
pro hdc vice, into an elective monarchy.
The inference is irresistible : and it must be
confessed, that though the Whigs were the
better citizens, the Tories were the more
correct logicians. It is in this conference
that we see the Whig leaders compelled
to disclose so much of those principles,
which tenderness for prejudice, and reve
rence for usage, had influenced them to dis
semble. It is here that we shall discover
sparks kindled in the collision of debate suf
ficient tW enlighten the " politic gloom" in
which they had enveloped their measures.
If there be any names venerable among
the constitutional lawyers of England, they
are those of Lord Somers and Serjeant May-
nard. They were both conspicuous mana
gers for the Commons in this conference;
and the language of both will more than jus
tify the inferences of Dr. Price, and the creed
of the Revolution Society. My Lord Not
tingham, who conducted the conference on
the part of the Tories, in a manner most
honourable to his dexterity and acuteness,
demanded of the managers for the Com
mons: — "Whether they mean the throne to
be so vacant as to annul the succession in
the hereditary line, and so all the heirs to be
cut off? which we (the Lords) say, will
make the crown elective." Maynard, whose
argument always breathed much of the old
republican spirit, replied with force and
plainness: — '-It is not that the Commons do
say the crown of England is always and
perpetually elective : but it is necessary
there be a supply where there is a defect."
It is impossible to mistake the import of
these words. Nothing can be more evident,
than that by the mode of denying " that the
crown was always and perpetually elective,"
he confesses that it was for the then exigen
cy elective. In pursuance of his argument,
he uses a comparison strongly illustrative of
his belief in dogmas anathematised by Mr.
Burke : — "If two of us make a mutual agree
ment to help and defend each other from
any one that should assault us in a journey,
and he that is with me turns upon me, and
breaks my head, he hath undoubtedly abdi
cated my assistance, and revoked." Senti
ments of the kingly office, more irreverent
and more correct, are not to be found in the
most profane evangelist that disgraces the
Democratic canon. It is not unworthy of
incidental remark, that there were then per
sons who felt as great horror at novelties,
which have since been universally received,
as Mr. Burke now feels at the "rights of
men." The Earl of Clarendon, in his strict
ures on the speech of Mr. Somers, said : —
" I may say thus much in general, that this
breaking the original contract is a language
that has not long been used in this place,
nor known in any of our law books, or public
records. It is sprung up but as taken from
some late authors, and those none of the
best received!" This language one might
have supposed to be that of Mr. Burke : it
is not however his; it is that of a Jacobite
lord of the seventeenth century.
The Tories continued to perplex and in
timidate the Whigs with the idea of election.
Maynard again replies, " The word ' elective'
is none of the Commons' word. The provi
sion must be made, and if it be, that will not
render the kingdom perpetually elective."
If it were necessary to multiply citations to
prove, that the Revolution was to all intents
and purposes an election, we might hear
Lord Nottingham, whose distinction is pecu
liarly applicable to the case before us. " If."
says he, "you do once make it elective, I do
not say you are always bound to go to elec
tion ; but it is enough to make it so, if by
that precedent there be a breach in the he
reditary succession." The reasoning of Sir
Robert Howard, another of the managers for
the Commons, is bold and explicit: — "My
Lords, you will do well to consider. Have
you riot yourselves limited the succession,
and cut off some that might have a line of
right ? Have you not concurred with us in
our vote, that it is inconsistent with our reli
gion and our laws to have a Papist to reifjn
over us? Must we not then come to an
election, if the next heir be a Papist?" — the
precise fact which followed. But what tends
the most strongly to illustrate that contradic
tion between the exoteric and esoteric 'doc
trine, — the legal language, and the real prin
ciples. — which forms the basis of this whole
argument, is the avowal of Sir Richard Tem
ple, another of the managers for the Com
mons : — "We are in as natural a capacity
as any of our predecessors were to provide
for a remedy in such exigencies as this."
Hence it followed infallibly, that their pos
terity to all generations would be in the
same " natural capacity," to provide a reme
dy for such exigencies.
But let us hear their statutes : — there " the
Lords Spiritual and Temporal, arid Commons,
do, in the name of all the people of England,
most humbly and faithfully submit them
selves, their heirs and posterity for ever,"
&c. Here is the triumph of Mr. Burke ; — a
solemn abdication and renunciation of right
to change the monarch or the constitution !
His triumph is increased by this statutory
abolition of the rights of men being copied
from a similar profession of eternal alle
giance made by the Parliament of Elizabeth.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
453
It is difficult to conceive any thing more pre
posterous. In the very act of exercising a
right which their ancestors had abdicated in
their name, they abdicate the same right in
the name of tneir posterity. To increase
the ridicule of this legislative farce, they
impose an irrevocable law on their posterity,
in the precise words of that law irrevocably
imposed on them by their ancestors, at the
moment when they are violating it. The
Parliament of Elizabeth submit themselves
and their posterity for ever : the Convention
of 1688 spurn the submission for themselves,
but re-enact it for their posterity. And after
such a glaring inconsistency, this language
of statutory adulation is seriously and tri
umphantly brought forward as '• the unerring-
oracles of Revolution policy."
Thus evidently has it appeared, from the
conduct and language of the leaders of the
Revolution, that it was a deposition and an
election ; and that all language of a contrary
tendency, which is to be found in their acts,
arose from the remnant of their own preju
dice, or from concession to the prejudice of
others, or from the superficial and presump
tuous policy of imposing august illusions on
mankind. The same spirit regulated, — the
same prejudices impeded their progress in
every department. u They acted," says Mr.
Burke, " by their ancient States :" — they did
not. Were the Peers, and the Members of
a dissolved House of Commons, with the
Lord Mayor of London, &c. convoked by a
summons from the Prince of Orange, the
Parliament of England7? — no: they were
neither lawfully elected, nor lawfully assem
bled. But they affected a semblance of a
Parliament in their Convention, and a sem
blance of hereditary right in their election.
The subsequent Act of Parliament is nuga
tory ; for as that Legislature derived its whole
existence and authority from the Convention,
it could not return more than it had received,
and could not, therefore, legalise the acts of
the body which created it. If they were
not previously legal, the Parliament itself
was without legal authority, and could there
fore give no legal sanction.
It is, therefore, without any view to a prior,
or allusion to a subsequent revolution, that
Dr. Price, and the Revolution Society of Lon
don, think themselves entitled to conclude,
that abused power is revocable, and that cor
rupt governments ought to be reformed. Of
the first of these Revolutions, — that in 1648,
— they may, perhaps, entertain different sen
timents from Mr. Burke. They will confess
that it was debased by the mixture of fanati
cism; they may lament that History has so
often prostituted her ungenerous suffrage to
success ; and that the commonwealth was
obscured and overwhelmed by the splendid
profligacy of military usurpation : but they
cannot arrogate to themselves the praise of
having been the first to maintain, — nor can
Mr. Burke support his claim to have been
the first to reprobate, — since that period, the
audacious heresy of popular politics.
The prototype of Mr. Burke is not a less
notorious personage than the predecessor he
has assigned to Dr. Price. History has pre
served fewer memorials of Hugh Peters than
of Judge Jeffries. It was the fortune of that
luminary and model of lawyers to sit in
judgment on one of the fanatical apostles of
democracy. In the present ignominious ob
scurity of the sect in England, it may be
necessary to mention, that the name of this
criminal was Algernon Sidney, who had. it
is true, in his own time acquired some re
nown. — celebrated as the hero, and deplored
as the martyr of freedom. But the learned
magistrate was above this ••'epidemical fana
ticism:" he inveighed against his pestilential
dogmas in a spirif that deprives Mr. Burke's
invective against Dr. Price of all pretensions
to originality. An unvarnished statement
will so evince the harmony both of the cul
prits and the accusers, that remark is super
fluous : —
" And that the aforesaid Al- "We have a right
gernon Sidney did make, coin- to choose our own
pose and write, or cause to be governors, to cashier
made, composed and written, a them for misconduct,
certain false, scandalous and and to frame a go-
seditious libel, in which is con- vernment for our-
tained the following English selves." — Dr. Price's
words : — ' The Power originally Sermon.
in the people is delegated to the
Parliament. He (meaning the
King) is subject to the laws of
God, as he is a man, and to the
people that made him a king,
inasmuch as he is a king.' And
in another place of the said li
bel he says, ' We may therefore
take away kings without break
ing any yoke, or that is made a
yoke, which ought not to be
one; and the injury therefore
is making or imposing, and there
can be none in breaking it,'
&c." — Indictment of JHgernun
Sidney, State Trials, vol. iii. p.
716.
Thus we see the harmony of the culprits:
the one is only a perspicuous and precise
abridgment of the other. The harmony of
the judges will not be found less remarkable :
Mr. Burke, "when he talks as if he had
made a discovery, only follows a prece
dent:" —
" The King, it says, is
responsible to them, and
he is only their trustee.
He has misgoverned, and
he is to give it up, that
they may be all kings
themselves. Gentlemen,
I must tell you, I think T
ought, more than ordina
rily, to press this on you,
because I know the mis
fortunes of the late un
happy rebellion ; and the
bringing of the late bless
ed King to the scaffold
was first begun by such
kind of principles. "-Jef
fries' Charge.
"The Revolution Society
chooses to assert, that a king
is no more than the first ser
vant of the public, created
by it, and responsible to it."
" The second claim of the
Revolution Society is ca
shiering the monarch for
misconduct." — " The Revo
lution Society, the heroic
band of fabricators of go
vernments, electors of sove
reigns." — "This sermon is
in a strain which has never
been heard in this kingdom
in any of the pulpits which
are tolerated or encourag
ed in it since 1648."— Jlfr.
Burke's Reflections.
Thus does Mr. Burke chant his political
song in exact unison with the strains of the
venerable magistrate : they indict the same
crimes : they impute the same motives ; they
dread the same consequences.
454
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
The Revolution Society felt, from the great
event which they professedly commemora
ted, new motives to exult in the emancipa
tion of France. The Revolution of 1688 de
serves more the attention of a philosopher
from its indirect influence on the progress of
human opinion, than from its immediate
effects on the government of England. In
the first view, it is perhaps difficult to esti
mate the magnitude of its effects. It sanc
tified, as we have seen, the general princi
ples of freedom. It gave the first example
in civilized modem Europe of a government
which reconciled a semblance of political,
and a large portion of civil liberty, with sta
bility and peace. But above all, Europe owes
to it the inestimable blessing of an asylum
for freedom of thought. Hence England
became the preceptress of the wrorld in phi
losophy and freedom: hence arose the school
of sages, who unshackled and emancipated
the human mind ; from among whom issued
the Lockes, the Rousseaus, the Turgots. and
the Franklins, — the immortal band of pre
ceptors and benefactors of mankind. They
silently operated a grand moral revolution,
which was in due time to ameliorate the
social order. They had tyrants to dethrone
more formidable than kings, and from whom
kings held their power. They wrested the
sceptre from Superstition, and dragged Pre
judice in triumph. They destroyed the ar
senal whence Despotism had borrowed her
thunders and her chains. These grand en
terprises of philosophic heroism must have
preceded the reforms of civil government.
The Colossus of tyranny was undermined,
and a pebble overthrew it.
With this progress of opinion arose the
American Revolution; and from this last,
most unquestionably, the delivery of France.
Nothing, therefore, could be more natural,
than that those who, without blind bigotry
for the forms, had a rational reverence for
the principles of our ancestors, should rejoice
in a Revolution, in which these principles,
long suffered to repose in impotent abstrac
tion in England, are called forth into energy,
expanded, invigorated, and matured. If, as
we have presumed to suppose, the Revolu
tion of 1688 may have had no small share
in accelerating the progress of light which
has dissolved the prejudices that supported
despotism, they may be permitted, besides
their exultation as friends of humanity, to
indulge some pride as Englishmen.
It must be confessed that our ancestors in
1688, confined, in their practical regulations,
their views solely to the urgent abuse. They
punished the usurper without ameliorating
the government ; and they proscribed usurpa
tions without correcting their source. They
were content to clear "the turbid stream, in
stead of purifying the polluted fountain.
They merit, however, veneration for their
achievements, and the most ample amnesty
for their defects ; for the first were their own,
and the last are imputable to the age in which
thoy lived. The true admirers of the Revo
lution will pardon it for having spared use
less establishments, only because they revere
it for having established grand principles.
But the case of Mr. Burke is different ; he
deifies its defects, and derides its principles :
and were Lord Somers to listen to such mis
placed eulogy, and tortured inference, he
might justly say, "You deny us the only
praise we can claim ; and the only merit you
allow us is in the sacrifices we were com
pelled to make to prejudice and ignorance.
Your glory is our shame." Reverence for
the principles, and pardon of the defects of
civil changes, which arise in ages but par
tially enlightened, are the plain dictates of
common sense. Admiration of Magna Charta
does not infer any respect for villainage ;
reverence for Roman patriotism is not incom
patible with detestation of slavery ; nor does
veneration for the Revolutionists of 1688 im
pose any blindness to the gross, radical, and
multiplied absurdities and corruptions in
their political system. The true admirers
of Revolution principles cannot venerate in
stitutions as sa^e and effectual protections
of freedom, which experience has proved to
be nerveless and illusive.
" The practical claim of impeachment,77 —
the vaunted responsibility oi ministers, — is
the most sorry juggle of political empiricism
by which a people were ever attempted to
be lulled into servitude. State prosecutions
in free states have ever either languished in
impotent and despised tediousness, or burst
forth in a storm of popular indignation, that
has at once overwhelmed its object, without
discrimination of innocence or guilt. Nothing
but this irresistible fervor can destroy the
barriers within which powerful and opulent
delinquents are fortified. If it is not with
imminent hazard to equity and humanity
gratified at the moment, it subsides. The
natural influence of the culprit, and of the
accomplices interested in his impunity, re
sumes its place. As these trials are neces
sarily long, and the facts which produce
conviction, and the eloquence which rouses
indignation, are effaced from the public mind
by time, by ribaldry, and by sophistry, the
shame of a corrupt decision is extenuated.
Every source of obloquy or odium that can
be attached to the obnoxious and invidious
character of an accuser is exhausted by the
profuse corruption of the delinquent. The
tribunal of public opinion, which alone pre
serves the purity of others, is itself polluted ;
and a people wearied, disgusted, irritated,
and corrupted, suffer the culprit to retire in
impunity and splendour.*
" Damnatus inani
Judicio. Quid enim salvis infamia nummis ft
Such has ever been the state of things, when
* Part of this description is purely historical.
Heaven forbid that the sequel should prove pro
phetic! — When this subject [the late trial of
Warren Hastings. — ED.] presents Mr. Burke to
mind, I must say, " Tabs cum sis, ulinam noster
esses."
t Juvenal, Sat. i.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
455
the force of the Government has been suffi
cient to protect the accused from the first
ebullition of popular impetuosity. The de
mocracies of antiquity presented a spectacle
directly the reverse; but no history affords
any example of a just medium. Slate trials
will always either be impotent or oppressive,
— a persecution or a farce.
Thus vain is the security of impeachment :
and equally absurd, surely, is our confidence
in " the control of parliaments," in their pre
sent constitution, and with their remaining
powers. To begin with the last : — they pos
sess the nominal power of impeachment.
Not to mention its disuse in the case of any
minister for more than seventy years, it is
always too late to remedy the evil, and pro
bably always too weak to punish the criminal.
They possess a pretended power of with
holding supplies : but the situation of society-
has in truth wrested it from them. The sup
plies they must vote : for the army must have
its pay, and the public creditors their interest.
A power that cannot be exercised without
provoking mutiny, and proclaiming bank
ruptcy, the blindest bigot cannot deny to be
purely nominal. A practical substitute for
these theoretical powers existed till our days
in the negative exercised by the House of
Commons on the choice of the Minister of
the Crown. But the elevation of Mr. Pitt
has establised a precedent which has extir
pated the last shadow of popular control from
the government of England : —
" Olim vera fides, Sulla Marioque receptis,
Libenatis obit: Pompeio rebus adempto,
Nunc et ficta perit."*
In truth, the force and the privileges of
Parliament are almost indifferent to the peo
ple; for it is not the guardian of their rights.
nor the organ of their voice. We are said
to be u unequally represented." This is one
of those contradictory phrases that form the
political jargon of half-enlightened periods.
Unequal freedom is a contradiction in terms.
The law is the deliberate reason of all. guid
ing their occasional will. Representation is
an expedient for peacefully, systematically,
and unequivocally collecting this universal
voice: — so thought and so spoke the Ed
mund Burke of better times. c' To follow,
not to force the public inclination, to give a
direction, a form, a technical dress, and a
specific sanction to the general sense of the'
community, is the true end of legislature :"f
— there spoke the correspondent of Frank
lin, J the champion of America, the enlight
ened advocate of humanity and freedom !
If these principles be true, and they are so
true that it seems almost puerile to repeat
them, who can without indignation hear the
House of Commons of England called a po-
* Pharsalia, lib. ix.
t Burke's " Two Letters to Gentlemen in the
City of Bristol" (1778), p. 52.
t Mr. Burke has had the honour of being tra
duced for corresponding, during the American war,
with this great man, because he was a rebel !
pular representative body ? A more insolent
and preposterous abuse of language is not
to be found in the vocabulary of tyrants.
The criterion that distinguishes laws from
dictates, freedom from servitude, rightful
government from usurpation, — a law being
an expression of the general will. — as want
ing. This is the grievance which the ad
mirers of the Revolution of 1688 desire to
remedy according to its principles. This is
that perennial source of corruption which has
increased, is increasing, and ouiiht to be
diminished. If the general interest is not
the object of our government, it is — it must
be because the general will does not govern.
We are boldly challenged to produce our
proofs; our complaints are asserted to be
chimerical; and the excellence of our govern
ment is inferred from its beneficial effects.
Most unfortunately for us, — most unfortu
nately for our country, these proofs are too
ready and too numerous. We find them in
that •' monumental debt," the bequest of
wasteful and profligate wars, which already
wrings from the peasant something of his
hard-earned pittance. — which already has
punished the industry of the useful and up
right manufacturer, by robbing him of the
asylum of his house, and the judgment of
his peers,* — to which the madness of political
Quixotism adds a million for every farthing
that the pomp of ministerial empiricism pays,
— and which menaces our children with con
vulsions and calamities, of which no age has
seen the parallel. We find them in the black
and bloody roll of persecuting statutes that
are still suffered to stain our code ; — a list
so execrable, that were no monument to
be preserved of what England was in the
eighteenth century but her Statute Book,
she might be deemed to have been then
still plunged in the deepest gloom of super
stitious barbarism. We find them in the
ignominious exclusion of great bodies of our
fellow-citizens from political trusts, by tests
which reward falsehood and punish probity,
— which profane the rights of the religion
they pretend to guard, and usurp the do
minion of the God they profess to revere.
We find them in the growing corruption of
those who administer the government, — in
the venality of a House of Commons, which
has become only a cumbrous and expensive
chamber for registering ministerial edicts, —
in the increase of a nobility degraded by the
profusion and prostitution of honours, which
the most zealous partisans of democracy
would have spared them. We find them,
above all, in the rapid progress which has
been made in silencing the great organ of
public opinion, — that Press, which is the
true control over the Ministers and Parlia
ments, who might else, with impunity, tram
ple on the impotent formalities that form the
pretended bulwark of our freedom. Tho
mutual control, the well-poised balance of
* Alluding to the stringent provisions of tin*
"Tobacco Act."— ED.
456
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the several members, of our Legislature, are
the visions of theoretical, or the pretext of
practical politicians. It is a government, not
of check, but of conspiracy. — a conspiracy
which can only be repressed by the energy
of popular opinion.
These are no visionary ills, — no chimerical
apprehensions: they are the sad and sober
reflections of as honest and enlightened men
as any in the kingdom. Nor are they alle
viated by the torpid and listless security into
which tlie people seem to be lulled. "'Sum-
mum otium fo reuse non quiescentissed sene-
scentis civitatis." It is in this fatal temper
that men become sufficiently debased and
ernbruted to sink into placid and polluted
servitude. It is then that it may most truly
be said, that the mind of a country is slain.
The admirers of Revolution principles natu
rally call on every aggrieved and enlightened
citizen to consider the source of his oppres
sion. If penal statutes hang over our Catho
lic brethren,* — if Test Acts outrage our
Protestant fellow-citizens, — if the remains
of feudal tyranny are still suffered to exist in
Scotland, — if the press is fettered, — if our
right to trial by jury is abridged, — if our
manufacturers are proscribed and hunted
down by excise, — the reason of all these op
pressions is the same : — no branch of the
Legislature represents the people. Men are
oppressed because they have no share in
their own government. Let all these classes
of oppressed citizens melt their local and
partial grievances into one great mass. Let
them cease to be suppliants for their rights,
or to sue for them like mendicants, as a
precarious boon from the arrogant pity of
usurpers. Until the Legislature speaks their
voice it will oppress them. Let them unite
to procure such a Reform in the representa
tion of the people as will make the House
of Commons their representative. If, dis
missing all petty views of obtaining their
own particular ends, they unite for this great
object, they must succeed. The co-operating
efforts of so many bodies of citizens must
awaken the nation ; and its voice will be
spoken in a tone that virtuous governors will
obey, and tyrannical ones must dread.
This tranquil and legal Reform is the ulti
mate object of those whom Mr. Burke has
so foully branded. In effect, this would be
amply sufficient. The powers of the King
and the Lords have never been formidable
* No body of men in any state that pretends to
freedom have ever been so insolently oppressed as
the Catholic majority of Ireland. Their cause has
been lately pleaded by an eloquent advocate,
whose virtues might, have been supposed to have
influenced rny praise, as the partial dictate of
friendship, had not his genius extorted it as a strict
tribute to justice. I perceive that he retains much
of that admiration which we cherished in common,
by his classical quotation respecting Mr. Burke : —
" Uni quippe vacat, studiisque odiisque carenti,
Humanum legere genus." Pharsalia, lib. ii.
See " The Constitutional Interests of Ireland with
respect to the Popery Laws," (Dublin, 1791,)
part iv.
in England, but from discords between the
House of Commons and its pretended con
stituents. Were that House really to be
come the vehicle of the popular voice, the
privileges of other bodies, in opposition to
the sense of the people and their representa
tives, would be but as dust in the balance.
From this radical improvement all subaltern
reform would naturally and peaceably arise.
We dream of no more • and in claiming this,
instead of meriting the imputation of being
apostles of sedition, we conceive ourselves
entitled to be considered as the most sincere
friends of tranquil and stable government.
We desire to avert revolution by reform. —
subversion by correction.* We admonish
our governors to reform, while they retain
the force to reform with dignity and secu
rity; and we conjure them not to await the
moment, which will infallibly arrive, when
they shall be obliged to supplicate that peo
ple, whom they oppress and despise, for the
slenderest pittance of their present powers.
The grievances of England do not now,
we confess, justify a change by violence :
but they are in a rapid progress to that fatal
j state, in which they will both justify arid
' produce it. It is because we sincerely love
I tranquil freedom, f that we earnestly depre
cate the arrival of the moment when virtue
! and honour shall compel us to seek her with
I our swords. Are not they the true friends
! to authority who desire, that whatever is
I granted by it "should issue as a gift of her
! bounty and beneficence, rather than as claim 3
recovered against a struggling litigant'? Or,
I at least, that if her beneficence obtained no
j credit in her concessions, they should appear
I the salutary provisions of wisdom and fore
sight, not as things wrung with blood by the
cruel gripe of a rigid necessity."! We de
sire that the political light which is to break
in on England should be "through well-
contrived and well-disposed windows, not
through flaws and breaches, — through the
yawning chasms of our ruin."§ ,
Such was the language of Mr. Bnrke in
cases nearly parallel to the present. But of
those who now presume to give similar
counsels, his alarm and abhorrence are ex
treme. They deem the "'present times"
favourable " to all exertions in the cause of
liberty." They naturally must : their hopes
in that great cause are from the determined
and recording voices of enlightened men.
The shock that has destroyed the despotism
of France has widely dispersed the clouds
that intercepted reason from the political and
* Let the governors of all states compare the
convulsion which the obstinacy of the Government
provoked in France, with the peaceful and digni-.
fied reform which its wisdom effected in Poland.
The moment is important, the dilemma inevitable,
the alternative awful, the lesson most instructive.
t " Manus haac inimica tyrannis
Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem."
[The lines inserted by Algernon Sidney in the
Album of the University of Copenhagen. — ED.]
} Burke, Speech at Bristol.
§ Ibid.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
457
moral world ; and we cannot suppose, that
England is the only spot that has not been
reached by this " flood of light" that has
burst upon the human race. We might
suppose, too, that Englishmen would be
shamed out of their torpor by the great ex
ertions of nations whom we had long deemed
buried in hopeless servitude.
But nothing can be more absurd than to
assert, that all who admire wish to imitate
the French Revolution. In one view, there
is room for diversity of opinion among the
warmest and wisest friends of freedom, — as
to the amount of democracy infused into the
new government. In another, and a more
important one, it is to be recollected, that
the conduct of nations is apt to vary with
the circumstances in which they are placed.
Blind admirers of Revolutions take them for
implicit models. Thus Mr. Burke admires
that of 1688 : but we, who conceive that we
pay the purest homage to the authors of that
Revolution, not in contending for what they
then did, but for what they now would do.
can feel no inconsistency in looking on
France, not to model our conduct, but to
invigorate the spirit of freedom. We per
mit ourselves to imagine how Lord Somers,
in the light and knowledge of the eighteenth
century. — how the patriots of France, in the
tranquillity and opulence of England, would
have acted. We are not bound to copy the
conduct to which the last were driven by a
bankrupt exchequer and a dissolved govern
ment, nor to maintain the establishments,
which were spared by the first in a preju
diced and benighted age. Exact imitation
is not necessary to reverence. We venerate
the principles which presided in both events ;
and we adapt to political admiration a maxim
which has long been received in polite let
ters. — that th.3 only manly and liberal imita
tion is to speak as a great man would have
spoken, had he lived in our times, and had
been placed in our circumstances.
But let us hear the charge of Mr. Burke.
c: Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with all
the laws, all the tribunals, all the ancient
corporations of the kingdom ? Is every land
mark of the kingdom to be done away in
favour of a geometrical and arithmetical
constitution'? Is the House of Lords to be
useless? Is episcopacy to be abolished'?" —
and, in a word, is France to be imitated ?
Yes ! if our governors imitate her policy, the
state must follow her catastrophe. Man is
every where man: imprisoned grievance
will at length have vent ; and the storm of
popular passion will find a feeble obstacle in
the solemn imbecility of human institutions.
But who are the true friends of order, the
prerogative of the monarch, the splendour
of the hierarchy, and the dignity of the peer
age] — those most certainly who inculcate,
that to withhold Reform is to stimulate con
vulsion, — those who admonish all to whom
honour, and rank, and dignity, and wealth
are dear, that they can only in the end pre
serve them by conceding, while the moment
58
of concession remains, — those who aim at
draining away the fountains that feed the
torrent, instead of opposing puny barriers to
its course. "The beginnings of confusion in
England are at present feeble enough : but
with you we have seen an infancy still more
feeble growing by moments into a strength
to heap mountains upon mountains, and to
wage war with Heaven itself. Whenever
our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be
amiss for the engines to play a little upon
our own." This language, taken in its most
natural sense, is exactly what the friends of
Reform in England would adopt. Every
gloomy tint that is added to the horrors of
the French Revolution by the tragic pencil
of Mr. Burke, is a new argument in support
of their claims; and those only are the real
enemies of the Nobility, the Priesthood, and
other bodies of men that suffer in such con
vulsions, who stimulate them to unequal and
desperate conflicts. Such are the sentiments
of those who can admire without servilely
copying recent changes, and can venerate
the principles without superstitiously defend
ing the corrupt reliques of old revolutions.
" Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty,"
says Mr. Burke, " I am sure I do not despise.
Old as I am, I still read ihe fine raptures of
Lucan and Corneille with pleasure." Long
may that virtuous and venerable age enjoy
such pleasures ! But why should he be in
dignant that ':the glowing sentiment and
the lofty speculation should have passed
from the schools and the closet to the se
nate," and no longer only serving
" To point a moral or adorn a tale,"*
should be brought home to the business and
the bosoms of men'? The sublime genius,
whom Mr. Burke admires, and who sung the
obsequies of Roman freedom, has one senti
ment, which the friends of liberty in Eng
land, if they are like him condemned to look
abroad for a free government, must adopt : —
" Redituraque nunquam
l.ibertas ultra Tierim Rhenumque recessit,
Et toties nobis jugulo quaesita negatur."t
SECTION VI.
Speculations on the probable consequences of
the French Revolution in Europe.
THERE is perhaps only one opinion about
the French Revolution in which its friends
and its enemies agree : — they both conceive
that its influence will not be confined to
France ; they both predict that it will pro
duce important changes in the general state
of Europe. This is the theme of the exulta
tion of its admirers ; this is the source of the
alarms of its detractors. It were* indeed
difficult to suppose that a Revolution so un-
* Vanity of Human Wishes. — ED.
t Pharsalia, lib. vii.
20
458
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
paralleled should take place in the most re
nowned of the European nations, without
spreading its influence throughout the Chris
tian commonwealth; connected as it is by
the multiplied relations of politics, by the
common interest of commerce, by the wide
intercourse of curiosity and of literature, by
similar arts, and by congenial manners. The
channels by which the prevailing sentiments
of France may enter into the other nations
of Europe, are so obvious and so numerous,
that it would be unnecessary and tedious to
detail them ; but I may remark, as among
the most conspicuous, a central situation, a
predominating language, and an authority
almost legislative in the ceremonial of the
private intercourse of life. These and many
other causes must facilitate the diffusion of
French politics among neighbouring nations:
but it will be justly remarked, that their ef
fect must in a great measure depend on the
stability of the Revolution. The suppression
of an honourable revolt would strengthen all
the governments of Europe : the view of a
splendid revolution would be the signal of
insurrection to their subjects. Any reason
ings on the influence of the French Revolu
tion may therefore be supposed to be prema
ture until its permanence be ascertained.
Of that permanence my conviction is firm :
but I am sensible that in the field of political
prediction, where veteran sagacity* has so
often been deceived, it becomes me to har
bour with distrust, and to propose with diffi
dence, a conviction influenced by partial en
thusiasm, and perhaps produced by the in
experienced ardour of youth.
The moment at whicli I write (August 25th.
1791,) is peculiarly critical. The invasion of
France is now spoken of as immediate by
the exiles and their partisans; and a con
federacy of despotst is announced with new
confidence. Notwithstanding these threats,
I retain my doubts whether the jarring inte
rests of the European Courts will permit this
alliance to have much energy or cordiality ;
and whether the cautious prudence of des
pots will send their military slaves to a
school of freedom in France. But if there
be doubts about the likelihood of the enter
prise being undertaken, there be few about
the probability of its event. History cele
brates many conquests of obscure tribes,
whose valour was animated by enthusiasm :
* Witness the memorable example of Harring
ton, who published a demonstration of the im
possibility of re-establishing monarchy in England
six months before the restoration of Charles II.
Religious prophecies have usually the inestimable
convenience of relating to a distant futurity.
t The malignant hostility displayed against
French freedom by a perfidious Prince, who oc
cupies and dishonours the throne of Gustavus
Vasa, cannot excite our wonder, though it may
provoke our indignation. The pensioner of Krench
despotism could not rejoice in its destruction; nor
could a monarch^ whose boasted talents have hi
therto been confined to perjury and usurpation,
fail to be wounded by the establishment of free
dom : for freedom demands genius, not intrigue,
—wisdom, not cunning.
but she records no example where a foreign
force has subjugated a powerful and gallant
people, governed by the most imperious pas
sion that can sway the human breast.* —
Whatever wonders fanaticism has performed,
may be again effected by a passion as ardent,
though not so transitory, because it is sanc
tioned by virtue and reason. To animate
patriotism, — to silence tumult. — to banish
division, — would be the only effects of an
invasion in the present state of France. A
people abandoned to its own inconstancy,
have often courted the yoke which they had
thrown off: but to oppose foreign hostility
to the enthusiasm of a nation, can only have
the effect of adding to it ardour, arid con
stancy, and force. These and similar views
must offer themselves to the European Cabi
nets; but perhaps they perceive themselves
to be placed in so peculiar a situation, that
exertion and inactivity are equally perilous.
If they fail in the attempt to crush the infant
liberty of France, the ineffectual effort will
recoil on their own governments: if they
tamely suffer a school! of freedom to be
founded in the centre of Europe, they
must foresee the hosts of disciples that are
to issue from it for the subversion of their
despotism.
They cannot be blind to a species of
danger which the history of Europe reveals
to them in legible characters. They see,
indeed, that the negotiations, the wars, and
the revolutions of vulgar policy, pass away
without leaving behind them any vestige
of their transitory and ignominious opera
tion : but they must remark also, that be-
* May I be permitted to state how the ances
tors of a nation now stigmatized for servility, felt
this powerful sentiment ? The Scottish Nobles,
contending for their liberty under Robert Bruce,
thus spoke to the Pope : — " Non pugnarnus prop-
tor divitias, honores, aut dignitates, sed propter
libertatem tantummodo, quam nemo bonus nisi
simul cum vita amittit !" Nor was this senti
ment confined to the Magnates ; for the same
letter declares the assent of the Commons : —
" Totaque Communitas Regni Scotiae !" Reflect
ing on the various fortunes of my country, I can
not exclude from my mind the comparison between
its present reputation and our ancient character, —
" terrarum et libertatis extremes :" nor can 1 for
get the honourable reproach against the Scottish
name in the character of Buchanan by Thuanus,
(Hist. lib. Ixxvi. cap. 11,) " Libertate genti innata
in regium fasiigium acerbior." This melancholy
retrospect is however relieved by the hope that a
gallant and enlightened people will not be slow
in renewing the era for such reproaches.
t The most important materials for the philoso
phy of history are collected from remarks on the
coincidence of the situations and sentiments of
distant periods ; and it may be curious as well as
instructive, to present to the reader the topics
by which the Calonnes of Charles I. were in
structed, to awaken the jealousy and solicit the
aid of the European courts: — " A dangerous com
bination of his Majesty's subjects have laid a de
sign to dissolve the monarchy and frame of govern
ment, becoming a dangerous precedent to all the
monarchies of Christendom, if attended with suc
cess in their design." — Charles I.'s Instructions
to his Minister in Denmark, Ludlow'z Memoirs,
vol. iii. p. 257.
A DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
459
sides this monotonous villany, there are
cases in which Europe, actuated by a com
mon passion, has appeared as one nation.
The religious passion animated and guided
the spirit of chivalry : — hence arose the Cru
sades. " A nerve was touched of exquisite
feeling ; and the sensation vibrated to the
heart of Europe."* In the same manner
the Reformation gave rise to religious wars,
the duration of which exceeded a century
and a half. Both examples prove the exist
ence of that sympathy, by the means of
which a great passion, taking its rise in any
considerable state of Europe, must circulate
through the whole Christian commonwealth.
Illusion is, however, transient, while truth is
immortal. The epidemical fanaticism of
former times was short-lived, for it could
only flourish in the eclipse of reason : but
the virtuous enthusiasm of liberty, though it
be like that fanaticism contagious, is not like
it transitory.
But there are other circumstances which
entitle us to expect, that the example of
France will have a mighty influence on the
subjects of despotic governments. The
Gothic governments of Europe have lived
their time. "Man, and for ever!" is the
sage exclamation of Mr. Hume.t Limits
are no less rigorously prescribed by Nature
to the age of governments than to that of
individuals. The Heroic governments of
Greece yielded to a body of legislative re
publics : these were in their turn swallowed
up by the conquests of Rome. That great
empire itself, under the same forms, passed
through various modes of government. The
first usurpers concealed it under a republican
disguise : their successors threw off the mask,
and avowed a military despotism : it expired
in the ostentatious feebleness of an Asiatic
monarchy. J It was overthrown by savages,
whose rude institutions and barbarous man
ners have, until our days, influenced Europe
with a permanance refused to wiser and
milder laws. But, unless historical analogy
be altogether delusive, the decease of the
Gothic governments cannot be distant. Their
maturity is long past : and symptoms of
their decrepitude are rapidly accumulating.
Whether they are to be succeeded by more
beneficial or more injurious forms may be
doubted ; but that they are about to perish,
we are authorized to suppose, from the usual
age to which the governments recorded in
history have arrived.
There are also other presumptions fur
nished by historical analogy, wrhich favour
the supposition that legislative governments
are about to succeed to the rude usurpations
of Gothic Europe. The commonwealths
* Gibbon, Decline and Fall, &c., chap. Ivii.
t Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 579.— ED.
t See this progress stated in the concise philoso
phy of Montesquieu, and illustrated by the copious
eloquence of Gibbon. The republican disguise
extends from Augustus to Severus ; the military
despotism from Severus to Diocletian ; the Asiatic
Sultanship from Diocletian to the final extinction
of the Roman name.
which in the sixth and seventh centuries
before the Christian era were erected on the
ruins of the heroic monarchies of Greece,
are perhaps the only genuine example of go
vernments truly legislative recorded in his
tory. A close inspection will, perhaps, dis
cover some coincidence between the circum
stances which formed them and those which
now influence the state of Europe. The
Phenician and Egyptian colonies were not
like our colonies in America, populous
enough to subdue or extirpate the native
savages of Greece: they were, however,
sufficiently so to instruct and civilize them.
From that alone could their power be de
rived: to that therefore were their efforts
directed. Imparting the arts and the know
ledge of polished nations to rude tribes, they
attracted, by avowed superiority of know
ledge, a submission necessary to the effect of
their legislation, — a submission which impos
tors acquire through superstition, and con
querors derive from force. An age of legisla
tion supposes great inequality of knowledge
between the legislators and those who receive
their institutions. The Asiatic colonists, who
first scattered the seeds of refinement, pos
sessed this superiority over the Pelasgic
hordes: and the legislators who in subse
quent periods organised the Grecian common
wealths, acquired from their travels in the
polished states of the East, that reputation of
superior knowledge, which enabled them to
dictate laws to their fellow-citizens. Let us
then compare Egypt and Phenicia with the
enlightened part of Europe, — separated as
widely from the general mass by the moral
difference of instruction, as these countries
were from Greece by the physical obsta
cles which impeded a rude navigation. — and
we must discern, that philosophers become
legislators are colonists from an enlightened
country reforming the institutions of rude
tribes. The present moment indeed resem
bles with wonderful exactness the legisla
tive age of Greece. The multitude have
attained sufficient knowledge to value the
superiority of enlightened men ; and they
retain a sufficient consciousness of ignorance
to preclude rebellion against their dictates.
Philosophers have meanwhile long remained
a distinct nation in the midst of an unen
lightened multitude. It is only now that
the conquests of the press are enlarging the
dominion of reason ; as the vessels of Cad
mus and Cecrops spread the arts and the
wisdom of the East among the Pelasgic bar
barians.
These general causes, — the unity of the
European commonwealth, the decrepitude
on which its fortuitous governments are
verging, and the similarity between our
age and the only recorded period when the
ascendant of philosophy dictated laws,- -en
title us to hope that freedom and reason will
be rapidly propagated from their source in
France. And there are not wanting symp
toms which justify the speculation. The first
symptoms which indicate the approach of
460
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
a contagious disease are the precautions
adopted" against it: the first marks of the
probable progress of French principles are
the alarms betrayed by despots. The Courts
of Europe seem to look on France, and to
exclaim in their despair; —
" Hinc populum late regem, belloque superbum,
Venturum excidio Libyae."
The King of Spain already seems to tremble
for his throne, though it be erected on so
firm a basis of general ignorance and trium
phant priestcraft. By expelling foreigners,
and by subjecting the entrance of travellers
to such multiplied restraints, he seeks the
preservation of his despotism in a vain at
tempt to convert his kingdom into a Bastile,
and to banish his subjects from the European
commonwealth. The Chinese government
has indeed thus maintained its permanency;
but it is insulated by Nature more effectually
than by policy. Let the Court of Madrid re
call her ambassadors, shut up her ports,
abandon her commerce, sever every tie that
unites her to Europe: the effect of such
shallow policy must be that of all ineffectual
rigour (and all rigour short of extirpation is
here ineffectual), to awaken reflection. — to
stimulate inquiry, — to aggravate discontent,
— and to provoke convulsion. "There are
no longer Pyrenees," said Louis XIV., on
the accession of his grandson to the Spanish
throne: " There are no longer Pyrenees,"
exclaimed the alarmed statesmen of Aran-
juez, — u to protect our despotism from being
consumed by the sun of liberty." The
alarm of the Pope for the little remnant of
his authority naturally increases with the
probability of the diffusion of French princi
ples. Even the mild and temperate aristo
cracies of Switzerland seem to apprehend the
arrival of that period, when men will not be
content to owe the benefits of government
to the fortuitous character of their governors,
but to its own intrinsic excellence. Even
the unsuccessful struggle of Liege, and the
theocratic insurrection of Brabant, have left
behind them traces of a patriotic party,
whom a more favourable moment may call
into more successful action. The despotic
Court of the Hague is betraying alarm that
the Dutch republic may yet revive, on the
destruction of a government odious and in
tolerable to an immense majority of the
people. Every where then are those alarms
discernible, which are the most evident
symptoms of the approaching downfall of the
European despotisms.
But the impression produced by the French
Revolution in England, — in an enlightened
country, which had long boasted of its free
dom, — merits more particular remark. Be
fore the publication of Mr. Burke, the public
were not recovered from that astonishment
into which they had been plunged by unex
ampled events, and the general opinion could
riot have been collected with precision. But
that performance has divided the nation into
marked parties. It has produced a contro-
j versy, which may be regarded as the trial
I of the French Revolution before the enlight
ened and independent tribunal of the Eng
lish public. What its decision has been I
shall not presume to decide • for it does not
become an advocate to announce the deci
sion of the judge. But this I may be per
mitted to remark, that the conduct of our
enemies has not resembled the usual triumph
of those who have been victorious in the war
of reason. Instead of the triumphant calm
ness that is ever inspired by conscious su
periority, they have betrayed the bitterness
of defeat, and the ferocity of resentment,
which are peculiar to the black revenge of
detected imposture. Priestcraft and Tory
ism have been supported only by literary ad
vocates of the most miserable description :
but they have been ably aided by auxiliaries
of another kind. Of the two great classes
of enemies to political reform, — the interest
ed and the prejudiced. — the activity of the
first usually supplies what may be wanting
in the talents of the last. Judges have for
gotten the dignity of their function. — priests
the mildness of their religion ; the Bench,
which should have spoken with the serene
temper of justice, the Pulpit, whence only
should have issued the healing sounds of
charity, have been prostituted to party pur
poses, and polluted with invectives against
freedom. The churches have resounded
with language at which Laud would have
shuddered, and Sacheverell would have
blushed : the most profane comparisons be
tween our duty to the Divinity and to kings,
have been unblushingly pronounced : flat
tery of the Ministers has been mixed with
the solemnities of religion, by the servants,
and in the temple of God. These profligate
proceedings have not been limited to a single
spot : they have been general over England.
In many churches the French Revolution
has been expressly named : in a majority it
was the constant theme of invective for
many weeks before its intended celebration.
Yet these are the peaceful pastors, who so
sincerely and meekly deprecate political
sermons.*
Nor was this sufficient. The grossness of
the popular mind, on which political invec
tive made but a faint impression, was to be
roused into action by religious fanaticism, —
the most intractable and domineering of all
destructive passions. A clamour which had
for half a century lain dormant has been re
vived : — the Church was in danger ! The
spirit of persecution against an unpopular sect
has been artfully excited ; and the friends
of freedom, whom it might be odious and
dangerous professedly to attack, are to be
overwhelmed as Dissenters. That the ma-
* These are no vague accusations. A sermon
was preached in a parish church in Middlesex on
the anniversary of the Restoration, in which eter
nal punishment was denounced against political
disaffection ! Persons for whose discernment and
veracity I can be responsible, were among the
indignant auditors of this infernal homily.
REASONS AGAINST THE FRENCH WAR OF 1793.
461
jority of the advocates for the French Revo
lution are not Dissenters is, indeed, suffi
ciently known to their enemies. They are
well known to be philosophers and friends
of humanity, superior to the creed of any
sect, and indifferent to the dogmas of any
popular faith. But it has suited the purpose
of their profligate adversaries to confound
them with the Dissenters, and to animate
against them the fury of prejudices which
those very adversaries despised.
The diffusion of these invectives has pro
duced those obvious and inevitable effects,
which it may require something more than
candour to suppose not foreseen and desired.
A banditti, which had been previously stimu
lated, as it has since been excused and pane
gyrized by incendiary libellers, have wreaked
their vengeance on a philosopher,* illustrious
* Alluding to the destruction of Dr. Priestley's
by his talents and his writings, venerable
for the spotless purity of his life, and amia
ble for the unoffending simplicity of his
manners. The excesses of this mob of
churchmen and loyalists are to be poorly
expiated by the few misguided victims who
are sacrificed to the vengeance of the law.
We are, however, only concerned with
these facts, as they are evidence from our
enemies of the probable progress of freedom.
The probability of that progress they all con
spire to prove. The briefs of the Pope, and
the pamphlets of Mr. Burke, the edicts of
the Spanish Court, and the mandates of the
Spanish inquisition, the Birmingham rioters,
and the Oxford graduates, equally render to
Liberty the involuntary homage of their
alarm.
house in the neighbourhood of Birmingham by the
mob, on the 14th of July, 1791.— ED.
REASONS
AGAINST THE FRENCH WAR OF 1793.
AT the commencement of the year 1793
the whole body of the supporters of the war
seemed unanimous; yet even then was per
ceptible the germ of a difference which time
and events have since unfolded. The Min
ister had early and frequent recourse to the
high principles of Mr. Burke, in order to adorn
his orations, — to assail his antagonists in de
bate, — to blacken the character of the ene
my, — and to arouse the national spirit against
them. Amid the fluctuating fortune of the
war, he seemed in the moment of victory
to deliver opinions scarcely distinguishable
from those of Mr. Burke, and to recede from
them by imperceptible degrees, as success
abandoned the arms of the Allies. When
the armies of the French republic were
every where triumphant, and the pecuniary
embarrassments of Great Britain began to
be severely felt, he at length dismissed alto
gether the consideration of the internal state
of F ranee, and professed to view the war as
merely defensive against aggressions com
mitted on Great Britain and her allies.
That the war was not just on such princi
ple? perhaps a very short argument will be |
sufficient to demonstrate. War is just only '
to those by whom it is unavoidable; and
every appeal to arms is unrighteous, except
that of a nation which has no other resource
for the maintenance of its security or the
assertion of its honour. Injury and insult do
not of themselves make it lawful for a nation
to seek redress by war, because they do not
* From the Monthly Review, vol. xl. p. 433. — ED
make it necessary : another means of redress
is still in her power, and it is still her duty
to employ it. It is not either injury or in
sult; but injury for which reparation has
been asked and denied, or insult for which
satisfaction has been demanded arid refused,
that places her in a state in which, having
in vain employed every other means of vin
dicating her rights, she may justly assert
them by arms. Any commonwealth, there
fore, which shuts up the channel of negotia
tion wrhile disputes are depending, is the
author of the war which may follow. As'a
perfect equality prevails in the society and
intercourse of nations, no state is bound to
degrade herself by submitting to unavowed
and clandestine negotiation ; but every go
vernment has a perfect right to be admitted
to that open, avowed, authorized, honourable
negotiation which in the practice of nations
is employed for the pacific adjustment of^
their contested claims. To refuse authorized
negotiation is to refuse the only negotiation
to which a government is forced to submit :
it is, therefore, in effect to refuse negotiation
altogether; and it follows, as a necessary
consequence, that they who refuse such au
thorized negotiation are responsible for a war
which that refusal makes on their part unjust.
These principles apply with irresistible
force to the conduct of the English Govern
ment in the commencement of the present
war. They complained, perhaps justly, of
the opening of the Scheldt, — of the Decree
of Fraternity, — of the countenance shown to
disaffected Englishmen : but they refused
2o 2
462
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
that authorised intercourse with the French
Government through its ambassador, M.
Chauvelin, which might have amicably ter
minated these disputes. It is no answer
that they were ready to carry on a clandes
tine correspondence with that government
through Noel and Maret, or any other of its
secret agents. That Government was not
obliged to submit to such an intercourse;
and the British Government put itself in the
wrong by refusing an intercourse of another
sort.
No difficulties arising from a refusal to ne
gotiate embarrass the system of Mr. Burke.
It is founded on the principle that the nature
of the French Government is a just ground
of war for its destruction, and regards the
particular acts of that government no farther
than as they are proofs of its irreconcilable
hostility to all other states and communities.
We are not disposed to deny that so mighty
a change in the frame of government and the
state of society, of one of the greatest nations
of the civilized world, as was effected by the
Revolution in France, — attended by such ex
travagant opinions, and producing such vio
lent passions, — was of a nature to be danger
ous to the several governments and to the
quiet of the various communities, which
compose the great commonwealth of Europe.
To affirm the contrary would be in effect to
maintain that man is not the creature of
sympathy and imitation, — that he is not al
ways disposed, in a greater or less degree,
to catch the feelings, to imbibe the opinions,
and to copy the conduct of his fellow-men.
Most of the revolutions which have laid an
cient systems in ruins, and changed the
whole face of society. ' have sprung from
these powerful and active principles of hu
man nature. The remote effect of these re
volutions has been sometimes beneficial and
sometimes pernicious : but the evil which
accompanied them has ever been great and
terrible; their future tendency was neces
sarily ambiguous and contingent ; and their
ultimate consequences were always depend
ent on circumstances much beyond the con
trol of the agents. With these opinions, the
only question that can be at issue between
Mr. Burke and ourselves is, whether a war
was a just, effectual, and safe mode of
averting the danger with which the French
Revolution might threaten the established
governments of Europe ; — just in its princi
ple, — effectual for its proposed end, — and
safe from the danger of collateral evil. On
all the three branches of this comprehen
sive question we are obliged to dissent very
widely from the opinions of Mr. Burke.
We are not required to affirm universally
that there never are cases in which the state
of the internal government of a foreign nation
may become a just ground of war ; and we
know too well the danger of universal affir
mations to extend our line of posts farther
than is absolutely necessary for our own de
fence. We are not convinced of the fact
that the French Government in the year 1791
(when the Royal confederacy originated) was
of such a nature as to be incapable of being
so ripened and mitigated by a wise modera
tion in the surrounding Powers, that it might
not become perfectly safe and inoffensive to
the neighbouring states. Till this fact be
proved, the whole reasoning of Mr. Burke
appears to us inconclusive. Whatever may
be done by prudence and forbearance is not
to be attempted by war. Whoever, there
fore, proposes war as the means of attaining
any public good, or of averting any public
evil, must first prove that his object is un
attainable by any other means. And pecu
liarly heavy is the burden of proof on the
man who, in such cases as the present, is
the author of violent counsels, — which, even
when they are most specious in promise, are
hard and difficult in trial, as well as most un
certain in their issue, — which usually pre
clude any subsequent recurrence to milder
and more moderate expedients. — and from
which a safe retreat is often difficult, and an
honourable retreat is generally impossible.
Great and evident indeed must be the ne
cessity which can justify a war that in its
nature must impair, and in its effects may
subvert the sacred principle of national in
dependence, — the great master-principle of
public morality, from which all the rules of
the law of nations flow, and which they are
all framed only to defend, — of which the
balance of power itself (for which so many
wars, in our opinion just, have been carried
on) is only a safeguard and an outwork. —
and of which the higher respect and the
more exact observance have so happily dis
tinguished our western parts of Europe, in
these latter times, above all other ages and
countries of the world. Under the guard of
this venerable principle, our European socie
ties, with the most different forms of govern
ment and the greatest inequalities of strength,
have subsisted and flourished in almost equal
security, — the character of man has been
exhibited in all that, variety and vigour which
are necessary for the expansion arid display
both of his powers and of his virtues, — the
spring and spirit and noble pride and gene
rous emulation, which arise from a division
of territory among a number of independent
states, have been combined with a large
measure of that tranquil security which has
been found so rarely reconcilable with such
a division, — the opinion of enlightened Eu
rope has furnished a mild but not altogether
ineffectual, control over the excesses of des
potism itself,— and the victims of tyranny
have at least found a safe and hospitable
asylum in foreign countries from the rage of
their native oppressors. It has alike exempt
ed us from the lethargic quiet of extensive
empire, — from the scourge of wide and rapid
conquest, — and from the pest of frequent do
mestic revolutions.
This excellent principle, like every other
rule which governs the moral conduct of
men, may be productive of occasional evil.
It must be owned that the absolute indepen-
REASONS AGAINST THE FRENCH WAR OF 1793.
463
dence of states, and their supreme exclusive
jurisdiction over all acts done within their
own territory, secure an impunity to the most
atrocious crimes either of usurpers or of law
ful governments degenerated into tyrannies.
There is no tribunal competent to punish
such crimes, because it is not for the interest
of mankind to vest in any tribunal an au
thority adequate to their punishment; and it
is better that these crimes should be unpun
ished, than that nations should not be inde
pendent. To admit such an authority would
only be to supply fresh incitements to am
bition and rapine, — to multiply the grounds
of war, — to sharpen the rage of national ani
mosity, — to destroy the confidence of inde
pendence and internal quiet. — and to furnish
new pretexts for invasion, for conquest, and
for partition. When the Roman, general
Flarninius was accomplishing the conquest
of Greece, under pretence of enfranchising
the Grecian republics, he partly covered his
ambitious designs under colour of punishing
the atrocious crimes of the Lacedasmonian
tyrant Nabis.* When Catherine II. and her
accomplices perpetrated the greatest crime
which any modern government has ever
committed against another nation, it was
easy for them to pretend that the partition
of Poland was necessary for the extirpation
of Jacobinism in the north of Europe.
We are therefore of opinion that the war
proposed by Mr. Burke is unjust, both be
cause it has not been proved that no other
means than war could have preserved us
from the danger; and because war was an
expedient, which it was impossible to employ
for such a purpose, without shaking the au
thority of that great tutelary principle, under
the shade of which the nations of Europe
have so long flourished in security. There
is no case of fact made out to which the
principles of the law of vicinage are to apply.
If the fact had been proved, we might confess
the justice of the war • though even in that
case its wisdom and policy would still remain
to be considered.
The first question to be discussed in the
examination of every measure of policy is,
whether it is likely to be effectual for its
proposed ends. That the war against France
was inadequate to the attainment of its ob
ject is a truth which is now demonstrated
by fatal experience: but which, in our
opinion, at the time of its commencement,
was very evident to men of sagacity and
foresight. The nature of the means to be
employed was of itself sufficient to prove
their inadequacy. The first condition es
sential to the success of the war was, that
the confederacy of ambitious princes who
were to carry it on, should become perfectly
wise, moderate, and disinterested, — that they
should bury in oblivion past animosities and
all mutual jealousies — that they should sacri
fice every view of ambition and every op-
* Livy, lib. xxxiv. cap. 24. The whole narra
tive is extremely curious, and not without resem
blance and application to later events.
portunity of aggrandisement to the great
object of securing Europe from general con
fusion by re-establishing the ancient mo
narchy of France. No man has proved this
more unanswerably than Mr. Burke himself.
This moderation and this disinterestedness
were not only necessary for the union of the
Allies, but for the disunion of France.
But we will venture to affirm, that the
supposition of a disinterested confederacy
of ambitious princes is as extravagant a chi
mera as any that can be laid to the charge
of the wildest visionaries of democracy.
The universal peace of the Abbe St. Pierre
was plausible and reasonable, when com
pared with this supposition. The universal
republic of Anacharsis Cloots himself was
not much more irreconcilable with the uni
form experience and sober judgment of man
kind. We are far from confounding two
writers, — one of whom was a benevolent
visionary and the other a sanguinary mad
man, — who had nothing in common but the
wildness of their predictions and the extrava
gance of their hopes. The Abbe St. Pierre
had the simplicity to mistake an ingenious
raillery of the Cardinal Fleuri for a deliberate
adoption of his reveries. That minister had
told him "that he had forgotten an indis
pensable preliminary — that of sending a body
of missionaries to turn the hearts and minds
of the princes of Europe." Mr. Burke, with
all his knowledge of human nature, and with
all his experience of public affairs, has for
gotten a circumstance as important as that
which was overlooked by the simple and
recluse speculator. He has forgotten that he
must have made ambition disinterested, —
power moderate, — the selfish generous, — and
the short-sighted wise, before he could hope
for success in the contest which he recom
mended.* To say that if the authors of the
partition of Poland could be made perfectly
wise and honest, they might prevail over the
French democracy, is very little more than
the most chimerical projector has to offer for
his wildest scheme. Such an answer only
gives us this new and important information,
that impracticable projects will be realised
when insurmountable obstacles are overcome.
Who are you that presume to frame laws for
men without taking human passions into ac
count, — to regulate the actions of mankind
* Perhaps something more of flexibility of cha
racter and accommodation of temper, — a mind
more broken down to the practice of the world, —
would have fitted Mr. Burke better for the execu
tion of that art which is the sole instrument of
political wisdom, and without which the highest
political wisdom is but barren speculation— we
mean the art of guiding and managing mankind.
How can he have forgotten that these vulgar poli
ticians were the only tools with which he had to
work in reducing his schemes to practice ? These
" creatures of the desk and creatures of favour"
unfortunately govern Europe. The ends of gene
rosity were to be compassed alone through the
agency of the selfish ; and the objects of pro
spective wisdom were to be attained by the exer
tions of the short-sighted. — Monthly Review
(IV. £.), vol. xix. p. 317.— ED.
464
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
without regarding the source and principle
of those actions ? A chemist who in his ex
periments should forget the power of steam
or of electricity, would have no right to be
surprised that his apparatus should be shi
vered to pieces, and his laboratory covered
with the fragments.
It must be owned, indeed, that no one
could have ventured to predict the extent
and extravagance of that monstrous and
almost incredible infatuation which has dis
tracted the strength and palsied the arms
of the Allied Powers: but it was easy to
foresee, and it was in fact predicted, that a
sufficient degree of that infatuation must
prevail to defeat the attainment of their
professed object. We cannot help express
ing our surprise, tfiat the immense differ
ence in this respect between the present
confederacy and the Grand Alliance of.
King William III. did not present itself
to the great understanding of Mr. Burke.
This is a war to avert the danger of the
French Revolution, in which it is indis
pensably necessary to avoid all appearance
of a design to aggrandise the Allies at the
expense of France. The other was one
designed to limit the exorbitant power of
Louis, which was chiefly to be effected by
diminishing his overgrown dominions. The
members of that confederacy gratified their
own ambition by the same means which
provided for the general safety. In that
contest, every conquest promoted the gene
ral object : — in this, every conquest retards
and tends to defeat it. No romantic mode
ration — no chimerical disinterestedness — no
sacrifice of private aggrandisement to the
cause of Europe, was required in that con
federacy. Yet, with that great advantage,
it is almost the only one recorded in history,
which was successful. Still it required, to
build it up, and hold it together, all the ex
alted genius, all the comprehensive wisdom,
all the disinterested moderation, and all the
unshaken perseverance of William* — other
talents than those of petty intrigue and pom
pous declamation. The bitterest enemies
#f our present ministers could scarcely ima-
* " It there be any man in the present age who
deserves the honour of being compared with this
great prince, it is George Washington. The
merit of both is more solid than dazzling. The
same plain sense, the same simplicity of character,
the same love of their country, the same unaffect
ed heroism, distinguished both these illustrious
men ; and both were so highly favoured by Pro
vidence as to be made its chosen instruments for
redeeming nations from bondage. As William
had to contend with greater captains, and to strug
gle with more complicated political difficulties, we
are able more decisively to ascertain his martial
prowess, and his civil prudence. It has been the
fortune of Washington to give a mor-e signal proof
of his disinterestedness, as he was placed in a
situation in which he could without blame resign
the supreme administration of that commonwealth
which his valour had guarded in infancy against
a foreign force, and which his wisdom has since
guided through still more formidable domestic
perils." — Monthly Review, vol. xi. p. 308. — ED.
gine so cruel a satire upon them, as any
comparison between their talents and policy,
and those of the great monarch. The dis
approbation of the conduct of the British
Cabinet must have arisen to an extraordinary
degree of warmth in the mind of Mr. Burke,
before he could have prevailed on himself
to bring into view the policy of other and
better times, and to awaken recollections of
past wisdom and glory which must tend so
much to embitter our indignation at the pre
sent mismanagement of public affairs. In
a word, the success of the war required it to
be felt by Frenchmen to be a war direct
ed against the Revolution, and not against
France; w^ile the ambition of the Allies
necessarily made it a war against France,
and not against the Revolution. Mr. Burke',
M. de Calonne, M. Mallet du Pan, and all
the other distinguished writers who have
appeared on behalf of the French Royalists
— a name which no man should pronounce
without pity, and no Englishman ought to
utter without shame — have acknowledged,
lamented, and condemned the wretched
policy of the confederates. We have still
to impeach their sagacity, for not having ori
ginally foreseen what a brittle instrument
such a confederacy must prove; we have
still to reproach them, for not having from
the first perceived, that to embark the safety
of Europe on the success of such an alliance,
was a most ambiguous policy, — only to be
reluctantly embraced, after every other ex
pedient was exhausted, in a case of the most
imminent danger, and in circumstances of
the most imperious necessity.
These reflections naturally lead us to the
consideration of the safety of the war, or of
the collateral evil with which it was preg
nant in either alternative, of its failure or
success ; and we do not hesitate to affirm,
that, in our humble opinion, its success was
dangerous to the independence of nations,
and its failure hostile to the stability of go
vernments. The choice between two such
dreadful evils is embarrassing and cruel : yet.
with the warmest zeal for the tranquillity of
every people, — with the strongest wishes
that can arise from personal habits and cha
racter for quiet and repose, — with all our
heartfelt and deeply-rooted detestation for
the crimes, -calamities, and horrors of civil
confusion, we cannot prevail on ourselves to
imagine that a greater evil could befall the
human race than the partition of Europe
among the spoilers of Poland. All the wild
freaks of popular licentiousness, — all the
fantastic transformations of government, — all
the frantic cruelty of anarchical tyranny,
almost vanish before the terrible idea of
gathering the whole civilized world under
the iron yoke of military despotism. It is —
at least, it was — an instinct of the English
character, to feel more alarm and horror at
despotism than at any other of those evils
which afflict human society; and we own
our minds to be still under the influence of
this old and perhaps exploded national preju-
REASONS AGAINST THE FRENCH WAR OF 1793.
465
dice. It is a prejudice, however, which ap
pears to us founded on the most sublime and
profound philosophy ; and it has been im
planted in the minds of Englishmen by their
long experience of the mildest and freest
government with which the bounty of Divine
Providence has been pleased for so many
centuries to favour so considerable a portion
of the human race. It has been nourished
by the blood of our forefathers ; it is em
bodied in our most venerable institutions;
it is the spirit of our sacred laws ; it is the
animating principle of the English character ;
it is the very life and soul of "the British con
stitution ; it is the distinguishing nobility of
the mealiest Englishman ; it is that proud
privilege which exalts him, in his own re
spect, above the most illustrious slave that
drags his gilded chain in the court of a ty
rant. It has given vigour and lustre to our
warlike enterprises, justice and humanity to
our laws, and character and energy to our
national genius and literature. Of such a
prejudice we are not ashamed: and we have
no desire to outlive its extinction in the minds
of our countrymen : —
tune omne Latinum
Fabula nomen erit.*
To return from what may be thought a
digression, but which is inspired by feelings
that we hope at least a few of our readers
may still be old-fashioned enough to pardon
us for indulging, — we proceed to make some
remarks on the dangers with which the
failure of this war threatened Europe. It is
a memorable example of the intoxication of
men, and of their governors, that at the com
mencement of this war, the bare idea of the
possibility of its failure would have been
rejected with indignation and scorn: yet it
became statesmen to consider this event as
at least possible ; and, in that alternative,
what were the consequences which the
European governments had to apprehend?
With their counsels baffled, their armies de
feated, their treasuries exhausted, their sub
jects groaning under the weight of taxes,
their military strength broken, and their
reputation for military superiority destroyed,
— they have to contend, in their own states,
against the progress of opinions, which their
own unfortunate policy has surrounded with
the dazzling lustre of heroism, and with all
the attractions and fascinations of victory.
Disgraced in a conflict with democracy
abroad, with what vigour and effect can they
repress it at home "? If they had forborne
from entering on the war, the reputation of
their power would at least have been whole
and entire : the awful question, whether the
French Revolution, or the established go
vernments of Europe, are the strongest,
would at least have remained undecided;
* Pharsalia, lib. vii.
59
and the people of all countries would not
have witnessed the dangerous examples of
their sovereigns humbled before the leaders
of the new sect. Mr. Burke tells us that the
war has at least procured a respite for Eu
rope; but he has forgotten to inform us, that
there are respites which aggravate the se
verity of the punishment, and that there are
violent struggles which provoke a fate that
might otherwise be avoided.
We purposely forbear to enlarge on this sub
ject, because the display of those evils which,
at the commencement of the war, were likely
to arise from its failure, is now become, unfor-
i Innately, the melancholy picture of the actual
! situation of Europe. This is a theme more
! adapted for meditation than discourse. It is
: as sincere wellwishers to the stability and
| tranquil improvement of established govern
ments, — as zealous and ardent friends to that
' admirable constitution of government, and
happy order of society, which prevail in our
native land, that we originally deprecated,
and still condemn, a war which has brought
these invaluable blessings into tne most im
minent peril. All the benevolence and pa
triotism of the human heart cannot, in our
opinion, breathe a prayer more auspicious
for Englishmen to the Supreme Ruler of the
world, than that they may enjoy to the latest
generations the blessings of that constitution
which has been bequeathed to them by their
forefathers. We desire its improvement,
indeed, — we ardently desire its improve
ment — as a means of its preservation ; but,
above all things, we desire its preservation.
We cannot close a subject, on which we
are serious even to melancholy, without of
fering the slender but unbiassed tribute of
our admiration and thanks to that illustrious
statesman. — the friend of what we must call
the better days of Mr. Burke, — whose great
talents have been devoted to the cause of
liberty and of mankind, — who, of all men,
most 'ardently loves, because he most tho
roughly understands, the British constitution,
— who has made a noble and memorable,
though unavailing, struggle to preserve us
from the evils and dangers of the present
war, — who is requited for the calumnies of
his enemies, the desertion of his friends, and
the ingratitude of his country, by the appro
bation of his own conscience, and by a well-
grounded expectation of the gratitude and
reverence of posterity. We never can reflect
on the event of this great man's counsel
without calling to mind that beautiful pas
sage of Cicero, in which he deplores the
death of his illustrious rival Hortensius : " Si
fuit tempus ullum cum extorquere arma pos
set e manibus iratorum eivium boni civis
auctoritas et oratio, turn profecto fuit, cum
] patrocinium pacis exclusum estaut errore ho-
j minum aut timore."*
* De Claris Oratoribus.
466
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ON THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1815.
To appreciate the effects of the French
Revolution on the people of France, is an
undertaking for which no man now alive has
sufficient materials, or sufficient impartiality,
even if he had sufficient ability. It is a task
from which Tacitus and Machiavel would
have shrunk j and to which the little pam
phleteers, who speak on it with dogmatism,
prove themselves so unequal by their pre
sumption, that men of sense do not wait for the
additional proof which is always amply fur
nished by their performances. The French Re
volution was a destruction of great abuses, ex
ecuted with much violence, injustice, arid in
humanity. The destruction of abuse is, in
itself, and for so much, a good : injustice and
inhumanity would cease to be vices, if they
were not productive of great mischief to so
ciety. This is a most perplexing account to
balance.
As applied, for instance, to the cultivators
and cultivation of France, there seems no
reason to doubt the unanimous testimony of
all travellers and observers, that agriculture
has advanced, and that the condition of the
agricultural population has been sensibly im
proved. M. de la Place calculates agricul
tural produce to have increased one fifth
during the last twenty-five years. M. Cu-
vier, an unprejudiced and dispassionate man.
rather friendly than adverse to much of what
the Revolution destroyed, and who, in his
frequent journeys through' France, surveyed
the country with the eyes of a naturalist and
a politician, bears the most decisive testi
mony to the same general result. M. de
Candolle, a very able and enlightened Gene-
vese, who is Professor of Botany at Mont-
pellier, is preparing for the press the fruit of
several years devoted to the survey of French
cultivation, in which we are promised the
detailed proofs of its progress. The appre
hensions lately entertained by the landed in
terest of England, and countenanced by no
less an authority than that of Mr. Mai thus,
that France, as a permanent exporter of corn,
would supply our market, and drive our in
ferior lands out of cultivation, — though we
consider them as extremely unreasonable, —
must be allowed to be of some weight in
this question. No such dread of the rival-
ship of French corn-growers was ever felt
or affected in this country in former times.
Lastly, the evidence of Mr. Birkbeck, an
* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxiv. p.
518. These remarks were written during the
Hundred Days, the author having spent part of
the preceding winter in Paris.— ED.
independent thinker, a shrewd observer,
and an experienced farmer, though his jour
ney was rapid, and though he perhaps wish
ed to find benefits resulting from the Re
volution, must be allowed to be of high
value.
But whatever may have been the benefits
conferred by the Revolution on the cultiva
tors, supposing them to have been more ques
tionable than they appear to have been, it is
at all events obvious, that the division of the
confiscated lands among the peasantry must
have given that body an interest and a pride
in the maintenance of the order or disorder
which that revolution had produced. All
confiscation is unjust. The French confisca
tion, being the most extensive, is the most
abominable example of that species of legal
robbery. But we speak only of its political
effects on the temper of the peasantry. These
effects are by no means confined to those
who had become proprietors. The promo
tion of many inspired all with pride : the
whole class was raised in self-importance by
the proprietary dignity acquired by nume
rous individuals. Nor must it be supposed
that the apprehensions of such a rabble of
ignorant owners, who had acquired their
ownerships by means of which their own
conscience would distrust the fairness, were
to be proportioned to the reasonable pro
babilities of clanger. The alarms of a mul
titude for objects very valuable to them,
are always extravagantly beyond the degree
of the risk, especially when they are strength
ened by any sense, however faint and indis
tinct, of injustice, which, by the immutable
laws of human nature, stamps every posses
sion which suggests it with a mark of inse-
curity". It is a panic fear j — one of those fears
which are so rapidly spread and so violently
exaggerated by sympathy, that the lively
fancy of the ancients represented them as
inflicted by a superior power.
Exemption from manorial rights and feu
dal services was not merely, nor perhaps
principally, considered by the French far
mers as a relief from oppression. They were
connected with the exulting recollections of
deliverance from a yoke, — of a triumph over
superiors, — aided even by the remembrance
of the licentiousness with which they had
exercised their saturnalian privileges in the
first moments of their short and ambiguous
liberty. They recollected these distinctions
as an emancipation of their caste. The in
terest, the pride, the resentment, and the
fear, had a great tendency to make the
ON THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1815.
467
maintenance of these changes a point of
honour among the whole peasantry of France.
On this subject, perhaps, they were likely
to acquire that jealousy and susceptibility
which the dispersed population of the coun
try rarely exhibit, unless when their religion,
or their national pride, or their ancient usa
ges, are violently attacked. The only secu
rity for these objects would appear to them to
be a government arising, like their own pro
perty and privileges, out of the Revolution.
We are far from commending these senti
ments, and still farther from confounding
them with the spirit of liberty. If the forms
of a free constitution could have been pre
served under a counter-revolutionary govern
ment, perhaps these hostile dispositions of
the peasants and new proprietors against
such a government, might have been gradu
ally mitigated and subdued into being one
of the auxiliaries of freedom. But, in the
present state of France, there are unhappily
no elements of such combinations. There is
no such class as landed gentry, — no great
proprietors resident on their estates, — conse
quently no leaders of this dispersed popula
tion, to give them permanent influence on
the public counsels, to animate their general
sluggishness, or to restrain their occasional
violence. In such a state they must, in ge
neral, be inert ; — in particular matters, which
touch their own prejudices and supposed in
terest, unreasonable and irresistible. The
extreme subdivision of landed property m ight,
under some circumstances, be favourable to
a democratical government. Under a limit
ed monarchy it is destructive of liberty, be
cause it annihilates the strongest bulwarks
against the power of the crown. Having
no body of great proprietors, it delivers the
monarch from all regular and constant re
straint, and from every apprehension but
that of an inconstant and often servile popu
lace. And, melancholy as the conclusion is,
it seems too probable that the present state
of property and prejudice among the larger
part of the people of France, rather disposes
them towards a despotism deriving its sole
title from the Revolution, and interested in
maintaining the system of society which it
has established, and armed with that tyran
nical power which may be necessary for its
maintenance.
Observations of a somewhat similar nature
are applicable to other classes of the French
population. Many of the tradesmen and
merchants, as well as of the numerous bo
dies of commissaries and contractors grown
rich by war, had become landed proprietors.
These classes in general had participated
in the early movements of the Revolution.
They had indeed generally shrunk from its
horrors ; but they had associated their pride,
their quiet, almost their moral character,
with its success, by extensive purchases of
confiscated land. These feelings were not
to be satisfied by any assurances, however
solemn and repeated, or however sincere,
that the sales of national property were to be
inviolable. The necessity of such assurance
continually reminded them of the odiousness
of their acquisitions, and of the light in which
the acquirers were considered by the govern
ment. Their property was to be spared as
an evil, incorrigible from its magnitude.
What they must have desired, was a govern
ment from whom no such assurances could
have been necessary.
The middle classes in cities were precisely
those who had been formerly humbled, mor
tified, and exasperated by the privileges of
the nobility, — for whom the Revolution was
a triumph over those who, in the daily in
tercourse of life, treated them with constant
disdain, — and whom that Revolution raised
to the vacant place of these deposed chiefs.
The vanity of that numerous, intelligent, and
active part of the community — merchants,
bankers, manufacturers, tradesmen, lawyers,
attorneys, physicians, surgeons, artists, ac
tors, men of letters — had been humbled by
the monarchy, and had triumphed in the Re
volution : they rushed into the stations which
the gentry — emigrant, beggared, or proscrib
ed — could no longer fill : the whole govern
ment fell into their hands.
Buonaparte's nobility was an institution
framed to secure the triumph of all these
vanities, and to provide against the possibili
ty of a second humiliation. It was a body
composed of a Revolutionary aristocracy,
with some of the ancient nobility, — either
rewarded for their services to the Revolu
tion, by its highest dignities, or compelled to
lend lustre to it, by accepting in it secondary
ranks, with titles inferior to their own, — and
with many lawyers, men of letters, mer
chants, physicians, &c., who often receive in
ferior marks of honour in England, but whom
the ancient system of the French monarchy
had rigorously excluded from such distinc
tions. The military principle predominated,
not only from the nature of the government,
but because military distinction was the pur
est that was earned during the Revolution.
The Legion of Honour spread the same prin
ciple through the whole army, which proba
bly contained six-and-thirty thousand out of
the forty thousand who composed the order.
The whole of these institutions was an array
of new against old vanities, — of that of the
former roturiers against that of the former
nobility. The new knights and nobles were
daily reminded by their badges, or titles, of
their interest to resist the re-establishment
of a system which would have perpetuated
their humiliation. The real operation of
these causes was visible during the short
reign of Louis XVIII. Military men, indeed,
had the courage to display their decorations,
and to avow their titles : but most civilians
were ashamed, or afraid, to use their new
names of dignity : they were conveyed, if at
all, in a subdued voice, almost in a whisper;
they were considered as extremely unfa
shionable and vulgar. Talleyrand renounced
his title of Prince of Beneventum } and Mas-
sena's resumption of his dignity of Prince
468
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
was regarded as an act of audacity, if not of
intentional defiance.
From these middle classes were chosen
another body, who were necessarily attached
'to the Revolutionary government, — the im
mense body of civil officers who were placed
in all the countries directly or indirectly sub
ject to France, — in Italy, in Germany, in
Poland, in Holland, in the Netherlands, — for
the purposes of administration of finance, and
of late to enforce the vain prohibition of
commerce with England. These were all
thrown back on France by the peace. They
had no hope of employment : their gratitude,
their resentment, and their expectations
bound them to the fortune of Napoleon.
The number of persons in France interest
ed, directly or indirectly, in the sale of con
fiscated property — by original purchase, by
some part in the successive transfers, by
mortgage, or by expectancy, — has been com
puted to be ten millions. This must be a
great exaggeration : but one half of that
number would be more than sufficient to
give colour to the general sentiment. Though
the lands of the Church and the Crown were
never regarded in the same invidious light
with those of private owners, yet the whole
mass of confiscation was held together by its
Revolutionary origin : the possessors of the
most odious part were considered as the out
posts and advanced guards of the rest. The
purchasers of small lots were peasants ; those
of considerable estates were the better classes
of the inhabitants of cities. Yet, in spite of
the powerful causes which attached these
last to the Revolution, it is certain, that
among the class called u La bonne bourgeoisie''
are to be found ths greatest number of those
who approved the restoration of the Bour
bons as the means of security and quiet.
They were weary of revolution, and they
dreaded confusion : but they are inert and
timid, and almost as little qualified to defend
a throne as they are disposed to overthrow it.
Unfortunately, their voice, of great weight
in the administration of regular governments.
is scarcely heard in convulsions. They are
destined to stoop to the bold; — too often,
though with vain sorrow and indignation, to
crouch under the yoke of the guilty and the
desperate.
The populace of great towns (a most im
portant constituent part of a free community,
when the union ofliberal institutions, with a
vigorous authority, provides both a vent for
their sentiments, and a curb on their vio
lence,) have, throughout the French Revolu
tion, showed at once all the varieties and
excesses of plebeian passions, and all the pe
culiarities of the French nat'ional character
in their most exaggerated state. The love
of show, or of change. — the rage for liberty
or slavery, for war or for peace, soon wearing
itself out into disgust and weariness, — the
idolatrous worship of demagogues, soon aban
doned, and at last cruelly persecuted, — the
envy of wealth, or the servile homage paid
to it,— all these; in every age, in everyplace.
from Athens to Paris, have characterised a
populace not educated by habits of reverence
for the laws, or bound by ties of character
and palpable interest to the other classes of
a free commonwealth. When the Parisian
mob were restrained by a strong government,
and compelled to renounce their democratic
orgies, they became proud of conquest, —
proud of the splendour of their despotism. —
proud of the magnificence of its exhibitions
and its monuments. Men may be so bru-
talised as to be proud of their chains. That
sort of interest in public concerns, which the
poor, in their intervals of idleness, and es
pecially when they are met together, feel
perhaps more strongly than other classes
more constantly occupied with prudential
cares, overflowed into new channels. They
applauded a general or a tyrant, as they had
applauded Robespierre, and worshipped Ma
rat. They applauded the triumphal entry
of a foreign army within their walls as a
grand show ; and they huzzaed the victori
ous sovereigns, as they would have celebra
ted the triumph of a French general. The
return of the Bourbons was a novelty, and a
sight, which, as such, might amuse them for
a day ; but the establishment of a pacific
and frugal government, with an infirm mo
narch and a gloomy court, without sights or
donatives, and the cessation of the gigantic
works constructed to adorn Paris, were sure
enough to alienate the Parisian populace.
There was neither vigour to overawe them, —
nor brilliancy to intoxicate them. — nor foreign
enterprise to divert their attention.
Among the separate parties into which
every people is divided, the Protestants are
to be regarded as a body of no small import
ance in France. Their numbers were rated
at between two and three millions ; but their
importance was not to be estimated by their
numerical strength. Their identity of inte
rest, — their habits of conceit, — their com
mon wrongs and resentments, — gave them
far more strength than a much larger number
of a secure, lazy, and dispirited majority. It
was, generally speaking, impossible that
French Protestants should wish well to the
family of Louis XIV., peculiarly supported
as it was by the Catholic party. The lenity
with which they had long been treated, was
ascribed more to the liberality of the age
than that of the Government. Till the year
1788, even their marriages and their inheri
tances had depended more upon the conni
vance of the tribunals, than upon the sanc
tion of the law. The petty vexations, and
ineffectual persecution of systematic exclu
sion from public offices, and the consequent
degradation of their body in public opinion,
long survived trie detestable but effectual
persecution which had been carried on by
missionary dragoons, and wrhich had benevo
lently left them the choice to be hypocrites,
or exiles, or galley-slaves. The Revolution
first gave them a secure and effective equali
ty with the Catholics, and a real admission
into civil office. It is to be feared that they
ON THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1815.
469
may have sometimes exulted over the suffer
ings of the Catholic Church, and thereby
contracted some part of the depravity of their
ancient persecutors. But it cannot be doubted
that they were generally attached to the Re
volution, and to governments founded on it.
The same observations may be applied,
without repetition, to other sects of Dissi
dents. Of all the lessons of history, there is
none more evident in itself, and more uni
formly neglected by governments, than that
persecutions, disabilities, exclusions, — all
systematic wrong to great bodies of citizens,
— are sooner or later punished ; though the
punishment often falls on individuals, who are
not only innocent, but who may have had
the merit of labouring to repair the wrong.
The voluntary associations which have led
or influenced the people during the Revolu
tion, are a very material object in a review
like the present. The very numerous body
who, as Jacobins or Terrorists, had partici
pated in the atrocities of 1793 and 1794, had,
in the exercise of tyranny, sufficiently un
learned the crude notions of liberty with
which they had set out. But they all re
quired a government established on Revolu
tionary foundations. They all took refuge
under Buonaparte's authority. The more
base accepted clandestine pensions or insig
nificant places : Barrere wrote slavish para
graphs at Paris; Tallien was provided for by
an obscure or a nominal consulship in Spain.
Fouche, who conducted this part of the sys
tem, thought the removal of an active Jaco
bin to a province cheaply purchased by five
hundred a year. Fouche himself, one of the
most atrocious of the Terrorists, had been
gradually formed into a good administrator
under a civilized despotism, — regardless in
deed of forms, but paying considerable re
spect to the substance, and especially to the
appearance of justice, — never shrinking from
what was necessary to crush a formidable
enemy, but carefully avoiding wanton cru
elty and unnecessary evil. His administra
tion, during the earlier and better part of Na
poleon's government, had so much repaired
the faults of his former life, that the appoint
ment of Savary to the police was one of the
most alarming acts of the internal policy
during the violent period which followed the
invasion of Spain.
At the head of this sort of persons, not
indeed in guilt, but in the conspicuous nature
of the act in which they had participated,
were the Regicides. The execution of Louis
XVI. being both unjust and illegal, was un
questionably an atrocious murder : but it
would argue great bigotry and ignorance of
human nature, riot to be aware, that many
who took a share in it must have viewed it
in a directly opposite light. Mr. Hume him
self, with all his passion for monarchy, ad
mits that Cromwell probably considered his
share in the death of Charles I. as one of
his most distinguished merits. Some of
those who voted for the death of Louis XVI.
have proved that they acted only from erro
neous judgment, by the decisive evidence
of a virtuous life. One of them perished in
Guiana, the victim of an attempt to restore
the Royal Family. But though among the
hundreds who voted for the death of that
unfortunate Prince, there might be seen
every shade of morality from the blackest
depravity to the very confines of purity — at
least in sentiment, it was impossible that any
of them could be contemplated without hor
ror by the brothers and daughter of the mur
dered Monarch. Nor would it be less vain
to expect that the objects of this hatred
should fail to support those Revolutionary
authorities, which secured them from punish
ment, — which covered them from contempt
by station and opulence. — and which com
pelled the monarchs of Europe to receive
them into their palaces as ambassadors.
They might be — the far greater part of them
certainly had become — indifferent to liberty,
— perhaps partial to that exercise of unlimit
ed power to which they had been accustom
ed under what they called a "free" govern
ment : but they could not be indifferent in
their dislike of a government, under which
their very best condition was that of par
doned criminals, whose criminality was the
more odious on account of the sad necessity
which made it pardoned. All the Terrorists,
and almost all the Regicides, had accordingly
accepted emoluments and honours from Na
poleon, and were eager to support his autho
rity as a Revolutionary despotism, strong
enough to protect them from general un
popularity, and to insure them against the
vengeance or the humiliating mercy of a
Bourbon government.
Another party of Revolutionists had com
mitted great errors in the beginning, which
co-operated with the alternate obstinacy and
feebleness of the Counter-revolutionists, to
produce all the evils which we feel and fear,
and which can only be excused by their own
inexperience in legislation, and by the pre
valence of erroneous opinions, at that period,
throughout the most enlightened part of Eu
rope. These were the best leaders of the Con
stituent Assembly, who never relinquished
the cause of liberty, nor disgraced it by sub
missions to tyranny, or participation in guilt.
The best representative of this small class,
is M. de La Fayette, a man of the purest ho
nour in private life, who has devoted himself
to the defence of liberty from his earliest
youth. He may have committed some mis
takes in opinion ; but his heart has always
been worthy of the friend of Washington
and of Fox. In due time the world will
see how victoriously he refutes the charges
against him of misconduct towards the Roy
al Family, when the palace of Versailles was
attacked by the mob, and when the King
escaped to Varennes. Having hazarded his
life to preserve Louis XVI., he was impri
soned in various dungeons, by Powers, who
at the same time released Regicides. His
wife fell a victim to her conjugal heroism.
His liberty was obtained by Buonaparte3 who
2P
470
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
paid court to him during the short period of
apparent liberality and moderation which
opened his political career. M. de La Fay-
ette repaid him, by faithful counsel; and
when he saw his rapid strides towards arbi
trary power, he terminated all correspond
ence with him, by a letter, which breathes
the calm dignity of constant and intrepid
virtue. In the choice of evils, he considered
the prejudices of the Court and the Nobility
as more capable of being reconciled with
liberty, than the power of an army. After a
long absence from courts, he appeared at the
levee of Monsieur, on his entry into Paris ;
and was received with a slight, — not justi
fied by his character, nor by his rank — more
important than character in the estimate of
palaces. He returned to his retirement, far
from, courts or conspiracies, with a reputation
for purity and firmness, which, if it had been
less rare among French leaders, would have
secured the liberty of that great nation, and
placed her fame on better foundations than
those of mere military genius and success.
This party, whose principles are decisively
favourable to a limited monarchy, and indeed
to the general outlines of the institutions of
Great Britain, had some strength among the
reasoners of the capital, but represented no
interest and no opinion in the country at
large. Whatever popularity they latterly
appeared to possess, arose but too probably
from the momentary concurrence, in opposi
tion to the Court, of those who were really
their most irreconcilable enemies, — the dis
contented Revolutionists and concealed Na-
poleonists. During the late short pause of
restriction on the press, they availed them
selves of the half-liberty of publication which
then existed, to employ the only arms in
which they were formidable, — those of ar
gument and eloquence. The pamphlets of
M. Benjamin Constant were by far the most
distinguished of those which they produced;
and he may be considered as the literary
representative of a party, which their ene
mies, as well as their friends, called the
"Liberal," who were hostile to Buonaparte
and to military power, friendly to the gene
ral principles of the constitution established
by Louis XVIII., though disapproving some
of its parts, and seriously distrusting the spi
rit in which it was executed, and the max
ims prevalent at Court. M. Constant, who
had been expelled from the Tribunal, and in
effect exiled from France, by Buonaparte,
began an attack on him before the Allies
had crossed the Rhine, and continued it till
after his march from Lyons. He is unques
tionably the first political writer of the Con
tinent, and apparently the ablest man in
France. His first Essay, that, on Conquest,
is a most ingenious development of the prin
ciple, that a system of war and conquest,
suitable to the condition of barbarians, is so
much at variance with the habits and pur
suits of civilized, commercial, and luxurious
nations, that it cannot be long-lived in such
an age as ours. If the position be limited to
those rapid and extensive conquests which
tend towards universal monarchy, and if the
tendency in human affairs to resist them be
stated only as of great force, and almost sure
within no long time of checking their pro
gress, the doctrine of M. Constant will be
generally acknowledged to be true. With
the comprehensive views, and the brilliant
poignancy of Montesquieu, he unites some
of the defects of that great writer. Like
him, his mind is too systematical for the
irregular variety of human affairs; and he
sacrifices too many of those exceptions and
limitations, which political reasonings re
quire, to the pointed sentences which com
pose his nervous and brilliant style. His
answer to the Abbe Montesquieu's foolish
plan of restricting the press, is a model of
polemical politics, uniting English solidity
and strength with French urbanity. His
tract on Ministerial Responsibility, with some
errors (though surprisingly fe\v) on English
details, is an admirable discussion of one of
the most important institutions of a free go
vernment, and, though founded on English
practice, would convey instruction to most
of those who have best studied the English
constitution. We have said thus much of
these masterly productions, because we con
sider them as the only specimens of the
Parisian press, during its semi-emancipa
tion, which deserve the attention of political
philosophers, and of the friends of true li
berty, in all countries. In times of more
calm, we should have thought a fuller ac
count of their contents, and a free discussion
of their faults, due to the eminent abilities
of the author. At present we mention them,
chiefly because they exhibit, pretty fairly,
the opinions of the liberal party in that
country.
But, not to dwell longer on this little fra
ternity (who are too enlightened and con
scientious to be of importance in the shocks
of faction, and of whom we have spoken
more from esteem for their character, than
from an opinion of their political influence),
it will be already apparent to our readers,
that many of the most numerous and guiding
classes in the newly-arranged community
of France, were bound, by strong ties of in
terest and pride, to a Revolutionary govern
ment, ho\vever little they might be qualified
or sincerely disposed for a free constitution,
— which they struggled to confound with
the former: that these dispositions among
the civil cla'sses formed one great source of
danger to the administration 'of the Bour
bons; and that they now constitute a mate
rial part of the strength of Napoleon. To
them he appeals in his Proclamations, when
he speaks of " a new dynasty founded on
the same bases with the new interests and
new institutions which owe their rise to the
Revolution." To them he appeals, though
more covertly, in his professions of zeal for
the dignity of the people, and of hostility
to feudal nobility, and monarchy by Divine
right.
ON THE STATE OF FRANCE IN 1815.
47J
It is natural to inquire how the conscrip
tion, and the prodigious expenditure of human
Jife in the campaigns of Spain arid Russia,
were not of themselves sufficient to make
the government of Napoleon detested by the
great majority of the French people. But it
is a very melancholy truth, that the body of
a people may be gradually so habituated to
war, that their habits and expectations are
at least so adapted to its demand for men,
and its waste of life, that they become almost
insensible to its evils, and require long dis
cipline to re-inspire them with a relish for
the blessings of peace, and a capacity for the
virtues of industry. The complaint is least
when the evil is greatest : — it is as difficult
to teach such a people the value of peace,
as it would be to reclaim a drunkard, or to
subject a robber to patient labour.
A conscription is, under pretence of equa
lity, the most unequal of all laws; because
it assumes that military service is equally
easy<to all classes and ranks of men. Ac
cordingly, it always produces pecuniary com
mutation in the sedentary and educated
classes. To them in many of the towns of
France it was an oppressive and grievous tax.
But to the majority of the people, always
accustomed to military service, the life of a
soldier became perhaps more agreeable than
any other. Families even considered it as a
means of provision for their children; each
parent labouring to persuade himself that his
children would be among those who should
have the fortune to survive. Long and con
stant wars created a regular demand for men,
to which the principle of population adapted
itself. An army which had conquered and
plundered Europe, and in which a private
soldier might reasonably enough hope to be
a marshal or a prince, had more allurements,
and riot more repulsive qualities, than many
of those odious, disgusting, unwholesome, or
perilous occupations, which in the common
course of society are always amply supplied.
The habit of war unfortunately perpetuates
itself: and this moral effect is a far greater
evil than the more destruction of life. What
ever may be the justness of these specula
tions, certain it is, that the travellers who
lately visited France, neither found the con
scription so unpopular, nor the decay of male
population so perceptible, as plausible and
confident statements had led them to ex
pect.
It is probable that among the majority of
the French (excluding the army), the restored
Bourbons gained less popularity by abolish
ing the conscription, than they lost by the
cession of all the conquests of France. This
fact affords a most important warning of the
tremendous dangers to which civilized na
tions expose their character by long war.
To say that liberty cannot survive it, is say
ing little : — liberty is one of the luxuries
which only a few nations seem destined to
enjoy; — and they only for a short period.
It is" not only fatal to the refinements and
ornaments of civilized life : — its long con
tinuance must inevitably destroy even that
degree (moderate as it is) of order and secu
rity which prevails even in the pure mon
archies of Europe, and distinguishes them
above all other societies ancient or modern.
It is vain to inveigh against the people of
France for delighting in war, for exulting in
conquest, and for being exasperated and mor
tified by renouncing those vast acquisitions.
These deplorable consequences arise from
an excess of the noblest and most necessary
principles in the character of a nation, acted
upon by habits of arms, and " cursed with
every granted prayer," during years of vic
tory and conquest. No nation could endure
such a trial. Doubtless those nations who
have the most liberty, the most intelligence,
the most virtue, — who possess in the highest
degree all the constituents of the most perfect
civilization, will resist it the longest. But,
let us not deceive ourselves, — long war ren
ders all these blessings impossible: it dis
solves all the civil and pacific virtues; it
leaves no calm for the cultivation of reason ;
and by substituting attachment to leaders,
instead of reverence for laws, it destroys .
liberty, the parent of intelligence and of
virtue.
The French Revolution has strongly con
firmed the lesson taught by the history of all
ages, that while political divisions excite the
activity of geriius; and teach honour in en
mity, as well as fidelity in attachment, the
excess of civil confusion and convulsion pro
duces diametrically opposite effects, — sub
jects society to force, instead of mind, —
renders its "distinctions the prey of boldness
and atrocity, instead of being the prize of
talent, — and concentrates the thoughts and
feelings of every individual upon himself, —
his own sufferings and fears. Whatever
beginnings of such an unhappy state may be
observed" in France, — whatever tendency it
may have had to dispose the people to a light
transfer of allegiance, and an undistinguishing
profession of attachment. — it is more useful
to consider them as the results of these
general causes, than as vices peculiar to that
great nation.
To this we must add, before we conclude
our cursory survey, that frequent changes of
government, however arising, promote a dis
position to acquiesce in change. No people
can long preserve the enthusiasm, which first
impels them to take an active part in change.
Its frequency at least teaches them patiently
to bear it. They become indifferent to go
vernments and sovereigns. They are spec
tators of revolutions, instead of actors in
them. They are a prey to be fought for by
the hardy and bold, and are generally dis
posed of by an army. In this state of things,
revolutions become bloodless, not from the
humanity, but from the indifference of a
people. Perhaps it may be true, though it
will appear paradoxical to many, that such
revolutions, as those of England and Ame
rica, conducted with such a regard for mo
deration and humanity, and even with such
472
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
respect for established authorities and insti
tutions, independently of their necessity for
the preservation of liberty, may even have
a tendency to strengthen, instead of weaken
ing, the frame of the commonwealth. The
example of reverence for justice, — of caution
in touching ancient institutions, — of not in
novating, beyond the necessities of the case,
even in a season of violence and anger, may
impress on the minds of men those conser
vative principles of society, more deeply and
strongly, than the most uninterrupted obser
vation of them in the ordinary course of quiet
and regular government.
ON
THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE.*
WHAT mode of representation is most
likely to secure the liberty, and consequent
ly the happiness, of a community circum
stanced like the people of Great Britain?
On the elementary part of this great ques
tion, it will be sufficient to remind the reader
of a few undisputed truths. The object of
government, is security against wrong. —
Most civilized governments, tolerably secure
their subjects against wrong from each other.
But to secure them, by laws, against wrong
from the government itself, is a problem of
a far more difficult sort, which few nations
have attempted to solve. — and of which it is
not so much as pretended that, since the be
ginning of history, more than one or two
great states have approached the solution.
It will be universally acknowledged, that
this approximation has never been affected
by any other means than that of a legislative
assembly, chosen by some considerable por
tion of the people.
The direct object of a popular representa
tion is, that one. at least, of the bodies exer
cising the legislative power being dependent
on the people by election, should have the
strongest inducement to guard their interests,
and to maintain their rights. For this pur
pose, it is not sufficient, that it should have
the same general interests with the people;
for every government has, in truth, the same
interests with its subjects. It is necessary
that the more direct and palpable interest,
arising from election, should be superadded.
In every legislative senate, the modes of ap
pointment ought to be such as to secure the
nomination of members the bast qualified,
and the most disposed, to make laws condu
cive to the well-being of the whole commu
nity. In a representative assembly this con
dition, though absolutely necessary, is not
of itself sufficient.
To understand the principles of its compo
sition thoroughly, we must divide the people
into classes, and examine the variety of local
and professional interests of which the whole
* From the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxi. p.
1/4.-ED.
j is composed. Each of these classes must be
j represented by persons who will guard its
peculiar interest, whether that interest arises
from inhabiting the same district, or pursu-
j ing the same occupation, — such as traffic, or
husbandry, or the useful or Ornamental arts.
The fidelity and zeal of such representatives,
are to be secured by every provision which,
to a sense of common interest, can superadd
a fellow-feeling with their constituents. Nor
is this all : in a great state, even that part of
the public interest which is common to all
classes, is composed of a great variety of
branches. A statesman should indeed have
a comprehensive view of the whole : but no
one man can be skilled in all the particulars.
The same education, and the same pursuits,
which qualify men to understand and regu
late some branches, disqualify them for
others. The representative assembly must
therefore contain, some members peculiarly
qualified for discussions of the constitution
and the laws, — others for those of foreign
policy, — some for those of the respective in
terests of agriculture, commerce, and manu
factures, — some for those of military affairs
by sea and land, — and some also who are
conversant with the colonies and distant pos
sessions of a great empire. It would be a
mistake to suppose that the place of such
representatives could be supplied by wit
nesses examined on each particular subject.
Both are not more than sufficient j — skilful
witnesses occasionally, for the most minute
information, — skilful representatives contin-
ally, to discover and conduct evidence, and
to enforce and illustrate the matters belong
ing to their department with the weight of
those who speak on a footing of equality.
It is obvious, that as long as this composi
tion is insured, it is for the present purpose
a matter of secondary importance whether it
be effected by direct or indirect means. To
be a faithful representative, it is necessary
that such an assembly should be numerous,
— that it should learn, from experience, the
movements that agitate multitudes, — and
that it should be susceptible, in no small de
gree, of the action of those causes which
ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE.
473
sway the thoughts and feelings of assemblies
of the people. For the same reason, among
others, it is expedient that its proceedings
should be public, and the reasonings on
which they are founded, submitted to the
judgment of mankind . These democratical
elements are indeed to be tempered and re
strained by such contrivances as may be
necessary to maintain the order and inde
pendence of deliberation: but, without them,
no assembly, however elected, can truly
represent a people.
Among the objects of representation, two
may, in an especial manner, deserve ob
servation: — the qualifications for making
good laws, and those for resisting oppression.
Now, the capacity of an assembly to make
good laws, evidently depends on the quan
tity of skill and information of every kind
which it possesses. But it seems to be ad
vantageous that it should contain a large
proportion of one body of a more neutral and
inactive character, — not indeed to propose
much, but to mediate or arbitrate in the dif
ferences between the more busy classes,
from whom important propositions are to be
expected. The suggestions of every man
relating to his province, have doubtless a
peculiar value : but most men imbibe preju
dices with their knowledge; and, in the
struggle of various classes Tor their conflict
ing interests, the best chance for an a
to riirht decision, lies
in an appea.
largest body of well-educated men, of lei
sure, large property, temperate character,
and who are impartial on more subjects than
any other class of men. An ascendency,
therefore, of landed proprietors must be con
sidered, on the whole, as a beneficial cir
cumstance in a representative body.
For resistance to oppression, it is pecu
liarly necessary that the lower, and. in some
places, the lowest classes, should possess the
right of suffrage. Their rights, would other
wise be less protected than those of any
other class; for some individuals of every
other class, would generally find admittance
into the legislature; or, at least, there is no
other class which is not connected with some
of its members. But in the uneducated
classes, none can either sit in a representa
tive assembly, or be connected on an equal
footing with its members. The right of suf
frage, therefore, is the only means by which
they can make their voice heard in its de
liberations. They also often send to a repre
sentative assembly, members whose charac
ter is an important element in its composi
tion, — men of popular talents, principles, and
feelings, — quick in suspecting oppression, —
bold in resisting it, — not thinking favourably
of the powerful, — listening, almost wkh cre
dulity to the complaints of the humble and
the feeble, — and impelled by ambition, where
they are not prompted by generosity, to be
the champions of the defenceless.
In all political institutions, it is a fortunate
circumstance when legal power is bestowed
on those who already possess a natural in-
60
fluence and ascendant over their fellow-citi
zens. Wherever, indeed, the circumstances
of society, and the appointments of law, are
in this respect completely at variance, sub
mission can hardly be maintained without
the odious and precarious means of force
and fear. But in a representative assembly,
which exercises directly no power, and of
which the members are too numerous to de
rive much individual consequence from their
stations, the security and importance of the
body, more than in any other case, depend
on the natural influence of those who com-
se it. In this respect, talent and skill,
sides their direct utility, have a secondary
value of no small importance. Together
with the other circumstances which com
mand respect or attachment among men, —
with popularity, vvith fame, with property,
with liberal education and condition, — they
form a body of strength, which no law could
give or take away. As far as an assembly
is deprived of any of these natural princi
ples of authority, so far it is weakened both
for the purpose of resisting the usurpations
of government and of maintaining the order
of society.
An elective system tends also, in other
material respects, to secure that free govern
ment,' of which it is4he most essential mem
ber. As it calls some of almost every class
of men to share in legislative power, and
many of all classes to exercise the highest
franchises, it engages the pride, the honour,
and the private interest as well as the gene
rosity, of every part of the community, in
defence of the constitution. Every noble
sentiment, every reasonable consideration,
every petty vanity, and every contemptible
folly, are made to contribute towards its se
curity. The performance of some of its
functions becomes part of the ordinary habits
of bodies of men numerous enough to spread
their feelings over great part of a nation.
Popular representation thus, in various
ways, tends to make governments good, and
to make good governments secure : — these
are its primary advantages. But free, that
is just, governments, tend to make men more
intelligent, more honest, more brave, more
generous. Liberty is the parent of genius. —
the nurse of reason, — the inspirer of that
valour which makes nations secure and
powerful, — the incentive to that activity and
enterprise to which they owe wealth and
splendour, the school of those principles of
humanity arid justice which bestow an un
speakably greater happiness, than any of the
outward advantages of which they are the
chief sources, and the sole guardians.
These effects of free government on the
character of a people, may. in one sense, be
called indirect and secondary; but they are
not the less to be considered as among its
greatest blessings : and it is scarcely neces
sary to observe, how much they tend to en
large and secure the liberty from which they
spring. But their effect will perhaps be
better shown by a more particular view of
2p2
474
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the influence of popular elections on the
character of the different classes of the com
munity.
To begin with the higher classes: — the
English nobility, \vho are blended with the
gentry by imperceptible shades, are the most
opulent and powerful order of men in Europe.
They are comparatively a small body, who
unite great legal privileges with ample pos
sessions, and names both of recent renown
and historical glory. They have attained
almost all the objects of human pursuit.
They are surrounded by every circumstance
which might seem likely to fill them with
arrogance, — to teach them to scorn their in
feriors, and which might naturally be sup
posed to extinguish enterprise, and to lull
every power of the understanding to sleep.
What has preserved their character ? What
makes them capable of serving or adorning
their country as orators and poets, men of
letters and men of business, in as great a
proportion as in any equal number of the
best educated classes of their countrymen'?
Surely only one solution can be given of these
phenomena, peculiar to our own country.*
Where all the ordinary incentives to action
are withdrawn, a free constitution excites it,
by presenting political power as a new object
of pursuit. By rendering that power in a
great degree dependent on popular favour, it
compels the highest to treat their fellow-
creatures with decency and courtesy, and
disposes the best of them to feel, that inferiors
in station may be superiors in worth, as they
are equals in right. Hence chiefly arises
that useful preference for country life, which
distinguishes the English gentry from that
of other nations. In despotic countries they
flock to the court, where all their hopes are
fixed : but here, as they have much to hope
from the people, they must cultivate the
esteem, and even court the favour of their
own natural dependants. They are quicken
ed in the pursuit of ambition, by the rivalship
of that enterprising talent, which is stimu
lated by more urgent motives. These dis
positions and manners have become, in some
measure, independent of the causes which
originally produced them, and extend to
many on whom these causes could have little
operation. In a great body, we must allow
for every variety of form and degree. It is
sufficient that a system of extensively popu
lar representation has, in a course of time,
produced this general character, and that the
English democracy is the true preservative
oi the talents and virtues of the aristocracy.
Tho effects of the elective franchise upon
the humbler classes, are, if possible, still
* To be quite correct, we must remind the rea
der, that we speak of the character of the whole
body, composed, as it is, of a small number. In
a body like the French noblesse, amounting per
haps to a hundred thousand, many of whom were
acted upon by the strongest stimulants of neces
sity, and, in a country of such diffused intelligence
as France, it would have been a miracle if many
had not risen to_ eminence in the state, and in let
ters, as well as in their natural profession of arms.
more obvious and important. By it the pea
sant is taught to " venerate himself as a
man" — to employ his thoughts, at least oc
casionally, upon high matters, — to meditate
on the same subjects with the wise and the
great, — to enlarge his feelings beyond the
circle of his narrow concerns. — to sympa
thise, however irregularly, with great bodies
of his fellow-creatures, and sometimes to do
acts which he may regard as contributing
directly to the welfare of his country. Much
of this good tendency is doubtless counter
acted by other circumstances. The outward
form is often ridiculous or odious. The judg
ments of the multitude are never exact, and
their feelings often grossly misapplied : but,
after all possible deductions, great benefits
must remain. The important object is. that
they should think and feel, — that they should
contemplate extensive consequences as capa
ble of arising from their own actions, and
thus gradually become conscious of the moral
dignity of their nature.
Among the very lowest classes, where the
disorders of elections are the most offensive,
the moral importance of the elective fran
chise is, in some respects, the greatest. As
individuals, they feel themselves of no con
sequence ; — hence, in part, arises their love
of numerous assemblies, — the only scenes in
which the poor feel their importance. Brought
together for elections, their tumultuary dis
position, which is little else than a desire to
display their short-lived consequence, is
gratified at the expense of inconsiderable
evils. It is useful that the pride of the high
est should be made occasionally to bend
before them, — that the greatest objects of
ambition should be partly at their disposal ;
it teaches them to feel that they also are
men. It is to the exercise of this franchise,
by some bodies of our lowest classes, that we
are to ascribe that sense of equality, — that
jealousy of right, — that grave independence,
and calm pride, which has been observed by
foreigners as marking the deportment of En
glishmen.
By thus laying open some of the particular
modes in which representation produces its
advantages to the whole community, and to
its separate classes, we hope that we have
contributed somewhat to the right decision
of the practical question which now presents
itself to our view. Systems of election may
be of very various kinds. The right of suf
frage may be limited, or universal • it may
be secretly, or openly exercised ; the repre
sentatives may be directly, or indirectly,
chosen by the people ; and where a qualifi
cation is necessary, it may be uniform, or it
may vary in different places. A variety of
rights of suffrage is the principle of the En
glish representation. In the reign of Edward
the First, as much as at the present moment,
the members for counties were chosen by
freeholders, and those for cities and towns
by freemen, burgage tenants, householders
or freeholders. Now, we prefer this general
principle of our representation to any uniform
ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE.
475
right of suffrage; though we think that, in
the present state of things, there are marry
particulars which, according to that principle,
ought to be amended.
Our reasons for this preference are shortly
these : — every uniform system which se
riously differs from universal suffrage, must
be founded on such a qualification, as to take
away the elective franchise from those por
tions of the inferior classes who now enjoy
it. Even the condition of paying direct taxes
would disfranchise many. After what we
have already said, on the general subject of
representation, it is needless for us to add,
that we should consider such a disfranchise-
rnent as a most pernicious mutilation of the
representative system. It has already been
seen, how much, in our opinion, the proper
composition of the House of Commons, the
justice of the government and the morality
of the people, depend upon the elections
which would be thus sacrificed.
This tendency of an uniform qualification
is visible in the new French system. The
qualification for the electors, is the annual
payment of direct taxes to the amount of
about 121. When the wealth of the two
countries is compared, it will be apparent
that, in this country, such a system would
be thought a mere aristocracy. In France,
the result is a body of one hundred thousand
electors ;* and in the situation and temper of
the French nation, such a scheme of repre
sentation may be eligible. But we mention
it only as an example, that every uniform
qualification, which is not altogether illusory,
must incline towards independent property,
as being the only ground on which it can
vest. The reform of Cromwell had the same
aristocratical character, though in a far less
degree. It nearly excluded what is called
the "populace;" and, for that reason, is
commended by the most sagacioust of our
Tory writers. An uniform qualification, in
short, must be so high as to exclude true
popular election, or so low, as to be liable to
most of the objections which we shall pre
sently offer against universal suffrage. It
seems difficult to conceive how it could be
so adjusted, as not either to impair the spirit
of liberty, or to expose the quiet of society
to continual hazard.
Our next objection to uniformity is, that it
exposes the difference between the proprie
tors and the indigent, in a way offensive and
degrading to the feelings of the latter. The
difference itself is indeed real, and cannot be
removed : but in our present system, it is
disguised under a great variety of usages; it
is far from uniformly regulating the franchise ;
and, even where it does, this invidious dis
tinction is not held out in its naked form. It
is something, also, that the system of various
rights does not constantly thrust forward that
qualification of property which, in its undis-
* The population of France is now [1818, ED.]
estimated at twenty-nine millions and a half,
t Clarendon, Hume, &c.
guised state, may be thought to teach the
people too exclusive a regard for wealth.
This variety, by giving a very great weight
to property in some elections, enables us
safely to allow an almost unbounded scope
to popular feeling in others. While some
have fallen under the influence of a few great
proprietors, others border on universal suf
frage. All the intermediate varieties, and
all their possible combinations, find their
place. Let the reader seriously reflect how
all the sorts of men, who are necessary com
ponent parts of a good House of Commons,
could on any other scheme find their way to
it. We have already sufficiently animad
verted on the mischief of excluding popular
leaders. Would there be no mischief in ex
cluding those important classes of men, whose
character unfits them for success in a can
vass, or whose fortune may be unequal to
the expense of a contest ? A representative
assembly, elected by a low uniform quali
fication, would fluctuate between country
gentlemen and demagogues: — elected on a
high qualification, it would probably exhibit
an unequal contest between landholders arid
courtiers. All other interests would, on either
system, be unprotected : no other class would
contribute its contingent of skill and know
ledge to aid the deliberations of the legisla
ture.
The founders of new commonwealths
must, we confess, act upon some uniform
principle. A builder can seldom imitate,
with success, all the fantastic but picturesque
and comfortable irregularities, of an old man
sion, which through a course of ages has been
repaired, enlarged, and altered, according to
the pleasure of various owners. This is one
of the many disadvantages attendant on the
lawgivers of infant states. Something, per
haps, by great skill and caution, they might
do ; but their wisdom is most shown, after
guarding the great principles of liberty, by
leaving time to do the rest.
Though we are satisfied, by the above and
by many other considerations, that we ought
not to exchange our diversified elections for
any general qualification, we certainly consi
der universal suffrage as beyond calculation
more mischievous than any other uniform
right. The reasons which make it important to
liberty, that the elective franchise should be
exercised by large bodies of the lower classes,
do not in the least degree require that it
should be conferred on them all. It is ne
cessary to their security from oppression, that
the wnole class should have some represen
tatives : but as their interest is every where
the same, representatives elected by one
body of them are necessarily the guardians
of the rights of all. The great object of
representation for them, is to be protected
against violence and cruelty. Sympathy with
suffering, and indignation against cruelty, are
easily excited in numerous assemblies, and
must either be felt or assumed by all their
members. Popular elections generally insure
the return of some men; who shrink from no
476
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
appeal, however invidious, on behalf of the
oppressed. We must again repeat, that we
consider such men as invaluable members
of a House of Commons; — perhaps their
number is at present too small. What \ve
now maintain is, that, though elected by one
place, they are in truth the representatives
of the same sort of people in other places.
Their number must be limited, unless we
are willing to exclude other interests, and to
sacrifice other most important objects of
representation.
The exercise of the elective franchise by
some of the labouring classes, betters the
character, raises the spirit, and enhances the
consequence of all. An English farmer or
artisan is more high-spirited and independent
than the same classes in despotic countries;
but nobody has ever observed that there is
in England a like difference between the
husbandman and mechanic, who have votes,
and who have not. The exclusion of the
class degrades the whole : but the admission
of a part bestows on the whole a sense of
importance, and a hold on the estimation of
their superiors. It must be admitted, that a
small infusion of popular election would not
produce these effects : whatever might seem
to be the accidental privilege of a few, would
have no influence on the rank of their fellows.
It must be considerable, and, — what is per
haps still more necessary, — it must be con
spicuous, and forced on the attention by the
circumstances which excite the feelings, and
strike the imagination of mankind. The
value of external dignity is not altogether
confined to kings or senates. The people
also have their majesty ; and they too ought
to display their importance in the exercise
of their rights.
The question is, whether all interests will
be protected, where the representatives are
chosen by all men, or where they are elect
ed by considerable portions only, of all
classes of men. This question will perhaps
be more clearly answered by setting out
from examples, than from general reason
ings. If we suppose Ireland to be an inde
pendent state, governed by its former House
of Commons, it will at once be admitted,
that no shadow of just government existed,
where the legislature were the enemies, in
stead of being the protectors, of the Catholics,
who formed a great class in the community.
That this evil was most cruelly aggravated
by the numbers of the oppressed, is true.
But, will it be contended, that such a go
vernment was unjust, only because the Ca
tholics were a majority ? We have only then
to suppose the case reversed ; — that the Ca
tholics were to assume the whole power,
and to retaliate upon the Protestants, by ex
cluding them from all political privilege.
Would this be a just or equal government ?
That will hardly be avowed. But what
would be the effect of establishing universal
suffrage in Ireland ? It would be, to do that
in substance, which no man would propose
in form. The Catholics, forming four-fifths of
the population, would, as far as depends on
laws, possess the whole authority of the state.
Such a government, instead of protecting all
interests, would be founded in hostility to
that which is the second interest in numbers,
and in many respects the first. The oppres
sors and the oppressed would, indeed, change
places; — we should have Catholic tyrants,
and Protestant slaves : but our only conso
lation would be, that the island would con
tain more tyrants, and fewer slaves. If there
be persons v\ho believe that majorities have
any power over the eternal principles of jus
tice, or that numbers can in the least degree
affect the difference between right and
wrong, it would be vain for us to argue
against those with whom we have no prin
ciples in common. To all others it must be
apparent, that a representation of classes
might possibly be so framed as to secure
both interests ; but that a representation of
•numbers must enslave the Protestant mi
nority.
That the majority of a people may be a
tyrant as much as one or a few, is most ap
parent in the cases where a state is divided,
by conspicuous marks, into a permanent ma
jority and minority. Till the principles of
toleration be universally felt, as well as ac
knowledged, religion will form one of these
cases. Till reason and morality be far more
widely diffused than they are, the outward
distinctions of colour and feature will form
another, more pernicious, and less capable
of remedy. Does any man doubt, that the
establishment of universal suffrage, among
emancipated slaves, would be only another
word for the oppression, if not the destruc
tion, of their former masters ? But is slavery
itself really more unjust, where the slaves
are a majority, than where they are a mi
nority ? or may it not be said, on the con
trary, that to hold men in slavery is most
inexcusable, where society is not built on
that unfortunate foundation, — where the sup
posed loss of the labour would be an incon
siderable evil, and no danger could be pre
tended from their manumission? Is it not
apparent, that the lower the right of suffrage
descends in a country, where the whites are
the majority, the more cruel would be the op-'
pression of the enslaved minority ? An aris-
tocratical legislature might consider, with
some impartiality, the disputes of the free
and of the servile labourers; but a body, in
fluenced chiefly by the first of these rival
classes, must be the oppressors of the latter.
These, it may be said, are extreme cases;
— they are selected for that reason : but the
principle which they strikingly illustrate,
will, on a very little reflection, be found ap
plicable in some degree to all communities
of men.
The labouring classes are in every country
a perpetual majority. The diffusion of edu
cation will doubtless raise their minds, and
throw open prizes for the ambition of a few
which will spread both activity and content
among the rest : but in the present state of
ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE.
477
the population and territory of European
countries, the majority of men must earn
their subsistence by daily labour. Notwith
standing local differences, persons in this situ
ation have a general resemblance of charac
ter, and sameness of interest. Their interest,
or what they think their interest, may be at
variance with the real or supposed interests
of the higher orders. If they are considered
as forming; in this respect, one class of so
ciety, a share in the representation may be
allotted to them, sufficient to protect their
interest, compatibly with the equal protec
tion of the interests of all other classes, and
regulated by a due regard to all the qualities
\vhich are required in a well-composed le
gislative assembly. But if representation be
proportioned to numbers alone, every other
interest in society is placed at the disposal
of the multitude. No other class can be
effectually represented : no other class can
have a political security for justice ; no other
can have any weight in the deliberations of
the legislature. No talents, no attainments,
but such as recommend men to the favour
of the multitude, can have any admission
into it. A representation so constituted,
would produce the same practical effects,
as if every man whose income was above a
certain amount, were excluded from the
right of voting. It is of little moment to the
proprietors, whether they be disfranchised,
or doomed, in every election, to form a hope
less minority.
Nor is this all. A representation, founded
on numbers only, would be productive of
gross inequality in that very class to which
all others are sacrificed. The difference be
tween the people of the country and those
of towns, is attended with consequences
which no contrivance of law can obviate.
Towns are the nursery of political feeling.
The frequency of meeting, the warmth of
discussion, the variety of pursuit, the rival-
ship of interest, the opportunities of informa
tion, even the fluctuations and extremes of
fortune, direct the minds of their inhabitants
to public concerns, and render them the
seats of republican governments, or the pre
servers of liberty in monarchies. But if this
difference be considerable among educated
men, it seems immeasurable when we con
template its effects on the more numerous
classes. Among them, no strong public senti
ment can be kept up without'numerous meet
ings. It is chiefly when they are animated
by a view of their own strength and numbers.
— when they are stimulated by an eloquence
suited to their character. — and when the pas
sions of each are strengthened by the like
emotions of the multitude which surround
him. that the thoughts of such men are direct
ed to subjects so far from their common call
ings as the concerns of the commonwealth.
All these aids are necessarily wanting to the
dispersed inhabitants of the country, whose
frequent meetings are rendered impossible
by distance and poverty, — who have few
opportunities of being excited by discussion
or declamation, and very imperfect means
of correspondence or concert with those at
a distance. An agricultural people is gene
rally submissive to the laws, and observant
of the ordinary duties of life, but stationary
and stagnant, without the enterprise which
is the source of improvement, and the public
spirit which preserves liberty. If the whole
political power of the state, therefore, were
thrown into the hands of the lowest classes,
it would be really exercised only by the
towns. About two-elevenths of the people
of England inhabit towns which have a
population of ten thousand souls or upwards.
A body so large, strengthened by union, dis
cipline, and spirit, would without difficulty
domineer over the lifeless and scattered
peasants. In towns, the lower part of the
middle classes are sometimes tame; while
the lowest class are always susceptible of
animation. But the small freeholders, and
considerable farmers, acquire an indepen
dence from their position, which makes them
very capable of public spirit. While the
classes below them are incapable of being
permanently rendered active elements in any
political combination, the dead weight of
their formal suffrages would only oppress
the independent votes of their superiors.
All active talent would, in such a case, fly
to the towns, where alone its power could
be felt. The choice of the country would
be dictated by the cry of the towns, where-
ever it was thought worth while to take it
from the quiet influence of the resident pro
prietors. Perhaps the only contrivance, which
can in any considerable degree remedy the
political inferiority of the inhabitants of the
country to those of towns, has been adopted
in the English constitution, which, while it
secures an ascendant of landholders in the
legislature, places the disposal of its most
honoured and envied seats in the hands of
the lowest classes among the agricultural
population, who are capable of employing
the right of suffrage with spirit and effect.
They who think representation chiefly
valuable, because whole nations cannot meet
to deliberate in one place, have formed a
very low notion of this great improvement.
It is not a contrivance for conveniently col
lecting or blindly executing all the pernicious
and unjust resolutions of ignorant multitudes.
To correct the faults of democratical govern
ment, is a still more important object of
representation, than to extend the sphere to
which that government may be applied. It
balances the power of the multitude by the
influence of other classes : it substitutes
skilful lawgivers for those who are utterly
incapable of any legislative function; and
it continues the trust long enough to guard
the legislature from the temporary delusions
of the people. By a system of universal
suffrage and annual elections, all these tem
peraments wTould be destroyed. The effect
of a crowded population, in increasing the
intensity and activity of the political pas
sions, is extremely accelerated in cities of
478
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the first class. The population of London
and its environs is nearly equal to that of all
other towns in England of or above ten thou
sand souls. According to the principle of
universal suffrage, it would contain about
two hundred and fifty thousand electors; and
send fifty-five members to Parliament. T^iis
electoral army would be occupied for the
whole year in election or canvass, or in the
endless animosities in which both would be
fertile. A hundred candidates for their suf
frages would be daily employed in inflaming
their passions. No time for deliberation, —
no interval of repose in which inflamed pas
sions might subside, could exist. The repre
sentatives would naturally be the most da
ring. and; for their purposes, the ablest of
their body. They must lead or overawe
the legislature. Every transient delusion, or
momentary phrensy of which a multitude
is susceptible, must rush with unresisted
violence into the representative body. Such
a representation would differ in no beneficial
respect from the wildest democracy. It
would be a democracy clothed in a specious
disguise, and armed with more effective in
struments of oppression. — but not wiser or
more just than the democracies of old, which
Hobbes called "an aristocracy of orators,
sometimes interrupted by the monarchy of a
single orator."
It may be said that such reasonings sup
pose the absence of those moral restraints
of property and opinion which would temper
the exercise of this, as well as of every other
kind of suffrage. Landholders would still
influence their tenants, — farmers their la
bourers, — artisans and manufacturers those
•whom they employ; — property would still
retain its power over those who depend on
the proprietor. To this statement we in
some respects accede ; and on it we build
our last and most conclusive argument against
universal suffrage.
It is true, that in very quiet times, a multi
plication of dependent voters would only
augment the influence of wealth. If votes
were bestowed on every private soldier, the
effect would be only to give a thousand votes
to the commanding officer who marched his
battalion to the poll. Whenever the people
felt little interest in public affairs, the same
power would be exercised by every master
through his dependants. The traders who
employ many labourers in great cities would
possess the highest power ; the great consu
mers and landholders would engross the re
mainder; the rest of the people would be
insignificant. As the multitude is composed
of those individuals who are most incapable
of fixed opinions, and as they are, in their
collective capacity, peculiarly alive to pre
sent impulse, there is no vice to which they
are so liable as inconstancy. Their passions
are quickly worn out by their own violence.
They become weary of the excesses into
which they have been plunged. Lassitude
and indifference succeed to their fury, and
are proportioned to its violence. They aban
don public affairs to any hand disposed to
guide them. They give up their favourite
measures to reprobation, and their darling
leaders to destruction. Their acclamations
are often as loud around the scaffold of the
demagogue, as around his triumphal car.
Under the elective system, against which
we now argue, the opposite evils of too much
strengthening wealth, and too much subject
ing property to the multitude, are likely, by
turns, to prevail. In either case, in may be
observed that the potver of the middle classes
would be annihilated. Society, on such a
system, would exhibit a series of alternate
fits of phrensy and lethargy. When the
people were naturally disposed to violence,
the mode of election would inflame it to mad
ness. When they were too much inclined
of themselves to listlessness and apathy, it
would lull them to sleep. In these, as in every
other respect, it is the reverse of a wisely con
stituted representation, which is a restraint on
the people in times of heat, and a stimulant
to their sluggishness when they would other
wise fall into torpor. This even and steady
interest in public concerns, is impossible in
a scheme which, in every case, would aggra
vate the predominant excess.
It must never be forgotten, that the whole
proprietary body must be in a state of per
manent conspiracy against an extreme de
mocracy. They are the natural enemies of
a constitution, which grants them no power
and no safety. Though property is often
borne down by the torrent of popular tyranny,
yet it has man)* chances of prevailing at
last. Proprietors have steadiness, vigilance,
concert, secrecy, and, if need be, dissimula
tion. They yield to the storm : they regain
their natural ascendant in the calm. Not
content with persuading the people to sub
mit to salutary restraints, they usually betray
them, by insensible degrees, into absolute
submission.
If the commonwealth does not take this
road to slavery, there are many paths that
lead to that state of perdition. "A dema
gogue seizes on that despotic power for him
self, which he for a long time has exercised
in the name of his faction ; — a victorious gene
ral leads his army to enslave their country :
and both these candidates for tyranny too
often find auxiliaries in those classes of so
ciety which are at length brought to regard
absolute monarchy as an asylum. Thus,
wherever property is not allowed great
weight in a free state, it will destroy liberty.
The history of popular clamour, even in Eng
land, is enough to show that it is easy some
times to work the populace into "a sedition
for slavery."
These obvious consequences have dis
posed most advocates of universal suffrage
to propose its combination with some other
ingredients, by which, they tell us, that the
poison will be converted into a remedy.
The composition now most in vogue is its
union with the Ballot. Before we proceed
to the consideration of that proposal, we shall
ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE.
479
bestow a few words on some other plans
which have been adopted or proposed, to
render uniform popular election consistent
with public quiet. The most remarkable
of these are that of Mr. Hume, where the
freeholders and the inhabitants assessed to
the poor, elect those who are to name the
members of the Supreme Council; — that
lately proposed in France, where a popular
body would propose candidates, from whom
a small number of the most considerable pro
prietors would select the representatives; —
and the singular plan of Mr. Home Tooke,
which proposed to give the right of voting
to all persons rated to the land-tax or parish-
rates at 21. 2s. per annum, on condition of
their paying to the public 21. 2s. at the time
of voting ; but providing, that if the number
of voters in any district fell short of four
thousand, every man rated at 201. per annum
might give a second vote, on again paying
the same sum; and making the same provi
sion, in case of the same failure, for third,
fourth, fifth, &c. votes for every additional
100L at which the voter is rated, till the
number of four thousand votes for the dis
trict should be completed.
This plan of Mr. Tooke is an ingenious stra
tagem for augmenting the power of wealth,
under pretence of bestowing the suffrage
almost universally. To that of Mr. Hume
it is a decisive objection, that it leaves to the
people only those subordinate elections which
would excite no interest in their minds, and
would consequently fail in attaining one of
the principal objects of popular elections.
All schemes for separating the proposition
of candidates for public office from the choice
of the officers, become in practice a power
of nomination in the proposers. It is easy to
leave no choice to the electors, by coupling
the favoured candidates with none but such
as are absolutely ineligible. Yet one reason
able object is common to these projects : —
they all aim at subjecting elections to the
joint influence of property and popularity.
In none of them is overlooked the grand prin
ciple of equally securing all orders of men,
and interesting all in the maintenance of the
constitution. It is possible that any of them
might be in some measure effectual ; but it
would be an act of mere wantonness in us
to make the experiment. By that variety of
rights of suffrage which seems so fantastic,
the English constitution has provided for the
union of the principles of property and popu
larity, in a manner much more effectual than
those which the most celebrated theorists
have imagined. Of the three, perhaps the
least unpromising is that of Mr. Tooke, be
cause it approaches nearest to the forms of
public and truly popular elections.
In the system now established in France,
where the right of suffrage is confined to
those who pay direct taxes amounting to
twelve pounds by the year, the object is evi
dently to vest the whole power in the hands
of the middling classes. The Royalists, who
are still proprietors of the greatest estates in
the kingdom, would have preferred a greater
extension of suffrage, in order to multiply
the votes of their dependants. But. as the
subdivision of forfeited estates has created a
numerous body of small land-owners, who
are deeply interested in maintaining the new
institutions, the law, which gives them almost
the whole elective' power, may on that ac
count be approved as politic. As a general
regulation, it is very objectionable.
If we were compelled to confine all elec
tive influence to one order, we must indeed
vest it in the middling classes ; both because
they possess the largest share of sense and
virtue, and because they have the most
numerous connections of interest with the
other parts of society. It is right that they
should have a preponderating influence, be
cause they are likely to make the best choice.
But that is not the sole object of representa
tion ; and, if it were, there are not wanting
circumstances which render it unfit that they
should engross the whole influence. Per
haps there never was a time or country in
which the middling classes were of a cha
racter so respectable and improving as they
are at this day in Great Britain : but it un
fortunately happens, that this sound and pure
body have more to hope from the favour of
Government than any other part of the nation.
The higher classes may. if they please, be
independent of its influence ; the lower are
almost below its direct action. On the mid
dling classes, it acts with concentrated and
unbroken force. Independent of that local
consideration, the virtues of that excellent
class are generally of a circumspect nature,
and apt to degenerate into timidity. They
have little of that political boldness which
sometimes belongs to commanding fortune,
and often, in too great a degree, to thought
less poverty. They require encouragement
and guidance from higher leaders ; and they
need excitement fronTthe numbers and even
turbulence of their inferiors. The end of
representation is not a medium between
wealth and numbers, but a combination of
the influence of both. It is the result of the
separate action of great property, of delibe
rate opinion, and of popular spirit, on different
parts of the' political system.
"That principle of representation," said
Mr. Fox, " is the best which calls into ac
tivity the greatest number of independent
votes, and excludes those whose condition
takes from them the powers of deliberation."
But even this principle, true in general, can
not be universally applied. Many who are
neither independent nor capable of delibera
tion, are at present rightly vested with the
elective franchise, — not because they are
qualified to make a good general choice of
members, — but because they indirectly con
tribute to secure the good composition and
right conduct of the legislature.
The question of the Ballot remains. On
the Ballot the advocates of universal suffrage
seem exclusively to rely for the defence
of their schemes: without it, they appear
480
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
tacitly to admit that universal suffrage would
be an impracticable and pernicious proposal.
, But all males in the kingdom, it is said,
may annually vote at elections with quiet
and independence, if the Ballot enables them
to give their votes secretly. Whether this
expectation be reasonable, is the question on
which the decision of the dispute seems now
to depend.
The first objection to this proposal is, that
the Ballot would not produce secrecy. Even
in those classes of men who are most ac
customed to keep their own secret, the effect
of the Ballot is very unequal and uncertain.
The common case of clubs, in which a small
minority is generally sufficient to exclude a
candidate, may serve as an example. Where
the club is numerous, the secret may be
kept, as it is difficult to distinguish the few
who reject : but in small clubs, where the
dissentients may amount to a considerable
proportion of the whole, they are almost
always ascertained. The practice, it is true,
is, in these cases, still useful j but it is only
because it is agreed, by a sort of tacit con
vention, that an exclusion by Ballot is not a
just cause of offence : it prevents quarrel,
not disclosure. In the House of Commons,-
Mr. Bentham allows that the Ballot does not
secure secrecy or independent choice. The
example of the elections at the India House is
very unfortunately selected ; for every thing
which a Ballot is supposed to prevent is to be
found in these elections : public and private
canvass, — the influence of personal friend
ship, connexion, gratitude, expectation, — pro
mises almost universally made and observed,
— votes generally if not always known, — as
much regard, indeed, to public grounds of
preference as in most other bodies, — but
scarcely any exclusion of private motives,
unless it be the apprehension of incurring re
sentment, which is naturally confined within
narrow limits, by the independent condition
of the greater part of the electors. In gene
ral, indeed, they refuse the secrecy which
the legislature seems to tender to them.
From kindness, from esteem, from other
motives, they are desirious that their votes
should be known to candidates whom they
favour. And what is disclosed to friends,
is speedily discovered by opponents.
If the Ballot should be thought a less of
fensive mode of voting against an individual
than the voice, this slight advantage is alto
gether confined to those classes of society
who have leisure for such fantastic refine
ments. But are any such influences likely,
or rather sure, to act on the two millions of
voters who would be given to us by univer
sal suffrage 1 Let us examine them closely.
Will the country labourer ever avail himself
of the proffered means of secrecy ? To be
lieve this, we must suppose that he performs
the most important act of his life, — that
which most natters his pride, and gratifies
his inclination, — without speaking of his in
tention before, or boasting of his vote when
he has given it. His life has no secrets.
The circle of his village is too small for con
cealment. His wife, his children, his fellow-
labourers, the companions of his recreations,
know all that he does, and almost all that he
thinks. Can any one believe that he would
pass the evening before, or the evening after
the day of election, at his alehouse, wrapt
up in the secrecy of a Venetian senator, and
concealing a suffrage as he would do a mur
der ? If his character disposed him to se
crecy, would his situation allow it ? His
landlord, or his employer, or their agents, or
the leaders of a party in the election, could
never have any difficulty in discovering him.
The simple acts of writing his vote, of de
livering it at the poll, or sending it if he could
not attend, would betray his secret in spite
of the most complicated Ballot ever contrived
in Venice. In great towns, the veiy men
tion of secret suffrage is ridiculous. By what
contrivance are public meetings of the two-
hundred and fifty thousand London electors
to be prevented ? There may be quiet and
secrecy at the poll ; but this does not in the
least prevent publicity and tumult at other
meetings occasioned by the election. A can
didate will not forego the means of success
which such meetings afford. The votes of
those who attend them must be always
known. If the Council of Ten were dispersed
among a Westminster mob while candidates
were "speaking, they would catch its spirit,
and betray their votes by huzzas or hisses.
Candidates and their partisans, committees
in parishes, agents in every street during an
active canvass, would quickly learn the se
cret of almost any man in Westminster. The
few who affected mystery would be detected
by their neighbours. The evasive answer
of the 'ablest of such dissemblers to his fa
voured friend or party, would be observably
different, at least in tone and manner, from
that which he gave to the enemy. The zeal,
attachment, and enthusiasm, which must
prevail in such elections, as long as they con
tinue really popular, would probably bring
all recurrence to means of secrecy into dis
credit, and very speedily into general disuse.
Even the smaller tradesmen, to whom the
Ballot might seem desirable, as a shield from
the displeasure of their opulent customers,
would betray the part they took in the elec
tion, by their ambition to be leaders in their
parishes. The formality of the Ballot might
remain : but the object of secrecy is incom
patible with the nature of such elections.
The second objection is, that if secrecy of
suffrage could be really adopted, it would,
in practice, contract, instead of extending,
the 'elective franchise, by abating, if not ex
tinguishing, the strongest inducements to its
exercise. All wise laws contain in them
selves effectual means for their own execu
tion : but, where votes are secret, scarcely
any motive for voting i-s left to the majority
of electors. Tn a blind eagerness to free the
franchise from influence, nearly all the com
mon motives for its exercise are taken away.
The common elector is neither to gain the
ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE.
481
favour of his superiors, nor the kindness of
his fellows, nor the gratitude of the candi
date for whom he votes : from all these, se
crecy must exclude him. He is forbidden
to strengthen his conviction, — to kindle his
zeal, — to conquer his fears or selfishness, in
numerous meetings of those with whom he
agrees ; for, if he attends such meetings, he
must publish his suffrage, and the Ballot, in
his case, becomes altogether illusory. Every
blamable motive of interest, — every pardon
able inducement of personal impartiality, is,
indeed, taken away. But what is left in their
place 1 Nothing but a mere sense of pub
lic duty, unaided by the popular discipline
which gives fervour and vigour to public
sentiments. A wise lawgiver does not trust
to a general sense of duty in the most unim
portant law. If such a principle could be
trusted, laws would be unnecessary. Yet
to this cold feeling, stripped of all its natural
and most powerful aids, would the system
of secret suffrage alone trust for its execu
tion. At the poll it is said to be sufficient,
because all temptations to do ill are sup
posed to be taken away : but the motives by
which electors are induced to go to a poll,
have been totally overlooked. The infe
rior classes, for whom this whole system is
contrived, would, in its practice, be speedily
disfranchised. They would soon relinquish
a privilege when it was reduced to a trouble
some duty. Their public principles are often
generous; but they do not arise from secret
meditation, and they do not flourish in soli
tude.
Lastly, if secret suffrage were to be per
manently practised by all voters, it would
deprive election of all its popular qualities,
and of many of its beneficial effects. The
great object of popular elections is, to in
spire and strengthen the love of liberty.
On the strength of that sentiment freedom
wholly depends, not only for its security
against the power of time and of enemies,
but for its efficiency and reality while it lasts.
If we could suppose a people perfectly indif
ferent to political measures, and without any
disposition to take a part in public affairs,
the most perfect forms and institutions of
liberty would be among them a dead let
ter. The most elaborate machinery would
stand still for want of a moving power. In
proportion as a people sinks more near to that
slavish apathy, their constitution becomes
so far vain, and their best laws impotent.
Institutions are carried into effect by men,
and men are moved to action by their feel
ings. A system of liberty can be executed
only by men who love liberty. With the
spirit of liberty, very unpromising forms
grow into an excellent government : without
it, the most specious cannot last, and are not
worth preserving. The institutions of a free
state are safest and most effective, when nu
merous bodies of men exercise their politi
cal rights with pleasure and pride, — conse
quently with zeal and boldness, — when these
rights are endeared to them by tradition and
61
:>y habit, as well as by conviction and feel
ing of their inestimable value, — and when
the mode of exercising privileges is such as
o excite the sympathy of all who view it,
and to spread through the whole society a
ealous love of popular right, and a proneness
o repel with indignation every encroach
ment on it.
Popular elections contribute to these ob-
ects, partly by the character of the majority
of the electors, and partly by the mode in
which they give their suffrage. Assemblies
of the people of great cities, are indeed very
11 qualified to exercise authority; but with
out their occasional use, it can never be
strongly curbed. Numbers are nowhere else
o be collected. On numbers, alone, much
of their power depends. In numerous meet-
Ings, every man catches animation from
;he feelings of his neighbour, and gathers
iourage from the strength of a multitude,
•mch assemblies, and they alone, with all
their defects and errors, have the privilege
of inspiring many human beings with a per
fect, however transient, disinterestedness,
and of rendering the most ordinary men
apable of foregoing interest, and forgetting
self, in the enthusiasm of zeal for a common
cause. Their vices are a corrective of the
leliberating selfishness of their superiors.
Their bad, as well as good qualities, render
them the portion of society the most sus
ceptible of impressions, and the most acces
sible to public feelings. They are fitted to
produce that democratic spirit which, tem
pered in its progress through the various
classes of the community, becomes the vital
principle of liberty. It is very true, that' the
occasional absurdity and violence of these
meetings, often alienate men of timid virtue
from the cause of liberty. It is enough for
the present purpose, that in those long pe
riods to which political reasonings must al
ways be understood to apply, they contribute
far more to excite and to second, than to
offend or alarm, the enlightened friends of
the rights of the people. But meetings for
election are by far the safest and the most
effective of all popular assemblies. They
are brought together by the constitution;
they have a legal character: they display
the ensigns of public authority: they assem
ble men of all ranks and opinions : and, in
them, the people publicly and conspicuously
bestow some of the highest prizes pursued
by a generous ambition. Hence they derive
a consequence, and give a sense of self-im
portance, to their humblest members, which
would be vainly sought for in spontaneous
meetings. They lend a part of their own
seriousness and dignity to other meetings
occasioned by the election, and even to those
which, at other times are really, or even no
minally, composed of electors.
In elections, political principles cease to
be mere abstractions. They are embodied
in individuals ; and the cold conviction of a
truth, or the languid approbation of a mea
sure, is animated by attachment for leaders.
2Q
482
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
and hostility to adversaries. Every political
passion is warmed in the contest. Even the
outward circumstances of the scene strike
the imagination, and affect the feelings. The
recital of them daily spreads enthusiasm over
a country. The various fortunes of the com
bat excite anxiety and agitation on all sides;
and an opportunity is offered of discussing
almost every political question, under cir
cumstances in which the hearts of bearers
and readers take part in the argument : till
the issue of a controversy is regarded by the
nation with some degree of the same solici
tude as the event of a battle. In this man
ner is formed democratical ascendency,
•which is most perfect when the greatest
numbers of independent judgments influence
the measures of government. Reading may,
indeed, increase the number and intelligence
of those whose sentiments compose public
opinion ; but numerous assemblies, and con
sequently popular elections, can alone gene
rate the courage and zeal which form so large
a portion of its power.
With these effects it is apparent that secret
suffrage is absolutely incompatible : they can
not exist together. Assemblies to elect, or
assemblies during elections, make all suffra
ges known. The publicity and boldness in
which voters give their suffrage are of the
very essence of popular elections, and greatly
contribute to their animating effect. The
advocates of the Ballot tell us, indeed, that
it would destroy canvass and tumult. But
after the destruction of the canvass, elections
would no longer teach humility to the great,
nor self-esteem to the humble. Were the
causes of tumult destroyed, elections would
no longer be nurseries of political zeal, and
instruments for rousing national spirit. The
friends of liberty ought rather to view the
turbulence of the people with indulgence and
pardon, as powerfully tending to exercise and
invigorate their public spirit. It is not to be
extinguished, but to be rendered safe by
countervailing institutions of an opposite ten
dency on other parts of the constitutional
system.
The original fallacy, which is the source
of all erroneous reasoning in favour of the
Ballot, is the assumption that the value of
popular elections chiefly depends on the ex
ercise of a deliberate judgment by the elec
tors. The whole anxiety of its advocates is
to remove the causes which might disturb a
considerate choice. In order to obtain such
a choice, which is not the great purpose of
popular elections, these speculators would
deprive them of the power to excite and dif
fuse public spirit, — the great and inestima
ble service which a due proportion of such
elections renders to a free state. In order to
make the forms of democracy universal, their
plan would universally extinguish its spirit.
In a commonwealth where universal suffrage
was already established, the Ballot might
perhaps be admissible as an expedient for
tempering such an extreme democracy.
Even there, it might be objected to, as one
of these remedies for licentiousness which
are likely to endanger liberty by destroying
all democratic spirit; — it would be one of
those dexterous frauds by which the people
are often weaned from the exertion of their
privileges.
The system which we oppose is establish
ed in the United States of America ; and it
is said to be attended with no mischievous
effects. To this we answer, that, in America,
universal suffrage is not the rule, but the ex
ception. In twelve out of the nineteen states*
which compose that immense confedernc)-,
the disgraceful institution of slavery deprives
great multitudes not only of political fran
chises, but of the indefeasible rights of all
mankind. The numbers of the representa
tives of the Slave-states in Congress is pro
portioned to their population, whether slaves
or freemen; — a provision arising, indeed,
from the most abominable of all human in
stitutions, but recognising the just principle,
that property is one of the elements of every
wise representation. In many states, the
white complexion is a necessary qualifica
tion for suffrage, and the disfranchised are
separated from the privileged order by a phy
sical boundary, which no individual can ever
pass. In countries of slavery, where to be
free is to be noble, the universal distribution
of privilege among the ruling caste, is a na
tural consequence of the aristocratical pride
with which each man regards the dignity of
the whole order, especially when they are
all distinguished from their slaves by the
same conspicuous and indelible marks. Yet,
in Virginia, which has long been the ruling
state of the confederacy, even the citizens
of the governing class cannot vote without
the possession of a freehold estate. A real
or personal estate is required in New Eng
land, — the ancient seat of the character and
spirit of America, — the parent of those sea
men, who. with a courage and skill worthy
of our common forefathers, have met the fol
lowers of Nelson in war, — the nursery of the
intelligent and moral, as well as hardy and
laborious race, who now annually colonize
the vast regions of the West.
But were the fact otherwise, America con
tains few large, and no very great towns ;
the people are dispersed, and agricultural ;
and, perhaps, a majority of the inhabitants
are either land-owners, or have that imme
diate expectation of becoming proprietors,
which produces nearly the same effect on
character with the possession of property.
Adventurers who, in other countries, disturb
society, are there naturally attracted towards
the frontier, where they pave the way for in
dustry, and become the pioneers of civiliza
tion. There is no part of their people in the
situation where democracy is dangerous, or
even usually powerful. The dispersion of
the inhabitants, and their distance from the
* This was written in 1819. In 1845 the pro
portion is thirteen Slave to fourteen Free states,
exclusive of Texas.— ED.
ON THE RIGHT OF PARLIAMENTARY SUFFRAGE.
483
scene of great affairs, are perhaps likely ra
ther to make the spirit of liberty among them
languid, than to rouse it to excess.
In what manner the present elective sys
tem of America may act, at the remote pe
riod when the progress of society shall have
conducted that country to the crowded cities
and unequal fortunes of Europe, no man will
pretend to foresee, except those whose pre
sumptuous folly disables them from forming
probable conjectures on such subjects. If,
from the unparalleled situation of America,
the present usages should quietly prevail for
a very long time, they may insensibly adapt
themselves to the gradual changes in the
national condition, and at length be found
capable of subsisting in a state of things to
which, if they had been suddenly introduced,
they would have proved irreconcilably ad
verse. In the thinly peopled states of the
West, universal suffrage itself may be so long
exercised without the possibility of danger,
as .to create a national habit which may be
strong enough to render its exercise safe in
the midst of an indigent populace. In that
long tranquillity it may languteh into forms,
and these forms may soon follow the spirit.
For a period far exceeding our foresight, it
cannot affect the confederacy further than
the effect which may arise from very popu
lar elections in a few of the larger Western
towns. The order of the interior country
wherever it is adopted, will be aided by the
compression of its firmer and more compact
confederates. It is even possible that the
extremely popular system which prevails in
some American elections, may, in future
times, be found not more than sufficient to
counterbalance the growing influence of
wealth in the South, and the tendencies to
wards Toryism which are of late perceptible
in New England.
The operation of different principles on
elections, in various parts of the Continent,
may even now be discerned. Some remarka
ble facts have already appeared. In the
state of Pennsylvania, we have* a practical
proof that the Ballot is not attended with
secrecy. We also know,t that committees
composed of the leaders of the Federal and
Democratic parties, instruct their partisans
how they are to vote at every election ; and
that in this manner the leaders of the Demo
cratic party who now predominate in their
Caucus}: or committee at Washington, do in
* Fearon, Travels in North America, p. 138.
How could this intelligent writer treat the absence
of tumult, in such a city and country, as bearing
any resemblance to the like circumstance in Eu-
iope ?
t Ibid. p. 320.
t The following account of this strange term,
will show its probable origin, and the long-experi
enced efficacy of such an expedient for controlling
the Ballot : — " About the year 1738, the father of
Samuel Adams, and twenty others who lived in
tlie north or shipping part of Boston, used to meet,
to make a Caucus, and lay their plan for intro
ducing certain persons into places of trust. Each
distributed the ballots in his own circle, and they
effect nominate to all the important offices
in North America. Thus, we already see
combinations formed, and interests arising,
on which the future government of the con
federacy may depend more than on the forms
of election, or the letter of its present laws.
Those who condemn the principle of party,
may disapprove these associations as uncon
stitutional. To us who consider parties as
inseparable from liberty, they seem remark
able as examples of those undesigned and
unforeseen correctives of inconvenient laws
which spring out of the circumstances of
society. The election of so great a magis
trate as the President, by great numbers of
electors, scattered over a vast continent,
without the power of concert, or the means
of personal knowledge, would naturally pro
duce confusion, if it were not tempered by
the confidence of the members of both parties
in the judgment of their respective leaders.
The permanence of these leaders, slowly
raised by a sort of insensible election to the
conduct of parties, tends to counteract the
evil of that system of periodical removal,
which is peculiarly inconvenient in its appli
cation to important executive offices. The
internal discipline of parties may be found
to be a principle of subordination of great
value in republican institutions. Certain it
is, that the affairs of the United States have
hitherto been generally administered, in
times of great difficulty and under a succes
sion of Presidents, with a forbearance, cir
cumspection, constancy, and vigour, not sur
passed by those commonwealths who have
been most justly renowned for the wisdom
of their councils.
The only disgrace or danger which we
perceive impending over America, arises
from the execrable institution of slavery, —
the unjust disfranchisement of free Blacks, —
the trading in slaves carried on from state
to state, — and the dissolute and violent cha
racter of those adventurers, whose impa
tience for guilty wealth spreads the horrors
of slavery over the new acquisitions in the
South. Let the lawgivers of that Imperial
Republic deeply consider how powerfully
these disgraceful circumstances tend to
weaken the love of liberty, — the only bond
which can hold together such vast territo
ries, and therefore the only source and
guard of the tranquillity and greatness of
America.
generally carried the election. In this manner
Mr. S. Adams first became representative for
Boston. Caucusing means electioneering." —
(Gordon, History of the American Revolution, p.
216, note.) It is conjectured, that as this practice
originated in the shipping part of Boston. ' Caucus'
was a corruption of Caulkers' Meeting. For this
information we are indebted to Pickering's Ameri
can Vocabulary (Boston, 1816); a modest and
sensible book, of which the principal fault is, that
the author ascribes too much importance to some
English writers, who are not objects of much
reverence to a near observer. Mr. Pickering's
volume, however, deserves a place in English
libraries.
484
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
A SPEECH
IN
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER,
ACCUSED OF A LIBEL ON THE FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE.
DELIVERED IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH ON THE 21ST OF FEBRUARY. 1803.*
GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,
T.he time is now come for me to address
you on behalf of the unfortunate Gentleman
who is the defendant on this record.
I must begin with observing, that though
I know myself too well to ascribe to any
thing but to the kindness and good-nature of
my learned friend the Attorney-General t the
unmerited praises which he has been pleased
to bestow on me, yet I will venture to say,
he<has done me no more than justice in sup
posing that in this place, and on this occasion,
where I exercise the functions of an inferior
minister of justice, — an inferior minister in
deed, but a minister of justice still, — I am
incapable of lending myself to the passions
of any client, and that I will not make the
proceedings of this Court subservient to any
political purpose. Whatever is respected by
the laws and government of my country,
shall, in this place, be respected by me. In
considering matters that deeply interest the
quiet, the safety, and the liberties of all
mankind, it is impossible for me not to feel
warmly and strongly j but I shall make an
effort to control my feelings, however painful
that effort maybe, and where I cannot speak
* The First Consul had for some time previ
ously shown considerable irritability under the fire
of the English journalists, when the Peace of
Amiens, by permitting a rapprochement with the
English Ministry, afforded an opening through
which his paw could reach the source of annoyance.
M. Jean Peltier, on whom it lighted, was an emi
grant, who had been conducting for some years
various periodical works in the Royalist interest.
From one of these, — " L'Ambigu" — three arti
cles, which are alluded to separately in the course
of the speech, were selected by the law officers
of the Crown for prosecution, as instigating the
assassination of the First Consul. Nor perhaps,
could such a conclusion have been successfully
struggled with by any advocate. The proceeding
was one that was accompanied with much excite
ment in public opinion, as was evidenced by the j
concourse of persons surrounding the court on the
day of trial. It was supposed by some that a ver
dict of acquittal would have had an unfavourable
effect upon the already feverish state of the inter
course between the two Governments. In fact,
though found ' guilty,' the Defendant escaped
any sentence through the recurrence of hostili
ties. — ED.
t The Right Honourable Spencer Perceval.
— ED.
out at the risk of offending either sincerity
or prudence, I shall labour to contain myself
and be silent.
I cannot but feel, Gentlemen, how much \
stand in need of your favourable attention
and indulgence. The charge which I have
to defend is surrounded with the most in
vidious topics of discussion. But they are
not of my seeing. The case, and the topics
which are inseparable from it, are brought
here by the prosecutor. Here I find them,
and here it is my duty to deal with them, as
the interests of Mr. Peltier seem to me to
require. He, by his choice and confidence,
has cast on me a very arduous duty, which
I could not decline, and which I can still less
betray. He has a right to expect from me a
faithful, a zealous; and a fearless defence ;
and this his just expectation, according to
the measure of my humble abilities, shall be
fulfilled. I have said, a fearless defence : —
perhaps that word was unnecessary in the
place where I now stand. Intrepidity in the
discharge of professional duty is so common
a quality at the English Bar, that it has,
thank God ! long ceased to be a matter of
boast or praise. If it had been otherwise,
Gentlemen, — if the Bar could have been
silenced or overawed by power, I may pre
sume to say, that an English jury would not
this day have been met to administer justice.
Perhaps I need scarce say that my defence
shall be fearless, in a place where fear never
entered any heart but that of a criminal. But
you will pardon me for having said so much,
when you consider who the real parties
before you are.
Gentlemen, the real prosecutor is the mas
ter of the greatest empire the civilized world
ever saw. The Defendant is a defenceless
proscribed exile. He is a French Royalist,
who fled from his country in the autumn of
1792, at the period of that memorable and
awful emigration when all the proprietors
and magistrates of the greatest civilized
country of Europe were driven from their
homes by the daggers of assassins ; — when
our shores were covered, as with the wreck
of a great tempest
h old
men, and wo
men, and children, and ministers of religion,
who'ned from the ferocity of their country
men as before an army of invading barba-
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
485
rians. The greater part of these unfortunate
exiles, — of those I mean who have been
spared by the sword, or who have survived
the effect of pestilential climates or broken
hearts, — have been since permitted to re
visit their country. Though despoiled of
their all, they have eagerly embraced even
the sad privilege of being suffered to die in
their native land. Even this miserable in
dulgence was to be purchased by compli
ances, — by declarations of allegiance to the
new government, — which some of these suf
fering royalists deemed incompatible with
their conscience, with their dearest attach
ments and their most sacred duties. Among
these last is Mr. Peltier. I do not presume
to blame those who submitted ; and I trust
you will not judge harshly of those who re
fused. You will not think unfavourably of
a man who stands before you as the volun
tary victim of his loyalty and honour. If a
revolution (which God avert !) were to drive
us into exile, and to cast us on a foreign
shore, we should expect, at least, to be par
doned by generous men. for stubborn loyalty,
and unseasonable fidelity, to the laws and
government of our fathers.
This unfortunate Gentleman had devoted
a great part of his life to literature. It was
the amusement and ornament of his better
days : since his own ruin, and the desolation
of his country, he has been compelled to
employ it as a means of support. For the
last ten years he has been engaged in a va
riety of publications of considerable import
ance : but, since the peace, he has desisted
from serious political discussion, and confined
himself to the obscure journal which is now
before you, — the least calculated, surely, of
any publication that ever issued from the
press, to rouse the alarms of the most jeal
ous government, — which will not be read in
England, because it is not written in our
language, — which cannot be read in France,
because its entry into that country is pro
hibited by a power whose mandates are not
very supinely enforced, nor often evaded
with impunity, — which can have no other
object than that of amusing the companions
of the author's principles and misfortunes, by
pleasantries and sarcasms on their victorious
enemies. There is, indeed, Gentlemen, one
remarkable circumstance in this unfortunate
publication: it is the only, or almost the
only, journal, which still dares to espouse
the cause of that royal and illustrious family,
which but fourteen years ago was flattered
by every press, and guarded by every tribu
nal, in Europe. Even the court in which we
are met affords an example of the vicissi
tudes of their fortune. My Learned Friend
has reminded you, that the last prosecution
tried in this place, at the instance of a French
government, was for a libel on that magnani
mous princess, who has since been butchered
in sight of her palace.
I do not make these observations with any
purpose of questioning the general principles
which have been laid down by my Learned
Friend. I must admit his right to bring be
fore you those who libel any government re
cognised by His Majesty, and at peace with
the British empire. I admit that, whether
such a government be of yesterday or a thou
sand years old, — whether it be a crude and
bloody usurpation, or the most ancient, just,
and paternal authority upon earth, — we are
equally bound by His Majesty's recognition
to protect it against libellous attacks. I ad
mit that if, during our Usurpation, Lord Cla
rendon had published his History at Paris,
or the Marquis of Montrose his verses on
the murder of his sovereign, or Mr. Cowley
his Discourse on Cromwell's Government,
and if the English ambassador had com
plained, the President de Mole, or any other
of the great magistrates who then adorned
the Parliament of Paris, however reluctant
ly, painfully, and indignantly, might have
been compelled to have condemned these il
lustrious men to the punishment of libellers.
I say this only for the sake of bespeaking a
favourable attention from your generosity
and compassion to what will be feebly urged
in behalf of my unfortunate Client, who has
sacrificed his fortune, his hopes, his connec
tions, and his country, to his conscience, —
who seems marked out for destruction in this
his last asylum.
That he still enjoys the security of this
asylum, — that he has not been sacrificed to
the resentment of his powerful enemies, is
perhaps owing to the firmness of the King's
Government. If that be the fact, Gentle
men, — if his Majesty's Ministers have re
sisted the applications to expel this unfor
tunate Gentleman from England, I should
publicly thank them for their firmness, if it
were not unseemly and improper to suppose
that they could have acted otherwise, — to
thank an English Government for not viola
ting the most sacred duties of hospitality, —
for not bringing indelible disgrace on their
country. But be that as it may, Gentlemen,
he now comes before you perfectly satisfied
that an English jury is the most refreshing
prospect that the eye of accused innocence
ever met in a human tribunal ; and he feels
with me the most fervent gratitude to the
Protector of empires, that, surrounded as
we are with the ruins of principalities and
powers, we still continue to meet together,
after the manner of our fathers, to adminis
ter justice in this her ancient sanctuary.
There is another point of view, Gentle
men, in which this case seems to me to
merit your most serious attention. I con
sider it as the first of a long series of con
flicts between the greatest power in the
world, and the only free press remaining in
Europe. No man living is more thoroughly
convinced than I am, that my Learned Friend
will never degrade his excellent character, —
that he will never disgrace his high magis
tracy by mean compliances, — by an immode
rate and unconscientious exercise of power;
yet I am convinced by circumstances which
I shall now abstain from discussinsr, that I
2a2
486
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
am to consider this as the first of a long series
of conflicts, between the greatest power in the
world, and the only free press now remaining
in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of
the English press is new : it is a proud and
melancholy distinction. Before the great
earthquake of the French Revolution had
swallowed up all the asylums of free discus
sion on the Continent, we enjoyed that pri-
vilege; indeed, more fully than others, but
we did not enjoy it exclusively. In great
monarchies the press has always been con
sidered as too formidable an engine to be
intrusted to unlicensed individuals. But in
other Continental countries, either by the
laws of the state, or by long habits of libe
rality and toleration in magistrates, a liberty
of discussion has been enjoyed, perhaps suffi
cient for the most useful purposes. It ex
isted, in fact, where it was not protected by
law : and the wise and generous connivance
of governments was daily more and more
.secured by the growing civilization of their
subjects. In Holland, in Switzerland, and in
.the Imperial towns of Germany, the press
was either legally or practically free. Hol
land and Switzerland are no more: arid,
since the commencement of this prosecu
tion, fifty Imperial towns have been erased
from the list of independent states, by one
dash of the pen. Three or four still preserve
a precarious and trembling existence. I will
not say by what compliances they must pur
chase its continuance. I will not insult the
feebleness of states whose unmerited fall I
do most bitterly deplore.
These governments were in many respects
one of the most interesting parts of the an
cient system of Europe. Unfortunately for
the repose of mankind, great states are com
pelled, by regard to their own safety, to con
sider the military spirit and martial habits
of their people as one of the main objects
of their policy. Frequent hostilities seem
almost the necessary condition of their great
ness : and, without" being great, they cannot
long remain safe. Smaller states, exempted
from this cruel necessity, — a hard condition
of greatness, a bitter satire on human nature,
— devoted themselves to the arts of peace,
to the cultivation of literature, and the im
provement of reason. They became places
of refuge for free and fearless discussion:
they were the impartial spectators and judges
of the various contests of ambition, which,
from time to time, disturbed the quiet of the
world. They thus became peculiarly quali
fied to be the organs of that public opinion
which converted Europe into a great repub
lic, with laws which mitigated, though they
could not extinguish, ambition, and with
moral tribunals to which eyen the most de
spotic sovereigns were amenable. If wars
of aggrandisement were undertaken, their
authors were arraigned in the face of Europe.
If acts of internal tyranny were perpetrated,
they resounded from a" thousand presses
throughout all civilized countries. Princes
on whose will there were no legal checks;
thus found a moral restraint which the most
powerful of them could not brave with abso
lute impunity. They acted before a vast
audience, to whose applause or condemna
tion they could not be utterly indifferent.
The very constitution of human nature, — the
unalterable laws of the mind of man, against
which all rebellion is fruitless, subjected the
proudest tyrants to this control. No eleva
tion of power, — no depravity, however con
summate, — no innocence, however spotless,
can render man wholly independent of the
praise or blame of his fellow-men.
These governments were in other respects
one of the most beautiful and interesting
parts of our ancient system. The perfect
security of such inconsiderable and feeble
states, — their undisturbed tranquillity amidst
the wars and conquests that surrounded
them, attested, beyond any other part of the
European system, the moderation, the jus
tice, the civilization to which Christian Eu
rope had reached in modern times. Their
weakness was protected only by the habitual
reverence for justice, which, during a long
series of ages, had grown up in Christendom.
This was the only fortification which de
fended them against those mighty monarchs
to whom they offered themselves so easy a
prey. And, till the French Revolution, this
was sufficient. Consider, for instance, the
situation of the republic of Geneva : think of
her defenceless position in the very jaws of
France; but think also of her undisturbed
security. — of her profound quiet, — of the
brilliant' success with which she applied to
industry and literature, while Louis XIV.
was pouring his myriads into Italy before
her gates. Call to mind, if ages crowded
into years have not effaced them from your
memory, that happy period when we scarcely
dreamt more of the subjugation of the feeblest
republic of Europe, than of the conquest of
her mightiest empire, and tell me if you can
imagine a spectacle more beautiful to the
moral eye, or a more striking proof of pro
gress in the noblest principles of true civili
zation.
These feeble states. — these monuments of
the justice of Europe, — the asylums of peace,
of industry, and of literature, — the organs
of public reason, — the refuge of oppressed
innocence and persecuted truth, — have pe
rished with those ancient principles which
were their sole guardians and protectors.
They have been swallowed up by that fear
ful convulsion which has shaken the utter
most corners of the earth. They are de
stroyed and gone for ever. One asylum of
free discussion is still inviolate. There is
still one spot in Europe where man can freely
exercise his reason on the most important
concerns of society, — where he can boldly
publish his judgment on the acts of the
proudest and most powerful tyrants. The
press of England is still free. It is guarded
by the free constitution of our forefathers j —
it is guarded by the hearts and arms of
Englishmen ; and I trust I may venture to
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
487
say, that if it be to fall, it will fall only
under the ruins of the British empire. It is
an awful consideration, Gentlemen : — every
other monument of European liberty has
perished : that ancient fabric which has been
gradually reared by the wisdom and virtue
of our fathers still stands. It stands, (thanks
be to God!) solid and entire; but it stands
alone, and it stands amidst ruins.
In these extraordinary circumstances, I
repeat that I must consider this as the first
of a long series of conflicts between the
greatest power in the world and the only
free press remaining in Europe; and I trust
that you will consider yourselves as the ad
vanced guard of liberty, as having this day
to fight the first battle of free discussion
against the most formidable enemy that it
ever encountered. You will therefore ex
cuse me, if on so important an occasion I
remind you at more length than is usual, of
those general principles of law and policy on
this subject, which have been handed down
to us by our ancestors.
Those who slowly built up the fabric of
our laws, never attempted anything so absurd
as to define by any precise rule the obscure
and shifting boundaries which divide libel
from history or discussion. It is a subject
which, from its nature, admits neither rules
nor definitions. The same words may be
perfectly innocent in one case, and most
mischievous and libellous in another. A
change of circumstances, often apparently
slight, is sufficient to make the whole differ
ence. These changes, which may be as
numerous as the variety of human intentions
.and conditions, can never be foreseen or
comprehended under any legal definitions ]
and the framers of our law have never at
tempted to subject them to such definitions.
They left such ridiculous attempts to those
who call themselves philosophers, but who
have in fact proved themselves most grossly
and stupidly ignorant of that philosophy
which is conversant with, human affairs.
The principles of the law of England on
the subject of political libel are few arid sim
ple ; and they are necessarily so broad, that,
without an habitually mild administration
of justice, they might encroach materially
on the liberty of political discussion. Every
publication which is intended to vilify either
our own government or the government of
any foreign state in amity with this kingdom,
is, by the law of England, a libel. To pro
tect political discussion from the danger to
which it would be exposed by these \vide
principles, if they were severely and literally
enforced, our ancestors trusted to various
securities; some growing out of the law and
constitution, and others arising from the
character of those public officers whom the
constitution had formed, and to whom its
administration is committed. They trusted
in the first place to the moderation of the
legal officers of the Crown, educated in the
maxims and imbued with the spirit of a free
government, controlled by the superintending
power of Parliament, and peculiarly watched
in all political prosecutions by the reasonable
and wholesome jealousy of their fellow-sub
jects. And I am bound to admit, that since
the glorious era of the Revolution. — making
due allowance for the frailties, the faults, and
the occasional vices of men, — they have upon
the whole not been disappointed. I know that,
in the hands of my Learned Friend, that trust
will never be abused. But. above all, they
confided in the moderation and good sense of
juries, — popular in their origin, — popular in
their feelings, — popular in their very preju
dices, — taken from the mass of the people,
and immediately returning to that mass again.
By these checks and temperaments they
hoped that they should sufficiently repress
malignant libels, without endangering that
freedom of inquiry which is the first security
of a free state. They knew that the offence
of a political libel is of a very peculiar nature,
and differing in the most important particu
lars from all other crimes. In all other cases
the most severe execution of law can only
spread terror among the guilty; but in politi
cal libels it inspires even the innocent with
fear. This striking peculiarity arises from
the same circumstances which make it im
possible to define the limits of libel and inno
cent discussion, — which make it impossible
for a man of the purest and most honourable
mind to be always perfectly certain, whether
he be within the territory of fair argument
and honest narrative, or whether he may
not have unwittingly overstepped the faint
and varying line which bounds them. But,
Gentlemen, I will go farther: — this is the
only offence where severe and frequent pun
ishments not only intimidate the innocent,
but deter men from the most meritorious
acts, and from rendering the most important
services to their country, — indispose and dis
qualify men for the discharge of the most
sacred duties which they owe to mankind.
To inform the public on the conduct of
those who administer public affairs, requires
courage and conscious security. It is always
an invidious and obnoxious office : but it is
often the most necessary of all public duties.
If it is not done boldly, it cannot be done
effectually: and it is not from writers trem
bling under the uplifted scourge, that we are
to hope for it.
There are other matters, Gentlemen, to
which I am desirous of particularly calling
your attention. These are, the circum
stances in the condition of this country, which
have induced our ancestors, at all times, to
handle with more than ordinary tenderness
that branch of the liberty of discussion which
is applied to the conduct of foreign states.
The relation of this kingdom to the common
wealth of Europe is so peculiar, that no his
tory, I think, furnishes a parallel to it. From
the moment in which we abandoned all pro
jects of Continental aggrandisement, we
could have no interest respecting the state
of the Continent, but the interests of national
safety, and of commercial prosperity. The
488
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
paramount interest of every state, — that
which comprehends every other, is security:
and the security of Great Britain requires
nothing on the Continent but the uniform
observance of justice. It requires nothing
but th.3 inviolability of ancient boundaries,
and the sacredness of ancient possessions,
•which, on these subjects, is but another form
of words for justice.
As to commercial prosperity, it is, indeed,
a secondary, but still a very-important branch
of our national interest; and it requires no
thing on the Continent of Europe but the
maintenance of peace, as far as the para
mount interest of security will allow. What
ever ignorant or prejudiced men may affirm,
no war was ever gainful to a commercial na
tion. Losses may be less in some, and in
cidental profits may arise in others. But no
such profits ever formed an adequate com
pensation for the waste of capital and indus
try which all wars must produce. Next to
peace, our commercial greatness depends
chiefly on the affluence and prosperity of our
neighbours. A commercial nation has. in-
d?ed, the same interest in the wealth of her
neighbours, that a tradesman has in the
wealth of his customers. The prosperity
of England has been chiefly owing to the
general progress of civilized nations in the
arts and improvements of social life. Not
an acre of land has been brought into culti
vation in the wilds of Siberia, or on the shores
of the Mississippi, which has not widened
the market for English industry. It is nou
rished by the progressive prosperity of the
world; and it amply repays all that it has
received. It can only be employed in spread
ing civilization and enjoyment over the earth ;
and by the unchangeable laws of nature, in
spite of the impotent tricks of governments,
it is now partly applied to revive the industry
of those very nations who are the loudest in
their senseless clamours against its pretended
mischiefs. If the blind and barbarous pro
ject of destroying English prosperity could j
be accomplished, it could have no other
effect than that of completely beggaring the
very countries, which now stupidly ascribe
their own poverty to our wealth.
Under these circumstances, Gentlemen, it
became the obvious policy of this kingdom,
— a policy in unison with the maxims of a !
free government. — to consider with great in
dulgence even the boldest animadversions
of our political writers on the ambitious pro
jects of foreign states. Bold, and sometimes
indiscreet, as these animadversions might be,
they had at least the effect of warning the
people of their danger, and of rousing the
national indignation against those encroach
ments which England has almost always
been compelled in" the end to resist by arms.
Seldom, indeed, has she been allowed to
wait, till a provident regard to her own safety
should compel her to take up arms in defence
of others. For, as it was said by a great
orator of antiquity, " that no man ever was
the enemy of the republic who had not first
declared war against him,"* so I may say,
with truth, that no man ever meditated the
subjugation of Europe, who did not consider
the destruction, or the corruption, of England
as the first condition of his success. If you
examine history you will find, that no such
project was ever formed in which it was not
deemed a necessary preliminary, either to
detach England from the common cause, or
to destroy her. It seems as if all the con
spirators against the independence of nations
might have sufficiently taught other states
that. England is their natural guardian and
protector, — that she alone has no interest but
their preservation, — that her safety is inter-
woVen with their own. When vast projects
of aggrandisement are manifested, — when
schemes of criminal ambition are carried into
effect, tlie day of battle is fast approaching
for England. Her free government cannot
engage in dangerous wars, without the hearty
and affectionate support of her people. A
state thus situated cannot without the utmost
peril silence those public discussions, which
are to point the popular indignation against
those who must soon be enemies. In do
mestic dissensions, it may sometimes be the
supposed interest of government to overawe
the press : but it never can be evon their
apparent interest when the danger is purely
foreign. A King of England who, in such
circumstances, should conspire against the
free press of this country, would undermine
the foundations of his own throne; — he
would silence the trumpet which is to call
his people round his standard.
Gentlemen, the public spirit of a people
(by which I mean the whole body of those
affections which unites men's hearts to the
commonwealth) is in various countries com
posed of various elements, and depends on
a great variety of causes. In this country, I
may venture to say, that it mainly depends
on the vigour of the popular parts and prin
ciples of our government ; and that the spirit
of liberty is one of its most important ele
ments. Perhaps it may depend less on those
advantages of a free government, which are
most highly estimated by calm reason, than
upon those parts of it which delight the ima
gination, and flatter the just and natural
pride of mankind. Among these we are
certainly not to forget the political rights
which are not uniformly withheld from the
lowest classes, and the continual appeal
made to them, in public discussion, upon the
greatest interests of the state. These are
undoubtedly among the circumstances which
endear to Englishmen their government and
their country, and animate their zeal for that
glorious institution which confers on the
meanest of them a sort of distinction and no
bility unknown to the most illustrious slaves
who tremble at the frown of a tyrant. Who
ever was unwarily and rashly to abolish or
narrow these privileges (which it must be
* The reference is probably to Cicero. Oral, in
Catilinam, iv. cap. 10. — ED.
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
489
owned are liable to great abuse, and to very
specious objections), might perhaps discover,
too late, that he had been dismantling the
fortifications of his country. Of whatever
elements public spirit is composed, it is
always and every where the chief defensive
principle of a state (it is perfectly distinct
from courage : — perhaps no nation — certainly
no European nation ever perished from an
inferiority of courage); and undoubtedly no
considerable nation was ever subdued, in
which the public affections were sound and
vigorous. It is public spirit which binds to
gether the dispersed courage of individuals,
and fastens it to the commonwealth : — it is
therefore, as I have said, the chief defensive
principle of every country. Of all the stimu
lants which rouse it into action, the most
powerful among us is certainly the press:
and the press cannot be restrained or weak
ened without imminent danger that the na
tional spirit may languish, and that the peo
ple may act with less zeal and affection for
their country in the hour of its danger.
These principles. Gentlemen, are not new :
they are genuine old English principles. And
though in our days they have been disgraced
and abused by ruffians and fanatics, they are
in themselves as just and sound as they are
liberal ; and they are the only principles on
which a free state can be safely governed.
'These principles I have adopted since I first
learnt the use of reason : and I think I shall
abandon them only with life.
On these principles I am now to call your
attention to the libel with which this unfor
tunate Gentleman is charged. I heartily re
joice that I concur with the greatest part of
what has been said by my Learned Friend,
who has done honour even to his character
by the generous and liberal principles which
he has laid down. He has told you that he
does not mean to attack historical narrative :
— he has told you that he does not mean to
attack political discussion ; — he has told you
also that he does not consider every intempe
rate word into which, a writer, fairly engaged
in narration or reasoning, might be betrayed,
as a fit subject for prosecution. The essence
of the crime of libel consists in the malignant
mind which the publication proves, and from
which it flows. A jury must be convinced,
before they find a man guilty of libel, that
his intention was to libel, — not to state facts
\vhich he believed to be true, or reasonings
which he thought just. My Learned Friend
has told you that the liberty of history in
cludes the right of publishing those observa
tions which occur to intelligent men when
they consider the affairs of the world ; and I
think he will not deny that it includes also
the right of expressing those sentiments
which all good men feel on the contempla
tion of extraordinary examples of depravity
or excellence.
One more privilege of the historian, which
the Attorney-General has not named, but to
which his principles extend, it is now my
duty to claim on behalf of my client: — I
62
mean, the right of republishing, historically,
those documents (whatever their original
malignity may be) which display the cha
racter and unfold the intentions of govern
ments, or factions, or individuals. I think
my Learned Friend will not deny, that an
historical compiler may innocently republish
in England the most insolent and outrageous
declaration of war ever published against
His Majesty by a foreign government. The
intention of the original author was to vilify
arid degrade his Majesty's government : but
the intention of the compiler is only to gratify
curiosity, or perhaps to rouse just indignation
against the calumniator whose production he
republishes; his intention is not libellous, —
his republication is therefore not a libel. Sup
pose this to be the case with Mr. Peltier; —
suppose him to have republished libels with
a merely historical intention. In that case it
cannot be pretended that he is more a libeller
than my learned friend Mr. Abbott,* who
read these supposed libels to you when he
opened the pleadings. Mr. Abbott repub
lished them to you, that you might know and
judge of them : Mr. Peltier, on the supposi
tion I have made, also republished them that
the public might know and judge of them.
You already know that the general plan of
Mr. Peltier's publication was to give a pic
ture of the cabals and intrigues, — of the
hopes and projects, of French factions. It
is undoubtedly a natural and necessary part
of this plan to republish all the serious and
ludicrous pieces which these factions circu
late against each other. The Ode ascribed
to Chenier or Ginguene I do really believe to
have been written at Paris. — to have been
circulated there, — to have been there attri
buted to one of these writers, — to have been
sent to England as their work, — and as such,
to have been republished by Mr. Peltier.
But I am not sure that I have evidence to
convince you of the truth of this. Suppose
that I have not : will my Learned Friend say
that my client must necessarily be con
victed1? I, on the contrary, contend, that it
is for my Learned Friend to show that it is
not an historical republication: — such it pro
fesses to be, and that profession it is for him
to disprove. The profession may indeed be
a "mask :" but it is for my Friend to pluck
off the mask, and expose the libeller, before
he calls upon you for a verdict of "guilty."
If the general lawfulness of such republi-
cations be denied, then I must ask Mr. At
torney-General to account for the long im
punity which English newspapers have en
joyed. I must request him to tell you vhy
they have been suffered to republish all the
atrocious, official and unofficial, libels which
have been published against His Majesty for
the last ten years, by the Brissots, the Marats,
the Dantons, the Robespierres, the Barreres,
the Talliens, the Reubells. the Merlins, the
Barras', and all that long line of bloody ty-
* The junior counsel for the prosecution, after
wards Lord Tenterden.— ED.
490
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
rants who oppressed their own country, and
insulted every other which they had not the
power to rob. What must be the answer?
That the English publishers were either in
nocent if their motive was to gratify curiosity,
or praiseworthy if their intention was to rouse
indignation against the calumniators of their
country. If any other answer be made, I
must remind my Friend of a most sacred
part of his duty — the duty of protecting the
honest fame of those who are absent in the
service of their country. Within these few
days. \ve have seen in every newspaper in
England, a publication, called the Report of
Col. Sebastiani, in which a gallant British
officer (General Stuart) is charged with writ
ing letters to procure assassination. The
publishers of that infamous Report are not
and will not be prosecuted, because their in
tention is not to libel General Stuart. On any
other principle, why have all our newspapers
been suffered to circulate that most atrocious
of all libels against the King and the people of
England, which purports to be translated
from the Moniteur of the 9th of August,
1802 ; a libel against a Prince, who has passed
through a factious and stormy reign of forty-
three years without a single imputation on
his personal character, — against a people
who have passed through the severest trials
of national virtue with unimpaired glory,
who alone in the world can boast of mutinies
without murder, of triumphant mobs without
massacre, of bloodless revolutions and of civil
wars unstained by a single assassination ; —
that most impudent and malignant libel,
which charges such a King of such a people
not only with having hired assassins, but
with being so shameless, — so lost to all sense
of character, as to have bestowed on these
assassins, if their murderous projects had
succeeded, the highest badges of public ho
nour, — the rewards reserved for statesmen
and heroes, — the Order of the Garter j — the
Order which was founded by the heroes of
Cre9y and Poitiers, — the Garter wrhich was
worn by Henry the Great and by Gustavus
Adolphus, — which might now be worn by
the Hero* who. on the shores of Syria, the
ancient theatre of English chivalry, has re
vived the renown of English valour and of
English humanity, — that unsullied Garter,
which a detestable libeller dares to say is to
be paid as the price of murder.
If I had now to defend an English pub
lisher for the republication of that abominable
libel, what must I have said on his defence ?
I must have told you that it was originally
published by the French Government in their
official gazette, — that it was republished by
the English editor to gratify the natural cu
riosity, perhaps to rouse the just resentment,
of his English readers. I should have con
tended, and, I trust, with success, that his
republication of a libel was not libellous, —
that it was lawful, — that it was laudable.
All that would be important, at least all that
* Sir Sydney Smith.— ED.
would be essential in such a defence I now
state to you on behalf of Mr. Peltier ; and
if an English newspaper may safely repub-
lish the libels of the French Government
against His Majesty, I shall leave you to
judge whether Mr. Peltier, in similar cir
cumstances, may not, with equal safety, re-
publish the libels of Chenier against the
First Consul. On the one hand you have the
assurances of Mr. Peltier in the context that
this Ode is merely a republicatiori ;— you
have also the general plan of his work, with
which such a republication is perfectly con
sistent. On the other hand, you have only the
suspicions of Mr. Attorney-General that this
Ode is an original production of the Defendant.
But supposing that you should think it his
production, and that you should also think it
a libel, — even in that event, which I cannot
anticipate, I am not left without a defence.
The question will still be open : — is it a libel
on Buonaparte, or is it a libel on Chenier or
Ginguene 1 This is not an information for a
libel on Chenier: and if you should think
that this Ode was produced by Mr. Peltier,
and ascribed by him to Chenier for the sake
of covering that writer with the odium of
Jacobinism, the Defendant is entitled to your
verdict of "not guilty." Or if you should
believe that it is ascribed to Jacobinical wri
ters for the sake of satirising a French Jaco
binical faction, you must also in that cnse
acquit him. Butler puts seditious and im
moral language into the mouths of rebels
and fanatics; but Hud i bras is not for that
reason a libel on morality or government.
Swift, in the most exquisite piece of irony in
the world (his Argument against the Aboli
tion of Christianity), uses the language of
those shallow, atheistical coxcombs whom
his satire was intended to scourge. The
scheme of his irony required some levity,
and even some profaneness of language; but
nobody was ever so dull as to doubt whether
Swift meant to satirise atheism or religion.
In the same manner Mr. Peltier, when he
wrote a satire on French Jacobinism, was
ompelled to ascribe to Jacobins a Jacobinical
hatred of government. He was obliged, by
dramatic propriety, to put into their mouths
those anarchical maxims which are com-',
plained of in this Ode. But it will be said,
these incitements to insurrection are here
lirected against the authority of Buonaparte.
This proves nothing, because they must have
been so directed, if the Ode was a satire on
Jacobinism. French Jacobins must inveigh
against Buonaparte, because he exercises
the powers of government : the satirist who
attacks them must transcribe their senti
ments, and adopt their language.
I do not mean to say, Gentlemen, that Mr.
Peltier feels any affection, or professes any
allegiance to Buonaparte. If I were to say
so, he would disown me. He would disdain
to purchase an acquittal by the profession of
sentiments which he disclaims and abhors.
Not to love Buonaparte is no crime. The
question is not whether Mr. Peltier loves or
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
491
hates the First Consul, but whether he has '
put revolutionary language into the mouth of
Jacobins, with a view to paint their incor
rigible turbulence, and to exhibit the fruits
of Jacobinical revolutions to the detestation
of mankind.
Now, Gentlemen, we cannot give a proba
ble answer to this question without previously
examining two or three questions on which
the answer to the first must very much de
pend. Is there a faction in France which
breathes the spirit, and is likely to employ
the language of this Ode? Does it perfectly
accord with their character and views'? Is
it utterly irreconcilable with the feelings,
opinions, and wishes of Mr. Peltier'? If these
questions can be answered in the affirmative,
then I think you must agree with me, that
Mr. Peltier does not in this Ode speak his
own sentiments, — that he does not here vent
his own resentment against Buonaparte, but
that he personates a Jacobin, and adopts his
language for the sake of satirising his prin
ciples.
These questions, Gentlemen, lead me to
those political discussions, which, generally
speaking, are in a court of justice odious and
disgusting. Here, however, they are neces
sary, and I shall consider them only as far as
the necessities of this cause require.
Gentlemen, the French Revolution — I must
pause, after I have uttered words which pre
sent such an overwhelming idea. But I have
not now to engage in an enterprise so far
beyond my force as that of examining and
judging that tremendous revolution. I have
only to consider the character of the factions
which it must have left behind it. The
French Revolution began with great and
fatal errors. These errors produced atrocious
crimes. A mild and feeble monarchy was
succeeded by bloody anarchy, which very
shortly gave birth to military despotism.
France, in a few years, described the whole
circle of human society. All this was in the
order of nature. When every principle of
authority and civil discipline, — when every
principle which enables some men to com
mand, and disposes others to obey, was ex
tirpated from the mind by atrocious theories,
and still more atrocious examples, — when
every old institution was trampled down with
contumely, and every new institution covered
in its cradle with blood, — when the principle
of property itself, the sheet-anchor of society,
was annihilated, — when in the persons of the
new possessors, whom the poverty 'of lan
guage obliges us to call proprietors, it was
contaminated in its source by robbery and
murder, and became separated from the
education and the manners, from the general
presumption of superior knowledge and more
scrupulous probity which form its only libe
ral titles to respect, — when the people were
taught to despise every thing old, and com
pelled to detest every thing new, there re
mained only one principle strong enough to
hold society together, — a principle utterly
incompatible, indeed, with liberty, and un
friendly to civilization itself, — a tyrannical
and barbarous principle, but, in that miser
able condition of human affairs, a refuge
from still more intolerable evils: — I mean
he principle of military power, which gains
strength from that confusion and bloodshed
n which all the other elements of society
ire dissolved, and which, in these terrible
(xtremities, is the cement that preserves it
'rom total destruction. Under such circum
stances, Buonaparte usurped the supreme
)ower in France ; — I say usurped, because an
llegal assumption of power is an usurpation.
3ut usurpation, in its strongest moral sense,
s scarcely applicable to a period of lawless
and savage anarchy. The guilt of military
usurpation, in truth, belongs to the authors
f those confusions which sooner or later
ive birth to such an usurpation. Thus, to
use the words of the historian, "by recent
as well as all ancient example, it became
evident, that illegal violence, with whatever
pretences it may be covered, and whatever
object it may pursue, must inevitably end at
last in the arbitrary and despotic govern
ment of a single person.'7* But though the
government of Buonaparte has silenced the
Revolutionary factions, it has not and it can
not have extinguished them. No human
power could reTmpress upon the minds of
men all those sentiments and opinions which
the sophistry and anarchy of fourteen years
had obliterated. A faction must exist, which
breathes the spirit of the Ode now before
you .
It is, I know, not the spirit of the quiet
and submissive majority of the French peo
ple. They have always rather suffered, than
acted in, the Revolution. Completely ex
hausted by the calamities through which
they have passed, they yield to any power
which gives them repose. There is, indeed,
a degree of oppression which rouses men to
resistance; but there is another and a greater
which wholly subdues and unmans them.
It is remarkable that Robespierre himself
was safe, till he attacked his own accom
plices. The spirit of men of virtue was
broken, and there was no vigour of character
left to destroy him, but in those daring ruf
fians who were the sharers of his tyranny.
As for the wretched populace who were
made the blind and senseless instrument of
so many crimes. — whose frenzy can now be
reviewed by a good mind with scarce any
moral sentiment but that of compassion, —
that miserable multitude of beings, scarcely
human, have already fallen into a brutish
forgetfulness of the very atrocities which
they themselves perpetrated : they have al
ready forgotten all the acts of their drunken
fury. If you ask one of them, who destroyed
that magnificent monument of religion and
art 1 or who perpetrated that massacre ? they
stupidly answer, "The Jacobins !" — though
he who gives the answer was probably one
of these Jacobins himself : so that a traveller,
* Hume, History of England, vol. vii. p. 220.
492
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ignorant of French history, might suppose
the Jacobins to be the name of some Tartar
horde, \vho? after laying waste France for
ten years, were at last expelled by the native
inhabitants. They have passed from sense
less rage to stupid quiet : their delirium is
followed by lethargy.
In a word, Gentlemen, the great body of
the people of France have been severely
trained in those convulsions and proscriptions
which are the school of slavery. They are
capable of no mutinous, and even of no bold
and manly political sentiments : and if this
Ode professed to paint their opinions, it would
be a most, unfaithful picture. But it is other
wise with those who have been the actors
and leaders in the scene of blood : it is other
wise with the numerous agents of the most
indefatigable, searching, multiform, and om-
nipressnt tyranny that ever existed, which
pervaded every class of society. — which had
ministers and victims in every village in
France.
Some of them, indeed, — the basest of the
race, — the Sophists, the Rhetors, the Poet-
laureates of murder, — who were cruel only
from cowardice, and calculating selfishness,
are perfectly willing to transfer their venal
pens to any government that does not disdain
their infamous support. These men, repub
licans from servility, who published rhetorical
panegyrics on massacre, and who reduced
plunder to a system of ethics, as are ready
to preach slavery as anarchy. But the more
daring — I had almost said the more respect
able — ruffians cannot so easily bend their
Leads, under the yoke. These fierce spirits
have not lost
" The unconquerable will, the study of revenge,
immortal hate."*
They leave the luxuries of servitude to the
mean and dastardly hypocrites, — to the
Belialsand Mammons of the infernal faction.
They pursue their old end of tyranny under
their old pretext of liberty. The recollection
of their unbounded power renders every in
ferior condition irksome and vapid : and their
former atrocities form, if I may so speak, a
sort of moral destiny which irresistibly im
pels them to the perpetration of new crimes.
They have no place left for penitence on
earth: they labour under the most awful
proscription of opinion that ever wras pro
nounced against human beings : they have
cut down every bridge by which they could
retreat into the society of men. Awakened
from their dreams of democracy, — the noise
subsided that deafened their ears to the voice
of humanity, — the film fallen from their eyes
which hid from them the blackness of their
own deeds, — haunted by the memory of
their inexpiable guilt, — condemned daily to
look on the faces of those whom their hand
has made widows and orphans, they are
goaded arid scourged by these real furies,
and hurried into the tumult of new crimes,
to drown the cries of remorse, or, if they be
* Paradise Lost, book ii.— ED.
too depraved for remorse, to silence the
curses of mankind. Tyrannical power is
their only refuge from the just vengeance of
their fellow creatures : murder is their only
means of usurping power. They have no
taste, no occupation, no pursuit, but power
and blood. If their hands are tied, they
must at least have the luxury of murderous
projects. They have drunk too deeply of
human blood ever to relinquish their cannibal
appetite.
Such a faction exists in France : it is nu
merous ; it is powerful ; and it has a principle
of fidelity stronger than any that ever held
together a society. They are banded together
by despair of forgiveness, — by the unanimous
detestation of mankind. They are now con
tained by a severe and stern government:
but they still meditate the renewal of insur
rection and massacre ; and they are prepared
to renew the worst and most atrocious of
their crimes, — that crime against posterity
and against human nature itself, — that crime
of which the latest generations of mankind
may feel the fatal consequences, — the crime
of degrading and prostituting the sacred
name of liberty. I must own that, however
paradoxical it may appear, I should almost
think not worse, but more meanly of them
if it were otherwise. I must then think them
destitute of that — I will not call it courage.
because that is the name of a virtue — but of
that ferocious energy Avhich alone rescues
ruffians from contempt. If they were desti
tute of that which is the heroism of murder
ers, they wrould be the lowest as well as the
most abominable of beings. It is impossible
to conceive any thing more despicable than
wretches who, after hectoring and .bullying1
over their meek and blameless sovereign,
and his defenceless family, — whom they
kept so long in a dungeon trembling for their
existence, — whom they put to death by a
slow torture of three years, — after playing
the republicans and the tyrannicides to wo
men and children. — become the supple and
fawning slaves of the first government that
knows how to wield the scourge with a firm
hand.
I have used the word "Republican," be
cause it is the name by which this atrocious
faction describes itself. The assumption of
that name is one of their crimes. They are
no more "Republicans" than "Royalists :57
they are the common enemies of all human
society. . God forbid, that by the use of that
word, I should be supposed to reflect on the
members of those respectable republican
communities which did exist in Europe be
fore the French Revolution. That Revolution
has spared many monarchies, but it has
spared no republic within the sphere of its
destructive energy. One republic only now
exists in the world — a republic of English
blood, which was originally composed of re
publican societies, under me protection of a
monarchy, which had therefore no great and
perilous change in their internal constitution
to effect, and of which (I speak it with plea-
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
493
sure and pride), the inhabitants, even in the
convulsions of a most deplorable separation,
displayed the humanity as well as valour,
•which, I trust, I may say they inherited from
their forefathers. Nor do I mean, by the
use of the word "Republican," to confound
this execrable faction with all those who, in
the liberty of private speculation, may prefer
a republican form of government. I own.
that after much reflection, I am not able to
conceive an error more gross than that of
those who believe in the possibility of erect
ing a republic in any of the old monarchical
countries of Europe. — who believe that in
such countries an elective supreme magis
tracy can produce any thing but a succession
of stern tyrannies and bloody civil wars. It
is a supposition which is belied by all expe
rience, and which betrays the greatest igno
rance of the first principles of the constitution
of society. It is an error which has a false
appearance of superiority over vulgar preju
dice • it is, therefore, too apt to be attended
with the most criminal rashness and pre
sumption, and too easy to be inflamed into
the most immoral and anti-social fanaticism.
But as long as it remains a mere quiescent
error, it is not the proper subject of moral
disapprobation.
If then, Gentlemen, such a faction, falsely
calling itself ••'Republican." exists in France,
let us -consider whether this Ode speaks their
sentiments, — describes their character, —
agrees with their views. Trying it by the
principle I have stated, I think you will have
no difficulty in concluding, that it is agree
able to the general plan of this publication
to give an historical and satirical view of
the Brutus' and brutes of the Republic, — of
those who assumed and disgraced the name
of Brutus,* and who, under that name; sat as
judges in their mock tribunals with pistols
in their girdles, to anticipate the office of the
executioner on those unfortunate men whom
they treated as rebels, for resistance to Ro
bespierre and Couthon.
I now come to show you, that this Ode
cannot represent the opinions of Mr. Peltier.
He is a French Royalist ; he has devoted his
talents to the cause of his King; for that
cause he has sacrificed his fortune and
hazarded his life ; — for that cause he is pro
scribed and exiled from his country. I could
easily conceive powerful topics of Royalist
invective against Buonaparte : and if Mr. Pel
tier had called upon Frenchmen by the
memory of St. Louis and Henry the Great,
— by the memory of that illustrious family
which reigned over them for seven centuries,
and with whom all their martial renown and
literary glory are so closely connected, — if he
had adjured them by the spotless name of
that Louis XVI., the martyr of his love for
his people, which scarce a man in France
can now pronounce but in the tone of pity
and veneration. — if he had thus called upon
* A Citizen Brutus was President of the Mili
tary Commission at Marseilles, in January, 1794.
them to change their useless regret and their
barren pity into generous and active indig
nation, — if he had reproached the conquerors
of Europe with the disgrace of being the
slaves of an upstart stranger, — if he had
brought before their minds the contrast be
tween their country under her ancient mo-
narchs, the source and model of refinement
in manners and taste, and since their expul
sion the scourge and opprobrium of humanity,
— if he had exhorted them to drive out their
ignoble tyrants, and to restore their native
sovereign, I should then have recognised the
voice of a Royalist, — I should have recog
nised language that must have flowed from
the heart of Mr. Peltier, and I should have
been compelled to acknowledge that it was
pointed against Buonaparte.
But instead of these, or similar topics,
what have we in this Ode "? On the suppo
sition that it is the invective of a Royalist,
how is it to be reconciled to common sense ?
What purpose is it to serve ? To whom is it
addressed? To what interests does it ap
peal? What passions is it to rouse? If it
be addressed to Royalists, then I request,
Gentlemen, that you will carefully read it,
and tell me whether, on that supposition, it
can be any thing but the ravings of insanity,
and whether a commission of lunacy be not
a proceeding more fitted to the author's case,
than a conviction for a libel. On that sup
position. I ask you whether it does not
amount, in substance, to such an address as
the following :— a Frenchmen ! Royalists! I
do not call upon you to avenge the murder
of your innocent sovereign, the butchery of
your relations and friends, or the disgrace
and oppression of your country. I call upon
you by the hereditary right of Barras, trans
mitted through a long series of ages, — by
the beneficent government of Merlin and
Reubell, those worthy successors of Charle
magne, whose authority was as mild as it
was lawful, — I call upon you to revenge on
Buonaparte the deposition of that Directory
who condemned the far greater part of your
selves to beggary and exile, — who covered
France with Bastiles and scaffolds. — who
doomed the most respectable remaining
members of their community, the Piche-
grus, the Barbe-Marbois', the Barthelemis,
to a lingering death in the pestilential wilds
of Guiana. I call upon yTou to avenge on
Buonaparte the cause of those Councils of
Five Hundred, or of Two Hundred, of Elders
or of Youngsters, — those disgusting and nau
seous mockeries of representative assemblies,
— those miserable councils which sycophant
sophists had converted into machines for
fabricating decrees of proscription and con
fiscation. — which not only proscribed unborn
thousands, but, by a refinement and innova
tion in rapine, visited the sins of the children
upon the fathers and beggared parents, not
for the offences but for the misfortunes of
their sons. I call upon you to restore this
Directory and these Councils, and all this
horrible profanation of the name of a repub-
2R
494
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
lie, and to punish those who delivered you
from them. I exhort you to reverence the
den of these banditti as c the sanctuary of
the laws/ and to lament the day in which
this intolerable nuisance was abated as i an
unfortunate day.' Last of all, I exhort you
once more to follow that deplorable chimera,
— the first lure that led you to destruction,
— the sovereignty of the people ; although I
know, and you have bitterly felt, that you
never were so much slaves in fact, as since
you have been sovereigns in theory !'"' Let
me ask Mr. Attorney-General, whether, upon
his supposition. I have not given you a faith
ful translation of this Ode ; and I think I may
safely repeat, that, if this be the language
of a Royalist addressed to Royalists, it must
be the production of a lunatic. But, on my
supposition, every thing is natural and con
sistent. You have the sentiments and lan
guage of a Jacobin : — it is therefore probable,
if you take it as an historical republication
of a Jacobin piece; it is just, if you take it
as a satirical representation of Jacobin opi
nions and projects.
Perhaps it will be said, that this is the
production of a Royalist writer, who assumes
a Republican disguise to serve Royalist pur
poses. But if my Learned Friend chooses
that supposition, I think an equal absurdity
returns upon him in another shape. We
must then suppose it to be intended to ex
cite Republican discontent and insurrection
against Buonaparte. It must then be taken
as addressed to Republicans. Would Mr.
Peltier, in that case, have disclosed his name
as the publisher ? Would he not much rather
have circulated the Ode in the name of
Chenier, without prefixing his own, which
was more than sufficient to warn his Jaco
binical readers against all his counsels and
exhortations. If "he had circulated it under
the name of Chenier only, he would indeed
have hung out Republican colours ; but by
prefixing his own, he appears without dis
guise. You must suppose him then to say :
— " Republicans ! I, your mortal enemy for
fourteen years, whom you have robbed of
his all. — whom you have forbidden to revisit
his country under pain of death, — who, from
the beginning of the Revolution, has unceas
ingly poured ridicule upon your follies, and
exposed your crimes to detestation, — who in
the cause of his unhappy sovereign braved
your daggers for three years, and who es
caped, almost by miracle, from your assassins
in September, — who has since been con
stantly employed in warning other nations
by your example, and in collecting the evi
dence upon which history will pronounce
your condemnation, — I who at this moment
deliberately choose exile and honourable
poverty, rather than give the slightest mark
of external compliance with your abomina
ble institutions, — I your most irreconcilable
and indefatigable enemy, offer you counsel
which you know can only be a snare into
which I expect you to fall, though by the
mere publication of my name I have suffi
ciently forewarned you that I can have no
aim but that of your destruction." I ask you
again, Gentlemen, is this common sense ? Is
it not as clear, from the name of the author,
that it is not addressed to Jacobins, as, from
the contents of the publication, that it is not
addressed to Royalists ? It may be the genu
ine work of Chenier; for the topics are such
as he would employ : it may be a satire on
Jacobinism; for the language is well adapted
to such a composition: but it cannot be a
Royalist's invective against Buonaparte, in
tended by him to stir up either Royalists or
Republicans to the destruction of the First
Consul.
I cannot conceive it to be necessary that I
should minutely examine this Poem to con
firm my construction. There are one or two
passages on which I shall make a few ob
servations. The first is the contrast between
the state of England and that of France, of
which an ingenious friend* has favoured me
with a translation, which I shall take the
liberty of reading to you : —
" Her glorious fabric England rears
On law's fix'd base alone;
Law's guardian pow'r while each reveres,
England ! thy people's freedom fears
No danger from the throne.
" For there, before almighty law,
High birth, high place, with pious awe,
In reverend homage bend :
There's man's free spirit, unconstrain'd,
Exults, in man's best rights maintain'd,—
Rights, which by ancient valour gained,
From age to age descend.
" Britons, by no base fear dismay'd,
May power's worst acts arraign.
Does tyrant force their rights invade?
They call on law's impartial aid,
Nor call that aid in vain.
" Hence, of her sacred charter proud,
With every earihly good endow'd,
O'er subject seas unfurl'd,
Britannia waves her standard wide ; —
Hence, sees her freighted navies ride,
Up wealthy Thames' majestic tide,
The wonder of the world."
Here, at first sight, you may perhaps think
that the consistency of the Jacobin character
is not supported — that the Republican dis
guise is thrown off, — that the Royalist stands
unmasked before you : — but, on more consi
deration, you will find that such an inference
would be too hasty. The leaders of the
Revolution are now reduced to envy that
British constitution which, in the infatuation
of their presumptuous ignorance, they once
rejected with scorn. They are now slaves
(as themselves confess) because twelve years
ago they did not believe Englishmen to be
free. They cannot but see that England is
the only popular government in Europe; and
they are compelled to pay a reluctant homage
to the justice of English principles. The
praise of England is too striking a satire on
their own government to escape them; and
I may accordingly venture to appeal to all
* Mr. Canning.— ED.
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
495
those who know any thing of the political
circles of Paris, whether such contrasts be
tween France and England as that which I
have read to you be not the most favourite
topics of the opponents of Buonaparte. But
in the very next stanza : —
Cependant, encore affligee
Par 1'odieuse heredite,
Londres de litres surcharged,
Londres n'a pas tEgalite: —
you see that though they are forced to render
an unwilling tribute to our liberty, they can
not yet renounce all their fantastic and de-
pi rable chimeras. They endeavour to make
a compromise between the experience on
which they cannot shut their eyes, and the
wretched systems to which they still cling.
Fanaticism is the most incurable of all men
tal diseases ; because in all its forms, — reli
gious, philosophical, or political, — it is dis
tinguished by a sort of mad contempt for
experience^ which alone can correct the errors
of practical judgment. And these demo-
cratical fanatics still speak of the odious
principle of i: hereditary government ;" they
still complain that we have not '•'•equality:'1''
they know not that this odious principle of
inheritance is our bulwark against tyranny,
— that if we had their pretended equality
we should soon cease to be the objects of
their envy. These are the sentiments which
you would naturally expect from half-cured
Juuatics: but once more I ask you, whether
they can be the sentiments of Mr. Peltier'?
Would he complain that we have too much
monarchy, or too much of what they call
'•'aristocracy'?" If he has any prejudices
against the English government, must they
not be of an entirely opposite kind?
I have only one observation more to make
on this Poem. It relates to the passage
which is supposed to be an incitement to
assassination. In my way of considering the
subject, Mr. Peltier is not answerable for
that passage, Vhatever its demerits may be.
It is put into the mouth of a Jacobin ; and it
will not, I think, be affirmed, that if it were
an incitement to assassinate, it would be
very unsuitable to his character. Experi
ence, and very recent experience, has abun
dantly proved how widely the French Re
volution has blackened men's imaginations,
— what a daring and desperate cast it has
given to their characters, — how much it has
made them regard the most extravagant pro
jects of guilt as easy and ordinary expe
dients, — and to what a horrible extent it has
familiarised their minds to crimes which be
fore were only known among civilized na
tions by the history of barbarous times, or
as the subject of poetical fiction. But. thank
God ! Gentlemen, we in England have not
learned to charge any man with inciting to
assassination, — not even a member of that
atrocious sect who have revived political as
sassination in Christendom, — except when
we are compelled to do so by irresistible
evidence. Where is that evidence here?
in general it is immoral, — because it is in
decent, — to speak with levity, still more to
anticipate with pleasure, the destruction of
any human being. But between this immo
rality and the horrible crime of inciting to
assassination, there is a wide interval in
deed. The real or supposed author of this
Ode gives you to understand that he would
hear with no great sorrow of the destruction
of the First Consul. But surely the publica
tion of that sentiment is very different from
an exhortation to assassinate.
But, says my Learned Friend, why is the
example of Brutus celebrated ? Why are the
French reproached with their baseness in
not copying that example? Gentlemen, I
have no judgment to give on the act of Mar
cus Brutus. I rejoice that I have not: I
should not dare to condemn the acts of brave
and virtuous men in extraordinary and ter
rible circumstances, and which have been,
as it were, consecrated by the veneration of
so many ages. Still less should I dare to
weaken the authority of the most sacred
rules of duty, by praises which would be
immoral, even if the acts themselves were
in some measure justified by the awful cir
cumstances under which they were done. I
am not the panegyrist of " those instances
of doubtful public spirit at which morality is
perplexed, reason is staggered, and from
which affrighted nature recoils."* But
whatever we may think of the act of Brutus.
surely my Learned Friend will not contend
that every allusion to it, every panegyric on
it, which has appeared for eighteen centu
ries, in prose and verse, is an incitement to
assassination. From the '•' corispiciuz divina
Philippica/amce." down to the last schoolboy
declamation, he will find scarce a work of
literature without such allusions, and not
very many without such panegyrics. I must
say that he has construed this Ode more like
an Attorney-General than a critic in poetry.
According to his construction, almost every
fine writer in our language is a preacher of
murder.
Having said so much on the first of these
supposed libels, I shall be very short on the
two that remain : — the Verses ascribed to a
Dutch Patriot, and the Parody of the Speech
of Lepidus.
In the first of these, the piercing eye of Mr.
Attorney-General has again discovered an
incitement to assassinate. — the most learned
incitement to assassinate that ever was ad
dressed to such ignorant ruffians as are most
likely to be employed for such purposes ! —
in an obscure allusion, to an obscure, and
perhaps fabulous, part of Roman history, —
to the supposed murder of Romulus, about
which none of us know any thing, and of
which the Jacobins of Paris and Amsterdam
probably never heard.
But the Apotheosis : — here my Learned
Friend has a little forgotten himself: — he
seems to argue as if Apotheosis always pre •
supposed death. But he must know, that
* Burke, Works, (quarto,) vol. iv. p. 427.
496
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
Augustus, and even Tiberius and Nero, were
deified during their lives; and he cannot
have forgotten the terms in which one of the
court-poets of Augustus speaks of his mas
ter's divinity : —
Praescns divus habebitur
Augustus, adjectis Britannia
Imperis — *
If any modern rival of Augustus should
choose that path to Olympus. I think he will
find it more steep and rugged than that by
which Pollux and Hercules climbed to the
etherial towers; and that he must be con
tent with "'purpling his lips" with Burgundy
on earth, as he has very little chance of do
ing so with nectar among the gods.
The utmost that can seriously be made
of this passage is, that it is a wish for a
man's death. I repeat, that I do not contend
for the decency of publicly declaring such
wishes, or even for the propriety of enter
taining them. But the distance between
such a wish and a persuasive to murder, is
immense. Such a wish for a man's death is
very often little more than a strong, though
I admit not a very decent, way of expressing
detestation of his character.
But without pursuing this argument any
farther, I think myself entitled to apply to
these Verses the same reasoning which I have
already applied to the first supposed libel on
Buonaparte. If they be the real composi
tion of a pretended Dutch Patriot, Mr. Pel
tier may republish them innocently : if they
be a satire on such pretended Dutch patriots,
they are not a libel on Buonaparte. Granting,
for the sake of argument, that they did con
tain a serious exhortation to assassinate, is
there any thing in such an exhortation in
consistent with the character of these pre
tended patriots 1 They who were disaffected
to the mild and tolerant government of their
flourishing country, because it did not ex
actly square with all their theoretical whim
sies, — who revolted from that administration
as tyrannical, which made Holland one of
the wonders of the world for protected in
dustry, for liberty of action and opinion, and
for a prosperity which I may venture to call
the greatest victory of man over hostile ele
ments, — who served in the armies of Robe
spierre, under the impudent pretext of giving
liberty to their own country, and who have,
finally, buried in the same grave its liberty,
its independence, and perhaps its national ex
istence, — such men are not entitled to much
tenderness from a political satirist ; and he
will scarcely violate dramatic propriety if he
impute to them any language, however crimi
nal and detestable. They who could not
brook the authority of their old, lazy, good-
natured government, are not likely to endure
with patience the yoke of that stern domina
tion which they have brought upon them
selves, and which, as far as relates to them,
is only the just punishment of their crimes.
I know nothing more odious than their
* Horace, lib. iii. ode 5. — Ed.
character, unless it be that of those who
invoked the aid of the oppressors of Switzer
land to be the deliverers of Ireland ! The
latter guilt has, indeed, peculiar aggravations.
In the name of liberty they were willing to
surrender their country into the hands of
tyrants, the most lawless, faithless, and
merciless that ever scourged Europe, — who.
at the very moment of the negotiation, were
covered with the blood of the unhappy
Swiss, the martyrs of real independence and
of real liberty. Their success would have
been the destruction of the only free com
munity remaining in Europe, — of England,
the only bulwark of the remains of Euro
pean independence. Their means were the
passions of an ignorant and barbarous pea
santry, and a civil war, which could not fail
to produce all the horrible crimes and horri
ble retaliations of the last calamity that can
befall society, — a servile revolt. They sought
the worst of ends by the most abominable
of means. They laboured for the subjuga
tion of the world at the expense of crimes
and miseries which men of humanity and
conscience would have thought too great a
price for its deliverance.
The last of these supposed libels, Gentle
men, is the Parody on the Speech of Lepi-
dus. in the Fragments of Sallust. It is
certainly a very ingenious and happy parody
of an original, attended with some historical
obscurity and difficulty, which it is no part
of our present business to examine. This
Parody is said to have been clandestinely
placed among the papers of one of the most
amiable and respectable men in France,
M. Camille Jourdan, in order to furnish a
pretext for involving that excellent person in
a charge of conspiracy. This is said to have
been done by a spy of Fouche. Now, Gen
tlemen, I take this to be a satire of Fouche,
— on his manufacture of plots, — on his con
trivances for the destruction of innocent and
virtuous men ; and I should admit it to be a
libel on Fouche, if it were possible to libel
him. I own that I should like to see Fouche
appear as a plaintiff, seeking reparation for
his injured character, before any tribunal,
safe from his fangs, — where he had not the
power of sending the judges to Guiana or
Madagascar. It happens that we kno"\y
something of the history of M. Fouche,
from a very credible witness against him, —
from himself. You will perhaps excuse me
for reading to you some passages of his let
ters in the year 1793, from which you will
judge whether any satire can be so severe as
the portrait he draws of himself : — " Convin
ced that there are no innocent men in this in
famous city," (the unhappy city of Lyons),
"but those who are oppressed and loaded
with irons by the assassins of the people,"
(he means the murderers who were con
demned to death for their crimes) " we are
on our guard against the tears of repentance !
nothing can disarm our severity. They have
not yet dared to solicit the repeal of your
first 'decree for the annihilation of the city
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
497
of Lyons ! but scarcely anything has yet
been done to carry it into execution." (Pa
thetic!) "The demolitions are too slow.
More rapid means are necessary to republi
can impatience. The explosion of the mine,
and the devouring activity of the flames, can
alone adequately represent the omnipotence
of the people." (Unhappy populace, always
the pretext, the instrument, and the victim
of political crimes !) " Their will cannot be
checked like that of tyrants — it ought to
have the effects of thunder!"* The next
specimen of this worthy gentleman which I
shall give, is in a speech to the Jacobin Club
of Paris, on the 21st of December. 1793, by
his worthy colleague in the mission to Ly
ons, Collot d'Herbois: — "We are accused"
(you, Gentlemen, will soon see how un
justly) "of being cannibals, men of blood;
but it is in counter-revolutionary petitions,
hawked about for signature by aristocrats,
that this charge is made against us. They
examine with the most scrupulous atten
tion how the counter-revolutionists are put
to death, and they affect to say, that they
are not killed at one stroke." (He speaks
for himself and his colleague Fouche, and
one would suppose that he was going to
deny the fact, — but nothing like it.) '-'Ah,
Jacobins, did Chalier die at the first stroke ?"
(This Chalier was the Marat of Lyons.) "A
drop of blood poured from generous veins
goes to my heart" (humane creature ! ) ; " but
I have no pity for conspirators." (He how
ever proceeds to state a most undeniable
proof of his compassion.) " We caused two
hundred to be shot at once, and it is charged
upon us as a crime!" (Astonishing! that
such an act of humanity should be called a
crime ! ) " They do not know that it is a proof
of our sensibility I When twenty criminals
are guillotined, the last of them dies twenty
deaths : but those two hundred conspirators
perished at once. They speak of sensibility;
we also are full of sensibility ! The Jacobins
have all the virtues ! They are compassionate ,
humane, generous ! " (This is somewhat hard
to be understood, but it is perfectly explained
by what follows;) "but they reserve these
sentiments for the patriots who are their
brethren, which the aristocrats never will
be."f
The only remaining document with which
I shall trouble you, is a letter from Fouche
to his amiable colleague Collot d'Herbois,
which, as might be expected in a confiden
tial communication, breathes all the native
tenderness of his soul : — " Let us be terrible,
that we may run no risk of being feeble or
cruel. Let us annihilate in our wrath, at a
single blow, all rebels, all conspirators, all
traitors," (comprehensive words in his voca
bulary) " to spare ourselves the pain, the
long agony, of punishing like kings !" (No
thing but philanthropy in this worthy man's
heart.) "Let us exercise justice after the
* Moniteur, 24th November, 1793.
t Moniteur, 24th December.
63
example of nature; let us avenge ourselves
ike a'people ; let us strike like the thunder
bolt ; and let even the ashes of our enemies
disappear from the soil *of liberty ! Let the
)erfidious and ferocious English be attacked
>om every side; let the whole republic
brm a volcano to pour devouring lava upon
hem ; may the infamous island which pro
duced these monsters, who no longer belong
o humanity, be for ever buried under the
waves of the ocean ! Farewell, my friend !
Tears of joy stream from my eyes" (we
shall soon see for what) ; " they deluge my
soul."* Then follows a little postscript,
which explains the cause of this excessive
joy, so hyperbolical in its language, and
which fully justifies the indignation of the
lumane writer against the " ferocious Eng-
"ish," who are so stupid and so cruel as never
:o have thought of a benevolent massacre,
t)y way of sparing themselves the pain of
punishing individual criminals. " We have
only one way of celebrating victory. We
send this evening two hundred and thirteen
rebels to be shot !"
Such, Gentlemen, is M. Fouche, who is
said to have procured this Parody to be mix
ed with the papers of my excellent friend
Camille Jourdan, to serve as a pretext for his
destruction. Fabricated plots are among the
most usual means of such tyrants for suck
purposes ; and if Mr. Peltier intended to
tibel — shall I say ?— Fouche by this compo
sition, I can easily understand both the Pa
rody and the history of its origin. But if it
be directed against Buonaparte to serve
Royalist purposes, I must confess myself
wholly unable to conceive why Mr. Peltier
should have stigmatised his work, and de
prived it of all authority and power of per
suasion, by prefixing to it the infamous name
of Fouche.
On the same principle I think one of the
observations of my Learned Friend, on the
title of this publication, may be retorted on
him. He has called your attention to the
title, — " L'Ambigu, ou Varietes atroces et
amusantes." Now, Gentlemen, I must ask
whether, had these been Mr. Peltier's own in
vectives against Buonaparte, he would him
self have branded them as "atrocious1?"
But if they be specimens of the opinions and
invectives of a French faction, the title is
very natural, and the epithets are perfectly
intelligible. Indeed I scarce know a more
appropriate title for the whole tragi-comedy
of the Revolution than that of "atrocious
and amusing varieties."
My Learned Friend has made some obsei
vations on other parts of this publication, to
show the spirit which animates the author;
but they do not seem to be very material to
the question between us. It is no part of my
case that Mr. Peltier has not spoken with
some impoliteness, — with some flippancy, —
with more severity than my Learned Friend
may approve, of factions and of adminis-
* Moniteur, 25th December.
2R2
498
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
trations in France. Mr.' Peltier cannot love
the Revolution, or any government that has
grown out of it and maintains it. The Re
volutionists have destroyed his family; they
have seized his inheritance ; they have beg
gared, exiled, and proscribed himself. If he
did not detest them he would be unworthy
of living ; he would be a base hypocrite if he
were to conceal his sentiments. But I must
again remind you, that this is not an Informa
tion for not sufficiently honouring the French
Revolution, — for not showing sufficient reve
rence for the Consular government. These
are no crimes among us. England is not
yet reduced to such an ignominious depend
ence. Our hearts and consciences are not
yet in the bonds of so wretched a slavery.
This is an Information for a libel on Buona
parte, and if you believe the principal inten
tion of Mr. Peltier to have been to republish
the writings or to satirise the character of
other individuals, you must acquit him of a
libel on the First Consul.
Here, Gentlemen, I think I might stop, if I
had only to consider the defence of Mr. Pel
tier. I trust that you are already convinced
of his innocence. I fear I have exhausted
your patience, as I am sure I have very nearly
exhausted my own strength. But so much
seems to me to depend on your verdict, that I
cannot forbear from laying before you some
considerations of a more general nature.
Believing as I do that we are on the eve
of a great struggle, — that this is only the first
battle between reason and power, — that you
have now in your hands, committed to your
trust, the only remains of free discussion in
Europe, now confined to this kingdom ; ad
dressing you, therefore, as the guardians of
the most important interests of mankind;
convinced that the unfettered exercise of
reason depends more on your present verdict
than on any other that was ever delivered
by a jury, I cannot conclude without bring
ing before you the sentiments and examples
of our ancestors in some of those awful and
perilous situations by which Divine Provi
dence has in former ages tried the virtue of
the English nation. We are fallen upon
times in which it behoves us to strengthen
our spirits by the contemplation of great ex
amples of constancy. Let us seek for them
in the annals of our forefathers.
The reign of Queen Elizabeth may be
considered as the opening of the modern
history of England, especially in its connec
tion with the modern system of Europe,
which began about that time to assume the
form that it preserved till the French Revo
lution. It was a very memorable period,
the maxims of which ought to be engraven
on the head and heart of every Englishman.
Philip II., at the head of the greatest empire
then in the world, was openly aiming at uni
versal domination ; and his project was so
far from being thought chimerical by the
wisest of his contemporaries, that in the opi
nion of the great Due de Sully he must have
been successful; "if, by a most singular
combination of circumstances, he had not at
the same time been resisted by two such
strong heads as those of Henry IV. and
Queen Elizabeth." To the most extensive
and opulent dominions, the most numerous
and disciplined armies, the most renowned
captains, the greatest revenue, he added also
the most formidable power over opinion.
He was the chief of a religious faction, ani
mated by the most atrocious fanaticism, and
prepared to second his ambition by rebellion,
anarchy, and regicide, in every Protestant
state. Elizabeth was among the first ob
jects of his hostility. That wise and mag
nanimous Princess placed herself in the front
of the battle for the liberties of Europe.
Though she had to contend at home with
his fanatical faction, which almost occupied
Ireland, which divided
Scotland, and was
not of contemptible strength in England, she
aided the oppressed inhabitants of the Ne
therlands in their just and glorious resistance
to his tyranny ; she aided Henry the Great in
suppressing the abominable rebellion which
anarchical principles had excited and Spanish
arms had supported in France j and after a
long reign of various fortune, in which she pre
served her unconquered spirit through great
calamities, and still greater dangers, she at
length broke the strength of the enemy, and
reduced his power within such limits as to
be compatible with the safety of England,
and of all Europe. Her only effectual ally
was the spirit of her people : and her policy
flowed from that magnanimous nature which
in the hour of peril teaches better lessons
than those of cold reason. Her great heart
inspired her xvith the higher and a nobler
wisdom, which disdained to appeal to the
low and sordid passions of her people even
for the protection of their low and sordid
interests ; because she knew, or rather she
felt, that these are effeminate, creeping, cow
ardly, short-sighted passions, which shrink
from conflict even in defence of their own
mean objects. In a righteous cause she
roused those generous affections of her people
which alone teach boldness, constancy, and
foresight, and which are therefore the only
safe guardians of the lowest as well as the
highest interests of a nation. In her me
morable address to her army, when the in
vasion of the kingdom was threatened by
Spain, this woman of heroic spirit disdained
to speak to them of their ease and their
commerce, and their wealth and their safety.
No! She touched another chord; — she spoke
of their national honour, of their dignity as
Englishmen, of " the foul scorn that Parma
or Spain should dare to invade the bor
ders of her realms!" She breathed into
them those grand and powerful sentiments
which exalt vulgar men into heroes, — which
led them into Ithe battle of their country
armed with holy and irresistible enthusiasm,
which even cover with their shield all the
ignoble interests that base calculation and
cowardly selfishness tremble to hazard, but
shrink from defending. A sort of prophetic
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
499
instinct, — if I may so speak, — seems to have
revealed to her the importance of that great
instrument for rousing and guiding the minds
of men, of the effects of which she had had
no experience, — which, since her time, has
changed the condition of the world, — but
which few modern statesmen have tho
roughly understood or wisely employed, —
which is no doubt connected with many
ridiculous and degrading details, — which has
produced, and which may again produce,
terrible mischiefs, — but the influence of
which must after all be considered as the
most certain effect and the most efficacious
cause of civilization, — and which, whether it
be a blessing or a curse, is the most power
ful engine that a politician can move : — I
mean the press. It is a curious fact, that,
in the year of the Armada, Queen Elizabeth
caused to be printed the first Gazettes that
ever appeared in England ; and I own, when
I consider that this mode of rousing a na
tional spirit was then absolutely unexam
pled, — that she could have no assurance of
its efficacy from the precedents of former
times, — 1 am disposed to regard her having
recourse to it as one of the most sagacious
experiments, — one of the greatest discove
ries of political genius. — one of the most
striking anticipations of future experience,
that we find in history. I mention it to you,
to justify the opinion that I have ventured to
state, of the close connection of our national
spirit with our press, and even our periodi
cal press. I cannot quit the reign of Eliza
beth without laying before you the maxims
of her policy, in the language of the greatest
and wisest of men. Lord Bacon, in one part
of his discourse on her reign, speaks thus of
her support of Holland : — •' But let me rest
upon the honourable and continual aid and
relief she hath given to the distressed and
desolate people . of the Low Countries ; a
people recommended unto her by ancient
confederacy and daily intercourse, by their
cause so innocent, and their fortune so la
mentable !;' — In another passage of the same
discourse, he thus speaks of the general
system of her foreign policy, as the protector
of Europe, in words too remarkable to re
quire any commentary: — "Then it is her
government, and her government alone, that
hath been the sconce and fort of all Europe,
which hath lett this proud nation from over
running all. If any state be yet free from
his factions erected in the bowels thereof; if
there be any state wherein this faction is
erected that is not yet fired with civil trou
bles; if there be any state under his pro
tection that enjoyeth moderate liberty, upon
whom he tyrannizeth not; it is the mercy
of this renowned Queen that standeth be
tween them and their misfortunes !"
The next great conspirator against the
rights of men and nations, against the secu
rity and independence of all European states,
against every kind and degree of civil and
religious liberty, was Louis XIV. In his
time the character of the English nation was
the more remarkably displayed, because it
was counteracted by an apostate and perfi
dious government. During great part of his
reign, you know that the throne of England
was filled by princes who deserted the
cause of their country and of Europe, —
who were the accomplices and the tools of
the oppressor of the world, — who were
even so unmanly, so unprincely, so base, as
to have sold themselves to his ambition, —
who were content that he should enslave
the Continent, if he enabled them to enslave
Great Britain. These princes, traitors to their
own royal dignity and to the feelings of the
generous people whom they ruled, preferred
the condition of the first slave of Louis XIV.
to the dignity of the first freeman of Eng
land. Yet, even under these princes, the
feelings of the people of this kingdom were
displayed on a most memorable occasion to
wards foreign sufferers and foreign oppres
sors. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
threw fifty thousand French Protestants on
our shores. They were received, as I trust
the victims of tyranny ever will be in this
land, which seems chosen by Providence to
be the home of the exile, — the refuge of the
oppressed. They were welcomed by a people
high-spirited as well as humane, who did
not insult them by clandestine charity, —
who did not give alms in secret lest their
charity should be detected by neighbouring
tyrants! No! they were publicly and na
tionally welcomed and relieved. They were
bid to raise their voice against their oppres
sor, and to proclaim their wrongs to all man
kind. They did so. They were joined in
the cry of just indignation by every English
man worthy of the name. It was a fruitful
indignation, which soon produced the suc
cessful resistance of all Europe to the com
mon enemy. Even then, when Jeffreys
disgraced the Bench which his Lordship*
now adorns, no refugee was deterred by
prosecution for libel from giving vent to his
feelings, — from arraigning the oppressor in
the face of all Europe.
During this ignominious period of our his
tory, a war arose on the Continent, which
cannot but present itself to the mind on
such an occasion as this, — the only war that
was ever made on the avowed ground of at
tacking a free press. I speak of the invasion
of Holland by Louis XIV. The liberties
which the Dutch gazettes had taken in dis
cussing his conduct were the sole cause of
this very extraordinary and memorable war,
which was of short duration, unprecedented
in its avowed principle, and most glorious in
its event for the liberties of mankind. That
republic, at all times so interesting to Eng
lishmen, — in the worst times of both coun
tries our brave enemies, — in their best times
our most faithful and valuable friends, — was
then charged with the defence of a free press
against the oppressor of Europe, as a sacred
trust for the benefit of all generations. They
Lord Ellenborough.— ED.
500
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
felt the sacredness of the deposit ; they felt
the dignity of the station in which they were
placed: and though deserted by the un-
English Government of England, they as
serted their own ancient character, and drove
out the great armies and great captains of
the oppressor with defeat and disgrace. Such
\vas the result of the only war hitherto avow
edly undertaken to oppress a free country
because she allowed the free and public ex
ercise of reason : — and may the God of Jus
tice and Liberty grant that such may ever
be the result of wars made by tyrants against
the rights of mankind, especially of those
against that right which is the guardian of
every other.
This war, Gentlemen, had the effect of
raising up from obscurity the great Prince
of Orange, afterwards King William III. —
the deliverer of Holland, the deliverer of
England, the deliverer of Europe, — the only
hero who was distinguished by such a happy
union of fortune and virtue that the objects
of his ambition were always the same with
the interests of humanity, — perhaps, the only
man who devoted the whole of his life ex
clusively to the service of mankind. This
most illustrious benefactor of Europe, — this
u hero without vanity or passion,7' as he has
been justly and beautifully called by a vene
rable prelate,* who never made a step to
wards greatness without securing or advan
cing liberty, who had been made Stadtholder
of Holland for the salvation of his own coun
try, was soon after made King of England
for the deliverance of ours. When the peo
ple of Great Britain had once more a govern
ment worthy of them, they returned to the
feelings and principles of their ancestors,
and resumed their former station and their
former duties as protectors of the indepen
dence of nations. The people of England, de
livered from a government which disgraced,
oppressed, and betrayed them, fought under
William as their forefathers had fought under
Elizabeth, and after an almost uninterrupted
struggle of more than twenty years, in which
they were often abandoned by fortune, but
never by their own constancy and magna
nimity, they at length once more defeated
those projects of guilty ambition, boundless
aggrandisement, and universal domination,
which had a second time threatened to over
whelm the whole civilized world. They
rescued Europe from being swallowed up in
the gulf of extensive empire, which the ex
perience of all times points out as the grave
of civilization, — where men are driven by
violent conquest and military oppression into
lethargy and slavishness of heart, — where,
after their arts have perished with the men
tal vigour from which they spring, they are
plunged by the combined power of effemi
nacy and ferocity into irreclaimable and
hopeless barbarism. Our ancestors esta
blished, the safety of their own country by
providing for that of others, and rebuilt the
* Dr. Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph.
European system upon such firm founda
tions, that nothing less than the tempest of the
French Revolution could have shaken it.
This arduous struggle was suspended for
a short time by the Peace of Ryswick. The
interval between that Treaty and the War
of the Succession enables us to judge how
our ancestors acted in a very peculiar situa
tion which requires maxims of policy very
different from those which usually govern
states. The treaty which they had con
cluded was in truth and substance only a
truce. The ambition and the power of the
enemy were such as to render real peace
impossible ; and it was perfectly obvious that
the disputed succession of the Spanish mon
archy would soon render it no longer practica
ble to preserve even the appearance of amity.
It was desirable, however, not to provoke
the enemy by unseasonable hostility ; but it
was still more desirable, — it was absolutely
necessary, to keep up the national jealousy
and indignation against him who was soon
to be their open enemy. It might naturally
have been apprehended that the press might
have driven into premature war a prince
who not long before had been violently ex
asperated by the press of another free coun
try. I have looked over the political publi
cations of that time with some care, and I
can venture to say. that at no period were
the system and projects of Louis XIV ani
madverted on with more freedom and bold
ness than during that interval. Our ances
tors, and the heroic Prince who governed
them, did not deem it wise policy to disarm
the national mind for the sake of prolonging
a truce : — they were both too proud and too
wise to pay so great a price for so small a
benefit.
In the course of the eighteenth century, a
great change took place in the state of politi
cal discussion in this country: — I speak of
the multiplication of newspapers. I know
that newspapers are not very popular in this
place, which is. indeed, not very surprising,
because they are known here only by their
faults. Their publishers come here only to
receive the chastisement due to their of
fences. With all their faults, I own, I can-
not help feeling some respect for whatever
is a proof of the increased curiosity and in
creased knowledge of mankind ; and I can
not help thinking, that if somewhat more
indulgence and consideration were shown
for the difficulties of their situation, it might
prove one of the best correctives of their
faults, by teaching them that self-respect
which is the best security for liberal conduct
towards others. But however that may be,
it is very certain that the multiplication of
these channels of popular information has
produced a great change in the state of our
domestic and foreign politics. At home, it
has, in truth, produced a gradual revolution
in our government. By increasing the num
ber of those who exercise some sort of judg
ment on public affairs, it has created a sub
stantial democracy, infinitely more important
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
50 :
than those democrat ical forms which have
been the subject of so much contest. So
that I may venture to say, England has not
only in its forms the most democratical gov
ernment that ever existed in a great country,
but, in substance, has the most democratical
government that ever existed in any country;
— if the most substantial democracy be that
state in which the greatest number of men
feel an interest and express an opinion upon
political questions, and in which the greatest
number of judgments and wills concur in in
fluencing public measures.
The same circumstance gave great addi
tional importance to our discussion of conti
nental politics. That discussion was no
longer, as in the preceding century, confined
to a few pamphlets, written and read only
by men of education and rank, which reach
ed the multitude very slowly and rarely.
In newspapers an almost daily appeal was
made, directly or indirectly, to the judgment
and passions of almost every individual in the
kingdom upon the measures and principles
not only of his own country, but of every
state in Europe. Under such circumstances,
the tone of these publications in speaking of
foreign governments became a matter of im
portance. You will excuse me, therefore,
if, before I conclude, I remind you of the
general nature of their language on one or two
very remarkable occasions, and of the bold
ness with which they arraigned the crimes
of powerful sovereigns, without any check
from the laws and magistrates of their own
country. This toleration, or rather this pro
tection, was too long and uniform to be acci
dental. I am, indeed, very much mistaken
if it be not founded upon a policy which this
country cannot abandon without sacrificing
her liberty and endangering her national
existence.
The first remarkable instance which I
shall choose to state of the unpunished and
protected boldness of the English press, — of
the freedom with which they animadverted
on the policy of powerful sovereigns, is on
the Partition of Poland in 1772, — an act not
perhaps so horrible in its means, nor so de
plorable in its immediate effects, as some
other atrocious invasions of national inde
pendence which have followed it, but the
most abominable in its general tendency
and ultimate consequences of any political
crime recorded in history, because it was the
first practical breach in the system of Eu
rope. — the first example of atrocious robbery
Serpetrated on unoffending countries, which
as been since so liberally followed, and
which has broken down all the barriers of
habit and principle that guarded defence
less states. The perpetrators of this atro
cious crime were the most powerful sove
reigns of the Continent, whose hostility it
certainly was not the interest of Great Britain
wantonly to incur. They were the most
illustrious princes of their age ; and some of
them were doubtless entitled to the highest
praise for their domestic administration, as
well as for the brilliant qualities which dis
tinguished their character. But none of
these circumstances, — no dread of their re
sentment, — no admiration of their talents, —
no consideration for their rank, — silenced the
animadversion of the English press. Some
of you remember, — all of you know, that a
loud and unanimous cry of reprobation and
execration broke out against them from every
part of this kingdom. It was perfectly un
influenced by any considerations of our own
mere national interest, which might perhaps
be supposed to be rather favourably affected
by that partition. It was not, as in some
other countries, the indignation of rival rob
bers, who were excluded from their share of
the prey : it was the moral anger of disinte
rested spectators against atrocious crimes, —
the gravest and the most dignified moral
principle which the God of Justice has im
planted in the human heart, — that one, the
dread of which is the only restraint on the
actions of powerful criminals, and the pro
mulgation of which is the only punishment
that can be inflicted on them. It is a re
straint which ought not to be weakened : it
is a punishment which no good man can de
sire to mitigate. That great crime was
spoken of as it deserved in England. Rob
bery was not described by any courtly cir
cumlocutions : rapine was not called "poli
cy:" nor was the oppression of an innocent
people termed a "mediation" in their do
mestic differences. No prosecutions. — no
Criminal Imormations followed the liberty
and the boldness of the language then em
ployed. No complaints even appear to have
been made from abroad ; — much less any
insolent menaces against the free constitu
tion which protected the English press. —
The people of England were too long known
throughout Europe for the proudest poten
tate to expect to silence our press by such
means.
I pass over the second partition of Poland
in 1792 (you all remember what passed on
that occasion — the universal abhorrence ex
pressed by every man and every writer of
every party, — the succours that were pub
licly preparing by large bodies of individuals
of all parties for the oppressed Poles); I
hasten to the final dismemberment of that
unhappy kingdom, which seems to me the
most striking example in our history of the
habitual, principled, and deeply-rooted for
bearance of those who administer the law
towards political writers. We were engaged
in the most extensive, bloody, and dangerous
war that this country ever knew; and the
parties to the dismemberment of Poland
were our allies, and our only powerful and
effective allies. We had every motive of
policy to court their friendship : every reason
of state seemed to require that we should
not permit them to be abused and vilified
by English writers. What was the fact?
Did any Englishman consider himself at
liberty, on account of temporary interests,
however urgent, to silence those feelings of
502
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
humanity and justice which guard the cer
tain and permanent interests of all coun
tries'? You all remember that every voice,
and every pen, and every press in England
were unceasingly employed to brand that
abominable robbery. You remember that
this was not confined to private writers, but
that the same abhorrence was expressed by
every member of both Houses of Parliament
who was not under the restraints of ministe
rial reserve. No minister dared even to
blame the language of honest indignation
which might be very inconvenient to his
most important political projects; and I
hope I may venture to say, that no English
assembly would have endured such a sacri
fice of eternal justice to any miserable in
terest of an hour. Did the Lawr-officers of
the Crown venture to come into a court of
justice to complain of the boldest of the
nblications of that time ? They did not.
o not say that they felt any disposition to
do so ] — I believe that they could not. But
I do say, that if they had, — if they had
spoken of the necessity of confining our
political writers to cold narrative and un
feeling argument, — if they had informed a
jury, that they did not prosecute history, but
invective, — that if private writers be at liberty
at all to blame great princes, it must be with
moderation and decorum, — the sound heads
and honest hearts of an English jury would
have confounded such sophistry, and would
have declared, by their verdict, that mode
ration of language is a relative term, which
varies with the subject to which it is ap
plied, — that atrocious crimes are not to be
related as calmly and coolly as indifferent or
trifling events, — that if there be a decorum
due to exalted rank and authority, there is
also a much more sacred decorum due to
virtue and to human nature, which would be
outraged and trampled under foot, by speak
ing of guilt in a lukewarm language, falsely
called moderate.
Soon after, Gentlemen, there followed an
act, in comparison with which all the deeds
of rapine and blood perpetrated in the world
are innocence itself, — the invasion and de
struction of Switzerland, — that unparalleled
scene of guilt and enormity, — that unpro
voked aggression against an innocent coun
try, which had been the sanctuary of peace
and liberty for three centuries, — respected
as a sort of sacred territory by the fiercest
ambition, — raised, like its own mountains,
beyond the region of the storms which raged
around on every side, — the only warlike
people that never sent forth armies to dis
turb their neighbours, — the only government
that ever accumulated treasures without
imposing taxes, — an innocent treasure, un
stained by the tears of the poor, the inviolate
patrimony of the commonwealth, which at
tested the virtue of a long series of magis
trates, but which at length caught the eye
of the spoiler, and became the fatal occasion
of their ruin ! Gentlemen, the destruction
of such a country,—'- its cause so innocent,
and its fortune so lamentable !" — made a
deep impression on the people of England.
I will ask my Learned Friend, if we had
then been at peace with the French republic,
whether we must have been silent specta
tors of the foulest crimes that ever blotted
the name of humanity'? — whether we must,
like cowards and slaves, have repressed the
compassion and indignation with which that
horrible scene of tyranny had filled our
hearts ? Let me suppose, Gentlemen, that
Aloys Reding, who has displayed in our
times the simplicity, magnanimity, and piety
of ancient heroes, had, after his glorious
struggle, honoured this kingdom by choosing
it as his refuge, — that, after perforaiiug pro
digies of valour at the head of his handful
of heroic peasants on the field of Morgarten
(where his ancestor, the Landamman Reding,
had, five hundred years before, defeated the
first oppressors of Switzerland), he had se
lected this country to be his residence, as
the chosen abode of liberty, as the ancient
and inviolable asylum of the oppressed,
would my Learned Friend have had the
boldness to have said to this hero, " that he
must hide his tears'7 (the tears shed by a
hero over the ruins of his country!) "lest
they might provoke the resentment of Reu-
bell or Rapinat, — that he must smother the
sorrow and the anger \vith which his heart
was loaded, — that he must breathe his mur
murs IOWT, lest they might be overheard by
the oppressor !" Would this have been the
language of my Learned Friend ? I know
that it would not. I know, that by such a
supposition, I have done wrong to his honour
able feelings — to his honest English heart.
I am sure that he knows as well as I do, that
a nation which should thus receive the op
pressed of other countries, would be prepa
ring its own neck for the yoke. He knows
the slavery which such a nation would de
serve, and must speedily incur. He knows,
that sympathy with the unmerited sufferings
of others, and disinterested anger against
their oppressors, are, if I may so speak, the
masters which are appointed by Providence
to teach us fortitude in the defence of our
own rights, — that selfishness is a dastardly
principle, which betrays its charge and flie$
from its post, — and that those only can de
fend themselves with valour, who are ani
mated by the moral approbation with which
they can survey their sentiments towards
others, — who are ennobled in their own eyes
by a consciousness that they are fighting for
justice as well as interest, — a consciousness
which none can feel, but those who have
felt for the wrongs of their brethren. These
are the sentiments which my Learned Friend
would have felt. He would have told the
hero: — "Your confidence is not deceived:
this is still that England, of which the his
tory may, perhaps, have contributed to fill
your heart with the heroism of liberty. —
Every other country of Europe is crouching
under the bloody tyrants who destroyed your
country: we are unchanged. We are still
DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER.
503
the same 'people which received with open
arms the victims of the tyranny of Philip II.
and Louis XIV. We shall not exercise a
cowardly and clandestine humanity. Here
we are not so dastardly as to rob you of
your greatest consolation ; — here, protected
ty a free, brave, and high-minded people,
you may give vent to your indignation, — you
may proclaim the crimes of your tyrants, —
you may devote them to the execration of
mankind. There is still one spot upon earth
in which they are abhorred, without being
dreaded !»
I am aware, Gentlemen, that I have al
ready abused your indulgence : but I must
entreat you to bear with me for a short time
longer, to allow me to suppose a case which
might have occurred, in which you will see
the horrible consequences of enforcing rigor
ously principles of law, which I cannot con
test, against political writers. We might
have been at peaCe with France during the
whole of that terrible period which elapsed
between August 1792 and 1794, which has
been usually called the " reign of Robes
pierre !" — the only series of crimes, perhaps,
in history, which, in spite of the common
disposition to exaggerate extraordinary facts,
has been beyond measure under-rated in
public opinion. I say this, Gentlemen, after
an investigation, which I think entitles me
to affirm it with confidence. Men's minds
were oppressed by the atrocity and the mul
titude of crimes; their humanity and their
indolence took refuge in scepticism from
such an overwhelming mass of guilt : and
the consequence was. that all these unparal
leled enormities, though proved, not only
with the fullest historical, but with the strict
est judicial evidence, were at the time only
half-believed, and are now scarcely half-re
membered. When these atrocities, — of which
the greatest part are as little known to the
public in general as the campaigns of Gen
ghis Khan, but are still protected from the
scrutiny of men by the immensity of those
voluminous records of guilt in which they
are related, and under the mass of which
they will lie buried, till some historian be
found with patience and courage enough to
drag them forth into light, for the shame, in
deed, but for the instruction of mankind, —
which had the peculiar malignity, through
the pretexts with which they were covered,
of making the noblest objects of human pur
suit seem odious and detestable, — which had
almost made the names of liberty, reforma
tion, and humanity, synonymous with anar-
ehy, robbery, and murder, — which thus
threatened not only to extinguish every prin
ciple of improvement, to arrest the progress
of civilized society, and to disinherit future
generations of that rich succession to be ex
pected from the knowledge and wisdom of
the present, but to destroy the civilization
of Europe (which never gave such a proof
of its vigour and robustness, as in being able
to resist their destructive power), — when all
these horrors were acting in the greatest em
pire of the Continent, I will ask ray Learned
Friend, if we had then been at peace with
France, how English writers were to relate
them so as to escape the charge of libelling
a friendly government ?
When Robespierre, in the debates in the
National Convention on the mode of mur
dering their blameless sovereign, objected to
the formal and tedious mode of murder
called a "trial," and proposed to put him
immediately to death without trial, " on the
principles of insurrection,'*' — because to doubt
the guilt of the King would be to doubt of
the innocence of the Convention, and if the
King were not a traitor, the Convention must
be rebels, — would my Learned Friend have
had an English writer state all this with
"decorum and moderation ?;J Would he
have had an English writer state, that though
this reasoning was not perfectly agreeable to
our national laws, or peihaps to our national
prejudices, yet it was not for him to make
any observations on the judicial proceedings
of foreign states ? When Marat, in the same
Convention, called for two hundred and se
venty thousand heads, must our English
writers have said, lhat the remedy did, in
deed, seem to their weak judgment rather
severe ; but that it was not for them to judge
the conduct of so illustrious an assembly as
the National Convention, or the suggestions
of so enlightened a statesman as M. Marat ?
When that Convention resounded with ap
plause at the news of several hundred aged
priests being thrown into the Loire, arid par
ticularly at the exclamation of Carrier, who
communicated the intelligence : — " What a
revolutionary torrent is the Loire .'-'-' — when
these suggestions and narratives of murder,
which have hitherto been only hinted and
whispered in the most secret cabals, in the
darkest caverns of banditti, were triumphant
ly uttered, patiently endured, and even loud
ly applauded by an assembly of seven hun
dred men, acting in the sight of all Europe,
would my Learned Friend have wished that
there had been found in England a single
writer so base as to deliberate upon the most
safe, decorous, and polite manner of relating
all these things to his countrymen ? When
Carrier ordered five hundred children under
fourteen years to be shot, the greater part of
whom escaped the fire from their size, —
when the poor victims ran for protection to
the soldiers, and were bayoneted clinging
round their knees, would my Friend — But I
cannot pursue the strain of interrogation; it
is too much ! It would be a violence which
I cannot practise on my own feelings: it
would be an outrage to my Friend ; it would
be an affront to you ; it would be an insult to
humanity.
No ! better, — ten thousand times better,
would it be that every press in the world
were burnt, — that the very use of letters
were abolished, — that we were returned to
the honest ignorance of the rudest times,
than that the results of civilization should be
made subservient to the purposes of barbar-
504
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ism ] — than that literature should be employed
to teach a toleration for cruelty, — to weaken
moral hatred for guilt, — to deprave and
brutalise the human mind. I know that I
speak my Friend's feelings as well as my
own, when I say, God forbid that the dread
of any punishment should ever make any
Englishman an accomplice in so corrupting
his countrymen, — a public teacher of de"-
pravity and barbarity !
Mortifying and horrible as the idea is, I
must remind you, Gentlemen, that even at
that time, even under the reign of Robes
pierre, my Learned Friend, if he had then
been Attorney-General, might have been
compelled by some most deplorable necessi
ty, to have come into this Court to ask your
verdict against the libellers of Barrere and
Collot d'Herbois. Mr. Peltier then employed
his talents against the enemies of the human
race, as he has uniformly and bravely done.
I do not believe that any peace, any political
considerations, any fear of punishment, would
have silenced him. He has shown too much
honour and constancy, and intrepidity, to be
shaken by such circumstances as these. My
Learned Friend might then have been com
pelled to have filed a Criminal Information
jigainst Mr. Peltier, for '•' wickedly and ma
liciously intending to vilify and degrade
Maximilian Robespierre, President of the
Committee of Public Safety of the French
Republic!" He might have been reduced
to the sad necessity of appearing before you
to belie his own better feelings by prose
cuting Mr. Peltier for publishing those sen
timents which my Friend himself had a thou
sand times felt, and a thousand times ex
pressed. He might have been obliged even
to call for punishment upon Mr. Peltier, for
language which he and all mankind would
for ever despise Mr. Peltier, if he were not
to employ. Then indeed, Gentlemen, we
should have seen the last humiliation fall on
England ; — the tribunals, the spotless and
venerable tribunals of this free country, re-
duoed to be the ministers of the vengeance
of Robespierre ! What could have rescued
us from this last disgrace ? — the honesty arid
courage of a jury. They would have de
livered the judges of their country from the
dire necessity of inflicting punishment on a
brave and virtuous man, because he spoke
truth of a monster. They would have de
spised the threats of a foreign tyrant as their
ancestors braved the power of oppressors at
home.
In the court where we are now met, Crom
well twice sent a satirist on his tyranny to
be convicted and punished as a libeller, and
in this court, — almost in sight of the scaffold
streaming with the blood of his Sovereign. —
within hearing of the clash of his bayonets
which drove out Parliaments with scorn and
contumely,— a jury twice rescued the intrepid
satirist* from his fangs, and sent out with
defeat and disgrace the Usurper's Attorney-
General from what he had the impudence to
call his court ! Even then, Gentlemen, when
all law and liberty were trampled under the
feet of a military banditti. — when those great
crimes were perpetrated in a high place and
with a high hand against those who were the
objects of public veneration, which more
than any thing else upon earth overwhelm
the minds of men, break their spirits, and
confound their moral sentiments, obliterate
the distinctions between right and wrong in
their understanding, and teach the multitude
to feel no longer any reverence for that jus
tice which they thus see triumphantly drag
ged at the chariot wheels of a tyrant, — even
then, when this unhappy country, triumphant
indeed abroad, but enslaved at home, had no
prospect but that of a long succession of
tyrants " wading through slaughter to a
throne," — even then, I say. when all seemed
lost, the unconquerable spirit of English
liberty survived in the hearts of English
jurors. That spirit is. I trust in God, not
extinct : and if any modern tyrant were, in
the plenitude of his insolence, to hope to
overawe an English jury, I trust arid I believe
that they would tell him : — " Our ancestors
braved the bayonets of Cromwell ; — we bid
defiance to yours. Contempsi Catilinoe gla-
dios ; — non pertimescam tuos !"
What could be such a tyrant's means of
overawing a jury ? As long as their country-
exists, they are girt round with impenetrable
armour. Till the destruction of their country,
no danger can fall upon them for the per
formance of their duty. And I do trust that
there is no Englishman so unworthy of life
as to desire to outlive England. But if any
of us are condemned to the cruel punishment
of surviving our country, — if in the inscruta
ble counsels of Providence, this favoured
seat of justice and liberty, — this noblest
work of human wisdom and virtue, be des
tined to destruction (which I shall not be
charged with national prejudice for saying
would be the most dangerous wound ever
inflicted on civilization), at least let us carry
with us into our sad exile the consolation
that we ourselves have not violated the
rights of hospitality to exiles, — that we have
not torn from the altar the suppliant who
claimed protection as the voluntary victim
of loyalty and conscience.
Gentlemen, I now leave this unfortunate
gentleman in your hands. His character and
his situation might interest your humanity:
but, on his behalf, I only ask justice from
you. I only ask a favourable construction of
what cannot be said to be more than ambigu
ous language ; and this you will soon be told
from the highest authority is a part of justice.
* Lilburne.
A CHARGE TO THE GRAND JURY OF BOMBAY.
505
A CHARGE,
DELIVERED
TO THE GRAND JURY OF THE ISLAND OF BOMBAY,
ON THE 20TH OF JULY, 1811.
GENTLEMEN 6*F THE GRAND JURY.
The present calendar is unfortunately re
markable for the number and enormity of
crimes. To what cause we are to impute
the very uncommon depravity which has, in
various forms, during the last twelvemonths,
appeared before this Court, it is difficult, and
perhaps impossible, to determine. But the
length of this calendar may probaby be, in a
great measure, ascribed to the late com
mendable disuse of irregular punishment at
the Office of Police : so that there may be
not so much an increase of crimes as of regu
lar trials.
To frame arid maintain a system of police,
warranted by law. vigorous enough for pro
tection, and with sufficient legal restraints to
afford a security against oppression, must be
owned to be a matter of considerable diffi
culty in the crowded, mixed, and shifting,
population of a great Indian sea-port. It is
no wonder, then, that there should be defects
in our system, both in the efficacy of its
regulations and in the legality of its princi
ples. And this may be mentioned with
more liberty, because these defects have
originated long before the time of any one
now in authority ; and have rather, indeed,
arisen from the operation of time and chance
on human institutions, than from the fault
of any individual. The subject has of late
occupied much of my attention. Govern
ment have been pleased to permit me to lay
my thoughts before them. — a permission of
which I shall in a few days avail myself;
and I hope that my diligent inquiry and long
reflection may contribute somewhat to aid
their judgment in the establishment of a
police which may be legal, vigorous, and un-
oppressive.
In reviewing the administration of law in
this place since I have presided here, two
circumstances present themselves, which
appear to deserve a public explanation.
The first relates to the principles adopted
by the Court in cases of commercial insol
vency.
In India, no law compels the equal distri
bution of the goods of an insolvent merchant :
we have no system of bankrupt laws. The
consequence is too well known. Every mer
cantile failure has produced a disreputable
scramble, in which no individual could be
64
blamed; because, if he were to forego his
rights, they would not be sacrificed to equita
ble division, but to the claims of a competitor
no better entitled than himself. A few have
recovered all, and the rest have lost all. Nor
was this the worst. Opulent commercial
houses, either present, or well served by
vigilant agents, almost always foresaw in
solvency in such time as to secure them
selves. But old officers, widows, and orphans
in Europe, could know nothing of the decay
ing credit of their Indian bankers, and they
had no agents but those bankers themselves:
they, therefore, were the victims of every
failure. The rich generally saved what was
of little consequence to them, and the poor
almost constantly lost their all. These scenes
have frequently been witnessed in various
parts of India : they have formerly occurred
here. On the death of one unfortunate gen
tleman, since I have been here, the evil was
rather dreaded than felt.
Soon after my arrival, I laid before the
British merchants of this island a plan for the
equal distribution of insolvent estates, of
which accident then prevented the adoption.
Since that time, the principle of the plan has
been adopted in several cases of actual or of
apprehended insolvency, by a conveyance of
the whole estate to trustees, for the equal
benefit of all the creditors. Some disposition
to adopt similar arrangements appears of late
to manifest itself in Europe. And certainly
nothing can be better adapted to the present
dark and unquiet condition of the commer
cial world. Wherever they are adopted
early, they are likely to prevent bankruptcy.
A very intelligent merchant justly observed
to me. that, under such a system, the early
disclosure of embarrassment would not be
attended with that shame and danger which
usually produce concealment and final ruin.
In all cases, and at every period, such ar
rangements would limit the evils of bank
ruptcy to the least possible amount. It
cannot, therefore, be matter of wonder that
a court of justice should protect such a sys
tem with all the weight of their opinion, and
to the utmost extent of their legal power.
I by no means presume to blame those
creditors who, on the first proposal of this
experiment, withheld their consent, and pre
ferred the assertion of their legal rights.
2S
506
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
They had. I dare say, been ill used by their
debtors. \vho might personally be entitled to
no indulgence from. them. It is too much to
require of men. that, under the influence of
cruel disappointment and very just resent
ment, they should estimate a plan of public
utility in the same manner with a dispassion
ate and disinterested spectator. But experi
ence and reflection will in time teach them,
that, in seeking to gratify a just resentment
against a culpable insolvent, they, in fact,
direct their hostility against the unoffending
and helpless part of their fellow-creditors.
One defect in this voluntary system of
bankrupt laws must be owned to be consi
derable : it is protected by no penalties against
the fraudulent concealment of property. —
There is no substitute for such penalties, but
the determined and vigilant integrity of trus
tees. I have, therefore, with pleasure, seen
that duty undertaken by European gentle
men of character and station. Besides the
great considerations of justice and humanity
to the creditors, I will confess that I am gra
tified by the interference of English gentle
men to prevent the fall of eminent or ancient
commercial families among the natives of
India.*
The second circumstance which I think
myself now bound to explain, relates to the
dispensation of penal law.
Since my arrival here, in May, 1804, the
punishment of death has not been inflicted
by this Court. Now, the population subject
to our jurisdiction, either locally or person
ally, cannot be estimated at less than two
hundred thousand persons. Whether any
evil consequence has yet arisen from so unu
sual, — and in the British dominions unexam
pled, — a circumstance as the disuse of capi
tal punishment, for so long a period as seven
yeans, among a population so considerable, is
a question which you are entitled to ask, and
to which I have the means of affording you
a satisfactory answer.
The criminal records go back to the year
1756. From May, 1756, to May, 1763, the
capital convictions amounted to one hundred
and forty-one ; and the executions were
forty-seven. The annual average of persons
who suffered death was almost seven ; and
the annual average of capital crimes ascer
tained to have been perpetrated was nearly
twenty. From May, 1804, to May, 1811,
there have been one hundred and nine capi-
*..."! am persuaded that your feelings would
have entirely accorded with mine ; convinced that,
both as jurors and as private gentlemen, you will
always consider yourselves as intrusted, in this re
mote region of the earth, with the honour of that
beloved country, which, I trust, becomes more
dear to you, as I am sure it does to me, during
every new moment of absence ; that, in your in
tercourse with each other as well as with the na
tives of India, you will keep unspotted the ancient
character of the British nation, — renowned in every
age, and in no age more than the present, for va
lour, for justice, for humanity, and generosity, —
for every virtue which supports, as well as for
every talent and accomplishment which adorns
human society." — Charge, 21st July, 1805. — ED.
tal convictions. The annual average, there
fore, of capital crimes, legally proved to have
been perpetrated during that period, is be
tween fifteen arid sixteen. During this period
there has been no capital execution. But as
the population of this island has much more
than doubled during the last fifty years, the
annual average of capital convictions during
the last seven years ought to have been forty,
in order to show the same proportion of cri
minality with that of the first seven years.
Between 1756 and 1763, the military force
was comparatively small : a few factories or
small ports only depended on this govern
ment. Between 1804 and 1811. five hundred
European officers, and probably four thousand
European soldiers, were scattered over ex
tensive territories. Though honour and mo
rality be powerful aids of law with respect
to the first class, and military discipline with
respect to the second, yet it might have been
expected, as experience has proved, that the
more violent enormities would be perpetrated
by the European soldiery — uneducated and
sometimes depraved as many of them must
originally be, — often in a state of mischiev
ous idleness, — commanding, in spite of all
care, the means of intoxication, and corrupt
ed by contempt for the feelings and rights
of the natives of this country. If these cir
cumstances be considered, it will appear that
the capital crimes committed during the last
seven years, with no capital execution, have,
in proportion to the population, not been
much more than a third of those committed
jn the first seven years, notwithstanding the
infliction of death on forty-seven persons.
The intermediate periods lead to the same
results. The number of capital crimes in
any one of these periods does not appear to
be diminished either by the capital execu
tions of the same period, or of that imme
diately preceding: they bear no assignable
proportion to each other.
In the seven years immediately preceding
the last, which were chiefly in the presidency
of my learned predecessor, Sir William Syer,
there was a remarkable diminution of capital
punishments. The average fell from about
four in each year, which was that of the
seven years before Sir William Syer, to somfe-
what less than two in each year. Yet the
capital convictions were diminished about
one-third.
"The punishment of death is principally
intended to prevent the more violent and
atrocious crimes. From May, 1797, there
were eighteen convictions for murder, of
which I omit two, as of a very particular
kind. In that period there were twelve
capital executions. From May, 1804, to
May, 1811, there were six convictions for
murder,* omitting one which W7as considered
* ... "The truth seems to be, as I observed
to you on a former occasion, that the natives of
India, though incapable of the crimes which arise
from violent passions, are, beyond every other
people of the earth, addicted to those vices which
proceed from the weakness of natural feeling, and
CHARGE TO THE GRAND JURY OF BOMBAY.
507
by the jury as in substance a case of man
slaughter with some aggravation. The mur
ders in the former period were, therefore,
very nearly as three to one to those in the
latter, in which no capital punishment was
inflicted. From the number of convictions,
I of course exclude those cases where the
prisoner escaped; whether he owed his
safety to defective proof of his guilt, or to a
legal objection. This cannot affect the just
ness of a comparative estimate, because the
proportion of criminals who escape on legal
objections before courts of tjie same law,
must, in any long period, be nearly the same.
But if the two cases. — one where a formal
verdict of murder, with a recommendation
to mercy, was intended to represent an ag
gravated manslaughter; and the other of a
man who escaped by a repugnancy in the
indictment, where, however, the facts were
more near manslaughter than murder, — be
added, then the murders of the last seven
years will be eight, while those of the former
seven years will be sixteen.
" This small experiment has. therefore,
been made without any diminution of the
security of the lives and properties of men.
Two hundred thousand men have been
governed for seven years without a capital
punishment, and without any increase of
crimes. If any experience has been acquired,
it has been safely and innocently gained. It
was, indeed, impossible that the trial could
ever have done harm. It was made on no
avowed principle of impunity or even lenity.
It was in its nature gradual, subject to cau
tious reconsideration in every new instance,
and easily capable of being altogethe r changed
on the least appearance of danger. Though
the general result be rather remarkable, yet
the usual maxims which regulate judicial
discretion have in a very great majority of
cases been pursued. The instances of de-
the almost total absence of moral restraint. This
observation may, in a great measure, account for
that most aggravated species of child-murder which
prevails among them. They are not actively
cruel ; but they are utterly insensible. They have
less ferocity, perhaps, than most other nations ;
but they have still less compassion. Among them,
therefore, infancy has lost its natural shield. The
paltry temptation of getting possession of the few
gold and silver ornaments, with which parents in
this country load their infants, seems sufficient to
lead these timid and mild beings to destroy a child
without pity, without anger, without fear, without
remorse, with little apprehension of punishment,
and with no apparent shame on detection." —
Charge, 19th April, 1806.— ED.
viation from those maxims scarcely amount
to a twentieth of the whole convictions.
I have no doubt of the right of society to
inflict the punishment of death on enormous
crimes, wherever an inferior punishment is
not sufficient. I consider it as a mere modi
fication of the right of self-defence, which
may as justly be exercised in deterring from
attack, as in repelling it. I abstain from the
discussions in which benevolent and enlight
ened men have, on more sober principles,
endeavoured to show the wisdom of, at least,
confining the punishment of death to the
highest class of crimes. I do not even pre
sume in this place to give an opinion regard
ing the attempt which has been made by
one* whom I consider as among the wisest
and most virtuous men of the present age, to
render the letter of our penal law more con
formable to its practice. My only object is
to show that no evil has hitherto resulted
from the exercise of judicial discretion in
this Court. I speak with the less reserve,
because the present sessions are likely to
afford a test which will determine whether I
have been actuated by weakness or by firm
ness, — by fantastic scruples and irrational
feelings, or by a calm and steady view to
what appeared to me the highest interests
of society.!
I have been induced to make these ex
planations by the probability of this being
the last time of my addressing a grand jury
from this place. His Majesty has been gra
ciously pleased to approve of my return to
Great Britain, which the state of my health
has for some time rendered very desirable.
It is therefore probable, though not certain,
that I may begin my voyage before the next
sessions.
In that case, Gentlemen, I now have the
honour to take my leave of you, with those
serious thoughts that naturally arise at the
close of every great division of human life,
— with the most ardent and unmixed wishes
for the welfare of the community with which
I have been for so many years connected by
an honourable tie. — and with thanks to you,
Gentlemen, for the assistance which many
of you have often afforded me in the dis
charge of duties, which are necessary, in
deed, and sacred, but which, to a single
judge, in a recent court, and small society,
are peculiarly arduous, invidious, and painful.
* Sir Samuel Romilly. — ED.
t Alluding to the impending trial of a native ar
tillery-man for murder, who was eventually exe
cuted. — ED.
508
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
SPEECH
ON
THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA TO THE KINGDOM OF SARDINIA.
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 27TH OF APRIL, 1815.*
MR. SPEAKER, — I now rise, pursuant to
my notice, to discharge the most arduous,
and certainly the most painful, public duty
which I have ever felt myself called upon to
perform. I have to bring before the House,
probably for its final consideration, t .e case
of Genoa, which, in various forms of pro
ceedings and stages of progress, has already
occupied a considerable degree of our at
tention. All these previous discussions of
this great question of faith and justice, have
been hitherto of necessity almost confined to
one side. When my Honourable Friendf
moved for papers on this subject, the reason
ing was only on this side of the House. The
gentlemen on the opposite side professedly
abstained from discussion of the merits of
the case, because they alleged that discus
sion was then premature, and that a disclo
sure of the documents necessary to form a
right judgment, would at that period have
been injurious to the public interest. In
what that danger consisted, or how such a
disclosure would have been more inconve
nient on the 22d of February than on the
27th of April, they will doubtless this day
* On the general reverses that befell the arms
of France in the spring of 1814, and the conse
quent withdrawal of her troops from Italy, Lord
William Bentinck was instructed to occupy the
territories of the republic of Genoa, " without
committing his Court or the Allies with respect
to their ultimate disposition." Of the proclama
tion which he issued upon the occasion of carrying
these orders into effect, dated March 14th, Lord
Castlereagh had himself observed, that " an ex
pression or two, taken separately, might create an
impression that his views of Italian liberation went
to the form of the government, as well as to the
expulsion of the French." On the success of the
military movement, the General reported that he
had, " in consequence of the unanimous desire of
the Genoese to return to their ancient state," pro
claimed the old form of government. That this
desire was unjustly thwarted, and that these ex
pectations, fairly raised by Lord William Ben-
tinck's proclamation, had been wrongfully disap
pointed bv the final territorial settlement of the
Allies at Paris, it was the scope of this speech to
prove. For the papers referred to, see Hansard's
Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxx. p. 387 ; and for
the Resolutions moved, ibid., p. 932. — ED.
t Mr. Lambton (afterwards Earl of Durham)
had on the 22d of February made a motion for
papers connected with the case of Genoa, on
which occasion Sir James Mackintosh had sup
ported him. — ED,
explain. I have in vain examined the papers
for an explanation of it. It was a serious as
sertion, made on their Ministerial responsi
bility, and absolutely requires to be satisfac
torily established. After the return of the
Noble Lord* from Vienna, the discussion
was again confined to one side, by the singu
lar course which he thought fit to adopt.
When my Honourable Friendf gave notice
of a motion for all papers respecting those
arrangements at Vienna, which had been
substantially completed, the Noble Lord did
not intimate any intention of acceding to the
motion. He suffered it to proceed as if it
were to be adversely debated, and instead
of granting the papers, so that they might be
in the possession of every member a suffi
cient time for careful perusal and attentive
consideration, he brought out upon us in the
middle of his speech a number of documents,
which had been familiar to him for six
months, but of which no private member of
the House could have known the existence.
It was impossible for us to discuss a great
mass of papers, of which we had heard ex
tracts once read in the heat and hurry of de
bate. For the moment we were silenced by
this ingenious stratagem: the House was
taken by surprise. They were betrayed into
premature applause of that of which it was
absolutely impossible that they should be
competent judges. It might be thought to
imply a very unreasonable distrust in the
Noble Lord of his own talents, if it were
not much more naturally imputable to his
well-grounded doubts of the justice of his
cause.
I have felt, Sir, great impatience to bring the
question to a final hearing, as soon as every
member possessed that full information in
which alone 1 well knew that my strength
must consist. The production of the papers
has occasioned some delay ; but it has been
attended also with some advantage to me,
which I ought to confess. It has given me
an opportunity of hearing in another place
a most perspicuous and forcible statement
of the defence of Ministers.! — a statement
which, without disparagement to the talents
of the Noble Lord, I may venture to consider
* Viscount Castlereagh. — ED.
t Mr. Whitbread.— ED.
t By Earl Bathurst, in the House of Lords.— ED.
ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA.
509
as containing the whole strength of their
case. After listening to that able statement,
— after much reflection for two months, —
after the most anxious examination of the
papers before us, I feel myself compelled to
adhere to my original opinion, and to bring
before the House the forcible transfer of the
Genoese territory to the foreign master whom
the Genoese people most hate, — a transfer
stipulated for by British ministers, and exe
cuted by British troops, — as an act by which
the pledged faith of this nation has been
forfeited; the rules of justice have been vio
lated, the fundamental principles of Euro
pean policy have been shaken, and the odious
claims of conquest stretched to an extent
unwarranted by a single precedent in the
good times of Europe. On the examination
of these charges, I entreat gentlemen to enter
with a disposition which becomes a solemn
and judicial determination of a question which
affects the honour of their country, — certain
ly without forgetting that justice which is
due to the King's Ministers, whose character
it does most deeply import.
I shall not introduce into this discussion
any of the practical questions which have
arisen out of recent and terrible events.*
They may, like other events in history, sup
ply argument or illustration ; but I shall in
substance argue the case, as if I were again
speaking on the 22d of February, without
any other change than a tone probably more
.subdued than would have been natural dur
ing that short moment of secure and almost
triumphant tranquillity.
For this transaction, and for our share in
all the great measures of the Congress of
Vienna, the Noble Lord has told that he is
" pre-eminently responsible." I know not
in what foreign school he may have learnt
such principles or phrases; but however
much his colleagues may have resigned their
discretion to him, I trust that Parliament will
not suffer him to relieve them from any part
of their responsibility. I shall not now in
quire on what principle of constitutional law
the whole late conduct of Continental nego
tiations by the Noble Lord could be justified.
A Secretary of State has travelled over Europe
with the crown and sceptre of Great Britain,
exercising the royal prerogatives without the
possibility of access to the Crown, to- give
advice, and to receive commands, and con
cluding his country by irrevocable acts, with
out communication with the other responsi
ble advisers of the King. I shall not now ex
amine into the nature of what our ancestors
would have termed an "accroachment" of
royal power,— an offence described indeed
with dangerous laxity in ancient times, but,
as an exercise of supreme power in another
mode than by the forms, and under the re
sponsibility prescribed by law, undoubtedly
tending to the subversion of the fundamental
principles of the British monarchy.
In all the preliminary discussions of this sub-
* Napoleon's return from Elba.— ED.
ject, the Noble Lord has naturally laboured
to excite prejudice against his opponents.
He has made a liberal use of the common
places of every Administration, against every
Opposition; and he has assailed us chiefly
through my Honourable Friend (Mr. Whit-
bread) with language more acrimonious and
contumelious than is very consistent with
his recommendations of decorum and mode
ration. He speaks of our "foul calumnies;"
though calumniators do not call out as we did
for inquiry and for trial. He tells us "that
our discussions inflame nations more than
they correct governments ;" — a pleasant anti
thesis, which I have no doubt contains the
opinion entertained of all popular discus
sion by the sovereigns and ministers of abso
lute monarchies, under whom he has lately
studied constitutional principles. Indeed,
Sir, I do not wonder that, on his return to
this House, he should have been provoked
into some forgetfulness of his usual modera
tion : — after long familiarity with the smooth
and soft manners of diplomatists, it is natural
that he should recoil from the turbulent free
dom of a popular assembly. But let him re
member, that to the uncourtly and fearless
turbulence of this House Great Britain owes a
greatness and power so much above her natu
ral resources, and that rank among nations
which gave him ascendency and authority
in the deliberations of assembled Europe : —
"Sic fortis Etruria crevit ! " By that plain
ness and roughness of speech which wounded
the nerves of courtiers, this House has forced
kings and ministers to respect public liberty
at home and to observe public faith abroad.
He complains that this should be the first
place where the faith of this country is im
pugned : — I rejoice that it is. It is because
the first approaches towards breach of faith
are sure of being attacked here, that there is
so little ground for specious attack on our
faith in other places. It is the nature and
essence of the House of Commons to be jeal
ous and suspicious, even to excess, of the
manner in which the conduct of the' Execu
tive Government may affect that dearest of
national interests — the character of the nation
for justice and faith. What is destroyed by
the slightest speck of corruption can never
be sincerely regarded unless it be watched
with jealous vigilance.
In questions of policy, where inconveni
ence is the worst consequence of error, and
where much deference may be reasonably
paid to superior information, there is much
room for confidence beforehand and for in
dulgence afterwards: but confidence respect
ing a point of honour is a disregard of honour.
Never, certainly, was there an occasion when
these principles became of more urgent ap
plication than during the deliberations of the
Congress of Vienna. Disposing, as they did,
of rights and interests more momentous than
were ever before placed at the disposal of a
human assembly, is it fit that no channel
should be left open by which they may learn
the opinion of the public respecting theii
2 s 2
510
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
councils, and the feelings which their mea
sures have excited from Norway to Anda
lusia? Were these princes and ministers
really desirous, in a situation of tremendous
responsibility, to bereave themselves of the
guidance, and release their judgments from
the control, which would arise from some
knowledge of the general sentiments of man
kind ? Were they so infatuated by absolute
power as to wish they might never hear the
public judgments till their system was un
alterably established, and the knowledge
could no longer be useful? It seems so.
There was only one assembly in Europe
from whose free discussions they might have
learnt the opinions of independent men, —
only one in which the grievances of men
and nations might have been published with
any effect. The House of Commons was
the only body which represented in some
sort the public opinions of Europe j and the
discussions which might have conveyed that
opinion to the Sovereigns at Vienna, seem,
from the language of the Noble Lord, to have
been odious and alarming to them. Even in
that case we have one consolation: — those
who hate advice most, always need it most.
If our language was odious, it must in the
very same proportion have been necessary ;
and notwithstanding all the abuse thrown
upon it may have been partly effectual. De
nial at least proves nothing; — we are very
sure that if we had prevented any evil, we
should only have been the more abused.
Sir, I do not regret the obloquy with which
we have been loaded during the present ses
sion : — it is a proof that we are following,
though with unequal steps, the great men
wholiave filled the same benches before us.
It was their lot to devote themselves to a
life of toilsome, thankless, arid often- unpopu
lar opposition, with no stronger allurement
to ambition than a chance of a few months
of office in half a century, and with no other
inducement to virtue than the faint hope of
limiting and mitigating evil, — always certain
that the merit would never be acknowledged,
and generally obliged to seek for the best
proof of their services in the scurrility with
which they were reviled. To represent
them as partisans of a foreign nation, for
whom they demanded justice, was always
one of the most effectual modes of exciting
a vulgar prejudice against them . When Mr.
Burke and Mr. Fox exhorted Great Britain
to be wise in relation to America, and just
towards Ireland, they were called Ameri
cans and Irishmen. But they considered it
as the greatest of all human calamities to be
unjust ; — they thought it worse to inflict than
to suffer wrong: and they rightly thought
themselves then most truly Englishmen,
when they most laboured to dissuade England
from tyranny. Afterwards, when Mr. Burke,
with equal disinterestedness as I firmly be
lieve, and certainly with sufficient zeal, sup
ported the administration of Mr. Pitt, and
the war against the Revolution, he did not
restrain the freedom which belonged to his
generous character. Speaking of that very
alliance on which all his hopes were found
ed, he spoke of it. as I might speak (if I had
his power of language) of the Congress at
Vienna: — "There can be no tie of honour
in a society for pillage." He was perhaps
blamed for indecorum; but no one ever
made any other conclusion from his language,
than that it proved the ardour of his attach
ment to that cause which he could not en
dure to see dishonoured.
The Noble Lord has charged us, Sir, with
a more than unusual interference in the
functions of the monarchy and with the
course of foreign negotiations. He has not
indeed denied the right of this House to in
terfere : — he will not venture to deny " that
this House is not only an accuser of compe
tence to criminate, but a council of weight
and wisdom to advise."* He incautiously,
indeed, " said that there was a necessary
collision between the powers of this House
and the prerogatives of the Crown." It
would have been more constitutional to have
said that there was a liability to collision,
and that the deference of each for the other
has produced mutual concession, compro
mise, and co-operation, instead of collision.
It has been, in fact, by the exercise of the
great Parliamentary function of counsel, that
in the best times of our history the House of
Commons has suspended the exercise of its
extreme powers. Respect for its opinion
has rendered the exertion of its authority
needless. It is not true that the interpo
sition of its advice respecting the conduct of
negotiations, the conduct of war, or the terms
of peace, has been more frequent of late
than in former times : — the contrary is the
truth. From the earliest periods, and during
the most glorious reigns in our history, its
counsel has been proffered and accepted on
the highest questions of peace and war. The
interposition was necessarily even more fre
quent and more rough in these early times, —
when the boundaries of its authority were
undefined, — when its principal occupation
was a struggle to assert and fortify its rights,
and when it was sometimes as important to
establish the legality of a power by exercise
as to exercise "it well, — than in these more;
fortunate periods of defined and acknowledg
ed right, when a mild and indirect intimation
of its opinion ought to preclude the necessity
of resorting to those awful powers with
which it is wisely armed. But though these
interpositions of Parliament were more fre
quent in ancient times,— partly from the ne
cessity of asserting contested rights, — and
more rare in recent periods, — partly from
the more submissive character of the House,
— they are wanting at no time in number
enough to establish the grand principle of
the constitution, that Parliament is the first
council of the King in war as well as in
peace. This great principle has been acted
* Burke, A Representation to His Majesty,
&c.— ED.
ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA.
511
on by Parliament in the best times: — it has
been reverenced by the Crown in the worst.
A short time before the Revolution it marked
a struggle for the establishment of liberty :
— a short time after the Revolution it proved
the secure enjoyment of liberty. The House
of Commons did not suffer Charles II. to be
tray his honour and his country, without
constitutional warning to choose a better
course 5* its first aid to William III. was by
counsels relating to vvar.t When, under the
influence of other feelings, the House rather
thwarted than aided their great Deliverer,
even the party in it most hostile to liberty
carried the rights of Parliament as a political
council to the utmost constitutional limit,
when they censured the treaty of Partition
as having been passed under the Great Seal
during the session of Parliament, and " with
out the advice of the same.';J During the
War of the Succession, both Houses repeat
edly counselled the Crown on the conduct
of the war,§ — on negotiation with our allies,
— and even on the terms of peace with the
enemy. But what needs any further enume
rations ? Did not the vote of this House put
an end to the American War 1
Even, Sir, if the right of Parliament to ad
vise had not been as clearly established as
the prerogative of the Crown to make war
or peace, — if it had not been thus constantly
exercised, — if the wisest and best men had
not been the first to call it forth into action,
we might reasonably have been more for
ward than our ancestors to exercise this
great right, because we contemplate a sys
tem of political negotiation, such as our an
cestors never saw. All former Congresses
were assemblies of the ministers of bellige
rent Powers to terminate their differences by
treaty, — to define the rights and decide on
the pretensions which had given rise to war,
or to make compensation for the injuries
which had been suffered in the course of it.
The firm and secure system of Europe ad
mitted no rapid, and few great changes of
power and possession. A few fortresses in
Flanders, a province on the frontiers of
France and Germany, were generally the ut
most cessions earned by the most victorious
wars, and recovered by the most important
treaties. Those who have lately compared
the transactions at Vienna with the Treaty
of Westphalia, — which formed the code of
the Empire, and an era in diplomatic history,
— which terminated the civil wars of re
ligion, not only in Germany, but throughout
Christendom, and which removed all that
danger with which, for more than a century,
the power of the House of Austria had threat
ened the liberties of Europe, — will perhaps
* Commons' Addresses, 15th of March, 1627;
29th of March, 1677; 25th of May, 1677; 30th
of December, 1680.
t 24th of April, 1689, (advising a declaration of
war).
\ 21st of March, 1701.
$ 27th of November. 1705 ; 22d of December,
1707 3d of March, 1709 ; 18th of February, 1710.
feel some surprise when they are reminded
that, except secularising a few Eeclesi-.istica1
principalities, that renowned and memorable
treaty ceded only Alsace to France and part
of Pomerania to Sweden, — that its stipula
tions did not change the political condition of
half a million of men, — that it affected no pre
tension to dispose of any territory but that of
those who were parties to it, — and that not
an acre of land was ceded without the express
and formal consent of its legal sovereign.*
Far other were the pretensions, and indeed
the performances, of the ministers assembled
in congress at Vienna. They met under the
modest pretence of carrying into effect the
thirty-second article of the Treaty of Paris :t
but under colour of this humble language, they
arrogated the power of doing that, in com
parison with which the whole Treaty of Paris
was a trivial convention, and which made the
Treaty of Westphalia appear no more than
an adjustment of parish boundaries. They
claimed the absolute disposal of every terri
tory which had been occupied by France and
her vassals, from Flanders to Livonia, and
from the Baltic to the Po. Over these, the
finest countries in the world, inhabited by
twelve millions of mankind. — under pretence
of delivering whom from a conqueror they
had taken up arms, — they arrogated to them
selves the harshest rights of conquest. It is
true that of this vast territory they restored,
or rather granted, a great part to its ancient
sovereigns. But these sovereigns were always
reminded by some new title, or by the dis
posal of some similarly circumstanced neigh
bouring territory, that they owed their resto
ration to the generosity, or at most to the
prudepce of the Congress, and that they
were not entitled to require it from its jus
tice. They came in by a new tenure : — they
were the feudatories of the new corporation
of kings erected at Vienna, exercising joint
powrer in effect over all Europe, consisting in
form of eight or ten princes, but in substance
of three great military Powers, — the spoilers
of Poland, the original invaders of the Eu
ropean constitution, — sanctioned by the sup-
Eort of England, and checked, however
sebly, by France alone. On these three
Powers, whose reverence for national inde
pendence and title to public confidence were
so firmly established by the partition of Po
land, the dictatorship of Europe has fallen.
They agree that Germany shall have a fede
ral constitution, — that Switzerland shall go
vern herself, — that unhappy Italy shall, as
they say, be composed of sovereign states : —
* This is certainly true respecting Pomerania
and Alsace : whether the Ecclesiastical principali
ties were treated with so much ceremony may be
more doubtful, and it would require more research
to ascertain it than can now be applied to the ob
ject.
t " All the Powers engaged on either side in
the present war, shall, within the space of two
months, send plenipotentiaries to Vienna for the
purpose of regulating in general congress the ar
rangements which are to complete the provisions
of the present treaty."
512
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
but it is all by grant from these lords para
mount. Their will is the sole title to domi
nion, — the universal tenure of sovereignty.
A single acre granted on such a principle is,
in truth, the signal of a monstrous revolu
tion in the system of Europe. Is the House
of Commons to remain silent, when such a
principle is applied in practice to a large part
of the Continent, and proclaimed in right
over the whole ? Is it to remain silent when
it has heard the King of Sardinia, at the mo
ment when he received possession of Genoa
from a British garrison, and when the British
commander stated himself to have made the
transfer in consequence of the decision at
Vienna, proclaim to the Genoese, that he took
possession of their territory " in concurrence
with the wishes of the principal Powers of
Europe ?"
It is to this particular act of the Con
gress, Sir, that I now desire to call the atten
tion of the House, not only on account of its
own atrocity, but because it seems to repre
sent in miniature the whole system of that
body. — to be a perfect specimen of their
new public law. and to exemplify every prin
ciple of that code of partition which they
are about to establish on the ruins of that
ancient system of national independence and
balanced power, which gradually raised the
nations of Europe to the first rank of the
human race. I contend that all the parties
to this violent trarisfer; and more especially
the British Government, have been guilty of
perfidy, — have been guilty of injustice ; and I
shall also contend, that the danger of these
violations of faith and justice is much increas
ed, when they are considered as examples of
those principles by which the Congress of
Vienna arrogate to themselves the right of
regulating a considerable portion of Europe.
To establish the breach of faith. I must
first ask. — What did Lord William Bentinck
promise, as commander-in-chief of His Ma
jesty's troops in Italy, by his Proclamations
of the 14th of March and 26th of April,
1814? The first is addressed to the people
of Italy. It offers them the assistance of
Great Britain to rescue them from the iron
yoke of Buonaparte. It holds out the ex
ample of Spain, enabled, by the aid of Great
Britain, to rescue '-her independence," — of
the neighbouring Sicily, " which hastens to
resume her ancient splendour among inde
pendent nations. . . Holland is about to obtain
the same object. . . Warriors of Italy, you
are invited to vindicate your own rights, and
to be free ! Italy, by our united efforts, shall
become what she was in her most prosperous
periods, and what Spain now is!"
Now, Sir, I do contend that all the powers
of human ingenuity cannot give two senses
to this Proclamation : I defy the wit of man
to explain it away. Whether Lord William
Bentinck had the power to promise is an after
question : — what he did promise, can be no
question at all. He promised the aid of Eng
land to obtain Italian independence. He
promised to assist the Italians in throwing off
a yoke, — in escaping from thraldom. — in es
tablishing liberty, — in asserting rights. — in
obtaining independence. Every term of
emancipation known in human language is
exhausted to impress his purpose on the heart
of Italy. I do not now inquire whether the
generous warmth of this language may not
require in justice some understood limita
tion : — perhaps it may. But can independ
ence mean a transfer to the yoke of the
most hated of foreign masters'? Were the
Genoese invited to spill their blood, not
merely for a choice of tyrants, but to earn
the right of wearing the chains of the rival
and the enemy of two centuries ? Are the
references to Spain, to Sicily, and to Holland
mere frauds on the Italians,—" words full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing?" If not,
can they mean less than this, — that those
countries of Italy which were independent
before the war. shall be independent again ?
These words, therefore, were at least ad
dressed to the Genoese : — suppose them to
be limited, as to any other Italians ;— suppose
the Lombards, or, at that time, the Neapoli
tans, to be tacitly excluded. Addressed to
the Genoese, they either had no meaning, or
they meant their ancient independence.
Did the Genoese act upon these promises'?
What did they do in consequence of that
first Proclamation of the 14th of March, from
Leghorn, addressed to all the Italians, but
applicable at least to the Genoese, and ne
cessarily understood by that people as com
prehending them'? I admit that the pro
mises were conditional' and to render them
conclusive, it was necessary for the Genoese
to fulfil the condition : — I contend that they
did. I shall not attempt again to describe
the march of Lord William Bentinck from
Leghorn to Genoa, which has already been
painted by my Honourable and Learned
Friend* with all the chaste beauties of his
moral and philosophical eloquence : my duty
confines me to the dry discussion of mere
facts. The force with which Lord William
Bentinck left Leghorn consisted of about
three thousand English, supported by a mot
ley band of perhaps five thousand Sicilians,
Italians, and Greeks, the greater part of whom
had scarcely ever seen a shot fired. At tjie
head of this force, he undertook a long march
through one of the most defensible countries
of Europe, against a city garrisoned or de
fended by seven thousand French veterans,
and which it would have required twenty-
five thousand men to invest, according to the
common rules of military prudence. Now,
Sir, I assert, without fear of contradiction,
that such an expedition would have been
an act of frenzy, unless Lord William Ben
tinck had the fullest assurance of the good
will and active aid of the Genoese people.
The fact sufficiently speaks for itself. I can
not here name the high military authority on
which my assertion rests; but I defy the
Right Honourable Gentlemen, with all their
* Mr. Homer.— ED.
ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA.
513
means of commanding military information,
to contradict me. I know they will not ven
ture. In the first place, then, I assume, that
the British general would not have begun his
advance without assurance of the friendship
of the Genoese, and that he owes his secure
and unmolested march to the influence of
the same friendship — supplying his army,
and deterring his enemies from attack. He
therefore, in truth, owed his being before
the walls of Genoa to Genoese co-operation.
The city of Genoa, which, in 1799, had been
defended by Massena for three months, fell
to Lord William Bentinck in two clays. In
two days seven thousand French veterans
laid down their arms to three thousand Bri
tish soldiers, encumbered rather than aided
by the auxiliary rabble whom I have de
scribed. Does any man in his senses be
lieve, that the French garrison could have
been driven to such a surrender by any
cause but their fear of the Genoese people ?
I have inquired, from the best military au
thorities accessible to me, what would be
the smallest force with which the expedi
tion might probably have been successful,
if the population had been — I do not say
enthusiastically, — but commonly hostile to
the invaders : — I have been assured, that it
could not have been less than twenty-five
thousand men. Here, again, I venture to
challenge contradiction. If none can be
given, must I not conclude that the known
friendship of the Genoese towards the British,
manifested after the issue of the Proclama
tion, and in no part created by it, was equiva
lent to an auxiliary force of seventeen thou
sand msnl Were not the known wishes of
the people, acting on the hopes of the British,
and on the fears of the French, the chief
cause of the expulsion of the French from
the Genoese territory? Can Lord William
Bentinck's little army be considered as more
than auxiliaries to the popular sentiment ? If
a body of four thousand Genoese had joined
Lord William, on the declared ground of his
Proclamation, all mankind would have ex
claimed that the condition was fulfilled, and
the contract indissoluble. Is it not the height
of absurdity to maintain that a manifesta
tion of public sentiment, which produced as
much benefit to him as four times that force,
is not to have the same effect. A ship which
is in sight of a capture is entitled to her
share of the prize, though she neither had
nor could have fired a shot, upon the plain
principle that apprehension of her approach
Srobably contributed to produce the surren-
er. If apprehension of Genoese hostility
influenced the French garrison, — if assu
rance of Genoese friendship encouraged the
British army, on what principle do you de
fraud the Genoese of their national inde
pendence, — the prize which you promised
them, and which they thus helped to wrest
from the enemy ?
In fact, I am well informed. Sir, that there
was a revolt in the city, which produced the
surrender, — that Buonaparte's statue had
65
been overthrown with every mark of indig
nity, — and that the French garrison was on
the point of being expelled, even if the be
siegers had not appeared. But I am not
obliged to risk the case upon the accuracy
of that information. Be it that the Genoese
complied with Lord Wellesley's wise instruc
tion, to avoid premature revolt : I affirm that
Lord William Bentinck's advance is positive
evidence of an understanding with the Geno
ese leaders; that there would have been
such evidence in the advance of any judi
cious officer, but most peculiarly in his, who
had been for three years negotiating in Upper
Italy, and was well acquainted with the pre
valent impatience of the French yoke. I
conceive it to be self-evident, that if the
Genoese had believed the English army to
be advancing in order to sell them to Sar
dinia, they would not have favoured the ad
vance. I think it demonstrable, that to their
favourable disposition the expedition owed
its success. And it needs no proof that they
favoured the English, because the English
promised them the restoration of independ
ence. The English have, therefore, broken
faith with them : the English have defrauded
them of solemnly-promised independence:
the English have requited their co-operation,
by forcibly subjecting them to the power of
the most odious of foreign masters. On the
whole, I shall close this part of the question
with challenging all the powers of human
ingenuity to interpret the Proclamation as
any thing but a promise of independence to
such Italian nations as were formerly inde
pendent, and would now co-operate for the
recovery of |heir rights. I leave to the Gen
tlemen on tne other side the task of convin
cing the House that the conduct of the Ge
noese did not co-operate towards success,
though without it success was impossible.
But we have been told that Lord William
Bentinck was not authorised to make such a
promise. It is needless for me to repeat my
assent to a truth so trivial, as that no political
negotiation is naturally within the province
of a military commander, and that for such
negotiations he must have special authority.
At the same time I must observe, that Lord
William Bentinck was not solely a military
commander, and could not be considered by
the Italians in that light. In Sicily his po
litical functions had been more important
than his military command. From 1811 to
1814 he had, with the approbation of his
Government, performed the highest acts of
political authority in that island : and he had,
during the same period, carried on the secret
negotiations of the British Government with
all Italians disaffected to France. To the
Italians, then, he appeared as a plenipoten
tiary j and they had a right to expect that
his Government would ratify his acts and
fulfil his engagements. In fact, his special
authority was full and explicit. Lord Wei
lesley's Instructions of the 21st of October
and 27th of December, 1811, speak with the
manly firmness which distinguishes that
514
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
great statesman as much as his command ing
character and splendid talents. His mean
ing is always precisely expressed : — he leaves
himself no retreat from his engagements in
the ambiguity and perplexity of an unintel
ligible style. The principal object of these
masterly despatches is to instruct Lord Wil
liam Bentinck respecting his support of any
eventual effort of the Italian states to rescue
Italy. They remind him of the desire of the
Prince Regent to afford every practicable as
sistance to the people of Italy in any such
effort. They convey so large a discretion,
that it is thought necessary to say, — " In all
arrangements respecting the expulsion of the
enemy, your Lordship will not fail to give
due consideration to our engagements with
the courts of Sicily and Sardinia." Lord Wil
liam Bentinck had therefore powers which
would have extended to Naples and Pied
mont, unless they had been specially ex-
cepted. On the 19th of May, 1812, Lord
Castlereagh virtually confirms the same ex
tensive and confidential powers. On the 4th
of March preceding. Lord Liverpool had,
indeed, instructed Lord William Bentinck
to employ a part of his force in a diversion
in favour of Lord Wellington, by a descent
on the eastern coast of Spain. This diver
sion doubtless suspended the negotiations
with the patriotic Italians, and precluded for
a time the possibility of affording them aid.
But so far from withdrawing Lord William
Bentinck's political power, in Italy, they ex
pressly contemplate their revival: — "This
operation would leave the question respect
ing Italy open for further consideration, if
circumstances should subsequently render
the prospect there more inviting." The
despatches of Lord Bathurst, from March
1812 to December 1813, treat Lord William
Bentinck as still in possession of those ex
tensive powers originally vested in him by
the despatch of Lord Wellesley. Every
question of policy is discussed in these des
patches, not as with a mere general, — not
even as with a mere ambassador, but as
with a confidential minister for the Italian
Department. The last despatch is that which
closes with the remarkable sentence, which
is, in my opinion, decisive of this whole
question: — "Provided it be clearly with the
entire concurrence of the inhabitants, you
may take possession of Genoa in the name
of His Sardinian Majesty." Now this is, in
effect, tantamount to an instruction not to
transfer Genoa to Sardinia without the con
currence of the inhabitants. It is a virtual in
struction to consider the wishes of the people
of Genoa as the rule and measure of his con
duct: it is more — it is a declaration that he
had no need of any instruction to re-establish
Genoa, if the Genoese desired it. That re-
establishment was provided for by his origi
nal instructions : only the new project of a
transfer to a foreign sovereign required new
ones. Under his original instructions, then,
thus ratified by a long series of succeeding
despatches from a succession of ministers,
did Lord William Bentinck issue the Procla
mation of the 14th of March.
Limitations there were in the original in
structions: — Sicily and Sardinia were ex-
cepted. New exceptions undoubtedly arose,
in the course of events, so plainly within the
principle of the original exceptions as to re
quire no specification. Every Italian pro
vince of a sovereign with whom Great Britain
had subsequently contracted an alliance was.
doubtless, as much to be excepted out of
general projects of revolt for Italian inde
pendence as those which had been subject
to the Allied Sovereigns in 1811. A British
minister needed no express instructions to
comprehend that he was to aid no revolt
against the Austrian Government in their
former province of Lombardy. The change
of circumstances sufficiently instructed him.
But in what respect were circumstances
changed respecting Genoa? The circum
stances of Genoa were the same as at the
time of Lord Wellesley's instructions. The
very last despatches (those of Lord Bathurst,
of the 28th of December, 1813,) had pointed
to the Genoese territory as the scene of mili
tary operations, without any intimation that
the original project was not still applicable
there, unless the Genoese nation should
agree to submit to the King of Sardinia. I
contend, therefore, that the original instruc
tion of Lord Wellesley, which authorised the
promise of independence to every part of the
Italian peninsula except Naples and Pied
mont, was still in force, wherever it was not
manifestly limited by subsequent engage
ments with the sovereigns of other countries,
similar to our engagements with the sove
reigns of Naples and Piedmont, — that no
such engagement existed respecting the Ge
noese authority, — and that to the Genoese
people the instruction of Lord Wellesley was
as applicable as on the day when that in
struction was issued.
The Noble Lord may then talk as he
pleases of "disentangling from the present
question the question of Italy," to which on
a former occasion he applied a phraseology
so singular. He cannot " disentangle these
questions:" — they are inseparably blended.
The Instructions of 1811 authorised the pro
mise of independence to all Italians, except
the people of Naples and Piedmont. The
Proclamation of the 14th of March 1814 pro
mised independence to all Italians, with the
manifestly implied exception of those \vho
had been the subjects of Powers who were
now become the allies of Great Britain. A
British general, fully authorised, promised
independence to those Italians who, like the
Genoese, had not been previously the sub
jects of an ally of Britain, and by that pro
mise, so authorised, his Government is in
violably bound.
But these direct instructions were not all.
He was indirectly authorised by the acts and
language of his own Government and of the
other great Powers of Europe. He was au
thorised to re-establish the republic of Ge-
ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA.
515
noa, because the British Government in the
Treaty of Amiens had refused to acknow
ledge its destruction. He was authorised to
believe that Austria desired the re-establish
ment of a republic whose destruction that
Government in 1808 had represented as a
cause of war. He was surely authorised to
consider that re-establishment as conform
able to the sentiments of the Emperor Alex
ander, who at the same time had, on account
of the annexation of Genoa to France, re
fused even at the request of Great Britain to
continue his mediation between her and a
Power capable of such an outrage on the
rights of independent nations. Where was
Lord William Bentinck to learn the latest
opinions of the Allied Powers'? If he read
the celebrated Declaration of Frankfort, he
there found an alliance announced of which
the object was the restoration of Europe.
Did restoration mean destruction'? Perhaps
before the 14th of March, — certainly before
the 26th of April, — he had seen the first ar
ticle of the Treaty of Chaumont, concluded
on the 1st of March, —
" Dum curae ambiguae, dum spes incerta futuri,"*
in which he found the object of the war de
clared by the assembled majesty of confe
derated Europe to be " a general peace under
which the rights and liberties of all nations
may be secured" — words eternally honour
able to their authors if they were to be ob
served — more memorable still if they were
to be openly and perpetually violated ! Be
fore the 26th of April he had certainly pe
rused these words, which no time will efface
from the records of history : for he evidently
adverts to them in the preamble of his Pro
clamation, and justly considers them as a
sufficient authority, if he had no other, to
warrant its provisions. "Considering," says
he, " that the general desire of the Genoese
nation seems to be, to return to their ancient
government, and considering that the desire
seems to be conformable to the principles
recognised by the High Allied Powers of re
storing to all their ancient rights and privi
leges." In the work of my celebrated friend,
Mr. Gentz, of whom I can never speak with
out regard and admiration, On the Balance
of Power, he would have found the incor
poration of Genoa justly reprobated as one
of the most unprincipled acts of French
tyranny; and he would have most reason
ably believed the sentiments of the Allied
Powers to have been spoken by that emi
nent person — now, if I am not misinformed,
the Secretary of that Congress, on whose
measures his writings are the most severe
censure.
But that Lord. William Bentinck did be
lieve himself to have offered independence
to the Genoese, — that he thought himself
directly and indirectly authorised to make
such an offer, — and that he was satisfied
that the Genoese had by their co-operation
id. lib. viii. — ED.
performed their part of the compact, are
facts which rest upon the positive and pre
cise testimony of Lord William Bentinck
himself. I call upon him as the best inter
preter of his own language, and the most
unexceptionable witness to prove the co
operation of the Genoese. Let this Procla
mation of the 26th of April be examined : —
it is the clearest commentary on that of the
14th of March. It is the most decisive testi
mony to the active aid of the Genoese people.
On the 26th of April he bestows on the peo
ple of Genoa that independence which he
had promised to all the nations of Italy (with
the implied exception, already often enough
mentioned), on condition of their aiding to
expel the oppressor. He, therefore, under
stood his own Proclamation to be such a
promise of independence : he could not doubt
but that he was authorised to make it: and
he believed that the Genoese were entitled
to claim the benefit of it by their performance
of its condition.
This brings me to the consideration of
this Proclamation, on which I should have
thought all observation unnecessary, unless
I had heard some attempts made by the
Noble Lord to explain it away, and to repre
sent it as nothing but the establishment of a
provisional government. I call on any mem
ber of the House to read that Proclamation,
and to say whether he can in common hon
our assent to such an interpretation. The
Proclamation, beyond all doubt, provides for
two perfectly distinct objects : — the establish
ment of a provisional government till the 1st
of January 1815, and the re-establishment
of the ancient constitution of the republic,
with certain reforms and modifications, from
and after that period. Three-fourths of the
Proclamation have no reference whatever to
a provisional government; — the first sentence
of the preamble, and the third and fourth ar
ticles only, refer to that object : but the larger
paragraph of the preamble, and four articles
of the enacting part, relate to the re-esta
blishment of the ancient constitution alone.
" The desire of the Genoese nation was to
return to their ancient government, under
which they had enjoyed independence :" —
was this relating to a provisional govern
ment1? Did " the principles recognised by the
High Allied Powers" contemplate only the
establishment of provisional governments?
Did provisional governments imply "resto
ring to all their ancient rights and privi
leges'?" Why should the ancient constitu
tion be re-established — the very constitution
given by Andrew Doria when he delivered
his country from a foreign yoke. — if nothing
was meant but a provisional government,
preparatory to foreign slavery ? Why was
the government to be modified according to
the general wish, the public good, and the
spirit of Doria's constitution, if nothing was
meant beyond a temporary administration,
till the Allied Powers could decide on what
vassal they were to bestow Genoa ? But I
may have been at first mistaken, and time
516
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
may have rendered my mistake incorrigible.
Let every gentleman, before he votes on this
question, calmly peruse the Proclamation of
the 26th of April, and determine for himself
whether it admits of any but one construc
tion. Does it not provide for a provisional
government immediately, and for the esta
blishment of the ancient constitution here
after; — the provisional government till the
1st of January, 1815, the constitution from
the 1st of January, 1815'? The provisional
government is in its nature temporary, and a
limit is fixed to it. The constitution of the
republic is permanent, and no term or limit
is prescribed beyond which it is not to en
dure. It is not the object of the Proclama
tion to establish the ancient constitution as
a provisional government. On the contrary,
the ancient constitution is not to be esta
blished till the provisional government ceases
to exist. So distinct are they, that the mode
of appointment to the supreme powers most
materially differs. Lord William Bentinck
nominates the two colleges, who compose
the provisional government. The two col
leges wrho are afterwards to compose the
permanent government of the republic, are
to be nominated agreeably to the ancient con
stitution. Can it be maintained that the in
tention was to establish two successive pro
visional governments 1 For what conceivable
reason?- Even in that case, why engage in
the laborious«and arduous task of reforming
an ancient constitution for the sake of a
second provisional government which might
not last three weeks ? And what constitu
tion wTas more unfit for a provisional govern
ment, — what was more likely to indispose
the people to all farther change, and above
all, to a sacrifice of their independence, than
the ancient constitution of the republic, which
revived all their feelings of national dignity,
and seemed to be a pledge trial they were
once more to be Genoese"? In short. Sir, I
am rather fearful that I shall be tfiought to
have overlaboured a point so extremely clear.
But if I have dwelt too long upon this Pro
clamation, and examined it too minutely, it
is not because I think it difficult, but because
I consider it is decisive of the whole ques
tion. If Lord William Bentinck in that Pro
clamation bestowed on the people of Genoa
their place among nations, and the govern
ment of their forefathers, it must havei)een
because he deemed himself authorised to
make that establishment by the repeated
instructions of the British Government, and
by the avowed principles and solemn acts of
the Allied Powers, and because he felt bound
to make it by his own Proclamation of the
14th of March, combined with the acts done
by the Genoese nation, in consequence of
that Proclamation. I think I have proved that
he did so, — that he believed himself to have
done so, and that the people of Genoa be
lieved it likewise.
Perhaps, however, if Lord William Ben
tinck had mistaken his instructions, and had
acted without authority; he might have been
disavowed, and his acts might have been
annulled ? I doubt whether, in such a case,
any disavowal would have been sufficient.
Wherever another people, in consequence
of the acts of our agent whom they had good
reason to trust, have done acts which they
cannot recall. I do not conceive the possibility
of a just disavowal of such an agent's acts.
Where one party has innocently and reason
ably advanced too far to recede, justice cuts
off the other also from retreat. But, at all
events, the disavowal, to be effectual, must
have been prompt, clear, and public. Where
is the disavowal here ? Where is the public
notice to the Genoese, that they were de
ceived ? Did their mistake deserve no cor
rection, even on the ground of compassion ?
I look in vain through these Papers for any
such act. The Noble Lord's letter of the 30th
of March was the first intimation which Lord
William Bentinck received of any change
of system beyond Lombardy. It contains
only a caution as to future conduct j and it
does not hint an intention to cancel any act
done on the faith of the Proclamation of the
14th of March. The allusion to the same
subject in the letter of the 3d of April, is
liable to the very same observation, and
being inserted at the instance of the Duke
of Campochiaro, was evidently intended only
to prevent the prevalence of such ideas of
Italian liberty as were inconsistent with the
accession then proposed to the territory of
Naples. It certainly could not have been
supposed by Lord William Benlinck to apply
to Genoa ; for Genoa was in his possession
on the 26th, when he issued the Proclama
tion, wrhich he never could have published
if he had understood the despatch in that
sense.
The Noble Lord's despatch of the 6th of
May is, Sir, in my opinion, fatal to his argu
ment. It evidently betrays a feeling that
acts had been done, to create in the Genoese
a hope of independence : yet it does not direct
these acts to "be disavowed ; — it contains no
order speedily to undeceive the people. It
implies that a deception had been practised ;
and instead of an attempt to repair it, there
is only an injunction not to repeat the faulit.
No expressions are to be used which may prt-
judge the fate of Genoa. Even then that fate
remained doubtful. So far from disavowal,
the Noble Lord proposes the re-establishment
of Genoa, though with some curtailment of
territory, to M. Pareto, who maintained the
interests of his country with an ability and
dignity worthy of happier success.
And the Treaty of Paris itself, far from a
disavowal, is, on every principle of rational
construction, a ratification and adoption of
the act of Lord William Bentinck. The 6th
article of that Treaty provides that "Italy,
beyond the limits of the country which is to
revert to Austria, shall be composed of sove
reign states." Now, Sir, I desire to know
the meaning of this provision. I can conceive
only three possible constructions. Either
that every country shall have «ome sove-
ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA.
517
reign, or, in other words, some government :
— it will not be said that so trivial a propo
sition required a solemn stipulation. Or that
there is to be more than one sovereign : —
that was absolutely unnecessary: Naples, the
States of the Church, and Tuscany, already
existed. Or, thirdly, that the ancient sove
reign states shall be re-established, except
the country which reverts to Austria : — this,
and this only, was an intelligible and import
ant object of stipulation, "it is the most
reasonable of the only three possible con
structions of these words. The phrase " sove
reign states" seems to have been preferred
to that of '-'sovereigns,7' because it compre
hended republics as well as monarchies.
According to this article, thus understood,
the Powers of Europe had by the Treaty of
Paris (to speak cautiously) given new hopes
to the Genoese that they were again to be a
nation.
But, according to every principle of jus
tice, it is unnecessary to carry the argument
so far. The act of an agent, if not disavowed
in reasonable time, becomes the act of the
principal. When a pledge is made to a peo
ple — such as was contained in the Procla
mations of the 14th of March and 26th of
April — it can be recalled only by a disavowal
equally public.
On the policy of annexing Genoa to Pied
mont, Sir, I have very little to say. That it
was a compulsory, and therefore an unjust
union, is, in my view of the subject, the cir
cumstance which renders it most impolitic.
It seems a bad means of securing Italy
against France, to render a considerable part
of the garrison of the Alps so dissatisfied
with their condition, that they must consider
every invader as a deliverer. But even if
the annexation had been just, I should have
doubted whether it was desirable. Informer
times, the House of Savoy might have been
the guardians of the Alps : — at present, to
treat them as such, seems to be putting the
keys of Italy into hands too weak to hold
them. Formerly, the conquest of Genoa and
Piedmont were two distinct operations: —
Genoa did not necessarily follow the fate of
Turin. In the state of things created by the
Congress, a French army has no need of
separately acting against the Genoese terri
tory: — it must fall with Piedmont. And
what is still more strange, it is bound to the
destinies of Piedmont by the same Congress
which has wantonly stripped Piedmont of its
natural defences. The House of Sardinia is
stripped of great part of its ancient patri
mony: — apart of Savoy is, for no conceivable
reason, given to France. The French are
put in possession of the approaches and out
posts of the passes of Mont Cenis : they are
brought a campaign nearer to Italy. At this
very moment they have assembled an army
at Chambery, which, unless Savoy had been
wantonly thrown to them, they must have
assembled at Lyons. You impose on the
House of Savoy the defence of a longer line
of Alps with one hand, and you weaken the
lefence of that part of the line which covers
heir capital with the other. But it is per-
ectly sufficient for me, in the present case,
f the policy is only doubtful, or the interests
mly slight. The laxest moralist will not,
ublicly at least, deny, that more advantage
s lost by the loss of a character for good
aith than can be gained by a small improve
ment in the distribution of territory. Perhaps,
ndeed, this annexation of Genoa is the only
nstance recorded in history of great Powers
laving (to say no more) brought their faith
ind honour into question without any of the
ligher temptations of ambition, — with no
jetter inducement than a doubtful advantage
n distributing territory more conveniently,
— unless, indeed, it can be supposed that
they are allured 'by the pleasures of a tri-
imph over the ancient principles of justice,
and of a parade of the new maxims of con
venience which are to regulate Europe in
heir stead.
I have hitherto argued this case as if the
mmorality of the annexation had arisen
solely from the pledge made to the Genoese
lation. I have argued it as if the Proclama
tion of Lord William Bentinck had been ad
dressed to a French province, on which there
could be no obligation to confer independence,
if there were no promise to do so. For the
sake of distinctness, I have hitherto kept out
of view that important circumstance, which
would, as I contend, without any promise,
have of itself rendered a compulsory annexa
tion unjust. Anterior to all promise, inde
pendent of all pledged faith, I conceive that
Great Britain could rot morally treat the
Genoese territory as a mere conquest, which
she might hold as a province, or cede to
another power, at her pleasure. In the year
1797, when Genoa was conquered by France
(then at war with England), under pretence
of being revolutionised, the Genoese republic
was at peace with Great Britain ; and conse
quently, in the language of the law of nations,
they were "friendly states." Neither the
substantial conquest in 1797, nor the formal
union of 1805. had ever been recognised by
this kingdom. ' When the British commander,
therefore, entered the Genoese territory in
1814, he entered the territory of a friend in
the possession of an enemy. Supposing him.
by his own unaided force, to have conquered
it from the enemy, can it 'be inferred that he
conquered it from the Genoese people "? He
had rights of conquest against the French :
— but what right of conquest would accrue
from their expulsion, against the Genoese ?
How could we be at war with the Genoese ?
— not as with the ancient republic of Genoa,
which fell when in a state of amity with us,
— not as subjects of France, because we had
never legally and formally acknowledged
their subjection to that Power. There could
be no right of conquest against them, be
cause there was neither the state of war,
nor the right of war. Perhaps the Powers
of the Continent, which had either expressly
or tacitly recognised the annexation of Genoa
2T
518
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
in their treaties with France, might consist
ently treat these Genoese people as mere
French subjects, and consequently the Ge
noese territory as a French province, con
quered from the French government, which
as regarded them had become the sovereign
of Genoa. But England stood in no such
position : — in her eye the republic of Genoa
still of right subsisted. She had done no act
which implied the legal destruction of a
commonwealth, with which she had had no
war, nor cause of war. Genoa ought to have
been regarded by England as a friendly
state, oppressed for a time by the common
enemy, and entitled to re-assume the exer
cise of her sovereign rights as soon as that
enemy was driven from her territory by a
friendly force. Voluntary, much more cheer
ful, union, — zealous co-operation, — even long
submission, — might have altered the state
of belligerent rights : — none of these are here
pretended. In such a case, I contend, that,
according to the law of nations, anterior to
all promises, and independent of all pledged
faith, the republic of Genoa was restored to
the exercise of her sovereignty, which, in
our eyes, she had never lost, by the expul
sion of the French from her soil.
These, Sir, are no reasonings of mine : I
read them in the most accredited works on
public law, delivered long before any events
of our time were in contemplation, and yet
as applicable to this transaction, as if they
had been contrived for it. Vattel, in the
thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of his
third book, has stated fully and clearly
those principles respecting the application
of the jus postliminii to the case of states,
which he had taken from his eminent prede
cessors, or rather which they and he had
discovered to be agreeable to the plainest
dictates of reason, and which they have
transcribed from the usage of civilized na
tions. I shall not trouble the House with
the passages,* unless I see some attempt to
* " When a nation, a people, a state, has been
entirely subjugated, whether a revolution can give
it the right of Postliminium ? To which we an
swer, that if the conquered state has not assented
to the new subjection, if it did not yield volun
tarily, if it only ceased to resist from inability, if
the conqueror has not yet sheathed the sword to
wield the sceptre of a pacific sovereign, — such a
state is only conquered and oppressed, and when
the arms of an ally deliver it, returns without
doubt to its first state. Its ally cannot become its
conqueror ; he is a deliverer, who can have a right
only to compensation for his services." . ..." If
the last conqueror, not being an ally of the state,
claims a right to retain it under his authority as the
prize of victory, he puts himself in the place of
the conqueror, and becomes the enemy of the op
pressed state. That state may legitimately resist
him, and avail herself of a favourable occasion to
recover her liberty. A state unjustly oppressed
ought to be re-established in her rights by the
conqueror who delivers her from the oppressor."
Whoever carefully considers the above passage
will observe, that it is intended to be applicable to
two very distinct cases ; — that of deliverance by
an ally, where the duty of restoration is strict and
precise, — and that of deliverance by a state unal-
reconcile them with the annexation of Genoa.
I venture to predict no such attempts will be
hazarded. It is not my disposition to over
rate the authority of this class of writers, or
to consider authority in any case as a substi
tute for reason. But these eminent writers
were at least necessarily impartial. Their
weight, as bearing testimony to general sen
timent and civilized usage, receives a new
accession from every statesman who appeals
to their writings, and from every year in
which no contrary practice is established or
hostile principles avowed. Their works are
thus attested by successive generations to be
records of the customs of the best times, and
depositories of the deliberate arid permanent
judgments of the more enlightened part of
mankind. Add to this, that their authority
is usually invoked by the feeble, and despised
by those who are strong enough to need no
aid from moral sentiment, and to bid defiance
to justice. I have never heard their princi
ples questioned, but by those whose flagitious
policy they had by anticipation condemned.
Here, Sir, let me for a moment lower the
claims of my argument, and abandon some
part of the ground which I think it practica
ble to maintain. If I were to admit that the
pledge here is not so strong, nor the duty of
re-establishing a rescued friend so imperious
as I have represented, still it must be ad
mitted to me, that it was a promise, though
perhaps not unequivocal, to perform that
which was moral and right, whether within
the sphere of strict duty or not. Either the
doubtful promise, or the imperfect duty,
might singly have been insufficient : but,
combined, they reciprocally strengthen each
other. The slightest promise to do what was
before a duty, becomes as binding as much
stronger words to do an indifferent act : —
strong assurances that a man will do what it
is right for him to do are not required. A
slight declaration to such an effect is believed
by those to whom it is addressed, and there
fore obligatory on those by whom it is uttered.
Was it not natural and reasonable for the
people of Genoa to believe, on the slenderest
pledges, that such a country as England,
with which they had never had a difference,
would avail herself of a victory, due at lea£t
in part to their friendly sentiments, in ordeV
to restore them to that independence of
which they had been robbed by her enemy
and theirs, — by the general oppressor of
Europe.
I shall not presume to define on invariable
principles the limits of the right of conquest.
lied, but not hostile, where in the opinion of the
writer the re-establishment of the oppressed nation
is at least the moral duty of the conqueror, though
arising only from our common humanity, and
from the amicable relation which subsists between
all men and all communities, till dissolved by
wrongful oppression. It is to the latter case that
the strong language in the second part of the
above quotation is applied. It seems very difficult,
and it has not hitherto been attempted, to resist the
application to the case of Genoa.
ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA.
519
It is founded, like every right of war, on a
regard to security, — the object of all just
war. The modes in which national safety
may be provided for, — by reparation for in-
salt, — by compensation for injury, — by ces
sions and by indemnifications, — vary in such
important respects, according to the circum
stances of various cases, that it is perhaps
impossible to limit them by an universal
principle. In the case of Norway,* I did
not pretend to argue the question upon
grounds so high as those which were taken
by some writers on public law. These wri
ters, who for two centuries have been quoted
as authorities in all the controversies of Eu
rope, with the moderate and pacific Grotius
at their head, have all concurred in treating
it as a fundamental principle, that a defeated
sovereign may indeed cede part of his do
minions to the conqueror, but that he there
by only abdicates his own sovereignty over
the ceded dominion. — that the consent of the
people is necessary to make them morally
subject to the authority of the conqueror.
Without renouncing this limitation of the
rights of conquest, founded on principles so
generous, and so agreeable to the dignity of
human nature, I was content to argue the
cession of Norway, — as I am content to argue
the cession of Genoa. — on lower and hum
bler, but perhaps safer grounds. Let me
waive the odious term '•' rights," — let me
waive the necessity of any consent of a peo
ple, express or implied, to legitimate the
cession of their territory : at least this will
not be denied, — that to unite a people by
force to a nation against whom they enter
tain a strong antipathy, is the most probable
means of rendering the community unhappy,
— of making the people discontented, and
the sovereign tyrannical. But there can be
no right in any governor, whether he derives
his power from conquest, or from any other
source, to make the governed unhappy : — all
the rights of all governors exist only to make
the governed happy. It may be disputed
among some, whether the rights of govern
ment be from the people ; but no man can
doubt that they are for the people. Such a
forcible union is an immoral and cruel exer
cise of the conqueror's power ; and as soon
as that concession is made, it is not worth
while to discuss whether it be within his
right, — in other words, whether he be forbid
den by any law to make it.
But if every cession of a territory against
the deliberate and manifest sense of its in
habitants be a harsh and reprehensible abuse
of conquest, it is most of all culpable, — it be
comes altogether atrocious and inhuman,
where the antipathy was not the feeling of
the moment, or the prejudice of the day, but
a profound sentiment of hereditary repug
nance and aversion, which has descended
from, generation to generation, — has mingled
* On Mr. Charles Wynn's motion (May 12th,
1814,) condemnatory of its forced annexation to
Sweden.— ED.
with every part of thought and action, — and
has become part of patriotism itself. Such
is the repugnance of the Genoese to a union
with Piedmont : and such is commonly the
peculiar horror which high-minded nations
feel of the yoke of their immediate neigh
bours. The feelings of Norway towards
Sweden, — of Portugal towards Spain, — arid
in former and less happy times of Scotland
towards England. — are a few out of innu
merable examples. There is nothing either
unreasonable or unnatural in this state of
national feelings. With neighbours there
are most occasions of quarrel; with them
there have been most wars ; from them there
has been most suffering: — of them there is
most fear. The resentment of wrongs, and
the remembrance of victory, strengthen our
repugnance to those who are most usually
our enemies. It is not from illiberal preju
dice, but from the constitution of human
nature, that an Englishman animates his pa
triotic affections, and supports his national
pride, by now looking back on victories over
Frenchmen, — on Cressy and Agincourt, on
Blenheim and Minden, — as our posterity will
one day look back on Salamanca and Vitto-
ria. The defensive principle ought to be the
strongest where the danger is likely most
frequently to arise. What, then, will the
House decide concerning the morality of
compelling Genoa to submit to the yoke of
Piedmont, — a state which the Genoese have
constantly dreaded and hated, and against
which their hatred was sharpened by con
tinual apprehensions for their independence ?
Whatever construction may be attempted of
Lord William Bentinck's Proclamations, —
whatever sophistry may be used successful
ly, to persuade you that Genoa was disposa
ble as a conquered territory, will you affirm
that the disposal of it to Piedmont was a just
and humane exercise of your power as a
conqueror ?
It is for this reason, among others, that I
detest and execrate the modern doctrine of
rounding territory, and following natural
boundaries, and melting down small states
into masses, and substituting lines of defence,
and right and left flanks, instead of justice
and the law of nations, and ancient posses
sion and national feeling. — the system of
Louis XIV. and Napoleon, of the spoilers of
Poland, and of the spoilers of Norway and
Genoa, — the system which the Noble Lord,
when newly arrived from the Congress, and
deeply imbued with its doctrines, in the
course of his ample and elaborate invective
against the memory and principles of ancient
Europe, defined in two phrases so character
istic of his reverence for the rights of nations,
and his tenderness for their feelings, that
they ought not easily to be forgotten, — when
he told us, speaking of this very antipathy
of Genoa to Piedmont, '-'that great questions
are not to be influenced by popular impres
sions/' and "that a people may be happy
without independence." The principal fea
ture of this new system is the incorporation
520
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of neighbouring, and therefore hostile com
munities. The system of justice reverenced
the union of men who had long been mem
bers of the same commonwealth, because
they had all the attachments and antipathies
which grow out of that fellow- ship : — the sys
tem of rapine tears asunder those whom na
ture has joined, and compels those to unite
whom the contests of ages have rendered ir
reconcilable.
And if all this had been less evident, \vould
no aggravation of this act have arisen from
the peculiar nature of the general war of
Europe against France "? It \vas a war in
which not only the Italians, but every peo
ple in Europe, were called by their sove
reigns to rise for the recovery of their inde
pendence. It was a revolt of the people
against Napoleon. It owed its success to the
spirit of popular insurrection. The principle
of a war for the restoration of independence,
was a pledge that each people was to be re
stored to its ancient territory. The nations
of Europe accepted the pledge, and shook
off the French yoke. But was it fora change
of masters'? Was it that three Foreign Min
isters at Paris might dispose of the Genoese
territory ? — was it for this that the youth of
P^urope had risen in arms from Moscow to
the Rhine ?
Ergo pari voto gessisti bella juvenfua?
Tu quoque pro dominis et Poinpeiana fuisti
Nori Romana maims !*
The people of Europe were, it seems,
roused to war, not to overthrow tyranny, but
to shift it into new hands, — not to re-esta
blish the independence arid restore the an
cient institutions of nations, but to strengthen
the right flank of one great military power,
arid to cover the left flank of another. This,
at least, was not the war for the success of
which I offered my most ardent prayers. I
prayed for the deliverance of Europe, not
for its transfer to other lords, — for the resto
ration of Europe, by which all men must
have understood at least the re-establish
ment of that ancient system, and of those
wise principles, under which it had become
great and prosperous. I expected the re-
establishment of every people in those terri
tories, of which the sovereignty had been
lost by recent usurpation, — of every people
who had been an ancient member of the
family of Europe, — of every people who had
preserved the spirit and feelings which con
stitute a nation, — and, above all, of every
people wTho had lost their territory or their
independence under the tyranny which the
Allies had taken up arms to overthrow. I
expected a reverence for ancient bounda
ries, — a respect for ancient institutions, —
certainly without excluding a prudent regard
to the new interests and opinions which had
taken so deep a root that they could not be
torn up without incurring the guilt and the
mischief of the most violent innovation.
* Pharsalia, lib. ix.— ED.
The very same reasons, indeed, both of
morality and policy (since I must comply so
far with vulgar usage as to distinguish what
cannot be separated) bound the Allied Sove
reigns to respect the ancient institutions, and
to regard the new opinions and interests of
nations. The art of all government, not
tyrannical, whatever may be its form, is to
conduct mankind by their feelings. It is
immoral to disregard the feelings of the go
verned, because it renders them miserable.
It is, and it ought to be, dangerous to disre
gard these feelings, because bold and intelli
gent men will always consider it as a mere
question of prudence, whether they ought to
obey governments which counteract the only
.purpose for which they all exist. The feel
ings of men are most generally wounded by
any violence to those ancient institutions
under which these feelings have been
formed, the national character has been
moulded, and to which all the habits and
expectations of life are adapted. It was
well said by Mr. Fox, that as ancient institu
tions have been sanctioned by a far greater
concurrence of human judgments than mo
dern laws can be, they are. upon democratic
principles, more respectable. But new opin
ions and new interests, and a new arrange
ment of society, which has given rise to other
habits and hopes, also excite the strongest
feelings, which, in proportion to their force
and extent, claim the regard of all moral
policy.
As it was doubtless the policy of the Allies
to consider the claims of ancient possession
as sacred, as far as the irrevocable changes
of the political system would allow, the con
siderate part of mankind did, I believe, hope
that they would hail the long-continued and
recently-lost sovereignty of a territory as
generally an inviolable right, and that, as
they could not be supposed wanting in zeal
for restoring the sovereignty of ancient reign
ing families, so they would guard that re-
establishment, and render it respectable in
the eyes of the world, by the impartiality
with which they re-established also those
ancient and legitimate governments of a re
publican form, which had fallen in the gene
ral slavery of nations. We remembered thit
republics and monarchies were alike called
to join in the war against the French Revo
lution, not for forms of government, but for
the existence of social order. We hoped
that Austria — to select a striking example —
would not pollute her title to her ancient do
minion of Lombardy. by blending it with the
faithless and lawless seizure of Venice. So
little republican territory was to be restored,
that the act of justice was to be performed,
and the character of impartiality gained, at
little expense; — even if such expense be
measured by the meanest calculations of
the most vulgar politics. Other vacant terri
tory remained at the disposal of the Con
gress to satisfy the demands of policy. The
sovereignity of the Ecclesiastical territories
might be fairly considered as lapsed: no
ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA.
521
reigning family could have any interest in
it } — no people could be attached to such a
rule of nomination to supreme power. And
in fact, these Principalities had lost all pride
of independence and all consciousness of
national existence. Several other territories
of Europe had been reduced to a like condi
tion. Ceded, perhaps, at first questionably,
they had been transferred so often from
master to master. — they had been so long
in a state of provincial degradation, that no
violence could be offered to their feelings
by any new transfer or partition. They
were, as it were, a sort of splinters thrown
off from nations in the shocks of warfara
during two centuries; arid they lay like stakes
on the board, to be played for at the terrible
game which had detached them, and to
satisfy the exchanges and cessions by which
it is usually closed.
Perhaps the existence of such detached
members is necessary to the European sys
tem ; but thsy are in themselves great evils.
They are amputated and lifeless members,
which, as soon as they lose the vital princi
ple of national spirit, no longer contribute
aught to the vigour and safety of the whole
living system. From them is to be expected
no struggle against invasion. — no resistance
to the designs of ambition, —no defence of
their country. Individuals, but no longer a
nation, they are the ready prey of every
candidate for universal monarchy, who soon
compels their passive inhabitants to fight for
his ambition, as they would not fight against
it, and to employ in enslaving other nations,
that courage which they had no noble in
terest to exert in defence of their own. —
Why should I seek examples of this truth in
former times'? What opened Europe to the
first inroads of the French armies ? — not, I
will venture to say, the mere smallness of
the neighbouring states: for if every one of
them had displayed as much national spirit
in 1794, as the smallest states of Switzerland
did in 1798, no French army could ever have
left the territory of France, — but the unhappy
course of events, which had deprived Flan
ders, and the Electorates, and Lombardy, of
all national spirit. Extinguished as this spirit
was by the form of government in some of
these countries, and crushed by a foreign
yoke in others. — without the pride of liberty,
which bestows the highest national spirit on
the smallest nations, or the pride of power,
which sometimes supplies its place in mighty
empires, or the consciousness of self-depend
ence, without which there is no nationality,
— they first became the prey of France, and
afterwards supplied the arms with which she
almost conquered the world. To enlarge this
dead part of Europe, — to enrich it by the
accession of countries renowned for their
public feelings, — to throw Genoa into the
same grave with Poland, with Venice, with
Finland, and with Norway. — is not the policy
of those who would be the preservers or re
storers of the European commonwealth.
It is not the principle of the Balance of
66
Power, but one precisely opposite. The
system of preserving some equilibrium of
power, — of preventing any state from be
coming too great for her neighbours, is a
system purely defensive, and directed to
wards the object of universal preservation.
It is a system which provides for the secu
rity of all states by balancing the force and
opposing the interests of great ones. The
independence of nations is the end, the ba
lance of power is only the means. To
destroy independent nations, in order to
strengthen the balance of power, is a most
extravagant sacrifice of the end to the means.
This inversion of all' the principles of the
ancient and beautiful system of Europe, is
the fundamental maxim of what the Noble
Lord, enriching our language with foreign
phrases as well as doctrines, calls '-'a repar
tition of power.'7 In the new system, small
states are annihilated by a combination of
great ones: — in the old, small states were
secured by the mutual jealousy of the great.
The Noble Lord very consistently treats
the re-establishment of small states as an
absurdity. This single tenet betrays the
school in which he has studied. Undoubt
edly, small communities are an absurdity,
or rather their permanent existence is an im
possibility, on his new system. They could
have had no existence in the continual con
quests of Asia ; — they were soon destroyed
amidst the turbulence of the Grecian con
federacy: — they must be sacrificed on the
system of rapine established at Vienna. —
Nations powerful enough to defend them
selves, may subsist securely in most tolera
ble conditions of society: but states too
small to be safe by their own strength, can
exist only where they are guarded by the
equilibrium of force, and the vigilance which
watches over its preservation. When the
Noble Lord represents small states as inca
pable of self-defence, he in truth avows that
he is returned in triumph from the destruc
tion of that system of the Balance of Power,
of which indeed great empires were the
guardians, but of which the perfect action was
indicated by the security of feebler common
wealths. Under this system, no great viola
tion of national independence had occurred
from the first civilization of the European
states till the partition of Poland. The safety
of the feeblest states, under the authority of
justice, was so great, that there seemed little
exaggeration in calling such a society the
'•commonwealth" of ^Europe. Principles,
which stood in the stead of laws and magis
trates, provided for the security of defence
less communities, as perfectly as the safety
of the humblest individual is maintained in a
well-ordered commonwealth. Europe can
no longer be called a commonwealth, when
her members have no safety but in their
strength.
In truth, the Balancing system is itself
only a secondary guard of national indepen
dence. The paramount principle — the mov
ing power, without which all such machinery
2x2
522
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
would be perfectly inert, is national spirit.
The love of country, the attachment to laws
and government, and even to soil and scene
ry, the feelings of national glory in arms and
arts, the remembrances of common triumph
and common suffering, with the mitigated
but not obliterated recollection of common
enmity, and the jealousy of dangerous neigh
bours, — all are instruments employed by na
ture to draw more closoly the bands of affec
tion that bind us to our country and to each
other. This is the only principle by which
sovereigns can, in the hour of danger, rouse
the minds of their subjects: — without it the
policy of the Balancing system would be
impotent.
The Congress of Vienna seems, indeed, to
have adopted every part of the French sys
tem, except that they have transferred the
dictatorship of Europe from an individual to
a triumvirate. One of the grand and parent
errors of the French Revolution was the fatal
opinion that it was possible for human skill
to make a government. It was an error too
generally prevalent, not to be excusable. —
The American Revolution had given it a fal
lacious semblance of support ; though no
event in history more clearly showed its
falsehood. The system of laws, and the
frame of society in North America, remain
ed after the Revolution, and remain to this
day, fundamentally the same as they ever
were. The change in America, like the
change in 1688, was made in defence of
legal right, not in pursuit of political improve
ment ; and it was limited by the necessity
of self-defence which produced it. The
whole internal order remained, which had
always been essentially republican. The
somewhat slender tie which loosely joined
these republics to a monarchy, was easily
and without violence divided. But the error
of the French Revolutionists was, in 1789,
the error of Europe. From that error we
have been long reclaimed by fatal experi
ence. We know, or rather we have seen
and felt, that a government is not, like a
machine or a building, the work of man ;
that it is the work of i,ature, like the nobler
productions of the vegetable and animal
world, which man may improve, and damage,
and even destroy, but which he cannot cre
ate. We have long learned to despise the
ignorance or the hypocrisy of those who
speak of giving a free constitution to a peo
ple, and to exclaim with a great living poet —
" A gift of that which never can be given
By all the blended powers of earth and heaven !"
We have, perhaps, — as usual, — gone too
near to the opposite error, and we do not
make sufficient allowances 'for those dread
ful cases — though we must not call them
desperate. — where, in long enslaved coun
tries, we must either humbly and cautiously
labour to lay some foundations from which
the fabric of liberty may slowly rise, or ac
quiesce in the doom of perpetual bondage.
But though we no longer dream of making
governments, the confederacy of kings seem
to feel no doubt of their own power to nii.ke
nations. Yet the only reason why it is im
possible to make a government is, because
it is impossible to make a nation. A govern
ment cannot be made, because its whole
spirit and principles arise from the chaiacter
of the nation. There would be no difficulty
in framing a government, if the habits of a
people could be changed by a lawgiver; — if
he could obliterate their recollections, trans
fer their attachment and reverence, extin
guish their animosities, and correct those
sentiments which, being at variance with his
opinions of public interest, he calls preju
dices. Now, this is precisely the power
which our statesmen at Vienna have arro
gated to themselves. They not only form
nations, but the}' compose them of elements
apparently the most irreconcilable. They
made one nation out of Norway and Sweden :
they tried to make another out of Prussia
and Saxony. They have, in the present
case, forced together Piedmont and Genoa
to form a nation which is to guard the ave
nues of Italy, and to be one of the main
securities of Europe against universal mo
narchy.
It w^as not the pretension of the ancient
system to form states, — to divide territory
according to speculations of military conve
nience. — and to unite and dissolve nations
better than the course of events had done
before. It was owned to be still more diffi
cult to give a new constitution to Europe,
than to form a new constitution for a single
state. The great statesmen of former times
did not speak of their measures as the Noble
Lord, did about the incorporation of Belgium
with Holland (against which I say nothing),
'•'as a great improvement in the system of
Europe/' That is the language only of
those who revolutionise that system by a
partition like that of Poland, by the establish
ment of the Federation of the Rhine at Paris,
or by the creation of new states at Vienna.
The ancient principle was to preserve all
those states which had been founded by
time and nature, — which were animated by
national spirit, and distinguished by the Di
versity of character which gave scope to
every variety of talent and virtue, — whose
character had been often preserved, and
whose nationality had been even created, by
those very irregularities of frontier and in
equalities of strength, of which a shallow
policy complains; — to preserve all those
states, down to the smallest, first, by their
own national spirit, and, secondly, by that
mutual jealousy which made every great
power the opponent of the dangerous ambi
tion of every other. Its object was to pre
serve nations, as living bodies produced by
the hand of nature — not to form artificial dead
machines, called "states," by the words and
parchment of a diplomatic act. Under this
ancient system, which secured the weak by
the jealousy of the strong, provision was made
alike for the permanency of civil institutions.
ON THE ANNEXATION OF GENOA.
523
the stability of governments, the progressive
leformation of laws and constitutions. — for
combining the general quiet with the high
est activity and energy of the human mind,
• — for uniting the benefits both of rivalship
and of friendship between nations, — for cul
tivating the moral sentiments of men, by the
noble spectacle of the long triumph of jus
tice in the security of the defenceless, — and.
finally, for maintaining uniform civilization
by the struggle as well as union of all the
moral and intellectual combinations which
compose that vast and various mass. It
effected these noble purposes, riot merely by
securing Europe against one master, but by
securing her against any union or conspiracy
of sovereignty, which, as long as it lasts, is
in no respect better than the domination of
an individual. The object of the new sys
tem is to crush the weak by the combination
of the strong. — to subject Europe, in the first
place, to an oligarchy of sovereigns, and ulti
mately to swallow it up in the gulf of uni
versal monarchy, in which civilization has
always perished, with freedom of thought,
with controlled power, with national cha
racter and spirit, with patriotism and emu
lation, — in a word, with all its characteristic
attributes, and with all its guardian princi
ples.
I am content, Sir, that these observations
should be thought wholly unreasonable by
those new masters of civil wisdom, who tell
us that the whole policy of Europe consists
in strengthening the right flank of Prussia,
and the left flank of Austria, — who see in
that wise and venerable system, long the
boast and the safeguard of Europe, only the
millions of souls to be given to one Power,
or the thousands of square miles to be given
to another, — who consider the frontier of a
river as a better protection for a country than
the love of its inhabitants, — and who pro
vide for the safety of their states by wound
ing the pride and mortifying the patriotic af
fection of a people, in order to fortify a line
of military posts. To such statesmen I will
apply the words of the great philosophical
orator, who so long vainly laboured to incul
cate wisdom in this House : — " All this, I
know well enough, will sound wild and chi
merical to the profane herd of those vulgar
and mechanical politicians who have no place
among us ; a sort of people who think that
nothing exists but what is gross and material ;
and who. therefore, far from being qualified
to be directors of the great movement of em
pire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the ma
chine. But to men truly initiated and right
ly taught, these ruling and master principles,
which, in the opinion of such men as I have
mentioned, have no substantial existence,
are in truth every thing, and all in all."
This great man, in the latter part of his life,
and when his opinions were less popular,
was often justly celebrated for that spirit of
philosophical prophecy wrhich enabled him
early to discern in their causes all the mis
fortunes which the leaders of the French
Revolution were to bring on the world by
their erroneous principles of reformation, —
"quod ille pene solus Romanorum animo
vidit, ingenio complexus est, eloquentia illu-
minavit:" but it has been remembered, that
his foresight was not limited to one party or
to one source of evil. In one of his immortal
writings,* — of which he has somewhat con
cealed the durable instruction by the tempo
rary title, — he clearly enough points out the
first scene of partition and rapine — the in
demnifications granted out of the spoils of
Germany in 1802: — "I see, indeed, a fund
from whence equivalents will be proposed.
It opens another Iliad of woes to Europe."
The policy of a conqueror is to demolish,
to erect on new foundations, to bestow new
names on authority, and to render every
power around him as new as his own. The
policy of a restorer is to re-establish, to
strengthen, cautiously to improve, and to
seem to recognise and confirm even that
which necessity compels him to establish
ane\v. But, in our times, the policy of the
avowed conqueror has been adopted by the
pretended restorers. The most minute par
ticulars of the system of Napoleon are re
vived in the acts of those who overthrew his
power. Even English officers, when they
are compelled to carry such orders into exe
cution, become infected by the spirit of the
system of which they are doomed to be the
ministers. I cannot read without pain and
shame the language of Sir John Dalrymple's
Despatch, — language which I lament as in
consistent with the feelings of a British offi
cer, and with the natural prejudices of a
Scotch gentleman. I wish that he had not
adopted the very technical language of Jaco
bin conquest, — " the downfall of the aristo
cracy," and "the irritation of the priests."
I do not think it very decent to talk with
levity of the destruction of a sovereignty ex
ercised for six centuries by one of the most
ancient and illustrious bodies of nobility in
Europe.
Italy is, perhaps, of all civilized countries,
that which affords the most signal example
of the debasing power of provincial depend
ence, and of a foreign yoke. With independ
ence, and with national spirit, they have lost,
if not talent, at least the moral and dignified
use of talent, which constitutes its only
worth. Italy alone seemed to derive some
hope of independence from those convul
sions which had destroyed that of other
nations. The restoration of Europe annihi
lated the hopes of Italy : — the emancipation
of other countries announced her bondage.
Stern necessity compelled us to suffer the
re-establishment of foreign masters in the
greater part of that renowned and humiliated
country. But as to Genoa, our hands were
unfettered ; we were at liberty to be just, or,
if you will, to be generous. We. had in our
hands the destiny of the last of that great
body of republics which united the ancient
* Second Letter on a Regicide Peace,— ED.
524
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
and the modern world. — the children and
heirs of Roman civilisation, who spread com
merce, and with it refinement, liberty, and
humanity over Western Europe, and whose
history has lately been rescued from obli
vion, and disclosed to our times, by the
greatest of living historians.* I hope I shall
not be thought fanciful when I say that
Genoa, whose greatness was founded on na
val power, and which, in the earliest ages,
gave the almost solitary example of a com
mercial gentry, — Genoa, the remnant of
Italian liberty, and the only remaining hope
of Italian independence, had peculiar claims
— to say no more — on the generosity of the
British nation. How have these claims been
satisfied ? She has been sacrificed to a fri
volous, a doubtful, perhaps an imaginary,
speculation of convenience. The most odi
ous of foreign yokes has been imposed upon
her by a free state, — by a people whom she
never injured, — after she had been mocked
by the re-appearance of her ancient govern
ment, and by all the ensigns and badges of
her past glory. And after all this, she has
been told to be grateful for the interest which
the Government of England has taken in her
fate. By this confiscation of the only Italian
territory which was at the disposal of justice,
the doors of hope have been barred on Italy
for ever. No English general can ever again
deceive Italians.
Will the House decide that all this is right ?
— That is the question which you have now
to decide. To vote with me, it is not neces
sary to adopt my opinions in their full extent.
All who think that the national faith has
been brought into question, — all who think
that there has been an unprecedented ex
tension, or an ungenerous exercise of the
rights of conquest, — are, I humbly conceive,
* Sismondi.
bound to express their disapprobation by
their votes. We are on the eve of a new
war. — perhaps only the first of a long series,
— in which there must be conquests and ces
sions, and there may be hard and doubtful
exertions of rights in their best state suffi
ciently odious: — I call upon the House 1o
interpose their council for the future in the
form of an opinion regarding the past. I
hope that I do not yield to any illusive feel-
i ings of national vanity, when I say that
this House is qualified to speak the senti-
| ments of mankind, and to convey them with
authority to cabinets and thrones. Single
among representative assemblies, this House
is now in the seventh century of its recorded
! existence. It appeared with the first dawn
I of legal government. It exercised its high
est powers under the most gloricus princes.
| It survived the change of a religion, and the
I extinction of a nobility, — the fall of Royal
j Houses, and an age of civil war. Depressed
for a moment by the tyrannical power which
is the usual growth of civil confusions, it
revived with the first glimpse of tranquillity,
— gathered strength from the intrepidity of
religious reformation, — grew with the know
ledge, and flourished with the progressive
wealth of the people. After having expe
rienced the excesses of the spirit of liberty
during the Civil War, and of the spirit of loy
alty at the Restoration, it was at length finally
established at the glorious era of the Revolu
tion ] and although since that immortal event
it has experienced little change in its formal
I constitution, and perhaps no accession of le-
I gal power, it has gradually cast its roots deep
i and wide, blending itself with every branch
I of the government, and every institution of
society, and has, at length, become the grand
est example ever seen among men of a solid
and durable representation of the people of
a mighty empire.
-|g SPEECH • ;
ON MOVING FOR A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO
THE STATE OE THE CRIMINAL LAW,
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE SD MARCH, 1819.*
MR. SPEAKER, — I now rise, in pursuance of
the notice which I gave, to bring before the
* This speech marks an epoch in the progress
of the reformation of the Criminal Law, inasmuch
as the motion with which it concluded, though op
posed by Lord Castlereagh, with all the force of
the Government, under cover of a professed en
largement of its principle, was carried by a ma
jority of nineteen in a House of two hundred and
seventy-five members. — ED.
House a motion for the appointment of a Se
lect Committee " to consider of so much of the
Criminal Laws as relates to Capital Punish
ment in Felonies, and to report their obser
vations and opinions thereon to the House."
And I should have immediately proceeded
to explain the grounds and objects of such
a motion, which is almost verbatim the same
as a resolution entered on the Journals in the
year 1770, when authority was delegated to
ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW.
525
a committee for the same purpose, — I should
have proceeded. I say, to state at once why
I think such an inquiry necessary, had it
not been for some concessions made by the
Noble Lord* last night, which tend much to
narrow the grounds of difference between
us, and to simplify the question before the
House. If I considered the only subject of
discussion to be that which exists between
the Noble Lord and mysslf, it would be re
duced to this narrow compass; — namely,
whether the Noble Lord's proposal or mine
be the more convenient for the conduct of
the same inquiry; but as every member
in this House is a party to the question, I
must make an observation or two on the
Noble Lord's statements.
If I understood him rightly, he confesses
that the growth of crime, and the state of
the Criminal Law in this country, call for in
vestigation, and proposes that these subjects
shall be investigated by a Select Committee:
— this I also admit to be the most expedient
course. He expressly asserts also his dispo
sition to make the inquiry as extensive as I
wish it to be. As far, therefore, as he is
concerned, I am relieved from the necessity
of proving that an inquiry is necessary, that
the appointment of a Select Committee is
the proper course of proceeding in it, and that
such inquiry ought to be extensive. I arn
thus brought to the narrower question, Whe
ther the committee of the Noble Lord, or
that which I propose, be the more conve
nient instrument for conducting an inquiry
into the special subject to which my motion
refers? I shall endeavour briefly to show,
that the mode of proceeding proposed by
him, although embracing another and very
fit subject of inquiry, must be considered as
precluding an inquiry into that part of the
Criminal Law which forms the subject of
my motion, for two reasons.
In the first place, Sir, it is physically im
possible ; and, having stated that, I may per
haps dispense with the necessity of adding
more. We have heard from an Honourable
Friend of mine.t whose authority is the
highest that can be resorted to on this sub
ject, that an inquiry into the state of two or
three jails occupied a committee during a
whole session. My Honourable Friend, f a
magistrate of the city, has stated that an in
quiry into the state of the prisons of the
Metropolis, occupied during a whole session
the assiduous committee over which he pre
sided. When, therefore, the Noble Lord
refers to one committee not only the state of
the Criminal Law, but that of the jails, of
transportation, and of that little adjunct the
hulks, he refers to it an inquiry which it can
never conduct to an end ; — he proposes, as
my Honourable Friend§ has said, to institute
an investigation which must outlive a Parlia
ment. The Noble Lord has in fact acknow-
* Viscount Castlereagh. — ED.
t The Honourable Henry Grey Bennet. — ED.
t Alderman Waithman. — ED.
§ Mr. Bennet. — ED.
ledged, by his proposed subdivision, that it
would be impossible for one committee to
inquire into all the subjects which he would
refer to it. And this impossibility he would
evade by an unconstitutional violation of the
usages of the House; as you, Sir, with the
authority due to your opinions, have declared
the proposition for subdividing a committee
to be. I, on the other hand, in accordance
with ancient usage, propose that the House
shall itself nominate these separate commit
tees.
My second objection is. Sir, that the Noble
Lord's notice, and the order made by the
House yesterday upon it, do not embrace the
purpose which I have in view. To prove
this, I might content myself with a reference
to the very words of the instruction under
which his proposed committee is to proceed.
It is directed "to inquire into the state and
description of jails, and other places of con
finement, and into the best method of pro
viding for the reformation, as well as for the
safe custody and punishment of offenders."
Now, what is the plain meaning of those ex
pressions? Are they not the same offenders,
whose punishment as well as whose refor
mation and safe custody is contemplated ?
And does not the instruction thus directly
exclude the subject of Capital Punishment.
The matter is too plain to be insisted on ;
but must not the meaning, in any fair and
liberal construction, be taken to be that the
committee is to consider the reformation and
safe custody of those offenders of whom im
prisonment forms the whole or the greatest
part of the punishment ? It would be absurd
to suppose that the question of Capital Pun
ishment should be made an inferior branch
of the secondary question of imprisonments,
and that the great subject of Criminal Law
should skulk into the committee under the
cover of one vague and equivocal word. On
these grounds, Sir, I have a right to say that
there is no comparison as to the convenience
or the efficacy of the two modes of proceed
ing.
Let us now see whether my proposition
casts a greater censure on the existing Jaws
than his. Every motion for inquiry assumes
that inquiry is necessary, — that some evil
exists, which may be remedied. The mo
tion of the Noble Lord assumes thus much ;
mine assumes no more : it casts no reflection
on the law, or on the magistrates by whom
it is administered.
With respect to the question whether Se
condary Punishments should be inquired
into before we dispose of the Primary, I
have to say, that in proposing the Present
investigation, I have not been guided by my
own feelings, nor have I trusted entirely to
my own judgment. My steps have been
directed and assured by former examples.
The first of these is the notable one in
1750, when, in consequence of the alarm
created by the increase of some species of
crimes, a committee was appointed "to ex
amine into and consider the state of the laws
526
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
relating to felonies, and to report to the House
their opinion as to the defects of those laws,
and as to the propriety of amending or re
pealing them." What does the Noble Lord
say to this large reference. — this ample dele
gation, — this attack on the laws of our ances
tors ? Was it made in bad times, by men of
no note, and of indifferent principles'? I will
mention the persons of whom the committee
was composed : — they were, Mr. Pelham,
then Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Mr. Pitt,
afterwards Lord Chatham ; Mr. George
Grenville, afterwards Lord Grenville; Mr.
Lyttletori and Mr. Charles Townsend, after
wards Secretaries of State ; and Sir Dudley
Ryder, the Attorney-General, afterwards
Chief Justice of England. Those great
lawyers and statesmen will, at least, not be
accused of having been rash theorists, or,
according to the new word, l ultra-philoso
phers." But it will be thought remarkable
that those great men, who were, in liberality,
as superior to some statesmen of the present
day. as in practical wisdom they were not
inferior to them, found two sessions neces
sary for the inquiry into which they had en
tered. The first resolution to which those
eminent and enlightened individuals agreed,
was, "that it was reasonable to exchange
the punishment of death for some other ade
quate punishment." Such a resolution is a
little more general and extensive than that
which I shall venture to propose ; — such a
resolution, however, did that committee,
vested with the powers which I have already
described, recommend to the adoption of
the House. One circumstance, not neces
sarily connected with my present motion, I
will take the liberty of mentioning : — to that
committee the credit is due of having first
denounced the Poor-laws as the nursery of
crime. In this country pauperism and crime
have always advanced in parallel lines, and
with equal steps. That committee imputed
much evil to the divisions among parishes on
account of the maintenance of the poor. That
committee too. composed of practical men as it
was, made a statement which some practical
statesmen of the present day will no doubt
condemn as too large ; — namely, " that the
increase of crime was in a great measure to
be attributed to the neglect of the education
of the children of the poor." A. bill was
brought in, founded on the resolutions of the
committee, and passed this House. It was
however negatived in the House of Lords,
although not opposed by any of the great
names of that day, — by any of the lumina
ries of that House. Lord Hardwicke, for in
stance, did not oppose a bill, the principal
object of which was the substitution of hard
labour arid imprisonment for the punishment
of death.
In 1770, another alarm, occasioned by the
increase of a certain species of crime, led to
the appointment, on the 27th of November
in that year, of another committee of the
same kind, of which Sir Charles Saville, Sir
William Meredith, Mr. Fox, Mr. Serjeant
Glynn, Sir Charles Bunbury, and others, were
members. To that committee the reference
was nearly the same as that which I am now
proposing; though mine be the more con
tracted one. That committee was occupied
for two years with the branch of the general
inquiry which the Noble Lord proposes to
add to the already excessive labours of an
existing committee. In the second session
they brought their report to maturity j and,
on that report, a bill was introduced for the
repeal of eight or ten statutes, which bill
passed the House of Commons without op
position. I do not mean to enter into the
minute history of that bill, which was thrown
out in the House of Lords. It met with no
hostility from the great ornaments of the
House of Lords of that day, Lord Camden
and Lord Mansfield ; but it was necessarily
opposed by others, whom I will not name, and
whose names will be unknown to posterity.
Sir, it is upon these precedents that I have
formed, and that I bring forward my motion.
I have shown, that the step I proposed to
take accords with the usage of Parliament
in the best of times, but that if we follow the
plan recommended by the Noble Lord, we
cannot effect the purpose which we have in.
view without evading or violating the usage
of Parliament. Accepting, therefore, his
concession, that a committee ought to be
appointed for this investigation, here I might
take my stand, and challenge him to drive
me from this giound, which, with all his
talents, he would find some difficulty in
doing. But I feel that there is a great differ
ence between our respective situations ; and
that, although he last night contented him
self with stating the evils which exist, with
out adverting to the other essential part of
my proposal for a Parliamentary inquiry, —
namely, the probability of a remedy,— I must
take a different course. Although I cannot
say that I agree with my Honourable Friend,
who says that a Select Committee is not the
proper mode of investigating this subject,
yet I agree with him that there are two
things necessary to justify an investigation,
whether by a committee, or in any other
manner : — the first is, the existence of an
evil; the second is, the probability of \a.
remedy. Far, therefore, from treating the
sacred fabric reared by our ancestors more
lightly, I approach it more reverently than
does the Noble Lord. I should not have
dared, merely on account of the number of
offences, to institute an inquiry into the state
of the Criminal Law, unless, while I saw the
defects, I had also within view, not the cer
tainty of a remedy (for that would be too
much to assert), but some strong probability,
that the law may be rendered more effi
cient, and a check be given to that which
has alarmed all good men, — the increase of
crime. While I do what I think it was the
bounden duty of the Noble Lord to have
done, I trust I shall not be told that I am a
rash speculator, — that I am holding out im
punity to criminals, or foreshadowing what
ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW.
527
he is pleased to call " a golden age for
crime." Sir Dudley Ryder, at the head of
the criminal jurisprudence of the country,
and Serjeant Glynn, the Recorder of London,
— an office that unhappily has the most ex
tensive experience of the administration of
Criminal Law in the world, — both believed
a remedy to the evil in question to be prac
ticable, and recommended it as necessary:
arid under any general reprobation which
the Noble Lord may apply to such men, I
shall not be ashamed to be included.
I must now, Sir, mention what my object
is not, in order to obviate the misapprehen
sions of over-zealous supporters, and the
misrepresentations of desperate opponents.
I do not propose to form a new criminal code.
Altogether to abolish a system of law, admi
rable in its principle, interwoven with the
habits of the English people, and under
which they have long and happily lived, is a
E reposition very remote from my notions of
igislation, and would be too extravagant and
ridiculous to be for a moment listened to.
Neither is it my intention to propose the
abolition of the punishment of death. I hold
the right of inflicting that punishment to be
a part of the rights of self-defence, with
which society as well as individuals are en
dowed. I hold it to be, like all other pun
ishments, an evil when unnecessary, but,
like any other evil employed to remedy a
greater evil, capable of becoming a good.
Nor do I wish to take away the right of par
don from, the Crown. On the contrary, my
object is, to restore to the Crown the practical
use of that right, of which the usage of
modern times has nearly deprived it.
The declaration may appear singular, but
I do not aim at realising any universal prin
ciple. My object is, to bring the letter of
the law more near to its practice, — to make
the execution of the law form the rule, and
the remission of its penalties the exception.
Although I do not expect that a system of
law can be so graduated, that it can be ap
plied to every case without the intervention
of a discretionary power, I hope to see an
effect produced on the vicious, by the steady
manner in which the law shall be enforced.
The main part of the reform which I should
propose would be, to transfer to the statute
book the improvements which the wisdom
of modern times has introduced into the prac
tice of the law. But I must add, that even
in the case of some of that practice with
which the feelings of good men are not in uni
son, I should propose such a reform as would
correct that anomaly. It is one of the greatest
evils which can befall a country when the
Criminal Law and the virtuous feeling of the
community are in hostility to each other.
They cannot be long at variance without in
jury to one, — perhaps to both. One of my
objects is to approximate them ; — to make
good men the anxious supporters of the
Criminal Law, and to restore, if it has been
injured, that zealous attachment to the law
in general, which, even in the most tempes-
tuous times of our history, has distinguished
the people of England among the nations of
the world.
Having made these few general remarks,
I will now, Sir, enter into a few illustrative
details. It is not my intention to follow the
Noble Lord in his inquiry into the causes of
the increase of crimes. I think that his
statement last night was in the main just and
candid. I agree with him, that it is consola
tory to remark, that the crimes in which so
rapid an increase has been observable, are
not those of the blackest die, or of the most
ferocious character; thai they are not those
which would the most deeply stain and dis
honour the ancient moral character of Eng
lishmen ; that they are crimes against pro
perty alone, and are to be viewed as the
result of the distresses, rather than of the
depravity of the community. I also firmly
believe, that some of the causes of increased
crime are temporary. But the Noble Lord
and I, while we agree in this proposition, are
thus whimsically situated: — he does not
think that some of these causes are tempo
rary which I conceive to be so; vihile, on
the other hand, he sets down some as tem
porary, which I believe to be permanent.
As to the increase of forgery, for example
[which I mention only by way of illustra
tion), I had hoped that when cash payments
should be restored, that crime would be di
minished. But the Noble Lord has taken
pains to dissipate that delusion, by asserting
:hat the withdrawal of such a mass of paper
Vom circulation would be attended with no
such beneficial consequences. According to
lira, the progress of the country in manu
factures and wealth, is one of the principal
causes of crime. But is our progress in manu-
actures and wealth to be arrested? Does
:he Noble Lord imagine, that there exists a
permanent and augmenting cause of crime,
— at once increasing with our prosperity, and
undermining it through its effects on the
Tiorals of the people. According to him, the
increase of great cities would form another
?ause of crime. This cause, at least, can
not diminish, for great cities are the natural
consequences of manufacturing and com
mercial greatness. In speaking, however,
)f the population of London, he has fallen
nto an error. Although London is positively
arger now than it was in 1700, it is rela-
ively smaller: — although it has since that
ime become the greatest commercial city
in Europe. — the capital of an empire whose
colonies extend over every quarter of the
world, — London is not so populous now, with
reference to the population of the whole
kingdom, as it was in the reign of William III.
It is principally to those causes of crime,
which arise out of errors in policy or legisla
tion, that I wish to draw the attention of
Parliament. Among other subjects, it may
be a question whether the laws for the pro
tection of the property called "game," have
not created a clandestine traffic highly injuri
ous to the morals of the labouring classes. I
528
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
am happy to find that that subject is to be
taken up by my Honourable Friend the
Member for Hertfordshire,* who will draw
to it the attention which every proposition of
his deserves. A smuggling traffic of another
species, although attended with nearly the
same effects, has been fostered by some of
the existing laws relating to the revenue. I
would propose no diminution of revenue, for
unfortunately we can spare none : but there
are some taxes which produce no revenue,
and which were never intended to produce
any, but which are, nevertheless, very detri
mental. The cumbrous system of draw
backs, and protecting duties, is only a bounty
on smuggling. Poachers and smugglers are
the two bodies from which malefactors are
principally recruited. The state which does
not seek to remedy these diseases, is guilty
of its own destruction.
Another subject I must mention: for,
viewing it as I do, it would be unpardonable
to omit it. On examining the summary of
crimes which has been laid on the table, it
appears that it was in 1808 that the great
increase of crime took place. The number
of crimes since that time has never fallen
below the number of that year: although
subsequent years have varied among one
another. But it is extremely remarkable,
and is, indeed, a most serious and alarming
fact, that the year 1808 was precisely the
period when the great issues of the Bank of
England began. As it has been observed
in the '• Letter to the Right Honourable Mem
ber for the University of Oxford,"! a work
which has been already mentioned in this
House (the author; of which, although he
has concealed his name, cannot conceal his
talents, and his singular union of ancient
learning with modern science), it was at that
time that pauperism and poor rates increased.
Pauperism and crime, as I have before said.
go hand in hand. Both were propelled by
the immense issues of Bank paper in 1808.
By those issues the value of the one-pound
note was reduced to fourteen shillings. Every
labourer, by he knew not what mysterious
power, — by causes which he could not dis
cover or comprehend. — found his wages di
minished at least in the proportion of a third.
No enemy had ravaged the country ] no in
clement season had blasted the produce of
the soil ; but his comforts were curtailed,
and his enjoyments destroyed by the opera
tion of the paper system, which was to him
like the workings of a malignant fiend, that
could be traced only in their effects. Can
any one doubt that this diminution of the
income of so many individuals, from the
highest to the lowest classes of society, was
one of the chief sources of the increase of
crime "?
There is one other secondary cause of
crime, which I hope we have at length se-
* The Honourable Thomas Brand. — ED.
t The Right Honourable Robert Peel.— ED.
$ The Rev. Edward Copleston (now Bishop of
LlandafD— ED.
riously determined to remove • — I mean the
state of our prisons. They never were fitted
for reformation by a wise system of disci
pline : but that is now become an inferior
subject of complaint. Since the number of
criminals have out-grown the size of our
Cons, comparatively small offenders have
n trained in them to the contemplation
of atrocious crime. Happily this terrible
source of evil is more than any other within
our reach. Prison discipline may fail in re
forming offenders : but it is our own fault if
it further corrupts them.
But the main ground which I take is this, —
that the Criminal Law is not so efficacious as
it might be, if temperate and prudent altera
tions in it were made. It is well known that
there are two hundred capital felonies on the
statute book: but it may not be so familiar
to the House! that by the Returns for London
and Middlesex, it appears that from 1749 to
1819, a term of seventy years, there are only
twenty-five sorts of felonies for which any
individuals have been executed. So that
there are a hundred and seventy-five capital
felonies respecting which the punishment or
dained by various statutes has not been in
flicted. In the thirteen years since 1805, it
appears that there are only thirty descrip
tions of felonies on which there have been
any capital convictions throughout England
and Wales. So that there are a hundred and
seventy felonies created by law, on which
not one capital conviction has taken place.
This rapidly increasing discordance between
the letter and the practice of the Criminal
Law, arose in the best times of our history,
and, in my opinion, out of one of its most
glorious and happy events. As I take it, the
most important consequence of the Revolu
tion of 1688, was the establishment in this
country of 'a Parliamentary government.
That event, however, has been attended by
one inconvenience — the unhappy facility af
forded to legislation. Every Member of Par
liament has had it in his power to indulge
his whims and caprices on that subject : and
if he could not do any thing else, he could
create a capital felony ! The anecdotes
which I have heard of this shameful ami
injurious facility, I am almost ashamed to
repeat. Mr. Burke once told me, that orna
certain occasion, when he was leaving the
House, one of the messengers called him
back, and on his saying that he was going on
urgent business, replied, " Oh ! it will not
keep you a single moment, it is only a felony
without benefit of clergy !" He also assured
me, that although, as may be imagined, from
his political career, he wras not often entitled
to ask favour from the ministry of the day,
he was persuaded that his interest was at
any time good enough to obtain their assent
to the creation of a felony without benefit
of clergy. This facility of granting an in
crease of the severity of the law to every
proposer, with the most impartial disregard
of political considerations, — this unfortunate
facility, arose at a time when the humane
ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW.
529
feelings of the country were only yet ripen
ing amidst the diffusion of knowledge . Hence
originated the final separation between the
letter and the practice of the law ; for both
the government and the nation revolted from
the execution of laws which were regarded,
not as the results of calm deliberation or
consummate wisdom, but rather as the fruit
of a series of perverse and malignant acci
dents, impelling the adoption of temporary
and short-sighted expedients. The reve
rence, therefore, generally due to old esta
blishments, cannot belong to such laws.
This most singular, and most injurious op
position of the legislative enactments, and
their judicial enforcement, has repeatedly
attracted the attention of a distinguished in
dividual, who unites in himself every quality
that could render him one of the greatest
ornaments of this House, and whom, as he
is no longer a member, I may be permitted
to name, — I mean Sir William Grant, — a man
who can never be mentioned by those who
know him without the expression of their
admiration — a man who is an honour, not
merely to the profession which he has adorn
ed but to the age in which he lives — a man
who is at once the greatest master of reason
and of the power of enforcing it, — whose
sound judgment is accompanied by the most
perspicuous comprehension, — whose views,
especially on all subjects connected with
legislation, or the administration of the law,
are directed by the profoundest wisdom, —
whom no one ever approaches without feel
ing his superiority, — who only wants the two
vices of ostentation and ambition (vices con
temned by the retiring simplicity and noble
modesty of his nature) to render his high
talents and attainments more popularly at
tractive. We have his authority for the
assertion, that the principle of the Criminal
Law is diametrically opposite to its practice.
On one occasion particularly, when his atten
tion was called to the subject, he declared it
to be impossible " that both the law and the
practice could be right ; that the toleration
of such discord wras an anomaly that ought
to be removed } and that, as the law might
be brought to an accordance with the prac
tice, but the practice could never be brought
to an accordance with the law, the law
ought to be altered for a wiser and more
humane system." At another time, the same
eminent individual used the remarkable ex
pression, " that during the last century, there
had been a general confederacy of prosecu
tors, witnesses, counsel, juries, judges, arid
the advisers of the Crown, to prevent the
execution of the Criminal Law." Is it fitting
that a system should continue which the
whole body of the intelligent community
combine to resist, as a disgrace to our nature
and nation ?
Sir, I feel that I already owe much to the
indulgence of the House, and I assure you
that I shall be as concise as the circum
stances of the case, important as it confess
edly is, will allow ; and more especially in
67
the details attendant upon it. The Noble
Lord last night dwelt much upon the conse
quences of a transition from war to peace in
the multiplication of crimes; but, upon con
sulting experience, I do not find that his
position is borne out. It is not true that
crime always diminishes during a state of
war, or that it always increases after its con
clusion. In the Seven-Years' War, indeed,
the number of crimes was augmented, —
decreasing after its termination. They were
more numerous in the seven years preceding
the American War. and continued to advance,
not only during tnose hostilities, but, I am
ready to admit, after the restoration of peace.
It is, however, quite correct to state, that
there was no augmentation of crime which
much outran the "progress of population until
within about the last twenty, and more es
pecially within the last ten years ] and that
the augmentation which has taken place is
capable of being accounted for, without any
disparagement to the ancient and peculiar
probity of the British character.
As to the variations which have taken
place in the administration of the law, with
respect to the proportion of the executions
to the convictions, some of them have cer
tainly been remarkable. Under the various
administrations of the supreme office of the
law, down to the time of Lord Thurlow, the
proportion of executions to convictions was
for the most part uniform. Lord Rosslyn
was the first Chancellor under whose admi
nistration a great diminution of executions,
as compared with convictions, is to be re
marked ; and this I must impute, not only to
the gentle disposition of that distinguished
lawyer, but to the liberality of those princi
ples which, however unfashionable they may
now have become, were entertained by his
early connexions. Under Lord Rosslyn's
administration of the law, the proportion of
executions was diminished to one in eight,
one in nine, and finally as low as one in
eleven.
But, Sir, to the Noble Lord's argument,
grounded on the diminution in the number
of executions, I wish to say a few words.
If we divide crimes into various sorts, sepa
rating the higher from the inferior offences,
we shall find, that with respect to the smaller
felonies, the proportion of executions to con
victions has been one in twenty, one in thirty,
and in one year, only one in sixty. In the
higher felonies (with the exception of bur
glary and robbery, which are peculiarly cir
cumstanced) the law has been uniformly
executed. The Noble Lord's statement,
therefore, is applicable only to the first-men
tioned class; and a delusion would be the
result of its being applied unqualifiedly to
the whole criminal code.
For the sake of clearness, I will divide
the crimes against which our penal code
denounces capital punishments into three
classes. In the first of these I include mur
der, and murderous offences, or such offences
as are likely to lead to murder, such as shoot-
2U
530
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
ing or stabbing, with a view to the malicious
destruction of human life : — in these cases
the law is invariably executed. In the se
cond class appear arson, highway-robbery,
piracy, and other offences, to the number of
nine or ten, which it is not necessary, and
which it would be painful, to specify : — on
these, at present, the law is carried into
effect in a great many instances. In these
two first divisions I will admit, for the pre
sent, that it would be unsafe to propose any
alteration. Many of the crimes compre
hended in them ought to be punished with
death. Whatever attacks the life or the
dwelling of man deserves such a punish
ment ; and I am persuaded that a patient and
calm investigation would remove the objec
tions of a number of well-meaning persons
who are of a contrary opinion.*
But looking from these offences at the head
of the criminal code to the other extremity
of it, I there find a third class of offences, —
some connected with frauds of various kinds,
but others of the most frivolous and fantastic
description, — amounting in number to about
one hundred and fifty, against which the
punishment of death is still denounced by
the law. although never carried into effect.
Indeed, it would be most absurd to suppose
that an execution would in such cases be
now tolerated, when one or two instances
even in former times excited the disgust and
horror of all good men. There can be no
doubt — even the Noble Lord, I apprehend,
will not dispute — that such capital felonies
should be expunged from our Statute Book
as a disgrace to it. Can any man think, for
instance, that such an offence as that of
cutting down a hop vine or a young tree in a
gentleman's pleasure ground should remain
punishable with death ? The " Black Act,"
as it is called, alone created about twenty-
one capital felonies, — some of them of the
most absurd description. Bearing particular
weapons, — having the face blackened at
night, — and being found disguised upon the
high road, — were some of them. So that if
a gentleman is going to a masquerade, and
is obliged to pass along a highway, he is
liable, if detected, to be hanged without
benefit of clergy ! Who, again, can endure
the idea that a man is exposed to the punish
ment of death for such an offence as cutting
the head of a fish-pond ? Sir. there are many
more capital felonies of a similar nature,
which are the relics of barbarous times, and
which are disgraceful to the character of a
thinking and enlightened people. For such
offences punishments quite adequate and
sufficiently numerous would remain. It is
undoubtedly true, that for the last seventy
years no capital punishment has been inflict
ed for such offences ; the statutes denouncing
them are therefore needless. And I trust I
shall never live to see the day when any
* This passage is left intact on account of the
momentous nature of its subject-matter, but the
speaker has evidently been here too loosely re
ported.— ED.
member of this House will rise and maintain
that a punishment avowedly needless ought
to be continued.
The debatable ground on this subject is
afforded by a sort of middle class of offences,
consisting of larcenies and frauds of a hei
nous kind, although not accompanied with
violence and terror. It is no part of my pro
posal to take away the discretion which is
reposed in the judicial authorities respecting
these offences. Nothing in my mind would
be more imprudent than to establish an un-
deviating rule of law, — a rule that in many
cases would have a more injurious and un
just operation than can easily be imagined.
I do not, therefore, propose in any degree to
interfere with the discretion of the judges, in
cases in which the punishment of death
ought, under certain aggravated circum
stances, to attach, but only to examine whe
ther or not it is fit that death should remain
as the punishment expressly directed by the
law for offences, which in its administration
are never, even under circumstances of the
greatest aggravation, more severely pun
ished than with various periods of trans
portation.
It is impossible to advert to the necessity
of reforming this part of the law, without
calling to mind the efforts of that highly
distinguished and universally lamented indi
vidual, by whom the attention of Parliament
was so often roused to the subject of our
Eenal code. Towards that excellent man I
3lt all the regard which a friendship of
twenty years' duration naturally inspired,
combined with the respect which his emi
nently superior understanding irresistibly
claimed. But I need not describe his me
rits ; to them ample justice has been already
done by the unanimous voice of the Empire,
seconded by the opinion of all the good men
of all nations, — and especially by the eulo-
gium of the Honourable Member for Bram-
ber,* whose kindred virtues and kindred
eloquence enable him justly to appreciate
the qualities of active philanthropy and pro
found wisdom. I trust the House will bear
with me if, while touching on this subject, I
cannot restrain myself from feebly express
ing my admiration for the individual by wh^se
benevolent exertions it has been consecrated.
There was, it is well known, an extraordinary
degree of original sensibility belonging to the
character of my lamented Friend, combined
with the greatest moral purity, and inflexi
bility of public principle : but yet, with these
elements, it is indisputably true, that his
conduct as a statesman was always con
trolled by a sound judgment, duly and de
liberately weighing every consideration of
legislative expediency and practical policy.
This was remarkably shown in his exertions
respecting the criminal code. In his endea
vours to rescue his country from the disgrace
arising out of the character of that code, he
never indulged in any visionary views ; — he
* Mr. Wilberforce— ED.
ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW.
531
was at once humane and just, — generous and
wise. With all that ardour of temperament
with which he unceasingly pursued the pub
lic good, never was there a reformer more
circumspect in his means, — more prudent in
his end ; — and yet all his propositions were
opposed. In one thing, however, he suc
ceeded, — he redeemed his country from a
great disgrace, by putting a stop to that ca
reer of improvident and cruel legislation,
which, from session to session was multiply
ing capital felonies. Sir, while private virtue
and public worth are distinguished among
men, the memory of Sir Samuel Romilly will
remain consecrated in the history of hu
manity. According to the views of my la
mented Friend, the punishment of death
ought not to attach by law to any of those
offences for which transportation is a suffi
cient punishment, and for which, in the ordi
nary administration of the law by the judges,
transportation alone is inflicted. In that view
I entirely concur.
I will not now enter into any discussion
of the doctrine of Dr. Paley with respect to
the expediency of investing judges with the
power of inflicting death even for minor
offences, where, in consequence of the cha
racter of the offence and of the offender,
some particular good may appear to be pro
mised from the example of such a punish
ment on a mischievous individual. The
question is, whether the general good de
rived by society from the existence of such
a state of the law is so great as to exceed
the evil. And I may venture to express my
conviction, that the result of such an inquiry
as that which I propose will be to show, that
the balance of advantage is decidedly against
the continuance of the existing system. The
late Lord Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas,* whose authority is undoubtedly en
titled • to great consideration in discussing
this question, expressed an opinion, that if
the punishment of death for certain crimes
were inflicted only in one case out of sixty,
yet that the chance of having to undergo
such a punishment mast serve to impose an
additional terror on the ill-disposed, and so
operate to prevent the commission of crime.
But I, On the contrary, maintain that such a
terror is not likely to arise out of this mode
of administering the law. I am persuaded
that a different result must ensue ; because
this difference in the punishment of the
same offence must naturally encourage a
calculation in the mind of a person disposed
to commit crime, of the manifold chances
of escaping its penalties. It must also ope
rate on a malefactor's mind in diminution
of the terrors of transportation. Exulting
at his escape from the more dreadful inflic
tion, joy and triumph mast absorb his facul
ties, eclipsing and obscuring those appre
hensions and regrets writh which he would
otherwise have contemplated the lesser
penalty, and inducing him, like Cicero, to
* Sir Vicary Gibbs.— ED.
consider exile as a refuge rather than as a
punishment. In support of this opinion I
will quote the authority of one who, if I
cannot describe him as an eminent lawyer,
all will agree was a man deeply skilled in
human nature, as well as a most active and
experienced magistrate, — I allude to the cele
brated Henry Fielding. In a work of his,
published at the period when the first Parlia
mentary inquiry of this nature was in pro-
ress, entituled ': A Treatise on the Causes of
!rime," there is this observation : — "A single
pardon excites a greater degree of hope in
the minds of criminals than twenty execu
tions excite of fear." Now this argument I
consider to be quite analagous to that which
I have just used with reference to the opinion
of the late Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas, because the chance of escape from
death, in either case, is but too apt to dis
lodge all thought of the inferior punishments.
But, Sir, another most important considera
tion is, the effect which the existing system
of law has in deterring injured persons from
commencing prosecutions, and witnesses
from coming forward in support of them.
The chances of escape are thus multiplied
by a system which, wrhile it discourages the
prosecutor, increases the temptations of the
offender. The better part of mankind, in
those grave and reflecting moments which
the prosecution for a capital offence must
always bring with it, frequently shrink from
the task imposed on them. The indisposi
tion to prosecute while the laws continue so
severe is matter of public notoriety. This
has been evinced in various cases. It is not
long since an act of George II., for preserving
bleaching-grounds from depredation, was
repealed on the proposition of Sir Samuel
Romilly, backed by a petition from the pro
prietors of those grounds, who expressed
their unwillingness to prosecute while the
law continued so severe, and who repre
sented that by the impunity thus given to
offenders, their property was left compara
tively unprotected. An eminent city banker
has also been very recently heard to declare
in this House, that bankers frequently de
clined to prosecute for the forgery of their
notes in consequence of the law which de
nounced the punishment of death against
such an offence. It is notorious that the
concealment of a bankrupt's effects is very
seldom prosecuted, because the law pro
nounces that to be a capital offence : it is
undoubtedly, however, a great crime, and
would not be allowed to enjoy such com
parative impunity were the law less severe.
There is another strong fact on this sub
ject, to which I may refer, as illustrating
the general impression respecting the Crimi
nal Law j — I mean the Act which was passed
in 1812, by which all previous enactments
of capital punishments for offences against
the revenue not specified in it were repealed.
That Act I understand was introduced at the
instance of certain officers of the revenue.
And why ? — but because from the excessive
532
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
severity of the then existing revenue laws,
the collectors of the revenue themselves
found that they were utterly inefficient. But
I have the highest official authority to sus
tain my view of the criminal code. I have
the authority of the late Chief Baron of the
Exchequer, Sir Archibald Macdonald, who,
when he held the office of Attorney-General,
which he discharged with so much honour
to himself, and advantage to the country,
distinctly expressed his concurrence in the
opinion of Lord Bacon that great penalties
deadened the force of the laws.
The House will still bear in mind, that I
do not call for the entire abolition of the
punishment of death, but only for its aboli
tion in those cases in which it is very rarely,
and ought never to be, carried into effect.
In those cases I propose to institute other,
milder, but more invariable punishments.
The courts of law should, in some cases, be
armed with the awful authority of taking
away life: but in order to render that au
thority fully impressive, I am convinced that
the punishment of death should be abolished
where inferior punishments are not only ap
plicable, but are usually applied. Nothing
indeed can, in my opinion, be more injurious
than the frequency with which the sentence
of death is at the present time pronounced
from the judgment-seat, with all the so
lemnities prescribed on such an occasion,
when it is evident, even to those against
whom it is denounced, that it will never be
carried into effect. Whenever that awful
authority, — the jurisdiction over life and
death, is disarmed of its terrors by such a
formality, the law is deprived of its benefi
cent energy, and society of its needful de
fence.
Sir William Grant, in a report of one of
his speeches which I have seen, observes,
" that the great utility of the punishment of
death consists in the horror which it is natu
rally calculated to excite against the crimi
nal ; and that all penal laws ought to be in
unison with the public feeling ; for that when
they are not so, and especially when they
are too severe, the influence of example is
lost, sympathy being excited towards the
criminal, while horror prevails against the
law." Such indeed was also the impression
of Sir William Blackstone, of Mr. Fox, and
of Mr. Pitt. It is also the opinion of Lord
Grenville, expressed in a speech* as dis
tinguished for forcible reasoning, profound
wisdom, and magnificent eloquence, as any
that I have ever heard.
It must undoubtedly happen, even in the
best regulated conditions of society, that the
laws will be sometimes at variance with Ihe
opinions and feelings of good men. But
that, in a country like Great Britain, they
should remain permanently in a state not
less inconsistent with obvious policy than
with the sentiments of all the enlightened
* Since published by Mr. Basil Montagu, in his
Collections On the Punishment of Death. — ED.
and respectable classes of the community, is
indeed scarcely credible. I should not be
an advocate for the repeal of any law be
cause it happened to be in opposition to
temporary prejudices: but I object to the
laws to which I have alluded, because they
are inconsistent with the deliberate and per
manent opinion of the public. In all nations
an agreement between the laws and the
general feeling of those who are subject to
them is essential to their efficacy : but this
agreement becomes of unspeakable impor
tance in a country in which the charge of
executing the laws is committed in a great
measure to the people themselves.
I know not how to contemplate, without
serious apprehension, the consequences that
may attend the prolongation of a system like
the present. It is my anxious desire to re
move, before they become insuperable, the
impediments that are already in the way of
our civil government. My object is to make
the laws popular, — to reconcile them with
public opinion, and thus to redeem their
character. It is to render the execution of
them easy, — the terror of them overwhelm
ing, — the efficacy of them complete, — that I
implore the House to give to this subject their
most grave consideration. I beg leave to re
mind them, that Sir William Blackstone has
already pointed out the indispensable neces
sity under which juries frequently labour of
committing, in estimating the value of stolen
property, what he calls " pious perjuries."
The resort to this practice in one of the
wisest institutions of the country, so clearly
indicates the public feeling, that to every
wise statesman it must afford an instructive
lesson. The just and faithful administration
of the laxv in all its branches is the great
bond of society, — the point at which autho
rity and obedience meet most nearly. If
those who hold the reins of government, in
stead of attempting a remedy, content them
selves with vain lamentations at the growth
of crime, — if they refuse to conform the laws
to the opinions and dispositions of the public
mind, that growth must continue to spread
among us a just alarm.
With respect to petitions upon this sub
ject, I have reason to believe that, in a few
days, many will be presented from a body
of men intimately connected with the ad
ministration of the Criminal Law, — I mean
the magistracy of the country, — praying for
its revision. Among that body I understand
that but little difference of opinion prevails,
and that when their petitions shall be pre
sented, they will be found subscribed by
many of the most respectable individuals
in the empire as to moral character, enlight
ened talent, and general consideration. I
did not, however, think it right to postpone
my motion for an inquiry so important until
those petitions should be actually laid on
the table. I should, indeed, have felt ex
treme regret if the consideration of this ques
tion had been preceded by petitions drawn
up and agreed to at popular and tumultuary
ON THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL LAW.
533
assemblies. No one can be more unwilling
than myself to see any proceeding that can
in the slightest degree interfere with the
calm, deliberate, and dignified consideration
of Parliament, more especially on a subject
of this nature.'
The Petition from the City of London,
however, ought to be considered in another
light, and is entitled to peculiar attention.
It proceeds from magistrates accustomed to
administer justice in a populous metropolis,
and who necessarily possess very great ex
perience. It proceeds from a body of most
respectable traders — men peculiarly exposed
to those depredations against which Capital
Punishment is denounced. An assembly so
composed, is one of weight and dignity; and
its representations on this subject are enti
tled to the greater deference, inasmuch as
the results of its experience appear to be in
direct opposition to its strongest prejudices.
The first impulse of men whose property is
attacked, is to destroy those by whom the
attack is made : but the enlightened traders
of London perceive, that the weapon of
destruction which our penal code affords, is
ineffective for its purpose ; they therefore,
disabusing themselves of vulgar prejudice,
call for the revision of that code.
Another Petition has been presented to the
House wThich I cannot pass over without no
tice : I allude to one from that highly merito
rious and exemplary body of men — the Qua
kers. It has, I think, been rather hardly
dealt by; and has been described as con
taining very extravagant recommendations ;
although the prayer writh which it concludes
is merely for such a change in the Criminal
Law as may be consistent with the ends of
justice. The body of the Petition certainly
deviates into a speculation as to the future
existence of some happier condition of so
ciety, in which mutual goodwill may render
severe punishments unnecessary. But this
is a speculation in which, however unsanc-
tioned by experience, virtuous and philoso
phical men have in all ages indulged them
selves, and by it have felt consoled for the
evils by which they have been surrounded.
The hope thus expressed, has exposed these
respectable Petitioners to be treated with
levity : but they are much too enlightened
not to know that with such questions states
men and lawyers, whose arrangements and
regulations must be limited by the actual
state and the necessary wants of a commu
nity, have no concern. And while I make
these remarks, I cannot but request the
House to recollect what description of people
it is to whom I apply them, — a people who
alone of all the population of the kingdom
send neither paupers to your parishes, nor
criminals to your jails, — a people who think
a spirit of benevolence an adequate security
to mankind (a spirit which certainly wants
but the possibility of its being universal to
constitute the perfection of our nature) — a
people who have ever been foremost in un
dertaking and promoting every great and
good work, — who were among the first to
engage in the abolition of the slave trade,
and who, by their firm yet modest perseve
rance, paved the way for the accomplish
ment of that incalculable benefit to humanity.
Recollecting all this, and recollecting the
channel through which this Petition was pre
sented to the House,* I consider it to be en
titled to anything but disrespect. The aid
of such a body must always be a source of
encouragement to those who are aiming at
any amelioration of the condition of human
beings; and on this occasion it inspires me,
not only with perfect confidence in the good
ness of my cause, but with the greatest
hopes of its success.
ED.
It had been presented by Mr. Wilberforce. —
2u 2
534
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
HI SPEECH - , • ;
ON MR. BROUGHAM'S MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS TO THE CROWN,
WITH REFERENCE TO THE TRIAL AND CONDEMNATION OF
THE REV. JOHN SMITH, OF DEMERAEA,
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE IST OF JUNE, 1824.*
MR. SPEAKER, — Even if I had not been
loudly called upon, and directly challenged
by the Honourable Gentleman, t — even if his
accusations, now repeated after full conside
ration, did not make it my duty to vindicate
the Petition which I had the honour to pre
sent from unjust reproach, I own that I should
have been anxious to address the House on
this occasion ; not to strengthen a case al
ready invincible, but to bear my solemn tes
timony against the most unjust and cruel
abuse" of power, under a false pretence of
* The Rev. John Smith, an Independent mi
nister, had been sent out to Demerara in the year
1816 by the London Missionary Society. The
exemplary discharge of his sacred functions on the
eastern shore of that colony for six years, amid
difficulties which are said to have distinguished
Demerara even among all her sister slave colo
nies, had so far impaired his health, that he was,
by medical advice, on the point of leaving the
country for a more salubrious climate, when, in
the month of August, 1823, a partial insurrection
of the negroes in his neighbourhood proved the
means of putting a period alike to his labours and
his life. The rising was not of an extensive or
organised character, and was, in fact, suppressed
immediately, with little loss of life or property.
Its suppression was, however, immediately fol
lowed by the establishment of martial law, and
the arrest of Mr. Smith as privy beforehand to
the plot. As the evidence in support of this
charsre had necessarily to be extracted for the most
part from prisoners trembling for their own lives,
incurable suspicion would seem to attach to the
whole of it ; though candour must admit, on a
careful consideration of the whole circumstances,
including the sensitive feelings and ardent tempe
rament of the accused, that it was not impossible
that he had been made the involuntary depositary
of the confidence of his flock. It was not till he
had been in prison for nearly two months that Mr.
Smith, on the 14th of October, was brought to
trial before a court-martial. After proceedings
abounding in irregularities, which lasted for six
weeks, he was found guilty, and sentenced to
death, but was recommended to the mercy of the
Crown. He died in prison on the 6th of February
following, awaiting the result. Sir James Mack
intosh had presented, at an earlier period of the
session, the appeal of the London Missionary So-
«ciety on behalf of his memory and his widow.
The present speech was delivered in support of
Mr. Brougham's motion for an Address to the
Crown on the subject. — ED.
t Mr. Wilmot Horton, who conducted the de
fence of the authorities at Demerara. — ED.
law, that has in our times dishonoured any
portion of the British empire. I am sorry
that the Honourable Gentleman, after so long
an interval for reflection, should have this
night repeated those charges against the
London Missionary Society, which when he
first made them I thought rash, and which I
am now entitled to treat as utterly ground
less. I should regret to be detained by them
for a moment, from the great question of hu
manity and justice before us, if I did not feel
that they excite a prejudice against the case
of Mr. Smith, and that the short discussion
sufficient to put them aside, leads directly
to the vindication of the memory of that op
pressed man.
The Honourable Gentleman calls the Lon
don Missionary Society " bad philosophers,"
— by which, I presume, he means bad rea-
soners, — because they ascribe the insurrec
tion partly " to the long and inexplicable
delay of the government of Demerara in
promulgating the instructions favourable to
the slave population;" and because he,
adopting one of the arguments of that speech
by which the deputy judge-advocate dis
graced his office, contends that a partial re
volt cannot have arisen from a general cause •
of discontent, — a position belied by the
whole course of history, and which is founded
upon the absurd assumption, that one part
of a people, from circumstances sometimes
easy, sometimes very hard to be discovered,
may not be more provoked than others by
grievances common to all. So inconsistent,
indeed, is the defence of the rulers of De
merara with itself, that in another part of the
case they represent a project for an universal
insurrection as having been formed, and
ascribe its being, in fact, confined to the east
coast, to unaccountable accidents. Paris, the
ringleader, in what is called his " confession,"
(to be found in the Demerara Papers, No. II.,
p. 21,) says, "The whole colony was to have
risen on Monday; and I cannot account for
the reasons why only the east rose at the
time appointed." So that, according to this
part of their own evidence, they must aban
don their argument, and own the discontent
to have been as general as the grievance.
Another argument against the Society's
CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH.
535
Petition, is transplanted from the same nur
sery of weeds. It is said, that cruelty can
not have contributed to this insurrection, be
cause the leaders of the revolt were persons
little likely to have been cruelly used, being
among the most trusted of the slaves. Those
who employ so gross a fallacy, must be con
tent to be called worse reasoners than the
London Missionary Society. It is, indeed,
one of the usual common-places in all cases
of discontent and tumult ; but it is one of the
most futile. The moving cause of most in
surrections, and in the opinion of two great
men (Sully and Burke) of all, is the distress
of the great body of insurgents ; but the ring
leaders are generally, and almost necessa
rily, individuals who, being more highly en
dowed or more happily situated, are raised
above the distress which is suffered by those
of whom they take the command.
But the Honourable Gentleman's principal
charge against the Petition, is the allegation
contained in it, " that the life of no white
man was voluntarily taken away by the
slaves." When I heard the confidence with
which a confutation of this averment was
announced, I own I trembled for the accu
racy of the Petition. But what was my as
tonishment, when I heard the attempt at
confutation made ! In the Demerara Papers.
No. II., there is an elaborate narrative of an
attack on the house of Mrs. Walrand, by the
insurgents, made by that lady, or for her — a
caution in statements which the subsequent
parts of these proceedings prove to be neces
sary in Demerara. The Honourable Gentle
man has read the narrative, to show that two
lives were unhappily lost in this skirmish;
and this he seriously quotes as proving the
inaccuracy of the Petition. Does he believe.
— can he hope to persuade the House, that
the Petitioners meant to say, that there was
an insurrection without fighting, or skirmishes
without death ? The attack and defence of
houses and posts are a necessary part of all
revolts; and deaths are the natural conse
quences of that, as well as of every species
of warfare. The revolt in this case was,
doubtless, an offence ; the attack on the
house was a part of that offence: the de
fence was brave and praiseworthy. The loss
of lives is deeply to be deplored ; but it was
inseparable from all such unhappy scenes :
it could riot be the "voluntary killing," in
tended to be denied in the Petition. The
Governor of Demerara, in a despatch to Lord
Bathurst. makes the same statement with
the Petition : — " I have not." he says, " heard
of one while who was deliberately murder
ed :" yet he was perfectly aware of the fact
which has been so triumphantly displayed
to the House. "At plantation Nabaclis,
where the whites were on their guard, two
out of three were killed in the defence of
their habitations." The defence was legiti
mate, and the deaths lamentable : but as the
Governor distinguishes them from murder,
so do the Society. They deny that there
was any killing in cold blood. They did not
mean to deny, — any more than to affirm —
(for the Papers which mention the fact were
printed since their Petition was drawn up),
that there was killing in battle, when each
party were openly struggling to destroy their
antagonists and to preserve themselves. The
Society only denies that this insurrection was
dishonoured by those murders of the unof
fending or of the vanquished, which too fre
quently attend the revolts of slaves. The
Governor of Demerara agrees with them;
the whole facts of the case support them ;
and the quotation of the Honourable Gentle
man leaves their denial untouched. The re
volt was absolutely unstained by excess.
The killing of whites, even in action, was so
small as not to appear in the trial of Mr.
Smith, or in the first accounts laid before us.
I will not stop to inquire whether "killing in
action" may not, in a strictly philosophical
sense, be called "voluntary." It is enough
for me, that no man will call it calm, need
less, or deliberate.
This is quite sufficient to justify even the
words of the Petition. The substance of it
is now more than abundantly justified by the
general spirit of humanity which pervaded
the unhappy insurgents, — by the unparal
leled forbearance and moderation which
characterised the insurrection. On this part
of the subject, so important to the general
question, as well as to the character of the
Petition for accuracy, the London Missionary
Society appeal to the highest authority, that
of the Reverend Mr. Austin, not a missionary
or a Methodist, but the chaplain of the colo
ny, a minister of the Church of England,
who has done honour even to that Church,
so illustrious through the genius and learn
ing and virtue of many of her clergy, by his
Christian charity, — by his inflexible princi
ples of justice. — by his intrepid defence of
innocence against all the power of a govern
ment, and against the still more formidable
prejudices of an alarmed and incensed com
munity. No man ever did himself more
honour by the admirable combination of
strength of character with sense of duty;
which needed nothing but a larger and more
elevated theatre to place him among those
who will be in all ages regarded by mankind
as models for imitation and objects of reve
rence. That excellent person, — speaking of
Mr. Smith, a person with whom he was pre
viously unacquainted, a minister of a differ
ent persuasion, a missionary, considered by
many of the established clergy as a rival, if
not an enemy, a man then odious to the body
of the colonists, whose good-will must have
been so important to Mr. Austin's comfort, —
after declaring his conviction of the perfect
innocence and extraordinary merit of the
persecuted missionary, proceeds to bear tes
timony to the moderation of the insurgents,
and to the beneficent influence of Mr. Smith,
in producing that moderation, in language,
far warmer and bolder than that of the Peti-
| tion. "I feel no hesitation in declaring,"
i says he, "from the intimate knowledge which
536
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
my most anxious inquiries have obtained,
that in the late scourge which the hand of
an all-wise Creator has inflicted on this ill-
fated country, nothing hut those religious
impressions which, under Providence, Mr.
Smith has been instrumental in fixing, — no
thing but those principles of the Gospel of
Peace, which he had been proclaiming, could
have prevented a dreadful effusion of blood
here, and saved the lives of those very per
sons who are now, I shudder to write it,
seeking his life."
And here I beg the House to weigh this
testimony. It is not only valuable from the
integrity, impartiality, and understanding of
the witness, but from his opportunities of
acquiring that intimate knowledge of facts
on which he rests his opinion. He was a
member of the Secret Commission of Inquiry
established on this occasion, which was
armed with all the authority of government,
and which received much evidence relating
to this insurrection not produced on the trial
of Mr. Smith.
This circumstance immediately brings me
to the consideration of the hearsay evidence
illegally received against Mr. Smith. I do
not merely or chiefly object io it on grounds
purely technical, or as being 'inadmissible
by the law of England. I abstain from taking
any part in the discussions of lawyers or phi
losophers, with respect to the wisdom of our
rules of evidence ; though I think that there
is more to be said for them than the inge
nious objectors are aware of. What I com
plain of is, the admission of hearsay, of the
vaguest sort, under circumstances where
such an admission was utterly abomina
ble. In what I am about to say, I shall not
quote from the Society's edition of the Trial,
but from that which is officially before the
House: so that I may lay aside all that has
been said on the superior authority of the
latter. Mr. Austin, when examined in
chief, stated, that though originally prepos
sessed against Mr. Smith, yet. in the course
of numerous inquiries, he could not see any
circumstances which led to a belief that Mr.
Smith had bean, in any degree, instrumental
in the insurrection ; but that, on the contrary,
when he (Mr. Austin) said to the slaves, that
bloodshed had not marked the progress of
their insurrection, their answer was : — " It is
contrary to the religion we profess" (which
had been taught to them by Mr. Smith) : —
" we cannot give life, and therefore we will
not take it." This evidence of the innocence
of Mr. Smith, and of the humanity of the
slaves, appears to have alarmed the impartial
judge-advocate ; and he proceeded, in his
cross-examination, to ask Mr. Austin whether
any of the negroes had ever insinuated, that
their misfortunes were occasioned by the
prisoner's influence over them, or by the
doctrines he taught them? Mr. Austin,
understanding this question to refer to what
passed before the Committee, appears to
have respectfully hesitated about the pro
priety of disclosing these proceedings ; upon
which the Court, in a tone of discourtesy
and displeasure, which a reputable advocate
for a prisoner would not have used towards
such a witness in this country, addressed
the following illegal and indecent question
to Mr. Austin : — " Can you take it upon
yourself to swear that you do not recollect
any insinuations of that sort at the Board of
Evidence 1" How that question came to be
waived, does not appear in the official copy.
It is almost certain, however, from the pur
port of the next question, that the Society's
Report is correct in supplying this defect,
and that Mr. Austin still doubted its sub
stantial propriety, and continued to resent
its insolent form. He was actually asked,
" whether he heard, before the Board of Evi
dence, any negro imputing the cause of re
volt to the prisoner ?" He answered, " Yes :"
— and the inquiry is pursued no further. I
again request the House to bear in mind, that
this question and answer rest on the autho
rity of the official copy ; and I repeat, that I
disdain to press ti*3 legal objection of its
being hearsay "evidence, and to contend, that
to put such a question and receive such an
answer, were acts of mere usurpation in any
English tribunal.
Much higher matter arises on this part of
the evidence. Fortunately for the interests
of truth, we are now in possession of the
testimony of the negroes before the Board
of Inquiry wrhich is adverted to in this ques
tion, and which, be it observed, was wholly
unknown to the unfortunate Mr. Smith. We
naturally ask, why these negroes themselves
were riot produced as witnesses, if they were
alive ; or, if they were executed, how it hap
pened that none of the men who gave such
important evidence before the Board of In
quiry were preserved to bear testimony
against him before the Court-martial ? Why
were they content with the much weaker
evidence actually produced? Why were
they driven to the necessity of illegally
obtaining, through 'Mr. Austin, what they
might have obtained from his informants ?
The reason is plain : — they disbelieved the
evidence of the negroes, who threw out the
" insinuations." or " imputations." That
might have been nothing; but they kneiv
that all mankind would have rejected that
pretended evidence with horror. They knew
that the negroes, to whom their question
adverted, had told a tale to the Board of
Evidence, in comparison with which the
story of Titus Oates was a model of proba
bility, candour, and truth. One of them
(Sandy) said, that Mr. Smith told him, though
not a member of his congregation, nor even
a Christian, "that a good thing was come
for the negroes, and that if they did not seek
for it now, the whites would trample upon
them, and upon their sons and daughters, to
eternity."* Another (Paris) says, " that all
the male whites (except the doctors and
missionaries) were to be murdered, and all
* Demerara Papers, No. II. p. 26.
CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH.
537
the females distributed among the insur
gents j that one of their leaders was to be a
king, another to be a governor, and Mr.
Smith to be emperor j* that on Sunday, the
17th of August, Mr. Smith administered the
sacrament to several leading negroes, and to
Mr. Hamilton, the European overseer of the
estate Le Ressouvenir ; that he swore the
former on the Bible to do him no harm when
they had conquered the country, and after
wards blessed their revolt, saying, "Go; as
you have begun in Christ, you must end in
Christ !;;t All this the prosecutor concealed,
with the knowledge of the Court. While
they asked, whether Mr. Austin had heard
statements made against Mr. Smith before
the Board of Evidence, they studiously con
cealed all those incredible, monstrous, im
possible fictions which accompanied these
statements, and which would have annihi
lated their credit. Whether the question
was intended to discredit Mr. Austin, or to
prejudice Mr. Smith, it was, in either case,
an atrocious attempt to take advantage of
the stories told by the negroes, and at the
same time to screen them from scrutiny,
contradiction, disbelief, and abhorrence. If
these men could have been believed, would
they not have been produced on the trial 1
Paris, indeed, the author of this horrible fa
brication, charges Bristol, Manuel, and Azor,
three of the witnesses afterwards examined
on the trial of Mr. Smith, with having been
parties to the dire and execrable oath: not
one of them alludes to such horrors ; all
virtually contradict them. Yet this Court-
martial sought to injure Mr. Austin, or to
contribute to the destruction of Mr. Smith.
by receiving as evidence a general state
ment of what was said by those whom they
could not believe, whom they durst not pro
duce, and who were contradicted by their
own principal witnesses. — who, if their
whole tale had been brought into view, would
have been driven out of any court with shouts
of execration.
I cannot yet leave this part of the subject.
It deeply affects the character of the whole
transaction. It shows the general terror,
which was so powerful as to stimulate the
slaves to the invention of such monstrous
falsehoods. It throws light on that species
of skill with which the prosecutors kept
back the absolutely incredible witnesses, and
brought forward only those who were dis
creet enough to tell a more plausible story,
and on the effect which the circulation of
the fictions, which were too absurd to be
avowed, must have had in exciting the body
of the colonists to the most relentless ani
mosity against the unfortunate Mr. Smith.
It teaches us to view with the utmost jea
lousy the more guarded testimony actually
produced against him, which could not be
exempt from the influence of the same fears
and prejudices. It authorises me to lay a
* Demarara Papers, No. II. p. 30.
t Ibid. p. 41.
68
much more than ordinary stress on every
defect of the evidence; because, in such
circumstances, I am warranted in affirming
that whatever was not proved, could not have
been proved.
But in answer to all this, we are asked by
the Honourable Gentleman, "Would Presi
dent Wray have been a party to the admission
of improper evidence V' Now, Sir, I wish
to say nothing disrespectful of Mr. Wray ;
and the rather, because he is well spoken
of by those whose good opinion is to be re
spected. We do not know that he may not
have dissented from every act of this Court-
martial. I should heartily rejoice to hear
that it was so : but I am aware we can
never know whether he did or not. The
Honourable Gentleman unwarily asks, —
li Would not Mr. Wray have publicly pro
tested against illegal questions'?" Does he
not know, or has he forgotten, that every
member of a court-martial is bound by oath
not to disclose its proceedings'? But really,
Sir, I must say that the character of no man
can avail against facts : — - Tolle e causa
nomen Catonis." Let character protect ac-
cuied men, when there is any defect in the
evidence of their guilt: let it continue to
yield to them that protection which Mr.
Smith, in his hour of danger, did not receive
from the tenor of his blameless and virtu
ous life : let it be used for mercy, not for
severity. Let it never be allowed to aid a
prosecutor, or to strengthen the case of an
accuser. Let it be a shield to cover the
accused : but let it never be converted into
a dagger, by which he is to be stabbed to
the heart. Above all, let it not be used to
destroy his good name, after his life has been
taken away.
The question is. as has been stated by the
Honourable Gentleman, whether, on a review
of the whole evidence, Mr. Smith can be
pronounced to be guilty of the crimes charg
ed against him, and for which he was con
demned to death. That is the fact on which
issue is to be joined. In trying it, I can lay
my hand on my heart, and solemnly declare,
upon my honour, or whatever more sacred
sanction there be, that I believe him to have
been an innocent and virtuous man, — ille
gally tried, unjustly condemned to death,
and treated in a manner which would be
disgraceful to a civilized government in the
case of the worst criminal. I heartily rejoice
that the Honourable Gentleman has been
manly enough directly to dissent from my
Honourable Friend's motion, — that the case
is to be fairly brought to a decision, — and
that no attempt is to be made to evade a de
termination, by moving the previous question.
That, of all modes of proceeding, I should
most lament. Some may think Mr. Smith
guilty ; others will agree with me in thinking
him innocent ; but no one can doubt that it
would be dishonourable to the Grand Jury
of the Empire, to declare that they will not
decide, when a grave case is brought before
them, whether a British subject has been
538
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
lawfully or unlawfully condemned to death.
We still observe that usage of our forefathers,
according to which the House of Commons,
at the commencement of every session of
Parliament, nominates a grand committee of
justice ; and if, in ordinary cases, other modes
of proceeding have been substituted in prac
tice for this ancient institution, we may at
least respect it as a remembrancer of our
duty> which points out one of the chief ob
jects of the original establishment. All eva
sion is here refusal j and a denial of justice
in Parliament, more especially in an inquest
for blood, would be a fatal and irreparable
breach in the English constitution.
The question before us resolves itself into
several questions, relating to every branch
and stage of the proceedings against Mr.
Smith : — Whether the Court-martial had
jurisdiction ? whether the evidence against
him was warranted by law, or sufficient in
fact ?- whether the sentence was just, or the
punishment legal? These questions are so
extensive and important, that I cannot help
wishing they had not been still further en
larged and embroiled by the introduction of
matter wholly impertinent to any of them.
To what purpose has the Honourable Gen
tleman so often told us that Mr. Smith was
an "enthusiast ?" It would have been well
if he had given us some explanation of the
sense in which he uses so vague a term. If
he meant by it to denote the prevalence of
those disorderly passions, which, whatever
De their source or their object, always dis-
mrb the understanding, and often pervert the
moral sentiments, we have clear proof that
it did not exist in Mr. Smith, so far as to
produce the first of these unfortunate effects :
and it is begging the whole question in dis
pute, to assert that it manifested itself in him
by the second and still more fatal symptom.
There is, indeed, another temper of mind
called enthusiasm, which, though rejecting
the authority neither of reason nor of virtue,
triumphs over all the vulgar infirmities of
apostolical
fices, — which devotes the ease, the pleasure,
the interest, the ambition, the life of the
generous enthusiast, to the service of his fel
low-men. If Mr. Smith had not been sup
ported by an ardent zeal for the cause of God
and man, he would have been ill qualified
for a task so surrounded by disgust, by ca
lumny, by peril, as that of attempting to
pour instruction into the minds of unhappy
slaves. Much of this excellent quality was
doubtless necessary for so long enduring the
climate and the government of Demerara.
I am sorry that the Honourable Gentleman
should have deigned to notice any part of
the impertinent absurdities with which the
Court have suffered their minutes to be en
cumbered, and which have no more to do
with this insurrection than with the Popish
Plot. What is it to us that a misunderstand
ing occurred, three or four years ago, between
Mr. Smith and a person called Captain or
Doctor Macturk, whom he had the misfor
tune to have for a neighbour, — a misunder
standing long antecedent to this revolt, and
utterly unconnected with any part of it ! It
was inadmissible evidence ; and if it had been
otherwise, it proved nothing but the character
of the witness, — of the generous Macturk ;
who, having had a trifling difference with
his neighbour five years ago, called it to
mind at the moment when that neighbour's
life was in danger. Such is the chivalrous
magnanimity of Dr. Macturk ! If I were
infected by classical superstition, I should
forbid such a man to embark in the same
vessel with me. I leave him to those from
whom, if we may trust his name or his man
ners, he may be descended ; and I cannot
help thinking that he deserves, as well as
they, to be excluded from the territory of
Christians.
I very sincerely regret, Sir, that the Ho
nourable Gentleman, by quotations from Mr.
Smith's manuscript journal, should appear to
give any countenance or sanction to the de
testable violation of all law, humanity, and
decency, by which that manuscript was pro
duced in evidence against the writer. I am
sure that, when his official zeal has some
what subsided, he will himself regret that
he appealed to such a document. That
which is unlawfully obtained cannot be fairly
quoted. The production of a paper in evi
dence, containing general reflections and
reasonings, or narratives of fact, not relating
to any design, or composed to compass any
end, is precisely the iniquity perpetrated by
Jeffreys, in the case of Sidney. M'hich has
since been reprobated by all lawyers, and
which has been solemnly condemned by the
legislature itself. I deny, without fear of
contradiction from any one of the learned
lawyers who differ from me in this debate,
that such a paper has been received in evi
dence, since that abominable trial, by any
body of men calling themselves a court of
justice. Is there a single line in the extracts
produced which could have been written to
forward the insurrection ? I defy any man
to point it out ? Could it be admissible evi
dence on any other ground'? I defy any
lawyer to maintain it ; for, if it were to Be
said that it manifests opinions and feelings
favourable to negro insurrection, and which
rendered probable the participation of Mr.
Smith in this revolt, (having first denied the
fact,) I should point to the statute reversing
the attainder of Sidney, against whom the
like evidence was produced precisely under
the same pretence. Nothing can be more
decisive on this point than the authority of a
great judge and an excellent writer. "Had
the papers found in Sidney's closets," says
Mr. Justice Foster, " been plainly relative to
the other treasonable practices charged in
the indictment, they might have been read
in evidence against him, though not publish
ed. The papers found on Lord Preston were
written in prosecution of certain determined
CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH.
539
purposes which were treasonable, and then
(namely, at the time of writing) in the con
templation of the offenders." But the iniquity
in the case of Sidney vanishes, in comparison
with that of this trial. Sidney's manuscript
was intended for publication : it could not be
said that its tendency, when published, was
not to excite dispositions hostile to the bad
government which then existed ; it was per
haps in strictness indictable as a seditious
libel. The journal of Mr. Smith was meant
for no human eyes : it was seen by none ]
only extracts of it had been sent to his em
ployers in England, — as inoffensive, doubt
less, as their excellent instructions required.
In the midst of conjugal affection and confi
dence, it was withheld even from his wife.
It consisted of his communings with his
own mind, or the breathings of his thoughts
towards his Creator; it was neither addressed
nor communicated to any created being.
That such a journal should have been drag
ged from its sacred secrecy is an atrocity — I
repeat it — to which I know no parallel in the
annals of any court that has professed to ob
serve a semblance of justice.
I dwell on this circumstance, because the
Honourable Gentleman, by his quotation, has
compelled me to do so, and because the ad
mission of this evidence shows the temper
of the Court. For I think the extracts pro
duced are, in truth, favourable to Mr. Smith ]
and I am entitled to presume that the whole
journal, withheld as it is from us, — withheld
from the Colonial Office, though circulated
through the Court to excite West Indian pre
judices against Mr. Smith, — would, in the
eyes of impartial men, have been still more
decisively advantageous to his cause. How.
indeed, can I think otherwise'? What, in
the opinion of the judge-advocate, is the
capital crime of this journal ? It is, that in
it the prisoner " avows he feels an aversion
to slavery ! !" He was so depraved, as to be
an enemy of that admirable institution ! He
was so lost to all sense of morality, as to be
dissatisfied with the perpetual and unlimited
subjection of millions of reasonable creatures
to the will, and caprice, and passions of other
men ! This opinion, it is true, Mr. Smith
shared with the King, Parliament, and peo
ple of Great Britain, — with all wise and good
men, in all ages and nations : still, it is stated
by the judge-advocate as if it were some im
moral paradox, which it required the utmost
effrontery to " avow." One of the passages
produced in evidence, and therefore thought
either to be criminal in itself, or a proof of
criminal intention, well deserves attention :
— " While writing this, my very heart flut
ters at the almost incessant cracking of the
whip !" As the date of this part of the jour
nal is the 22d of March 1819, more than four
years before the insurrection, it cannot be
so distorted by human ingenuity as to be
brought to bear on the specific charges which
the Court had to try. What, therefore, is
the purpose for which it is produced 1 They
overheard; as it were, a man secretly com
plaining to himself of the agitation produced
in his bodily frame by the horrible noise of
a whip constantly resounding on the torn and
bloody backs of his fellow-creatures. As ha
does not dare to utter them to any other, the j
must have been unaffected, undesigning.
almost involuntary ejaculations of feeling
The discovery of them might have recalled
unhardened men from practices of which
they had thus casually perceived the impres
sion upon an uncorrupted heart. It could
hardly have been supposed that the most
practised negro-driver could have blamed
them more severely than by calling them
effusions of weak and womanish feelings.
But it seemed good to the prosecutors of Mr.
Smith to view these complaints in another
light. They regard " the fluttering of his
heart at the incessant cracking of the whip,"
as an overt act of the treason of " abhorring
slavery." They treat natural compassion,
and even its involuntary effects on the bodily
frame, as an offence. Such is the system of
their society, that they consider every man
who feels pity for sufferings, or indignation
against cruelty, as their irreconcilable enemy.
Nay, they receive a secret expression of
those feelings as evidence against a man on
trial for his life, in what they call a court of
justice. My Right Honourable Friend* has,
on a former occasion, happily characterised
the resistance, which has not been obscurely
threatened, against all measures for mitiga
ting the evils of slavery, as a " rebellion for
the whip." In the present instance we see
how sacred that instrument is held, — how
the right to use it is prized as one of the
dearest of privileges, — and in what manner
the most private murmur against its severest
inflictions is brought forward as a proof, that
he who breathes it must be prepared to
plunge into violence and blood.
In the same spirit, conversations are given
in evidence, long before the revolt, wholly
unconnected with it, and held with ignorant
men, who might easily misunderstand or
misremember them } in which Mr. Smith is
supposed to have expressed a general and
speculative opinion, that slavery never could
be mitigated, and that it must die a violent
death. These opinions the Honourable Gen
tleman calls " fanatical." Does he think Dr.
Johnson a fanatic, or a sectary, or a Metho
dist, or an enemy of established authority ?
But he must know from the most amusing
of books, that Johnson, when on a visit to
Oxford, perhaps when enjoying lettered hos
pitality at the table of the Master of Univer
sity College, t proposed as a toast, " Success
to the first revolt of negroes in the West In
dies !" He neither meant to make a jest of
such matters, nor to express a deliberate
wish for an event so full of horror, but merely
to express in the strongest manner his honest
hatred of slavery. For no man ever more de
tested actual oppression; though his Tory
* Mr. Canning. — ED.
t Dr. Wetherell, father of the Solicitor- General.
540
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
prejudices hindered him from seeing the
value of those liberal institutions which alone
secure society from oppression. This justice
will be universally done to the aged moralist,
who knew slavery only as a distant evil, —
whose ears were never wounded by the
cracking of the whip. Yet all the casual
expressions of the unfortunate Mr. Smith, in
the midst of dispute, or when he was fresh
from the sight of suffering, rise up against
him as legal proof of settled purposes and
deliberate designs.
On the legality of the trial, Sir, the im
pregnable speech of my Learned Friend* has
left me little if any thing to say. The only
principle on which the law of England tole
rates what is called "martial law," is neces
sity; its introduction can be justified only by
necessity ; its continuance requires precisely
the same justification of necessity; and if
it survives the necessity, in which alone it
rests, for a single minute, it becomes in
stantly a mere exercise of lawless violence.
When foreign invasion or civil war renders
it impossible for courts of law to sit, or to
enforce the execution of their judgments, it
becomes necessary to find some rude sub
stitute for them, and to employ for that pur
pose the military, which is the only remain
ing force in the community. While the laws
are silenced by the noise of arms, the rulers
of the armed force must punish, as equitably
as they can, those crimes which threaten
their own safety and that of society ; but no
longer; — every moment beyond is usurpa
tion. As soon as the laws can act, every
other mode of punishing supposed crimes is
itself an enormous crime. If argument be
not enough on this subject, — if, indeed, the
mere statement be not the evidence of its own
truth, I appeal to the highest and most vene
rable authority known to our lav/. " Martial
law," says Sir Matthew Hale, "is not a law,
but something indulged rather than allowed,
as a law. The necessity of government,
order, and discipline in an army, is that only
which can give it countenance. l Necessitas
enim, quod cogit, defend it.' Secondly, this
indulged law is only to extend to members
of the army, or to those of the opposite army,
and never may be so much indulged as to be
exercised or executed upon others. Thirdly,
the exercise of martial law may not be per
mitted in time of peace, when the king's
courts are" (or may be) " open."t The illus
trious Judge on this occasion appeals to the
Petition of Right, which, fifty years before,
had declared all proceedings by martial law,
in time of peace, to be illegal. He carries
the principle back to the cradle of English
liberty, and quotes the famous reversal of
the attainder of the Earl of Kent, in the first
year of Edward III., as decisive of the prin
ciple, that nothing but the necessity arising
from the absolute interruption of civil judi
cature by arms, can warrant the exercise of
* Mr. Brougham. — ED.
t History of the Common Law, chap. xi.
what is called martial law. Wherever, and
whenever, they are so interrupted, and as
long as the interruption continues, necessity
justifies it.
No other doctrine has ever been maintain
ed in this country, since the solemn Parlia
mentary condemnation of the usurpations of
Charles I., which he was himself compelled
to sanction in the Petition of Right. In none
of the revolutions or rebellions which have
since occurred has martial la\v been exer
cised, however much, in some of them, the
necessity might seem to exist. Even in
those most deplorable of all commotions,
which tore Ireland in pieces, in the last years
of the eighteenth century, — in the midst of
ferocious revolt and cruel punishment, — at
the very moment of legalising these martial
jurisdictions in 1799, the very Irish statute,
which was passed for that purpose, did
homage to the ancient and fundamental
principles of the law, in the very act of de
parting from. them. The Irish statute 39
Geo. III. c. 2, after reciting " that martial law
had been successfully exercised to the restora
tion of peace, so far as to permit the course of
the common law partially to take place, but
that the rebellion continued to rage in con
siderable parts of the kingdom, whereby it
has become necessary for Parliament to in
terpose," goes on to enable the Lord Lieu
tenant " to punish rebels by courts-martial."
This statute is the most positive declaration,
that where the common law can be exer
cised in some parts of the country, martial
law cannot be established in others, though
rebellion actually prevails in those others,
without an extraordinary interposition of the
supreme legislative authority itself.
I have already quoted from Sir Matthew
Hale his position respecting the two-fold
operation of martial law ; — as it affects the
army of the power which exercises it, and
as it acts against the army of the enemy.
That great Judge, happily unused to stand
ing armies, and reasonably prejudiced against
military jurisdiction, does not pursue his dis
tinction through all its consequences, and
assigns a ground for the whole, which will
support only one of its parts. "The neces
sity of order and discipline in an army," isL
according to him, the reason why the laW
tolerates this departure from its most valu
able rules; but this necessity only justifies
the exercise of martial law over the army
of our own state. One part of it has since
been annually taken out of the common law,
and provided for by the Mutiny Act, which
subjects the military offences of soldiers
only to punishment by military courts, even
in time of peace. Hence we may now be
said annually to legalise military law ; which,
however, differs essentially from martial law,
in being confined to offences against military
discipline, and in not extending to any per
sons but those who are members of the
army.
Martial law exercised against enemies or
rebels cannot depend on the same principle ;
CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH.
541
for it is certainly not intended to enforce or
preserve discipline among them. It seems
to me to be* only a more regular and conve
nient mode of exercising the right to kill in
war, — a right originating in self-defence,
and limited to those cases where such kill
ing is necessary, as the means of insuring
that end. Martial law put in force against
rebels, can only be excused as a mode of
more deliberately and equitably selecting
the persons from whom quarter ought to be
withheld, in a case where all have forfeited
their claim to it. It is nothing more than a
sort of better regulated decimation, founded
upon choice, instead of chance, in order to
provide for the safety of the conquerors, with
out the horrors of undistinguished slaughter :
it is justifiable only where it is an act of
mercy. Thus the matter stands by the law
of nations. But by the law of England, it
cannot be exercised except where the juris
diction of courts of justice is interrupted by
violence. Did this necessity exist at Deme-
rara on the 13th of October, 1823. Was it
on that day impossible for the courts of law
to try offences ? It is clear that, if the case
be tried by the law of England, and unless
an affirmative answer can be given to these
questions of fact, the Court-martial had no
legal power to try Mr. Smith.
Now, Sir, I must in the first place remark,
that General Murray has himself expressly
waived the plea of necessity, and takes merit
to himself for having brought Mr. Smith to
trial before a court-martial, as the most pro
bable mode of securing impartial justice, —
a statement which would be clearly an at
tempt to obtain commendation under false
pretences, if he had no choice, and was
compelled by absolute necessity to recur to
martial law: — "In bringing this man (Mr.
Smith) to trial, under present circumstances,
I have endeavoured to secure to him the
advantage of the most cool and dispassionate
consideration, by framing a court entirely of
officers of the army, who, having no interests
in the country, are without the bias of pub
lic opinion, which is at present so violent
against Mr. Smith.15* This paragraph I con
ceive to be an admission, and almost a boast,
that the trial by court-martial was a matter
of choice, arid therefore not of necessity;
and I shall at present say nothing more on
it, than earnestly to beseech the House to
remark the evidence which it affords of the
temper of the colonists, and to bear in mind
the inevitable influence of that furious tem
per on the prosecutors who conducted the
accusation. — on the witnesses who supported
it by their testimony, — on the officers of the
Court-martial, who could have no other asso
ciates or friends but among these prejudiced
and exasperated colonists. With what sus
picion and jealousy ought we not to regard
such proceedings.'? What deductions ought
to be made from the evidence ? How little
* General Murray (Governor of Demerara) to
Earl Bathurst, 21st of October, 1823.
can we trust the fairness of the prosecutors,
or the impartiality of the judges? What
hope of acquittal could the most innocent
prisoner entertain ? Such, says in substance
Governor Murray, was the rage of the in
habitants of Demerara against the unfortu
nate Mr. Smith, that his only chance of im
partial trial required him to be deprived of
all the safeguards which are the birthright
of British subjects, and to be tried by a judi
cature which the laws and feelings of his
country alike abhor.
But the admission of Governor Murray,
though conclusive against him, is riot ne
cessary to the argument ; for my Learned
Friend has already demonstrated that, in
fact, there was no necessity for a court-mar
tial on the 13th of October. From the 31st
of August, it appears by General Murray's
letters, that no impediment existed to the or
dinary course of law ; " no negroes were in
arms; no war or battle's sound was heard"
through the colony. There remained, in
deed, a few runaways in the forests behind ;
but we know, from the best authorities,*
that the forests were never free from bodies
of these wretched and desperate men in
those unhappy settlements in Guiana, —
where, under every government, rebellion
has as uniformly sprung from cruelty, as
pestilence has arisen from the marshes. Be
fore the 4th of September, even the detach
ment which pursued the deserters into the
forest had returned into the colony. For
six weeks, then, before the Court-martial
was assembled, and for twelve weeks before
that Court pronounced sentence of death on
Mr. Smith, all hostility had ceased, no ne
cessity for their existence can be pretended,
and every act which they did was an open
and deliberate defiance of the law of Eng
land.
Where, then, are we to look for any colour
of law in these proceedings'? Do they de
rive it from the Dutch law ? I have dili
gently examined the Roman law, which is
the foundation of that system, and the writ
ings of those most eminent jurists who have
contributed so much to the reputation of
Holland : — I can find in them no trace of any
such principle as martial law. Military law,
indeed, is clearly defined ; and provision is
made for the punishment by military judges
of the purely military offences of soldiers.
But to any power of extending military juris
diction over those who are not soldiers, there
is not an allusion. I will not furnish a sub
ject for the pleasantries of my Right Honour
able Friend, or tempt him into a repetition
of his former innumerable blunders, by
naming the greatest of these jurists ;t lest his
date, his occupation, and his rank might be
again mistaken ; and the venerable President
of the Supreme Court of Holland might be
once more called a " clerk of the States*
* See Stedman, Bolingbroke, &c.
t Bynkershoek, — of whose professional rank
Mr. Canning had professed ignorance. — ED.
2V
542
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
General." "Persecutio militis," says that
learned person, " pertinet ad judicem miJita-
rem quando delictum sit militare, et ad judi
cem communem quando delictum sit com
mune." Far from supposing it to be pos
sible, that those who were not soldiers could
ever be triable by military courts for crimes
not military, he expressly declares the law
and practice of the United Provinces to be,
that even soldiers are amenable, for ordi
nary offences against society, to the court of
Holland and Friesland, of which he was long
the chief. The law of Holland, therefore,
does not justify this trial by martial law.
Nothing remains but some law of the
colony itself. Where is it ? It is not al
leged or alluded to in any part of this trial.
We have heard nothing of it this evening.
So unwilling was I to believe that this Court-
martial would dare to act without some pre
tence of legal authority, that I suspected an
authority for martial law would be dug out
of some dark corner of a Guiana ordinance.
I knew it was neither in the law of England,
nor in that of Holland ; and I now believe
that it does not exist even in the law of De-
merara. The silence of those who are in
terested in producing it, is not my only rea
son for this belief. I happen to have seen
the instructions of the States-General to their
Governor of Demerara, in November, 1792, —
probably the last ever issued to such an offi
cer by that illustrious and memorable as
sembly. They speak at large of councils of
war, both for consultation and for judicature.
They authorise these councils to try the mili
tary offences of soldiers ; and therefore, by
an inference which is stronger than silence,
authorise us to conclude that the governor
had no power to subject those who were not
soldiers to their authority.
The result, then, is, that the law of Hol
land does not allow what is called "martial
law " in any case ; and that the law of Eng
land does not allow it without a necessity,
which did not exist in the case of Mr. Smith.
If, then, martial law is not to be justified by
the law of England, or by the law of Holland,
or by the law of Demerara, what is there to
hinder me from affirming, that the members
of this pretended court had no more right to
try Mr. Smith than any other fifteen men on
the face of the earth, — that their acts were
nullities, and their meeting a conspiracy, —
that their sentence was a direction to com
mit a crime, — that, if it had been .obeyed, it
would not have been an execution, but a
murder, — and that they, and all other parties
engaged in it, must have answered for it with
their lives.
I liope, Sir, no man will, in this House, un
dervalue that part of the case which relates
to the illegality of the trial. I should be
sorry to hear any man represent it as an in
ferior question, whether we are to be go
verned by law or by will. Every breach of
law, under pretence of attaining what is cal
led "substantial justice," is a step towards
reducing society under the authority of arbi
trary caprice and lawless force. As in many
other cases of evil-doing, it is not the imme
diate effect, but the example (which is the
larger part of the consequences of every act),
which is most mischievous. If we listen to
any language of this sort, we shall do our
utmost to encourage governors of colonies to
discover some specious pretexts of present
convenience for relieving themselves alto
gether* and as often as they wish, from the
restraints of law. In spite of every legal
check, colonial administrators are already
daring enough, from the physical impedi
ments which render it nearly impossible to
reduce their responsibility to practice. If
we encourage them to proclaim martial law
without necessity, we shall take away all
limitations from their power in this depart
ment ; for pretences of convenience can sel
dom be wanting in a state of society which
presents any temptation to abuse of power.
But I am aware, Sir. that I have under
taken to maintain the innocence of Mr. Smith;
as well as to show the unlawfulness and nulli
ty of the proceedings against him. I am
relieved from the necessity of entering at
large into the facts of his conduct, by the ad
mirable and irresistible speech of my Learned
Friend, who has already demonstrated the
virtue and innocence of this unfortunate
Gentleman, who died the martyr of his zeal
for the diffusion of religion, humanity, and
civilization, among the slaves of Demerara.
The Honourable Gentleman charges him
with a want of discretion. Perhaps it may
be so. That useful quality, which Swift
somewhere calls "an alderman-like virtue,"
is deservedly much in esteem among those
who are "wise in their generation," and to
whom the prosperity of mis world belongs ;
but it is rarely the attribute of heroes and of
martyrs, — of those who voluntarily suffer for
faith or freedom, — who perish on the scaffold
in attestation of their principles ; — it does not
animate men to encounter that honourable
death which the colonists of Demerara were
so eager to bestow on Mr. Smith.
On the question of actual innocence, the
Honourable Gentleman has either bewildered
himself, or found it necessary to attempt to
bewilder his audience, by involving the casje
in a labyrinth of words, from which I shall
be able to extricate it by a very few anfy
short remarks. The question is, not whether
Mr. Smith was wanting in the highest vigi
lance and foresight, but whether he was
guilty of certain crimes laid to his charge ?
The first charge is, that he promoted discon
tent and dissatisfaction among the slaves,
"intending thereby to excite revolt." The
Court-martial found him guilty of the fact,
but not of the intention ; thereby, in com
mon sense and justice, acquitting him. The
second charge is, that, on the 17th of August,
he consulted with Quamina concerning the
intended rebellion; and, on the 19th and
20th, during its progress, he aided and as
sisted it by consulting and corresponding
with Quamina, an insurgent. The Court-
CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH.
543
martial found him guilty of the acts charged
on the 17th and 20th, but acquitted him of
that charged on the 19th. But this charge
is abandoned by the Honourable Gentleman,
and, as far as I can learn, will not be sup
ported by any one likely to take a part in
this debate. On the fourth charge, which,
in substance, is, that Mr. Smith olid not en
deavour to make Quamina prisoner on the
the 20th of August, — the Court-martial have
found him guilty. But I will not waste the
time of the House, by throwing away a single
word upon an accusation which I am per
suaded no man here will so insult his own
reputation as to vindicate.
The third charge, therefore, is the only one
which requires a moment's discussion. It
imputes to Mr. Smith, that he previously
knew of the intended revolt, and did not
communicate his knowledge to the proper
authorities. It depends entirely on the same
evidence which was produced in support of
the second. It is an offence analogous to
what, in our law, is denominated "mis
prision" of treason j and it bears the same re
lation to an intended revolt of slaves against
their owners, which misprision in England
bears to high treason. To support this charge,
there should be sufficient evidence of such
'a concealment as would have amounted
to misprision, if a revolt of slaves against
their private masters had been high treason.
Now, it had been positively laid down by
all the judges of England, that "one who is
told only, in general, that there will be a
rising, without persons or particulars, is not
bound to disclose. ';* Concealment of the
avowal of an intention is riot misprision, be
cause such an avowal is not an overt act of
high treason. Misprision of treason is a con
cealment of an overt act of treason. A con
sultation about the means of revolt is un
doubtedly an overt act, because it is one of
the ordinary and necessary means of accom
plishing the object : but it is perfectly other
wise with a conversation, even though in the
course of it improper declarations of a gene
ral nature should be made. I need not quote
Hale or Foster in support of positions which
I believe will not be controverted. Content
ing myself with having laid them down, I
proceed to apply them to the evidence on
this charge. •
I think myself entitled to lay aside — and,
indeed, in that I only follow the example of
the Honourable Gentleman — the testimony
of the coachman and the groom, which, if
understood in one sense is incredible, and in
the other is insignificant. It evidently
amounts to no more than a remark by Mr.
Smith, after the insurrection broke out, that
he had long foreseen danger. The conceal
ment of such a general misapprehension, if
he had concealed it. was no crime ; for it
would be indeed most inconvenient to magis
trates and rulers, and most destructive of the
quiet of society, if men were bound to com
municate to the public authorities every
* Kelynge, p. 22.
alarm that might seize the minds of any of
them.
But he did not conceal that general appre
hension : on the contrary, he did much more
than strict legal duty required. Divide the
facts into two parts, those which preceded
Sunday the 17th of August, and those which
occurred then and afterwards. I fix on this
day, because it will not be said, by any one
whose arguments I should be at the trouble
of answering, that there is any evidence of
the existence of a specific plan of revolt pre
vious to the 17th of August. What did riot
xist could neither be concealed nor dis
closed. But the conduct of Mr. Smith re
specting the general apprehensions which he
entertained before that day is evidence of
_reat importance as to what would have
been his probable conduct, if any specific
plan had afterwards been communicated to
trim. If he made every effort to disclose a
general apprehension, it is not likely that he
should have deliberately concealed a specific
plan. It is in that light that I desire the at-
;ention of the House to it.
It is quite clear that considerable agitation
lad prevailed among the negroes from the
arrival of Lord Bathurst's Dispatch in the
beginning of July. They had heard from
seamen arrived from England, and by ser
vants in the Governor's house, and by the
angry conversations of their masters, that
some projects for improving their condition
had been favourably received in this country.
They naturally entertained sanguine and ex
aggerated hopes of the extent of the refor
mation. The delay in making the Instruc
tions known naturally led the slaves to
greater exaggerations of the plan, and gra
dually filled their minds with angry suspi-
ions that it was concealed on account of the
extensive benefits it was to confer. Liberty
seemed to be offered from England, and
pushed aside by their masters and rulers at
Demerara. This irritation could not escape
the observation of Mr. Smith, and instead of
concealing it, he early imparted it to a neigh
bouring manager and attorney. How comes
the Honourable Gentleman to have entirely
omitted the evidence of Mr. Stewart ?* It
appears from his testimony, that Mr. Smith,
several weeks before the revolt, communi
cated to him, (Stewart) the manager of plan
tation Success, that alarming rumours about
the Instructions prevailed among the negroes.
It appears that Mr. Smith wrent publicly \vith
his friend Mr. Elliott, another missionary, to
Mr. Stewart, to repeat the information at a
subsequent period ; and that, in consequence,
Mr. Stewart, with Mr. Cort,' the attorney of
plantation Success, went on the 8th of August
to Mr. Smith, who confirmed his previous
statements. — said that Quamina and other
negroes had asked whether their freedom
had come out, — and mentioned that he had
some thoughts of disabusing them, by telling
them from the pulpit that their expectations
of freedom were erroneous. Mr. Cort dis-
* Trial, &c., p. 47.
544
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
suaded him from taking so much upon him
self. Is it not evident from this testimony,
that Mr. Smith had the reverse of an inten
tion to conceal the dangerous agitation on or
before the 8th of August ? It is certain that
all evidence of his privity or participation
before that day must be false. He then told
all that he knew, and offered to do much
more than he was bound to do. His dis
closures were of a nature to defeat a project
of revolt, or to prevent it from being formed :
— he enabled Cort or Stewart to put the Go
vernment on their guard. He told no parti
culars, because he knew none ; but he put
it into the power of others to discover them
if they existed. He made these discoveries
on the 8th of August: what could have
changed his previous system of conduct in
the remaining ten days'? Nay, more, he put it
out of his own power to change his conduct
effectually: it no longer depended on himself
whether what he knew should not be so per
fectly made known to the Government as to
render all subsequent concealment ineffec
tual. He could not even know on the 17th
whether his conversations with Stewart and
Cort had not been communicated' to the Go
vernor, and whether measures had not been
taken, which had either ascertained that the
agitation no longer generally prevailed, or
had led to such precautions as could not fail
to end in the destruction of those who should
deliberately and criminally conceal the de
signs of the insurgents. The crime of mis-
prision consists in a design to deceive, —
which, after such a disclosure, it was im
possible to harbour. If this had related to
the communication of a formed plan, it might
be said, that the disclosure to private per
sons was not sufficient, and that he was
bound to make it to the higher authorities.
I believe Mr. Cort was a member of the
Court of Policy. [Here Mr. Gladstone inti
mated by a shake of his head that Mr. Cort
was not.] I yield to the local knowledge of
my Honourable Friend — if I may venture to
call him so in our present belligerent rela
tions. If Mr. Cort be not a member of the
Court of Policy, he must have had access to
its members: — he stated to Mr. Smith the
reason of their delay to promulgate the In
structions; and in a communication which
related merely to general agitation, Mr.
Smith could not have chosen two persons
more likely to be on the alert about a revolt
of slaves than the manager and attorney of
a neighbouring plantation. Stewart and Cort
were also officers of militia.
A very extraordinary part of this case ap
pears in the Demerara Papers (No. II.) to
which I have already adverted. Hamilton,
the manager of plantation Ressouvenir, had,
it seems, a negro mistress, from whom few
of his secrets were hid. This lady had the
singularly inappropriate name of Susannah.
I am now told that she had been the wife of
Jack, one of the leaders of the revolt — I have
no wish to penetrate into his domestic mis
fortunes; — at all events, Jack kept up a con
stant and confidential intercourse with his
former friend, even in the elevated station
which she had attained. She told him (if
we may believe both him and her) of all
Hamilton's conversations. By the account
of Paris, it seems that Hamilton had instruct
ed them to destroy the bridges. Susannah
said that he entreated them to delay the re
volt for two weeks, till he could remove his
things. They told Hamilton not only of the
intention to rise three weeks before, but of
the particular time. On Monday morning
Hamilton told her, that it was useless for
him to manumit -her and her children, as
she wished, for that all would soon be free ;
and that the Governor kept back the Instruc
tions because he was himself a slave-owner.
Paris and Jack agree in laying to Hamilton's
charge the deepest participation in their
criminal designs. If this evidence was be
lieved, why was not Hamilton brought to
trial rather than Smith? If it was disbe
lieved, as the far greater part of it must
have been, why was it concealed from Smith
that such wicked falsehoods had been con
trived against another man, — a circumstance
which so deeply affects the credit of all the
negro accomplices, who swore to save their
own lives. If, as I am inclined to believe,
some communications were made through
Susannah, how hard was the fate of Mr.
Smith, who suffers for not promulgating
some general notions of danger, which, from
this instance, must have entered through
many channels into the minds of the greater
number of whites. But, up to the 17th of
August, it appears that Mr. Smith did not
content himself with bare disclosure, but
proffered his services to allay discontent,
and showed more solicitude than any other
person known to us, to preserve the peace
of the community.
The question now presents itself, which I
allow constitutes the vital part of this case,
— Whether any communication was made to
Mr. Smith on the evening of Sunday the
17th, of which the concealment from his
superiors was equivalent to what we call
misprision of treason? No man can consci
entiously vote against the motion who does
not consider the affirmative as proved. I do
not say that this would be of itself sufficierit
to negative the motion; I only say, that it is
indispensably necessary. There would still
remain behind the illegality of the jurisdic
tion, as well as the injustice of the punish
ment. And on this latter most important
part of the case I must here remark, that it
would not be sufficient to tell us, that the
JRoman and Dutch law ranked misprision as a
species of treason, and made it punishable
by death. It must be shown, not only that
the Court were by this law entitled to con
demn Mr. Smith to death, but that they were
also bound to pronounce such a sentence.
For if they had any discretion, it will not be
said that an English court-martial ought not
to regulate the exercise of it by the more
humane and reasonable principles of their
CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH.
545
own law, which does not treat misprision as
a capital offence.
. . . I am sorry to see that the Honour
able Agent for Demerara* has quitted his
usual place, and has taken a very important
position. I feel no ill-will j but I dread the
sight of him when pouring poison into the
ears of the powerful. He is but too formid
able in his ordinary station, at the head of
those troops whom his magical wand brings
into battle in such numbers as no eloquence
can match, and no influence but his own can
command
Let us now consider the evidence of what
passed on the 17th of August. And here,
once more, let me conjure the House to con
sider the condition of the witnesses who gave
that evidence. They were accomplices in
the revolt, who had no chance of life but
what acceptable testimony might afford. —
They knew the fierce, furious hatred, which
the ruling party had vowed against Mr. Smith.
They were surrounded by the skeletons of
their brethren : — they could perhaps hear
the lash resounding on the bloody backs of
others, who were condemned to suffer a
thousand lashes, and to work for life in irons
under the burning sun of Guiana. They
lived in a colony where such unexampled
barbarities were inflicted as a mitigated
punishment, and held out as acts of mercy.
Such were the dreadful terrors which acted
on their minds, and under the mental torture
of which every syllable of their testimony
was uttered. There was still another deduc
tion to be made from their evidence : — they
rke to no palpable facts : they gave evi-
ice only of conversation. "Words," says
Mr. Justice Foster, " are transient and fleet
ing as the wind ; frequently the effects of a
sudden transport easily misunderstood, and
often misreported." If he spoke thus of
words used in the presence of witnesses in
telligent, enlightened, and accustomed to ap
preciate the force and distinctions of terms,
what would he have said of the evidence of
negro slaves, accomplices in the crime, trem
bling for their lives, reporting conversations
of which the whole effect might depend on
the shades and gradations of words in a lan
guage very grossly known to them, — of Eng
lish words, uttered in a few hurried moments,
and in the presence of no other witnesses
from whom they could dread an exposure of
their falsehood ? It may be safely affirmed,
that it is difficult for imagination to conceive
admissible evidence of lower credit, and
more near the verge of utter rejection.
But what, after all, is the sum of the evi
dence ? It is, that the negroes who followed
Mr. Smith from church on Sunday the 17th,
spoke to him of some design which they en
tertained for the. next day. It is not pre
tended that time, or place, or persons, were
mentioned: — the contrary is sworn. Mr.
* Mr. William Holmes, who was also the Trea
sury " whipper-in," was for the moment seated
next, and whispering to, Mr. Canning.— ED.
69
Smith, who was accustomed for six weeks
to their murmurs, and had before been suc
cessful in dissuading them from violence,
contents himself with repeating the same
dissuasives, — believes he has again succeed
ed in persuading them to remain quiet,— and
abstains for twenty-four hours from any new
communication of designs altogether vague
and undigested, which he hoped would eva
porate, as others of the same kind had done,
without any serious effects. The very utmost
that he seems to have apprehended was, a
plan for obliging, or " driving," as they called
it, their managers to join in an application to
the Governor on the subject of the new law,
— a kind of proceeding which had more than
once occurred, both under the Dutch and
English governments. It appears from the
witnesses for the prosecution, that they had
more than once gone to Mr. Smith before on
the same subject, and that his answer was
always the same : and that some of the more
exasperated negroes were so dissatisfied with
his exhortations to submission, that they
cried out, "Mr. Smith was making them
fools, — that he would not deny his own colour
for the sake of black people." Quamina
appears to have shown at all times a more
than ordinary deference towards his pastor.
He renewed these conversations on the even
ing of Sunday the 17th, and told Mr. Smith,
who again exhorted them to patience, that
two of the more violent negroes. Jack arid
Joseph, spoke of taking their liberty by force.
I desire it to be particularly observed, that
this intention, or even violent language, ap
pears to have been attributed only to two,
and that in such a manner as naturally to
exclude the rest. Mr. Smith again repeated
the advice which had hitherto proved effica
cious. " He told them to wait, and not to be
so foolish. How do you mean that they
should take it by force ? You cannot do any
thing with the white people, because the
soldiers will be more strong than you ; there
fore you had better wait. You "had better
go and tell the people, and Christians parti
cularly, that they had better have nothing to
do with it." When Mr. Smith spoke of the
resistance of the soldiers, Quamina, with an
evident view to persuade Mr. Smith that no
thing was intended which would induce the
military to proceed to the last extremity,
observed, that they would drive the mana
gers to town ; which, by means of the ex
pedient of a general "strike" or refusal to
work, appears to have been the project spoken
of by most of the slaves. To this observation
Mr. Smith justly answered, that even if they
did "drive" the managers to town, they
" would not be able to go against the sol
diers," who would very properly resist such
tumultuary and dangerous movements. Be
it again observed, that Bristol, the chief wit
ness for the prosecution, clearly distinguishes
this plan from that of Jack and Joseph, " who
intended to fight with the white people." I
do not undertake to determine whether the
more desperate measure was at that time
2v2
546
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
confined to these two men : it is sufficient
for me that such was the representation made
to Mr. Smith. Whoever fairly compares the
evidence of Bristol with that of Seaton will,
I think, find the general result to be such as
I have now stated. It is true, that there are
contradictions between them, which, in the
case of witnesses of another caste, might be
considered as altogether subversive of their
credit. But I make allowance for their fears,
— for their confusion. — for their habitual in
accuracy, — for their ignorance of the lan
guage, — for their own incorrectness, if they
gave evidence in English, — for that of the
interpreters, if they employed any other lan
guage. In return, I expect that no fair op
ponent will rely on minute circumstances, —
that he will also allow the benefit of all
chances of inaccuracy to the accused, — and
that he will not rely on the manner, where
a single word, mistaken or misremembered.
might make the whole difference between
the most earnest and the faintest dissuasive.
I do not know what other topics Mr. Smith
could have used. He appeals to their pru
dence : " the soldiers," says he, " will over
come your vain revolt." He appeals to their
sense of religion : — " as Christians you ought
not to use violence." What argument re
mained, if both these failed ? What part of
human nature could he have addressed,
where neither danger could deter, nor duty
restrain ? He spoke to their conscience and
to their fears : — surely admonition could go
no further. There is not the least appear
ance that these topics were not urged with
as perfect good faith, as they must have been
in those former instances where he demon
strated his sincerity by the communications
which he made to Stewart and Cort. His
temper of mind on this subject continued,
then, to be the same on the evening of the
17th that it had been before. And, if so,
how absolutely incredible it is, that he should,
on that night, and on the succeeding morn
ing, advisedly, coolly, and malignantly, form
the design of hiding a treasonable plot con
fidentially imparted to him by the conspira
tors, in order to lull the vigilance of the
Government, and commit himself and his
countrymen to the mercy of exasperated and
triumphant slaves !
I have already stated the reasons which
might have induced him to believe that he
had once more succeeded in dissuading the
negroes from violence. Was he inexcusable
in overrating his own ascendant, — in over
estimating the docility of his converts, — in
relying more on the efficacy of his religious
instructions than men of more experience
and colder temper would deem reasonable ?
I entreat the House to consider whether this
self-deception be improbable ; for if he be
lieved that he had been successful, and that
the plan of tumult or revolt was abandoned,
would it not have been the basest and most
atrocious treachery to have given such in
formation as might have exposed the de
fenceless slaves to punishments of unparal
leled cruelty, for offences which they had
meditated, but from which he believed that
he had reclaimed them ? Let me for a mo
ment again remind the House of the facts
which give such weight to this considera
tion. He lived in a colony where, for an in
surrection in which no white man was wan
tonly or deliberately put to death, and no
property was intentionally destroyed or even
damaged, I know not how many negroes
perished on the gibbet, and others, — under
the insolent, atrocious, detestable pretext of
mercy! — suffered a thousand lashes, and
were doomed to hard labour in irons for life,
under the burning sun, and among the pes
tilential marshes of Guiana1? These dread
ful cruelties, miscalled punishments, did in
deed occur after the 17th of August. But
he, whose "heart had fluttered from the in
cessant cracking of the whip," must have
strongly felt the horrors to which he was ex
posing his unhappy flock by a hasty or need
less disclosure of projects excited by the
impolitic delay of their rulers. Every good
man must have wished to find the informa-
tion unnecessary. Would not Mr. Smith
have been the most unworthy of pastors, if
he had not desired that such a cup might
pass from him? And if he felt these be
nevolent desires, — if he recoiled with horror
from putting these poor men into the hands
of what in Demerara is called justice, there
was nothing in the circumstances which
might not have seemed to him to accord with
his wishes. Even without the influence of
warm feeling, I do not think that it would
have been unreasonable for any man to
believe that the negroes had fully agreed to
wait. Nay, I am convinced that with Qua-
mina Mr. Smith was successful. Quamina,
I believe, used his influence to prevent the
revolt j and it was not till after he was ap
prehended on Monday, on unjust suspicions,
and was rescued, that he took refuge among
the revolters, and was at last shot by the
soldiery when he was a runaway in the
forest, — a fact which was accepted by the
Court-martial as the sufficient, though sole,
evidence of his being a ringleader in the
rebellion.
The whole period during which it is nje-
cessary to account for Mr. Smith's not corh-
municating to the Government an immature
project, of which he knew no particulars,
and which he might well believe to be aban
doned, is a few hours in the morning of Mon
day ; for it is proved by the evidence of
Hamilton, that he was informed of the in
tended revolt by a Captain Simson, at one
o'clock of that day, in George-Town, the
seat of government, at some miles distant
from the scene of action. It was then so
notorious, that Hamilton never dreamt of
troubling the Governor with such needless
intelligence j yet this was only four or five
hours later than the time when Mr. Smith
was held to be bound, under pain of death,
to make such a communication ! The Go
vernor himself, in his dispatches, said that
CASE OF MISSIONARY SMITH.
547
he had received the information, but did not
believe it.* This disbelief, however, could
not have been of long duration: for active
measures were taken, and Mr. Stewart ap
prehended Quamina and his son Jack a little
after three o'clock on Monday ; which, con
sidering the distance, necessarily implies
that some general order of that nature had
been issued by the Government at George-
Town not long after noon on that day.t As
all these proceedings occurred before Mr.
Smith received the note from Jack of Doch-
four about half an hour before the revolt, I
lay that fact out of the case, as wholly im
material. The interview of Mr. Smith with
Quamina, on the 19th of August, is nega
tived by the finding of the Court-martial : —
that on the 20th will be relied on by no man
in this House, because there is not the slight
est proof, nor, indeed, probability, that the
conversation at that interview was not per
fectly innocent. Nothing, then, called for
explanation but the conversation of Sunday
evening, and the silence of Monday morning,
which I think I have satisfactorily explained,
as fully as my present strength will allow,
and much more so than the speech of my
Learned Friend left it necessary to do.
There is one other circumstance which
occurred on Sunday, and which I cannot pass
over in silence : — it is the cruel perversion
of the beautiful text from the Gospel on
which Mr. Smith preached his last sermon.
That circumstance alone evinces the incura
ble prejudice against this unfortunate man,
which so far blinded his prosecutors, that
they actually represent him as choosing that
most affecting lamentation over the fall of
Jerusalem, in order to excite the slaves to
accomplish the destruction of Demerara. The
lamentation of one wrho loved a country was
by them thought to be selected to stimulate
those who were to destroy a country ; — as if
tragical reprehensions of the horrors of an
assault were likely to be exhibited in the
camp of the assailants the night before they
were to storm a city. It is wonderful that
these prosecutors should not have perceived
that such a choice of a text would have been
very natural for Mr. Smith, only on the sup
position that he had been full of love and
compassion and alarm for the European in
habitants of Demerara. The simple truth
was. that the estate was about to be sold,
the negroes to be scattered over the colony
by auction, and that, — by one of those some
what forced analogies, which may appear to
me unreasonable, but which men of the
most sublime genius as well as fervent piety
have often applied to the interpretation of
Scripture. — he likened their sad dispersion,
in connection with their past neglect of the
means of improvement, and the chance of
their now losing all religious consolation and
instruction, to the punishment inflicted on
the Jews by the conquest and destruction of
Jerusalem.
* Demerara Papers, No. II. p. 1. t Ibid., p. 70.
In what I have now addressed to the
House, I have studiously abstained from all
discussions of those awful questions which
relate to the general structure of colonial so
ciety. I am as adverse as any one to the
sudden emancipation of slaves, — much out
of regard to the masters, but still more, as
affecting a far larger portion of mankind, out
of regard to the unhappy slaves themselves.
Emancipation by violence and revolt I con
sider as the greatest calamity that can visit
a community, except perpetual slavery. I
should not have so deep an abhorrence of
that wretched state, if I did not regard it as
unfitting slaves for the safe exercise of the
common rights of mankind. I should be
grossly inconsistent with myself, if, believing
this corrupt and degrading power of slavery
over the mind to be the worst of all its evils,
I were not very fearful of changes which
would set free those beings, whom a cruel
yoke had transformed into wild beasts, only
that they might tear and devour each other.
I acknowledge that the pacific emancipation
of great multitudes thus wretchedly circum
stanced is a problem so arduous as to per
plex and almost silence the reason of man.
Time is undoubtedly necessary; and I shall
never object to time if it be asked in good
faith. If I be convinced of the sincerity of
the reformer, I will not object to the reforma
tion merely on account of the time which it
requires. But I have a right to be jealous
of every attempt which, under pretence of
asking time for reformation, may only aim at
evading urgent demands, and indefinitely
Erocrastinating the deliverance of men from
ondage.
And here. Sir, I should naturally close;
but I must be permitted to relate the subse
quent treatment of Mr. Smith, because it
reflects back the strongest light on the inten
tions and dispositions of those who prose
cuted him, and of those who ratified the sen
tence of death. They who can cruelly treat
the condemned, are not in general scrupu
lous about convicting the innocent. I have
seen the widow of this unhappy sufferer, —
a pious and amiable woman, worthy to be
the helpmate of her martyred husband, dis
tinguished by a calm and clear understand
ing, and, as far as I could discover, of great
accuracy, anxious rather to understate facts,
and to counteract every lurking disposition
to exaggerate, of which her judgment and
humility might lead her to suspect herself.
She told me her story with temper and sim
plicity ; and, though I ventured more near to
cross examination in my inquiries than de
licacy would, perhaps, in any less important
case have warranted, I saw not the least rea
son to distrust the exactness, any more than
the honesty, of her narrative. Within a few
days of his apprehension, Mr. Smith and his
wife were closely confined in two small rooms
at the top of a building, with only the out
ward roof between them and the sun, when
the thermometer in the shade at their resi
dence in the country stood at an average of
548
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
eighty-three degrees of Fahrenheit. There
they were confined from August to October,
with two sentries at the door, which was
kept open day and night. These sentries.
who were relieved every two hours, had
orders at every relief to call on the prisoner,
to ascertain by his answer that he had not
escaped. The generality, of course, executed
their orders: "a few, more humane,'? said
Mrs. Smith, "contented themselves during
the night with quietly looking into the bed."
Thus was he, under a mortal disease, and
his wife, with all the delicacy of her sex,
confined for two months, without seeing a
human face except those of the sentries, and
of the absolutely necessary attendants : — no
physician, no friends to console, no legal ad
viser to guide the prisoner to the means of
proving his innocence, no mitigation, no
solace ! The first human face which she
saw, was that of the man who came to bear
tidings of accusation, and trial, and death, to
her husband. I asked her, " whether it was
possible that the Governor knew that they
were in this state of desolation V1 She an
swered, "that she did not know, for nobody
came to inquire after them !" He was after
wards removed to apartments on the ground
floor, the damp of which seems to have has
tened his fate. Mrs. Smith was set at large,
but obliged to ask a daily permission to see
her husband for a limited time, and if I re
member right, before witnesses ! After the
packet had sailed, and when there was no
longer cause to dread their communication
with England, she was permitted to have un
restricted access to him, as long as his inter
course with earthly things endured. At
length he was mercifully released from his
woes. The funeral was ordered to take place
at two o'clock in the morning, that no sor
rowing negroes might follow the good man's
corpse. The widow desired to accompany
the remains of her husband to the grave : —
even this sad luxury was prohibited. The
officer declared that his instructions were
peremptory: Mrs. Smith bowed with the
silent submission of a broken heart. Mrs.
Elliot, her friend and companion, not so
borne down by sorrow, remonstrated. "Is
it possible," she said, " That General Murray
can have forbidden a poor widow from fol
lowing the coffin of her husband." The
officer again answered that his orders were
peremptory. "At all events/' said Mrs.
Elliot, " he cannot hinder us from meeting
the coffin at the grave." Two negroes bore
the coffin, with a single lantern going before ;
and at four o'clock in the morning, the two
women met it in silent anguish at The grave,
and poured over the remains of the perse
cuted man that tribute which nature pays to
the memory of those whom we love. Two
negro workmen, a carpenter and a brick
layer,— who had been members of his con
gregation, — were desirous of being permitted
to protect and distinguish the spot where
their benefactor reposed : —
" That ev'n his bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial, still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture
deckt,
Might claim the passing tribute of a sigh."*
They began to rail in and to brick over the
grave : but as soon as this intelligence reach
ed the First Fiscal, his Honour was pleased
to forbid the work ; he ordered the bricks to
be taken up, the railing to be torn down, and
the whole frail memorial of gratitude and
piety to be destroyed !
"English vengeance wars not with the
dead :" — it is not so in Guiana. As they
began, so they concluded ; and at least it
must be owned that they were consistent in
their treatment of the living and of the dead.
They did not stop here : a few days after the
death of Mr. Smith, they passed a vote of
thanks to Mr. President Wray. for his ser
vices during the insurrection, which, I fear,
consisted entirely in his judicial acts as a
member of the Court-martial. It is the
single instance. I believe, in the history of
the world, where a popular meeting thanked
a judge for his share in a trial which closed
with a sentence of death ! I must add, with
sincere regret, that Mr. Wray, in an unad
vised moment, accepted these tainted thanks,
and expressed his gratitude for them. Shortly
after they did their utmost to make him re
pent, and be ashamed of his rashness. I
hold in my hand a Demerara newspaper,
containing an account of a meeting, which
must have been held with the knowledge of
the Governor, and among whom I see nine
names, which from the prefix " Honourable,"
belong, I presume, to persons who were
members either of the Court of Justice or
of the Court of Policy. It was an assembly
which must be taken to represent the co
lony. Their first proceeding was a Declara
tion of Independence : — they resolved, that
the King and Parliament or Great Britain
had no right to change their Jaws without
the consent of their Court of Policy. They
founded this pretension. — which would be
so extravagant and insolent, if it were not
so ridiculous, — on the first article of the
Capitulation now lying before me. bearing
date on the 19th of September, 1803,1 by
which it was stipulated that no new efcta-
blishments should be introduced without the
consent of the Court of Policy. — as if a mili
tary commander had any power to perpetuate
the civil constitution of a conquered country,
and as if the subsequent treaty had not ceded
Demerara in full sovereignty to his Majesty.
I should have disdained to notice such a de
claration if it were not for what followed.
This meeting took place eighteen days after
the death of Mr. Smith. It might be hoped,
that, if their hearts were riot touched by his
fate, at least their hatred might have been
buried in his grave ; but they showed how
little chance of justice he had when living
* Gray's Elegy.— ED.
ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES.
549
within the sphere of their influence, by their
rancorous persecution of his memory after
death. Eighteen days after he had expired in
a dungeon, they passed a resolution of strong
condemnation against two names not often
joined, — the London Missionary Society and
Lord Bathurst; — the Society, because they
petitioned for mercy (for that is a crime in
their eyes), — Lord Bathurst, because he ad
vised His Majesty to dispense it to Mr. Smith.
With an ignorance suitable to their other
qualities, they consider the exercise of mercy
as a violation of justice. They are not con
tent with persecuting their victim to death ;
— they arraign nature, which released him,
and justice, in the form of mercy, which
would have delivered him out of their hands.
Not satisfied with his life, they are incensed
at not being able to brand his memory, — to
put an ignominious end to his miseries, and
to hang up his skeleton on a gibbet, which,
as often as it waved in the winds, should
warn every future missionary to fly from
such a shore, and not dare to enter that colony
to preach the doctrines of peace, of justice,
and of mercy !
SPEECH
ON PRESENTING A PETITION FROM THE MERCHANTS OF LONDON FOR THE RECOGNITION OF
. ' THE INDEPENDENT STATES
ESTABLISHED IN THE COUNTRIES OF AMERICA FORMERLY SUBJECT TO SPAIN.
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE 15TH OF JUNE, 1824.
Scit ....
Unde petal Romam, libertas ultima mundi
Quo steterit ierienda loco. — Pharsalia, lib. vii. 579.
" As for the wars anciently made on behalf of a parity or tacit conformity of estate, — to set up or
pull down democracies and oligarchies, — I do not see how they may be well justified." — BACON,
Essay on the True Greatness of Kingdoms.
MR. SPEAKER, — I hold in my hand a Peti
tion from the Merchants of the City of London
who are engaged in trade with the countries
of America formerly subject to the crown of
Spain, praying that the House would adopt
such measures as to them may seem meet
to induce His Majesty's Government to re
cognise the independence of the states in
those countries which have, in fact, esta
blished independent governments.
In presenting this Petition, I think it right
to give the House such information as I pos
sess relating to the number and character of
the Petitioners, that it may be seen how far
they are what they profess to be, — what are
their means of knowledge, — what are likely
to be the motives of their application, — what
faith is due to their testimony, and what
weight ought to be allowed to their judg
ment. Their number is one hundred and
seventeen. Each of them is a member of a
considerable commercial house interested in
the trade to America; the Petition, therefore,
conveys the sentiments of three or four hun
dred merchants. The signatures were col
lected in two days, without a public meeting,
or even an advertisement. It was confined
to the American merchants, but the Petition
ers have no reason to believe that any mer
chant in London would have declined to put
his name to it. I am but imperfectly quali
fied to estimate the importance and station
of the Petitioners. Judging from common
information, I should consider many of them
as in the first rank of the mercantile com
munity. I see among them the firm of
Baring and Company, which, without dis
paragement to any others, may be placed at
the head of the commercial establishments
of the world. I see also the firms of Herring,
Powles, and Company; of Richardson and
Company ; Goldsmid and Company ; Monte-
fiore and Company ; of Mr. Benjamin Shaw,
who, as Chairman of Lloyd's Coffee-house,
represents the most numerous and diversified
interests of traffic; together with many others
not equally known to me, but whom, if I did
know, I have no doubt that I might with
truth describe as persons of the highest mer
cantile respectability. I perceive among
them the name of Ricardo, which I shall
ever honour, and which I cannot now pro
nounce without emotion.* In a word, the
Petitioners are the City of London. They
contain individuals of all political parties;
they are deeply interested in the subject, —
perfectly conversant with all its commercial
* Mr. Ricardo had died on the llth of Septem
ber preceding. — ED.
550
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
bearings; and they could not fill the high
place where they stand, if they were not
as much distinguished by intelligence and
probity; as by those inferior advantages of
wealth which with them are not fortunate
accidents, but proofs of personal worth and
professional merit.
If, Sir, it had been my intention to enter
fully on this subject, and especially to dis
cuss it adversely to the King's Government,
I might have chosen a different form of pre
senting it to the House. But though I am
and ever shall be a member of a party asso
ciated, as I conceive, for preserving the liber
ties of the kingdom, I present this Petition
in the spirit of those by whom it is sub
scribed, in the hope of relieving that anxious
desire which pervades the commercial world,
— and which is also shared by the people of
England, — that the present session may not
close without some discussion or some expla
nation on this important subject, as far as
that explanation can be given without incon
venience to the public service. For such a
purpose, the presentation of a petition affords
a convenient opportunity, both because it
implies the absence of any intention to blame
the past measures of Government as foreign
from the wishes of the Petitioners, and be
cause it does not naturally require to be fol
lowed by any motion which might be repre
sented as an invasion of the prerogative of
the Crown, or as a restraint on the discretion
of its constitutional advisers.
At the same time I must add, that in what
ever form or at whatever period of the ses
sion I had brought this subject forward, I do
not think that I should have felt myself call
ed upon to discuss it in a tone very different
from that which the nature of the present
occasion appears to me to require. On a
question of policy, where various opinions
may be formed about the past, and where
the only important part is necessarily pros
pective, I should naturally have wished to
speak in a deliberative temper. However
much I might lament the delays which had
occurred in khe recognition of the American
States, I could hardly have gone further than
strongly to urge that the time was now at
least come for more decisive measures.
With respect, indeed, to the Slate Papers
laid before us, I see nothing in them to blame
or to regret, unless it be that excess of ten
derness and forbearance towards the feelings
and pretensions of European Spain which the
Despatches themselves acknowledge. In all
other respects, I can only describe them as
containing a body of liberal maxims of policy
and just principles of public law, expressed
with a precision, a circumspection, and a dig
nity which will always render them models
and master-pieces of diplomatic composi
tion.* Far from assailing these valuable
* They were among the first papers issued from
the Foreign Office, after the accession to office of
Mr. Canning, and represented the spirit of his —
as distinguished from the preceding Castlereagh
policy. — ED.
documents, it is my object to uphold their
doctrines, to reason from their principles, and
to contend for nothing more than that the
future policy of England on this subject may
be governed by them. On them I rest : from
them seems to me to flow every consequence
respecting the future, which I think most
desirable. I should naturally have had no
other task than that of quoting them, of
showing the stage to which they had con
ducted the question, of unfolding their import
where they are too short for the generality
of readers, and of enforcing their application
to all that yet remains undone. But some
thing more is made necessary by the confu
sion and misconception which prevail on one
part of this subject. I have observed with
astonishment, that persons otherwise well
informed should here betray a forgetfulness
of the most celebrated events in history, and
an unacquaintance with the plainest princi
ples of international law. which I should not
have thought possible if 'l had not known it
to be real. I am therefore obliged to justify
these State Papers before I appeal to them.
I must go back for a moment to those ele
mentary principles which are so grossly mis
understood.
And first, Sir, with respect to the term
" recognition," the introduction of which
into these discussions has proved the princi
pal occasion of darkness and error. It is a
term which is used in two senses so different
from each other as to have nothing very im
portant in common. The first, which is the
true and legitimate sense of the word " re
cognition," as a technical term of interna
tional law, is that in which it denotes the
explicit acknowledgment of the independ
ence of a country by a state which formerly
exercised sovereignty over it. Spain has
been doomed to exhibit more examples of
this species of recognition than any other
European state; of which the most memora
ble cases are her acknowledgment of the
independence of Portugal and Holland. This
country also paid the penalty of evil councils
in that hour of folly and infatuation which
led to a hostile separation between the
American Colonies and their mother country.
Such recognitions are renunciations of sove
reignty, — surrenders of the power or of me
claim to govern.
But we, who are as foreign to the Spanish
states in America as we are to Spain herself,
— who never had any more authority over
them than over her, — have in this case no
claims to renounce, no power to abdicate, no
sovereignty to resign, no legal rights to con
fer. What we have to do is therefore not
recognition in its first and most strictly proper
sense. It is not by formal stipulations or
solemn declarations that we are to recognise
the American states, but by measures of
practical policy, which imply that we ac
knowledge their independence. Our recog
nition is virtual. The most conspicuous part
of such a recognition, is the act of sending
and receiving diplomatic agents. It implies
ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES.
551
no guarantee, no alliance, no aid, no appro
bation of the successful revolt, — no intimation
of an opinion concerning the justice or injus
tice of the means by which it has been ac
complished. These are matters beyond our
jurisdiction. It would be an usurpation in
us to sit in judgment upon them. As a state,
we can neither condemn nor justify revolu
tions which do not affect our safety, and are
not amenable to our laws. We deal with
the authorities of new states on the same
principles and for the same object as wdth
those of old. We consider them as govern
ments actually exercising authority over the
people of a country, with whom we are
called upon to maintain a regular intercourse
by diplomatic agents for the interests of
Great Britain, and for the security of British
subjects. Antiquity affords a presumption
of stability, which, like all other presump
tions, may and does fail in particular in
stances; but in itself it is nothing, and when
it ceases to indicate stability, ir ought to be
regarded by a foreign country as of no ac
count. The tacit recognition of a new state,
with which alone I am now7 concerned, not
being a judgment for the new government,
or against the old, is not a deviation from
perfect neutrality, or a cause of just offence
to the dispossessed ruler.* When Great
Britain recognised the United States, it was
* These doctrines are so indisputable, that they
are not controverted even by the jurists of the
Holy Alliance, whose writings in every other re
spect bear the most ignominious marks of the
servitude of the human understanding under the
empire of that confederacy. Martens, who in the
last edition of his Summary of International Law
has sacrificed even the principle of national inde
pendence (liv. iii. c. ii. s. 74), without which no
such law could be conceived, yet speaks as follows
on recognitions: — " Quant a la simple reconnais
sance, il semble qu'une naiion etrangere, n'etant
pas obligee a juger de la legitimite, peut toutes
les fois qu'elle est douteuse se permettre de s'at-
tacher au seul fait de la possession, et trailer
comme independent de son ancien gouyernement,
I'etat ou la province qui jouit dans le fait de 1'inde-
pendance, sans blesser par la les devoirs d'une
rigoureuse neutralite." — Precis du Droit des Gens,
liv. iii. c. ii. s. 80. Gottingen, 1821. Yet a com
parison of the above sentence with the paralle
passage of the same book in the edition of 1789 is
a mortifying specimen of the decline of liberty of
opinion in Europe. Even Kluber, the publishei
of the proceedings of the Congress of Vienna,
assents to the same doctrine, though he insidiously
contrives the means of evading it by the insertion
of one or two ambiguous words: — "La souve-
rainete est acquise par un erat, ou lors de sa fon-
dation ou bien lorsqu'il se degage legitimement de
la dependance dans laquelle il se trouvait. Pour
etre valide, elle n'a pas besoin d'etre reconnue ot
garantie par une puissance quelconque : pourvu
que la possession ne soit pas vicieuse." — Droit des
Gens, part i. c. i. s. 23. Mr. Kluber would find i
difficult to answer the question, " Who is to judg<
whether the acquisition of independence be leg iii
mate, or its possession vicious V And it is eviden
that the latter qualification is utterly unmeaning
for if there be an original fault, which vitiates th<
possession of independence, it cannot be remove<
by foreign recognition, which, according to thii
writer himselfpis needless where the independence
a concession by the recognising Power, the
object of which was the advantage and se
curity of the government recognised. But
.vhen Great Britain (I hope very soon) recog-
lises the states of Spanish America, it will
lot be as a concession to them, for they need
10 such recognition ; but it will be lor her
wn sake, — to promote her own interest. — to
jrotect the trade and navigation of her sub
jects, — to acquire the best means of cul-
ivating friendly relations with important
countries, and of composing by immediate
negotiation those differences which might
otherwise terminate in war. Are these new
loctrines? — quite the contrary. They are
founded on the ancient practice of Europe.
They have been acted upon for more than
;\vo centuries by England as well as other
lations.
I have already generally alluded, Sir, to
the memorable and glorious revolt by which
the United Provinces of the Netherlands
threw off the yoke of Spain. Nearly four
score years passed from the beginning of
that just insurrection to the time when a
recognition of independence was at last ex
torted from Castilian pride and obstinacy.
The people of the Netherlands first took up
arms to obtain the redress of intolerable
grievances; and for many years they for
bore from proceeding to the last extremity
against their tyrannical king.* It was not
till Philip had formally proscribed the Prince
of Orange, — the purest and most perfect
model of a patriotic hero, — putting a price
on his head, and promising not only pardon
for every crime, but the honours of nobility
to any one who should assassinate him,t that
the States-General declared the King of Spain
to have forfeited, by a Jong course of merci
less tyranny, his rights of sovereignty over the
Netherlands. J Several assassins attempted
the life of the good and great Prince of
Orange : one wounded him dangerously ;
another consummated the murder, — a zealot
of what wras then, as it is now. called " legiti
macy." He suffered the punishment due to
his crime ; but the King of Spain bestowed
is lawful, and must therefore be useless in those
cases where he insinuates rather than asserts that
foreign states are bound or entitled to treat it as
unlawful.
* The following are the words of their illustri
ous historian: — " Pos\ longam dubitationem, ab
ordinibus Belgarum Philippo, ob violatas leges,
imperium abrogatum est ; lataque in ilium senten-
tia cum quo, si verum fatemur, novem jam per
annos bellatum erat ; sed tune primum desitum
nomen ejus et insignia usurpari, mutataque verba
solennis jurisjurandi, ut qui princeps hactenus
erat: hostis vocaretur. Hoc consilium vicinas
apud gentes necessitate et tot irritis ante precibus
excusatum, haud desiere Hispani ut scelus insec-
tari, parum memores, pulsum a rnajoribus suis
regno invisas crudelitatis regem, eique praelatam
stirpem non ex legibus genitam ; ut jam taceantur
vetera apud Francos, minus vetera apud Anglos,
recentiora apud Danos et Sueonas dejectorum
regum exempla." — Grotii Annales, lib. iii.
t Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, vol. v. p. 368.
t Ibid. p. 413.
552
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
on his family the infamous nobility which
had been earned by the assassin, — an ex
ample which has also disgraced our age.
Before and after that murder, the greatest
vicissitudes of fortune had attended the
arms of those who fought for the liberties of
their country. Their chiefs were driven into
exile; their armies were dispersed. The
greatest and most opulent of the Belgic
Provinces, misled by priests, had made their
peace with the tyrant. The greatest cap
tains of the age commanded against them.
The Duke of Alva employed his valour and
experience to quell the revolts which had
been produced by his cruelty. The genius
of the Prince of Parma long threatened the
infant liberty of Holland. Spinola balanced
the consummate ability of Prince Maurice,
and kept up an equal contest, till Gustavus
Adolphus rescued Europe from the Holy
Allies of that age. The insurgents had seen
with dread the armament called "Invinci
ble," which was designed, by the conquest
of England, to destroy the last hopes of the
Netherlands. Their independence appeared
more than once to be annihilated ; it was
often endangered ; it was to the last fiercely
contested. The fortune of war was as often
adverse as favourable to their arms.
It was not till the 30th of January, 1648,*
nearly eight years after the revolt, nearly
seventy after the declaration of independ
ence, that the Crown of Spain, by the Treaty
of Munster, recognised the Republic of the
United Provinces, and renounced all pre
tensions to sovereignty over their territory.
What, during that Ions' period, was the policy
of the European states'? Did they wait for
eighty years, till the obstinate punctilio or
lazy pedantry of the Escurial was subdued ?
Did they forego all the advantages of friendly
intercourse with a powerful and flourishing
republic'? Did they withhold from that re
public the ordinary courtesy of keeping up
a regular and open correspondence with her
through avowed and honourable ministers?
Did they refuse to their own subjects that pro
tection for their lives and properties, which
such a correspondence alone could afford ?
All this they ought to have done, accord
ing to the principles of those who would
resist the prayer of the Petition in my hand.
But nothing of this was then done or dreamt
of. Every state in Europe, except the Ger
man branch of the House of Austria, sent
ministers to the Hague, and received those
of the States-General. Their friendship was
prized, — their alliance courted ; and defen
sive treaties were formed with them by
Powers at peace with Spain, from the heroic
Gustavus Adolphus to the barbarians of Per
sia arid Muscovy. I say nothing of Eliza
beth herself, — proscribed as she was as an
usurper, — the stay of Holland, and the leader
of the liberal party throughout Europe. But
no one can question the authority on this
point of her successor, — the great professor
* Dumont, vol. vi. p. 429.
of legitimacy, — the founder of that doctrine
of the divine right of kings, which led his
family to destruction. As king of Scotland,
in 1594, forty-four years before the recogni
tion by Spain, James recognised the States-
General as the successors of the Houses of
Austria and Burgundy, by stipulating with
them the renewal of a treaty concluded be
tween his mother Queen Mary and the
Emperor Charles V.* In 1604, when he
made peace with Spain, eager as he was by
that transaction to be admitted into the fra
ternity of legitimate kings, he was so far
curbed by the counsellors of Elizabeth, that
he adhered to his own and to her recognition
of the independence of Holland : the Court
of Madrid virtually acknowledging, by seve
ral articles of the treaty* t that such perseve
rance in the recognition was no breach of
neutrality, and no obstacle to friendship with
Spain. At the very moment of the negotia
tion, Winwood was despatched with new
instructions as minister to the States-Gene
ral. It is needless to add that England, at
peace with Spain, continued to treat Holland
as an independent slate for the forty-four
years which passed from that treaty to the
recognition of Munster.
The policy of England towards Portugal,
though in itself far Jess memorable, is still
more strikingly pertinent to the purpose of
this argument. On the 1st of December
1640, the people of Portugal rose in arms
against the tyranny of Spain, under which
they had groaned about sixty years. They
seated the Duke of Braganza on the throne.
In January 1641, the Cortes of the kingdom
were assembled to legalize his authority,
though seldom convoked by his successors
after their power was consolidated. Did
England then wait the pleasure of Spain?
Did she desist from connection with Portu
gal, till it appeared from long experience
that the attempts of Spain to recover that
country must be unavailing? Did she even
require that the Braganza Government should
stand the test of time before she recognised
its independent authority? No: within a
year of the proclamation of the Duke of
Braganza by the Cortes, a treaty of peace?'
and alliance wTas signed at Windsor betvveerl
Charles I. and JohnlV.. which not only treats',
with the latter as an independent sovereign,
but expressly speaks of the King of Castile
as a dispossessed ruler; and alleges on the
part of the King of England, that he was
moved to conclude this treaty uby his solici
tude to preserve the tranquillity of his king
doms, and to secure the liberty of trade of his
beloved subjects."* The contest was carried
on: the Spaniards obtained victories; they
excited conspiracies; they created divisions.
* Dumont, vol. v. p. 507.
t See particularly Art. xii. and xiv. in Rymer,
vol. xvi. The extreme anxiety of the English to
adhere to their connection with Holland, appears
from the Instructions and Despatches in Win-
wood.
t Dumont, vol. vi. p. 238. \,\
ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH- AM ERIC AN STATES.
553
The palace of the King of Portugal was the
scene of domestic discord, court intrigue, and
meditated usurpation. There is no trace of
any complaint or remonstrance, or even mur
mur, against the early recognition by Eng
land, though it was not till twenty-six years
afterwards that Spain herself acknowledged
the independence of Portugal, and (what is
remarkable) made that acknowledgment in
a treaty concluded under the mediation of
England.*
To these examples let me add an observa
tion upon a part of the practice of nations,
strongly illustrative of the principles which
ought to decide this question. All the Pow
ers of Europe treated England, under the
Commonwealth and the Protectorate, as re
taining her rights of sovereignty. They re
cognised these governments as much as they
had recognised the Monarchy. The friends
of Charles II. did riot complain of this policy.
That monarch, when restored, did not dis
allow the treaties of foreign Powers with the
Republic or with Cromwell. Why? Be
cause these Powers were obliged, for the
interest of their own subjects, to negotiate
with the government which, whatever might
be its character, was actually obeyed by the
British nation. They pronounced no opinion
on the legitimacy of that government, — no
judgment unfavourable to the claims of the
exiled prince; they consulted only the secu
rity of the commerce and intercourse of their
own subjects with the British Islands.
It was quite otherwise with the recogni
tion by Louis XIV. of the son of James II.,
when his father died, as King of Great Bri
tain. As that prince was not acknowledged
and obeyed in England, no interest of France
required that Louis should maintain an inter
course, or take any notice of his pretensions.
That recognition was therefore justly resent
ed by England as a wanton insult, — as a
direct interference in her internal affairs, —
as an assumption of authority to pronounce
against the lawfulness of her government. t
I am aware. Sir, that our complaints of the
interference of France in the American war
may be quoted against my argument. Those
who glance over the surface of history may
* Treaty of Lisbon, February 23d, 1688. Du-
monl, vol. vii. p. 70.
t " Le Comte de Manchester, ambassadeur
d'Angleterre, ne parut plus a Versailles apres la
reconnaissance du Prince de Galles, et partit, sans
prendre conge, quelquos jours apres 1'arrivee du
Roi a Fpntainbleau. Le Roi Guillaume regut
en sa maison de Loo en Hollande la nouvelte de
la mort du Roi Jacques etde cette reconnaissance.
II etait alors a table avec quelques autres seigneurs.
II ne profera pas une seule parole outre la nouvelle;
mais il rougit, enfon§a son chapeau, et ne put
contenir son visage. 11 envoya ordre a Londres
d'en chasser sur le champ Poussin, et de lui faire
repasser la mer aussi-tot apres. II faisait les affaires
du Roi en Tabsence d'un ambassadeur et d'un
envoye. Get eclat fut suivi de pres de la signa
ture de la Grande Alliance defensive et offensive
centre la France et 1'Espagne, entre 1'Empereur
et 1'Empire, 1'Angleterre et la Hollande." — Me-
moires de St. Simon, vol. iii. p. 228.
70
see some likeness between that case and
the present : but the resemblance is merely
superficial; it disappears on the slightest
examination. It was riot of the establish
ment of diplomatic relation with America
by France in 1778, that Great Britain com
plained. We now know from the last edi
tion of the Memoirs of the Marquis de Bou-
ille, that from the first appearance of discon
tent in 1765, the Due de Choiseul employed
secret agents to excite commotion in North
America. That gallant and accomplished
officer himself was no stranger to these in
trigues after the year 1768, when he became
governor of Guadaloupe.* It is well known
that the same clandestine and treacherous
machinations were continued to the last, in
a time of profound peace, and in spite of pro
fessions of amity so repeated and so solemn,
that the breach of them produced a more
than political resentment in the mind of King
George III. against the House of Bourbon.
We also learn, from no contemptible autho
rity, that at the very time that the prelimi
naries of peace were signed at Fontainbleau
in 1762 by the Ducde Choiseul and the Duke
of Bedford, the former of these ministers con
cluded a secret treaty with Spain, by which
it was stipulated, that in eight years both
Powers should attack England; — a design
of which the removal of Choiseul defeated
the execution.! The recognition of the
United States was no more than the con
summation and avowal of these dark designs.
So conscious was the Court of Versailles of
their own perfidy, that they expected war to
be the immediate consequence of it. On
the same day with the treaty of commerce
they signed another secret treaty.; by which
it was stipulated, that in case of hostilities be
tween France and England, America should
make common cause with the former. The
division of the territories to be conquered
was even provided for. Negligent and su
pine as were the English Ministers, they can
hardly be supposed to have been altogether
ignorant of these secret treaties. The cause
of war, then, was not a mere recognition
after a long warning to the mother country,
— after a more than generous forbearance
shown to her dignity and claims (as it would
be now in the case with Spanish America) :
it was that France, in defiance of the most
solemn assurances of her Ministers, and also
as it is said of her Sovereign, at length openly
avowed those machinations to destroy the
union between the British nation and the
people of America,— Englishmen by blood,
and freemen by principle, dear to us by both
ties, but most dear by the last, — which they
had carried on during so many years of
peace and pretended friendship.
I now proceed to review the progress
which we have already made towards the
* Memoires de Bouille, p. 15. Choiseul, Rela
tion du Voyage de Louis XVI. a Varennes.p. 14.
t Ferrand, Trois Demembremens de la Polog-
ne, vol. i. p. 76.
+ Martens, Recueil de Traites. vol. i. p. 701.
2W
554
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
recognition of the states of Spanish America,
as it appears in the Papers before the House.
I \vill not dwell on the statute 3 Geo. IV. c.
43, which provides, " that the merchandize
of countries in America or the West Indies,
being or having been a part of the dominions
of the Kins, of Spain, may be imported into
Great Britain in ships which are the build
of these countries ;" though that clause must
be allowed to be an acknowledgment of in
dependence, unless it could be said that the
provinces separated from Spain were either
countries without inhabitants, or inhabited
by men without a government. Neither will
I say any thing of the declaration made to
Spain, that consuls must be immediately sent
to South America; though I shall hereafter
argue, that the appointment of consuls is as
much an act of recognition as the appoint
ment of higher ministers. Lord Liverpool
indeed said, that by doing so we were "treat
ing South America as independent," — which
is the only species of recognition which w-e
have a right to make. I should be the last
to blame the suspension of such a purpose
during the lawless and faithless invasion of
Spain, then threatened, and soon after exe
cuted. So strongly was I convinced that
this was a sacred duty, that I at that time
declined to present a petition of a nature
similar to that which I now offer to your
consideration. Nothing under heaven could
have induced me to give the slightest aid to
the unrighteous violence w-hich then mena
ced the independence of Spain.
The Despatch of Mr. Secretary Canning to
Sir Charles Stuart, of the 31st of March, 1823,
is the first paper which I wish to recall to
the remembrance, and recommend to the
serious attention of the House. It declares
that time and events have decided the sepa
ration of Spanish America, — that various cir
cumstances in their internal condition may
accelerate or retard the recognition of their
independence ; and it concludes with intelli
gibly intimating that Great Britain would
resist the conquest of any part of these pro
vinces by France. The most explicit warn
ing was thus given to Spain, to France, and
to all Europe, as well as to the states of
Spanish America, that Great Britain con
sidered their independence as certain, — that
she regarded the time of recognising it as a
question only of policy, — and that she would
not suffer foreign Po\vers to interfere for pre
venting its establishment. France, indeed,
is the only Power named ; but the reason of
the case applied to every other, and extended
as much to conquest under the name of Spain
as if it were made avowedly for France her
self.
The next document to which I shall refer
is the Memorandum of a Conference be
tween M. de Polignac and Mr. Secretary
Canning, on the 9th of October, 1823 ; and I
cannot help earnestly recommending to all
persons who have any doubt writh respect to
the present state of this question, or to the
footing on which it has stood for many
months, — who do not see or do not own that
our determination has long been made and
announced, — to observe with care the force
and extent of the language of the British
Government on this important occasion. —
" The British Government," it is there saidr
" were of opinion that any attempt to bring
Spanish America under its ancient submis
sion must be utterly hopeless; that all nego
tiation for that purpose would be unsuccess
ful ; and that the prolongation or renewal of
war for the same object could be only a
w^aste of human life and an infliction of ca
lamities on both parties to no end.7' Lan
guage cannot more strongly declare the con
viction of Great Britain that the issue of the
contest was even then no longer doubtful, — •
that there was indeed no longer any such
contest as could affect the policy of foreign
states towards America. As soon as we had
made known our opinion in terms so positive
to Europe and America, the pretensions of
Spain could not in point of justice be any
reason for a delay. After declaring that we
should remain, however, " strictly neutral
if war should be unhappily prolonged," we
go on to state more explicitly than before,
'•' that the junction of any Power in an enter
prise of Spain against the colonies would be
viewed as an entirely new question, upon
which they must take such decision as the
interest of Great Britain might require ;" —
language which, however cautious and mo
derate in its forms, is in substance too clear
to be misunderstood. After this paragraph,
no state in Europe would have had a right
to affect surprise at the recognition, if it had
been proclaimed on the following day. Still
more clearly, if possible, is the same princi
ple avowed in a subsequent paragraph : —
" That the British Government had no de
sire to precipitate the recognition, so long as
there was any reasonable chance of an ac
commodation writh the mother country, by
which such a recognition might come first
from Spain :" but that it could not wait in
definitely for that result ] that it could not
consent to make its recognition of the new
states dependent on that of Spain ] " and.
that it would consider any foreign interfere
ence, either by force or by menace, in th4
dispute between Spain and the colonies, as,
a motive for recognising the latter without
delay." And here in a matter less impor
tant I should be willing to stop, and to rest
my case on this passage alone. Words can
not be more explicit : it is needless to com
ment on them, and impossible to evade them.
We declare, that the only accommodation
which we contemplate, is one which is to
terminate in recognition by Spain ; and that
we cannot indefinitely wait even for that re
sult. We assert our right to recognise,
whether Spain does so or not ; and we state
a case in which we should immediately re
cognise, independently of the consent of the
Spanish Government, arid without regard to
the internal state of the American provinces.
As a natural consequence of these positions.
ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES.
555
we decline any part in a proposed congress
of European Powers for regulating the affairs
of America.
Sir, I cannot quit this document without
paying a just tribute to that part which re
lates to commerce. — to the firmness with
which it asserts the right of this country to
continue her important trade with America,
as well as the necessity of the appointment
of consuls for the protection of that trade, —
and to the distinct annunciation, "that an
attempt to renew the obsolete interdictions
would be best cut short by a speedy and un
qualified recognition of the independence of
the South American states." Still more do I
applaud the declaration, "that Great Britain
had no desire to set up any separate right to
the free enjoyment of this trade ; that she
considered the force of circumstances and
the irreversible progress of events to have
already determined the question of the ex
istence of that freedom for all the world."
These are declarations equally wise and ad
mirable. They coincide indeed so evidently
with the well-understood interest of every
state, that it is mortifying to be compelled
to speak of them as generous; but they are
so much at variance with the base and short
sighted policy of Governments, that it is re
freshing and consolatory to meet them in
Acts of State ; — at least when, as here, they
must be sincere, because the circumstances
of their promulgation secure their observ
ance, and indeed render deviation from them
impossible. I read them over and over with
the utmost pleasure. They breathe the spirit
of that just policy and sound philosophy,
which teaches us to regard the interest of
our country as best promoted by an increase
of the industry, wealth, and happiness of
other nations.
Although the attention of the House is
chiefly directed to the acts of our own Go
vernment, it is not foreign from the purpose
of my argument to solicit them for a few
minutes to consider the admirable Message
sent on the 2d of December, 1823, by the
President of the United States* to the Con
gress of that great republic. I heartily re
joice in the perfect agreement of that mes
sage with the principles professed by us to
the French Minister, and afterwards to all
the great Powers of Europe, whether mili
tary or maritime, and to the great English
State beyond the Atlantic. I am not anx
ious to ascertain whether the Message was
influenced by our communication, or was
the mere result of similarity of principle
and coincidence of interest. The United
States had at all events long preceded us in
the recognition. They sent consuls and
commissioners two years before us, who
found the greater part of South America
quiet and secure, and in the agitations of
the remainder, met with no obstacles to
friendly intercourse. This recognition neither
interrupted amicable relations with Spain, nor
occasioned remonstrances from any Power
* Mr. Monroe.— -ED.
in Europe. They declared their neutrality
at the moment of recognition : they solemnly
renew that declaration in the Message be
fore me. That wise Government, in grave
but determined language, and with that rea
sonable and deliberate tone which becomes
true courage, proclaims the principles of her
policy, and makes known the cases in which
the care of her own safety will compel her
to lake up arms for the defence of other
states. I have already observed its coinci
dence with the declarations of England ;
which indeed is perfect, if allowance be
made for the deeper, or at least more imme
diate, interest in the independence of South
America, which near neighbourhood gives to
the United States. This coincidence of the
two great English Commonwealths (for so I
delight to call them, and I heartily pray that
they may be for ever united in the cause of
justice and liberty) cannot be contemplated
without the utmost pleasure by every en
lightened citizen of either. Above all, Sir,
there is one coincidence between them,
which is, I trust, of happy augury to the
whole civilized world : — they have both de
clared their neutrality in the American con
test as long as it shall be confined to Spain
and her former colonies, or as long as no
foreign Power shall interfere.
On the 25th of December 1823, M. Ofalia,
the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs,
proposed to the principal Powers of Europe
a conference at Paris on the best means of
enabling his Catholic Majesty to re-establish
his legitimate authority, and to spread the
blessings of his paternal government over
the vast provinces of America which once
acknowledged the supremacy of Spain. To
this communication, which was made also to
this government, an answer was given on
the 30th of January following, which cannot
be read by Englishmen without approbation
and pleasure. In this answer, the proposi
tion of a congress is once more rejected : the
British Government adheres to its original
declaration, that it would wait for a time, —
but a limited time only, — and would rejoice
to see his Catholic Majesty have the grace
and advantage of taking the lead among the
Powers of Europe in the recognition of the
American states, as well for the greater
benefit and security of these states them
selves, as from the generous disposition felt
by Great Britain to spare the remains of
dignity and grandeur, however infinitesi-
mally small, which may still be fancied to
belong to the thing called the crown of Spain.
Even the shadow of long-departed greatness
was treated with compassionate forbearance.
But all these courtesies and decorums were
to have their limit. The interests of Europe
and America imposed higher duties, which
\vere not to be violated for the sake of leav
ing undisturbed the precedents copied by
public offices at Madrid, from the power of
Charles V. or the arrogance of Philip II.
The principal circumstance in which this
Despatch added to the preceding, was; that
556
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
it both laid a wider foundation for the policy
of recognition, and made a much nearer ap
proach to exactness in fixing the time beyond
which it could not be delayed.
I have no subsequent official information.
I have heard, and I believe, that Spain has
answered this Despatch, — that she repeals
her invitation to England to send a minister
to the proposed congress, and that she has
notified the assent of Russia, Austria, France,
and Prussia. I have heard, and I also be
lieve, that England on this occasion has
proved true to herself, — that, in conformity
to her ancient character, and in consistency
with her repeated declarations, she has de
clined all discussion of this question with the
Holy (or w?i-Holy) Alliance. Would to God
that we had from the beginning kept aloof
from these Congresses, in which we have
made shipwreck of our ancient honour ! If
that were not possible, would to God that we
had protested, at least by silence and ab
sence against that conspiracy at Verona,
which has annihilated the liberties of conti
nental Europe !
In confirmation of the review which I have
taken of the documents, I may also here
mention the declaration made in this House,
that during the occupation of Spain by a
French army, every armament against the
Spanish ports must be considered as having
a French character, and being therefore
W7ithin the principle repeatedly laid down in
the Papers. Spain indeed, as a belligerent,
can be now considered only as a fang of the
Holy Alliance, powerless in itself, but which
that monster has the power to arm with
thrice-distilled venom.
As the case now stands, Sir, I conceive it
to be declared by Great Britain, that the ac
knowledgment of the independence of Spa
nish America is no breach of faith or neu
trality towards Spain, — that such an acknow
ledgment might long ago have been made
without any violation of her rights or inter
position in her affairs, — that we have been
for at least two years entitled to make it by
all the rules of international law, — that we
have delayed it, from friendly consideration
for the feelings and claims of the Spanish
Government, — that we have now carried our
forbearance to the utmost verge of reasonable
generosity, — and, having exhausted all the
offices of friendship and good neighbourhood,
are at perfect liberty to consult only the in
terest of our own subjects, and the just pre
tensions of the American states.
In adopting this recognition now, we shall
give just offence to no other Power. But if
we did, and once suffer ourselves to be in
fluenced by the apprehension of danger in re
sisting unjust pretensions, we destroy the only
bulwark, — that of principle, — that guards
a nation. There never was a time when it
would be more perilous to make concessions,
or to show feebleness and fear. We live in
an age of the most extravagant and mon
strous pretensions, supported by tremendous
force. A confederacy of absolute monarchs
claim the right of controlling the internal go
vernment of all nations. In the exercise of
that usurped power they have already taken
military possession of the whole continent
of Europe. Continental governments either
obey their laws or tremble at their displea
sure. England alone has condemned their
principles, and is independent of their power,
They ascribe all the misfortunes of the pre
sent age to the example of her institutions,
On England, therefore, they must look with
irreconcilable hatred. As long as she is free
and powerful, their system is incomplete, all
the precautions of their tyrannical policy are
imperfect, and their oppressed subjects may
turn their eyes to her, indulging the hope
that circumstances will one day compel us
to exchange the alliance of kings for the .
friendship of nations.
I will not say that such a state of the world
does not require a considerate and circum
spect policy. I acknowledge, and should
earnestly' contend, that there never was a
moment at which the continuance of peace
was more desirable. After passing through
all the sufferings of twenty years universal
war, and feeling its internal evils perhaps
more severely since its close than when it
raged most widely and fiercely, we are only
now beginning to taste the natural and genu
ine fruits of peace. The robust constitution
of a free community is just showing its power
to heal the deepest wounds. — to compose
obstinate convulsions. — and to restore health
and vigour to every disordered function or
disabled member. I deprecate the occur
rence of what must disturb this noble pro
cess, — one of the miracles of Liberty. But
I am also firmly convinced, that prudence in
the present circumstances of Europe forbids
every measure that can be represented as
having the appearance of fear. If we carry
our caution further than strict abstinence
from injustice, we cannot doubt to what mo
tive our forbearance will be imputed. Every
delay is liable to that interpretation. The least
scrupulous politicians condemn falsehood
when it wears the appearance of fear. It
maybe sometimes unsafe to fire at the royal
tiger who suddenly crosses your path in an •
eastern forest ; but it is thought fully as dan- (
gerous to betray your fear by running away : '
prudent men quietly pursue their road with
out altering their pace, — without provoking
or tempting the ferocious animal.
Having thus traced the progress of mea
sures which have lead us to the very verge
of recognition, the question naturally presents
itself, Why do we not now recognize ? It is
not so much my duty as it is that of the Go
vernment, to tell us why they do not com
plete their own system. Every preparation
is made ; every adverse claim is rejected ;
ample notice is given to all parties. Why is
the determination delayed ? We are irrevo
cably pledged to maintain our principles, and
to act on them towards America. We have
cut off all honourable retreat. Why should
we seem to hesitate ? America expects from
ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES. 557
us the common marks of amity and respect.
Spain cannot complain at their being granted.
iVo other state can intimate an opinion on the
subject, without an open attack on the inde
pendence of Great Britain. What then hin
ders the decisive word from being spoken ?
We have already indeed taken one step
more, in addition to those on which I have
too long dwelt. \Ve have sent consuls to all
the ports of Spanish America to which we
trade, as well as to the seats of the new go
vernment in that country. We have seen in
the public papers, that the consul at Buenos
Ayres has presented a letter from the Secre
tary of State for Foreign Affairs in this coun
try to the Secretary of that Government, de
siring that they would grant the permission
to the consul, without which he cannot ex
ercise his powers. Does not this act acknow
ledge the independence of the State of Bue
nos Ayres ? An independent state alone
can appoint consuls : — an independent state
only can receive consuls. We have not only
sent consuls, but commissioners. What is
their character? Can it be any other than
that of an envoy with a new title 1 Every
agent publicly accredited to a foreign govern
ment, and not limited by his commission to
commercial affairs, must in reality be a di
plomatic minister, whatever may be his offi
cial name. We read of the public and joyful
reception of these commissioners, of presents
made by them to the American administra
tors, and of speeches in which they announce
the good-will of the Government and people
of England towards the infant republics. I
allude to the speech of Colonel Hamilton at
Bogota, on which, as I have seen it only in
a translation, I can only venture to conjecture
(after making some allowance for the over
flow of courtesy and kindness which is apt
to occur on such occasions) that it expressed
the anxious wishes and earnest hopes of this
country, that he might find Columbia in a
state capable of maintaining those relations
of amity which we were sincerely desirous
to establish. Where should we apply for
redress, if a Columbian privateer were to
capture an English merchantman ? Not at
Madrid, but at Bogota. Does not this answer
decide the whole question ?
But British subjects, Sir, have a right to
expect, not merely that their Government
shall provide some means of redress, but
that they should provide adequate and effec
tual means, — those which universal expe
rience has proved to be the best. They are
not bound to be content writh the unavowed
agency and precarious good offices of naval
officers, nor even with the inferior and im
perfect protection of an agent whose com
mission is limited to the security of trade.
The power of a consul is confined to com
mercial affairs; and there are many of the
severest wrongs which the merchant suffers,
which, as they may not directly affect him
in his trading concerns, are not within the
proper province of the consul. The English
trader at Buenos Ayres ought not to feel his
safety less perfect than that of other foreign
merchants. The habit of trusting to an am
bassador for security has a tendency to re
concile the spirit of adventurous industry
with a constant affection for the place of a
man's birth. If these advantages are not
inconsiderable to any European nation, they
must be important to the most commercial
and maritime people of the world.
The American Governments at present
rate our friendship too high, to be jealous
and punctilious in their intercourse with us.
But a little longer delay may give rise to an
unfavourable judgment of our conduct. They
may even doubt our neutrality itself. In
stead of admitting that the acknowledgment
of their independence would be a breach of
neutrality towards Spain, they may much
more naturally conceive that the delay to
acknowledge it is a breach of neutrality
towards themselves. Do we in truth deal
equally by both the contending parties ? We
do not content ourselves with consuls at Ca
diz and Barcelona. If we expect justice to
our subjects from the Government of Ferdi
nand VII., we in return pay every honour to
that Government as a Power of the first class.
We lend it every aid that it can desire from
the presence of a British minister of the
highest rank. We do not inquire whether
he legitimately deposed his father, or legally
dispersed the Cortes who preserved his
throne. The inequality becomes the more
strikingly offensive, when it is considered
that the number of English in the American
States is far greater, and our commerce with
them much more important.
We have long since advised Spain to ac
knowledge the independence of her late pro
vinces in America : we have told her that it
is the only basis on which negotiations can be
carried on, and that it affords her the only
chance of preserving some of the advantages
of friendship and commerce with these vast
territories. Whatever rendered it right for
Spain to recognise them, must also render it
right for us. If we now delay, Spain may
very speciously charge us with insincerity
"It now," she may say, " appears from your
own conduct, that under pretence of friend
ship you advised us to do that from which
you yourselves recoil."
We have declared that we should imme
diately proceed to recognition, either if Spain
were to invade the liberty of trade which we
now possess, or if any other Power were to
take a part in the contest between her and
the American states. But do not these decla
rations necessarily imply that they are in
fact independent ? Surely no injustice of
Spain, or France, or Russia could authorize
England to acknowledge that to be a fact
which we do not know to be so. Either
therefore we have threatened to do what
ought not to be done, or these states are
now in a condition to be treated as independ
ent.
It is now many months since it was de
clared to M. de Polignacj that we should
2 w 2
558
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
consider "any foreign interference, by force
or menace, in the dispute between Spain and
her colonies, as a motive for recognising the
latter without delay." I ask whether the
interference "by menace" has not now oc
curred ? M. Ofalia, on the 26th of Decem
ber, proposed a congress on the affairs of
America, in hopes that the allies of King
Ferdinand " will assist him in accomplishing
the worthy object of upholding the principles
of order and legitimacy, the subversion of
which, once commenced in America, would
speedily communicate." Now I have al
ready said, that, if I am rightly informed,
this proposition, happily rejected by Great
Britain, has been acceded to by the Allied
Powers. Preparations for the congress are
said to be already made. Can there be a
more distinct case of interference by menace
in the American contest, than the agreement
to assemble a congress for the purpose de
scribed in the despatch of M. Ofalia'?
But it is said, Sir, that \ve ought not to re
cognise independence where a contest is still
maintained, or \vhere governments of some
apparent stability do not exist. Both these
ideas seem to be comprehended in the proposi
tion, — " that we ought to recognise only where
independence is actually enjoyed ;" though
that proposition properly only affirms the
former. But it is said that we are called
upon only to acknowledge the fact of inde
pendence, and before we make the acknow
ledgment we ought to have evidence of the
fact. To this single point the discussion is
now confined. All considerations of Euro
pean policy are (I cannot repeat it too often)
excluded : the policy of Spain, or France, or
Russia, is no longer an element in the pro
blem. The fact of independence is now the
sole object of consideration. If there be no
independence, we cannot acknowledge it : if
there be, we must.
To understand the matter rightly, we must
consider separately — what are often con
founded — the two questions, — Whether there
is a contest with Spain still pending ? and
Whether internal tranquillity be securely
established ? As to the first, we must mean
such a contest as exhibits some equality of
force, and of which, if the combatants wrere
left to themselves, the issue would be in
some degree doubtful. It never can be un
derstood so as to include a bare chance, that
Spain might recover her ancient dominions at
some distant and absolutely uncertain period.
In this inquiry, do you consider Spanish
America as one mass, or do you apply your
inquiry to the peculiar situation of each in
dividual state ? For the purposes of the
present argument you may view them in
either light : — in the latter, because they are
sovereign commonwealths, as independent
of each other as they all are of Europe j or in
the former, because they are united by a
treaty of alliance offensive and defensive,
which binds them to make common cause in
this contest, and to conclude no separate
peace with Spain.
If I look on Spanish America as one vast
unit, the question of the existence of any
serious contest is too simple to admit the
slightest doubt. What proportion does the
contest bear to the country in which it pre
vails? My geograghy, or at least my recol
lection, does not serve me so far, that I could
enumerate the degrees of latitude and longi
tude over which that vast country extends.
On the western coast, however, it reaches
from the northern point of New California to
the utmost limit of cultivation towards Cape
Horn. On the eastern it extends from the
mouth of the Mississippi to that of the Ori
noco ; and, after the immense exception of
Guiana and Brazil, from the Rio de la Plata
to the southern footsteps of civilized man.
The prodigious varieties of its elevation ex
hibit in the same parallel of latitude all the
climates and products of the globe. It is the
only abundant source of the metals justly call
ed "precious," — the most generally and per
manently useful of all commodities, except
those which are necessary to the preservation
of human life. It is unequally and scantily peo
pled by sixteen or eighteen millions. — whose
numbers, freedom of industry, and security
of property must be quadrupled in a century.
Its length on the Pacific coast is equal to that
of the whole continent of Africa from the
Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Gibraltar.
It is more extensive than the vast possessions
of Russia or of Great Britain in Asia. The
Spanish language is spoken over a line of
nearly six thousand miles. The State of
Mexico alone is five times larger that Euro
pean Spain. A single communication cut
through these territories between the Atlan
tic and Pacific would bring China six thou
sand miles nearer to Europe ;* and the Re
public of Columbia or that of Mexico may
open and command that new road for the
commerce of the world.
What is the Spanish strength? A single
castle in Mexico, an island on the coast of
Chili, and a small army in Upper Peru ! Is
this a contest approaching to equality? Is it
sufficient to render the independence of
such a country doubtful? Does it deserve
the name of a contest? It is very little mor^
than what in some of the wretched goverri
ments of the East is thought desirable tA
keep alive the vigilance of the rulers, and
to exercise the martial spirit of the people.
There is no present appearance that the
country can be reduced by the power of
Spain alone; and if any other Power were
to interfere, it is acknowledged that such an
interference would impose new duties on
Great Britain.
If, on the other hand, we consider the
American states as separate, the fact of in
dependence is undisputed, with respect at
least to some of them. What doubts can^be
entertained of the independence of the im
mense provinces of Caraccas, New Grenada,
* See Humboldt's admirable Essay on New
Spain.
ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH- AM ERIC AN STATES. 559
and Quito, which now form the Republic of
Columbia'? There, a considerable Spanish
army has been defeated : all have been either
destroyed, or expelled from the territory of
the Republic : not a Royalist soldier remains.
Three Congresses have successively been
assembled : they have formed a reasonable
and promising Constitution ; and they have
endeavoured to establish a wise system and
a just administration of law. In the midst
of their difficulties the Columbians have
ventured (and hitherto with perfect success)
to encounter the arduous and perilous, but
noble problem of a pacific emancipation of
their slaves. They have been able to ob
serve good faith with their creditors, and
thus to preserve the greatest of all resources
for times of danger. Their tranquillity has
stood the test of the long absence of Bolivar
in Peru. Englishmen who have lately tra
versed their territories in various directions.
are unanimous in stating that their journeys
were made in the most undisturbed security.
Every where they saw the laws obeyed,
justice administered, armies disciplined, and
the revenue peaceably collected. Many
British subjects have indeed given prac
tical proofs of their faith in the power and
will of the Columbian Government to pro
tect industry and property: — they have esta
blished houses of trade ; they have under
taken to work mines; and they are esta
blishing steam-boats on the Orinoco and the
Magdalena. Where is the state which can
give better proofs of secure independence ?
The Republic of Buenos Ayres has an
equally undisputed enjoyment of independ
ence. There no Spanish soldier has set his
foot for fourteen years. It would be as diffi
cult to find a Royalist there, as it would be a
Jacobite in England (I mean only a personal
adherent of ths House of Stuart, for as to
Jacobites in principle, I fear they never were
more abundant). Its rulers are so conscious
of internal security, that they have crossed
the Andes, and interposed with vigour and
effect in the revolutions of Chili and Peru.
Whoever wishes to know the state of Chili,
will find it in a very valuable book lately
published by Mrs. Graham,* a lady whom I
have the happiness to call my friend, who,
by the faithful and picturesque minuteness
of her descriptions, places her reader in the
midst of the country, and introduces him to
the familiar acquaintance of the inhabitants.
Whatever seeds of internal discord may be
perceived, we do not discover the vestige of
any party friendly to the dominion of Spain.
Even in Peru, where the spirit of independ
ence has most recently appeared, and ap
pears most to fluctuate, no formidable body
of Spanish partisans has been observed by
the most intelligent observers; and it is very
doubtful whether even the army which keeps
the field in that province against the Ameri
can cause be devoted to the restored despot
ism of Spain . Mexico, the greatest, doubt-
Journal of a Residence in Chili. — ED.
less, and most populous, but not perhaps the
most enlightened, portion of Spanish America,
has passed through severe trials, and seems
hitherto far from showing a disposition again
to fall under the authority of Spain. Even
the party who long bore the name of Spain
on their banners, imbibed in that very con
test the spirit of independence, and at length
ceased to look abroad for a sovereign. The
last Viceroy who was sent from Spain* was
compelled to acknowledge the independence
of Mexico; and the Royalist officer,! who
appeared for a time so fortunate, could not
win his wTay to a transient power without
declaring against the pretensions of the mo
ther country.
If. then, we consider these states as one
nation, there cannot be said to be any re
maining contest. If, on the other hand, we
consider them separately, why do we not
immediately comply with the prayer of this
Petition, by recognising the independence
of those which \ve must allow to be in fact
independent ? Where is the objection to the
instantaneous recognition at least of Colum
bia and Buenos Ayres 1
But here, Sir. I shall be reminded of the
second condition (as applicable to Mexico
and Peru), — the necessity of a stable go
vernment arid of internal tranquillity. Inde
pendence and good government are unfortu
nately very different things. Most countries
have enjoyed the former : not above three
or four since the beginning of history have
had any pretensions to the latter. Still,
many grossly misgoverned countries have
performed the common duties of justice and
good- will to their neighbours, — I do not say
so well as more wisely ordered common
wealths, but still tolerably, and always much
better than if they had not been controlled
by the influence of opinion acting through a
regular intercourse with other nations.
We really do not deal with Spain and
America by the same weight and measure.
We exact proofs of independence and tran
quillity from America: we dispense both
with independence and tranquillity in Old
Spain. We have an ambassador at Madrid,
though the whole kingdom be in the hands
of France. We treat Spain with all the ho
nours due to a civilized state of the first rank,
though we have been told in this House, that
the continuance of the French army there is
an act of humanity, necessary to prevent the
faction of frantic Royalists from destroying
not only the friends of liberty, but every
Spaniard who hesitates to carry on a war of
persecution and extirpation against all who
are not the zealous supporters of unbounded
tyranny. On the other hand, we require of
me new-born states of America to solve the
awful problem of reconciling liberty with or
der. We expect that all the efforts incident
to a fearful struggle shah1 at once subside
into the most perfect and undisturbed tran-
* Admiral Apodaca. — ED.
t Don Augustiu Iturbide. — ED.
560
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
quillity,— that every visionary or ambitious
nope which it has kindled shall submit with
out a murmur to the counsels of wisdom and
the authority of the laws. Who are we who
exact the performance of such hard condi
tions? Are we the English nation, to look
thus coldly on rising liberty 1 We have in
dulgence enough for tyrants; we make am
ple allowance for the difficulties of their
situation; we are ready enough to deprecate
the censure of their worst acts. And are we,
who spent ages of bloodshed in struggling
for freedom, to treat with such severity
others now following our example ?- Are we
to refuse that indulgence to the errors and
faults of other nations, which was so long
needed by our own ancestors'? We who have
passed through every form of civil and reli
gious tyranny, — who persecuted Protestants
under Mary, — who — I blush to add — perse
cuted Catholics under Elizabeth, — shall we
now inconsistently, — unreasonably, — basely
hold, that distractions so much fewer and
milder and shorter, endured in the same
glorious cause, will unfit other nations for its
attainment, and preclude them from the en
joyment of that rank and those privileges
which we at the same moment recognise as
belonging to slaves and barbarians'?
I call upon my Right Honourable Friend*
distinctly to tell us, on what principle he con
siders the perfect enjoyment of internal quiet
as a condition necessary for the acknowledg
ment of an independence which cannot be
denied to exist. I can discover none; un
less the confusions of a country were such
as to endanger the personal safety of a
foreign minister. Yet the European Powers
have always had ministers at Constantinople,
though it was well known that the barbari
ans who ruled there would, on the approach
of a quarrel, send these unfortunate gentle
men to a prison in which they might remain
during a long war. But if there is any such
insecurity in these states, how do the minis
ters of the United States of North America
reside in their capitals'? or why do we trust
our own consuls and commissioners among
them ? Is there any physical pecularity in
a consul, wbjch renders him invulnerable
where an ambassador or an envoy would be
in danger"? Is he bullet-proof or bayonet-
proof? or does he wear a coat of mail ? The
same Government, one would think, which
redresses an individual grievance on the ap
plication of a consul, may remove a cause of
national difference after listening to the re
monstrance of an envoy.
I will venture even to contend, that inter
nal distractions, instead of being an impedi
ment to diplomatic intercourse, are rather an
additional reason for it. An ambassador is
more necessary in a disturbed than in a tran
quil country, inasmuch as the evils against
which his presence is intended to guard are
more likely to occur in the former than in
the latter. It is in the midst of civil com-
* Mr. Canning. — ED.
motions that the foreign trader is the most
likely to be wronged ; and it is then that he
therefore requires not only the good offices
of a consul, but the weightier interposition
of a higher minister. In a perfectly well-
ordered country the laws and the tribunals
might be sufficient. In the same manner it
is obvious, that if an ambassador be an im
portant security for the preservation of good
understanding between the best regulated
governments, his presence must be far more
requisite to prevent the angry passions of
exasperated factions from breaking out into
war. Whether therefore we consider the
individual or the public interests which are
secured by embassies, it seems no paradox
to maintain, that if they could be dispensed
with at all, it would rather be in quiet than
in disturbed countries.
The interests here at stake may be said
to be rather individual than national. But a
wrong done to the humblest British subject,
an insult offered to the British flag flying
on the slightest skiff, is, if unrepaired, a dis
honour to the British nation.
Then the amount of private interests en
gaged in our trade with Spanish America is
so great as to render them a large part of the
national interest. There are already at least
a hundred English houses of trade established
in various parts of that immense country. A
great body of skilful miners have lately left
this country, to restore and increase the
working of the mines of Mexico. Botanists,
and geologists, and zoologists, are preparing
to explore regions too vast to be exhausted
by the Condamines and Humboldts. These
missionaries of civilization, who are about
to spread European, and especially English
opinions and habits, and to teach industry
and the arts, with their natural consequences
— the love of order and the desire of quiet, —
are at the same time opening new markets
for the produce of British labour, and new
sources of improvement as well as enjoyment
to the people of America.
The excellent petition from Liverpool to
the King sets forth the value of our South
American commerce very clearly, with re
spect to its present extent, its rapid increase,
and its probable permanence. In 1819, t|ie
official returns represent the value of British
exports at thirty-five millions sterling, — In
1822, at forty-six millions; and, in the opin
ion of the Petitioners, who are witnesses of
the highest authority, a great part of this
prodigious increase is to be ascribed to the
progress of the South American trade. On
this" point, however, they are not content
with probabilities. In 1822, they tell us that
the British exports to the late Spanish colo
nies amounted in value to three millions
eight hundred thousand pounds sterling; and
in 1823, to five millions six hundred thou
sand ; — an increase of near two millions in
one year. As both the years compared are
subsequent to the opening of the American
ports, we may lay out of the account the in
direct trade formerly carried on with the
ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES.
561
Spanish Main through the West Indies, the
far greater part of which must now be trans
ferred to a cheaper, shorter, and more con
venient channel. In the year 1820 and the
three following years, the annual average
number of ships which sailed from the port
of Liverpool to Spanish America, was one
hundred and eighty-nine; and the number
of those who have so sailed in five mouths
of the present year, is already one hundred
and twenty-four; being an increase in the
proportion of thirty to nineteen. Another
criterion of the importance of this trade, on
which the traders of Liverpool are peculiarly
well qualified to judge, is the export of cot
ton goods from their own port. -The result
of the comparison of that export to the United
States of America, and to certain parts* of
Spanish and Portuguese America, is pecu
liarly instructive and striking : —
ACTUAL VALUE OF COTTON GOODS EXPORTED
FROM LIVERPOOL.
Year ending Jan. 5, 1820.
To United States - - - £882,029
To Spanish and Portuguese America 852,651
Year ending Jan. 5, 1821.
To United States - - - £1,033,206
To Spanish and Portuguese America 1,111,574
It is to be observed, that this last extraordi
nary statement relates to the comparative
infancy of this trade ; that it comprehends
neither Vera Cruz nor the ports of Columbia ;
and that the striking disproportion in the rate
of increase does not arise from the abate
ment of the North American demand (for
that has increased), but from the rapid pro
gress of that in the South American market.
Already, then, this new commerce surpasses
in amount, and still more in progress, that
trade with the United States which is one
of the oldest and most extensive, as well as
most progressive branches of our traffic.
If I consult another respectable authority,
and look at the subject in a somewhat dif
ferent light, I find the annual value of our
whole exports estimated in Lord Liverpool's
speecht on this subject at forty-three mil
lions sterling, of which about twenty mil
lions' worth "goes to Europe, and about the
value of seventeen millions to North arid
South America; leaving between four and
five millions to Africa and Asia. According
to this statement. I may reckon the trade to
the new independent states as one eighth of
the trade of the whole British Empire. It is
more than our trade to all our possessions on
the continent and islands of America was,
before the beginning of the fatal American
\var in 1774: — for fatal I call it, not because
I lament the independence of America, but
because I deeply deplore the hostile separa
tion of the two great nations of English race.
The official accounts of exports and im
ports laid before this House on the 3d of
* Viz., Brazil, Buenos Ayres, Monte Video,
Chili, and the West Coast of America.
t Delivered in the House of Lords on the 15th
of March.— ED.
71
May, 1824, present another view of this
subject, in which the Spanish colonies are
carefully separated from Brazil. By these
accounts it appears that the exports to the
Spanish colonies were as follows : —
1818, £735,344.
1819, £850.943.
1820', £431.615.
1821,
1822,
1823,
£917.916.
£1.210^825.
£2^016,276.
I quote all these statements of this com
merce, though they do not entirely agree
with each other, because I well know the
difficulty of attaining exactness on such sub
jects, — because the least of them is perfectly
sufficient for my purpose, — and because the
last, though not so large as others in amount,
shows more clearly than any other its rapid
progress, and the proportion which its increase
bears to the extension of American independ
ence.
If it were important to swell this account.
I might follow the example of the Liverpoo
Petitioners (who are to be heard with more
respect, because on this subject they have
no interest), by adding to the general amount
of commerce the supply of money to the
American states of about twelve millions
sterling. For though I of course allow that
such contracts cannot be enforced by the
arms of this country against a foreign state,
yet I consider the commerce in money as
equally legitimate and honourable with any
other sort of commercial dealing, and equally
advantageous to the country of the lenders,
wherever it is profitable to the lenders them
selves. I see no difference in principle be
tween a loan on the security of public reve
nue, and a loan on a mortgage of private
property; and the protection of such deal
ings is in my opinion a perfectly good addi
tional reason for hastening to do that which
is previously determined to be politic and
just.
If. Sir, I were further called to illustrate
the value of a free intercourse with South
America. I should refer the House to a valu
able work, which I hope all who hear me
have read, and which I know they ought to
read, — I mean Captain Basil Hall's Travels
in that country. The whole book is one
continued proof of the importance of a Free
Trade to England, to America, and to man
kind. No man knows belter how to extract
information from the most seemingly trifling
conversations, and to make them the means
of conveying the most just conception of the
opinions, interests, and feelings of a people.
Though he can weigh interests in the scales
of Smith, he also seizes with the skill of
Plutarch on those small circumstances and
expressions which characterize not only in
dividuals but nations. "While we were ad
miring the scenery," says he, "our people
had established themselves in a hut, and
were preparing supper under the direction
of a peasant, — a tall copper-coloured semi-
barbarous native of the forest, — but who,
notwithstanding his uncivilized appearance,
turned out to be a very shrewd feUow; aud
562
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
gave us sufficiently pertinent answers to
most of our queries. A young Spaniard of
our party, a Royalist by birth, and half a
patriot in sentiment, asked the mountaineer
what harm the King had done. l Why,' an
swered he, cas for the King, his only fault.
at least that I know of, was his living too far
off. If a king be really good for a country,
it appears to me that he ought to live in that
country, not two thousand leagues away
from it.' On asking him what was his
opinion of free trade, ' My opinion,' said he,
'is this: — formerly I paid nine dollars for
the piece of cloth of which this shirt is
made ; I now pay two : — that is my opinion
of free trade.' "* This simple story illus
trates better than a thousand arguments the
sense which the American consumer has of
the consequences of free trade to him.
If we ask how it affects the American
producer, we shall find a decisive answer in
the same admirable work. His interest is to
produce his commodities at less expense,
and to sell them at a higher price, as well as
in greater quantity : — all these objects he
has obtained. Before the Revolution; he sold
his copper at seven dollars a quintal: in
1821, he sold it at thirteen. The articles
which he uses in the mines are, on the other
hand, reduced; — steel from fifty dollars a
quintal to sixteen dollars ; iron from twenty-
five to eight ; the provisions of his labourers
in the proportion of twenty-one to fourteen ;
the fine cloth which he himself wears, from
twenty-three dollars a yard to twelve ; his
crockery from three hundred and fifty reals
per crate to forty; his hardware from three
hundred to one hundred reals
from two hundred to one hundred. t
It is justly observed by Captain Hall, that
however incompetent a Peruvian might be
to appreciate the benefits of political liberty,
he can have no difficulty in estimating such
sensible and palpable improvements in the
condition of himself and his countrymen.
With Spanish authority he connects the re
membrance of restriction, monopoly, degra
dation, poverty, discomfort, privation. In
those who struggle to restore it, we may be
assured that the majority of Americans can
see only enemies who come to rob them of
private enjoyments and personal accommo
dations.
It will perhaps be said, that Spain is will
ing to abandon her monopolies. But if she
does now, might she not by the same autho
rity restore them ? If her sovereignty be re
stored, she must possess abundant means
of evading the execution of any concessions
now made in the hour of her distress. The
faith of a Ferdinand is the only security she
offers. On the other hand, if America con
tinues independent, our security is the strong
sense of a most palpable interest already
spread among the people, — the interest of
* Vol. ii. p. 188.
t Vol. ii. p. 47. -This curious table relates to
Chili, — the anecdote to Mexico.
and his glass
the miner of Chili in selling his copper, and
of the peasant of Mexico in buying his shirt.
I prefer it to the royal word of Ferdinand.
But do we not know that the Royalist Gene
ral Canterac, in the summer of 1823, declared
the old prohibitory laws to be still in force
in Peru, and announced his intention of ac
cordingly confiscating all English merchan
dise which he had before generously spared?
Do we not know that English commerce
every where flies from the Royalists, and
hails with security and joy the appearance
of the American flag?* But it is needless
to reason on this subject, or to refer to the
conduct of local agents. We have a decree
of Ferdinand himself to appeal to, bearing
date at Madrid on the 9th February, 1824.
It is a very curious document, and very
agreeable to the general character of his
most important edicts; — in it there is more
than the usual repugnance between the title
and the purport. As he published a table
of proscription under the name of a decree
of amnesty, so his professed grant of free
trade is in truth an establishment of mo
nopoly. The first article does indeed pro
mise a free trade to Spanish America. The
second, however, hastens to declare, that
this free trade is. to be "regulated" by a
future law, — that it is to be confined to cer
tain ports, — and that it shall be subjected to
duties, which are to be regulated by the
same law. The third also declares, that
the preference to be granted to Spain shall
be "regulated" in like manner. As if the
duties, limitations, and preferences thus an
nounced had not provided such means of
evasion as were equivalent to a repeal of the
first article, the Royal lawgiver proceeds in
the fourth article to enact, that "till the two
foregoing articles can receive their perfect
execution, there shall be nothing innovated
in the state of America." As the Court of
Madrid does not recognise the legality of
what has been done in America since the
revolt, must not this be reasonably inter
preted to import a re-establishment of the
Spanish laws of absolute monopoly, till the
Government of Spain shall be disposed to
promulgate that code of restriction, of pre
ference, and of duties, — perhaps prohibitory
ones, — which, according to them, constitutes
free trade.
But, Sir, it will be said elsewhere, though
not here, that I now argue on the selfish and
sordid principle of exclusive regard to Bri
tish interest, — that I would sacrifice every
higher consideration to the extension of our
traffic, and to the increase of our profits.
For this is the insolent language, in which
those who gratify their ambition by plunder
ing and destroying their fellow-creatures,
have in all ages dared to speak of those who
better their own condition by multiplying the
enjoyments of mankind. In answer, I might
content myself with saying, that having
* As in the evacuation of Lima in the spring of
1824.
ON THE RECOGNITION OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN STATES.
563
proved the recognition of the independence
of these states to be conformable to justice,
I have a perfect right to recommend it as
conducive to the welfare of this nation. But
I deny altogether the doctrine, that com
merce has a selfish character, — that it can
benefit one party without being advantageous
to the other. It is twice blessed : it blesses
the giver as well as the receiver. It consists
in the interchange of the means of enjoy
ment; and its very essence is to employ 'one
part of mankind in contributing to the hap
piness of others. What is the instrument
by which a savage is to be raised from a
state in which he has nothing human but the
form, but commerce, — exciting in his mind
the desire of accommodation and enjoyment,
and presenting to him the means of obtain
ing these advantages ? It is thus only that
he is gradually raised to industry, — to fore
sight. — to a respect for property, — to a sense
of justice, — to a perception of the necessity
of laws. What corrects his prejudices against
foreign nations and dissimilar races? — com
mercial intercourse. What slowly teaches
him that the quiet and well-being of the
most distant regions have some tendency to
promote the prosperity of his own'? What
at length disposes him even to tolerate those
religious differences which led him to regard
the greater part of the species with abhor
rence ? Nothing but the intercourse and
familiarity into which commerce alone could
have tempted him. What diffuses wealth,
and therefore increases the leisure which
calls into existence the works of genius, the
discoveries of science, and the inventions of
art? What transports just opinions of go
vernment into enslaved countries, — raises the
importance of the middle and lower classes
of society, and thus reforms social institu
tions, and establishes equal liberty ? What
but Commerce — the real civilizer and eman
cipator of mankind ?
A delay of recognition would be an im
portant breach of justice to the American
states. We send consuls to their territory,
in the confidence that their Government and
their judges will do justice to British sub
jects* but we receive no authorised agents
from them in return. Until they shall be
recognised by the King, our courts of law
will not acknowledge their existence. Our
statutes allow certain privileges to ships
coming from the "provinces in America
lately subject to Spain ;" but our courts will
not acknowledge that these provinces are
subject to any government. If the maritime
war which has lately commenced should
long continue, many questions of interna
tional law may arise out of our anomalous
situation, which it will be impossible to de
termine by any established principles. If
we escape this difficulty by recognising the
actual governments in courts of Prize, how
absurd, inconsistent, and inconvenient it is
not to extend the same recognition to all our
tribunals !
The reception of a new state into the so
ciety of civilized nations by those acts which
amount to recognition, is a proceeding which,
as it has no legal character, and is purely of
a moral nature, must vary very much in its
value, according to the authority of the na
tions who, upon such occasions, act as the
representatives of civilized men. I will say
nothing of England, but that she is the only
anciently free state in the world. For her
to refuse her moral aid to communities strug
gling for liberty, is an act of unnatural harsh
ness, which, if it does not recoil on herself,
must injure America in the estimation of
mankind.
This is not all. The delay of recognition
tends to prolong and exasperate the disorders
which are the reason alleged for it. It en
courages Spain to waste herself in desperate
efforts; it encourages the Holy Alliance to
sow division, — to employ intrigue and cor
ruption, — to threaten, perhaps to equip and
despatch, armaments. Then it encourages
every incendiary to excite revolt, and every
ambitious adventurer to embark in projects
of usurpation. It is a cruel policy, which
has the strongest tendency to continue for a
time, of which we cannot foresee the limits,
rapine and blood, commotions and civil wars,
throughout the larger portion of the New
World. By maintaining an outlawry against
them, wre shall give them the character of
outlaws. The long continuance of confu
sion.— in part arising from our refusing to
countenance their governments, to impose on
them the mild yoke of civilized opinion, and
to teach them respect for themselves by as
sociating them with other free communities,
— may at length really unfit them for liberty
or order, and destroy in America that capa
city to maintain the usual relations of peace
and amity with us which undoubtedly exists
there at present.
It is vain to expect that Spain, even if she
were to reconquer America, could establish
in that country a vigorous government, ca
pable of securing a peaceful intercourse with
other countries. America is too determined,
and Spain is too feeble. The only possible
result of so unhappy an event would be, to
exhibit the wretched spectacle of beggary,
plunder, bloodshed, and alternate anarchy
and despotism in a country almost depopu
lated. It may require time to give firmness
to native governments; but it is impossi
ble that a Spanish one should ever again ac
quire it.
Sir, I am far from foretelling that the Ame
rican nations will not speedily and complete
ly subdue the agitations which are in some
degree, perhaps, inseparable from a struggle
for independence. I have no such gloomy
forebodings; though even if I were to yield
to them, I should not speak the language
once grateful to the ears of this House, if I
were not to say that the chance of liberty is
worth the agitations of centuries. If any
Englishman were to speak opposite doctrines
to these rising communities, the present
power and prosperity and glory of England
564
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
would enable them to detect his slavish
sophistry. As a man, I trust that the virtue
and fortune of these American states will
spare them many of the sufferings which
appear to be the price set on liberty; but as
a Briton, I am desirous that we should aid
them by early treating them with that honour
and kindness which the justice, humanity,
valour, and magnanimity which' they have
displayed in the prosecution of the noblest
object of human pursuit, have so well de
served.
To conclude : — the delay of the recogni
tion is not due to Spain: it is injurious to
America : it is inconvenient to all European
nations, — and only most inconvenient to
Great Britain, because she has a greater in
tercourse with America than any other na
tion. I would not endanger the safety of my
own country for the advantage of others; I
would not violate the rules of duty to pro
mote its interest; I would not take unlawful
means even for the purpose of diffusing
liberty among men ; I would not violate neu
trality to serve America, nor commit injus
tice to extend the commerce of England :
j but I would do an act, consistent with neu
trality, and warranted by impartial justice,
: tending to mature the liberty and to consoli-
| date the internal quiet of a vast continent, —
' to increase the probability of the benefits of
free and just government being attained by
; a great portion of mankind, — to procure for
England the honour of a becoming share in
j contributing to so unspeakable a blessing. —
; to prevent the dictators of Europe from be-
' coming the masters of the New World, — to
re-establish some balance of opinions and
force, by placing the republics of America,
1 with the wealth and maritime power of the
world, in the scale opposite to that of the
European Allies, — to establish beyond the
Atlantic an asylum which may preserve, till
happier times, the remains of the Spanish
name, — to save nations, who have already
proved their generous spirit, from becoming
the slaves of the Holy Alliance, — and to
rescue sixteen millions of American Spa
niards from sharing with their European
brethren that sort of law and justice, — of
peace and order, — which now prevails from
the Pyrenees to the Rock of Gibraltar.
;^,<:: :. SPEECH
ON THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA,
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 2o OF MAY, 1828.
MR. SPEAKER, — I think I may interpret
fairly the general feeling of the House, when
I express my congratulations upon the great
extent of talent and information which the
Honourable Member for St. Michael's* has
just displayed, and that I may venture to
assert he has given us full assurance, in his
future progress, of proving a useful and valu
able member of the Parliament of this coun
try. I cannot, also, avoid observing, that the
laudable curiosity which carried him to visit
that country whose situation is now the sub
ject of discussion, and still more the curiosity
which led him to visit that Imperial Republic
which occupies the other best portion of the
American continent, gave evidence of a mind
actuated by enlarged and liberal views.
After having presented a petition signed
by eighty-seven thousand of the inhabitants
of Lower Canada — comprehending in that
number nine-tenths of the heads of families
in the province, and more than two-thirds of
its landed proprietors, and after having shown
that the Petitioners had the greatest causes
of complaint against the administration of
* Mr. [now the Right Honourable] Henry La-
bouchere.— ED.
the government in that colony, it would be
an act of inconsistency on my part to attempt
to throw any obstacle in the way of that in
quiry which the Right Honourable Gentle-
| man* proposes. It might seem, indeed, a
j more natural course on my part, if I had
j seconded such a preposition. Perhaps I
! might have been contented to give a silent
; acquiescence in the appointment of a coifi-
! mittee, and to reserve any observations }.l
may have to offer until some specific meal-
sure is proposed, or until the House is in pos
session of the information which may be
! procured through the labours of the commit-
i tee, — perhaps, I say, I might have been dis-
' posed to adopt this course if I had not been
intrusted with the presentation of that Peti
tion. But I feel bound by a sense of the
trust reposed in me to allow no opportunity
to pass over of calling the attention of the
House to the grievances of the Petitioners,
* Mr. Huskisson, Secretary for the Colonial
Department, had moved to refer the whole ques
tion of the already embroiled affairs of the Ca
nadian provinces to a Select Committee of the
House of Commons, which was eventually agreed
to,— ED.
ON THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA.
565
and to their claims for redress and for the
maintenance of their legitimate rights. This
duty I hold -myself bound to execute, ac
cording to the best of my ability, without
sacrificing my judgment, or rendering it sub
ordinate to any sense of duty ; — but feeling
only that the confidence of the Petitioners
binds me to act on their behalf, and as their
advocate, in precisely the same manner,
and to the same extent, as if I had been in
vested with another character, and autho
rised to state their complaints in a different
situation.*
To begin then with the speech of the
Right Honourable Gentleman, I may take
leave to observe, that in all that was con
tained in the latter part of it he has my full
est and most cordial assent. In 1822, when
the Canadians were last before the House,
I stated the principles which ought to be
maintained with respect to what the Right
Honourable Gentleman has very properly
and very eloquently called the "Great Bri
tish Confederacy." I hold now, as I did
then, that all the different portions of that
Confederacy are integral parts of the British
Empire, and as such entitled to the fullest
protection. I hold that they are all bound
together as one great class, by an alliance
prior in importance to every other, — more
binding upon us than any treaty ever enter
ed into with any state, — the fulfilment of
which we can never desert without the
sacrifice of a great moral duty. I hold that
it can be a matter of no moment, in this bond
of alliance, whether the parties be divided
by oceans or be neighbours : — I hold that
the moral bond of duty and protection is the
same. My maxims of Colonial Policy are
few and simple : — a full and efficient pro
tection from all foreign influence : full per
mission to conduct the whole of their own
internal affairs ; compelling them to pay all
the reasonable expenses of their own govern
ment, and giving them at the same time a
perfect control over the expenditures of the
money; and imposing no restrictions of any
kind upon the industry or traffic of the peo
ple. These are the only means by which
the hitherto almost incurable evil of distant
government can be either mitigated or re
moved. And it may be a matter of doubt,
whether in such circumstances the colonists
would not be under a more gentle control,
and in a happier state, than if they were to
be admitted to a full participation in the
rule, and brought under the immediate and
full protection, of the parent government.
I agree most fully with the Honourable Gen
tleman who spoke last, when he expressed a
wish that we should leave the regulation of
the internal affairs of the colonies to the
colonists, except in cases of the most urgent
and manifest necessity. The most urgent
and manifest necessity, I say ; and few and
* This alludes to his nomination some time
previously by the House of Assembly of Lower
Canada as the Agent of the Province, which
nomination had not however taken effect. — ED.
rare ought to be the exceptions to the rule
even upon the strength of those necessities.
Under these circumstances of right I con
tend it is prudent to regard all our colonies;
and peculiarly the population of these two
great provinces; — provinces placed in one
of those rare and happy states of society in
which the progress of population must be
regarded as a blessing to mankind, — exempt
from the curse of fostering slavery, — exempt
from the evils produced by the contentions
of jarring systems of reli
enjoying the
blessings of universal toleration, — and pre
senting a state of society the most unlike
that can possibly be imagined to the fastidi
ous distinctions of Europe. Exempt at once
from the slavery of the West, and the castes
of the East, — exempt, too. from the embar
rassments of that other great continent which
we have chosen as a penal settlement, and
in which the prejudices of society have
been fostered, I regret to find, in a most un
reasonable degree, — exempt from all the
artificial distinctions of the Old World, arid
many of the evils of the New, we see a great
population rapidly growing up to be a great
nation. None of the claims of such a popu
lation ought to be cast aside ; and none of
their complaints can receive any but the
most serious consideration.
In the first part of his speech the Right
Honourable Gentleman declared, that the
excesses and complaints of the colonists
arose from the defect of their constitution,
and next from certain contentions into which
they had fallen with Lord Dalhousie. In
any thing I may say on this occasion, I beg
to be understood as not casting any imputa
tion upon the character of that Noble Lord :
I speak merely of the acts of his Govern
ment; and I wish solely to be understood as
saying, that my opinion of the acts of that
Government are different from those which
I believe to have been conscientiously his.
I, however, must say, that I thought the
Right Honourable Gentleman in one part of
his address had indulged himself in some
pleasantries which seemed ill suited to the
subject to which he claimed our attention ;
— I allude to the three essential grievances
which he seemed to imagine led to many,
if not all, of the discontents and complaints
of the colonists. There was the perplexed
system of real-property-law, creating such a
vexatious delay, and such enormous costs to
the suitor as to 'amount very nearly to a de
nial of justice : this, he said, arose from ad
hering to the Custom of Paris. The next
cause of discontent is the inadequate repre
sentation of the people in Parliament : that
he recommended to the immediate attention
of the committee, for the purpose of revision.
Lastly, the members of the Legislature were
so absurdly ignorant of the first principles of
political economy, as to have attempted to
exclude all the industry and capital of other
countries from flowing in to enrich and fer
tilise their shores. These were the three
grounds upon which he formally impeached
2X
566
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the people of Canada before the Knights,
Citizens, and Burgesses of Great Britain and
Ireland in Parliament assembled.
Did the Right Honourable Gentleman never
hear of any other System of law, in any
other country than Canada, in which a jumble
of obsolete usages were mixed up and con
founded with modern subtleties, until the
mind of the most acute men of the age and
nation — men who had, in a service of forty
years, passed through every stage of its gra
dations — were driven to declare that they
felt totally unable to find their way through
its labyrinths, and were compelled, by their
doubts of what was law and what was not,
to add in a most ruinous degree to the ex
penses of the suitor ? This system has been
called the "Common Law,'' — "the wisdom
of our ancestors," — and various other vener
able names. Did he never hear of a system
of representation in any other country totally
irreconcilable either with the state of the
population or with any rule or principle under
heaven 1 Have I not heard over and over
again from the lips of the Right Honourable
Gentleman, and from one* whom, alas ! I
shall hear no more, that this inadequate
system of representation possessed extraor
dinary advantages over those more syste
matic contrivances which resulted from the
studies of the " constitution makers" of other
countries'? And yet it is for this very irre
gularity in their mode of representation that
the Canadians are now to be brought before
the judgment of the Right Honourable Gentle
man's committee. I felt still greater wonder,
however, when I heard him mention his third
ground of objection to the proceedings of the
colonists, and his third cause of their dis
content — their ignorance of political econo
my. Too surely the laws for the exclusion
of the capital and industry of other countries
did display the grossest ignorance of that
science ! I should not much wonder if I
heard of the Canadians devising plans to
prevent the entrance of a single grain of
foreign corn into the provinces. I should not
wonder to hear the members of their Legis
lature and their great land-owners contend
ing that it was absolutely necessary that the
D)le should be able to raise all their own
; and consequently (although, perhaps,
they do not see the consequences) to make
every other nation completely independent
of their products and their industry. It is
perhaps barely possible that some such non
sense as this might be uttered in the legisla
tive assembly of the Canadians.
Then again, Sir, the Right Honourable
Gentleman has alluded to the Seigneurs and
their vassals. Som&of these "most potent,
grave, and reverend" Seigneurs may happen
to be jealous of their manorial rights : for
seigneuralty means manor, and a seigneur is
only, therefore, a lord of the manor. How
harmless this lofty word seems to be when
translated ! Some of these seigneurs might
* Mr. Canning. — ED.
happen, I say, to be jealous of their manorial
privileges, and anxious for the preservation
of their game. I am a very bad sportsman
myself,,.and not well acquainted with the
various objects of anxiety to such persons;
but there may be, too, in these colonies also,
persons who may take upon themselves to
institute a rigorous inquiry into the state of
their game, and into the best methods of
preserving red game and black game, and
pheasants and partridges; and who might be
disposed to make it a question whether any
evils arise from the preservation of these
things for their sport, or whether the safety,
the liberty, and the life of their fellow-sub
jects ought not to be sacrificed for their per
sonal gratification.
With regard to the observance of the
Custom of Paris, I beg the House to consider
that no change was effected from 1760 to
1789; and (although I admit with the Right
Honourable Gentleman that it may be bad as
a system of conveyance, and may be expen
sive on account of the difficulties produced
by mortgages) that the Canadians cannot be
very ill off under a code of laws which grew
up under the auspices of the Parliament of
Paris — a body comprising the greatest learn
ing and talent ever brought to the study of
the law, and boasting the names of L'Hopital
and Montesquieu.
Neither can it be said, that the Assembly
of Canada was so entirely indifferent to its
system of representation : for it ought to be
recollected, that they passed a bill to amend
it, Avhich was thrown out by the Council. —
that is, in fact, by the Government. At 'all
events, this showTs that there was no want
of a disposition to amend the state of their
representation; although Government might
differ from them as to the best method of
accomplishing it. A bill for establishing the
independence of the judges was another re
medial measure thrown out by the Upper
House.
As at present informed, however, without
going further into these questions, I see
enough stated in the Petition upon the table
of the House, to justify the appointment of
a committee of inquiry.
In every country, Sir, the wishes of the
greater number of the inhabitants, and o'f
those in possession of the great mass of the
property, ought to have great influence in the
government; — they ought to possess the
power of the government. If this be true
generally, the rule ought, a multo fortiori, to
be followed in the government of distant
colonies, from which the information that is
to guide the Government at home is. sent by
a few, and is never correct or complete. A
Government on the spot, though with the
means of obtaining correct information, is
exposed to the delusions of prejudice : — for
a Government at a distance, the only safe
course to pursue is to follow public opinion.
In making the practical application of this
principle, if I find the Government of any
country engaged in squabbles with the great
ON THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA.
56T
mass of the people, — if I find it engaged in
vexatious controversies and ill-timed dis
putes, — especially if that Government be the
Government of a colony, — I say, that there
is a reasonable presumption against that Go
vernment. I do not charge it with injustice,
but I charge it with imprudence and indis
cretion ; and I say that it is unfit to hold the
authority intrusted to it. The ten years of
squabbles and hostility which have existed
in this instance, are a sufficient charge against
this Government.
I was surprised to hear the Right Honour
able Gentleman put the People and the Go
vernment on the same footing in this respect.
What is government good for, if not to temper
passion with wisdom? The People are said
to be deficient in certain qualities, and a go
vernment are said to possess them. If the
People are not deficient in them, it is a fal
lacy to talk of the danger of intrusting them
with political power: if they are deficient,
where is the common sense of exacting from
them that moderation which government is
instituted for the very purpose of supplying ?
Taking this to be true as a general princi
ple, it cannot be false in its application to
the question before the House. As I under
stand it, the House of Assembly has a right
to appropriate the supplies which itself has
granted. The House of Commons knows
well how to appreciate that right, and should
not quarrel with the House of Assembly for
indulging in a similar feeling. The Right
Honourable Gentleman himself admits the
existence of this right. The Governor-Gene
ral has, however, infringed it, by appropria
ting a sum of one hundred and forty thousand
pounds without the authority of the Assem
bly. That House does not claim to appro
priate the revenue raised under the Act of
1774: they only claim a right to examine
the items of the appropriation in order to
ascertain if the Government need any fresh
supplies. The Petitioners state it as one of
their not unimaginary grievances, that they
have lost one hundred thousand pounds by
the neglect of the Receiver-General. This
is not one of those grievances which are said
to arise from the Assembly's claim of politi
cal rights. Another dispute arises from the
Governor-General claiming, in imitation of
the power of the King, a right to confirm the
Speaker of the House of Assembly. This
right. — a very ancient one, and venerable
from its antiquity and from being an esta
blished fact of an excellent constitution at
home, — is a most absurd adjunct to a colo
nial government. But I will not investigate
the question, nor enter into any legal argu
ment with regard to it ; for no discussion can
in any case, as I feel, be put in competition
with the feelings of a whole people. It is a
fatal error in the rulers of a country to despise
the people : its safety, honour, and strength,
are best preserved by consulting their wishes
and feelings. The Government at Quebec,
despising such considerations, has been long
engaged in a scuffle with the people, and has
2Q2
thought hard wrords and hard blows not in
consistent with its dignity.
I observe, Sir, that twenty-one bills were
passed by the House of Assembly in 1827,
— most of them reformatory, — of which not
one was approved of by the Legislative
Council. Is the Governor responsible for
this'? I answer, he is. The Council is no
thing else but his tool : it is not, as at present
constituted, a fair and just constitutional
check between the popular assembly and the
Governor. Of the twenty-seven Councillors,
seventeen hold places under the Government
at pleasure, dividingamong themselves yearly
fifteen thousand pounds, which is not a small
sum in a country in which a thousand a-year
is a large income for a country gentleman.
I omit the Bishop, who is perhaps rather too
much inclined to authority, but is of a pacific
character. The minority, worn out in their
fruitless resistance, have withdrawn from
attendance on the Council. Two of them,
being the most considerable landholders in
the province, were amongst the subscribers
to the Petition. I appeal to the House, if the
Canadians are not justified in considering the
very existence of this Council as a constitu
tional grievance 1
It has been said that there is no aristocracy
formed in the province. It is not possible
that this part of Mr. Pitt's plan could ever
have been carried into execution : an aristo
cracy — the creature of time and opinion —
cannot be created. But men of great merit
and superior qualifications get an influence
over the people ; and they form a species of
aristocracy, differing, indeed, from one of
birth and descent, but supplying the mate
rials out of which a constitutional senate
may be constituted. Such an aristocracy
there is in Canada; but it is excluded from
the Council.
There are then, Sir. two specific classes
of grievances complained of by the Lower-
Canadians: the first is, the continued hosti
lity to all the projected measures of the
Assembly by the Governor; the second is,
the use he makes of the Council to oppose
them. These are the grounds on which in
quiry and change are demanded. I, how
ever, do not look upon these circumstances
alone as peremptorily requiring a change in
the constitution of the province. These are
wrongs which the Government might have
remedied. It might have selected a better
Council ; and it might have sent out instruc
tions to the Governor to consult the feelings
of the people. It might have pointed out to
him the example of a Government which
gave way to the wishes of a people, — of a
majority of the people, expressed by a ma
jority of their representatives, — on a ques
tion, too. of religious liberty,* and instead of
weakening themselves, had thereby more
firmly seated themselves in the hearts of the
people. On reviewing the whole question,
the only practical remedy which I see, is to
* Alluding to the repeal of the Test Act.— ED.
568
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
introduce more prudence and discretion into
the counsels of the Administration of the
Province.
The Right Honourable Gentleman has made
allusion to the English settlers in Lower-
Canada, as if they were oppressed by the
natives. But I ask what law has been passed
by the Assembly that is unjust to them ? Is
it a remedy for this that it is proposed to
change the scheme of representation ? The
English inhabitants of Lower-Canada, with
some few exceptions, collected, in towns as
merchants or the agents of merchants, —
very respectable persons, I have no doubt, —
amount to about eighty thousand : would it
not be the height of injustice to give them
the same influence which the four hundred
thousand Canadians, from their numbers and
property, ought to possess? Sir, when I hear
of an inquiry on account of measures neces
sary to protect English settlers, I greatly
lament that any such language should have
been used. Are we to have an English colony
in Canada separated from the rest of the in
habitants, — a favoured body, with peculiar
privileges ? Shall they have a sympathy with
English sympathies and English interests?
And shall we deal out to Canada six hundred
years of such miseries as we have to Ireland ?
Let us not. in God's name, introduce such
curses into another region. Let our policy
be to give all the King's subjects in Canada
equal law and equal justice. I cannot listen
to unwise distinctions, generating alarm, and
leading to nothing but evil, without adverting
to them j and I shall be glad if my observa
tions supply the Gentlemen opposite with the
opportunity of disavowing, — knowing, as I
do, that the disavowal will be sincere — that
any such distinction is to be kept up.
As to Upper Canada, the statement of the
Right Honourable Gentleman appears to be
scanty in information : it does not point out,
— as is usual in proposing such a Committee.
— what is to be the termination of the change
proposed. He has thrown out two or three
plans; but he has also himself supplied ob
jections to them. The Assembly there ap
pears to be as independent as the one in the
Lower province. I have heard of some of
their measures — an Alien bill, a Catholic
bill, and a bill for regulating the Press :
and these discussions were managed with as
much spirit as those of an assembly which
I will not say is better, but which has the
good fortune to be their superiors. The peo
ple have been much disappointed by the
immense grants of land which have been
reserved for the Church of England, — which
faith is not 4hat of the majority~of the people.
Such endowments are to be held sacred
where they have been long made j but I do
not see the propriety of creating them anewr,
— and for a Church, too, to which the ma
jority of the people do not belong. Then,
with regard to the regulations \vhich have
been made for the new college, I see with
astonishment that, in a country where the
majority of the people do not belong to the
Church of England, the professors are all to
subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles : so that,
if Dr. Adam Smith were alive, he could not
fill the chair of political economy, and Dr.
Black would be excluded from that of chem
istry. Another thing should be considered :
— a large portion of the population consists
of American settlers, who can least of all
men bear the intrusion of law into the do
mains of conscience arid religion. It is a
bad augury for the welfare of the province,
that opinions prevalent at the distance of
thousands of miles, are to be the foundations
of the college-charter : it is still worse, if
they be only the opinions of a faction, that
we cannot interfere to correct the injustice.
To the proposed plan for the union of the
two provinces there are so many and such
powerful objections, that I scarcely think
that such a measure can soon be success
fully concluded. The Bill proposed in 1822,
whereby the bitterness of the Lower-Canada
Assembly was to be mitigated by an infu
sion of mildness from the Upper province, —
failing as it did. — has excited general alarm
and mistrust among all your colonies. Ex
cept that measure, which ought to be looked
upon as a warning rather than a precedent,
I think the grounds upon which we have
now been called upon to interfere the scan
tiest that ever were exhibited.
I do not know, Sir, what other plans are to
be produced, but I think the wisest measure
would be to send out a temperate Governor,
with instructions to be candid, and to supply
him with such a Council as will put an end
to the present disputes, and infuse a better
spirit into the administration than it ha|
known for the last ten years. I wish, how-*
ever, to state, that I have not come to a final'
judgment, but have merely described what
the bearing of my mind is on those general
maxims of colonial policy, any deviation
from which is as inconsistent with national
policy as it is with national justice.
ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.
569
SPEECH
ON MOVING FOR
PAPERS RELATIVE TO THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE IST OF JUNE, 1829.
MR. SPEAKER, — I think it will be scarcely
necessary for any man \vho addresses the
House from that part of it where I generally
sit, to disclaim any spirit of party opposition
to His Majesty's Ministers during the present
session. My own conduct in dealing with
the motion which I regret that it is now my
painful duty to bring forward, affords, I be
lieve I may say, a pretty fair sample of the
principle and feeling which have guided all
my friends in the course they have adopted
since the very first day of this Session, when
I intimated rny intention to call public atten
tion to the present subject. For the first
two months of the session, I considered my
self and my political friends as acting under
a sacred and irresistible obligation not to do
any thing which might appear even to ruffle
the surface of that hearty and complete co
operation which experience has proved to
have been not more than necessary to the suc
cess of that grand healing measure* brought
forward by His Majesty's Ministers. — that
measure which I trust and believe will be
found the most beneficent ever adopted by
Parliament since the period when the happy-
settlement of a Parliamentary and constitu
tional crown on the House of Brunswick, not
only preserved the constitution of England,
but struck a death-blow against all preten
sions to unbounded power and indefeasible
title throughout the world. I cannot now
throw off the feelings that actuated me in
the course of the contest by means of which
this great measure has been effected. I can
not so soon forget that I have fought by the
side of the Gentlemen opposite for the at
tainment of that end. Such are my feelings
upon the present occasion, that while I will
endeavour to discharge my duty, as I feel
no hostility, so I shall assume no appearance
of acrimony. At the same time, I trust my
conduct will be found to be at an immeasura
ble distance from that lukevvarmness, which,
on a question of national honour, and in the
cause of the defenceless. I should hold to be
aggravated treachery. I am influenced by
a solicitude that the councils of England
should be and should seem unspotted, not
only at home, but in the eye of the people
as well as the rulers of Europe, — by a desire
* The Bill for removing the Roman Catholic
disabilities.
72
I for an explanation of measures which have
j ended in plunging our most ancient ally into
I the lowest depths of degradation, — by a warm
and therefore jealous regard to national hon
' our, which, in my judgment, consists still
more in not doing or abetiing, or approach
ing, or conniving at wrong to others, than in
the' spirit never tamely to brook wrong done
to ourselves.
I hold it. Sir, as a general principle to be
exceedingly beneficial and wholesome, that
the attention of the House should be some
times drawn to the state of our foreign rela
tions : atid this for the satisfaction of the peo
ple of England ; — in the first place, in order
to assure them that proper care is taken for
the maintenance of peace and security; —
above all, to convince them that care is taken
of the national honour, the best, and indeed
only sufficient guard of that peace and secu
rity. I regard such discussions as acts of
courtesy due to cur fellow-members of the
great commonwealth of European slates;
more particularly now that some of them are
bound to us by kindred ties of liberty, and
by the possession of institutions similar to
our own. Two of our neighbouring states,
— one our closest and most congenial ally, —
the other, in times less happy, our most
illustrious antagonist, but in times to come
our most illustrious rival — have adopted our
English institutions of limited monarchy and
representative assemblies : may they con
solidate and perpetuate their wise alliance
between authority and freedom ! The occa
sional discussions of Foreign Policy in such
assemblies will, I believe, in spite of cross
accidents and intemperate individuals, prove
on the whole, and in the long-run, favourable
to c;ood-will and good understanding between
nations, by gradually softening prejudices,
by leading to public and satisfactory expla
nations of ambiguous acts, and even by
affording a timely vent to jealousies and re
sentments. They will. I am persuaded, root
more deeply that strong and grow ing passion
for peace, which, whaFever may be the pro
jects or intrigues of Cabinets, is daily spread
ing in the hearts of European nations, and
which, let me add, is the best legacy be
queathed to us by the fierce wars which
have desolated Europe from Copenhagen to
Cadiz. They will foster this useful disposi
tion, through the most generous sentiments
2x2
570
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of .human nature, instead of attempting to
attain the same end by under-rating the re
sources or magnifying the difficulties of any
single country, at a moment when distress is
felt by all : — attempts more likely to rouse
and provoke the just sense of national dig
nity which belongs to great and gallant na
tions, than to check their boldness or to damp
their spirit.
If any thing was wanting to strengthen my
passion for peace, it would draw new vigour
from the dissuasive against war which I
heard fall with such weight from the lips of
him,* of whom alone in the two thousand
S?ars that have passed since Scipio defeated
armibal at Zama. it can be said, that in a
single battle he overthrew the greatest of
commanders. I thought, at the moment, of
verses written and sometimes quoted for
other purposes, but characteristic of a dis
suasive, which derived its weight from so
many victories, and of the awful lesson taught
by the fate of his mighty antagonist : —
" Si admoveris ora,
Cannas et Trebiam ante oculos, Thrasymenaque
busta,
Et Pauli stare ingentem miraberis umbram/'t
Actuated by a passion for peace, I own
that I am as jealous of new guarantees of
foreign political arrangements, as I should be
resolute in observing the old. I object to
them as multiplying the chances of war.
And I deprecate virtual, as wrell as express
ones : for such engagements may be as much
contracted by acts as by word s. To proclaim
by our measures, or our language, that the
preservation of the integrity of a particular
state is to be introduced as a principle into
the public policy of Europe, is in truth to
form a new, and, perhaps, universal, even
if only a virtual, guarantee. I will not affect
to conceal that I allude to our peculiarly ob
jectionable guarantee of the Ottoman em
pire, t I cannot see the justice of a policy,
which would doom to perpetual barbarism
and barrenness the eastern and southern
shores of the Mediterranean, — the fair and
famous lands which wind from the Euxine
to the Atlantic. I recoil from thus riveting
the Turkish yoke on the neck of the Chris
tian nations of As:a Minor, of Mesopotamia,
of Syria, and of Egypt : encouraged as they
are on the one hand to hope for deliverance
by the example of Greece, and sure that
the barbarians will be provoked, by the
same example, to maltreat them with tenfold
cruelty. It is in vain to distinguish in this
case between a guarantee against foreign
enemies, and one against internal revolt. If
all the Powers of Europe be pledged by their
acts to protect the Turkish territory from
invasion, the unhappy Christians of the East
* Alluding to a passage contained in a speech
of the Duke of Wellington on the Catholic Relief
Bill.— ED.
t Pharsalia, lib. vii. — ED.
t Which formed part of the basis of the arrange
ments for liberating Greece. — ED.
must look on all as enemies ; while the Turk,
relieved from all foreign fear, is at perfect
liberty to tyrannize over his slaves. The
Christians must despair not only of aid, but
even of good-will, from states whose interest
it will become, that a Government which
they are bound to shield from abroad should
be undisturbed at home. Such a guarantee
cannot be long enforced ; it will shortly give
rise to the very dangers against which it is
intended to guard. The issue will assuredly,
in no long time, be, that the great military
Powers of the neighbourhood, when they
come to the brink of war with each other,
will recur to their ancient secret of avoiding
a quarrel, by fairly cutting up the prey that
lies at their feet. They will smile at the
credulity of those most distant states, whose
strength, however great, is neither of the
kind, nor within the distance, which would
enable them to prevent the partition. But
of this, perhaps, too much.
The case of Portugal touches us most near
ly. It is that of a country connected with
England by treaty for four hundred and fifty
years, without the interruption of a single
day's coldness, — with which we have been
connected by a treaty of guarantee for more
than a century, without ever having been
drawn into war, or exposed to the danger of
it, — which, on the other hand, for her stead
fast faith to England, has been three times
invaded — in 1760, in 1801, and in 1807. —
and the soldiers of which have fought for
European independence, when it was main
tained by our most renowned captains against
Louis XIV. and Napoleon. It is a connection
which in length and intimacy the history of
mankind cannot match. All other nations
have learnt to regard our ascendant, and
their attachment, as two of the elements of
the European system. May I venture to
add, that Portugal preceded us, though but
for a short period, in the command of the
sea, and that it is the country of the greatest
poet who has employed his genius in cele
brating nautical enterprise ?
Such is the country which has fallen under
the yoke of an usurper, whose private crimes
rather remind us of the age of Commoduja
and Caracalla, than of the level mediocrity
of civilized vice, — who appears before th&
whole world with the deep brand on his
brow of a pardon from his king and father
for a parricide rebellion, — who has waded
to the throne through a succession of frauds,
falsehoods, and perjuries, for which any man
amenable to the law woul'd have suffered
the most disgraceful, — if not the last pun
ishment. Meanwhile the lawful sovereign,
Donna Maria II., received by His Majesty
with parental kindness, — by the British na
tion with the interest due to her age. and
sex, and royal dignity, — solemnly recognised
by the British Government as Queen of Por
tugal, — whom all the great Powers of Europe
once co-operated to place on her throne, con
tinues still to be an exile ; though the very
acts by which she is unlawfully dispossessed
ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.
571
are outrages and indignities of the highest
nature against these Powers themselves.
His Majesty has twice told his Parliament
that he has been compelled, by this alike
perfidious and insolent usurpation, to break
off all diplomatic intercourse with Portugal.
Europe has tried the Usurper. Europe is
determined that under his sway the usual re
lations of amity and courtesy cannot be kept
up with a once illustrious and still respecta
ble nation. So strong a mark of the displea
sure of all European rulers has never yet
been set on any country in time of peace.
It would be a reflection on them, to doubt
that they have been in some measure influ
enced by those unconfuted — 1 might say, un-
coritradicted — charges of monstrous crimes
which hang over the head of the Usurper.
His crimes, public and private, have brought
on her this unparalleled dishonour. Never
before were the crimes of a ruler the avowed
and sufficient ground of so severe a visitation
on a people. It is. therefore, my public duty
to state them here ; and I cannot do so in
soft words, without injustice to Portugal and
disgrace to myself. In a case touching our
national honour, in relation to our conduct
towards a feeble ally, and to the unmatched
ignominy which has now befallen her, I
must use the utmost frankness of speech.
I must inquire what are the causes of this
fatal issue ? Has the fluctuation of British
policy had any part in it? Can we safely
say that we have acted not merely with
literal fidelity to engagements, but with gene
rous support to those who risked all in reli
ance on us, — with consistent friendship to
wards a people who put their trust in us, —
with liberal good faith to a monarch whom
we acknowledge as lawful, and who has
taken irretrievable steps in consequence of
our apparent encouragement? The motion
with which I shall conclude, will be for an
address to obtain answers to these important
questions, by the production of the principal
despatches and documents relating to Portu
guese affairs, from the summer of 1826 to
to the present moment • whether originating
at London, at Lisbon, at Vienna, at Rio Ja
neiro, or at Terceira.
As a ground for such a motion, I am obliged,
Sir, to state at some length, though as shortly
as I can, the events on which these docu
ments may throw the needful light. In this
statement I shall first lighten my burden by
throwing overboard the pretended claim of
Miguel to the crowyn, under I know not what
ancient laws : not that I have not examined
it,* and found it to be altogether absurd ; but
because he renounced it by repeated oaths, —
because all the Powers of Europe recognised
another settlement of the Portuguese cro\vn,
and took measures, though inadequate ones,
to carry it into effect, — because His Majesty
has withdrawn his minister from Lisbon, in
acknowledgment of Donna Maria's right. I
content myself with these authorities, as, in
See the Case of Donna Maria,~-Ep,
this place, indisputable. In the performance
of my duty, I shall have to relate facts which
I have heard from high authority, and to
quote copies which I consider as accurate,
of various despatches and minutes. I be
lieve the truth of what I shall relate, and the
correctness of what I shall quote. I shall be
corrected wheresoever I may chance to be
misinformed. I owe no part of my intelli
gence to any breach of duty. The House
will not wonder that many copies of docu
ments interesting to multitudes of men, in
the disastrous situation of some of the parties,
should have been scattered over Europe.
I pass over the revolution of 1820, when a
democratical monarchy was adopted. The
principles of its best adherents have been
modified by the reform of 1826: its basest
leaders are now among the tools of the
Usurper, while he proscribes the loyal suf
ferers of that period. 1 mention only in pas
sing the Treaty of Rio Janeiro, completed in
August, 1825, by which Brazil was separated
from Portugal, under the mediation of Eng
land and Austria ; — the result of negotiations
in which Sir Charles Stuart (nowr Lord Stuart
de Rothesay), one of the most distinguished
of British diplomatists, acted as the plenipo
tentiary of Portugal. In the following spring,
John VI., the late King of Portugal, died,
after having, in the ratification of the treaty,
acknowledged Dom Pedro as his heir. It
was a necessary interpretation of that treaty
that the latter was not to continue King of
Portugal in his own right, but only for the
purpose of separating and settling the two
kingdoms. He held Portugal in trust, and
only till he had discharged this trust : for
that purpose some time was necessary ; the
duration could not be precisely defined; but
it was sufficient that there should appear no
symptom of bad faith, — no appearance of an
intention to hold it longer than the purposes
of the trust absolutely required. For these
purposes, and for that time, he was as much
King of Portugal as his forefathers ; and as
such was recognised by all Europe, with the
exception of Spain, which did riot throw the
discredit of her recognition on his title.
To effect the separation safely and bene
ficially for both countries, Dom Pedro abdi
cated the crown of Portugal in favour of his
daughter Donna Maria, who was to be affi
anced to Dom Miguel, on condition of his
swearing to observe the Constitution at the
same time bestowed by Dom Pedro on the
Portuguese nation. With whatever pangs
he thus sacrificed his daughter, it must be
owned that no arrangement seemed more
likely to secure peace between the parties
who divided Portugal, than the union of the
chief of the Absolutists with a princess who
became the hope of the Constitutionalists.
Various opinions may be formed of the fit-
ness of Portugal for a free constitution : but
no one can doubt that the foundations of
tranquillity could be laid no otherwise than
in the security of each party from being op
pressed by the other,— that a fair distribu-
572
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
tion of political power between them was
the only means of shielding either, — and that
no such distribution could be effected with
out a constitution comprehending all classes
and parties.
In the month of June, 1826, this Constitu
tion was brought to Lisbon by the same emi
nent English minister who had gone from
that city to Brazil as the plenipotentiary of
John VI., and who now returned from Rio to
the Tagus. as the bearer of the Constitutional
Charter granted by Dom Pedro. I do not
meddle with the rumours of dissatisfaction
then produced by that Minister's visit to
Lisbon. It is easier to censure at a distance,
than to decide on a pressing emergency. It
doubtless appeared of the utmost importance
to Sir Charles Stuart, that the uncertainty of
the Portuguese nation as to their form of
government should not be continued ; and
that he, a messenger of peace, should hasten
with its tidings. No one can doubt that the
people of Portugal received such a boon, by
such a bearer, as a mark of the favourable
disposition of the British Government towards
the Constitution. It is matter of notoriety
that many of the Nobility were encouraged
by this seeming approbation of Great Britain
publicly to espouse it in a manner which
they might and would otherwise have con
sidered as an useless sacrifice of their own
safety. Their constitutional principles, how
ever sincere, required no such devotion,
without these reasonable hopes of success,
which every mark of the favour of England
strongly tended to inspire. No diplomatic
disavowal (a proceeding so apt to be con
sidered as merely formal) could, even if it
were public, which it was not, undo the im
pression made by this act of Sir Charles
Stuart. No avowal, however public, made
six months after, of an intention to abstain
from all interference in intestine divisions,
could replace the Portuguese in their first
situation : they had taken irrevocable steps,
and cut themselves off from all retreat.
But this is not all. Unless I be misin
formed by those who cannot deceive, and
are most unlikely to be deceived, the promul
gation of the Constitution was suspended at
Lisbon till the Regency could receive advice
from His Majesty. The delay lasted at least
a fortnight. The advice given was, to put
the Charter in force. I do not know the
terms of this opinion, or the limitations and
conditions which might accompany it : nor
does it import to my reasoning that I should.
The great practical fact that it was asked
for, was sure to be published, as it instantly
was, through all the societies of Lisbon. —
The small accessories were either likely to
be concealed, or sure to be disregarded, by
eager and ardent reporters. In the rapid
succession of governments which then ap
peared at Lisbon, it could not fail to be known
to every man of information, and spread with
the usual exaggerations among the multitude,
that Great Britain had declared for the Con
stitution. Let it not be thought that I men-
ion these acts to blame them. They were
he good offices of an ally. Friendly advice
s not undue interference : it involves no en
croachment on independence, — no departure
"rom neutrality. '• Strict neutrality consists
merely, first, in abstaining from all part in
the operations of war; and, secondly, in
equally allowing or forbidding the supply of
nstruments of war to both parties."* Neu
trality does not imply indifference. It re
quires no detestable impartiality between
right or wrong. It consists in an abstinence
from certain outward acts, well defined by
international law. — leaving the heart entirely
free, and the hands at liberty, where they
are not visibly bound. We violated no neu
trality in execrating the sale of Corsica, — in
ioudly crying out against the partition of
Poland. Neutrality did not prevent Mr.
Canning from almost praying in this House
for the defeat of the French invasion of
Spain. No war with France, or Austria, or
Prussia, or Russia, ensued. Neutrality is
not a point, but a line extending from the
camp of one party to the camp of his oppo
nent. It comprehends a great variety of
shades and degrees of good and ill opinion :
so that there is scope within its technical
limits for a change from the most friendly to
the most adverse policy, as long as arms are
not taken up.
Soon after, another encouragement of an
extraordinary nature presented itself to this
unfortunate people, the atrocious peculiari
ties of which throw into shade its connection,
through subsequent occurrences, with the
acts of Great Britain. On the 30th October
following. Dom Miguel, at Vienna, first swore
to the Constitution, and was consequently
affianced by the Pope's Nuncio, in the pre
sence of the Imperial Ministers, to Donna
Maria, whom he then solemnly acknow
ledged as Queen of Portugal. This was
the first of his perjuries. It was a deliberate
one, for it depended on the issue of a Papal
dispensation, which required time and many
formalities. The falsehood had every aggra
vation that can arise from the quality of
the witnesses, the importance of the object ('
which it secured to him. and the reliance^
which he desired should be placed on it by
this country. At the same moment, a re- "
bellion, abetted by Spain, broke out in his
name, which still he publicly disavowed.
Two months more, and the perfidy of Spain
became apparent : the English troops were
landed in Portugal ; the rebels were driven
from the territory of our ancient friends, by
one of the most wise, honourable, vigorous,
and brilliant strokes of policy ever struck
by England. Mr. Canning delivered Portu
gal, and thus paid the debt which we owed
for four centuries of constant faith and friend
ship, — for three invasions and a conquest
endured in our cause. Still we were neutral :
but what Portuguese could doubt that the
nation which had scattered the Absolutists
* Martens, Precis du Droit des Gens, p. 524.
ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.
573
was friendly to the Constitution ? No tech
nical rule was broken ; but new encourage
ment was unavoidably held out. These re
peated incentives to a nation's hopes, — these
informal but most effective, arid therefore
most binding acts, are those on which I lay
the stress of this argument, still more than
on federal and diplomatic proceedings.
There occurred in the following year a
transaction between the Governments, more
nearly approaching the nature of a treaty,
and which, in my humble judgment, par
takes much of its nature, and imposes its
equitable and honourable duties. I now
come to the conferences of Vienna in au
tumn, 1827. On the 3d of July in that year,
Dom Pedro had issued an edict by which he
approached more nearly to an abdication of
the crown, and nominated Dom Miguel lieu
tenant of the kingdom. This decree had
been enforced by letters of the same date, —
one to Dom Miguel, commanding and re
quiring him to execute the office in con
formity with the Constitution, and others to
his allies, the Emperor of Austria and the
King of Great Britain, committing to them
as it were the execution of his decree, and
beseeching them to take such measures as
should render the Constitutional Charter the
fundamental law of the Portuguese mo
narchy.* On these conditions, for this pur
pose, he prayed for aid in the establishment
of Miguel. In consequence of this decree,
measures had been immediately taken for a
ministerial conference at Vienna, to concert
the means of its execution.
And here, Sir, I must mention one of them,
as of the utmost importance to both branches
of my argument ; — as an encouragement to
the Portuguese, and as a virtual engagement
with Dom Pedro : and I entreat the House to
bear in mind the character of the transactions
of which I am now to speak, as it affects both
these important points. Count Villa Real, at
that time in London, was appointed, I know
not by whom, to act as a Portuguese minis
ter at Vienna. Under colour of want of time
to consult the Princess Regent at Lisbon, un
signed papers of advice, amounting in effect
to instructions, were put into his hands by an
Austrian and an English minister. In these
papers he was instructed to assure Miguel,
that by observing the Constitutional Charter,
he would insure the support of England.
The tone and temper fit to be adopted by
Miguel in conversations at Paris were pointed
out. Count Villa Real was more especially
instructed to urge the necessity of Miguel's
return by England. " His return," it was
said, "is itself an immense guarantee to the
Royalists ; his return through this country
will be a security to the other party." Could
the Nobility and people of Portugal fail to
* " Je supplie V. M. de m'aider non seulement
a faire que cette regenee entre promptement en
fonctions, mais encore a effectuer que la Charte
Constitutionelie octroyee par moi devienne la loi
fondamentale du Royaume." — Dom Pedro to the
King of Great Britain, 3d July, 1827.
consider so active a part in the settlement
of their government, as an encouragement
from their ancient and powerful ally to ad
here to the Constitution ? Is it possible that
language so remarkable should not speedily
have spread among them ? May not some
of those before whose eyes now rises a scaf
fold have been emboldened to act on their
opinions by encouragement which seemed
so flattering'?
In the month of September, 1827, when
Europe and America were bewailing the
death of Mr. Canning, a note was given in at
Vienna by the Marquess de Rezende. the
Brazilian minister at that court, containing
the edict and letters of the 3d of July. The
ministers of Austria, England, Portugal, and
Brazil, assembled there on the 18th of Octo
ber. They began by taking the Brazilian
note and the documents which accompanied
it, as the basis of their proceedings. It was
thus acknowledged, solemnly, that Dom
Pedro's title was unimpaired, and his settle
ment of the constitutional crown legitimate.
They thus also accepted the execution of the
trust on the conditions under which he com
mitted it to them.
It appears from a despatch of Prince Met
ternich to Prince Esterhazy (the copy of
which was entered on the minutes of the
conference), that Prince Metternich imme
diately proceeded to dispose Dom Miguel
towards a prudent and obedient course. He
represented to him that Dom Pedro had re
quired "the effectual aid of Austria to en
gage the Infant to submit with entire defer
ence to the orders of his brother'" and he
added, that " the Emperor of Austria could,
in no case, consent to his return through
Spain, which would be contrary to the wishes
of Dom Pedro, and to the opinion of all the
Governments of Europe." These represen
tations were vain : the good offices of an Au
gust Person were interposed : — Miguel con
tinued inflexible. But in an interview, where,
if there had been any truth in him. he must
have uttered it. he spontaneously added, that
" he was determined to maintain in Portugal
the Charter to which he had sworn, and that
His Majesty might be at ease in that respect."
This voluntary falsehood, — this daring allu
sion to his oath, amounting, virtually, to a re
petition of it. — this promise, made at a mo
ment when obstinacy in other respects gave
it a fraudulent credit, deserves to be num
bered among the most signal of the perjuries
by which he deluded his subjects, and in
sulted all European sovereigns.
Prince Metternich. after having consulted
Sir Henry Wellesley (now Lord Cowley) and
the other Ministers, '-'on the means of con
quering the resistance of the Infant," deter
mined, conformably, (be it remembered)
with the concurrence of all, to have a last
and categorical explanation with that Prince.
"'I declared to him," says Prince Metter
nich, " without reserve, that, in his position,
he had only to choose between immediately
going to England on his way to Portugal, or
574
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
waiting at Vienna the further determination
of Dom Pedro, to whom the Courts of Lon
don (be it not forgotten) and Vienna would
communicate the motives which had induced
the Infant not immediately to obey his bro
ther's orders." Prince Metternich describes
the instantaneous effect of this menace of
further imprisonment with the elaborate soft
ness of a courtier and a diplomatist. " I was
not slow in perceiving that I had the happi
ness to make a profound impression on the
mind of the Infant. After some moments
of reflection, he at last yielded to the coun
sels of friendship and of reason." He owned
" that he dreaded a return through England,
because he knew that there were strong pre
judices against him in that country, and he
feared a bad reception there." He did jus
tice to the people of England • — his conscious
guilt foresaw their just indignation : but he
could not be expected to comprehend those
higher and more generous qualities which
disposed them to forget his former crimes,
in the hope that he was about to atone for
them by the establishment of liberty. No
thing in their own nature taught them that
it was possible for a being in human shape
to employ the solemn promises which de
luded them as the means of perpetrating
new and more atrocious crimes.
Here, Sir, I must pause. Prince Metter
nich, with the concurrence of the English
Minister, announced to Miguel, that if he did
not immediately return to Portugal by way
of England, he must remain at Vienna until
Dom Pedro's further pleasure should be
known. Reflections here crowd on the mind.
Miguel had before agreed to maintain the
Charter : had he hesitated on that subject, it
is evident that the language used to him
must have been still more categorical. No
doubt is hinted on either side of his brother's
sovereign authority: the whole proceeding im
plies it ; and in many of its parts it is express
ly affirmed. He is to be detained at Vienna,
if he does not consent to go through England,
in order to persuade the whole Portuguese
nation of his sincerity, and to hold out — in
the already quoted words of the English
Minister — " a security to the Constitutional
party," or, in other language, the strongest
practical assurance to them, that he was sent
by Austria, and more especially by England,
to exercise the Regency, on condition of ad
hering to the Constitution. Whence did this
right of imprisonment arise ? I cannot ques
tion it without charging a threat of false im
prisonment on all the great Powers. It may,
perhaps, be thought, if not said, that it was
founded on the original commitment by John
VI. for rebellion and meditated parricide,
and on the, perhaps, too lenient commuta
tion of it into a sentence of transportation to
Vienna. The pardon and enlargement grant
ed by Dom Pedro were, on that supposition,
conditional, and could not be earned without
the fulfilment of all the conditions. Miguel's
escape from custody must, then, be regarded
as effected by fraud '} and those to whom his
person was intrusted by Dom Pedro, seem
to me to have been bound, by their trust, to
do all that was necessary to repair the evil
consequences of his enlargement to the King
and people of Portugal. But the more natu
ral supposition is, that they undertook the
trust, the custody, and the conditional liber
ation, in consequence of the application of
their ally, the lawful Sovereign of Portugal,
and for the public object of preserving the
quiet of that kingdom, and with it the peace
of Europe and the secure tranquillity of their
own dominions. Did they not thereby con
tract a federal obligation with Dom Pedro to
complete their work, and, more especially,
to take care that Miguel should not imme
diately employ the liberty, the sanction, the
moral aid. which they had given him, for the
overthrow of the fundamental laws which
they too easily trusted that he would observe
his promises and oaths to uphold ? When
did this duty cease? Was it not fully as
binding on the banks of the Tagus as on those
of the Danube ? If, in the fulfilment of this
obligation, they had a right to imprison him
at Vienna, because he would not allay the
suspicions of the Constitutional party by re
turning through England, is it possible to con
tend that they were not bound to require and
demand at Lisbon, that he should instantly
desist from his open overthrow of the Char
ter'?
I do not enter into any technical distinc
tions between a protocol and a treaty. I
consider the protocol as the minutes of con
ferences, in which the parties verbally agreed
on certain important measures, which, being
afterwards acted upon by others, became
conclusively binding, in faith, honour, and
conscience, on themselves. In consequence
of these conferences, Dom Miguel, on the
19th of October, wrote letters to his brother,
His Britannic Majesty, and Her Royal High
ness the Regent of Portugal. In the two
former, he solemnly re-affirmed his determi
nation to maintain the charter "granted by
Dom Pedro;" and, in the last, he more fully
assures his sister his unshaken purpose "to
maintain, and cause to be observed, the law;S
and institutions legally granted by our auguit
brother, and which we have all sworn tf?
maintain ; and I desire that you should give
to this solemn declaration the necessary pub
licity." On the faith of these declarations,
he was suffered to leave Vienna. The Pow
ers who thus enlarged him taught the world,
by this act, that they believed him. They
lent him their credit, and became vouchers
for his fidelity. On the faith of these decla-
tions, the King and people of England re
ceived him with kindness, and forgot the
criminal, to hail the first Constitutional King
of emancipated Portugal. On the same faith,
the English ambassadors attended him ; and
the English flag, which sanctioned his return,
proclaimed to the Constitutionalists, that they
might lay aside their fears for liberty and
their reasonable apprehensions for them
selves. The British ministers, in their in-
ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.
575
strnctions to Count Villa Real, had expressly
declared, that his return through England
was a great security to the Constitutional
party. Facts had loudly spoken the same
language; but the very words of the British
Minister must inevitably have resounded
through Portugal — lulling vigilance, seeming
to dispense with caution, and tending to ex
tinguish the blackest suspicions. This is
not all: Count Villa Flor, then a minister,
who knew his man, on the first rumours of
Miguel's return obtained the appointment of
Ambassador to Paris, that he might not be
caught by the wolf in his den. It was ap
prehended that such a step would give gene
ral alarm : — he was prevailed upon to remain,
by letters from Vienna, with assurances of
Miguel's good dispositions, which were not
unknown to the British Ministers at Vienna;
and he continued in office a living pledge
from the two Powers to the whole Portu
guese people, that their Constitution was
to be preserved. How many irrevocable
acts were done, — how many dungeons were
crowded, — how many deaths were braved, —
how many were suffered — from faith in per
fidious assurances, accredited by the appa
rent sanction of two deluded and abused
Courts ! How can these Courts ba released
from the duty of repairing the evil which
their credulity has caused !
I shall say nothing of the Protocol of Lon
don of the 12th of January, 1828, except
that it adopted and ratified the conferences
of Vienna, — that it provided for a loan to
Miguel to assist his re-establishment. — and
that it was immediately transmitted to Dom
Pedro, together with the Protocol of Vienna.
Dom Pedro had originally besought the aid
of the Powers to secure the Constitution.
They did not refuse it : — they did not make
any reservations or limitations respecting it :
on the contrary, they took the most decisive
measures on the principle of his proposition.
So implicitly did Dom Pedro rely on them
that, in spite of all threatening symptoms
of danger, he has sent his daughter to Eu
rope ; — a step from which he cannot recede,
without betraying his own dignity, and seem
ing to weaken her claims; and which has
proved a fruitful source of embarrassment,
vexation, and humiliation, to himself and his
most faithful councillors. By this decisive
measure, he has placed his loyal subjects in
a more lasting and irreconcilable state of
hostility with those who have mastered their
country, and has rendered compromise under
better rulers more difficult.
Under all these circumstances, Sir, I can
not doubt that the Mediating Powers have
acquired a right imperatively to require that
Miguel shall renounce that authority which
by fraud and falsehood he has obtained from
them the means of usurping. They are
bound to exercise that right by a sacred
duty towards Dom Pedro, who has intrusted
them with the conditional establishment of
the Regency, and the people of Portugal,
with whom their obligation of honour is the
more inviolable, because it must be informal.
I shall be sorry to hear that such duties are
to be distinguished, by the first Powers of
Christendom, from the most strictly literal
obligations of a treaty.
On the 28th of February, Miguel landed
at Lisbon, accompanied by an English am
bassador, who showed as much sagacity and
firmness as were perhaps ever combined in
such circumstances. The Cortes met to re
ceive the oaths of the Regent to the Emperor
and the Constitution. A scene then passed
which is the most dastardly of all his per
juries, — the basest evasion that could be
devised by a cowardly and immoral super
stition. He acted as if he were taking the
oaths, slurring them over in apparent hurry,
and muttering inarticulately, instead of ut
tering their words. A Prince of one of the
most illustrious of Royal Houses, at the mo
ment of undertaking the sacred duties of
supreme magistracy, in the presence of the
representatives of the nation, and of the
ministers of all civilized states, had recourse
to the lowest of the knavish tricks formerly
said (but I hope calumniously) to have been
practised by miscreants at the Old Bailey,
who by bringing their lips so near the book
without kissing it as to deceive the specta
tor, satisfied their own base superstition, and
dared to hope that they could deceive the
Searcher of Hearts.
I shall not follow him through the steps
of his usurpation. His designs were soon
perceived : they were so evident that Sir
Frederick Lamb, with equal sense and spi
rit, refused to land the money raised by
loan, and sent it back to this country. They
might have been then defeated by the
Loyalists : but an insurmountable obstacle
presented itself. The British troops were
instructed to abstain from interference in
domestic dissensions : — there was one ex
ception, and it was in favour of the basest
man in Portugal. The Loyalists had the
means of sending Miguel to his too merciful
brother in Brazil : they were bound by their
allegiance to prevent his rebellion ; and loy
alty and liberty alike required it. The right
was not doubted by the British authorities :
but they were compelled to say that the
general instruction to protect the Royal Fa
mily would oblige them to protect Miguel
against attack. Our troops remained long
•enough to give him time to displace all
faithful officers, and to fill the garrison with
rebels; while by the help of monks and
bribes, he stirred up the vilest rabble to a
"sedition for slavery." When his designs
were ripe for execution, we delivered him
from all shadow of restraint by recalling
our troops to England. I do not mention
this circumstance as matter of blame, but
of the deepest regret. It is too certain,
that if they had left Lisbon three months
sooner, or remained there three months
longer, in either case Portugal would have
been saved. This consequence, however
unintended, surely imposes on us the duty
576
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of showing much, more than ordinary con
sideration towards those who were destroy
ed by the effect of our measures. The form
in which the blockade of Oporto was an
nounced did not repair this misfortune. I
have never yet heard why we did not speak of
'• the persons exercising the power of govern
ment," instead of calling Miguel " Prince Re
gent," — a title which he had forfeited, and
indeed had himself rejected. Nor do I see
why in the singular case of twro parties, —
one falsely, the other truly, — professing to
act on behalf of Dom Pedro, both might not
have been impartially forbidden to exercise
belligerent rights at sea until his pleasure
was made known. The fatal events which
have followed are, I have serious reasons to
believe, no proof of the slate of general opi
nion in Portugal. A majority of the higher
nobility, with almost all the considerable in
habitants of towns, were and are still wTell
affected. The clergy, the lower gentry,
and the rabble, were, but I believe are not
now, adverse. The enemies of the Consti
tution were th.9 same classes who opposed
our own Revolution for fourscore years. Ac
cidents, unusually unfortunate, deprived the
Oporto army of its commanders. Had they
disregarded this obstacle, and immediately
advanced from Coimbra, it is the opinion of
the most impartial and intelligent persons,
then at Lisbon, that they would have suc
ceeded without a blow. It is certain that
the Usurper and his mother had prepared for
a flight to Madrid, and, after the fatal delay
at Coimbra, were with difficulty persuaded
to adopt measures of courage. As soon as
Miguel assumed the title of King, all the
Foreign Ministers fled from Lisbon : a nation
which ceased to resist such a tyrant was
deemed unworthy of remaining a member
of the European community. The brand of
exclusion was fixed, which is not yet with
drawn. But, in the mean time, the delay
at Coimbra, the strength thence gained by
the Usurper, and the discouragement spread
by the retreat of the Loyalists, led to the fall
of Oporto, and compelled its loyal garrison,
with many other faithful subjects, to leave
their dishonoured country. They were
doubly honoured by the barbarous inhospi-
tality of Spain on the one hand, and on the
other by the sympathy of France and of
England.
At this point, Sir, I must deviate a mo
ment from my line, to consider the very pe
culiar state of our diplomatic intercourse
with Dom Pedro and Donna Maria, in rela
tion to the crown of Portugal. All diplo
matic intercourse with the Usurper in posses
sion of it was broken off. There were three
ministers from the legitimate sovereigns of
the House of Braganza in London: — the
Marquess Palmella, ambassador from Portu
gal, who considered himself in that character
as the minister of Donna Maria, the Queen
acknowledged by us. — the Marquess Barba-
cena, the confidential adviser appointed by
Dom Pedro to guide the infant Queen, — and
the Viscount Itabayana, the recognised min
ister from that monarch as Emperor of Bra
zil. They all negotiated, or attempted to
negotiate, with us. The Marquess Palmella
was told that the success of the usurpation
left him no Portuguese interests to protect, —
that his occupation was gone. The Viscount
Itabayana was repelled as being merely the
minister from Brazil, a country finally sepa
rated from Portugal. The Marquess Barba-
cena was positively apprised that we did not
recognise the right of Dom Pedro to interfere
as head of the House of Brazil, or as interna
tional guardian of his daughter. By some
ingenious stratagem each was excluded, or
driven to negotiate in an inferior and unac
knowledged character. This policy seems
to me very like what used to be called in
the courts, '-'sharp practice." It is not free
from all appearance of international special
pleading, which seems to me the less com
mendable, because the Government were
neither guided nor hampered by precedent.
It is a case. I will venture to say, without
parallel. The result was, that an infant
Queen, recognised as legitimate, treated with
personal honour and kindness, is left without
a guardian to guide her, or a minister to act
for her. Such was the result of our interna
tional subtleties and diplomatic punctilios !
To avoid such a practical absurdity, no
thing seemed more simple than to hold that
nature and necessity, with the entire absence
of any other qualified person, had vested in
Dom Pedro the guardianship of his Royal
daughter, for the purpose of executing the
separation of the two countries, and the ab
dication of the Portuguese crown. His cha
racter would have had some analogy to that
of the guardian named in a court of justice
to a minor party in a law-suit. Ingenuity
would, I think, have been better empfoyed
in discovering the legal analogies, or politi
cal reasons, which are favourable to this na
tural and convenient doctrine. Even the
rejection of the minister of a deposed sove
reign has not always been rigidly enforced.
Queen Elizabeth's virtues were riot indul
gent; nor did her treatment of the Queen of
Scots do honour to her character : yet she
continued for years after the deposition Qf
Mary to treat with Bishop Leslie; and he
was not pronounced to have forfeited the
privileges of an ambassador till he was de
tected in a treasonable conspiracy.
A negotiation under the disadvantage of
an unacknowledged character was, however,
carried on by the Marquess Palmella, and
the Marquess Barbacena, between the months
of November and February last, in which
they claimed the aid of Great Britain against
the Usurper, by virtue of the ancient treaties,
and of the conferences at Vienna. Perhaps
I must allow that the first claim could not in
strictness be maintained : — perhaps this case
was not in the bond. But I have already
stated my reasons for considering the con
ferences at Vienna, the measures concerted
there, and the acts done on their faith, as
ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.
577
equivalent to an engagement on the part of
Austria and England with Dom Pedro. At
all events, this series of treaties for four
hundred and fifty years, from Edward III. to
George IV. — longer and more uninterrupted
than any other in history, — containing many
articles closely approaching the nature of a
guarantee, followed, as it has been by the
strong marks of favour showed by England
to the Constitution, and by the principles and
plan adopted by England and Austria (with
the approbation of France, Russia, and Prus
sia), at Vienna, altogether hold out the strong
est virtual encouragement to the Constitu
tionalists. How could Portugal believe that
those who threatened to imprison Miguel at
Vienna, would hesitate about hurling him
from an usurped throne at Lisbon ? How
could the Portuguese nation suppose that, in
a case where Austria and England had the
concurrence of all the great Powers, they
should be deterred from doing justice by a
fear of war? How could they imagine that
the rule of non-interference, — violated against
Spain, — violated against Naples, — violated
against Piedmont, — more honourably violat
ed for Greece but against Turkey. — should
be held sacred, only when it served to screen
the armies and guard the usurpation of Mi
guel ? Perhaps their confidence might have
been strengthened by what they must think
the obvious policy of the two Courts. It
does seem to me that they might have com
manded Miguel to quit his prey (for war is
ridiculous) as a mere act of self-defence.
Ferdinand VII. is doubtless an able preacher
of republicanism ; but he is surpassed in this
particular by Miguel. I cannot think it a
safe policy to allow the performance of an
experiment to determine how low the kingly
character may sink in the Pyrenean Penin
sula, without abating its estimation in the
rest of Europe. Kings are sometimes the
most formidable of all enemies to royalty.
The issue of our conduct towards Portugal
for the last eighteen months is, in point of
policy, astonishing. We are now bound to
defend a country of which we have made all
the inhabitants our enemies. It is needless
to speak of former divisions : there are now
only two parties there. The Absolutists hate
us : they detest the country of juries and of
Parliaments, — the native land of Canning, —
the source from which their Constitution
seemed to come, — the model which has ex
cited the love of liberty throughout the world.
No half-measures, however cruel to their
opponents, can allay their hatred. If you
doubt, look at their treatment of British sub
jects, which I consider chiefly important, as
indicating their deep-rooted and irreconcil
able malignity to us. The very name of an
Englishman is with them that of a jacobin
and an atheist. Look at their treatment of
the city of Oporto and of the island of Ma
deira, which may be almost considered as
English colonies. If this hatred was in any
degree excited by the feelings of the Eng
lish inhabitants towards them, from what
could such feelings spring but from a know
ledge of the execrable character of the ruling
faction ?• Can they ever forgive us for de
grading their Government and disgracing
their minion, by an exclusion from interna
tional intercourse more rigorous than any in-
urred under a Papal interdict of the four
teenth century?- Their trust alone is in the
Spanish Apostolicals. The Constitutionalists,
who had absorbed and softened all the more
popular parties of the former period, no longer
trust us. They consider us as having incited
them to resistance, and as having afterwards
abandoned them to their fate. They do riot
distinguish between treaties and protocols, —
between one sort of guarantee and another.
They view us, more simply, as friends who
have ruined them. Their trust alone is in
Constitutional France. Even those who think,
perhaps justly, that the political value of
Portugal to us is unspeakably diminished by
the measures which we have happily taken
for the security of Ireland, cannot reasonably
expect that any nation of the second order,
which sees the fate of Portugal, will feel as
surance of safety from the protection of
England.
If we persist in an unfriendly neutrality, it
is absurd voluntarily to continue to submit
to obligations from which we may justly re
lease ourselves. For undoubtedly a govern
ment so covered with crimes, so disgraced
by Europe as that of Miguel, is a new source
of danger, not contemplated' in the treaties
of alliance and guarantee. If Mr. Canning,
with reason, held that an alliance of Portugal
with the Spanish Revolutionists would, on
that principle, release us from our obligations,
it cannot be doubted that by the standing in
famy of submission to the present Govern
ment, she well deserves to forfeit all remain
ing claims to our protection.
Notwithstanding the failure of the nego
tiations to obtain our aid as an ally, I believe
that others have been carried on, and proba
bly are not yet closed, in London and at Rio
Janeiro. It has been proposed, by the Me
diating Powers, to Dom Pedro, to complete
the marriage, to be silent on the Constitu
tion, — but to obtain an universal amnesty. I
cannot wonder at Dom Pedro's rejection of
conditions, one of which only can be effec
tual, — that which imposes on his daughter
the worst husband in Europe. What wonder
that he should reject a proposal to put the
life of a Royal infant under the care of mur
derers. — to join her youthful hand, at the
altar, with one embrued in the blood of hei
most faithful friends ! As for the other con
ditions, what amnesty can be expected from
the wolf of Oporto1? What imaginable se
curity can be devised for an amnesty, unless
the vanquished party be shielded by some
political privileges ? Yet I rejoice that these
negotiations have not closed, — that the two
Powers have adopted the decisive principle
of stipulating what Miguel must do, without
consulting him ; and that, whether from the
generous feelings of a Royal mind at home,
578
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
or from the spirit of constitutional liberty in
the greatest of foreign countries, or from
both these causes, the negotiations have as
sumed a more amicable tone. I do not
wonder that Dom Pedro, after having pro
tested against the rebellion of his brother,
and the coldness of his friends, should in
dignantly give orders for the return of the
young Queen, while he provides for the as
sertion of her rights, by the establishment of
a regency in Europe. I am well pleased
however to learn, that the Mediating Powers
have advised his ministers to suspend the
execution of his commands till he shall be
acquainted with the present state of affairs.
The monstrous marriage is, at all events, I
trust, for ever abandoned. As long as a ne
gotiation is on foot respecting the general
question, I shall not despair of our ancient
Ally.
Sir, I must own, that there is no circum
stance in this case, which, taken singly, I so
deeply regret as the late unhappy affair of
Terceira. The Portuguese troops and Roy
alists who landed in England, had been sta
tioned, after some time, at Plymouth, where
their exemplary conduct gained the most
public and general marks of the esteem of
the inhabitants. In the month of November,
a proposition to disperse them in the towns
and villages of the adjacent counties, without
their officers, was made by the British Go
vernment. Far be it from me to question
the right of His Majesty to disperse all mili
tary bodies in his dominions, and to prevent
this country from being used as an arsenal or
port of equipment by one belligerent against
another, — even in cases where, as in the
present, it cannot be said that the assemblage
was dangerous to the peace of this kingdom,
or menacing to the safety of any other. 1
admit, in their fullest extent, the rights and
duties of neutral states. Yet the dispersion
of these troops, without their officers, could
scarcely fail to discourage them, to deprive
them of military spirits- and habits, and to
end in the utter disbanding of the feeble re
mains of a faithful army. The ministers of
Donna Maria considered this as fatal to their
hopes. An unofficial correspondence was
carried on from the end of November to the
beginning of January on the subject, between
the Duke of Wellington and the Marquess
Palmella, — a man of whom I cannot help
saying, that he is perhaps the individual by
whom his country is most favourably known
to foreign nations, — that, highly esteemed as
he is among statesmen 'for his share in the
greatest affairs of Europe for the last sixteen
years, he is not less valued by his friends for
his amiable character and various accom
plishments, — and that there is no one living
more incapable of forgetting the severest
dictates of delicacy and honour. The Mar
quess chose rather to send the faithful rem
nant of Donna Maria's troops to Brazil, than
to subject them to utter annihilation. Va
rious letters passed on the reasonableness of
this dispersion, and the mode of removal,
from the 20th of November to the 20lh of
December, in which Brazil was considered as
the destination of the troops. In a letter of
t he 20th of December, the Marquess Palmella,
for the first time, mentioned the Island of
Terceira. It had been twice before men
tioned, in negotiations, by two ministers of
the House of Braganza, with totally different
views, which, if the course of debate should
call for it, I trust I shall explain : but it was
first substituted for Brazil by the Marquess
Palmella on the 20th of December. I anx
iously particularize the date, because it is
alone sufficient to vindicate his scrupulous
honour. In the month of May, some parti
sans of Miguel had shaken the loyalty of a
part of the inhabitants: Dom Pedro and the
Constitution wrere proclaimed on the 22d of
June ; the ringleaders of the rebellion were
arrested j and the lawful government was re
established. Some disturbances, however,
continued, which enabled the priests to stir
up a revolt in the end of September. The
insurgents were again suppressed in a few
days ; but it was not till the 4th of December
that Donna Maria was proclaimed as Queen
of Portugal in conformity to the treaty of se
paration, to the Constitutional Charter, and
to the Act of Abdication. Since that time I
have now before me documents which de
monstrate that her authority has been regu
larly exercised and acknowledged in that
island, with no other disturbance than that
occasioned by one or two bands of Guerillas,
quickly dispersed, and without any pretence
for alleging that there was in that island a
disputed title, or an armed contest.
On the 20th of December, then, the Mar
quess Palmella informed the Duke of Wel
lington, that though he (the Marquess) had
hitherto chosen Brazil as being the only safe,
though distant, refuge for the troops, " yet,
from the information which he had just re
ceived of the entire and peaceable submission
of Terceira to the young Queen, and of the
disappearance of the squadron sent by the ac
tual Government of Portugal to blockade the
Azores, he now intended to send her troops
to that part of her dominions where she w?s
not only the rightful but the actual Sovfe-
reign, and for which he conceived that the^
might embark at Plymouth, without any in
fringement of the neutrality of the British
territories." This letter contains the explana
tion of the change of destination. Unarmed
troops could not have been safely sent to
Terceira, nor merchant vessels either, while
there were intestine divisions, or apprehen
sions of a blockade, or indeed till there was
full and authentic information of the esta
blishment of quiet and legitimate authority.
The Marquess Palmella thought that the
transportation of the troops had now become
as lawful as it was obviously desirable. To
remove the Queen's troops to a part of her
own actual dominions, seemed to him, as I
own it still seems to me, an act consistent
even with the cold and stem neutrality as
sumed by England. Had not a Queen, ac-
ON THE AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.
579
knowledged in England, and obeyed in Ter-
ceira, a perfect right to send her own sol
diers home from a neutral country? If the
fact of the actual return of Terceira to its
allegiance be not denied and disproved, I
shall be anxious to hear the reasons, to me
unknown, which authorise a neutral power
to forbid such a movement. It is vain to
say, that Great Britain, as mediator in the
Treaty of 1825, was entitled to prevent the
separation of the Azores from Portugal, and
their subjection to Brazil; for, on the 4th of
December, Donna Maria had been proclaim
ed at Terceira as Queen of Portugal, in virtue
of the possession of the Portuguese crown.
It is vain to say that the embarcation had a
hostile character ; since it was immediately
destined for the territory of the friendly
sovereign. Beyond this point the neutral is
neither bound nor entitled to inquire. It
•was not, as has been inconsiderately said,
an expedition against the Azores. It was
the movement of Portuguese troops from
neutral England to obedient and loyal Ter
ceira, — where surely the Sovereign might
employ her troops in such manner as she
judged right. How far is the contrary pro
position to go ? Should we, — could we, as a
neutral Power, have hindered Miguel from
transporting those of his followers, who might
be in England, to Lisbon, because they might
be sent thence against the Azores. It is true,
the group of islands have the generic name
of the Azores : but so, — though the Ameri
can islands are called the West Indies, — I
presume it will not be contended that a re
bellion in Barbadoes could authorise a foreign
Sovereign in preventing British troops which
happened to be on his territory from being
despatched by His Majesty to strengthen his
garrison of Jamaica. Supposing the facts
which I have stated to be true, I can see no
mode of impugning the inferences which I
have made from them. Until I receive a
satisfactory answer, I am bound to say, that
I consider the prohibition of this embarca
tion as a breach of neutrality in favour of
the Usurper.
And even, Sir, if these arguments are suc
cessfully controverted, another proposition
remains, to which it is still more difficult for
me to conceive the possibility of an answer.
Granting that the permission of the embarca
tion was a breach of neutrality, which might
be, and must be, prevented on British land,
or in British waters, where is the proof from
reason, from usage. — even from example or
authority, that England was bound, or enti
tled, to pursue the expedition over the ocean,
— to use force against them on the high seas,
— most of all to levy war against them within
the waters of Terceira ? Where are the proofs
of the existence of any such right or duty? I
have searched for them in vain. Even if an
example or two could be dug up, they would
not affect my judgment. I desire to know
where the series of examples from good
times can be found which might amount to
general usage, and thus constitute a part of
international law. I never can consider mere
general reasoning as a sufficient justification
of such an act. There are many instances
in which international law rejects such rea
sonings. For example, to allow a passage
to a belligerent through a neutral territory,
is not in itself a departure from neutrality.
But to fire on a friendly ship within the \va-
terfe of a friendly state, for a wrong done in
an English harbour, is an act which appears
to me a most alarming innovation in the law
of civilized war. The attack on the Spanish
frigates in 1805 is probably reconcilable with
the stern and odious rights of war : yet I am
sure that every cool-headed and true-hearted
Englishman would desire to blot the scene
from the annals of Europe. Every approach
towards rigour, beyond the common and
well-known usage of war, is an innovation :
and it must ever be deplored that we have
made the first experiment of its extension
beyond former usage in the case of the most
ancient of our allies, in the season of her
utmost need.
I shrink from enlarging on the scene which
closed, — I fear for ever, — a friendship of four
hundred and fifty years. On the 16th of
January last, three English vessels and a
Russian brig, having aboard five hundred
unarmed Portuguese, attempted to enter the
port of Praya, in the island of Terceira. Cap
tain Walpole, of His Majesty's ship "Ran
ger," fired on two of these vessels, which
had got under the guns of the forts protect
ing the harbour: the blood of Her Most
Faithful Majesty's subjects was spilt ; one
soldier was killed ; a peaceable passenger
was dangerously wounded. I forbear to state
further particulars. I hope and confidently
trust that Captain Walpole will acquit him
self of all negligence, — of all want of the
most anxious endeavours to spare blood, and
to be frugal of violence, in a proceeding where
such defects would be crimes. Warmly as I
rejoice in the prevalence of that spirit of li
berty, and, as a consequence, of humanity,
of which the triumph in France is so happy
for Europe, I must own that I cannot con
template without mortification the spectacle
of the loyal Portuguese exhibiting in a French
port wounds inflicted by the arms of their an
cient ally, protector, and friend. The friend
ship of four centuries and a half should have
had a more becoming close : it should not
have been extinguished in fire. and blood.
I will now conclude, Sir, with the latest,
and perhaps the saddest incident in this tra
gic story of a nation's <: hopes too fondly
raised," perhaps, but surely " too rudely
crossed." I shall not quote it as a proof o'f
the Usurper's inhumanity; — there is no man
in this House who would not say that such
proofs are needless: I produce it, only as a
sample of the boldness with which he now
throws down the gauntlet to the govern
ments and nations of Christendom. On
Thursday the 7th of May, little more than
three weeks ago, in the city of Oporto, ten
gentlemen were openly murdered on *^e
580
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
avowed ground, that on the 16th of May,
1828, while Miguel himself still pretended
to be the lieutenant of Dom Pedro, they fol
lowed the example of Austria and England,
in treating Dom Pedro as their lawful sove
reign, and in endeavouring to carry into ex
ecution the laws established by him. Two
were reserved for longer suffering by a pre
tended pardon : — the tender mercies of the
wicked are cruel. One of these two was
condemned to a lingering yet agonizing death
in the galleys of Angola ; the other, the bro
ther of the Ambassador at Brussels, was con
demned to hard labour for life, but adjudged
first to witness the execution of his friends;
— an aggravation light to the hard-hearted,
heart-breaking to the generous, which, by a
hateful contrivance, draws the whole force
of the infliction from the virtues of the suf
ferer. The city of Oporto felt this scene
with a horror not lessened by the sentiments
which generations of Englishmen have, I
would fain hope, left behind them. The rich
fled to their villas; the poor shut up their
doors and windows ; the peasants of the
neighbourhood withheld their wonted sup
plies from the markets of the tainted city ;
the deserted streets were left to the execu
tioner, his guards, and his victims. — with no
more beholders than were needful to bear
witness, that those "faithful found among
the faithless" left the world with the feel
ings of men who die for their country.
On the 16th of May, 1828, the day on
which the pretended treasons were charged
to have been committed, the state of Portu
gal was, in the light most indulgent to Mi
guel, that of a contest for the crown. It was
not a rebellion : it was a civil war. At the
] close of these wars without triumph, civilized
j victors hasten to throw the pall of amnesty
over the wounds of their country. Not so
Miguel : ten months after submission, he
1 sheds blood for acts done before the war.
j He has not the excuses of Robespierre and
Marat : — no army is marching on Lisbon ; no
squadron is entering the Tagus with the flag
of deliverance. The season of fulness and
safety, which stills the tiger, rouses the
j coward's thirst for blood. Is this the blind
j instinct of ferocity ? Is it only to carry des-
I pair into the thousands of loyal Portuguese
j whom he has scattered over the earth ? No !
acts of later date might have served that
purpose : his choice of time is a defiance to
Europe. The offence here was resisting an
usurpation, the consummation of which a
few weeks after made the representatives
| of Europe fly from Lisbon, as from a city
I of the plague. The indignity is chiefly
! pointed at the two Mediating Powers, who
j nave not yet relinquished all hopes of com-
! promise. But it is not confined to them :
' though he is aware that a breath would blow
j him away without blood or cost, he makes
! a daring experiment on the patience of all
; Europe. He will draw out for slaughter
handful after handful of those, whose sole
• crime was to trust the words and follow the
example of all civilized nations. He be
lieves that an attempt will at length be made
to stop his crimes by a recognition of his
authority, — that by dint of murders he may
1 force his way into the number of the dis-
I pensers of justice and mercy. He holds up
; the bleeding heads of Oporto to tell sove
reigns and nations alike how he scorns their
: judgment and defies their power.
SPEECH : -
ON THE SECOND READING OF
THE UILL TO AMEND THE REPRESENTATION'
OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND AND WALES.
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE 4TH OF JULY, 1831.
MR. SPEAKER, — I feel no surprise, and cer
tainly no regret, at the applause which fol
lowed the speech of the Honourable and
Learned Gentleman,* whose speeches never
leave any unpleasant impression, but the re-
* Mr. Fynes Clinton, M. P. for Aldborough.
— ED.
flection that he speaks so seldom. Much
of that excellent speech so immediately
bears on the whole question of Parliamen
tary Reform, that it will naturally lead me
to the consideration of the general principle
of the Bill before us.
I must, Sir, however, premise a very few
remarks on the speech of the Honourable
SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.
581
Baronet:* though I shall not follow him
through his account of the squabble between
the labourers and their employers at Merthyr
Tidvil, which I leave to the justice of the
law, or, what is better, to the prudence and
principle of both parties. Neither can I
seriously handle his objection to this Bill,
that it has produced a strong interest, and
divided opinions throughout the kingdom.
Such objections prove too much : they would
exclude most important questions, and. cer
tainly, all reformatory measures. It is one
of the chief advantages of free governments,
that they excite,— sometimes to an incon
venient degree, but, upon the whole, with
the utmost benefit, — all the generous feel
ings, all the efforts for a public cause, of
which human nature is capable. But there
is one point in the ingenious speech of the
Honourable Baronet, which, as it touches the
great doctrines of the Constitution, and in
volves a reflection on the conduct of many
Members of this House, cannot be passed
over, without an exposition of the fallacy
which shuts his eyes to very plain truths. —
Mr. Burke, in the famous speech at Bristol,
told, indeed, his constituents, that as soon as
he should be elected, however much he
might respect their opinions, his votes must
be governed by his own conscience. This
doctrine was indisputably true. But did he
not, by his elaborate justification of his
public conduct, admit their jurisdiction over
it, and acknowledge, that if he failed in con
verting them, they had an undoubted right
to reject him? Then, if they could justly
reject him, for differing from what' they
thought right, it follows, most evidently,
that they might, with equal justice, refuse
their suffrages to him, if they thought his
future votes likely to differ from those which
they deemed indispensable to the public
weal. If they doubted what that future
conduct might be, they were entitled, and
bound, to require a satisfactory explanation,
either in public or in private ; and in case
of unsatisfactory, or of no explanation, to
refuse their support to the candidate. This
duty the people may exercise in whatever
form they deem most effectual. They im
pose no restriction on the conscience of the
candidate ; they only satisfy their own con
science, by rejecting a candidate, of whose
conduct, on the most momentous question,
they have reason to doubt. Far less could
constituents be absolved, on the present occa
sion, from the absolute duty of ascertaining
the determination of candidates on the sub
ject of Parliamentary Reform. His Majesty,
in his speech from the throne, on the 22d
of April, was pleased to declare, " I have
come to meet you, for the purpose of pro
roguing Parliament, with a view to its im
mediate dissolution. I have been induced
to resort to this measure, for the purpose of
* Sir John Walsh, who had moved the amend
ment that the Bill be read that day six months,
which Mr. Clinton had seconded. — ED,
| ascertaining the sense of my people, in the
way in which it can be most constitutionally
and authentically expressed, on the expedi
ency of making such changes in the repre
sentation as circumstances may appear to
require; and which, founded upon the ac
knowledged principles of the Constitution,
may tend at once to uphold the just rights
arid prerogatives of the Crown, and to give
security to the liberties of the subject."
What answer could the people have made
to the appeal thus generously made to them,
without taking all necessary means to be
assured that the votes of those, whom they
chose, would sufficiently manifest to him the
sense of his people, on the changes neces
sary to be made in the representation.
On subjects of foreign policy, Sir, a long
silence has been observed on this side of
the House, — undisturbed, I am bound to add,
by the opposite side, for reasons which are
very obvious. We are silent, and we are
allowed to be silent; because, a word spoken
awry, might occasion fatal explosions. The
affairs of the Continent are so embroiled,
that we have forborne to express those feel
ings, which must agitate the breast of every
human being, at the sight of that admirable
and afflicting struggle* on which the eyes
of Europe are constantly, however silently,
fixed. As it is admitted by the Honourable
Baronet, that the resistance of the French to
an usurpation of their rights last year was
glorious to all who were concerned in it, it
follows that, being just, it has no need of
being sanctioned by the approbation of for
tune. Who then are morally answerable for
the unfortunate confusions which followed,
and for the further commotion, which, if
heaven avert it not, may convulse France
and Europe ? Who opened the floodgates
of discord on mankind'? Not the friends of
liberty, — not the advocates of popular prin
ciples: their hands are clean ; — they took up
arms only to defend themselves against
wrong. I hold sacred every retreat of mis
fortune, and desire not to disturb fallen great
ness; but justice compels me to say, that the
hands of the late King of France were made
to unlock these gates by his usurping ordi
nances, —
" To open ; but to shut surpassed his power."
The dangers of Europe do not originate in de-
mocratical principles, or democratical power,
but in a conspiracy for the subversion of all
popular rights, however sanctioned by oaths,
by constitution, and by laws.
I shall now, Sir, directly proceed to the
latter part of the speech of the Honourable
and Learned Member for Boroughbridge,
which regards the general principle and
character of this Bill. In so doing, I shall
endeavour, as far as may be, not to displease
the fastidious ears of the Honourable Baro
net, by frequently repeating the barbarous
names of the Tudors and Plantagenets. I
* The insurrection in Poland. — ED.
2y2
582
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
must, however, follow the Honourable and
Learned Member to the fountains of our go
vernment and laws, whither, indeed, he
calls upon me with no unfriendly voice to
accompany him.
That no example can be found from the
time of Simon de Montfort to the present
year, either in the practice of ancient legis
lation, or in the improvements proposed by
modern Reformers, which sanctions the
general principle of this Bill, is an assertion,
which I am sure the Honourable Gentleman
will discover to be unadvisedly hazarded.
I shall begin with one of the latest exam
ples of a Reformer of great weight and au
thority, — that which is afforded by the
speech and the plan of Mr. Pitt, in 1785,
because it does not only itself exhibit the
principle of the schedules of this Bill, but
because it proves, beyond all possibility of
dispute, his thorough conviction tjiat this
principle is conformable to the ancient laws
and practice of the constitution. The prin
ciple of Schedules A. and B. is the abolition,
partial or total, of the elective rights of petty
and dependent boroughs. The principle of
Schedules C. D. and E. is the transfer of
that resumed right to great towns, and to
other bodies of constituents deemed likely
to use it better. Let me now state Mr. Pitt's
opinion, in his own words, on the expediency
of acting on both these principles, and on the
agreement of both with the ancient course
and order of the constitution. His plan, it is
well known, was to take away seventy-two
members from thirty-six small boroughs, and
to. add them to the county representation,
with a permanent provision for such other
transfers of similar rights to great towns, as
should from time to time seem necessary.
His object, in this disfranchisement and en
franchisement, was, according to his own
words, "to make the House of Commons an
assembly which should have the closest
union, and the most perfect sympathy with
the mass of the people." To effect this
object, he proposed to buy up these boroughs
by the establishment of a fund, (cheers from
the Opposition,) of which the first effect was
expected to be considerable, and the accu
mulation would prove an irresistible tempta
tion. Gentlemen would do well to hear the
whole words of Mr. Pitt, before they so
loudl}'- exult: — "It is an indisputable doc
trine of antiquity, that the state of the repre
sentation is to be changed with the change
of circumstances. Change in the borough
representation was frequent. A great num
ber of the boroughs, originally Parliamentary,
had been disfranchised, — that is, the Crown
had ceased to summon them to send bur
gesses. Some of these had been restored on
their petitions: the rest had not recovered
their lost franchise. Considering the resto
ration of the former, and the deprivation of
the latter, the constitution had been grossly
violated, if it was true (which he denied,) that
the extension of the elective franchise to
one set of boroughs, and the resumption of
it from others, was a violation of the consti
tution. The alterations were not made from
principle; but they were founded on the
general notion which gave the discretionary
power to the Crown, — viz., that the prin
cipal places, and not the decayed boroughs,
should exercise the right of election/''* I
know full well that these boroughs were to
be bought. I also know, that the late Mem
ber for Dorset (Mr. Bankes), the college-
friend, the zealous but independent sup
porter of Mr. Pitt, exclaimed against the
purchase, though he applauded the Reform.
How did Mr. Pitt answer? Did he say, I
cannot deprive men of inviolable privileges
without compensation ; I cannot promote
Reform by injustice ? Must he not have so
answered, if he had considered the resump
tion of the franchise as "corporation rob
bery?" No ! he excuses himself to his
friend : he declares the purchase to be
"the tender part of the subject," and apolo
gizes for it, as "having become a necessary
evil, if any Reform was to take place.77
Would this great master of language, who
so thoroughly understood and practised pre
cision and propriety of words, have called
that a necessary evil which he thought an
obligation of justice, — the payment of a
sacred debt? It is clear from the very
words that follow, — "if any Reform were
to take place," that he regarded the price
of the boroughs merely as a boon to so many
borough-holders to become proselytes to it.
It is material also to observe, that as com
pensation was no part of his plans or sug
gestions in 1782 and 1783, he could not have
consistently represented it as of right due.
Another decisive reason renders it impos
sible to annex any other meaning to his lan
guage : — he justifies his system of transfer
ring the franchise by analogy to the ancient
practice of ceasing to summon some boroughs
to send members, while the prerogative of
summoning others at pleasure was acknow
ledged. But the analogy would have failed3
if he thought compensation was due; for it
is certain that no compensation was dreamt
of, till his own plan. Would he have so
strenuously maintained the constitutional
authority to disfranchise and enfranchise dif
ferent places, if he had entertained the least
suspicion that it could not be exercised
without being justly characterised as an act
of rapine ? Another circumstance is conclu
sive : — his plan, as may be seen in his
speech, was to make the compensation to
the borough-holders, — not to the poor free
men, the scot and lot voters, the pot-wallop-
pers; — whose spoliation has been so much
deprecated on this occasion, — who alone
could have had any pretence of justice or
colour of law to claim it. They at least had
legal privileges: the compensation to the
borough-holders was to be for the loss of
their profits by breaches of law. One pas
sage only in Mr. Pitt's speech, may be
* Parl. Hist. vol. xxv. p. 435.— ED.
SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.
583
thought favourable to another sense : — " To
a Reform by violence he had an insurmount*
able objection." Now these words might
mean only an objection to effect his purpose
by an act of the supreme power, when he
could introduce the same good by milder
means. The reports of that period were far
less accurate than they now are : the general
tenor of the speech must determine the mean
ing of a single word. It seems to me impos
sible to believe, that he could have intended
more than that he preferred a pacific accom
modation of almost any sort to formidable
resistance, and the chance of lasting discon
tent. This preference, founded either on
personal feelings, or on supposed expedi
ency, is nothing against my present purpose.
What an imputation would be thrown on his
memory, by supposing that he who answered
the objection of Reform being unconstitu
tional, could pass over the more serious ob
jection that it was unjust.
That I may not be obliged to return to this
case, I shall add one other observation, which
more strictly belongs to another part of the
argument. Mr. Pitt never once hints, that
the dependent boroughs were thought neces
sary to the security of property. It never
occurred to him that any one could think
them intrinsically good. It was impossible
that he could propose to employ a million
sterling in demolishing the safeguards of the
British constitution. Be it observed, that
this remark must be considered by all who
respect the authority of Mr. Put as of great
weight, even if they believe compensation
and voluntary surrender to be essential to
the justice of transferring the elective fran
chise. It must, then, I think, be acknow
ledged by the Honourable and Learned Mem
ber for Aldborough himself, that there was
a Reformer of great name before my Noble
Friend, who maintained the transfer of the
elective franchise, by disfranchisement and
enfranchisement, to be conformable to an
cient rights or usages, and for that reason,
among others, fit to be employed as parts of
a plan of Parliamentary Reform.*
The two plans of Reform, Sir, that have
been proposed, during the last seventy years,
maybe divided into the Simultaneous and the
Progressive. Of the first it is manifest, that
the two expedients of resuming the franchise
from those who cannot use it for the public
good, and bestowing it where it will proba
bly be better employed, are indispensable,
or rather essential parts. I shall presently
show that it is impossible to execute the most
slowly Progressive scheme of Reformation,
without some application, however limited,
of these now altogether proscribed principles.
I do not wish to displease the Honour
able Baronet by frequent or extensive excur
sions into the Middle Ages ; but the Honour
able and Learned Gentleman will admit that
* The Reforms proposed by Mr. Flood in 1790,
and by Lord Grey in 1797, might have been added
to those of Mr. Pitt in 1782, 1783 and 1785.
the right of the Crown to summon new bo
roughs, was never disputed until its last ex
ercise by Charles II. in the well-known in
stance of Newark. In the Tudor reigns, this
prerogative had added one hundred and fifty
members to this House. In the forty-five
years of Elizabeth, more than sixty were
received into it. From the accession of
Henry VII. to the disuse of the prerogative,
the representation received an accession of
about two hundred, if we include the cases
where representation was established by
Parliament, and those where, after a disuse
of centuries, it was so restored. Let me
add, without enlarging on it, that forty-foil?
boroughs, and a city, which anciently sent
burgesses to this House, are unrepresented
at this day. I know no Parliamentary mode
of restoring their franchises, but by a statute,
which would be in effect a new grant. I
believe, that if such matters were cogniza
ble by courts of law, the judges would pre
sume, or, for greater security, advise a jury
to presume, after a disuse of so many centu
ries, that it had originated either in a sur
render, or in some other legal mode of ter
minating the privilege. According to the
common maxim, that there is no right with
out a remedy, we may infer the absence of
right from the absence of remedy. In that
case, the disuse of granting summonses by
the King, or his officers, must be taken to
hays been legal, in spite of the authority of
Serjeant Glanville and his Committee, who,
in the reign of James I., held the contrary
doctrine. But I waive this question, because
the answer to it is needless to the purpose
of my argument. It is enough for me that
the disuse had been practically maintained,
without being questioned, till the end of
James' reign ; and that it still shuts our doors
on ninety persons who might otherwise be
chosen to sit in this House. The practice
of resuming the franchise, therefore, prevailed
as certainly in ancient times, as the exercise
of the prerogative of conferring it. The
effect of both combined, was to take from
the representation the character of immuta
bility, and to bestow on it that flexibility
which, if it had been then properly applied,
might have easily fitted it for every change
of circumstances. These powers were never
exercised on any fixed principle. The pre
rogative was often grievously abused ] but
the abuse chiefly consisted in granting the
privilege to beggarly villages, or to the manor
or demesne of a favoured lord : there are few
examples of withholding the franchise from
considerable towns. On a rapid review of
the class of towns next in importance to Lon
don, such as York, Bristol, Exeter, Norwich,
Lincoln, &c., it appears to me, that they all
sent Members to the House of Commons of
Edward I. Boston did not occur to me ; but,
admitting the statement respecting that place
to be accurate, the Honourable and Learned
Gentleman must allow this instance to be at
variance with the general spirit and ten
dency of the ancient constitution, in the dis-
584
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
tribution of elective privileges. I do not
call it an exception to a rule : for there were
no rules: it was no departure from principle j
for no general principle was professed, or,
perhaps, thought of: but it was at variance
with that disposition not to leave grant towns
unrepresented, which, though not reduced to
system, yet practically influenced the coarse
good sense of our ancestors, and, what is re
markable, is most discernible in the earliest
part of their legislation.*
It was not the Union with Scotland that
stopped the exercise of the prerogative. With
the exception of Newark, there was no in
stance of its exertion for nearly seventy
years before that date. We know that the I
Stuart Kings dreaded an increase of mem- 1
bers in this House, as likely to bestow a more
democratical character on its proceedings:
but still the true cause of the extinction of
the prerogative, was the jealousy of a people
become more enlightened, and suspicious of
a power which had already been abused,
and which might be made the means of en
slaving the kingdom. The discussions in
this House respecting the admission of the
members for Newark, though they ended
favourably to the Crown in that instance,
afforded such a specimen of the general sen
timents and temper respecting the preroga
tive, that no man was bold enough to advise
its subsequent exercise.
The course of true wisdom would have
been to regulate the employment of the pre
rogative by a law. which, acting quietly,
calmly, but constantly, would have removed
or prevented all gross inequality in the re
presentation. It would have then been ne
cessary only to enact that every town, which
grew to a certain number of houses, should
be summoned to send members to Parlia
ment, and that every town which fell below
a certain number, should ceaso to be so sum
moned. The consequence of this neglect
became apparent as the want of some re
medial power was felt. The regulator of
the representation, which had been injuri
ously active in stationary times, was suffered
to drop from the machine at a moment when
it was much needed to adapt the elective
system to the rapid and prodigious changes
which have occurred in the state of society, 1
— when vast cities have sprung up in every
province, and the manufacturing world may
be said to have been created. There was
no longer any renovating principle in the
frame of the constitution. All the marvel
lous works of industry and science are un
noticed in our system of representation. The
changes of a century and a half since the
case of Newark. — the social revolution of the
last sixty years, have altered the whole con
dition of mankind more than did the three
centuries which passed before : — the repre
sentation alone has stood still. It is to this
* For a more detailed reference to the earlier
statutory regulations affecting the franchise, see
Appendix A — ED.
interruption of the vis mcdicatrix et conserva-
trix of the commonwealth that we owe the
necessity of now recurring to the extensive
plan of Simultaneous Eeform, of which I do
not dispute the inconveniences. We are
now called on to pay the arrears of a hundred
and sixty years of an unreformed represen
tation. The immediate settlement of this
constitutional balance is now difficult • — it
may not be without danger : but it is become
necessary that we may avoid ruin. It may
soon be impossible to save us by that, or by
any other means.
But, Sir, we are here met by a serious
question, which, being founded on a princi
ple generally true, acquires a great effect by
specious application; We are reminded by
the Honourable and Learned Gentleman, that
governments are to be valued for their bene
ficial effects. — not for their beauty as inge
nious pieces of machinery. We are asked,
what is the practical evil which we propose
to remove, or even to lesson, by Reform 1
We are told, that the representative system
" works well," and that the excellence of the
English constitution is attested by the ad
mirable fruits, which for at least a century
and a half it has produced. I dare not take
the high ground of denying the truth of the
facts thus alleged. God forbid that I should
ever derogate from the transcendent merits
of the English constitution, which it has been
the chief occupation of my life to study,
and which I now seek, because I love it. to
reform !
Much as I love and revere this constitu
tion. I must say. that, during the last century,
the representative system has not worked
well. I do not mean to undervalue its gene
ral results: but it has riot worked well for
one grand purpose, without which, no other
benefit can be safe : — the means employed
in elections, has worked all respect for the
constitution out of the hearts of the people.
The foulness and shamefulness, or the fraud
and mockery of borough elections, have
slowly weaned the people from their ancient
attachments. With less competence, per
haps, than others, to draw up the general
comparison between the good and evil re
sults, they were shocked by the barefaced
corruption which the increasing frequency
of contests constantly brought home to them.
These disgusting scenes could not but uproot
attachment to the government to which they
seemed to pertain. The people could see
nothing venerable in venality, — in bribery, —
in the sale of some, and in the gift of other
seats, — in nominal elections carried on by in
dividuals, under the disguise of popular forms.
It is true, that the vile machinery of openly
marketable votes, was the most powerful
cause which alienated them. But half the
nomination-boroughs were so marketable.
Though I know one nomination borough*
* Knaresborough, the property of the Duko
of Devonshire, which he had represented since
1818.— ED.
SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.
585
where no seat was ever sold, — where no
Member ever heard a whisper of the wishes
of a patron, — where One Member at least
was under no restraint beyond the ties of
political opinion and friendship, which he
voluntarily imposed upon himself. It does
not become me to say how the Member to
whom I advert would have acted in other
circumstances; but I am firmly convinced
that the generous nature of the other Party
would as much recoil from imposing de
pendency, as any other could recoil from
submitting- to it. I do not pretend to say
that this is a solitary instance : but I believe
it to ba too favourable a one to be a fair sam
ple of the general practice.
Even in the best cases, the pretended
election was an eye-sore to all that witnessed
it. A lie was solemnly acted before their
eyes. While the popular principles of the
constitution had taught them that popular
elections belonged to the people, all the acts
that the letter of the law had expressly for
bidden were now become the ordinary means
of obtaining a Parliamentary seat. These
odious and loathsome means became more
general as the country increased in wealth,
and as the people grew better informed. —
more jealous of encroachment on their rights,
and more impatient of exclusion from power.
In the times of the Stuarts and Tudors, the
burgesses, as we see from the lists, had been
very generally the sons of neighbouring gen
tlemen, chosen with little contest and noise,
and so seldom open to the charge of bribery,
that when it occurred, we find it mentioned
as a singular event. It was not till after the
Revolution that monied candidates came from
the Capital to invade a tranquillity very
closly allied to blind submission. At length,
the worst of all practical effects was pro
duced : — the constitution sunk in popular
estimation; the mass of the people were
estranged from the objects of their here
ditary reverence. An election is the part
of our constitution with which the multitude
come into most frequent contact. Seeing in
many of them nothing but debauchery, —
riot. — the sale of a right to concur in making
Jaw, — the purchase in open market of a
share in the choice of lawgivers, — absolute
nomination under the forms of election, they
were conscious that many immoral, many
illegal practices became habitual, and were
even justified. Was it not natural for the
majority of honest men to form their judg
ments rather by means of their moral feel
ings, than as the results of refined argu
ments, founded on a calm comparison of
evils'? Such at least was the effect of this
most mischievous practice, that when any
misfortune of the country, any error of the
Government, any commotion abroad, or any
disorder at home arose, they were all as
cribed, with exaggeration, but naturally, to
the corruption, which the humblest of the
people saw had tainted the vital organs of
the commonwealth.
My Honourable and Excellent Friend, the
74
Member for the University of Oxford,* in
deed told the last Parliament, that the cla
mours about the state of the representation
were only momentary cries, which, however
magnified at the moment, always quickly
yielded to a vigorous and politic government.
He might have looked back somewhat far
ther. What were the Place Bills and Trien
nial Bills of Sir Robert Walpole's time?
Were they not, in truth, demands of Parlia
mentary Reform 1 The cry is therefore one
of the symptoms of a distemper, which has
lasted for a century. But to come to his
more recent examples : — in 1770, Lord Chat
ham was the agitator; Mr. Burke was the
incendiary pamphleteer, who exaggerated
the importance of a momentary delusion,
which was to subside as quickly as it had
risen. Unfortunately for this reasoning,
though the delusion subsided after 1770, it
revived again in 1780. under Sir George
Saville; under Mr. Pitt in 1782. 1783, and
1784: it was felt at the time of Mr. Flood's
motion in 1790. Lord Grey's motion in 1797
was supported by respectable Tories, such
as Sir William Dolben, Sir Rowland Hill, and
by conscientious men, more friendly to Mr.
Pitt than to his opponents, of whom it is
enough to name Mr. Henry Thornton, then
Member for Surrey. Instead of being the ex
pressions of a transient delusion, these con
stantly recurring complaints are the symp
toms of a deep-rooted malady, sometimes
breaking out, sometimes dying away, some
times repelled, but always sure to return. —
re-appearing with resistless force in the elec
tions of 1830, and still more decisively in
those of 1831. If we seek for proof of an
occasional provocation, which roused the peo
ple to a louder declaration of their opinions,
where shall we find a more unexceptionable
witness, than in one of the ablest and most
unsparing opponents of the Ministers and of
their Bill. Mr. Henry Drummond, in his
very able Address to the Freeholders of Sur
rey, explicitly ascribes the irritation which
now prevails to the unwise language of the
late Ministers. The declaration of the late
Ministers against Reform, says he, "proved
their gross ignorance of the national feeling,
and drove the people of England to despair."
Many allege, Sir, that the people have
gained so much strength and influence
through the press, that they need no formal
privileges or legal franchises to reinforce it.
If it be so, I consider it to be a decisive rea
son for a reformation of the scheme of the
representation. A country in which the
masses are become powerful by their intel
ligence and by their wealth, while they
are exasperated by exclusion from political
rights, never can be in a safe condition. I
hold it to be one of the most invariable
maxims of legislation, to bind to the consti
tution, by the participation of legal privilege,
all persons who have risen in wealth, — in in
telligence, — in any of the legitimate sources
* Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Bart,— -ED,
586
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
of ascendancy. I would do now what our
forefathers, though rudely, aimed at doing,
by calling into the national councils every
rising element in the body politic.
The grand objection to this Bill, Sir, is
what ought to be fatal to any Bill, if the ob
jection had any foundation but loud and
bold assertion, — that it is unjust. This ar
gument was never, indeed, urged by the
Right Honourable Baronet, and it seems to
be on the eve of being abandoned. But the
walls of the House still seem to resound
with the vociferations of my Honourable and
Learned 'Friend, the Member for Borough-
bridge,* against what he called " corporation
robbery." Now many of these boroughs have
no corporations at all : while none who have
will be deprived of their corporate rights.
But if all these corporations had been about
to be divested of their character, — divested
of rights which have been, or are likely to
be abused, the term "robbery" would have
been ridiculously inapplicable. Examples
are more striking than general reasonings.
Was the disuse of issuing Writs of Summons,
as a consequence of which near a hundred
Members are excluded from this House, an
act of " robbery ? " Was the Union with Scot
land, which reduced the borough representa
tion from sixty-five to fifteen, an act of " rob
bery ?" Yes, surely it was, if the term can
be properly applied to this Bill. The Scotch
boroughs were thrown into clusters of four
and five; each of which sent a burgess. But
if it be " robbery 'r to take away the whole
of a franchise, is it not in principle as violent
an invasion of property to take away four-
fifths or three-fourths of it. What will be
eaid of the Union with Ireland ? Was it
" robbery" to reduce her representation from
three hundred 'to one hundred Members ?
Was it " robbery " to disfranchise, as they did
then, one hundred boroughs, on the very
principle of the present Bill, — because they
were decayed, dependent, and so unfit to
exercise the franchise? Was it " robbery"
to deprive the Peers of Scotland of their
birthright, and compel them to be contented
with a bare possibility of being occasionally
elected 1 Was it " robbery " to mutilate the
legislative rights of the Irish Peerage ? No !
because in all these cases, the powers taken
away or limited were trusts resumable by
Parliament for the general well-being.
Further, I contend that if this be "rob
bery," every borough disfranchised for cor
ruption has been "robbed" of its rights.
Talk not to me of the guilt of these bo
roughs: individuals are innocent or guilty,
— bodies politic can be neither. Ifdisfran-
chisement be considered as a punishment,
where is the trial, — where are the wit-
uesses on oath, — where are the precautions
against partiality, — where are the responsible
judges 1 — who, indeed, are the judges ? men
who have avowedly committed and have
justified as constitutional the very offence.
Why, in such cases, are the unborn punished
" * Sir Charles Wetherell.-ED.
for the offences of the present generation ?
Why should the innocent minority suffer for
the sins of a venal majority ? If the rights
of unoffending parties are reserved, of what
importance is the reservation, if they are to
be merged in those of hundreds or thousands
of fellow-voters'? Woultl not the opening
of the suffrage in the city of Bath be as de
structive to the close Corporation as if they
were to be by name disfranchised ? Viewed
in that light, every Bill of Disfranchisement
is a Bill of Pains and Penalties, and in the
nature of a Bill of Attainder. How are these
absurdities avoided? — only by the principle
of this Bill, — that political trust may be
justly resumed by the supreme power, when
ever it is deemed injurious to the common
wealth.
The test. Sir. which distinguishes property
from trust, is simple, and easily applied : —
property exists for the benefit of the pro
prietor: political power exists only for the
service of the state. Property is, indeed,
the most useful of all human institutions : it
is so. because the power of every man to do
what he will with his own, is beneficial and
even essential to the existence of society.
A trustee is legally answerable for the abuse
of his power : a proprietor is not amenable
to human law for any misuse of his property,
unless it should involve a direct violation of
the rights of others. It is said, that property
is a trust; and so it may, in figurative lan
guage, be called : but it is a moral, not a
legal one. In the present argument, we have
to deal only with the latter. The confusion
of the ideas misled the Stuarts so far, that
they thought the kingdom their property, till
they were undeceived by the Revolution,
which taught us, that man cannot have a
property in~his fellows. As all government
is a trust, the share which each voter has in
the nomination of lawgivers is one also.
Otherwise, if the voter, as such, were a pro
prietor, he must have a property in his fel-
low'citizens, who are governed by laws, of
which he has a share in naming the makers.
If the doctrine of the franchise being pro
perty be admitted, all Reform is for ever pre
cluded. Even the enfranchisement of newf
boroughs, or districts, must be renounced)
for every addition diminishes the value or ^
the previous suffrage : and it is no more law
ful to lessen the value of property, than to
take it away.
Of all doctrines which threaten the prin
ciple of properly, none more dangerous was
ever promulgated, than that which confounds
it with political privileges. None of the dis
ciples of St. Simon, or of the followers of the
ingenious and benevolent Owen, have struck
so deadly a blow at it, as those who would
reduce it to the level of the elective rights
of Gatton and Old Sarum. Property, the
nourisher of mankind, — the incentive to in
dustry, — the cement of human society, — will
be in a perilous condition, if the people be
taught to identify it with political abuse, and
to deal with it as being involved in its im-
SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.
587
pending fate. Let us not teach the spoilers
of future times to represent our resumption
of a right of suffrage as a precedent for their
seizure of lands arid possessions.
Much is said in praise of the practice of
nomination, which is now called "the most
unexceptionable part of our representation/'
To nomination, it seems, we owe the talents
of our young Members,— the prudence and
experience of the more aged. It supplies
the colonies and dependencies of this great
empire with virtual representation in this
House. By it commercial and funded pro
perty finds skilful advocates and intrepid de
fenders. All these happy consequences are
ascribed to that flagrant system of breaches
of the law, which is now called " the prac
tice of the English constitution."
Sir, I never had, and have not now, any
objection to the admission of representatives
of the colonies into this House, on fair and
just conditions. But I cannot conceive that
a Bill which is objected to, as raising ihe
commercial interest at the expense of the
landed, will also lessen the safeguards of
their property. Considering the well-known
and most remarkable subdivision of funded
income, — the most minutely divided of any
mass of property, — I do not believe that any
representatives, or even any constituents,
could be ultimately disposed to do them
selves so great an injury as to invade it. Men
of genius, and men of experience, and men
of opulence, have found their way into this
House through nomination, or worse means,
— through any channel that was open : the
same classes of candidates will now direct
their ambition and their efforts to the new
channels opened by the present Bill j they
will attain their end by only varying their
means.
A list has been read to us of illustrious
men who found an introduction to Parlia
ment, or a refuge from unmerited loss of
popularity, by means of decayed boroughs.
What does such a catalogue prove, but that
England, for the last sixty years, has been a
country full of ability, — of knowledge, — of
intellectual activity. — of honourable ambi
tion, and that a large portion of these quali
ties has flowed into the House of Commons?
Might riot the same dazzling common-places
have been opposed to the abolition of the
court of the Star Chamber? "What," it
might have been said, "will you, in your
frantic rage of innovation, demolish the tri
bunal in which Sir Thomas More, the best of
men, and Lord Bacon, the greatest of philo
sophers, presided, — where Sir Edward Coke,
the oracle of law, — where Burleigh and Wal-
singham, the most revered of English states
men, sat as judges, — which Bacon, enlight
ened by philosophy and experience, called
the peculiar glory of our legislation, as being
1 a court of criminal equity V Will you, in
your paroxysms of audacious frenzy, abo
lish this Pra3torian tribunal, — this sole instru
ment for bridling popular incendiaries'? Will
you dare to persevere in your wild purpose,
at a moment when Scotland is agitated by a
rebellious League and Covenant, — when Ire
land is threatened with insurrection and
massacre? Will you surrender the shield
of the crown, — the only formidable arm of
prerogative, — at a time when his Majesty's
authority is openly defied in the capital
where we are assembled?"
I cannot, indeed. Sir, recollect a single
instance in that Jong course of reformation,
which constitutes the history of the English
constitution, where the same plausible argu
ments, and the same exciting topics, might
riot have been employed as are now pointed
against the present measure. The Honoura
ble and Learned Gentleman has alluded to
Simon de Montfort, — the first and most ex
tensive Parliamentary Reformer, — who pla
ced the representatives of the burgesses in
Parliament. The haughty and unletfered
Barons disdained argument ; but their mur
murs were doubtless loud and vehement.
Even they could exclaim that the new con
stitution was an "untried scheme," — that it
was a "daring experiment," — that it "would
level all the distinctions of society," — that it
would throw the power of the state into the
hands of traffickers and burgesses. Were
men but yesterday slaves, now to be seated
by the side of Plantagenets engaged in the
arduous duty of making laws? Are these
not the topics which are substantially used
against Parliamentary Reform ? They are
now belied by experience, which has taught
us that the adoption of the lower classes
into the constitution, the concessions made
to them, and the widening of the foundation
of the legislature, have been the source of
peace, of order, of harmony, — of all that is
excellent in our government, and of all that
secures the frame of our society. The Ha
beas Corpus Act, in the reign of Charles the
Second, was obtained only by repeated, per
severing, unwearied exertions of the Earl of
Shaftesbury, after a meritorious struggle of
many years. I mention the facts with plea
sure in the presence of his descendant.*
It is now well known, from the confidential
correspondence of Charles and his brother
James, that they both believed sincerely
that a government without the power of
arbitrary imprisonment would not long exist;
and that Shaftesbury had forced this Act
upon them, in order either to expose them
unarmed to the populace, or to drive them
to have recourse to the odious and precarious
protection of a standing army. The belief
of the Royal Brothers was the more incorri
gible, because it was sincere. It is the fatal
effect of absolute power to corrupt the judg
ment of its possessors, and to insinuate into
their minds the false and pernicious opinion,
that power is always weakened by limitation.
Shall I be told, that the sale of seats is
not in itself an evil ? The same most inge
nious persont who hazarded this paradox,
* Viscount Ashley. — ED.
t It would not seem easy to specify the person
alluded to. — ED.
588
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
quoted the example of the sale of the judi
cial office in Old France, with a near ap
proach to approbation. That practice has
been vindicated by French writers of great
note; arid it had, in fact, many guards and
limitations not to be found in our system of
marketable boroughs : but it has been swept
away by the Revolution ; and there is now
no man disposed to palliate its shameless
enormity. The grossest abuses, as long as
they prevail, never want advocates to find
out specious mitigations of their effects :
their downfall discovers their deformity to
every eye. For my part, I do not see, why
the sale of a power to make Jaws should not
be as immoral as the sale of a power to ad
minister them.
We have heard it said, Sir, that the Peer
age, and even the Monarchy, cannot survive
the loss of these boroughs ; and we are re
ferred to the period that has elapsed since
the Revolution, as that during which this
influence has been their main guard against
popular assault and dictation. I respectfully
lay aside the Crown in this debate ; and in
the few words that I am now about to utter,
I am desirous to express myself in cautious
and constitutional language. Since the Re
volution, — since the defeat of the attempts
to establish absolute monarchy, the English
government has undoubtedly become Parlia
mentary. But during that time, also, the
hereditary elements of the constitution have
been uniformly respected as wholesome
temperaments of the rashness of popular
assemblies. I can discover nothing in this
proposed change which will disable the
Peers from usefully continuing to perform
this duty. If some inconvenient diminution
of the influence of great property should
follow, we must encounter the risk ; for no
thing can, in my judgment, be more certain,
than that the constitution can no longer bear
the weight of the obloquy thrown upon it by
our present mode of conducting elections.
The community cannot afford to purchase any
advantage at such an expense of private cha
racter. But so great is the natural influence
of property, especially in a country where
the various ranks of society have been so
long bound together by friendly ties as in
ours, that I can scarcely conceive any laws
or institutions which could much diminish
the influence of well-spent wealth, whether
honourably inherited, or honestly earned.
The benefits of any reformation might
indeed be hazarded, if the great proprie
tors were to set themselves in battle array
against the permanent desires of the people.
If they treat their countrymen as adversa
ries, they may, in their turn, excite a hostile
spirit. Distrust will beget distrust: jealousy
will awaken an adverse jealousy. I trust
these evil consequences may not arise. The
Nobility of England, in former times, have
led their countrymen in the battles of liber
ty . those among them who are most distin
guished by ample possessions, by historical
names, or by hereditary fame, interwoven ,
with the glory of their country, have, on this
occasion, been the foremost to show their
confidence in the people, — their unsuspect
ing liberality in the enlargement of popular
privilege, — their reliance on the sense and
honesty of their fellow-citizens, as the best
safeguard of property and of order, as well
as of all other interests of society. Already,
this measure has exhibited a disinterested
ness which has united all classes, from the
highest borough-holder to the humblest non
resident freeman, in the sacrifice of their
own exclusive advantages to what they
think a great public good. There must be
something good in what produces so noble a
sacrifice.
This, Sir, is not solely a reformatory mea
sure; it is also conciliatory. If it were pro
posed exclusively for the amendment of in
stitutions, I might join in the prevalent cry
"that it goes too far," or at least " travels
too fast." — farther and faster than the max
ims of wise reformation would warrant. But
as it is a means of regaining national confi
dence, it must be guided by other maxims.
In that important view of the subject, I con
sider the terms of this plan as of less conse
quence than the temper which it breathes,
and the spirit by which it is animated. A
conciliatory measure deserves the name only,
when it is seen and felt by the simplest of
men, to flow from the desire and determina
tion to conciliate. At this moment, when,
amidst many causes of discord, there is a
general sympathy in favour of reformation,
the superior classes of society, by opening
their arms to receive the people, — by giving
to the people a signal and conspicuous proof
of confidence, — may reasonably expect to be
trusted in return. But to reach this end, they
must not only be, but appear to be, liberally
just and equitably generous. Confidence can
be purchased by confidence alone. If the
leading classes follow the example of many
of their own number. — if they show, by
gracious and cheerful concessions, — by strik
ing acts, not merely by specious language or
cold formalities of law, — that they are will
ing to rest on the fidelity and conscience of
the people, I do not believe that they w|l
lean on a broken reed. As for those wise
saws which teach us that there is alwayfe
danger in trust, and that policy and genero
sity are at perpetual variance, I hold them
in little respect. Every unbending maxim
of policy is hollow and unsafe. Base princi
ples are often not the more prudent because
they are pusillanimous. I rather agree with
the beautiful peroration of Mr. Burke's se
cond speech on North America : — l' Mag
nanimity in politics is not seldom the truest
wisdom": a great empire and little minds go
ill together. If we are conscious of our
situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place,
as becomes our station and ourselves, we
ought to auspicate our proceedings respect
ing America, with the old warning of the
Church, — 'Sursum CordaS We ought to
elevate our minds to the dignity of that trust,
SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.
589
to which the order of Providence has called
us."
Whether we consider this measure, either
as a scheme of reformation, or an attempt to
form an alliance with the people, it must be
always remembered, that it is a question of
the comparative safety or danger of the only
systems now before us for our option • — that
of imdifitinguishing adherence to present in
stitutions, — that of ample redress and bold
reformation, — and that of niggardly, evasive,
arid unwilling Reform. I say ''comparative"
safety or danger; for not one of those who
have argued this question seem to have re
membered that it has two sides. They have
thrown all the danger of the times upon the
Reform. They load it with as much odium
as if the age were otherwise altogether ex
empt from turbulence and agitation, and first
provoked from its serene quiet by this wanton
attempt. They make it answerable for mis
chiefs which it may not have the power to
prevent, and which might have occurred if
no such measure had ever been attempted.
They, at least, tacitly assume that it must ag
gravate every evil arising from other sources.
In short, they beg the whole question in dis
pute. They ask us, Whether there be not
danger in Reform ? I answer by asking them,
Is there no danger in not reforming'? To
this question, to which they have never yet
attempted to answer. I expect no answer
now ; because a negative one would seem
to me impossible, while an affirmative would
reduce the whole discussion to a cool com
putation and calm comparison of the different
degrees of danger opening upon us.
A niggardly Reform, Sir, seems to me the
most unsafe step of all systems. It cannot
conciliate; for it is founded in distrust. It
practically admits an evil, of which dissatis
faction is a large part ; and yet it has been
already proved by experience that it yet
satisfied nobody. Other systems may be
unsatisfactory: this scheme is so already.
In the present temper of the people, and
circumstances of the world, I can see no one
good purpose to be answered by an evasive
and delusive Reform. To what extent will
they trust the determined enemies of the
smallest step towards reformation, — who, to
avoid the grant of the franchise to Birming
ham, have broken up one Administration,
and who, if they be sincere, must try every
expedient to render impotent a measure
which they can no longer venture avowedly
to oppose.
On the other hand, Sir, the effect of the
Bill before us has hitherto confirmed the
opinion of those who thought that a measure
of a conciliatory temper, and of large and
liberal concession, would satisfy the people.
The tone and scope of their petitions, which
were at first extravagant, became moderate
and pacific, as soon as the Bill was known.
As soon as they saw so unexpected a project
of substantial amendment, proceeding from
sincere Reformers, they at once sacrificed all
vague projects of indefinite perfection. No
thing can be more ludicrously absurd, than the
supposition which has been hazarded among
us, that several millions of men are such deep
dissemblers. — such dark conspirators. — as to
be able to conceal all their farther projects,
till this Bill arms them with the means of
carrying them into execution . The body of a
people cannot fail to be sincere. I do not ex
pect any measure of legislation to work mira
cles. Discontent may and will continue ; but
I believe that it will be by this measure per
manently abated. Others there doubtless are;
who foretell far other effects : it seems to me,
that the favourers of the Bill rest their pre
dictions on more probable foundations.
Among the numerous assumptions of our
opponents, there is none which appears to
me more remarkable, than their taking for
granted that concession is always, or even
generally, more dangerous to the stability of
government than resistance. As the Right
Honourable Baronet introduced several happy
quotations from Cicero on this subject, which
he seemed to address more particularly to
me, I hope I shall not be charged with pe
dantry, if I begin my proofs of the contrary,
with the testimony of that great writer. In
the third book of his work, " De Legibus,"
after having put an excellent aristocratical
speech, against the tribunitian power, into
the mouth of his brother Quintus, he proceeds
to answer him as follows : — " Concessa Plebi
a Patribus ista potestate. arma ceciderunt,
restincta seditio est, inventum est tempera-
mentum quo tenuiores cum principibus
requari se putarint ; in quo uno fuit civitatis
salus." It will not be said, that Cicero was
a radical or a demagogue, or that he had any
personal cause to be favourable to the tri
bunitian power. It will not be said, that to
grant to a few, a right to stop the progress
oj every public measure, was a slender, or
likely to be a safe concession. The ancients
had more experience of democracy, and a
better knowledge of the character of dema
gogues, than the frame of modern society
allows us the means of attaining. This great
man, in spite of his natural prejudices, and
just resentments, ascribes to this apparently
monstrous power, not merely the spirit and
energy which may be expected even from
the excess of popular institutions, but what
ever safety and tranquillity the common
wealth enjoyed through a series of ages.
He would not, therefore, have argued as has
been argued on this occasion, that if the mul
titude appeal to violence, before legal privi
leges are conferred on them, they will be
guilty of tenfold excesses when they become
sharers in legitimate authority. On the con
trary, he lays it down in the context of the
passage quoted, that their violence is abated,
by allowing a legal vent to their feelings.
But it appears. Sir, to be taken for granted,
that concession to a people is always more
dangerous to public quiet than resistance. Is
there any pretence for such a doctrine ? I
appeal to history, as a vast magazine of facts,
all leading to the very opposite conclusion,--
590
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
teaching that this fatal principle has over
thrown more thrones and dismembered more
empires than any other — proving that late
reformation, — dilatory reformation, — reform
ation refused at the critical moment, — which
may pass for ever, — in the twinkling of an
eye, has been the most frequent of all causes
of the convulsions which have shaken states,
and for a time burst asunder the bonds of
society. Allow me very briefly to advert to
the earliest revolution of modern times: —
•was it by concession that Philip II. lost the
Netherlands ? Had he granted timely and
equitable concessions, — had he not plotted
the destruction of the ancient privileges of
these flourishing provinces, under pretence
that all popular privilege was repugnant to
just authority, would he not have continued
to his death the master of that fair portion
of Europe ? Did Charles I. lose his throne
and his life by concession ? Is it not notori
ous, that if, before losing the confidence of
the Parliament and the people (after that loss
all his expediems of policy were vain, as
in such a case all policy is unavailing), he
had adhered to the principles of the Petition
of Right, to which he had given his Royal
Assent, — if he had forborne from the perse
cution of the Puritans, — if he had refrained
from levying money •without a grant from
Parliament, he would, in all human proba
bility, have reigned prosperously to the last
day of his life. If there be any man who
doubts it. his doubts will be easily removed
without pursuing his studies farther than the
first volume of Lord Clarendon's History.
Did the British Parliament lose North America
by concession ? Is not the loss of that great
empire solely to be ascribed to the obstinate
resistance of this House to every conciliatory
proposition, although supported by their own
greatest men, tendered in the loyal petitions
of the Colonies, until they were driven into
the arms of France, and the door was for
ever closed against all hopes of re-union ?
Had we yielded to the latest prayers of the
Americans, it is hard to say how long the
two British nations might have been held
together : the separation, at all events, if ab
solutely necessary, might have been effected
on quiet and friendly terms. Whatever may
be thought of recent events (of which it is
yet too early to firm a final judgment), the
history of their origin and progress would of
itself be enough to show the wisdom of those
«arly reformations, which, as Mr. Burke
says, "are accommodations with a friend in
power."
I feel, Sir, some curiosity to know how
many of the high-principled, consistent, in
flexible, and hitherto unyielding opponents of
this Bill, will continue to refuse to make
declaration in favour of any Reform, till the
last moment of this discussion. Although 1
differ from them very widely in opinion, I
know how to estimate their fidelity towards
each other, and their general fairness to
others, as well as their firmness under cir
cumstances of a discouraging and disheart
ening nature, calculated to sow distrust and
disunion in any political party. What I
dread and deprecate in their system is, that
hey offer no option but Reform or coercion.
L,et any man seriously consider what is the
ull impoit of this last tremendous word. Re
strictions will be first laid on the people,
•hich will be assuredly productive of new
discontents, provoking in turn an incensed
Grovernment to measures still more rigorous.
Discontent will rankle into disaffection : dis-
iffection will break out into revolt, which,
supposing the most favourable termination,
will not be quelled without spilling the blood
of our countrymen, and will leave them in
he end full of hatred for their rulers, and
watching for the favourable opportunity of
renewing their attack. It is needless to con
sider the consequences of a still more disas
trous and irreparable termination of the con
test. It is enough for me to say, that the long
continuance of such wretched scuffles be-
ween the Government and the people is abso-
utely incompatible with the very existence
of the English constitution. But although a
larkness hangs over the event, is there nothing
In the present temper, — in the opinions, — in
the circumstances of all European nations,
which renders the success of popular princi
ples probable "? The mode in which this mat
ter has been argued, will excuse me for once
more reminding the House that the question
is one of comparative danger. I vote for the
present Bill, not only because I approve of it
as a measure of Reform, but because i con
sider it as affording the greatest probability
of preserving the integrity of our fundamental
laws. Those who shut their eyes on the
tempests which are abroad, — on the gloomy
silence with which the extreme parties look
at each other, may obstinately persist in
ascribing the present agitation of mind in
Great Britain to a new Cabinet in November,
or to a Reform Bill in March.
Our opponents, Sir, deal much in prophecy :
they foretell all the evils which will spring
from Reform. They do right: such antici
pations are not only legitimate arguments ;
but they form the hinge on which the wh(^le
case turns. But they have two sets of weights
arid measures : — they use the probability of
future evil resulting from Reform as their
main stay ; but when we employ the proba
bility of future evil from No-Reform, in sup
port of our opinion, they call it menace, and
charge us with intimidation.
In this, and indeed in every other branch
of the case, the arguments of our opponents
have so singular a resemblance to those em
ployed by them on the Catholic Question,
that we might quote as answers to them
their own language. Then, as now, Minis
ters were charged with yielding to clamour
and menace, and with attempting to frighten
other men from their independence. As a
brief, but conclusive answer, I have only to
say, that all policy consists in such considera
tions as to whether a measure be safe and
beneficial,— that every statesman or lawgiver
SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.
591
ought to fear what he considers as dangerous
to the public, — and that I avow myself a
coward at the prospect of the civil disorders
which I think impending over my country.
Then. Sir, we are told, — as we were told
in the case of the Catholics, — that this mea- j
sure is not final, and that it is sought only as
a vantage ground from which it will be more I
easy to effect other innovations. I denied !
the disposition to encroach, with which the
Catholics were charged ; and however afflict
ing the condition of Ireland may now be, I ;
appeal to every dispassionate man, whether j
the relief granted to them has not, on the j
whole, bettered the situation, and strength
ened the security of the country. I was
then taught by the Right Honourable Baro
net.* that concession would divide loyal from
disaffected opponents, and unite all friends
of their country against those whose demands
were manifestly insatiable. Is it not rea
sonable to expect some degree of the same
benefits on the present occasion ?
Nothing human is, in one sense of the
word, final. Of a distant futurity I know
nothing ; and I am, therefore, altogether un
fitted to make laws for it. Posterity may
rightly measure their own wants, and their
capacity. — we cannot; the utmost that we
can aspire to, is to remove elements of dis
cord from their path. But within the very
limited horizon to which the view of politi
cians can reach, I have pointed out some
reasons why I expect that a measure of con
cession, made in a spirit of unsuspecting
confidence, may inspire the like sentiments,
and why I believe that the people will
acquiesce in a grant of these extensive privi
leges to those whose interests must be al
ways the same as their own. After all, is it
* Sir Robert Peel.— ED.
not obvious that the people already possess
that power through their numbers, of which
the exercise is dreaded ? It is ours, indeed,
to decide, whether they are to exert their
force in the market-place, in the street, in
the field, or in discussion, and debate in this
House. If we somewhat increase their legal
privileges, we must, also, in the same mea
sure, abate their supposed disposition to use
it ill.
On the great proprietors, much of the
grace, — of the generous character. — of the
conciliatory effect of this measure, must cer
tainly depend. But its success cannot ulti
mately depend upon a single class. If they
be deluded or enraged by tales of intimida
tion arid of riot. — if they can be brought to
doubt that there is in the public mind on the
necessity of Reform any more doubt than is
necessary to show the liberty of publishing
opinion, — whenever or wherever they act on
these great errors, they may abate the heal
ing efficacy of a great measure of concilia
tion and improvement ; but they cannot pre
vent its final adoption. Above all other
considerations, I advise these great proprie
tors to cast from them those reasonings which
would involve property in the approaching
downfall of political abuse. If they assent
to the doctrine that political privilege is
property, they must be prepared for the in
evitable consequence, — that it is no more
unlawful to violate their possessions, than to
resume a delegated trust. The suppression
of dependent boroughs is at hand : it will be
the truest wisdom of the natural guardians
of the principle of property, to maintain, to
inculcate, to enforce the essential distinction
between it and political trust, — if they be
not desirous to arm the spoilers, whom they
dread, with arguments which they can never
consistently answer.
APPENDIX.
A.
THE first article in a wise plan of reformation,
would, in our opinion, be the immediate addition
of twenty Members to the House of Commons, to
be chosen by the most opulent and populous of
the communities which are at present without di
rect representation ; with such varieties in the right
of suffrage as the local circumstances of each com
munity might suggest, but in all of them on the
principle of a widely diffused franchise. In Scot
land, Glasgow ought to be included: in Ireland
we think there are no unrepresented communities
to which the principle could be applied.
In endeavouring to show that this proposal is
strictly constitutional, according to the narrowest
and most cautious use of that term, — that it re
quires only the exercise of an acknowledged right,
and the revival of a practice observed for several
ages, we shall abstain from those controverted
questions which relate to the obscure and legend
ary part of pur Parliamentary history. A very
cursory review of the authentic annals of the
House of Commons, is sufficient for the present
purpose. In the writs of summons of the llth of
Edward I., the Sheriffs were directed (as they are
by the present writ) to send two Members from
each city and borough within their respective baili
wicks. The letter of this injunction appears, from
the beginning, to have been disobeyed, The
Crown was, indeed, desirous of a full attendance
of citizens and burgesses, a class of men then sub
servient to the Royal pleasure, and who, it was
expected, would reconcile their neighbours in the
provinces to the burthen of Parliamentary grants ;
but to many boroughs, the wages of burgesses in
Parliament were a heavy and sometimes an in
supportable burthen : and this struggle between
the policy of the Crown and the poverty of the
boroughs, occasioned great fluctuation in the towns
who sent Members to the House of Commons, i.'i
592
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
the course of ihe fourteenth century. Small bo
roughs were often excused by the Sheriff on ac
count of their poverty, and at other times negleci-
ed or disobeyed his "order. When he persisted,
petitions were presented to the King in Parlia
ment, and perpetual or temporary charters of ex
emption were obtained by the petitioning boroughs.
In the 1st of Edward III. the county ot Northum
berland, and the town of Newcastle, were ex
empted, on account of the devastations of the
Scotch war. The boroughs in Lancashire sent
no Members from the reign of Edward III. to
that of Henry VI.; the Sheriff stating, in his re
turns, that there was no borough in his bailiwick
able to bear the expense. Of one hundred and
eighty-four cities and boroughs, summoned to
Parliament in the reigns of the three first Ed
wards, only ninety-one continued to send Mem
bers in the reign of Richard II. In the midst of
this great irregularity in the composition of the
House of Commons, we still see a manifest,
though irregular, tendency to the establishment
ot a constitutional principle, — viz. that deputies
from all the most important communities, with
palpably distinct interests, should form part of a
national assembly. The separate and sometimes
clashing interests of the town and the country,
were not intrusted to the same guardians. The
Knights of the Shire were not considered as suf
ficient representatives even of the rude industry
and infant commerce of that age.
The dangerous discretion of the Sheriffs was
taken away by the statutes for the regulation of
elections, passed under the princes of the House
of Lancaster. A seat in the House of Commons
had now begun to be an object of general ambi
tion. Landed gentlemen, lawyers, even courtiers,
served as burgesses, instead of those traders, —
sometimes, if we may judge from their names, of
humble occupation, — who filled that station in
former times. Boroughs had already fallen under
the influence of neighbouring proprietors: and,
from a curious passage in the Paston Letters, (vol.
i. p. 96,) we find, that in the middle of the fifteenth
century, the nomination of a young gentleman to
serve for a borough, by the proprietor, or by a
great man of the Court, was spoken of as not an
unusual transaction. From this time the power
of the Crown, of granting representation to new
boroughs, formed a part of the regular practice of
the government, and was exercised without inter
ruption for two hundred years.
In the cases of Wales, Chester, and long after
of Durham, representation was bestowed by sta
tute, probably because it was thought that no in
ferior authority could have admiued Members
from those territories, long subject to a distinct
government, jnto the Parliament of England. In
these ancient grants of representation, whether
made by the King or by Parliament, we discover
a great uniformiiy of principle, and an approach
to the maxims of our present constitution. In
Wales and Chester, as well as in England, the
counties were distinguished from the towns ; and
the protection of their separate interests was com
mitted to different representatives : the rights of
election were diversified, according to the local
interests and municipal constitution of the several
towns. In the preamble of the Chester Act, re
presentation is stated to be the means of securing
the county from the wrong which it had suffered
while it was unrepresented. It was bestowed on
Wales with the other parts of the laws of Eng
land, of which it was thought the necessary com
panion : and the exercise of popular privileges is
distinctly held out as one of the means which
were to quiet and civilize that principality. In the
cases of Calais and Berwick, the frontier fortresses
against France and Scotland, — where modern poli
ticians would have been fearful of introducing the
disorders of elections, — Henry the VHIth granted
the elective franchise, apparently for the purpose
of strengthening the attachment, and securing the
fidelity of their inhabitants. The Knights of the
Shire for Northumberland were not then thought
to represent Berwick sufficiently.
While we thus find in these ancient examples
so much solicitude for an adequate representation
of the separate interests of classes and districts, it
is particularly worthy of remark, that we find no
trace in any of them of a representation founded
merely on numbers. The statute that gave repre
sentatives to Wales, was within a century of the
act of Henry VI. for regulating the qualifications
for the voters in counties ; and on that subject, as
well as others, may be regarded as no inconsider
able evidence on the ancient state of the constitu
tion. Had universal suffrage prevailed till the fif
teenth century, it seems wholly incredible, that no
trace of it should be found in the numerous Royal
and Parliamentary grants of representation, which
occur in the early part of the sixteenth. Mere ac
cident must have revived it in some instances ; for
it certainly had not then become an argument of
jealousy or apprehension.
In the reigns of Edward the Vlth, Mary, and
Elizabeth, the struggles between the Catholic and
Protestant parties occasioned a great and sudden
increase of the House of Commons. Fourteen
boroughs were thus privileged by the first of these
Sovereigns, ten by the second, and twenty-four
by Elizabeth. The choice, in the reign of Edward
and Elizabeth, was chiefly in the western and
southern counties, where the adherents of the
Reformation were most numerous, and the
towns were most under the influence of the
Crown. By this extraordinary exertion of prero
gative, a permanent addition of ninety-four Mem
bers was made to the House in little more than
fifty years. James and Charles, perhaps, dread
ing the accession of strength which a more nu
merous House might give to the popular cause,
made a more sparing use of this power. But
the popular party in the House, imitating the
policy of the ministers of Elizabeth, began to
strengthen their Parliamentary influence by a
similar expedient. That House had, indeed, no
pretensions to the power of making new Parlia
mentary boroughs ; but the same purpose was
answered, by the revival of those which had long
disused their privilege. Petitions were obtained
from many towns well effected to the popular
cause, alleging that they had, in ancient times,
sent Members to Parliament, and had not legal
ly lost the right. These petitions were referred
to the Committee of Privileges ; and, on a fa
vourable report, the Speaker was directed to issue
his warrant for new writs. Six towns (of which
Mr. Hampden's borough of Wendover was onje)
were in this manner empowered to send Members
to Parliament in the reign of James. Two were
added in 1628 by like means, and six more by the
Long Parliament on the very eve of the civil war.
No further addition was made to the represen
tation of England except the borough of Newark,
on which Charles II., in 1672, bestowed the pri
vilege of sending burgesses to the House of Com
mons, as a reward for the fidelity of the inhabitants
to his father. The right of the first burgesses re
turned by this borough in 1673 was questioned, —
though on what ground our scanty and confused
accounts of the Parliamentary transactions of that
period do not enable us to determine. The ques
tion was suspended for about three years ; and at
last, on the 26th of March, 1676, it was determin
ed by a majority of one hundred and twenty-five
against seventy-three, that the town had a right to
send burgesses. But on a second division, it was
resolved, by a majority of one, that the Members
returned were not duly elected. And thus sud
denly, and somewhat unaccountably, ceased the
exercise of a prerogative which, for several centu-
SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.
593
ries, had continued to augment, and, in some
measure, to regulate the English representation.
Neither this, nor any other constitutional power,
originated in foresight and contrivance. Occa
sional convenience gave rise to its first exercise :
the course of time gave it a sanction of law. It
was more often exercised for purposes of tempo
rary policy, or of personal favour, than with any
regard to the interest of the constitution. Its en
tire cessation is, however, to be considered as
forming an epoch in the progress of our govern
ment. However its exercise might have been
abused, its existence might be defended, on the
ground that it was the constitutional means of re
medying the defects of the representation. It was
a tacit acknowledgment that a representative sys
tem must, from time to time, require amendment.
Every constitutional reasoner must have admitted,
that it was rightly exercised only in those cases
where it contributed to the ends for the sake of
which alone it could be justified. Its abuse con
sisted much more in granting the suffrage to in
significant villages, than from withholding it from
large towns. The cases of the latter sort are very
few, and may be imputed to accident and negli
gence, which would probably have been corrected
in process of time. No such instance occurs with
respect to any town of the first, or even of the
second class. And, indeed, it cannot be supposed,
that, before the disuse of that prerogative, four or
five of the principal towns in the kingdom should
have continued without representatives for more
than a century. Whatever the motive might have
been for granting representatives to Westminster
by Edward VI., no reason could have been as
signed for the grant, but the growing importance
of that city. Lord Clarendon's commendation of
the constitution of Cromwell's Parliament, to
which Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax, then towns
of moderate size, sent representatives, may be
considered as an indication of the general opinion
on this subject.
In confirmation of these remarks, we shall close
this short review of the progress of the represen
tation before the Revolution, by an appeal to two
legislative declarations of the principles by which
it ought to be governed.
The first is the Chester Act, (34 & 35 Hen. 8.
c. 13,) the preamble of which is so well known as
the basis of Mr- Burke's plan for conciliation with
America. It was used against him, to show that
Parliament might legislate for unrepresented
counties ; but it was retorted by him, with much
greater force, as a proof from experience, and an
acknowledgment from the Legislature, that coun
ties in that situation had no security against mis
rule. The Petition of the inhabitants of Che
shire, which was adopted as the preamble of the
Act, complained that they had neither knight nor
burgess in Parliament for the said county-pala
tine ; and that the said inhabitants, "for lack
thereof, have been oftentimes touched and grieved
with acts and statutes made within the said court."
On this recital the Statute proceeds: — "For
remedy thereof may it please your Highness, that
it may be enacted, that from the end of this pre
sent session, the said county-palatine shall have
two knights for the said county-palatine, and
likewise two citizens to be burgesses for the city
of Chester."
The Statute enabling Durham to send knights
and burgesses to Parliament, which has been less
frequently quoted, is still more explicit on the pur
poses of the present argument : —
" Whereas the inhabitants of the said county-
palatine of Durham have not hitherto had the
liberty and privilege of electing: and sending any
knights and burgesses to the High Court of Par
liament, although the inhabitants of the said
county-palatine are liable to all payments, rates,
and subsidies granted by Parliament, equally
75
with the inhabitants of other counties, cities, and
boroughs in this kingdom, who have their knights
and burgesses in the Parliament, and are there
fore concerned equally with others the inhabitants
of this kingdom to have knights and burgesses
in the said High Court of Parliament, ot their
own election, to represent the condition of their
county, as the inhabitants of other counties, cities,
and boroughs of this kingdom have .... Where
fore, be it enacted, that the said county-palatine
of Durham may have two knights for the same
county, and the city of Durham two citizens to
be burgesses for the same city, for ever here
after, to serve in the High Court of Parliament . . .
The elections of the Knights to serve for the
said county, from time to time hereafter, to be
made by the greater number of freeholders of the
said county-palatine, which from time to time
shall be present at such elections, accordingly as
is used in other counties in this your Majesty's
kingdom ; and the election of the said burgesses
for the city of Durham, to be made from time to
time by the major part of the mayor, aldermen,
and freemen of the said city of Durham, which
from time to time shall be present at such elec
tions." This Statute does not, like the Chester
Act, allege that any specific evil had arisen from
the previous want of representatives ; but it re
cognises, as a general principle of the English
constitution, that the interests of every unrepre
sented district are in danger of being overlooked
or sacrificed, and that the inhabitants of such dis
tricts are therefore interested to have knights and
burgesses in Parliament, " of their own election,
to represent the condition of their country."
The principle is, in effect, as applicable to towns
as to counties. The town of Newcastle had then
as evident an interest in the welfare of the county
of Durham, as the county of Warwick can now
have in the prosperity of the town of Birming
ham ; but the members for Newcastle were not
considered, by this statute, as sufficient guardians
of the prosperity of the county of D urham. Even
the knights who were to serve for the county,
were not thought to dispense with the burgesses
to serve for the city. As we have before observed,
the distinct interests of country and town were
always, on such occasions, provided for by our
ancestors ; and a principle was thereby established,
that every great community, with distinct interest,
ought to have separate representatives.
It is also observable, that the right of suffrage
is not given to all the inhabitants, nor even to all
the taxable inhabitants, but to the freeholders of
the county, and freemen of the city,— who have a
common interest and fellow-feeling with the whole.
As these electors were likely to partake the senti
ments of the rest of the inhabitants, and as every
public measure must affect both classes alike,
the members chosen by such a part of the people
were considered as virtually representing all. —
The claim to representation is acknowledged as
belonging to all districts and communities, to all
classes and interests, — but not to all men. Some
degree of actual election was held necessary to
virtual representation. The guardians of the in
terest of the country were to be, to use the lan
guage of the preamble, " of their own election ;"
though it evidently appears from the enactments,
that these words imported only an election by a
considerable portion of them. It is also to be
observed, that there is no trace in this Act of a
care to proportion the number of the new repre
sentatives to the population of the district, though
a very gross deviation on either side would proba
bly have been avoided.
When we speak of principles on this subject,
we are not to be understood as ascribing to them
the character of rules of law, or of axioms of
science. They were maxims of constitutional
policy, to which there is a visible, though jy>t a
2z 2
594
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
uniform, reference in the acts of our forefathers.
They were more or less regarded, according to
the character of those who directed the public
councils : the wisest and most generous men made
the nearest approaches to their observance. But
in the application of these, as well as of all other
political maxims, it was often necessary to yield
to circumstances, — to watch for opportunities, —
to consult the temper of the people, the condition
of the country, and the dispositions of powerful
leaders. It is from want of due regard to con
siderations like these, that the theory of the Eng
lish representation has, of late years, been dis
figured by various and opposite kinds of reasoners.
Some refuse to acknowledge any principles on
this subject, but those most general considera
tions of expediency and abstract justice, which
are applicable to all governments, and to every
situation of mankind. But these remote princi
ples shed too faint a light to guide us on our path ;
and can seldom be directly applied with any ad
vantage to human affairs. Others represent the
whole constitution, as contained in the written
laws ; and treat every principle as vague or vision
ary, which is not sanctioned by some legal au
thority. A third class, considering (rightly) the
representation as originating only in usage, and
incessantljMhough insensibly altered in the course
of time, erroneously infer, that it is altogether a
matter of coarse and confused practice, incapable
of being reduced to any theory. The truth is,
however, that out of the best parts of that prac
tice have gradually arisen a body of maxims,
which guide our judgment in each particular case ;
and which, though beyond the letter of the law,
are better defined, and more near the course of
business, than general notions of expediency or
justice. Often disregarded, and never rigorously
adhered to, they have no support but a general
conviction, growing with experience, of their fit
ness and value. The mere speculator disdains
them as beggarly details: the mere lawyer asks
for the statute or case on which they rest: the
mere practical politician scorns them as airy vi
sions. But these intermediate maxims constitute
the principles of the British constitution, as dis
tinguished, on the one hand, from abstract notions
of government, and, on the other, from the pro
visions of law, or the course of practice. " Civil
knowledge," says Lord Bacon, " is of all others
the most immersed in matter, and the hardliest
reduced to axioms." politics, therefore, if they
should ever be reduced to a science, will require
the greatest number of intermediate laws, to con
nect its most general principles with the variety
and intricacy of the public concerns. But in every
branch of knowledge, we are told by the same
great Master, (Novum Organum,) "that while
generalities are barren, and the multiplicity of
single facts present nothing but confusion, the
middle principles alone are solid, orderly, and
fruitful."
The nature of virtual representation may be illus
trated by the oriuinal contioversy between Great
Britain and America. The Americans alleged,
perhaps untruly, that being unrepresented they
could not legally be taxed. They, added, with
truth, that being unrepresented, they ou^ht not
constitutionally to be taxed. But they defended
this true position, on a ground untenable in argu
ment. They sought for the constitution in the
works of abstract reasoners, instead of searching
for it in its own ancient and uniform practice.
They were told that virtual, not actual, represen-
ration, was the principle of the constitution ; and
that they were as much virtually represented as
the majority of ths people of England. In answer
to this, they denied that virtual representation waa
a constitutional principle, instead of denying the
facr, that they were virtually represented. Had
they chosen the latter ground, their case would
have been unanswerable. The unrepresented part
of England could not be taxed, without taxing the
represented : the laws affected alike the members
who passed them, their constituents, and the rest
of the people. On the contrary, separate laws
might be, and were, made for America : separate
taxes might be, and were, laid on her. The case
of that country, therefore, was the very reverse of
virtual representation. Instead of identity, there
was a contrariety of apparent interest. The Eng
lish land-holder was to be relieved by an Ameri
can revenue. The prosperity of the English manu
facturer was supposed to depend on a monopoly
of the American market. Such a system of go
verning a great nation was repugnant to the princi
ples ot a constitution which had solemnly pro
nounced, that the people of the small territories of
Chester and Durham could not be virtually repre
sented without some share of actual representa
tion. — Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxiv. p. 477.
B.
THE principle of short Parliaments was solemn
ly declared at the Revolution. On the 29th of
January 1689, seven days after the Convention
was assembled, the following resolution was adopt
ed by the House of Commons: — " That a com
mittee be appointed to bring in general heads of
such things as are absolutely necessary to be con
sidered, for the better securing our Religion, Laws,
and Liberties." Of this Committee Mr. Somers
was one. On the 2d of February, Sir George Tre-
by, from the Committee thus appointed, reported
the general heads on which they had agreed. The
llth article of these general heads was as follows :
— " That the too long continuance of the same Par
liament be prevented." On the 4th of February
it was ordered, " That it be referred to the Com
mittee to distinguish such general heads as are in-
troductive of new laws, from those that are declar
ratory of ancient rights." On the 7th of the same
month, the Committee made their Second Re
port ; and, after going through the declaratory part,
which constitutes the Bill of Rights as it now
stands, proposed the following, among other
clauses, relating to the introduction of new laws:
— " And towards the making a more firm and per
fect settlement of the said Religion, Laws, and
Liberties, and for remedying several defects and
inconveniences, it is proposed and advised by
[blank left for ' Lords'] and Commons, that there
be provision, by new laws, made in such manner,
and with such limitations, as by the wisdom and
justice of Parliament shall be considered and or
dained in the particulars; and in particular, and \o
the purposes following, viz. for preventing the t<$o
long continuance of the same Parliament." Thte
articles which required new laws being thus dis^
tinguished, it was resolved on the following day,
on the motion of Mr. Somers, "that it be an in-
struction to the said Committee, to connect, to
the vote of the Lords, such parts of the heads
passed this House yesterday as are declaratory of
ancient rights ; leaving out such parts as are intro
ductory 01 new laws." The declaratory articles
were accordingly formed into the Declaration of
Rights; and in that state were, by both Houses,
presented to the Prince and Princess of Orange,
and accepted by them, with the crown of England.
But the articles introductive of new laws, thougf
necessarily omitted in a Declaration of Rights,
had been adopted without a division by the House
of Commons; who thus, at the very moment of
the Revolution, determined, " that a firm and per
fect settlement of the Religion, Laws, and Liber
ties," required provision for a new law, "for pre
venting the too long continuance of the same Par
liament."
SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.
595
But though the principle of short Parliaments
was thus solemnly recognised at the Revolution,
the time of introducing the new law, the means
by which its object was to be attained, and the
precise term to be fixed for their duration, were
reserved for subsequent deliberation. Attempts
were made to give effect to the principle in 1692
and 1693, by a Triennial Bill. In the former
year, it passed both Houses, but did not receive
the Royal Assent : in the latter, it was rejected by
the House of Commons. In 1694, after Sir John
Somers was raised to the office of Lord Keeper,
the Triennial Bill passed into a law.* It was not
confined, like the bills under the same title, in the
reigns of Charles I. and Charles II., (and with
which it is too frequently confounded,) to provisions
for securing the frequent sitting of Parliament : it
for the first time limited its duration. Till the
passing of this bill, Parliament, unless dissolved
by the King, might legally have continued till the
demise of the Crown, — its only natural and ne
cessary termination.
The Preamble is deserving of serious considera
tion : — "Whereas, by the ancient laws and
statutes of this kingdom, frequent Parliaments
ought to be held ; and whereas frequent and new
Parliaments tend very much to the happy union
and good agreement of the King and People."
The Act then proceeds, in the first section, to
provide for the frequent holding of Parliaments,
according to the former laws ; and in the second
and third sections, by enactments which were be
fore unknown to our laws, to direct, that there
shall be a new Parliament every three years, and
that no Parliament shall have continuance longer
than three years at the farthest. Here, as at the
time of the Declaration of Rights, the holding of
Parliaments is carefully distinguished from their
election. The two parts of the Preamble refer
separately to each of these objects : the frequent
holding of Parliaments is declared to be conform
able to the ancient laws ; but the frequent election
of Parliament is considered only as a measure
highly expedient on account of its tendency to
preserve harmony between the Government and
the People.
The principle of the Triennial Act, therefore,
seems to be of as high constitutional authority as
if it had been inserted in the Bill of Rights itself,
from which it was separated only that it might be
afterwards carried into effect in a more convenient
manner. The particular term of three years is an
arrangement of expediency, to which it would be
folly to ascribe any great importance. This Act
continued in force only for twenty years. Its op
ponents have often expatiated on the corruption
and disorder in elections, and the instability in the
national councils which prevailed during that
period : but the country was then so much dis
turbed by the weakness of a new government,
and the agitation of a disputed succession, that it
is impossible to ascertain whether more frequent
elections had any share in augmenting the dis
order. At the accession of George I. the dura
tion of Parliament was extended to seven years,
by the famous statute called the " Septennial
Act," 1 Geo. I. et. 2. c. 38, the preamble of which
asserts, that the last provision of the Triennial
Act, " if it should continue, may probably at this
juncture, when a restless and Popish faction are
designing and endeavouring to renew the rebel
lion within this kingdom, and an invasion from
abroad, be destructive to the peace and security
of the government." This allegation is now as
certained to have been perfectly true. There is
the most complete historical evidence that all the
Tories of the kingdom were then engaged in a
conspiracy to effect a counter-revolution, — to
wrest from the people all the securities which they
6 W. & M. c. 2.
had obtained for liberty, — to brand them as rebels,
and to stigmatise their rulers as usurpers, — and to
re-establish the principles of slavery, by the resto
ration of a family, whose claim to power waa
founded on their pretended authority. It is beyond
all doubt, that a general election at that period
would have endangered all these objects. la
these circumstances the Septennial Act was pass
ed, because it was necessary to secure liberty.
But it was undoubtedly one of the highest exer
tions of the legislative authority. It was a devia
tion from the course of the constitution too exten
sive in its effects, and too dangerous in its exam
ple, to be warranted by motives of political expe
diency : it could be justified only by the necessity
of preserving liberty. The Revolution itself waa
a breach of the laws ; and it was as great a devia
tion from the principles of monarchy, as the Sep
tennial Act could be from the constitution of the
House of Commons : — and the latter can only be
justified by the same ground of necessity, with
that glorious Revolution of which it probably con
tributed to preserve — would to God we could say
perpetuate — the inestimable blessings.
It has been said by some, that as the danger
was temporary, the law ought to have been passed
only for a time, and that it should have been de
layed till the approach of a general election should
ascertain, whether a change in the temper of the
people had not rendered it unnecessary. But it
was necessary, at the instant, to confound the
hopes of conspirators, who were then supported
and animated by the prospect of a general elec
tion : and if any period had been fixed tor its du
ration, it might have weakened its effects, as a
declaration of the determined resolution of Par
liament to stand or fall with the Revolution.
It is now certain, that the conspiracy of the
Tories against the House of Hanover, continued
till the last years of the reign of George II. The
Whigs, who had preserved the fruits of the Revo
lution, and upheld the tottering throne of the
Hanoverian Family during half a century, were,
in this state of things, unwilling to repeal a law, for
which the reasons had not entirely ceased. The
hostility of the Tories to the Protestant succession
was not extinguished, till the appearance of their
leaders at the court of King George III. proclaim
ed to the world their hope, that Jacobite principles
might re-ascend the throne of England with a
monarch of the House of Brunswick.
The effects of the Septennial Act on the consti
tution werp materially altered in the late reign, by
an innovation in the exercise of the prerogative of
dissolution. This important prerogative is the
buckler of the monarchy : it is intended for great
emergencies, when its exercise may be the only
means of averting immediate danger from the
throne : it is strictly a defensive right. As no ne
cessity arose, under the two first Georges, for its
defensive exercise, it lay, during that period, in a
state of almost total inactivity. Only one Parlia
ment, under these two Princes, was dissolved till
its seventh year. The same inoffensive maxims
were pursued during the early part of the reign
of George III. In the year 1784, the power of
dissolution, hitherto reserved for the defence of the
monarchy, was, for the first time, employed to
support the power of an Administration. The
majority of the House of Commons had, in 1782,
driven one Administration from office, and com
pelled another to retire. Its right to interpose,
with decisive weight, in the choice of ministers,
as well as the adoption of measures, seemed by
these vigonms exertions to be finally established.
George II. had, indeed, often been compelled to
receive ministers whom he hated : but his succes
sor, more tenacious of his prerogative, and more
inflexible in his resentment, did not so easily brook
the subjection to which he thought himself about
to be reduced. When the latter, in 1784, again
596
MACKINTOSH'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
saw his Ministers threatened with expulsion by a
majority of the House of Commons, he found a
Prime Minister who, trusting to his popularity,
ventured to make common cause with him, and
to brave that Parliamentary disapprobation to
which the prudence or principle of both his prede
cessors had induced them to yield. Not content
with this great victory, he proceeded, by a disso
lution of Parliament, to inflict such an exemplary
punishment on the majority, as might deter all
future ones from following their dangerous ex
ample.
The ministers of 1806 gave some countenance
to Mr. Pitt's precedent, by a very reprehensible
dissolution : and in 1807, its full consequences
were unfolded. The House of Commons was
then openly threatened with a dissolution, if a
majority should vote against Ministers ; and in
pursuance of this threat, the Parliament was actu
ally dissolved. From that moment, the new pre
rogative of penal dissolution was added to all the
other means of ministerial influence.
Of all the silent revolutions which have materi
ally changed the English government, without
any alteration in the latter of the law, there is,
perhaps, none more fatal to the constitution than
the power thus introduced by Mr. Pitt, and
strengthened by his followers. And it is the
more dangerous, because it is hardly capable of
being counteracted by direct laws. The preroga
tive of dissolution, being a means of defence on
sudden emergencies, is scarcely to be limited by
law. There is, however, an indirect, but effectual
mode of meeting its abuse : — by shortening the
duration of Parliaments, the punishment of disso
lution will be divested of its terrors. While its
defensive power will be unimpaired, its efficacy,
as a means of influence, will be nearly destroyed.
The attempt to reduce Parliament to a greater
degree of dependence, will thus be defeated ; due
reparation be made to the constitution ; and future
ministers taught, by a useful example of just re
taliation, that the Crown is not likely to be finally
the gainer, in struggles to convert a necessary
prerogative into a means of unconstitutional influ
ence.— Ibid. p. 494.
THE END.
[126 Chcsnut street, Philadelphia.
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the Modern Essayists, comprising the Critical and Miscel- j That celebrated journal made reviewing more .-espectable
laneous writings of the most distinguished authors of mo- [than authorship. It was started at a time when the de-
dern times, has induced the publishers to issue a new, \ generacy of literature demanded a radical reform, and a
revised, and very cheap edition, witli finely engraved Por- j sharp vein of criticism. Its contributors were men who
traits of the authors; and while they have added to the possessed talents and information, and so far held a slight
series the writings of several distinguished authors, they j advantage over most of those they reviewed, who did not
have reduced the price more THAN ONE HALK! j happen to possess either, (.'rub Street quarterly quaked t«
The writings of each author will be comprised in a sin- its foundations, as the northern comet shot its portentous
pie octavo volume, well printed from new type, on fine, glare into the dark alleys, where bathos and puerility buzzed
white paper, manufactured expressly for this edition.
and hived. The citizens of Brussels, on the nizln previous
The series will contain all the most able papers that have I to Waterloo, were hardly more terror-struck than the vast
array of fated authors who, every three months, waited the
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sound which betokened its arrival,
' Whispered with white lips, the foe! it comes! it comes I'
"In the early and palmy days of the Review, when re
viewers wwre wits and writers were hacks, the shore of the
great ocean of books was ' heaped with the damned like
pebbles.' Like an 'eagle in a dovecote,' it fluttered the
leaves of the Minerva press, and stifled the weak notes of
imbecile elegance, and the dull croak of insipid vulgarity,
learned ignorance, and pompous humility. The descent of
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tion to the Italians, than the 'fell swoop' of the Edinburgh
Review on the degenerate denizens of Grub Street and Pa
ternoster Row. It carried ruin and devastation wherever
it went, and in most cases it carried those severe but pro
vidential dispensations to the right places, and made havoc
consistent both with political and poetic justice. The Edin
burgh r«viewers were found not to he of the old school of
critics. They were not contented with the humble task of
chronicling the appearance of books, and meekly condens
ing their weak contents for the edification of lazy heads ;
hut when They deigned to read and analyze the work they
judged, they sought rather for opportunities to display their
own wit and knowledge than to flatter the vanity of the
author, or to increase hie readers. Many of their most
splendid articles were essays rather than reviews. The
writer, whose work afforded the name of the subject, was
summarily disposed of in a quiet sneer, a terse sarcasm, or
a faint panegyric, and the remainder of the article hardly
recognised his existence. It is to these purely original con
tributions, written by men of the first order of talent, that
the Review owes most of its reputation."
The North American Review remarks :
" We have intimated our high opinion of the value of the
essays-tind disquisitions with which British Periodical litera
ture is now so amply filled. An eminent publishing house
in Philadelphia has very wisely undertaken to reprint these.
ever appeared in The Edinburgh Review, The London Quar
terly Review, and Blm kwood's Ma<raiine, and may indeed be
ca!U;d the cream of those publications.
It is only necessary to mention the names of those au
thors whose writings" \v Ml appear :
T. Babinfton Mara-uliy, Sir Walter Scott,
Archibald Alison, Lord Jeffrey,
Ren. Sydney Smith, Sir James Markintnsh
Professor Wils<-n, T. JVoon Tulfourd,
James Stephen, J. O. Lockhart,
Thomas Curly I e, William Gifford,
Robert Suuthey, J. Wilson Crocker,
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annual subscription.
The following is extracted from a very able article on
Mr. Macaulay, by Mr. E. P. Whipple :
" It is impossible to cast even a careless glance over the
literature of the last thirty years, without perceiving the
prominent station occupied by critics, reviewers and essay
ists. Criticism in the old days of Monthly Reviews and Gen
tlemen's Magazines, was quite an humble occupation, and
was chiefly monopolized by the ' barren rascals' of letters,
who scribbled, sinned and starved in attics and cellars ; but
it. has since been almost exalted into a creative art, and
numbers among its professors some of the most accom
plished writers of the age. Dennis, Rhymer, Winstarley,
Theophilus Gibber, Griffiths, and other 'eminent f'ands,' as
well as the nameless contributors to defunct peiiodicals and
deceased pamphlets, have departed, body and soul, and left
not a wreck behind ; and their places have been supplied
by such men as Coleridge, Carlyle, Macaulay, Lamb, Ilaz-
litt, Jeffrey, Wilson, Gifford, Mackintosh, Sydney Smith,
Ilallam, Campbell, Talfourd and Brougham. Indeed every
celebrated writer of the present century, without, it is be
lieved, a solitary exception, has dabbled or excelled in criti
cism. It has been the road to fame and profit, and has com
manded both applause and guineas, when the unfortunate
objects of it have been blessed with neither. Many of the
strongest minds of the age will leave no other record be
hind them, than critical essays and popular speeches. To
th«se who have made criticism a business, it ha* led to
success in other professions. The Edinburgh Review,
which took the lead in the establishment of the new order
of things, was projected in a lofty attic by two briefless
barristers and a titheless parson ; the former are now lords,
and the latter is a snug prebendary, rejoicing in the reputa-
a general circulation in the United
and to give
States.
CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
WRITINGS of THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
in one volume, with a finely engraved Portrait, from
an original picture by Henry Inman. Price $2.00.
CONTENTS.
Milton, Mackintosh's History of tfiu
Machiavelli, Revolution of England,
Dryden, Sir John Malcolm's Life Ol
History, Lord (.'live,
Hallam's Constitutional His- Life and Writings of Sir W
lory, Temple,
Boulhey's Colloquies on So- Church and State,
ciety, Ranke's History of the Popes,
Moore's Life of Byron, Cowley and Milton,
Southey's Bunyan's Pil- Mitford's History of Greece,
grim's Progress, The Athenian Orators.
Croker's Boswell's Life of Comic Dramatists of the Re-
Johnson, storation,
Lord Nugent's Memoirs of Lord Holland,
Hampden, Warren Hastings,
Kares's Memoirs of Lord Frederic the Great,
Burghley, Lays of Ancient Rome,
Dumont's Recollections of Madame D'Arblay,
Mirabeau, Adriison,
Lord Mahon's War of The Barere's Memoirs,
Succession, Montgomery's Poems,
Walpnle's Letters to Sir II. Civil Disabilities of the Jews,
Mann, Mill on Government,
Thackaray's History of Earl Bentham's Defence of Mill,
'''••"' Utilitarian Theory of Go
vernment.
Chatham,
Earl Chatham, 2d part.
Lord Bacon,
A remittance of TWELVE DOLLARS will pay for the ESSAYS of MACAULAY, ALISON,
SYDNEY SMITH, CARLYLE, WILSON, JEFFRKtf, STEPHEN, TALFOURD, and
MACKINTOSH, in 8 vols., bound in cloth, gilt.
CAREY & HART'S NEW 1'UBLIUATIUrtS.
There probably never was a series of articles communi
cated to a periodical, which can challenge comparison with
those of Macaulay, for artistic merit. They are character
ized by many of the qualities of heart and mind which
•tamp the productions of an Edinburgh reviewer ; hut in
the combination of various excellences they far excel ihe
finest efforts of the class. As nimble and as concise in wit
as Sydney Smith ; an eye quick to seize all those delicate
refinements of language and happy turns of expression,
which charm us in Jeffrey; displaying much of the impe
rious scorn, passionate strength and swelling diction of
Brougham; as brilliant and as acute in critical dissection
as Hazlitt, without the unsoundness of mind which disfi
gures the finest compositions of that remarkable man ; at
times evincing a critical judgment which would not dis
grace the stern gravity of Hallam, and a range of thought
and knowledge which remind us of Mackintosh,— Macaulay
seems to be the abstract and epitome of the whole journal,
— seems the utmost that an Edinburgh reviewer "car.
come to." He delights every one— high or low, intelligent
or ignorant. His spice is of so keen a flavour that it tickles
the coarsest palate. He has the unhesitating suffrages of
men of taste, and the plaudits of the million. The man
who has a common knowledge of the English language,
and the scholar who has mastered its refinements, seem
equally sensible to the charm of his diction. No matter
how unpromising the subject on which he writes may ap
pear to the common eye, in his hands it is made pleasing.
Statistics, history, biography, political economy, all suffer
a transformation into "something rich and strange." Pro
saists are made to love poetry, tory politicians to sympa
thize with Hampden and Milton, and novel-readers to ob
tain some idea of Bacon and his philosophy. The won
derful clearness, point, and vigour of his style, send his
thoughts right into every brain. Indeed, a person who is
utterly insensible to the witchery of Macaulay's diction,
must be either a Yahoo or a beatified intelligence.
CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
WRITINGS of ARCHIBALD ALISON, Author of
"The History of Europe," in one volume, 8vo, with a
Portrait. Price $1.25.
CONTENTS.
Chateaubriand,
Napoleon,
Bossuet,
Poland,
Madame de S.ael,
National Monuments,
Marshal Ney,
Robert Bruce,
Paris in 1814,
The Louvre in 1814,
Tyrol,
France in 1833,
Italy,
Scott, Campbell and Byron,
Schools of Design,
Lamartine,
The Copyright Question,
Michelet's France,
Arnold's Rome,
RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER
NORTH, (JOHN WILSON,) in one volume, 8vo, with a
Pi
Military Treason and Civic
Soldiers,
Mirabeau,
Bulwer's Athens,
The Reign of Terror,
The French Revolution of
1830,
The Fall of Turkey,
The Spanish Revolution of
1820,
Karamsin's Russia,
Effects of the French Revo
lution of 1830,
Desertion of Portugal,
Wellington,
Carlist Struggle in Spain,
The Afghanistan Expedition,
The Future, dec. &c.
Portrait. Price One Dollar.
Mid-day,
Sacred Poetry,
Christopher in his Aviary,
Dr. Kitr.hiner,
Soliloquy on the Seasons,
A Few YVords on Thomson,
The Snowball Bicker of
Piedmont,
Christmas Dreams,
Our Winter Quarters,
Stroll to Grassmere,
L'Envoy.
Christopher in his Sporting
Jacket,
A Tale of Expiation,
Morning Monologue,
The Field of Flowers,
Cottages,
An Hour'sTalk aboutPoeiry,
Inch Cruin,
A Day at Windermere,
The Moors,
Highland Snow-Storm.
The Holy Child,
Our Parish,
"And not less for that wonderful series of articles by
Wilson, in Blackwood's Magazine— in their kind an truly
amazing and as truly glorious as the romances of Scott or the
poetry of Wordsworth. Far and wide and much as these
papers have been admired, wherever the English language
is read, I still question whether any one man has a just idea
of them as a whole." — Extract from Howitt's " Rural Life."
"The outpouring of a gifted, a tutored, and an exuberant
mind, on men and manners— literature, science, and philo-
•ophy — and all embued by the peculiar phases of that mind,
whether viewed in the light of humour, wit, sentiment,
pathos, fancy or imagination." — Literary Gazette.
" A blaze of dazzling light which literally blinds us, while
the tumult that its perusal causes within us, makes us per
fectly helpless." — Cambridge Chronicle.
THE WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY
SMITH, in one volume, with a Portrait. Price On*
Dollar.
CONTENTS.
Dr. Pair,
Dr. Kennel,
John Bowles,
Dr Lang ford,
Archdeacon Nares,
Matthew Lewis,
Australia,
Fievee's Letters on England,
Edgeworth on Bulls,
Trimmer and Lancaster,
Parnell and Ireland,
Methodism,
Indian Missions,
Catholics,
Methodism,
Hannah More,
Professional Education,
Female Education,
Public Schools,
Toleration,
Charles Fox,
Mad Quakers,
America,
Game Laws,
Botany Bay,
Chimney Sweepers,
America,
Ireland,
Spring Guns,
Observations on the Histori
cal Work of the Right
Honourable Charles James
Fox,
Disturbances of Madras,
Bishop of Lincoln's Charge,
Madame d'Epinay,
Poor Laws,
Public Characters of 1801-2,
Anastasius,
Scarlett's Poor Bill,
Memoirs of Captain Rock,
Granby,
Island of Ceylon,
Delphine,
Mission to Ashantee,
Witman's Travels,
Speech on Catholic Claims,
Speech at the Taunton Re
form Meeting,
Speech atTaunton at a Meet
ing to celebrate the Acces
sion of King William IV.,
Persecuting Bishsps,
Speech at Taunton in 1831 on
the Reform Bill not being
passed,
Prisons,
Prisons,
Botany Bay,
Game Laws,
Cruel Treatment of untried
Prisoners,
America,
Bent ha m on Fallacies,
Waterton,
Man Traps and Spring Guns,
Hamilton's Method of leach
ing Languages,
Counsel for Prisoners,
Catholics,
Neckar's Last Views,
Catteau, Tableau des Etata
Danois,
Thoughts on the Residenca
of the Clergy,
Travels from Palestine,
Letter on the Curates' Salary
Bill,
Proceedings of the Society
for the Suppression of
Vice,
Characters of Fox,
Speech respecting the Re
form Bill,
The Ballot,
First Letter to Archdeacon
Singleton,
Second Letter to Archdeacon
Singleton,
Third Letter to Archdeacon
Singleton,
Letter on the Character of
Sir James Mackintosh,
Letter to Lord John Russell,
Sermon on the Duties of the
Queen,
The Lawyer that tempted
Christ : a Sermon,
The Judge that smites con
trary to the Law : a Ser
mon,
A letter to the Electors upon
the Catholic Question,
A Sermon on the Rules of
Christian Charity,
Peter Plymley's Letter.
CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ESSAYS OF THOMAS CARLYLE, in one 8vo vol., with
Portrait. Price $1.75.
CONTENTS.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter— State of German Litera
ture — Werner— Goethe's Helena— Goethe— Burns— Heyne
German Playwrights — Voltaire— Novalis— Signs of the
Times— Jean Paul Friedrich Richter again — On History —
Schiller— The Nibellungen Lied— Early German Literature
—Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry- Character
istics — Johnson — Death of Goethe — Goethe's Works »-
Diderot— On History again — Count Cagliostro — Corn Lafcr
Rhymes — The Diamond Necklace — Mirabeau —French
Parliamentary History— Walter Scott, &c. &c.
CRITICAL WRITINGS OF FRANCIS
JEFFREY, in one 8vo volume, with a Portrait. $2.00.
"It is a book not to be read only, but studied. It is a
vast repertory, or rather a system or institute, embracing
the whole circle of letters— if we except the exact sciences
—and contains within itself, not in a desultory form, but
in a well-ditrested scheme, more original conception, bold
and fearless speculation and just reasoning on all kinds and
varieties of subjects, than are to be found in any English
writer with whom we are acquainted within the present or
the last generation His choice of words is unbounded,
and his felicity of expression, to the most impalpable shade
of discriminat'ion,almost miraculous. Playful,lively,and full
of illustration, no subject is so dull or so dry that he cannot
invest it with interest, and none so trifling that it cannot
acquire dignity and elegance from his pencil. Independent
ly, however, o'f mere style, and apart from the great variety
o'f subjects embraced by his pen, the distinguishing feature
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CRITICAL WRITINGS OF T. NOON
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author." — JVbrtA American Review.
THE CRITICAL WRITINGS OF SIR
WALTER SCOTT, complete in one volume, 8vo,
with a Portrait, (in press.)
We have spent a whole day in the society of his mighty
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wilh the sight of 'a river, winding at its own sweet will.' "
[JYew World.
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH'S CON
TRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.
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SELECTIONS FROM THE LONDON
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have appeared in that able periodical, which numbers
among its contributors, (in press.)
Southey, Wilson Croker, Lockhart,
- Hallam, Gifford, Heber,
Milmun, Scott, &c. <kc.
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THE HISTORICAL ESSAYS,
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matic effect, with the observance of historical truth." —
London Quarterly Review.
"The 'Narrative of the Merovingian Era' is the produc
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essentially a work of art, though important ideas relative
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of the sixth century, it is unequalled : it joins the pic-
turesqueness, animation and exciting interest of a novel by
Scott, to the minute fidelity of exhaustive erudition."—
British and Foreign Review.
HISTORICAL ESSAYS of M. Sismondi. 1 vol. 8vo, with
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MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS of M. Michelet. 1 rol.
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CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS, by M.de Cha
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HISTORY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS,
From the earliest period to the Norman Conquest. By
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•• This edition is an exact reprint of the London edition,
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siderable number have been imported into this country, does
pot contain a single word of Saxon. — Boston Morning Post. \
I POETS AND POETRY OF EUROPE,
with Biographical Notices and Translations, from
the earliest period to the present time, by Henry W.
Longfellow. In one large 8vo volume, 800 pages.
Illustrated. Price $5.00.
The above volume contains translations from the Anglo-
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French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, &.c. &.c.
POETS AND POETRY OF ENGLAND,
In the Nineteenth Century, by Ruftis W. Griswold.
In one large 8vo volume, with a splendid Portrait of
Byron in the Albanian costume, and other Illustra
tions. Price $-3.00.
This volume contains Biographical and Critical Notices
of more than sixty writers, who have written in the present
century; and besides liberal selections from Byron, Scott,
Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Campbell, and
others well known in America, contains the most admirable
productions of Wilson, Landor, Barry Cornwall, Tennyson,
Milnes, Hood, Barrett, and all the younger poets now at
tracting attention in England, and as yet unpublished in
this country. With a great deal that is familiar, it undoubt
edly embraces as much that is new to the great mass of
readers as any book of the season.
POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA,
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8vo, with Portraits of Dana, Bryant, Sprague, Hal leek,
and Longfellow, and many other beautiful Illustrations.
Price $3.
Of the POETS and POETRY of AMERICA it is scarcely ne
cessary for the publishers to speak, as it has already passed
into a. Eighth. Edition— Of the POETS and POETRY of ENO-
LAND just issued, they may be allowed to state that it con
tains selections from the works of many delightful Poets
but little known in this country, but who only require to be
known to be admired. The VOLUME by MR. LONGFELLOW
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HISTORYOFTHE FRENCH REVOLU
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HISTORY OF THE CONSULATE AND
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THE HISTORY OF THE WAR IN THE
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THE LIFE OF LORENZO DE MEDICI,
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CAREY & HART'S NEW PUBLICATIONS.
PATRICK, LOWTH, AND WHITBY'S
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vols. THE HOLY BIBLE, with Bishop Patrick's
Commentary on the Historical, and Paraphrase of the
Poetical Books of the Old Testament. Bishop Lowth
on the Prophets. Arnald on the Apocrypha. Whitby
on the Gospels and Epistles, and Lowinan on the Re
velation.
In the previous editions of this work, the Annotations
were printed without the Text, thus rendering it a mere
book of reference for the study ; in this edition the text is
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To those who may be unacquainted with the excellencies
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BISHOP PATRICK, whose commentary includes from
Genesis to the Song of Solomon, is esteemed among theo
logical writers, one of the most acute and sensible, and
therefore useful illustrators of the Old Testament. "In
his Exposition," says Dr. Wotton, in his Thoughts con
cerning the Study of Divinity, "there is great learning,
and great variety, and what will save the reading of many
volumes."
DR. LOWTH, the father of the well-known Bishop of Lon
don, completed the Old Testament, and is considered one
of the most judicious Commentators on the Prophets. Few
men were more deeply versed in critical learning, there
being scarcely any author, Greek or Latin, profane or eccle
siastical, that Dr. Lowth hath not read, constantly accom
panying his reading with critical and philosophical re
marks ; he adheres strictly to the literal meaning of the in
spired writer, and there Is not a great appearance of criti
cism, but the original texts and all critical aids are closely
studied by this most learned divine. Bishop Watson pro
nounced Lowth's to be the best commentary OH the Prophets
in the English language.
ARNALD ON THE APOCRYPHA. — The Apocryphal Books
of the Old Testament, though not a part of the inspired
writings, contain much historical information, and are use
ful for illustrating the idiom of the New Testament. Ar-
nald's is a Critical Commentary on such books of the Apo
crypha as are appointed to be read in churches. The work
was originally published at different times, and is deserved
ly held in high estimation. Archbishop Cranmer, in the
Preface to his Bible, says, "that men may read them (the
Books of the Apocrypha) to the edifying of the people, but
not to confirm and strengthen the doctrines of the church."
DR. WHITBY ON THE GOSPELS AND EPISTLES. — The
Commentary on the New Testament is by Dr. Whitby,
who, in the course of his work, exhibits labour and research
worthy of the subject. Few men have brought a larger
portion of sagacity, and a larger measure of appropriate
learning, on the interpretation of Scripture. His know
ledge of the Bible itself was thorough and complete, and
his acquaintance with the writings of the fathers and of
modern interpreters was profound. On a difficult text or
expression, the reader will seldom consult him in vain. Dr.
Adam Clarke, in the learned Preface to his Commentary,
says, " The best comment on the New Testament, taken in
all points of view, is certainly that of Whitby. He has
done all that should be done ; he is learned, argumentative,
and thoroughly orthodox."
LOWMAN ON THE REVELATION.— Bishop Tomline in
cludes this work in his List of Books for Clergymen and
Biblical Students. Dr. Doddridge has said of it, that he
"has received more satisfaction from it, with respect to
many difficulties, than he ever found elsewhere, or expected
to find at all." Lowman's scheme of the Seven Seals is
also approved by the late Rev. David Simpson, in his Key
to the Prophecies.
03- The reader will thus see, from the authorities cited in
this brief view, that the learned writings of Patrick, Lowth,
Arnald, Whitby and Lowman, form a perfect and invaluable
series of English Commentaries on the Old and New Tes
taments, and on the books of the Apocrypha.
THE WORKS OF LORD BACON,
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The American edition of the works of Lord Bacon now
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The only Complete French Dictionary.
A NEW AND COMPLETE FRENCH
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and Crabbe. From the last edition of Chambaud,
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With complete Tables of the Verbs, on an entirely new
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