Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843

"Now, on which side the law of nations should throw the guilt of most atrocious murder, is of little comparative consequence, or whether it should attach it to both sides equally; but that the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both of the parties concerned in it, seems to me self-evident. The simplest course would seem to be, that all non-combatants should be allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who should refuse to let them pass, should be regarded in the same light as one who were to murder his prisoners, or who were to be in the habit of butchering women and children. For it is not true that war only looks to the speediest and most effectual way of attaining its object; so that, as the letting the inhabitants go out would enable the garrison to maintain the town longer, the laws of war authorize the keeping them in and starving them. Poisoning wells might be a still quicker method of reducing a place; but do the laws of war therefore sanction it? I shall not be supposed for a moment to be placing the guilt of the individuals concerned in the two cases which I am going to compare, on an equal footing; it would be most unjust to do so—for in the one case they acted, as they supposed, according to a law which made what they did their duty. But, take the cases themselves, and examine them in all their circumstances; the degree of suffering inflicted—the innocence and helplessness of the sufferers—the interests at stake—and the possibility of otherwise securing them; and if any man can defend the lawfulness in the abstract of the starvation of the inhabitants of Genoa, I will engage also to establish the lawfulness of the massacres of September."

We rejoice to find that the great authority of Colonel W. Napier—an authority of which posterity will know the value—is arrayed on the side of those who think that war, the best school, as after all it must often be, of some of our noblest virtues, need not be always the cause of such atrocities.

This enquiry shows us how the centre of external movement in Europe has varied; but it is not merely to the territorial struggle that our attention should be confined—mighty principles, Christian truth, civil freedom, were often partially at issue on one side, or on the other, in the different contests which the gold and steel of Europe were set in motion to determine; hence the necessity of considering not only the moral power, but the economical and military strength of the respective countries. It requires no mean share of political wisdom to mitigate an encounter with the financial difficulties by which every contest is beset. The evils of the political and social state of France were brought to a head by the dilapidation of its revenues, and occasioned, not the Revolution itself, but the disorders by which it was accompanied. And more than half of our national revenue is appropriated to the payment of our own debt; in other words, every acre of land, besides the support of its owner and the actual demands of the State, is encumbered with the support of two or three persons who represent the creditors of the nation; and every man who would have laboured twelve hours, had no national debt existed, is now obliged to toil sixteen for the same remuneration: such a state of things may be necessary, but it certainly requires investigation.

Other parts of the law of nations, the maritime law especially, require improvement. Superficial men are apt to overlook the transcendent importance of error on these subjects by which desolation may be spread from one quarter of the globe to the other. As no man can bear long the unanimous disapprobation of his fellows, no nation can long set at defiance the voice of a civilized world. But we return to history in military operations. A good map is essential to this study. For instance, to understand the wars of Frederick the Great, it is not enough to know that he was defeated at Kolin, Hochkirchen, and Cunersdorf—that he was victorious at Rosbach, Lowositz, Zorndorf, and Prague—that he was opposed by Daun, and Laudohn, and Soltikoff—we must also comprehend the situation of the Prussian dominions with regard to those of the allies—the importance of Saxony as covering Prussia on the side of Austria—the importance of Silesia as running into the Austrian frontier, and flanking a large part of Bohemia, should also be considered—this will alone enable us to account for Frederick's attack on Saxony, and his pertinacity in keeping possession of Silesia; nor should it be forgotten, that the military positions of one generation are not always those of the next, and that the military history of one period will be almost unintelligible, if judged according to the roads and fortresses of another. For instance, St Dizier in Champagne, which arrested Charles the Fifth's invading army, is now perfectly untenable—Turin, so celebrated for the sieges it has sustained, is an open town, while Alexandria is the great Piedmontese fortress. The addition of Paris to the list of French strongholds, is, if really intended, a greater change than any that has been enumerated. This discussion leads to an allusion to mountain warfare, which has been termed the poetry of the military art, and of which the struggle in Switzerland in 1799, when the eastern part of that country was turned into a vast citadel, defended by the French against Suwaroff, is a most remarkable instance, as well as the most recent. The history by General Mathieu Dumas of the campaign in 1799 and 1800, is referred to as containing a good account and explanation of this branch of military science.

The internal history of Europe during the three hundred and forty years which have elapsed since the middle ages, is the subject now proposed for our consideration. To the question—What was the external object of Europe during any part of this period? the answer is obvious, that it was engaged in resisting the aggression of Spain, or France, or Austria. But if we carry our view to the moral world, do we find any principle equally obvious, and a solution as satisfactory? By no means. We may, indeed, say, with apparent precision, that during the earliest part of this epoch, Europe was divided between the champions and antagonists of religion, as, during its latter portion, it was between the enemies and supporters of political reformation. But a deeper analysis will show us that these names were but the badges of ideas, always complex, sometimes contradictory—the war-cry of contending parties, by whom the reality was now forgotten, or to whom, compared with other purposes, it was altogether subordinate.

Take, for instance, the exercise of political power. Is a state free in proportion to the number of its subjects who are admitted to rank among its citizens, or to the degree in which its recognised citizens are invested with political authority? In the latter point of view, the government of Athens was the freest the world has ever seen. In the former it was a most exclusive and jealous oligarchy. "For a city to be well governed," says Aristotle in his Politics, "those who share in its government must be free from the care of providing for their own support. This," he adds, "is an admitted truth."

Again, the attentive reader can hardly fail to see that, in the struggle between Pompey and Cæsar, Cæsar represented the popular as Pompey did the aristocratical party, and that Pompey's triumph would have been attended, as Cicero clearly saw, by the domination of an aristocracy in the shape most oppressive and intolerable. The government of Rome, after several desperate struggles, had degenerated into the most corrupt oligarchy, in which all the eloquence of Cicero was unable to kindle the faintest gleam of public virtue. Owing to the success of Cæsar, the civilized world exchanged the dominion of several tyrants for that of one, and the opposition to his design was the resistance of the few to the many.

Or we may take another view of the subject. By freedom do we mean the absence of all restraint in private life, the non-interference by the state in the details of ordinary intercourse? According to such a view, the old government of Venice and the present government of Austria, where debauchery is more than tolerated, would be freer than the Puritan commonwealths in North America, where dramatic representations were prohibited as impious, and death was the legal punishment of fornication.

These are specimens of the difficulties by which we are beset, when we endeavour to obtain an exact and faithful image from the troubled medium through which human affairs are reflected to us. Dr Arnold dwells on this point with his usual felicity of language and illustration.

"This inattention to altered circumstances, which would make us be Guelfs in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, because the Guelf cause had been right in the eleventh or twelfth, is a fault of most universal application in all political questions, and is often most seriously mischievous. It is deeply seated in human nature, being, in fact, no other than an exemplification of the force of habit. It is like the case of a settler, landing in a country overrun with wood and undrained, and visited therefore by excessive falls of rain. The evil of wet, and damp, and closeness, is besetting him on every side; he clears away the woods, and he drains his land, and he, by doing so, mends both his climate and his own condition. Encouraged by his success, he perseveres in his system; clearing a country is with him synonymous with making it fertile and habitable; and he levels, or rather sets fire to, his forests without mercy. Meanwhile, the tide is turned without his observing it; he has already cleared enough, and every additional clearance is a mischief; damp and wet are no longer the evil most to be dreaded, but excessive drought. The rains do not fall in sufficient quantity; the springs become low, the rivers become less and less fitted for navigation. Yet habit blinds him for a long while to the real state of the case; and he continues to encourage a coming mischief in his dread of one that is become obsolete. We have been long making progress on our present tack; yet if we do not go about now, we shall run ashore. Consider the popular feeling at this moment against capital punishment; what is it but continuing to burn the woods, when the country actually wants shade and moisture? Year after year, men talked of the severity of the penal code, and struggled against it in vain. The feeling became stronger and stronger, and at last effected all, and more than all, which it had at first vainly demanded; yet still, from mere habit, it pursues its course, no longer to the restraining of legal cruelty, but to the injury of innocence and the encouragement of crime, and encouraging that worse evil—a sympathy with wickedness justly punished rather than with the law, whether of God or man, unjustly violated. So men have continued to cry out against the power of the Crown after the Crown had been shackled hand and foot; and to express the greatest dread of popular violence long after that violence was exhausted, and the anti-popular party was not only rallied, but had turned the tide of battle, and was victoriously pressing upon its enemy."

The view which Dr Arnold gives of the parties in England during the sixteenth century—that great epoch of English genius—is remarkable for its candour and moderation. He considers the distinctions which then prevailed in England as political rather than religious, "inasmuch as they disputed about points of church government, without any reference to a supposed priesthood; and because even those who maintained that one or another form was to be preferred, because it was of divine appointment, were influenced in their interpretation of the doubtful language of the Scriptures by their own strong persuasion of what that language could not but mean to say."

And he then concludes by the unanswerable remark, that in England, according to the theory of the constitution during the sixteenth century, church and state were one. The proofs of this proposition are innumerable—not merely the act by which the supremacy was conferred on Henry VIII.—not merely the powers, almost unlimited, in matters ecclesiastical, delegated to the king's vicegerent, that vicegerent being a layman—not merely the communion established by the sole authority of Edward VI.—without the least participation in it by any bishop or clergyman; but the still more conclusive argument furnished by the fact, that no point in the doctrine, discipline, or ritual of our church, was established except by the power of Parliament, and the power of Parliament alone—nay, more, that they were established in direct defiance of the implacable opposition of the bishops, by whom, being then Roman Catholics, the English Church, on the accession of Elizabeth, was represented—to which the omission of the names of the Lords Spiritual in the Act of Uniformity, which is said to be enacted by the "Queen's Highness," with the assent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, is a testimony, at once unanswerable and unprecedented. We have dwelt with the more anxiety on this part of Dr Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete answer to the absurd opinions concerning the English Church, which it has been of late the object of a few bigots, unconsciously acting as the tools of artful and ambitious men, to propagate, and which would lead, by a direct and logical process, to the complete overthrow of Protestant faith and worship. Such, then, being the state of things "recognized on all hands, church government was no light matter, but one which essentially involved in it the government of the state; and the disputing the Queen's supremacy, was equivalent to depriving her of one of the most important portions of her sovereignty, and committing half of the government of the nation to other hands."

At the accession of Henry VIII., the most profound tranquillity prevailed over England. The last embers of those factions by which, during his father's reign, the peace of the nation had been disturbed rather than endangered, were quenched by the vigilance and severity of that able monarch; during the wars of the Roses, the noblest blood in England had been poured out on the field or on the scaffold, and the wealth of the most opulent proprietors had been drained by confiscation. The parties of York and Lancaster were no more—the Episcopal and Puritan factions were not yet in being—every day diminished the influence of the nobles—the strength of the Commons was in its infancy—the Crown alone remained, strong in its own prerogative, stronger still in the want of all competitors. Crime after crime was committed by the savage tyrant who inherited it; he was ostentatious—the treasures of the nation were lavished at his feet; he was vindictive—the blood of the wise, the noble, and the beautiful, was shed, like water, to gratify his resentment; he was rapacious—the accumulations of ancient piety were surrendered to glut his avarice; he was arbitrary—and his proclamations were made equivalent to acts of Parliament; he was fickle—and the religion of the nation was changed to gratify his lust. To all this the English people submitted, as to some divine infliction, in silence and consternation—the purses, lives, liberties, and consciences of his people were, for a time, at his disposal. During the times of his son and his eldest daughter, the general aspect of affairs was the same. But, though the hurricane of royal caprice and bigotry swept over the land, seemingly without resistance, the sublime truths which were the daily subject of controversy, and the solid studies with which the age was conversant, penetrated into every corner of the land, and were incorporated with the very being of the nation. Then, as the mist of doubt and persecution which had covered Mary's throne cleared away, the intellect of England, in all its health, and vigour, and symmetry, stood revealed in the men and women of the Elizabethan age:—

"To say," observes Dr Arnold, "that the Puritans were wanting in humility because they did not acquiesce in the state of things which they found around them, is a mere extravagance, arising out of a total misapprehension of the nature of humility, and of the merits of the feeling of veneration. All earnestness and depth of character is incompatible with such a notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated with some great truth, and compelled, as it were, to obey it, cannot listen to every one who may be indifferent to it, or opposed to it. There is a voice to which he already owes obedience, which he serves with the humblest devotion, which he worships with the most intense veneration. It is not that such feelings are dead in him, but that he has bestowed them on one object, and they are claimed for another. To which they are most due is a question of justice; he may be wrong in his decision, and his worship may be idolatrous; but so also may be the worship which his opponents call upon him to render. If, indeed, it can be shown that a man admires and reverences nothing, he may be justly taxed with want of humility; but this is at variance with the very notion of an earnest character; for its earnestness consists in its devotion to some one object, as opposed to a proud or contemptuous indifference. But if it be meant that reverence in itself is good, so that the more objects of veneration we have the better is our character, this is to confound the essential difference between veneration and love. The excellence of love is its universality; we are told that even the highest object of all cannot be loved if inferior objects are hated."

Opinions, in the meanwhile, not very favourable to established authority in the state, and marked by a rooted antipathy to ecclesiastical pretensions, were rapidly gaining proselytes in the nation, and even at the court. But the prudence and spirit of Elizabeth, and, still more, the great veneration and esteem for that magnanimous princess, which were for many years the ruling principle—we might almost say, the darling passion—of Englishmen, enabled her to keep at bay the dangerous animosities which her miserable successor had neither dexterity to conciliate nor vigour to subdue. In his time the cravings, moral and intellectual, of the English nation discovered themselves in forms not to be mistaken—some more, some less formidable to established government; but all announcing that the time was come when concession to them was inevitable. No matter whether it was the Puritan who complained of the rags of popery, or the judge who questioned the prerogative of the sovereign, or the patriot who bewailed the profligate expenditure of James's polluted court, or the pamphleteer whom one of our dramatists has described so admirably, or the hoarse murmur of the crowd execrating the pusillanimous murder of Raleigh—whosesoever the voice might be, whatever shape it might assume, petition, controversy, remonstrance, address, impeachment, libel, menace, insurrection, the language it spoke was uniform and unequivocal; it demanded for the people a share in the administration of their government, civil and ecclesiastical—it expressed their determination to make the House of Commons a reality.

The observations that follow are fraught with the most profound wisdom, and afford an admirable exemplification of the manner in which history should be read by those who wish to find in it something more than a mere register of facts and anecdotes:—

"Under these circumstances there were now working together in the same party many principles which, as we have seen, are sometimes perfectly distinct. For instance the popular principle, that the influence of many should not be overborne by that of one, was working side by side with the principle of movement, or the desire of carrying on the work of the Reformation to the furthest possible point, and not only the desire of completing the Reformation, but that of shaking off the manifold evils of the existing state of things, both political and moral. Yet it is remarkable that the spirit of intellectual movement stood as it were hesitating which party it ought to join: and as the contest went on, it seemed rather to incline to that party which was most opposed to the political movement. This is a point in the state of English party in the seventeenth century which is well worth noticing, and we must endeavour to comprehend it.

"We might think, a priori, that the spirit of political, and that of intellectual, and that of religious movement, would go on together, each favouring and encouraging the other. But the Spirit of intellectual movement differs from the other two in this, that it is comparatively one with which the mass of mankind have little sympathy. Political benefits all men can appreciate; and all good men, and a great many more than we might well dare to call good, can appreciate also the value, not of all, but of some religious truth which to them may seem all: the way to obtain God's favour and to worship Him aright, is a thing which great bodies of men can value, and be moved to the most determined efforts if they fancy that they are hindered from attaining to it. But intellectual movement in itself is a thing which few care for. Political truth may be dear to them, so far as it effects their common well-being; and religious truth so far as they may think it their duty to learn it; but truth abstractedly, and because it is truth, which is the object, I suppose, of the pure intellect, is to the mass of mankind a thing indifferent. Thus the workings of the intellect come even to be regarded with suspicion as unsettling: we have got, we say, what we want, and we are well contented with it; why should we be kept in perpetual restlessness, because you are searching after some new truths which, when found, will compel us to derange the state of our minds in order to make room for them. Thus the democracy of Athens was afraid of and hated Socrates; and the poet who satirized Cleon, knew that Cleon's partizans, no less than his own aristocratical friends, would sympathize with his satire when directed against the philosophers. But if this hold in political matters, much more does it hold religiously. The two great parties of the Christian world have each their own standard of truth, by which they try all things: Scripture on the one hand, the voice of the church on the other. To both, therefore, the pure intellectual movement is not only unwelcome, but they dislike it. It will question what they will not allow to be questioned; it may arrive at conclusions which they would regard as impious. And, therefore, in an age of religious movement particularly, the spirit of intellectual movement soon finds itself proscribed rather than countenanced."

In the extract which follows, the pure and tender morality of the sentiment vies with the atmosphere of fine writing that invests it. The passage is one which Plato might have envied, and which we should imagine the most hardened and successful of our modern apostates cannot read without some feeling like contrition and remorse. Fortunate indeed were the youth trained to virtue by such a monitor, and still more fortunate the country where such a duty was confided to such a man:—

"I have tried to analyze the popular party: I must now endeavour to do the same with the party opposed to it. Of course an anti-popular party varies exceedingly at different times; when it is in the ascendant, its vilest elements are sure to be uppermost: fair and moderate,—just men, wise men, noble-minded men,—then refuse to take part with it. But when it is humbled, and the opposite side begins to imitate its practices, then again many of the best and noblest spirits return to it, and share its defeat though they abhorred its victory. We must distinguish, therefore, very widely, between the anti-popular party in 1640, before the Long Parliament met, and the same party a few years, or even a few months, afterwards. Now, taking the best specimens of this party in its best state, we can scarcely admire them too highly. A man who leaves the popular cause when it is triumphant, and joins the party opposed to it, without really changing his principles and becoming a renegade, is one of the noblest characters in history. He may not have the clearest judgment, or the firmest wisdom; he may have been mistaken, but, as far as he is concerned personally, we cannot but admire him. But such a man changes his party not to conquer but to die. He does not allow the caresses of his new friends to make him forget that he is a sojourner with them, and not a citizen: his old friends may have used him ill, they may be dealing unjustly and cruelly: still their faults, though they may have driven him into exile, cannot banish from his mind the consciousness that with them is his true home: that their cause is habitually just and habitually the weaker, although now bewildered and led astray by an unwonted gleam of success. He protests so strongly against their evil that he chooses to die by their hands rather than in their company; but die he must, for there is no place left on earth where his sympathies can breathe freely; he is obliged to leave the country of his affections, and life elsewhere is intolerable. This man is no renegade, no apostate, but the purest of martyrs: for what testimony to truth can be so pure as that which is given uncheered by any sympathy; given not against friends, amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing enemies. And such a martyr was Falkland!

"Others who fall off from a popular party in its triumph, are of a different character; ambitious men, who think that they become necessary to their opponents and who crave the glory of being able to undo their own work as easily as they had done it: passionate men, who, quarrelling with their old associates on some personal question, join the adversary in search of revenge; vain men, who think their place unequal to their merits, and hope to gain a higher on the opposite side: timid men, who are frightened as it were at the noise of their own guns, and the stir of actual battle—who had liked to dally with popular principles in the parade service of debating or writing in quiet times, but who shrink alarmed when both sides are become thoroughly in earnest: and again, quiet and honest men, who never having fully comprehended the general principles at issue, and judging only by what they see before them, are shocked at the violence of their party, and think that the opposite party is now become innocent and just, because it is now suffering wrong rather than doing it. Lastly, men who rightly understand that good government is the result of popular and anti-popular principles blended together, rather than of the mere ascendancy of either; whose aim, therefore, is to prevent either from going too far, and to throw their weight into the lighter scale: wise men and most useful, up to the moment when the two parties are engaged in actual civil war, and the question is—which shall conquer? For no man can pretend to limit the success of a party, when the sword is the arbitrator: he who wins in that game does not win by halves: and therefore the only question then is, which party is on the whole the best, or rather perhaps the least evil; for as one must crush the other, it is at least desirable that the party so crushed should be the worse."

Dr Arnold—rightly, we hope—assumes, that in lectures addressed to Englishmen and Protestants, it is unnecessary to vindicate the principles of the Revolution; it would, indeed, be an affront to any class of educated Protestant freemen, to argue that our present constitution was better than a feudal monarchy, or the religion of Tillotson superior to that of Laud—in his own words, "whether the doctrine and discipline of our Protestant Church of England, be not better and truer than that of Rome." He therefore supposes the Revolution complete, the Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act already passed, the authority of King William recognized in England and in Scotland, while in Ireland the party of King James was still predominant. He then bids us consider the character and object of the parties by which Great Britain was then divided; on the side of the Revolution were enlisted the great families of our aristocracy, and the bulk of the middle classes. The faction of James included the great mass of country gentlemen, the lower orders, and, (after the first dread of a Roman Catholic hierarchy had passed away,) except in a very few instances, the parochial and teaching clergy; civil and religious liberty was the motto of one party—hereditary right and passive obedience, of the other. As the Revolution had been bloodless, it might have been supposed that its reward would have been secure, and that our great deliverer would have been allowed to pursue his schemes for the liberty of Europe, if not without opposition, at least without hostility. But the old Royalist party had been surprised and confounded, not broken or altogether overcome. They rallied—some from pure, others from selfish and sordid motives—under the banner to which they had been so long accustomed; and, though ultimately baffled, they were able to place in jeopardy, and in some measure to fling away the advantages which the blood and treasure of England had been prodigally lavished to obtain.

The conquest of Ireland was followed by that terrible code against the Catholics, the last remnant of which is now obliterated from our statute-book. It is singular that this savage proscription should have been the work of the party at whose head stood the champion of toleration. The account which Mr Burke has given of it, and for the accuracy of which he appeals to Bishop Burnet, does not entirely coincide with the view taken by Dr Arnold. Mr Burke says—

"A party in this nation, enemies to the system of the Revolution, were in opposition to the government of King William. They knew that our glorious deliverer was an enemy to all persecution. They knew that he came to free us from slavery and Popery, out of a country where a third of the people are contented Catholics, under a Protestant government. He came, with a part of his army composed of those very Catholics, to overset the power of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of a tolerating spirit, and so much is liberty served in every way, and by all persons, by a manly adherence to its own principles. Whilst freedom is true to itself, every thing becomes subject to it, and its very adversaries are an instrument in its hands.

"The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would disparage the best friends of their country) resolved to make the King either violate his principles of toleration, or incur the odium of protecting Papists. They, therefore, brought in this bill, and made it purposely wicked and absurd, that it might be rejected. The then court-party discovering their game, turned the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed with still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon its original authors. They, finding their own ball thrown back to them, kicked it back again to their adversaries. And thus this act, loaded with the double injustice of two parties, neither of whom intended to pass what they hoped the other would be persuaded to reject, went through the legislature, contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, and of all the parties that composed it. In this manner these insolent and profligate factions, as if they were playing with balls and counters, made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties of their fellow-creatures. Other acts of persecution have been acts of malice. This was a subversion of justice from wantonness."

Whether Dr Arnold's theory be applicable or not to this particular case, it furnishes but too just a solution of Irish misgovernment in general. It is, that excessive severity toward conquered rebels, is by no means inconsistent with the principles of free government, or even with the triumph of a democracy. The truth of this fact is extorted from us by all history, and may be accounted for first, by the circumstance, that large bodies of men are less affected than individuals, by the feelings of shame and a sense of responsibility; and, secondly, that conduct the most selfish and oppressive, the mere suspicion of which would be enough to brand an individual with everlasting infamy, assumes, when adopted by popular assemblies, the air of statesmanlike wisdom and patriotic inflexibility. The main cause of the difference with which the lower orders in France and England regarded the Revolution in their respective countries, is to be found in the different nature of the evils which they were intended to remove. The English Revolution was merely political—the French was social also; the benefits of the Bill of Rights, great and inestimable as they were, were such as demanded some knowledge and reflection to appreciate—they did not come home directly to the business and bosom of the peasant; it was only in rare and great emergencies that he could become sensible of the rights they gave, or of the means of oppression they took away: while the time-honoured dwellings of the Cavendishes and Russells were menaced and assailed, nothing but the most senseless tyranny could render the cottage insecure; but the abolition of the seignorial rights in France, free communication between her provinces, equal taxation, impartial justice—these were blessings which it required no economist to illustrate, and no philosopher to explain. Every labourer in France, whose sweat had flowed for the benefit of others, whose goods had been seized by the exactors of the Taille and the Gabelle,[1 - "Taille and the Gabelle." Sully thus describes these fertile sources of crime and misery:—"Taille, source principale d'abus et de vexations de toute espèce, sans sa repartition et sa perception. Il est bien à souhaiter, mais pas à espérer, qu'on change un jour en entier le fond de cette partie des revenus. Je mets la Gabelle de niveau avec la Taille. Je n'ai jamais rien trouvé de si bizarrement tyrannique que de faire acheter à un particulier, plus de sel qu'il n'en veut et n'en peut consommer, et de lui défendre encore de revendre ce qu'il a de trop."] the fruits of whose soil had been wasted because he was not allowed to sell them at the neighbouring market, whose domestic happiness had been polluted, or whose self-respect had been lowered by injuries and insults, all retribution for which was hopeless, might well be expected to value these advantages more than life itself. But when the principles of the Revolution were triumphant, and the House of Brunswick finally seated on the throne of this country, it remains to be seen what were, during the eighteenth century, the fruits of this great and lasting victory. The answer is a melancholy one. Content with what had been achieved, the nation seems at once to have abandoned all idea of any further moral or intellectual progress. In private life the grossest ignorance and debauchery were written upon our social habits, in the broadest and most legible characters. In public life, we see chicanery in the law, apathy in the Church, corruption in Parliament, brutality on the seat of justice; trade burdened with a great variety of capricious restrictions; the punishment of death multiplied with the most shocking indifference; the state of prisons so dreadful, that imprisonment—which might be, and in those days often was, the lot of the most innocent of mankind—became in itself a tremendous punishment; the press virtually shackled; education every where wanted, and no where to be found.

The laws that were passed resemble the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and even vindictive oligarchy, rather than institutions adopted for the common welfare, by the representatives of a free people. Turn to any of the works which describe the manners of the age, from the works of Richardson or Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill and the melancholy remonstrances of Cowper, and you are struck with the delineation of a state and manners, and a tone of feeling which, in the present day, appears scarcely credible. "'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten me with the law?" says Lovelace to the victim of his calculating and sordid violence. Throughout the volumes of these great writers, the features perpetually recur of insolence, corruption, violence, and debauchery in the one class, and of servility and cunning in the other. It is impossible for the worst quality of an aristocracy—nominally, to be sure, subject to the restraint of the law, but practically, almost wholly exempt from its operation—to be more clearly and more fearfully represented. The South Sea scheme, the invasion of Scotland, the disgraceful expeditions on the coast of France; the conduct of Lord George Sackville at Minden, the miserable attempt on Carthagena, the loss of Minorca, the convention of Closterseven, the insecurity of the high-roads, nay, of the public streets in the metropolis itself, all serve to show the deplorable condition into which the nation was fast sinking, abroad and at home, when the "Great Commoner" once more aroused its energies, concentrated its strength, and carried it to a higher pinnacle of glory than it has ever been the lot even of Great Britain to attain. Yet this effect was transient—the progress of corruption was checked, but the disease still lurked in the heart, and tainted the life-blood of the community. The orgies of Medmenham Abbey, the triumphs of Wilkes, and the loss of America, bear fatal testimony to the want of decency and disregard of merit in private as well as public life which infected Great Britain, polluting the sources of her domestic virtues, and bringing disgrace upon her arms and councils during the greater part of the eighteenth century. It is with a masterly review of this period of our history that Dr Arnold closes his analysis of the three last centuries. His remaining lecture is dedicated to the examination of historical evidence—a subject on which it is not our present intention to offer any commentary.

To trace effects to their causes, is the object of all science; and by this object, as it is accomplished or incomplete, the progress of any particular science must be determined. The order of the moral is in reality as immutable as the laws of the physical world; and human actions are linked to their consequences by a necessity as inexorable as that which controls the growth of plants or the motion of the earth, though the connexion between cause and effect is not equally discernible. The depression of the nobles and the rise of the commons in England, after the statutes of alienation, were the result of causes as infallible in their operation as those which regulate the seasons and the tides. Repeated experiments have proved beyond dispute, that gold is heavier than iron. Is the superior value of gold to iron a fact more questionable? Yet is value a quality purely moral, and absolutely dependent on the will of man. The events of to-day are bound to those of yesterday, and those of to-morrow will be bound to those of to-day, no less certainly than the harvest of the present year springs from the grain which is the produce of former harvests. When by a severe and diligent analysis we have ascertained all the ingredients of any phenomenon, and have separated it from all that is foreign and adventitious, we know its true nature, and may deduce a general law from our experiment; for a general law is nothing more than an expression of the effect produced by the same cause operating under the same circumstances. In the reign of Louis XV., a Montmorency was convicted of an atrocious murder. He was punished by a short imprisonment in the Bastile. His servant and accomplice was, for the same offence at the same time, broken alive upon the wheel. Is the proposition, that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, more certain than the ruin of a system under which such a state of things was tolerated? How, then, does it come to pass, that the same people who cling to one set of truths reject the other with obstinate incredulity? Cicero shall account for it:—"Sensus nostros non parens, non nutrix, non poeta, non scena depravat; animis omnes tendentur insidiæ." The discoveries of physical science, in the present day at least, allow little scope to prejudice and inclination. Whig and Tory, Radical and Conservative, agree, that fire will burn and water suffocate; nay, no tractarian, so far as we know, has ventured to call in question the truths established by Cuvier and La Place. But every proposition in moral or political science enlists a host of feelings in zealous support or implacable hostility; and the same system, according to the creed and prepossessions of the speaker, is put forward as self-evident, or stigmatized as chimerical. One set of people throw corn into the river and burn mills, in order to cheapen bread—another vote that sixteen shillings are equal to twenty-one, in order to support public credit—proceedings in no degree more reasonable than a denial that two and two make four, or using gunpowder instead of water to stop a conflagration. Again, in physical science, the chain which binds the cause to its effect is short, simple, and passes through no region of vapour and obscurity; in moral phenomena, it is long hidden and intertwined with the links of ten thousand other chains, which ramify and cross each other in a confusion which it requires no common patience and sagacity to unravel. Therefore it is that the lessons of history, dearly as they have been purchased, are forgotten and thrown away—therefore it is that nations sow in folly and reap in affliction—that thrones are shaken, and empires convulsed, and commerce fettered by vexatious restrictions, by those who live in one century, without enabling their descendants to become wiser or richer in the next. The death of Charles I. did not prevent the exile of James II., and, in spite of the disasters of Charles XII., Napoleon tempted fortune too often and too long. It is not, then, by the mere knowledge of separate facts that history can contribute to our improvement or our happiness; it would then exchange the character of philosophy treated by examples, for that of sophistry misleading by empiricism. The more systematic the view of human events which it enables us to gain, the more nearly does it approach its real office, and entitle itself to the splendid panegyric of the Roman statesman—"Historia, testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriæ, magistra vitæ, nuntia vetustatis."

But while we insist upon the certainty of those truths which a calm examination of history confirms, and the sure operation of those general laws by which Providence in its wisdom has ordained that the affairs of this lower world shall be controlled—let it not be supposed that we for a moment doubt the truth which Demosthenes took such pains to inculcate upon his countrymen, that fortune in human affairs is for a time omnipotent. That fortune, which "erring men call chance," is the name which finite beings must apply to those secret and unknown causes which no human sagacity can penetrate or comprehend. What depends upon a few persons, observes Mr Hume, is to be ascribed to chance; what arises from a great number, may often be accounted for by known and determinate causes; and he illustrates this position by the instance of a loaded die, the bias of which, however it may for a short time escape detection, will certainly in a great number of instances become predominant. The issue of a battle may be decided by a sunbeam or a cloud of dust. Had an heir been born to Charles II. of Spain—had the youthful son of Monsieur De Bouillé not fallen asleep when Louis XVI. entered Varennes—had Napoleon, on his return from Egypt, been stopped by an English cruizer—how different would have been the face of Europe. The poco di piu and poco di meno has, in such contingencies, an unbounded influence. The trade-winds are steady enough to furnish grounds for the most accurate calculation; but will any man in our climate venture to predict from what quarter, on any particular day, the wind may chance to blow?

Therefore, in forming our judgment of human affairs, we must apply a "Lesbian rule," instead of one that is inflexible. Here it is that the line is drawn between science, and the wisdom which has for its object the administration of human affairs. The masters of science explore a multitude of phenomena to ascertain a single cause; the statesman and legislator, engaged in pursuits "hardliest reduced to axiom," examine a multitude of causes to explain a solitary phenomenon. The investigations, however, to which such questions lead, are singularly difficult, as they require an accurate analysis of the most complicated class of facts which can possibly engross our attention, and to the complete examination of which the faculties of any one man must be inadequate. The finest specimens of such enquiries which we possess are the works of Adam Smith and Montesquieu. The latter, indeed, may be called a great historian. He sought in every quarter for his account of those fundamental principles which are common to all governments, as well as of those peculiarities by which they are distinguished one from another. The analogy which reaches from the first dim gleam of civility to the last and consummate result of policy and intelligence, from the law of the Salian Franks to the Code Napoleon, it was reserved for him to discover and explain. He saw that, though the shape into which the expression of human thought and will was moulded as the family became a tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be fantastic and even monstrous—that the staple from which it unrolled itself must be the same. Treading in the steps of Vico, he more than realized his master's project, and in his immortal work (which, with all its faults, is a magnificent, and as yet unrivalled, trophy of his genius, and will serve as a landmark to future enquirers when its puny critics are not known enough to be despised) he has extracted from a chaos of casual observations, detached hints—from the principles concealed in the intricate system of Roman jurisprudence, or exposed in the rules which barely held together the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany—from the manners of the polished Athenian, and from the usages of the wandering Tartar—from the rudeness of savage life, and the corruptions of refined society—a digest of luminous and coherent evidence, by which the condition of man, in the different stages of his social progress, is exemplified and ascertained. The loss of the History of Louis XI.—a work which he had projected, and of which he had traced the outline—is a disappointment which the reader of modern history can never enough deplore.

The province of science lies in truths that are universal and immutable; that of prudence in second causes that are transient and subordinate. What is universally true is alone necessarily true—the knowledge that rests in particulars must be accidental. The theorist disdains experience—the empiric rejects principle. The one is the pedant who read Hannibal a lecture on the art of war; the other is the carrier who knows the road between London and York better than Humboldt, but a new road is prescribed to him and his knowledge becomes useless. This is the state of mind La Fontaine has described so perfectly in his story of the "Cierge."

"Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie
Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la même envie;
Et nouvel Empédocle, aux flammes condamné
Par sa pure et propre folie,
Il se lança dédans—ce fût mal raisonné,
Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie."

The mere chemist or mathematician will apply his truths improperly; the man of detail, the mere empiric, will deal skilfully with particulars, while to all general truths he is insensible. The wise man, the philosopher in action, will use the one as a stepping-stone to the other, and acquire a vantage-ground from whence he will command the realms of practice and experience.

History teems with instances that—although the general course of the human mind is marked out, and each succeeding phasis in which it exhibits itself appears inevitable—the human race cannot be considered, as Vico and Herder were, perhaps, inclined to look upon it, as a mass without intelligence, traversing its orbit according to laws which it has no power to modify or control. On such an hypothesis, Wisdom and Folly, Justice and Injustice, would be the same, followed by the same consequences and subject to the same destiny—no certain laws establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end; the feelings, faculties, and instincts of man would be useless in a world where the wise was always as the foolish, the just as the unjust, where calculation was impossible, and experience of no avail.

Man is no doubt the instrument, but the unconscious instrument, of Providence; and for the end they propose to themselves, though not for the result which they attain, nations as well as individuals are responsible. Otherwise, why should we read or speak of history? it would be the feverish dream of a distempered imagination, full of incoherent ravings, a disordered chaos of antagonist illusions—

——"A tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

But on the contrary, it is in history that the lessons of morality are delivered with most effect. The priest may provoke our suspicion—the moralist may fail to work in us any practical conviction; but the lessons of history are not such as vanish in the fumes of unprofitable speculation, or which it is possible for us to mistrust, or to deride. Obscure as the dispensations of Providence often are, it sometimes, to use Lord Bacon's language—"pleases God, for the confutation of such as are without God in the world, to write them in such text and capital letters that he who runneth by may read it—that is, mere sensual persons which hasten by God's judgments, and never tend or fix their cogitations upon them, are nevertheless in their passage and race urged to discern it." In all historical writers, philosophical or trivial, sacred or profane, from the meagre accounts of the monkish chronicler, no less than from the pages stamped with all the indignant energy of Tacitus, gleams forth the light which, amid surrounding gloom and injustice, amid the apparent triumph of evil, discovers the influence of that power which the heathens personified as Nemesis. Her tread, indeed, is often noiseless—her form may be long invisible—but the moment at length arrives when the measure of forbearance is complete; the echoes of her step vibrate upon the ear, her form bursts upon the eye, and her victim—be it a savage tyrant, or a selfish oligarchy, or a hypocritical church, or a corrupt nation—perishes.

"Come quei che va di notte,
Che porta il lume dietro, e a se non giova,
Ma dopo se fa le persone dotte."

And as in daily life we rejoice to trace means directed to an end, and proofs of sagacity and instinct even among the lower tribes of animated nature, with how much greater delight do we seize the proofs vouchsafed to us in history of that eternal law, by which the affairs of the universe are governed? How much more do we rejoice to find that the order to which physical nature owes its existence and perpetuity, does not stop at the threshold of national life—that the moral world is not fatherless, and that man, formed to look before and after, is not abandoned to confusion and insecurity?

Fertile and comprehensive indeed is the domain of history, comprising the whole region of probabilities within its jurisdiction—all the various shapes into which man has been cast—all the different scenes in which he has been called upon to act or suffer; his power and his weakness, his folly and his wisdom, his virtues in their meridian height, his vices in the lowest abyss of their degradation, are displayed before us, in their struggles, vicissitudes, and infinitely diversified combinations: an inheritance beyond all price—a vast repository of fruitful and immortal truths. There is nothing so mean or so dignified; nothing so obscure or so glorious; no question so abstruse, no problem so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no situation so critical, of which we may not demand from history an account and elucidation. Here we find all that the toil, and virtues, and sufferings, and genius, and experience, of our species have laboured for successive generations to accumulate and preserve. The fruit of their blood, of their labour, of their doubts, and their struggles, is before us—a treasure that no malignity can corrupt, or violence take away. And above all, it is here that, when tormented by doubt, or startled by anomalies, stung by disappointment, or exasperated by injustice, we may look for consolation and encouragement. As we see the same events, that to those who witnessed them must have appeared isolated and capricious, tending to one great end, and accomplishing one specific purpose, we may learn to infer that those which appear to us most extraordinary, are alike subservient to a wise and benevolent dispensation. Poetry, the greatest of all critics has told us, has this advantage over history, that the lessons which it furnishes are not mixed and confined to particular cases, but pure and universal. Studied, however, in this spirit, history, while it improves the reason, may satisfy the heart, enabling us to await with patience the lesson of the great instructor, Time, and to employ the mighty elements it places within our reach, to the only legitimate purpose of all knowledge—"The advancement of God's glory, and the relief of man's estate."

POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER

No. V.

THE VICTORY FEAST

[This noble lyric is perhaps the happiest of all those poems in which Schiller has blended the classical spirit with the more deep and tender philosophy which belongs to modern romance. The individuality of the heroes introduced is carefully preserved. The reader is every where reminded of Homer; and yet, as a German critic has observed, there is an under current of sentiment which betrays the thoughtful Northern minstrel. This detracts from the art of the Poem viewed as an imitation, but constitutes its very charm as an original composition. Its inspiration rises from a source purely Hellenic, but the streamlets it receives at once adulterate and enrich, or (to change the metaphor) it has the costume and the gusto of the Greek, but the toning down of the colours betrays the German.]

The stately walls of Troy had sunken,
Her towers and temples strew'd the soil;
The sons of Hellas, victory-drunken,