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LECTURES
MODERI HISTORl.
9i
INTRODUCTORY LECTURES
MODERN HISTORY,
DELIVERED IN LENT TERM, RmCCCXLII.
rii'l
THE INAUGURAL LECTURE
DELIVERED IN DECEMBER, MDCCCXLI.
BY THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D ,
REGIUS PROFESSOR OP MODERN HIBTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFOUU
AND HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL-
ED."' jiD^
FROM VHE S>.C(.N)) a^GIx'DOy IIDITION.
WITH A PREFACE AND NOTES,
BY HENRY REED, M. A.,
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVr.RSITY OF PENNSYtVANIA
HV-t
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.
1884.
Entkeed, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845^ by
D. APPLETON & CO.,
In llio Clerk's Ollice of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.
TO THE EEVEREND
EDWARD HAWKINS, D. D.,
PROVOST OF ORIEL COLLEGE,
ETC., ETC., ETC.,
THESE LECTURES,
niK FIRST FRUITS OF A RENEWKD CONNEXION WITH THE UNlv'ERSITT
AND ITS RESIDENT MEMBERS,
ARE INSCRIRED WITH TRUE RESPECT AND REGARD,
BY IIIB SINCERELY ATTACHED FRllCND,
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE
THE AMERICAN EDITION
Ii will be seen from Dr. Arnold's prefatory note, that these Lee*
tures were printed almost exactly as they were delivered ; the datu
of the publication showing too that it was very soon after the de-
livery of them. The Lectures are altogether of an introductory
character, and it was the humble hope of the author, that in suc-
ceeding years he would be enabled to devote other courses to the
farther examination of modern history — the subject which he re-
garded as " of all others the most interesting, inasmuch as it in-
cludes all questions of the deepest interest, relating not to human
things only, but to divine." The last lecture in this volume appears
to have been delivered in the month of February, 1842, and it was
upon the 12ih of June that Dr. Arnold's sudden death took place.
The hope of future labors in modern history was not to be fulfilled,
and, in the words of his biograplier, '• the Introductory Lectures
were to be invested with the solemnity of being the last words
which he spoke in his beloved university."
The design of these Lectures cannot be better described than ty
saying that they were intended to excite a greater interest in tho
Btudy of history. Dr. Arnold's biographer thus speaks of them :
" The course was purely and in every sense of the word ' titro-
ductory.' As the design of his first residence in Oxford was not to
gain influence over the place so much as to familiarize himself with
it after his long absence ; so the object of his first lectures was not
so much to impart any historical knowledge, as to state his own
views of history, and to excite an interest in the study of it. The
6 PREFACE TO THE
Inaugural Lecture was a definition of history in general, and of
modern history in particular ; the eight following lectures were the
natural expansion of this definition ; and the statement of such
leading difficulties as he conceived a student would meet in the
study first of the external life, and then of the internal life of
nations. They were also strictly ' lectures ;' it is not an author
and his readers, but the professor and his hearers, that are brought
before us. Throughout the course, but especially in its varioua
digressions, is to be discerned his usual anxiety — in this case
almost as with a prophetic foreboding — to deliver his testimony be-
fore it was too late, on the subjects next his heart ; which often
imparts to them at once the defect and the interest of the out-
pouring of his natural conversation."
Of the spirit in which he should lecture with respect to the feel-
ings of the place, Dr. Arnold remarks, in one of his letters, " The
best rule, it seems to me, is to lecture exactly as I should write for
the world at large ; to lecture, that is, neither hostilely nor cau-
tiously, not seeking occasions of shocking men's favorite opinions,
yet neither in any way humouring them, or declining to speak the
truth, however opposed it may be to them."
While the text of these Lectures is with scrupulous fidelity pre-
served exactly as they were uttered and printed, it has seemed to
me that their interest and value might be increased by the introduc-
tion of some illustrative notes. There would indeed have beer
little need of any thing of the kind, had Arnold's life been prolonged
till his professorial labors were completed; but considering that
these Lectures have been left to us as introductory to unaccom-
plished after-courses, and that a lecturer is always under the neces-
sity of bringing his subject in each lecture within narrow limits of
time, I have thought that it was an occasion on which the addition
of editorial notes would not be inappropriate. This thought was
perhaps first suggested to my mind by the knowledge that Dr
Arnold's other works furnished passages which might be brought
into fit connection with the Lectures, and the belief that on farther
examination with this special object ir view, I should be able to
find more. My first and chief aim, therefore, in the notes I have
introduced in this edition, has been to collect such parallel passages
as would explain and illustrate the opinions and feelings which arc
AMERICAN EDITION. 7
presented, either by direct statement or brief intimation, in llitf
Lectures.
I have not however confined the notes to selections from Dr
Arnold's writings, but have brought them from various sources, as
far as I thought they would contribute to historical knowledge and
truth, without encumbering the volume. It will readily be under-
stood, that in lectures as copious as these are in historical and bio-
fifraphical allusions, the process of annotation might be carried on
to an almost indefinite extent, but I have endeavored to limit the
notes in a great measure to such as are of that suggestive character
for which the Lectures themselves are distinguished — such as
might encourage a love for the study of history and prompt to his-
torical reading. In no department of literature has there been
greater advance than in historical science during about the last
twenty years, and it is a branch of education well deserving atten-
tion, as one of the means of chastening that narrow and spurious
nationality which is no more than unsubstantial national vanity —
the substitute of ignorance and arrogance for genuine and rational
and dutiful patriotism.
In preparing this edition, I have had in view its use, not only for
the general reader, but also as a text-book in education, especially
in our college courses of study. It might be thought that this last
purpose would require the introduction of many notes of an explan-
atory kind for the information of young students ; but from such
annotation I have in a great measure forborne, and purposely, for
two reasons — because it must have become too copious in a work so
full of historical allusions, and because the volume can be an appro-
priate text-book only for advanced students, who have completed an
elementary course of history. Besides, it is my belief that many a
text-book is now-a-days overloaded with notes, to the positive in-
jury of education : such books seem to be prepared upon a pre-
sumption that they are to be taught by men who are either ignorant
or indolent, or both, and thus it is that the spirit of oral instruction
is deadened by the practice of anticipating much that should be sup-
plied by the teacher. The active intercourse between the mind
Ihat teaches and the minds that are taught, which is essential to all
true instruction, is often rendered dull by the use of books of such
description. I have therefore endeavored to make the notes in this
8 PREFACE TO THE
volume chiefly 3> ggestive, and only incidentally explanatory, and
in doing so, it is iry belief and hope that I have followed a principle
on which the Lec'ures themselves were written.
The introduction of this work as a text-book I regard as im-
portant, because, at least so far as my information entitles me to
Bpeak, there is no book better calculated to inspire an interest in
historical study. That it has this power over the minds of students
I can say from experience, which enables me also to add, that I
have found it excellently suited to a course of college instruction.
By intelligent and enterprising members of a class especially, it is
studied as a text-book with zeal and animation.
In offering thi.« volume for such use, I am not unaware of the
difficulties arising from the fact that our college courses are both
limited as to time and crowded with a considerable variety of
studies — often perhaps too great a variety for sound education.
The false academic ambition of mi»king a display of many subjects
has the inevitable effect of rendering instruction superficial in such
studies as ought to be cultivated thoroughly. I should be sorry,
therefore, to be contributing in any way to what may be regarded
as an evil and an abuse — the injurious accumulation of subjects of
study upon a course that is limited in duration. It is in order to
avoid this, that I venture here to suggest an expedient by whicli
instruction in these Lectures may be accomplished advantageously
and without embarrassment or conflict with other studies. The
student may be made well acquainted with these Lectures by the
process of making written abstracts of them, for which the work is,
as I have found, peculiarly adapted. Let me, however, fortify this
suggestion by something far more valuable than my own opinion oj
experience — the authority of Dr. Arnold himself as to the value of
the method. It m ill be found in his correspondence that he earnest Ij
advises the making of an abstract of some standard work in history :
besides the information gained, " the abstract itself," are his words.
" practises you in condensing and giving in your own words what
another has said ; a habit of great value, as it forces one to think
about it, which extracting merely does not. It farther gives a
brevity and simplicity to your language, two of the greatest merita
which style can have." This method may, it appears to me, be
made with advantage a substitute, to a considerable extent, for wh-i*
AMERICAN EDITION.
9
is commonly called " original composition" of young writers. It
evoids a danger which in that process has probably occurred to the
minds of most persons who have had experience and are thought-
fully engaged in that branch of education. The danger I allude to
has beer, wisely and I think not too strongly spoken of as the " im-
mense peril of introducing dishonesty into a pupil's miiid, of teach-
ing him to utter phrases which answer to nothing that is actually
within him, and do not describe any thing that he has actually seen
or imagined." {Lectures on National Education, by the Rev. Prof.
Maurice, now of King's College, London.)
A few words may be added here, for the general reader as well
as the student. In order to receive just impressions from these
Lectures it is important to bear in mind one or two of the peculiarly
prominent traits of Dr. Arnold's intellectual, or rather moral charac-
ter. The zeal to combat wrong — to withstand evil — engendered a
polemical propensity, which leads him sometimes to speak as if he
saw only evil in what may be mixed good and evil. His view of
things, therefore, is occasionally both true and false, because one-
sided and incomplete. Of chivalry, for instance, his mind appears
to have dwelt only or chiefly on the dark side — the evils and abuses
of it. ' Conservatism' was to him a symbol of evil, because he
thought of it, not as preserving what is good, but a spirit of resist-
ance to all change.
Arbitrary power, in any of its forms, was odious to the mind of
Arnold, not simply because it creates restraint and subjection, but
inasmuch as it retards or prevents improvement of faculties given
to be improved. " Half of our virtue," he exclaims, quoting Ho-
mer's lines with a bold version, " Half of our virtue is torn away
when a man becomes a slave, and the other half goes when he
becomes a slave broke loose." The solemn and impassioned
utterance of the great living poet, whom Arnold knew in personal
converse, would not be too strong to express the feeling with which
bo looked upon oppression by lawless dominion :
" Never may from our souls one truth depart —
That an accursed thing it is to gazo
On prosperous tyrants with a dazzled eye."
Liberty was prized by Arnold, not for its own sake — not as in ilsell
lO PREFACE ro THE
a good, but as a means — a condition of cultivation and impro'rement,
and it became in his eyes a worthless boon, an abused privilege
whenever not dutifully employed for the good of man and -he glory
of God.
Dr. Arnold's opinions must also often be judged of in their rela-
tive connection. " It is my nature," he says, " always to attack
that evil which seems to me most present." Accordingly, the evil
he would most strenuously condemn in one place, or time, or state
of things, might elsewhere cease to be the most dangerous, or in
deed give place to even an opposite evil. This has an important
bearing upon any application of his principles or opinions to various
political or social conditions ; but be the thoughts and words what
they may, there is assurance that they come from a man distin-
guished for that straightforwardness of purpose and of speech
which everywhere and always is a virtue —
«■ irdvTa ie vd^iov tvO<)y\<o(jaos ai'ijf -Trpofipet,
rapa Tvpavi'iSi, xiLrdrav b AajSpog arpurrfj,
X^Tav i:6\iv o'l ao(j>o\ rrjpitovTt. Pylh. II.
Having spoken of applications of Dr. Arnold's thoughts, I wish
to add, that there could be no more unworthy tribute rendered to
liim than either the careless, unreflecting adoption of his views, or
the citing his words as a sanction for opinions that may in other
minds be no more than prejudices — formed in ignorance or indif-
ference, and held without earnestness or candor. Such is not the
lesson to be learned from the character of one of whom I may say
that he could not draw a happy breath in the presence of falsehood,
and the master-passion of wliose spirit was the love of Law and of
Truth.
Jn the arrangement of this volume for the press, I have placed
the notes of this edition at the end of each lecture, so that they
may not intrude at all upon the text of the lectures, which diifer it,
no other particular from the original, than merely the insertion ol
numbers for reference to the notes, and a correction of a slighl
error in a reference to an authority in Lecture VL To prevent
4ny possibility of error, let it be understood that Dr. Arnold's own
notes, few in number, are printed as foot-notes, as in the original
edition. The notes of this edition are in all cases referred to bv
numbers, and are i)laced after each lecture.
AMERICAN EDITION. 11
For several \aluable suggestions and references, I am indebted
to the learning and the kindness of the Rev. Professor George
Allen, of Delaware College. I mention my obligation, because
otherwise silence would bring me the self-reproach for something
like unreal display. There is a pleasure too in making such an
acknowledgment, especially when, in connection with this volume,
it is to one whose earnest scholarship is kindred to that of Arnold
himself in several respects, and chiefly in this — the not common
combination of philological accuracy with cultivation of modern
history and literature.
j£. a.
University of Pennsylvania,
rHILADCLPHIA, .9prU 2S, 1S45.
The following Lectures are printed almost exactly as
lliey were delivered. They were written with the ex-
pectation that they would be read in a room to a very
limited audience ; which may explain why the style in
some instances is more colloquial than became the circum-
stances under which they were delivered actually.
liughy, May 5th, 1842.
CONTENTS.
INAUGURAL LECTURE.
Mai
History often underrated.— It cannot be appreciated justly at
once.— Definition of history.— The biography of a society.
— Properly, the biography of a nation. — And hence, gene-
rally, of a government. — But not always so in reality. — A
nation's life is twofold, partly external and partly internal.
— The internal life determined by its end. — This end moral
rather than physical. — Because a nation is a sovereign
society ; and must therefore be cognizant of moral ends ;
as it controls all actions. — End of a nation's life, its highest
happiness. — This is the fruit of laws and institutions ; which
together form its constitution; executive, legislative, and
judicial. — Institutions for public instruction. — Institutions
relating to property. — Their great importance.— Instances
given : primogeniture, entails, commercial laws, &c. —
Other elements affecting national life. — Conclusion : the
greatness of history. — What constitutes modern history ? —
It treats of nations still living. — When was the English
nation bornl — National personality depends on four great
elements. — Peculiarity of modern history. — Its element of
the German race. — Spread of this race. — Is modern history
the last history^ — Why it seems likely to be so. — Impor-
tance of its being so. — Value of the lessons of history. —
Conclusion .25
(Notes ^M
18 CONTENTS.
APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE.
ptai
Theory of the perfect state. — The supreme society must be
moral. — ^Why the moral theory is objected to. — ^What
should be the bond of societies. — Union of action rather
than of belief. — When is government national 1 — Govern-
ment speaking the voice of the nation may choose its own
national law. — Churches may infringe individual rights. —
Excommunication is a punishment. — All centralization has
its dangers. — Obedience to Christian law the way to arrive
at Christian faith. — But the end is not to be made the be-
ginning. — ^What the real difficulty of the question is. —
Agreement of the moral theory of a state with the true
theory of the church. — The one seems to require the other.
— Notice of some special objections. — The objections as-
sume as true what is condemned by high authorities. —
Confusion as to what is properly " secular." — Excommuni-
cation a secular punishment. — In what sense our Lord's
kingdom was not a kingdom of this world. — Conclusion . 64
[Notes .......... B4j
LECTURE I.
li.troductory remarks. — Contrast between ancient and modern
history. — Extreme voluminousness of modern history. —
Some one particular portion to be selected. — First study it
in a contemporary historian. — Or in those of more than one
nation. — Other authorities next to be consulted. — Advan-
tages of the university libraries. — Collections of tiei^ties to
be consulted. — Rymer's Fcedera. — Also collections of laws,
&c. — Their value to the historical student — Letters or other
writings of great men. — Miscellaneous literature. — How
such reading may be made practicable, by reading with a
view to our particular object. — And yet will not be super-
firiul. — What reading is superficial and misleading. — Re-
CONTENTS. 19
PASS
rnarkable example of misquotation from Moshcim's Ecclesi-
astical History. — Which quotation has inadvertently been
given by several successive writers. — Showing the danger
of quoting at second-hand. — Still a knowledge of past times
is insufficient and even incomplete in itself, without a lively
knowledge of the present. — Good effects of a knowledge of
the present, and generally of more than one period. — To
prevent our wrongly valuing one period. — Especially to
prevent us from decrying our own. — Recapitulation. — Sub-
ject of the ensuing lecture . . . . . . !il
'Notes U4]
LECTURE II.
Two periods of modern history. — Before and after the six-
teenth century. — The history of the first is simpler, of the
second more complicated. — Historians of the first period.
— Bede. — Study of language in history. — Importance of
good habits of translation. — Difference of the classical and
later Latin. — Trustworthiness of historians. — Question as to
Bede's accounts of miracles. — Difference between wonders
and miracles. — Alleged miracles by far the most difficult. —
Their external testimony defective ; and also their internal
evidence. — They are generally to be disbelieved. — Perhaps
with some exceptions. — But even if true they cannot sanc-
tion all the opinions held by those who work them. — Ques-
tions belonging to the thirteenth century. — Questions in the
study of the Chronicles. — Philip de Comines. — Advantages
of previous classical study. — Greater difficulty in the study
of the middle ages. — Importance of genealogies. — ^We must
look backwards and forwards. — Examples given. — Contest
for the throne of Naples. — Peculiar interest of the period
described by Philip de Comines. — Contrast between him
and Herodotus. — Conclusion . . . . . .11!)
[Notes . 112]
20 CONTENTS.
LECTURE III.
FAUI
Magnitude of modern history. — Its different subjects of study.
— External history. — Geography. — Common notions of ge-
ography. — How it should be studied. — Examples of its im-
portance. — Geography of Italy. — Tendency of the last three
centuries. — Small states swallowed up by great ones. —
Excesses of this tendency. — First, Spain. — Spain dangerous
to Europe. — The Austro-Spanish power. — France danger-
ous to Europe. — Ascendency of England in 1763. — France
under Napoleon. — The dominion of Napoleon. — Its won-
derful overthrow. — These are merely external struggles;
although often mixed up with struggles of principle. — The
questions contained in them are economical and military. —
Economical questions. — Difficulty of supporting a war. —
Temptation to raise money by loans. — Evils of the borrow-
ing system. — Examples of financial difficulties in France
and in England. — Are such evils unavoidable 1 — Conclusion 147
'Notes 1701
LECTURE IV.
Difficulty of speaking on others' professions. — How far it may
be done with propriety. — And where we must be ignorant.
— Whose campaigns are worth studying. — Discipline must
conquer enthusiasm. — ^Will some races always beat others ?
— Not of necessity. — Mischiefs of irregular warfare. —
Irregular warfare not justified by the accident of our coun-
try's being invaded. — Certain laws of war considered. —
Plundering a town taken by storm. — General Napier's judg-
ment on this point. — Of the right of blockade. — Siege of
Genoa in 1800. — Importance of amending bad laws. — Of
wrong done in going to war. — Suspicion begets suspicion. —
Understanding of military operations. — What leads to battles
in particular places. — Great lines of road often change.—
Changes in roads and fortresses. — Mountain warfare. —
Conclusion ... ..... 1»1
iNoTts • • 207]
CONTENTS. 81
LECTURE V.
paiii
Transition to internal history. — General divisions of the sub-
ject. — Question of many and few. — What is a popular party ■?
— ^Vhat is meant by the few and the many ] — What is the
good of a nation 1 — Principles intermixed with one another.
— Example of Hume. — ^What is the party of the movement 1
— Not always a popular party. — Parties changed by time. —
Example of the Guelfs and Ghibelins. — Dread of extinct
evils ; or of such as are the weaker. — Analysis of internal
history. — Period of religious movement. — Parties in Eng-
land first appear in the reign of Elizabeth. — Three parties.
— The party of the established church. — The party of the
puritans. — Party of the Romanists. — Ability of Elizabeth. —
Her great popularity 219
[Notes 244]
LECTURE VL
Church questions are often political rather than religious ,
inasmuch as they have been questions of government. —
Questions of the priesthood are religious, but were not dis-
cussed in England. — Church questions in England political,
as the church and state were one. — Yet the church ques-
tions were in form not political till the reign of James L —
Causes of the political movement. — Growth of the House
of Commons. — Its growth owing to that of the nation. —
The intellectual movement stood aloof from the political,
being regarded by it with suspicion, especially by the re-
ligious movement. — ^^^ly the purely intellectual movement
inclined to the party upholding church authority ; submitting
to it insincerely. — State of the contest hitherto. — It might
have been delayed but not prevented. — Change wrought in
the popular party ; both in its religious party and in its politi-
cal. — Elements of the antipopular party. — Nobleness of its
best members. — Lord Falkland. — Its other members. —
Those who are called meek and oeaceable. — They have no
22 CONTENTS.
TACt
temptation to be otherwise, and are not to be admired —
Other opponents of puritanism, some better and others
worse. — Lord Falkland's character of these. — Results of
the civil war. — Altered relations of church and state. —
Conclusion ... ..... 201
Notes 28*2.
LECTURE VIL
England after the Revolution. — Parties supporting or dis-
liking it. — The popular party. — Two divisions of the oppo-
site party. — One of these maintained the Revolution because
it had changed so little ; yet the advantages involved in it
were both great and lasting. — Treatment of Ireland by the
popular party. — Feelings of the opposite party towards
France. — The poorer class unfriendly to the Revolution.
— Parties in the eighteenth century. — Triumph of the popu-
lar party. — What it neglected to accomplish. — New form of
English party. — First years of George the Third's reign. —
— The House of Commons antipopular. — How this came to
take place. — New popular party out of parliament. — The
periodical press. — Separation of politics from morals. —
Letters of Junius. — American war. — War of the French
Revolution. — Consistency of parties. — General view of the
movement. — Omissions of both parties. — Our judgment ol
them affected by our judgment of earlier times. — Conclusion 315
Notes 340J
LECTURE Vm.
Credibility of history. — History alone tells us of the past
— Whether a narrative is meant to be history. — Example
from Sir Walter Scott's works. — A narrative may aim at
truth and yet be careless of fact. — Criteria of an historical
narrative. — Ecclesiastical biographies. — Credibility of wri-
tings clearly historical. — Contemporary writers often over-
rated. — The narrative of actual witnesses. — Witnesses more
CONTENTS. 23
PAQB
or less perfect. — The principal actor a perfect witness, in
knowledge though not in honesty. — All history credible up
to a certain point. — An earnest craving after truth the great
qualification of an historian.— Truth when sought may be
found. — The craving after truth in a reader enables him to
estimate truth in a writer. — Examination of an historian's
credibility, both as to style and matter. — As to the authori-
ties referred to. — As a military historian. — As a political
historian. — False notions of impartiality. — Objection to his-
tory generally. — Uncertainty as to political questions. —
Their laws not really uncertain, although often thought to
be so. — Certain principles are clearly good. — Yet can his-
tory profit us 1 — Or are we bound by an unchangeable fate ?
— Can we undo the effect of the past ] — Supposed case in
the French Revolution. — The effects of the past partly re-
versible. — Conclusion of the Lectures. — Proposed subject
of the next course. — Conclusion ..... 3G7
[Notes 394|
[Appendix I. — On Dr. Arnold's character as an Historian,
from the ' Life and Correspondence' . . . 413]
[Appendix IL — On historical instruction, from Dr. Arnold's
account of ' Rugby School' .... 4iy]
Appendix in. — On Translation . . .. 423]
INAUGURAL LECTURE.
It has been often remarked, that when a stranger entei'a
St. Peter's for the first time, the immediate impression is one
of disappointment ; the building looks smaller than he ex-
pected to find it. So it is with the first sight of mountains ;
their summits never seem so near the clouds as we had hoped
to see them. But a closer acquaintance with these, and with
other grand or beautiful objects, convinces us that our first
impression arose not from the want of greatness in what we
saw, but from a want of comprehensiveness in ourselves to
grasp it. What we saw was not all that existed ; but all
that our untaught glance could master. As we know it bet-
*er, it remains the same, but we rise more nearly to its level :
our greater admiration is but the proof that we are become
able to appreciate it more truly. (1)
Something of this sort takes place, I think, in our unin-
structed impressions of history. We are not inclined to rate
very highly the qualifications required either in the student
or in the writer of it. It seems to demand little more than
memory in the one, and honesty and diligence in the other.
It is, we say, only a record of facts ; and such a work seems
to offer no field for the imagination, or for the judgment, or
for our powers of reasoning. History is but time's follower;
she does not pretend to discover, but merely to register what
time has brought to light already. Eminent men have been
known to hold this language ; Johnson, whose fondness for
tiography might have taught him to judge more truly, enter
26 INAUGURAL LECTURE.
tainea little respect for history. We cannot comprehend
what we have never studied, and history must be content to
share in the common portion of every thing great and good ;
it must be undervalued by a hasty observer.
If I were to attempt to institute a comparison between the
excellencies of history and those of other studies, I should be
falling into the very fault which I have been just noticing;
I might be doing injustice to other branches of knowledge-
only because I had no sufficient acquaintance with them.
But I may be allowed to claim for history, not any particular
rank, whether high or low, as compared with other studies,
but simply that credit should be given it for containing more
than a superficial view of it can appreciate ; for having trea-
sures, neither lying on the surface nor immediately below the
surface, — treasures not to be obtained without much labor,
yet rewarding the hardest labor amply.
To these treasures it is my business to endeavor to point
out the way. A Professor of history, if I understand his
duties rightly, has two principal objects ; he must try to ac-
quaint his hearers with the nature and value of the treasure
for which they are searching ; and, secondly, he must try to
show them the best and speediest method of discovering and
extracting it. The first of these two things may be done
once for all ; but the second must be his habitual employ-
ment, the business of his professorial life. I am now, there-
fore, not to attempt to enter upon the second, but to bestow
my attention upon the first : I must try to state what is the
treasure to be found by a search into the records of history ;
if we cannot be satisfied that it is abundant and most valua-
ble, we shall care little to be instructed how to gain it.
In speaking of history generally, I may appear to be for-
getting that my proper subject is more limited ; that it is not
liistory simply, but modern history. I am perfectly aware
of this, and hope not to forget it in my practice : but still a;
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 87
jhc outset I must trace the stream from its source ; I must
ask you to remain with me awhile on the high ground, where
the waters, which are liereafter to form the separate streams
of ancient and modern history, lie as yet undistinguished in
their common parent lake. I must speak of history in gene-
ral, in order to understand the better the character of any
one of its particular species.
The general idea of history seems to be, that it is the
biography of a society. It docs not appear to me to be his-
tory at all, but simply biography, unless it finds in the per-
sons who are its subject sometliing of a common purpose, the
accomplishment of which is tlie object of their common life.
History is to this common life of many, what biography is to
the life of an individual. Take, for instance, any common
family, and its members are soon so scattered from one an-
other, and are engaged in such different pursuits, that al-
though it is possible to write the biography of each individual,
yet there can be no such tiling, properly speaking, as the
history of the family. Cut suppose all the members to be
thrown .ogether in one place, amidst strangers or savages,
and there immediately becomes a conmion life, — a unity of
action, — interest, and purpose, distinct from others around
them, which renders them at once a fit subject of history.
Perhaps I ought not to press the word " purpose ;" because
purpose implies consciousness in the purposer, and a society
may exist without being fully conscious of its own business
as a society. But whether consciously or not, every society
— so much is implied in the very word — must have in il
something of community ; and so far as the members of it
are members, so far as they are each incomplete parts, but
taken together form a whole, so far, it appears to me, their
"oint life is the proper subject of history.
Accordingly we find the term history often applied to small
88 INAUGURAL LECTURE.
and subordinate societies. We speak of the history of lite,
rary or scientific societies ; we have histories of commercia,
bodies ; nistories of religious orders ; histories of universities.
In all these cases, history has to do with that which the sev.
eral members of eacii of these societies have in common ; it
is, as I said, the biography of tlieir common life. And it
seems to me that it could not perform its office, if it had no
distinct notion in what this common life consisted.
But if the life of every society belongs to history, much
more does the life of that highest and sovereign society which
we call a state or a nation. And this in fact is considered
the proper subject of history ; insomuch that if we speak of
it simply, without any qualifying epithet, we understand by
it, not the biography of any suboi'dinate society, but of some
one or more of the great national societies of the human
race, whatever political form their bond of connection may
assume. And thus we get a somewhat stricter definition of
history properly so called ; we may describe it not simply
as the biography of a society, but as the biography of a po-
litical society or commonwealth.
Now in a commonwealth or state, that common life which
I have ventured to call the proper subject of history, finds its
natural expression in those who are invested with the state's
government. Here we have the varied elements which exist
in the body of a iiction, reduced as it were to an intelligible
unity : the state appears to have a personal existence in its
government. And where that government is lodged in the
hands of a single individual, then biography and history
seem to melt into one another, inasmuch as one and the same
person combines in himself his life as an individual, and the
common life of his nation.
That common life, then, wliich we could not find repre-
sented by any private members of the state, is brought to h
head, as it were, and exhibited intelligibly and visibly in tlie
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 29
government. And thus history has generally taken govern-
ments as the proper representatives of nations ; it has re-
corded the actions and fortunes of kings or national councils,
and has so appeared to fulfU its appointed duty, that of re-
cording the life of a commonwealth. Nor is this theoreti-
cally other than true ; the idea of government is no doubt
that it should represent the person of the state, desiring those
ends, and contriving those means to compass them, which the
state itself, if it could act for itself, ought to desire and to
contrive. But practically and really this has not been so:
governments have less represented the state than themselves;
the individual life has so predominated in them over the com
nion life, that what in theory is history, because it is record-
ing the actions of a government, and the government repre-
sents the nation, becomes in fact no more tlian biography ; it
does but record the passions and actions of an individual,
who is abusing the state's name for the purposes of selfish,
rather than public good.
We see, then, in practice how history has been beguiled,
so to speak, from its proper business, and has ceased to de-
scribe the life of a commonwealth. For, taking governments
as the representatives of commonwealths, which in idea they
are, history has watched their features, as if from them might
be drawn the portrait of their respective nations. But as in
this she has been deceived, so her portraits were necessarily
unlike what they were intended to represent ; they were not
portraits of the commonwealth, but of individuals.
Again, the life of a commonwealth, like that of an indi-
vidual, has two parts ; it is partly external, and partly inter-
nal. Its external life is seen in its dealings with other
commonwealths ; its internal life, in its dealings with itself.
Now in the former of these, government must ever be, in a
certain degree, the representative of the nation ; there must
here be a community of interest, at least up to a certain
80 INAtJGURAL LECTrRE.
point, and something also of a community of feeling. If a
governmfint be overthrown by a foreign enemy, the nation
shares in the evils of the conquest, and in the shame of the
defeat ; if it be victorious, the nation, even if not enriched
with the spoils, is yet proud to claim its portion of the glory.
And thus, in describing a government's external life, that is,
its dealings with other governments, history has remained,
and could not but remain, true to its proper subject : for in
foreign war, the government must represent more than its in-
dividual self; here it really must act and suffer, not alto-
gether, but yet to a considerable degree, for and with th«i
nation.
I have assumed that the external life of a state is seen in
little else than in its wars; and this I fear is true, with
scarcely any qualification. A state acting out of itself, ia
mostly either repelling violence, or exercising it upon others ;
the friendly intercourse between nation and nation is for the
most part negative. A nation's external life, then, is dis-
played in its wars, and here history has been sufRciently
busy : the wars of the human race have been recorded, when
the memory of every thing else has perished. Nor is this to
be wondered at ; for the external life of nations, as of indi-
viduals, is at once the most easily known and the most gene-
rally interesting. Action, in the common sense of the word,
is intelligible to every one ; its effects are visible and sensi-
ble ; in itself, from its necessary connection with outward
nature, it is often highly picturesque, while the qualities dis-
played in it are some of those which, by an irresistible in-
stinct, we are most led to admire. Ability in the adaptation
of means to ends, courage, endurance, and perseverance, the
complete conquest ever some of t'ne most universal weak-
nesses of our nature, the victory over some of its most pow.
erful temptations, — these are qualities displayed in action,
and particularly in war. And it is our deep sympathy with
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 31
these qualities, much more than any fondness for scenes of
horror and blood, which has made descriptions of battles,
ivhether in poetry or history, so generally attractive. He
who can read these without interest, differs, I am inclined to
think, from the mass of mankind rather for the worse than
for the better ; he rather wants some noble qualities which
other men have, than possesses some which other men want.
But still we have another life besides that of outward
action ; and it is this inward life after all which determines
the character of the actions and of the man. And how eagerly
do we desire in those great men whose actions fill so large a
space in history, to know not only what they did but whal
they were : how much do we prize their letters or their re-
corded words, and not least such words as are uttered in their
most private moments, which enable us to look as it were
into the very nature of that_mind, whose distant effects we
know to be so marvellous! /But a nation has its inward life
no less than an individual, and from this its outward life also
is characterized. For what does a nation effect by war, but
either the securing of its existence, or the increasing of its
power ? We honor the heroism shown in accomplishing
theye objects; but power, nay even existence, are not ultimalo
ends) ; the question may be asked of every created being why \
he should live at all, and no satisfactory answer can be given, \
if his life does not, by doing God's will consciously or uncon- I
sciously, tend to God's glory and to the good of his brethren^/
And if a nation's annals contain the record ef deeds ever so
heroic, done in defence of the national freedom or existence,
still we may require that the freedom or the life so bravely
maintained should be also employed for worthy purposes ; or
else even the names of Thermopylae and of Morgarten be-
come in after years a reproach rather than a glory. (2)
Turning then to regard the inner life of a nation, wo
cannot but see that here, as in the life of an individual, it i"*
32 INAUGURAL LECTURE.
determined by the nature of its ultimate end. What is a
nation's main object, is therefore a question which must be
asked, before we can answer whether its inner life, and con-
sequently its outwai'd life also, which depends upon the inner
life, is to be called good or evil. Now it does not seem easy
to conceive that a nation can have any other object than thai
which is the highest object of every individual in it; if it can,
then the attribute of sovereignty which is inseparable from
nationality becomes the dominion of an evil principle. For
suppose, for instance, that a nation as such is not cognizant
of the notions of justice and humanity, but that its highest
object is wealth, or dominion, or security. It then follows
that the sovereign power in human life, which can influence
the minds and compel the actions of us all, is a power alto-
gether unmoral ; and if unmoral, and yet commanding the
actions of moral beings, then evil. Again, if being cognizant
of the notions of justice and humanity it deliberately prefers
other objects to them, then here is the dominion of an evil
»principle still more clearly. But if it be cognizant of them
!and appreciates them rightly, then it must see that they are
more to be followed than any objects of outward advantage ;
then it acknowledges moral ends as a higher good than phys-
ical ends, and thus, as we said, agrees with every good indi-
vidual man in its estimate of the highest object of national no
less than of individual life.
It is sometimes urged, that although this be true of Individ-
uals, yet it is not true of every society ; that we constantly
see instances of the contrary ; that, for example, the highest
object of the Royal Society as a society is the advancement
of science, although to the individuals of that society a moral
and religious object would be incomparably of higher value.
Why then may not tlie highest object of a nation, as such, be
self-defence, or wealth, oi any otI)er outwai-d good, although
every individual of the nation puts a moral object before an>
INAUGURAL LECTUr^K 33
mere external benefits. The answer to this is simply be.
cause a nation is a sovereign society, and it is something
monstrous that the ultimate power in human lifs should be
destitute of a sense of riglit and wrong. For there being a
right and a wrong in all or ahiiost all our actions, the power
which can command or forbid these actions without an appeal
to any human tribunal higher than itself, must surely have a
sense not only of the right or wrong of this particular action
now commanded or forbidden, but generally of the compara-
tive value of difierent ends, and thus of the highest end of all ;
lost perchance while commanding what is in itself good, it
may command it at a time or in a degree to interfere with
some higher good ; and then it is in fact commanding evil.
And that the power of government is thus extensive and
sovereign seems admitted, not only historically, inasmuch aa
no known limits to it have ever been affixed, nor indeed can
be, without contradiction, but also by our common sense and
language, which feels and expresses that government does,
and may, and ought to interpose in a great variety of matters ;
various for instance, as education and the raising of a rev-
enue, and the making of war or peace ; matters which it
would be very difficult to class together under any one com-
mon head, except such ao i nave assigned as the end of po-
litical society, the highest good, namely, of the whole society
or nation. And our common notions of the difference be-
t\vc<in a government and a police, between a government and
an army, are alone sufficient to show the fallacy of the at-
tempted comparison. It is the ultimate object of a police to
provide for the security of our bodies and goods against vio-
lence at homo, as it is the object of an army to secure them
against violence from without. Policemen and soldiers have
individually another and a higher object ; but the societies,
if I may so call them, the institutions of a police and an army,
have not. And who does not see that for this very reason
34 INAUGURAL LECTURE.
the police and the army are not sovereign societies!, but
essentially subordinate ; that because they are not cognizant
of moral ends, therefore they are incapable of directing men's
conduct in the last resort ; and that therefore they are them-
selves subject to a higher power, namely, that of the govern-
ment, the representative of the national life ? If neither is
the government cognizant of moral ends, then it too must bo
subject to some higher power, which is a contradiction in
terms ; or else, as I said before, it cannot surely be the ordi-
nance of God ; and if not, can it be otherwise than evil ?
Perhaps it was hardly necessary to dwell so long on this
point before my present hearers; yet the opposite doctrine to
that which I have been asserting has been maintained, since
Warburton, by names deserving of no common respect : and
what seems to me the truth, was necessary to be stated, be-
cause on it depends our whole view of history, so far as his-
tory is more than a mere record of wars. In wars no doubt
the end sought is ho more than a nation's security or power ;
[n other words, that she may develop her internal life at
all, or develop it with vigour. But we must recognise some
worthy end for the life thus preserved, or strengthened ;
otherwise it is but given in vain.
That end appears to be the promoting and securing a na-
tion's highest happiness ; so we must express it in its most
general formula ; but under the most favorable combination
of circumstances, this same end is conceived and expressed
more purely, as the setting forth God's glory by doing His
appointed work. And that work for a nation seems to imply
not only the greatest possible perfecting of the natures of its
individual members, but also the perfecting of all those acts
which are done by the nation collectively, or by the govern-
ment standing in its place, and faithfully representing it.
For that conceivably a nation may have duties of vast im
portance to perform in its national capacity, and which cannot
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 85
be effected by its individual members, however excellent-
duties of its external life of a very different sort from ordinary
wars, even when justifiable, seems to follow at once from the
consideration that every single state is but a member of a
greater body ; that is, immediately, of the great body of or-
ganized states throughout the world, and still farther, of the
universal family of mankind, and that it is a member of botli
according to the will of God.
But perfection in outward life is the fruit of perfection in
(he life within us. And a nation's inner life consists in its
action upon and within itself. Now in order to the perfecting
of itself, it must follow certain principles, and acquire certain
habits ; in other words, it must have its laws and institutions
adapted to the accomplishment of its great end. On these
the characters of its people so mainly depend, that if these
be faulty, the whole inner life is corrupted ; if these be good,
it is likely to go on healthfully. The history then of a nation's
internal life, is the history of its institutions and of its laws,
both of which are included under the term laws, in the com-
prehensive sense of that word as used by the Greeks ; (3)
but for us it is most convenient to distinguish them. Let us
consider how much these two terms include.
I would first say that by institutions I wish to understand
such offices, orders of men, public bodies, settlements of prop-
erty, customs, or regulations, concerning matters of general
usage, as do not owe their existence to any express law or
laws, but having originated in various ways at a period of
remote antiquity, are already parts of the national system, at
the very beginning of our historical view of it, and are re.
cognised by all actual laws, as being themselves a kind of
primary condition on which all recorded legislation proceeds.
And I would confine the term laws to the enactments of a
known legislative power, at a certain known period.
Here then, in the institutions and legislation of a country,
56 INAUGURAL LECTURE,
the principles, and rules, and influencing powers of its inter-
nal life, we have one of the noblest subjects of history.
For by one or both of these, generally from institutions modi
fied by laws, comes in the first place what we call the consti-
tution of a country ; that is, to speak generally, its peculiar
arrangement of the executive, legislative, and judicial power?
of government. The bearing of the constitution of a countrj
upon its internal life is twofold ; direct and indirect. Foi
example, the effect of any particular arrangement of the
judicial power is seen, directly in the greater or less purity
with which justice is administered ; but there is a farther
effect, and one of the highest importance, in its furnishing to
a greater or less portion of the nation one of the best means
of moral and intellectual culture, the opportunity, namely,
of exercising the functions of a judge. I mean, that to ac-
custom a number of persons to the intellectual exercise of
attending to, and weighing, and comparing evidence, and to
the moral exercise of being placed in a high and responsible
situation, invested with one of God's own attributes, that of
judgment, and having to determine with authority between
truth and falsehood, right and wrong, is to furnish them with
very high means of moral and intellectual culture ; in other
words, it is providing them with one of the highest kinds of
education. And thus a judicial constitution may secure a
pure administration of justice, and yet fail as an engine of
national cultivation, when it is vested in the hands of a small
body of professional men, like the old French parliaments.
While, on the other hand, it may communicate the judicial
office very widely, as by our system of juries, and thus may
educate, if I may so speak, a very large portion of the nation,
but yet may not succeed in obtaining the greatest certainty
of just legal decisions. I do not mean that our jury systeiT.
does not succeed, but it is conceivable that it should not.
Bo in the same way different arrangements of the executi n
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 37
and legislative powers should be always regarded in this
twofold aspect ; as effecting their direct objects, good govern,
ment and good legislation; and as educating the nation more
or less extensively, by affording to a greater or less numbe/
of persons practical lessons in governing and legislating.
I have noticed the political constitution of a country, tho
first of all its institutions, because it is the one which from
its prominence first attracts our notice. Others, however,
although less conspicuous, have an influence not less impor-
tant. Of these are all such institutions or laws as relate to
public instruction in the widest sense, whether of the young,
or of persons of all ages. There are certain principles which
the State wishes to inculcate on all its members, certain
habits which it wishes to form, a certain kind and degree of
knowledge which it wishes to communicate ; such, namely,
as bear more or less immediately on its great end, its own in-
tellectual and moral perfection, arising out of the perfection of
its several members. Now as far as this instruction, usin2
the term again in its widest sense, and including under it the
formation of habits, as far as this instruction is applied to the
young, it goes under the name of education ; as far as it
regards persons of all ages, it generally takes the form oi"
religion. Even in heathen countries, where direct teaching
was no part of the business of the ministers of religion, still
the solemn festivals, the games, the sacrifices, the systems
of divination, nay^ the very temples themselves, had an un-
doubted moral effect on the people, whether for good or for
evil, and were designed to have it; so that in the larger sense
already claimed for the word, they may be called a sort of
public instruction. In Christian countries, religion at once
inculcates truths and forms habits; the first, by what I may
be allowed to call prophesying or direct teaching ; the second,
by this also, and farther by the ritual and social agency of
*he Church. Nor need I add one word to my present audi
38 INATTGITRAL LECTURE.
ence to impress the vast importance of this one of a nation's
institutions.
Neither let it be thought an abrupt or painful descent, if,
from the mention of public instruction in its very highest
form, I pass to another class of institutions and laws, which
some may look upon as regarding only the lowest part of a
state's external life; those institutions and laws, I mean,
which affect the acquisition and the distribution of property. J
grant that the way in which economical questions are some-
times discussed may create a prejudice against the study of
them ; excusably, it may be, yet not over reasonably. For
in economical works, the economical end alone is regarded,
without taking account of its bearings upon the higher or
political end to which it should minister. But surely this, as
it would be very faulty in a statesman, is not at all faulty in
one who professes only to be an economist ; it does not seem
to me that, in discussing any subordinate science, its relations
with the supreme or architectonical science fall properly
under our consideration. (4) We are but to send in our
report of the facts within our special subject of inquiry ; to
legislate upon this report belongs to a higher department. It
is very useful to consider economical questions in a purely
economical point of view, in order to discover the truth re-
specting them merely as points of economy ; although it by
liO means follows that what is expedient economically, is ex-
pedient also politically, because it may well be that another
end rather than the economical may best further the attain-
ment of the great end of the commonwealth. But no man
who thinks seriously about it, can doubt the vast moral im-
portance of institutions and laws relating to property. It has
been said that the possession of property implies education ;
:hat is, that it calls forth and exercises so many valuable
qualities, — forethought, love of order, justice, beneficence,
and wisdom in the use of power, — that he who possesses it
INA.UGURAL LECTURE. 39
cannot live in the extreme of ignorance or biutaliiy : he has?
learnt unavoidably some of the higher lessons of humanity.
It is at least certain that the utter want of property oflers
obstacles to the moral and intellectual education of persona
labouring under it, such as no book teaching can in ordinary
circumstances overcome. Laws therefore which affect, di-
rectly or indirectly, the distribution of property, affect also a
nation's internal life very deeply. It is not a matter of in-
difference whether the laws of inheritance direct the equal
distribution of a man's property among all his children, or
whether they establish a right of primogeniture ; whether,
they fix the principle of succession independently of individ-
ual discretion, or whether they leave a man the power of
disposing of his property by will, according to his own plea-
sure. Nor, again, is it indifferent whether the law favors
the stability of property, or its rapid circulation ; whether it
encourages entails, or forbids them ; whether it determines
that land held in mortmain is an advantage or an evil. I
might allude to the importance of commercial laws, whether
for good or for evil ; and to that fruitful source of political
disputes in modern times, the amount and character of a
country's taxation. But it is enough to have just noticed
these points, in order to show that economical questions, or
such as relate to wealth or property, demand the careful at-
tention of the historian, inasmuch as they influence most
powerfully a nation's moral and political condition, that is,
in the highest sense of the terms, its welfare or its mis-
ery. (5)
Hitherto we have considered tne history of a nation's nat-
ural life as busied with its institutions and laws ; and as
tracing their effects in their three great divisions of, 1st,
politics, 2d, instruction in the widest sense, and, 3d, econ-
omy. Yet life, whether individual or national, is subject to
a variety of irregular influences, such as originate in no
10 INAUGURAL LECTURE.
known law. Unless the national will, as at Sparta, attenipt
to absorb into itself the wills of individuals, so that they shall
do nothing, suffer nothing, desire nothing, but according to
the bidding of law, there must always exist along with the
most vigorous positive institutions and laws, a great mass of
independent individual action and feeling, which cannot be
without its influence on the national virtue and happiness.
To these spontaneous elements belong science, art, and lite-
rature, which may indeed be encouraged by institutions and
laws, or discouraged, but yet on the whole their origin and
growth in any given country has been owing to individuals
rather than to the nation, or more properly perhaps to causes
external to both, to those causes which have given genius
and taste to some races of mankind in remarkable measure,
and have denied them to others ; causes which have first pre-
pared the fuel ready for kindling, and then have sent the
spark to light it up into a blaze. No man can say why the
great discoveries of science were made only at the time and
in the country when and where they were made actually :
why the compass was withheld from the navigation of the
Roman Empire, but was already in existence when it was
needed to aid the genius of Columbus : why printing was in-
vented in time to preserve that portion of Greek literature
which still survived in the fifteenth century, but was not
known early enough to prevent the irreparable mischiefs of
the Latin storming of Constantinople in the thirteenth : (Q)
why the steam-engine, triumphing over time and space, was
denied to tlie stirring spirit of the sixteenth century, and re-
served to display its wonderful works only to the nineteenth
Other influences may possibly be named which have their
effect on the national character and happiness ; but I may
be pardoned if in so vast a field something should be omitted
mconsciously, and something necessarily passed over, not to
encroach too largely on your time and patience. But cnouc;h
INAUGURAL LECTURE 4i
has been said I think to show that history contains no mean
treasures: that as being the biography of a nation, it partakes
of the richness and variety of those elements which make up
a nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness in the final
cause of all human thought and action, God's glory and man's
perfection, that is the measure of the greatness of history.
Whatever there is of variety and intense interest in human
nature, in its elevation, whether proud as by nature or sanc-
tified as by God's grace ; in its suffering, whether blesseo or
unblessed, a martyrdom or a judgment ; in its strange reverses,
in its varied adventures, in its yet more varied powers, its
courage and its patience, its genius and its wisdom, its justice
and its love, that also is the measure of the interest and va-
riety of history. The treasures indeed are ample, but we
may more reasonably fear whether we may have strength
and skill to win them.
I have thus far spoken of history in the abstract ; at least
of history so far as it relates to civilized nations, with no re-
ference to any one time or country more than to another.
But, as I said before, I must not forget that my particular
business is not history generally, but modern history ; and
without going farther into details than is suitable to the present
occasion, it may yet be proper, as we have considered what
history in general has to oiler, so now to see also whether
there is any peculiar attraction in modern history: and
whether ancient and modern history in the popular sense of
the words differ only in this, that the one relates to events
which took place before a certain period, and the other to
events which have happened since that period ; or whether
there is a real distinction between them, grounded upon an
essential difference in their nature. If they ditfer only chro.
nologically, it is manifest that the line which separates them
is purely arbitrary : and we might equally well fix the limit
of ancient history at the fall of the Babylonian monarchy
42 INAUGURAL LECTURE.
and embrace the whole fortunes of Greece and Rome whhin
what we choose to call modern ; or, on the other hand, we
might carry on ancient history to the close of the fifteenth
century, and place the beginning of modern history at that
memorable period which witnessed the expulsion of the
Moors from Spain, the discovery of America, and, only a few
years later, the Reformation.
It seems, however, that there is a real difference between
ancient and modern history, which justifies the limit usually
assigned to them ; the fall, namely, of the western empire :
that is to say, the fall of the western empire separates the
subsequent period from that which preceded it by a broader
line, so far as we are concerned, than can be found at any
other point either earlier or later. For the state of things
now in existence, dates its origin from the fall of the western
empire; so far we can trace up the fortunes of nations which
are still flourishing ; history so far is the biography of the
living ; beyond, it is but the biography of the dead. In our
own island we see this most clearly : our history clearly begins
with the coming over of the Saxons; the Britons and Romans
had lived in our country, but they are not our fathers ; we are
connected with them as men indeed, but nationally speaking,
the history of Caesar's invasion has no more to do with us,
than thr- natural history of the animals which then inhabited
our for'-'-'.s. We, this great English nation, whose race and
lano-uasre are now overrunnina: the earth from one end of it
to the other — we were born when the white horse of the
Saxons had established his dominion from the Tweed to tne
Tamar. (7) So far we can trace our blood, our language,
the name and actual divisions of our country, the beginnings
of some of our institutions. So far our national identity ex.
tends, so far history is modern, for it treats of a life which
was then, and is not yet extinguished.
And if we cross the channel, what is the case with oui
INAUGURAL LECTURE, 43
great neighbour nation of France ? Roman Gaul had existed
since the Christian sera ; the origin of Keltic Gaul is older
than history : (8) but France and Frenchmen came into
beinff when the Franks established themselves west of the
Rhine. Not that before that period the fathers of the ma-
jority of the actual French people were living on the Elbe or
the Saal ; for the Franks were numerically few, and through-
out the south of France the population is predominantly, and
much more than predominantly, of Gallo-Roman origin.
But Clovis and his Germans struck root so deeply, and their
institutions wrought such changes, that the identity of France
cannot be carried back beyond their invasion : the older
elements no doubt have helped greatly to characterize the
existing nation ; but they cannot be said by themselves to be
that nation.
The essential character then of modern history appears to
be this ; that it treats of national life still in existence : it
commences with that period when all the great elements of
the existing state of things had met together ; so that subse-
quent changes, great as they have been, have only combined
or disposed these same elements differently ; they have added
to them no new one. By the great elements of nationality, I
mean race, language, institutions, and religion ; and it will
be seen that throughout Europe all these four may be traced
up, if not actually in every case to the fall of the western
empire, yet to the dark period which followed that fall, while
in no case are all the four to be found united before it.
Otherwise, if we allow the two first of these elements, without
the thix'd and fourth, to constitute national identity, especially
when combined with sameness of place, we must then say
that the northern countries of Europe have no ancient his-
tory, inasmuch as they have been inhabited from the earliest
times by the same race speaking what is radically the same
language. But it is better not to admit national identity, till
14 iNAUGURAL LECTURE.
the two elements of institutions and religion, or at any rate
one of them, be added to those of blood and language. At
all events it cannot be doubted, that as soon as the four are
united, the national personality becomes complete.
It cannot be doubted then that modern history so defined is
especially interesting to us, inasmuch as it treats only of
national existence not yet extinct : it contains, so to speak, the
first acts of a great drama now actually in the process of
being represented, and of which the catastrophe is still future.
But besides this personal interest, is there nothing in modern
history of more essential difference from ancient — of dif-
erence such as would remain, even if we could conceive our-
selves living in some third period of history, when existing
nations had passed away like those which we now call ancient,
and when our modern history would have become what the
history of Greece and Rome is to us ?
Such a difference does characterize what we now call
modern history, and must continue to characterize it forever.
Modern history exhibits a fuller development of the human
race, a richer combination of its most remarkable elements.
We ourselves are one of the most striking examples of this.
We derive scarcely one drop of our blood from Roman fathers ;
we are in our race strangers to Greece, and strangers to
Israel. But mor?.lly how much do we derive from all three :
in this respect their life is in a manner continued in ours;
their influences, to say the least, have not perished.
Here then we have, if I may so speak, the ancient world
still existing, but with a new element added, the element of
our English race. And that this element is an important
one, cannot be doubted for an instant. Our English race is
the German race ; for though our Norman fathers had learned
to speak a stranger's language, yet in blood, as we know,
they were the Saxons' brethren : both alike belong to the
Teutonic or German stock. (9) Now the importance of this
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 43
Ktock is plain from this, that its intermixture with the Keltic
and Roman races at the fall of the western empire has
changed the whole face of Europe. It is doubly remarkable,
because the other elements of modern history are derived from
the ancient world. If we consider the Roman empire in the
fourth century of the Christian aera, we shall find in it Chris-
tianity, we shall find in it all the intellectual treasures of
Greece, all the social and political wisdom of Rome. (10)
What was not there, was simply the German race, and the
peculiar qualities which characterize it. This one addition
was of such power, that it changed the character of the
whole mass : the peculiar stamp of the middb ages is un-
doubtedly German ; the change manifested in the last three
centuries has been owing to the revival of the older elements
with greater power, so that the German element has been
less manifestly predominant. But that clement still pre-
serves its force, and is felt for good or for evil in almost
every country of the civilized world. (11)
We will pause for a moment to observe over how large
a portion of the earth this influence is now extended. It af-
fects more or less the whole west of Europe, from the head
of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory of
Sicily, from the Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides and
to Lisbon. It is true that the language spoken over a large
portion of this space is not predominantly German ; but even
in France, and Italy, and Spain, the influence of the Franks,
Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards, while it
has colored even the lanrruarje, has in blood and institutions
left its mark legibly and indelibly. Germany, the Low
Countries, Switzerland for the most part, Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden, and our own islands, are all in language, in
blood, and in institutions, German most decidedly. But all
South America is peopled with Spaniards and Portuguese, all
North America and all Australia with Englishmen. I say
16 INAUGURAL LECTURE,
nothing of the prospects and influence of the German race in
Africa and in India : it is enough to say that half of Europe,
and all America and Australia, are German more or less
completely, in race, in language, or in institutions, or in all.
Modern history then differs from ancient history in this,
that while it preserves the elements of ancient history unde-
stroyed, it has added others to them ; and these, as we have
seen, elements of no common power. (12) But the German
race is not the only one which has been thus added ; the
Sclavonic race is another new element, which has overrun
the east of Europe, as the German has overrun the west.
And when we consider that the Sclavonic race wields the
mighty empire of Russia, we may believe that its future in-
fluence on the condition of Europe and of the world may be
far greater than that which it exercises now.
This leads us to a view of modern history, which cannot
indeed be confidently relied on, but which still impresses the
mind with an imagination, if not with a conviction, of its
reality. I mean, that modern history appears to be not only
a step in advance of ancient history, but the last step ; it ap-
pears to bear marks of the fulness of time, as if there would
be no future history beyond it. For the last eighteen bun-
dred years, Greece has fed the human intellect ; Rome,
taught by Greece and improving upon her teacher, has been
the source of law and government and social civilization ;
and what neither Greece nor Rome could furnish, the per-
fection of moral and spiritual truth, has been given by Chris-
tianity. The changes which have been wrought have arisen
out of the reception of these elements by new races ; races
sndowed with such force of character that what was old in
itself, when exhibited in them, seemed to become something
new. But races so gifted are and have been from the begin-
ning of the world few in number : the mass of mankind have
no such power j they either receive the impression of foreiga
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 47
elements so completely that their own individual character is
absorbed, and they take their whole being from without; or
being incapable of taking in higher elements, they dwindle
away when brought into the pi'escnce of a more powerful life,
and become at last extinct altogether. Now looking anxiously
}X)und the world for any new races which may receive the
seed (so to speak) of our present history into a kindly yet a
vigorous soil, and may reproduce it, the same and yet new,
for a future period, we know not where such* are to be found.
Some appear exhausted, others incapable, and yet the sur-
face of the whole globe is known to us. The Roman colonies
along the banks of the Rhine and Danube looked out on the
country beyond those rivers as we look up at the stars, and
actually see with our eyes a world of which we know nothing.
The Romans knew that there was a vast portion of the earth
which tliey did not know ; how vast it might be was a part
of its mysteries. But to us all is explored : imagination can
hope for no new Atlantic island to realize the vision of Plato's
Critias : no new continent peopled by youthful races, the
destined restorers of our worn-out generations. Everywhere
the search has been made, and tlie report has been received ;
we have the full amount of earth's resources before us, and
they seem inadequate to supply life for a third period of hu-
nian history.
I am well aware that to state tliis as a matter of positive
belief would be the extreme of presumption ; there may be
nations reserved hereafter for great purposes of God's provi-
dence, whose fitness for their appointed work will not betray
itself till the work and the time for doing it be come. Thero
was a period perhaps when the ancestors of the Athenians
were to be no otherwise distinguished from their barbarian
* What may De done hereafter by tlie Sclavonic nations, is not prejudged
by this statement ; because the Schivonic nations are elements of our a:;tual
history, although their jxiwers may be as yet only partially develoi)cd.
48 INAUGURAL LECTURE
neighbours than by some finer taste in the decorations of their
arms, and something of a loftier spirit in the songs which told
of the exploits of their warriors ; and when Aristotle heard
that Rome had been taken by the Gauls, he knew not that
its total destruction would have been a greater loss to man-
kind than the recent overthrow of Veii. But without any
presumptuous confidence, if there be any signs, however un-
certain, that we are living in the latest period of the world's
history, that no other races remain behind to perform what
we have neglected or to restore what we have ruined, then
indeed the interest of modern history does become intense,
and the importance of not wasting the time still left to us
may well be called incalculable. When an army's last re-
serve has been brought into action, every single soldier knows
that he must do his duty to the utmost ; that if he cannot win
the battle now, he must lose it. So if our existing nations
are the last reserve of the world, its fate may be said to be
in their hands — God's work on earth will be left undone if
they do not do it.
But our future course must be hesitating or mistaken, if
we do not know wliat course has brought us to the point
where we are at present. Otherwise, the simple fact tha*
after so many years of trial the world has made no greater
progress than it has, must impress our minds injuriously ;
either making us despair of doing what our fathers have not
done, or if we do not despair, then it may make us unreason-
ably presumptuous, as if we could do more than had been
done by other generations, because we were wiser than they
or better. But history forbids despair without authorizing
vanity : it explains why more has not been done by our fore-
fathers : it shows the difficulties which beset them, rendering
success impossible ; while it records the greatness of their
efforts, which we cannot hope to surpass. But without sur.
Bassing, perhaps without equalling their efforts, we may
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 49
learn by their experience to avoid their difficulties: Napoleon
crossed the Alps with scarcely the loss of a man, while Han-
nibal left behind him nearly half his army ; yet Napoleon
was not a greater man than Hannibal, nor was his enter-
prise conducted with greater ability. (i;3) Two things we
ought to learn from history ; one, that we are not in our-
selves superior to our fathers ; another, that we are shame-
fully and monstrously inferior to them, if we do not advance
beyond them.
And now if the view here taken of the greatness, first of
all history, and then especially of modern history, be correct,
it will at once show in what way the professorship which I
have the honor to liokl, may be made productive of some
benefit to the University. It is certainly no affected humility,
but the very simple truth, to acknowledge, that of many large
and fruitful districts in the vast territory of modern history I
possess only the most superficial knowledge, of some I am all
but totally ignorant. I could but ill pretend to guide others
where I should be at a loss myself: and though many might
possess a knowledge far surpassing mine, yet the mere ordi-
nary length of human life renders it impossible for any one
to have that profound acquaintance with every part of modern
history in detail, which might enable him to impart a full
understanding of it to otiiei's. But yet it may be possible,
and this indeed is my hope, to encourage others to study it,
to point out how much is to be done, and. to suggest some
rules for doing it. And if, in addition to this, I could myself
exemplify these rules in working at some one particular por-
tion of history, I should have accomplished all that I can
venture to anticipate. Meanwhile we have in this place an
inmiense help towards the study of modern history, in our
familiar acquaintance with the history of the ancient world,
or at any rate with the works of its greatest historians. The
importance of this preparation is continually brought to my
5
BO INAUGURAL LECTURE.
mind by observing the bad effects of the want of it in those
who have net enjoyed our advantages : on the other hand,
here, as in other matters, advantages neglected are but our
shame, and if we here are ignorant of modern history, we
are I think especially inexcusable.
I have detained you I fear too long, and yet have left much
unsaid, and have compressed some part of what I have said
into limits which I am afraid have scarcely allowed it to be
stated intelligibly. This defect however it may be possible
to remedy on future occasions, when much that has been
now put summarily may be developed more fully. For
other defects not equally within my power to remedy, I have
only in all sincerity to request your indulgence. Deeply as
I value the privilege of addressing you as one of the profes-
sors of this University — and there is no privilege which I
more value, no public reward or honour which could be to me
so welcome — I feel no less keenly the responsibility which it
involves, and the impossibility of discharging its duties in
any manner proportioned to its importance, or to my own
Bonso of what it requires. (14)
NOTES
INAUGURAL LECTURE.
Note 1. — Page 25.
« • • >< -pj^e works of great poets require to be approached at tlio
outset with a full faith in their excellence : the reader must be con-
vinced that if be does not fully admire them, it is his fault and not
theirs. This is no more than a just tribute to their reputation ; in
other words, it is the proper modesty of an individual thinking his
own unpractised judgment more likely to be mistaken than the con-
curring voice of the public. And it is the property of the greatest
works of genius in other departments also, that a first view of them
is generally disappointing ; and if a man were foolish enough to go
away trusting more to his own hasty impressions than to the de-
liberate judgment of the world, he would remain continually as
blind and ignorant as he was at the beginning. Tlie cartoons of
Raphael, at Hampton Court Palace, the frescoes of the same great
painter in the galleries of the Vatican at Rome, the famous statues
of the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere, and the Church of St
Peter at Rome, the most magnificent building perhaps in the world
— all alike are generally found to disappoint a person on his first
view of them. But let him be sure that they are excellent, and
that he only wants the knowledge and the taste to appreciate them
properly, and every succeeding sight of them will open his eyes
more and more, till he learns to admire thom, not indeed as much as
they deserve, but so nuicli as greatly to enrich and enlarge his own
mind, by becoming acquainted with such perfect beauty. So it is
with great poets: they must be read often and studied reverently,
before an unpractised mind can gain any thing like an adequate
notion of their excellence. Meanwhile, the process is in itself
52 NOTES
most useful : it is a good thing to doubt our i xn wisdom, it is a
good thing to believe, it is a good thing to admire. By continually
looking upwards our minds will themselves grow upwards ; and as a
man, by indulging in habits of scorn and contempt for others, is sure
to descend to the level of what he despises, so the opposite habits
of admiration and enthusiastic reverence for excellence impart to
ourselves a portion of the qualities which we admire ; and here, aa
in every thing else, humility is the surest path to exaltation."
Dr. Arnold's Preface to ' Poetry of Common Life.*
Note 2.— Page 31.
In one of his ' travelling journals,' Dr. Arnold writes :
" This is the Canton Uri, one of the Wald Staaten or Forest
Cantons, which were the original germ of the Swiss confederacy.
But Uri, like Sparta, has to answer the question, what has mankind
gained over and above the ever precious example of noble deeds,
from Murgarten, Sempach, or Thermopylae. What the world has
gained by Salamis and Plataea, and by Zama, is on the other hand
no question, any more than it ought to be a question what the world
has gained by the defeat of Philip's armada, or by Trafalgar and
Waterloo. But if a nation only does great deeds that it may live,
and does not show some worthy object for which it has lived — and
Uri and Switzerland have shown but too little of any such — then
Dur sympathy with the great deeds of their history can hardly go
beyond the generation by which those deeds were performed ; and
I cannot help thinking of the mercenary Swiss of Novara and Ma-
rignano, and of the oppression exercised over the Italian bailiwicks
and the Pays de Vaud, and all the tyrannical exclusiveness of these
little barren oligarchies, as much as of the heroic deeds of the three
men, Tell and his comrades, or of the self-devotion of my namesake
uf Winkelried, when at Sempach he received into his breast ' a
iheaf of Austrian spears.' "
Life and Correspondence : Appendix C, No. is
He, too, of battle-martyrs chief!
Who, to recall his daunted peers.
For victory shaped an oj)en space.
TO INAUGURAI- LECIURE. S3
By gathering with a wide embrace,
Into his single breast a sheaf
Of fatal Austrian spears."*
Wordsworth's Poeticai Works, vol. iv. p. 147.
la his History of Rome, (ch. xxxvii.,) Dr. Arnold speaks of a
slate of society where patriotism becomes impossible — the imiet
.ife being so exhausted as to inspire the citizens (of the Greek com-
monwealth in their decline) with neither respect nor attachment.
Note 3.— Page 35.
" These ' high commissioners,' (under the Terentilian law ) ' De-
cemviri legibus scribendis,' were like the Greek vonoOirai, oi in the
language of Thucydides, (viii. 67,) which exactly expresses the ob-
ject of the law, Uku avSpag (\iadai ^vyypaipiai airoKpaTopai—tcad' 8 ri apurra
f, irdhi oUnaerai. We arc SO accustomed to distinguish between a
constitution and a code of laws, that we have no one word which
will express both, or convey a full idea of the wide range of the
commissioners' powers ; which embraced at once the work of the
French constituent assembly, and that of Napoleon, when he drew
up his code. But this comprehensiveness belonged to the character
of the ancient lawgivers ; a far higher term than legislators, al-
though etymologically the same ; they provided for the whole life
of their citizens in all its relations, social, civil, political, moral, and
religious."
Arnold's History of Route, vol. i. 228, note.
* * * " The Greeks had, as we have, their aypa^s I'tfjioj, or un-
written law of reason and conscience : but they had no other written
law, vdfios ycyfiaiifihot, than the civil law of each particular state ;
and by this law not only their civil but their moral and religious
duties also were in ordinary cases rcgulat ed. It was the sole au-
thority by which the several virtues could be enforced on the mass
of mankind ; and to weaken this sanction in public opinion, by re-
presenting the law as a thing mutable and subject to the popular
judgment, instead of being its guide and standard, was to leave men
*" Arnold Winkelried, at the battle otSonipoch, broke an Austrian phalanx in this
manner. The event is one of the most famous in the annals of Swiss heroism; and
picl'ire.s and prints of it are freiiuent throughout tlic country-"
54 NOTES
with no other law than their own reason and conscience ; a state
for which even Christians are not yet sufficiently advanced, with all
the lights and helps that their reason and conscience ought to have
derived from the truths and motives of tJie gospel. In short, tho
vd/ios Ycyp"fit*'"'i with the Greeks corresponded at once to the law of
the land, and to the revealed law of God in Christian countries ;
and if both these laws amongst us had only the same authority of
human institution and custom ; if the one could not be altered with-
out lessening our veneration for the other ; who would not say with
Cleon, that it was far better to endure bad political institutions than
to destroy the only generally understood sanction of moral duty, and
to leave the mass of mankind with no law but that of their own
minds, or, as it would too often be, their own prejudices and pas-
sions]"
Arnold's Thucydides, vol. i. 388, note
Note 4.— Page 38.
* * * " I agree with Carlyle in thinking that they (the Liberal
party) greatly over-estimate Bentham, and also that they overrate
the political economists generally ; not that I doubt the ability of
those writers, or the truth of their conclusions, as far as regards
their own science ; but I think that the summum bonum of their
science, and of human life, are not identical ; and, therefore, many
questions in which free trade is involved, and the advantages of
large capital, &c., although perfectly simple in an economical point
of view, become, when considered politically, very complex ; and
the economical good is very often, from a neglect of other points,
made in practice a direct social evil."
" Life and Correspondence" letter Jan. 23, 1840. Am. edit. p. 367,
* * * " It is right — it is absolutely necessary at this day — that all
nho value their country should raise a warning voice, whether in
the legislature, or in the pulpit, or in schools, or in books, against the
theory which would make this accumulation (' the augmentation of
comforts and enjoyments, and all the other elements which make
up an accumulation of national good out of the separate good of in-
dividuals and of families') the end of society and the primary obli.
gation of the citizen. Such a theory has now gnawed its way not
TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 55
only into all our political philosophy but into our public legislation
and private practice, till it has degraded society from its highest
functions, has sensualized and animalized its character, has intro-
duced a chaos of conflicting elemojits into our system of laws, has
secretly dissolved the ties which bound us to each other as well as
to our sovereign, and has extinguished the noblest instincts of pri-
vate as of public life. It must be thus whenever expediency ia
made the rule of action, especially of political action."
Se well's "Christian rditics,^' p. IGO
Note 5.— Page 39.
* * * " There are few points of more importance in the history
of a nation : the law of property, of real property especially, and a
knowledge of all the circumstances of its tenure and divisions,
would throw light upon more than the physical condition of a peo-
I)lc ; it would furnish the key to some of the main principles preva-
lent in their society. For instance, the feudal notion that property
in land confers jurisdiction, and the derivation of property either
from the owner's own sword, or from the gift of the stronger chief
whose sword he had aided, not from the regular assignment of so-
ciety, has most deeply affected the political and social state of the
nations of modern Europe. At Rome, as elsewhere among the
free commonwealths of the ancient world, property was derived
from political rights rather than political rights from property ; and
the division and assignation of lands to the individual members of the
state by the deliberate act of the whole community, was familiarly
recognised as the manner in which such property was most regu-
larly acquired."
History of Rome, chap. xiv. vol. i. p. 266.
* * * "As society advances in true civilization, its supremacy
over all individual rights of property becomes more fully recognised :
and it is understood that we are but stewards of our possessions
with regard to the commonwealth of which we are members, as
woU as with respect to God."
History of Rome, chap. xiv. vol. i. p. iiM.
* * " In order to point out the restrictions which exist, and which
I contend are useless and prejudicial, I shall be obliged to refer
56 NOTES
shortly to the origin and history of the mortmain laws ; and I trust
I shall be able to show from that reference, that restrictions which
might be beneficial in the fifteenth, are altogether the reverse in the
nineteenth century. In England, I maintain, restrictions in mort-
main originated in the natural dread which the great feudal barons,
and each successive king, as the great landowner in the kingdom,
entertained of the growing power and wealth of the monastic body :
they were imposed, not from any political-economic notion that il
was unwise to tie up land in perpetuity, but because, as is invariably
alleged in the preamble of those acts, such alienations to religious
bodies deprived the lords of the advantages of tenure, and weakened
tlie military defences of the country. Take the first and most im-
portant of those acts, the 9th of Henry III. ; it was confined in
terms to the regular clergy, and merely restrained the tenants of
other lords from transferring their tenure by a fictitious process to
religious houses. And so far am I from saying that this law, or
the laws passed in the reign of Edward I. and subsequent reigns,
were uncalled for, that I look on it as a matter of deep regret that
the monastic institutions in those ages were not still more stringently
supervised and guarded against, so that their wholesale and fatal
destruction at the Reformation might have been averted. But I
contend that restrictions which were useful then, are useful no
longer. What reasonable ground of fear is there now of a fictitious
title being set up by religious houses to lands which donors wish to
grant to them ! What reason is there now to apprehend detriment
to the lords or danger to the state, from tenants setting up crosses
in their fields in order to avoid performing their proper military
service 1 I think it so obvious, that no argument in favor of mort-
main laws can be drawn from enactments passed previous to the
Reformation, from a state of society ecclesiastically and politically
so different from our own, that I shall not weary the House by any
farther consideration of them."
Lord John Manners^ Speech on the Laws of Mortmmn,
in the House of Commons, \ug. 1, 1813.
Note 6. — Page 40.
• * * " Photius, who was patriarch of Constantinople in the latter
half of the ninth century, has left a sort of catalogue raisonne, oi
TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 57
tntlier an abstract, of the various books which he was in the habil
of reading. In this work, which he called his library, there are
preserved abridgments of many books which would otherwise have
been altogether lost to us. * * * * So capricious is the chance
which has preserved some portions of ancient history from oblivion;
while it has utterly destroyed all record of others. But Photius's
library, compiled in the ninth century, shows what treasures of
Greek literature were then existing at Constantinople, which in the
course of the six following centuries perished irrecoverably. In
this respect the French and Venetian conquest in the thirteenth
century was far more destructive than the Turkish conquest in the
fifteenth."
History of Rome, eh. xxxv. vol. ii. p. 408, note.
Note 7. — Page 4:2.
* * * La colonic Saxonne " recevait des Bretons, scs botes,
toutcs les choses nccessaires k la vie ; plusieurs fois elle combattii
vaillamment et fid^lement pour eux, et leva centre les Pictes et less
Scots son etendard oil etait peint un cheval blanc, esp6ce d'embleme
conforme au nom de ses deux chefs," Ilenghist et Ilorsa.*
Thierry, Hist, dc la Conquite de V Angleterre, liv. ler, p. 44.
Note 8.— Page 43.
" We can trace with great distinctness the period at which the
Kelts became familiarly known to the Greeks. Herodotus only
knew of them from the Phoenician navigators : Thucydides does
not name them at all : Xenophon only notices them as forming part
of the auxiliary force sent by Dionysius to the aid of Lacedeemon.
Isocrates makes no mention of them. But immediately afterwards
their incursions into central and southern Italy, on the one hand,
and into the countries between the Danube and Macedonia on the
other, had made them objects of general interest and curiosit}"^ ; and
Aristotle notices several points in their habits and character, in dif-
ferent parts of his philosophical works."
History of Rome, vol. i. p. 491, note.
• ' L'orthograpliic sjixonne est IIeit;^ist. Ilcngist signific un SUilon, et Att*, ul
knu, un cheval.'
58 NOTES
In the fourth century before the Christian era, " the Kelts ot
Gauls broke through the thin screen which had hitherto concealed
them from sight, and began for the first time to take their part in
the great drama of the nations. For nearly two hundred yeara
they continued to fill Europe and Asia with the terror of their
name : but it was a passing tempest, and if useful at all, it was use-
ful only to destroy. The Gauls could communicate no essential
points of human character in which other races might be deficient ;
they could neither improve the intellectual state of mankind, nor ita
social and political relations. When, therefore, they had done their
appointed work of havoc, they were doomed to be themselves ex-
tirpated, or to be lost amidst nations of greater creative and construc-
tive power ; nor is there any race which has left fewer traces of
itself in the character and institutions of modern civilization."
History of Rome, vol. i. chap. xxii. p. 499
Note 9. — Page 44.
The Saxons, Danes, and Normans, by whom England was suc-
cessively invaded, were " all originally of the same race, but so
altered by their various fortunes, that the Danish invaders had no
national sympathy with the Anglo-Saxons of Alfred and Ethelred ;
and the Normans, having changed their language as well as their
habits, were regarded both by Saxons and Danes as not only a dif-
ferent nation, but actually a different race. The historians of Den-
mark speak of the Norman conquerors of England as a people of
Roman or Latin race, and deplore the conquest as a triumph of the
Roman blood and language over the Teutonic."
Arnold's Thuri/dides, vol. ii. p. 55, note
Note 10. — Page 43.
• * * (Rome) " Of earthly sights rphov alTb — Athens and Jerusalem
are the other two — the three people of God's election, two for things
temporal, and one for things eternal. Yet even in the things eter-
nal thev were allowed to minister. Greek cultivation and Roman
polity prepared men for Christianity. * * "
Life and Correspondence, Appendix C, No. ix. 6
TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 59
Note 11. — Page 45.
• * • " The river itself (the Rhine) was the frontier of the (RoiT.an)
tfnpire — the limit as it were of two worlds, that of Roman laws and
customs, and that of German. Far L-efore us lay the land of our
Saxon and Teutonic forefathers — the land uncorrupted by Roman
or any other mixture ; the birth-place of the most moral races of
men that the world has yet seen — of the soundest laws — the least
violent passions, and the fairest dome.stic and civil virtues. I
thought of that memorable* defeat of Varus and his three legions,
which forever confined the Romans to the western side of the
Rhine, and preserved the Teutonic nation — the regenerating ele
ment in modern Europe — safe and free."
Life and Correspondence, Appendix C, No. iii. 1.
Note 12.— Page 46.
In his edition of Thucydides, Dr. Arnold has taken another vie v
of the divisions of history, and lays great stress upon what he re-
gards as " a more sensible, a more philosophical division of history
than that, which is commonly adopted, of ancient and modern."
" We shall see," he adds, " that there is in fact an ancient and a
modern period in the history of every people ; the ancient differing,
and the modern in many essential points agreeing, with that in
which we now live. Thus, the largest portion of that history which
we commonly call ancient is practically modern, as it describes
society in a stage analogous to that in which it now is ; while, on
the other hand, much of what is called modern history is practically
ancient, as it relates to a state of things which has passed away.
Thucydides and Xenophon, the orators of Athens, and the philoso-
phers, speak a wisdom more applicable to us politically than the
wisdom of even our own countrymen who lived in the middle ages ;
and their position, both intellectual and political, more nearly re-
sembled ou- own."
Essay on the Progress of Socictij, Appendix i. vol. i. of Thucydides.
* " This, nn.l tlie iloCont of the Moors by Charles Martcl, he used to rauk as the tw«
a»ost iinportaiil battles in the world."
60 NOTES
The subject is also referred to in the preface to vol. iii. as fol-
lows : " In conclusion, I must beg to repeat what I have said before,
that the period to which the work of Thucydides refers belong?
properly to modern and not to ancient history ; and it is this cir-
cumstance, over and above the great ability of the historian himself,
which makes it so peculiarly deservinjr of our study. The state of
Greece from Pericles to Alexander, fully described to us as it is in
the works of the great contemporary historians, poets, orators, and
philosophers, affords a political lesson perliaps more applicable to
our own times, if taken all together, than a: y other portion of his-
tory which can be named anterior to the e ghteenth century.
Where Thucydides, in his reflections on the bloody dissensions at
Corcyra, notices the decay and extinction of the simplicity of old
times, he marks the great transition from ancient history to modern,
the transition from an age of feeling to one of reflection, from a
period of ignorance and credulity to one of inquiry and scepticism.
Now such a transition took place in part in the sixteenth century ;
the period of the Reformation, when compared with the ages pre-
ceding it, was undoubtedly one of inquiry and reflection. But still
it was an age of strong feeling and of intense belief; the human
mind cleared a space for itself vigorously within a certain circle ;
but except in individual cases, and even those scarcely avowed,
there were still acknowledged limits of authority, which inquiry
had not yet ventured to question. The period of Roman civiliza-
tion from the times of the Gracchi to those of the Antonines, was
in this respect far more completely modern ; and accordingly thia
is one of the periods of history which we should do well to study
most carefully. But unfortunately our information respecting it is
much scantier than in the case of the corresponding portion of
Greek history ; the writers, generally speaking, are greatly inferior ;
and in freedom of inquiry no greater range was or could be taken
than that which the mind of Greece had reached already. And in
point of political experience, we are even at this hour scarcely on
a level with the statesmen of the age of Alexander. Mere lapsn
of years confers here no increase of knowledge ; four thousand
years have furnished tlie Asiatic with scarcely any thing that de-
Berves the name of political experience ; two thousand years since
the fall of Carthage huve furnished the African with absolutely
TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 61
hothing. Even in Europe and in America, it would not be easy nuv
to collect such a treasure of experience as the constitutions of a hun-
dred and fifty-three commonwealths along the various coasts of the
Mediterranean afforded to Aristotle. There he might study the in-
stitutions of various races derived from various sources : every
possible variety of external position, of national character, of posi-
tive law ; agricultural states and commercial, military powers and
maritime, wealthy countries and poor ones, monarchies, aristocracies,
and democracies, with every imaginable form and combiration of
each and all ; states overpeopled and underpeopled, old and new, in
every circumstance of advance, maturity, and decline. So rich was
the experience which Aristotle enjoyed, but which to us is only at-
tainable mediately and imperfectly through his other writings ;
his own record of all these commonwealths, as well as all other
information concerning the greatest part of them, having unhappily
perished. Nor was the moral experience of the age of Greek
civilization less complete. By moral experience I mean an ac-
quaintance with the whole compass of those questions which relate
(o the metaphysical analysis of man's nature and laculties, and to
the practical object of his being. This was derived from the strong
critical and inquiring spirit of the Greek sophists and philosophers,
and from the unbounded freedom which they enjoyed. In mere
metaphysical research the schoolmen were indefatigable and bold.
I)ut in moral questions there was an authority which restrained
them : among Christians, the notions of duty and of virtue must be
assumed as beyond dispute. But not the wildest extravagance of
atheistic wickedness in modern times can go farther than the
sophists of Greece went before them ; whatever audacity can dare
and subtilty contrive to make the words ' good' and ' evil' change
their meaning, has been already tried in the days of Plato, and by
liis eloquence, and wisdom, and faith unshaken, has been put to
shame. Thus it is that, while the advance of civilization destroys
much that is noble, and throws over the mass of human society an
atmosphere somewhat dull and hard ; yet it is only by its peculiar
trials, no less than by its positive advantages, that the utmost virtue
of human nature can be matured; and those who vainly lament that
progress cf earthly things which, whether good or evil, is certainly
inevitable may be consoled by the thought that its sure tendency is
62 NOTES
to confirm and purify the virtue of the good : and thi.1 to us, holding
in our hands, not the wisdom of Plato only, but also a treasure of
wisdom and of comfort which to Plato was denied, the utmost
activity of the human mind may be viewed without apprehension,
in the confidence that we possess a charm to deprive it of its evil,
and to make it minister for ourselves certainly, and through us, if
we use it rightly, for the world in general, to the more perfect tri-
umph of good.
" I linger round a subject which nothing could tempt me to quit
but the consciousness of treating it too unworthily. What is mis-
called ancient history, the really modern history of the civilization
of Greece and Rome, has for years interested me so deeply, that it
is painful to feel myself after all so unable to paint it fully. Of the
manifold imperfections of this edition of Thucydides none can be
more aware than I am ; but in the present state of knowledge these
will be soon corrected and supplied by others ; and I will at least
hope that these volumes may encourage a spirit of research into
history, and may in some measure assist in directing it ; that thev
may contribute to the conviction that history is to be studied as a
whole, and according to its philosophical divisions, not such as are
merely geographical and chronological ; that the history of Greece
and of Rome is not an idle inquiry about remote ages and forgotten
institutions, but a living picture of things present, fitted not so much
for the curiosity of the scholar, as for the instruction of the states-
man and the citizen.
" January, 1835 "
Note 13.— Page 49.
* * * " Hannibal was arrived in Italy, but with a force so weakened
by its losses in men and horses, and by the exhausted state of the
survivors, that he might seem to have accomplished his great march
in vain. According to his own statement, which there is no reason
to doubt, he brought out of the Alpine valleys no more than twelve
thousand African and eight thousand Spanish infantry, with six
thousand cavalry ; so that his march from the Pyrenees to the
plains of northern Italy must have cost him thirty-three thousand
men ; an enormous loss, which proves how severely the army must
TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 63
fcavo suffered from the privations of the inarch, and the severity
of the Alpine climate ; for not half of these thirty-three thousand
men can have fallen in battle."
History of Rome, chap, xliii. vol. iii. p, 91
* * " Such is the story of the earliest recorded passage of the
Alps by civilized men, the earliest and the most memorable. Ac-
customed as we are, since the completion of the great Alpine roads
in the present century, to regard the crossing of the Alps as an
easy summer excursion, we can even less than our fathers conceive
the difficulties of Hannibal's march, and the enormous sacrifices by
which it was accomplished. lie himself declared that he had lost
above thirty thousand men since he had crossed the Pyrenees, and
that the remnant of his army, when he reached the plains of Italy,
amounted to no more than twenty thousand foot and six thousand
horsemen : nor does Polybius seem to suspect any exaggeration in
the statement. Yet eleven years afterwards Ilasdrubal crossed
the Alps in his brother's track without sustaining any loss de-
serving of notice, and ' a few accidents' are all that occurred in
the most memorable passage of modern times, that of Napoleon
over the great St. Bernard, (' On n'cutque pcu d'accidens.' Napole-
on's Memoirs, i. 261.) It is evident that Hannibal could have found
nothing deserving the name of a road, no bridges over the rivers,
torrents, and gorges, nothing but mere mountain paths, liable to be
destroyed by the first avalanche or landslip, and which the barbarians
neither could nor cared to repair, but on the destruction of which
they looked out for another line, such as for tlieir purposes of com-
munication it was not difficult to find."
History of Rome, vol. iii. p. 480, note.
Note 14. — Page 50.
In connection with this lecture there should be read the account
of Dr. Arnold's character as a student and writer of history, ^iven
in Mr. Stanley's excellent biography of him. Appendix No. 1 of
ihis valume will be found to contain a selection from it.
In Appendix No. 2, I have selected from his description of
Rugby School' some of his opinions upon historical instruction.
APPENDIX.
I HAVE alluded in my Inaugural Lecture to authorities
deservinw of all respect which maintain the doctrine of
Warburton, that " the object of political society is the pre-
servation of body and goods." I alluded particularly to the
Archbishop of Dublin, and to the author of a Review of
Mr. Gladstone's book, " The State in its Relations with the
Church," in the 139th number of the Edinburgh Review.
It is due to such opponents not to pass by their arguments
unnoticed ; it is due to them, and still more to myself, lest 1
should be suspected of leaving them unanswered because I
could not answer them.
It appears to me that the Reviewer is led to maintain
Warburton's doctrine, chiefly in consequence of certain
practical difficulties which seem to result from the doctrine
opposed to it. He does not wish to restrict the state from
reiiardino[ religious and moral ends : but fearing that ita
regard for them will lead to practical mischief, he will only
allow it to consider them in the second place, so far, that is,
as they do not interfere with its primary object, the pro-
tection of persons and property. The Warburtonian theory
appears not to be the natural conclusion of inquiries into the
object of governments, but an ingenious device to enable us
to escape from some difficulties which we know not how tc
deal with. If the opposite theory can be freed from these
difficulties, it may be believed that the Reviewer would
gladly sacrifice the theory of Warburton.
APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 65
I regard the theory of government, maintained in my
Lecture, to be a theory which we can in practice only par-
tially realize. This I quite allow, at least with regard either
to the present, or to any future, which we can as yet ven-
ture to anticipate. It is a theory which, nowhere perfectly
realized, is jrealized imperfectly in very different degrees in
different times and countries. It must not be forced upon a
state of things not ripe for it, and therefore its most zealous
advocates must often be content to tolerate violations of it
more or less flagrant. All this is true ; but yet I believe it
to be the true theory of government, and that by acknow-
ledging it to be so, and keeping it therefore always in sight,
we may be able at last to approach indefinitely near to it.
The moral character of government seems to follow ne-
cessarily from its sovereign power ; this is the simple ground
of what I will venture to call the moral theory of its objects.
For as in each individual man there is a higher object than
the preservation of his body and goods, so if he be subjected
in the last resort to a power incapable of appreciating this
higher object, his social or political relations, instead of being
the perfection of his being, must be its corruption ; the voice
of law can only agree accidentally with that of his con-
science, and yet on this voice of law his life and death are
to depend; for its sovereignty over him must be, by the na-
ture of the case, absolute.
The Reviewer's distinction between primary and second-
ary ends, and his estimate of physical ends as primary and
moral as secondary, may apply perfectly well to any society,
except that which is sovereign over all human life ; because
so long as this sovereign society preserves the due order of
objects, postponing the physical to the moral, other societies
may safely in their subordinate sphere reverse it, the check
upon them being always at hand ; the confession theoreti-
cally, and the care practically, that the physical end shall
66 APPENUIX TO
take precedence of the moral only at certain times and in
certain instances, but that the rule of life is the other way.
And again, that singleness of object which the Reviewer
considers so great an excellence, " every contrivance of hu-
man wisdom being likely to answer its end best when it is
constructed with a single view to that end," belongs it i&
true to subordinate societies or contrivances, but ceases to
exist as we ascend from the subordinate to the supreme
Tills is the exact difference between teaching and education ;
a teacher, whether it be of Latin and Greek, or of Frencl>
and German, or of geography and history, or of drawing, oi
of gymnastics, has nothing to think of beyond his own imme-
diate subject J it is not his concern if his pupil's tastes and
abilities are more adapted to other studies, if that particular
knowledge which he is communicating is claiming a portion
of time more than in accordance with its value. He has one
single object, to teach his own science effectually. But he
who educates must take a higher view, and pursue an end
accordingly far more complicated. He must adjust the re-
spective claims of bodily and mental exercise, of different
kinds of intellectual labour ; — he must consider every part
of his pupil's nature, physical, intellectual, and moral ; re ■
gaiding the cultivation of the last, however, as paramount to
that of either of the others. (1) Now, according to the Re-
viewer's theory, the state is like the subordinate teacher ,
according to mine it is like the educator, and for this very
reason, because its part cannot be subordinate ; if you make
the state no more than a particular teacher, we must look foi
the educator elsewhere ; for the sovereign authority over us
must be like the educator, it must regulate our particular
lessons, and determine that wc shall study most what is of
most value.
But I believe that the moral theory of the objects of a
etute, expressed as I have here expressed it, would in itself
IN\UGURAL LECTURE. 67
never have been disputed. It is considered to be objection-
able and leading to great practical mischief, when stated
somewhat differently ; when it is said, that the great object
of a state is to promote and propagate religious truth ; a
statement which yet appears to be identical, or nearly so,
with the moral theory ; so that if it be false, the moral theory
is thought to be overturned with it. But it has always ap-
peared to me that here precisely we find the great confusions
of the whole question ; and that the substitution of the term
" religious truth" in the place of " man's highest perfection"
has given birth to the great difficulties of the case. For by
" religious truth" we immediately understand certain dog-
matical propositions on matters more or less connected with
religion ; these we connect with a certain creed and a cer-
tain sect or church, and then the theory comes to be, that the
great object of a state is to uphold some one particular
church, conceived to be the true one, and to discountenance
all who are not members of it ; a form in which I do not
wonder that the moral theory should be regarded as most
objectionable.
All societies of men, whether we call them states or
churches, should make their bond to consist in a common
object and a common practice, rather than in a common be-
lief; in other words, their end should be good rather than
truth. We may consent to act together, but we cannot con-
sent to believe together ; many motives may persuade us to
the one ; we may like the object, or we may like our com-
pany, or we may think it safest to join them, or most conve-
nient, and any one of these motives is quite sufficient to induce
a unity of action, action being a thing in our own power.
But no motives can persuade us to believe together ; we may
wish a statement to be true, we may admire those who be-
lieve it, we may find it very inconvenient not to believe it ;
all this helps us nothing ; unless our own mind is freely con.
G8 APPENDIX TO
vincE,d that the statement or doctrine be true, we cannot by
possibility believe it. That union in action will in the end
lead very often to union of belief is most true ; but we cannot
ensure its doing so; and the social bond cannot directly re-
quire for its perfectness more than union of action. It cannot
properly require more than it is in the power of «nen to give j
and men can submit their actions to a common law at theii
own choice, but their internal convictions they cannot.
Such a union of action appears historically to have been
the original bond of the Christian church. Whoever was
willing to receive Christ as his master, to join His people,
and to walk according to their rules, he was admitted to the
Christian society. We know that in the earliest church
there existed the strangest varieties of belief, some Christians
not even believing that there would be a resurrection of the
dead. Of course it was not intended that such varieties
should be perpetual ; a closer union of belief was gradually
effected : but the point to observe, is that the union of belief
grew out of the union of action : it was the result of belong,
ing to the society rather than a previous condition required
for belonging to it. And it is true farther, that all union of
action implies in one sense a union of belief; that is, they
who aofree to do a certain thing must believe that in some
way or other, either as a positive good or as the lesser evil, it
is desirable for them to do it. But belief in the desirableness
of an act differs greatly from belief in the truth of a propo-
sition ; even fear may give unity of action, and such unity
of belief as is implied by it : a soldier is threatened with
death if he does not fight, and so believing that to fight is
now desirable for him, as a less evil than certain death, he
stands his ground and fights accordingly. But fear, though
it may make us wish with all our hearts that we could be-
lieve the truth of a proposition, yet cannot enable or compel
U3 to believe it.
INAUGURAL LECTURE 69
Now tlie state aiming at tiie highest perfection of its mem-
bers, can require them to conform their conduct to a certain
law ; and it may exclude from its benefits those who dispute
this law's authority. Nor does it in the least matter whether
the law so enforced be of the state's own invention, or be
borrowed from some other nation, as many countries have
adopted the Roman law ; or be received not from any human
author at all, but from God. A state may as justly declare
the New Testament to be its law, as it may choose the insti-
tutes and code of Justinian. In this manner the law of
Christ's church may be made its law ; and all the institutions
which this law enjoins, whether in ritual or discipline, may
be adopted as national institutions just as legitimately as any
institutions of mere human origin.
The question then which is sometimes asked so indig-
nantly, — Is the government to impose its religion upon the
people ? may be answered by asking again, — Is the govern-
ment to impose its own laws upon the people ? We speak
of the government as distinct from the people, without there-
by implying that it is in opposition to the people. In a cor-
rupt state the government and people are wholly at variance ;
in a perfect state they would be wholly one ; in ordinary
states they are one more or less imperfectly. We need not
be afraid to say, that in a perfect state the law of the gov-
ernment would be the law of the people, the law of their
choice, the expression of their mind. In less perfect states
the law of the government is more or less the law of the
people, suiting them in the main if not entirely. If it be
wholly or in great part unwelcome to them, something in
that state is greatly wrong; and although I believe that
there are cases where a dictatorship is a good, and where
good laws may rightfully be imposed on a barbarian and un.
willing people ; yet, as the rule, there can be no doubt that
such a state of things is tyranny. When I speak theiefore
70 APPENDIX TO
of the government, I am speaking of it as expressing the
mmd and will of the nation ; and though a government may
not impose its own law, whether human or divine, upon an
adverse people ; yet a nation, acting through its government,
may certainly choose for itself such a law as it deems most
for its good.
And therefore when it lias been said that " these islands
do not belong to the king and parliament in the same man-
ner as the house or land of any individual belongs to the
owner," and that therefore a government may not settle the
religious law of a country as the master of a family may
settle the religious practices of his household ; this is true
only if we consider the king and parliament as not speaking
the voice of the nation, but their own opposed to that of the
nation. For the right of a nation over its own territory
must be at least as absolute as that of any individual over
his own house and land ; and it surely is not an absurdity to
suppose that the voice of government can ever be the voice
of the nation : although they unhappily too often differ, yet
surely they may conceivably, and very often do in practice,
completely agree.
The only question then is, how far the nation or society
rnav impose its law upon a number of dissentient individuals ;
what we have to do with, are the rights of the body in rela^
tion to those of the several members ; a grave question cer
tainly — I know of none more difficult ; but which exists iu
all its force, even if we abandon the moral theory of the
state altogether. For if we acknowledge the idea of a church,
ihe difficulty meets us no less ; the names of slate and church
rjake no diffi^rence in the matter ; we have still a body iin.
josing It's laws upon individuals ; if the state may not inter-
fere with an individual's religion, how can the church do it ?
for the difficulty is that the individual cannot and must not be
•vholly merged in the society ; he cannot yield all his con-
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 71
vicfions of truth and right to the convictions of other men :
he may sometimes be called upon to dissent from, and to dis-
obey, chief priests and doctors, bishops and presbyters, no
less than the secular authorities, as they are called, of em-
perors and kings, proconsuls and parliaments. Long before
Constantine interfered with his imperial power in the con-
cerns of the church, the question existed : conscience might
be lorded over, tastes and feelings rudely shocked, belief
claimed for that which to the mind of the individual appeared
certain error; the majority might tyrannize over the mi-
nority ; the society might interfere with the most sacred
rights of the individual.
Nor is it the state alone which, by imposing articles of
faith, is guilty of tempting men to hypocrisy ; a charge which
has been very strongly urged against the system of making
full citizenship depend on the profession of Christianity : nor
is it the state alone which docs more than merely instruct
and persuade, and which employs "secular coercion" in the
cause of the Gospel ; all which things have been said to be
" at variance with the true spirit of the Gospel," and to
" imply a sinful distrust, want of faith in Christ's wisdom, and
goodness, and power." The church has required obedience
and punished disobedience ; I will not appeal to St. Paul'a
expression of " delivering a man to Satan for the destruction
of the flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the day of the
Lord," because what is there meant is uncertain, and the
power claimed may be extraordinary ; but I maintain that
the sentence of excommunication, which has been held al-
ways to belong to the church, is to all intents and purposes a
secular coercion ; it goes much beyond instruction and per-
suasion, it is a punishment as completely as ever was the
ancient ccTifAia, or deprivation of political rights : [2) it inflicts
and is meant to inflict great inconvenience and great suflering,
acting most ceenly upon the noblest minds, but yet touching
72 APPENDIX TO
the meanest as effectually, to say the least, as the ancient
civil penalty of banishment.
Now accidentally excommunication may be a small pen-
alty, but in its own nature it is most grievous. It cuts a
man off from the kindness and society of his nearest and
dearest friends ; it divides him from those with whom alone
he can in the nature of things feel strong sympathy ; for
where can a Christian find such but among Christ's people,
and from these excommunication cuts him off. And con-
ceive the case of a country, geographically remote from other
countries, and inhabited only by Christians j what resource
would, under such circumstances, be left to an excommuni-
cated person ? and would not the temptation be extreme to
him to profess his belief in whatever the church taught, to
yield obedience to whatever it required, in order to be saved
from a life of loneliness and of infamy? Yet the power of
excommunicating for heretical opinions is one which the
church is supposed to hold lawfully, while the power of dis-
franchising for such opinions is called persecution, and a
making Christ's kingdom a kingdom of the world.
It is of some consequence to disentangle this confusion, be-
cause what I have called the moral theory of a state, is really
open to no objections but such as apply with equal force to
the theory of a church, and especially to the theory of a
national, and still more of a universal church. Wherever
there is centralization, there is danger of the parts of the
body being too much crippled in their individual action ; and
yet centralization is essential to their healthy activity no less
than to the perfection of the body. But if men run away
with the mistaken notion that liberty of conscience is threat-
ened only by a state religion, and not at all by a church re-
ligion, the danger is that they will abandon religion alto-
gether to what they call the church, that is, to the power of
a society far worse governed than most states, and likely to
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 73
lay far heavier burdens on individual conscience, because
the spirit dominant in it is narrower and more intolerant.
No doubt all societies, whether they are called states or
churches, arc bound to avoid tempting the consciences of in-
dividuals by overstraining the terms of citizenship or commu-
nion. And it is desirable, as I said before, to require a pro-
fession of obedience rather than of belief, because obedience
can and will often be readily rendered where belief would
be withheld. But as states require declarations of allegiance
to the sovereign, so they may require declarations of sub-
mission to the authority of a particular law. If a man
believes himself bound to refuse obedience to the law of
Christianity, or will not pledge himself to regard it as para-
mount in authority to any human legislation, he cannot prop-
erly be a member of a society which conceives itself bound
to regulate all its proceedings by this law, and cannot allow
any of its provisions to be regarded as revocable or alterable.
But no human power can presume to inquire into the degree
of a man's positive belief: the heretic was not properly he
who did not believe what the church taught, but he who wil-
fully withdrew himself from its society, refusing to conform
to its system, and setting up another system of his own.
1 know that it will be objected to this, that it is no other
than the system of the old philosophers, who upheld pagan-
ism as expedient, while they laughed at it in their hearts as
false. But he who makes such an objection must surely forget
the essential difference between paganism and Christianity,
Paganism, in the days of the philosophers, scarcely pretended
to rest on a foundation of historical truth ; no thinking man
believed in it, except as allegorically irue. But Christianity
Commen(ls hself to the minds of a va^t majority of thinking
men, as being true in fact no less than in doctrine ; they be-
lieve in it as literally true no less than spiritually. When I
speak then of a state requiring obedience to the Christian
7
74 APPENDIX TO
law, it means that the state, being the perfect church, should
do the church's work ; that is, that it should provide for the
Christian education of the young, and the Christian instruc-
tion of the old ; that it should, by public worship and by a
Christian discipline, endeavour, as much as may be, to realize
Christianity to all its people. Under such a system, the
teachers would speak because they believed, for Christian
teachers as a general rule do so, and their hearers would, in
like manner, learn to believe also. Farther, the evidence of
the Christian religion, in itself so unanswerable, would hi
confirmed by the manifest witness of the Christian church,
when possessing a real living constitution, and purified by an
efficient discipline ; so that the temptations to unbelief would
be continually lessened, and unbelief, in all human proba-
bility, would become continually of more rare occurrence.
And possibly the time might come when a rejection of Chris-
tianity would be so clearly a moral offence, that profane
writings would be as great a shock to all men's notions of
right and wrong as obscene writings are now, and the one
might be punished with no greater injury to liberty of con-
science than the other.
But this general hearty belief in Christianity is to be re-
garded by the Christian society, whether it be called church
or state, not as its starting point, but as its highest perfection.
To begin with a strict creed and no efficient Christian insti-
tutions, is the sure way to hypocrisy and unbelief; to begin
with the most general confession of faith, imposed, that is, as
a test of membership, but with vigorous Christian institutions,
is the way most likely to lead, not only to a real and general
belief, but also to a lively perception of the highest points of
Christian faith. In other words, intellectual objections to
Christianity should be tolerated, where they are combined
with moral obedience ; tolerated, because in this way they
are most surely removed ; whereas a corrupt or disorganized
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 76
church with a minute creed, encourages intellectual objec-
tions ; and if it proceeds to put them down by force, it does
often violate the right of conscience, punishing an unbelief
which its own evil has provoked, and, so far as human judg-
ment can see, has in a great measure justified.
I have endeavored to show that the favorite objections
against the state's concerning itself with religion, apply no
less to the theory of a church, the difficulty being to prevent
the society from controlling the individual mind too com-
jdetely, and from encouraging unbelief and hypocrisy by re-
quiring prematurely a declaration of belief from its members,
rather than a promise of obedience. It is hardly necessary
to observe, that the moral theory of a state is not open to the
objection commonly brought against our actual constitution,
namely, that parliament is not a fit body to legislate on mat-
ters of religion ; for the council of a really Christian state
would consist of Christians at once good and sensible, quite
as much as the council of a really Christian church ; and if
we take a nominally Christian state, or a nominally Christian
church, their councils will be equally unfit to legislate ; to
say nothing of the obvious answer, that the details of all
great legislative measures, whether ecclesiastical, or legal, or
military, may be safely left to professional knowledge and
experience, so long as there remains a higher power, not pi-o-
fessional, to give to them the sanction of law.
Finally, the moral theory of a state, which I believe to be
the foundation of political truth, agrees and matches, so to
speak, with the only true theory of a church. If the state
under any form, and in its highest state of perfection, can
only primarily take cognizance of physical ends ; then its
rulers can certainly never be the rulers of the church, and
the church must be governed by rulers of its own. Now the
notion of a priesthood, or of a divinely appointed succession
of church governors, does not indeed necessarily follow from
16 APPENDIX TO
this ; but at any rate it agrees marvellously with it : while,
on the other hand, if there be in the church no priesthood, and
no divinely ordered succession of governors, then it is ready
to become identified with the Christian state, and to adopt its
forms of eovernment ; and if the Christian state be a contra-
diction in terms, because the state must always prefer physi-
cal objects to moral, then the church has no resource but tc
imitate its forms as well as it can, although in a subordinate
society they must lose their own proper efficacy.
Now believing with the Archbishop of Dublin, that there
is in the Christian church neither priesthood nor divine suc-
cession of governors, and believing with Mr. Gladstone that
the state's highest objects are moral and not physical, I can-
not but wonder that these two truths are in each of their sys-
tems divorced from their proper mates. The church freed
from the notions of priesthood and apostolical succession, is
divested of all unchristian and tyrannical power; but craves
by reason of its subordinate condition the power of sovereign
fTovernment, that power which the forms of a free state can
alone supply healthfully. And the state having sovereign
power, and also, as Mr. Gladstone allows, having a moral
end paramount to all others, is at once fit to do the work of
the church perfectly, so soon as it becomes Christian ; nor
can it abandon its responsibility, and surrender its conscience
up into the hands of a ' priesthood, who have no knowledge
superior to its own, and who cannot exercise its sovereignty.
The Christian king, or council, or assembly, excludes the
interference of the priesthood ; the church without a priest-
hood, craves its Christian assembly, or council, or king.
Believing that the church has no divinely appointed suc-
cession of governors or form of government, and that its
actual governments, considering it as distinct from the state,
have been greatly inferior to the governments of well-ordered
knigdoms and commonwealths ; believing that the end and
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 77
object of a Christian kingdom or commonwealth is precisely
the same with that of a Christian clmrcli, and that the sepa-
ration of the two has led to the grievous corruption of both,
making the state worldly and profane, and the church formal,
superstitious, and idolatrous ; believing farther, that the state
cannot be perfect till it possess the wisdom of the church, nor
the church be perfect till it possess the power of the state ; that
the one has as it were the soul, and the other the j^rganized
body, each of which requires to be united with the other; I
would unite one half of the Archbishop of Dublin's theory
with one half of Mr. Gladstone's ; agreeing cordially with
Rlr. Gladstone in the moral theory of the state, and agreeing
as cordially with the archbishop in what I will venture to
call the Christian theory of the church, and deducing from
the two the conclusion that the perfect state and the perfect
church are identical.
In what has been said above, I have rather attempted to
answer objections and to remove misconceptions with regard
to the moral theory of a state, than to offer any positive proof
of that theory. It seems to me to be one of those truths
which in itself command general assent, and that the opposi-
tion to it is mostly an after-thought, originating solely in a
sense of the difficulties which it is supposed practically to in-
volve. And therefore to remove those difficulties, leaves the
theory with its own internal persuasiveness unimpaired, and
likely as such to be generally received. Something, how-
ever, in support of the theory itself has been offered in the
Inaugural Lecture ; and it may farther be proper to notice
here a little more in detail two elaborate attacks upon 't,
which have been made in the Archbishop of Dublin's " Ad-
ditional remarks on the Jews' Relief Bill," publislied in the
volume entitled, " Charges and other Tracts," printed in 1836 :
und in his work on the " Kingdom of Christ," printed in 1841.
In those works it is asserted and implied continually, thai
76 APPENDIX TO
religion is not within the province of the civil magistrate •
and that secular or legal coercion may not be employed iti
the cause of the Gospel. Now the first of these statements
is surely not a thing to be taken for granted ; and whether it
be right or wrong, it is certain that such a doctrine is con-
demned by the almost unanimous consent of all writers on
government, whether heathen or Christian, down to the
eighteenth century ; and in later times, to name no others,
by Burke* and Coleridge. Grotius, no mean authority surely
on points of law and government, has an express work, " De
imperio summarum Potestatum circa sacra ;" in which he
uses nearly the same argument that I have adopted in my
Inaugural Lecture : namely, that the sovereignty of the state
makes it necessarily embrace all points of human life and
conduct. And he says, " Si quis dixerit actiones esse diver-
sas, alias puta judiciales, alias militares, alias ecclesiasticas,
ac proinde hujus diversitatis respectu posse ipsum summum
imperium in plures dividi, sequitur ex ejus sententia, ut
eodem tempore idem homo ab hoc ire jussus ad forum, ab
illo ad castra, ab illo rursus in templum, his omnibus parere
teneatur, quod est impossibile." Grotius, Opera Theol. torn.
iv. (iii.) p. 204, ed. Londin. 1679. Nay, it is allowed by
those who object to the moral theory of a state, that Christian
legislators did well iz. forcibly suppressing gladiatorial shows
and impure rites, " as being immoral and pernicious ao-
* " An alliance between church and state in a Christian conimonwealth, is,
in my opinion, an idle and a fanciful speculation. An alUance is between two
things that are in their nature distinct and independent, such as betw een two
sovereign states. But in a Christian commonwealth, the church and the stat"
are one and the same thing, being different integral parts of the same w hole
**** Religion is so far, in my opinion, from being out of the province or duty ol
a Christian magistrate, that it is, and it ought to be, not only his care, but the
principal thing in his care ; because it is one of the great bonds of liimian soci-
ety, and its object tiie supreme good, the ultimate end and object of man him-
self." Speech on the Unitarian Petition, 1793. Burke's Works, vol. x. p. «
cd. 1816.
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 79
lions ;" but if the legislator has any thing to do with morality,
the whole question is conceded ; for morality is surely not
another name for expediency, or what is advantageous for
body and goods ; yet if it be not, and a legislator may pro-
hibit any practice because it is wicked, then he regards
moral ends, and his care is directed towards man's highest
happiness, and to the putting down his greatest misery, moral
evil. Nor in fact docs it appear how, on other than purely
moral considerations, a state is justified in making certain
abominations penal ; such acts involving in them no violence
or fraud upon persons or property, which, according to War-
burton, are the only objects of a state's care.
The words ''secular" and "temporal" appear to me to be
used by the adversaries of the moral theory of a state with
some confusion. (3) Every thing done on earth is secular
and temporal ; and in this sense no society, whether it be
called church or state, can have for its direct objects any other
than such as are secular and temporal. The object of the
church is not to raise men to heaven, but to make them fit for
heaven ; but this is a work done in time and in the world,
and completed there ; nor does it differ from what it would be
if there were no future life at all ; our duties to God and man
would be just the same whether we were to exist for seventy
years or for forever, although our hope and encouragement
would be infinitely difTerent. The words " temporal" and
" secular" have therefore no place in this question, unless we
believe that the God of this world is really and truly not the God
of the next; and that "temporal" things therefore are subject
to a different government from things eternal. And so with
the term "secular coercion:" it is manifest that no coercion
can be applied to any man in this life without affecting his
present well-being or enjoyment : excommunication is a
''secular coercion" as much as imprisonment; it inflicts a
present harm, it makes a man's life less happy than it would
80 APPENDIX TO
be otherwise. It is, in fact, one of the severest of earthly
punishments ; for it is very well to talk of it as the natural
act of a society against those who will not comply with its
rules, and that it involves no injiiry, because a man has only
to leave a society if he does not like it. But that society
may be one to which it is the pride and pleasure of his life
to belong ; and if the majority form rules which he finds very
irksome, and then expel him for not complying with them,
he sustains, I will not say an injury, but a hurt and loss;
he is put out of a society which he earnestly wished to belong
to, and which comprehends, it may be, every respectable
person in his neighbourhood. He has a strong temptation to
comply even against his conscience, rather than incur such
a penalty ; and when the society is the church of God, to live
out of which would be to many minds intolerable, is it true
that exclusion from that society is no temporal punishment
or coercion ?
But the argument against which I am contending relies
mainly on our Lord's declaration to Pilate that " His king-
dom was not of this world ;" from which it is concluded
that Christians can never be justified in making the profes-
sion of obedience to Christ a condition of citizenship, for that
is to make Christ's kingdom a kingdom of the world. I have
been in the habit of understanding our Lord to mean that
His spiritual dominion did not of itself confer any earthly
authority ; that, therefore. His servants did not fight for him
against the Roman soldiers, as the servants of an earthly
king would be bound to defend their master against the ser-
vants of a foreign power. And so neither does the spiritual
superiority of Christians either exempt them from obedience
to the law of ordinary government, or authorize them to im-
pose their own law on other men by virtue of that superior-
ity. In other words, their religion gives them no political
rights whatever which they would not have had without it.
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 8j
But this meaning is not considered sufficient. Our Lord
meant to disclaim political power for His people, not only in
their actual circumstances, but in all other conceivable cir-
cumstances : not only as claimed by virtue of their religious
superiority, but as claimed according to the simplest and
most acknowledged principles of political right. If in days
to come, emperor, senate, and people, shall have become
Christians by the mere force of the truth and holiness of
Christianity, yet they must not think that they may exercise
their executive and legislative powei's to the hurt of any law
or institution now existing in tlie Roman heathen world.
Never may they dure to interfere with the Roman's peculiar
pride, the absolute dominion of the father over his sons; nor
with the state of slavery ; nor with the solemn gladiatorial
sacrifice, so grateful to the shades of the departed ; nor with
those festive rites of Flora, in which the people expressed their
homage to the vivifying and prolific powers of nature. To stop
one of these will be to make Christ's kingdom a kiniidom of
the world, which Clirist has forbidden. True it is that to us
these institutions appear immoral or unjust, because Chris-
tianity has taught us so to regard them ; but to a Roman they
were privileges, or powers, or pleasures, which he could ill
bear to abandon. And most strange is the statement that
" every tribe having been accustomed to establish, wherever
they were able, a monopoly of political rights for themselves,
keeping all other inhabitants of the same territory in a state
of tributary subjection, this was probably the very thing ap-
prehended by those who persecuted the early Christians as
disaffected persons." In the first place, "the notion of one
tribe establishing a monopoly of political rights," belonged
o a state of things which had long since perished, and was
the last thing which any man would apprehend in the Roman
•world in the days of Tiberius, when all distinctions of condi-
tion between the various races subject to the empire had
82 APPENDIX TO
either been done away long since by Alexander's conqueslSj
or were daily being destroyed by the gift of the Roman fran-
chise more and more widely. What the Romans dreaded
was simply a revolt of Judsea ; they heard that there was a
king of the Jews, and they naturally thought that he would
attempt to recover the ancient kingdom of his nation ; and to
this it was a clear and satisfactory answer, that the kingdom
spoken of was not an earthly kingdom, that no one claimed
as David's heir to expel Caesar as a foreign usurper. That
the heathen Romans persecuted the Christians from a fear
of losing their civil rights should Christians become the pre-
dominant party in the empire, is not only a statement with-
out evidence, but against it. We know from the Christian
apologists what were the grounds of the persecution ; we
know it farther from the well-known letters of Pliny and
Trajan. The Christians were punished for their resolute
non-conformity to the laws and customs of Rome, and as
men who, by their principles and lives, seemed to condemn
the common principles and practice of mankind. They were
punished not as men who might change the laws of Rome
hereafter, but as men who disobeyed them now.
I am content with that interpretation of our Lord's worda
which I believe has been generally given to them; that He
did not mean to call Himself king of the Jews in the common
sense of the term, so as to imply any opposition to the gov-
ernment of the Romans. And as a general deduction from
His words, I accept a very important truth which fanaticism
has often neglected — that moral and spiritual superiority does
not interfere witli the ordinary laws, of political right ; that
the children of God are not by virtue of that relation to
claim any dominion upon earth. Being perfectly convinced
that our Lord has not forbidden His people to establish His
kingdom., when they can do so without the breach of any
rule of common justice, I sliould hail as the perfect consum-
INAUGURAL LECTURE. 83
ma^ion of earthly things, the fulfilment of the word, that the
kingdoms of the world should become the kingdoms of God
and of Christ. And that kingdoms of the world not only
may, but are bound to provide for the highest welfare of
their people according to their knowledge, is a truth in which
philosophers and statesmen, all theory and all practice, have
agreed with wonderful unanimity down to the time of the
eighteenth century. In the eighteenth century, however,
and since, the old truth has not wanted illustrious advocates.
I have already named Burke and Coleridge in our own
country, nor am I aware that the opposite notion has ever
received any countenance from any one of the great men of
Germany, Up to this moment the weight of authority is be-
yond all comparison against it ; and it is for its advocates to
establish it, if they can, by some clear proofs. At present
there is no valid objection raised against the moral theory of
a state's objects; difficulties only are suggested as to points
of practical detail, some of them arising from the mixture of
extraneous and indefensible doctrines with the simple theory
itself, and others applicable indeed to that theory, but no less
applicable to any theory which can be given of a Christian
church, and to be avoided only by a system of complete in.
dividual independence, in matters relating to morals 8/W (o
religion. (4)
NOTES
APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE.
Note 1.— Page 66.
* * " A mere apprenticeship is not good education.
" Whatever system of tuition is solely adapted to enable the
pupil to play a certain part in the world's drama, whether for his
own earthly advantage, or for that of any other man, or conmiunity
of men, is a mere apprenticeship. It matters not whether the part
be high or low, the hero or the fool.
" A good education, on the other hand, looks primarily to the
right formation of the Man in man, and its final cause is the well-
being of the pupil, as he is a moral, responsible, and immortal
being.
" But, because to every man there is appointed a certain ministry
and service, a path prescribed of duty, a work to perform, and 3
race to run, an office in the economy of Providence, a good educa-
tion always provides a good apprenticeship ; for usefulness is a
necessary property of goodness.
" The moral culture of man and so much of intellectual culture
as is conducive thereto, is essential to education. Whatever of in-
tellectual culture is beyond this, should be regarded as pertaining
to apprenticeship, and should be apportioned to the demands of the
vocation for which that apprenticeship is designed to qualify.
" A man whose education is without apprenticeship, will be use-
less ; a man whose education is all apprenticeship, will be bad, and
therefore pernicious, and the more pernicious in proportion as hia
function is high, noble, or influential."
Hartley Coleridge's ' Lives of Distinguished Northerns,*
p .wg, note.
NOTES TO APPENDIX, ETC. 85
Note 2. — Page 71.
" Art/ifa was either total or partial. A man was totally de-
prived of his rights, both for himself and for his descendants, wher
ne was convicted of murder, theft, false witness, partiality as ar-
biter, violence offered to a magistrate, and so forth. This highesi
degree of aniita excluded the person affected by it from the forum,
and from all public assemblies ; from the public sacrifices, and froip
the law courts ; or rendered him liable to immediate imprisonment,
if he was found in any of these places. It was either temporary
or perpetual ; and either accompanied or not with confiscation of
property. Partial irmla only involved the forfeiture of some iew
rights, as for instance, the riglit of pleading in court. Public debt-
ors were suspended from their civic functions till they discharged
their debt to the state. People who had once become altogethei
iri/ioi were very seldom restored to their lost privileges. The
converse term to <iri/</a was hiuitla."
'Diet, of Greek and Roman Antiquities.^
Edited by Dr. W. Smith. London, 1842.
Note 3. — Page 79.
In the contemplation of carrying on his history of Rome, to what
he regarded as " its natural termination at the revival of the West-
ern empire, in the year 800 of the Christian aera, by the coronation
of Charlemagne at Rome," Dr. Arnold writes — " We shall then
have passed through the chaos which followed the destruction of
the old Western empire, and shall have seen its several elements,
combined with others which in that great convulsion had been
mixed with them, organized again into tlieir new form. Tliat new
form exhibited a marked and recognised division between the so-
called secular and spiritual powers, and thereby has maintained in
Christian Europe the imhappy distinction which necessarily pre-
vailed in the heathen empire between the church and the state ; a
distinction now so deeply seated in our laws, our language, and our
very notions, that nothing less than a miraculous interposition of
God's providence seems capable, within any definite time, of eradi-
cating it."
Hitit. of Rome, vol. I., Preface, viii
86 NOTES
Note 4.— Page 83.
* * " Law is more or less the expression of man's reason, aa
opposed to his interest and his passion. I do not say that it has
ever been the expression of pure reason ; it has not been so, for
man's best reason is net pure. Nor has it been often free from the
influence of interest, nor always from that of passion : there have
been unjust laws in abundance ; cruel and vindictive laws have not
been wanting. Law, in short, like every thing human, has been
greatly corrupted, but still it has never lost its character of good
altogether : there never, I suppose, has been an age or country in
which the laws, however bad, were not better than no law at all ;
they have ever preserved something of their essential excellence —
that they acknowledged the authority of right, and not of might.
Again, law has, and must have, along with this inherent respect
for right and justice, an immense power ; it is that which, in the
last resort, controls human life. It is, on the one hand, the source
of the highest honours and advantages which men can bestow on
men ; it awards, on the other hand, the extremity of outward evil
— poverty, dishonour, and death. Here, then, we have a mighty
power, necessary by the very condition of our nature ; clearly good
in its tendency, however corrupted, and therefore assuredly coming
from God, and swaying the whole frame of human society with su-
preme dominion. Such is law in itself; such is a kingdom of this
world. Now, then, conceive this law ... to become instinct and
inspired, as it were, by the spirit of Christ's gospel ; and it retains
all its sovereign power, all its necessity, all its original and inhe-
rent virtue ; it does but lose its corruptions ; it is not only the pure
expression of human reason, cleansed from interest and passion,
but the expression of a purer reason than man's. Law in a Chris-
tian country, so far as that country is really Christian, has, indeed,
lo use the magnificent language of Hooker, her seat in the bosom
of God ; and her voice, inasmuch as it breathes the spirit of divine
truth, is indeed the harmony of the world."
Arnold's Sermons, vol. iv , p. 444.
The following passage in Dr. Arnold's preface to the third vol-
TO APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. S"?
ume of his Thucydides, has a bearing on the opinions in the Ap-
pendix to the Inaugural Lecture :
'' There is another point not peculiarly connected with Thucy-
dides, except so far as he may be considered as the representative
of all Grecian history, which appears to me deserving of notice ;
that state of imperfect citizenship so common in Greece under tho
various names of itiroiKoi^ ncploiKot^ avvoiKot^ etc. This is a matter of
importance, as bearing upon some of the great and eternal princi-
ples of political science, and thus applying more or !ess to the
history of every age and nation.
" It seems to be assumed in modern times that the being born of
free parents within the territory of any particular state, and the
paying towards the support of its government, conveys a natural
claim to the rights of citizenship. In the ancient world, on tho
contrary, citizenship, unless specially conferred as a favour by
some definite law or charter, was derivable only from race. The
descendants of a foreigner remained foreigners to the end of time ;
the circumstance of their being born and bred in the country was
held to make no change in their condition ; community of place
could no more convert aliens into citizens than it could change do-
mestic animals into men. Nor did the paying of taxes confer
citizenship ; taxation was the price paid by a stranger for the lib-
erty of residing in a country not his own, and for the protection
aflbrded by its laws to his person and property ; but it w-as thought
to have no necessary connection with the franchise of a citizen, far
less with the right of legislating for the commonwealth.
" Citizenship was derived from race ; but distinctions of race were
not of that odious and fantastic character which they have borne in
modern times : they implied real differences often of the most im-
portant kind, religious and moral. Particular races worshipped
particular gods, and in a particular manner. But different gods
had different attributes, and the moral image thus presented to the
continual contemplation and veneration of the people could not but
produce some effect on the national character. According to the
attributes of the god was the nature of the hynms in which he was
celebrated : even the music varied ; and this alone, to a people of
such lively sensibilities as the Greeks, was held to be a powerful
moral engine ; wliilst the accompanying ceremonies of the worship
(5b NOTES
enforced with still greater effect the impression produced by the
hymns and music. Again, particular races had particular cus-
toms which affected the relations of domestic life and of public.
Amongst some polygamy was allowed, amongst others forbidden ;
some held irianticide to be an atrocious crime, others in certain
cases ordained it by law. Practices and professions regarded as
infamous by some, were freely tolerated or honoured amongst oth-
ers ; the laws of property and of inheritance were completely va-
rious. It is not then to be wondered at that Thucydides, when
speaking of a city founded jointly by lonians and Dorians, should
have thought it right to add ' that the prevailing institutions of the
place were the Ionian ;' for according as they were derived from
one or the other of the two races, the whole character of the peo-
ple would be different. And therefore the mixture of persons of
different race in the same commonwealth, unless one race had a
complete ascendency, tended to confuse all the relations of life,
and all men's notions of right and wrong ; or by compelling men to
tolerate, in so near a relation as that of fellow-citizens, differences
upon the main point of human life, led to a general carelessness
and scepticism, and encouraged the notion that right and wrong
have no real existence, but are the mere creatures of human
opinion.
" But the interests of ambition and avarice are ever impatient of
moral barriers. When a conquering prince or people had formed a
vast dominion out of a number of different nations, the several cus-
toms and religions of each were either to be extirpated or melted
into one mass, in which each learned to tolerate those of its neigh-
bours and to despise its own. And the same blending of races,
and consequent confusion and degeneracy of manners, was favoured
by commercial policy ; which, regarding men solely in the relation
of buyers and sellers, considered other points as comparatively un-
important, and in order to win customers would readily sacrifice oi
endanger the purity of moral and religious institutions. So that in
the ancient world, civilization, which grew chiefly out of conquest
or commerce, went almost hand in hand with demoralization.
" Now to those who think that political society was ordained for
higher purposes than those of mere police or of traffic, the princi-
ple of the ancient commonwealths in making agreement in religion
TO APPENDIX TO INAUGURAL LECTURE. 89
ind morals the test of citizenship, cannot but appear wise and good.
And yet the mixture of races is essential to the improvement of
mankind, and an exclusive attachment to national customs is in-
compatible with true liberality. How then was the problem to be
solved 1 how could civilization be attained without moral degene-
racy ■? how could a narrow-minded bigotry be escaped without fall-
ing into the worse evil of Epicurean indifference'? Christianity
has answered these questions most satisfactorily, by making reli-
gious and moral agreement independent of race or national cus-
toms ; by furnishing us with a sure criterion to distinguish between
what is essential and eternal, and what is indifferent, and temporal
or local : allowing, nay, commanding us to be with regard to every
thing of this latter kind in the highest degree tolerant, liberal, and
comprehensive ; while it gives to the former that only sanction to
which implicit reverence may safely and usefully be paid, not the
fond sanction of custom, or national prejudice, or human authority
of any kind whatever, but the sanction of the truth of God.
" That bond and test of citizenship then, which the ancient legis-
lators were compelled to seek in sameness of race, because thus
only could they avoid the worst of evils, a confusion and conse-
quent indifference in men's notions of right and wrong, is now fur-
nished to us in the profession of Christianity. lie who is a Chris-
tian, let his race be what it will, let his national customs be ever so
different from ours, is fitted to become our fellow-citizen ; for his
being a Christian implies that he retains such of his national cus-
toms only as are morally indifferent ; and for all such we ought to
feel the most perfect toleration. He who is not a Christian, though
his family may have lived for generations on the same soil with us,
though they may have bought and sold with us, though they may
have been protected by our laws, and paid* taxes in return for that
* " It is considered in our days that tliose who arc possessed of property in a coun-
try ought to be citizens in it : the ancient maxim was, that those who were citizens
ought to be possessed of properly. The difterencc involved in these two diflerent
views is most rcniarkalile."
In one of his letters also, Dr. Arnold remarks, "The correlative to taxation, in my
opinion, is not citizenship but protection. ... To confound tlie right of taking oneself
with the right of general legislation, is one of the Jacobinical confusions of later days,
arising from those low Warburtonian notions of the ends of political society."
Arnold's mind was so deeply imbued with Greek philosophy— especially that of hii.
90 NOTES TO APPENDIX, ETC.
Drotection, is yet essentially not a citizen but a sojourner ; and to
admit such a person to the rights of citizenship tends in principle
to the confusion of right and wrong, and lowers the objects of po-
litical society to such as are merely physical and external."
The reader, who desires to investigate the subject discussed in
the Appendix to the Inaugural Lecture, may consult, besides the
authorities referred to there, the following works : Coleridge's
' Constitution of Church and State according to the Idea of Each,''
Maurice's ' Kingdom of Christ,' and Derwent Coleridge's ' Scriptu-
ral Character of the English Church.'
chief favourite Aristotle, his feeling for whom was ever finding utterance in terms of
even affectionate and familiar endearment, th.it to understand him rightly, it is neces-
sary to bear in mind how much higher and more comprehensive a meaning there was
in the Greek 'jriiAtrtic^' than in our English term 'politics.' It has been well re-
marked by the writer of the article ' Civitas' in the 'Diet, of Greek and Roman An-
tiquities," that, " If we would picture to ourselves the true notion which the Greeks
embodied in the word jrrfXif, we must lay aside all modern ideas respecting the nature
and object of a state. With us practically, if not in theory, the essential object of a
state hardly embraces more than the protection of life and property. The Greeks, on
the other hand, had the most vivid conception of the state as a whole, every part of
which was to co-operate to some great end, to which all other duties were considered
u 8ub«dinate."
LECTURE I,
It will not, I trust, be deemed impertinent or affected, it'
a, the very outset of these Lectures I venture again to
request the indulgence of my hearers for the many deficien-
cies which will undoubtedly be found in them. I could not
enter on the duties of my office with tolerable cheerfulness,
if I might not confess how imperfectly I can hope to fulfil
them. And this is the more necessary, because I hope that
our standard of excellence in history will be continually
rising ; we shall be convinced, I trust, more and more, of
the vast amount of knowledge which the historical student
should aim at, and of the rare union of high qualifications
required in a perfect historian. Now just in proportion to
your sense of this, must be unavoidably your sense of the
defects of these Lectures ; because I must often dwell on the
value of a knowledge which I do not possess ; and must thus
lay open my own ignorance by the very course which I be-
lieve to be most beneficial to my hearers.
I would gladly consent, however, even to call your atten-
tion to my want of knowledge, because it is, I think, of such
great importance to all of us to have a lively consciousness
of the exact limits of our knowledge and our ignorance. A
keen sense of either implies, indeed, an equally keen sense
of the other. A bad geographer looks upon the map of a
known and of an unknown country with pretty nearly the
same eyes. The random line which expresses the form of a
coast not yet explored ; the streams suddenly stopping in
92 LECTURE I.
their course, or as suddenly beginning to be delineated, be-
cause their outlet or their sources are unknown; these convey
to the eye of an untaught person no sense of deficiency,
because the most complete survey of the most thoroughly
explored country gives him no sense of full information.
But he who knows how to value a good map, is painfully
aware of the defects of a bad one ; and he who feels these
defects, would also value the opposite excellencies. And
thus in all things, as our knowledge and ignorance are cu-
riously intermixed with one another, so it is most important
to keep the limits of each distinctly traced, that we may be
able confidently to make use of the one, while we endeavour
to remove or lessen the other.
One other remark of a different nature I would wish to
make also, before I enter upon my lectures. Considering
that the great questions on which men most widely differ from
each other, belong almost all to modern history, it seems
scarcely possible to avoid expressing opinions which some of
my hearers will think erroneous. Even if not expressed
they would probably be indicated, and I do not know how
this is to be avoided. Yet I shall be greatly disappointed if
at the close of these lectures, our feeling of agreement with
one another is not much stronger than our feeling of differ-
ence. You will not judge me so hardly as to suppose that i
am expressing a hope of proselytizing any one : my mean-
ing is very different. But I suppose that all calm inquiry
conducted amongst those who have their main principles of
judgment in common, leads, if not to an approximation of
views, yet at least to an increase of sympathy. And the
truths of historical science, which I certainly believe to be
very real and very important, are not exactly the same thing
with the opinions of any actual party.
I will now detain you no longer with any prefatory obser-
vations, but will proceed directly to our subject. I will sup-
LECTURE I. 93
pose then, if you please, the case of a member of this
university who has just taken his degree, and finding liimself
at leisure to enter now more fully into other than classical or
mathematical studies, proposes to apply himself to modern
liistory. We will suppose, moreover, that his actual know-
ledge of the subject goes no farther than what he has collect-
ed from any of the common popular compendiums. And
now our question is, in what manner he should be recom-
mended to proceed.
We must allow that the case is one of considerable per-
plexity. Hitherto in ancient profane history, his attention
has been confined almost exclusively to two countries : and
to a few great writers whose superior claims to attention are
indisputable. Nay, if he goes farther, and endeavours to
illustrate the regular historians from the other and miscella-
neous literature of the period, yet his work in most cases is
to be accomplished without any impossible exertion ; for
many periods indeed of ancient history, and these not the
least interesting, all our existing materials are so scanty that
it takes but little time to acquaint ourselves with them all,
and their information is not of a bulk to oppress any but the
very feeblest memory.
IIow overwhelming is the contrast when the student turns
to modern history ! Instead of two countries claiming his
attention, he finds several systems of countries, if I may so
speak, any one of which offers a wide field of inquiry. First
of all, there is the history of Europe ; then quite distinct from
this there is oriental history ; and thirdly, there is the history
of European colonies. But when we turn from the subjects
of inquiry to the sources of information, the difference is
greater still. Consider the long rows of folio volumes which
present themselves to our notice in the Bodleian, or in our
college libraries ; and think how many of these relate to
modern history. There is the Benedictine collection of the
94 LECTURE I.
early French historians, and Muratori's great collection of
the Italian historians of the middle ages : and these, vast aa
they are, relate only to two countries, and to particular
periods. What shall we say of the great collections of works
directly subsidiary to nistory, such as Rymer's Foedera, and
the various collections of treaties ; of bodies of laws, the
statutes at large for example for England only : of £uch
works as the publications of the Record Commission, or as
the Journals of the Houses of Parliament. Turning then to
lighter works, which contain some of the most precious mate-
rials for history, we find the countless volumes of the French
memoirs, magazines, newspapers, (it is enough to remind
you of the set of the Moniteurs in the Bodleian ;) correspond-
ence of eminent men printed or in MS., (the library at Besan^on
contains sixty volumes of the Letters of Granvella, Charles
the Fifth's great minister,) and lastly, the swarm of miscella-
neous pamphlets, which in these later days as we know are
in numbers numberless, but which in the seventeenth and
even in the sixteenth centuries were more numerous than we
sometimes are aware of. There is a collection of these in
Corpus library for example, of which I retain a very grateful
recollection for many hours of amusement which they used
to afford me. I might go on and extend my catalogue till it
far exceeded the length of the Homeric catalogue of the ships :
but I have mentioned quite enough for my purpose. We
may well conceive that amid this boundless wilderness of
historical materials, the student may be oppressed with a
sense of the hopelessness of all his efforts ; which way shall
he choose among so many ? what progress can he hope to
iiiake in a space so boundless ?
It is quite manifest that a choice must be made immedi-
ately. The English student, unless determined by particular
circumstances, will have no difficulty in seeing that European
history should be preferred to oriental or to o:)lonial ; and again,
LECTURE I. 95
In European history itself, that that of our own country, or of
France, or of Germany, or of Italy, has a peculiar claim on
his notice. Next, when he has fixed upon the country, he
has to determine the period which he will study, whether hf
will apply himself to any one of the three last centuries, or
to the middle agesj and if to these last, whether to their
earlier period or to their close. And here again, particular
circumstances or the taste of the student will of course in-
fluence his decision. It matters very little, I think, on which
his choice may happen to fall.
We will suppose then the choice to be made of some one
period, it should not be a very long one, whether bounded by
merely arbitrary limits, as any one })articular century, or by
such as constitute a natural beginning and end, as for ex-
ample the period in German history between the Reformation
and the peace of Westphalia. If the period fixed on be very
short, it may be made to include the history of two or three
countries ; but it would be best perhaps to select for our
principal subject one country only. And now with our work
limited sufficiently both as to time and as to space, it will
assume a more compassable shape : and we shall be inclined
to set about it vigorously.
In the first place then we should take, I think, some one
history as nearly contemporary as may bo, and written, to
speak generally, by a native historian. For instance, sup-
pose that our subject be France in the middle of the fifteenth
century, we should begin by reading the memoirs of Philip
de Comines. The reason of tliis rule is evident ; that it is
important to look at an age or country in its own point of
view ; which of course is best to be obtained from a native
and contemporary writer. Such a history is in fact a double
lesson : it gives us the actions and the mind of the actors at the
same time, telling us not only what was done, but with what
motives and in what spirit it was done. Again, the language
96 LECTURE 1.
of a native contemporary historian is the language of those
of whom he is writing ; in reading him we are in some sort
hearing them, and an impression of the style and peculiarities
of any man's language is an important help towards realizing
our notion of him altogether. I know not whether others
have been struck with this equally ; but for myself I have
seemed to gain a far more lively impression of what James
the First was, ever since I read those humorous scenes in the
Fortunes of Nigel which remind one so forcibly that he spoke
a broad Scotch dialect. (1)
If the period which we have chosen be one marked by im-
portant foreign wars, it will be desirable also to read another
contemporary history, written by a native of the other belli-
gerent power. The same war is regarded so differently by
the two parties engaged in it, that it is of importance to see it
in more than one point of view, not merely for the correction
of military details, but to make our general impressions and
our sympathies with either side more impartial. And in
contemporary histories of wars we have the passions and pre-
judices of both parties generally expressed with all their
freshness, even in cases where both nations, when passion has
gone to sleep, agree in passing the same judgment. Joan of
Arc is now a heroine to Englishmen no less than to French-
men : but in the fifteenth century she was looked upon by
Englishmen as a witch, while the French regarded her as a
messenger sent from heaven. (2)
And now the one or two general contemporary histories of
our period having put us in possession not only of the outline
and of some of the details of events, but also of the prevailing
tone of opinion and feeling, we next proceed to a process
which is indeed not a little laborious, and in many places
would be impracticable, from the difficulty of obtaining the
books required. But I am convinced that it is essential to
be gone through once, if we wish to learn the true method of
LECTURE I. 9T
listorical investigation : and if done once, for one period, the
benefit of it will be felt in all our future reading, because we
shall always know how to explore below the surface, when-
ever we wish to do so, and we sliall be able to estimate
rightly those popular histories which after all must be our
ordinary sources of information, except where we find it
needful to carry on our researches more deeply. And I am
addressing those who having the benefit of the libraries of
this place, can really carry into effect, if they will, such a
course of study as I am going to recommend. I cannot in-
deed too earnestly advise every one who is resident in the
university to seize this golden time for his own reading, whilst
he has on the one hand the riches of our libraries at his
command, and before the pressure of actual life has come
upon him, when the acquisition of knowledge is mostly out
of the question, and we must be content to live upon what we
have already gained. Many and many a time since I ceased
to be resident in Oxford, has the sense of your advantages
boon forced upon my mind ; for with the keenest love of his-
torical researches, want of books and want of time have con-
tinually thrown obstacles in my way ; and to this hour I
look back with the greatest gratitude to the libraries and
the comparative leisure of this place, as having enabled
nie to do far more than I should ever have been able to
effect elsewhere, and amidst the engagements of a pro-
fession.
I think therefore that here I may venture to recommend
what I believe to be the best method of historical reading;
for although even here there will be more or less impedi-
ments in the way of our carrying it out completely, still the
probability is that some may have both the will and the
power to do it; and even an approximation to it, and a re.
garding it as the standard whicli we should always be trying
to reach, will, I think, be found to be valuable.
98 LECTURE I.
To proceed therefore with our supposed student's course
of reading. Keeping the general history which he has been
reading as his text, and getting from it the skeleton, in a
manner, of the future figure, he must now break forth excur-
sively to the right and left, collecting richness and fulness of
knowledge from the most various sources. For example, we
will suppose that where his popular historian has mentioned
that an alliance was concluded between two powers, or a
treaty of peace agreed upon, he first of all resolves to consult
the actual documents themselves, as they are to be found in
some one of the great collections of European treaties, or if
they are connected with English history, in Rymer's Foedera.
By comparing the actual treaty with his historian's report of
its provisions, we get in the first place a critical process of
some value, inasmuch as the historian's accuracy is at once
tested : but there are other purposes answered besides. An
historian's report of a treaty is almost always an abridgment
of it ; minor articles will probably be omitted, and the rest
condensed, and stripped of all their formal language. But
our object now being to reproduce to ourselves, so far as is
possible, the very life of the period which we are studying,
minute particulars help us to do this ; nay, the very formal
enumeration of titles, and the specification of towns and dis-
tricts in their legal style, help to realize the time to us, if it
be only from their very particularity. Every common his-
tory records the substance of the treaty of Troyes, May, 1420,
By which the succession to the crown of France was given
to Henry the Fifth. But the treaty in itself, or the English
version of it which Henry sent over to England to be pro
claimed there, gives a far more lively impression of the tri-
umphant state of the great conqueror, and the utter weakness
of the poor French king, Charles the Sixth, in the ostentatious
care taken to provide for the recognition of his formal title
during his lifetime, while all real power is ceded to Henry,
LECTURE I. 9%
and provision is made f br the perpetual union hereafter of the
two kingdoms under his sole government.
I have named treaties as the first class of ofiicial instru-
ments to be consulted, because the mention of them occura
unavoidably in every history. Another class of documents,
certainly of no less importance, yet much less frequently re-
ferred to by popular historians, consists of statutes, ordi-
nances, proclamations, acts, or by whatever various names
the laws of each particular period happen to be designated.
That the Statute Book has not been more habitually referred
to by writers on English history, has always seemed to me
matter of surprise. Legislation has not perhaps been so
busy in every country as it has been with us, yet everywhere
and in every period it has done something : evils real or sup-
posed have always existed, which the supreme power in the
nation has endeavoured to remove by the provisions of law.
And under the name of laws I would include the acts of
councils, which form an important part of the history of Eu-
ropean nations during many centuries ; provincial councils,
as you are aware, having been held very frequently, and
iheir enactments relating to local and particular evils, so that
they illustrate history in a very lively manner. Now in
these and all the other laws of any given period, we find in
the first place from their particularity a great additional help
towards becoming familiar with the times in which they were
passed ; we learn tlie names of various officers, courts, and
processes; and these, when understood, (and I suppose always
the habit of reading nothing without taking pains to under-
stand it,) liolp us from their very number to realize tlie state
of things then existing; a lively notion of any object depend-
ing on our clearly seeing some of its parts, and the more we
people it, so to speak, with distinct images, tlie more it comes
to resemble the crowded world around us. But in additioD
to this benefit, which I am disposed to rate iu itself very
100 LECTURE I
highly, every tiling of the nature of law has a peculiar in
terest and value, because it is the expression of the deliberate
mind of the supreme government of society ; and as history,
as commonly written, records so much of the passionate and
unreflecting part of human nature, we are bound in fairness
to acquaint ourselves with its calmer and better part also.
And then if we find, as unhappily we often shall find, that
this calmer and better part was in itself neither good nor
wise ; that law, which should be the very voice of justice,
was on the other hand unequal, oppressive, insolent ; that the
deliberate mind of the ruling spirits of any age was sunk in
ignorance or perverted by wickedness, then we may feel sure
that with whatever bright spots to be found here and there,
the "eneral state of that age was evil.
1 am imprudent perhaps in leading you at the outset of our
historical studies into a region so forbidding ; the large vol-
umes of treaties and laws with which I have recommended
the student to become familiar, may seem enough to crush
the boldest spirit jf enterprise. There is an alchemy, how-
ever, which can change these apparently dull materials into
bright gold ; but I must not now anticipate the mention of it.
I will rather proceed to offer some relief to the student by in-
viting him next to turn to volumes of a very different charac-
ter. Some of the great men of an age have in all probability
left some memorials of their minds behind them, speeches, it
may be, or letters, or a journal ; or possibly works of a
deeper character, in which they have handled, expressly and
deliberately, some of the questions which most interested their
generation. Now if our former researches have enabled us
ty people our view of the past with many images of events,
iijstitutions. usages, titles, &c., to make up with some com-
pleteness what may be called the still life of the picture, wc
shall next be anxious to people it also with the images of its
great individual men, to change it as it were from a land.
LECTURE I. 101
scape or a view of buildings, to what may truly be called an
historical picture. Whoever has made himself famous by
his actions, or even by his rank or position in society, so that
his name is at once familiar to our ears, such a man's
writings have an interest for us even before we begin to read
them ; the instant that he gets up as it were to address us,
we are hushed into the deepest attention. These works give
us an insight not only into the spirit of an age, as exemplified
in the minds of its greatest men, but they multiply in some
sort the number of those with whom we are personally and
individually in sympathy ; they enable us to recognise
amidst the dimness of remote and uncongenial ages, the fea-
tures of friends and of brethren.
But the greatest, or at least the most active men of an age,
may have left but little behind them in writing ; memorials
of this kind, however precious, will often be but few. We
next then consider who those were who were eminent by their
writings only, who before they began to speak had no pecu-
liar claim to be heard, but who won and fixed attention by the
wisdom or eloquence of what they uttered. Or again, to take
a still lower step, there may have been men vvlio spoke only
to a limited audience, men of eminence merely in their own
profession or study, but who within their own precinct were
listened to, and exercised considerable influence. Yet once
acain, there is a still lower division of literature, there are
works neither of men great by their actions, nor of men
proved to be great by these very works themselves ; nor of
men, who though not great properly in any sense, were yet
within a certain circle respected and influential ; but works
written by common persons for common persons, works writ-
ten because the profession, or circumstances, or necessities
of their authors led them to write, second and third rate
works of theology, second and third rate political, or legal,
or philosopliical, or literary disquisitions, ordinary histories.
108 LECTURE 1
poetry of that class which is to a proverb worthless, novels
and tales which no man reads twice, and only an indiscrimi-
nate literary voracity would read once. Time gives even to
this mass of rubbish an accidental value ; what was in its
lifetime mere moss, becomes in the lapse of ages, after being
buried in its peat-bed, of some value as fuel ; it is capable of
yielding both light and heat. And so even the most worth
less pieces of the literature of a remote period, contain in
them both instruction and amusement. The historical student
should consult such of these as time has spared ; all the four
divisions of the literature of a period which I have mentioned,
should engage his attention, not all certainly in an equal de-
gree, but all are of importance towards that object which at
this part of his course he is especially pursuing ; the realizing
to himself, I mean, as vividly and as perfectly as possible, all
the varied aspects of the period which he is investigating.
I feel sure that whilst I have been reading the three or four
last pages, I have been drawing rather largely on your kind
readiness to put the best construction on my words which
they will possibly bear. But after all, you must I fear be
unable to acquit me of great extravagance, in recommending
the student to make himself acquainted with the whole litera-
ture of the period of which he wishes to learn the history. 1
trust, however, to clear myself of this imputation, by ex-
plaining in what manner so wide a range of reading is really
practicable. There is no greater confusion than exists in
many men's notions of deep and superficial reading. It is
often supposed, I believe, that deep reading consists in going
through many books from beginning to end, superficial read-
ing in looking only at parts of them. But depth and shal-
lowness have reference properly to our particular object : so
that the very same amount of reading may be superficial in
one sense, and deep in another. For example, I want to
know whether a peculiar mode of expression occurs i;i a
LECTURE I. 103
given writer ; an expression, we will say, supposed to have
come into existence only at a later period. Now with a view
to this object, any thing short of an almost complete perusal
of the writer's works from beginning to end is superficial :
because I cannot be in a condition to decide the question on
a partial hearing of the evidence ; and the evidence in this
case is not any given portion of the author's writings, but the
whole of them. Again, if I wish to know what a writer has
said on some one particular subject, and he has written an
express work on this subject, my reading is not superficial if
I go through that one work, although I may leave a hundred
of his works on other subjects unread altogether. Now for
what purpose is it that we wish to consult the general second-
rate literature of a period, as an illustration of its history ?
Is it not in order to discover what was the prevailing tone
and taste of men's minds j how they reasoned j what ideas
had most possession of them ; what they knew, and what use
they made of their knowledge? For this object, a judicious
selection following a general survey of the contents of an
author's works is really quite sufficient. We take the vol-
ume or volumes of them into our hands ; we look at the con-
tents, and so learn the subjects and nature of his several
writings. It may be and often is the case, that amongst them
we find some letters; on these we should fasten immediately,
and read through several of them, taking some from different
periods of his life, if his correspondence run through several
years. Again, his works may contain treatises, we will say,
on various subjects; if he be a theologian, they may contain
commentaries also on the whole or parts of the Scripture; or
controversial tracts, or meditations and prayers. Amongst his
treatises we should select such as must from their subject
call forth the character of his mind most fully; and one or
two of these we should read through. So again, we can test
bis character as a commentator by consulting him on such
104 LECTURE I.
parts of Scripture as necessarily lead to the fullest develop-
ment of his opinions and knowledge ; and we can deal in a
similar way with his other writings. If he be an historian, a
portion of his work will certainly display his historical powers
sufficiently ; if he be a poet, the strength and character of
his genius will appear, without our reading every line which
he has written. It is possible certainly that an estimate so
formed may not be altogether correct ; we should not value
Shakespeare sufficiently without being acquainted with all
his great plays ; yet even in the case of Shakespeare, a
knowledge of any one of his best tragedies, and any one of
his best comedies, would give us a notion faithful in kind,
although requiring to be augmented in degree. But what I
am saying does not apply to the works of the very highest
class of minds, but to the mass of ordinary literature ; and
surely any one canto of Glover's Leonidas would enable
us to judge very fairly of the merits and style of the poem ;
and half a dozen of the letters of Junius would express faith-
fully the excellencies and faults of the author as a political
writer, without our being obliged to read through the w'hole
volume. (3)
That, however, is really superficial reading, which dips
merely into a great many places of a volume at random, and
studies no considerable portion of it consecutively. One
whole treatise upon a striking subject may, and will, give us
an accurate estimate of a writer's powers ; it will exhibit his
way of handling a question, his fairness or unfairness, his
judgment, his clearness, his eloquence, or his powers of rea-
soning. One single treatise out of a great many will show
us this, but not mere extracts even from many treatises.
Particular passages selected, whether for good or for bad, are
really apt to remind one of the brick which the old pedant
carried about as a specimen of his house. It is vain to judge
of any writer from isolated quotations, least of all, when we
LECTURE I. 105
want to Judge of him as illustrating the views and habils of
his time. Nothing can be more unsafe than to venture to
criticise the literature of a period from turning over the pages
even of the fullest literary history : Tiraboschi is invaluable
as a book of reference, furnishing us with the number of
Italian writers who flourished at any one time, and with a
catalogue raisonnce of their writings j but a catalogue is to
guide research, not to supersede it. Besides, quotations made
from waiters to show the character of their opinions, are not
always to be trusted even for their honesty. One instance
of this is so remarkable, and affords so memorable a warning,
that I cannot refrain from noticing it, as it may possibly be
new to some of my hearers. Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical
History, gave in one of his notes the following passage fiom
the works of Eligius or Eloy, bishop of Noyon in the middle
of the seventh century, as a specinun of the false notions of
Christian duty entertained generally at that period, even by
men of the highest reputed holiness.* Robertson, in his notes
* Text of Mosheim. " The Christians of tliis century (the seventh) seemed
by their superstitious doctrine to exchide from the kingdom of heaven such as
had not contributed by their oflerings to augment the riches of the clergy or
tlic church." Century VII. part ii. eh. .'), edit. 8vo. 180G.
Ilis note is as foUow.s : " 8. Eligius or Eloi expresses himself upon this matter
in the following manner : Bonus Christianus est qui ad ecclesiam frequenter
venit, et oblationcm, quiB in altari Deo otferatur, exhibet : qui de fructibus suia
non gustat nisi prius Ueo aliquid olferat : ([ui quotics sanclae solemnitates ad-
veniunt, ante dies plurcs castitatem etiam cum jiroprift uxore custodit, ut
secura conscientia Domini altaro accedcro possit ; qui postremo symbolum
vol orationcm Dominicam memoriter tenet . . . Kedimite animas vestras do
poEn;'i, dum habetis in potestate remedia . , . oblationea et decimas ecclesiia
offerte, luminaria Sanctis locis, juxta quod habetis, exhibete ... ad ecclesiam
quoque frcquentius convenite, sanctorum patrocinia humiliter expetite . . .
quod si observaveritis, securi in die judicii ante tribunal ajterni judicis veni-
entes dicetis: Da, Domine, quia dedimus." Maclaine, the I-Jigiish translator,
then adds this farther note of his own : " We see here a large and ample de-
scription of the character of a good Christian, in which there is not the lea-sl
mention of the luve of God, resiffJiation to his will, obedience to his laws, or
of justice, benevolence, and churiti/ towards men, and in which th3 wliole of
religion is made to consist in coming often to tlie church, bringing offeringt
106 LECTURE I.
to his Charles V., borrowed the quotation, to prove, that at
that period " men instead of aspiring to sanctity and virtue,
lo the altar, lighting candles in consecrated places, and such like vain ser-
vices."
I am glad to say that Schrockh, although he quotes the passage as showing
now much stress was laid on gifts to the church, yet quotes it quite fairly,
without garbling, and expressly says before he begins to quote it, " Man musa
gestehen, dass darunter viel wahres und schriftmiissiges vorkommt." Cliristl
Kirch. Geschichte. xix Theil. p. 438, ed. 1794. Leipzig. The whole psissage
is as follows :
" Qui verus Christianus vult esse, hasc ei necesse est praecepta 3Ustodire ; si
enim non custodit, ipse se circumvenit. Ille itaque bonus Christianus est, qui
nulla phylacteria vel adinventiones diaboli credit, sed omnem spem suam in
solo Christo ponit : qui peregrinos tanquam ipsum Christum cum gaudio sus-
cipit, quia ipse dicit, Hospes fui et susccpistis me ; Et, quando fecistis uni ex
minimis meis mihi fecistis. Ille inquam bonus Christianus est qui hospitibus
pedes lavat, et tanquam parentes carissimos diligit, qui juxta quod habet pau-
peribus eleemosynam tribuit, qui ad ecclesiam frequenter venit, et oblationem
quae in altari Deo offeratur exiiibet, qui de fnictibus suis non gustat, nisi prius
Deo aliquid ofTerat : qui stateras dolosas et mensuras duplices non habet ; qui
pecuniam suam non dedit ad usuram ; qui ipse caste vivit et filios vel vicinos
docct, ut caste et cum timore Dei vivant : et quoties sanctse solennitates ad-
veniunt ante dies plures castitatem etiam cum propria uxore custodit, ut
secur4 conscientia Domini altare accedere possit : qui postremo symbolum
vel orationem dominicam memoriter tenet, et filios ac familiam eandem docet.
Qui talis est, sine dubio verus Christianus est, sed et Christus in ipso habitat,
qui dixit. Ego et pater veniemus et mansionem apud eum faciemus. Similiter
et per prophefam dixit. Ego inhabitabo in eis et inter illos ambulabo, et ero
iUorum Deus.
" Ecce audistis fratres quales sint Christiani boni, ideo quantum potestis cum
Dei adjutorio laborate, ut nomen Cl.ristianum non sit falsum in vobis, sed ut
veri Christiani esse possitis : semper prtecepta Christi et cogitate in mente, et
implete in operatione. Redimite animas vestras de jxEuft, dum habetis in po-
testate remedia: eleemosjaiam .juxta vires facite, pacem et charitatem hatH;te,
discordcs ad concordiam revocate, mendacium fugite, peijurium expavescite,
falsum testimonium non dicite, furtum non facite: oblationes et decimas
ticclesiis offerte, luniinaria Sanctis locis juxta quod habetis, exhibete, symbolum
et orationem Dorjiinicam memoria rt^tincte et filiis vestris insinuate, filios etiam
quos ex baptismo suscepivfis docete et castigate ut semper cum timore Dei
vivant: scitote vos fulejiissores pro ipsis apiid Deum esse. Ad ecclesiam quo-
que frequenter convenite, sanctorum patrocinia humiliter expetite ; diem Do-
minicum pro reverentia resiirrcctionis Cliristi absque ullo servili opere colite,
sanctorum solemnitates pio atfectu cclel)rate, proximos vestros sicut vos ipsos
diligite : quod vobis vulti.s ab aliis fieri hoc et vos aliis facite : quod vobis non
Toltis fieri null! facite : charitatem ante omnia habete, quia charitas operit
LECTURE I 107
imagined that they satisfied every obligation of duty by a
scrupulous observance of external ceremonies." Mr. Hal-
lam, in the first editions of his work on the Middle Ages, (in
tiic later editions the error has been corrected,) transcribed it
into his account of tlie state of society, to show that " priests
made submission to the church not only the condition but the
measure of all praise." Dr. Waddington, in the text of hia
History of the Church, had referred to the self-same passage,
which he gave accordingly, still copied from Mosheim, in a
note at the foot of his page. But being led to inquire a little
more fully into the matter, he found the whole passage in
D'Acheri's Spicilegium Veterum Scriptorum, (D'Acheri was
one of the learned French Benedictines of the seventeenth
century,) and there he discovered that the quotation in Mo-
sheim, which Robertson, and Mr. Hallam, and himself had
all copied from him in reliance on its fidelity, was utterly
garbled, as you will see for yourselves when I read it to you
at length. Here then is Eligius quoted by successive histo.
rians as proving what his real words do in fact effectually
miiltitudiiicm pcccatorum : estote liospitales, humilcs, omuem solicitudinem
vcstraiii ponentcs in Deuin, quoniain ipsi cura est de vobis. Intirinos visitate,
carccraU^ rcquirite, pcTcgrinos su.scipite, csurieates p;iscite, iiudos vestite.
Ariolos et maws speriiitc: sit voljis ajqualitas in pondcre ct niensurd: sit
Btatera j iLsta, j ustus niodius, oe(iiuis(jue sextariiLs, nee plusquam dedistis repe-
tatis, nequo usuras iiro lencrata pccunia a quotpiani exigatis. Quod si obser-
vaveritis, securi in die judicii ante tribunal a;tenii judicis venieutes dicetis.
Da Domino, quia dedimus ; miserere, quia misericordiam fecimus ; nos im-
I>Ievimus quod jussisti, tu reddc quod proniisisti."
1 am only concerned with this [lassago as an instance of great misrepresen-
tation : there is enough really bad in Eligius's theology to make it unnecessary
to make it woi-se ; and after all, how far it is Eligius's doctrine or not is very
questionable; for the author of his Life merely profe&ses to give the substance
of his general teaching, to which he devotes eleven folio pages of double col-
nmns. It does not appear that it is more than a vague traditional impression
of what he used to say ; and the Life in which it appears, though professing to
be written oy S. t)uen, has been greatly inten'o'ated, according to Baluze, by
a later hand. The above extract has been made from Baluze's edition of
D'Achery, 3 vols, folio. Paris, 1723. Vol. ii. pp. OG, 97.
106 le^;ture i.
disprove Well might Niebuhr protest against the practice
of making quotations at second hand, instead of going our.
selves to the original source. To do this is indeed a sort
of superficial reading which we cannot be too careful to
avoid. (4)
You will therefore, I trust, acquit me of recommending
any thing which really deserves the name of superficial read-
ing ; and yet I think that by following the method which 1
have suggested, we may arrive at a very just and full know-
ledge of the character of the literature of a period, and thereby
of the period itself, without undergoing any extravagant
burden of labor, or sacrificing an undue portion of time.
And by such means, followed up still farther by those who
have a taste for such studies, by inquiring into the state of
art, whether in painting, sculpture, or architecture, or as
exemplified in matters of common life, we may I think imbue
ourselves eflfectually with the spirit of a period, no less than
with the actual events which it witnessed ; we may be able
to image it to our minds in detail, and conceive of it as of an
object with which we are really familiar.
But is our work now done ? Is this full and distinct im-
pression of the events, characters, institutions, manners, and
ways of thinking of any period, that true historical knowledge
which we require ? The answer at once is " No." What
we have attained to is no more than antiquarianism, an indis-
pensable element in history, but not history itself. Anti-
quarianism is no teacher of wisdom ; on the contrary, few
things seem more to contract and enfeeble the mind, few
things difier more widely from that comprehensive view
which becomes the true historian. And this is a point so
important that I must venture to dwell upon it a little more
particularly.
What is it that the mere antiquarian wants, and which the
mere scholar wants also ; so that satire, sagacious enough in
LECTURE I. lOfi
dtxecting the weak points of every character, has often held
them both up to ridicule ? They have wanted what is the
essential accompaniment to all our knowledge of the past, a
lively and extensive knowledge of the present ; they wanted
tne habit of continually viewing the two in combination with
each other j they wanted that master power, which enables
us to take a point from which to contemplate both at a dis-
tance, and so to judge of each and of both as if we belonged
to neither. For it is from the views so obtained, from the con-
elusions so acquired, that the wisdom is formed which may
really assist in shaping and preparing the course of the future.
Antiquarianism, then, is the knowledge of the past enjoyed
by one who has no lively knowledge of the present. Thence
it is, when concerned with great matters, a dull knowledge.
!t may be lively in little things, it may conceive vividly the
shape and color of a dress, or the style of a building, because
no man can be so ignorant as not to have a distinct notion of
these in his own times ; he must have a full conception of
the coat he wears and the house he lives in. But the past
is reflected to us by the present ; so far as we see and under-
stand the present, so far we can see and understand the past :
so far but no farthc. And this is the reason why scholars
and antiquarians, nay, and men calling themselves historians
also, have written so uninstructively of the ancient world :
they could do no otherwise, for they did not understand the
world around them. How can he comprehend the parties of
other days, who has no clear notion of those of his own ? What
sense can he have of the progress of the great contest of human
atTairs in its earlier stages, when it rages around him at this
actual moment unnoticed, or felt to be no more than a mere
indistinct hubbub of sounds and confusion of weapons ? —
what cause is at issue in the combat he knows not. Whereas
on the other hand, he who feels his own times keenly, to
whom they are a positive reality, with a good and evil dis-
110 LECTURE I.
tinctly pei'ceived in them, such a man will write a lively
and impressive account of past times, even though his know,
ledge be insufficient, and his prejudices strong. This I think
is the merit of Mitford, and it is a great one. His very anti-
iacDbin partialities, much as they have interfered with the
fairness of his history, have yet completely saved it from
being dull. He took an interest in the parlies of Greece
because he was alive to the parties of his own time : he
described the popular party in Athens just as he would have
described the whigs of England ; he was unjust to Demos-
thenes because he would have been unjust to Mr. Fox. His
knowledge of the Greek language was limited, and so was
his learning altogether ; but because he was an English
gentleman who felt and understood the state of things around
him, and entered warmly into its parties, therefore he was
able to write a history of Greece, which has the great charm
of reality ; and which, if I may judge by my own experience,
is read at first with interest and retains its hold firmly on the
memory. (5)
This is an example of what I mean ; and it were easy to
add others. Raleigh had perhaps less learning than Mitford ;
he had at no time of his life the leisure or the opportunity to
collect a great store of antiquarian knowledge. But he had
seen life in his own times extensively, and entered keenly
into its various pursuits. Soldier, seaman, court favorite, I
am afraid we must add, intriguer, war and policy were per-
fectly familiar to him. His accounts therefore of ancient
affairs have also a peculiar charm ; they too are a reality ;
he entered into the difficulties of ancient generals from
remembering what he had himself experienced ; he related
their gallant actions with all his heart, recollecting what he
had himself seen and done. (6) Now I am well aware that
tbislively notion of our own times is extraneous to any course
of historical study, and depends on other causes than those
LEr.TURE 1. Ill
«vith which we are concerned now. And farther, even under
favorable circumstances, it can scarcely be attained in
perfection by a young man, whose experience of life and its
business is necessarily scanty. But where it does not exist,
it is of importance that we should be aware of the greatness
of the defect, and to take care lest while it destroys the benefit
of our nistorical studies, they in their turn should aggravate
it, and thus each should go on with an effect reciprocally
injurious. And we should try, if not by the most effectual
means then by some of inferior virtue, to prevent our historical
studies from becoming mere antiquarianism. Accordingly,
after having made ourselves familiar with the spirit of any
given period from a study of the different writers of the period
itself, we should turn to a history of it written by a modern
writer, and observe how its peculiarities accord with those of
a different age, and what judgment is passed by posterity
upon its favorite views and practices. It does not follow that
this judgment is to be an infallible guide to ours, but it is
useful to listen to it, for in some points it will certainly be
true, and its very difference from the judgment of our earlier
period, even where it runs into an opposite extreme, is of
itself worth attending to. And thus by seeing what was
underrated once receiving its due and perhaps more than its
due honor at a subsequent period, and by observing that
what is now unjustly slighted was in times past excessively
overvalued, we shall escape that Quixotism of zeal, whether
for or against any particular institution, which is apt to be
the resuU of a limited knowledge ; as it what we now hnd
over honored or too much despised, had never undergone the
opposite fate ; as if it were for us now to redress for the first
time the injustice of fortune, and to make up by the vehe.
mence of our admiration for centuries of contempt, or bj' our
scorn for centuries of blind veneration.
We may hope that such a comparison of the views of dif
112 LECTURE I.
ferent periods will save us from one of the besetting faults
of minds raised a little above the mass, but not arrived at
any high pitch of wisdom ; I mean the habit either of sneer-
ing at or extravagantly exalting the age in which we our-
selves live. At the same time I am inclined to think that
although both are faulty, yet the temptation is far greater to
undervalue our own age than to overvalue it. I am not
speaking, be it observed, of the mass of mere ordinary
minds, but of those which possess some portion of intelli.
gence and cultivation. Our personal superiority seems
much more advanced by decrying our contemporaries than
by decrying our fathers. The dead are not our real ri-
vals, nor is pride very much gratified by asserting a su-
periority over those who cannot deny it. But if we run
down the living, that is, those with whom our whole com-
petition exists, what do we but exalt ourselves, as having
at any rate that great mark of superior wisdom, that we
discern deficiency where others find nothing but matter of
admiration. It is far more tempting to personal vanity to
think ourselves the only wise amongst a generation of fools,
than to glory in belonging to a wise generation, where our
personal wisdom, be it what it may, cannot at least have the
distinction of singularity.
Thus far then we seem to have proceeded in our outline
of the course of reading to be pursued by the historical stu-
dent. It has combined at present two points, a full know-
ledge of the particular period which we choose to study, as
derived from a general acquaintance with its contemporary
literature, and then what I may call a knowledge of its bear-
ings with respect to other and later periods, and not least
with respect to our own times ; that is to say, how succeed-
ing ages have judged of it, how far their sympathies have
gone along with its own in admiring what it admired ; and
as collected from this judgment, how far it coloured the times
LECTURE I 113
which followed it ; in other words, what part it has played
for G'ood or for evil in the great drama of the world's his-
tory ; what of its influence has survived and what has per-
ished. And he who has so studied and so understood one
period, deserves the praise generally of understanding his-
tory. For to know all history actually is impossible ; our
object should l)e to possess the power of knowing any portion
of history which we wish to learn, at a less cost of labour
and with far greater certainty of success than belong to oth-
er men. For by our careful study of some one period, we
have learnt a method of proceeding with all ; so that if we
open any history, its facts at once fall into their proper
places, indicating their causes, implying their consequences ;
we have gained also a measure of their value, teaching ua
what are productive, and what are barren, what will com-
bine with other facts, and establish and illustrate a truth, and
what in our present state of knowledge are isolated, of no
worth in themselves, and leading to nothing. This will be
still more apparent, when we come to examine more care-
fully our student's process in mastering the history of any
one period ; for hitherto, you will observe, I have said no-
thing of the difficulties or questions which will occur to him
in his reading ; I have only said generally what he should
read.
I purpose then in the following lectures to notice some of
the principal difficulties or questions which the historical
student will encounter, wlicthcr the period which he has
chosen belong to the times of imperfect or of advanced civili-
zation : for the questions in each of these are not altogether
the same. And I will begin with the difficulties presented
by the history of a period of imperfect civilization.
NOTES
L E C T U R fi '
Note 1. — Page 96.
Thougli Lord Clarendon has not preserved the dialect of Jainc3
tl.e First, the drimatic form of several passages in the first book
of his History gives a very life-like notion of the King's familiar
conversation — the coarse mind and manners distinctly reflected in
the coarseness and voluble profanity of his speech.
Note 2.— Page 96.
"The fate of Joan in literature has been strange, — almost as
strange as her fate in life. The ponderous cantos of Chapelain in
her praise have long since perished — all but a few lines that live
embalmed in the satires of Boileau. But besides Schiller's power-
ful drama, two considerable narrative poems yet survive with Joan
of Arc for their subject : the epic of Southey, and the epic of Vol-
taire. The one, a young poet's earnest and touching tribute to he-
roic worth — the first flight of the muse that was ere long to soar
over India and Spain ; the other full of ribaldry and blasphemous
jests, holding out the Maid of Orleans as a fitting mark for slander
and derision. But from whom did these far different poems pro-
ceed ? The shaft of ridicule came from a French — the token of
respect from an English — hand !
* * * " Who that has ever trodden the gorgeous galleries of Ver-
sailles, has not fondly lingered before that noble work of art — be-
fore that touching impersonation of the Christian heroine — the head
meekly bended, and the hands devoutly clasping the sword ia sign
of the cross, but firm resolution imprinted on that close-pressed
NOTES TO LECTURE I, 115
mouth, and beaming from that lofty brow ! Whose thoughts, as he
paused to gaze and gaze again, might not sometimes wander from
old times to the present, and turn to the sculptress — sprung from
the same royal lineage which Joan had risen in arms to restore —
so highly gifted in talent, in fortunes, in hopes of happiness, yet
doomed to an end so grievous and untimely 1 Thus the statue has
grown to be a monument, not only to the memory of the Maid, but
to her own : thus future generations in France — all those at least
who know how to prize either genius or goodnc£,s in woman — will
love to blend together the two names, the female artist and the
female warrior — Mary of Wurtemberg and Joan of Arc."
Quar. Review, vol. Ixix., p. 328, March, 1843.
Note 3.— Page 101.
" Keep your view of men and things extensive, and de^jcnd upon
it that a mixed knowledge is not a superficial one ; — as far as it
goes, the views that it gives are true, — but he who reads deeply in
one class of writers only, gets views which are almost sure to be
perverted, and which are not only narrow but false. Adjust your
proposed amount of reading to your time and inclination — this is
perfectly free to every man, but whether that amount be large or
small, let it be varied in its kind, and widely varied. If I have a
confident opinion on any one point connected with the improvement
of the human mind, it is on this."
Life and Correspondence, Letter ccv., Am. edition, 357.
" It is a very hard thing to read at once passionately and critic-
ally, by no means to be cold, captious, sneering, or scofirng ; to ad-
mire greatness and goodness with an intense love and veneration,
yet to judge all things ; to be the slave neither of names nor of
parties, and to sacrifice even the most beautiful associations for the
sake of truth. I would say, as a good general rule, never read the
works of any ordinary man, except on scientific matters, or when
they contain simple matters of fact. Even on matters of fact, silly
and ignorant men, however honest and industrious in tlioir particu-
lar subject, require to be read with constant watchfulness and sus-
picion ; whereas great men are always instructive, even amidst
much of error on particular points. In general, however, I hold il
1 1 6 NOTES
to be certain, that the truth is to be found in the great meD,aiA tho
error in the little ones."
Life and Correspondence, Letter xcviii., Am edit. p. 245.
Note 4. — Page 108.
This case of the traditional misrepresentation of St. Eligius aud
of the times he lived in has been even more completely and con-
clusively treated by Mr. Maitland, in one of the numbers (vii.) of
his work entitled " The Dark Ages,'''' — a volume in which the gen-
uine learning and the dauntless love of truth, that were needed to
expose old habitual falsehood, are happily united with much ap-
propriate pleasantness of thought and with true and weil-directed
satire. He remarks that the sermon which was mutilated seems
almost as if it had been written in anticipation of all and each of
Mosheim's and Maclaine's charges, and he quotes the observations
of the late Hugh James Rose, by whom it was well said :
" Here we find not only an individual traduced, but, through him,
the religious character of a whole age misrepresented, and this
misrepresentation now generally believed. We find men leaving out
what a writer says, and then reproaching him and his age for not
saying it. We find Mosheim, Maclaine, Robertson, Jortin, White,
mangling, misusing, and (some of them) traducing a writer whose
works not one of them, except Mosheim, (if even he,) had ever
seen. These things are very serious. We may just as well, or
better, not read at all, if we read only second-hand writers, or do
not take care that those whom we do trust read for themselves,
and report honestly. We, in short, trust a painter who paints that
black which is while, and then think we have a clear idea of the
object."
This is a case that cannot be too strongly condemned, for it is but
one of many examples that might, with little pains, be collected, of
the vicious habit of unacknowledged quotation at second hand, or at
some even more remote degree from the original — a vicious habit,
for at least two reasons : that it is a frequent cause of historical
error, gaining authority by the activity of falsehood ; and that it ia
the ready device by which the superficial and the uncandid can
make a false display.
TO LECTURE I. 117
Note 5.— Pasrc 110.
It is to Mitford and his history that Bishop Thirlwall alludes
when, in a note in his History of Greece, he speaks of " a writer
who considers it as the great business of history to place royalty in
the most favourable light ;" and in another note, he speaks of " a
work which, though cast in an historical form, is intended not to
give historical information, but to state opinions, and then to give
such facts as square with them."
Note 6. — Page 110.
In Raleigh's History of the World, says INlr. Hallam, " the
Greek and Roman story is told more fully and exactly than by any
earlier English author, and with a plain eloquence, which has given
this book a classical reputation in our language, though from its
length, and the want of that critical sifting of facts which we now
justly demand, it is not greatly read. Raleigh has intermingled
political reflections, and illustrated his history by episodes from
modern tines, which perhaps are now the most interesting pas-
eages.'"
Inlroductton to Literature v/ Europe, vol. iii p. 657
LECTURE II.
The first step which I ventured to recommend in the study
of the history of any period, was, that we should take some
one contemporary historian, and if we were studying the
history of any one country in particular, then It should be
also an historian of that country, and that we should so gain
our first introduction both to the events and to the general
character of the times. I am now to consider what difficul-
ties and what questions will be likely to present themselves
in reading such an historian, interfering, if not answered,
with our deriving from him all the instruction which he is
capable of rendering. Now you will observe that I am pur-
posely looking out for the difficulties in history, but I am
very far from professing to be able to solve them. Still I
think that what I am doing may be very useful : because tc
direct attention to what is to be done is the best means of
procuring that it shall be done. And farther, an enterprising
student will be rather encouraged by hearing that the work
is not all done to his hands ; he will be glad to find that
the motto upon history, in spite of all that has been lately
accomplished, is still "Plus ultra:" the actual boundary
reached is not the final one ; every bold and able adventurer
in this wide ocean may hope to obtain the honours of a dis-
coverer of countries hitherto unknown.
In the first place I said that the difficulties and questions
which occurred in reading an historian of a period of imper-
fect civilization, were not in all respects the same whicli we
120 LECTURE II,
should meet with in an historian of a more advanced age.
This leads me naturally to consider what constitutes the dif-
ference between these two classes of historians, before I pro-
ceed to the proper subject of this lecture, the questions
namely suggested by the former class, or those of a period
imperfectly civilized.
There are some persons whose prejudices are so violent
against their own age, and that immediately preceding it,
that they take offence at their claim to a higher civilization,
and will by no means allow the earlier centuries of modern
history to have been their inferiors in this respect. For my
own part, I should find it very difficult, even if I thought it
desirable, to relinquish the habitual language of our age ;
which calls itself civilized, and the middle ages as in com-
parison half civilized, not in the spirit of controversy or of
boasting, but as a simple matter of fact. However, I do not
wish to assume any conclusion at the outset which may be
supposed to be disputable ; and therefore, I will not if I can
help it use the terms more or less civilized as applied to the
earlier or later periods of modern history, but will state the
difference between them in more neutral lano-uaffe. For that
there is a difference will scarcely I think be disputed : or
that this difference coincides chronologically, or nearly so,
with the sixteenth century ; so that the historians prior to
this period up to the very beginning of modern history, have,
speaking generally, one character; and those who flourished
subsequently to it have another. And farther, I cannot think
it disputable, that the great historians of Greece and Rome
resemble for the most part tlie historians of the last two or
three centuries, and differ from those of the early or middle
ages.
Now without using the invidious words, " civilized" or
*' half civilized," the difference may be stated thus; that the
writers of the early and middle ages belonged to a period in
LECTURE II. 121
which the active elements were fewer, and the views gene-
rally prevalent were therefore fewer also. Fewer in two
w^ays, first inasmuch as the classes or orders of society which
expressed themselves actively in word or deed were fewer ;
and then, as there were very much fewer individual varieties
amongst members of the same class. Hence therefore the
history of the early ages is simple ; that of later times is
complicated. In the former the active elements were kino-s,
popes, bishops, lords, and knights, with exceptions here and
there of remarkable individuals ; but generally speaking
the other elements of society were passive. In later
times, on the other hand, other orders of men have been
taking their part actively ; and the number of these ap-
pears to be continually increasing. So that the number
of views of human life, and the number of agencies at work
upon it, are multiplied ; the difficulty of judging between
them all theoretically is very great: that of adjusting their
respective claims practically is almost insuperable. Again,
in later times, the individual differences between members of
the same class or order have been far greater; for while the
common class or professional influence has still been power-
ful, yet the restraint from without having been removed,
which forced the individual to 2bstain from disputing that
influence, the tendencies of men's individual minds have
worked freely, and where these were strong, they have mod-
ified the class or professional influence variously, and have
thus produced a great variety of theories on the same sub-
ject. The introduction of new classes or bodies of men into
the active elements of society may be exemplified by the in-
creased importance in later times of the science of political
economy, while the individual variety amongst those of the
same order is shown by the various theories which have been
advanced at different times by different economical writers.
This M'ill explain what I mean, when I divide the historians
11
122 LECTURE II
of modern history into uwo classes, and when I call the one
class, that belonging to a simpler state of things; and the
other that belonging to a state more complicated.
We are now, you will remember, concerned with the wri-
ters of the first class ; and as a specimen of these in theii
simplest form, we will take the Church History of the Ven.
erable Bede. This work has been lately published, 1838, in
a convenient form, 1 vol. 8vo, by the English Historical So-
ciety ; and it is their edition to which my references have
been made. I need scarcely remind you of the date and
circumstances of Bede's life. Born in 674, only fifty years
after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, he died at the age
of sixty-one, in 735, two or three years after that great vic-
tory of Charles Martel over the Saracens, which delivered
France and Europe from Mahometan conquest. At seven
years old he was placed under the care of the abbot of
Wearmouth, and from that monastery he removed to the
neighbouring one of Jarrow, and there passed the remainder
of his life. He was ordained deacon in his nineteenth year,
and priest in his thirtieth, and beyond these two events we
know nothing of his external life except his writings. These
are various, and he himself, at the conclusion of his Eccle-
siastical History, has left us a list of them : — they consist of
commentaries on almost all the books of Scripture, of trea-
tises on some scriptural subjects, of religious biographies, of
a book of hymns ; and of some of a different character, on
general history and chronology, a book de orthographia, and
another de metrica arte. His Ecclesiastical History, in five
books, embraces the period from Augustine's arrival in 597,
down to the year 731, only four years before his own death ;
so that for a considerable portion of the time to which it re-
lates his work is a contemporary history.
In Bede we shall find no political questions of any kind to
create any difliculty, nor are there those varied details of
LECTURE II. 123
war and peace which, before they can be vividly compre.
hended, require a certain degree of miscellaneous knowledge.
[ may notice then in him one or two things which belong
more or less to all history. First, his language. We derive,
or ought to derive from our philological studies, a great ad-
vantage in this respect ; we ought to have acquired in some
degree the habit of regarding language critically, and of in-
terpreting it correctly. This is not a trifling matter ; for
as an immense majority of histories must be written in a
foreign language, it is very possible for a careless reader,
who has never been trained as we have been from our earliest
years in grammatical analysis, to make important mistakes
as to the meaning of his author; for translation, to be thor-
oughly good, must be a matter of habit, and must be grounded
on such a minutely accurate process as we are early trained
to in our study of Greek and Latin writers. It must be
grounded on such a process, the great value of which is, that
it hinders us from neglecting little words, conjunctions espe-
cially, on which so large a portion of the meaning of contin-
uous writing depends, and which a careless reader not so
trained is apt to pass over. But there is a higher step in
translation which is by no means a mere matter of ornament,
and which I believe is not always attended to as it deserves
even amongst ourselves. I mean translation as distinguished
from construing ; a process which retains all the accuracy
of the earlier habit; its searching view into every corner, so
to speak, of the passage to be translated ; its appreciation of
every little word, of every shade of distinction in mood or
tense ; but from this accuracy makes its way to another slii.
more perfect — the exact expression of the mind of the original,
so that the feelings excited by the translation, the image?
conveyed by the words, the force of their arrangement, their
tone, whether serious or half playful, should be the exact re-
presentation of the original. And in this greater accuracy
124 LECTURE II.
construing must always be deficient, because the grammati-
cal order of one language is not the same as that of another,
and to keep the real order, which is of great importance to the
fidelity of the translation, the grammatical order must often be
sacrificed. I have ventured to say thus much, because I have
continually had occasion to feel the difficulty of good transla-
tion, and because in this respect our admirable classical system
is apt, I think, to forego one of its great advantages, that in the
habit ofvivA voce translation, as opposed to construing, we have
an exercise at once in the two great subjects of grammar and
rhetoric — an exercise in extemporaneous composition in our
own language to which none other is comparable, no less than
an exercise in the language from which we are translating. (1)
To return, however, to the language of Bede. We in one
way may have a source of error peculiarly our own ; that is,
our almost exclusive familiarity with classical Latin is some-
times apt to mislead us, when we transfer its rules, and its
senses of words, without hesitation, to the Latin of what are
called the low or middle ages. As a single and very familiar
instance of the difference between classical Latin and low
Latin, I may notice the perpetual usage of the conjunction
"quia" in the latter in the sense of the Greek oVi. " Nosti
quia ad tui oris imperium semper vivere studui," " Thou
knowest that I have ever been careful to live in obedience to
thy words;" iv. 29. This occurs in the Latin of unclassical
writers continually. I do not know what is the earliest in-
stance of it, but it is frequent in the Latin version of the
Scriptures which was used by the western churches before
Jerome's time, and in the old Latin translation of Irenaeus.
Facciolati gives no instance of it in any classical writer, ex-
cept we choose to bestow that title on Palladius, one of the
ogricultural writers, whose date is not known, but who cer-
tainly did not flourish earlier than the third century, or the
very end of the second, inasmuch as he quotes Apuleius, who
LECTURE II. 125
lived under M. Aurelius Antoninus. Besides this, it is always
worth while in reading the Latin of the lower ages, to observe
the gradual introduction of words of Barbarian origin, such as
scabini, scaccarium, marcliio, haiallujn, and innumerable others
of which the pages of Ducange are full. But of these, very
k\v, perhaps no certain instance, is to be found in Bede.
Another question comes before us in the history of Bede,
which also is common to all history, although in him and in
the other writers of the middle ages it often takes a peculiar
form. I mean the great question of the trustworthiness of
historians ; on what grounds and to what degree we may
venture to yield our belief to what we read in them. In
Bede and in many others the question takes this form. What
credit is to" be attached to the frequent stories of miracles or
of wonders which occur in their narratives ? And it is this
peculiar form of it which I would wish to notice now. The
question is not an easy one, and I must here remind you of
what I said at the beginning of this lecture, that while point
ing out the difficulties of history, I was very far from pro
fessing to be able always to solve them.
You will, I think, allow that the difficulty here relates
much more to miracles than to mere wonders. By the term
miracle we imply I think two things which do not exist in
mere wonders ; two things, or perhaps more properly one,
that God is not only the author of the wonderful work, but
that it is wrought for us to observe and be influenced by it :
whereas a wonder is no doubt God's work also, but it is not
wrought so far as we can discern for our sakes; so far as we
are concerned it is a work without an object. Being there-
fore wholly ignorant of the nature and object of wonders, and
being ignorant of a great many natural laws, by which they
may be produced, the question of their credibility resolves
itseli" into little more than a mere question as to the credibility
of the witnesses ; there is little room for considerations of
126 LECTURE II.
Internal evidence as to the time and circumstances when tho
wonder is said to have happened. The internal evidence
only comes in with respect to our knowledge of the law,
which the wonder is supposed to violate : in proportion to our
observations of its comprehensiveness and its unbroken ob-
servance, would be our unwillingness to believe that it had
been ever departed from. And thus I suppose that any de-
viation from the observed laws with respect to the heavenly
bodies, as, for instance, to the time of the sun's rising or set-
ting, if we looked upon it as a mere wonder and not as a
miracle, we should scarcely be persuaded by any weight
of evidence to believe : or to speak more correctly, if the
weight of evidence were overwhelmingly great, we should be
obliged to regard the phenomenon as a miracle, and not as a
wonder; as a sign given by God for our instruction. But in
a great number of cases, we may admit the existence of a
wonder without seeing any reason to conclude that it is a
miracle. A man may appear ridiculous if he expresses his
belief in any particular story of this sort to those who know
nothing of it but its strann-eness. And there is no doubt that
human folly and human fraud are mixed up largely with
most accounts of wonders, and render it our duty to receive
them not with caution merely, but with unwillingness and
suspicion. Yet to say that all recorded wonders are false,
from those recorded by Herodotus down to the latest reports
of animal magnetism, would be a boldness of assertion wholly
unjustifiable and extravagant. The accounts of wonders
then, from Livy's prodigies downwards, I should receive ac-
cording to Herodotus's expression when speaking of one of
them, OUTS d'jfKfTscjiv, o'Cts ladrsduM n Xi7]v : sometimes consid-
ering of what fact they were an exaggerated or corrupted repre-
eentation, at other times trying to remember whether any and
how many other notices occur of the same thing, and whethei
they are of force enough to lead us to search for some law
LECTURE II. 127
hitherto undiscovered, to which they may all be referred, and
become liereafter the foundation of a new science. (2)
But when a wonderful thing is represented as a miracle,
tlie question becomes fur graver and far more complicated.
Moral and religious considerations then come in unavoidably,
and involve some of the deepest questions of theology. What
is repDrted as a miracle may be either the answer to the be-
lieving prayer of a Christian, or it may be the working of one
of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, or it may be a special sign
sent from God for a special mercy or judgment in the par-
ticular case, and for the instruction and warning of others.
And whichever of these kinds it may be, the question fol-
lows, why then are miracles not performed in every age and
in every Christian country ? And if they are not, are the
ages and countries thus excepted, to be considered as having
fallen away from the faith, and to have forfeited what is
properly a perpetual privilege of Christianity, to have God
visibly and sensibly near to us ? Say that we acquiesce in
this conclusion, yet proceeding to regard the question in this
point of view, is it embarrassed with no dilliculties ? Is it
possible to deny that the individuals, the churches, and the
times, which appear to have been left without miracles, have
displayed o'her and even more unquestionable signs of God's
presence amongst them ; signs which have not always existed
with peculiar brightness where miracles are alleged to have
most abounded ? Or again. Can it be denied that the times
and the writers where these miraculous accounts are to be
found, were generally, as compared with those where they
are wanting, apt to take little pains in their examination of
truth, of such truth, I mean, as their previous state of mind
did not dispose them to question ? We see this from their
accounts of points of natural history ; how few of these can
be depended upon, and what extravagant and palpable fablca
were transmitted from generation to generation ! It is enougli
128 LECTURE II.
to notice the famous story of the barnacle-tree, which dropped
its fruit into the water, and the fruit cracked, and out swam
a gosling. Bede's accounts of natural objects are few, but it
so happens that one of these relates to a place with which I
have been acquainted all my life, and its incorrectness is re-
markable. He says that in the Solent sea, which separates
the Isle of Wight from Hampshire, " two tides of the ocean,
breaking forth round Britain from the boundless Northern
ocean, meet every day in mutual conflict with each other
beyond the mouth of the river of Homelea, (Hamble,) and
after their conflict is over they sweep back to the ocean, and
return to the place from whence they came."* Who could
recognise in this description the sort of race which runs at
certain times of the tide, and in rough weather, over the
shoal called the Brambles, or the sliglit agitation sometimes
produced, not by the conflicting tides of the Solent sea itself,
but by the ebb of the Southampton or Hamble river meeting
at an angle with the tide of the Solent ? We have to weigh
then this fact in the character of Bede and other such histo-
rians, and this, added to the religious difficulty noticed above,
may incline us rather to take the opposite conclusion, and
limiting miracles to the earliest times of Christianity, refuse
our belief to all those which are reported by the historians
of subsequent centuries.
Yet, again, this conclusion has its difficulties. We may
not like to refuse assent to so many statements of so many
writers, of men, so far as we know, who believe that they
were speaking the truth. And we may be taxed with incon-
sistency in stopping our scepticism arbitrarily as it may seem
when we arrive at the first century, and according to the
miracles of the Gospels that belief which we refuse to those
of ecclesiastical history. This last charge, however, we may
* Hietor. Ecclesiast n . IG.
LECTURE II. 129
satisfactorily repel. The miracles of the Gospel and those
of later history do not stand on the same ground, I do not
think that they stand on the same ground of external evi-
dence; I cannot think that the unbelieving spirit of the Roman
world in the first century was equally favorable '.o tlie origi-
nation and admission of stories of miracles, with the credu-
lous tendencies of the middle ages. But the difference goes
far deeper than this to all those who can appreciate the other
evidences of Christianity, and who there fere feel that in the
one case what we call miracles were but the natural accom-
paniments, if I may so speak, of the Christian revelation ;
accompaniments, the absence of which would have been fur
more wonderful than their presence. Tliis, as I may almost
call it, this a priori probability in favour of the miracles of
the Gospel cannot be said to exist in favour of those of later
history.
Disembarrassed tlien of this painful parallel, and able to
judge freely of the miraculous stories of Bede and other his-
torians, without feeling our whole Christian faith to rest on
the decision, it will not however follow, as some appear to
think, tliat we shall riot as it were in a full license of unbe-
lief, or that a reasonable mind will exercise no belief in re-
ligious matters except such as it dares not withhold. Some
appear to be unable to conceive of belief or unbelief except
as having some ulterior object ; " we believe this, because
we love it ; we disbelieve it, because we wish it to be dis-
proved." There is, however, in minds more healthfully
constituted, a belief and a disbelief grounded solely upon the
evidence of the case, arising neither out of partiality nor out
of prejudice against the supposed conclusions which may re.
suit from its truth or falsehood. iVnd in such a spirit the
historical student will consider the cases of Bede's and other
historians' miracles. He will, I think, as a general rule dig-
believe them ; for the immense multitude which he finds re-
130 LECTURE II.
corded, and which I suppose no credulity could believe in,
shows sufficiently that on this point there was a total want
of judgment and a blindness of belief generally existLig
which makes the testimony wholly insufficient; and while the
external evidence in favour of these alleged miracles is so
unsatisfactory, there are, for the most part, strong internal
improbabilities against them. But with regard to some mir-
acles, he will see that there is no strong a priori improbability
in their occurrence, but rather the contrary ; as, for instance,
where the first missionaries of the Gospel in a barbarous
country are said to have been assisted by a manifestation of
the spirit of power, and if the evidence appears to warrant
his belief, he will readily and gladly yield it. And in doing
so he will have the countenance of a great man,* who in his
fragment of English history has not hesitated to express the
same sentiments. (3) Nor will he be unwilling, but most
thankful, to find sufficient grounds for believing, that not
only at the beginning of the Gospel, but in ages long after-
wards, believing prayer has received extraordinary answers,
that it has been heard even in more than it might have dared
to ask for. Yet again, if the gift of faith — the gift as distin-
guished from the grace — of the faith which removes moun-
tains, has been given to any in later times in remarkable
measure, the mighty works which such faith may have
wrought cannot be incredible in themselves to those who re-
member our Lord's promise ; and if it appears from satisfac-
tory evidence that they were wrought actually, we shall be-
lieve them, and believe with joy. Only as it is in most cases
unpossible to admit the trustworthiness of the evidence, our
minds must remain at the most in a state of suspense, and I
do not know why it is necessary to come to any positive de.
cision. For if we think that supposing the miracle to be
» Burke.
LECTURE II. 131
true, it gives the seal of God's approbation to all the belief
of him who performed it, this is manifestly a most hasty and
untenable inference. The gift of faith does not imply the
gift of wisdom, nor is every believing Christian, whose prayer
God may hear in an extraordinary manner, endued also with
an exemption from error. Men's gifts are infinitely different,
distinct from each other, as from God's gifts of inward grace ;
unequal in value outwardly, the highest, it may be, of less
value spiritually to its possessor than the humblest grace of
him who lias no remarkable gift at all. Yet the grace can-
not do the work of the gift, nor the higher gift the work of
the meaner ; nor may he who can work miracles claim there-
fore the gift of understanding the Scripture, and interpreting
it with infallible truth. Cyprian said of the martyrs, when
he thought that they were impairing the discipline of the
church by granting tickets of communion over hastily to the
Lapsi, or those who had fallen away in the persecutions,
" The martyrs do not make the Gospel, fur it is through the
Gospel that they acquire the glory of martyrdom."* And so
we might say of certain miracles, if tliere were any such,
wrought by persons who had in many points grievously cor-
rupted the Christian faith, " Miracles must not be allowed to
overrule the Gospel ; for it is only through our belief in the
Gospel that we accord our belief to them." (4)
I do not make any apology for the length of this discussion,
because the subject was one which lay directly in our way,
and could not be passed over hastily ; and I am never averse
to showing how closely connected are those studies which
we will attempt to divide by the names religious and secular,
mjuring both by trying to separate them. Let us now pro-
ceed with our review of the difficulties of history, and still
confining ourselves to what I have called the simpler period,
• Cy-prian Epist. xxvii. " 3Iiiiimo cousiileravit riuoil iion martyres Evaii-
t'elJuin faciaiit, sed per Evaiigcliuin martyres liant."
132 LECTURE II.
we will pass on however from the eighth to the thirteenth
century, and briefly notice some of the questions which sug-
gest themselves when we read Matthew Paris, or, still more,
any of the French, German, or Italian historians of the same
period.
The thirteenth century contains in it at its beginning the
most splendid period of the papacy, the time of Innocent the
Third ; its end coincides with that great struggle between
Boniface the Eighth and Philip the Fair, which marks the
first stage of its decline. It contains the reign of Frederick
the Second, and his long contests with the popes in Italy ;
the foundation of the orders of friars, Dominican and Fran-
ciscan ; the last period of the crusades, and the age of the
greatest glory of the schoolmen. Thus full of matters of interest
as it is, it will yet be found that all its interest is more or less
connected with two great questions concerning the church ;
namely, the power of the priesthood in matters of government
and in matters of faith ; the merits of the contest between the
papacy and the kings of Europe ; the nature and character
of that influence over men's minds which affected the whole
philosophy of the period, the whole intellectual condition of
the Christian world.
It would be out of place here altogether to enter at large
into either of these questions. But it is closely connected
with my subject, to notice one or two points as to the method
of studying them. I observed in my first lecture, that after
studying the history of any period in its own contemporary
writers, it was desirable also to study the view of it enter-
tained by a later period, as whether more or less true, it was
sure to be diflferent, and would probably afford some truth in
which the contemporary view was deficient. This holds
good with the thirteenth century as with other periods ; it is
quite important that we should see it as it appears in the eyes
of later times, no less than as it appears in its own. But the
LECTURE II. 133
questions of the thirteenth century, if I am right in saying
that tlicy are connected with the church, require especially
that our view should be cast backwards as well as forwards ;
we should regard them not only as they appear to later times,
but to a time far earlier ; the merits or demerits of the papacy
must be tried with reference to the original system of Chris-
tianity, not as exhibited only in what is called the early
church, but much more as exhibited in Scripture. Is the
church system of Innocent the Third, either in faith or in
government, the system of the New Testament ? That the
two differ widely is certain ; but is one the developement of
the other ? Is the spirit of both the same, with no other
alteration than one merely external, such as must be found
in passing from the infancy of the church to its maturity ?
Or is the spirit altogether diiTercnt, so that the later system
is not the developement of the earlier, but its perversion ?
And then follows the inquiry, intensely interesting to those
who are able to pursue it, what is the history of this perver-
sion, and how far is it unlike merely, without being corrupted
from, the Gospel ; for the perversion may not extend through
every part of it ; there may be in it differences from the
original system which are merely external ; there may be in
it, even where superficially considered it is at variance with
the scriptural system, there may be in it developement merely
in some instances while there is perversion in others. Only
it is essential that we do not look at the first century through
the medium of the thirteenth, nor through the medium of any
earlier century : the judge's words must not be taken accord-
ing to the advocate's sense of them : the lirst century is to
determine our judgment of the second, and of all subsequent
centuries ; it will not do to assume that the judgment must
be interpreted by the very practices and opinions the merita
of which it has to try.
We may, however, choose rather to look at the outside of
134 LECTURE II.
the middle ages than penetrate to the deeper principles which
are involved in their contests and their condition. We may
study the chroniclers rather, who paint the visible face of
things with exceeding liveliness, however little they may be
able or may choose lo descend to what lies within. And as
a specimen of these we may take one of the latest of their
number, the celebrated Philip de Comines.
Philip de Comines came from the small town of that name
near Lisle in Flanders, and was thus born a subject of the
dukes of Burgundy, in the reign of Duke Philip the Good, in
the year 1445. He served Duke Philip, and his son Duke
Charles the Bold, but left the latter and went over to the
service of Louis the Eleventh in 1472, by whom he was em-
ployed in his most important and confidential affairs. He
was present with Louis during the last scenes of his life at
Plessis les Tours ; he lived through the reign of Charles the
Eighth with great varieties of fortune, being at one time shut
up in prison, and at another employed in honourable and im-
portant duties, and he died in the reign of Louis the Twelfth.
His Memoirs embrace a period of thirty-four years, from
1464, when he first entered into the service of Duke Charles
of Burgundy, then Count of Charolois, to the death of King
Charles the Eighth in 1498. Thus they are not only a con-
temporary history, but relate mostly to transactions which
the writer actually witnessed, or in which he was more or
less concerned.
Philip de Comines has been called the father of modern
history, a title which would class him with the writers of the
second, or what I have called the more complicated period.
But it seems to me that he belongs entirely to the simpler
period ; and this is most apparent when we compare him
with Machiavelli, who, although almost his contemporary,
yat does in his whole style, and in the tone of his mind,
really belong to the later period. Thus in Philip de Comines
LECTURE II. 135
we meet with scarcely any thing of the great political ques-
tions which arose in the next century ; his Memoirs puint
the wars and intrigues carried on by one prince against
another for the mere purpose of enlarging his dominions;
and, except in the revolts of Liege against the Duke of Bur-
gundy, we see no symptoms of any thing lilte a war of opin-
ion. We get then only a view of the external appearance
of things ; and meet with no other difficulties than such as
arise from a want of sufficient circumstantial knowledge to
enable us to realize his pictures fully.
And here I cannot but congratulate ourselves in this place
on those habits of careful sifting and analysis which we
either have, or ought to have gained, from our classical
studies. Take any large work of a classical historian, and
with what niceness of attention have we been accustomed to
read it. How many books have we consulted in illustration
of its grammatical difficulties, how have we studied our maps
to become familiar with its geography ; what various aids
have we employed to throw light on its historical allusions,
on every office or institution casually named ; on all points
of military detail, the divisions of the army, the form of the
camp, the nature of the weapons and engines used in battles
or in sieges ; or on all matters of private life, points of law,
of domestic economy, of general usages and manners. la
this way we penetrate an ancient history by a thousand pas-
sages, we explore every thing contained in it; if some points
remain obscure, they stand apart from the rest for that very
reason distinctly remembered, the very page in which they
occur is familiar to us. We are already trained, therefore,
in the process of studying history thoroughly ; and we have
only to repeat for Philip de Comines, or any other writer on
whom we may have fixed our choice, the very same method
which we have been accustomed to employ with Herodotus
«.nd Thucydides.
130 LECTURE II.
At the same time it is fair to add, that this process with a
modern historian is accidentally much more difficult. For
the ancient writers we have our helps ready at hand, well-
known, cheap, and accessible. The school-boy has his
Ainsworth or his Donnegan ; he has his small atlas of
ancient maps, his compendium of Greek or Roman anti-
quities, his abridgments of Greek and Roman history. The
more advanced student has his Facciolati, his Schneider,
or his Passow ; his more elaborate atlas, his fuller his-
tories, his vast collections of Greek and Roman antiquities,
to which all the learning of Europe has contributed its aid.
How different is the case with the history of the middle
ages ! If there are any cheap or compendious helps for the
study of them, I must profess my ignorance of them. There
may be many, known on the Continent if not in England, but
I am unable to mention them. For the Latin of the middle
ages, I know of nothing in a smaller form than Adelung's
abridged edition of Ducange ; yet this abridgment consists
of six thick octavos. (5) Maps accommodated to the geog-
raphy of the middle ages, and generally accessible, there are
I think, at least in England, none.* We have nothing, I
think, for the history of the middle ages answering in fulness
and convenience to that book so well known to us all, Lem-
priere's Classical Dictionary. For antiquities, laws, man-
ners, customs, &c., many large and valuable works might
be named, — many sources of information scattered about in
different places ; let me name several excellent papers by
Lancelot, St. Palaye, and others, occurring in the volumes
of the Memoirs of the French Academy, — but a cheap popu-
lar compendium like our old acquaintances Adam and Pot-
ter, or the more itnproved works which are now superseding
thorn, does not, I believe, exist. My object in stating this ia
* All atlas of this kind, however, exhibiting the several countries of Eun^
at auccessive periods, is now in the course of publication in Germany.
LECTURE II. 137
twofold; first, because to state publicly the want is likely
perhaps to excite some one or other to make it good ; and
secondly, to point out again to you how invaluable is the
time which you are passing in this place, inasmuch as the
libraries here furnish you with that information in abun-
dance which to any one settled in the country is in ordinary
oases inaccessible.
But to return to Philip de Comines. We find well exem
plified in him one of the peculiarities of modern history, as
distinguished from that of Greece ana Rome, he .tmportance
namely of attending to genealogies. Many of the wars of
modern Europe have been succession wars ; questions of
disputed inheritance, where either competitor claimed to be
the legal heir of the last undoubted possessor of the crown.
Of such a nature were the great French wars in Italy in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of which Comines witnessed
and has recorded the beginning. And this same thing shows
us also how impossible it is to study any age by itself, how
necessarily our inquiries run back into previous centuries,
how instinctively we look forward to the results in a suc-
ceeding period of what we are now studying in its origin.
For instance, Comines records the marriage of Mary duchess
of Burgundy, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold,
with Maximilian archduke of Austria. This marriage, con-
veying all the dominions of Burgundy to Maximilian and his
heirs, established a great independent sovereign on the fron-
tiers of France, giving to him on the north, not only the
present kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, but large portions
of what is now French territory, the old provinces of Artoiso
and French Flanders, French Hainault and French Luxem-
bourg : while on the east it gave him Franche Comtc, thus
yielding him a footing within the Jura, on the very banks
of the Saone. Thence ensued, in after ages, when the Span-
ish branch of the house of Austria had inherited this part of
138 LECTURE II.
its dominions, the long contests which deluged the Nether
lands with blood, the campaigns of King William and Lux-
embourg, the nine years of efforts no less skilful than val-
iant, in which Marlborough broke his way through the
fortresses of the iron frontier. Again, when Spain became
in a manner French by the accession of the house of Bour.
bon, the Netherlands reverted once more to Austria itself;
and from thence the powers of Europe advanced almost in
our own days to assail France as a republic ; and on this
ground, on the plains of Fleurus, was won the first of those
great victories which for nearly twenty years carried the
French standards triumphantly over Europe. Thus the
marriage recorded by Comines has been working busily
down to our very own times : it is only since the settlement
of 1814, and that more recent one of 1830, that the Nether-
lands have ceased to be affected by the union of Charles the
Bold's daughter with Maximilian of Austria.
Again, Comines records the expedition of Charles the
Eighth of France into Italy to claim the crown of Naples.
He found the throne filled by a prince of the house of Ara-
gon. A Frenchman and a Spaniard contend for the inheri-
tance of the most southern kingdom of Italy. We are obliged
to unroll somewhat more of the scroll of time than the part
which was at first lying open before us, in order to make this
part intelligible. The French king represented the house of
Anjou, the elder branch of which, more than two centuries
earlier, had been invited by the pope into Italy to uphold the
Guelf or papal cause against the Ghibelines or party of the
emperors ; headed as it was by Manfred king of Naples, son
of the Swabian emperor of the house of Hohcnstaufen, Fred-
erick the Second. And thus we open upon the rich story
of the contests in Italy in the thirteenth century, the conquer-
ing march of Charles of Anjou, the unworthy brother of tha
noblest and holiest of monarchs Louis the Ninth ; (6) tha
LECTURE II. 139
battle of Benevento; the sad history of the young Conradin,
Manfred's nephew — his defeat at Scurgola undei* the old
walls of the Marsian and Pelasgian Alba, his cruel execu-
tion, the transferring of his claims to Peter of Aragon, who
had married his cousin Constance, Manfred's daughter, the
tragedy of the Sicilian vespers, and the enthroning of the
Aragoneze monarch in Sicily. All these earlier events,
and the extinction subsequently of the elder branch of the
house of Anjou; the crimes and misfortunes of queen Joanna,
her adoption of the younger branch of the house of Anjou,
and the counter adoption of a prince of the house of Aragon
by queen Joanna the Second, the new contest between the
French and Spanish princes, and the triumph of the latter in
1442, fall naturally under our view, in order to explain the
expedition of Charles the Eighth. I say nothing of inquiries
less closely connected with our main subject, inquiries sug-
gested by the events of the Italian expedition ; the state of
Florence after the unsubstantial lustre of Lorenzo di Medici's
government had passed away ; the state of the papacy when
Alexander the Sixth could be elected to fill the papal chair.
But in the more direct inquiries needed to illustrate the con-
test in Naples itself, we see how wide a field must be ex-
plored of earlier times, in order to understand the passing
events of modern history.
The Memoirs of Philip de Comincs terminate about twenty
years before the reformation, six years after the first voyage
of Columbus. They relate then to a tranquil period immedi-
ately preceding a period of extraordinary movement ; to the
last stage of an old state of things, now on the point of passing
away. Such periods, the lull before the burst of the hurri-
cane, the almost oppressive stillness which announces the
eruption, or, to use Campbell's beautiful image —
"Tlie torrent's smootlmcss ere it dash below,"
J 40 LECTURE II.
are always, 1 taink, full of a very deep interest. But it ia
not from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow,
nor yet from the solemnity which all things wear when their
dissolution is fast approaching — the interest has yet another
source ; our knowledge namely, that in that tranquil period
lay the germs of the great changes following, taking their
shape for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly, while
all wore an outside of unconsciousness. We, enlightened by
experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber, we wish in
vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its
condition, and taught the infinite preciousness of the passing
hour. And as when a man has been cut off by sudden death,
we are curious to know whether his previous words or be-
haviour indicated any sense of his coming fate, so we examine
the records of a state of things just expiring, anxious to ob-
serve whether in any point there may be discerned an anti-
cipation of the great future, or whether all was blindness and
insensibility. In this respect Comines' Memoirs are striking
from their perfect unconsciousness : the knell of the middle
ages had been already sounded, yet Comines has no other
notions than such as they had tended to foster ; he describes
their events, their characters, their relations, as if they were
to continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the
simplest form of human affairs gives birth to ; he laments
the instability of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common
mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between
Solon and Crcesus, when the philosopher assured the king
that to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But resem-
bling Herodotus in his simple morality, (7) he is utterly un-
like him in another point ; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely
and honestly of all men without respect of persons, Philip de
Comi.ies praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the
best of princes, although he witnessed not only the crimes of
his life, but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter
LECTURE II. 141
end, and has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect
Philip de Comines is in no respect superior to Froissart, with
whom the crimes committed by his knights and great lords
never interfere with his general eulogies of them : the habit
of deference and respect was too strong to be broken, and the
facts which he himself relates to their discredit, appear to
have produced on his mind no impression.
It is not then in Philip de Comines, nor in tlie other histo-
rians of the earlier period of modern history, that we find the
greatest historical questions presenting themselves. If we
attempt to ascend to these, we must seek them by ourselves ;
the historians themselves do not naturally lead us to thein.
But we must now proceed to the second or more complicated
period, and we must see to what kind of inquiries the histories
of this period immediately introduce us, and what is neces-
sary to enable us fully to understand the scenes which they
present to us. And on this subject I hope to enter in my
next U«iure.
NOTES
LECTURE II.
Note 1.— Page 124.
The importance to the cause of education, of right theory and
practice of translation, which induced Dr. Arnold to speak of it
though only slightly connected with the subject of his lecture, leads
me to follow it somewhat farther. The note which I wish to add
to his remarks will be found in Appendix III. of this volume
Note 2. — Page 127.
In the Preface to the History of Rome, (p. x.,) Dr. Arnold
speaks of Niebuhr's " master art of doubting rightly, and believing
rightly,"
Note 3.— Page 130.
Speaking of the pagan condition of the Anglo-Saxons and theii
conversion to Christianity, Mr. Burke writes — " The introduction
of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such
inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in
these rude and fierce manners.
" It is by no means impossible, that, for an end so worthy, Provi-
dence, on some occasions, might directly have interposed. The
books which contain the history of this time and change, are little
else than a narrative of miracles ; frequently, however, with such
apparent marks of weakness or design, that they afford little en-
couragement to insist on them. They were received with a blind
NOTES TO LECTURE II, 143
credulity ; they have been since rejected with as undistinguishing
a disregard. But as it is not in my design nor inclination, nor in-
deed in my power, either to establish or refute these stories, it is
sufficient to observe, that the reality or opinion of such miracles
was the principal cause of the early acceptance and rapid progre&s
of Christianity in this island."
Essay on English Hislori/, book ii. oh. 1.
Note 4. — Page 131.
" The clearest notion which can be given of rationalism would,
I think, be this ; that it is the abuse of the understanding in
subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are inter-
mingled. Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine
things it cannot ; and thus, where the two are mixed together, its
inability to judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions
of both, and the judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example,
the understanding examines a miraculous history : it judges truly
of what I may call the human part of the case ; that is to say, of
the rarity of miracles, of the fallibility of human testimony, of the
proneness of most minds to exaggeration, and of the critical argu-
ments affecting the genuineness or the date of the narrative itself.
But it forgets the divine part, namely, the power and providence of
God, that he is really ever present amongst us, and that the spiritual
world, which exists invisibly all around us, may conceivably, and
by no means impossibly exist, at some times and to some persons,
even visibly."
AriwWs Sermons, vol. iv., " Christian Life, its Course, etc.,"
note, p. 405.
* * * " I neither afTiim nor deny any thing as to the question
how often in the history of the Church, or in what periods of it,
God may have been pleased to suspend the operations of interme-
diate agents, for the purpose of showing that He is at all times the
Author and Mover of them. This question must be determined by
a careful study of historical evidence ; upon the result of such a
study I should be very sorry to dogmatize. Those who believe
that miracles are for the assertion of order, and not for the viola*
tion or it, for the sake of proving the constant presence of a spiri-
144 NOTES
tual power, and not for the sake of showing that it interferes
occasionally with the affairs of the world, will be the least inclined
to expect the frequent repetitions of such signs, for they hold, that
being recorded as facts in the former ages of the world, they be-
come laws in ours, that we are to own Him, who healed the sick
of the palsy, in every cure which is wrought by the ordinary phy-
sician, Him who stilled the storm on the Lake of Gennesareth, in
the guidance and preservation of every ship which crosses the ocean
— and that this effect would be lost, if we were led to put any con-
tempt upon that which is daily and habitual. Still, I should think it
very presumptuous to say, that it has never been needful, in the
modern history of the world, to break the idols of sense and expe-
rience by the same method which was sanctioned in the days of old.
Far less should I be inclined to underrate the piety, and criticize
the wisdom and honesty of those men, who, missing or overlooking
intermediate powers, of which they knew little, at once referred
the acts and events they witnessed to their primary source."
Maltiice's ' Kingdom of Christ,'' Part II., chap, iv., sect 6
XoTK 5. — Page 133.
" A good glossary to the schoolmen would be an mteresting and
instructive work ; a glossary collecting all the words which they
coined, pointing out the changes they made in the signification of
old Latin words, explaining the ground of these innovations, and
the wants they were meant to supply, and tracking all these words
through the various languages of modern Europe. Valuable as
Ducange's great work is for political, legal, ecclesiastical, military,
and all manner of technical words, we still want a similar, though
a far less bulky and laborious collection of such words as his plan
did not embrace, especially of philosophical, scientific, and medical
words, before we can be thoroughly acquainted with the alterations
which Latin underwent, when, from being the language of Rome,
It became that of all persons of education throughout Europe.
Even from Ducange it would be well if some industrious gram-
marian would pick out all such words as have left any offspring
amongst us. Then alone shall we be prepared for understanding
the history of the English language, when its various elements
TO LECTURE II 145
Iiave be 3 a carefully separated, collected, arranged, and classi-
fied."
' Guesses at Truth,* p. 140.
NoTK G. — Page 138.
•' No direct instruction could leave on their (the pupils at Rugby)
minds a livelier image of his (Dr. Arnold's) disgust at moral evil,
than the black cloud of indignation which passed over his face
when speaking of the crimes of Napoleon or of Caesar, and the
dead pause which followed, as if the acts had just been committed
in his very presence. No expression of his reverence for a high
standard of Christian excellence could have been more striking
than the almost involuntary expressions of admiration which broke
from him whenever mention was made of St. Louis of France."
Life, chap. iii.
Note 7. — Page 140.
It is perhaps partly for the pleasure of quoting from a work
abounding in beautiful and wise criticism — one of the most valuable
contributions that has been made to critical literature — a model of
what Christian imaginative criticism should be — that I select Mr.
Keble's words respecting the ' simple morality' of Herodotus.
* * " Habcmus Ilcrodotum, habemus Platonem : quorum alter
Ilomerum refert non lingua tantum lonica, et simplicitate ilia
ipxatoTp6K<f, sod ct universo genere narrandi, et maxime omnium
propter quasdam sententias, de vita caduca, rerumque mortalium
segritudine, quas ille mira dulcedine narrationibus suis intertexi
curavit." * *
Keble : Pralectiones, i. 27.1.
* * * " If I were called upon to name what spirit of evil pre-
dominantly deserved the name of Antichrist, I should name the
spirit of chivalry* — the more detestable for the very guise of tlie
• " Chivalry," or (as Dr. Arnotil used more ftequently to call the clement in tho
middle ages which he thus condemned) " feudality, is especially Keltic and barbarian
— incompatible with the highest virtue of wliich man is capable, and the last at which
he arrives— a sense of justice. It sets up the personal allegiance to the chief iibov*
allegiance to God and law."
146 NOTES TO LECTURE II.
' Archangel ruined,' which has made it so seductive to the most
generous spiiits — but to me so hateful, because it is in direct oppo-
sition to the impartial justice of the Gospel, and its comprehensive
feeling of equal brotherhood, and because it so fostered a sense of
honour rather then a sense of duty."
Life and Correspondence, chap, v., letter 4.
* * * " One relation alone, beyond those of blood, seems to have
been acknowledged," (in Cisalpine Gaul in the 3d century, a. c. ;)
" the same which, introduced into Europe six hundred years after-
wards by the victories of the German barbarians, has deeply tainted
modern society down to this hour ; the relation of chief and fol-
lowers, or, as it was called in its subsequent form, lord and vassals.
The head of a family distinguished for his strength and courage
gathered around him a numerous train of followers from other fam-
ilies ; and they formed his clan, or band, or followers, bound to him
for life and death, bestowing on him those feelings of devoted at-
tachment, which can be safely entertained only towards the com-
monwealth and its laws, and rendering him that blind obedience
which is wickedness when paid to any less than God. This evil
and degrading bond is well described by the Greek and Roman
writers, by words expressive of unlawful and anti-social combina-
tions, (' Factio,' Caesar, de Bell. Gallic, vi. 11; traipti'a, Polybius,
ii. 17 :) it is the same which in other times and countries has ap-
peared in the shape of sworn brotherhoods, factions, parties, sects,
clubs, secret societies, and unions, everywhere and in every form
the worst enemy both of individual and of social excellence, as it
substitutes other objects in place of those to which as men and citi-
r.ens we ought only to be bound, namely, God and Law."
Hist, qf Rome, \o\.'m note, p 476
LECTURE III.
It is my hope, if I am allowed to resume these lectures
next year, to enter fully into the history of some one charac
tcristic period of the middle ages, to point out as well as I
can the sources of information respecting it, and to paint it,
and enable you to judge of its nature both absolutely and
relatively to us. But for the present, I must turn to that
period which is properly to be called modern history, the
modern of the modern, the complicated period as I have call-
ed it, in contradistinction to the simpler period which preceded
it. And here too, if life and health be spared me, I hope
hereafter to enter into minute details; selecting some one
country as the principal subject of our inquiries, and illus-
trating the lessons of history for the most part from its par-
ticular experience. Now, however, I must content myself
with more general notices : I must remember that I am
endeavouring to assist the student of modern history, by sug-
gesting to him the best method of studying it, and pointing
out the principal difficulties which will impede his progress.
I must not suppose the student to be working only at the his-
tory of one country, or one age : the points of interest in tho
three last centuries arc so numerous that our researches may
be carried on {\ir apart from each other, and I must endeavour,
so far as my knowledge will permit, to render these lectures
serviceable generally.
Now in the first place, when we enter upon modern history,
»ur work, limit it as we will, unavoidably grows in magni-
148 LECTURE 111.
cude. Allowing that we are not so extravagant as to aim al
mastering the details of the history of the whole world, that
we set aside oriental history and colonial history ; that far-
ther, having now restricted ourselves to Europe, we separate
the western kingdoms from the northern and eastern, and
confine our attention principally to our own country and to
those which have been most closely connected with it ; yet
still the limit which we strive to draw round our inquiries
will be continually broken through, they will and must extend
themselves beyond it. Northern, eastern, and south-eastern
Europe, the vast world of European colonies, nay sometimes
the distinct oriental world itself, will demand our attention :
there is scarcely a portion of the globe of whicli we can be suf-
fered to remain in complete ignorance. Amidst this wide field,
widening as it were before us at every step, it becomes doubly
important to gain certain principles of inquiry, lest we should
be wandering about vaguely like an ignorant man in an ill-
ai'ranged museum, seeing and wondering at much, but learn-
ing nothing.
The immense variety of history makes it very possible for
different persons to study it with different objects ; and here
we have an obvious and convenient division. But ihe great
object, as I cannot but think, is that wliich most nearly touches
the inner life of civilized man, namely, the vicissitudes of
institutions social, political, and religious. This, in my
judgment, is the TeXsioraTov reXog of historical inquiry; but
because of its great and crowning magnitude we will assign to
it its due place of honour, we will survey the exterior and the
outer courts of the temple, before we approach the sanctuary.
In history, as in other things, a knowledge of the external
is needed before we arrive at that which is within. We want
to get a sort of frame for our picture ; a set of local habita-
tions, Tom'oi, where our ideas may be arranged, a scene in
which the struggle of principles is to be fought, and men who
ion Angeles, Cai.
LECTURE III. 149
are to fight it. And thus wc want to know clearly the geo-
graphical bounds of different countries, and their external
revolutions. This leads us in the first instance to geography
and military history, even if our ultimate object lies beyond.
But being led to them by necessity, we linger in them after-
wards from choice ; so much is there in both of the most
picturesque and poetical character, so much of beauty, of
magnificence, and of interest, physical and moral.
The student of modern history especially needs a knowledge
of geography, because, as I have said, his inquiries will lead
him first or last to every quarter of the globe. But let us»
consider a little what a knowledge of geography is. First, 1
grant, it is a knowledge of the relative position and distance
of places from one another : and by places I mean either
towns, or the habitations of particular tribes or nations ; for
I think our first notion of a map is that of a plan of the dwell-
ings of the human race ; we connect it strictly with man,
and with man's history. And here I believe many persons'
geography stops : they have an idea of the shape, relative
position, and distance of different couaitries ; and of the posi-
tion, that is, as respects the points of the compass, and mutual
distance, of the principal towns. Every one for example has
a notion of the shapes of France and of Italy, that one is
situated north-west of the other, and that their frontiers join :
and again, every one knows that Paris is situated in the
north of France, Bordeaux in the south-west ; that Venice
lies at the north-east corner of Italy, and Rome nearly in the
middle as regards north and south, and near to the western
sea. Thus much of knowledge is indeed indispensable to the
simplest understanding of history ; and this kind of know-
ledge, extending over more or less countries as it may be
and embracing with more or less minuteness the divisions of
wovinces, and the position of the smaller towns, is that which
passes, I believe, with many for a knowledge of geography.
150 LECTURE III.
Yet, you will observe, that this knowledge does not touch
the earth itself, but only the dwellings of men upon the
earth. It regards the shapes of a certain number of great
national estates, if I may so call them ; the limits of which
like those of individuals' property, have often respect to no
natural boundaries, but are purely arbitrary. A real know -
ledge of geography embraces at once a knowledge of the
earth, and of the dwellings of man upon it ; it stretches out
one hand to history, and the other to geology and physiology :
it is just that part in the dominion of knowledge where the
students of physical and of moral science meet together.
And without denying the usefulness of that plan-like know
ledge of geography of which I was just now speaking, it can-
not be doubted that a far deeper knowledge of it is required
by him who would study history effectively. And the deeper
knowledge becomes far the easier to remember. For my
own part I find it extremely difficult to remember the position
of towns, when I have no other association with them than
their situation relatively to each other. But let me once
understand the real geography of a country, its organic
structure if I may so call it : the form of its skeleton, that is,
of its hills : the magnitude and course of its veins and arteries,
that is, o'its streams and rivers : let me conceive of it as of
a whole made up of connected parts ; and then the position
of man's dwellings, viewed in reference to these parts, be-
comes at once easily remembered, and lively and intelligible
besides.
1 said that geography held out one hand to geology and
physiology, while she held out the other to history. In fact,
geology and physiology themselves are closely connected with
history. For instance, what lies at the bottom of that ques-
tion which is now being discussed everywhere, the question
of the corn-laws, but the geological fact that England is more
richly supplied with coal-mines than any other countiy in
LECTURE III. 151
the world ?* What has given a peculiar interest to our rela-
tions with China, but the physiological fact, that the tea-
planl, which is become so necessary to our daily life, has
been cultivated with equal success in no other climate or
country ? What is it which threatens the permanence of
the union between the northern and southern states of the
American confederacy, but the physiological fact that the
soil and climate of the soutliern states render them essentially
agricultural ; while those of the northern states, combined
with tlieir geographical advantages as to sea-pcrts, dispose
them no less naturally to be manufacturing and commercial ?
The whole character of a nation may be influenced by its
geology and physical geography.
* Tlio importance of our coal-mines is so great, that I think it a duty to
reprint here a note of Dr. Buckland's, wliich is to be found in p. 41 of hia
" Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Geological Society ot
London, 19th of February, 1811." What Dr. Buckland says on such a subject
is of the very highest authority ; and should be circulated as widely as possible.
" As no more coal is in process of formation, and our national prosperity must
inevitably terminate with the exhaustion of those precious stores of mineral
fuel, which fonn the foundation of our greatest manufacturing and commer-
cial establishments, I feel it my duty to entreat the attention of the legislature
to two evil practices which are tending to accelerate tl>e iieriod when the con-
tents L.r our coal-mines will have been consumed. The first of these is the
wanton waste which for more than fifty years has been conmiitted by the
coal-owners near Newcastle, by screening and burning annually in uever-
e.xtinguisiied ^eri/ heaps at the pits' mouth, more than one million of chaldrons
of excellent small coal, being nearly one third of the entire produce of the best
coal-mines in England. This criminal destruction of the elements of our
national industry, which is accelerating by one third the not very distant
period when these mines will be exhausted, is perpetrated by the colliers, for
the purpose of selling the remaining two-thirds at a greater j)rolit than they
would derive from the sale of the entire bulk unscreened to the coal-merchant
" The second evil is the exportation of coal to foreign countries, in some of
which it is employed to work the machinery of rival manufactories, that in
certain cases could scarcely be maintained without a supply of British coals.
•ji !H.TJ, 1,-I31,8(il tons were cxiwrted, and in 1810, l,5ii->,'283 tons, of which
nearly one fourth were sent to France. An inneased duty on coals exported
to any country, excej)ting our own colonies, might atford a remedy. Sco note
J lliis subject in my Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. p. 535."
152 LECTURE III.
But for the sake of its mere beauty and liveliness, if there
were no other consideration, it would be worth our while to
acquire this richer view of geography. Conceive only the
difference between a ground-plan and a picture. The mere
plan-geography of Italy gives us its shape, as I have ob-
served, and the position of its towns ; to these it may add a
semicircle of mountains round the northern boundary, to re-
present the Alps ; and another long line stretching down the
middle of the country, to represent the Apennines. But let
us carry on this a little farther, and give life, and meaning,
and harmony to what is at present at once lifeless and con-
fused. Observe in the first place, how the Apennine line,
beginning from the southern extremity of the Alps, runs
across Italy to the very edge of the Adriatic, and thus sepa-
rates naturally the Italy proper of the Romans from Cisalpine
Gaul. Observe again, how the Alps, after running north
and south where they divide Italy from France, turn then
away to the eastward, running almost parallel to the Apen-
nines, till they too touch the head of the Adriatic, on the
confines of Istria. Thus between these two lines of moun-
tains there is enclosed one great basin or plain ; enclosed on
three sides by mountains, open only on the east to the sea.
Observe how widely it spreads itself out, and then see how
well it is watered. One great river flows through it in its
whole extent ; and this is fed by streams almost unnumbered,
descending towards it on either side, from the Alps on one
side, and from the Apennines on the other. Who can wonder
that this large, and rich, and well-watered plain should be
filled with flourishing cities, or that it should have been con-
tended for so often by successive invaders ? Then descend-
ing into Italy proper, we find the complexity of its geography
quite in accordance with its manifold political divisions. It
is not one simple central ridge of mountains, leaving a broad
belt of level country on either side between it and the sea ;
LECTURE III 153
nor yet is h a cliain rising immediately from the sea on one
side, like the Andes iu South America, and leaving room
therefore on the other side for wide plains of table-land, and
for rivers with a sufficient length of course to become at last
great and navigable. It is a back-bone thickly set with
spines of unequal length, some of them running out at regu-
lar distances parallel to each other, but others twisted so
strangely that they often run for a long way parallel to the
back-bone, or main ridge, and interlace with one another in
a maze almost inextricable. And as if to complete the dis-
order, in those spots wlierc the spines of the Apennines, being
twisted round, run parallel to the sea and to tlieir own cen-
tral chain, and thus leave an interval of plain between their
jases and the Mediterranean, volcanic agency has broken up
tlie space thus left with otlicr and distinct groups of hills of
its own creation, as in the case of Vesuvius and of the Alban
hills near Rome. Speaking generally then, Italy is made
up of an infinite multitude of valleys pent in between high
and steep hills, each forming a country to itself, and cut off
by natural barriers from the others. Its several parts are
isolated by nature, and no art of man can thoroughly unite
them. Even the various provinces of the same kingdom are
strangers to each other ; the Abruzzi are like an unknown
world to the inhabitants of Naples, insomuch that when two
Neapolitan naturalists not ten years since made an excursion
to visit the Majella, one of the highest of the central Apen-
nines, they found there many medicinal plants growing in
the greatest profusion, which the Neapolitans were regularly
in the habit of importing from other countries, as no one sus-
pected their existence within their own kingdom. Hence
arises the romantic character of Italian scenery; the constant
combination of a mountain outline, and all the wild features
of a mountain country, with the rich vegetation of a southern
clin-ate in the valleys : hence too the rudeness, the pastoral
154 LECTURE III.
simplicity, and the occasional robber liabits, to be found in
the population ; so that to this day you may travel in many
places for miles together in the plains and valleys without
passing through a single town or village : for the towns still
cluster on the mountain sides, the houses nestling together on
some scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them and sinking
down abruptly below them, the very " congesta manu pree-
ruptis oppida saxis" of Virgil's description, which he even
then called " antique walls," because they had been the
strongholds of the primeval inhabitants of the country, and
which are still inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries,
nothing of the stir and movement of other parts of Europe
having penetrated into these lonely valleys, and tempted the
people to quit their mountain fastnesses for a more accessible
dwelling in the plain. I have been led on farther than I in-
tended j but I wished to give an example of what I meant by
a real and lively knowledge of geography, which brings the
whole character of a country before our eyes, and enables
us to understand its influence upon the social and political
condition of its inhabitants. And this knowledge, as I said
before, is very important to enable us to follow clearly the
external revolutions of different nations, which we want to
comprehend before we penetrate to what has been passing
within. (1)
The undoubted tendency of the last three centuries has
been to consolidate what were once separate states or king-
doms into one great nation. The Spanish peninsula, which
in earlier times had contained many distinct states, came to
consist as at present of two kingdoms only, Spain and Portu-
gal, in the last ten years of the fifteenth century. Franc
about the same period acquired Bretagne and Provence, but
Its acquisitions of Artois, of Franche Comte, of French Flan-
aers, of Lorraine, and of \lsace, have been much later;
and Avignon and its tcrrito-y were not acquired till the rev
LECTURE III. 155
olution. Fcr a century after the beginning of our period,
Scotland and England were governed by different sover-
eigns ; for two centuries they remained distinct kingdoms ;
and the legislative union with Ireland is no older than the
present century. Looking eastward, how many kingdoms
and states have been swallowed up in the empire of Austria :
Ijohemia, and Hungary : the duchies of Milan and Mantua,
and the republic of Venice. The growth of Prussia into a
mighty kingdom, and Russia into the most colossal of em-
pires, is the work of the last century or of the present.
Even in Germany and Italy, where smaller states still sub-
sist, the same law has been in operation ; of all the free im-
perial cities of Germany four only are left, Frankfort, Ham-
Ijurg, Bremen, and Lubec ; and not Prussia only, but Bavaria
has grown into a great kingdom. So it has been in Italy ;
Venice and Genoa have both been absorbed in our own days
into the monarchies of Austria and Sardinia ; but the six-
t>enth century, and even the fifteenth had begun this work :
/enice had extinguished the independence of Padua and
Verona; Florence had conquered its rival Pisa: and at a
later period the duchies of Ferrara and Urbino fell under
the dominion of the popes. Tliis then has been the tendency
of things generally ; but it has been a tendency by no means
working unchecked j on the contrary, wherever it has threat-
ened to lead to the universal or overbearing dominion of a
single state, it has been strenuously resisted, and resisted
with success; as in the case of Austria and Spain in the six-
teenth and early part of the seventcenlli centuries, of France
at the end of the seventeenth and bc<rinniii(T of the eiirh-
teenth; of England in some degree after the peace of Paris
in 1763, and again of France in our own times. These suc-
cessive excesses of the tendency towards consolidation, and
the resistac.ce ofTered to them, afford some of the most ccnve-
156 LECTURE III.
nient divisions for the external history of modern Europe,
and as such I will briefly notice them.
We have seen that at the end of the fifteenth century,
France and Spain had already become greatly consolidated
within themselves; the former by the acquisition of the
duchy of Burgundy, of Provence, and above all of Bre-
tagne ; the latter by the union of the kingdoms of Castih
and Leon, and the destruction of the Moorish Kingdom of
Granada. But after the marriage of the heiress of Burgun-
dy to Maximilian archduke of Austria had united the Neth-
erlands and Franche Comte to the Austrian dominions, the
subsequent marriage of the archduke Philip, Maximilian's
son, with Joanna daughter and heiress of Ferdinand and Isa-
bella, added to them besides in the beginning of the sixteenth
century the whole inheritance of the crown of Spain. And
as the kingdom of Naples had finally fallen into the hands
of Ferdinand of Aragon, at the termination of the long
struggle between the Aragoncze line and that of Anjou,
Naples also was included in this inheritance. So that when
Charles the Fifth, the archduke Philip's son, succeeded his
grandfather Maximilian as emperor, in 1519, the mass of his
dominions seemed to put him in tlie way of acquiring a
universal empire. And this Austro-Spanish power is the
first of those which going beyond the just limits of the law
of consolidation of states, threatened to alter altogether the
condition of Europe.
It was opposed principally by France, kept at bay by
Francis the First throughout his reign, notwithstanding the
defeats which he suffered ; humbled by the successful al-
liance of his successor Henry the Second with the German
Protestants in 1551, and finally dissolved by the abdication
of Charles the Fifth, and the consequent division of his em-
pire, his brother Ferdinand succeeding to his German do-
minions, whilst his son Philip hiherited Spain, Naples, and
LECTURE III. 157
the Netherlands. This took place in 1555, the second year
of the reign of our queen Mary.
But though deprived of his father's German dominions,
yet the inheritance of Philip the Second was still so ample
that the Spanish power itself overstepped its just bounds, and
became a new object of alarm to Europe. The conquest of
Portugal after the death of king Sebastian in Africa had
given to Philip the whole Spanish peninsula ; to this were
added the Spanish discoveries and conquests in America,
with the wealth derived from them ; besides the :-"..ingdom of
Naples, including the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and the
seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. There was this
important circumstance in addition, that France, which had
successfully resisted Charles the Fifth, was now distracted
by its own religious wars, and in no condition to uphold the
balance of power abroad. The dominion of Philip the Sec-
ond was therefore a very reasonable cause of alarm.
But this too was resisted and dissolved ; principally owing
to the revolt of the Netherlands, the opposition of England,
and the return of France to her proper place amongst Euro-
pean powers, when her religious wars were ended by Henry
the Fourth. Philip lived to see the decline of his power,
and the dismemberment of his empire was sanctioned by his
successor Philip the Third, who virtually resigned his claim
to the sovereignty of the seven united provinces of the Neth-
erlands, the newly-formed republic of Holland. Tiiis great
concession, expressed under the form of a truce for twelve
years, was made in the year 1G09, the sixth year of the
reign of our James the First.
During the reign of Philip the Second, Austria had stood
aloof from Spain ; but in the reigns of his successors the two
branches of the Austrian line were drawn more closely io-
gether, and their power was exerted for the same object.
The conquest of the Palatinate by the emperor Ferdiuaud
t5S LECTURE III.
Ihe Second, in 1622, again excited general alarm, and resist,
ance was organized once more against the dangerous powei
of the house of Austria. France, under Richelieu, was once
more the principal bond of the union, but the power which
acted the most prominent part was one which had not hith-
erto interfered in the general affairs of Europe, the northern
kingdom of Sweden. Sweden, Holland, and the Protestant
states of Germany, were leagued against the house of Aus-
tria under its two heads, the emperor and the king of Spain.
Again the resisting power triumphed ; the Austrian power in
Germany was effectually restrained by the peace of West-
phalia, in 1648 ; Spain saw Portugal again become an in-
dependent kingdom, and when she ended her quarrel with
France by the peace of the Pyrenees, in 1659, she retired
for ever from the foremost place amongst the powers of Eu-
rope.
Austria thus curbed, and Spain falling into decline, room
was left for others to succeed to the highest place in Europe,
now left vacant, and that place was innnediately occupied by
France. Louis the Fourteenth, Henry the Fourth's grand-
son, began to reign without governors in the year 1661, the
year after our restoration, and for the next twenty or thirty
years the French power became more and more formidable.
Its conquests indeed were not considerable, when compared
with those of a later period, yet were they in themselves of
great and enduring importance. French Flanders gave to
France the fortress of Lisle and the port of Dunkirk.
Franche Comte extended its frontier to the eastern slope of
the Jura, and the borders of Switzerland ; Alsace carried it
over the crest of the Vosgcs, and established it on the Rhine.
But the power of France was not to be judged of merely by
ifjs territorial conquests. Its navy had arisen from nothing
to the sovereignty of the seas ; its internal resources were
<leveloped, the ascendency of its arts, its fashions, and its
LECTURE III. 159
literature, was universal. Yet this fourtli alarm of unixx-r-
sal dominion passed away lilce those which had preceded it.
And here the resisting power was England, which now for
tne first time since the reign of Elizabeth, took an active
part in the affairs of Europe. This change was elFecled by
the accession of William the Third, the stadtholder of Hol-
land and the great antagonist of Louis the Fourteenth, to
the throne of England ; and by the strong national, and reli-
gious, and political feeling against France which possessed
the English people. William checked the power of Louis
the Fourteenth, Marlborougli and Eugene overthrew it.
Oppressed by defeats abroad, and by famine and misery at
home, Louis was laid at the mercy of his enemies, and was
only saved by a party revolution in the English ministry.
But the peace of Utrecht in 1713, although it sanctioned the
succession of the French prince Pliilip, grandson of king
Louis, to the throne of Spain, yet by its other stipulations,
and still more by the weakness which made France accept
it, showed sufficiently that all danger of French dominion
was effectually overpast. (2)
Then followed a period of nearly ninety years, during
which the external order of Europe was not materially
threatened. Had Frederic the Second of Prussia possessed
greater physical resources, his personal qualities and dispo-
sitions might hav3 made him the most formidable of conquer,
ors ; but as it was, his extraordinary efforts were essentially
defensive ; it was his glory at the end of the Seven Years'
War that Prussia was not overwhelmed, that it had shattered
the mighty confederacy which had assailed it, and that hav-
ing ridden out the storm, the fiery trial left it with confirmed
and proved strength, and protected besides by the shield of
its glory. (3) England alone, by her great colonial and na.
val successes in the war of 1755, and by the high preten-
sions of her naval code, excited during this period the jeal.
160 LECTURE III.
ousy of Europe ; and thus not only France and Spain, but
her old ally Holland, took part against her in the American
war, and the northern powers showed that their disposition
was equally unfriendly, by agreeing together in their armed
neutrality. But in the loss of America, England seemed to
have paid a sufficient penalty, and the spirit of jealousy and
hostility against her did not appear to survive the conclusion
of the peace of Paris in 1783.
Ten years afterwards there broke out by far the most
alarming danger of universal dominion, which had ever
threatened Europe. The most military people in Europe
became engaged in a war for their very existence. Inva-
sion on the frontiers, civil war and all imaginable horrors
raging within, the ordinary relations of life went to wrack;
and every Frenchman became a soldier. It was a multitude
numerous as the hosts of Persia, but animated by the cour-
age and skill and energy of the old Romans. One thing
alone was wanting, that which Pyrrhus said the Romans
wanted, to enable them to conquer the world, a general and
a ruler like himself. There was wanted a master hand to
restore and maintain peace at home, and to concentrate and
direct the immense military resources of France against her
foreign enemies. And such a one appeared in Napoleon.
Pacifying La Vendee, receiving back the emigrants, restoring
the church, remodelling the law, personally absolute, yet
carefully preserving and maintaining all the great points
which the nation had won at the revolution. Napoleon uni-
ted in himself not only the power but the whole will of
France, and that power and will were guided by a genius
for war such as Europe had never seen since Csesar. The
effect was absolutely magical. In November, 1799, he was
made First Consul ; he found France humbled by defeats,
his Italian conquests lost, his allies invaded, his own frontier
Uireatened. He took the field in May, 1800, and in June the
LECTURE III. 161
whole fortune of the war was changed, and Austria driven
out of Lombardy by the victory of Marengo. Still the flood
of the tide rose higher and higher, and every successive
wave of its advance swept away a kingdom. Earthly state
has never reached a prouder pinnacle, than when Napoleon
in June, 1812, gathered his army at Dresden, that mighty
host, unequalled in all time, of 450,000, not men merely but
effective soldiers, and there received the homage of subject
kings. And now what was the principal adversary of this
tremendous power ? by whom was it checked, and resisted,
and put down ? By none, and by nothing, but the direct and
manifest interposition of God. I know of no language so
well fitted to describe that victorious advance to Moscow,
and the utter humiliation of the retreat, as the lanfruajje of
the prophet with respect to the advance and subsequent de-
struction of the host of Sennacherib. " When they arose
early in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses,"
applies almost literally to that memorable night of frost in
which twenty thousand horses perished, and the strength of
the French army was utterly broken. Human instruments
no doubt were employed in the remainder of the work, nor
would I deny to Germany and to Prussia the glories of that
great year 1813, nor to England the honour of her victories
m Spain, or of the crowning victory of Waterloo. But at
the distance of thirty years, those who lived in the time of
danger, and remember its magnitude, and now calmly re-
view what there was in human strength to avert it, must ac.
knowledge, I think, beyond all controversy, that the deliver-
ance of Europe from the dominion of Napoleon was effected
neither by Russia, nor by Germany, nor by England, but by
the hand of God alone. (4)
What I have now been noticing wih afford one division
which may be convenient for the student of modern history ;
one division, out of many which might be made, and purely
162 LECTURE III.
an external one. But for this purpose it may be useful, just
as we sometimes divide Grecian history into the periods of
the Lacedaemonian, the Athenian, the Theban, and the Mace-
donian ascendency. It shows us how the centre of external
movement has varied, round what point the hopes and fears
of Europe have been successively busy, so far as concerns
external dominion. You will observe, however, how strictly
I have confined myself to the outward and merely territorial
struggle ; how entirely I have omitted all those other and
deeper points which are in connection with the principles of
internal life. I have regarded Austria, Spain, and France
purely in one and the same light ; that is, as national bodies
occupying a certain space on the map of Europe, and en-
deavoring to spread themselves beyond this space, and so
deranging the position of those other national bodies which
existed in their neighbourhood. You know that this is a very
imperfect representation of the great contests of Europe.
You know that Austria and Spain in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries were not merely two nations governed by
tlie same sovereign, or by sovereigns closely allied together,
and which sought their own aggrandizement at the expense
of their neighbours. They were a great deal more than
this; they were the representatives, not purely but in a great
measure, of certain political and religious principles ; and
the triumph of these principles was involved in their territo-
rial conquests. So again, the resistance to them was in part
also the resistance of the opposite principles ; in part, but by
no means purely. It is worth our while to observe this, as
one instance out of thousands, how little any real history is
an exact exemplification of abstract principles ; how our
generalizations — which must indeed be made, for so alone
can history furnish us with any truths — must yet be kept
within certain limits, or they become full of error. Thus
for instance, it is quite true to say that the struggle against
LECTURE III. 163
Austria and Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
was not a mere resistance against territorial aggression :
there were principles involved in the contest. Yet all con-
corned in this resistance did not feel it to be a contest of
principle : France under Francis the First and Henry the
Second, and again under Henry the Fourth, and lastly under
Louis the Thirteenth, or rather under Richelieu, was most
deeply engaged in the resistance to Austria and Spain ; yet
certainly the French government at no one time was con-
tending either for Christian truth or for civil freedom. With
France it was a purely territorial and external contest ; and
this was well shown by the conduct of Francis the First,
who burnt French protestants at Paris, while he was allying
himself with the protestants of Germany ; who opposed, ac-
cidentally indeed, the papal power and cause, but who did
not scruple to form a league with the Turks. So again, in
the Thirty Years' War, that very Richelieu who mainly
contributed to the establishment of protestantism in Germany
on a perfectly equal footing by the treaty of Westphalia, was
the very man who threw his mole across the harbour of
Rochelle, and conquered the great stronghold of protestantism
in France.
These external movements, then, as we have now been
contemplating them, involve no questions of political or re-
ligious principle. We may conceive of them as of a mere
game of chess, where the pieces and pawns on both sides
differ from each other only in being played from a different
part of the board. What we have to consider in these con-
tests are mostly economical questions and military : the purso
and the sword were the powers which decided them. But is
the study of such questions indifferent to us? That surely
it were most unwise to imagine. For in tlie first place,
Jiese very contests which we are now regarding as purely
external, were really as we have seen contests of principle
164 LECTURE III.
also ; and thus the economical and military skill which de-
termined their issue, were in fact the means by which cer^
tain principles were attacked or defended. Besides, economy
and military virtues are the great supports of national exist-
ence, as food and exercise support our individual bodies. I
grant that the existence so supported may be worthless, may
be sinful : yet self-preservation is an essential condition of
all virtue ; in order to do their duty both states and Individ-
uals must first live and be kept alive. But more than all
this, economical and military questions are not purely exter-
nal ; they are connected closely with moral good and evil ;
a faulty political economy is the fruitful parent of crime ; a
sound military system is no mean school of virtue ; and war,
as I have said before, has in its vicissitudes, and much more
in the moral qualities which it calls into action, a deep and
abiding interest for every one worthy of the name of man.
Economical questions arise obviously out of the history of
all wars, although careless readers are very apt to neglect
them. They arise out of that simple law of our nature
which makes it necessary for every man to eat and drink
and be clothed. Common readers, and I am afraid I may
add, many historians also, appear to write and read about
military operations without recollecting this. We hear of
armies marching, advancing, and retreating, besieging towns,
fighting battles, being engaged actively for some weeks or
months, and are apt to think of them solely as moving or
fighting machines, whose success depends on the skill with
which their general plays them, as if they were really so
many chess-men. Yet one would think it was sufficiently
obvious that these armies are made up of men who must eat
and drink every day, and who wear clothing. Of the expense
and difficulty of maintaining them it is not easy, I grant,
for private persons in peace to form any adequate idea. (5)
Yet here we may gain something more of a notion of it than
LECTURE III. 165
can be obtained readily in a private family. A college will
contain perhaps seventy or eighty members ; let any man
but look round the hall at dinner ; or let him go into the
kitchen and see the number of joints at the fire, or let him
ask the number of pounds of meat required for the daily con.
sumption of the college, and see what the cost will amount
to. Then he may think what it is to provide for the food,
not of eighty or of ninety persons, but of twenty, or of forty,
or of sixty, or even of a hundred thousand. All this multi-
tude doing nothing to raise food or make clothing for them-
selves, must be fed and clothed out of the wealth of the
community. Again this community may have to maintain,
not one of these armies but several, and large fleets besides,
and this for many years together; while it may often happen
that its means of doing so are at the same time crippled : its
foreign trade may be cut off, or large portions of its territory
may be laid waste ; while the event of the contest being un-
certain, and defeat and ruin being a possible consequence of
it, hope and confidence are checked, and with them credit
perishes also. Is it then a light matter first to provide the
necessary resources for such a contest, and next to see that
they are not spent wastcfully ? With regard to providing
them, there is first the great question between direct taxation
and loans. Shall we lay the whole burden of the contest
upon the present generation, or divide it between ourselves
and posterity ? Conceive now the difficulties, the exceeding
temptations, which beset the decision of this question. In a
free government it may be doubtful whether the people will
consent to raise the money or no. But suppose that legally
they have no voice in the matter, that the government may
ay on what taxes it will ; still extreme discontent at home
is not likely to be risked in the midst of foreign war ; or if
the people are willing to bear the burden still the power may
be wanting. A tax may easily destroy itself: that is, sup
166 LECTURE III.
pose that a man's trade just yields him a profit which he can
live upon, and a tax is laid upon him to the amount of a
fourth part of his profit. If he raises the price of his com-
modity to the consumer, the consumer will either purchase
so much the less of it, or will endeavour to procure it from
other countries where the dealer being less heavily taxed can
afford to sell on cheaper terms. Then the government inter-
poses to protect the taxed native dealer by prohibiting the
importation of the commodity of the untaxed foreigner. But
such a prohibition running counter to a plain rule of common
sense, which makes every man desire to buy a cheaper article
rather than a dearer, when both are of equal goodness, it can
only be maintained by force. Thence arises the necessity of a
large constabulary or preventive force to put down smuggling,
and, to say nothing of the moral evils produced by such a
state of things, it is clear that the expense of the additional
preventive force which the new tax rendered necessary, is
all to be deducted from the profits of that tax ; and this de-
duction, added to the falling off" in its productiveness occa-
sioned by the greater poverty of the tax-payer, may reduce
its return almost to nothing. Suppose then that a statesman,
appalled by all these difficulties, resolves to share the burden
with posterity, and begins to raise money by loans. No
doubt for the present his work is greatly facilitated ; instead
of providing for the principal of the money which he wants,
he has only to provide for the interest of it. But observe
what follows. In the first place, by an almost universal law
of our nature, money lightly gained is lightly spent: a reve-
nue raised at the expense of posterity is sure to be squandered
wastcfully. Waste as usual begetting want, the sums raised
b/ loans will commonly be large. Now these large sums
are a mortgage on all the property, on all the industry, on
al] the skill and ability of a country forever. Every acre
■)f land from henceforth has not only to maintain its ownw
LECTURE III. 167
and his family, and to answer the just demands of the actual
public service, but it has also to feed one oi* more extraneous
persons besides, the state's creditors or their heirs, who in
times past lent it their money. Every man who would have
laboured twelve hours for the support of his family and the
public service of his own {reneration, must labour one or two
hours in addition, for the support of a stranger, the state's
creditor. So with all its property, with all its industry, with
all its powers thus burdened, thus strained to the very ex-
tremity of endurance, the nation is committed to the vicissi-
tudes of all coming time, to run in the race with other nations
who are in the full freshness of their unstrained strength; to
battle with occasional storms which would try the lightest
and stoutest vessel, but in wjiich one already overloaded till
the timbers are well nigh starting, must necessarily expect to
founder.
Such then being the financial or economical difficulties be-
setting every great contest, it is no mean wisdom to avoid
them as far as is possible ; to make the people so keenly
enter into the necessity of the contest tliat they will make
real sacrifices to maintain it ; so to choose the subjects of
taxation, and so to distribute its burden, as to make it press
with the least possible severity, neither seriously impairing a
people's resources, nor irritating their feelings by a sense of
its inequality. If a statesman after all finds that he must
borrow — and I am far from denying that such a necessity
has sometimes existed — it is no mean administrative wisdom
to enforce the strictest economy in his expenditure ; rigor
ously to put down and punish all jobbing, whether in high
quarters or in low, but more especially in the former; to
resist the fatal temptation of having frequent recourse to an
expedient promising present ease and only threatening future
ruin ; and to keep his eye steadily upon the payment within
a definite time of the sums which he is obliged to borrow.
168 LECTURE III.
That this is a most rare and high wisdom we shall learn
from history, by seeing the fatal consequences of the opposite
follies : consequences wide, and deep, and lasting ; and af-
fecting not only a nation's physical welfare, but through it
surely and fatally corrupting its higher v/elfare also.
One example of this sad truth may be taken from a for-
eign history ; the other which I shall give affects us yet
more closely. We know in how many wars France was
engaged throughout the eighteenth century. We know that
in the Seven Years' War her efforts were great and her de-
feats overwhebning, while her government was in the highest
degree wasteful and unequal in its dealings towards the dif-
ferent classes of society. We know that about fifteen years
afterwards France again engaged in our American war, and
supported a very expensive contest, still aggravated as before
by wastefulness, corruption, and injustice at home, for the space
of five years. A general embarrassment in the finances was
the consequence, and this brought the old and inveterate evils
of the political and social state of France to a head. Both
together led, not to the revolution, but to those tremendous
disorders which accompanied and followed the revolution ;
disorders quite distinct from it, and which were owing mainly
to the extremely unhealthy state of the social relations in
France, to which unhealthy state wide-spreading distress,
brought on by a most unequal and corrupt system of taxation,
had largely contributed.
The other, and unhappily the nearer instance, is yet even
more significant. Whatever distress or difficulty at this
moment surrounds us, has its source in a very great degree
in financial or economical causes. Of course I am not going
to offer any opinion as to the present or future ; I am merely
referring to what is an historical fact belonging to the past.
It is a fact beyond all controversy that the wars of the last
oentury, and particularly that great war which raged during
LECTURE HI. 169
ihe first fifteen years of the present century, were supported
largely by loans ; it is no less certain a fact that of the debt
thus contracted a sum amounting to above £700,000,000 is
still unpaid, and that more than half of our yearly revenue,
to say the least, is appropriated to paying the interest of it.
That such a burden must be too much for the resources or
industry of any country to bear without injury, would seem
to be a proposition absolutely self-evident. Every interest
in the country is subject to unfair disadvantages in the com-
petition with foreigners ; every interest being heavily taxed
is either unable, or able only by the most extraordinary ex-
ertions, to sustain itself in the market of the world against
untaxed or lightly taxed rivals. Now the evils being enor-
mous, and so far as we can see perpetual, it does become an
important question to ask, whether they were also inevitable ?
that is to say, whether, if the same circumstances were to
occur again, which is a matter not within our control, we
should have no choice but to adopt the very same financial
expedients. It may be that the sums raised, and nothing
less, were required by the urgency of the crisis; it may be that
no larger portion of them could have been raised by present
taxation than was so raised actually ; it may be that nothing
more could have been done to liquidate the debt when con-
tracted than has been done actually. But where the meas-
ures adopted have been so ruinous, we must at least be dis-
posed to hope that they might have been avoided ; that here,
as in so many other mstances, the fault rests not with fortune
or with outward circumstances, but with human passion and
human error.
Such is the importance and such the interest of the econoni-
ical questions which arise out of the history of the great ex-
jernaX contests of modern Europe. The military questiona
3onnected with the same history, will form our next subject
of inquiry ; and on this I propose to enter in my next lecture
15
NOTES
LECTURE III
Note 1. — Page 154.
In the Preface to the posthumous volume (vol. iii.) of ^hc His-
tcry of Rome, Archdeacon J. C. Hare, by whom it was edited, speaks
of " the most remarkable among Dr. Arnold's talents, his singular
geographical eye, which enabled him to find as much pleasure in
looking at a map, as lovers of painting in a picture by Raphael or
Claude." (p. viii.)
It may not, perhaps, be inappropriate here to direct attention to
the raised maps as a new facility for the accurate study of geogra-
phy, especially of mountainous regions : they give a notion, which
it would be difficult to gain from the ordinary maps, of the compli-
cated inequalities of Italy or Spain, for instance.
Note 2. — Page 15y.
" Few events in modern times ever seemed so unfavourable to
the balance of power as the union between the French and Spanish
monarchies. The former, already too mighty from her increased
dominions, her central situation, and her warlike and enterprising
people, could now direct the resources of that very state which hixi
formerly weighed the heaviest in the opposite scale. By her pro-
gressive encroachments most other states had been struck witk
dismay; not roused into resistance, and seemed more inclined to
BUS for her alliance than to dare her enmity. But happily for Eu-
rope, the throne of England at this period was filled by a prince of
singular ability both in the council and the field. The first endeav-
ours of William III u^ oppose the succession of Philip, and from a
NOTES TO LECTURE III. 171
confederacy against France, had been thwarted as much by hia
parliament as by foreign powers, and he liad prudently yielded to
the tide, but foresaw and awaited its ebbing. He continued to keep
his objects steadily in sight, and even their ostensible relinquish-
ment was only one of his methods to promote them. By acknow-
ledging the new king of Spain, and professing great desire for
peace, he disarmed the French government of its caution, and led
it to disclose more and more its ambitious and grasping designs.
" Nor were these long delayed. Within a few months Louis
XIV. began to claim the privileges of the South American trade,
struck several blows at British commerce, supplanted the Dutch in
the Spanish Asiento, or contract for negroes, raised new works in
the Flemish fortresses within sight of their frontier, and both in-
creased and assembled his armies. Such conduct could not fail to
provoke most highly the nations thus aggrieved ; and the public in-
dignation, improved by William to the best advantage, gradually grew
into a cry for war. The rising discontent in Spain was another
circumstance auspicious to his views. He spared no labor, no ex-
ertion ; he went in person to the Hague, where he carried on the
most active and able negotiations, foiled all the counter-intrigues
of Louis, and at length succeeded in concluding the basis of the
' Grand Alliance' between England, Austria, and the States Gene-
ral, (Sept. 1701.) The public mind being yet scarcely ripe for the
decisive principles afterwards avowed and acted on, this treaty was
very guarded in its phrases, and confined in its extent. The rights
of the Archduke Charles were not yet asserted, nor those of Philip
denied ; and the chief objects of the contracting parties seemed to
be, that France might not retain its footing in the Netherlands, nor
acquire any in the West Lidics ; and that its crown and that of
Spain might never be united on the same head."
Lord Mauon's ' Hist, of the War of the Succ3Ssion in Spain,''
chap. ii.,p. 11
• * * "France was now (1711) so much weakened, and so
oeirly overwhelmed, by the contest, that it seemed not only possi-
ble, but easy to reduce her overgrown possessions. Her fortresses
taken — her frontiers laid bare — her armies almost annihilated — her
senerals disheartened and distrusted — her finances exhausted- -her
173 NOTES
people starving, she could no longer have defended the successive
usurpations heaped up during the last half century ; and a barrier
against their recurrence might now have been concerted, estab-
lished, and maintained. It only remained for the allies to crown a
glorious war by a triumphant peace. But all this fair prospect was
overcast and darkened by a change in the government, and there-
fore in the policy, of England. Queen Anne, since the deaths of
her only child and of her husband, had nourished a secret leaning
to her exiled family, and maintained the Duke of Marlborough and
his party more from their successes than her inclinations. The
Duchess of Marlborough had, indeed, great influence over her ma-
jesty, and ruled her by the strong chains of habit ; but gradually
lost her ascendency by her own violent and overbearing temper,
and especially her haughty jealousy of Mrs. Masham, a dependant
cousin, whom she had placed about the Queen as a bedchamber
woman, and whom she unexpectedly found distinguished by several
marks of royal regard. A glass of water, thrown by the Duchess
on the gown of Mrs. Masham, changed the destinies of Europe
An humble relation was transformed into an aspiring rival ; and the
Queen, quite estranged from her former favourite, carried her fond-
ness from the person to the politics of her new one. Thus she feii
into the hands of the Tories, then guided mainly by the subtle ca-
bals of Harley, and the splendid genius of St. John. They did
not venture to assail at once the recent services and deeply-rooted
reputation of Marlborough, and thought it safer to undermine than
to overthrow. He was induced to retain the command of the
army ; and the existing administration was broken only by degrees.
In June (1710) fell the Earl of Sunderland, the Foreign Secretary;
in August the Lord Treasurer Godolphin ; and the rest followed in
succession. By some the seals of office were resigned, from others
they were wrested ; and before the close of the year, the Tories
were completely and triumphantly installed in the place of the
Whigs. ..."
Jd., chap. ix. p. 347.
After stating the result of the negotiations between England and
F'rance, Lord Mahon adds —
" Such, in a very few words, is the substance of the celebrated
peace of Utrecht, which has always been considered a blot on the
TO LECTURE 111. 173
bright annals of England ; and which one of her greatest states-
men. Lord Chatham, has pronounced * tlie indelible reproacli of the
last generation.' We may, however, be allowed to think, that
whilst the glory of the war belongs to the whole people, — whilst
Blenheim and Ramillies were prepared by British treasure, and
won by British skill and British bravery, the disgrace of the
peace, that low and unworthy result of such great achievements,
should rest on only a small knot of factious partisans. Let it rest,
above all, on Lord Bolingbroke ; whose genius, splendid as it was,
seldom worked but for evil either in philosophy or politics."
Id., chap. ix. p. 370.
* * * " It is impossible," says Mr. Ilallam, " to justify the
course of that negotiation which ended in the peace of Utrecht.
It was at best a dangerous and inauspicious concession, demanding
every compensation that could be devised, and which the circum-
stances of the war entitled us to require. France was still our
formidable enemy ; the ambition of Louis was still to be dreaded,
his intrigues to be suspected. That an English minister should
have thrown himself into the arms of this enemy at the first over-
ture of negotiation ; that he should have renounced advantages
upon which he might have insisted ; that he should have restored
Lille, and almost attempted to procure the sacrifice of Tournay ;
that throughout the whole correspondence, and in all personal in-
terviews with Torcy, he should have shown the triumphant Queen
of Great Britain more eager for peace than her vanquished adver-
sary ; that the two courts should have been virtually conspiring
against those allies, without whom we had bound ourselves to enter
on no treaty ; that we should have withdrawn our troops in the
midst of a campaign, and even seized upon the towns of our con-
federates while we left them exposed to be overcome by a superior
force ; that we should have first deceived those confederates by the
most direct falsehood in denying our clandestine treaty, and then
dictated to them its acceptance, are facts so disgraceful to Boling-
broke, and in somewhat a loss degree to Oxford, that tiiey cau
hardly be palliated by establishing the expediency of the treaty
baclf."
Coiistit. Hist (if England, cliaj). xvi. vol. iii. p 294
174 NOTES
Note 3.— Page 159.
The Peace of Hubertsburg, between the King of Prussia and
Maria Theresa, being signed on the 15th of February, 1763 — " Six
weeks afterwards Frederick made a public entry into his capital,
which he had not seen for six years ; he sat in an open carriage
with Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick at his side, and the people of
Berlin, thinned as they were in numbers, and well nigh ruined iu
fortunes, by the long-protracted war, greeted with enthusiastic
Bhouts the heroes of their country. Never had any sovereign
waged so arduous a contest with more undeviating spirit or more
varying success. Of ten pitched battles where he commanded in
person, he had been worsted in three, and victorious in seven. Ot
six where other chiefs directed the Prussian armies, every one,
except only Prince Henry's at Freyberg, had been a defeat. Ac-
cording to Frederick's own computation, he had lost in these terri-
ble seven years 180,000 soldiers, while of Russians there had fallen
120,000, of Austrians 140,000, and of French 200,000. But such
numbers, vast as they seem, give a most inadequate idea of all the
misery, desolation, and havoc which this warfare had wrought.
Pestilence had swept away many peaceful thousands ; whole dis-
tricts, especially in Brandenburg and Pomerania, were turned to
wastes ; all the best dwellings laid in ashes ; the very seed-corn in
part devoured, and none but women and children left to follow the
plough ! An officer reports that he rode through seven villages of
Hesse in which he found only one single human being ; a clergj^-
man who was boiling horse-beans for his dinner ! But no dan-
gers could vanquish, no sufferings exhaust, the patriotic spirit of
the Prussians. Seeing the independence of their country at stake,
they scarcely even murmured or complained ; they showed them-
selves ready in such a cause to encounter the worst perils with
onshrinking courage, and endure the worst hardships with mag
oanimous patience. I have always thought their conduct as a
petple, during the two appalling struggles of 1756 and 1813, de-
BCrving of the higliest admiration. From other countries and othei
Bges History can show several chiefs as great as Frederick, and
many chiefs greater than Bliicher. How few, on the contrary, are
TO LECTUEE III. 175
the nations that, like the Prussian at these two periods, have Btood
firm agauist foreign invaders witk the utmost energy and the ut-
most moderation combined, — never relenting in their just hostihty,
and never venting it, like some southern races, in deeds of tumult
and assassination, — proud of their martial renown yet not blindly
relying upon it, and always vindicating that pride by fresh achievements
and accumulated glories ! "
Lord Mahon'a nist. of England, ch. sxxviii. vol. iv. p. 41 S,
A^TE 4. — Page IGl.
It is indeed scarcely possible to speak witli exaggeration of tlie
pomp and pride of power displayed during Napoleon's short rcti-
dence at Dresden, at the beginning of his Russian campaign ; but
if it become a question of substantial strength and of the durability
of the imperial power, a just estimate can be formed only by takuig
into consideration what Dr. Arnold has elsewhere noticed, and
wLidi stands in very significant contrast with the pageantry at
Dresden :
" When Napoleon saw kings and princes bowing before him at
Dresden, Wellington was advancing victoriously in Spain."
• Life and Correspondence,^ Appendix C, ix. 19.
In the eloquent passage in this lecture, where Dr. Arnold speaks
of the tremendous power of the French emperor being checked,
resisted, and put down, " by none, and by nothing but the direct
and manifest interposition of God," he gives a view of the disas-
trous ending of the Russian campaign that is most impressive. It
IS a pity to suggest any thing that will weaken that impression, but
when " direct and manifest interposition of God," apart from human
agency, is spoken of, it can be understood only of the destruction
of the French soldiery by the severities of the Russian winter, and
that to this alone is the catastrophe to be attributed. It can hardly
now be considered a question whether or no the failure of the in-
vasion was owing entirely to the destructive cold, or to that to-
gether with ruinous consequences from the burning of Moscow. It
cannot with precision be said that it was by the elements alone — •
cold, or fire, or both — that such destructive havoc was made with
176 NOTES
the French army ; nor is it necessary, for the puri'ose of strongly
presenting the thought of Divine interposition, to disparage liuman
agency. The fierce avenging courage of men may be an instru-
ment, in the course of Providence, no less than the pitiless cold of
a Siberian winter. A note, like one of these, is not an appropriate
place to examine the various causes of the ruin of the expedition
into Russia, nor vi^ould I presume to discuss the military questions
respecting the campaign ; but when it is stated that the discomfiture
is to be ascribed to nothing but the direct and manifest interposition
of God, it might be thought that the calm judgment of history
did not recognise the skill and foresight in planning and executing
such an invasion, and justice would not be done to that indomitable
bravery with which the injured nation withstood the invasion, and
the energy with which the retreating army was harassed and de-
stroyed during the disastrous retreat. It appears to be well estab-
lished as an historical result, that Napoleon entered Moscow with
an army so reduced in force, and beset with so many difficulties
and dangers, as to render his position a desperate one — ^that he
began the retreat most reluctantly, as a measure of inevitable ne-
cessity, about three weeks too before the intensely cold weather
came on — that, after the bloody fight at Malo-Jaroslawetz, he was
compelled to retreat by the worst route, the same by which he had
advanced, and that the cold only rendered more destructive the de-
struction that had already been begun.
In the account of " the Campaign of 1812 in Russia," written by
the Prussian general Clausewitz, who was in the Russian service,
he arrives at these conclusions, p. 100 :
" 1. That the French army reached Moscow already too much
weakened for the attainment of the end of its enterprise. For the
facts that one third of its force had been wasted before reaching
Smolensko, and another before Moscow, could not fail to make
an impression on the Russian officers in command, the Emperor,
and the ministry, which put an end to all notions cf peace a.d
concession."
" 2. That the actions at Wiazma, Krasnoi, and the Beresina,
although no large bodies could be cited as cut off, occasioned enor-
mous losses to the French ; and that, whatever critics may say of
particular moments of the transaction, the entire destruction of tho
TO LECTURE III. 1T7
French army is to be ascribed to the unheard-of energy of the pur«
suit, the results of which imagination could hardly exaggerate."
Impartial French opinion, and at the same time high military
authority, may be cited to show that Moscow was considered un-
tenable for the French army even before the conflagration : it will
be found in the ' Souvenirs'' of his own life by General Dumas, who
served with the invading army during the campaign, that he de-
plored the pertinacity with which Napoleon postponed the retreat,
and even considered the conflagration of Moscow a fortunate event,
inasmuch as it was tlie means of i)reventing farther delay and de-
struction still more disastrous
" The direct and manifest interposition of God," that Dr. Arnold
here speaks of, had been the subject of some lofty strains of Eng-
lish poetry nearly contemporary with the events ; and sometimes
the poet, with his higher aims of imaginative truth, is found to
reach also more accuracy of fact than the historic commentator.
In the present instance it is the Poet, more than the Lecturer,
who does justice to human agency — to the deeds and the sufferings
of men in the crisis of a desperate conflict, while the presence of
a Divine power of retribution is not less recognised. The com-
parison to the annihilation of the Assyrian host had already been
present to the imagination of Southey in one of his impassioned
lyrics :
" Witness that dread retreat.
When God and nature snioto
The tyrant in his pride !
No wider ruin overtook
Sennacherib's impious host;
Nor when the frantic Persian led
His veterans to the Lybian sands ;
Nor when united Greece
O'er the barbaric power that victory wou
Which EuroiH) yet may bless.
A fouler tyTant cursed the groaning earth,
A fearfuUer destruction was dispensed.
Victorious armies follow'd on his flight ;
On every side he met
The Cossacks' dreadful spear •
On every side he saw
The injured nation rise
Invincible in arms."
' Poetical ITorks,' vol. Ill ML
178 NOTES
In that series of poems which Wordsworth has worthily inscribed
as ' dedicated to Liberty,' the subject is so treated as to show the
Divine interposition made manifest in human agency as well as in
the power of the elements — the work of destruction beg^n by the
self-devotion and the courage of men, and finished by 'famine,
enow, and frost :' —
' No pitying voice commands a halt.
No courage can repel the dire assault ;
Distracted, spiritless, benumbed, and blind,
Whole legions sink — and, in one instant, find
Burial and death : look for them — and descry,
When morn returns, beneath the clear blue sky
A soundless waste, a trackless vacancy !"
' By Moscow self-devoted to a blaze
Of dreadful sacrifice ; by Russian blood
Lavish'd in fight with desperate hardihood ;
The unfeeling Elements no claim shall raise
To rob onr Human Nature of just praise
For what she did and sulTer'd. Pledges sure
Of a deliverance absolute and pure
She gave, if Faith might tread the beaten ways
Of Providence. But now did the Most High
Exalt his still small voice ; — to quell that host
Gather'd his power, a manifest ally ;
He, whose heap'd waves confounded the proud boast
Of Pharaoh, said to Famine, Snow, and Frost,
•Finish the strife by deadliest victory !' "
' Poetical Works,' vol. iii. pp. 238 and 240.
Note 5. — Page 164.
The best way, perhaps, to correct the inadequacy here alluded
to in our ordinary notions of warfare, and to obtain a theoretical
sense of the importance of the ' economics' of war, will be by
the perusal of the correspondence of those who are in command —
for example, the official military letters of Washington, or the dis-
patches of Wellington. From these the reader may form some
conception of the difficulty of provisioning an army — of clothing
and daily feeding a large assemblage of soldiers — of the care of the
sick and wounded, &c. &c. I cannot dismiss a reference to tho
TO LECTURE III. 179
hiilitary correspondence of "Washington and Wellington without
noticing how much each is characterized by the same qualities in
the writers — of good sense, or (to use a more adequate term) the
highest practical wisdom — of singleness of purpose — of heroism
genuine and unostentatious— of integrity and an ever-present sense
of duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice ; and with these qualities a
straight-forward simplicity of style — such as has been truly said to
be the soldierly style — the style that is common to these great cap-
tains of modern times, and to Xenophon and Caesar.
LECTURE IV.
At the very beginning of this lecture I must myself remind
you, lest it should occur to your own minds if I were to omit
it, of that well-known story of the Greek sophist wlio dis-
coursed at length upon the art of war, when Hannibal hap-
pened to be amongst his audience. Some of his hearers, full
of admiration of his eloquence and knowledge, for such it
seemed to them, eagerly applied to the great general for his
judgment, not doubting that it would confirm their own. But
Hannibal's answer was, that he had met with many absurd
old men in his life, but never with one so absurd as this lec-
turer. The recollection of this story should ever be present
to unmilitary men, when they attempt to speak about war ;
and though there may be no Hannibal actually present
amongst us, yet I would wish to speak as cautiously as if my
words were to be heard by one as competent to judge them
as he was.
But although the story relates to the art of war only, yet
it is in fact universally applicable. The unprofessional man,
i8iurr]g, must speak with hesitation in presence of a master
of his craft. And not only in his presence, but generally,
he who is a stranger to any profession must be aware of his
own disadvantages when speaking of the subject of that pro-
fession. Yet consider, on the other hand, that no one man
in the common course of things has more than one profession ,
is he then to be silent, or to feel himself incapable of passing
a judgment upon the subjects of all professions except that
1S2 LECTURE IV.
one ? And consider farther, that professional men may labor
under some disadvantages of their own, looking at their call-
ing from within always, and never from without ; and from
their very devotion to it, not being apt to see it in its relations
with other matters. Farther still, the writer of history seems
under the necessity of overstepping this professional barrier ;
he must speak of wars, he must speak of legislation, he must
often speak of religious disputes, and of questions of political
economy. Yet he cannot be at once soldier, seaman, states-
man, lawyer, clergyman, and merchant. Clearly then then,
is a distinction to be drawn somewhere, there must be a point
up to which an unprofessional judgment of a professional
subject may be not only competent but of high authority ;
although beyond that point it cannot venture without pre-
sumption and folly.
The distinction seems to lie originally in the difference
between the power of doing a thing, and that of perceiving
whether it be well done or not. He who lives in the house,
says Aristotle, is a better judge of its being a good or a bad
one, than the builder of it. He can tell not only whether
the house is good or bad, but wherein its defects consist ; he
can say to the builder, This chimney smokes, or has a bad
draught : or this arrangement of the rooms is inconvenient ;
and yet he may be quite unable to cure the chimney, or to
draw out a plan for his rooms which would on the whole suiJ
him better. Nay, sometimes he can even see where the
fault is which has caused the mischief, and yet he may not
know practically how to remedy it. Following up this prin-
ciple, it would appear that what we understand least in the
profession of another is the detail of his practice ; we may
appreciate his object, may see where he has missed it, oi
where he is pursuing it ill ; nay, may understand generally
che method of setting about it ; but we fail in the minute de-
tails. Applying this to the art of war, and we shall see, I
LECTURE IV. 183
think, that the part which unprofessional men can least
understand is what is technically called tactic, the practical
management of the men in action or even upon parade ; the
handling, so to speak, of themselves, no less than the ac-
tual handling of their weapons. Let a man be as versed as
he will in military history, he must well know that in these
essential points of the last resort he is helpless, and the com-
monest sergeant, or the commonest soldier, knows infinitely
more of the matter than he does. But in proportion as we
recede from these details to more general points, first to what
is technically called strategy, that is to say, the directing the
movements of an army with a view to the accomplishment of
the object of the campaign ; and next to the whole conduct
of the war, as political or moral questions may afiect it, in
that proportion general knowledge and powers of mind come
into play, and an unprofessional person may without blame
speak or write on military subjects, and may judge of them
sufiiciently. (1)
Thus much premised, we may venture to look a little at
the history of the great external contests of Europe, and as
all our historians are full of descriptions of wars and battles,
we will see what lessons are to be gained from them, and
what questions arise out of them.
The highest authority in such matters, the Emperor Napo-
leon, has told us expressly that as a study for a soldier there
were only four generals in modern history whose campaigns
were worth following in detail ; namely, Turenne, Montecu-
culi, Eugene of Savoy, and Frederick of Prussia. (2) It
was only an unworthy feeling which made him omit the name
of Marlborough ; and no one could hesitate to add to the list
his own. But he spoke of generals who were dead, and of
course in adding no other name to this catalogue, I am fo'.
lowing the same rule. Marlborough and Eugene, Frederick
Bnd Napoleon, are gp/ierals whose greatness the commonest
184 LECTURE IV.
reader can feel, because he sees the magnitude of their ex
ploits. But the campaigns of Turenne and Montecuculi or
the Rhine, where they were opposed to each other, although
Napoleon's testimony is quite sufficient to establish their
value as a professional study for a soldier, are yet too much
confined to movements of detail to be readily appreciated by
others. Turenne's military reputation we must for the most
part take upon trust, not disputing it, but being unable to ap-
preciate it. On the other hand, the general reader will turn
with interest to many points of military history which Napo-
leon disregarded : the greatness of the stake at issue, the
magnitude of the events, the moral or intellectual qualities
displayed by the contending parties, are to us exceedingly
interesting ; although I confess that I think the interest
heightened when there is added to all these elements that of
consummate military ability besides.
One of the most certain of all lessons of military history,
although some writers have neglected it, and some have even
disputed it, is the superiority of discipline to enthusiasm.
Much serious mischief has been done by an ignorance or
disbelief of this truth ; and if ever the French had landed in
this country in the early part of the late war, we might have
been taught it by a bitter experience. The defeat of Cope's
army by the Highlanders at Preston Pans is no exception to
this rule, for it was not the enthusiasm of the Highlanders
which won the day, but their novel manner of fighting which
perplexed their enemies ; and the Highlanders had besides a
discipline of their own which made them to a certain degree
efficient soldiers. But as soon as the surprise was over, an!
an officer of even moderate ability was placed at the head of
the royal army, the effect of the highei discipline and superior
tactic of one of the regular armies of Europe became instantly
visible, and the victory at Culloden was won with no diffi-
culty. Even in Fiance, where the natural genius of the
LECTURE IV, 185
people for war is greater than in any other country, and
although the enthusiasm of the Vendcans was directed by
officers of great ability, yet the arrival of the old soldiers of
the garrison of Mentz immediately decided the contest, and
gave them a defeat from which they could never recover. (3)
On the other hand, while not even the most military nations
can become good soldiers without discipline, yet with disci-
pline even the most unmilitary can be made efficient ; of
which no more striking instance can be given than the high
military character of our Sepoy army in India. The first
thing then to be done in all warfare, whether foreign or do-
mestic, is to discipline our men, and till they are thoroughly
disciplined to avoid above all things the exposing them to any
general actions with the enemy. History is full indeed of
instances of great victories gained by a very small force over
a very large one ; but not by undisciplined men, however
brave and enthusiastic, over those who were well disciplined,
except under peculiar circumstances of surprise or local
advantages, such as cannot affect the truth of the general
rule.
It is a question of some interest, whether history justifies
the belief of an inherent superiority in some races of men
over others, or whether all such differences are only acci-
dental and temporary ; and we are to acquiesce in the judg-
ment of king Archidamus, that one man naturally differs little
from another, but that culture and training makes the dis
tinction. There are some very satisfactory examples to
show that a nation must not at any rate assume lightly that
it is superior to another, because it may have gained great
victories over it. Judging by the experience of the period
from 1796 to 1809, we might say that the B'rench were de-
cidedly superior to the Austrians ; and so the campaign of
1806 might seem to show an equal superiority over the Prus-
aians. Yet in the long struggle between the Austrian aud
186 LECTURE IV.
French monarchies, the military success of each are wonder-
fully balanced ; in 1796, whilst Napoleon was defeating
army after army in Italy, the archduke Charles was driving
.Tourdan and Moreau before him out of Germany ; and Fred-
erick the Great defeated the French at Rosbach as completely
and easily as Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena. The
military character of the Italians is now low : yet without
going back to the Roman times, we find that in the sixteenth
century the inhabitants of the Roman states were reputed to
possess in an eminent degree the qualities of soldiers, and
some of the ablest generals of Europe, Alexander Farnese
prince of Parma, Spinola, and Montecuculi, were natives ol
Italy. In our own contests with France, our superiority hae.
not always been what our national vanity would imagine it ;
Philip Augustus and Louis the Ninth were uniformly suc-
cessful against John and Henry the Third ; the conquests of
Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth were followed by pe-
riods of equally unvaried disasters ; and descending to later
times, if Marlborough was uniformly victorious, yet king
William when opposed to Luxembourg, and the duke of
Cumberland when opposed to Marshal Saxe, were no less
uniformly beaten. Such examples are, I think, satisfactory ;
for judging calmly, we would not surely wish that one nation
should be uniformly and inevitably superior to another ; I do
not know what national virtue could safely be subjected to so
severe a temptation. If there be, as perhaps there are, some
physical and moral qualities enjoyed by some nations in a
higher degree than by others, and this, so far as we see, con.
stitutionally ; yet the superiority is not so great but that a
little over presumption and carelessness on one side, or a lit-
tle increased activity and more careful discipline on the other,
and still more any remarkable individual genius in the gen.
erals or in the government, may easily restore the balance,
or even turn it the other way. It is quite a different thing
LECTURE IV. 187
and very legitimate to feel that we have such qualities as will
save us from ever being despicable enemies, or from being
easily defeated by others ; but it is much better that wo
should not feel so confident, as to think tliat others must
always be defeated by us. (4)
But the thoughtful student of military history will find
otlier questions suggesting themselves of a deeper interest ;
he will consider whether the laws of war, as at present
acknowledged, are not susceptible of further improvement ;
he will wish to make out the real merits of certain cases,
which historians seem always to decide from mere partial
feelings, according to the parties concerned, rather than by
any fixed principle. For what is sometimes and by one party
called an heroic national resistance, is by others called insur-
rection and brigandage ; and what, according to one version,
are but strong and just severities for the maintenance of peace,
a. 6; according to another, wholesale murders and military
massacres. Now certainly, if there be no other rule in this
matter than the justice of either party's cause, the case is
evidently incapable of decision till the end of time ; for in
every war, whether civil or foreign, both sides always main-
tain that they are in the right. But this being a point always
assumed by one party and denied by the other, it is much
better that it should be put aside altogether, and that the
merits or demerits of what is called a national war should
be tried on some more tangible and acknowledged ground.
Now it seems one of the greatest improvements of the modern
'aws of war, that regular armies are considered to be the
only belligerents, and that the inhabitants of a country which
shall happen to be the seat of war, shall be regarded as neu-
Iralsj and protected both in their persons and property. It is
held that such a system does but prevent gratuitous horrors; a
treacherous and assassinating kind of warfare on one side, and
on the other cruelties and ojitragcs of the worst description, in
188 LECTURE IV.
which the most helpless part of the population, the sick and
the aged, women and children, are the greatest sufferers.
But it is quite essential that this system of forbearance should
be equally observed by both parties ; if soldiers plunder or
set fire to a village they cannot complain if the inhabitants
cut off their stragglers, or shoot at them from behind walls
and hedges ; and, on the other hand, if the inhabitants of a
village will go out on their own account to annoy an enemy's
march, to interrupt his communications, and to fire upon his
men wherever they can find them, they too must be patient
if the enemy in return burn their village, and hang them up
as brigands. For it is idle to say that the mere circumstance
that an army is invading its enemy's country, puts it out of
the pale of civilized hostility ; or, at any rate, if this be
maintained, it is worse than idle to say that it may not re
taliate this system, and put out of the pale of civilized hostil-
ity those who have^ begun so to deal whh them. The truth
is, that if war, carried on by regular armies under the strict-
est discipline, is yet a great evil, an irregular partisan
warfare is an evil ten times more intolerable ; it is in fad
no other than to give a license to a whole population to com-
mit all sorts of treachery, rapine, and cruelty without any
restraint ; letting loose a multitude of armed men, with none
of the obedience and none of the honourable feelings of a
soldier ; cowardly because they are undisciplined, and cruel
because they are cowardly. It seems then the bounden duty
of every government, not only not to encourage such irregu-
lar warfare on the part of its population, but carefully to
repress it, and to oppose its enemy only with its regular
troops, or with men regularly organized, and acting under
authorized officers, who shall observe the ordinary humanities
of civilized war. And what are called patriotic insurrections,
or irregular risings of the whole population to annoy an in-
vading army by all means, ought impartially to be condemn-
LECTURE IV, 189
ed, by whomsoever and against whomsoever practised, as a
resource of small and doubtful efBcacy, but full of certain
atrocity, and a most terrible aggravation of the evils of war.
Of course, if an invading army sets the example of such
irregular warfare, if they proceed after the manner of the
ancients tP lay waste the country in mere wantonness, to
burn houses, and to be guilty of personal outrages on the
inhabitants, then they themselves invite retaliation, And a
guerilla warfare against such an invader becomes justifiable.
But our censure in all cases should have reference not to the
justice of the original war, which is a point infinitely dis-
putable, but to the simple fact, which side first set the
example of departing from the laws of civilized warfare, and
of beginning a system of treachery and atrocity.
As this is a matter of some importance, I may be allowed
to dwell a little longer upon a vague notion not uncommonly,
as I believe, entertained, that a people whose country is at-
tacked, by which is meant whose territory is the seat of war,
are sustaining some intolerable wrong which they are justi-
fied in repelling by any and every means. But in the natu-
ral course of things, war must be carried on in the territory
of one belligerent or of the other ; it is an accident merely
if their fighting ground iiappcn to be the country of some
third party. Now it cannot be said that the party which
acts on the ofTonsive, war having been once declared, becomes
in the wrong by doing so, or that the object of all invasion is
conquest. You invade your enemy in order to compel him
to do you justice; that is, to force him to make peace on
reasonable terms. This is your theory of the case, and it is
one which must be allowed to be maintainable just as much
as your enemy's, for all laws of war waive and must waive
the question as to the original justice of the quarrel ; they
assume that both parties are equally in the right. But sup-
pose invasion for the sake of conquest, I do not say of the
190 LECTURE IV
whole of your enemy's country, but of that portion of h
which you are invading ; as we have many times invaded
French colonies with a view to their incorporation perma
nently with the British dominions. Conquests of such a sort
are no violations necessarily of the legitimate object of war,
they may be considered as a security taken for the time to
come. Yet undoubtedly the shock to the inhabitants of the
particular countries so invaded is very great ; it was not a
light thing for the Canadian, or the inhabitant of Tnnidad,
or of the Cape of Good Hope, to be severed from the people
of his own blood and language, from his own mother state,
and to be subjected to the dominion of foreigners, men with
a strange language, strange manners, a different church, and a
different law. That the inhabitants of such countries should
enlist very zealously in the militia, and should place the re-
sources of defence very readily in the hands of the govern-
ment, is quite just and quite their duty ; I am only depre-
cating the notion that they should rise in irregular warfare,
each man or each village for itself, and assail the invaders as
their personal enemies, killing them whenever and wherever
they can find them. Or again, suppose that the invasion is
undertaken for the purpose of overthrowing the existing
government of a country, as the attempted French descents
to co-operate with the Jacobites, or the invasion of France by
the coalesced powers in 1792 and 1793, and again in 1814
and 1815. When the English army advanced into France
in 1814, respecting persons and property, and paying for
every article of food which they took from the country,
would it have been for the inhabitants to barricade every
village, to have lurked in every thicket and behind every
wall to shoot stragglers and sentinels, and keep up night and
day a war of extermination ? (5) If indeed the avowed ob-
ject of the invader be the destruction not of any particular
government, bu< of the national existence altogether ; if he
LECTURE IV. 1S1
thus disclaims the usual object of legitimate wai, a fair and
lasting peace, and declares that he makes it a war of exter-
mination, he doubtless cannot complain if the usual laws of
war are departed from against him, when he himself sets the
example. But even then, when we consider wliat unspeak-
able atrocities a partisan warfare gives birth to, and that no
nation attacked by an overwhelming force of disciplined
armies was ever saved by such means, it may be doubted
even tnen whether it be justifiable, unless the invader drives
the inhabitants to it, by treating them from the beginning as
enemies, and outraging their persons and property. If this
judgment seem extreme to any one, I would only ask him to
consider well first the cowardly, treacherous, and atrocious
character of all guerilla warfare, and in the next place the
certain misery which it entails on the country which prac-
tises it, and its inefficacy, as a general rule, to conquer or
expel an enemy, however much it may annoy him.
Other questions will also occur to us, questions I grant of
some theoretical and much practical difficulty, yet which
surely require to be seriously considered. I allude particu-
larly to the supposed right of sacking a town taken by assault,
and of blockading a town defended not by the inhabitants
but by a garrison wholly independent of their control ; the
known consequences of such a blockade being the starvation
of the inhabitants before the garrison can be made to sufier.
The extreme hardness in such cases is that the penalty falls
chiefly on the innocent. When a town is sacked we do not
commonly hear of the garrison being put to the sword in cold
blood, on the plea that they have no right to quarter. Gen-
eral Philippon and his garrison laid down their arms at Ba
dajoz, and were treated as prisoners of war, whilst the houses
of the Spanish inhabitants were plundered. And be it re-
membered, that when we speak of plundering a town after an
assault, we veil under that softer name all crimes which man
192 LECTURE IV.
in his worst excesses can commit, horrors so atrocious that
their very atrocity preserves them from our full execration,
because it makes it impossible to describe them. On this
subject, on the abominable character of such scenes, and the
possibility of preventing them, I will give you not my own
crude opinion, who know nothing of the actual state of armies
at such moments, but that of a veteran soldier, who knows
well the horrors of war while he deeply feels its stirring
power, and its opportunities of nobleness, the historian of the
war in the Spanish peninsula. General Napier's language
is as follows :
" It is a common but shallow and mischievous notion, thai
a villain makes never the worse soldier for an assault, be-
cause the appetite for plunder supplies the place of honour ;
as if the compatibility of vice and bravery rendered the union
of virtue and courage unnecessary in warlike matters. In
all the host which stormed San Sebastian, there was not a
man who being sane would for plunder only have encountered
tl>e danger of that assault, yet under the spell of discipline
all rushed eagerly to meet it. Discipline however has its
root in pati'iotism, or how could armed men be controlled at
all, and it would be wise and far from difficult to graft moder-
ation and humanity upon such a noble stock. The modern
soldier is not necessarily the stern bloody-handed man the
ancient soldier was; there is as much difference between
them as between the sportsman and the butcher ; the ancient
warrior fighting with the sword and reaping his harvest of
death when the enemy was in flight, became habituated to the
act of slaying. The inodern soldier seldom uses his bayonet,
sees not his peculiar victim fall, and exults not over mangled
limbs as proofs of personal prowess. (6) Hence preserving
his original feelings, his natural abhorrence of murder and
crimes of violence, he differs not from other men unless often
engaged in the assault of towns, where rapacity, lust, and
LECTURE IV. 193
inebriety, unchecked by the restraints of discipline, are
excited by temptation. It is said that no soldier can be re-
strained after storming a town, and a British soldier least of
all, because he is brutish and insensible to honour ! Shame
on such calumnies ! What makes the British soldier fight
as no other soldier ever fights ? His pay ? Soldiers of all
nations receive pay. At the period of this assault, a sergeant
of the twenty-eighth regiment named Ball, had beeia sent
with a party to the coast from Roncesvalles, to make pur-
chases for his officers. He placed the money he w-as in-
trusted with, two thousand dollars, in the hands of a commis-
sary, and having secured a receipt, persuaded his party to
join in the storm. He survived, reclaimed the money, made
his purchases, and returned to his regiment. And these are
the men, these are the spirits, wlio are called too brutish to
work upon except by fear. It is precisely fear to which
they are most insensible.
" Undoubtedly if soldiers read and hear that it is impossible
to restrain their violence, they will not be restrained. But
let the plunder of a tovvrn after an assault be expressly made
criminal by the articles of war, with a due punishment at-
tached ; let it be constantly impressed upon the troops that
such conduct is as much opposed to military honour and dis-
cipline as it is to morality ; let a select permanent body of
men receiving higher pay form a part of the army, and be
charged to follow storming columns to aid in preserving
order, and with power to inflict instantaneous punishment,
death if it be necessary. Finally, as reward for extraor-
dinary valour should keep pace witli chastisement for crimes
committed under such temptation, it would be fitting that
money, apportioned to the danger and importance of the ser-
vice, should be ensured to the successful troops, and always
paid whhout delay. This money might be taken as ransom
from enemies, but if the inhabitants are friends, or too^poor,
17
194 LECTURE IV.
government should furnish the amount. Willi such regula-
tions, the storming of towns would not produce more military
disorders than the gaining of battles in the field."*
The other case on which it seems desirable that the law
of nations should either be amended, or declared more clearly
and enforced in practice, is that of the blockade of towns not
defended by their inhabitants, in order to force their surrender
by starvation. And here let us try to realize to ourselves
what such a blockade is. We need not, unhappily, draw a
fancied picture ; history, and no remote history either, will
supply us with the facts. Some of you, I doubt not, remem-
ber Genoa ; you have seen that queenly city with its streets
of palaces, rising tier above tier from the water, girdling
with the long lines of its bright white houses the vast sweep
of its harbour, the mouth of which is marked by a huge
natural mole of rock, crowned by its magnificent light-house
tower. You remember how its white houses rose out of a mass
of fig, and olive, and orange-trees, the glory of hs old patri-
cian luxury ; you may have observed the mountains behind
the town spotted at intervals by small circular low towers,
one of which is distinctly conspicuous where the ridge of the
lulls rises to its summit, and hides from view all the country
behind it. Those towers are the forts of the famous lines,
which, curiously resembling in shape the later Syracusan
walls enclosing Epipolse, converge inland from the eastern
and western extremities of the city, looking down, the west-
ern line on the valley of the Polcevera, the eastern on that of
the Bisagno, till they meet as I have said on the summit of
the mountains, where the hills cease to rise from the sea, and
become more or less of a table-land running off towards the
interior, at the distance, as well as I remember, of between
two and three miles from the outside of the city. Thus a
very large open space is enclosed within the lines, and Genoa
* History o( the War in the Peninsula, vol. vi. p. 215
LECTURE IV. 195
ts capable therefore of becoming a vast entrenched camp,
holding not so much a garrison as an army. In the autumn
of 1799 the Austrians had driven the French out of Lom-
bardy and Piedmont ; their last victory of Fossano or Genola
liad won the fortress of Coni or Cuneo close under the Alps,
and at the very extremity of tiie plain of the Po ; the French
clung to Italy only by their hold of the Riviera of Genoa,
the narrow strip of coast between the Apennines and the sea,
which extends from the frontiers of France almost to the
mouth of the Arno. Hither the remains of the French force
were collected, commanded by General Masscna, and the
point of chief importance to his defence was the city of
Genoa. Napoleon liad just returned from Egypt, and was
become First Consul ; but he could not be expected to take
the field till the following spring, and till then Massena was
hopeless of relief from without, every thing was to depend on
his own pertinacity. The strength of his army made it im-
possible to force it in such a position as Genoa ; but its very
numbers, added to the population of a great city, held out to
the enemy a hope of reducing it by famine ; and as Genoa
derives most of its supplies by sea, Lord Keith, the British
naval comma:2der-in-chief in the Mediterranean, lent the
assistance of nis naval force to the Austrians, and by the
vigilance of his cruisers, the whole coasting trade right and
left along the Riviera was effectually cut off. It is not at
once that the inhabitants of a great city, accustomed to the
daily sight of well-stored shops and an abundant market,
begm to realize the idea of scarcity ; or that the wealthy
classes of society, who have never known any other state
than one of abundance and luxury, begin seriously to con.
ceive of famine. But the shops were emptied, and the store,
houses began to be drawn upon ; and no fresh supply or
hope of supply appeared. Winter passed away, and spring
returned, so early and so beautiful on that garden-like coast.
196 LECTURE IV.
sheltered as it is from the north winds by its belt of moun-
tains, and open to the full rays of the southern sun. Spring
returned, and clothed the hill sides within the lines with its
fresh verdure. But that verdure was no longer the mere
delight of the careless eye of luxury, refreshing the citizens
by its liveliness and softness when they rode or walked up
thither from the city to enjoy the surpassing beauty of the
prospect. The green hill-sides were now visited for a very
different object ; ladies of the highest rank might be seen
cutting up every plant which it was possible to turn to food,
and bearing home the common weeds of our road sides as a
most precious treasure. The French general pitied the distress
of the people, but the lives and strength of his garrison seemed
to him more important than the lives of the Genoese, and such
provisions as remained were reserved in the first place for
the French army. Scarcity became utter want, and want
became famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of that gor-
geous city, no less than in the humblest tenements of its
humblest poor, death was busy ; not the momentary death of
battle or massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence, but
the lingering and most miserable death of famine. Infants
died before their parents' eyes, husbands and wives lay down
to expire together. A man whom I saw at Genoa in 1825
told me that his father and two of his brothers had been
starved to death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till in the
month of June, when Napoleon had already descended from
the Alps into the plain of Lombardy, the misery became un-
endurable, and Massena surrendered. But before he did so,
twenty thousand innocent persons, old and young, women
and children, had died by the most horrible of deaths which
humanity can endure. Other horrors which occurred be-
sides during this b.ockade I pass over; the agonizing death
of twenty thousand innocent and helpless persons required
nothing to be added to it. (7)
LECTURE IV. 197
Now is it right that such a tragedy as this should take
place, and that the laws of war should be supposed to justify
the authors of it ? Conceive having been a naval officer
in Lord Keith's squadron at that time, and being employed
in stopping the food which was being brought for the lelief
of such misery. For the thing was done deliberately ; the
helplessness of the Genoese was known, their distress was
known ; it was known that they could not force Massena to
surrender 3 it was known that they were dying daily by
hundreds ; yet week after week, and month after month, did
the British ships of war keep their iron watch along all the
coast : no vessel nor boat laden with any article of provision
could escape their vigilance. One cannot but be thankful
that Nelson was spared from commanding at this horrible
blockade of Genoa.
Now on which side the law of nations should throw the
guilt of most atrocious murder, is of little comparative conse-
quence, 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 pai'ties 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 re-
carded in the same light as one who were to murder hia
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 author-
ize 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 sup-
posed for a moment to be placing the guilt of the individuals
198 LECTURE IV.
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 helpless-
ness 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.
Other points of the received law of nations might be no-
ticed, and more especially of maritime law, which require,
to say the least, a full reconsideration. They will suggest
themselves to the attentive reader of histoiy, if his thoughts
have been once turned in that direction. And, considering
the magnitude of the interests involved, any defect in national
law is surely no less important than a defect in civil law ;
to lend a sanction to the passions and injustice of men where
they operate most extensively, is a sad perversion of the na-
ture of law ; it is that corruption of the noblest thing which is
itself the vilest. But in these inquiries, amidst all our con-
demnation of a bad law, we must remember that its very evil
consists mainly in this, that it throws its sanction over crime ;
that is, that men commit crime as a thing lawful. The
magnitude of the evil of a bad law is, I was almost going to
say, the measure of the allowance to be granted to the indi-
viduals whom it misleads ; at any rate it greatly diminishes
their guilt. And for this reason I chose in the instances
which I gave of faulty national law, to take tliose in which
our countrymen acted upon tlie bad law, ratlier than those in
which it was acted upon by foreigners or enemies. In our
own case we are willing enough to make that allowance
which in the case of others we might be inclined to refuse.
LECTURE IV. 199
Generally, however, I confess, that amongst ourselves, and
when we are not concerned to establish our own just claims
to the respect of others, I think that it is more useful to con-
template our own national faults and the worthy deeds of
other nations, than to take the opposite course ; or even to
dwell singly upon our own glories, or on the dishonour of
others. For there can be, I imagine, no danger of our admi-
ring our neighbours too much, oi ourselves too little. It can-
not be necessary to enlarge before an English audience upon
the greatness of England, whether past or present: it cannot
be necessary for an Englishman to express in so many words
his love and admiration for his country. It is because Eng-
land is so great, and our love for our country is so deep and
so just, that we can not only afford to dwell upon the darker
spots in our history, but we absolutely require them, lest our
love and admiration should become idolatrous ; it is because
we are only too apt to compare foreign nations with our-
selves unfavourably, that it is absolutely good for us to con-
template what they have suffered unjustly or done worthily.
Connected with the last point which I have been noticing,
is another which appears to me of importance in studying
military or external history, and that is, to apprehend cor-
rectly in every war what are the merits of the quarrel. I do
not mean only so far as such an apprehension is essential to
our sympathizing rightly with either of the parties concerned
in it, but with a higher object ; that we may see, namely,
what have been ordinarily the causes of wars, and then con-
sider whether they liave been sufficient to justify recourse to
such an extreme arbitrament. For as I speak freely of the
intense interest of military history, and the great sympathy
due to the many heroic qualities which war calls into action,
so we must never forget that waV is after all a very great
evil ; and though I believe that theoretically the Quakers are
wrong in pronouncing all wars to be unjustifiable, yet I con-
800 LECTURE V,
fess that historically the exceptions to their doctrine have
been comparatively few ; that is to say, as in every war one
party I suppose must be to blame, so in most wars both parties
have been blameable ; and the wars ought never to have
taken place at all. Two cases of wars where both parties
appear to me more or less to blame, I will now give by way
of example. It sometimes happens, especially in the inter-
course of a civilized nation with barbarians, that the subjects
of one nation persist in a course of conduct at variance with
the laws of the other ; and that the party thus aggrieved takes
its redress into its own hands and punishes the ofienders, sum-
marily, with over sevei'ity pei'haps, and sometimes mistaken,
ly : that is, the individuals punished may in that particular
case be innocent ; as it has often happened that when soldiers
fire upon a riotous crowd, some harmless passers by are the
sufferers, although they had no concern whatever in the riot.
It cannot be denied that the party originally aggrieved has
now given some just cause of complaint against itself; yet it
is monstrous in the original aggressor to prosecute his quarrel
forthwith by arms, or to insist peremptorily on receiving satis-
faction for the wrong done to him, without entering into the
question of the previous and unprovoked wrong which had
been done by him. For after all, the balance of wrong is
not, when all things are taken into the account, so much as
brought to a level : the original debtor is the debtor still ;
some counter claims he has upon his creditor ; but the bal-
ance of the account is against him. Yet he goes to war as
if it were not only in his favour, but as if his adversary had
Buffered no wrong at all, and he had done none.
The other case is one of greater difficulty, and has been
the fruitful parent of wars continued from generation to
generation. This is where nations suspect each other, and
the suspicion has in the case of cither enough to justify it.
Thus what one party claims as a security, the other regards
LECTURE IV 201
AS a fresh aggression ; and so the quarrel goes on hiternii.
iiably. The Punic wars in ancient history arc one instance
of this : the long wars between France and the coalesced
powers in our own times are another. At a given moment
in the contest the government on one side may feci sure of
its own honest intentions, and suspect with justice the hostile
disposition of its rival. But in all fairness, the previous
steps of the struggle must be reviewed ; have our predeces-
sors never acted in such a way as to inspire suspicion justly ?
We stand in their place, the inheritors of their cause, and the
suspicions which their conduct occasioned still survive to-
wards us. Our enemy is dealing insincerely with us, be-
cause he cannot be persuaded that we mean fairly by him.
A great evil, and one almost endless, if each party refuses
to put itself in the other's place, and presses merely the actual
fact of the moment, that while it is dealing in all sincerity,
its adversary is meditating only deceit and hostility. In
such cases I cannot but think that the guilt of the continued
quarrel must be divided, not equally perhaps, but divided,
between both the belligerents.
And now coming to the mere history of military operation?
themselves, in what manner may a common reader best enter
into them, and read them with interest ? It is notorious, 1
believe, that our ordinary notions of wars are very much
those which wc find in the accounts of the Samnitc wars in
Livy. (8) We remember the great battles, sometimes with
much particularity ; but they stand in our memory as iso-
lated events ; we cannot connect them with each other, we
know not what led to them, nor what was their bearing on
the fate of the campaign. Sometimes, it is true, this is of no
great consequence ; for the previous movements were nc
more than the Homeric —
202 LECTURE IV.
the armies maiched out to meet each other, and the battle
decided every thing. But in complicated wars it is very
different. Take for instance the wars of Frederick the
Great ; we may remember that he was defeated at Kolin, at
Hochkirchen, and at Cunersdorf ; that he was victorious at
Rosbach, at Lissa, at Zorndorf, and at Torgau ; but how far
are we still from comprehending the action of the war, and
appreciating his extraordinary ability. To do this, a good
map is essential ; a map which shall exhibit the hills of a
country, its principal roads, and its most important fortresses.
To understand the operations of the Seven Years' War, we
must comprehend the situation of the Prussian dominions
with respect to those of the allies, and must know also their
geographical character, as well as that of the countries im-
mediately adjoining them. We must observe the importance
of Saxony, as covering Prussia on the side of Austria ; the
importance of Silesia, as running in deeply within what may
be called the line of the Austrian frontier, and flanking a
large part of Bohemia. For these reasons Frederick began
the war by surprising Saxony, and amidst all his difficulties
clung resolutely to the possession of Silesia. His vulnerable
side was on the east towards Russia ; and had the Russian
power been in any degree such as it became afterwards, he
would have lost Berlin not once only, but permanently. But
the Russian armies being better fitted for defence than offence,
even their great victory of Cunersdorf was followed by no
important consequences, and Frederick was able generally
to leave the defence of his eastern frontiers to his generals,
and to devote his own attention to the great struggle witn
Austria on the side of Saxony and Silesia.
Connected with the details of military history, and in itself
in many respects curious, is the history, so far as it can be
traced, of great roads and fortresses ; for these, like all other
earthly things, change from age to age, and if we do not
LECTURE 1 7. 203
Know or Dbseive these changes, the military history of one
period will be almost unintelligible, if judged of according to
ihe roads and fortresses of another. For example, there are
at present three great lines of communication between the
northwest of Italy and the Rhone : one is the coast road from
Nice to Marseilles, and Tarascon or Avignon ; another is
the road over Mont Cenis upon Montmeillan, and so descend-
ing the valley of the Isere by Grenoble upon Valence ; a
third is the road so well known to all travellers, from Mont-
meillan upon Chamberri, and from thence by Les Echellcs
upon Lyons. But in the early part of the sixteenth century,
I find in the work of an Italian, named Gratarolo, wlio wrote
a sort of guide for travellers, that the principal line of com-
munication between Italy and the Rhone was one which it
now requires a good map even to trace ; it crossed the Alps
by the Mont Gencvre, descended for a certain distance along
.llie valley of the Durance, and then struck ofT to the right,
and went straight towards Avignon, by a little place called
Sault, and by Carpentras. The abandonment in many in-
stances of the line of the Roman roads in Italy is owing, as I
have been informed, to the extreme insecurity of travelling
during a long period ; so that accoi'ding to the description of
a similar state of things in Scripture, " the highways were
unoccupied, and the travellers walked through by-ways."
Merchants and those who were obliged to go from place to
place followed by-roads, as nearly parallel as they could
find them to the line of the great roads ; and when a better
state of things returned, the by-roads were become so much
in use, that they remained the ordinary lines of communica-
tion, and the great roads of the Roman time went to ruin.
So again with fortresses ; when Charles the Fifth invaded
Champagne in the sixteenth century, his army was resisted
by the little town of St. Dizier, which is now perfectly open,
nnd incapable of stopping an enemy for half an hour; while
204 LECTURE IV.
the fortresses which resisted the Prussians in 1792, Longwy
and Verdun, seem to have been in Charles the Fifth's daya
of no consequence whatever. The great Piedmontese for-
tress at this day is Alessandria, which I think hardly occurs
in the military history of Piedmont previously to the wars of
the French revolution. On the other hand, Turin itself,
which was besieged so elaborately by Marshal Marsin in
1706, and so effectually relieved by Prince Eugene's victo-
rious assault on the besiegers' lines, and the citadel of which
was a fortress of some importance so late as 1799, is now
wholly an open town, and its ramparts are become a pro-
menade.
When speaking of the altered lines of roads, one is natu-
rally led to think of the roads over great mountain chains,
of which so many have been newly opened in our own days;
and a few words on mountain warfare, which has been called
the poetry of the military art, shall conclude this lecture.
But by mountain warfare I do not mean the mere attack or
defence of a mountain pass, such as we read of in the Tyro-
lese insurrection of 1809 ; but the attack and defence of a
whole mountain country, comprehending a line perhaps of
eighty or a hundred miles. You have here almost all the
elements of interest in war met together ; the highest exer-
cise of skill hi the general in the combination of his opera-
tions ', the greatest skill and energy in the officers and soldiers
in overcoming or turning to account the natural difficulties
of the ground ; and the picturesque and poetical charm of
the grouping together of art and nature, of the greatest works
and efforts of man with the highest magnificence of natural
scenery. One memorable instance of this grand mountain
warfare was the contest in the Pyrenees in 1813 ; another
may be found in Napoleon's operations in the Apennines, in
the beginning of the campaign of 1796, and those in the val-
ley of the Adige in January 1797 ; a third, and in some m-
LECTURE IV. 205
Bpec\s the most striking of all, was the struggle in Switzer-
land in 1799, when the eastern side of Switzerland was made
as it were one vast fortress, which the French defended
against the attacks of the allies. In such warfare, a general
must bear constantly in mind the whole anatomy of the
mountains which he is defending or attacking : the geo-
graphical distance of the several valleys and passes from
each other, their facilities of lateral communication, their
exact bearings and windings, as well as the details of their
natural features, and resources. He must also conceive tlie
disposition of liis enemy's army, the force at each particular
point, and the facilities of massing a large force at any one
point in a given time. For a blow struck with effect at any
one spot is felt along the whole line ; and the strongest posi-
tions are sometimes necessarily abandoned without firing a
shot, merely because a point has been carried at the distance
of thirty or forty miles from them, by which the enemy may
penetrate within their line and threaten their rear. And
surely the moving forty or fifty thousand men with such pre-
cision, that marching from many different quarters they may
be all brought together at a given hour on a given spot, is a
very magnificent combination, if we consider how many
points must be embraced at once in the mind, in order to its
conception, and how many more are essential to its successful
execution. But lest I should seem here forgetting my own
caution, and imitating the presumption of Hannibal's sophist,
I will only refer you to General Malhicu Dumas' History of
the Campaigns of 1799 and 1800, in which, illustrated as it
is by its notes, you will find a very clear account of the par-
ticular contest in Switzerland, and some general remarks on
mountain warfare, very clear and very interesting. (9)
The subject is so vast that it would not be easy to exhaust
it ; but enough has been said perhaps to fulfil my immediate
object, that of noticing some of the questions and difficulties
206 LECTURE IV.
which occur in military history ; and I have lingered long
enough upon ground on which my right as an unmilitary
man to enter at all may possibly be questioned. Here then
I shall end what I have to say with regard to external history •
it follows that we should penetrate a little deeper, and endea-
vour to find some clue to guide us through the labyrinth of
opinions and parties, political and religious, which constitute
at once the difficulty and the interest of internal history.
NOTES
I,ECTURE IV.
Note 1.— Page 183.
In one of the prefaces to his History of Rome, Dr. Ain(»ld writes :
• • " I am well aware of the great difficulty of giving liveliness to
a narrative which necessarily gets all its facts at second-hand.
And a writer who has never been engaged in any public transac-
tions, either of peace or war, must feel this especially. One who
is himself a statesman and orator, may relate the political contests
even of remote ages with something of the spirit of a contemporary ;
for his own experience realizes to him in a great measure the scenes
and the characters which he is describing. And in like manner a
soldier or a seaman can enter fully into the great deeds of ancient
warfare ; for although in outward form ancient battles and sieges
may differ from those of modern times, yet the genius of the general
and the courage of the soldier, the call for so many of the highest
qualities of our nature, which constitutes the enduring moral interest
of war, are common ilike to all times ; and he who has fought under
Wellington has been in spirit an eye-witness of the campaigns of
Hannibal. But a writer whose whole experience has been con-
fined to private life and to peace, has no link to connect him with
the actors and great deeds of ancient history, except the feelings of
our common humanity. He cannot realize civil contests or battles
with the vividness of a statesman and a soldier ; he can but enter
into them as a man ; and his general knowledge of human nature,
his love of great and good actions, his sympathy with virtue, his ab-
horrence of vice, can alone assist him in making himself as it were
a witness of what he attempts to describe. But these even by
208
NOTES
themselves will do much ; and if an historian feels as a man and as
a citizen, there is hope that, however humble his experience, he
may inspire his readers with something of his own interest in tho
events of his history."
History of Rome, vol. ii. Preface
Note 2.— Page 183.
" It is curious to observe how readily men mistake accidental
distinctions for such as are really essential. A lively writer, the
author of the ' Bubbles from the Brunnen of Nassau,' ridicides the
study of what is called ancient history ; and as an instance of ita
uselessness, asks what lessons in the art of war can be derived
from the insignificant contests which took place before the invention
of gunpowder. Now it so happens that one who well knew whaJ
military lessons were instructive, the emperor Napoleon, has se-
lected out of the whole range of history the campaigns of seven
generals only, as important to be studied by an officer professionally
in all their details ; and of these seven three belong to the times of
Greece and Rome, namely, Alexander, Hannibal, and Cajsar. See.
Napoleon's ' Melanges Historiques,' tome ii. p. 10."
Arnold's Thucydides, vol. iii. Preface, p. 20, note
Note 3.— Page 185,
When Mentz was taken by the allied army in 1793, the French
garrison was allowed to march out, without being made prisoners
of war, and only under a stipulation that they w ere not to serve
against the allies for a year. The consequence of which was, that
these disciplined veterans were afterwards hurried, under the com-
mand of Kleber, into La Vendee, and against them, as Dr. Arnold
has observed, the heroism and enthusiasm of the Vendeans, before
victorious, was quickly found an unequal match. Goethe, who was
present with the Duke of Brunswick during the siege, has given a
ourious account of the personal appearance of the veterans by whom
this important fortress of Mayence had been stoutly defended. On
one occasion, riding over the ground after a bold sortie in the night by
the besieged garrison, he says, " The sun rose with a dull light, and
TO LECTURE IV. 209
I'tie sacrifices of tlio night were lying side by side. Our German cui-
rassiers, men of gigantic stature and well clothed, presented a strango
contrast with the dwarfish, insignificant-looking, tattered Sanscu-
lottes." When the garrison surrendered and marched out, he after-
wards adds, " Never was any thing stranger than the way in which
they came upon our sight ; a column of Marseillois, all small and
black-looking, and clad in particoloured rags, came pattering along,
as if King Edwin had opened his mountain and sent forth his merry
host of dwarfs. After these followed troops of a more regular de-
scription, with serious and dissatisfied visages, with no look how-
ever of being ashamed or out of heart. But what had the most
striking appearance was when the chasseurs a cheval rode forward
in their turn. They had advanced in silence to our station, when
their band struck up the ]\Iarseillaise march. This revolutionary
Te Deum has, under any circumstances, somewhat of a mournful
expression, let it be played in ever so quick time, but on this occa-
sion they gave it a slow movement, and so came slowly along. It
was an impressive and fearful sight when the horsemen, long, lean
men, all with a veteran look, rode slowly forward, with faces as
solemn and mournful as the tones of their music. Individually they
might have reminded one of Don Quixote, but as a body their ap-
pearance was such as to inspire awe." " Belagerung von Maintz."
Note 4. — Page 187.
" I never felt more keenly the wish to see the peace between the
two countries (England and France) perpetual ; never could I be
more indignant at the folly and wickedness which on both sides of
the water are trying to rekindle the flames of war. The one eflect
of the last war ought to be to excite in both nations the greatest
mutual respect. France witli the aid of half Europe could not
conquer England ; England, with the aid of all Europe, never could
have overcome France, had France been zealous and united in Na-
poleon's quarrel. When Napoleon saw kings and priices bowing
before him at Dresden, Wellington was advancing victoriously in
Spain; when a million of men iu 1815 were invading France, Na-
poleon engaged for three days with two armies, each singly equal
210 NOTES
to his own, and was for two days victorious. Equally and utterly
false are the follies uttered by silly men of both countries, about
the certainty of one beating the other. 'Oi irdXu Siafipu avSpun-oj
ivBpuTT'i'j, is especially applicable here. When Englishmen and
Frenchmen meet in war, each may know that they will meet in
the other all a soldier's qualities, skill, activity, and undaunted cour-
age, with bodies able to do the bidding of the spirit cither in action
or in endurance. England and France may do each other incalcu-
lable mischief by going to war, both physically and morally ; but
they can gain for themselves, or hope to gain, nothing. It were an
accursed wish in either to wish to destroy the other, and happily
the wish would be as utterly vain as it wouii be wicked." 1840.
Life and Correspondence, Appendix C, ix. 19
The allusion, both in the text and in the above extract, to King
Archidamus, refers to some of the words of cautious counsel he
gave to his countrymen in the public deliberations held at Sparta
before the hostilities in the Peloponnesian War — woXi) reSiaipiptiv oi
Se7 voiilC,eiv aVOpuiTrov avOpdirov, KpaTiarov Se tlvai Sorif iv to7s avayxaioTdToii
iraidevtrai, ThucycUdes, i. 84 ; or in Dr. Arnold's paraphrase — " One
man is practically much the same as another ; or if there be any
difference, it is that he who has been taught what is most needful,
and has never troubled himself with superfluous accomplishments,
is the best and most valuable."
General Dumas, in a note in the fourth volume of his " Precis des
Evenemens Militaires,^'' alludes to the peculiar vivacity of French
character as an important element in sustaining the national spirit
under the depression of military reverses, and gives a pleasant in-
stance of the expression of such feeling :
"Al'epoque de la paix de 1762, quand les Anglais parvinrent,
par les malheurs de la guerre sur le continent, k humilier la marine
frauQaise, Favart, connu seulement par quelques ouvrages drama-
tiques du genre le plus leger, mais pleins de grace, inspire cetVe
fois par cet esprit public recele dans le coeur des Frangais comma
le feu dans le caillou, fit le couplet suivant, qui merite d'etre con-
•erve, et ne saurait etre reproduit plus k propos :
TO LECTURE IV. 211
" Le co<i franjais est le coq iIc la gloire ;
Par Ics revers il n'est point abattu ;
II chaiite fort, s'il gagne la victoire ;
Encor plus fort quatid il est bien battu:
Lc coq franfais est le coq de la gloire ;
Toujours chanter est sa granile vertu,
Est-il imprudent, est-il sage 1
C'est ce qu'on ne peut difinir ;
Mais qui ne pcrd jamais courage,
Se rend maitre dc I'avenir."
Dr. Arnold has noticed the resemblance of Athenian and
French vivacity, in preserving unbroken self-confidence amidst the
greatest disasters, and that Favart's epigram is almost a paraphrase
of the language of the Corinthians as applied to the Athenians —
" KparovvTes re ric exOpHv tn-J TrAeicrrov e^(px''VTaiy Kal viKilifitvoi tV i\dxiaToi
avatrliiTovaiv." Tliuci/didcs, book i. 70, note.
Note 5.— Page 190.
In one of the Duke of Wellington's dispatches, dated at St. Jean
de Luz, 1st Jan., 1814, he remarks to Earl Bathurst, " It is a cu-
rious circumstance that we are the protectors of the property of
the inhabitants against the plunder of their own armies ; and their
cattle, property, etc., are driven into our lines for protection."
The difficulty in preventing plunder was chiefly felt with regard
to the Spanish and Portuguese troops, who were under violent
temptation, now they were on French ground, after having witnessed
such havoc and desolation by pillaging in their own countries.
The following characteristic letter of Wellington's was written on
the occasion to the general of the Spanish forces.
" St. Jean dc Luz, Q3d Decern., 1813,
" To General Morillo —
" Before I gave the orders of the th, of which you and tli«
officers under your command have made such repeated complaints,
I warned you repeatedly of tlie misconduct of your troops, in direct
disobedience of my orders, which I told you I could not permit ;
»nd I desired you to take measures to prevent it.
" I have sent orders to countermand those which I gave on tliu
212 NOTES
18th ; but I give you notice that whatever may be the consequence
I shall repeat those orders, if your troops are not made, by theii
officers, to conduct themselves as well-disciplined soldiers ought.
" I did not lose thousands of men to bring the army under my
command into the French territory, in order that the soldiers might
plunder and ill-treat the French peasantry, in positive disobedience
to my orders ; and I beg that you and your officers will understand
that I prefer to have a small army, that will obey my orders and
preserve discipline, to a large one, that is disobedient and undisci-
plined ; and that if the measures which I am obliged to adopt to
enforce obedience and good order, occasion the loss of men, and
the reduction of my force, it is totally indifferent to me ; and the
fault rests with those who, by the neglect of their duty, suffer theii
soldiers to commit disorders which must be prejudicial to their
country.
" I cannot be satisfied with professions of obedience. My orders
raust be really obeyed, and strictly carried into execution ; and if I
cannot obtain obedience in one way, I will in another, or I will not
command the troops which disobey me."
In a letter to the Portuguese General Freyre, Wellington WTites
in French as characteristic as his English ; * * " pour moi, je
declare que je ne desire pas un commandement, ni I'union des na-
tions, si I'un ou I'autre doit 6tre fonde sur le pillage. J'ai perdu
20,000 hommes dans cette campagne, et ce n'est pas pour que le
General Morillo, ni qui que ce soit, puisse venir piller les paysans
Fran^ais ; et, oh je commande, je declare hautement que je ne le
permettrai pas. Si on veut piller, qu'on nomme un autre ci com
mander , parceque, moi, je declare que, si on est sous mes ordres,
il ne faut pas piller.
" Vous avez des grandes armees en Espagne ; et si on veut
piller les paysans Francjais, on n'a qu'k m'6ter le commandement,
et entrer en France. Je couvrirai I'Espagne centre les malheura
qui en seront le resultat ; c'est k dire, que vos armees, quelquea
grandes qu'elles puissent ^tre, ne pourront pas rester en France
pendant 15 jours. * *
" Je pourrais dire quelque chose aussi en justification de ce que
''ai fait, qui regarderait la politique ; mais j'ai assez dit, et je vous
r6pete, qu'i. m'est absolument indifferent que je commande uiie
TO LECTURE IV 213
grande ou une petite armee ; mais que, qu'ellc soft grande ou
netite, il faut qii'elle m'obeisse, et surtout qiCelle ne pille pas.''''
Wellington's 'Dispatches and General Orders,'' 8G3,
Note G.— Page 192.
* * " The manner of war, which affords most opportunity for per-
Bonal prowess, and requires most individual exertion, calls forth
more personal feeling, and, consequently, fiercer passions. How
much more murderous would battles be, if they were decided by
the sword and bayonet ; how few prisoners would be taken, and
how little mercy shown !
" Montesinos. In proof of this, more Englishmen fell at Tow-
ton, than in any of Marlborough's battles, or at Waterloo.
" Sir Thomas More. In war, then, it is manifestly better that
men, in general, should act in masses as machines, than with an
individual feeling.
" Montesinos. I remember to have read or heard of a soldier in
our late war, who was one day told by his officer to take aim when
he fired, and make sure of his man. ' I cannot do it, sir.' was his
reply. ' I fire into their ranks, and that does as well ; but to single
out one among them, and mark him for death, would lie upon my
mind afterwards.' The man who could feel thus, was worthy of a
better station than that in which his lot had been assigned.
" Sir Thomas More. And yet, Montesinos, such a man was
well placed, if not for present welfare, for his lasting good. A
soul tl.at can withstand the hcarthardcning tendencies of a military
life, is strengthened and elevated by it. In what other station
could he have attained that quiet dignity of mind, that conscious-
ness of moral strength, which is possessed by those who, living
daily in the face of death, live also always in the fear of God'?"
Southcy's 'Colloquies,'' vol. i., p. 210.
Note 7.— Page 196.
A detailed and graphic description of the sufferings and horrors
of the siege of Genoa, is given in Botta's History of Italy, chap-
ter 19.
214 NOTES
Note 8.— Page 201
* * " Of the Samnite people we can gain no distinct notions
whatever. Unknown and unnoticed by the early Greek writers,
they had been well nigh exterminated before the time of those
Roman writers whose works have come down to us ; and in the
Augustan age, nothing survived of them but a miserable remnant,
retaining no traceable image of the former state of the nation.
Our knowledge of the Samnites is literally limited to the single
fact, that they were a brave people, who clung resolutely to their
national independence. ** The very story of their wars with Rome,
having been recorded by no contemporary historian, has been cor-
rupted, as usual, by the Roman vanity ; and neither the origin of
the contest, nor its circumstances, nor the terms of the several
treaties which were made before its final issue, have been related
truly.
* * " Every step in the Samnite and Latin wars has been so dis-
guised by the Roman annalists, that a probable narrative of these
events can only be given by a free correction of their falsifications.
The case of Capua applying for aid to Rome against the Samnites,
was exactly that of Corcyra asking help from Athens against Cor-
inth. * * So truly is real history a lesson of universal application,
that we should understand the war between Rome and Samnium far
better from reading Thucydides' account of the war between Cor-
inth and Corcyra, t'lan from Livy's corrupted story of the very
events themselves.
* * " Livy himself (viii. 40) deplores the Want of all contempo-
rary writers for the times of the Sanuiite wars, as one great cause
of the hopeless confusion in which the story of those wars was
involved."
History of Rome, vol. ii., chap, xxviii.
Note 9.— Page 205.
" On s'etonnera que tant de barri^res, qui passaient pour ^tre des
obstacles insurmontables k la marche d'une armee, aient ete forcees,
et que la defense opinia,tre et trfes active d'un nombre de troupes,
que certainement or eilt autrefois juge surabondant pour fetnier
TO LECTURE IV. 215
tuus ces passages, n'aient pas arrete plus long-temps Tarmee at-
taquante. On demandera s'il y avait plus d'ardeur dans Tattaque,
moins de vigueur et de Constance dans la defense ; si Ton employa
de nouvelles amies, de nouveaux moyens dans les combats ; si les
rapports et les applications des manoeuvres des diverses armes aux
diflerentes natures de pays et de terrain furent changes 1 Non, sans
doute, et tr^s vraisemblablement I'art de la guerre avait dejk atteint,
60US tous ces rapports, son plus haut periode. Le Cesar de notre
cige, Frederic II., avait laisse peu de decouvertes k faire, ou k per-
fectionner dans la tactique moderne.
" Mais k mesure que les combinaisons generales se sont etendues,
il en a ete des postes les plus forts, et des lieux reputes inexpugna-
bles dans les pays de montagnes, comme des places dans les pays
de plaine : si ces postes n'assurent la possession des sommites les
plus hautes et les plus escarpees, s'ils ne sont la clef des moindres
interstices dans la chalne, celle des premiers passages ouverts par
les eaux, et qui, s'agrandissant peu k peu, et s'aplanissant en suivant
leur cours, donnent I'entree des vallees fertiles et etendues; ils n'ont
qu'une importance relative et momentanee.
" Dcpuis que les voyageurs ont fra)'e des sentiers a travcrs les
ablmes de glaces, dcpuis que de nouvelles regions ont ete explorees,
Tart de la guerre, qui s'empare de tout, qui s'accroit de tous les
progr^s de I'esprit humain, a fait tenter de nouveaux hasards, a fait
faire de nouvelles experiences ; et le talent et I'audacc militairea
n'ont pas d\l exciter les hommes k des efforts moindres, que ceux
qu'inspirait Tamour des sciences ou la simple curiosite des voyageurs
" D6s qu'on a su gravir les cimes glacees des Alpes, et porter
des corps de troupes et de I'artillerie par des sentiers, k peine
tentes par les plus intrepides chasseurs, on a bientdt forme de
grands plans d'attaque et de defense, comme la nature avait elle-
meme lie les aretes et les hauteurs moyennes aux chaines et aux
masses principales ; on a surpris ses secrets ; on a reconnu son
ordre immuable jusque dans ses caprices les plus bizarres ; le chaos
dos grandes Alpes a ete debrouille, les cartes topographiques per-
foctionnees, les moindres details recueillis ; on a figure des reliefs
avec un art et une piecision inconnus jusqu'a nos jours. Cette con-
naissance exacte de la grande charpente, de Vosteologie des monta-
gnes, (si on vcut nous pcrmetter cette expression,) a inspire aux
216 NOTES
generaux et aux officiers d'etat major des idees plus grandes et
plus simples. Les communications plus pratiquees ont ete exa-
minees avec plus d'attention ; enfin, il s'est etabli una nouvelle
echelle pour les operations dans la guerre de montagnes ; on a ose
detacher des corps k de grandes distances, pour s'assurer du point
qui rendait maitre des grands intervalles.
" Ces avantages furent si bien saisis de part et d'autre dans la
guerre de Suisse, que les coups portes sur la frontiere de Tyrol et
des Grisons k trente et quarante lieues des positions centrales des
armees, etaient ressentis ^ I'instant, obligeaient k faire des mouv'e-
mens, faisaient changer les desseins, comme si ces divisions se-
parees par tant de difficultes, par tant de retranchemens naturels,
avaient ete contiguees.
" Aucun obstacle ne pouvant arreter le mouvement general, du
moins assez long-temps pour obliger le parti supei"ieur en force h
se departir du plan simple d'operations, qu'on pourrait appeler le
plan naturel, et qui consiste k deborder les ailes de son eimemi,
tourner et miner leurs appuis, il en est resulte que, dans la guerre
de montagnes, la force des postes et des positions ne balance plus
autant qu'autrefois la superiorite du nombre.
" Nous pensons que le nouveau systeme de guerre de postes,
dans les actions generales entre toutes les parties des armees op-
posees, a reqn un grand developpement dans la guerre de Suisse,
et qu'il est aussi utile qu'interessant d'observer, sous ces rapports,
les succes et les revers, les fautes commises et les traits d'habilete.
Nous laissons k nos lecteurs le soin d'appliquer ces observations
aux exemples qui les justifient ; les plus remarquables se trouvent
dans la rapide invasion du pays des Grisons, dans les operations du
general Lecourbe, et dans celles des generaux Laudon et Belle-
garde, que nous avons rapportees ; enfin, dans la premiere retraite
du general Massena, force de concentrer ses forces sur Zurich, de
replier sa droite en-de^k du Mont Saint-Gothard et des petits can-
tons, et de ceder k I'Archiduc en moins de quinze jours, presque
tout le cours du Rhin et la moitie du territoire de la Suisse."
Dumas : " Precis des Ev6nemens Militaires," i. eh. 3me.
*' Comme les habitans des pays montagneux et sauvages sont
ordinairement les plus courageux, et du moins les pliTS hardis, parcc
TO LECTURE IV. 217
(u'ils sont accoutumes k surmonter les obstacles que leur oppose
.'asiperite du sol, et qu'ils sont forces k des marches penibles, k
dcs travaux souvent perilleux ; on doit remarquer aussi que le
courage s'exalte dans la guerre des montagnes, le genie semble
etre plus fecond en ressources, les obstacles irritent ; quand tout
est difficile, rien ne semble impossible ; le soldat y devient plus
audacieux, et chaquc jour plus entreprenant ; il acquiert aussi plui
dc Constance et de confiance en sa propre valeur."
Idem, iii. eh. 'Jde, p. 40.
It is an interesting fact, that it was in this country that thisdistin-
/uished military historian and soldier, General Mathicu Dumas, had
rtis early service. He came when quite a young man, with the French
troops to the United States, as one of the aids of Count Rocham-
oeau, in 1780, and continued in the country till after the surrender
of Yorktown, at which he was present. He has left " Recollec-
cions" of his life, which describe his service in America, the French
revolutionary period, and his service under the French Empire.
The more elaborate work, on which his reputation chiefly rests, is
ihe "Precis des Evcnemens Militaires, on Essais Historiques sur les
Campngnes de 1799 a 1814." It is the work to which Dr. Arnold
refers ; it was completed down to the year 1807, in nineteen vol-
umes. It sustains, I am informed, a high character as a military
authority, and I can well believe that it is written in an admirable
spirit, and with the genuine candour of an old soldier, well versed
in the science of his profession, when I meet, in the preface, with such
reflections as these, after an observation on the military pedantry
of judging by a too rigid application of the principles of warfare :
' La critique austere et tranchante n'est pas toujours la plus in-
structive. Sans negliger de faire remarquer Timprevoyance, la
temerite, les faux calculs punis par des revers merites, je m "i suis,
je I'avoue, attache davantage k faire ressortir les exemples ccn-
traires, ceux od le general n'a pas du seulement la victoire aux
fautes de son adversaire, mais bien plutot k ses bonnes dispositions,
k I'intelligence et k I'energie de ses officiers et de ses soldats, ne
laissant a la fortune que les chances qu'on ne peut garantir centre
BBS caprices '
19
LECTURE V.
1 piioPosED that in the present lecture we should approach
to the consideration of the internal history of the last three
hundred or three hundred and forty years which have
elapsed since the close of the middle ages. It is not with-
out some peculiar apprehensions that I enter upon this part
of my subject. Its difficulties are so great that I cannot hope
to do more than partially remove them ; and still more, when
we come to an analysis of opinions and parties, it is scarcely
possible to avoid expressing, or at least implying some judg-
ments of my own, which may be at variance with the judg-
ments of many of my hearers. Yet with a full sense of all
these impediments in my way, I yet feel that I must proceed,
and that to turn aside from the straightforward road, would
be an unworthy shrinking from one of the most important
parts of my duty. For, as I said at the beginning, any thing
ol the nature of a calm analysis of that on which we have
been accustomed to feel much more than to think, cannot but
be useful to us. Nor will it be the least valuable part of it
that it should teach us to disentangle principles first from
parties, and again from one another ; first of all, as showing
how imperfectly all parties represent their own principles,
and then, how the principles themselves are a mingled tissue,
the good and evil being sometimes combined together ; and
practically, that which under some circumstances was good
or evil, changing under different circumstances, and becom-
ing the opposite,
Now here, at the outset of our inquiry, 1 must again dwell
220 LECTURE V.
for a moment on our peculiar advantages, in this place, ir
beiniT made so familiar with the histories of Greece and ot
Rome. For in those histories is involved a great part of our
own : they contain a view of our own society, only some-
what simplified, as befits an earlier and introductory study.
And our familiarity with their details will be convenient en
the present occasion, because they will furnish us with
many illustrations familiar already to all my hearers. Be-
sides this, he who has studied Thucydides and Tacitus, and
has added to them, as so many of us have done, a familiar
acquaintance with Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero, has already
heard the masters of political wisdom, and will have derived
from them some general rules to assist him in making his
way through the thicket of modern history. (1)
When we surveyed the external history of the last three
centuries, we found that there were at different times differ-
ent centres of action ; that at one time Austria was this cen-
tre, at another Spain, and at another France : so that if one
were asked, quite generally, what was Europe doing exter-
nally at such or such a period, it might be answered, that it
was engaged in favouring or in resisting one or other of these
great powers. Now if we ask at any given period, what
Europe was doing internally, can we give an answer equally
simple ? Has there been any principle predominant with
respect to internal history, as successive nations have been
in external matters, and has the advancing or putting down
this principle been the great business of the mind of Europe,
as the supporting or opposing Austrian or French dominion
has been the business of her external policy and action ?
Now, for the convenience of division, and as an aid to our
examination, we may say perhaps that there was : and we
may divide the three last centuries into two periods, the first
extending from 1500 to the middle of the seventeenth centu.
ry, and the second going on from 1650 or 1660 to nearly our
LECTURE V. 221
own times. And quite generally, we might answer, that in
the first of these periods Europe was engaged in maintaining
or opposing the protestant reformation ; in the second, in
maintaining or opposing a reformation, or to use a more neu-
tral word, an alteration in matters political. Such a division,
and such a view of each of the two parts of the division,
would be allowable and just, I think, if made for the mere
purpose of assisting our studies, while we were fully aware
of its incompleteness. But if we believed it to be altogether
correct, it would be sadly misleading; for in real if v more
than one principle has been contended for at one time : and
what we call the protestant reformation, is itself a complex
thing, embracing a great many points, theological, moral, and
political : and these points may not have been all pressed by
the same persons, nor at the same time ; and political ref-
ormation also is very variously understood ; some wishing
for greater changes, others for less ; and the points most pas-
sionately desired by some, being to others almost indifferent,
or it may be, even objectionable. So that it becomes essen-
tial to carry our analysis a little farther, and to show in this
w^ay what a complicated subject we have to deal with.
Let us suppose for an instant that the whole struggle which
has occupied the internal history of modern Europe, has been
a political one : we will take nothing more into the account
than those questions which are ordinarily called political.
Now, then, what is the real political question which is at the
bottom of all others, or in other words, what is the principle
of all political divisions? Shall we say that it is this, —
whether political power shall be vested in a greater or less
number of Ijands, the old Greek question, in short, as to the
ascendency of the many or the k\v ? Accordingly, they
who take one side of this question, which we call the popu.
lar side, should advocate, we will say, the conmiunication of
political power as widely as possible ; those who take the
222 LECTURE V.
anti-popular side, should wish it to be confined only to a
few ? A complete democracy would appear to be the con.
summation of the wishes of the former, a simple monarchy
would most answer the views of the latter. And thus, if the
contest be between a republic and an individual aiming at
monarchy, men who espouse the popular party would wish
well to the republic, their opponents would favour the at-
tempt at monarchy. Accordingly, in the greatest heat of the
French revolution, this was the view taken of the civil wars
of Rome ; and the popular party in France revered the
memory, and on all occasions magnified the names of Cato
and Brutus as true republicans, who were upholding the
cause of liberty against a tyi'ant. Yet it is certain that this
view was quite fallacious ; that Cato and Brutus belonged
not to the popular party at Rome, but to the aristocratical j
they belonged to that party which had steadily opposed the
agrarian laws, and the communication of the Roman fran-
chise to the allies ; to the party which had destroyed the
Gracchi, and had recovered its ascendency through the pro-
scriptions of Sylla. And it is no less certain that Caesar
was supported by the popular party ; and that when he
marched into Italy at the beginning of the civil war, his pre-
text was, that he was come to uphold the tribunician power,
and, in point of fact, the mass of the inhabitants of Italy re-
garded him with favour.
Here, then, the opposition of a republic to an individual
aiming at monarchy, is not the opposition of a popular party
to an antipopulTvr one, but exactly the reverse. Again, a
similar mistake has been committed with regard to parties in
Carthage. Dr. Priestley, a most strenuous advocate of pop-
ular principles, in his Lectures on History, sympathizes en-
tirely with Hanno's opposition to Hannibal; he is afraid that
Hannibal's standing army might have overthrown the liber-
ties of Carthao;c. Yet nothing is more certain than thai
LECTURE V ii23
Hanno belonged to the high aristocratical party, that same
party which never forgave Hannibal for his attempt to lessen
the powers of their exclusive courts of judicature. So that
it is very possible that, judging of political parties merely by
their advocating the power of a greater or smaller number,
we should estimate them quite erroneously.
Again, what is at the bottom of our preference of what is
called the popular cause, or of the antiponular ? Do we
rest in the simple fact of the supremo power being vested in
more hands or in fewer ? or do we value this fact only as a
means to some farther end, such as the liberty and happiness
of the several individuals of the commonwealth ? Do we, in
short, most value political equality, or the absence of restraint
from us as individuals ? It is manifest that as we value the
one or the other, our estimate of a pure democracy may
greatly differ. If our great object be equality, then the equal
enjoyment of political rights and honours by all will seem to
us the perfection of government : if the absence of restraint
on individuals be what we most desire, then we may com-
plain of the tyranny of a majority, of a severe system of
sumptuary laws, of hindrances thrown in the way of our un-
limited accumulation of property, or of our absolute disposal
of it, whether by gift or by will, (2)
Yet again, taking the mere ascendency of the many or the
few to be our object, without looking any farther, yet there
arises a most important question, how many we comprehend
in our division of many and few. Do we mean the many
and the few of all the human beings within our territory, or
of all the freemen, or of all the sovereign state, as opposed to
ill provinces, or of all the full citizens, as opposed to half,
citizens and sojourners ? According as we mean either the
one or the other, the same party may be popular or antipop
ular: Are the southern states of the North American union,
then, to be regarded as democratical or as oligarchical ? Ir
824 LECTURE V.
the old constitution of Switzerland, what was the canton of
Uri, as we regard it either with or without its Italian baili.
wicks ? In Spanish America what would have been a Creole
democracy, as we either forgot or remembered the existence
of the men of colour ? So that our very principle of the
mere ascendency of the few or the many becomes complica-
ted ; and we very often regard a government as populai
when it might with justice, in another respect, be called au-
tipopular.
Thus regarding the contests of Europe simply in a politi-
cal light, and as they affect one single political question, — ■
that of the ascendency of the many or the kw, — we do not
find it easy to judge of them. Let us carry this on a little
farther. Say that we do not regard the mere machinery of
governments, but their results ; we value that most which is
best administered, and most promotes the good of the nation ;
our views are not so much popular as liberal. Have we ar-
rived, therefore, at a greater simplification of the question ?
Shall we, as liberal men, agree in regarding the same gov-
ernment as deserving of our support or our opposition ?
Scarcely, I think, unless we are first agreed as to what the
good of the nation is. The ancient commonwealths, for the
most part, discouraged trade and manufactures as compared
with agriculture. Were these governments promoting the
public good, or no ? Other nations have followed a different
course ; have encouraged trade and rejoiced in the growing
wealth and comforts of their people. These, in their turn,
are denounced by the principles and practice of others, who
dread above all things the introduction of luxury. Again,
we attach great importance to the cultivation of art and cci-
cnte ; to all humanizing amusements ; music, the theatre,
ilancing, &c. But when Lavoisier pleaded for his life to the
French government of 1793, he was told that the republic
had no need of chemists ; (3) the Roman senate expc^lled the
LECTURE V. 225
/hctoricians from Rome ; the early government of the state
of Connecticut, one of the freest of commonwealths, would
tolerate no public amusements, least of all the theatre. 1
might instance other differences in matters of a still hinher
character ; as, for example, with regard to the expediency
of a severe penal code or a mild one ; to the establishment
of one religion, or the extending equal favour to all. We
see that the good government of one man is the bad govern
ment of another ; the best results, according to one man's
estimate, are in the eyes of his neighbour the most to bo dep-
recated.
Now all these different views are found in connection with
different views on questions purely political ; so that the very
same party may in some respects advocate what we approve
of, and in others follow what we most dislike ; and farther,
it may often act inconsistently with itself, and pursue its
principles, thus mingled as they are, imperfectly, or even
may seem to act at variance with them. What, then, are^
we to judge of it, when we are studying past history ; or
how should we have to act, if a similar party were to exist
in our own generation ?
Such, we see, are the difficulties of our subject ; and to
illustrate them still farther, 1 will name one or two instances
in which men may seem to have mistaken their own natural
side, owing to the complicated character of actual parties ;
and from their keen perception of some one point, either as
loving it or abhorring it, have for its sake renounced muck
that was congenial, or joined much that was unsuited to
them. This was the case, I think, with the historian Hume.
A man of his exceedingly inquiring and unrestrained mind,
living in the midst of the eighteenth century, might have
been expected to have espoused what is called the popular
side in the great questions of English history, the side, in
\uter language, of the movement. Yet we know that Hume's
Z2Q LECTURE V.
leaning is the othei vay. Accidental causes may perhaps
have contributed to this; the prejudice of an ingenious mind
against the opinions vhich he found most prevalent around
him ; the resistance of a restless mind to the powers that be,
as natural as implicit acquiescence in them is to an indolent
mind. But the main cause apparently is to be sought in his
abhorrence of puritanism, alike repugnant to him in its good
and its evil. His subtle and active mind could not bear its
narrowness and bigotry, his careless and epicurean temper
had no sympathy with its earnestness and devotion. The
popular cause in our great civil contests was in his eyes the
cause of fanaticism ; and where he saw fanaticism, he saw
that from which his whole nature recoiled, as the greatest of
all conceivable evils. (4)
I have spoken of the popular party in our great civil con-
test as being, in modern language, the party of the move-
mcnt. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that a popular
party and a movement party are always synonymous. A
movement party is a very indefinite expression, applicable
equally to very different things. It includes equally those
who move with a clearly apprehended object, aware of the
evil which they are leaving, and of the good towards which
they are tending ; and those who move from an impulse of
intolerable suffering in their actual state, but are going they
know not whither; and those who would move from mere
restlessness ; and those, lastly, who move as the instruments
of a power which they serve unconsciously, altering the state
of the world while they are thinking only of some object of
personal ambition. In this latter sense, Philip of Macedon
belonged to the party of the movement, while Demosthenes
A'ould have kept Greece in her old relations. We see, in
this last instance, the popular party and the movement party
directly opposed to one another, accidentally, however, aa
their coincidence also is accidental. We cannot but see that
LECTtjRE V. 227
tlio change which Philip wrought, caring only for his personal
objects, was in fact a.i onward step in the scheme of God's
providence, involving, as it did, that great spread of the
Greek race and language over Asia, which was to serve
such high purposes hereafter. To this Demosthenes was op-
posed ; his object being only to maintain the old indepen-
dence of Greece, and the old liberty and glory of Athens. (5)
A hundred years earlier, Pericles, heading the same political
party, if we look only to the political relations of Athens
abroad and at home, had also headed the oarty of the move-
ment ; new dominion, new wealth, new ^lory, new arts, and
a new philosophy, every thing in Pericles and his adminis-
tration was a going onward from what had existed before. (0)
So again, to take our examples from modern times, the great
religious movement in England at the Reformation, was quite
unconnected with popular principles in poliiics; and the same
was the case in France in the wars of the League. The
popular party in France, so far as either of the contending
parties deserved that name, was opposed to Henry the Fourth,
and in favour of the house of Guise. The burghers of Paris
were as zealously attached to the Holy Catholic League as
those of London, sixty years later, were devoted to the Sol-
emn League and Covenant. The great movement, there-
fore, of the world is often wholly unconnected with the
relations of the popular and antipopular parties in any one
particular state, — it may be favoured or resisted by either of
them.
Farther still, the mere change of time and circumstancca
may alter the character of the same party, without any
change on its own part : its triumph may be at one time an
evil, and at another time a good. This is owing to a truth
which should never be forgotten in all political inquiries, that
government is wholly relative ; and that there is and can be
no such thing as the best government absolutely, suited to
228 LECTURE V.
all periodsf and to all countries. It is a fatal error ia all po-
litical questions to mistake the clock ; to fancy that it is still
forenoon, when the sun is westering ; that it is early morn-
ing, H'hen the sun has already mounted high in the heavens.
No instance of this importance of reading the clock arighl
can be more instructive, than the great quarrel ordinarily
known as that of the Guelfs and Ghibelins, I may remind
you that these were respectively the parlies which embraced
the papal and the imperial cause, in the struggle between
these two powers in Italy and Germany, fiv/m the eleventh
century onwards to the fourteenth. Here, as in all other
actual contests, a great variety of principles, and passions,
and instincts, so to speak, were intermingled ; we must not
suppose that it was any thing like a pure struggle on what
may be called the distinguishing principle of the Guelf oi
Ghibelin cause. But the principle in itself was this : wheth-
er the papal or the imperial, in other words, the sacerdotal or
the regal power, was to be accounted the greater. Now con-
ceive the papal power to be the representative of what is
moral and spiritual, and the imperial power to represent only
what is external and physical ; conceive the first to express
the ideas of responsibility to God and paternal care and
guidance, while the other was the mere embodying of selfish
might, like the old Greek tyrannies ; (7) and who can do
other than wisli success to the papal cause ? who can help
being with all his heart a Guelf? But in the early part of
the struggle, this was to a great degree the state of it ; the
pope stood in the place of the church, the emperor was a
merely worldly despot, corrupt and arbitrary. (8) But con-
ceive, on the other hand, the papacy to become the represent-
ative of superstition and of spiritual tyranny, while the
imperial power was the expression and voice of law ; that
the emperor stood in the place of the church, and the pope
••as the mere priest, the church's worst enemy ; and this was
LECTURE V. 229
actually the form which the contest between the sacerJotal
and regal powers assumed at a later period; then our syin
pathies are changed, and we become no less zealously Ghib-
elin than we before were Guelf. Now, so far at least as tlie
papal power was concerned, the change was not in it, but in
outward circumstances. In the beginning of the dispute, the
papal claims were no less excessive than they became after-
wards ; all the notions of priestly power were to be found in
them, if not fully devoloped, yet virtually. But tlicse claims
are harmless when the church is asleep or inactive, except
so far as they tend to prolong tlie sleep and inactivity. Set-
ting aside this consideration, and supposing a state of igno-
rance and torpor not produced by the papacy, and likely to
exist for a long time to come from other causes, independent
of the papacy's control, and then the papal dominion may be
no more than the natural and lawful authority of mature age
over childhood, of the teacher over him who needs to be
taught, of those who understand what Christianity is, over
those who, professing to be Christians, yet know not what
their principles are. But so soon as the child grew up into
the man, that the sleeper was awakened, the inactive roused,
the Christian taught to know his privileges and his duties^
then the church being competent to do its own work, the
claim of the pope to stand in its place became impertinent ;
and when that claim was urged as one of divine right, for all
times and circumstances, and men were required to acknow-
ledge its validity, then having become as useless and mis-
chievous practically, as it was and always had been false
theoretically, it was rejected as it deserved to be, and was
considered amongst the greatest obstacles to truth and to
goodness.
This inattention to altered circumstances, v.hich would
make us be Guclfs in tiie sixtccntli or seventeenth ccnturiea
occause the Guelf cause had been right in the eleventh or
230 LErruRE v.
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 casff
of a settler landing in a country overrun with wood and un-
drained, 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 tlie evils most to be dreaded, but ex-
cessive 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, Considei
the popular feeling at this moment against capital punish-
ments ; 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 strug-
gled 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
trime, and encouraging that worse evil, a sympathy with
(wickedness justly punished, rather than with the law, whethei
LECTURE V. 231
ot God or man, unjustly violated. (9) So men have con
tinucd 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 antipopular party was not only rallied,
but had turned the tide of battle, and was victoriously pressing
upon its enemy. (10)
I am not afraid after having gone thus far, to mention one
consideration more, which, however over nice it may seem
to some, appears to mc really deserving to be taken into ac-
count. I mean that although the danger from any party in
our own particular contest may seem to be at an end, and our
alarms are beginning to be transferred to the opposite party,
yet it is an important modification of the case, if in other
countries the party which with us has just ceased to be for-
midable is still entirely predominant, and no opposition to it
seems to be in existence. This would seem to show that the
main current of our times is still setting in that direction, and
that the danger is still where we at first apprehended it ;
although in our own particular country, a local cross-current
may seem to indicate the contrary. For example, any ex-
cesses of t":B popular party in England in 1642 and the sub-
sequent years, were much less dangerous, because the same
party in other parts of Europe was so completely powerless;
whereas in later years the triumph, first of the Americans,
and afterwards of the French Revolution, would make an
essential difference in the strength of popular principles in
the world generally, and therefore would make their excess
in any one particular country more really formidable.
If we take into consideration all that has been hitherto
said, and remember besides how much national questions
have been mixed up with those of a political or religious
character, to say nothing of commercial or economical in-
terests, or of the anomalies of individual caprice or passion.
832 LECTURE V,
we shall have some notion of the difficulty of our task to
analyze the ir.ternal history of the last three centuries. And
I have said nothing of philosophy, and nothing of religion,
both of which have been very influential causes of action,
and thus tend to complicate the subject still farther. Let us
now see how far it is possible to separate a little this per-
plexed mass, and to arrive at some distinct views of the
course of events and of opinions.
In order to do this, the most effectual way perhaps will be to
select some one particular country, and make its internal his-
tory the subject of an analysis. But I should wish it to be
understood that I am offering rather a specimen of the method
to be pursued in analyzing history, than pretending to execute
the analysis completely. In fact if there were no other ob-
stacles in the way of such a complete work, the limits of these
lectures would alone render it impracticable. And therefore
if any of my hearers notice great omissions in the following
sketch, he may suppose, at least in many instances, that they
are made advisedly, that I am not attempting a complete his-
torical view, but only exhibiting, in some very familiar in-
stances, what I believe to be the method of studying internal
history to the greatest advantage.
Availing myself then of the division which I have noticed
above, and assuming for our present purposes that the three
last centuries may be divided into two periods, the one of re-
ligious, the other of political movement, I will now endeavour
to offer a specimen of the analysis of internal history, taking
for my subject these two periods successively, as far as re-
gards our own country ; and beginning therefore with the
sixteenth century.
It does not appear to me that there was at the beginning
of this century any thing in England which deserves to be
called either a political or a religious party. There were
:jhan"es at work no doubt, social changes going on imper-
LECTURE V. 233
ceptibly which prepared the way for the development of par-
ties hereafter ; but the parties themselves were not yet in
existence. There was no party to assert the right of any
rival claimant to the throne, there was no question stirring
between the king and the nobility, or between the king and
the commons, or between the nobility and commons. A more
tranquil state of things politically could not well be Ibund.
So it was also religiously. Tlie great schism of the rival
popes had been long settled, and WicklifTe's doctrines, al-
though they could never have become extinct, did not gain
strength visibly ; and those who held them were in no condi-
tion to form a party against the prevailing church doctrines
or government. We start therefore upon our inquiry, with
the whole matter of it before us, nothing of it has been al-
ready begun.
Neither do I think that any thing properly to be called a
party showed itself till the reign of Elizabeth. I do not
mean to deny that Cranmer and Gardiner, the Seymours and
the Howards, may have had their adherents and their ene-
mies, principally amongst those who were attached on the
one hand to the Reformation, and on the other hand to the
system which was being reformed. So again there were
ii.surrections both in Henry the Eighth's reign and in Ed-
ward the Sixth's against the measures of the government,
when it was assailing the ancient system. But none of these
things seem to have had sufficient consistence or permanence
to entitle them to the name of national parties. At any rate
the reign of Elizabeth witnessed them in a much more formed
state, and here therefore we will consider them.
Elizabeth ascended the throne in the year 15.58 ; Charles
the Fifth had died about two months before her accession ;
Henry the Second was still reigning. Paul the Fourth,
John Peter CarafTa, had been pope for the last three years;
liie Reformation, dating from Luther's first preaching, waa
834 LECTURE T.
now about forty years old : the council of Trent was sus.
pended ; its third and final period began under Pius the
Fourth, four years later. The Reformation after having
been established fully in England under Edward the Sixth,
and again completely overthrown under Mary, was now
once more triumphant. But its friends were divided amongst
themselves, and we can now trace two active and visible
parties in England, with a third no longer combating in its
own name in the front of the battle, but still powerful, and
transferring some of its principles to one of the other two
parties, whose triumph might possibly lead the "^ay here-
after to its own. These three parties were the favourers of
the church system as actually established, those who wished
to reform it still more, and those who wished to undo what
had been done to it already. But the Roman Catholics, who
formed this last party, could not, as I have said, fight their
battle openly, as both the government and the mass of the
nation were against them.
It does not appear that these parties had as yet assumed a
directly political form. They as yet involved no struggle
between the crown and the parliament, or between the gov-
ernment and the nation. Of course they contained in them
certain political tendencies, which were afterwards developed
sufficiently ; but they were as yet, in their form, of a religious,
or at least of an ecclesiastical character. And like all other
parties they represented each no one single principle, but
several ; and mixed with principles, a variety of interests
and passions besides.
1st. The friends or supporters of the existing church sys-
tem, however different in other respects, agreed in one great
point ; namely, in the exclusion of the papal power, and in
asserting the national independence in things ecclesiastical
and spiritual. Farther, they agreed in the main in regarding
the national voice, whose independence they maintained, aa
LECTURE V. 235
expre&scd by the national sovereign, in recognising the king
or queen as the liead of the church. In other matters they
differed greatly, as was unavoidable ; for thus far the most
U'orldly men and the most religious might go along with each
other, although in other things most at variance. It may
be safely said that this point of the national Teligious inde-
pendence, expressed by the royal supremacy, was the main
bond which held Elizabeth to the Reformation ; not that she
was averse to it religiously, at least in its principal points ;
but that this threw her at once into its arms : she preferred
that system which made her a queen altogether, to that which
subjected her, in the most important of all human concerns,
to the authority of an Italian priest. Elizabeth's own views
were shared by a large portion of her people ; they utterly
abhorred the papal supremacy, with an English feeling quite
as much as a religious one ; it is not clear that they would
have abhorred it equally had the papal see been removed for-
ever from Rome to Canterbury, and the pope been necessarily
an Englishman. But in proportion as religious questions had
come to engage men's minds more generally, so tliey became
desirous to have the power of deciding them for themselves.
And no doubt mere political feelings had a great deal to do
with the matter ; the papacy was a government constantly
varying in its foreign policy ; French influence was at one
time predominant at Rome, Spanish influence at another ;
but English influence was never powerful ; and Englishmen
did not wish to be in any degree subject to an authority
which might be acting in the interests of their rivals or their
enemies.
Again, the existing church system as opposed to the old
one was upheld by a great number of persons throughout the
country, because it was the relaxation of an irksome control.
The Roman Catholic system, when enforced, does undoubt-
edly interfere considerably with men's libeity of thought and
236 LECTURE V,
action. Its ritual and ceremonial ordinances are very nu
merous, and may be compared to the minute details of mili-
tary discipline in the bondage which they are felt to impose.
Its requiring auricular confession, and its assumed right of
exercisinsr over men's minds and studies the same absolute
authority which a parent claims over the mind and pursuits
of a young child, were unendurable at a moment when the
burst of mental vigour in England was so extraordinary as
it was in the reign of queen Elizabeth. Let any man read
Shakespeare and the other great dramatists of the period, and
he will observe nothing more remarkable in them than theii
extreme freedom, I may almost call it, their license of
thought. These dramatists were entirely men of the people ;
and other writers of the day belonging to the same class, show
no less the same tendency. Men of various ranks and degrees,
from the highest nobility to the humblest of that middle class,
which was now daily growing in numbers and importance,
all loving their liberty of thought and action in their several
ways, were averse to the return of a system which, when-
ever it was enforced, as it now seemed likely to be, exer-
cised a constant control over both. (11)
To be classed in the same party, and yet very different in
themselves from the division of it just noticed, were all those
who out of sincere and conscientious feeling concurred hearti-
ly in the church system as it was established in the reign of
Edward the Sixth, and from various motives were disposed to
rest contented in it. Some thinking it a matter of wisdom
and charity not to go farther from the old system than was
necessary ; some also, and this is a natural feeling in the
leaders of a reforming party, esteeming very much what
they had done already, and yielding to that desire of our
nature which after work well done longs to rest. And these
took it ill when they were told to think nothing accomplished,
till they should have accomplished every thing ; it seemed
LECTURE V. 237
.iko an unthankful disparagement of their past efforts, to be
requiring of them immediately to exert themselves farther.
Nor was it possible for the bishops and others of the high
clergy to escape the influence of professional feelings; which
would plead in favour of a system which, however much it
subjected them to the control of the crown, gave thern much
authority and dignity with respect to the inferior clergy and
to the laity.
2dly. Distinct from and soon to be strongly opposed to this
first party, was the party which wished to carry the Refor-
mation farther ; that party which is commonly known by the
name of Puritan. This was composed of less different ele-
ments than the church party, from the nature of the case ;
although in it too differences were in process of time observ-
able. But at first it contained only those who in their main
principle were agreed : they deemed the old church system
to be utterly bad, so bad as to have defiled whatever it had
touched, even things in their own nature indifferent ; they
wished therefore to reform it utterly, and abandoning every
thing of man's device, to adopt nothing either in church doc-
trine or discipline which was not authorized directly by God's
word. Being men of exceeding zeal and of a most stirring
nature, they were anxious to do the work effectually, and
would listen to no considerations which pleaded for compro-
mise or for delay.
Familiarity with and love of the foreign protcstant churclics
on the one hand, especially tliat of Geneva ; an extreme
veneration for what they found in the letter of the Scripture?,
and probably also certain notions of good and free govern-
ment wliich tlie actual state of the English monarchy could
not but shock ; disposed the Puritans to regard with dislike
the principle of the royal supremacy. They saw that prae.
tically the arbitrary power which they abhorred in the pope
had been transferred in the lamp to the queen ; they saw no
238 LECTURE V.
such thing in the Christian church, as exhibited in the Scrip-
tures; neither could they find there, as they thought, any
like the English episcopacy and hierarchy ; but the govern-
ment of the church vested in a body of elders, and these not
all members of the order of the clergy. What they thought
they found in the Scriptures they believed to be of divine
authority, not only when it was first instituted, but forever ;
and they wished therefore to substitute for the royal suprem-
acy and hierarchy of the existing English church, that
church government which alone, as they were persuaded,
was ordained by God himself.
Furthermore, as men to whom religious questions were a
great reality, and a matter of the deepest personal interest,
they were in the highest degree impatient of all which
seemed to them formalism. They conceived that amidst the
prevailing ignorance and indifference on religious matters, a
liturgical service was of much less consequence than a stir-
ring preaching of the gospel ; they complained, therefore, of
the evil of an unpreaching ministry ; for the mass of the
clergy were so ignorant that they were unable, or could not
be trusted to preach, and the homilies had been set forth by
authority, to remedy, as far as might be, this defect. The
puritans said that the liturgy might become a mere form,
both in the minister and in the congregation, if it were not
accompanied by an effective preaching ; the minister, in
their view, was not to be the mere instrument of the church
services, but to be useful to the people by his own personal
gifts ; an ignorant or utterly vicious man might read a form
prescribed by others ; they wanted a man who should be-
lieve, and must therefore speak, not the words of others, but
those of his own convictions and affections.
There was in the principles of the puritans nothing of
philosophy, either in the good sense of the word or the bad.
A.nd it is also most unjust to charge them with irreverence oi
LECTURE V. 230
want ot humility. They received tiie Scriptures as God's
word, and they followed them implicitly. Neither do they
seem chargeable with establishing nice distinctions in order
to evade their obvious meaning ; their fault seems lathcr to
have lain in the other extreme ; they acquiesced in the ob-
vious and literal meaning too unhesitatingly. Nor yet were
they wanting in respect for all human authority, as trusting
in their own wisdom and piety only. On the contrary, the
decisions of the earlier church with respect to the great
Christian doctrines, they received without questioning : they
by no means took the Scriptures into their hands, and sat
down to make a new creed of their own out of them. They
disregarded the church only where the church departed from
the obvious sense of Scripture ; I do not say the true sense,
Uut the obvious one. The difference as to their moral char-
acter is considerable : because he who maintains another than
the obvious sense of Scripture against other men, may indeed
be perfectly right, but he is liable to the charge, whether
grave or frivolous as it may be, of preferring his own inter-
pretation to that of the church. But maintaining the obvious
sense, even if it be the wrong one, he can hardly be charged
himself with arrogance ; he may with greater plausibility
retort the charge on his opponents, that they are substituting
the devices of their own ingenuity for the plain sense of the
word of God.
To say 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
24C LECTTTRE y.
lie already owes obedience, which he serves with the hum
blest devotion, which he worships with the nnost intense ven-
eration. 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 ques-
tion 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 justly be taxed with want of humility ; but this is at va-
fiance with the very notion of an earnest character ; for its
earnestness consists in its devotion to some one object, as op-
posed 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 ob-
jects are hated. And with some exaggeration in theexpres-
sion, we may admit the truth of Coleridge's lines,
lie prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man, and bird, and beast;
insomuch that if we were to hear of a man sacrificing even
liis life to save that of an animal, we could not help admiring
him. But the excellence of veneration consists purely in its
being fixed upon a worthy object ; when felt indiscriminately
it is idolatry or insanity. To tax any one, therefore, with
want of reverence, because he pays no respect to what we
venerate, is either irrelevant, or is a mere confusion. The
fact, so far as it is true, is no reproach, but an honour ; be-
cause to reverence all persons and all things is absolutely
wrong : reverence shown to that which does not deserve it,
is no virtue, no. nor even an amiable weakness, but a plain
LECirRE V. 241
folly and sin. But if it be meant that he is wanting in proper
reverence, not respecting what is really to be respected, that is
assuming the whole question at issue, because what we call
divine he calls an idol ; and as, supposing that we are in the
right, we are bound to fall down and worship, so, supposing
him to be in the right, he is no less bound to pull it to the
ground and destroy it.
I have said thus much not only to do justice to the puritans,
but because this charge of want of humility is one frequently
brought by weaker and baser minds against the stronger and
nobler ; not seldom by those who are at once arrogant and
indifferent, against those who are in truth as humble as they
are zealous. But returning to our immediate subject, we
see that the puritans united in themselves two points which
gave to their party a double appearance ; and at a later pe-
riod, when the union between the two was no longer believed
in, they excited in the very same minds a mingled feeling ;
admiration as far as regarded one point, alienation as regard-
ed the other. The puritans wished to alter the existing
church system for one which they believed to be freer and
better ; and so far they resembled a common popular party :
but inasmuch as in this and all other matters their great prin-
ciple was, conformity to the Scripture, and they pushed this
to an extravagant excess, because tncir interpretation of
Scripture was continually faulty, there was, together with
their free political spirit, a narrow spirit in things religious,
which shocked not only the popular party of the succeeding
age, but many even in their own day, who politically enter-
lained opinions far narrower than theirs. In Elizabeth's
reign, however, they had scarcely begun to form a political
party ; their views affected the church government only, and
contemplated no alteration in the spirit of the monarchy ,
although it was evident, that if the crown continued to resist
their efforts in church matters, they would end by resisting
21
242 LECTURE V.
not only its ecclesiastical supremacy, but its actual ascend-
ency in the constitution altogether.
3d. The Roman Catholic party could not, as I have said,
act openly in their own name, because their system had been
put down by law ; and, as they were at present regarded aa
far worse in themselves and far more dangerous than tho
puritans, all their movements and all expressions of their
opinions were restrained with greater severity. Denying
like the puritans the royal supremacy, and exposed for so do-
ing to the heaviest penalties, their language sometimes as-
sumed a strong political character, and they spoke freely of
the duty of disobeying and deposing those tyrannical princes,
on whom the church by the pope's voice had already pro-
nounced its sentence of condemnation. It was the language
af the old Guelf party, which some even to this hour regard
as popular and liberal. But to oppose a lighter tyranny in
the name of a heavier cannot be to serve the cause of good
government ; and the moral and spiritual dominion of the
papacy was now become the great evil of the world, as it was
pressing upon those parts of man's nature which were stirring
for themselves, and whose silence would be no longer sleep
but death.
The language of the Roman Catholics did not mislead the
mass of the English nation, but only made themselves more
odious. The serpent's wisdom of Elizabeth cannot be denied
by the bitterest of her enemies. With incomparable ability
she made herself personally the darling of her people from
the first year of her reign to the last. Her behaviour when
she passed through the city in state on the day preceding her
coronation, or when thirty years afterwards she visited and
harangued her troops at Tilbury, or when at the very end of
her reign she granted so gracefully the petition of the house
of commons against monopolies, was all of the same charac-
ter ; the frank and gracious and noble bearing of a sovereign
LECTURE V 243
feeling lierself at once beloved and respected, knowing the
greatness of her place, and sincerely, if not habitually, ap-
preciating its duties. Her personal qualities made her dear
to her subjects, and assisted them in seeing clearly that her
cause and theirs were one. Conspiracy at home and open
war abroad, the excommunications of Rome, the Armadas of
Spain, the assassination plots of the Catholics, only bound her
people's love to her more firmly. Her arbitrary acts, and
still more arbitrary language, the severities, illegalities, and
cruelties of her government towards the parties who opposed
her, the people at large forgot or approved of. Nothing was
unjust, nothing was cruel, against the enemies of one whom
the nation so loved ; the alnaost universal voice of England
called for the death of Mary Stuart, because the people be-
lieved her life to be incompatible with the safety of their
beloved queen. Whilst Elizabeth lived, political parties,
properly so called, were incapable of existing ; it was the
whole English nation on one side, and on the other a few
conspirators.
But another scene \\as preparing, and when her successoi
came to the throne, the state of parties assumed a difTerent as-
pect ; and political elements were added to the religious,
rivalling or surpassing them in the interest which they awa-
kened. This later stage of what I have called the religious
movement of modern English history will be considered in
Ihe following lecture.
NOTES
LECTURE V,
Note 1.— Page 220.
*' * * .itill more precious is the story of his own time recorded
bj a statesman, who has trod the field of political action, and has
stood near the source of events and lookt into it, when he has in-
deed a statesman's discernment, and knows how men act and why.
Such are the great works of Clarendon, of Tacitus, of Polyhius,
above all of Thucydides. The latter has hitherto been, and is
likely to continue unequalled. For the sphere of history since his
time has been so manifoldly enlarged, it is scarcely possible now
for any one mind to circumnavigate it. Besides, the more fastidious
nicety of modern manners shrinks from that naked exposure of the
character as well as of the limbs, which the ruder ancients took no
offence at ; and machinery is scarcely doing less toward super-
seding personal energy in politics and war, than in our manufac-
tures ; so that history may come ere long to be written without
mention of a name. In Thucydides too, and in him alone, there is
that u.iion of the poet with the philosopher, which is essential to
form a perfect historian. He has the imaginative plastic power,
which makes events pass in living array before us, combined with
a profound reflective insight into their causes and laws ; and all his
other faculties are under the dominion of the most penetrative prac
tical understanding."
J. C. Hare. " Guesses at Truth," p. 339
NOTES TO LECTURE V. 245
Note 2.— Page 223,
" Liberal principles and popular principles are by no means neces-
sarily the same ; and it is of importance to be aware of the differenco
between them. Popular principles are opposed simply to restraint
— liberal principles to unjust restraint. Popular principles sym-
pathize with all who are subject to authority, and regard with sus-
picion all punishments ; liberal principles sympathize, on the other
hand, with authority, whenever the evil tendencies of human nature
are more likely to be shown in disregarding it than in abusing it.
Popular principles seem to have but one object — the deliverance of
the many from the control of the few. Liberal principles, while
generally favourable to this same object, yet pursue it as a means, not
as an end ; and therefore, they support the subjection of the many
to the few under certain circumstances, where the great end, which
they steadily keep in view, is more likely to be promoted by sub-
jection than by independence. For the great end of liberal princi-
ples is indeed ' the greatest happiness of the greatest number,' if wo
understand that the happiness of man consists more in his intellec-
tual well-doing than in his physical ; and yet more in his moral and
religious excellence than in his intellectual.
" It must be allowed, however, that the fault of popular princi-
ples as distinguished from liberal, has been greatly provoked by the
long-continued prevalence of principles of authority which are no
less illiberal. Power has been so constantly perverted that it has
come to be generally suspected. Liberty has been so constantly
unjustly restrained, that it has been thought iinpossible that it should
ever be indulged too freely. Popular feeling is not quick in obser-
ving the cliange of times and circumstances : it is with difficulty
brought to act against a long-standing evil ; but, being once set in
motion, it is apt to overshoot its mark, and to continue to cry out
against an evil long after it has disappeared, and tlie opposite evil
is become most to be dreaded. Something of this excessive recoil
of feeling may toe observed, I think, in the continued cry against the
severity of the penal code, as distinguished from its other defects ;
and the same disposition is shown in the popular clamour against
246 NOTES
military flogging, and in the complaints which are often made against
the existing system of discipline in our schools."
Dr. Arnold's Letter • On the Discipline of Public Schools,'' in the ' Quar
terly Journal of Education: Vol. ix. i>. 280. 1835.
In the same letter occurs the following remark, which, though
referring only to the author's ideal of school discipline for young
boys, admits of a much more enlarged application to men in their
social and political relations :
' <i * * This would be a discipline truly generous and wise, in one
word, truly Christian — making an increase of dignity the certain
consequence of increased virtuous effort, but giving no countenance
to that barbarian pride which claims the treatment of a freeman and
an equal, while it cherishes all the carelessness, the folly, and the
low and selfish principle of a slave," p. 285.
Note 3.— Page 224.
" * * The speech ascribed to Robespierre, when refusing tc
spare Lavoisier, ' the republic does not want chemists,' is just of
the same character with the speeches of Cleon at Athens, and but
expresses the indifference of the vulgar, whether aristocrats or dem-
ocrats, for an eminence with which they have no sympathy." * *
Arnold's Thucydides. Note, B viii. 89.
Note 4.— Page 226.
There may be a doubt whether Hume's abhorrence of Puritan-
ism is to be regarded as the sole or chief explanation of the politi-
cal character of his history. But be that as it may, it is certain
that his careless and epicurean temper was adverse not only to
the earnestness and devotion of the Puritans, but to earnestness and
devotion in any form. He was a cold-hearted unbeliever — self-
satisfied in a shallow philosophy ; and as an historian, indolent in
research and insidiously unfair in every thing directly or remotely
connected with the Clmrch of Christ. It is inveterate hostility tc
leligion that has engendered in his history, and that too under a de-
rseptive outward decorum, not a few of an historuin's worst vices—
TO LECTURE V. 247
sophistry, misrepresentation, suppression of the truth, falsification,
malij^aant hatred of Christian faith and holiness ; so that it has come
to be eaid without exaggeration, " that there is less in the popular
histoiy of the Christian kingdom of England which implies the
reality of religion, — less acknowledgment of the laws and agenta
of a U.vine government, partly concealed and partly manifested, to
which llie temporal rulers of the world are even here amenable, —
than in the legends, or even the political history of Greece and
Rome."
Abundant proof of Hume's untrustworthiness may be found in an
Article in the Quarterly Review for March, 1844, (No. 146,) in
which many passages of his history are thoroughly discussed to ex-
emplify his character as an historian.
INoTE 5. — Page 227.
" Aristophanes had to deal with Democracy, not when she was
old, but when her heart was high and her pulse full, and when
with some of the nobleness and generosity peculiar to youth, she
liad still more of its heat, impetuosity, and self-willedness. The
old age of Athenian democracy (and a premature old age it neces-
sarily was) must be looked for in the public speeches of Demosthe-
nes, and in the warning voice of that eminent statesman, fraught
with all that is great, holy, and commanding, yet powerless to put
more than a momentary life into limbs paralyzed and efTete with
previous excesses. For her midday of life we must go to the in-
tervening speeches of Lysias, a writer full of ability and talent, but
a thorough son of democracy, and for which the calamities suffered
by himself and his family under the oligarchal i)arty form great ex-
cuse. The very pages of this writer smell, as it were, of blood and
confiscation ; nor docs simple death always content him ; thrice,
sometimes, would he ' slay his slain !' In running down his prey,
this orator shows a business-like energy, unexampled in any other
Grecian advocate : none hangs a culprit, or one whom he would
fain make appear as such, so cleverly on the Iiorns of a dilemma,
and his notions of time, when in pursuit of democratic vengeance,
ire truly royal : — ' Nullum tempus Lysiae occurrit.' ' Numbers'
are his chief view of political society, and ' Your Manyship,' (rj
248 NOTES
i/ilrepov :r\JjOoi) his idol. Generous ideas of rank and birth, of the
graces and accomplishments of society, seem utterly unknown to
him : ener^ and business evidently co; uprise his vocabulary of
excellence, while his stock in trade is all the gloomy images
that pervade a disturbed state of society ; strife, sedition, discord,
continual fluctuation of government, addresses to the passions, not
to the reason, the voice of law stifled, or silent, that of party and
faction perpetually predominant ; add exile, proscription, fine, hem-
lock and blood spilt upon the ground almost like water, and we
have the ingredients of a Lysiac speech, and the corresponding
events of his period of history, pretty well in our hands."
Mitchell's Note {Aristophanes '^ Knights,'' v. 1062.)
Note 6. — Page 227.
When Pericles is spoken of as the leader of a party, it is proper
to bear in mind the position which history describes him as having
held in Athens, and the influence or rather control he exercised
there over the people during his most remarkable administration.
For his independence is described by Thacydides to have been
such that he was the loader of the multitude but never led by them
— that he could brave iheir anger and resist the popular will — and
that, in short, the government, though called a democracy, was such
only in name, for it was in one chief man :
" * * a'riov 5' >/v '6ti ikcIvo^ jtcv Svvarbi (5v tuJ tc a^tiiiiari Kai tTj yrto/jiji, XPV'
(ictTiav re iia<pavu>s aS(i>p6TaTog ytv6fiivoi, kutux^ t& ttXtjOoi iXcv9ipu>s. xal ovk {jytre
fiaXXov Pff' avTov rj avrdi Jjyc, Sia to fxii KTiijitvoi f| oh rrpo<TriK6vTU)v rr/v ivia/itv
Trpdj Jt&ovijv Ti \iyuv, aXA' ^X'^^ ^^' «l"^<'£' *"' ^p^i dpy^v ti ayrcnrtiv. birdn
yovv a'taOoird ri avTov; itapa Kaipov i(ipci (htpaovvTaf, Xiyutv (car/wAj/aacv iiri to
(tioPetaOat, Kat lcSi6raf av a\6yiij; avTiKaQiarri ttuAiv m Ti Oapceiv. iyiyviri
TC Xdy(|) f fv StJiiOKpaTta, Ipyo) be vtto tou TrpwTov SivSpis (Jpx^- "^ ^* v<jTcpoi> Xaai
ahroX fiSWov irpoj iXXfjXovi SvTti, Kai ipcydjitvot tou TrpStTo; iKaaTo; yiyveadat,
IrodvavTo eaO' riiovai t!o 6^p(f icai tu irpay/iaTa ivStiivai"
Tl.ucydides, ii. 65
Note 7.— Page 228.
•All the ancient writers, without exception, call the government
of Dionysius a tyranny. This, as is well known, was with there
TO LECTURE V. 249
no vague and disputable term, resting on party impressions of char-
acter, and thus liable to be bestowed or denied according to the
political opinions of the speaker or writer. It describes a particular
kind of government, the merits of which might be differently esti-
mated, but the fact of its existence admitted of no dispute. Dio-
nysius was not a king, because hereditary monarchy was not the
constitution of Syracuse ; he was not the head of the aristocratical
party, enjoying supreme power, inasmuch as they were in possession
of the government, and he was their most distinguished member ;
on the contrary, the richer classes were opposed to him, and he
found his safety in banishing them in a mass, and confiscating their
property. Nor was he the leader of a democracy, like Pericles and
Demosthenes, all-powerful inasmuch as the free love and admira-
tion of the people made his will theirs ; for what democratical
leader ever surrounded himself with foreign mercenaries, or fixed
his residence in the citadel, or kept up in his style of living, and in
the society which surrounded him, tlie state and luxury of a king's
court ■? He was not an hereditary constitutional king, nor the
leader of one of the great divisions of the commonwealtli ; but he
had gained sovereign power by fraud, and maintained it by force :
he represented no party, he sought to uphold no ascendency but
that of his own individual self; and standing thus apart from the
sympathies of his countrymen, his objects were essentially selfish,
his own safety, his own enjoyments, his own power, and his own
glory. Feeling that he had no right to be where he was, he was
full of suspicion and jealousy, and oppressed his subjects with taxes
at once heavy and capriciously levied, not only that he might enrich
himself, but that he might impoverish and weaken them. A gov-
ernment carried on thus manifestly for the good of one single
governor, with an end of such unmixed selfishness, and resting
mainly upon the fear and not the love of its people ; with what
ever brilliant qualities it might happen to be gilded, and however
free it might be from acts of atrocious cruelty, was yet called by
the Greeks a tyranny."
• # # ♦ # # «
"The Greeks had no abhorrence for kings : the descendant of a
hero race, ruling over a people whom his fathers had ruled from
tune immemorial, was no subject of obloquy either with the people
5J50 NOTES
or with the philosophers. But a tyrant, a man of low or ordii ary
birth, who by force or fraud had seated himself on the necks of hia
countrymen, to gorge each prevailing passion of his nature at their
cost, with no principle but the interest of his own power — such a
man was regarded as a wild beast, that had broken into the fold of
civilized society, and whom it was every one's right and duty, by
Any means, or with any weapon, presently to destroy. Such mere
monsters of selfishness Christian Europe has rarely seen. If the
claim to reign ' by the grace of God' has given an undue sanction
to absolute power, yet it has diffused at the same time a sense of
the responsibilities of power, such as the tyrants, and even the
kings of the later age of Greece, never knew. The most unprin-
cipled of modern sovereigns would yet have acknowledged, that he
owed a duty to his people, for the discharge of which he was
answerable to God ; but the Greek tyrant regarded his subjects as
the mere instruments of his own gratification ; fortune or his own
superiority had given him extraordinary means of indulging his
favourite passions, and it would be folly to forego the opportunity.
It is this total want of regard for his fellow-creatures, the utter
sacrifice of their present and future improvement, for the sake of
objects purely personal, which constitutes the guilt of Dionysius
and his fellow-tyrants. In such men all virtue was necessarily
blighted : neither genius, nor courage, nor occasional signs of
human feeling could atone for the deliberate wickedness of tlieir
system »f tyranny." * *
History of Rome, i. eh. 21.
Note 8.— Page 228.
This subject of the relation of the papal power to the monarchies
of Europe during the middle ages has, I presume, been adverted to
by Dr. Arnold in two of his pamphlets also, which I have not had
however the opportunity of referring to, one on the " Roman Catho-
lic Claims" in 1828, and the other on "the Principles of Church
Reform" in 183.3. His biographer speaks of them as "earlier
works in which he vindicated the characters of the eminent popea
of the middle ages, Gregory VII. and Innocent III., long before
hat great change in the popular view respecting them, which iw
TO LECTURE V. 251
this, as in many other instances, he had forestalled at a I ne whea
ais opinion was condemned as the height of paradox."
(Chap. X. of" Life and Correspondence")
A discussion of this subject will be found in an article on " Miche-
let's History of France," in No. 159, (January, 1844,) of tlio
Edinburgh Review, an authority, certainly, as little likely as any
to favour high views of church authority. The reviewer's purpose
is to show, that " the popes were not so entirely in the wrong, as
historians have deemed them, in their disputes with the emperors,
and with the kings of England and France ;" and that the church
" was the great improver and civilizer of Europe." " It would,"
he observes, " do many English thinkers much good to acquaint
themselves with the grounds on which the best continental minds,
without disguising one particle of the evil which existed openly or
latently, in the Romish church, are on the whole convinced that it
was not only a beneficent institution, but the only means capable of
being now assigned, by which Europe could have been reclaimed
from barbarism."
" Who," it is asked, " in the middle ages were worthier of power
tiian the clergy ■? Did they not need all, and more than all tiie in-
fluence they could acquire, when they could not be kings or em-
perors, and when kings and emperors were among those whose
passion and arrogance they had to admonish and govern T The
great Ambrose, refusing absolution to Theodosius until he per-
formed penance for a massacre, was a type of what these men had
to do. In an age of violence and brigandage, who but the church
could insist on justice, and forbearance, and reconciliation] In an
age when the weak were prostrate at the feet of the strong, who
was there but the Church to i)lead to the strong for the weak ]
They were the depositaries of the only moral power to which the
great were amenable ; they alone had a right to remind kings and
potentates of responsibility ; to speak to them of humility, charity,
\nd peace. Even in the times of the first ferocious invaders, the
' Rccits' of M. Thierry (though the least favourable of the modern
Fiench historians to the Romish clergy) show, at what peril to
themselves, the prelates of the church continually stepped between
the oppressor and his victim. Almost all the great social improve-
252 NOTES
ments which took place were accomplished under their influence.
They at all times took part with the kings against the feudal
anarchy. The enfranchisement of the mass of the people from
personal servitude, they not only favoured, but inculcated as a
Christian duty."
" * * Now we say that the priesthood never could have stood
their ground in such an age, against kings and their powerful vassals,
as an independent moral authority, entitled to advise, to reprimand,
and if need were, to denounce, if they had not been tound together
into an European body under a government of their own. They
must otherwise have grovelled from the first in that slavish sub-
servience into which they sank at last. No local, no merely na-
tional organization, would have sufficed. The state has too strong
a hold upon an exclusively national corporation. Nothing but an
authority recognised by many nations, and not essentially dependent
upon any one, could in that age have been adequate to the post.
It required a pope to speak with authority to kings and emperors.
Had an individual priest even had the courage to tell them that
they had violated the law of God, his voice, not being the voice of
the Church, would not have been heeded. That the pope, when
he pretended to depose kings, or made war upon them with temporal
a.rms, went beyond his province, needs hardly, in the present day,
be insisted upon. But when he claimed the right of censuring and
denouncing them with whatever degree of solemnity, in the name
of the moral law which all recognised, he assumed a function ne-
cessary at all times, and which, in those days, no one except
the Church could assume, or was in any degree qualified to exer-
cise."
The view wnich Dr. Arnold appears to have taken of the great
mediaeval struggle, whether the religious or the military principle —
the spirit of the Christian church or the arbitrary temper of lawless
feudalism, should predominate, is also strongly presented in a val-
uable article, entitled, " St. Anselm and William Rufus," in the
" British Critic," (No. 65, Jan., 1843,) on the controversy in Eng-
.and between that saintly and heroic primate, and the second of tho
Norman tyrants, of whom it was said, " Never a night came but
he lay down a worse man than he rose ; and never a morning, but
he rose worse than he lay down."
TO LECTURE V. '-i53
" The great controversies of the early church, and those of the
middle ages, differed in two points. Those of the first five centu-
ries were for the most part carried on with persons out of the pale
of the Church, and on points of faith and doctrine : those of the
middle ages were mainly connected with life and morals, and wei (
with men who knew no spiritual authority but hers. Her first op-
ponents, quarrelling with her as a teacher of religion, broke off
from her, and set up parallel and antagonist systems of theil own ;
they were heretics and schismatics, self-condemned, and clearly
marked out as such by their own formal and deliberate acts. There
was no mistaking the grounds or the importance of the dispute.
But in the eleventh century, these heresies were things of a past
age in the west — lifeless and inoperative carcasses of old enemies,
from whom the Church had little comparatively to fear for the pres-
ent. She had living antagonists to cope with, but they were of a
different sort. They were no longer the sophist and declaimer of
the schools, but mail-clad barons. Just as she had subdued the in-
telligence and refinement of the old Roman empire, it was swept
away, and she was left alone with its wild destroyers. Her com-
mission was changed ; she had now to tame and rule the barba-
rians. But upon them the voice which had rebuked the heretic
fell powerless. While they pressed into her fold, they overwhelmed
all her efforts to reclaim them, and filled her, from east to west,
with violence and stunning disorder. WTien, therefore, she again
lOused herself to confront the world, her position and difficulties
had shifted. Her enemy was no longer heresy, but vice, — wicked-
ness which wrought with a high hand, — foul and rampant, like that
of Sodom, or the men before the flood. It was not the Faith, but
the first principles of duty — ^justice, mercy, and truth — which were
directly endangered by the unbridled ambition and licentiousness of
the feudal aristocracy, who were then masters of Europe. These
proud and resolute men were no enemy out of doors ; they were
within her pale, professed allegiance to her, and to be her protectors ;
claimed and exercised important rights in her government and in-
ternal arrangements, plausible in their origin, strengthened by pre-
scription, daily placed further out of the reach of attack by over-
e.xtending encroachments, and guarded with the jealousy of men
who felt that the restraints of church discipline, if ever they
SJ54 NOTES
closed round them, would be fetters of iron. And with ti.is fierce
nobility she had to fight the battle of the poor and weak ; to settle
the question whether Christian religion and the offices of the
Church were to be any thing more than names, and honours, and
endowments, trappings of chivalry and gentle blood ; whether there
were yet strength left upon earth to maintain and avenge the laws
of God, whoever might break them. She had to stand between
the oppressor and his prey ; to compel respect for what is pure and
sacred, from the lawless and powerful." — Vol. 33, p. 7.
Note 9.— Page 231.
* * " Let me notice two or three things, in which the spirit ol
Christianity has breathed, and will, we may hope, continue to
breathe more fully, through our system of law and government.
First, let us notice our criminal law. Now, in unchristian coun-
tries, criminal law has mostly been either too lax or too bloody :
too lax in a rude state of society, because the inconvenience of
crimes was less felt, and their guilt was little regarded ; too bloody
in a more refined state, strange as it may at first appear, because
the inconvenie:4ce of crimes, and particularly of those against
property, is felt excessively ; and the sacredness of human life, and
the moral evil done to a people by making them familiar with
bloody punishments, are not apt to be regarded by the mere spiri
of worldly selfishness. Now, our laws for many years were, in
these points, quite unch istian ; they were passed in utter disregard
of our national pledges to follow Christ's law ; but latterly a better
spirit has been awakened ; and men have felt that it is no light
thing to take away the life of a brother ; that it is more Christian
to amend an ofTcinder, if possible, than to destroy him. Only let
us remember that there is an error on the other side, into which a
mere feeling of compassion, if unmixed with a true Christian sense
of the evil of sin, might possibly lead us. There is a danger lest
men should think punishment more to be avoided than crime ; lest
they should exclaim only against the severity of the one, without
a due abhorrence of the guilt of the other. This, however, is noJ
the spirit of Christianity, but of its utter opposite — lawlessness."
Arnold's Ser?nons, vol. iv., " Christian Life, etc."
Sermon XL.
TO LECTURE V. 25i!
" It is a melaiicholy truth," says Blackstone, in liis Commenta-
ries, " that amorjg the variety of actions which men are daily liable
to commit, no less than an hundred and sixty have been declared,
by act of parliament, to be felonies without benefit of clergy ; or
in other words, to be worthy of instant death."
This was written about the year 1760, and in 1809, when Sir Sam-
uel Romilly devoted himself to the arduous and admirable labour of
bringing about a reformation of the criminal law of England, it ia
stated by ]\Ir. Alison, in his History of Europe, (chap. 60,) that
the punishment of death was by statute affixed to the fearful and
almost incredible number of above six hundred different crimes,
" while the increasing humanity of the age had induced so wide a
departure from the strict letter of the law, that out of 1872 persons
capitally convicted at the Old Bailey in seven years, from 1803 to
1810, only one had been executed." The enormous list of capital
crimes was the result of what Mr. Alison well calls the ' separate
and selfish system' pursued by the various classes of property-hold-
ers, whose influence was employed upon parliament in successive
sessions, to obtain this inhuman safeguard for their respective in-
terests. Well has Landor, in one of his ' Imaginary Conversations,'
put these words into the mouth of Romilly : " I am ready to believe
that Draco himself did not punish so many offences with blood as we
do, although he punished with blood every one. * * * We punish
with death certain offences which Draco did not even note as
crimes, and many others had not yet sprung up in society."
It is only lately that the reform begun by Romilly, but which the
sad catastrophe of his life prevented his witnessing, has been com-
pleted so far as to limit capital punishment very much to crimes af-
fecting directly or indirectly the security of life, instead of property.
In 1837, Parliament (by the Acts of 7th Will. IV. and 1st Victoria)
removed the punishment of death from about 200 offences, and it is
now left applicable to treason, murder and attempts at murder, arson
with danger to life, and to piracies, burglaries, and robberies, wlien
aggravated by cruelty and violence.
The danger, which Dr. Arnold alludes to as an extreme reaction
trom an old abuse, is often the growth of a spurious, sentimental
sympathy with guilt, which lessens the authority and power of
Law, and causes low notions of the State by denying to it tha
256 NOTES
right to exact the forfeiture of life for any crime. The reader who
feels an interest in these questions of jurisprudence, and who can
comprehend how reasoning and imaginative wisdom may be aptly
combined, will study with advantage the philosophical series of
' Sonnets on the Punishment of Death,' by Mr. Wordsworth, in the.
latest volume of his poems. An excellent commentary upon them
is given in an article in the Quarterly Review, (No. 137, December,
1841,) written, I believe, by the author of ' Philip Van Artaveldc '
Note 10.— Page 231.
" * * * Who, if possest of that practical wisdom which com-
mands us to urge on the sluggish and to rein in the impetuous, will
go on singing the same song year after year 1 even when the gen-
eration he first endeavoured to arouse by it has passed away, and a
new generation has sprung up in its place, altogether different from
the first in its exigencies and its purposes, in the tone of its passions,
the features of its understanding, and the energies of its will. Who
is there who can always keep equally violent on the same side, ex
ccpt the slaves and minions of party, except those who are equall)
hostile to all governments, and those who are equally servile to all 1
The very principles which yesterday were trodden under foot, and
therefore needed to be lifted up and supported, perhaps to-day, when
they have risen and become predominant, may in their turn require
to be kept in check by antagonist principles. And this is the great
problem for political wisdom, the rock it is the most difiicult for politi-
cal integrity not to split on : to know when to stop ; to withstand the
precipitous seductions of success ; to draw back from the friends by
whose side one has been fighting, at the moment they have gained
and are beginning to abuse their victory ; to join those whom one
has hitherto regarded with inevitable and perhaps well-deserved
animosity ; to save those who have been too strong from becoming
too weak ; and to rescue the abusers of power from being crushed
by its abuse. This is no apology for a political turncoat : on the
contrary, though there may be a semblance of similarity between
the man who shifts his principles out of interest, and the man who
modifies them out of principle, yet what the latter does is the very
reverse of what the former does : the one turns his back on the
TO LECTURE V, 257
.vind and runs alon<j before it; the otlier faces and confronts it.
Such, for example, was the conduct of that most philosophical and
consistent statesman Burke ; who has been vilified, because he did
not, like some of his friends, blindly cling to the carcase of the
Liberty he once had loved, when her spirit had passed away from
it. and a foul fiend had seized on it in her stead * *."
JjLius Hare's ' Vindication of Nicbuhr's History.^ p. 20
Note 11.— Page 236.
* * " Those who teach that the powers of man woke at once
from a deep slumber just at the beginning of the fifteenth century,
or somewhere in the course of the fourteenth, do indeed use strange
and preposterous language. For all the seven centuries during
which the Western people had been growing up, these powers had
been most wonderfully developing themselves. In the conflicts of
political parties, in the conflicts of the schools, in splendid enter-
prises and lonely watchings, the human faculties had been acquiring
a strength and an energy which no sudden revolution, if it were the
most favourable the imagination can dream of, ever could have im-
parted to them.
" But it is true also, that the consciousness of these powers, the
feeling that they were within, and must come out, was characteristic
of the new age. They had been exerted before in ascertaining the
conditions and limitations to which they were subject, exerted with
the pleasure which always accompanies the feeling of duty, but not
from a mere joyous irrepressible impulse. Set free from the ban-
dages of logic, yet still with that sense of subjection to law which
was derived from the logical age, exercised under the sense of a
spiritual Presence, without the cowardly dread of it ; these facul-
ties began to assert themselves in the sixteenth century with a glad-
ness and freedom of which there was no previous, and perhaps
there has been no subsequent example. In those countries which
had effectually asserted a national position, and where theological
controversies were so f;xr settled, that they did not occupy the whole
mind of thinking men, or require swords to settle them, tiiis outburst
of life and energy took especially the form of poetry. English
poetry had from the first been connected with the feelings of Ref-
258 NOTES
ormation and the rise of the new order ; Chaucer and WickliflF ex-
pound each other. And now Protestantism manifestly gave the
direction to the thoughts of those who exhibited least in their wri-
tings of its exclusive influence. The high feeling of an ideal of
excellence which had descended from the former age, and which in
that age had not been able to express itself in words, now came in
to incorporate itself with the sense of a meaning and pregnancy in
all the daily acts and common relations of life, and the union gave
birth to dramas as completely embodying the genius of modern
Europe, as those of ^schylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes em-
body the genius of Greece. Throughout Europe the influence was
felt. The peculiar genius of Cervantes did not hinder him from
expressing the feeling which we have designated as characteristic
of the time, only as was natural from his circumstances with more
of an apparent opposition to the older form of thought. And he as
well as Ariosto and Tasso were able to bring forth in their works
the national spirit of their respective countries, just as Shakspeare,
with all his universality, exhibits so strikingly the life and character
of England."
Maurice's ' Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.^
Encyclopoedia Metropolitaua. Pure Sciences, vol. ii. p. 650.
In this extract Mr. Maurice views, as Dr. Arnold does in the
Lecture, the Elizabethan literature in its relation to its own and a
preceding age, while in the following passage in Mr. Keble's ad-
mirable Lectures, he contemplates it in its relation to a succeeding
generation :
* * " Crediderim fore ut in singulis tum sajculis tum regionibus
germana Poesis, tacito quodam testimonio, veram ac solidam Pieta-
tem foveat. Nee facile invenias in uUa civitate, quae quidem leges
moresque habeat stabiles, mutari in gravius et sanctius rem sacram
et religiosam, non ante mutato laudatorum carminum tenore. Ni-
mirum, si ulla unquam ex parte fuerit labefactata religio, ea eerie
tenus erunt homines eadem conditione qua patres nostri nondum ad
Deum conversi. Nihil ergo vetat eos eadem ratione ac via, novo
videlicet Poetarum ordine, sensim ad meliora erigi.
'* Exempli gratia, (ut in domesticis maneam,) recordamini paulis-
per celeberrimam scriptorum familiam, qui apud nos viguerunt, Elisa*
TO LECTURE V. 259
betliae tempore. Nonne ea fuit vatum et carminum indoles, quae
jpsis, qui scribebant, ignaris, optimc convcniret cum saniore de re-
bus divinis sententia, qualis erat in honore I'utura, regnante Carolo 1
Quid ? Shaksperus ille noster, deliciae omnium, maxima Anglorum
adolescentium, nihilne putandus est egisse, qui toties ridicule, toties
acriter invectus est in ilia praesertim vitia, quae proxima aetate illa-
tura erant reipublicae nostras tarn grave detrimentum 1 qui semper
frui videtur aura quadam propria, et sibi quidem gratissima quotibs
vapulant sive pietatcm simulantes, sive regiam minuentes majesta-
tem ■? Quid ? Spenserura qui juvenes assidue in manibus cum
amore et studio habuerant, quo tandem animo praelium erant inituri
cum illo hoste, cui solenne fuerit omni convicio lacessere nunc re-
giis f<£minas, nunc sacrorum antistites ]"
KsBUc, ' Proilectiones,' p. Kli
LECTURE VI.
Oi;r sketch of the English part of what I have called the
religious movement of modern Europe has now arrived at the
beginning of the seventeenth century. And I have said that
the several parties as hitherto developed have been religious
rather than political, but that they were soon to become
political also. I have used these words " religious" and
" political" in their common acceptation for the sake of con-
venience ; but it is quite necessary to observe the confusions
which attend this use of them, as well as of the kindred
words "church" and "state," "spiritual" and "secular,"
confusions of no slight importance, and perpetually tending,
as I think, to perplex our notions of the whole matter to
which the words relate.
I have called the puritans in the sixteenth century a reli-
gious party rather than a political, because it was the gov-
ernment of the church and not of the state, to use again the
common language, which they were attempting to alter ; the
government by bishops, archdeacons, &c., under the royal
supremacy, not the government by king, lords, and commons.
But if we examine the case a little more closely, we shall
find that in strictness they were a political party, and that the
changes which they wanted to introduce were political ;
political, it may be said, even more than religious, if we
apprehend the distinction involved in these words more ac-
curately than seems to be done by the common usage of
them.
I shall not, 1 trust, be suspected of wishing merely to bring
262 LECTURE VI.
forward a startling paradox, when I say that in speaking of
Christianity the word " church" is rather to be used as distinct
from religion than as synonymous with it, and that it belongs
in great part to another set of ideas, relating to ♦hings which
we call political. Religion expresses the relations of man to
God, setting aside our relations to other men : the church ex-
presses our relations to God in and through our relations to oth-
er men; the state, in popular language, expresses our relations
to other men without reference to our relations to God : but I
have always thought that this notion is in fact atheistic, and that
the truer notion would be that the state at least expresses our
relations to other men according to God's ordinance, that is, in
some degree including our relation to God. However, without
insisting on this, we will allow that the term religion may
have a meaning without at all considering our relations to
other men, and that the word state may have a meaning
without at all considering our relations to God ; not its per-
fect meaning, but a meaning ; whereas the word " church"
necessarily comprehends both : we cannot attach any sense
to it without conceiving of it as related to God, and involving
also the relations of men to one another. It stands, therefore,
according to this view of it, as the union of the two ideas of
religion and the state, comprising necessarily in itself the es-
sential points of both the others; and as being such, all church
questions may be said to be both religious and political ;
although in some the religious element may be predominant,
and in others the political, almost to the absorption of the
other.
Now questions of church government may appear clearly
to be predominantly political ; that is, as regarding the rela-
tions of the members of the church to one another, whether
one shall govern the rest, or ihe few the many, or the many
themselves : and the arguments which bear upon all these
points in societies merely political might seem the arguments
LECTURE VI. 263
which should decide them here. But two other considerationa
arc here to be added ; one, that in the opinion of many per-
sons of opposite parties, all such arguments are barred by
God's having expressly commanded a particular form of
government ; so that instead of the general question, what is
the best form of government under such and such circum-
stances, we have another, what is the particular form com-
manded by God as the best under all circumstances. This
is one consideration, and according to this, it might no doubt
happen that persons of the most opposite political opinions
might concur in desiring the very same form of church gov-
ernment, simply as that which God had commanded. This
is possible, and in individual cases I do not doubt that it has
often actually happened. But as the question, what is the
particular form divinely commanded, is open to manifold
doubts, to say nothing of the farther question, " whether any
particular form has been commanded or no;" so practically
?v-nongst actual parties, men's opinions and feelings, political
and others, have really influenced them in deciding the ques-
tion of fact, and they have actually maintained one form or
another to be the form divinely commanded, according to
their firm belief of its superior excellence, or their sense of
the actual evils of other forms, or their instinctive feeling m
favour of what was established and ancient. And so we
really should thus far reclaim questions on church govern-
ment to the dominion of political questions ; political or moral
considerations having really for the most part been the springs
of the opinions of the several parties respecting them.
But I said that there were two considerations to be added,
and I have as yet only mentioned one. The other is the be-
lief entertained of the existence of a priesthood in Christianity,
and this priesthood regulated by a divine law, and attached
for ever to the offices which exercise government also. And
this priesthood being, according to the opinion of those who
264 LECTURE VI
believe in it, of infinite religious importance, the question of
church government becomes in their view much more reli-
gious than political ; religious, not only in this sense, that
church government, whether we may think it good or bad,
must be tried simply by the matter of fact, whether it is the
government ordained by God ; but in another and stricter
sense, that the priesthood implying also the government, and
being necessary to every man's spiritual welfare, not through
the governing powers attached to it, but in its own direct
priestly acts which are quite distinct from government, church
government is directly a matter of religious import, and to
depart from what God has ordained respecting it is not merely
a breach of God's commandments, but is an actual cutting
off of that supply of spiritual strength by which alone we can
be saved. So that in this view questions of church govern-
ment, as involving more or less the priesthood also, must be
predominantly religious.
Am I, then, contradicting myself, and were the parties of
the sixteenth century purely religious, as I have called them
religious in the popular sense of the word, and not at all, or
scarcely at all political ? I think that the commonest reader
of English history will feel that they were political, and that
I was right in calling them so ; where, then, are we to find
the solution of the puzzle ? In two points, which I think are
historically certain : first, that the controversy about episco-
pacy was not held of necessity to involve the question of the
priesthood, because the priestly character was not thought to
bo vested exclusively in bishops, nor to be communicable
only by them ; so that episcopacy might be after all a
point of government and not of priesthood : and secondly, in
this, that the reformed churches, and the church of England
no less than the rest, laid no stress on the notion of a priest-
hood, and made it no part of their faith ; so that questions of
church government, when debated between protestants and
LECTURE VI, 265
protcstants, were debated without reference to it, and aj
questions of government only. Whereas amongst Roman
Catholics, where the belief in a priesthood is at the bottom of
the whole system, questions of church government have had
no place, but the dispute has been de sacerdotio et imperio,
respecting the limits of the church and the state ; for the
church being supposed identical with, or rather to be merged
in the priesthood, its own government of itself was fixed irrev-
ocably ; and the important question was, how large a portion
of human life could be saved from the grasp of this dominion,
which was supposed to be divine, and yet by sad experience
was felt also to be capable both of corruption and tyranny.
So that there was no remedy but to separate the dominion of
the state from that of the church as widely as possible, and
to establish a distinction between secular things and spiritual,
that so the corrupt church might have only one portion of the
man, and some other power, not subject to its control, might
have the rest.
Returning, then, to my original point, it is still, I think,
true that the parties of the sixteenth century in England
were in great measure political ; inasmuch as they disputed
about points of cliurch government, wiiiiout any reference to
a supposed priesthood ; and because even those who main-
tained that one or another form was to be preferred, because
it was of divine appointment, were influenced in their inter-
pretation of the doubtful language of the Scriptures by their
own strong persuasion of what that language could not but
mean to say. But being political even as we have hitherto
regarded them, the parties become so in a much higher de-
gree when we remember that, according to the theory of the
English constitution in the sixteenth century, its church and
its state were one.
Whether this identification be right or wrong, is no part of
my present business to decide ; but the fact is perfectly in
23
266 LECTiriiE VI.
disputable. It does not depend merely on the language of
the act which conferred the supremacy on Henry the Eighth,
large and decisive as that language is. (1) Nor on the large
powers and high precedence, ranking above all the bishops
and archbishops, assigned to the king's vicegerent in matters
ecclesiastical, such vicegerent being a layman. (2) Nor
yet does it rest solely on the fact of Edward the Sixth issuing
an office for the celebration of the communion purely by his
own authority, with the advice of his uncle the protector
Somerset, and others of his privy council, without the slight-
est mention of any consent or advice of any bishop or cler-
ical person whatsoever ; the king declaring in his preface
that he knows what by God's word is meet to be redressed,
and that he purposes with God's grace to do it.*(3) But it is
proved by this, that every point in the doctrine, discipline,
and ritual of our church, was settled by the authority of par-
liament : the Act of Uniformity of the first of Elizabeth,
which fixed the liturgy and ordered its use in all churches,
being passed by the queen, lords temporal, and commons
only ; the bishops being Roman Catholics, and of course re
fusing to join in it ; so that the very preamble of the act
omits all mention of lords spiritual, and declares that it was
enacted by the queen, with the advice and consent of the
lords and commons, and by the authority of the same. (4)
And it is proved again by the language of the prayer for the
church militant, where the king's council and his ministers
are undoubtedly regarded as being officers in the church by
virtue of their offices in the state. (5) This being the fact,
recognised on all hands, church government was no light
matter, but one which essentially involved in it the govern-
* See Edward the Sixth's " Order of the Communion," " imprinted at Lon-
don by Richard Grafton, 1547," and reprinted by Bishop Sparrow in his " Col-
lection of Articles, Injunctions, Canons, Orders," &c., and again lately by
Dr. Cardwell, as an AppendL\ to the Two Liturgies of Edward tlie Sixth. Ox
ford, 1841.
LECTURE VI. 267
ment of the state ; and the disputing the queen's supremacy
was equivalent to depriving her of one of the most important
Dortions of her sovereignty, and committing half of the gov.
ernment of the nation to other hands. And therefore, when
James the First used his famous expression of " no bishop,
no king," (6) he spoke exactly in the spirit of the notion that
an aristocracy is a necessary condition of a monarchy, unless
it be a pure despotism, military or otherwise; that where
the people are free, if they have rejected an aristocracy,
they will surely sooner or later reject a monarchy also.
But still, had Elizabeth's successor been like herself, the
religious parties might iiave gone on for a long time without
givmg to their opposition a direct political form. Sir Fran-
cis Knollys, writing to Lord Burghley in January, 1592,
(1591, O.S.,) wonders that the queen should imagine "that
she is in as much danger of such as are called puritans as
she is of the papists, and yet her majesty cannot be ignorant
that the puritans are not able to change the government of
the clergy, but only by petition at her majesty's hands. And
yet her majesty cannot do it, but she must call a parliament
for it ; and no act can pass thereof unless her majesty shall
give her royal assent thereto."* (7) This shows that as yet
no notion was entertained of parliament's taking up the cause
of itself, and pressing it against the crown ; and indeed such
was the mingled fear and love entertained for Elizabeth, that
the mere notion of a strong party in parliament setting itself
in opposition to her was altogether chimerical. But in the
mean time the puritan party was gaining ground in the
country ; its supporters in parliament were continually be-
coming more numerous ; and instead of the most able, the
most respected, and the most beloved of queens, the sovereign
of England was now James the First.
» Queen Elizabeth and Her Times. Edited by T. Wright, Trinity College,
Cambridge. London, 1838. Vol. ii. p. 417.
868 LEC7URE VI.
At one stroke the crown became placed ia a new position.
Not less averse to the puritans than Elizabeth had been, King
James met with ncne of that enthusiastic loyalty from the
mass of the people which in the late reign had softened the
opposition of the puritans, and if it had not softened it would
have rendered it harmless. He abandoned Elizabeth's fo-
reign policy, as he was incapable of maintaining either the
dignity or the popularity of her personal character. The
spell which had stayed the spirit of political party was bro-
ken, and the waters whose swelling had been l.eld back as it
were by its potent influence, now took their natural course,
and rose with astonishing rapidity. (8)
The most disastrous revolutions are produced by the ex-
treme of physical want ; the most happy, by wants of a moral
kind, physical want being absent. There are many reasons
why this should be so : and this amongst others, that extreme
physical want is unnatural : it is a disease which cannot be
shaken off without a violent and convulsive struggle. But
moral and intellectual cravings are but a healthful symptom
of vigorous life : before they were felt, no wrong was done
in withholding their appointed food, and if it be given them
when they demand it, all goes on naturally and happily.
Nay, even where it is refused, and a struggle is the conse-
quence, still the struggle is marked with much less of bitter-
ness, for men contending for political rights are not infuriated
like those who are fighting for bread. Now at the beginning
of the seventeenth century the craving for a more active
share in the management of their own concerns was felt by
a large portion of the English people. It had been suspended
in Elizabeth's reign owing to the general respect for her
government, and the growing activity of the nation found its
employment in war, or in trade, or in writing ; for the mass
of writers in Elizabeth's time was enormous. (9) But when
the government excited no respect, then the nation began to
LECTURE VI. 269
question with itself, why in the conduct of its affairs such a
government should be so much and itself so little.
No imaginary constitution floated before the eyes of the
popular party in parliament, as the object towards which all
their efforts should be directed. Their feeling was indistinct,
but yet tlicy seem to have acted on a consciousness that the
time was come when in the government of the country the
influence of the crown should be less, and that of the nation
more. It appears to me that the particular matters of dispute
were altogether subordinate ; the puritan members of parlia-
ment pressed for the reform of the church ; men who were
keenly alive to the value of personal freedom, attacked arbi-
trary courts of justice, and the power of ai-bitrary imprison-
ment ; those who cared for little else, were at least anxious
to keep in their own hands the control over their own money.
But in all the impulse was the same, to make the house of
commons a reality. Created in the midst of regal and aris-
tocratical oppression, and wonderfully preserved during the
despotism of the Tudor princes with all its powers unimpaired
because it had not attempted to exercise them unseasonably ;
an undoubted branch of the legislature, — the sole controller
by law of the public taxation, — authorized even in its feeblest
infancy to petition for the redress of national grievances and
to impeach public delinquents in the name of the " Commons
of England," — recognised as speaking with the voice of the
nation when the nation could do no more than petition and
complain, the house of commons spoke that same voice no less
now, when the nation was grown up to manhood, and had the
power to demand and to punish. (10)
The greater or less importance of a representative assem-
bly is like the quicksilver in a barometer ; it rises or falls
according to causes external to itself; and is but an index
exhibited in a palpable form, of the more or less powerful
pressure of the popular atmosphere. When the people at
270 LECTURE VI.
large are poor, depressed, and inactive, then their represen
tatives faithfully express their weakness ; nothing is so help-
less as a house of commons, or a chamber of deputies, when
their constituents are indifferent to or unable to support their
efforts. But under opposite circumstances an opposite result
is inevitable ; where the people are vigorous, powerful, and
determined, their representatives, so long as they are believed
to represent them faithfully, cannot but wield a predominant
influence. Naturally then and unavoidably did the power
of the house of commons grow in the seventeenth century,
because, as I have said, they spoke the voice of the nation,
and the nation Avas now become strong.
Under these circumstances there were now working to-
gether 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 farthest 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 po-
litical 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 politi-
cal 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
tnankmd have little sympathy. Political benefits all men
LECTURE VI. 271
oan appreciate ; and all good men, and a great many moro
than we might well dare to call good, can appreciate also
the value not of all, but of some religious truth which to
tliem 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 eflbils, 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 affects 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 indilierent. 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 (11) ; and the poet who satirized Cleon, knew
that Cleon's partisans no less than his own aristocratical
friends would sympathize with his satire, when directed
against the philosophers. But if this hold in political mat-
ters, 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 there-
fore 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 re-
ligious movement particularly, the spirit of intellectual move*
lucnt soon finds itself proscribed rather than countenanced.
272 LECTURE VI.
But still there remains the question why it should have
shrunk from the religious party which was aiming at reform
rather than from that which was opposed to it. And the ex-
planation appears to be this. The Reforming party held up
Scripture in all things as their standard, and Scripture ac-
cording to its most obvious interpretation. Thus in matters
of practice, such as church government, ceremonial, &;c.,
they allowed of no liberty; Scripture was to be the rule
positively and negatively ; what was found in it was com-
manded; what it did not command was unlawful. Again,
in matters of faith, what the Scripture taught was to be be-
lieved : believed actively, not submissively accepted. I in-
stance the niost startling points of Calvinism as an example
of this. And this party knew no distinction of learned or un-
learned, of priest or layman, of those who were to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of God, and of those who were to
receive the book sealed up, and believe that its contents were
holy, because their teachers told them so. All having the
full Christian privileges, all had alike the full Christian re-
sponsibilities. I have known a man of science, a Roman
Catholic, express the most intolerant opinions as to dissenters
from the Romish communion, and yet when pressed on the
subject, declare that his business was science, and that he
knew nothing about theology. But the religious reforming
party of the seventeenth century would allow their men of
science no such shelter as this. They were members of
Christ's church, and must know and believe Christ's truth
for themselves, and not by proxy. With such a party, then,
considering that the truth for which they demanded such im.
plicit faith, was their own interpretation of Scripture, formed
on no very enlarged principles, the intellectual inquirer, who
demanded a large liberty of thought, and to believe only
what he could reasonably accept as true, could entertain nc
sympathy.
LECTURE VI. 273
But with the party opposed to them it was difTcrent. To
a man not in earnest the principle of church authority is a
very endurable shackle. He does homage to it once for all,
and is then free. In matters of church government, however,
men in earnest no less than men not in earnest found that,
intellectually speaking, the antipopular party dealt more
gently with them than the puritans. For Hooker's principle
being adopted, that the church had great liberty in its choice
of a government, as well as of its ceremonial, the existing
church government and ritual rested its claim not on its being
essential always, and divinely commanded, but on being
established by lawful authority. On this principle any man
might obey it, witliout being at all obliged to maintain its in-
herent excellence : his conformity did not touch his intellec-
tual freedom. With respect to doctrines, even to the honest
and earnest believer there was in many points also allowed
a greater liberty. Whei-e the church did not pronounce
authoritatively, the interpretation of Scripture was left free :
and the obvious sense was not imposed upon men's belief as
the true one. Thus the peculiar points of Calvinism were
rejected by tlie antipopular party, the more readily no doubt
because Calvin had taught them, but also by many because
of their own startling character. But where there was an
indifference to religious truth altogether, there tlie principle
of church authority, and the strong distinctions drawn between
the knowledge required of the clergy, and that necessary foi
the laity, offered a most convenient refuge. It cost such a
man little not to attack opinions about which he cared noth-
ing ; it cost him little to say that he submitted dutifully to
the authority of the church, being himself very ignorant of
such matters, and unable to argue about them. His igno-
rance was really unbelief: but his profession of submission
allowed him to inquire freely on other matters which he
did care for, and there to assert principles which, if consi*
274 LECTURE VI
lently applied, might shake what the church most maintained.
But he would not make the application, and like the Jesuit
editors of Newton, he was ready if questioned to disclaim
it. (12)
Thus up to the breaking out of the civil war in 1642, we
find some of the most inquiring and purely intellectual men
of the age, such as Hales and Chillingworth, strongly at-
tached to the antipopular party. And it was his extreme
shrinking from what he considered the narrow-mindedness
of the puritans, which principally, I think, influenced the
mind of Lord Falkland in joining at last the antipopular
cause as the least evil of the two. But as the civil war
went on, the popular party underwent a great change ; a
change which prepared the way for the totally new form in
which it appeared in Europe in that second period of modern
history which I have called the period of the political move-
ment.
Before, however, we trace this change, let us consider
generally the progress of the struggle in the first forty years
of the seventeenth century. What strikes us predominantly
is, that what in Elizabeth's time was a controversy between
divines, was now a great political contest between the crown
and the parliament. I have already observed that the grow-
ing vigour of the nation necessarily gave a corresponding
vigour to the parliament : its greater ascendency was in the
course of things natural. And although the nation was grow-
ing throughout the forty years and more of Elizabeth's reigu,,
yet of course the period of its after growth produced much
greater results : the infant grows into the boy in his first ten
years of life ; but it is in the second ten years, from ten to
twenty, that he grows up into the freedom of manhood. Bui
yet it cannot be denied that had Elizabeth reigned from If. 03
to 1642, the complexion of events would have been greatly
different. A great sovereign might have either headed th«
lecti:re VI. 275
movement or diverted it. For instance, a sovereign who ob-
serving the strength of tlie national feeling in favour of the
protcstant Reformation liad entered frankly and vigorously
into the great continental struggle ; had supported on princi-
ple that cause which Richelieu aided purely from worldly
policy ; had struck to the heart of Spain by a sustained naval
war, and by letting loose Raleigh and other such companions
or followers of Drake and Frobisher upon her American col-
onies; while he had combated the Austrian power front to
front in Germany, and formed an army like Cromwell's in
foreign rather than in domestic warfare, such a king would
have met with no opposition on the score of subsidies ; his
faithful commons would have supported him as liberally and
heartily as their fathers had supported Henry the Fifth's
quarrel with France, or as their posterity supported the tri-
umphant administration of the first William Pitt. And puri-
tan plans of church reform would have been cast aside;
unheeded : the star-chamber would have remained unas-
sailed, because it would have found no victims, or none whom
the public mind would have cared for ; and Hampden instead
of resisting the tax of ship-money, would, like the Roman
senators of old, have rather built and manned a ship at his
own single cost ; and commanding it in person for the cause
of God and the glory of England, might have died like Nel-
son after completing the destruction of the Spanish navy,
instead of perishing almost in his own native county, at that
sad skirmish of Chalgrave field.
This might have been, had James the First been the very
reverse of what he was ; and then the contest would have
been delayed to a later period, and have taken place under
other circumstances. For sooner or later it could not but
come, and the first long peace under a weak monarch would
nave led to it. For the supposed long course of foreign wars
would have caused parliaments to have been continually
276 LECTURE VI,
summoned, so tnat it would not have been possible afteni aida
to have discontinued them ; and whenever the parliament
and a weak king had found themselves in presence of each
other, with no foreign war to engage them, the collision waa
inevitable. We have rather therefore reason to be thankful
that the struggle did take place actually, when no long war
had brought distress upon the whole nation, and embittered
men's minds with what Thucydides* calls its rude and vio-
lent teaching (13) ; but in a time of peace and general pros-
perity, when our social state was so healthy that the extreme
of political commotion did not seriously affect it; so that al-
though a three or four years' civil war cannot but be a great
calamity, yet never was there any similar struggle marked
with so little misery, and stained with so few crimes, as the
great English civil war of the seventeenth century.
Meantime, as I said, the character of the popular party
underwent a change. For as the struggle became fiercer,
and more predominantly political, and bold and active men
were called forward from all ranks of society, it was impos-
sible that the puritan form of church government, or their
system of Scripture interpretation, should be agreeable to all
the popular party. Some broke off therefore in one direc-
tion, others in another. In times when the masses were no
longer inert, but individual character was everywhere mani-
festing itself, no system of centralization, whether in the
hands of bishops or presbyters, was likely to be acceptable.
Centralization and active life pervading the whole body are
hard to reconcile : he who should do this perfectly, would
have established a perfect government. For " quot homines
tot sentential" holds good only where there is any thinking at
all : otherwise there may be a hundred millions of men and
only "una sententia," if the minds of the 99,999,999 are
• III. 82.
LECTURE VI, 277
wholly quiescent. And thus the Independent principle arose
naturally out of the high excitement on religious questions
which prevailed throughout the nation ; just as the multitude
of little commonwealths in Greece, and in Italy in the middle
ages, showed the stirring of political life in those countries.
Each congregation was independent of other congregations ;
each individual in the congregation, according to his gifts real
or fancied, might pray, exhort, and interpret Scripture. Men
so resolute in asserting the rights of the small society against
the larger, and of the individual against the society, could not
but recognise, I do not say the duty, so much as the necessity
of toleration ; and thus the independents showed more mutual
indulgence in this matter than any religious party had as yef
shown in England. But such a system, to say nothing of its
other defects, had in it no principle of duration ; for it seems a
law that life cannot long go on in a multitude of minute parts
without union, nay even without something of that very cen-
tralization which yet if not well watched is so apt to destroy
them by absorbing their life into its own : there wants a heart
in the political as in the natural body, to supply the extremi-
ties continually with fresh blood.
But I said that the popular party broke oil from puritan-
ism partly in one direction and partly in another. Some
there were who set the religious part of the contest aside al-
together ; esteeming the disputes about church government
of no account, holding all the religious parties alike in equal
contempt, as equally narrow-minded in their different ways.
The good government of the commonwealth was their mahi
object, with a pure system of divine philosophy. The eyes
of such men were turned rather to Greece and Rome than
to any nearer model ; there alone, as they fancied, was to be
found the freedom which they desired. Others, who were
incapable of any romantic or philosophical aspirations, desired
simply such objects as have been expressed, in later times,
878 LECTURE VI.
under the terms civil and religious liberty ; they deprecated
unjust restraint, whether external or internal ; but with this
negation their zeal seemed to rest contented. A great and
fatal error, and which has done more than any thing else to
make good men in later times stand aloof from the popular
cause. For liberty, though an essential condition of all oui
excellence, is yet valuable because it is such a condition : I
may say of it what I have said of actual existence, that the
question may always be asked why we are free, and if the
answer is, that we may do nothing, or that we may please
ourselves, then liberty, so far as we are concerned, is value-
less : its good is this only, that it takes away from another
the guilt of injustice. But to speak of religious liberty, when
we mean the liberty to be irreligious, or of freedom of con-
science, when our only conscience is our convenience, is no
other than a mockery and a profanation. It is by following
such principles that a popular party justly incurs that re-
proach of axoXarfia, which the ancient philosophers bestowed
especially on democracies. (14)
I have tried to analyze the popular party : I must now en-
deavour to do the same with the party opposed to it. Of
course an antipopular party varies exceedingly at different
times ; when it is in the ascendant its vilest elements are
sure to be uppermost : fair and moderate men, — ^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
in^.itate 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 be-
tween the antipopular party in 1640, before the Long Parlia-
ment 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 tri-
LECTURE VI. 279
uinplianl, and joins the party opposed to it, without really
changing hia 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 can-
not 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, ulthough now bewildered and led astray by an
unwonted gluam of success. He protests so strongly against
their evil th&t 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 atfeetions, 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 uneheered by any sympathy ;
given not against enemies amidst applauding friends, but
against friends amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing enemies.
And such a martyr was Falkland ! (15)
Others who fall olF from a popular party in its triumph,
are of a different character ; ambitious men, who think that
they are become necessary to their opponents, and who crave
the glory of being able to undo tlieir own work as easily as
they had done it: passionate men, who, quarrelling witii their
old associates on some personal question, join tiie adversary
in search of revenge : vain men, who think their place une.
«|ual to their merits, and hope to gain a higher on the oppo-
site side : timid men, who are frightened as it were at fhe
880 LECTURE VI.
noise of their own guns, and the stir of actual battle ; who
had liked to dally with popular principles in the parade ser-
vice 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 vio-
lence 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 antipopulai
principles blended together, rather than of the mere ascend-
ancy of either ; whose aim, therefore, is to prevent eithei
from going too far, and to throw their weight into the lightei
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 arbi-
trator ; 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, pei'haps, the least evil ; for as one
must crush the other, it is at least desirable that the party so
crushed should be the worse.
Again, of the supporters of an antipopular party in its or-
dinary state, before it has received accessions from its oppo-
Bite, there is also a considerable variety. Walton,* when
describing the three parties of the reign of Elizabeth, speaks
of them as " the active Romanists," " the restless non-con-
formists," and "the passive and peaceable Protestants."
This virtue of quietness, meekness, and peaceableness, the
tt-Trfayfxotfuvy) of the Athenians, has been ascribed to Wal-
ton himself, and is often claimed as the characteristic ex-
cellence of an antipopular party, and particularly of the
* Life of Hooker.
LECTURE VI. 281
antipopular parly of our English contests of the seventeenth
century. Now it may be, though I do not think that it is
made out clearly, that there existed at Athens a state of
things so feverish — that a town life, surrounded by such
manifold excitements as was that of the Athenians, had so
overpowered the taste for quiet, that the d'rf ^ayi^dv , or the
man who followed only his own domestic concerns, was a
healthy rarity. (16) But in general, and most certainly with
our country life, and our English constitutions, partaking
something of the coldness of our northern climate, it is extra-
ordinary that any should have regarded this a^^a^jxod'y'vj]
as a rare virtue, and praised the meekness of those who, be-
ing themselves well off, and having all their own desires con-
tented, do not trouble themselves about the evils which they
do not feel ; and complain of the noisy restlessness of the
beggars in the street, while they are sitting at their ease in
their warm and comfortable rooms. Isaac Walton might en-
joy his angling undisturbed in spite of star-chamber, ship-
money, high-commission court, or popish ceremonies ; what
was the sacrifice to him of letting the public grievances take
their own way, and enjoying the freshness of a May morning
in the meadows on the banks of the Lea ? Show me a pop-
ulation painfully struggling for existence, toiling hard and
scarcely able to obtain necessary food, and seeing others
around them in the enjoyment of every luxury, and this pop-
ulation repelling all agitation, and going on peaceably and
patiently under a system in which they and they alone are
suffering ; and I will yield to no man in my admiration, in
my deep reverence for such quietness, or rather for such
true meekness, such self-denying resignation. For there ia
not a living man on whom hunger and cold do not press
heavily, if he has to bear them ; and he who endures these
is truly patient. But are all men keenly alive to religioua
error ? to political abuses which do not touch them ? to in-
282 LECTURE VI.
justice from which others only are the sufferers ? Oi are
our English minds so enthusiastic, that our most dangerous
tendency is to forget our own private and personal concerns,
lo crave after abstract changes in church and state, and to
rail against existing institutions with the certainty of meeting
as our reward poverty and a jail ? Generally, then, there
is no merit in the acquiescence in existing things shown by
the mass of the population whose physical comforts are not
touched, nor their personal feelings insulted. There may be
individuals, no doubt, whose submission is virtuous ; men
who see clearly what is evil, and desire to have it redressed,
but from a mistaken sense of duty, and from that only, for-
bear to complain of it. But where the evil is one which the
mass care little for, when to complain of it is highly danger-
ous, and there is enough of work and enjoyment in their own
private concerns to satisfy all the wants of their nature, 1
know not how the political peaceableness of such persons can
be thought in itself to be either admirable or amiable. It
seems to me to be in itself neither admirable nor strongly
blameable ; but simply the following of a natural tendency ;
and of this sort was the dislike of the popular party enter-
tained by the great majority of their opponents.
Others, however, there were who were opposed to the pop-
ular party, at least so long as it was predominantly religious,
on more positive and earnest grounds. A vast multitude of
principles and practices had been joined together in the
Roman Ca\.holic system, not all necessarily connected with
each other. Of these, some desired to restore all, some loved
peculiarly those which were most essential to the system real-
ly, though not in the eyes of the vulgar; others regretted
only those which, having no necessary connection with it,
were yet proscribed for its sake. To all of these, and to
many more besides, which the church of England had act-
ually adopted, the puritans professed the most uncompromis
LECTURE VI 2S3
ing hostility. Not only, therefore, were all those opposed to
them who thought that the Reformation had gone too far, but
many of those also who thought that it had gone far enough,
and could not bear to go any farther. Men of taste, men
who loved antiquity, men of strong associations which they
felt almost sacred, were scandalized at the homeliness, the
utter renunciation of the past, the rude snapping asunder of
some of the most venerable usages, which were prominent
parts of the puritan system. But along with these were oth-
ers whose dislike to puritanism went deeper ; some who
dreaded their system of Scripture interpretation, and the doc-
trines which they deduced from it ; a large party who be-
lieved the government by bishops to be divinely commanded;
as firmly as the puritans believed the same of their presby-
teries ; but many also, and from the beginning of the seven-
teenth century onwards continually becoming more active,
and raised to higher dignities, who in their hearts hated the
Reformation altogether — hated especially the foreign protest-
ants — hated the doctrine of justification by faith, loved cere-
monies and rites, idolized antiquity, preached up the priest,
hood, and, in the words of Lord Falkland, " laboured to
bring in an English though not a Roman popery." " I
mean," he goes on,* " not only the outside and dress of it,
* Tlie Lord Falkland's speech, Feb. 9tii, IGll, O. 8.— (From Nalson's
(Collections :)
* * * " The truth is, 3Ir. Speaker, that as some ill niiiiisters in our state
first took away oiir money from us, and afterwards endeavoured to make our
money not worth tho taking, by turning it into broja by a kind of antipiiiloso-
plier's stone ; so these men used us in the point of preaching: first, depressing
it to their power, and next labouring to make it such, a-s the hami had not
been much if it had been depressed, the most frequent subjects even in tlie
most sacred auditories, being the jus divinuinof bishops and tithes, the sacrcd-
ness of tiie clergy, the sacrilege of impropriations, the demolishing of puritan-
ism and propriety, the building of tiie prerogative at Paul's, the introduction
of sHch doctrines as, admitting them true, the truth would not recompense the
scandal ; or of such as were so far false, that, as Sir Thomius 3Iorc says of the
oafcuifits, tlieir business was not to kee]) men from simiing, but to mform them,
284 LECTURE VI.
but equally absolute ; a blind dependence of the people upon
the clergy, and of the clergy upon themselves." All these
several elements were found mixed up together in the anti-
popular party of the first half of the seventeenth century.
Let us now pass abruptly from 1642 to 1660 ; when the
long contest was ended, the old constitution restored, and the
first period, which I have called the period of the religious
movement, was brought to a close. Let us consider what
tne object of the movement had been, and what was its suc-
cess. And first, as religious parties only, we have seen that
there had been three, those who wished to maintain the sys-
tem established at the Reformation, those who wished to alter
it by cai'rying on the Reformation farther, and those who
wished to undo it, and return to the system which it had
superseded. We have seen that this last party could not act
openly in its own name, and its own direct operations were
therefore inconsiderable : but a portion of the established
church party, in their extreme antipathy towards those who
called for farther reform, did really labour in spirit to undo
what had been effected already, serving the principles of the
Roman Catholic party if not its forms. But the result of the
contest was singularly favourable to the middle party, to the
Quam prope ad peccatum sine peccato liceat accedere ; so it seemed their
work was to try how much of a papist might be brought in without popery,
and to destroy as much as they could of the Gospel, without bringing tliem-
Belves into danger of being destroyed by the law. * * Mr. Speaker, to go
yet farther, some of them have so industriously laboured to deduce themselves
from Rome, that they have given great suspicion that in gratitude they desire
to return thither, or at least to meet it halfway; some have evidently laboured
to bring in an English, though not a Roman popery : I mean not only the out-
side and dress of it, but equally absolute ; a Dlind dependence of the people
upon the clergy, and of the clergy upon themselves ; and have opposed Uio
papacy beyond the seas that they might settle one beyond the water, [i. e
trans Thamesin, at Lambeth.] Nay, common fame is: more than ordinarily
false, if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to
the i>referments of England ; and be so absolutely, directly, and cordia.ly pa-
pists, that it is all that £1300 s year ciin do to keep them from confessing it."
LECTURE VI. .285
supporters of the Elizabethan reformation against the Roman
Catholics on one side, and against the puritans on the other.
It was decided that the church of England was to remain at
once protcstant and episcopal, acknowledging the royal su-
premacy and retaining its hierarchy ; repelling alike Roman-
um and puritanism; maintaining the reform already effected,
resisting any reform or change beyond it. This is the first
and obvious impression which we derive from the sight of the
battle-field when the smoke is cleared away ; all other stan-
dards are beaten down, the standard of the protestant and
episcopal church of England appears to float alone trium-
phant.
But on examining more closely the state of the conquerors,
we find that their victory has not been cheaply won ; that
they do not leave the field such as they came upon it. And
this is the important part of the whole matter, that the original
idea of the church of England, as only another name for the
state and nation of England, was now greatly obscured, and
from this time forward was ever more and more lost sight of.
Change in the government of the church had been success-
fully resisted ; there the puritans had done nothing ; but
changes of the greatest importance had been wrought in the
state, not in its forms indeed, for the alteration of these had
been triumphantly repealed by the restoration, but in its
spirit : the question whether England was to be a pure or
mixed monarchy had been decisively settled ', the ascendency
of parliament, which the revolution of 1G88 placed beyond
dispute, was rendered sure by the events of the preceding
contest ; the bloodless triumph of King William was pur-
chased in fact by the blood shed in the great civil war. It
was impossible then that that absoluteness of church govern-
ment which had existed in the reigns of Elizabeth and her
successors should be any longer tolerated ; no high-commission
court could be appointed now, nor would the license of the
886 LECTURE VI.
crown be held sufficient to give the clergy a legislative power,
and to enable them to make canons for the church at their
discretion. The canons of 1640, passed by Laud in the
plenitude of his power, were annulled by the parliament after
the Restoration no less than they had been by the Long Par-
liament ; the writ De haeretico comburendo was now for the
first time abolished by law. The old forms of church gov-
ernment had been maintained against all change, but being
ill suited to the advance which had been made in the spirit
of the general government, they were not allowed to possess
their former activity.
Whilst the identity of church and state was thus impaired
on the one hand, it was also lessened in another way by the
total defeat of the puritans, and by the ejection of such a
multitude of their ministers by the new oaths imposed by the
Act of Uniformity. Hitherto the puritans had been more or
less a party within the church ; the dispute had been whether
the church itself should be modelled after the puritan rule or
no ; both parties as yet supposing that there was to be one
church only as there was one nation. But first the growth
of independency during the civil war, and now the vehement
repulsion by the church of all puritan elements from its min-
istry, made it but too certain that one church would no
longer be coextensive with the nation. The old idea was
attempted to be maintained for a while by force; we had the
Five. Mile Act and the Conventicle Act, (17) and such men
as John Bunyan and William Penn were subjected to legal
penalties ; but to maintain an idea which was now contra-
dicted by facts, became as impossible as it was •injust ; and
llie Toleration Act, recognising the legal existence of various
bodies of dissenters from the church, was at least a confession
that the great idea of the English Reformation could not be
realized in the actual state of things ; its accomplishment
mtwt be reserved for happier and better times.
LECTURE VI 287
The church, or religious movement, having thus ended
satisfactorily to the principles of neither party, the religious
elements on both sides retired as it were into the background,
dtid the political elements were left in the front rank of the
battle alone. We cannot wonder, therefore, that the next
great period of movement should have been predominantly
political. The composition and vicissitudes of parties during
this second period will form the subject of the next lecture.
N O T E S
LECTURE Yi.
Note 1.— Page 366.
The course of argument and historical reference in this paragraph
must bt^, taken in connection with Dr. Arnold's idea of a Christi-an
state — what may be called his high-State theory. If on the con-
trary the reader should connect it with the more common opinion
respecting the functions of the State — ' the low Jacobinical notion,'
as Arnold was in the habit of stigmatizing the Warburtonian and
Utilitarian theory, that the only object of the State is the conservation
of body and goods, he will receive an impression from this passage
widely different from the thoughts that were in the mind of the
Lecturer, and which he would have been the last to sanction. In
establishing the identification of Church and State, according to the
theory of the English constitution in the sixteenth century. Dr. Ar-
nold adopts a course of historical argument which gives great prom-
inence to the influence of parliamentary legislation and civil author-
ity upon ecclesiastical affairs, — indeed this is so strongly stated that
his real object might be mistaken for an intention to establish the
supremacy of the State over the Church, — considered as distinct
and even opposite, and thus to fasten an Erastian character upon
the English Church. It is however enough to show that such was
not the drift of his reasoning, to observe that it would be rather in-
direct and indeed insidious argumentation, different from the pur-
pose he has expressed, and altogether at variance with the upright
and candid habit of his mind. Dr. Arnold was not a man to strike
a secret or even a side blow.
The supremacy of the Crown was, in truth, a favourite idea with
NOTES TO LECTURE VI. 28D
him, not, however, according to the common acceptation of the
phrase, but because considering Church and State to be identical,
and ' the Christian nation of England to be the Church of Eng-
land,' he therefore considered the ' head of that nation the head of
the Church.' Ivi one of his letters (No. 2 IC) he speaks of ' the
doctrine of the Crown's Supremacy having been vouchsafed to the
English Church by a rare blessing of God, and containing in itself
the true idea of the Christian perfect Church, — the Kingdom of
God.' In another letter (No. 216) he writes more at length :
" * * I look to the full development of the Cliristian Church in
its perfect form, as the Kingdom of God, for the most effective re-
moval of all evil, and promotion of all good ; and I can understand
no perfect Church, or perfect State, without their blending into one
in this ultimate form. I believe, farther, that our fathers at the
Reformation stumbled accidentally, or rather were unconsciously
led by God's Providence, to the declaration of the great principle
of this system, the doctrine of the King's Supremacy ; which is, in
fact, no other than an assertion of the supremacy of the Church or
Christian society over the clergy, and a denial of that which I hold
to be one of the most mischievous falsehoods ever broached, — that
the government of the Christian Church is vested by divine right in
the clergy, and that the close corporation of bishops and presbyters,
whether one or more makes no difference, — is and ever ought to be
the representative of the Christian Church. Holding this doctrine
as the very corner-stone of all my political belief, I am equally op-
posed to Popery, High Churchism, and the claims of the Scotch
Presbyteries on the one hand ; and to all tlie Independents, and ad-
vocates of the separation, as they call it, of Church and State on the
other ; the first setting up a Priesthood in the place of the Church,
and the other lowering necessarily the objects of Law and Govern-
ment, and reducing them to a mere system of police, while they
profess to wish to make the Church purer."
In letter 187 he writes, " * * I want to know what principles and
objects a Christian State can have, if it be really Christian, mare w
less than those of the Church. In whatever degree it differs from
the Church, it becomes, I think, in that exact proportion unchris-
tian. In short, it seems to me that the State must be 'the world,'
if it be not 'the Church;' but for a society of Christians to be
25
290 NOTES
'the world' seems monstrous. * * Again, the ipyot of a Christkn
State and Church is absolutely one and the same : nor can a differ-
ence be made out which shall not impair the Christian character of
one or both ; as, e.g., if the epyov of the State be made to be merely
physical or economical good, or that of the Church be made to be
the performing of a ritual service." — And in letter No. 79 he states
his theory " that the State, being the only power sovereign over
human life, has for its legitimate object the happiness of its people,
— their highest happiness, not physical only, but intellectual and
moral ; in short, the highest happiness of which it has a concep-
tion."
Now it is this conception which Dr. Arnold had of what he called
'the highest duty and prerogative of the Commonwealth," that
must be taken in connection with the paragraph in the Lecture.
The same legislation, in English history, is also referred to in one
of his letters, (No. 84,) where he expresses the opinion that " the
statutes passed about the Church in Henry the Eighth's and Edward
the Sixth's reigns are still the apxa of its constitution, if that may be
said to have a constitution which never was constituted, but was
left as avowedly unfinished as Cologne Cathedral, where they left
a crane standing on one of the half-built towers, ^hree hundred
years ago, and have renevt-ed the crane from time to time, as it
wore out, as a sign not only that the building was incomplete, but
that the friends of the Church hoped to finish the work whenever
they could. Had it been in England, the crane would have been
speedily destroyed, and the friends of the Church would have said
that the Church was finished perfectly already, and that none but
its enemies would dare to suggest that it wanted any thing to com-
plete its symmetry and usefulness."
Entertaining the theory of the State which Dr. Arnold did, he
naturally expressed himself in strong and unqualified language re-
specting the regal supremacy — language the unmodified force of
which might mislead others, setting out from different principles of
the functions of government, into the opinion that this supremacy
prostrated the Church beneath a royal papacy. An additional expla-
nation, therefore, may not be inappropriate in this and the following
notes on the same paragraph.
" In considering the title of supreme head of tiie Church o*" Eng-
rO LECTURE VI. 291
land, given to Henry V^III. by the clergy of England, we must bo
careful to distinguish the sense in which they allowed it to the king,
from any exaggerated and unsound meaning which may have been
affixed to it by courtiers or lawyers : for the former only is the
Church of England responsible ; the latter she is not concerned
with.
" When it was proposed to the clergy of the Convocation of
Ca.iterbury, to acknowledge the King supreme head of the church
and clergy of England, they refused to pass this title simply and
unconditionally ; and after much discussion, the King was at last
obliged to accept it with a proviso, introduced by the clergy, to the
following effect : ' Ecclesiae et cleri Anglicani singularem protec-
torem et unicum ct suprcmum dominum, et {quantum per Christi
legem licet) etiani suprcmum caput, ipsius niajcstatcm recognosci-
mus.'"
Palmer's ' Treatise on the Church,' vol. i. part ii. oh. 3
" The clergy of England, in acknowledging the supremacy of
the King, a. d. 1534, did so, as Burnet proves, with the important
proviso, ' quantum per Christi legem licet ;' which original condi-
tion is ever to be supposed in our acknowledgment of the royal su-
premacy. Consequently we give no authority to the prince, except
what is consistent with the maintenance of all those rights, liberties,
jurisdictions, anl spiritual powers which 'the law of Christ' con-
fers on his Chu"2h."
lb. Part I. eh. 10.
Note 2.— Page 2CG.
" The first act of the King was to appoint Cromwell, in 1535, his
Vicar-General and Visitor of Monasteries. The former title was
certainly novel, and sounded ill, but there being no evidence that it
R'as intended in a heterodox sense, the church was not bound to
icsist the title or office. * *
" The claim advanced by Cromwell as the King's vicegerent to
the Jirst scat in convocation was indisputable As the represen-
tative of the prince, he could not be refused a position which tlie
scumenioal synods allotted to the Christian emperors."
Palmer's ' Treatise, <^c.,' vol. i. part ii ch. 3.
'^92 NOTES
Note 3.— Page 266.
" It is alleged, that in the time of Edward VI. all the most im-
portant changes in the form of ordinations, the public service, the
body of the canons, &c., were regulated by the King or parliament,
to the annihilation of the church's power. This is far from the truth.
The parliament only added the force of the temporal law to the
determinations of convocations or bishops, or at least its regulations
were confirmed by ecclesiastical authority. Thus, in 1547, an act
passed for communion in both kinds, and against private masses,
on the ground of Scripture and primitive practice, but the convoca-
tion also agreed to it."
Pal-MEr's ' Treatise, (Jc.,' vol. i. part ii. ch. 3
Note 4.— Page 266.
" It is admitted that the parliament passed acts for abolishing the
papal jurisdiction and establishing the regal supremacy, with an
oath to that effect ; and also for establishing the English ritual.
But these acts were merely confirmatory of the laws and institu-
tions made by the church of England during the reigns of Henry
VIII. and Edward VI., which had been indeed disobeyed by the
schismatics in the reign of Mary, and annulled by the civil power,
but which had never been annulled by any legitimate authorit)'^ of
the church. These acts were simply revivals of laws which had
been formerly made with the concurrence of the church of England .
they only gave the temporal sanction to institutions which had a'
ways remained in their full spiritual force and obligation."
Palmer's ' Treatise,^ vol. i. part ii. ch. 5.
Note 5.— Page 266.
In this proof of the identification of Church and State, it is not
clear whether Dr. Arnold intended to limit the argument to the
King's council. There seems to be no reason for such a limit, for
the argument admits of just the same application to " all that are
put in authority under him," (the king,) and also to "all Christian
Kings, Princes, and Governors," or in the language of the prayei in
'Jie American liturgy, " all Christian rulers."
TO LECTURE VI. 293
Note 6. — Page 267.
King James'e use of the expression is thus set forth in the witty
rhurch-historian, P\iller's dramatically told account of tlie Hampton
court conference :
" llis Majesty. — Why, then, I will tell you a tale : After that
the religion restored hy King Edward VI. was soon overthrown by
Queen Mary here in England, we in Scotland felt the effect of it.
For, thereupon, Mr. Knox writes to the queen regent, a virtuous
and moderate lady ; telling her that she was the supreme head of
the church, and charged her, as she would answer it to God's tri-
bunal, to take care of Christ's Evangel, in suppressing the popish
prelates, who withstood the same. But how long, trow you, did
this continue 1 Even till, by her authority, the popish bishops were
repressed, and Knox, with his adherents, being brought in, made
strong enough. Then began they to make small account of her
supremacy, when, according to tliat inore light wherewith they
were illuminated, they made a further reformation of themselves
llow they used the poor lady my mother, is not unknown, and how
they dealt with me in my minority. I thus apply it : my lords the
bishops, (this he said, putting his hand to his hat,) I may thank you
that these men plead tlius for my supremacy. They think they
cannot make their party good against you, but by appealing unto it.
But if once you were out and they in, I know what would become
of my supremacy ; for, ' No bishop, no king !' "
liook X. sect. 1.
Note 7.— Pago 267 .
In considering the authority of this quotation from Knollys's let-
ter to Cecil, it is to be judged not merely as correspondence from one
of Queen Elizabeth's privy-counsellors to another, but it must be re-
membered that the writer was one of those public men who sympa-
thized strongly with the favourable feeling for the Puritan party,
ivhich was entertained both in the parliaments and the Queen's cabi-
net, during at least more than the first half of that reign. I^Ir.
Hallam speaks of Knollys as one of " the powerful friends at court"
af the Puritans, and calls iiim " the staunch enemy of episcopacy,"
294 NOTES
though in this there is probably something of that exaggeration iato
which this historian is occasionally led by some intemperance of
feeling. {Const. Hist., vol. i. ch. 4.) Collier, in his ^Ecclesiastical
History,'' (part ii. book 6,) speaks of " Leicester, Knowlis, and VVal-
Bingham," as " either puritans, or abettors of that party." With
more moderation than either, Mr. Keble, in his preface to ' Hooker's
Eccles. Polity,' (p. 57,) speaks of " such persons as Knolles and
Milmay, and others, who were Calvinists and Low Churchmen on
principle." The editor of the book Dr. ArncJd has quoted from,
calls Knollys "a zealous puritan."
Indeed the very letter from Sir Francis Knollys that Dr. Arnold
has quoted, shows the feeling with which he appears through the
reign to have been in the habit of regarding respectively the influ-
ence of the opposite parties of ' purytanes' and ' papysts.' It is a
letter interceding to obtain fair dealing and equal justice for Cart-
wright, and the other early non-conformists : after the sentence
quoted, it goes on — " And as touching their seditious going aboute
the same, if the byshoppes, or my Lord Chancelor, or any for them,
could have proved de facto that Cartevvrighte and his fellow pris-
oners had gone aboute any such matter seditiously, then Carte-
wrighte and his followers had been hanged before this tyme. But
her Majestie must keepe a forme of justyce, as well against Pury-
tanes as any other subjectes, so that they may be tryed in tyme
convenient, whether they be suspected for sedition or treason, or
whatever name you shall give unto it, being purytanisme or other-
wyse."
Knollys appears to have been unable to apprehend any danger to
the Church of England from the Puritan party in his day — then
only a party within the communion of the English Church, and the
diinger that, to his eye, was always darkening the horizon, was the
papal power. There was indeed a combination of many causes
tvhich made it then appear the most imminent and present peril.
The date of the letter quoted was, it will bo observed, a short time
only after England had been threatened by the Spanish Armaila —
and it was not many years before that, that all protestan'., Europe-
had been horror-struck with the atrocities of the massacre of St.
Bartholomew's — Burleigh himself having been invited to the bloody
marriage festivities. Going back a little earlier, the recoUectiot
TO LECTURE VI. 295
wae fresh of the Marian persecutions — the fires at Smithfield had
not been very long extinguished — and another cause of the feeling
alluded to is to be found in the state of feverish apprehension pro-
duced by the papal bull of Pius V., dethroning Queen Elizabctli,
and by the intrigues for the succession of Mary Queen of Scots —
ajjpeased only by the perpetration of that great national crime, the
tragic judgment executed at Fotheringay Castle. The Puritan
movement was therefore countenanced, not only by the encourage-
ment, from wortliless motives, of that weak and wicked favourite the
Earl of Leicester, but also conscientiously by such as Knollys, who
were impelled by the dread of the papacy. With these feelings it
appears that Knollys was active in interposing to thwart the eccle-
siastical measures to enforce conformity. That Roman Catholic
dominion was the one danger which filled his vision, is shown yet
more conclusively by another letter of his in this same collection of
the correspondence of the Elizabethan statesmen. It is in January,
157G, (1577, O. S.,) that he writes as follows : "If her Majestic
wol be safe, she must comforte the hartes of those that be her most
faythfuU subjects, even for conscyence sake. But if the Bishopp
of Canterburye shall be deprived, then up startes the pryde and
practise of the papistes, and downe declyneth tlic comforte and
strcngthe of her Majestie's safety." (Vol. ii. p. 75.) The primate
referred to is Grindal, who, it will be remembered, incurred the
queen's displeasure, suspension from his ecclesiastical functions,
and other penalties, in consequence of refusing to exercise them
for the suppression of the new puritan practice of " exercises of
prophcsi/ing" which he desired rather to regulate than to suppress.
W hatever may be thought by persons of dilferent ecclesiastical
principles, of Archbishop Gnndal's indulgence to the non-conform-
ists, and (as Collier expresses it) " too kind an opinion of the Cal-
vinistic scheme — warping a little to an over-indulgence" — whatever
estimate may be formed of the fitness of a primacy so gentle as
Grindal's for the Jimes, coming as it did between the firmness of
Parker's primacy and the vigour of Whitgift's, he will be remem-
bered as one who was not intimidated by the malignity of the mean
ind inprincipled Leicester, as one to whom, in the exercise of hia
powers in the church, the vnice of conscience and of his God spake
1 )udcr than the voice of his queen, and who foi liis piety and vir-
296 NOTES
lues is commemorated as the " good Grindal," of the historian
Fuller, and aa " the good shepherd, Algrind," by the poet Spenser,
with oft-repeated affection in his allegorical pastorals.
Note 8.— Page 26S.
Sir Egerton Brydges, in his ' Memoirs of the Peers of England
during the reign of James the First,' passionately describes the
fallen condition of the nobility at this period of English history :
"What was the character of the nobility during this inglorious
and disgraceful reign, that, by alternate acts of tyranny and pusil-
lanimous concession, sowed those seeds of civil war which a few
years afterwards overturned the monarchy, and brought the King
to the scaffold 1 We see the ancient, illustrious, and galUnt fami-
ly of Vere, Sir Francis and Sir Horace, with their cousins Henry
and Robert, Earls of Oxford, incapable of dozing away their lives
on the bed of sloth, seeking those scenes of action abroad which
their own timid Prince could not afford them, and carrying arms to
the powers contending on the continent. * * *
"James, on his arrival in England, was both too fond of his
amusements, and too ignorant of business, to take much of the man-
agement of public affairs on himself; while the dependents and
companions he brought with him were equally incompetent, being
men of pleasure, inexperienced in concerns of state, and intent only
on gathering the golden harvests of private fortune, which they saw
within their grasp. The government of the nation, therefore, wa?
suffered for some time to continue in the hands of the former min-
istry. Lord Buckhurst remained at the head of the treasury ; that
able politician Cecil kept his post of secretary of state ; and Eger-
ton still presided over the court of chancery. The last luckily sur-
vived through the greater part of this reign, to preserve the fame
and integrity of that sacred Bench. But the two former died ear-
lier ; and as James was now grown more confident, and his favour-
ites more daring, the post which was vacated by the death of one
of the most efficient and long-exercised statesmen in Europe, was
died in succession by those minions, Carr and Villiers. It is ap-
parent that the old nobility fled for the most part from a or urt of
TO LECTURE VI. 297
needy, gsping, and upstart dependents, of splendid poverty, coarse
manners, and lazy and inglorious amusements."
Preface, p. 18.
Note 9.— Page 268.
" Every thing concurred, in the Elizabethan era, to give a vig-
our and a range to genius, to which neither prior nor subsequent
times have been equally propitious. An heroic age, inflamed with
the discovery of new worlds, gave increased impulse to fancies en-
riched by access both to the recovered treasures of ancient litera-
ture, and the wild splendours of Italian fiction. A command of
langsdge equal to the great occasion was not wanting. For what
is there in copiousness or force of words, or in clearness of ar-
rangement, or in harmony or grandeur of modulation, which Spen-
ser at least has not given proofs that that age could produce ]"
Sir EoERTON Brydges' "Excerpia Tudoriana."
* * " There was much in the times of Queen Elizabeth that %\ as
propitious to great intellectual development. The English lan-
guage was then well-grown ; it was not only adequate to the com-
mon wants of speech, but it was affluent in expressions, which had
become incorporated into it from the literature of antiquity. An-
cient learning had been made, as it were, part of the modern mind
of Europe ; and in England, under Elizabeth, the great universi-
ties, which during the reigns immediately before, had suftered from
violence that penetrated even those tranquil abodes, were gathering
anew their scattered force. There was scattered, too, through the
realm the popular literature of the minstrelsy, familiar, in its va-
rious forms, upon the highways and in the thoroughfares, and by
the fireside in the long English winter evening. The language was
not only enriched by phraseology of ancient birth, but it had also
gained what was more precious than aught that could come from
the domains of extinct paganism — for the word of God had taken
the form of English words, and thus a sacred glory was reflected
upon the language itself. The civil and ecclesiastical condition of
the country was also f;ivourable to intellectual advancement, for
there was in abundance all that could cheer and animate a nation's
898 NOTES
heart. There was the romantic enthusiasm of early expeditions to
remote and unexplored regions ; there was repose after the agony
of ecclesiastical bloodshedding ; and whatever feverish apprehen-
sion remained of foreign aggression or domestic discord, there vvaa
the proud sense of national independence and national power ; the
moral force greater even than the physical. Spiritual subserviency
to Rome was at an end, and England was once more standing upon
the foundations of the ancient British Church. It was the meet
glory of such an age, that there arose upon it, as the sixteenth cen-
tury was drawing to a close, in succession, the glory of the genius
of Edmund Spenser and of William Shakspere. The intellectual
energy of the times is shown by the large company of the poets ;
a list of two hundred English poets assigned to what is usually
styled the Elizabethan age, is thought by Mr. Hallam (History of
Literature) not to exceed the true number. What is yet more
characteristic of an age of thought and of action, is the fertility of
dramatic literature. In a quotation from Heywood, one of Shaks-
pere's contemporaries, given by Charles Lamb, (in his ^Specimens,'')
it appears that Heywood had ' either an entire hand, or at the least
a main finger' in 220 plays, much the greater number of which has
perished. Such was one of the ways in which, as in the palmy
age of the Athenian drama, the activity of the times was finding at
once utterance and relief."
MS. Lectures on English Poetry.
Note 10.— Page 269
* * " So it is that all things come best in their season ; that po
lilical power is then most happily exercised by a people, when it
has not been given to them prematurely, that is, before, in the nat-
ural progress of things, they feel the want of it. Security for per-
son and property enables a nation to grow without interruption ; in
contending for this, a people's sense of law and right is wholeson e-
ly exercised ; meantime, national prosperity increases, and brings
with it an increase of intelligence, till other and more necessary
*ants being satisfied, men awaken to the highest earthly desire of
the ripened mind — llie desire of taking an active share in the great
work of government. The Roman commons abandoned the high-
TO LECTURE VI. 299
est magistracies to the patricians for a period of many years ; but
they continued to increase in prosperity and in influence, and what
the fathers had wisely yielded, their sons in the fulness of time ac-
quired. So the English house of commons, in the reign of Ed-
ward III., declined to interfere in questions of peace and war, as
being too high for them to compass ; but they would not allow the
crown to lake their money without their own consent ; and so the
nation grew, and the influence of the house of commons grew along
with it, till that house has become the great and predominant power
in the British constitution."
Histoyy of Rome, vol. i., 3 13.
Dr. Arnold, in one of his letters, speaks of the historical Essay
in his Thucydides, (Appendix No. 1,) as " a full dissertation on the
progress of a people towards liberty, and their unfitness for it at aa
earlier stage." (No. 25.)
Note 11. — Page 271.
" The aristocratical hatred against Socrates is exhibited in the
Clouds of Aristophanes ; and the famous speech of Cleon on the
qusstion of the punishment of the revolted Mytilencans, shows the
same spirit in connection with the strong democratical party. Polit-
ical parties are not tlie ultimate distinction between man and man ;
there are higher points, whether for good or evil, on which a moral
sympathy unites those who politically are most at variance with
each other ; and so the common dread and hatred of improvement,
of truth, of principle — in other words, of all that is the light and
life of man, has, on more than one occasion, united in one cause all
who are low in intellect and morals, from the highest rank in socie-
ty down to the humblest."
History of Rome, \o\. i.,p. 34G, note.
Note 1-2. — Page 274.
'* The Jesuits cannot be accused of neglecting to give information
on physical subjects to their scholars. Nor docs it appear that they
attempted to restore old theories on these matters, or to teaoh any
300 NOTES
Other opinions than those which had the general sanction of philoso-
phers in their day. As the Dominicans and the Franciscans were
the means of reversing the papal decree against Aristotle, so it seems
as if the Jesuits had practically reversed the decree against Galileo,
rather eagerly availing themselves of the direction which men's mind?
were taking towards physical inquiries, to turn them away from inqui
ries into subjects more immediately concerning themselves. Here
as elsewhere, their instruction proceeded upon one principle, and ie
cne regular, coherent system. Teach every thing, be it physics,
history, or philosophy, in such wise that the student shall feel he is
not apprehending a truth, but only receiving a maxim upon trust,
or studying a set of probabilities. Acting upon this rule, they could
publish an edition of the ' Principia,' mentioning that the main doc-
trine of it had been denounced by the Pope, and was therefore to be
rejected ; but, at the same time, recommending the study of the
book as containing a series of very ingenious arguments and appa-
rent demonstrations. There was no curl of the lip in this utterance,
strange as it may seem to us, nor, in the sense we commonly give
to the word, any dishonesty. The editors did not believe that New-
ton had proved his point. They had not enough of the feeling of
certainty in their minds, to think that any thing could be proved.
All is one sea of doubts, perplexities, possibilities ; the great neces-
sity is to feel that we cannot arrive at truth, and that therefore we
must submit ourselves to an infallible authority. This was the
habit of their mind ; whether it was a true one or no the religious
man wi' 1 be able to resolve when he has considered its effects in
producing the scepticism of the eighteenth century ; the scientific
man, when he thinks how hopeless of progression those who cherish
it must be."
Maurice's ^Kingdom of Christ,^ part ii. ch. v sect. 5.
The following is the remarkable note, which Professor jMauriec
illudes to, and which was prefaced by the Jesuit Commentators on
Ihc ' Principia,' to fhe Edition published by them in 1742 ;
" PP. Le Seur et Jacquier
Declaratio.
Newtonus in hoc tertio Libro Telluris motae hypothesim assumet.
A uteris Propositiones aliter explicari non poterant nisi eAdem quo-
TO LECTURE VI. 301
(jh ! factil liypothesi. Hinc alienam coacti sunius gerere personam.
Caeterum latis a siimmis Pontificibus contr^ TcUuris motum Decretis
nos obsequi profitemur."
Note 13.— Page 276.
• * " Iv ftiv yap tlpt'ivt) Ka\ ayaOoli v^dyjiaaiv ai re TrS\cii Kai ol ISidrai iijitl'
vouf Tas yvti/ias c^ovtTi ita ri /it) Ci aKovaiovi dvdyKa; nijTTCtv' b 6c TrdXcjiOi {j^eXwv
Tf]V cinoplav tov KaO' f/iitpav (ilaio; StSdoKaXos, Kai npu; tu irapdvTa Taj ipyai rfit
" War," (in Dr. Arnold's version of the last phrase,) '• makes
men's tempers as hard as their circumstanecs." Hist, of Rome,
ch. 21.
In the historical Essay appended to his Edition of Thucydides,
Dr. Arnold remarks, " that the great enemy of society in its present
stage is war : if this calamity be avoided, the progress of improve-
ment is sure ; but attempts to advance the cause of freedom by the
Bword are incalculably perilous. War is a state of such fatal in-
toxication, that it makes men careless of improving, and sometimes
even of repairing their internal institutions ; and thus the course of
national happiness may be cut short, not only by foreign conquest,
but by a state of war poisoning the blood, destroying the healthy
tone of the system and setting up a feverish excitement, till the dis-
order terminates in despotism." Vol I. p. 522. Appendix I
Note M.— Page 278.
The mind of Arnold was so deeply imbued with the Greek phi-
losophy, that in following his thoughts in this Lecture, it is neces-
sary to understand what was the nature of that democratic itoAuor/a,
which he and the bes* of those ancient philosophers abhorred no
'ess than tyranny in its other forms of selfish aristocracy or oli-
garchy. With his favourite Aristotle Arnold sympathized strongly in
aversion to ahsolutism, whether it be the uncontrolled power of one
or of a few, or of the many, and in the deep reverence for the su-
premacy of law over will.
The nature oi aKoXaaia as a vicious condition of individual life, is
discussed with characteristic precision by Aristotle, {Ethic. Ntc.
302 NOTES
Book VII. in several chapters.) It is the very opposite of thai
VFell-regulated, disciplined, and vrisely-tempered condition of mind
described by the term aux^poaivij. The a.Ko\aala is also, with the finest
precision of ethical science, distinguished from the axpaala, moral
powerlessness, want of self-command ; the aKparos is feeble or help-
less in resisting passions — in withstanding temptation — a fool of
passion or of impulse, while the ixiXaaTo;, the unchastened, is wicked
willingly — he goes wrong, not by the mere sway of passion or the
negative absence of moral principle, but knowingly, habitually, pur-
posely : he marks out for himself a course of vicious pleasure or
excessive indulgence, and then as a matter of deliberate choice he
follows it up for its own sake, even more than for any return it
brings him in the way of sensual gratification — & jiev raj IrcpPo'kai
liiitKiiiv Twv ijiiuiv, Tj KaS' virsp^o\di, fi 5(a Trpoaipicrtv Kal 5t' avra;, Kai ftrjScv li
ircpov a-Ko^aivov, aKdXaaro;. To apply to this pagan ethical term words
that a Christian poet has put into the mouth of Archbishop Chichely,
the oKoXacia is the '■ unwhipt offending Adam.'* The aKoXaaia is
viciousness deliberate and of choice, while the aKpauia is rathei
without any settled principle of vice — ro nev yap, irapa irpoalptmv, to H
Kara irpoalptaiv hriv. In the character of Falstaff, for instance, that
which is erroneously regarded as cowardice, is a complete illustra-
tion of aKo\aaia in One of its forms, while the genuine cowardice of
Pistol or Parolles is oKpacia. Of this latter quality the character of
Macbeth is also a specimen, at least during the early part of his de-
pravity : the character of lago, on the other hand, is one of the most
intense exhibitions ever given by poetic invention, of the dKoXaaia —
that corruption of conscience denounced in the prophet's words:
" Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness
for light, and lig'at for darkness !" This wilful perversion of principle
— moral disorganization — was signally shown in many of the promi-
nent men in the French Revolution, and it was after being an eye-wit-
ness of the advance of that convulsion to its extreme of wickedness,
that the character of Oswald' in Wordsworth's tragedy of" The Bor-
derers" was conceived, under a deep sense of ' the awful truth that
there are no limits to the hardening of the heart, and the perversion
* " Consideration lilie an angol came,
And whipped the offending Adam out of him."
Henry the Fifth.' Act 1. 1
TO LECTURE VI. 308
of the understanding to which sin and crime may carry their slaves.'
The condition of the oKdAairroj was regarded as desperate too by the
Greek moralist — i/i/<mi yip rfi npoaipicci — the disease is incurable, for
t is inveterate by lack of discipline, and by choice and habit — oi«y<i?
yap Tovrovjiri elvai itcraiteXrjTiKdv' Siar' av'iaroi — remorse and reformation are
impossible, for the vice is not mere passion, but it is a principle ; it
is cold-blooded iniquity, ^a^^I &i Sv So^eic xdpiiiv ilvai, d m nt] iiriOvjidv,
9 ^piua irpaTTOi ti alaxfiov i) d cnpdipa iviOvpCiv' Kai el /lij 6pyi\,<ipcvos tvtoi, if d
ipYi<iSlttvos' . ... ltd b aKdXaaros X^'P'^" '''"" aKparov;, (' Ethic. Nic.^ Book
VII. ch. 8.) This utter hopelessness of restoration, while it shows
the strong view which the Greek moralist took of the aKo\aa(a, illus-
trates also how the highest heathen philosophy in its ethics reaches
limits which are transcended by Christian morals.
Now let us pass to the political axoXaaia, and the reproach on this
account to which Dr. Arnold alludes as having been cast by Greek
writers on the democracies. His favourite llerodctus (' Thalia,^
80-83) relates a discussion concerning the form of government to
be established when the Persian throne became vacant by the death
of Cambyses : Otanes proposes a democracy, but Megabyzus replies
that to transfer the power to the multitude — rb irA^^oj — would be
missing the wisest plan, for that nothing is more empty of under-
standing — alvvtriirtpov — 01 more full of outrageous insolence — l/Jpur-
rdrepop — than the good-for-nothing crowd — S/iAou ax^^^ov — and that it
was not at all to be tolerated that, when men escape from the vio-
lence of a despot, they should fall upon that of the licentious people
— bfinov aKo\d<TTov. Again, this vice is brought into close connection
with the democracies by Xenophon — if the author of this treatise —
(Rep. Ather , i. 5,) where he speaks of the contrast between the
government by the better sort and that by the common people —
Iv yap T0({ /FtXWoToij evt uKoXaaia tc dXiyiaTrj Kal aStxla, axpifitia Sc -rXdcTT]
Koi ds Ta vpTjora" ev ie tu) Sijpif apadia re ttAsiVtij kuI ara^ia Kai vovripia —
licentiousness idnoXaata) being in contrast with ' scrupulous regard
for what is right.' Plato, {Rep. viii.) without perhaps using the
term ixo^aala throughout the whole book, is yet describing the thing
itself, as existing in a democracy which gives indiscriminate license
—liovaia xoini/ 3 ri Wj /JouXtrat— where there is great talk about liberty
—and the acolastic defilement of the conscience manifests itself in
moral mitnomer — the calling evil good — avapxi<^v nlv eXndiplav «aXoS».
504 NOTES
rtj, avalStiav 6c, avSpiav k. r. X., lawlessness liberty, and impudeiico
mai.Jiness, &c. — where there is a want of respect for age, and au-
thority, and station — the son making himself equal to the father,
neither honouring nor fearing — n>'iTe alaxivtaQai nf,Tc St&tivat — his parents
— the pupil treating the teacher with contempt — and the resident
alien— ^/roiKoj— putting himself on a level with the citizen — and where
the father is under the controul of his boys — and the teacher stands
in awe of his scholars, and pays court to them, and old men play
the young man, for fear of seeming strict and authoritative — arjicli
uribi ScarroTiKol — -Aristotle describes in various passages the kinds of
democracy in which the aicoXaaia prevails — when for instance the
multitude has the mastery over the laws— Sttou to ttX^Sos Kipwv tUv vd^t^i
— and the equality is by numbers and not by worth — /tar' apiOjiov
and not Kar a^lav — and justice is made to mean whatever the ma-
jority please — Kal S n Sv Sd^rj Toli iz^doai, tovt tlvai to SUaiov — whenever
the supremacy of the constitution is made to yield to mere votes or
decrees, which is brought about by the demagogue who corrupts the
popular government as the flatterer spoils a king — Srav to. ^ri<i>iaiiaTa
Kvpia ij, dXAa jiri b vojxoi . . . Sttou 5' ol vdjioi fir] eiai KV(iioi, IvTavQa yiiovTai Srijxayuyol
— the supremacy of the multitude over the law being encouraged
for selfish purposes by the demagogue, who makes every thing a
subject of direct appeal to the people, whose opinion at the same
time he can fashion or controul — aiTtot il hai tov ilvai Ta ^^rijuanaTa ittipia,
aX\a jiri ToU vi5/^otJ, ovtoi, ravTa avdyovTts th tov irijiov . nvjx^aivti yap avTo'n
yii'cadai ncydXois, 8ta rd, top (liv Irjitov eTvai Kipiov, Trji 6e tov S^fiov ^(}|>/s, tovtois '
TTciOcTai yap to nXrjBos rot'roij. (Polit. iv. 4.) This is that absence of law
which destroys a polity — Smv yap ^^ yd/ioi apxoyci, ovk ecTi iroXtTtia. In
the fifth book, (ch. 7,) Aristotle shows that the character of the
polity is preserved only by the presence of law, and that it may be
destroyed when the principal element of it is pushed to excess —
ToXXa yap rail' Sokovvtij>v iiinoTiKuv Xvci ras SvfOKpaTias . . . Ol 6' oUjxtvoi TavTtii
ivat jilav aplrtiv, iXKOvaiv eh t>)v inTCpPoX!]v, and it is of this that the StagJ'-
rite gives his homely illustration of the nose, which may deviate
Bomewhat from the most perfect form — the straightness of which is
nost beautiful, (the Grecian,) — rfiv tvOvTtiTa t;;v KaXXiarrit — and become
i little curved or depressed — 7rp6j ro ypwov ^ rd atiby — without losing
its beauty and grace, but it may become such a beak, or so flat, as
QOt to look like a nose at all — Siarc uijit ptva -xointrai (paivcadai. Thid ia
TO LECTURE VI. 305
|u8t what happens, adds Aristotle, in governments, when tlieir due
proportions are lost, and the predominant element is carried to ex-
cess, so that whether it be lawless oligarchy or lawless democracy,
it is hideous political deformity. In another passage Aristotle has
shown how when a popular government becomes extravagantly
democratic, intractable licentiousness will surely engender tyranny
IK lij/ioKpaTiai rrji vtaviKuiTdTTis . . ylverai rvpavvl;. (Book iv. ch. 9.)
The iKo\aa(a that Dr. Arnold refers to as the vice of the ancient
democracies, appears then to have been the undisciplined, ungov-
ernable condition of deliberate and habitual lawlessness, taking this
word, however, not in a mere negative sense, but rather as describ-
ing that state of things where men make a law of their own passions
— impatient of authority, human or divine — what ]\Iilton calls the
"senseless mood that bawls for freedom," but meaning "license
wlien they cry liberty." The democratic aKoXaala that is referred
to in the text, can be briefly and fitly defined, only with an ana-
chronism, as unchastized, systematic Jacobinism.
Note 15.— Page 279.
In connection with this eloquent passage, there should be read,
for either original or renewed enjoyment of one of the noblest
pieces in English historical literature, the well-known character of
Lucius Gary, Lord Falkland — " the incomparable," in Clarendon's
history. Dr. Arnold's biographer has well shown the peculiar
sympathy that was felt with Falkland by Arnold, and indeed for
any one who can find in history something more than a record of
national events — of the aggregate action of courts and armies —
something to feed the sense of adrairation with, there is in the
character of Falkland, dying young as he did in battle, and in a
disastrous cause, a combination of worth that has given an almost
romantic glory to his name : the Ciiristian statesman, scholar, and
soldier — a loyalist in the true and noblest sense of the title, up-
holding the law against the monarch and with the monarch — hia
short life, a sad and strenuous one, has left the memory of heroism
and martyrdom. It is a martyr's glory that Arnold gives to the
memory of Falkland ; and what he thought of that glory, he has
elaewhere said with fervid eloquence.
306 NOTES
" The conqueror and the martyr are alike God's instruments ;
but it is the privilege of his conscious and willing instruments to be
doubly and merely blessed ; the benefits of their work to others are
unalloyed by evil, while to themselves it is the perfecting and not
the corrupting of their moral being ; when it is done, they are not
cast away as instruments spoiled and worthless, but partake of the
good which they have given, and enjoy forever the love of men, and
the blessing of God."
IJistoty of Rome, chap, xxxviii.
Note 16.— Page 281.
There is not in these Lectures a passage more strikingly char-
acteristic of the author, than this in which he expresses his doubt
respecting the Athenian a-Kpay^6<jvvri, and does not spare a rebuke to
that meek citizen, good Isaac Walton. Indeed, it is hardly pos-
sible, without a smile, to consider the contrast of the various virtues
of the head-master of Rugby, and of the no less well-honoured angler
— opposite merits which it will be better to comprehend under the
charity of uncensorious, catholic judgment, than to set in opposition.
It would be a pity too to discover asperity in Dr. Arnold's allusion
to Walton, against whose inoffensive and sweet-spirited character
the only writer who has ever uttered a harsh or unkind word was
that fierce polemic Bishop Warburton. The contrast is indeed
most remarkable — Arnold's impetuous temperament and undaunted,
unfailing energy — painfully alive to what he regarded as social, or
political, or ecclesiastical evil, and, though despondent of the power
to remove or mitigate it, always earnest, prompt, and strenuous in
putting into action all the ability he had at command : in the famil-
iarity of correspondence with one of his family, he exclaims, " I
must write a pamphlet in the holidays, or I shall burst." When
Isaac Walton's lot was cast upon more troubled and evil days — •
when the church and the state he was loyal to w-ere tumbling down
in the civil war, he appears to have shut up his shop in London
and gone fishing. In revolutionary times, it was his vocation to
suffer rather than to act. When the Covenanters marched into
England in 1643, he writes, '' This I saw, and suffered by it." He
was faithful to the afflicted cause, and, powerless in helping or re-
TO LECTURE VI. 307
trieving it, he was uncomplaining. The good work he was reserved
for was to record the " lives" of those i)ious men whose names
still cluster round his memory.
The iirpayiiSavvv of the Athenians, spoken of in the lecture, must
be considered in its relation peculiarly to the national character of
that people, and their political and social condition. The Corin-
thians described them (Tliucydides, b. i. 70) as a race of men who
look upon quiet with nothing to do, as no less an affliction than hard-
working business, so that if any one were to sum up their character
by saying that they were born, neither to have any enjoyment of re-
pose themselves, nor to let anybody else have it, he would say truly
— ^vfKpopdv T£ oux' ijooov riav^iav aTrpdy/xova tj d<7;^oX<'ui' erlirovov Stare £t rij
avTovi (vvc\i)V (pahi Tn<pvKivai iirl nji ii)Jtc avToii exctv tiavxlav ixtJTe Toiii aXXotij
ivOpuinovi iSv, ipQu>i uv emoi. And Periclcs, in his funeral oration,
ttjakcs it tlie peculiar glory of the Athenians, that they held the re-
ining citizen, the man who abstained from public and political work,
to be not merely one who does not busy himself about matters —
iTrpdyiiova — but downright good-for-nothing — ixpfto"-
When this propensity of Athenian character and society went on
increasing, a different estimate began to be entertained of the re-
tiring citizen, both by poet and pliilosopher, who with sarcastic or
grave reproof did not fail to condemn the morbid excitement, the
turmoil, the restless activity, the T:o\vvpayiioamti of political life ; and,
indeed, the judgment to be pronounced upon the aTTpaynoaivn must
after all be only a relative one — relative chiefly to the state of so-
ciety from which escape is sought. When the inordinate increase
and corruption of the Athenian courts, with the six thousand ' di-
casts,' and three hundred court-days in the year, developed the
full force of such a system, with a people who had a passion for
litigation, and for whom the administration of law had a sort of
dramatic interest, then seclusion became almost the only security
— an imperfect one — for property, or liberty, or life. In his Aris-
tophanes, in the introduction to ' The Knights,' Mr. Mitchell gives
this account of the awpdynovts — " While the poor, the idle, and the
ricious, pour in by crowds for a gratuity thus easily obtained,
(pay for attendance in the courts.) those of better circumstances
either withdraw from the assembly altogether, or, if they take part
ill its deliberations, fcrm so inconsiderable a minority, that all uieaa*
308 NOTES
ures are carried oy mere numbers, without any reference to in-
telligence or property ; hence they say that those best qualified
for the management of public affairs, finding that they can nei-
ther initiate what their own wisdom would suggest, nor pursue
■what the prudence of others would recommend, retire in disgust,
leaving the conduct of public affairs to men the least compete-it
to direct them." p. xxviii. And at v. 259 of the same play, bo
remarks, " Persons of a quiet unintermeddling disposition in Athens,
had but one of three resources : to consent to be despised and
trampled on ; to quit the place altogether, like the two fugitives in
our author's ' Birds' — ^ijtoZvtc t6tzov airpdyfova ; or +o console them-
selves with a quotation from some satiric comedian.
Kai (Ttfivbs, eav 17 /itO' iripuyv dirpay/idi'ui', ApoUodorus "
He describes them elsewhere (note, ' Wasps,'' 1042) as 'that small
portion of the Athenian populace, who, shunning law and politics,
wished to pursue quietly their own occupations,' and when the Poet
promises, as a reward for the virtuous citizen, the odour of aTrpay/toavvii
— (' Clouds,'' V. 1007,) ' e^wv Kal airpaynoaivrii' Mr. Mitchell adds, " To
live in the odour of aTrpayiioaivri at Athens must have been almost as
fortunate as dying in the odour of sanctity in the papal church."
In his ' Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato,' Mr. Sewell, whi
has no disposition to extenuate the evils of the Greek democracies,
says, " No privacy of life, no innocence, no abstinence from public
business, {iwpayftoauvtj,) not even poverty, could guarantee an Athe-
nian gentleman in the land of liberty from being dragged at any
moment before a tribunal of his fellow-townsmen, and there com-
pelled to plead his own cause in person, with fines, imprisonment,
find death, staring him in the face ; and neither laws, oaths, evi-
ience, nor records, affording him any solid ground on which to rest
nis defence." (Chap. 17.) In an admirable chapter (the 32d) in
his ' History of Greece,' Bishop Thirlwall, with no disposition to
magnify the evils of the ancient popular systems, shows how the
retired citizen was the victim of judicial persecution, when the
government was deeply corrupt, the tone of morals low, when liti-
gaion was an epidemic disease, and the trade of the informer wa»
TO LECTURE VI, 309
rife : " The opulent citizens of timid natures and quiet habits, who
were both unable to plead for themselves and shrank from a public
appearance, were singled out as the objects of attack by the syco-
phants who lived by extortion." . . . . " Some were prevented by
timidity, or by their love of quiet, or by want of the talents, or
the physical powers required for appearing as speakers in the as-
Bcmbly, or the tribunals, from taking a part in public business.
Many, irritated or disheartened by their political disadvantages,
kept sullenly or dcspondingly aloof from the gitat body of theii
fellow-citizens, nourishing a secret hatred to the Constitution, and
anxiously waiting for an opportunity of overthrowing it, and avenging
themselves for past injuries and humiliation." It is of the Judicial
abuse that Xenophon (' Mem. Soc' ii. 9) represents the complaints
of Crito — a citizen wishing to mind his own business, ' /3ouXo;<*V«
ra iavTov -rpdrrtiv,' but bcsct by the informers, who thought he would
pay his money for the sake of a quiet life — h^mv av apyvpiov rtXtVai,
f npdynara ix"" : Socrates advises defence by making reprisals — by
retaliating in the way of ' information.'
A curious expression of feeling respecting these opposite habits
uf aKpayixoaiivri and voXvxpayiJoc'uvri occurs in a fragment of the Prologue
to Euripides's ' Philoctetes :' the words are in the mouth of Ulysses,
whose wisdom is reduced apud tragicos from the epic elevation to
Bhecr, selfish cunning — he questions, with vexation, his own claim to
the character of sagacity, considering how active and busy he had
been, when he might have fared as well as tlie best, and yet lived
•dir/)ny/«Si/(i)s.' And in the myth which Plato introduces at the close
of the tenth book of ' the Republic,' symbolizing the immortality of
the soul by the doctrine of transmigration, the soul of Ulysses is
represented as chancing to get the last right of making choice of
its new life, but remembering its former toils, and having lost all
ambition, it goes about for a long while in search of the life of a
private man, who kept himself from public affairs — (ii6v Mpii iSiuitov
inpayfiovoi — and when at last, after a great deal of difficulty, it found
one, lying any where and disregarded by every other soul of them,
it gladly took this life for itself, and said that this was the very
thing it would have chosen, if it had had the first choice. The
fable seems then to teach that a life of u-pay/iooiJfi? was so rare that
only one could be found — so little valued that it was sought for
310 NOTES
only by one — and that one the last chooser — and th.it choosej
Ulysses, of all souls in the (other) world !
The airpayfioavi't] (or arroXlTeta) of Socratss was of another and
higher kind than that which has been spoken of. He was with-
held from taking his part in the Assembly and courts by the in-
timations of his Dccmon, (Plato, Ap. Soc. ch. 19,) and because he
believed it to be his proper vocation to prepare others for perform-
ing their political duties with intelligence and integrity. And this
kind of d-jpayiioavvri he declared was such an object of admiration
in the eyes of the three Judges of the Dead, that when they en-
countered the soul of a private man — avipi; ISkHtov, who had lived
with integrity and truth — or especially that of a philosopher,
who had heeded his own business, and not been universally and
restlessly officious, tu ahrov Trpd^avrui, Tiai ov jroXv-rrpayiiOvijaavTo; iv tu (Hif,
they sent it applaudingly to the " Islands of the Blest." (Plato,
' Gorgias,' ch. 82.) In the '■ Meynorabilia,'' (book iii. ch. 11.) Socra-
tes is represented as playfully alluding to his own a-npayitocivt),
(tmarKuiKTiav rriv avTov aTrpaypoaiiriv) — when Theodota (a womau whose
morals were not as pure as her name) solicits a farther conference,
the philosopher replies, that no leisure is left him by his public
and private engagements — 'i&ia -rpaypara voWa kuI Srnidaia — meaning,
however, his business as a moral teacher.
The habit of retirement from public life may, therefore, be justi-
fiable when it is prompted by a sense of higher duty — by the con-
viction that it may give to a man better opportunity of benefiting
his fellow-men — of preserving his power of doing good to his
countr}f permanently. It may give rise to nice questions of dut}',
especially in popular governments, where every citizen has his
political duties, though looking at them perhaps more in the light
of privileges, he may lose the sense of obligation in them. The
retirement, instead of being dutiful, may in some cases be proof
rather of timidity, of effeminacy, or of selfishness. There may be
a shrinking from public cares, for the sake of gratifying private
indolence or pleasures, or from sheer indifference to national con-
cerns. Horace Walpole in one of his letters tells a story of an
English squire, who went out with his hounds during the battle of
Edgehill. It is told of Goethe, I believe, that he was busy study-
ing Chinese during the battle of Leipsic : he is, however, vindica-
TO LECTURE \l 311
ted by his admirers from the imputation of iiulifFerence to national
inic^rests, by reference to his indefatigable zeal in the arts of peace,
i.:d the fidelity to his high functions as an artist. Another form
of the airpaYiio(rvvri, excusable at least, if not justifiable, is the se-
clusion from political life that has become desperately vicious,
though there is higher virtue in that better spirit which, whether
in hope or despair, falters not, as standing " ever in the great Task-
master's eye" — such dutifulness as Thirlwall in his History (chap.
32) worthily applauds in Nicias, who, " though he saw and sufTered
from the defects of the government, served his country zealously
and faithfully." Let me only add to a note which has already
reached too great a length, that, on the subject of participation in
public affairs or seclusion from them, there is no name suggesting
60 much food for reflection as that of Milton. There is much, too,
in the career of Walter Scott, and in the animating strains that
burst from Southey and from Wordsworth, in their mountain-homes,
during a trying period of their country's history.
Note 17.— Page 286.
" Rumours of conspiracy and insurrection, sometimes false, but
(/aining credit from the notorious discontent, both of the old com-
monwealth's party and of many who had never been on that side,
were sedulously propagated, in order to keep up the animosity of
parliament against the ejected clergy ; and tbese are recited as the
pretext of an act passed in 1661, for suppressing seditious conven-
ticles, (the epithet being in this place wantonly and unjustly insult-
ing,) which inflicted on all persons above the age of sixteen, present
at any religious meeting in other manner than is allowed by the
practice of the Church of England, where five or more persona
besides the household should be present, a penalty of three months'
imprisonment for the first offence, of six for the second, and of sev-
en years' transportation for the third, on conviction before a singlr
justice of peace. This act, says Clarendon, if it had been vig
orously executed, would no doubt have produced a thorough ref-
ormation. Such is ever the language of the supporters of tj'ranny ;
when oppression does not succeed, it is because there has been too
little of it But thos-e who sufTered under this statute report very
312 NOTES
differently as to its vigorous execution. The gaols were filled, r.ol
only with ministers who had borne the brunt of former persecutions,
but with the laity who attended them ; and the hardship was the
more grievous, that the act being ambiguously worded, its construc-
tion was left to a single magistrate, generally very adverse to the
accused.
" It is the natural consequence of restrictive laws to aggravate
the disaffection which has served as their pretext ; and thus to cre-
ate a necessity for a legislature that will not retrace its steps, to
pass still onward in the course of severity. In the next session,
accordingly, held at Oxford in 1G65, on account of the plague that
ravaged the capital, we find a new and more inevitable blow aimed
at the fallen church of Calvin. It was enacted that all persons in
holy orders, who had not subscribed the act of uniformity, should
swear that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take
arms against the King ; and that they did abhor that traitorous po-
sition of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against
those that are commissioned by him, and would not at any time en-
deavour any alteration of government in church or state. Those
who refused this oath, were not only made incapable of teaching in
schools, but prohibited from coming within five miles of any city,
corporate town, or borough sending members to parliament."
Hallam's ^ Const. History of England,' vol. ii. 472.
* * " After the Restoration, Bunyan was one of the first persons
who was punished for non-conformity. The nation was in a most
unquiet state. There was a restless, rancorous, implacable party
who would have renewed the civil war, for the sake of again trying
the experiment of a Commonwealth, which had so completely and
miserably failed when the power was in their hands. They looked
to Ludlow as their General ; and Algernon Sidney took the first
opportunity of soliciting for them men from Holland and money
from France. The political enthusiasts who were engaged in such
schemes, counted upon the sectaries for support. Even among the
sober sects there were men who at the cost of a rebellion would
gladly have again thrown down the Church Establishment, for the
hope of setting up their own system during the anarchy that must
ensue Among the wilder some were eager to proclaim King Jesus,
TO LECTURE VI 313
and take possession of the earth as being the Saints to whom it
was promised ; and some, (a lew years later,) less in hope of effect-
ing their republican projects than in despair and vengeance, con-
spired to burn London : they were discovered, tried, convicted, and
executed ; they confessed their intention ; they named the day
which had been appointed for carrying it into effect, because an
astrological scheme had shown it to be a lucky one for this design ;
and on that very day the fire of London broke out. In such times
the Government was rendered suspicious by the constant sense of
danger, and was led, as much by fear as by resentment, to severi-
ties which are explained by the necessity of self-defence — not jus-
tified by it when they full upon the innocent, or even upon the lesa
RTiilty."
Southby'b ^Life nf Bunyan '
27
LECTURE VII.
h; attempting to analyze the parlies of our history, I have
purposely omitted, for the most part, the names of the indi-
viduals who headed them. By so doing we keep the subject
clear at any rate of mere personalities, and avoid shocking
that large portion of our political feelings which consists of per-
sonal likings or dislikings. But still liow to describe even the
abstract principles of two parties without indicating which on
the whole we prefer, I confess I know not. For these prin-
ciples are so closely connected with points of moral character,
tliat I do not see how we can even wish to be indifferent to
tljem. I have endeavoured to show how in both parties they
were mixed up together, partly good and partly evil, and if I
have not done this faithfully in point of fact, then my state-
ment is so far partial and unjust. But that certain principles
in politics are in themselves good as the rule, and that others
are bad as the rule, although not perhaps absolutely without
exception, I can no more wish to doubt, than I would doubt
in reading the contest between Christianity and heathenism,
on which side lay the truth.
Therefore in speaking of the Revolution of 1688, I can
imply no doubt whatever as to its merits. I grant that, de-
scending to personal history, we should find principles sadly
obscured ; much evil must be acknowledged to exist in one
party, much good or n\uch that claims great allowance on
316 LECTURE VII„
the other, But to doubt as to the character of the Revolution
itself, is to doubt as to the decision of two questions, which
speaking to Englishmen, and to members of the church of
England, I have no right, as I certainly have no inclination,
to look upon as doubtful. I have no right to regard it aa
doubtful, whether our present constitution be not better than
a feudal monarchy ; and whether the doctrine and discipline
of our protestant church of England be not truer and better
than those of the church of Rome. (1)
We will suppose then the Revolution accomplished. King
William and Queen Mary seated on the throne ; the Bill of
Rights and the Toleration Act passed ; England and Scotland
mostly at peace under the government of King William ; the
party of King James still predominant in Ireland. What
were now the principal parties in the kingdom, and what
were their objects ?
With one king on the throne in England and Scotland, and
with another ruling in Ireland, and trying to recover the
throne of Great Britian also, the main question at issue, and
one to which all others were necessarily subordinate, was
the maintenance or the overthrow of the Revolution. Judo-,
ing from the extraordinary fact that the Revolution had been
sfTected almost, literally speaking, without bloodshed, we
should have expected that the nation would have been almost
unanimous in supporting it. But the debates in the conven-
tion which had preceded the recognition of William had made
it plain that this was not the case j and as every month
which James passed in exile weakened the impression of his
faults and increased the pity for his misfortunes, so his cause
after the Revolution gained strength rather than lost it. The
oarty which liad been foremost in placing William on the
throne, united in itself all the remains of the ancient puritans,
and of all those who liad formed the popular party in Charles
.he Second's time, together with many of those persons who
LECTURE VII. 317
arc the great disgrace of this period of our history, persona
wlio joined either party from motives of interest or ambition,
when their opinions led them naturally the other way. The
motto of all this party may be said to have been civil and re-
ligious liberty; their object was the maintenance of the
uower of parliament, and through it of the liberty of the sub-
ject ; the putting down popery, and the allowing liberty of
worship to those dissenters who dilTercd from the church on
points of government or discipline. Beyond this, as is well
known, the notion of religious liberty was not then carried :
and it is remarkable, that at this very time an act of parlia-
ment was passed making the profession of unitarianism in all
its forms penal ; so that it was not popery only which remain-
ed exposed to the severities of the law.
The party opposed to the one just described, contained
within itself two remarkable divisions, which practically
made such a difference as to constitute rather two distinct
parties. For although both divisions looked upon the Revo-
lution with dislike, yet one of them having a sincere love for
the real protestant doctrine of the church of England, re-
garded the return of a Roman Calliolic king as a greater evil
than the maintenance of the Revolution ; and besides, a large
proportion of these, like the better part of the Royalists in
the civil war, were no friends to absolute monarchy, and
wished the parliament to exist, and to be powerful. The
other party, or division of the party, whichever we choose to
call it, was anxious at any risk to restore James ; the nominal
protestants among them being in fact at the best such men
as Lord Falkland had described in his days as labouring to
oring in an English though not a Roman popery, men whose
whole sympathies were with the Roinisli system in doctrine
and ritual, though thoy had not yet resolved to j)lace the
nead of their church at Rome. Their political principle?
were as highly Ghibelin as their religious were Guelf : tliB
318 LECTURE VII
divine right and indefeasible authority of kings stood in theij
belief side by side with the divine right and indefeasible au-
Ihority of priests ; and had these two powers again come into
conflict, half of the Jacobites probably would have stood by
the one, and half by the other.
Under these circumstances the maintenance of the Revo-
lution was no doubt effected by this, that so far one division
of the antipopular party went dong with their opponents.
But this was not only owing to the sincere and zealous pro-
testantism of this division ; it was owing also to another point,
which, whether we call it the wisdom or the happiness of the
Revolution, is at any rate one of its greatest excellencies and
best lessons for all after ages. I mean that the Revolution
preserved the monarchy, with all its style and dignity un-
touched : it made William king, and not protector. The
great seal was the same, the national colours remained the
same, all writs ran in the same terms, all commissions were
in the same form ; as far as all the common business of life
was concerned, it was simply like the accession of a new
king in natural succession, whose name was William instead
of James. Now this is not a little matter. In France some
years since the outward signs of Revolution were visible
everywhere : old names of streets were hastily painted over,
and might still be traced through the new names which had
been written upon them : on all government offices, and on
many shops and other buildings the fresh colour of the word
royalc showed that it had been but recently substituted for
imperiale, as that had a little before succeeded to nationale.
By all this the continuity of a nation's life is broken, and the
deep truth conveyed in those beautiful lines of Mr. Words-
*'orlh, —
" Tlie child is father of the man,
And I would wish my days to be,
Bound each to each by natural piety »"
i
LECTURE VII. 319
a truth almost more important to be observed by nations than
Dy individuals, is unhappily neglected. (2) But it is the
olessing of our English history that its days are thus bound
each to each by natural piety : the child has been the father
of the man. And tlms the old loyalist, whose watchword was
church and king, saw that after the Revolution no less than
before, the church and king were left to him : the church
untouched in its liturgy, in its ai'ticles, in its government, in
its secular dignity, and in its wealth : the king sitting on the
throne of his predecessors, unchanged in semblance, un-
changed in the possession of his legal prerogatives : still the
sovereign of a kingdom, and not merely tlie first magistrate
in the commonwealth. Nor can we doubt that this operated
powerfully to reconcile men's minds to the settlement of the
Revolution, theirs especially who are influenced mainly by
what strikes them outwardly, and wno found that the outward
change was so little.
The outward change was little, and yet what was gained
by the Revolution and by the Act of Settlement which was
passed a few years afterwards, was in importance incalcula-
ble. The reigning sovereign was bound to the cause of free
and just government, by the consideration that his title to the
crown rested on no other foundation ; that there was a com-
petitor in existence whose right on high monarchical principles
was preferable to his own. Now, as the whole temptation
of kings must necessarily be to magnify their own authority,
any thing which counteracts this tendency in them must be
good alike for their people and for themselves. And this
was the case, except during the reign of Queen Anne, from
the Revolution to the middle of the eighteenth century; if the
king forgot the principles of the Revolution, he condemned
himself and denied his own title to the throne. Nor was it a
little thing to have established once for all as the undoubted
doctrine of the constitution, that the rule of hereditary sue
320 LECTURE VII.
cession, like all others, admits occasionally of exception'! j
rare, indeed, — it is to be desired that they should be very
rare, — one or two scattered up and down in the history ol
centuries, — but yet clear and undoubted, and to the full as
legitimate when they do occur as the rule which they set
aside. The exception made at the Revolution and confirmed
by the Act of Settlement is in force to this very hour ; for I
need not say that if the rule of hereditary succession be in
all cases binding, the house of Brunswick is at this moment
usurping the rights of the houses of Savoy or of Modena; for
the princes of the house of Brunswick are descended only
from a daughter of James the First, and except by virtue of
the Act of Settlement they could not succeed to the throne
whilst the heirs of a daughter of Charles the First were still
living ; and such heirs exist, I believe, in more than one royal
house in Italy ; to maintain whose rights to the British crown
would be, notwithstanding, treason.
A few years after the Revolution, King James's party was
utterly put down in Ireland, and the three kingdoms were
united under the authority of King William. The conquest
of Ireland, for such it might almost be called, was followed
by that famous penal code against the Roman Catholics,
which was designed to keep them for ever in a state of sub-
jection and humiliation. It is curious to observe one of the
most oppressive of all codes enacted by a popular party,
whose watchword, as I have said, was civil and religious lib-
erty. It is curious, yet ought not for a moment to puzzle
any one who is familiar with ancient history. The democ-
racy of Athens put to death a thousand Mytilenaeans of the
oligarchical party, and confiscated the lands of the whole
pfiople. The injustice of the Athenian dominion over Lesbos
may be questioned, or we may complain of the excessive
severity of their treatment of the Mytilenaeans ; but not surely
of its inoonsistency with a sincere love of democratical prin*
LECTURE VII, 321
ciples of government. For the Mytilcnaeans in the one case,
.ike the Irish Catholics in the otiier, had been the declared
enemies of the popular cause ; the one in Athens, the other
in England : and their treatment was that of vanquished en-
emies and rebels, not of citizens. And as after the Myti-
Icnccan revolt the people of Methymna were alone regarded
by the Atlicnians as the free inhabitants of Lesbos ; so the
Irish protestants were regarded by the English as the only
Irish people : the Roman Catholics were looked upon alto
gether as an inferior caste. The whole question, in fact,
relates to the treatment of enemies or subjects, and not to that
of citizens: and unjust wars or conquests or dominions are
not more inconsistent with a popular government than with
any other : because the popular principle is understood to bf
maintained only with regard to those within the common-
wealth, and not to those who are without. They are not
more inconsistent with one form of government than another,
but I hope I shall not be supposed, therefore, to deny their
guilt ; that remains the same, and is not affected by the
question of consistency or inconsistency.
Greek history will enable us also to comprehend the feel-
ings with which the popular and antipopular parties respect-
ively regarded the great French war. The popular party
felt towards France as the same party in Athens regarded
Lacedajmon ; not merely as towards a national rival, but as
towards a political enemy, who was leaguea with their polit
ical enemies at home to eHect the overthrow of their actual
free constitution. And as Thucydidcs* says of the aristo-
cratical party of the Four Hundred, that although they would
have been glad to have preserved, if possible, the foreign
dorr.inion and the political independence of Atiiens, yet they
were ready to sacrifice these to Sparta rather than full under
* VIII. 91.
322 LECTURE VII
the power of their own democracy ; (3) so we can under
stand what otherwise would be incredible and monstrous, the
desertion of the alliance, the putting Ormono into Marlbo-
rough's place, and the separate negotiations with France in
1713. And, on the other hand, that the enmity of the popu-
lar party was directed not against France nationally, bul
against the supporter of their domestic enemies, was shown
by the friendly relations which subsisted between the two
countries in the reign of George the First, when Philip of Or-
leans was at the head of the French government, and France
was no longer in league with the partisans of James. The
war which afterwards broke out in 1740, appears to have
arisen solely from national and European causes ; and the
support which the French then afforded to the insurrection
of 1745, was merely given as an effectual means of annoying
a foreign enemy, and diverting the attention of the English
from the great military struggle in the Netherlands. Ac-
cordingly, we do not find that any party in England regard-
ed France with favour in that war, or complained of the
government except for a want of vigour and ability in thpir
military and naval operations.
The cause of the Revolution in France never at any time,
1 believe, was otherwise than popular with the poorer classes;
the peasantry no less than the poor of the towns were, with
a few local exceptions, such as La Vendee and Bretagne, its
zealous supporters. In England it was otherwise ; the
strength of the friends of the Revolution lay in the middle
classes, in the commercial class, and in the highest class of
the aristocracy ; the lower class of the aristocracy, the cler-
gy, and the poorer classes, were ranged together on the op.
posite side. The main cause of this difference is to be found
in the fact that the French Revolution was social quite as
much as political : (4) ours was political only. The aboli-
tion of the Scigncurial dominion in France, and the making
LECTURE VII. 321)
all Frenchmen equal before the law, were benefits which the
poorest man felt daily : but the English Revolution had only
settled great constitutional questions — questions of the utmost
importance, indeed, to good government, and affecting in the
end the welfare of all classes of the community, but yet
working indirectly, and in their first and obvious character
little concerning the poor ; while, on the other hand, the
wars which followed the Revolution had led to an increased
taxation. To this it must be added, that the mere populace
is at all times disposed to dislike the existing government, be
it what it will : and as the popular party retained the govern-
ment in its hands for many years, the habitual feeling against
all governments happened to turn against them. In country
parishes the peasantry went along with the country gentle-
men and clergy from natural feelings of attachment ; feelings
which distress had not as yet shaken : while the town popu-
lace, and the country populace also, so far as they knew
'hem, disliked the dissenters both socially and morally ; so-
cially, from the same feeling which at this moment makes it
easier to excite the populace against the great manufacturers
than against the old nobility : jealousy, namely, against those
nearer to themselves in rank, yet raised by circumstances
above them ; and morally, from a dislike of their strictness
and religious j)rofession : the same feeling which urged the
mob to persecute the first Methodists, and which is curiously
blended with the social feeling. For religious language,
even when amounting to rebuke of ourselves, is borne
more readily, to say the least, when it proceeds from those
who seem authorized to use it. Thus it gives less offence
when coming from a clergyman than from a layman ; and to
a poor man it comes more naturally from one whom he feels
to be his superior in station, than from one more nearly his
equal. Partly in connection with this, is the greater tolera.
lion shown by the Roman world to the Jews than to tho
384 LECTURE VII
Christians ; the Jews seemed to have a right to believe in one
God, because it was their national religion ; but what right
had one Roman citizen to pretend to be wiser than his neigh-
bours, and to profess to worship one God, because that and
that alone was the truth ? From such feelings, good and bad
together, the populace in Queen Anne's reign, and in that
which followed, were generally averse to the dissenters and
the popular party, and friendly to the clergy, and to the par-
ty opposed to the Revolution.
Meanwhile years passed on, and .he house of Hanover was
firmly seated on the throne ; on the deaui of George the First
his son George the Second succeeded him without the slight-
est opposition ; a larger portion of the clergy, and a very
large majority of the nation had learnt not only to acquiesce
in, but to approve heartily of the principles of the Revolu-
tion ; the victory of civil and religious liberty, as it was
called, was completely won. Now, then, considering, as I
have said before, that we have a right to ask for the fruits of
liberty, just as we may ask for the fruits of health; (for
while we are ill we give up our whole attention to the getting
the better of our sickness ; and health is then reasonably our
great object ; but when we are well, if instead of using our
health to do our duty, we go on idly talking about its excel-
lence, and think of nothing but its preservation, we become
ridiculous valetudinarians;) even so, having a right to de-
mand of men, when their liberty is secured, what fruits thej
have produced with it, let us even put this question to the
triumphant popular party of the eighteenth century. And
if we hear no sufficient answer, but only a mere repetition of
phrases about the excellence of civil and religious liberty,
then we shall do well not indeed to fall in love with the anti-
popular party, and say that sickness is better than health, but
to confess with shame that tlie popular party has neither
practised nor understood its duty ; that they laboured well
<
LECTURE VII. 325
to clear the ground for their building, but when it was cleared
they built nothing.
Here seems to me to be the great fault of the last century :
as in the eyes of many it is its great excellence ; that it wag
for letting things alone. (5) In some respects, indeed, it
stopped its own professed work too soon ; for trade was not
free, but burdened with a great variety of capricious restric-
tions : sinecure places, and tliese granted in reversion, were
exceedingly numerous : the press, had the disposition of the
government been jealous of it, was still greatly at its mercy ;
for as yet it remained with the judges only to decide whether
a publication was or was not libellous : the business of the
jury was merely to decide on the fact, whether the defendant
had published it. (6) But with regard to institutions of the
greatest importance, the neglect was extreme. The whole
subject of criminal law and prison discipline was either left
alone, or touched only for mischief. The s'ate of the prisons,
both physically and morally, was as bad as it had been in
the preceding century ; the punishment of death was multi-
plied with a fearful indifference ; education was everywhere
wanted, and scarcely anywhere to be found. Persons are now
living who remember the old state of things in this univer-
sity, when a degree might be gained without any reading at
all : and the introduction of Sunday schools is also within living
memory. It is not to be wondered at that attention should not
have been turned immediately to these and many other points ;
but still the principle of the age had no tendency to them : in
political and ecclesiastical matters the work had been so long
to get rid of what was bad, that it seemed to be forgotten that
it was no less important to build up what was good ; and
men's positive efforts seemed to run wholly in another direc
don, towards physical and external advancement. (7)
Then there arose in England, for I am now looking no far-
Jior, a new form of political party. It is well known thai
326 LECTURE VII.
the administration of the first William Pitt was a period of
unanimity unparalleled in our annals ; popular and antipo{>
ular parties had gone to sleep together : the great minister
wielded the energies of the whole united nation ; France and
Spain were trampled in the dust ; protestant Germany saved ;
all North America was the dominion of the British crown ;
the vast foundations were laid of our empire in India. (8)
Of almost instantaneous growth, the birth of two or three
years of astonishing successes, the plant of our power spread
its broad and flourishing leaves east and west, and half the
globe rested beneath its shade. Yet the worm at its root was
not wanting. Parties awoke again, one hardly knows how
or why, and their struggle during the early part of the rtign
of George the Third was of such a character, that after study-
ing it attentively, we turn from it as from a portion of history
equally anomalous and disagreeable. Yet its uninstructive
ness in one sense is instructive in another ; and 1 will venture
to call your attention to that period in which the most promi-
nent names — alas ! for the degraded state of English party-
are those of John Wilkes and of Junius.
For the first time for nearly fifty years the king was sup-
posed to be disinclined to the principles of the Revolution ;
the great popular minister, Pitt, had resigned, and the minis-
ter who was believed to be the king's perbonal favourite,
was believed also to be strongly attached to the principles
of the old antipopular party. (9) These circumstances, to-
gether with some dissatisfaction at what were called the in-
adequate terms of the peace with France and Spain, revived
party feelings in a portion of the community with much
warmth. (10) The press became violent, and Wilkes's famous
attack on the king's speech in No. 45 of the North Briton,
drew down a prosecution from the government. He happened
at that time to be a member of the house of commons; and
the house expelled him. I will not detain you with the detail
LECTURE VII. 32?
of his case ; it is enough to say that having been elected aa
member for Middlesex after liis expulsion, the house of com.
mens would not allow him to sit : and when he again offered
himself as a candidate, and nad obtained an enormous ma-
jority of votes over his competitor, the house of commons
nevertheless resolved that his competitor was duly elected,
and he took his seat for Middlesex accordingly.
The striking point in this new state of parties cannot fail
to have attracted your notice : namely, that the house of
commons is no longer on the popular but on the antipopular
side J and that the popular party speaks no longer by the
voice of any legally constituted authority, but by that of in-
dividuals, self-appointed to the service, and through the press.
This was a great change, and, as I think, a change in some
respects for the worse. But it is very important to dwell
upon, because it is the result of a natural law, and therefore
is constantly to be looked for, unless steps are taken to pre-
vent it. We have noticed an instance of the same thing in
our religious Reformation ; no sooner had the leaders of the
English church make good their cause against Rome, than
they became engaged in disputes with their own followers
who wanted to carry on the Reformation still farther. But
what was a reformation yesterday is become an establish-
ment to-day ; and the reformer of yesterday is to-day the
defender of an establishment, opposed in his turn to those
who by wishing fjr farther reformation necessarily assail the
reformation already effected. So when the house of commona
had established the ascendancy of parliament against the
crown, and through that ascendancy had no doubt secured
also the liberties of the nation, they naturally stopped and
thought that their work was done. Besides, for the last fifty
years the crown had headed the popular party, and the efforts
which the popular leaders had made, through the influence
of the crown, to secure a majority against the influence of
328 LECTURE VII
their opponents, had thus been all directed, whatever be
thought of the means used, towards securing the triumph ol
popular principles, the principles, that is, of the Revolution.
Things were wonderfully changed, when the crown was sup-
posed to nave gone over to the opposite side, and when its in.
fluence was acting in concurrence with that very party which
it had long been accustomed to combat. The popular party
therefore no longer had the majority of the commons in its fa-
vour; but on t'ne contrary received from the house of commons
its immediate reproof. Now while the house clearly led the
popular cause, its acts of authority excited no ill will ; soldiers
will bear any strictness of discipline from officers whom they
thoroughly trust, and who are in the habit of leading them on
to victory. But let it be once whispered that these officers
are traitors, or that they are even lukewarm and inefficient
merely against the enemy, and any severity of discipline is
tlien resented as tyranny. So it was with the popular party
out of doors, when the house of commons, now as they thought
inclined to the interest of their opponents, began to set up
their power of expulsion as controlling the elective fran-
chise of their constituents. The representatives were thus
placed in opposition to their constituents, as the antipopular
party opposed to the popular : but the constituents were no
legally organized body ; they were undistinguished, except
by their right of voting, from the whole mass of the nation ;
nor was there in existence any constitutional power lower
than the house of commons, which in this new struggle might
be against the house of commons itself what that house had
formerly been against the crown. The corporation of Lon-
don attempted to supply this want, but in vain : it could not
pretend to be a national, but merely a local body ; and London
has never exercised such an influence over the country, as
that the chief magistrate of London should be recog'iised as
tlic poj'ular leader of England. The popular party then, as
I
LECTURE VII. 329
. have said before, having no ofFicial organ, spoke as it best
could tlirough self-appointed individuals, and through the
press. (11)
This changed state of things is one with which we are
very familiar : a strong popular party out of parliament, and
that great power of the public press, which with much truth
as well as humour has been called the fourth estate of the
realm, are two of the most prominent features of tliese later
times. Both undoubtedly have their evils, but both are the
natural and unavoidable consequence of the changed position
of the house of commons on one side, and of the growth of the
mass of the nation in political activity on the other. For
there being, as I have said, no lower constitutional body
which could be the licart as it were of the popular party,
now that the house of commons had ceased to be so, it was a
matter of plain necessity that the opposition should be car-
ried on from the ranks of the people itself, in aid of that
portion of the house of commons which upheld the same
principles, but was, within the walls of parliament, a minor-
ity. And as for the press, reading in our climates so natu-
rally takes the place of hearing, and is so indispensable where
the state is not confined within the walls of a single city but
is spread over a great country, that it could not but increase
in power as the number of those who took an interest in pub-
lic affairs became daily greater. True it is that its power,
as actually exercised, was liable to enormous abuse. The
writers in the public journals were anonymous, and although
the printer and publisher were legally responsible for the
contents of their papers, yet the bad tendencies of anonymous
writing are many more than the severest law of libel can re-
press. The best of us, I am afraid, would be in danger of
writing more carelessly without our names than with them.
We should be tempted to weigh our statements less, putting
forward as true what we believe indeed, but have no suflicicnl
330 LECTURE VII.
grounds for believing, to use sophistical arguments with lesa
scruple, to say bitter and insulting things of our adversarie?
with far less forbearance. But then the writers for the pub
lie journals have the farther disadvantage of always writing
hastily, and in many instances of writing for their bread, so
that whatever other qualities their articles may have or not
have, it is necessary that they should be such as will make
the paper sell. Again, a journal is a property ; like other
property it may be bequeathed, bought, and sold, and may
thus pass into hands totally indifferent to all political princi-
ples, and only anxious to make the property profitable. In-
stead of guiding public opinion, such a proprietor will think
it better policy to follow it and encourage it ; well knowing
that to praise and agree with a man's opinions is a surer way
of pleasing him than to attempt to teach him better. Even
where this is not the case, and a journal is honestly devoted
to the maintenance of a certain set of political principles, yet
the writers in it, over and above the disadvantages already
noticed, of haste and of writing anonymously, are many times
persons ill fitted by education or by station in society to fonn
the wisest judgments on political questions ; they have not
knowledge sufficient to be teachers. All this is true ; and
journalism accordingly has pandered abundantly to men's
evil passions, has misled the public mind, many times, instead
of leading it aright. And farther, there is always a danger
that popular principles, when advocated spontaneously bj^
individuals, and not by a regular constitutional body, should
become somewhat in excess, should respect actual institutions
too little, and should savour too much of individual extrava.
gance or passion. So that it would be an enormous evil if
ever the popular party in the house of commons was so weak,
Aat the main stress of the contest should be carried on out
of parliament, by speakers at public meetings or by the press.
There is no question that something of iins evil was felt iu
LECTURE VII. 331
the lattei part of the eighteenth century ^ too much devolved
on the popular party out of doors and on the press, because
of the vast superiority of the antipopular party in parliament.
But with all the evils of a political press, the question still
recurs, What should we be without it ? Or how would it be
possible otherwise to satisfy the natural desire of an active-
minded people, to know the state of their own affairs ? And
there is no question that reading is a less exciting process
than hearing ; sophisms read quietly in our own house arc
less likely to mislead, than when commended by the eloquence
of a popular speaker and the sympathy of a vast multitude,
his hearers : what there is of mischief does less harm, while
what there is of true information is better digested and better
remembered. Again, whatever of sophistry and virulence
there is in the public journals, yet this is partly neutralized
as to its effects by their opposition to each other ; and while
we allow for the existence of those faults, it is impossible to
deny that the consequence of the system of extreme publicity
is to communicate a great mass of real information, that tlie
truth after all is more widely known and with less scandal-
ous corruptions than it could be under any other system con-
ceivable.
The evil of the public journals of the eighteenth century
was that of the political writing of the time generally, and it
arose out of that fault to which I have already alluded, when
I said that the mere notion of civil and religious liberty was
too exclusively worshipped by the popular party, to the neg-
lect of the moral end which lay beyond it. And this unhappy
separation of politics from morals, and from the perfection of
morals, Christianity, was by no means peculiar to the popu-
lar party, nor to the eighteenth century ; its causes lay
deeper, and their consequences have been but too durable.
In this respect, the existence of a clmrch which was sup.
posed to include the whole nation within its pale, and to take
332 LECTURE VII.
effectual care of their highest interests, was in some respects
absolutely mischievous, when that church in practice was in-
ctTicient and disorganized. For as if the state were thus re-
lieved from all moral responsibility, it took less care, by its
own regulations, for the moral excellence of its magistrates,
than was taken by many a heathen commonwealth. The
Roman censors expelled from the senate any man of scan-
dalous life ; and though their sentence was reversible, yet a
judicium turpe, or being found guilty, by a court of law, of
any one out of a great vai-iety of specified disgraceful offen-
ces, deprived a man of his political privileges irrevocably ;
he lost even his vote as a member of the comitia. (12) How
different was the state of feeling in England, was but too
clearly shown in the dispute as to the re-election of Wilkes,
after the house of commons had expelled him. Politically,
the subsequent decision of the house of commons, which is
now considered to have settled the question, seems perfectly
just : the choice of a representative seems to belong to his
constituents, within the bounds fixed by law ; and the judg-
ment of his fellow representatives against him is not so
much to the purpose as the renewed decision of those who are
more immediately concerned, given in his favour. (13) Yet
was the scandal extreme when a man of such moral charac-
ter as Wilkes was made a popular leader, and when a great
political principle seemed involved in choosing him to be a
legislator. True it is that the opposite party had no right to
complain of him, for the candidate whom they supported
against him was in moral character nothing his superior ; it
is a curious fact that both were members together in private
life of that scandalous society whose meetings at Medmen-
ham Abbey, between Henley and Marlow, were the subject
at the time of many a disgraceful story. (14) But it was and
is one of the evils of our state, that personal infamy is no bai
to the exercise of political rights ; that a man may walk out
LECTURE VII. 333
of jail and take his seat in the highest places, even as a
legislator. And this same moral insensibility makes us tole-
rate the defects of the press in these points, when we sympa-
thize with it politically ; because we are all accustomed too
much to separate moral and political matters from each
otlier ; one party thinking of liberty only, and another of au-
thority ; but each forgetting what is the true fruit and object
of both.
As Wilkes was one of the worst specimens of a popular
leader, so was Junius of a popular political writer. One is
ashamed to think of the celebrity so long enjoyed by a pub-
lication so worthless. No great question of principle is dis-
cussed in it ; it is remarkable that on the subject of the
impressment of seamen, which is a real evil of the most se-
rious kind, and allowed to be so even by those who do not
believe that it is altogether remediable, Junius strongly de-
fends the existing practice. All the favourite topics of his
letters are purely personal or particular; his appeals are
never to the best part of our nature, often to tlie vilest. If
I wished to prejudice a good man against popular principles,
I could not do better than to put into his hands the letters of
Junius. (15)
But I have dwelt too long on this period of our history,
and must hasten to conclude this sketch. The disputes
about Wilkes's election were soon lost in a far greater mat-
ter, the contest with America. In that contest the questions
of our own former history were virtually reproduced ; for it
is quite manifest tliat the British parliament stood to the
American colonics in precisely the same relation in which
the crown had firmerly stood towards the people ot Eng-
land ; every argument for or against ship-money might have
been pleaded for and against the Stamp Act. This Lord
Chatham clearly perceived, and so far he was in agreement
uith the rest of the popular party. His opposition to the in-
334 LECTURE VIT
dependence of the colonies belonged to the personal charac-
ter of the man, to his invincible abhorrence of yielding to
the house of Bourbon, to his natural unwillingness to divide
that great American empire which his administration had
founded. But he struggled against a law altogether distinct
from the question about taxation, a law of nature herself,
which makes distance an insuperable obstacle to political
union ; and when the time arrives at which a colony is too
great to be dependent, distance making union impossible with
a mother country at the end of the earth, the only alterna-
tive is complete separation. (16)
In the various contests which followed, to the end of the
century, the character of the popular party remained pretty
nearly the same : its object might still be said to be civil and
religious liberty ; the difference was that these objects were
now often contended for for the sake of others, with whom
Englishmen had no personal connection. And so paramount
are political principles, when they seem really at stake, to
any national sympathies or antipathies, that at the end of the
century the feelings of our two great political parties with
regard to France were exactly reversed from what they had
been at the beginning of it, because France was become the
representative of exactly opposite political principles. With
perfect consistency therefore did the popular party deprecate
and the antipopular party support the war with France in
1793, as in 1703 the antipopular party had opposed it, and
the popular party had been zealous in its favour. (17)
It marks also the truth of the description which I gave of
the later movement of Europe, calling it the political, as dis
tinguished from the religious movement of the preceding
period, that political consistency led parties to alter their
feelings towards the same religious party ; the popular party
being zealous to undo that very penal code which their polit
ical ancestors had imposed on the Roman Catholics of Ireland,
LECTURE VII. 335
the antipopular party on the other hand vigorously maintain-
ing it. Neither party were in tlic least inconsistent with
their inherent political principles ; and the religious feelings
which in the case of the Roman Catholics had a century ear-
lier modified the political feeling, were now on both sides
greatly weakened.
The struggle then in this latter period of modern history,
so far as England has been concerned, may be called a
struggle for civil and religious liberty ; understanding liberty
in a perfectly neutral sense, and not as a deliverance from
evil and unjust restraint, but from restraint simply. And
taking the word in this meaning, it seems to me that the
statement cannot be disputed, that the object of one party
during the eighteenth century was to unloose, the object of
the other to hinder such unloosing ; it being a distinct ques-
tion whether the bands thus sought to be taken off or retained,
were just or unjust, useful or mischievous. And I think it
is also certain that this object in the preceding period of
modern history was combined with another of a more specific
character, namely, tlie attainment of religious truth, which
was on both sides a more positive object than the simply un-
loosing or holding fast, and one more certainly to be called
good.
What has been exemplified from our own history, holds
true I think no less with respect to Europe at large. Un-
questionably whatever internal movement there has been on
the continent since 1648, has been predominantly political ;
undoubtedly also the object of that movement has been gen-
erally to unloose, to remove certain restraints external or
internal ; and the object of those opposed to that movement
lias been to maintain these restraints or to add to them.
It would appear that this view of the question will enable
us easily enough to account for the disappointment with
which, whatever be our political opinions, we must rise froin
336 LECTURE VII.
ihe study of this period of political movement. Disappoint-
ment, because evils great and unquestioned still exist abun-
dantly, evils which both parties have failed to prevent. Those
who advocate the side of the movement, when taunted with
the little good which has resulted from their political suc-
cesses, besides being at issue with their opponents as to the
amount of good produced, might fairly acknowledge that the
movement was essentially defective, that its object ought not
to have been merely negative, that although to do away evil
and unjust restraints is good, yet that our views should be
carried much farther ; we are unjust to our own work if we
take no care that liberty shall be to all men's eyes the mother
of virtue. And on the other hand they who sympathize with
the party which strove to hold fast the restraints, if they say
that the mischief has resulted wholly from their own defeat,
are yet required to account for the very fact of that defeat ;
and they too may acknowledge that to restrain a child or to
confine a lunatic is not all that their cases need : that re-
straint is but a means no less than liberty ; and that when
man exercises it upon man, he is bound to show that it is a
means to work the good of the person restrained, or else it is
an injustice and a sin. Now it is past all doubt that the
antipopular party, both religious and political, have here
greatly failed ; considering the people as children, they have
restrained the child, but they have not educated him ; con-
sidering them even as lunatics, they have confined the luna-
tic, but have often so irritated him with their discipline as
to make his paroxysms more violent and more incurable.
Farther also, as to the judgment we should form of the
struggle of the last three centuries, it is manifest that it de-
pends in some measure on our judgment of the centuries
preceding them. If all was well in those preceding centuries,
the movement, whether religious or political, must have been
undesirable ; for certainly all is not well now. If all was ill
LECTURE VII. Xn
in those preceding centuries, then certainly the movement
has been a great blessing; for our present state is blessed
with very much of good. But it was neither all well nor all
ill ; so much the most superficial knowledge may teach us :
the question to decide our judgment is, whether it was ill or
well predominantly.
In most other places it would be considered extraordinary
to represent such a question as doubtful for a moment. But
here there is always a tendency to magnify the past : five-
and-twenty years ago I can remember that it was the fashion
to exalt the seventeenth century at the expense of the eigh-
teenth : now I believe many are disposed to depreciate both,
and to reserve their admiration for times still more remote,
and more unlike our own. It is very well that we should not
6wim with the stream of public opinion : places like this are
exceedingly valuable as temples where an older truth is still
worshipped, which else might have been forgotten : and some
caricature of our proper business must at times be tolerated, for
such is the tendency of humanity. But still if we make it our
glory to run exactly counter to the general opinions of our age,
making distance from them the measure of truth, we shall at
once destroy our usefulness and our real respectability. And
to believe seriously that the movement of the three last cen-
turies has been a degeneracy ; that tlie middle ages were
wiser, or better, or happier than our own, seeing truth more
clearly and serving God more faithfully ; would be an error
so extravagant that no amount of prejudice could excuse us
for entertaining it. (18)
It has been my object in this and in my last lecture to ex-
emplify from that history whicli, is most familiar to us all, the
method of historical analysis j by which we endeavour to
discover the key as it were to the complicated movement of
the world, and to understand the real principles of opposite
parties amidst much in their opinions and conduct that is
29
338 LECTURE VII.
purely accidental. I believe that the result of the analysis
now made, is historically correct ; if it be otherwise, I have
managed the experiment ill, and it has failed m this particu-
lar instance ; but the method itself is no less the true one, and
you have only to conduct it more cai'efuUy in order to make
it completely answer. In a brief review of a period of three
centuries, I have made so many omissions that my sketch
may seem to be superficial ; and I grant that this is always
the danger to be apprehended in our generalizations, and one
which when speaking of a period so busy it is not easy to
avoid. To be acquainted with every existing source of in-
formation illustrative of the last three centuries is of course
physically impossible, while human life is no longer than it
is : the only question is, or else all our reading must be use-
less, whether by a tolerably large and comprehensive study
of a variety of sources we may not gain a notion substantially
correct, which a still more extensive study, if such were prac-
ticable, would confirm and enrich, but would not materially
alter.
What I have now attempted to do briefly for a long and
very busy period, I shall endeavour to do next year, if Grod
shall permit, at greater length for a shorter period, namely,
for the fourteenth century. Whoever has already made that
period his study, or shall do so in the course of this year, may
find it not uninteresting to compare the result of his inquiries
with mine, and if he shall learn any thing from me he may
be sure also that he might impart something to me in return,
of which I was ignorant. For in this wide field there is full
work for many labourers, and it is my hope that many of u3
may thus co-operate, and by yur separate researches collect
what no one man could have collected alone. In the mean
while, my next and last lecture will be devoted to one or
two more general matters ; such particularly as the criteria
of historic credibility, a question naturally of great import
LECTURE VII, 339
ance, because unless we can discriminate between a cieiUble
testimony and a suspicious one, we shall never be able to
avoid the evil either of unreasonable scepticism or of unrea-
sonable credulity. And the result of such an inquiry will
be what we could most wish ; that there is an liistorical truth
attainable by those who truly desire it, however easily and
indeed inevitably missed by the unfair or even the careless
historian, whatever may be his external advantages. This
question, with one or two points connected with it, will be
almost more than sufficient to occupy the time which we shall
be able to afford to them.
NOTES
LECTURE VII
Note 1.— Page 316.
Coleridge has spoken of " the revolution" as " wise and no-
jessitated confirmation and explanation of the law of England,
erroneously entitled the English Revolution q/" 1688." — ' The Friend^
iii. p. 130 ; and again, in the 'TaHe Talk," ii. p. 172 : " The great
reform brought into act by and under William the Third, combined
the principles truly contended for by Charles the First and his
Parliament respectively."
Note 2.— Page 319.
* * " It is the misfortune of France that her ' past' cannot be
loved or respected; her future and her present cannot be wedded
to it ; yet how can the present yield fruit, or the future have prom-
ise, except their roots be fixed in the past 1 The evil is infinite,
but the blame rests with th)se who made the past a dead thing, out
of which no healthful life could be produced."
^Life and Correspondence,'' Appendix C, x. 7.
In his 'Vindication of Niebuhr's History,' Archdeacon Hare
quotes the following passage from X\ie first edition, with the remark
that in it " the author seems almost to have snatched a feather out
of Burke's plumage :"
*' Notwithstanding that they established the festival of the Rsgi-
fug^iurr._ and abolished the name of King for ever, the Romans
were very far from looking back with any ferocity of hatred at the
times of their monarchal government. The statues of the Kings,
that of the last Tarquinius himself, it would seem among the rest,
NOTES TO LECTURE VII 341
were preserved, and probably even multiplied ; their laws and insti-
tutions in civil as well as ceremonial matters were maintained in
full force. The change in the constitution did not at first go beyond
this single branch ; and never did it enter the heads of the Romans
to beggar themselves of their rich inheritance of laws and recol-
lections. It was reserved for our days to see the fruits of thaJ
madness, which led our fathers, with an unexampled kind of arro-
gance, to brand themselves falsely with being a degraded and slav-
ish race, at the same time that they falsely asserted they were
called to an unparalleled degree of perfection ; of that madness
which bragged it would form a new earth by demolishing the old
one : only once has the world beheld — and we have been the spec-
tators — universal contempt invoked upon the whole of the past, and
people proud of the title of slaves broken loose. Something similar,
indeed, and attended with similar results, had been experienced in
religious revolutions : the protestant communities have cast away
the saints and fathers of the church, and they have not done so with
impunity : it has been the same in the revolutions of science and
literature. On the other hand, the lessons of all experience teach
us, that a i ition cannot possess a nobler treasure than the unbroken
chain of a long and brilliant history. It is the want of this that
makes all colonies so sickly. Those of the Greeks indeed seldom
cut off their recollections altogether from the root of their mother
city : modern colonies have done so : and this unnatural outrage
has perhaps operated still more than other circumstances to plungo
them into a state of incorrigible depravity."
Note 3. — Page 322.
This was the feeling when Theramenes separated from the oli-
garchical party that had set up the government of the * Four Hun-
dred,' and just before the counter-revolution which overturned it,
when Phrynichus was assassinated, in the 92d Olympiad, A. C.
411. The words of Thucydides referred to are — " fViTroj yap /iu'AiPTu
ftiv ijiovXovTO dXfyapxoiixcvoi afixciv Kat tUv ^viiiidxwv, cl &c fir), rdi TC vuCj Kat rd
Tti'x'J 'X<'*''''5 ""'■o*'"/''''''^'" )*'?£'?}'''>'£'''" ^* *"' TovTov lii) ovv i/ito Tuv ii'iiiov yi aiOi{
ycvoftiyov avToi npb Twy aAXuv fid^tara (ha(pO<ipT]vat, aWa xal Tvii 7ro.\r/i/ov(
ioayay6ji€voi aicv rcixiov Kai vciHv ^Vfijifjtat Kai bniiiaovv ra rrjs T($Xcai{ i\cn «l roi'
jt ai))taai cipHv a^cia carai."
942 NOTES
Note 4.— Page 322.
Speaking of Arthur Young's Travels in Fraiice, Dr. Ainoy
writes : " He shows how deadly was the hatred of the peasantry
towards the lords, and how in 1789 the chateaux were destroyed
and the families of the gentry insulted from a common feeling of
hatred to all who had made themselves and the poor two orders,
and who were now to pay the penalty of having put asunder what
God had joined."
''Life and Correspondence,^ Letter Dec. 24, 1830.
Note 5. — Page 325.
A forcible illustration of the evils of the false ' Conservatism' in-
volved in the maxim Dr. Arnold is alluding to, is given by a writer
in a late number of the ^English Review,^ (Dec. 1844.) He speaks
of " an oracular maxim most usually expressed in the French Ian
guage, France having been the scene of its most prodigal applica-
',ion. Laissez faire are the words of potency which, from one gen-
oration to another, have formed the chief trust and confidence of
rulers, and statesmen, and economists. . . . Still, for the most part,
revolution is one legitimate result of the long and undisturbed pre
dominance of laissez faire. Witness that terrific convulsion, act-
uall}' seen, throughout the whole course of its development, by
many men now living, and which made History stand aghast at the
sore and frightful task which it has laid upon her. For what was
that explosion but the inevitable issue of a thousand years of sel-
fish, igrorant, heartless, and we might justly add, godless non-inter-
ferenct A considerable portion of the preceding century more
especially, was the very riot and revelry of the grand master-prin-
ciple of ^Let alone.'' Its influence pervaded all ranks of the com-
munity. Let the philosophers and atheists write and talk as they
list ; lot the wits point slanderous epigrams and licentious vers de
tocicle ; let the court dance minuets, give pelits soupers ; let the
Ki:ig quarrel with his parliaments, and take the occasional diversion
of a lettre de cachet; above all, let his majesty provide himself
wiih that one thing needful, a joarc aux cerfs; and all this while, let
h people live as '.key please and as they can ! What could be more
TO LECTURE VII. 343
captivating tnan the seeming liberality of this very coinlortablc doc-
trine ? And yet, some how or other it proved, after all, to be a
most destructive imposture. It was truly remarked by Charles
Fox, that the government and aristocracy of France seemed to
have been long smitten by it, with a judicial infatuation. They
had eyes, and would not see : they had ears, and would not hear.
They were surrounded with degraded and almost famishing mil-
lions, but they would behold nothing but princes and nobles. At
length the measure of iniquity was complete. The phials of wrath
were filled to the very brim ; and at the fated moment their fury
was poured out. The issue is known to all. First, the sans-culot-
terie, with its September massacres, and its reign of terror ; then
the conscription, and the empire ; and lastly, all Europe on the
verge of ruin !" — Vol. ii. p. 257.
Note 6. — Page 325.
* * " Meanwhile the judges naturally adhered to their estab-
lished doctrine ; and in prosecutions for political libels were very
little inclined to favour what they deemed the presumption, if not
the licentiousness of the press. They advanced a little farther
than their predecessors ; and, contrary to the practice both before
and after the revolution, laid it down at length as an absolute prin-
ciple, that falsehood, though always alleged in the indictment, was
not essential to the guilt of the libel ; refusing to admit its truth to be
pleaded, or given in evidence, or even urged by way of mitigation
of punishment. But as the defendant could only be convicted by
the verdict of a jury, and jurors both partook of the general senti-
ment in favour of free discussion, and might in certain cases have
acquired some prepossessions as to the real truth of the supposed
libel, which the court's refusal to enter upon it could not remove,
they were often reluotant tc find a verdict of guilty ; and hence
arose by degrees a sort of contention, which sometimes showed
itself upon trials, and divided both the profession of the law and the
general public. The judges and lawyers for the most part, main-
tained that the province of the jury was only to determine tlie fact
of publication ; and also whether what are called the inurndoes
were properly filled up, that is, ^^•hether the libel meant that which
344 NOTES
it was alleged in the indictment to mean, not whether such mean-
ing were criminal or innocent, a question of law which the courl
were exclusively competent to decide. That the jury might acquit
at their pleasure was undeniahle ; but it was asserted that they
would do so in violation of their oaths and duty, if they should re-
ject the opinion of the judge by whom they were to be guided as
to the general law. Others of great name in our jurisprudence,
and the majority of the public at large, conceiving that this would
throw the liberty of the press altogether into the hands of the
judges, maintained that the jury had a strict right to take the whole
matter into their consideration, and determine the defendants' crim-
inality or innocence according to the nature of the circumstances
of the publication. This controversy, which perhaps hardly arose
within the period to which the present work relates, was settled by
Mr. Fox's libel bill in 1792. It declares the right of the jury to
find a general verdict upon the whole matter ; and though, from
causes easy to explain, it is not drawn in the most intelligible and
consistent manner, was certainly designed to turn the defendant's
intention, as it might be laudable or innocent, seditious or malignant,
into a matter of fact for their inquiry and decision."
Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. iii. p. 223
Note 7.— Page 335.
" * * In many parts of Europe (and especially in our own coun-
try) men have been pressing forward lor some time, in a path
which has betrayed by its fruitfulness ; furnishing them constant
employment for picking up things about their feet, when thoughts
were perishing in their minds. While Mechanic Arts, Manufac-
tures, Agriculture, Commerce, and all those products of knowledge
which are confined to gross, definite, and tangible objects; have,
with the aid of Experimental Philosophy, been every day putting
on more brilliant colours ; tlie splendour of the Imagination has
been fading : Sensibility, which was formerly a generous nursling
of rude Nature, has been chased from its ancient range in the wide
domain of patriotism and religion, with the weapons of derision,
by a shadow calling itself Good Sense : calculations of presumptu-
ous Expediency — groping its way among partial and temporary
TO LECTURE VII, ."MS
consequences — have been substituted for the dictates of paramount
and infallible Conscience, the supreme embracer of consequences :
!ifeloss and circumspect Decencies have banished the graceful neg-
ligence and unsuspicious dignity of Virtue." p. 161 of Words-
vvorlh's Trac« ' On the Convention of Cintra,^ written in 1808-9 —
which Southey, at the time of the publication, justly said was " in
that strain of political morality to which Hutchinson, and Milton
and Sidney, could have set their hands." Though composed only
is an occasional pamphlet, it abounds with admirable and abiding
political wisdom, uttered with fervid eloquence. Never having
jeen reprinted, it has become very rare.
Note 8,— Page 326.
" Such then were the principal foreign transactions of the year 1759
■ — the most glorious, probably, that England ever yet had seen. That
it was the most glorious was apparently proclaimed or acknowledged
by all parties at the time, nor will History find much to detract
from that contemporary praise. In Asia, Africa. America, Europe,
by land and sea, our arms had signally triumpheu. Every ship from
India :ame fraught with tidings of continued success to the British
cause. In January we received tlie news of the capture of Goree,
in June, o." the capture of Guadaloupe. In August came the tidings
of the victory at Minden, in September, of the victory off Lagos,
in October, of the victory at Quebec, in November, of the victory
at Quiberon. ' Indeed,' says Horace Walpole, in his lively style,
' one is forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear
of missing one !' Another contemporary. Dr. Hay, exclaimed, in
no liberal spirit of triumph, that it would soon be as shameful to
beat a Frenchman as to beat a woman ! With better reason we
might have claimed to ourselves the arrogant boast of the Span-
iards only one hundred and fifty years before, that there were not
seas or winds sufficient for their ships. Nor did our trade and
manufactures languish amidst this blaze of military fame. It is
the peculiar honour of Chatham — as may yet be seen inscribed on
.he stately monument which the citizens of London have raised
him in Guildhall — that under his rule they found commerce l'NITKb
346 NOTES
WITH AND MADE TO FLOURISH BY WAR. Still less can it be Said
that tliese wonders had grown altogether from harmony and con-
cord at home. It was the just vaunt of Chatham himself in the
House of Commons, that success had given us unanimity, not una-
nimity success. Never yet had tliere been a more rapid transition
from languor and failure to spirit and conquest. Never yet had the
merits of a great Minister in producing that transition been more
fully acknowledged in his lifetime. The two Houses, which rn-
assembled in November, met only to pass Addresses of Congratu-
lation and Votes of Credit. So far from seeking to excuse or to
palliate the large supplies which he demanded, Pitt plumed himself
upon them ; he was the first to call them enormous, and double any
years of Queen Anne. ' To push expense,' he said openly upon
the Army Estimates, ' is the best economy' — a w ise doctrine in
war, which, perhaps, no statesman since his son has had the courage
to avow."
Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. iv. p. 27".
* * " Such then was the close of Pitt's justly renowned admin-
istration. Even amidst the full blaze of its glory there arose some
murmurs at its vast expense — the only objection of any weight, I
think, that has ever been urged against it. Yet, as a shrewd ob
server writes at the time, ' It has cost us a great deal, it is true,
but then we have had success and honour for our money. Before
Mr. Pitt came in, we spent vast sums only to purchase disgrace
and infamy.' What number, I would ask, of pounds, of shillings,
or of pence, could fairly represent the value of rousing the national
spirit, and retrieving the national honour? Is it gold that can
measure the interval between the lowest pitch of despondency and
the pinnacle of triumph — between the England of 1756 and tlie
England of 1761?
" Let me add, that in the closing act of this administration — in
^iroposing an immediate declaration of war against Spain — Pitt did
not urge any immature or ill-considered scheme. His prepara-
tions were already made to strike more than one heavy blow upon
his enemy — to capture the returning galleons — and to take posses-
sion of the Isthmus of Panama, thus securing a port in the Pacific,
and cutting ofi" all communication between the Spanish piovinces
TO LECTURE VII. 347
of Mexico and Peru. Nor did his designs end here : these points
once accomplished — as they might have been witli little difliculty—
he had planned an expedition against the Havana, and another,
on a smaller scale, against the Philippine islands. In none of these
{)Iaccs could the means of resistance be compared to those of the
French in Canada, while the means of aggression from England
would be the same. Yet a few months, and the most precious
provinces of Spain in the New World, the brightest gems of her
colonial empire, might not improbably have decked the British
Crown ! In reviewing designs so vast, pursued by a spirit so lofty,
I can only find a parallel from amongst that nation which Pitt
sought to humble ; I can only point to Cardinal Ximcncs. This
resemblance would be the less surprising, since Pitt, at the outset
of his administration, had once, in conversation with Fox, talked
much of Ximenes, who, he owned, was his favourite character in
nis'ory."
Id. chap, xx.xvii. ad Jin.
Note 9.— Page 326.
John Stuart, Earl of Bute, ' the favourite,' as Horace Wulpole
styles him in his ' Memoirs of the Reign of George III.,' and ' the
Scotch favourite,'' as the London Mob called him, was sworn into
the first Privy Council of George III., and as a member of the
Cabinet. Early in the next year, 1761, he succeeded the Earl of
Holderness as one of the Secretaries of State, and when Mr. Pitt
resigned from the Ministry in October, and was followed by Lord
Temple, the ascendency of Lord Bute became complete. In 1762,
on the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle, he was declared First
Lord of the Treasury.
Note 10.— Page 326.
Lord Mahon, in the fourth volume of his History, after referring
lO the contemporary opinion of Lord Granville, who, when the pre-
liminaries of the Treaty of Paris were submitted to him, gave it
his approbation, as that " of a dying statesman on the most glorious
war and the most honourable peace the nation ever saw" — adds,
348 NOTES
" The calm reflections of posterity will not, I think confirm this
partial judgment. To them the terms obtained will appear by no
means fully commensurate to the conquests that we had made, nor
to the expectations which had been, not unreasonably, raised." At
the same time he regards it still farther removed from the violent
reproaches which were cast upon it by party hatred. " The mis-
representations," he remarks, " against this treaty were undoubtedly
far greater than even its defects." IV. pp. 408-9, ch. xxxviii.
The debate on the Preliminaries was the occasion, it will be re-
membered, of one of Pitt's remarkable efforts in the House of
Commons, when his elaborate eloquence was exerted, but without
effect, against the Treaty.
Note U.— Page 329.
" The publication of regular newspapers, partly designed for the
communication of intelligence, partly for the discussion of politica)
topics, may be referred, upon the whole, to the reign of Anne, when
they obtained great circulation, and became the accredited organs
of different factions. The tory ministers, towards the close of that
reign, were annoyed at the vivacity of the press both in periodical
and other writings, which led to a stamp duty, intended chiefly to
diminish their number, and was nearly producing more pernicious
restrictions, such as renewing the licensing act, or compelling au-
thors to acknowledge their names.* These however did not take
place, and the gcvernment more honourably coped with their adver-
saries in the same warfare ; nor with Swift and Bolingbroke on
their side could they require, except indeed through the badness of
their cause, any aid from the arm of power."f
IIallam's Constit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 3QC,
* -'A bill was fcronght in for this purpose in 1712, which Swift, in his History cf
the l^ast Four Years, who never printed any thing with his name, natorally blames
It miscarried, probably on account of this provision." * * *
t " Bolingbroke's letter to the Examiner, in 1710, excited so much attention, that It
was answered by lord Cowper, then chancellor, in a letter to the Tatler. Somers*
Tracts, xiii. 75 ; where Sir Walter Scott justly obser\'es, that the fact of two snob
•talesmen becoming the correspondents of periodical publications, shows the iaflneiu;*
hey must have acquired over the public mind."
TO LECTURE VII. 349
" Ce fut le cardinal Mazarin qui s'avisa le premier de faire un in-
etrument politique des feuilles qui, k I'imitation de la gazetta de
Venise, se publiaient en Italie. Ce ministre astucieux y faisait in-
serer des bulletins de la guerre d'Espagne, et des nouvelles poli-
liques sur Ics evenemens interieurs de la France, auxquels il donnait
la couleur qui convenait k ses vues et favorisait ses intrigues. Get
exeinple ne manqua pas d'imitateurs."
Dumas : ' Pi ids des Evdnemens Militaires,^ tome ix. notes, p. 135.
Note 12.— Page 332.
" The censorship was an office so remarkable, that however fa-
miliar the subject may be to many readers, it is necessary here to
bestow some notice on it. Its original business was to take a
register of the citizens and of their property ; but this, which seems
at first sight to be no more than the drawing up of a mere statistical
report, became in fact, from tlie large discretion allowed to every
Roman officer, a political power of the highest importance. The
censors made out the returns of the free population ; but they did
more ; they divided it according to its civil distinctions, and drew
up a list of the senators, a list of the equites, a list of the members
of the several tribes, or of those citizens who enjoyed the right of
votin-T, and a list of the aerarians, consisting of those freedmen,
naturalized strangers, and others, who being enrolled in no tribe,
possessed no vote in the comitia, but still enjoyed all the private
rights of Roman citizens. Now the lists thus drawn up by the cen-
sors were regarded as legal evidence of a man's condition : the
state could refer to no more authentic standard than to the returns
deliberately made b)' one of its highest magistrates, who was re-
sponsible to it for their being drawn up properly. He would, in the
first place, be the sole judge of many questions of fact, such as
whether a citizen had the qualifications required by law or custom
for the rank which he claimed, or whether he had ever incurred
any judicial sentence which rendered him infamous ; but from thence
the transition was easy, according to Roman notions, to the de-
<?ioion of questions of right ; such as whether a citizen was really
worthy of retaining his rank, whether he had not committed somo
act as justly degrading as those which incurred the sentence of the
350 NOTES
law ; and in this manner the censor gave a definite power to public
opinion, and whatever acts or habits were at variance with the gen-
eral feeling, he held himself authorized to visit with disgrace or
disfranchisement. Thus was established a direct check upon many
vices or faults which law, in almost all countries, has not venturec*
to notice. Whatever was contrary to good morals, or to the cus
toms of their fathers, Roman citizens ought to be ashamed to prac-
tise : if a man behaved tyrannically to his wife or children, if he
was guilty of excessive cruelty even to his slaves, if he neglected
his land, if he indulged in habits of extravagant expense, or follow^ed
any calling which was regarded as degrading, the offence was justly
noted by the censors, and the offender was struck off from the list
of senators, if his rank were so high ; or if he were an ordinary
citizen, he was expelled from his tribe, and reduced to the class of
the agrarians. Beyond this the censor had no power of degradation ;
for the private rights of Roman citizens could not be taken away by
any magistrate ; the sentence could only affect his honours, or such
privileges as were strictly political."*
History of Rome, vol. i. 348, chap. xvii.
Note 13.— Page 332.
In May, 1770, the Earl of Chatham brought in a bill, in the House
of Lords, to reverse the proceedings of the House of Commons on
the Middlesex election — his intention, as he declared, being to give
the people a strong and thorough sense of the great violation of th?
constitution, by t'lose unjust and arbitrary proceedings. It was en
titled " A Bill for rev5Tsing the Adjudications of the House of Com
mons, whereby John Wilkes, Esq. has been adjudged incapable of
being elected a member to serve in this Parliament, and the Free-
holders of the County of Middlesex have been deprived of one of
their legal representatives." It sets forth the rights of the Com-
mons to elect their representatives ; and after reciting the several
* "This was called a 'judicium turpe,' and this was incurred in varioas actions,
A'hich are Bi)ccified by the lawyers ; as, for instance, if a man were cast in an actio
.'Vuti, or vi bonorum raptorum, or tuteli;, or mandati, or pro socio, etc. See Gaijs, In-
aUtntes, iv. ^ 182. ,\nd the disqualification thus incurred was jxirpetual, and could
But be reversed by the cense rs. See Cicero pro Cluentio, 43 "
TO LECTURE VII. 35 1
elections of Wilkes, and the action of the House of Commons, de-
clares their adjudications arbitrary and illegal. Lord Chatham
spoke on the Bill, which was, however, rejected.
Wilkes was an instance of a worthless and profligate man be-
coming, by chance or management, the representative of a popular
principle, and thus acquiring an importance he was utterly unworthy
of. He was upheld and caressed, because it was conceived that
in the measures directed against him the Constitution itself was as-
sailed ; the consequence of which was that, as Horace W^alpole
said, he was elected as often as Marius was chosen consul. He
escaped too in some measure moral reprobation in the defence
against political persecution. In after years, when the causes of
his accidental consequence had passed away, he sank to his real
level.
Note 14.— Page 332.
Wilkes's opponent was Col. Luttrell, and the profligate society
which Dr. Arnold alludes to, is said to have originated with Sir
Francis Dashwood — the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Bute
Ministry. Horace Walpole — perhaps sufficient authority in the
gossip of history — gives the following account of the society and
its projector. " Sir Francis Dashw ood had long been known by his
singularities and some humour. In his early youth, accoutred like
Charles XII., he had travelled to Russia in hopes of captivating the
Czarina ; but neither the < haracter nor dress of Charles were well
imagined to catch a woman's heart. In Italy, Sir Francis had given
into the most open profan<Miess ; and at his return, had assembled a
society of Young Travellers, (they called themselves the Dilettanti,)
to which a taste for the arts and antiquity, or merely having trav-
elled, were the recommendatory ingredients. Their pictures were
drawn, ornamented with symbols and devices ; and the founder, ia
the habit of St. Francis, and with a chalice in his hand, was repre-
aented at his devotions before a statue of the Venus of Medicis, a
stream of glory beaming on liim from behind her lower hand. These
pictures were long exhibited in thoir club-room at a tavern in Palace
Yard ; but of later years Saint Francis had instituted a more select
order. He and some chosen friends had hired the ruins of Meden-
352 NOTES
ham Abbey, neai Marlow, and refitted it in a conventual style
Thither at stated seasons they adjourned ; had each their cell, a
proper habit, a monastic name, and a refectory in common — besides
a chapel, the decorations of which may well be supposed to have
contained the quintessence of their mysteries, since it was impene-
trable to any but the initiated. Whatever their doctrines were, their
practice was rigorously pagan : Bacchus and Venus were the deities
to whom they almost publicly sacrificed. Yet their follies would
have escaped the eye of the public, if Lord Bute from this seminary
of piety and wisdom had not selected a Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, But politics had no sooner infused themselves amongst
these rosy anchorites, than dissensions were kindled, and a false
brother arose, who divulged the arcana and exposed the good Prior,
in order to ridicule him as Minister of the Finances."
'Memoirs of the Reign of George the Third,'' chap, xi
Note 15.— Page 333.
By way of confirmation of a right judgment upon a writer such
as Junius, the opinion of Coleridge may aptly be added :
* * " The great art of Junius is never to say too much, and to
avoid with equal anxiety a commonplace manner, and matter that
is not commonplace. If ever he deviates into any originality of
thought, he takes care that it shall be such as excites surprise for
its acuteness rather than admiration for its profundity The
Letters are plain and sensible whenever the author is in the right,
and whether right or wrong, always shrewd and epigrammatic, and
fitted for the coffee-house, the exchange, the lobby of the House of
Commons, and to be read aloud at a public meeting. When con-
nected, dropping the forms of connection, desultory without abrupt-
ness or appearance of disconnection, epigrammatic and antithetical
to excess, sententious and personal, regardless of right or wrong,
yet well skilled to act the part of an honest, warm-hearted man,
and even when he is in the right, saying the truth but never
proving it, much less attempting to bottom it, — this is the charac^
ter of Junius ; — and on this character, and in the mould of these
writings must every man cast himself, who would wish in factious
times to be the important and long-remembered agent of a faction.'
' Literary Remains of S. T. C,' i. 240
TO LECTURE VII. 353
Note 16.— Page 334.
"The most splendid passage in Lord Chatham's public life waa
certainly the closing one : when on the 7th of April, 1778, wastea
by his dire disease, but impelled by an overruling sense of duty, he
repaired for the last time to the House of Lords, tottering from
weakness, and supported on one side by his son-in-law Lord Mahon,
on the other by his second son William, ere long to become like him-
self the saviour of his country. Of such a scene even the slightest
details have interest, and happily they are recorded in the words o'
an eye-witness. Lord Chatham, we are told, was dressed in black
velvet, but swathed up to the knees in flannel. From within his
large wig Utile more was to be seen than his aquiline nose and his
penetrating eye. He looked, as he was, a dying man ; ' yet never,'
adds the narrator, ' was seen a figure of more dignity ; he appeared
like a being of a superior species.' He rose from his seat with
slowness and difficulty, leaning on his crutches and supported by
his two relations. He took his hand from his crutch and raised it,
lifting his eyes towards Heaven, and said, — ' I thank God that I
have been enabled to come here this day, — to perform my duty,
and to speak on a subject which has so deeply impressed my mind.
I am old and infirm — have one foot, more than one foot in the grave.
I am risen from my bed, to stand up in the cause of my country —
perhaps never again to speak in this House.' The reverence, the
attention, the stillness of the House were here most affecting ; had
any one dropped a handkerchief the noise would have been heard.
At first he spoke in the low and feeble tone of sickness, but as he
grew warm, his voice rose in peals as high and liarmonious as ever.
He gave the whole history of the American war, detailing the mea-
sures to which he had objected, and the evil consequences which he
had foretold, adding, at the close of each period, ' and so it proved.'
He then expressed his indignation at the idea, which he heard had
gone forth, of yielding up the sovereignty of America ; he called
for vigorous and prompt exertion ; he rejoiced that he was still
aliire, to lift up his voice against the first dismemberment of this
ancient and most noble monarcliy. After him, the Duke of Rich-
mond attempted some explanations and defence on the part of tho
government. Lord Chatham heard him with attention, and when hia
354 NOTES
Grace had concluded, eagerly rose to reply. But this last exertioc
overcame him, and after repeated attempts to stand firm, he sud-
denly pressed his hand to his heart, and fell back in convulsions.
The Duke of Cumberland, Lord Temple, and other Peers, caught
him in their arms, and bore him to a neighbouring apartment, while
the Lords left in the House immediately adjourned in the utmost
confusion and concern. He was removed to Hayes, and lingered
till the 11th of May, when the mighty spirit was finally released
from its shattered frame. Who that reads of this soul-stirring scene
— who that has seen it portrayed by that painter, whose son has
since raised himself by his genius to be a principal light and orna-
ment of the same assembly — who does not feel that were the choice
before him, he would rather live that one triumphant hour of pain
and suffering, than through the longest career of thriving and suc-
cessful selfishness ■?"
Lord Maiion's ' Hist, of England^' vol. iii. p. 60.
This famous scene has suggested a passage in Dr. Arnold's His-
tory of Rome, which may be quoted here as a specimen not only of
historic style, but also of the skill with which he frequently renders
ancient and modern story illustrative of each other :
Pyrrhus had formed his Italian alliances against Rome — a con
sular army had been defeated — Cineas, the favourite minister of tht)
King of Epirus, had arrived as ambassador to the City with terms
of peace, which it was apprehended many of the Senators might be
awed into favouring :
" Appius Claudius, the famous censor, the greatest of his coun-
tr)rmen in the works of peace, and no mean soldier in time of need,
was now, in the thirtieth year after his censorship, in extreme old
age, and had been for many years blind. But his active mind tri-
umphed over age and infirmity ; and although he no longer took
part in public business, yet he was ready in his own house to give
answers to those who consulted him on points of law, and his namo
was fresh in all men's minds, though his person was not seen in the
forum. The old man heard that the Senate was listening to the
proposals of Cineas, and was likely to accept the King's terms of
peace. He immediately desired to be carried to the Senate-house,
and was borne in a litter by his slaves through the forum. When
TO LECTURE VII. 355
it was known that Appius Claudius was coming, his sons and sons-
in-law went out to the steps of the Senate-house to receive hiin,
and he was by them led into his place. The whole Senate kept the
deepest silence as the old man arose to speak.
" No Englishman can have read thus far without remembering
the scene, in all points so similar, which took place within our fa-
thers' memory in our own house of parliament. We recollect how
the greatest of English statesmen, bowed down by years and infir-
mity like Appius, but roused like him by the dread of approaching
dishonour to the English name, was led by his son and son-in-law
into the House of Lords, and all tlie peers with one impulse arose to
receive him. We know the expiring words of that mighty voice,
when he protested against the dismemberment of this ancient mon-
archy, and prayed that if England must fall, she might fall with
honour. The real speech of Lord Chatham against yielding to the
coalition of France and America, will give a far more lively image
of what was said by the blind Appius in the Roman Senate, than
any fictitious oration which I could either copy from other writers,
or endeavour myself to invent ; and those who would wish to know
how Appius spoke, should read the dying words of the great orator
of England." — II. ch. xxxvii. p. 496.
Note 17.— Page 334.
The adverse feeling to the war with France in 1793, and the sub-
sequent change in the popular mind, are thus spoken of by Words-
woi'l'., in the Tract 'on the Convention of Cintra:'
* * " This just and necessary war, as we have been accustomed to
hear it styled from the beginning of the contest in the year 1793, had,
some time before the Treaty of Amiens, viz., after the subjugation
of Switzerland, and not till then, begun to be regarded by the body
of the people, as indeed both just and necessary ; and this justice
and necessity were by none more clearly perceived, or more feel-
ingly bewailed, tlian by those who had most eagerly opposed the
war in its commencement, and who continued most bitterly to regret
that this nation had ever borne a part in it. Their conduct was
herein consistent : they proved that they kept tlieir eyes steadily
fixed upon principles , fi'r though there was a siiifting or transfei
356 NOTES
of hostility in their minds as far as regarded persons, they only
combated the same enemy opposed to them under a different shape ;
and that enemy was the spirit of selfish tyranny and lawless ambi-
tion. , . . The people now wished for war, as their rulers had done
before, because open war between nations is a defined and effectual
partition, and the sword, in the hands of the good and the virtuous,
is the most intelligible symbol of abhorrence There are
promptings of wisdom from the penetralia of human nature, which
a people can hear, though the wisest of their practical Statesmen be
deaf towards them. This authentic voice the people of England had
heard and obeyed ; and in opposition to French tyranny, growing
daily more insatiate and implacable, they ranged themselves zealous-
ly under their government ; though they neither forgot nor forgave its
transgressions, in having first involved them in a war with a people
then struggling for its own liberties under a twofold aflliction — con-
founded by inbred faction, and beleagured by a cruel and imperious
external foe." — p. 6.
Note 18.— Page 337,
The cultivation of historical study is so much regulated by a
right habit of opinion respecting past ages, especially in their rela-
tion to the age that is present, that I think it important here to
illustrate the text by some selections, not only from Dr. Arnold's
other writings, but from some other thoughtful authors who have
touched upon this s'lbject. History loses half its value if it teaches
only what we are to shun, and nothing to admire and imitate : it
loses all its value, when an age " refuses to allow its own tempei
and judgment to be at all controlled by those of antiquity."
" It is absurd to extol one age at the expense of another, since
each has its good and its bad. There was greater genius in ancient
times, but art and science come late. But in one respect it is to ba
feared we have degenerated — what Tacitus so beautifully expresses,
after telling a etory of a man, who, in the civil war in Vespasian's
lime, had killed his own brother, and received a reward for it ;
and then relates that the same thing happened before in the civil
war of Sylla and Marius, and the man when he found it out ki]>«!
TO LECTURE Vll. 357
himself from remorse : and then he adds, ' Tanto major apud anti-
quos ut virtutibus gloria, iia. jlagitiis paenitentia erat.' The deep
remorse for crime is less in advanced civilization. There is more
of sympathy with suffering of all kinds, but less abhorrence of what
\s admitted to be crime."
Life and Correspondence : Appendix C, ix. 3
" There are few stranger and sadder sights" (writes Dr. Arnold
in the 'Introduction' to the fourth volume of his Sermons — 1841)
" than to see men judging of whole periods of the history of mankind
with the blindness of party spirit, never naming one century with-
out expressions of contempt or abhorrence, never mentioning another
l)ut with extravagant and undistinguishing admiration." — p. 8.
And in the same ' Introduction :'
* * " In philosophy and general literature, there have been
sufficient proofs that the pendulum, which for nearly two hundred
years had been swinging one way, was now (' in the last ten years
of the last century') beginning to swing back again ; and as its last
oscillation brought it far from the true centre, so it may be, that its
present impulse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring on
again, in aft^r ages, another corresponding reaction.
" Now, if it be asked what, set :ing aside the metaphor, are the
two points between which mankind has been thus moving to and
fro ; and what are the tendencies in us which, thus alternately pre-
dominati ig, give so different a character to different periods of the
human history ; the answer is not easy to be given summarily, for
the generalization which it requires is almost beyond the compass
of the human mind. Several phenomena appear in each period,
and it would be easy to give any one of these as marking its tend-
ency; as, for instance, we might describe one period as having a
t«ndency to despotism, and another to licentiousness : but the true
answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering that com-
mon element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in
philosophy, and in literature, being modified by the subject matter
of each, assumes in each a different form, so that its own proper
nature is no longer to be recognised. Again, it would be an error
to suppose that either of the two tendencies which so affect the
course of human affairs were to be called simj)ly bad or good
358 NOTES
Each has its good and evil nicely intermingled ; and taking the
highest good of each, it would be difficult to say which was the
more excellent ; taking the last corruption of each, we could not
determine which was the more hateful. For so far as we can
trace back the manifold streams, flowing some from the eastern
mountains, and some from the western, to the highest springs from
which they rise, we find on the one side the ideas of truth and
justice, on the other those of beauty and love — things so exalted,
and so inseparably united in the divine perfections, that to set
either two above the other were presumptuous and profane. Yet
these most divine things separated from each other, and defiled in
their passage through this lower world, do each assume a form in
human nature of very great evil : the exclusive and corrupted love
of truth and justice becomes in man selfish atheism ; the exclusive
and corrupted worship of beauty and love becomes in man a bloody
and lying idolatry.
" Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in
which human aflfairs may be said to have been successively drifting.
But real history, even the history of all mankind, and much more that
of any particular age or country, presents a picture far more com-
plicated. First, as to time : as the vessels in a harbour, and in the
open sea without it, may be seen swinging with the tide at the
same moment in opposite directions ; the ebb has begun in the
roadstead, while it is not yet high water in the harbour ; so one or
moi'e nations may be in advance of or behind the general tendency of
their age, and from either cause may be moving in the opposite
direction. Again, the tendency or movement in itself is liable to
frequent interruptions, and short counter-movements : even when
the tide is coming in upon th3 shore, every wave retires after its
advance ; and he who follows incautiously the retreating waters,
may be caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming again for an
instant the spot which had just been left dry. A child standing by
the sea-shore for a few minutes, and watching this, as it seenas,
irregular advance and retreat of the water, could not tell whether it
was ebb or flood : and we, standing for a few years on the shore
of time, can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which
we witness is according to or against the general tendency of tho
whole period. Farther yet, as these great tendencies are often iu-
TO LECTURE VII. 359
torrupted, &o are they continually mixed : that is, not only are theii
own good and bad elements successively predominant, but they
never have the world wholly to themselves : the opposite tendency
exists, in an under-current it may be, and not lightly perceptible ;
but here and there it struggles to the surface, and mingles its own
good and evil with the predominant good and evil of its antagonist.
Wherefore he who would learn wisdom from the complex experi-
ence of history, must question closely all its phenomena, must notice
that which is less obvious as well as that which is most palpable,
must judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, but with reserves and
exceptions ; not as lightly overrunning a wide region of truth, but
thankful, if after much pains he has advanced his landmarks only a
little ; if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier for-
tresses, in which he can establish himself forever." — p. iii.
" I confess, that if I were called upon to name what spirit of c\ il
predominantly deserved the name of Antichrist, I should name the
spirit of chivalry — the more detestable for the very guise of the
' Archangel ruined,' which has made it so seductive to the most
generous spirits — but to me so hateful, because it is in direct op-
position to the impartial justice of the Gospel, and its comprehen-
sive feeling of equal brotherhood, and because it so fostered a sense
of honour rather than a sense of duty."
Life and Correspondence— Letter, March .30, 182P.
In his letter "on the Discipline of Public Schools," (Quar. Jour-
nal of Education, vol. ix. p. 281 — 1835,) Dr. Arnold, speaking of
the opinion that ' corporal punishment is degrading,' remarks : " t
well know of what feeling this is the expression; it originates in
that proud notion of personal independence, wiiich is neither rea-
sonable nor Christian, but essentially barbarian. It visited Europe
in former times with all the curses of the age of chivalry, and is
threatening us now with those of Jacobinism. For so it is, that the
evils of ultra-aristocracy and ultra-popular principles spring pre-
cisely from the same source — namely, from selfish pride — from an
idolatry of personal honour and dignity in the aristocratical form of
the disease — of personal independence in its modern and popular
form. It is simply impatience of inferiority and submission — a
feeling which must be more frequently wrong or right, in proper-
3G0 NOTES
tion to the relative situation and worthiness of him who entertains
it, hut which cannot be always or generally right, except in beings
infinitely more perfect than man. Impatience of inferiority felt by
a child towards his parents, or by a people towards its instructors,
is merely wrong, because it is at variance with the truth : there
exists a real inferiority in the relation, and it is an error, a fault, a
corruption of nature, not to acknowledge it."
These are strong expressions of condemnation of that element in
the middle ages, which Dr. Arnold termed ' chivalry,' or more
justly, ' feudality.' If it is to be spoken of as ' chivalry,' then,
unless we mean vainly to entangle our thoughts in a mere verbal
discussion, it should be remembered that it had a side of truth as
well as of error — a bright side as well as a dark one — and this, its
glory, Arnold himself saw when his spirit was glowing with the
fervent admiration which he habitually professed for the hero-saint,
the Ninth Louis of France. Looking, however, chiefly at the evils
of the system, and its abuses during a certain period of history, he
came to look upon chivalry as the lawless, tyrannical selfishness of
mediffival feudality, while another author, looking from another
point of view, contemplates it as a thing, in some form or other,
coeval with human society, and infinitely ennobled under the influ-
ence of the Christian religion, and hence a widely different defini-
tion of the term : " Chivalry is only a name for that general spirit
or state of mind which disposes men to heroic and generous actions,
and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in
the intellectual and moral world." — ' The Broad Stone of Honour,
or the True Sense and Practice of Chivalry,'' by Kenelm Henry
Digby, Esq. In referring to this volume, I feel that this is one of
the cases — alas ! too many — where we are constrained to seek for
truth in the study of extremes ; and I am not willing that the ref-
erence should be made unaccompanied with explanation of the char-
acter of the book. In the ' Guesses at Truth,^ amid more of en-
thusiastic eulogy, and more, too, of earnest and reluctant censure
than I have room to quote, 'TAe Broad Stone of Honour'' is spoken
of as " a book, fitted, above almost all others, to inspire youthful
minds with the feelings befitting a Christian gentleman," and as
" rich in magnanimous and holy thoughts, and in tales of honour
and of piety. . . . The author identifies himself, as few have ever
TO LECTURE VII. 361
done, with the good, and great, and heroic, and holy in former
times, and ever rejoices in passing out of himself into them : he
loves to utter his thoughts and feelings in their words, rather than
his own : and the saints, and philosophers, and warriors of old join
in swelling the sacred consort which rises heavenward from his
pages. Nevertheless, it is not a book which can be recommended
without hesitation to the young. The very charm which it is sure
to exercise over them, hightens one's scruples about doing so. For
in it the author has come forward as a convert and champion of the
Romish Church, and as the implacable enemy of Protestantism. . .
He culls the choicest and noblest stories out of fifteen centuries, —
and not merely out of history, but out of poetry and romance, — and
the purest and sublimest morsels of the great religious writers be-
tween the time of the Apostles and the Reformation : and this mag-
nificent spiritual hierarchy he sets before us as a living and trust-
worthy picture of what the Ages of Faith, as he terms them, act-
ually were. On the other hand, shutting his eyes to what is great
and holy in later times, he picks out divers indications of baseness,
unbelief, pusillanimity, and worldlymindedness, as portraying what
Europe has become, owing to the dissolution of the unity of the
Church."— p. 206.
* * * " The present time is distinguished beyond any that have
preceded it, not merely by the neglect, but by the dislike of antiqui-
ty. All the world appears bent upon ' laying again the foundation'
of all things. Customary usage, far from being a recommendation,
is taken as argument either of folly or of fraud. To plead length
of prescription in favour of an existing practice, or an established
right, is to confess that no better reason can be urged in its defence.
A remoie origin aiTords, it is argued, a presumption, not in favour
of a given institution, but against it ; because length of years are
likely to have occasioned a change of circumstances, and what may
have been right and fitting long ago, can hardly fail of being obso-
lete and unsuitable now.
" Thus, whatever is ancient is presumed to be antiquated, more
especially in an enlightened age, preceded by centuries of compara-
tive darkness, when the human mind, freeing itself from the re-
straints by which it was formerly fettered, has sprung forward with
31
362 NOTES
a sudden and unexampled bound. That such has been for some
time the tone of public feeling, is testified, not only in the course
of political events, or in the conduct of a political party, but in the
literature, habits, and manners of the people at large. It may be
regarded as a moving principle in the formation of popular opinion ;
a principle sometimes nearly dormant, and overborne by a dead
weight of custom ; sometimes nicely balanced by counter influer-
ces, and tending to progressive improvement ; sometimes acquiring
a rapid and uncontrollable development, and menacing total de-
struction.
" That this way of thinking, like every other that obtains widely
and forcibly among mankind, has a side of truth, and when properly
limited, has been productive of good ; nay, that at certain periods
it has been usefully called forth into unusual energy in the service
of religion, need not be denied : but that, as at present exhibited, it
is mischievous, extravagant, and unreasonable, is felt by all sober-
minded persons, and scarcely requires proof.
" And, first, it greatly overestimates, not merely the superiority
of the present over past ages, in substantial wisdom, and that
knowledge, of whatever kind, upon which it is founded, but even
the diflference in kind, existing between our times and those of our
ancestors. It is not asserted that there has been no advance in use-
ful knowledge, or that no real variation in the actual state of things
has taken place, but only that the degree is vastly overrated.
"In regard to the first, the supposed superiority of the present
age, the mistake arises in various ways. A part of knowledge,
perhaps the least important, is put for the whole. No balance is
struck between what is gained in one department, and what is lost
in another. The worthiness of the end pursued is not considered
in determining the value of the means. Thus science, the doctrine
of means, usurps the place of philosophy, the doctrine of ultimate
ends. The economy of wealth is taken as the measure of national
welfare ; legislation passes for jurisprudence. So again, the study
of nature may have flourished, the study of mind may have drooped ;
the arts of life may have advanced, domestic wisdom may have lost
ground ; education may have been diffused, scholastic learning may
have declined. All our gains are counted, but our losses are net
■at against them. And again, personal comfort, convenience, oi
TO LECTURE VII. 303
txury, mental or bodily, is openly proposed, not only as the best,
but as the only object of intellectual pursuit ; whereas formerly, the
search of truth was supposed to bring its own recompense. Thu3
a lower end is substituted for a higher; and by overstating the
claims of our fellow-creatures, once too much neglected in these
studies, we forget the more sublime relation between the human
spirit and the God who gave it. The effect which has resulted to
ihe religion of the day is very striking, and far from unmixedly
good. It is the recoil of monastic piety in matters of devotion, as
of monastic philosophy in the pursuit of intellect." * * *
" In a word, the contempt of antiquity, so commonly manifested,
places the age in a false position, more especially in ecclesiastical
affairs. A single generation is drawn up in a.rray against all that
have preceded it, and has to make good its pretensions, not only
with no assistance from the great and good men that ' sleep in the
Lord,' but against their united forces. Covenant is broken with
the mighty dead ; and they, whose everliving wisdom, whether it
speak to us in books, or yet more impressively in the institutions
which they have contributed to form, to sanction, to improve, are
set aside to make room for the new, capricious, dogmatical, untried
authorities of the day ; for partial interests, sectarian prejudice, and
temporary fashion ; for the despotic sway and idolatrous worship of
the present ; as if there wore neither voice nor vision in the oracu
lar past."
Derwent Coleridge : ' Sciipturul Character of the Church,' p. 80.
* * " Far from adopting an opinion which was prevalent at least
till very recently, that the questions which occupied the schools
were trivial, senseless, and now wholly obsolete, we think it is diffi-
cult to overrate their intrinsic value, or the influence which they
are exercising upon ourselves at the present moment. The persona
who use the words Ontology or Nominalism and Realism with a
sneer, little know how much those difficulties of which Ontology
treats are besetting their own path ; with what vehemence the con-
troversy between Nominalism and Realism is carried on within
their own minds and in the minds of all about them. We do not
gain much by speaking contemptuously of our progenitors ; we onlj
3ontrive that we should suffer all the perplexities which they suf-
364 NOTES
fered without the same consciousness of them which they had, and
without their help in extricating ourselves from them. The mistake
has been owing, we fancy, in a great measure to a confused appre-
hension that the schools and the world have in all times, and had at
this time especially, very little to do with each other. The fashion
of scorning the active life of the middle ages is passing away ; nay,
is just at present giving place to a sentimental admiration. Men
have discovered that something was done in this so-called dark time
which we in our bright time could not well dispense with. But un-
less the speculative life of that period, besides obtaining the cour-
teous treatment which it is likely to meet with under such a re-
action, be viewed in connection with this practical life and shown
to be inseparable from it, there is no chance, we think, of either
being dealt with clearly and justly. A history which should do
this would far more effectually expose the real evils of the middle
ages, and show whence those evils flowed, than all vehement party
declamations against them, which being written without sympathy
for the right, are very seldom successful in detecting the wrong."
* * p. 640.
* * " Through terrible conflicts, in spite of fearful sins, this age
(of the schoolmen) had been really effecting its work, and was to
leave imperishable tokens for the generations to come. The first
period after Christianity had left the form of a universal polity ;
had left ordinances, creeds ecclesiastical institutions, the witnesses
of this universal polity, the powers by which it was upheld, and by
which men were enabled to possess and enjoy its benefits ; it had
left records of the oppositions through which transcendent and uni-
versal truths had been maintained and confirmed ; it had left a
literature connecting itself with the former literature of the world,
and showing that what therein had been foretold or wished for had
come to pass. If these deposits remained and remam to this day,
is it not equally true that those middle ages have left their deposits '
National societies grown up from infancy to manhood ; the forms
of law established ; languages created and defined ; new forms in-
vented in which ihe conceptions of men could clothe themselves —
forms of architecture, of poetry, and finally of painting ; last, and
we are bound to say not least, the full power and dimensions of the
logical faculty in man ascertained by a series of precious experi
TO LECTURE VII. 365
ments determining what it can and what it cannot achieve. For
let no one say that the scholastic philosophy is obsolete in its eflect*,
because the volumes which contain it are seldom read, and becaaso
it has been found to have failed in much that it hoped to do. Not
the feeblest newspaper scribe, who writes praises of the nineteenth
century, and talks about the discoveries of Bacon, and the vain
squabbles by which men were distracted till his time, could cast
even these empty phrases into a coherent and intelligible shape, if
those schoolmen whom he abuses had not lived. As truly as wc
owe our laws and ecclesiastical buildings to the middle ages, so
truly do we owe to them our forms of thought and language. We
arc very unhappy if we have not learnt much since that time, and
we shall presently have to show in what direction that learning has
been won. But in fixing the terms and conditions of human thought,
we are bold to say, that men have only done any thing by going back
to these schoolmen, and using the fresh light that may have fallen
upon us to the more effectual consideration of the questions which
they raised.
" When one reflects on these facts, men may surely be well con-
tent that what is called the revival of letters came when it did, and
not four or five centuries earlier. Most sad would it have been for
the world, if the western nations, instead of being left to work out
a cultivation for themselves with only sucii helps from ancient lore
as best suited the thoughts which were awakening in them, had
been overlaid with heaps of books, in wliich their circumstances
gave them no interest, which they could not interpret livingly, and
which would therefore have crushed all sparks of native and origi-
nal speculation. When that revival did come, the inhabitants of
western Europe were in some way prepared for it — prepared al
least, by their own sense of a national position, to enter into the
national feelings, and the thoughts and inquiries accompanying them,
whereof Grecian books are the exposition." * * * p. 64".
* Encyclopedia Mctropolitana,' vol. ii. of ' Pure Sciences ;' ' Moral and
Metaphysical Philosophy,' by tlio Rev. Fkederick De.vison JIaurice,
Professor of English Literuturo and History, in King's College Lon-
don.
*' • * In dealing with ancient institutions which appear to have
JoBt their efficacy, there are two courses. The narrow-minded, the
366 NOTES TO LECTURE VII.
men of mere practical understanding, without imagination to call up
those manifold relations which lie beyond the span of the under-
standing, — tney who see one thing clearly and distinctly, and who
straightway conclude that it is the only thing to be seen, who walk
between two high walls, and suppose that the whole world is in-
cluded between them, — they who have no reverence for antiquity,
no faith in a higher spirit guiding and shaping the actions of men,
and pervading their institutions, — they who trust in their own wis-
dom and in their own will, and who desire to see that wisdom and
that will reflected in every thing around them, — will destroy the
decayed institution as worthless to set up some creation of their
own in its stead. They on the other hand who have learnt to dis-
trust their own wisdom, and to suspect their will, — who have dis-
covered the limits of their faculties, and how narrow they are, —
who have perceived how far the largest part of what is valuable
in their minds is owing to the unnoticed influences of the thoughts
and principles and institutions amid which they have grown up, —
they who have discerned that in nations also, and in other bodies
corporate, there is a kind of instinct, whereby they seek and assimi-
late what is suitable and healthful, rejecting what is noxious, — who
have discerned that in nations also ' the child is father of the man,'
and that the only sure progress of national life lies in expansion and
transfiguration, not in transmigration, — will always be anxious to
preserve the institutions which their fathers have left them, not
however in their worn-out, dilapidated state, but restored to com-
pleteness and vigour, with a new spirit of life kindled in them."
Arc'uieacon Jcuub Chaiuueb Hare's ' Charge.^ |840
LECTURE Vlll.
We have now for some lime been engaged in analyzing
t.\e statements of history, in order .0 the more clear under-
standing of them ; and particularly we have been consider-
ing the forms of political party in our own country, with a
view to discover what in them has been accidental and what
essential. I liave assumed certain facts as unquestionably
'.rue, and have made them the groundwork of what I have
said, either to account for them, or to point out their conse-
quences. But what are we to say, if these facts themselves
are disputed ; if we are taunted with the known exaggera-
tions and falsehoods of human testimony ; with the difficul-
ties surrounding all investigation of human actions, even if
most ably and fairly conducted ; and with the many defects
of individual writers, which have made them, as invcstiga-
tors, neither able nor fair ? Or are these objections to be
met by saying, that although the truth relating to past agca
be difficult to discover, yet that contemporary history is at
any rate entitled tv' confidence ; that men cannot misrepresent
in the face of detection ; that in this case truth may be dis-
covered, and cannot but be declared ? Or is any other an-
swer to be given, maintaining any other criterion ; or shall
we be obliged to confess the unsoundness of all our goodly
fabric ; and to compare historical deductions, however logi-
cal, to the elephant in the well-known apologue, which rested
upon a tortoise, and the tortoise rested upon a stone, and the
stone rested upon notiiing ?
The question now befo'^e us is clearly of considerable inv
368 LECTURE VIII.
portance. If historical testimony be really worth nothing^
it touches us in one of the very divinest parts of our nature,
the power of connecting ourselves with the past. For this
we do and can do only through knowledge which we must
call historical. Without such knowledge, what would the
ancient buildings of this place be but monuments more un-
meaning than the Pictish towers of Scotland and Ireland ?
They would not tell their own story alone ; they would onlj
show that they were not new, and by examining their stones
we might tell out of what quarries it had been hewn : but as
to all that constitutes their real charm, as representing to us
first the times of their founders, and then with wonderful
rapidity the successive ages which have since passed, amidst
how different a world their inmates have, generation after
generation, trod their courts, and studied in their chambers,
and worshipped in their chapels, — all this would be utterly
lost to us. Our life would be at once restricted to the span
of our own memory ; nay, I might almost say, to the span of
our own actual consciousness. For if no other man's report
of the past is to be credited, I know not how we can defend
the very reports of our own memories. They, too, unques-
tionably are fallible ; they, too, very often are perplexed by-
vague or conflicting recollections ; we cannot tell whether we
remember or no ; nor whether we remember correctly. And
if this extreme scepticism be, as it clearly is, absurd even to
insanity, yet we want to know what abatements are to be
made from it ; where it not only ceases to be insane, but be-
comes reasonable and true ; there being no question at all
that we have been often deceived with false accounts of the
past ; that human testimony is the .estimony of those who
are often deceived, who often endeavour to deceive, and who
perhaps more often still are both in the one predicament and
the other ; not loving truth sincerely, and at the same lime
eally unable to discern it.
LECTURE VIII. 369
Now, in an inquiry into the credibility of history in the
largest sense of tiie word, the first question which we will
consider is, whether any composition bearing more or less of
an historical form, be really historical or no, in the intention
of its author. For if it be not, then if we accept it igno-
rantly as such, we are in the condition of those persons on
whom a trick has been played ; our belief has in it some-
thing ludicrous, like theirs who innocently fall into a mis-
chievous boy's snare on the first of April ; and although in
this case there was probably no mischief intended, yet that
makes our mistake only the more ridiculous, if we went
wrong when no one endeavoured to mislead us. Conceive
one of the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott surviving
alone amongst its companions to some very remote age, when
the greatest part of our literature should have perished, and
all knowledge of Scott as a novelist should be utterly lost.
Suppose that of all his numerous works there should exist
only his Life of Napoleon, Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, and
his novel of Woodstock. Conceive posterity taking all the
three works as equally historical ; in the one, it might be
said we have an elaborate narrative, in a regular historical
form, of the life of the Emperor Napoleon ; in the second we
have a most lively account of the principal events of his sec-
ond reign, given in letters written at the time and from the
very scene of action ; while in the tliird we have a narra-
tive, taken probably from some ancient chronicle, and there-
fore much more dramatic and more full of minute details, of
some passages in the life of Charles the Second, including
the story of his wonderful concealment and escape after the
battle of Worcester. It would then be received as fact, that
Charles, after his escape from the battle, was sheltered and
concealed at "Woodstock, and that Cromwell himself came
down to Woodstock, and, guided by the information of a pre-
tended royalist, had nearly succeeded in surprising him.
370 lECTURE VIII.
There is nothing in the book, it would be urged, that declares
It to be a fiction ; it is a narrative about real historical per-
sons ; why should we doubt its accuracy ? So men might
argue, and might be led into a mistake which to us appears
altogether ridiculous, because we know that Woodstock is a
novel ; but which is not at all inconceivable in those who
centuries afterwards should find it in company with other
works of the same author, which they supposed equally to be
historical, and one of which in fact is so. Now there are
times and writings in which all narrative bears more or less
the character of an historical novel ; it may contain truth,
and often does so : but this is merely accidental ; the writer's
object is merely to amuse, and whether his story happens to
be authentic or not gives him no sort of concern. Sometimes
there seems to be absolutely an intention to mislead the sim-
ple reader ; not a malicious or fraudulent intention, for any
grave ends of falsehood, but, as appears, only for the mere
joke's sake ; for the pleasure of imposing on the unsuspi-
cious. Now, wherever this spirit may at all be supposed to
exist, we are completely falling into the writer's trap if we
really take him at his word, as if he were in earnest ; and
our error is not less, if, not understanding the character of
narration, whether in verse or prose, at the particular period,
or in writers of a certain sort, we conceive exactness of fact
to be its object, instead of amusement, or possibly some
moral or religious lesson which the story was framed to
inculcate. And therefore our first question with respect
to a story or narrative should be, was the writer in earnest
or in jest ? and if in earnest, was he in earnest as to the
facts or as to the moral conveyed by the facts ? For he
may have been very earnest indeed as a poet, or as a
moral teacher, or as inculcating some deep religious truth
under a symbolical veil, and yet not at all in earnest as a
matter-of-fact historian. This question is one of gr^at im-
LECTURE VIII. 371
portance to put, and unhappily it is not always easy to find
the answer to it.
You will see where the difficulty lies, if you consider the
case which I supposed, of some future age mistaking Wood-
stock for an authentic history. We do not mistake it, chiefly
I think for certain external reasons ; that it is published as a
novel, and has always been received as such ; and farther,
because we are familiar with many other works of the same
sort, so that the notion of an historical novel is one which
readily occurs to us. But ancient books do not tell us the
story of their publication ; we do not know how they were
received by their original readers, nor are specimens of the
literature of the time sufficiently numerous to enable us to
conceive readily what form they would be likely to assume.
It does not seem possible, therefore, always to have a sure
criterion whether a given narrative be historical or no ; or
at any rate, to have such a criterion as may be applied by
ordinary readers; such as is palpable and tangible, or to use
the German expression, handgrcijlich. A criterion there is
indeed, not of course unerring, yet generally to be relied
upon, in the instinctive tact of those who are much conver-
sant with the narratives of early times, and with the charac-
ter of undoubted history, and who feel at once where they
have history, and where they have poetry, or apologue, or
allegory, or a story careless of fact and aiming only at truth,
or it may be, seeking neither fact not truth, but simply to
amuse and astonish its readers. This feeling in a sensible
man is, I believe, very much to be relied upon ; but you can-
not justify it to those who dispute it; you cannot establish it
upon tangible evidence, appreciable by the ignorant no less
than by the wise.
For the greater part of modern history, however, the ques-
tion which we have now been considering will not give ua
any trouble. Yet it presents itself, I think, in some of tha
372 LECTURE VIII.
ecclesiastical biographies, where we find not unfreqaently
grotesque touches, to say nothing of other matters, such so*
leave great room for doubting whether their authors evei
meant them to be taken as simple matter-of-fact narratives.
The human mind so shrinks from undisguised and unpallia-
ted falsehood, that it is generally safer as well as more char-
itable, when we are reading a narrative which it is impossible
to believe, to suppose that the writer himself did not mean it
to be taken seriously ; regarding the facts at best as the or-
nament, or, if you will, as a sort of conventional expression
of what he did believe to be a truth, namely, the sanctity of
the subject of his biography. We may call this, if we will,
a species of pious fraud ; but at any rate, its guilt is much
less than it would be now, inasmuch as it would not be equal-
ly regarded as a bringing forward false evidence to establish
a conclusion. The moment that facts come to be regarded
in the light of essential evidence, without which our conclu-
sion falls, then all tampering with or exaggerating them is a
gross fraud, to be condemned with no qualification what-
ever. (1) But I should doubt whether the spirit of the well-
known story of the man who, when told that the facts were
wholly at variance with his theory, replied, Tant pis pour les
fails, was not very generally prevalent before the time of
Bacon, in more matters than in natural philosophy. (2)
Principles of science were assumed on a priori reasoning ;
and opinions in theology were he d in the same manner, not
indeed upon reasoning of any kind so much as upon author-
ity, but yet independently of any supposed proof to be lookeo
for from particular miracles. This consideration is perhaps
worth attending to, as it may in some measure account for a
carelessness as to the truth of facts which otherwise would
be merely scandalous ; and allows us to qualify as fictions
what we otherwise should be obliged to call falsehoods.
Passing on, then, to narratives which propose to be histori
I
LECTURE VIII. 373
cal, that is, where stress is understood to be laid upon the
facts, and it is the writer's avowed object to represent these
faithfully, and we ask under what circumstances and to what
degree can we maintain their credibility. And first, let us
consider what are the claims of a writer upon our belief,
merely on the strength of his being contemporary with the
e>ents which he relates.
That a contemporary writer cannot avoid giving us some
correct and valuable impressions of his times, is evident.
For such points of detail as an antiquarian deliglifs in, he
may be fully relied upon ; and he himself is at any rate an
authentic portrait ; his own mind, with its peculiar leanings,
his own language, with its peculiar style and forms of words,
these must certainly be drawn faithfully, because drawn un-
consciously ; and we cannot doubt their witness. But be-
yond this, and for historical facts properly so called, the
value of a contemporary historian is often greatly overrated.
No man sees the whole of his own times, any more than an
officer in action sees the whole of the battle. Some are too
busy to contemplate society in all its relations ; others are
too abstracted from it altogether. With regard to public
events, oi'dinary men are but in a very slight degree wit-
nesses of them : the councils of governments, the secret
springs of parties, are known only to a few ; military and
naval events take place publicly indeed, but often at a great
distance, and though they may happen in our time, yet our
knowledge of them only comes from the reports of others.
Again, it should be remembered, that many things which
we have seen and heard we forget afterwards : that although
we were contemporary with the events which took place ten
years ago, yet that we are not perhaps contemporary with
tlje»:i when we relate them ; even what we ourselves said
and did is no longer present to us; our witness is that of one
living after the event. (3) To this must be added disadvan-
374 LECTURE VIII.
cages which are generally recognised ; the livelier state of
passion to which a contemporary is liable, the veil hanging
over many characters and over the causes of many actions
which only after-ages will see removed. So that on the
whole, it is by no means sufficient to known that a history
was written by a contemporary : it may have been so, and
yet may be of very little value ; full of idle reports and un-
examined stories, giving the first obvious view of things,
which a little more observation would have shown to be far
from the true one.
Ascending a step higher, and supposing an historian to be
not merely contemporary with the events which he relates,
but an actual witness of them, his credibility no doubt be-
comes much greater. We must distinguish, however, be-
tween what I may call an active and a passive witness. I
call a passive witness one who was present, but took no part
in the actions described ; as for instance, Edward the Fourth's
chaplain, who has left us an account of King Edward's
landing in England after Warwick had obliged him to fly,
of his march towards London, and of the decisive battle of
Barnet. This is a witness in the lowest degree, from which
we ascend, according as the direct interest and share in the
transactions related is greater, up to the highest sort of wit-
ness ; namely, the main agent and director of the actions.
Here we have knowledge as nearly perfect as possible ; a
full understanding of the action in all its bearings, a view of
its different parts in connection with each other; and a clear
perception and recollection of each, because our knowledge
of one helps us to remember another, and because we our-
selves directed them. And thus in the case of Csesar and
the Emperor Napoleon we have witnesses, to whose Know,
ledge of the actions which they relate, nothing, as it seems,
could be added. Yet we should not be justified in viewing
the Commentaries of the one or the Memoirs of the other as
LECTURE VIII. 376
perfectly trustworthy histories; on the contrary, few narra-
fives require to be read with more constant and vigilant sus.
picion. For unhappily a knowledge of the truth does not
imply an intention of uttering it; it may be, on the contrary,
that he w ho knows perfectly the real state of the case should
find it to his interest to represent it altogether differently, and
his knowledge then does but enable him to misrepresent
more artfully. And as in the infinnit}' of human nature no
man's actions are always what he likes to look back upon,
as there are points in which he would wish that he had acted
otherwise; so every man who tells his own story is under a
temptation more or less to disguise the truth : and the more,
in proportion as his actions have been upon a larger scale,
and his faults or mistakes therefore have been more flagrant.
Yet do we not lose entirely the benefit of a writer's know-
ledge, even when his honesty is most questionable. He who
always can tell the truth when he has a mind to do so, will
toll it very often, because in a great many instances he has
no conceivable interest in departing from it. Thus Caesar'a
descriptions of countries have always been held to be of high
value ; for in them we have all the benefit of his intelligence,
with nothing to be deducted on account of his want of prin-
ciple. And so again in relating his own military conduct,
as it was mostly so admirable that to relate it most truly was
to praise it most eloquently, his knowledge gives us every
thing that we can desire. The same may be said of Napo-
Icon : his sketch of the geography of Syria, and of that of
Italy, his account of Egypt, and his detail of his proceedings
at the siege of Toulon, are all most excellent. The latter in
particular, his account of the siege of Toulon, is a complete
specimen of what is valuable and what is suspicious in hid
narratives. His description of the topography of Toulon,
and of his o'vn views in recommending the attack on Fort
Malbosquet, as the point where the enemy's operations might
376 LECTURE VIII.
be impeded most effectually, is all clear and admirable ; bwl
his statement of the enemy's force in Fort Malbosquet, and
of the assault itself, is to be regarded with suspicion; be-
cause his object not being truth, but his own glory, he never
puts himself for an instant in the place of an impartial spec-
tator, to consider what were the disadvantages of his enemy,
but rather is inclined to exaggerate and multiply all his ad.
vantages, in order to represent the victory over him as more
honourable. (4)
Thus neither is perfect knowledge a guarantee for entire
trustworthiness. Still let us consider for how much it is a
guarantee, namely, for truth in all indifferent matters, indif.
ferent I mean to the writer or to his party ; and for much
truth easily to be discerned from its colourings, in matters
that concern him nearly. And so again, a writer's nearness
to the times of which he treats is a warrant, not for his com-
plete trustworthiness, but yet for accurate painting of the
outsides of things, at any rate ; he cannot help telling us
much that we can depend on, whatever be his own personal
qualifications. So in all historians, the mere outline of events
is generally credible, and speaking of modern history, we
can always also, or almost always, trust to the dates. We
get everywhere therefore a certain portion of truth, only
more or less corrupted; but what we want to know is,
whether there be any qualification in an historian which
will give us more than this ; which will enable us to trust to
him all but implicitly ; without any one positive deduction
from his credibility, but merely with an acknowledgment
that being human he is therefore fallible, and that if sufficient
reasons exist for doubting his authority in any one point, we
should not insist at all hazards on maintaining it.
Now this one great qualification in an historian is an
earnest craving after truth, and utter impatience not of false-
hood mere.y but of error. This is a very different thing, he
LECTURE VIII. 377
it observed, from a mere absence of dishonesty or partiality.
Many minds like the truth a great deal better than falsehood
when the two are set before them ; they will tell a story
fairly with groat pleasure, if it be told fairly to tlicm. But
not being impatient and intolerant of error, they suffer it to
exist undiscovered when no one points it out to them : not
having a deep craving after truth they rest easily satisfied
with truth's counterfeit. This is the oLTaXai-Tru^ia. "tt^oj Tr,v
(^YlTr](fiv TYis akri&sias of which Thucydides complains so truly,
and which, far more than active dishonesty, is the source of
most of the error that prevails in the world. (.5) And this
fault in some degree is apt to beset us all ; for it is with trutii
as with goodness, none of us love it so heartily as to be at all
times ready to take any pains to arrive at it, as to question
its counterfeit when it wears an aspect of plausibility. For
example, there is a story which has become famous all over
Europe, repeated from one historian to another, and from one
country to another, which is yet totally untrue. I mean the
famous story of the crew of the French ship Le Vengeur in
the action of the first of June, 1794, refusing to strike their
colours, and fighting their ship till she went down, and at the
very moment that she was sinking shouting with one voice,
Vive la Republique ! Even Mr. Carlyle repeated this story
in his history of the French Revolution, and I have seen it
within the last month in a very able German* work published
only last year, given as a remarkable instance of the heroism
of the French sailors no less than of their soldiers during the
war of the Revolution. Not for one moment would I deny
the conclusion ; the heroic defence of the Guillaume Tell
against a British squadron off Malta in 1800, and of tho
Redoutable in the battle of Trafalgar, tlirow a glory on tho
courage of French seamen,which needs not to be heightened
« Der zweite Punische Krieg und d.<»r KriegBplan der Cartliager. Vou
Ludwig, Freiherra von Vincko. Berlin, 1841.
S78 LECTURE VIII.
by apocryphal instances of their self-devotion. But when
Mr. Carlyle's book appeared, one of the surviving British
officers who were in the action of the first of June wrote to him
to assure him that the story was wholly without foundation.
Upon this Mr. Carlyle commenced a careful inquiry into it,
and the point which is encouraging is this, that although the
story related to an event nearly fifty years old, still the means
were found, when sought, of effectually disproving it ; for
the official letter of the French captain of Le Vengeur to the
Committee of Public Safety still exists, and on reference to
it, it appeared that it was written on board of a British ship ;
that the Vengeur had struck,* and that her captain and some
of her men had been removed out of her, and some British
seamen sent on board to take possession. She sank, it is
true, and many of her crew were lost in her ; but she sank
as a British prize, and the British party who had taken pos-
session of her were unhappily lost in her also. The fictitious
statement was merely one of Barrere's accustomed flourishes,
inserted by him in his report of the action, and from thence
copied by French wi-iters first, and afterwards by foreigners.
Now here was a case where the truth was found with perfect
ease as soon as it was sought after ; and the story might
have been suspected from the quarter in which it originally
appeared, as also from its internal character ; for althougli
cases of the most heroic self-devotion m war are nothing
strange or suspicious, yet there was a theatrical display about
* It so happened that I had been myself aware of the falsehood of the com-
mon story for many years, and was sorry to see it repeated by Mr. Carlyle iu
his History of the French Revolution. It is more than thirty years since I
read a MS. account of the part taken by II. M. S. Brunswick, Captain John
Harvey, in the action of the first of June. The account was drawn up by one
of the surviving oflicers of the Brunswick, Captain Harvey having been mor-
tally wounded in the action, and was in tiie possession of Captain Harvey's
family. It was very circumstantial, and as the Vengeur was particularly
engaged with the Brunswick, it necessarily described her fate, and effectuallv
contradicted the story invented by Barrere.
LECTURE VIII. 379
this story which did call for examination. And as in this
instance,* so it is I think generally : that where there is nol
merely a willingness to receive the truth, but a real earnest
desire to discover it, the truth may almost surely be found.
I suppose then that what is wanted to constitute a trust-
worthy historian, is such an active impatience of error and
desire of truth. And it will be seen at once that these quali-
ties are intellectual as well as moral, and are as incompatible
with great feebleness of mind as they are with dishonesty.
For a feeble mind, and the same holds good also of an igno-
rant mind, is by no means impatient of error, because it does
not readily suspect it ; it may reject it when it is made to
notice it, but otherwise it suflers it patiently and confounds it
with truth. Now if this love of truth will make a trust-
worthy historian, so it will enable us no less to judge of what
is trustworthy history ; and to suspect error on the one hand,
and to appreciate truth on the other ; and if it will not enable
us to discover what the truth is, supposing that it has nowhere
been given, for then it can only be discovered by direct his-
torical researches of our own, yet to miss the truth where it
really is not, is in itself no mean knowledge, and the same
* Tlie interest wliich we all feel in every thing relating to Nelson will be a
BUfticient excuse for my inserting in tliis place a correction ot' a statement in
Southey'a Life of liim, wliich, as there given, imputes a very unworthy and
childidh vanity to liim, of which on that particular occasion he was wholly
innocent. It is said that Nelson wore on the day of the action of Trafalgar,
"his admiral's frock coat, bearing on the left breast four stars," that his offi-
cers wished to speak to him on the subject, but were afraid to do so, knowing
that it was useless ; ho having said on a former occasion, when requested to
change his dress or to cover his stars, " In honour I gained them, and in hon-
our I will die with them." The truth is, that Nelson wore on the day of
Trafalgar the same coat which he had commonly worn for weeks, on which
the order of the Bath was embroidered, as was then usual. Sir Thomas Hardy
did notice it to him, observing that he was afraid the badge might be marked
by the enemy ; to which Nelson replied, " that he was aware of that, but that
it •sras too late then to shift a coat." This account rests on the authority of
Bir Thomas Hardy, from whom it was heard by Capteiin Smyth, and by liini
oommuuicated to me.
580 LECTURE VIII.
power which enables us to do this will enable us also, to a
considerable degree, to discern where the truth lies hid, if
we have not ourseives the time or the opportunity to bring it
to light.
First of all then, in estimating whether any history is
trustworthy or no, I should not ask whether it was written by
a contemporary, or by one engaged in the transactions which
it describes, but whether it was written by one who loves the
truth with all his heart, and cannot endure error. For such
a one, we may be sure, would never attempt to write a his-
tory if he had no means of writing it truly ; and therefore
although distant in time or place, or both, from the events
which he describes, yet we may be satisfied that he had
sources of good information at his command, or else that he
would never have written at all.
Such an historian is not indeed infallible, or exempt from
actual error, but yet he is deserving of the fullest confidence
in his general narrative ; to be believed safely, unles<5 we
happen to have very strong reasons for doubting him in any
one particular point. But such historians are in the highest
degree rare ; and the question practically is, how can we
supply their want, and by the same qualities of mind in our-
selves, can extract a trustworthy history from that which in
itself is not completely trustworthy ; setting aside the rub-
bish and fastening upon the fragments of precious stone which
may be mixed up with it. Let the historian be whoever he
may, and if he does not appear to belong to the class of those
who are essentially trustworthy, let us subject him to some
such examination as the following.
His date, his country, and the circumstances of his life,
may be easily learned from a common biographical dic-
tionary ; and though these points are not of the greatest
importance of all, yet they are useful as intimating what
particular influences we may suspect to have been at work
I
LECTURE VIII. 381
flpon liid mind, and where therefore we should be particu-
larly upon our guard. But the main thing to look to is of
course his work itself. Here the very style gives us an im-
pression by no means to be despised. If it is very heavy
and cumbrous, it indicates cither a dull man, or a pompous
man, or at least a slow and awkward man ; if it be tawdry
and full of commonplaces enunciated with great solemnity,
the writer is most likely a silly man ; if it be highly anti-
thetical, and full of unusual expressions, or artificial ways
of stating a plain thing, the writer is clearly an affected
man. If it be plain and simple, always clear, but never
eloquent, the writer may be a very sensible man, but is too
hard and dry to be a very great man. If, on the other hand,
it is always eloquent, rich in illustrations, full of animation,
but too uniformly so, and without the relief of simple and
quiet passages, we must admire the writer's genius in a very
high degree, but we may fear that he is too continually ex-
cited to have attained to the highest wisdom ; for that is
necessarily calm. (6) In this manner the mere language
of an historian will furnish us with something of a key to
his mind, and will tell us, or at least give us cause to pre-
sume, in what his main strength lies, and in what he is de-
ficient. (7)
The style of a book impresses us immediately ; but pro-
ceeding to the matter, it is of importance to observe from
what sources the historian has derived his information. This
wc ought always to be able to discover, by looking at the
authorities referred to in the margin or at the bottom of the
page ; it is a most unpardonable fault if these are omitted.
We should consider these authorities as to quantity and quali-
ty ; as to quantity, for if they are but few, we may feel sure
that the historian's knowledge is meagre : the materials for
modern history are ample, and if only a few out of so many
have been consulted, the historian is not equal to his task.
382 LECTURE VII .
Consider the richness and variety of Gibbon's references, and
of Niebuhr's even more, when we know how few the obvious
sources were for the period with which he was engaged. (8)
Then as to quality, we should observe, first, whether they
consist of writers of one country or of several, of all the
countries, that is, to which the history directly relates ; sec-
ondly, whether they consist of historians only, or whether
more miscellaneous sources of information have been referred
to ; thirdly, what is the character of the authorities most re-
lied on. Are they really the best that could have been
found or no ? and if they are, then what are their particular
qualities and tendencies ? was the historian aware of these,
and on his guard against them, or no ? By this process we
shall be enabled to estimate the depth and richness of our
historian's knowledge, and also in some measure his judg-
ment as shown in the choice of his authorities, and in his
appreciation of their just value, knowing where they might
be trusted implicitly and where suspected.
We may now carry our judgment a little farther, by ex-
amining an historian in greater detail ; by observing him as
a military historian, we will say, as an historian of political
contests, as an historian of church matters, and so on. in
military history, for instance, there is first the question, Is he
a good geographer ? for if not, he cannot be a good military
historian. (9) Next let us observe his temper ; Does he
love exaggerations, does he give us accounts of a handful of
men defeating a multitude ; is one side always victorious and
always heroic, is the other always defeated, always cruel,
or blundering, or cowardly ? (10) Or is he an unbeliever in
all heroism, a man who brings every thing down to the level
of a common mediocrity; to whose notions, soldiers care for
nothing but pay or plunder, and war is an expensive folly,
with no fruit but an empty g>ory ? (11) Depend upon it that
he truth has not been found by writers of either of these two
LECTURE \in. 383
classes. And so in political history. Is the historian a
master of his science, can he separate the perpetual from the
temporary, the essential from the accidental ; in the strife of
parties, does he understand the game or describe the moves
at random? Party partialities, if they do not agree with our
own, we are apt enough to suspect, and even to exaggerate ;
but do we rightly know what partiality is ? Do we confound
a decided preference for one cause above another, with a
misrepresentation of the acts and characters of the men en-
gaged j and think that a writer cannot be impartial unless
he is really ignorant or indilferent ? It is partiality if our
love of the cause blind us to the faults of its supporters, or
our hatred of the cause make us unjust to the virtues of its
advocates. But it is not partiality to say that the support of
a bad cause is itself evil, the support of a good cause is itsoll
good. It is not partiality to say, that the self-same political
acts, as for example acts of sovereign power exercised be-
yond the ordinary law, are, according to the cause for which
they are done, either to be justified or condemned ; and the
actor is to be justified or condemned personally, according to
the cause for which he acted, and the purity of his own mo-
tives in acting, as shown by his subsequent conduct. Of
course this docs not in the least degree apply to actions
morally wrong, such as falsehood, or individual injustice, or
cruelty; for to make the end justify such, were to hold that
evil may be done that good may come. But in political
actions the moral character of the act depends mainly on the
object and motive of it j the written law may yield to the
higher unwritten law, but not to selfish tyranny or injustice
Undoubtedly in such cases the temptations to the actor and
to the historian are obvious; injustice in deed and in judg-
ment lie with both close at the door. Nevertheless if there
be such a thing as political truth, a good and an evil in the
internal contests of parties, it seems certain that what would
384 LECTURE VIII.
pretend to be impartiality is very often ignorance or indif-
ferentism, and tliat an historian may be called partial by the
vulgar, when he is in fact only seeing more clearly and
weighing more evenly the respective claims of truth and
falsehood, good and evil. (12)
Such an examination will enable us, I think, sometimes to
discover with certainty, and always to suspect with proba-
bility, where an historian's narrative is untrustworthy. And
where it seems to be so, there we should compare it with
some other narrative, written, if it may be, by an author of
opinions very unlike those of our first historian. If the sus-
pected defect relate to some particular matter of fact, then
to check it is of course easy ; if it consist in general mea-
gerness or poverty of information, another history by a
different writer will most probably make up its deficiencies ;
if it consist in a wrong and narrow judgment of the whole
state of things described, an opposite view may in part at
least correct this also. But it should be remembered that
for the mere outline of events, which is all that we need for
many portions of history, all historians are trustworthy ; the
difficulty does but relate to details, and occurs therefore but
rarely ; for, as I have said before, it is absolutely impossible
to study the mass of history in detail, we must be contented
to know the mere heads of it, and to reserve minute inquiries
into it for the time when we shall have some particular call
to study it.
After all, history presents to many minds an unsatisfactory
aspect, because it is a perpetual study of particulars, without
any certainly acknowledged law ; and though our know-
ledge of general laws may here, as well as in natural
science, be drawn from an induction of particular instances,
yet it is not in natural science required of every student to
go through this process for himself; the laws have been
found out for him by others, and to these his attention is
LECTURE VIII. 385
directed. Whereas in history, the laws of the science aro
kept out of sight, perhaps arc not known, and he is turned
adrift, as it were, on a wide sea, to navigate it as he best
can, and take his own soundings and make his own surveys.
Now allowing the great beauty and interest of history as a
series of particular pictures, not by any means barren in
matter for reflection, but in the highest degree rich and in-
structive ; transcending all the most curious details of natu-
ral history, in the ratio of man's superiority over the brute
creation ; yet I think that we must confess and deplore that
its scientific character has not been yet sufficiently made
out ; there hangs an uncertainty about its laws which to
most persons is very perplexing. Why is it for example
that we here, holding in common, as we certainly do, our
principles of religious and moral trutii, should yet regard
political questions so differently ? that the history of our own
great civil war, for instance, reads to diflercnt persons so
different a lesson, so that we cannot touch upon it without
being sui'e to encounter a strong opposition to whatever
opinions we may maintain respecting it? (13) It is very
true that some of this opposition may arise from simple ig-
norance, and then the study of the history may modify or
remove it ; but let a man read, if it be possible, every exist-
ing document relating to the facts of those times, and is it
quite certain that his conclusions will be precisely the same
with those of another man who may have gone through the
same process ? History, therefore, docs not seem to be suf-
ficient to the right understanding of itself; its laws, which,
as it seems, ought to be established from its facts, appear,
even with a full knowledge of the facts before us, to be yet
infinitely disputable.
I confess that if I believed them to be as really disputable
as they have been disputed, the pain of such a conviction
would be most grievous to bear. I am firmly persuaded, on
33
386 LECTURE VIII.
the contrary, that setting out with those views of man which
we find in the Scriptures, and with those plain moral notions
which the Scriptures do not so much teach as suppose to
exist in us, and sanction ; the laws of history, in other words,
the laws of political science, using " political" in the most
exalted sense of the term, as expressing the highest *oXjTixii
of the Greek philosophers, may be deduced, or, if you will,
may be confirmed from it with perfect certainty, with a cer-
tainty equal to that of the most undoubted truths of morals. (14)
And if in this or in any former lectures I have seemed to
express or to imply a very firm conviction on points which I
well know to be warmly disputed, it is because these laws
being to my own mind absolutely certain, the lessons of any
particular portion of history, supposing that the facts are
known to us, appear to be certain also ; and daily experience
can scarcely remove my wonder at finding they do not appeal
so to others.
That they do not appear so, however, is undoubtedly a
phenomenon to be accounted for. And hard as it is, almost
I think impossible, to doubt conclusions which seem both in
the way by which we arrived at them originally, and in their
consistency with one another, and in their offering a key to
all manner of difficulties, and in their never having met with
any objection which we could not readily answer, to com-
mand absolutely our mind's assent; still I allow, that if they
convinced no minds but ours, or if being generally disputed
or doubted, we could in no way account satisfactorily for the
fact of such a doubt respecting them, we should be driven to
the extremity of scepticism ; truth would appear indeed to
be a thing utterly unreal or utterly unattainable. Now on
tjie contrary, what appear to me to be the laws of history,
contain in them no single paradox ; there is no step in the
process by which we arrive at them which is not absolutely
confirmed by the sanction of the highest authorities ; and t^hc
LECTURE VIII. 387
doubt respecting them appears to arise partly because men
have not always viewed them in combination with one an-
other, in which state one modifies another, and removes or
lessens what might appear strange in eacli separately ; and
partly because in regarding any one period of liistory, oui
perception of the general law is obscured by circumstances
which interfere with its regular operation, and thus lead many
to doubt its existence.
But in speaking of the certainty of the laws of political
science I mean only that there are principles of government,
undoubtedly good in themselves, and tending to the happi-
ness of mankind ; and that whenever these principles appear
not to have produced good, it is owing to some disturbing
causes which may be clearly pointed out, or to the absence
of something which was their proper consequence, and the
omission of which in its season left them without their natural
fruit ; but that although the principles may thus be impeded
by untoward circumstances, or fail to bring forth their con-
sequences in any given case, as it is not every blossom which
is succeeded by its fruit, yet they are an essential condition
of the birth of fruit, and to oppose them, instead of furthering
and perfecting their work, and helping to make them fruitful,
is merely to uphold what is bad ; so that there is on one side,
it may be, an ineffectual, or even an abused good, on the
other hand there is a positive evil.
But one great question still remains ; if history has its
laws, as I entirely believe ; if theoretically considered it is
not a mere aggregation of particular actions or characteis,
like the anecdotes of natural history, but is besides this the
witness to general moral and political truths, and capable,
when rightly used, of bringing to our notice fresh truths
which we might not have gained by a priori reasoning only ;
still, it may be asked, is this theoretical knowledge available?
Can the truths which it teaches us to value be really carried
388 LECTURE VIII.
into effect practically, or are we rather cursed with that bitter
thing, a powerless knowledge, seeing an evil from which we
cannot escape, and a good to which we cannot attain ; (15)
being in fact embarked upon the rapids of fate, which hurry
us along to the top of the fall, and then dash us down below ;
while all the while, there are the banks on the right and left
close in sight, an assured and visible safety if we could but
reach it, but we try to steer and to pull our boat thither in
vain ; and with eyes open, and amidst unavailing struggles.
we are swept away to destruction ? This is the belief of
some of no mean name or ability ; who hold that the destiny
of the present and future was fixed irrevocably by the past,
and that the greatest efforts of individuals can do nothing
against it, nay, that they are rather disposed by an overruling
power to be apparently the instruments in bringing it to pass.
While others hold that great men can control fate itself, that
there is an energy in the human will which can as it were
restore life to the dead ; and snap asunder the links of the
chain of destiny, even when they have been multiplied around
us by the toil of centuries.
Now practically there is an end of this question altogether,
if the power of this supposed fate goes so far as to make us
its willing instruments ; I mean, if the influences of our time,
determined themselves by the influence of a past time, do in
their turn determine our characters ; if we admire, abhor,
hope, fear, desire, or flee from, the very objects and no others
which an irresistible law of our condition sets before us.
For to ask whether a slave who loves his chains can break
them, is but an idle question ; because it is certain that he
will not. And if we in like manner think according to a
fixed law, viewing things in our generation as beings born in
Buch a generation must view them, then it is evident that our
deliverance must proceed wholly from a higher power ; be-
fore the outward bondage can be broken, we must be set at
LECTURE VIII. 389
liberty within. The only question which can be of injport-
ance to us is this, whether, if our minds be free, our actions
can compass what we desire ; whether, perceiving the influ-
ence of our times, and struggling against it, we can resist il
with success ; whether the natural consequences of the mis-
doings of past generations can be averted now, or whctlx^r
such late repentance be unavailing.
And here surely the answer is such as we should most
desire to be the true one ; an answer cncouraginir exertion,
yet making the responsibility of every generation exceedingly
great, and forbidding us to think that in us or in our actions
is placed the turning power of the fortunes of the world. I
do not suppose that any state of things can be conceived so
bad as that the efforts of good men, working in the faith of
God, can do nothing to amend it ; yet on the other hand, the
evil may be far too deeply rooted to be altogether removed ;
nor would it be possible for the greatest individual efforts to
undo the effect of past errors or crimes, so that it should be
the same thing whether they had ever been committed or no.
It has been said. Conceive Frederick the Great in the place
of Louis the Sixteenth on the morning of the 10th of August,
1792, and would not the future history of the Revolution
have been altogether ditferent ? But the more reasonable
case to conceive would be rather, that Louis the Sixteenth
had been endowed, not on that one day of the 10th of August,
but from his early youth, with the virtue and firmness of
Louis the Ninth, together with the genius of Frederick or of
Napoleon. What would have been the difference in the his-
tory of France then ? That there would have been a great
difference I doubt not, yet were the evils such as no human
virtue and wisdom could have altogether undone. No livinjj
man could have removed that deep suspicion and abhorrence
entertained for the existing church and clergy which made
the people incredulous of all virtue in an individual priest
890 LECTURE VIII.
because they were so fully possessed with the impression ot
the falsehood and evil of the system. Nor, in like manner,
could any one have reconciled the peasants throughout
Finance to the landed proprietors ; the feeling of hatred was
become too strong to be appeased, because here too it was
mixed with intense suspicion, the result inevitably of suffering
and ignorance, and nothing but the overthrew of those against
whom it was directed, could have satisfied it. (16) Yet high
virtue and ability in the king would have in all probability
both softened the violence of the convulsion, and shortened
its duration ; and by saving himself from becoming its victim,
there would have been one at hand with acknowledged
authority and power to reconstruct the frame of society not
only sooner but better than it was reconstructed actually ;
and the monarchy at least, among the old institutions of
France, would have retained the love of the people, and
would have been one precious link to connect the present
with the past, instead of all links being severed together, and
old France being separated by an impassable gulf from the
new.
A greater accuracy as to the determining of this question,
does not seem to be attainable. We know that evil com-
mitted is in certain cases, and beyond a certain degree, irre-
mediable ; I do not say, not to be palliated or softened as to
its consequences, but not to be wholly removed. And we
know also that the blessing of individual goodness has been
felt in very evil times, not only by itself, but by others.
What, or what amount of evil is incurable, or how widely or
deeply individual good may become a blessing amidst pre-
vailing evil, we are not allowed to determine or to know.
God's national judgments are spoken of in Scripture both as
reversible and irreversible • for Ahab's repentance the threat,
ened evil was delayed, yet afterwards the cup of Judah's sin
was so full, that the reward of Josiah's goodness was his own
LECTURE VHI. 391
Dcing early taken away from the evil to come, not the rever-
sal nor even the postponement of the sentence against his
country. Surely it is enough to know that our sin now may
render unavailing the greatest goodness of our posterity ; our
eilbrts for good may be permitted to remove, or at any rate
to mitigate, the curse of our fathers' sin.
Here then the present introductory course of lectures shall
close. There is in all things a compensation whether of
good or evil ; and as the subject of modern history is of all
others to my mind the most interesting, inasmuch as it in-
cludes all questions of the deepest interest relating not to
human things only, but to divine, so the intermixture of evil
is, that for this very reason it is of all subjects the most deli-
cate to treat of before a mixed audience. Sharing thus much
in common with religious subjects, that no man feels himself
to be a mere learner in it, but also in many respects a judge of
what he hears, it has this farther difficulty, that the preacher
speaking to members of the same church with himself speaks
necessarily to men wliosc religious opinions in the main agree
with his own ; but he who speaks on modern history, even to
members of the same nation and commonwealth, sjjcaks to
those whose political opinions may diller from his own very
deeply, who therefore are sure not only to judge what they
hear, but to condemn it. And however nmcli, when provoked
by opposition, we may even feel pleasure in stating our opin-
ions in their broadest form, yet he must be of a dilFerent consti-
tution of mind from mine, who can like to do this unprovoked,
who can wish, in the discharge of a public duty in our own
common University, to embitter our academical studies with
controversy, to excite angry feelings in a place where he has
never met with any thing but kindness, a place connected in
his mind with recollections, associations, and actual feelings,
the most prized and most delightful. Only, it must be re-
membered, that if modern history be studied at all, he wiio
392 LECTirRE VIII.
speaks upon it officially, must speak as he would do on an)
other matter, simply and fully ; expounding it according te
his ability and convictions ; not disguising or suppressing
what he believes to be necessary to the right understanding
of it, although it may sometimes cost him a painful effort.
But in the lectures which I would propose to deliver next
year, our business will be less embarrassing. We shall then
be engaged with a remote period, where the forms of our
present parties were unknown ; and our object will be to
endeavour to represent to ourselves the England of the
fourteenth century. To represent it, if we can, even in its
outward aspect ; for I cannot think that the changes in the
face of the country are beneath the notice of history : what
supplied the place of the landscape which is now so familiai
to us ; what it was before five hundred years of what I may
call the wear and tear of human dominion ; when cultivation
had scarcely ventured beyond the valleys, or the low sunny
slopes of the neighbouring hills ; and whole tracts now
swarming with inhabitants, were a wide solitude of forest or
of moor. To represent it also in its institutions, and its
state of society ; and farther, in its individual men and in
their actions ; for I would never wish the results of history
to be separated from history itself: the great events of past
times require to be represented no less than institutions, or
manners, or buildings, or scenery : we must listen to the stir
of gathering war; we must follow our two Edwards, the
second and third, on their enterprises visited with such dif-
ferent fortune ; we must be present at the route and flight of
Bannockburn, and at the triumph of Crecy. (17) Finally,
we must remember also not so to transport ourselves into the
fourteenth century as to forget that we belong really to the
nineteenth ; that here, and not there, lie our duties ; that the
harvest gathered in the fields of the past, is to be brought
home for the use of the present ; avoiding the fault of that
LECTURE VIII. 393
admirable painter of tlie niidJle ages, M. de Barantc, wlio,
having shown himself most capable of analyzing history
philosophically, and having described the literature of France
in the eighteenth century in a work not to be surpassed for
its mingled beauty and profoundness, (18) has yet chosen in
his history of the Dukes of Burgundy, to forfeit the benefits
of his own wisdom, and has described the fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries no otherwise than might have been done by
their own simple chroniclers. An example, one amongst a
thousand, how men in their dread of one extreme, the ex-
treme in this case of writing mere discussions upon history
instead of history itself, are apt to fall into another not less
distant from the true mean.
The experience of this year has given me the most en-
couraging assurance that the subject of modern history is
felt to be full of interest. Those who study it for themselves,
will certainly find its interest grow upon them ; it will not
then be perilled, to apply an expression of Thucydides,*
upon the capacity of a lecturer, according as he may lecture
with more or less of ability and knowledge, (19) For we
here are not likely to run away with the foolish notion, that
lectures can teach us a science without careful study of our
own. They can but excite us to begin to work for ourselves;
nossibly they may assist our efTorts ; they can in no way
supersede them.
• n. 86.
NOTES
TO
LECTURE VIII.
Note 1.— Pajre 372.
In the History of Rome, Dr. Arnold writes as follows, on the
Jifference between the poetical legends and the wilful falsehoods
Df the Roman family memoirs :
* * " But before we finally quit the poetical legends of the early
Roman history, the last of them and not the least beautiful, that
which relates to the fall of Veii, must find its place in this narra-
tive. In the life of Camillus there meet two distinct kinds of fic-
tion, equally remote from historical truth, but in all other respects
most opposite to one another, the one imaginative but honest,
playing it is true with the facts of history, and converting them
into a whole different form, but addressing itself also to a different
part of the mind ; not professing to impart exact knowledge, but to
delight, to quicken, and to raise the perception of what is beautiful
and noble : the other, tame and fraudulent, deliberately corrupting
truth in order to minister to national or individual vanity, pretend-
ing to describe actual events, but substituting in the place of reality
the representations of interested or servile falsehood. To the
former of these classes belongs the legend of the fall of Veii ; to the
latter the interpolation of the pretended victory of Camillus over
the Gauls. The stories of ihe former kind, as innocent as they are
delightful, I have thought it an irreverence to neglect : the fabii-
cations of the latter sort, which are the peculiar disgrace of Roman
history, it is best to pass over in total silence, that they may if pos-
sible be consigned to perpetual oblivion "
Vol. i. ch. xviii. p. 395.
A train of thought somewhat similar to that which occurs in the
first part of the text of this Lecture, and which had elsewhere been
NOTES TO LECTURE VIII. 395
a subject of reflection to Dr. Arnold iti his study of the legends of
Uoinan ]fistory, will be found in the following passages from the
'Lives of the English Saints :'
* * When " so much has been said and believed of a number of
Saints with so little historical foundation. It is not that we may
lawfully despise or refuse a great gift and benefit, historical testimony,
and the intellectual exercises which attend on it, study, researcli,
»nd criticism ; for in the hands of serious and believing men they
are jt the highest value. We do not refuse Uiem, but in the cases
in question, we have them not. The bulk of Christians have then*
not ; the multitude has them not ; the multitude forms its view of
the past, not from antiquities, not critically, not in the letter ; but it
develops its small portion of true knowledge into something which
is like the very truth though it be not it, and which stands Tor ihe
truth when it is but like it. Its evidence is a legend ; its facts are
a symbol ; its history a representation ; its drift is a moral.
" Thus then is it with the biographies and reminiscences of llie
Saints. ' Some there are which have no memorial, and are as
though they had never been ;' others are known to have lived and
died, and are known in little else. They have left a name but they
have left nothing besides. Or the place of their birth, or of their
ibode, or of their death, or some one or other striking incident of
their life, gives a character to their memory. Or they are known by
martyrologies or services, or by the traditions of a neighbourhood,
or by the title or the decorations of a Church. Or they are known
by certain miraculous interpositions which are attributed to them.
Or their deeds and sufferings belong to countries far away, and the
report of them comes musical and low over the broad sea. Such
are some of the small elements which, when more is not known,
faith is fain to receive, love dwells on, meditation unfolds, disposes,
and forms ; till by the sympathy of many minds, and the concert
of many voices, and the lapse of many years, a certain whole figure
is developed with words and actions, a history and a character —
•'liich is indeed but the portrait of the original, yet is, as much as a
portrait, an imitation rather than a copy, a likeness on the whole,
but in its particulars more or less the work of imagination. It is
but collateral and parallel to the truth ; it is the truth under assumed
conditions ; it brings out a true idea, vet by inaccurate or defective
396 NOTES
means of exhibition, it savours of the age, yet rt is the offspring
from what is spiritual and everlasting. It is the picture of a saint,
who did other miracles if not these ; who went through sufferings,
who wrought righteousness, who died in faith and peace — of this
we are sure ; we are not sure, should it so happen, of the when,
the where, ihe how, the why, and the whence, * * *
* * " The author of a marvellous Life may be proved to a de-
monstration to be an ignorant, Credulous monk, or a literary or
ecclesiastical gossip ; to be preaching to us his dreams, or to have
saturated himself with popular absurdities ; he may be cross-exam-
ined, and made to contradict himself; or his own story, as it stands,
may be self-destructive ; and yet he may ^e the index of a hidden
fact, and may symbolize a history to which he does not testify.
* * " The Lives of the Saints are not so much strict biographies
as myths, edifying stories compiled from tradition, and designed
not so much to relate facts, as to produce a religious impression on
the mind of the hearer. Under the most favourable circumstances,
it is scarcely conceivable that uninspired men could write a faithful
history of a miraculous life. Even ordinary history, except mere
annals, is all more or less fictitious ; that is, the facts are related,
not as they really happened, but as they appeared to the writer ; as
they happened to illustrate his views or support his prejudices.
And if this is so of common facts, how much more so must it be
when all the power of the marvellous is thrown in to stimulate the
imagination. But to see fully the difficulties under which the
writers of these Lives must have laboured, let us observe a few of
the ways in which we all, and time for us, treat the common his-
tory and incidents of life.
'' First ; we all write legends. Little as we may be conscious
of it, we all of us continually act on the very same principle,
which made the Lives of Saints such as we find them ; only per-
haps less poetically.
" Who has not observed in himself, in his ordinary dealings with
ihe facts of every day life, with the sayings and doings of his ac-
quaintance, in short, with every thing which comes before him as a
fact, a disposition to forget the real order in which they appear,
and re-arrange them according to his theory of how they ought to
bo ' Do we hear of a generous self-denying action, in a short time
TO LECTURE VIII. 397
the r«al doer and it are forgotten ; it has become the property of
tlie noblest person we know : so a jest we relate of the wittiest
person, frivolity of the most frivolous, and so on ; each particular
act we attribute to the person we conceive most likely to have been
the author of it. And this does not arise from any wish to leave a
false impression, scarcely from carelessness ; but only because facts
refuse to remain bare and isolated in our memory ; they will
arrange themselves under some law or other ; they must illus-
trate something to us — some character, some principle — or else
we forget them. Facts are thus perpetually, so to say, becoming
unfixed and re-arranged in a more conceptional order. In this
way, we find fragments of Jewish history in the legends of Greece,
stories from Herodotus become naturalized in the tradition of early
Rome ; and the mythic exploits of the northern heroes, adopted by
the biographers of our Saxon kings. So, uncertain traditions of
miracles with vague descriptions of name and place, are handed
down from generation to generation, and each set of people, as they
pass into their minds, naturally group them round the great central
figure of their admiration or veneration, be he hero or be he saint.
And so with the great objects of national interest. Alfred — ' Eng-
land's darling' — the noblest of the Saxon kings, became mythic
almost before his death ; and forthwith, every institution that Eng-
lishmen most value, of law or church, became appropriated to him.
lie divided England into shires ; he established trial by jury ; he
destroyed wolves and made the country so secure, that golden
bracelets hung untouched in the open road. And when Oxford was
founded, a century was added to its age ; and it was discovered
that Alfred had laid the first stone of the first college, and that St.
Neot had been the first Professor of Theology."
Lives of the En/ilish Saints, No. IV., 'Hermit Saints,' pp. 3, 6-2, and 'i
Note 2.— Page 372.
The story is told, I believe, of the Abbe Vertot. Souihey, ii.
one of his Essays, tells it of a " French historian," without giving
a name. It may be that Yertot gets the credit of it from the olhei
story told of him — that when ofi'ercd some additional and unpub-
lished materials for his History of the Siege of Rhodes, he replied,
'' Mon si^ge est fait."
398 NOTES
Note 3.— Page 373.
» * " Time in another way pla)'s strange tricks with facts, anc
is ever altering, shifting, and even changing their nature in oiu
memory. Every man's past life is becoming mythic to him ; we
cannot call up again the feelings of our childhood, only we know
that what then seemed to us the bitterest misfortunes, we have
since learnt by change of character or circumstance, to think very
great blessings ; and even when there is no change, and were they
to recur again, they are such as we should equally repine at, yet by
mere lapse of time sorrow is turned to pleasure, and the shupest
pang at present becomes the most alluring object of our retrospect.
The sick-bed, the school trial, loss of friends, pain and grief of
every kind, become rounded off, and assume a soft and beautiful
grace. ' Time dissipates to shining aether the hard angularity of
facts ;' the harshest of them are smoothed and chastened off in the
past like the rough mountains and jagged rocks in the distant hori-
zon. And so it is with every other event of our lives; read a let-
ter we wrote ten years ago, and how impossible we find it to recog-
nise the writer in our altered selves. Incident after incident rises
up and bides its day, and then sinks back into the landscape. It
changes by distance, and we change by age. While it was present
it meant one thing, now it means another, and to-morrow perhaps
something else on the point of vision alters. Even old Nature,
endlessly and patiently reproducing the same forms, the same beau-
ties, cannot reproduce in us the same emotions we remember in our
childhood. Then all was Fairy-land : now time and custom have
deadened our sense, and
The things which wc have seen, we now can see no more.
This is the true reason why men people past ages with the superhu-
man and the marvellous. They feel their own past was indeed some-
thing miraculous, and they cannot adequately represent their feel-
ings except by borrowing from ar other order of beings.
" Thus age after age springs up, and each succeeds to the inher-
itance of all that went before it ; but each age has its own fetjlings,
its own character, its own necessities ; therefore, receiving the ao
cumulations of literature and history, it absorbs, and fuses, and re-
TO LECTURE VIII, 399
iiiodels them to meet the altered circumstances. The histories of
Greece and Rome are not yet exhausted ; every new historian finds
something more in them. Alcibiades and Catiline are not to us
\vhat they were to Thucydidcs and Sallust, even though we use
their eyes to look at them. So it has been with facts, and so it al-
ways shall be. It holds with the lives of individuals ; it holds wilh
histories, even where there is contemporary writing, and much
more than either, where, as with many of the Lives of the Saints,
we can only see them as they appeared through the haze of several
generations, with no other light but oral tradition."
Lives of the Euglish Saints, No. IV.. ' Hermit Saints,' p. 78.
Note 1. — Page 376.
The want of trustworthiness in the two great military auto-his'
torians of ancient and modern times, Ca;sar and Napoleon, has been
strongly commented on in the '■Histoire de VArt MUitaire,'' by Car-
rion-Nisas, an officer who served with considerable distinction in
the French cavalry in the Peninsular war, and whose work, I am
informed, is esteemed for its professional value. lie places the
fairness of Turenne's military memoirs in fine contrast with those
of both Caesar and Napoleon :
" On admire surtout dans les Memoircs de Turenne la candeur
de ses aveux ; c'est surtout en ce point qu'il diflere de Cesar ; et il
est effectivement curieux de voir avec quel detail Turenne semble
se plaire i faire remarquer toutes ses fautes et les positions dange-
reuses ou elles le jeterent. Dans le recit de Taffaire malheureuse
de Mariendhal, tantot il s'accuse de trop defacilite k permettre une
mesure qui rendoitles cantonnemens de la cavalerie plus commodes,
mais plus hasardeux ; tantdt il denonce sa propre resolution prise
nalapropos ; il ne dissimule pas que toute son infanterie eloit per-
due ; il se peint comme rcduit, par sa faute, k fuir presque seul, et
sur le point d'etre pris. Au milieu de ce desordre naivement ra-
conle, il excuse M. de Rosen d'avoir engage Taflaire, et ne manqua
pas de dire que ce general, qui fut fait prisonnier, avoit tr^s-bien
fait son devoir ; enfin, il se charge seul de tout le blfime d'une
affaire desastreuse." To this the author adds, in a note, — "' Quelle
difference de cetto franchise, de cette naivete de Turenne, de cej
amour de la verite sans homes et sans reticence, avec la subtile ar-
400 NOTES
gumentation, I'egoisme opiniatre, les tours de force de Napoleon,
pour persuader au monde ce qui n'a jamais ete vrai d'aucun mortel,
en aucun temps ; savoir, qu'il n'a jamais commis une faute dans co
qu'il a fait, une erreur dans ce qu'il a dit ! On trouve bien quelque
chose de cette intention de Napoleon dans les Commentaires de
Cesar, mais avec bien plus d'art, de gout et de sobriete."
Tome II, p. 101-2
Again, in the same volume, p. 645, with reference to the St. He-
lena Memoirs, the author remarks : " Napoleon denature tellement
les fails, qu'il faut attribuer sa maniere de les presenter ou a une
presomption extreme, et qui est la folic meme dont il etoit affecte,
ou k un pur mensonge qui seroit trop au-dessous de Napoleon."
An earlier writer on military science, Puysegur, in his ^Art de la
Guerre,^ (a work in which there is much solicitude to refute the er-
ror noticed by Arnold, that the lessons of ancient warfare are use-
less to the modern soldier,) draws the same contrast between Caesar
and Turenne ; and it is remarked in the treatise quoted above. " II
n'est pas etonnant que Puysegur, si bien fait pour apprecier la ve-
racite et la candeur de Turenne, ait ete un peu repousse par les ar-
tifices continuels de Cesar, que sous leur voile de simplicite Puy-
segur apercevoit tres bien." I. 604. And in the Appendix
(ii. 615) he dwells upon this admirable integrity and candour of
Lewis the Fourteenth's great Marshal : " On ne sauroit trop revenir
sur ce trait singulier de son caractere. Turenne disoit de Rithel
et de Mariendhal, ' J'y fus battu par ma faute,' et entrant sans re-
pugnance dans ses details, ' Si je voulais,' ecrit il, ' me faire justice
un peu severement, je dirois que I'afFaire de Mariendhal est arrivee
pour m'etre laisse aller mal-a-propos a I'importunite des Allemands,
qui demandoient des quartiers ; et que celle de Rithel est venue
pour m'6tre trop fie k la lettre du gouverneur, qui promettoit de tenir
quatre jours la veille meme qu'il se rendit. Je fus, dans ces occa •
sions, trop credule et trop facile ; mais quand un homme rCa pas
fait de f antes a la guerre, il ne I'a pas faite long-temps.' Aiusi
cette admirable franchise etoit encore de la profondeur d'obscrva-
tion."
The best reputation which has since been gained by a soldier and
aistorian, for that historic truthfulness and candour in the narrative
TO LECTURE VIII. 401
of his own campaigns, which appears to have distinguished Turonue,
IS that which has been secured by the Archduke Charles. Mr. Ali-
son, speaking of the history of the German campaigns, remarks :
" MiUtary history has few more remarkable works of which to boast.
Luminous, sagacious, disinterested, severe in judging of himself, in-
dulgent in criticising the conduct of others ; liberal of praise to all
but his own great achievements, profoundly skilled in the military
art, and gifted with no common powers of narrative and description,
his work is a model of candid and able military disquisition. Less
vehement and forcible than Napoleon, he is more circumspect and
consistent ; with far inferior genius, he is distinguished by infinitely
greater candour, generosity, and trustworthiness. On a fact stated
by the Archduke, whether favourable or adverse to his reputation,
or a criticism made by him on others, the most perfect reliance may
be placed." '■Hist, of Europe,^ ch. 29, note. Of the high merit
of the military authorship of the Archduke still more substantial
proof is found in the impartial respect rendered to his works by such
eminent professional French authority as Jomini and Dumas ; the
former having considered it an honourable task to translate and an-
notate them, and the latter recognising their standard authority. —
Appendix to the 5th vol. of the ' Precis des Evcncmcns Mili-
taires.^
As one of the class of military histories, referred to in this note,
the Duke of Berwick's Memoirs (' Mcmoircs de Berwick') may
also be mentioned as an accurate and trusty record of his own
campaigns. I state this character of the work, not from my own
knowledge, but because it is so spoken of by Lord Mahon in his
' History of the War of the Succession in Spain.' He frequently
cites the Memoirs among his authorities, and refers to them (chap,
iii.) as ' written with great frankness and simplicity, and aftbrding
some of the best materials for the War of the Succession.'
Note 5. — Page 377.
In the sketch of the state of Greece in early times, with which
Thucydides introduces his history, he laments the uncertainty that
is produced by the facility with which men receive traditional hear-
say without putting the truth of it to the test — i'liatayiarwi. Aftni
402 NOTES
siting several examples of historical errors, he deplores that there
should be so great and so general indolence — carelessness in the
search after truth, such reluctance to have any trouble about it,
and the readiness with which men betake themselves, with lazy
credulity and want of earnestness, to whatever chances to be ready
for them oCr&jj aToKai-Kwpos Toii ■KoWo'ii f) ^^r?7o-i{ r;"js aXnOeias, Kat Ittl rd
tTolyia jjaXXov TpenovTai,
Note 6.— Page 381.
This sentence appears to me so completely to describe the style of
Mr. Macauley, that his brilliant review-essays may be said to ex-
emplify Dr. Arnold's reflection. It is the predominance of such a
style that has exposed him to this criticism by a fellow-reviewer — •
" Mr. Macauley, pointed and brilliant, but sacrificing every thing
to the object of immediate display, insomuch that one would hardly
gather from his writings that he believed truth to have existence "
Brit. Critic : Article on Mill's Logic.
Note 7.— Page 381.
Coleridge has insisted upon "the importance of accuracy of stylo
as being near akin to veracity and truthful habits of mind." ' Lit.
Remains'', i. 241. And of the author of these Lectures it has been
well said, " Arnold's style is worthy of his manly understanding, and
the noble simplicity of his character." ' Guesses at Truth,'' p. 289.
Note 8.— Page 382.
* * " What his (Arnold's) general admiration for Niebuhr wag
IS a practical motive in the earlier part of his work, that his deep
aversion to Gibbon, as a man, was in the latter part. ' My highest
ambition,' he said, as early as 1826, 'and what I hope to do as far
as 1 can, is to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this
respect, — that whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low
morality, is hostile to religion, without speaking directly against il ;
so my greatest desire would be, in my History, by its high morala
and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually
bringing it forwaid,'"
' Life and Correspondence,^ chap. iv.
TO LECTURE VIII. 403
Note 9.— Page r82.
"Nothing shows more clearly the great rarity of geographical
talent, than the praise which has been commonly bestowed on Poly-
oiu3 as a good geographer. He seems indeed to have been aware
of the importance of geography to history, and to have taken
considerable pains to gain information on the subject : but this
very circumstance proves the more the difficulty of tlie task ; for
his descriptions are so vague and imperfect, and so totally devoid
of painting, that it is scarcely possible to understand them. For
instance, in his account of the march cf the Gauls into Italy, and
of the subsequent movements of their army and of the Romans,
there is an obscurity which never could have existed, had he con-
ceived in his own mind a lively image of the seat of war as a whole,
of the connection of the rivers and chains of mountains with each
other, and of the consequent direction of the roads and most fre-
quented passes. * * *
" The question in what direction this famous march (Hannibal's
passage across the Alps) was taken, has been agitated for more
than 1800 years, and who can undertake to decide it] The difR-
culty to modern inquirers has been chiefly from the total absence
of geographical talent in Polybius. That this historian indeed should
ever have gained the reputation of a good geographer, only proves
how few there are who have any notion what a geographical in-
stinct is. Polybius indeed laboured with praiseworthy diligence to
become a geographer ; but he laboured against nature ; and the un-
poetical character of his mind has in his writings actually lessened
the accuracy, as it has totally destroyed the beauty of history. To
any man who comprehended the whole character of a mountain
country, and the nature of its passes, nothing could have been easier
than to have conveyed at once a clear idea of Hannibal's route, by
naming the valley by which he had ascended to the main chain, and
afterwards that which he followed in descending from it. Or ad-
mitting that the names of barbarian rivers would have conveyed
Httle information to Greek readers, still the several Alpine valleys
have each their peculiar character, and an observer with the least
power of description could have given such lively touches of the
varying scenery of the march, that future travellers must at onco
404 NOTES
have recognised his description. Whereas the account of Polybius
is at once so unscientific and so deficient in truth and liveliness of
painting, that persons who have gone over the several Alpine passes
for the very purpose of identifying his descriptions, can still rea-
sonably doubt whether they were meant to apply to Mont Genevre,
or Mont Cenis, or to tie Little St. Bernard."
History of Rome, vol. iii , notes F and L.
* * * " How bad a geographer is Polybius, and how strange that
he should be thought a good one ! Compare him with any man who
is really a geographer, with Herodotus, with Napoleon, — whose
sketches of Italy, Egypt, and Syria, in his memoirs, are to me un-
rivalled, — or with Niebuhr, and how striking is the difference. The
dullness of Polybius's fancy made it impossible for him to conceive
or paint scenery clearly, and how can a man be a geographer with-
out lively images of the formation and features of the country which
he describes ■? How different are the several Alpine valleys, and
how would a few simple touches of the scenery which he seems
actually to have visited, yet could neither understand nor feel it,
have decided for ever the question of the route ! (Hannibal's.) Now
the account suits no valley well, and therefore it may be applied to
many." * * *
' Life and Correspondence,' letter ex., Septem. 21, 1835
Note 10.— Page 382.
" Nothing shows more forcibly the unrivalled truth of the narra
tive of Thucydides than to contrast it, as we have here an oppor-
tunity of doing, with that of an ordinary historian such as Diodorus
Siculus. For instance, Thucydides, well aware of the studied
secrecy observed in such matters by the Lacedaemonian government,
does not pretend to state the number of the Spartan land forces
employed at the siege of Pylus. Diodorus, however, states it with-
out hesitation, at ' twelve thousand.' The soldiers sent over to
Sphacteria were, according to Thucydides, drafted by lot from the
several Lochi ; Diodorus, to enhance the glory of the Athenians,
represents them as 'picked men, chosen for their valour.' The
siege of Pylus, Thucydides tells us, lasted during one whole day
TO LECTURE VIII. 405
and part of the next : Diodorus carries it on through ' several days.'
Lastly, the heroic courage of Brasidas, and liis bold though unsuc-
cessful attempt to force a landing, are told hy Thucydides with
equal force and simplicity ; while Diodorus, in his clumsy endea-
vours to exalt the effect of the story, makes it only ridiculous : for
he describes Brasidas as repelling a host of enemies, and killing
many of the Athenians in single combat, before he was disabled.
No wonder that we hear complaints of the uncertainty Ci' history,
when such a writer as Diodorus is only a fair specimen of by far
the majority of those whom the world has been good-natured enough
to call historians."
Arnold's 'Thucydides,'' vo.. ii. p. 15. Note-
* * " This simple statement, when contrasted with the exaggera-
tion of Cornelius Nepos, serves admirably to show the difference be-
tween a sensible man who loved truth, and the careless folly of that
most worthless class of writers, the second and third-rate historians
of Greece and Rome. Thucydides says that ' Themistocles learnt
as much of the Persian language as he could ;' Cornelius Nepos
tells us, that he became so perfectly master of it, ' ut multo com-
modius dicatur apud regem verba fecisse, quam hi poterant qui in
Pcrside erant nati.' "
lb. vol. i. p. 105. Note.
•' The whole of this chapter (on the Battle in the Harbour of
Syracuse and defeat of the Athenians) has been copied by Dion
Cassius nearly word for word, and applied to his own account of
the naval victory gained by M. Agrippa, over the fleet of Sex.
Pompeius in Sicily, in the year of Rome 718. It was a strango
taste to embellish a history with borrowed descriptions, which of
course could only suit in their general outline the actions to which
,hey were thus transferred. But this indifference to fidelity of de-
tail, and this habit of dressing up an historical picture, as some
artists dress up their sketches from nature, has produced effects of
no light importance in corrupting first history itself, and then tho
taste of readers of history."
lb. vol. iii. p. 23.'). Nolo
406 NOTES
Note 11.— Page 382.
* * "I hold the lines, 'Nil admirari, &c.,' to be as utterly false
as any moral sentiment ever uttered. Intense admiration is neces-
sary to our highest perfection, &c."
^ Life and Correspondence,^ Letter Ixvii. July 15, 1833.
" * * "I believe that ' Nil admirari,' in 'Jiis sense, is the Devil's
favourite text ; and he could not choose a better to introduce his
pupils into the more esoteric parts of his doctrine. And therefore
I have always looked upon a man infected with this disorder of
anti-romance, as on one who has lost the finest part of his nature,
and his best protection against every thing low and foolish." * *
lb. Letter c. March 30, 1835
Note 12.— Page 384,
" It might seem ludicrous to speak of impartiality in writing the
history of remote times, did not those times really bear a nearer
resemblance to our own than many imagine ; or did not Mitford's
example sufficiently prove that the spirit of modern party may affect
our view of ancient history. But many persons do not clearly see
what should be the true impartiality of an historian. If there be
no truths in moral and political science, little good can be derived
from the study of either ; if there be truths, it must be desirable
that they should be discovered and embraced. Scepticism must ever
be a misfortune or a defect : a misfortune, if there be no means of
arriving at truth ; a defect, if while there exist such means we are
unable or unwilling to use them. Believing that political scienct
has its truths no less than moral, I cannot regard them with indif-
ference, I cannot but wish them to be seen and embraced by others.
" On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that these truths
have been much disputed ; that they have not, like moral truths.,
received that universal assent of good men which makes us shrink
&om submitting them to question. And again, in human affairs,
tke contest has never been betn-een pure truth and pure error.
Neither then may we assume political conclusions as absolutely
certain ; nor are political truths ever wholly identical with the pro
fessions or practice of any party or individual. If for the sake ot
TO LECTURE VIII 40"?
recommending any principle, we disguise the errors or the crimes
with which it has been in practice accompanied, and which in the
weakness of human nature may perhaps be naturally connected
with our reception of it, then we are guilty of most blameable par-
tiulitv. And so it is no less, if for the sake of decrying an erro-
neous principle, we depreciate the wisdom, and the good and noble
feelings with which error also is frequently, and in some instances
naturally joined. This were to make our sense of political truth
to overpower our sense of moral truth ; a double error, inasmuch
as it is at once the less certain ; and to those who enjoy a Chris-
tian's hope, by far the less worthy.
" While then I cannot think that political science contains no
truths, or that it is a matter of indifference whether they are be-
lieved or no, I have endeavoured also to remember, that be they
ever so certain, there are other truths no less sure ; and that one
truth must never be sacrificed to another. I have tried to be strict-
ly impartial in my judgment of men and parties, without being in-
dilTcrent to those principles which were involved more or less purely
in their defeat or triumph. I have desired neither to be so possessed
with the mixed character of all things human, as to doubt the exist-
ence of abstract truth ; nor so to dote on any abstract truth, as to
tiiink that its presence in the human mind is incompatible with any
evil, its absence incompatible with any good."
History of Rome, Prrfare, vol. i. p. x.
" * * History, a science, whose real difliculties, uncertainties,
and perplexities are every day more clearly seen, and of which we
predict that it will be one triumph achieved by the present genera-
tion, that its real nature will be more fully understood. It is getting
more and more to be perceived, that the historian requires not merely
a profound, accurate, and most miscellaneous knowledge of facts; not
merely a great measure of what is commonly called ' knowledge of
the world,' by which is meant an ever-energizing insight into the mo-
tives of action, the sentiments, the iuibits, the tendencies of the crowd
of ordinary men, (though this is indeed indispensable ;) if he is to be
really such, he needs much more than this ; he needs even more
absolutely a deep and penetrating knowledge of the innermost re-
cesses of the human heart. The real movers of great events are
408 NOTES
ordinarily great men ; he must have then a glowing appreciation
and hearty sympathy for greatness ; he must be able to recognise,
understand, and assign to its due place in the scene of life the ec-
centricities of genius, the waywardness of keen sensibility. Then
the subtle influence of mind upon mind, the process whereby national
character is formed, or again whereby each several age is distin-
guished by that assemblage of notions and instincts peculiar to it-
self, which by so universal and felicitous a figure is called its
atmosphere ; this is closely connected with the deepest metaphy-
sical problems, and yet meets the historian at every step, as one
of the very principal facts which claim his recognition, comprehen-
sion, and explanation. But in ecclesiastical history, the powers of
mind he requires are even rarer, by how much he has to do with a
more unfathomable element, and with phenomena less open to the
ordinary view. Who shall analyze the secret communings of the
holy and mortified soul with its God 1 Yet of this kind are the ma-
terials which have even the principal share in those events, whicli
are the objects of his science."
'British Critic,'' vol. xxxiii. p. 217. Jan. 1843.
Note 13.— Page 385.
Yet of that period of history Coleridge was able to take a more
catholic view, when he said, " I know of no portion of history which
a man might write with so much pleasure as that of the great
struggle in the time of Charles 1., because he may feel the pro-
foundest respect for both parties. The side taken by any particular
person was determined by the point of view which such person
happened to command at the commencement of the inevitable col-
lision, one line seeming straight to this man, another line to another.
No man of that age saw the truth, the whole truth ; there was not
light enough for that. The consequence, of course, was a violent
exaggeration of each party for the time." ' Table Talk,'' ii. 171.
May, 1833.
Note 11.— Page 3b6.
ft is remarked by Aristotle (' (Econ.'' ch. 1) that some arts are
TO LECTURE VII [. 409
wholly distinct, with reference to construction and use, such as the
<naking a musical instrument and the performing on it ; but that politics
comprehends both the framing a constitution, and the administration
of it Ttii if noXiTiKrji tart, Kai ttoXiv ff apxns avarriaaaOai, xal birafixovoi XP^'
ancOat /caXuiy. And again, QPolit.'' iii. 9,) that political society is
not mere living together, but communion for happiness and virtue
— TO ^^v tnJai/idiuf Kai fcuAws" rail' KaXdv apa rpd^cwv X'^'P"' Ocriov tXvai Trjp
tcXiTtKifv Kotvojiiav, dW ov tov cv^rjv.
See also note to ' Appendix to Inaugural Lecture,' p. 90
Note 15.— Page 388.
Dr. Arnold here gives the substance of ihat 'saying of the Per-
sian fatalist — ixOi<fTri ii 6i6i>ri iarl tZv Iv dvOpiinotat aCri;, iroXXu (ppoveofTo /ii/-
^siis Kftariciv — which was so often in his mouth, and which expressed
a solicitude so habitual and characteristic, that his biographer re-
marks that it " might stand as the motto of his whole mind," (ch. ix.)
It is found in Herodotus, ('Calliope'' 16,) who relates that when
Mardonius was encamped in Boeotia, before the battle of Plata;a, he
xnd fifty of his officers were invited to meet the same number of
riiebans at a banquet, at which they reclined in pairs, a Persian
ind a Theban upon each couch. During the entertainment one of
the Persians with many tears predicted to his Theban companion
the speedy and utter destruction of the invading army ; and, when
asked why he used no influence with Mardonius to avert it, he
answered — " That which God hath determined, it is impossible for
man to turn aside ; for when one would give faithful counsel, nobody
is willing to believe him. Although many of us Persians are aware
of the end we are coining to, we still go on, because we are bound
to our destiny ; and this is the very bitterest of a man's griefs, to
seo clearly but to have no power to do any thing at all."
Note 1G.— Page 390.
* * " It has been well said that long periods of general suffering
make far less impression on our minds, than the short sharp strug-
gle in which a few distinguished individuals perish ; not that wo
over-estimate the horror and the guilt of times of open bloodshed-
410 NOTES
ding, but we are much too patient of the greater misery and greatei
sin of periods of quiet legalized oppression ; of that most deadly of
all evils, when law, and even religion herself, are false to their di-
vine origin and purpose, and their voice is no longer the voice of
God, but of his enemy. In such cases the evil derives advantage,
in a manner, from the very amount of its own enormity. No pen
can record, no volume can contain the details of the daily and
hourly sufferings of a whole people, endured without intermission,
through the whole life of man, from the cradle to the grave. The
mind itself can scarcely comprehend the wide range of the mis-
chief : how constant poverty and insult, long endured as the natural
portion of a degraded caste, bear with them to the sufferers some-
thing yet worse than pain, whether of the body or the feelings ; how
they dull the understanding and poison the morals ; how ignorance
and ill-treatment combined are the parents of universal suspicion •
how from oppression is produced habitual cowardice, breaking out
when occasion offers into merciless cruelty ; how slaves become
naturally liars ; how they, whose condition denies them all noble
enjoyments, and to whom looking forward is only despair, plunge
themselves, with a brute's recklessness, into the lowest sensual
pleasures ; how the domestic circle itself, the last sanctuary of hu-
man virtue, becomes at length corrupted, and in the place of natural
affection and parental care, there is to be seen only selfishness and
unkindness, and no other anxiety on the part of the parents for their
children, than that they may, by fraud or by violence, prey in their
turn upon that society which they have found their bitterest enemy.
Evils like these, long working in the heart of a nation, render their
own cure impossible : a revolution may execute judgment on one
generation, and that perhaps the very one whi ?h was beginning to
see and to repent of its inherited sins ; but it cannot restore life to the
morally dead ; and its ill success, as if in this line of evils no curse
bhould be wanting, is pleaded by other oppressors as a defence of
ihfcir own iniquity, and a reason for perpetuating it for ever."
History of Rome, vol. ii., p. 19.
Note 17.— Page 392.
The siege of Orleans is one of the turning points in the history
TO LECTURE VIII. 411
of nations. Had the English dominion in France been established,
no man can tell what might have been the consequence to England,
which would probably have become an appendage to France. So
little does the prosperity of a people depend upon success in war,
that two of the greatest defeats we ever had have been two of our
greatest blessings, Orleans and Bannockburn. It is curious, too,
that in Edward II. 's reign the victory over the Irish proved our
rnirse, as our defeat by the Scots turned out a blessing. Had the
Irish remained independent, they might afterwards have been united
to us, as Scotland was ; and had Scotland been reduced to subjec-
tion, it would have been another curse to us, like Ireland."'*
* "Bannockl)urn," Dr. Arnold used to say, "ought to be celebrated by Englishmen
as a national festival, and Athunree lamented as a national judgment."
^Life and Correspondence ,^ Appendix C, No. IX.
Note 18.— Page 393.
The little volume on the literature of France during the eigh-
teenth century, by M. de Barante, appears to have been a favourite
book with Dr. Arnold : he made some use of it as a text-book in
Rugby School. The other reference in the Lecture is to the
^Melanges IlistMques et Litteraires,'' of the same author.
Note 19.— Page 393.
It is the expression put into the mouth of Pericles, when, in the
exordium of his funeral oration, he speaks of the risk in honouring the
dead by words — that the memory of their virtues may bo endan-
gered — depending for fame or discredit upon one man, whether he
speak well or ill. — /»>) Iv tVi ivSpi noWdv ipcriit KivivyntaBai cv re (at
^Tpov tindi'Tt TiaTcubiii'ai.
APPENDIX.
No. 1.
(See p 63, Note 14 to ' Inaugural Lecture.')
Mr. Stanley has given, in chapter iv. of the '^ Life and Cine
tpo7idence,'' a faithful and judicious character of Dr. Arnold as an
historian — a student and writer of history, and I introduce it here,
in illustration of these Lectures :
" His early fondness for history grew constantly upon him • he
delighted in it, as feeling it to be ' simply a search after truth,
where, by daily becoming more familiar with it, truth seems for
evermore within your grasp :' the images of the past were liahitu-
ally in his mind, and haunted him even in sleep, with a vividness
which would bring before him some of the most striking passages
in ancient history — the death of Cajsar, the wars of Sylla, the siege
of Syracuse, the destruction of Jerusalem — as scenes in which he
was himself taking an active part. What objects he put before
him, as an historian, may best be judged from his own view of the
province of history. It was, indeed, altogether imperfect, in hia
judgment, unless it was not only a plan but a picture ; unless it repre-
sented 'what men thought, what they hated, and what they loved ;'
unless it ' pointed the way to that higher region, within which she
herself is not permitted to enter ;'* and in the details of geographical
or military descriptions ho took especial pleasure, and himself re-
markably excelled in them. Still it was in the dramatic faculty on
tlie one hand, and the metaphysical faculty on the other hand, that
he felt himself deficient ; and it is accordingly in the political
rather than in the philosophical or biographical department of his-
tory — in giving a combined view of different states or of different
periods — in analyzing laws, parties, and institutions, that his chief
merit consists.
• Uistory of Rome, vol. 1. p. 08; vol. li. p. 173.
114 APPENDIX.
" What were his views of Modern History will appear in the
mention of his Oxford Professorship. But it was in ancient his-
tory that he naturally felt the greatest delight. ' I linger round a
subject, which nothing could tempt me to quit but the conscious-
ness of treating it too unworthily,' were his expressions of regret,
when he had finished his edition of Thucydides ; ' the subject of
what is miscalled ancient history, the really modern history of the
civilization of Greece and Rome, which has for years interested mo
so deeply, that it is painful to feel myself, after all, so unable to
paint it fully.' His earliest labours had been devoted not to Roman
but to Greek history ; and there still remains amongst his MSS. a
short sketch of the rise of the Greek nation, written between 1820
and 1823, and carried down to the time of the Persian wars. And
in later years, liis edition of Thucydides, undertaken originally with
the design of illustrating that author rather historically than philo-
logically, contains in its notes and appendices, the most systematic
remains of his studies in this direction, and at one time promised
to embody his thoughts on the most striking periods of Athenian
history. Nor, after he had abandoned this design, did he ever lose
his interest in the subject ; his real sympathies (if one may venture
to say so) were always with Athens rather than with Rome ; some
of the most characteristic points of his mind were Greek rather
than Roman ; from the vacancy of the early Roman annals he was
forever turning to the contemporary records of the Greek common-
wealths, to pay ' an involuntary tribute of respect and affection to old
associations and immortal names, on which we can scarcely dwell
too long or too often ;' the falsehood and emptiness of the Latin
historians were for ever suggesting the contrast of their Grecian
rivals ; the two opposite poles in which he seemed to realize his
ideas of the worst and the best qualities of an historian, with feel-
ings of personal antipathy and sympathy towards each, were liivy
and Thucydides.
" Even these scattered notices of what he once hoped to have
worked out more fully, will often furnish the student of Greek his-
tory with the means of entering upon its most remarkable epochs
under his guidance. Those who have carefully read his works, or
ihared his instructions, can still enjoy the light wliich he has thrown
on tlie rise and progress of the Greek commonwealths, and their
APPENDIX. 41D
analogy with the States of modern Europe ; and apply, in theii
manifold relations, the principles which he has laid down with re-
gard to tlie peculiar ideas attached in the Greek world to race, to
eitizenship, and to law. They can still catch the glow of almost
passionate enthusiasm, with which he threw himself into the age
of Pericles, and the depth of emotion with which he watched, like
an eye-witness, the failure of the Syracusan expedition. They can
titill trace the almost personal sympathy with which he entered into
(lie great crisis of Greek society, when ' Socrates, the faithful
servant of truth and virtue, fell a victim to the hatred alike of the
democratical and aristocratical vulgar ;' when ' all that audacity can
dare, or subtlety contrive, to make the words of ' good' and ' evil'
cliange their meaning, was tried in the days of Plato, and by his
eloquence, and wisdom, and faith unshaken, was put to shame.'
Tlicy can well imagine the intense admiration, with which he
would have dwelt in detail, on what he has now left only in faint
outline. Alexander at Babylon impressed him as one of the most
solemn scenes in all history; the vision of Alexander's career, even
to the lively image which he entertained of his youthful and god-
like beauty, rose constantly before him as the most signal instance
of tlie effects of a good education against the temptations of power ;
as being beyond any thing recorded in Roman history, the career
of ' the greatest man of the ancient world ;' and even after tho
period, when Greece ceased to possess any real interest for liim,
he loved to hang with a melancholy pleasure over the last decay of
Greek g?nius and wisdom — 'the worn-out and cast-off skin, from
which the living serpent had gone forth to carry his youtli and
vigour to other lands.'
" But, deep as was his interest in Grecian history, and tliough in
some respects no other part of ancient literature derived so great a
light from his researclies, it was to his History of Rome that he
looked as the chief inonument of his historical fame. Led to it
partly by his personal feeling of regard towards Niebulir and Cheva-
lier Bunsen, and by the sense of their encouragement, there was,
moreover, something in the subject itself peculiarly attractive to
liim, whether ii the magnificence of ibe field which it embraced—
(' the History of Rome,' he said, ' must be in some sort the History
of the World,') — or in the congenial element which he naturally
il6 APPENDIX,
found in the character of a people, ' whose distinguishing quality
was their love of institutions and order, and their reverence foi
law.' Accordingly, after approaching it in various forms, he at last
conceived the design of the work, of which the three publishc(^
volumes are the result, but which he had intended to carry down,
in successive periods, to what seemed to him its natural termina-
tion in the coronation of Charlemagne. (Pref. vol. i. p. vii.)
*' The two earlier volumes occupy a place in the History of Rome,
and of the ancient world generally, which in England had not and
has not been otherwise filled up. Yet in the subjects of which they
treat, his peculiar talents had hardly a fair field for their exercise.
The want of personal characters and of distinct events, which Nie-
buhr was to a certain extent able to supply from the richness of his
learning and the felicity of his conjectures, was necessarily a disad-
vantage to an historian whose strength lay in combining what was
already known, rather than in deciphering what was unknown, and
whose veneration for his predecessor made him distrustful not only
of dissenting from his judgment, but even of seeing or discovering
more than had been by him seen or discovered before. ' No man,'
as he said, ' can step gracefully or boldly when he is groping his
way in the dark,' (Hist. Rome, i. p. 133,) and it is with a melan-
choly interest that we read his complaint of the obscurity of the
subject : ' I can but encourage myself, whilst painfully feeling my
way in such thick darkness, with the hope of arriving at last at the
light, and enjoying all the freshness and fulness of a detailed con-
temporary history.' (Hist. Rome, ii. p. 447.) But the narrative
of the second Punic war, which occupies the third and posthumous
volume, both as being comparatively unbroken ground, and as af-
fording so full a scope for his talents in military and geographical
descriptions, may well be taken as a measure of his historical
powers, and has been pronounced by its editor. Archdeacon Hare,
to be the first history which ' has given any thing like an adequate
representation of the wonderful genius and noble character of Han-
nibal.' With this volume the work was broken off: but it is im-
possible not to dwell for a moment on what it would have been had
he lived to complete it.
" The outline in his early articles in the Encyclopaedia Metropoli-
tana, of the later history of the Civil Wars. ' a subject so glorious,
APPENDIX. 417
he writes in 1824, • that I groan beforehand vvlien I think liow cer-
tainly I shall fail in doing it justice,' provokes of itself the desire to
see how he would have gone over the same ground again with hia
added knowledge and experience — how the characters of the time,
which even in this rough sketch stand out more clearly than in any
other English work on the same period, would have been repro-
duced — how he would have represented the pure* character and
military genius of his favourite hero, Pompey — or expressed his
mingled admiration and abhorrence of the intellectual power and
moral degradation of Caesar ; how he would have done justice to
the coarseness and cruelty of Marius, ' the lowest of democrats' —
or amidst all his crimes, to the views of ' the most sincere of Aris-
tocrats,' Sylla. And in advancing to the farther times of the Empire,
his scattered hints exhibit his strong desire to reach those events,
to which all the intervening volumes seemed to him only a prelude.
' I would not overstrain my eyes or my faculties,' he writes in
18-40, ' but whilst eyesight and strength are yet undecayed, I want
to get through the earlier Roman History, to come down to the
Imperial and Christian times, which form a subject of such deep
interest.' What his general admiration for Niebuhr was as a prac-
tical motive in the earlier part of his work, that his deep aversion
to Gibbon, as a man, was in the latter part. ' My highest ambition,'
he said, as early as 1826, ' and, what I hope to do as far as I can, is
to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this respect — that
whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile
to religion, without speaking directly against it ; so my greatest
desire would be, in my History, by its high morals and its general
tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually bringing it forward.'
* It may be ncccssarj- (especially since the recent publication of Nicliuhr"s Lcc
tures, where a very ditrcrcnt opinion is advocated) to refer to Dr. Arnold's own esti-
mate of the moral character of Pompey, which, it is believed, he retained unaltered,
in the Encyc. Metrop. ii. 252. The following extract from a letter of Gencril Napiei
may not be without interest li confirmation of an opinion which he had himself
ibriiied independently of it. "Tell Dr. Arnold to beware of falling into the error of
Pompey being a bad general ; ho was a very great one, perhaps in a purely military
sense greater than Ca;sar." At the same time it should be observed, that his admi-
ration of Ca!sar's intellectual greatness was always very strong, and it was almos'
with an indignant animation that, on the starting of an objection that Co'sar s v.'clir-
ries were only gained over inferior enemies, he at once denied the inference, anj
Instantly recounted campaign afler campaign in refutation.
il8 APPENDIX.
" There would have been the place for his unfolding the rise of
the Christian Church, not in a distinct ecclesiastical history, but ae
he thought it ought to be written, in conjunction with the history
of the world. ' The period from Augustus to Aurelian,' he writes
as far back as 1824, 'I will not willingly give up to any one, be-
cause I have a particular object, namely, to blend the civil and re-
ligious history together more than has ever yet been done.' There
he would, on the one hand, have expressed his view of the external
influences, which checked the free growth of the early Church —
the gradual revival of Judaic principles under a Christian form —
the gradual extinction of individual responsibility, under the system
of government, Roman and Gentile in its origin, which, according
to his latest opinion, took possession of the Church rulers from the
time of Cyprian. There, on the other hand, he would have dwelt
on the self-denying zeal and devotion to truth, which peculiarly
endeared to him the very name of Martyr, and on the bond of
Christian brotherhood, which he delighted to feel with such men
as Athanadus and Augustine, discerning, even in what he thought
their weaknesses, a signal testimony to the triumph of Christianity,
unaided by other means, than its intrinsic excellence and holiness
Lastly, with that analytical method, which he delighted to pursue
in his historical researches, he would have traced to their source
' those evil currents of neglect, of uncharitableness, and of igno-
rance, whose full streams we now find so pestilent,' first, ' in the
social helplessness and intellectual frivolousness' of the close of the
Roman empire ; and then, in that event which had attracted his
earliest interest, ' the nominal conversion of the northern nations to
Christianity — a vast subject, and one of the greatest importance
both to the spiritual and temporal advancement of the nations of
Europe, (Serm. vol. i. p. 88,) as explaining the more confirmed
separation of clergy and laity in later times, and the incomplete in-
fluence which Christianity has exercised upon the institutions c^im
3f Christian countries.' (Serra vol. ii. pref p xiv )"
APPENDIX. 419
No. II.
(See p. 03, note H to ' Inaugural Lecture.')
On Historical Instruction.
'' • • * In the statement of the business of Rugby school wJiich
kai been given above, one part of it will be found to consist of works
of modern history. An undue importance is attached by some per-
eons to this circumstance, and those who would care little to have
their sons familiar with the history of the Peloponnesian war are de-
lighted that tliey sliould study the Campaigns of Frederic the Great
or of Napoleon. Information about modern events is more useful,
they think, than that which relates to antiquity ; and such informa-
tion they wish to be given to their children.
"This favourite notion of filling boys with useful information is
'ikely, we think, to be productive of some mischief. It is a carica-
ture of the principles of inductive philosophy, which, while it taught
the importance of a knowledge of facts, never imagined that tliis
knowledge was of itself equivalent to wisdom. Now it is not so
much our object to give boys ' useful information,' as to facilitate
their gaining it hereafter for themselves, and to enable them to turn
it to account when gained. Tlie first is to be eflected by supplying
them on any subject with a skeleton which they may fill up here-
after. For instance, a real knowledge of history in after life is
highly desirable ; let us see how education can best facilitate the
gaining of it. It should begin by impressing on a boy's mind the
names of the greatest men of dilTerent periods, and by giving huu a
notion of their order in point of time, and the part of the earth on
which they lived. This is best done by a set of pictures bound up
together in a volume, such, for instance, as those which illustrated
Mrs. Trimmer's little histories, and to which the writer of this ar-
ticle is glad to acknowledge his own early obligations. Nor coukl
better service be rendered to the cause of historical instruction than
by publishing a volume of prints of universal history, accompanied
with a very short description of each. Correctness of costume in
such prints, or good taste in the drawing, however desirable it' they
can be easily obtained, are of very subordinate importance ; the
great matter is that the print should be striking, and full enough to
i20 APPENDIX.
sxcite and to gratify curiosity. By these means a lasting associa-
lion is obtained with the greatest names in history, and the most
remarkable actions of their lives : while their chronological arrange-
ment is learnt at the same time from the order of the pictures ; a
boy's memory being very apt to recollect the place which a favourite
print holds in a volume, whether it comes towards the beginning,
middle, or end, what picture comes before it, and what follows it.
Such pictures should contain as much as possible the poetry of his-
tory ; the most striking characters, and most hercic actions, whether
of doing or of suffering ; but they should not embarrass themselves
with its philosophy, with the causes of revolutions, the progress of
society, or the merits of great political questions. Their use is of
another kind, to make some great name, and great action of every
period, familiar to the mind ; that so in taking up any more detailed
history or biography, (and education should never forget the im-
portance of preparing a boy to derive benefit from his accidental
reading,) he may have some association with the subject of it, and
may not feel himself to be on ground wholly unknown to him. He
may thus be led to open volumes into which he would otherwise
have never thought of looking : he need not read them through —
indeed it is sad folly to require either man or boy to read through
every book they look at, but he will see what is said about such and
such persons or actions ; and then he will learn by the way some-
thing about other pe'sons and other actions ; and wiU have his stock
of associations increased, so as to render more and more informa-
tion acceptable to him.
" After this foundation, the object still being rather to create an
appetite for knowledge than to satisfy it, it would be desirable to
furnish a boy with histories of one or two particular countries,
Greece Rome, and England, for instance, written at no great
length, and these also written poetically much more than philo-
sophically, with much liveliness of style, and force of painting, so
aa to excite an interest about the persons and things spoken of. The
absence of all instruction in politics or political economy, nay even
an absolute erroneousness of judgment in such matters, provided
always that it involves no wrong principle in morality, are compara*
lively of slight importance. Let the boy gain, if possible, a strong
appetite for knowledge to begin with ; it is a later part of educatior.
APPENDIX. 421
*hicli should enable liim to pursue it sensibly, and to make it. when
obtained, wisdom.
" But should his education, as is often the case, be cut short by
circumstances, so that he never receives its finishing lessons, will
ho not feel the want of more direct information and instruction in its
earlier stages ? The answer is, that every thing has its proper sea-
eon, and if summer be cut out of the year, it is vain to suppose that
the work of summer can be forestalled in spring. Undoubtedly,
much is lost by this abridgement of the term of education, and it
is well to insist strongly upon the evil, as it might, in many in-
stances, be easily avoided. But if it is unavoidable, the evil conse-
quences arising from it cannot be prevented. Fulness of knowledge
and sagacity of judgment arc fruits not to be looked for in early
youth ; and he who endeavours to force them does but interfere with
the natural growth of the plant, and prematurely exhaust its vigour.
" In the common course of things, however, where a young per-
son's education is not interrupted, the later process is one of exceed-
ing importance and interest. Supposing a boy to possess that outline
of general history which his prints and his abridgements will have
given him, with his associations, so far as they go, strong and lively,
and his desire of increased knowledge keen, the next thing to be done
is to set him to read some first-rate historian, whose mind was
formed in, and bears the stamp of some period of advanced civili-
zation, analogous to that in which we now live. In other words,
ho should read Thucydides or Tacitus, or any writer equal to thom,
if sucn can be found, belonging to the third period of fuU civiliza-
tion, that of modern Europe since the middle ages. The particular
subject of the history is of little moment, so long as it be taken
neither from the barbarian, nor from the romantic, but from the phi-
losophical or civilized stage of human society ; and so long as the
writer be a man of commanding mind, who has fully imbibed the
influences of his age, yet without bearing its exclusive impress.
And the study of such a work under an intelligent teaclier becomes
indeed the key of knowledge and of wisdom : first it aflords an ex-
ample of good historical evidence, and hence the pupil may be
taught to notice from time to time the various criteria of a credible
narrative, and by the rule of contraries to observe what are the in-
dications of a testimony questionable, suspicious, or worthless. Un-
122 APPENDIX.
due scepticism may be repressed by showing how generally IrulV,
has been attained when it has been honestly and judiciously soiighi ;
while credulity may be checked by pointing out, on the other hand,
how manifold are the errors into which those are betrayed whose
intellect or whose principles have been found wanting. Now too
the time is come when the pupil may be introduced to that high
philosophy which unfolds the ' causes of things.' The history with
which he is engaged presents a view of society in its most advanced
state, when the human mind is highly developed, and the various
crises which affect the growth of the political fabric are all over-
past. Let him be taught to analyze the subject thus presented to
him ; to trace back institutions, civil and religious, to their origin ;
to explore the elements of the national character, as now exhibited
in maturity, in the vicissitudes of the nation's fortune, and the moral
and physical qualities of its race ; to observe how the morals and
the mind of the people have been subject to a succession of in-
fluences, some accidental, others regular ; to see and remember
what critical seasons of improvement have been neglected, — what
besetting evils have been wantonly aggravated by wickedness or
folly. In short, the pupil may be furnished as it were with certain
formulae, which shall enable him to read all history beneficially ;
which shall teach him what to look for in it, how to judge of it, and
how to apply it.
" Education will thus fulfil its great business, as far as regards
the intellect, to inspire it with a desire of knowledge, and to fur-
nish it with power to obtain and to profit by what it seeks for.
And a man thus educated, even though he knows no history in de-
tail but that which is called ancient, will be far better fitted to enter
on public life, than he who could tell the circumstances and the
date of every battle and every debate throughout the last century ;
whose information, in the common sense of the term, about modern
history, might be twenty times more minute. The fault of s)'stems
of cla.ssical education in some instances has been, not that they did
not teach modern history, but that they did not prepare and dispose
their pupils to acquaint themselves with it afterwards ; not that
they did not attempt to raise an impossible superstructure, but that
they did not jjrepare the ground for the foundation, and put the ma-
terials within reach of the builder.
APPENDIX. 42.'i
'* That impatience, which is one of the diseases of the ago, is in
great danger of possessing the public mind on the subject of edu-
cation ; an unhealtliy restlessness may succeed to lethargy. Men
are not contented with sowing the seed, unless they can also reap
the fruit ; forgetting how often it is the law of our condition, —
'that one soweth, and another reapeth.' It is no wisdom to make
boys prodigies of information ; but it is our wisdom and our duty
lo cultivate their faculties each in its season — first the memory and
imagination, and then the judgment ; to furnish them with the
means, and to excite the desire, of improving themselves, and to
wait with confidence for God's blessing on the result."
Dr. Arnolo's Uescri|)tion of Rugby School,
'Journal of Education,' voL vii. pp. 'J45-9.
No. III.
(See p. Hi, note 1 to Lecture II.)
On Translation.
" * * * All this supposes, indeed, that classical instruction should
be sensibly conducted ; it requires that a classical teacher should be
fully acquainted with modern history and modern literature, no less
than with those of Greece and Rome. What is, or perhaps what
used to be, called a mere scholar, cannot possibly communicate to
his pupils the main advantages of a classical education. The know-
ledge of the past is valuable, because without it our knowledge of
the present and of the future must be scanty ; but if the knowledge
of the past be confined wholly to itself; if, instead of being made
to bear upon things around us, it be totally isolated from them, and
so disguised by vagueness and misapprehension as to appear inca-
pable of illustrating them, then indeed it becomes little better than
laborious trifling, and they who declaim against it may be fully
forgiven.
" To select one instance of this perversion, what can be more ab-
surd than the practice of what is called construing Greek and Latin,
continued as it often is even with pupils of an advanced age 1 Tim
«tudy of Greek and Latin considered as mere languages, is of im-
portance, mainlv as it enables us to understand and employ weli
424 APPENDIX.
that language in which we commonly think, and speak, and ivrite.
It does this, because Greek and Latin are specimens of language
at once highly perfect and incapable of being understood without
long and minute attention : the study of them, therefore, naturally
involves that of the general principles of grammar ; while their
peculiar excellences illustrate the points which render language
clear, and forcible, and beautiful. But our application of this gen-
eral knowledge must naturally be to our own language, to show us
what are its peculiarities, what its beauties, what its defects ; to
teach us by the patterns or the analogies offered by other lan-
guages, how the effect which we admire in them may be produced
with a somewhat different instrument. Every lesson in Greek or
Latin may and ought to be made a lesson in English. The trans-
lation of every sentence in Demosthenes or Tacitus is properly an
exercise in extemporaneous English composition ; a problem, how
to express with equal brevity, clearness, and force, in our own Ian
guage, the thought which the original author has so admirably ex
pressed in his. But the system of construing, far from assisting, is
positively injurious to our knowledge and use of English ; it accus-
toms us to a tame and involved arrangement of our words, and to
the substitution of foreign idioms in the place of such as are na-
tional ; it obliges us to caricature every sentence that we render,
by turning what is, in its original dress, beautiful and natural, into
something which is neither Greek nor English, stiff, obscure, and
flat, exemplifying all the faults incident to language, and excluding
every excellence.
" The exercise of translation, on the other hand, meaning, by
translation, the expressing of an entire sentence of a foreign Ian
guage by an entire sentence of our own, as opposed to the render-
ing separately into English either every separate word, or at most
only parts of the sentence, whether larger or smaller, the exercise
■jf translation is capable of furnishing improvement to students of
every age, according to the measure of their abilities and know,
ledge. The late Dr. Gabell, than whom in these matters there caa
be no higher authority, when he was the under-master of Win-
chester College, never allowed even the lowest forms to construe,
they alwavs were taught, according to his expression, to read intt
English. From this habit even the youngest boys derived several
APPENDIX. 42c
idvantages ; the meaning of the sentence was more clearly seen
when it was read all at once in English, than when every clause
or word of English was interrupted by the intermixture of patches
of Latin; and any absurdity in the translation was more apparent.
Again, there was the habit gained of constructing English sentences
upon any given subject, readily and correctly. Thirdly, with re-
spect to Latin itself, the practice was highly useful. By being
accustomed to translate idiomatically, a boy, when turning his own
thoughts into Latin, was enabled to render his own natural English
into the appropriate expressions in Latin. Having been always ac-
customed, for instance, to translate ' quum venisset' by the particle
' having come,' he naturally, when he wishes to translate ' having
come,' into Latin, remembers what expression in Latin is equivalent
to it. Whereas, if he has been taught to construe literally ' when he
had come,' he never has occasion to use the English participle in his
translations from Latin ; and when, in his own Latin compositions,
he wishes to express it, he is at a loss how to do it, and not unfre-
quently from the construing notion that a participle in one language
must be a participle in another, renders it by the Latin participle
passive ; a fault which all who have had any experience in boys'
compositions must have frequently noticed.
" But as a boy advances in scholarship, he ascends from the idio-
matic translation of particular expressions to a similar rendering of
an entire sentence. He may be taught that the order of the words
in the original is to be preserved as nearly as possible in the trans-
lation ; and the problem is how to elTect this without violating the
idiom of his own language. There are simple sentences, such as
' Ardeam Rutuli habebant,' in which nothing more is required than
to change the Latin accusative into the English nominative, and
the active verb into one passive or neuter : ' Ardca belonged to the
Rutulians.' And in the same way the other objective cases, the
genitive and the dative, when they occur at the beginning of a
sentence, may be often translated by the nominative in English,
making a corresponding change in the voice of the verb following.
But in many instances also tlic nominative expresses so completelv
the principal subject of the sentence, that it is unnatural to put it
into any other case than the nominative in the translation. ' Om-
nium primum avidum novae libertatis populum, ne postmodum llecti
126 APPENDIX.
precibus aut donis regiis posset, jurejurando adegit [Brutus] nemi-
nem Rorna passuros regnare.' It will not do here to translate
' adegit' by a passive verb, and to make Brutus the ablative case,
because Brutus is the principal subject of this and the sentences
preceding and following it ; the historian is engaged in relating his
measures. To preserve, therefore, the order of the words, the
clause ' avidum novae libertatis populum' must be translated as a
subordinate sentence, by inserting a conjunction and verb. ' First
of all, while the people were set so keenly on their new liberty, to
prevent the possibility of their ever being moved from it hereafter
by the entreaties or bribes of the royal house, Brutus bound them
by an oath, that they would never suffer any man to be king at
Rome.' Other passages are still more complicated, and require
greater taste and command of language to express them properly ;
and such will often offer no uninteresting trial of skill, not to the
pupil only, but even to his instructor.
"Another point may be mentioned, in which the translation of
the Greek and Roman writers is most useful in improving a boy's
knowledge of his own language. In the choice of his words, and
in the style of his sentences, he should be taught to follow the
analogy required by the age and character of the writer whom he
is translating. For instance, in translating Homer, hardly any
words should be employed except Saxon, and the oldest and simplest
of those which are of French origin ; and the language should con-
sist of a series of simple propositions, connected with one another
only by the most inartificial conjunctions. In translating the trage-
dians, the words should be principally Saxon, but mixed with many
of French or foreign origin, like the language of Shakspeare, and
the other dramatists of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. The
term ' words of French origin' is used purposely, to denote that
large portion of our language which, although of Latin derivation,
came to us immediately from the French of our Norman conquer-
ors, and thus became a part of the natural spoken language of that
mixed people, which grew out of the melting of the Saxon and
Norman races into one another. But these are carefully to be dis-
tinguished from another class of words equally of Jjatm derivation,
but which have been introduced by learned men at a much later
period, directly from Latin books, and have never, properly speak-
APPENDIX 427
ing, formed any part of the genuine national language. These
truly foreign words, which Johnson used so largely, are carefully
to be shunned in the translation of poetry, as being unnatural, and
associated only with the most unpoetical period of our literature,
the middle of the eighteenth century.
" So also, in translating the prose writers of Greece and Rome,
Herodotus should be rendered in the style and language of the
Chroniclers ; Thucydides in that of Bacon or Hooker, while De-
mosthenes, Cicero, Caesar, and Tacitus, require a style completely
modern — the perfection of the Enijlish language such as we now
speak and write it, varied only to suit the individual differences of
the different writers, but in its range of words and in its idioms,
substantially the same.
"Thus much has been said on the subject of translation, because
the practice of construing has naturally tended to bring the exer-
cise into disrepute : and in the contests for academical honours at
both Universities, less and less importance, we have heard, is con-
stantly being attached to the power of viva voce translation. We
do not wonder at any contempt that is shown towards construing,
the practice being a mere folly ; but it is of some consequence that
the vplue of translating should be better understood, and the exei'-
cise more carefully attended to. It is a mere chimera to suppose,
as many do, that what they call free translation is a convenient
cover for inaccurate scholarship. It can only be so through the
incompetence or carelessness of the teacher. If the force of every
part of the sentence be not fully given, the translation is so far
faulty ; but idiomatic translation, much more than literal, is an
evidence that the translator does see the force of his original ; and
it should be remembered that the very object of so translating is to
preserve the spirit of an author, w-here it would be lost or weakened
by translating literally ; but where a literal translation happens to
be faithful to the spirit, there of course it should be adopted ; and
any omission or misrepresentation of any part of the meaning of tlie
original does not preserve its spirit, but, as far as it goes, sacrifices
it, and is not to be called '■free translation,'' but rather ' imperfect,
' blundering,' or, in a word, ' bad translation.' "
Dr. Arnold's Description of Rugby School,
' Journal of Education,' vol. vii. pp. 241-5.
428 APPENDIX.
The essential difficulty in the process of translation lias beer
well stated by Mr. Newman, in the Preface to his " Church of the
Fathers ;"
" It should be considered that translation in itself is, after all
out a problem, how, two languages being given, the nearest approxi-
mation may be made in the second to the expression of ideas al-
ready conveyed through the medium of the first. The problenr.
almost starts with the assumption that something must be sacrificed
and the chief question ia, what is the least sacrifice ? In a balance
of difficulties, one translator will aim at being critically correct,
and will become obscure, cumbrous, and foreign ; another will aim
at being English, and will appear deficient in scholarship. While
grammatical particles are followed out, the spirit evaporates ; and
while ease is secured, new ideas are intruded, or the point of the
original is lost, or the drift of the context broken." p. viii.
On a subject of so much interest in education, I may add a re-
ference to some judicious ' Remarks on Translation' by Mr. R. H.
Home, in the third No. of the ' Classical Museum,^ Decern., 1843.
The nature of true and false translation, is also examined and well
exemplified, in an article on ' German and English Translators
from the Greek,' ir the '■Foreign Quarterly Revieiv,'' vol. xxxiii.
July, 1841.
IHE END.
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