* 
 
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 ROBERTSOM
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 HISTORY AND POLITICS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN M. ROBERTSON. 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SOLD BY E. FOKDEK, 28 STONECUTTER ST., E.G. 
 
 1891.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY A. BONNKR, 
 84 B >UVEK E STBEET, FLKKT STREET, E.G.
 
 T 
 
 SANTA BABBABA 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 ROYALISM. 
 
 THOMAS PAINE. An Investigation. 
 
 TORYISM AND BARBARISM. 
 
 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIANISM. 
 
 OVERPOPULATION.
 
 E E E A T A. 
 
 PAGE 150, note. For Tyler read Tytler. 
 
 ,, 156, lines 19-20. For the passage "judged it prudent .... 
 as regent" read "seems to have confided considerably 
 in a leading clergyman, and in the ministers generally". 
 
 ,, 162, line 15. For "no witch -burning " read " no systematic 
 witch-burning ".
 
 THE SINS OF THE CHURCH. 
 IX. 
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 BY JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 IN the history of Scotland since the Reformation the term 
 "the Church" has a more various significance than be- 
 longs to it in the records of any other modern State. Even 
 in the Dark Ages, so-called, the early fraternity of the 
 Culdees, by their independence of Roman control, gave a 
 tinge of ecclesiastical diversity to Scotland's experience ; 
 and when once the Papal authority in matters spiritual and 
 temporal was repudiated by the Scottish Parliament in 
 1560, the people entered on a period of religious vicissitude 
 in which for a century and a half no single church polity 
 prevailed for more than a generation, Presbyterianism and 
 Episcopalianism alternating in varying strength as the 
 various political forces fluctuated. Such a species of con- 
 fusion, however, creates no difficulty for the onlooker who 
 sees ecclesiastical history from the standpoint of religious 
 neutrality. The general principle on which the State 
 Establishment of religion is condemned, is, I take it, that 
 any and every sect so established is certain to abuse its 
 power, and that its form of government, while it may 
 affect the nature and extent of the abuse, has little or 
 nothing to do with the temper and attitude of the privileged 
 body towards liberty and enlightenment. The mode varies, 
 the spirit is the same. 
 
 In Scotland, as in England, it has been the custom to 
 plead the cause of the Establishment as that of an institu- 
 tion beneficently bound up with the country's history, the 
 molestation of which would be an outrage on the very spirit 
 of national continuity. In Scotland even more than in 
 England has the process of the Reformation been magni- 
 fied and f abulised ; the result there being the growth of 
 an essentially mythological notion of the Reformation 
 period and of the men who figured in it. To this day 
 there circulate among the devout poor in Scotland narra- 
 tives in which Reformation heroes are represented as either
 
 130 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 working miracles or having miracles worked in their 
 behalf. The later editions of the " Scots Worthies " pro- 
 bably contain few of the old stories of supernatural inter- 
 position for the succor of the elect and the destruction of 
 the -wicked; but on such fables the ecclesiasticism of 
 modern Scotland was to a large extent nourished ; and the 
 survival of the tradition has still some share in the temper 
 of the resistance to the withdrawal of State recognition 
 from the Church, though, as it happens, the tradition is 
 not peculiar to the privileged sect. To show what the 
 Reformation actually was and did, the manner of its 
 occurrence, its effect on the political and social after-course 
 of the people, and above all its influence on their intel- 
 lectual development to do this briefly is the purpose of 
 the following pages. 
 
 It is by this time pretty well established that in Scotland 
 as in England the immediately effective force in the Refor- 
 mation was the temporal motive of a hankering after the 
 Church's property among the powerful classes. In the 
 north, no doubt, there was much more of a popular move- 
 ment of hostility to the corrupt Romish Church than in 
 the south : there always had been among the Scottish 
 people a relatively closer participation in public affairs 
 than can be traced in the early history of the commons of 
 England, the difference arising in the main out of the 
 constant turmoil in which Scottish life was so long kept 
 by the two forces of hostile outside pressure and civil strife. 
 But while the Scottish commonalty mixed closely in the 
 uprising of Protestantism, it is sufficiently clear that the 
 determining power was the interested adoption of their 
 cause by the nobles. So much is admitted by clerical 
 partisans of the Reformation. "It is a great mistake," 
 says the younger McCrie ("Sketches of Scottish Church 
 History", 2nd ed., p. 48), "to suppose that the Scottish 
 Reformation originated with the common people, or in the 
 spirit of rebellion. It would be much nearer the truth to 
 say, that Scotland was reformed by her noblemen and 
 gentlemen." And the impartial student can see very well 
 what such a writer would not see, that what the noblemen 
 and gentlemen were mainly interested in was the plunder. 
 For over a century the issue had been strenuously led up 
 to by the policy of the throne, which, always weak in that 
 land of feudal strifes and scanty civilisation, assiduously
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 131 
 
 sought to strengthen itself by strengthening the Church. 
 As early as the thirteenth century the sons of St. Margaret 
 had richly endowed religion; and at the death of James 
 Y. in 1542 the policy of that and previous Stewart kings 
 had made the Scottish hierarchy wealthier in proportion 
 to the country's total wealth than that of perhaps any 
 State in Christendom. Not less marked than James's 
 favor to the Church had been his hostility to the nobles, 
 and at his death the enmity between the two classes had 
 reached the highest pitch. Other influences had been 
 spreading "Reformation principles" ; but the adoption of 
 anti-Romish doctrines by the nobility in general was 
 essentially a phase of the struggle for existence between 
 two powerful orders. The lords, growing ever stronger 
 during the regencies of Mary's minority, naturally joined 
 in the spiritual attack on their temporal enemies as a 
 matter of tactics, seeing in the ministrations of the Protes- 
 tant preachers an extremely serviceable engine for the 
 overturning of an institution that could not subsist in the 
 entire absence of popular attachment. In this spirit they 
 sent abroad for Knox in 1559 as for a useful instrument 
 to prosecute the work they had already carried so far. 
 A few devotees there were among them, no doubt, just as 
 there remained a few Catholics ; but, as Dr. Burton criti- 
 cally observes of one group of the Protestant nobles of 
 that time ("History of Scotland," revised ed., vol. v., 
 p. 217): "it would be difficult to find in the Christian 
 world men with less religion or more ruffianism". Even 
 Mr. McCrie could not deny that when once the ecclesiastical 
 revolution was carried the nobility unblushingly appropri- 
 ated by far the greater part of the old Church's property. 
 Only by strenuous efforts did the new clergy get any of it at 
 all. The best arrangement they could force on the for-once 
 united nobility all-powerful for the moment in the interval 
 between the death of the Queen Regent and the arrival of 
 the young Queen Mary was that the Church revenues 
 should be divided into three parts, of which one was to be 
 shared between the Crown and the Protestant ministers, 
 while the other two were understood to remain with the 
 disestablished Catholic dignitaries during their lives. What 
 really happened, of course, was that the latter were 
 promptly fleeced by the baronage, being only too glad to 
 compound with the masters of the situation on any terms ;
 
 132 THE PERVEKSIOX OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 while the ministers were left to scramble for their fraction 
 of a third. (See Burton's History, iv., 37 41 ; Knox's 
 "History of the Reformation", Laing's ed. of his works, 
 ii., 542; Calderwood's "History of the Kirk", Wodrow 
 Society's ed., ii., 172; and Spottiswoode's "History of the 
 Church ", ed. 1851, vol. ii., p. 64.) The nobles, regretfully 
 observes Mr. McCrie, " showed a degree of avarice and 
 rapacity hardly to be expected from persons who had 
 taken such active part in reforming the Church". Knox's 
 comment was more dramatic. "Weill", he reports him- 
 self to have said "on the stoolle of Edinburgh" ("History 
 of the Reformation ", Laing's edition of his works, vol. ii., 
 p. 310) " Weill, yf the end of this ordour, pretended to be 
 tacken for sustentatioun of the Ministeris, be happy, my 
 judgment failleth me ; for I am assured that the Spreit of 
 God is nott the auctor of it ; for, first, I see Twa partis 
 freely given to the Devill, and the Thrid maun be devided 
 betwix Q-od and the Devill". "Who wold have thought", 
 he exclaims again, "that when Joseph reulled Egypt, that 
 his brethren should have travailled for vitallis, and have 
 returned with empty seckis unto their families ? " And, 
 again (p. 312): "0 happy servandis of the Devill, and 
 miserable servandis of Jesus Christ ; yf that after this lyef 
 thair war nott hell and heavin ! " (see also pp. 128-9). 
 The chagrined ministers loudly demanded that they should 
 have the entire reversion of the endowment. They "seem 
 to have made the mistake ", as Dr. Burton judicially puts 
 it (iv., 39), "of supposing that the active energy with 
 which their lay brethren helped them to pull down Popery 
 was actually the fruit of religious zeal; and to have 
 expected that they took from the one Church merely to 
 give to the other. The landholders, on their part, thought 
 such an expectation so utterly preposterous that they did 
 not condescend to reason with it ; but, without any hypo- 
 critical attempt to varnish their selfishness, called the 
 expectations of the ministers ' a fond imagination '." And 
 such it certainly proved to be. The condition of the new 
 clergy for many a day was one of distinct hardship, their 
 pittances being so irregularly paid that some fairly 
 abandoned their calling (Spottiswoode, ii., 64). 
 
 It is only just, in this connexion, to acquit them in part 
 of a charge often brought against them that of bringing- 
 about the general destruction of the old religious edifices.
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 133 
 
 Certainly the clergy were zealous to annihilate all the 
 artistic adjuncts, which for them were mere "idolatry " ; and 
 the rank and file were responsible for the destruction as 
 well as the plunder of many monasteries, some of which 
 were noble buildings. But, while there would have been 
 some practical cogency in the view so often attributed to 
 Knox, that "the best way to drive off the rooks is to pull 
 down the nests ", as a matter of fact Knox was for a dif- 
 ferent policy, though, as we shall see, the temper of demo- 
 lition was not absent from the clerical body. There has 
 been, on this subject, a seesaw of sweeping aspersion and. 
 equally sweeping vindication of the Reformers, in which 
 the truth has been alternately made too white and too 
 black. In the earlier part of this century, an influential 
 antiquarian movement fostered the view among Episco- 
 palians and unbelievers that the Eeformers were a mere 
 set of frenzied fanatics who sought to destroy every scrap 
 of architecture associated with Papistry. Cooler research 
 noted that the great monasteries in the southern counties 
 had been burned in the English invasion under Hertford, 
 during Mary's infancy, in 1545 the second under that 
 leader ; and the more liberal Presbyterians eagerly pro- 
 claimed that no guilt of that kind lay with their forefathers. 
 But to speak so is to ignore some of the plainest facts 
 of the Eeformation. The invading English general did 
 indeed display his zeal in the service of his master and 
 the cause of Protestantism by burning, in addition to 243 
 villages and 192 separate structures, the Abbeys of Kelso, 
 Melrose, Dryburgh, Eoxburgh, and Coldingham (Burton, 
 iii., 247-8); as he had burned Holyrood Abbey and 
 Palace, with the town of Edinburgh, in 1544 (Laing's 
 Knox, ii., 121, note] ; but there is not the least reason to 
 assume that the southern edifices, if not so destroyed, 
 would have escaped the Eeformation mobs any more than 
 did the monasteries of the north. The Protestants had 
 already destroyed the monasteries at Dundee and sacked 
 the Abbey of Lindores in their first outbreak in 1543 
 (Burton, iii., 250), two years before Hertford's second in- 
 vasion ; they had at the same period attacked the church 
 of Arbroath and the Blackfriars Monastery at Edinburgh ; 
 and in 1559 they wrecked monasteries all over the country. 
 But it is important to notice on this head that the main 
 devastation of the latter year was not only not wrought at
 
 134 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the behest of the clerical and aristocratic leaders, but was- 
 done in spite of their resistance. The failure of Dr. McCrie 
 to vindicate Knox in this regard is a curious illustration 
 of the helplessness of a partisan in his own walk when he 
 has to hold the scales between sections of his party. Knox's 
 History shows in the clearest way that the leading Ee- 
 former opposed the wrecking of the fabrics even of the 
 monasteries. Describing the opening outbreak at Perth, in- 
 volving the ruin of the Greyfriars', Blackfriars', and Charter- 
 house monasteries the third "a buyldingof awonderouse 
 coast and greatness" he writes that the riot was begun 
 against the exhortations of the preacher present and of 
 the magistrates, by a multitude, "not of the gentelmen r 
 neyther of thame that war earnest prof essouris, but of the> 
 raschall multitude " (i., 322) ; and in this he is followed 
 by Calderwood (History of the Kirk, i., 441). Again, 
 dealing with the burning of the Abbey and Palace of 
 Scone (pp. 360-2), he tells how Murray and Argyle on the 
 first day saved the buildings, and how it was only on the 
 breaking out of a fresh riot on the second day, over the 
 stabbing of a Dundee plunderer by the bishop's son, that 
 "the multitude, easelie inflambed, gave the alarme", and 
 a fresh mob from Perth set Abbey and Palace on fire. 
 "Wharat", says Knox, "no small nomber of us war 
 offended, that patientlie we could nocht speak till any that 
 war of Dundie or Sanct Johnestoun" [i.e., Perth]. His 
 superstition, indeed, makes him incline to suspect that 
 there must have been a divine dispensation in the matter ; 
 just as he seems fain to make out, in his own despite, that 
 the mischief-makers at Perth had after all been disinte- 
 rested religionists, 1 anxious "onlie to abolish idolatrie, the 
 places and monumentis thareof " ; but of the Scone busi- 
 ness he expressly says in his conclusion (p. 362) "assuredlie, 
 yf the labouris or travell of any man culd have saved that 
 place, it had nocht bein at that tyme destroyed ; for men 
 of greattest estimatioun lawboured with all diligence for the 
 savetie of it". On the same page, his common-sense again 
 coming uppermost, he tells that the utter destruction 
 
 1 The inconsistencies of Knox's text on this head are so marked as- 
 almost to suggest some tampering with the original MS. before it 
 publication ; but revisals in different moods would probably suffice to 
 lead into self-contradiction a man naturally clear-headed, but always 
 incitable to vaticination by his theistic fervor.
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 135 
 
 of the friaries at Stirling was accomplished by the 
 "rascheall multitude" before the arrival of the occu- 
 pying force under Murray and Argyle ; and yet again (p. 
 363) he records that at Edinburgh " the poore" had 
 "maid havock of all suche thingia as was movable", in 
 the monasteries of the Black and Gray Eriars, " befoir our 
 cuming, and had left nothing bot bair wallis, yea, nocht 
 sa inuche as door or windok ; wharthrow we war the less 
 trubilled in putting ordour to suche places." It was thus 
 the common people of the towns who, eager to fleece the 
 monks whose gross venality and hypocrisy they knew so 
 well, proceeded from plunder to the savage destruction of 
 the fine buildings for which they had no appreciation 
 whatever ; while men like Knox and Murray would gladly 
 have preserved such edifices. The Churchmen had left 
 themselves no friends. As the writer of the "Diurnal of 
 Remarkable Occurrents" says : "In all this tyme all kirk- 
 mennis goodis and geir wer spoulzeit and reft fra thame, 
 in euerie place quhair the samyne culd be apprehendit; 
 for euerie man for the maist pairt that culd get anything 
 pertenyng to any kirkmen, thocht the same as wele won 
 geir" (p. 269). The people were wreaking vengeance 
 rather than assailing an alleged idolatry; they pulled 
 down the houses for hatred of the dwellers. The destruc- 
 tion was general and deplorable, the already defaced and 
 poverty-stricken country being thus deprived by its own 
 children of a large part of what little show of material 
 wealth it had left. Knox (ii., 167) tells how the Protes- 
 tants of the West " burnt Paislay .... kest down Eail- 
 furd, Kilwynning, and a part of Crossragwell " ; and 
 from Balfour (Annals i., 316) and the English envoy 
 Sadler (Burton, iii., 353, note] and other sources we know 
 that similar destruction was wrought at Cambuskenneth, 
 Linlithgow, Dunfermline, and St. Andrews; while the 
 clergy themselves everywhere saw to the smashing of 
 " images " and altars. Nay, the ministers did not entirely 
 spare the churches as is claimed for them by Burton (p. 
 353). "When the historian asserts that "the fabric of the 
 churches did not excite their destructive indignation," he 
 overlooks the record that in the very first General Assembly 
 of the new Church, held in December 1560, it was resolved 
 "that the kirk of Eestalrig, as monument of Idolatry, 
 be razed and utterly casten downe and destroyed"
 
 136 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 ("Booke of the Universall Kirk of Scotland," ed. 1839, p. 
 3). Further, though the admission is not decisive, it is to 
 be noted that Dr. McCrie accepts for the Reformation the 
 responsibility of the destruction of the Chapel of Loretto 
 at Musselburgh ("Life of Knox", Crichton's ed., 1840, p. 
 151, note}. The residual truth is that, setting aside the 
 demolition of one or two churches, presumably of a highly 
 ornamental type, and the utter annihilation of all ecclesi- 
 astical art work, the Protestant clergy are not chargeable 
 with the ruin of the fabrics of the great cathedrals and 
 churches. Apart from the declarations of Knox, they 
 must have the credit, such as it is, of the preserved letter 
 of instructions by Argyle, Murray, and Ruthven, in which 
 the lairds of Arntilly and Kinvaid are directed to burn all 
 the images, altars, and monuments of idolatry in the 
 Cathedral of Dunkeld, with the proviso: "Faill not, bot 
 ze tak guid heyd that neither the dasks, windocks, nor 
 durris be ony ways hurt or broken, eyther glassin wark or 
 iron wark". (McCrie's Life of Knox, Appendix, p. 372.) 
 That McCrie should not have given any effect in his bio- 
 graphy to Knox's repudiation of the pulling down of 
 the monasteries must apparently be attributed to his un- 
 willingness to put on record that the Reformation was in 
 any sense a work of reckless mobs 1 an unwillingness 
 paralleled in his son's reluctance to admit that the Protestant 
 aristocracy were mostly hungry land-grabbers. The facts, 
 looked at fairly, are seen to relate naturally to the known 
 principles of human nature. The natural instincts of the 
 rude populace led to the wreckage of the monasteries : the 
 clergy, fanatically eager to destroy the signs of "idolatry ", 
 might well seek to preserve the buildings ; and nobles 
 like Murray would readily help them. It was specially 
 to the interest of the clergy to retain such buildings. 
 There seems to be no good authority for Spottiswoode's 
 story, made so familiar by Scott in "Rob Roy", that 
 Glasgow Cathedral was only saved by the armed resistance 
 of the city craftsmen to an attempt against it by the 
 zealots (see Burton, vi., 222, note]; and there is on the 
 other hand documentary evidence that the clergy bitterly 
 reproached the greedy landowners, who were the last and 
 
 1 He seems, however, to have been unaware that the southern 
 monasteries were destroyed by Hertford. See his second note on 
 p. 151, and the text.
 
 THE PEKVEBSION OF SCOTLAND. 137 
 
 -worst culprits, for the sordid apathy with which they let 
 the preserved edifices, great and small, fall into titter ruin 
 for sheer lack of ordinary repairs. The roofs of cathedrals 
 were soon stripped of their lead for purposes of war, and the 
 Protestant nobility, alike in their private and in their public 
 capacities, refused to lift a finger for their maintenance. On 
 them must fall the final reproach. Glasgow Cathedral, on the 
 other hand, was preserved by municipal supervision ; and 
 "there is abundant testimony that the clergy o the Refor- 
 mation did their best for the preservation and good order 
 of the fabrics of the churches" (Burton, iv., 355) ; though 
 their poverty disabled them for that particular form of 
 self -aggrandisement. What the new Church did as such, 
 when thus disappointed of the rewards for which its clergy 
 had hoped, was to get hold of the popular mind with a 
 thoroughness which would otherwise have been impossible, 
 and. accordingly, to exert to the utmost its influence for 
 the restriction and subjection of the people's intellectual 
 and social life. Wealth and power have been natural 
 objects of desire to every established Church, and if that 
 of Scotland after the Reformation could not acquire the 
 former it could still attain the latter. 
 
 Scarcely was the legislative process of the Reformation 
 accomplished when the clerical passion for power began 
 to manifest itself. The political change was effected by 
 the Estates in August 1560, and in .1561, just before the 
 arrival of Queen Mary from France, the secular-minded 
 among the people of Edinburgh had a taste of the quality 
 of the new institution. Under Romanism the people of 
 Scotland, like those of other European countries, had 
 regularly practised such ancient semi-pagan semi-Christian 
 mummeries as the Bacchic feast of the Ass, and such 
 customs naturally gave them a taste for pageants in 
 general. Accordingly, in the summer of 1561 the Edin- 
 burgh tradesfolk proposed as of old to celebrate the pageant 
 of Robin Hood. But the new clergy had set their faces 
 against all such performances, and, armed with an Act of 
 Parliament, the Lords of the Congregation, which at that 
 time meant the clergy plus the countenance of the nobles, 
 prohibited the undertaking. The craftsmen persisted; 
 disturbance followed; and a " cordinar " or shoemaker, 
 charged with both theft and rioting, was put in jail in 
 the old " Heart of Midlothian " and sentenced to death.
 
 138 THE PER VERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 To John Knox, as being the most influential public man 
 at the moment, the friends of the condemned man applied 
 for mercy ; but the Reformer and the magistrates, in the 
 words of the contemporary chronicler, would " dae nothing 
 bot have him hangit ". Only by a forcible riot and 
 storming of the gaol was the representative of popular 
 rights saved. (See Burton iv., 27 ; Knox's History, ii., 
 157-9; and the "Diurnal of Remarkable Occurrents", 
 published by the Bannatyne Club, pp. 65-6.) The magis- 
 trates were terrorised, and the clergy had to be content 
 with holding the " haill multitude excommunicat " till, so 
 says Knox, they "maid humble sute unto the kirk". 
 The preachers of course knew that they could only maintain 
 their position by an absolute moral control over the mind 
 of the populace. That they in the long run acquired, 
 and there was virtually an end in Scotland of popular 
 pageants, and of every form of dramatic, musical, and 
 imitative art, for many generations. 
 
 The uppermost thought of the Protestant clergy, of 
 course, was to complete the suppression of the old faith. 
 The Act of 24th August, 1560, had provided that the 
 administering, or being present at the administration, of 
 the mass, should be punishable on a first offence by for- 
 feiture of possessions and corporal punishment ; on a 
 second, by banishment ; and on a third by death. (Scots 
 Acts of Parliament, ed. 1814, vol. ii., p. 534.) This 
 pointed, considering the spirit of the times, rather to a 
 minimising of bloodshed than to an absolute desire to take 
 the lives of Papists in any number ; and in point of fact 
 the history of the extirpation of the old faith in Scotland, 
 so far as we have it, is a much less sanguinary record than 
 the corresponding narrative for England. What happened 
 in the first instance was a wholesale expulsion. (See 
 Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 69.) But three points have to 
 be kept in view : first, that Queen Mary came to her 
 kingdom immediately after the ecclesiastical revolution, 
 and that she always evaded the ratification of the Refor- 
 mation Acts, which were so distasteful to her ; second, 
 that, apart from the Queen's unwillingness to let Catholics 
 be persecuted, a large section of the nobility looked very 
 coldly on the pretensions of the Presbyterian clergy to 
 exercise civil power ; and, third, that many of the criminal 
 records of that period 'have been lost. (See Burton, v.,
 
 THE PEE VERSION OF SCOTLAND. 13t> 
 
 10.) It will be found on examination, too, that only a 
 few heretics had been put to death in Scotland by the 
 Romish Church in the days of its power ; and it may have 
 been that the Protestant laity were unwilling to take more 
 lives than the old church had done. But if, with Protes- 
 tant partisans, we take the line of arguing that it was 
 not for lack of will that the Romish priesthood had burnt 
 so few Protestant emissaries, it will be impossible to reject 
 a similar conclusion in regard to the Protestant policy 
 after the overturn. Certainly nothing could be more 
 fiercely intolerant than the declarations of the Reformers 
 in regard to the doctrines they had overthrown. To them 
 the mass was in dead earnest "idolatry", properly punish- 
 able with death. Knox insisted on this constantly ; and 
 there were few things which exasperated him more than 
 the suggestion that there might be no harm in leaving 
 the Papists alone. (See the "History of the Reforma- 
 tion", ii., 265-6.) The principle of toleration had in 
 fact no more place in the Calvinistic system than in the 
 Papal; and if it be granted that the Protestants knew 
 the Queen and the Catholic party would be glad to put 
 them down as they had put down Catholicism, it is none 
 the less certain that their motive was not mere self-preser- 
 vation, but just such an innate lust for the suppression of 
 heresy as actuated Catholic persecutors in that age. And, 
 motive apart, the forcible suppression of Catholic worship 
 was completely and relentlessly accomplished. Knox at 
 one point triumphantly writes that the "Papists war so con- 
 founded that none within the Realme durst more avow the 
 hearing or saying of Messe, then the theavis of Lyddesdaill 
 durst avow thair stowth [stealth= stealing] in presence of ane 
 upryght judge " (History, ii., 265). How much bloodshed 
 this really represented it is impossible now to say. That 
 it meant countless acts of gross tyranny is perfectly clear 
 from the many references to prosecutions, finings, and 
 banishments. But it is impossible to believe that in such 
 a community as the Scotland of that day no worse out- 
 rages than these were inflicted on a downtrodden and 
 detested sect by their triumphant enemies. A passage or 
 two from the old " Diurnal of Occurrents " gives us some 
 idea of the temper of the time. Under the date April 1 1th, 
 1574 (pp. 340-1) the Diarist tells how one Robert Drum- 
 mond committed suicide by stabbing himself at the cross
 
 140 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 when lie was about to be burnt in the cheek for persisting 
 in bigamy. He had first been made to do penance in the 
 kirk ; then, for continued contumacy, he had been ban- 
 ished ; now, having returned and proved incorrigible, he 
 was to be branded, when he suddenly took matters in his 
 own hands and escaped his tormentors. And the Diarist 
 incidentally explains how, after the second punishment, 
 " the Magistratis, being movit with pittie, brocht him in 
 the toun, becaus he had been ane lang servand, and one 
 greit seikar and apprehendar of all preistis and papistis ". Of 
 such unrecorded persecution there must have been an 
 abundance ; and another detail in the same record, over- 
 looked or ignored by historians, points to an unascertain- 
 able, though doubtless small, number of random execu- 
 tions. In the same year is the entry (p. 341) : " Wpoun 
 the fourt day of Maij thair wes ane preist hangit in 
 Glasgow, calk't , for saying of mes." The 
 
 name is either awanting or illegible in the manuscript, it 
 appears ; and it is evident that the writer did not think 
 the matter one of much consequence. Such an entry is a 
 sufficient disproof of the allegation that no Papist suffered 
 death for his religion in Scotland, and of the generally 
 accepted statement of Calderwood ( ' ' History of the Kirk 
 of Scotland ", iii., 196) that Ogilvie the Jesuit, hanged at 
 Glasgow in 1615, was the first priest put to death in Scot- 
 land after the execution of Hamilton, the Archbishop of 
 St. Andrews, hanged on his capture in 1571 as a Queen' s- 
 man too dangerous to be allowed to live. There appears 
 to be no truth in the story (found in Leslie's History and 
 in Dempster's "Historia Ecclesiastica ", and cited in 
 Robert Chambers' "Domestic Annals") that a priest 
 named Black was stoned to death by an Edinburgh mob 
 in 1562; Black having really been mysteriously killed on 
 the night of Darnley's murder in 1567 (see Laing's 
 Knox, ii., appendix, 592 5) ; but such an outrage 
 would have been possible enough, and would have 
 given small concern to the Protestant ministers. What 
 is certain is that from the fall of Mary down to the 
 end of the seventeenth century the Romanists left in 
 Scotland could not indulge in the ceremonies of their 
 Church, even in semi-private fashion in rural districts, 
 without risk of instant prosecution, and, that they ran 
 the most serious dangers when they secretly harbored
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 141 
 
 Catholic priests. Even Mary was compelled to prosecute 
 and imprison the members of her own faith, being, indeed, 
 menaced from the first in her own practice of it. When, 
 on the first Sunday after her arrival, she attended mass in 
 her private chapel at Holyrood, an attack was made on 
 the building by a Protestant mob, a priest was ill-treated, 
 and the interior would certainly have been wrecked but 
 for the interference of Mary's brother Lord James Murray, 
 afterwards Regent. Even by such an act as this, Murray, 
 Protestant as he was, incurred the resentment of Knox, 
 who approved of and probably encouraged the riot. (See 
 his History, ii., 271.) Shortly after, at a meeting of the 
 "Congregation", the clergy voted unanimously against 
 allowing the Queen to exercise her own worship in her own 
 household, and only the lay votes carried a contrary resolu- 
 tion (Burton, iv., 34). It is not here argued that the 
 Protestant clergy had no reason to fear a return of Catholic 
 ascendancy: the point is that their spirit was precisely 
 that of the Catholics. It may indeed be claimed for the 
 early Protestants, by those who will, that whereas the 
 Catholics practised oppression while in power and professed 
 principles of tolerance when in the minority, the Protes- 
 tants were as pronounced in their intolerance when weak 
 as when strong. (Ibid., 119.) From the first they defied 
 the Court. In March, 1562, "Sir" James Arthur, a 
 priest, was prosecuted for solemnising baptisms and mar- 
 riages "in the old abominable Papist manner"; and if 
 he escaped punishment it was only by the determined 
 exercise of the queen's "mercy ", on which he threw him- 
 self (p. 56). Mary, of course, was too consummate a 
 tactician not to save her fellow Catholics in the long run, 
 but in May 1563 she had to permit the indictment of forty- 
 eight Papists, including the Archbishop of St. Andrews 
 and other eminent ecclesiastics, for celebrating mass and 
 endeavoring to restore Popery in Paisley and Ayrshire ; 
 and of the number several had to go through the form of 
 imprisonment at the Queen's pleasure. (Ibid., 63.) The 
 manner of the offences charged had involved no attack on 
 the Protestant authorities, but consisted simply of the 
 more or less secret performance of Catholic worship, just 
 as the Covenanters of a later generation performed theirs. 
 In 1565, again, we find a priest, "Sir" John Carvet, seized 
 for saying mass, and pilloried and pelted with eggs on
 
 142 THE PERVEKSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 two successive days; being apparently only saved from 
 lynching at the hands of a riotous mob on the second day 
 by the interference of the town guard. A. royal letter, 
 demanding the prosecution of the rioters, secured his 
 release, but no such prosecution took place ; and the bare 
 idea of such a demand on the part of the Crown moved 
 the clergy to wrathful activity. (Knox ii., 476 ; Burton, 
 iv., 118.) 
 
 It cannot be too strongly insisted that the Protestant 
 Church all along aimed at secular power. With the ex- 
 ample of Geneva before their eyes, the Reformers held 
 it their function to control the body politic and the body 
 social alike ; and only the self-interest of the aristocracy 
 prevented their fully gaining their ends, just as it baulked 
 them of the revenues of the fallen Church. The issue 
 as to temporal power was effectively raised in 1561, over 
 the attempt of the clergy to have their "Book of Disci- 
 pline " made part of the law of the land. " The Protestant 
 nobles and lairds", observes Burton (iv., 34), "were 
 ready to accept all denunciations of Antichrist and Popish 
 idolatry, nor did they hesitate at accepting the Calvinistic 
 doctrines of the new faith just as Knox and his assistant 
 ministers set them forth : they had, hence, at once adopted 
 the Confession of Faith in Parliament. But the Book of 
 Discipline affected practice as well as faith, and enforced 
 certain stringent restraints to which it would have been 
 inconvenient for some, who were the readiest to subscribe 
 propositions of theological metaphysics, to submit." So 
 that, though some approved, and even these under sus- 
 picion of hypocrisy, the lay notabilities resisted the clerical 
 proposal; one telling Knox to " stand content that Buke 
 will nott be obteaned" (Burton, iv., 35 ; Hist, of Ref., ii., 
 297). For the time the preachers were left to impotent 
 declamation; but in the summer of 1565, after the Carvet 
 riot, they attempted more vigorous measures. Frustrations 
 in other ways they had borne, but they would not endure 
 that there should be any approach to toleration of Romish 
 practices. Accordingly they resolved in General Assembly : 
 11 Imprimis, that the Papisticall and blasphemous masse, 
 with all Papistrie and idolatrie of Paip's jurisdictione, 
 be universallie suppressed and abolished throughout the 
 haill realme, not only in the subjects, but .in the Q. 
 Majestie's awn persone, with punishment against all
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 143 
 
 persones that shall be deprehended to transgresse and 
 offend the same ; and that the sincere word of Grod and 
 His true religion, now presently receaved, might be estab- 
 lished, approven, and ratified throughout the whole realme, 
 as well in the Queen's Majestie's owne persone as in the 
 subjects, without any impediment, and that the people be 
 astricted to resort upon the Sunday at least to the prayers 
 and preaching of G-od's word, like as they were astricted 
 before to the idolatrous masse ; and thir heads to be pro- 
 Tided be act of Parliament, with consent of the Estates 
 and ratification of the Queen's Majestie" ("Booke of the 
 Universall Kirk", p. 28; compare Burton, iv., 48). At 
 the same time, besides requiring that provision should be 
 made for the ministers, they demanded, what they had 
 ordained in 1560, that no one should be permitted to teach 
 in schools, colleges, or universities, or even in private, save 
 <such as were authorised by the Church ; further, that 
 Parliament should make adequate provision for the punish- 
 ment of crime, "witchcraft, sorcerie, and inchantment" 
 being among the offences singled out for special mention. 
 There could not be a more explicit attempt on the part of 
 a purely ecclesiastical body to lay down and control the 
 laws of the land ; and it was only the extreme uncertainty 
 of the political situation at the moment just before Mary's 
 marriage with Darnley that prevented any effective action 
 being taken when the Queen diplomatically evaded the 
 Assembly's demands (Burton, pp. 119 21). 
 
 Nor was the Protestant spirit of intolerance strong 
 merely against the Church of Rome. The hatred of the 
 Presbyterians to all other sects was tolerably impartial. 
 As Tytler observes ("History of Scotland," Nimmo's ed., 
 iii., 130), "it was the opinion of many of the leaders of 
 the Reformation .... in Scotland that the hierarchy of 
 England, as established under Elizabeth, was nearly as 
 corrupt as Rome itself". And when in 1562 steps were 
 taken to arrange a meeting between Mary and Elizabeth, 
 the Scottish clergy, Knox heading them, bitterly opposed 
 the plan, preferring, says Tytler (p. 161), "that their queen 
 should remain an obstinate Papist, rather than take refuge 
 in a religion which had as little ground in the word of God ". 
 How this temper took effect when the opportunity arose we 
 shall see later. In the meantime the Reformers had almost 
 no species of Dissent to trouble them. Calderwood much
 
 144 THE PERVEKSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 later chronicles the arrival of a few Brownists (iv., pp. 1, 2) 
 as an incident that came to practically nothing; and we may 
 surmise that the English Anabaptists, from what they 
 knew of Knox's sentiments in regard to them, would be 
 very chary of seeking proselytes in the north. He thought 
 some of their writings deserved punishment by death 
 as blasphemous (Laing's Knox, v., 14) ; and his voluble 
 treatise on Predestination, written by way of com- 
 batting their doctrines, stands in the front rank of the 
 most rancorous controversy of the period. They shrank, 
 poor men, from the theory that the Deity had foreordained 
 the eternal perdition of the majority of his own creatures, 
 and they sought to account for the moral confusion of the 
 world, as more pretentious thinkers have done before and 
 since, by the old suggestion of two supernatural prin- 
 ciples : all which was as brimstone in the nostrils of a good 
 Calvinist. But the creed of Geneva had not to contend 
 with such aberrations of humane sentiment in Scotland. 
 There the iron of inhuman dogma wholly entered the 
 national soul, with what dark results of intellectual and. 
 social perversion it is now proposed to show. 
 
 Printed by AXXIE BESAXT and CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 03, Fleet St., B.C. 1886.
 
 THE SINS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE PEEVERSION OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 BY JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 (II.) 
 
 have seen how the class interest of the nobles had 
 effected the main part of the Reformation, and how, their 
 purpose served, they for the most part turned their backs 
 on their preaching allies. The ultimate result of this 
 course was the democratisation of the Kirk's polity, but 
 the effect came about slowly. At the outset its members 
 had no thought of abolishing the hierarchical system ; and 
 there can be little doubt that if the nobles had fairly 
 shared their plunder with their auxiliaries Scotland would 
 to-day have been as Episcopalian as England. The allow- 
 ances originally proposed to be made to them varied from 
 one hundred to three hundred merks a-year, a rate of 
 income of which it was said that few Scotch lords had 
 then as much in spare cash (Burton, iv., 41 2; Calder- 
 wood, ii., 172) ; and the clergy insisted that it was no 
 more than they needed, arguing that, looking to the im- 
 portance' and dignity of a minister's services, provision 
 ought to be made not only for his comfort but for the 
 "education and up-setting [establishment] of his sons, 
 and for his daughters being virtuously brought up and 
 honestly doted", that is, dowered (Burton, iv., p. 36). Such 
 an arrangement would have made of the ministry a class 
 with aristocratic habits and sympathies ; among whom an 
 order of bishops would be regarded as in every way 
 desirable : as it was, the old hierarchical titles were not 
 legally abolished in 1560; and the spirit of episcopacy 
 was exemplified in the Kirk's institution of the new order 
 of "superintendents" holding office during life, of whom 
 Spottiswoode observes that " their power was episcopal ; 
 for they did elect and ordain ministers, they presided in 
 synods, and directed all church censures, neither was any 
 excommunication pronounced without their warrant " (ii., 
 167). It has been pretended that as these Superinten- 
 dents were themselves chosen by the Church there was
 
 146 THE PERVERSION OP SCOTLAND. 
 
 nothing episcopal in their functions, but the essential point 
 is that, as Buckle decisively points out in his citations 
 ("History of Civilisation", iii., 99), they exercised a 
 special authority, which the Assembly upheld. It was 
 required "that punyschment suld be appointed for suche 
 as dissobeyid or contemned the Superintendentes in thair 
 functioun ", (Knox ii., 161) and in 1562 " it was ordeaned, 
 that if ministers be disobedient to superintendents in 
 aniething belonging to edificatioun, that they must be 
 subject to correctioun ". (Calderwood, ii., 184). In the 
 " Book of Discipline ", indeed, it is also provided that the 
 Superintendent "must be subjected to the censur and cor- 
 rectioun of the Ministeris and Elderis .... of the hoill 
 Province ", (Knox ii., 20) ; but for obvious reasons that 
 stipulation did not prevent the superintendent from being 
 in actual fact a person in authority. Such an arrangement 
 was the more natural because a considerable number of 
 the new ministers had been inferior clergy in the old 
 Church. (Burton, iv., 328). But as years passed and the 
 ruling class made no better provision for the ministry, 
 there naturally arose a temper more and more averse to 
 a system which created within the church a small semi- 
 aristocratic class. In 1567, after Mary's forced abdica- 
 tion and during her incarceration at Lochleven, matters 
 seemed to come to a definite issue. The clergy invited 
 to their Assembly, as lay coadjutors, the Protestant land- 
 holders in general, calling on them to co-operate in the 
 task of securing to the Church its proper patrimony, and 
 some eighty of the "most notorious impropriators of 
 Church lands " actually attended and professed zeal in the 
 cause ("Booke of the Universall Kirk," pp. 54-58; Burton, 
 iv., 324) ; while the Parliament went so far as to draw up 
 a statute ordaining that "the haill thriddis of the haill 
 benefices of this Kealme sail now instantlie, and in all 
 tymes to cum, first be payit to the Ministeris of the 
 Evangell of Jesus Christ and thair successouris." And even 
 this purported to be but a temporary arrangement, holding 
 good until " the Kirk come to the full possession of thair 
 proper patrimonie, quhilk is the teindis " [tithes] ; while 
 an annotated draft suggests a restoration of the "hale 
 patrimony ", which would mean the temporalities of all 
 kinds. (Burton, iv., 324-5 ; Acts of Parliament, iii., pp. 
 24 and 37.) The whole was a grim and impudent mockery
 
 THE PERVERSION OP SCOTLAND. 147 
 
 on the part of the nobles. It " bore no fruit, if we may 
 except the historical conclusion, that the statesmen of the 
 day were anxious to secure the co-operation of the clergy " 
 (Burton, p. 325). 
 
 Why they should have been so anxious it is needless to 
 inquire minutely : the substantial fact is that if the ruling 
 classes ever found the support of the clergy useful, the 
 clerical influence none the less was impotent as against the 
 aristocratic. In one direction only did it play freely and 
 irresistibly, namely, in the coloring and moulding of the 
 ignorant and plastic popular mind ; though, ^ of course, 
 where the superstition of the nobles chimed with that of 
 clergy and people, there was unity of fanatical action, just 
 as there had been union when the nobles' personal interests 
 coincided with the progress of the new doctrines. Scottish 
 history will be misunderstood at several conjunctures if 
 this factor of the interested action of the nobility is not 
 kept clearly in view. Just as the throne, alike under 
 James V., his widow, and his daughter, had the nobility 
 against it because of its wish to aggrandise the Catholic 
 Church, so did Murray prejudice his position as Eegent 
 the moment he gave his fellow nobles cause to suspect that 
 he wished to help the Protestant clergy from the confiscated 
 revenues (Burton, iv., 358). Buckle seems to me to make 
 far too much of the political power of the clergy when he 
 declares (iii., 113) that "it was they who taught their 
 countrymen to scrutinise, with a fearless eye, the policy of 
 their rulers" ; and he lapses into sheer extravagance 1 when 
 he further announces that "It was they who pointed the 
 finger of scorn at kings and nobles, and laid bare the 
 hollo wness of their pretensions ' ' . The clergy never showed 
 regal and aristocratic pretensions to be hollow in any sense 
 save one which simply substituted their own pretensions 
 for those they challenged ; and in point of fact there was 
 as much popular criticism of the rulers by the populace in 
 the old times as in the new. How much the political 
 action of the ministry was an affair of declamation may be 
 
 1 Such a criticism should not be advanced by a student of Scotch 
 history without a counterbalancing acknowledgment of the excellent 
 service Buckle has done in bringing the main factors of that history 
 into luminous relief and reducing the whole to rational bases, besides 
 making an important research in quarters almost entirely ignored by 
 specialist historians. My own debt to him is great.
 
 148 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 seen from their powerlessness to protect even theif owfi 
 class against Regent Morton. That Protestant ruler, who, 
 powerful and unscrupulous as he was, could not in the long 
 run preserve himself against the ferocious intriguing of 
 the nobles hostile to him, declared that there would never 
 be peace in Scotland until some ministers were hanged ; and 
 he did torture and hang one in 1572 (" Diurnal," pp. 262, 
 293), without thereby securing special order, it must be said. 
 The political lot of the clergy under the Protestant Regencies 
 of James's minority is a mere record of impotent resent- 
 ment of contemptuous oppression. In 1572 the Privy 
 Council compelled them to accept a systematic establish- 
 ment of the whole set of superior ecclesiastical offices under 
 the old titles, it being provided that the names, titles, and 
 dioceses of archbishops and bishops were to "stand and 
 continue in time coming as they did before the reformation 
 of religion ", while the dignities of the abolished monastic 
 system were also to be preserved by way of maintaining 
 "the ecclesiastical Estate in Parliament" (Calderwood, 
 iii., 173; Burton, v., 74 77). What Knox thought of 
 this arrangement as such is not quite clear, but the truth 
 seems to be that he was not anti- episcopalian at heart ; 
 and though he had a quarrel of some duration with 
 Murray, he does not appear ever to have protested against 
 Murray's retention of the Priorship of St. Andrews. In 
 August of 1572 we find him subscribing "with my dead 
 hand but glaid heart, praising God", the official ratifica- 
 tion of a certain sermon preached before the regent ; and 
 this below the signature of " J. Sanct Androis "a circum- 
 stance which Dr. McCrie does not mention in his account 
 of the matter ("Life," p. 292. Compare Burton, v., 80). 
 Nor did the populace show any presbyterian zeal against 
 the arrangement ; their comment taking the shape of one 
 of those nicknames, their talent for which has been noted 
 and inherited by Carlyle. The true purpose of the 
 re-establishment of the hierarchy was to retain ecclesi- 
 astical funds in the hands of the landowners by a new 
 device, the new bishops being simply the tools of the ruling 
 nobles, and their function that of drawing revenues the 
 greater part of which they surrendered to their patrons. 
 On perceiving which, the popular mind classed them with 
 the domestic invention of the "tulchan" the stuffed 
 figure of a calf which in the husbandry of those days it
 
 THE PERVEESION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 was customary to place beside a cow at milking time to 
 induce her to give her milk freely. The "tulchan bishops" 
 are perhaps the most happily nicknamed body in history, 
 and the popular feeling against them apparently went 
 little further than the nickname. 
 
 If the Kirk could be defrauded thus under the Regencies 
 of Lennox and Mar, while the sorely tried country was 
 being convulsed by fresh invasions and a miserable civil 
 war, it was not likely to manage much better under the 
 iron rule of the Earl of Morton when quiet had been 
 restored. Morton " had the address to persuade the Pres- 
 byterian clergy that it would be the best thing for their 
 interest to resign at once into his hands the thirds of the 
 benefices which had been granted for their support. . . . 
 Their collectors, he said, were often in arrear ; but his 
 object would be to make the stipend local, and payable 
 in each parish where they served. . . . The moment 
 Morton became possessed of the thirds, his scheme of 
 spoliation was unmasked. The course he followed was to 
 appoint two, three, or even or four churches to one minister, 
 who was bound to preach in them by turns ; and at the 
 same time he placed in every parish a reader whose duty 
 was to officiate in the minister's absence, and to whom a 
 miserable pittance of twenty or forty pounds Scots was 
 assigned. Having thus allotted to the Church the smallest 
 possible sum, he seized the overplus for himself; and 
 when the clergy .... petitioned to be reinstated in their 
 property .... they were at first met with many delays, 
 and at last peremptorily told that the appointment of the 
 stipends ought properly to belong to the regent and coun- 
 cil" (Tytler, iv., 2; see also Spottiswoode, iii., 195-6). 
 Instead of the people being now more democratically im- 
 patient of tyranny than in the past, they were positively 
 oppressed by Morton in a way they never had been under 
 their kings. He exacted fines in all directions from those 
 who had been on the other side in the civil war, and the 
 circuit courts, under his administration, " became little 
 else than parts of a system of legal machinery invented to 
 overawe and plunder all classes of the community. To 
 supply them with victims he kept in pay a numerous body 
 of informers, whose business it was to discover offences. 
 . . . Ground was found for every species of prosecution ; 
 against merchants for transporting coin out of the realm,
 
 150 THE PEE VERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 against Protestants for transgressing the statute by eating flesh 
 in Lent, against the poorer artisans or laborers for the 
 mere remaining in a town or city which was occupied by 
 the queen's forces. As to those whose only offence was 
 to be rich, their case was the worst of all ; for to have a 
 full purse, and ' thole ' [undergo] a heavy fine to the 
 regent, were become synonymous terms" (Tytler, iv., 3). 
 Against this tyranny by a Protestant noble, one of the 
 pillars of the Reformation, the clergy could not and did 
 not help the people. Their comparatively efficient criticism 
 of the ruling powers only began under the weak and 
 ignoble rule of James VI., when the throne was in its old 
 position of conflict with the baronage. 
 
 Such was the tenor of ecclesiastical history in Scotland 
 from the Reformation till after the death of Knox ; and 
 for us who study the influence of the Kirk as a political 
 and social institution the question arises, What had it done 
 thus far for the nation ? Did it improve men's morals or 
 spread light and knowledge, or further justice, or increase 
 liberty, or raise the people, or in any way specially pro- 
 mote civilisation ? The answer of the impartial historian 
 must be that it had done none of these things. Taking 
 its rise in sectarian hatred, and finding its life in persecu- 
 tion, it could not vindicate justice, or consecrate liberty; 
 and, making neither for freedom nor tolerance, it could not 
 be said to advance morality. The one thing that can be 
 claimed for it thus far is that its influence was directed 
 against "immorality" in the clerical sense that is, against 
 unlegalised intercourse between the sexes. When a lead- 
 ing reformer was found to have broken his marriage vow 
 his brethren promptly expelled him (Burton, iv., 90) ; but 
 of any inculcation of a high general morality their teach- 
 ings show no trace. It is the bare truth to say that in an 
 age of lawlessness and crime they never protested against 
 lawless violence save when it was used against themselves 
 or their party. Men like Knox, not personally inclined to 
 acts of outrage, availed themselves without scruple of the 
 aid of the most depraved criminals. 1 The murderers of 
 
 1 The suspected complicity of Wishart the martyr in the English 
 plot to assassinate Beaton being still insufficiently proved, I offer no 
 statement on the question here. The charge, however, must be kept 
 in view. Compare Tyler, iii., 36/5 et seq., and Burton, iii., 256-261. 
 As the evidence stands, there is clear ground for suspicion against
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 151 
 
 Cardinal Beaton, with whom he threw in his lot in 1546, 
 were admittedly a set of grossly licentious ruffians (Burton, 
 iii., 263). Of one of them the clerical historian Robertson 
 has declared that he was " the most corrupt man of his 
 age ", a description accepted by Burton, with the remark 
 that it is "an expression condensing within it a terrible 
 mass of criminality" (p. 268) ; while Knox himself (His- 
 tory, i., 23) afterwards spoke of others of the gang as 
 having become "enemies of Christ Jesus and to all vertew" 
 -which may mean either that after murdering Beaton 
 they cooled in their zeal for Protestantism, or that their 
 later lives were in keeping with that beginning. It proves 
 Knox's entire failure to rise above the ethics of his time 
 that he justified the acts of such men without hesitation 
 when they happened to meet his own wishes. He was 
 even more lawless than his lay contemporaries, not less so. 
 When a layman like Lyndsay could say of the Beaton 
 murder that 
 
 " Although, the loon was weill away, 
 The deed was foully done," 
 
 Knox had no regret or * scruple whatever. The Eev. Dr. 
 Crichton feels constrained to urge (McCrie's "Life", p. 
 xxxv.) that " the arguments of Knox, drawn from heathen 
 antiquity, to palliate the assassination of Cardinal Bea- 
 toun, the ill-timed merriment he displays in relating that 
 foul deed, and the countenance which his comments on 
 that act were calculated to give in a fierce age, to pro- 
 mote murder or unrestrained vengeance deserved, upon 
 the whole, a severer reprehension, a more decided con- 
 demnation than they have found in the pages of his bio- 
 grapher". And the Beaton business was not a solitary 
 case. Knox was always ready to condone and extol a 
 murder which removed an enemy of his cause. Much 
 indignation has been expressed by Presbyterian partisans 
 at a statement of Ty tier's (iii., 216, and appendix) that 
 Knox was privy to the murder of David Rizzio. The 
 charge is in point of fact quite reasonably supported j 1 but 
 
 Wishart, and no satisfactory vindication. The argument relied on by 
 the younger McCrie (" Sketches", p. 41, note) is childish. 
 
 1 The case stands thus. The envoy Randolph wrote from Berwick 
 to Elizabeth's minister Cecil in March, 1565-6, naming certain men, 
 and alluding to others unnamed, as having been mixed up in the 
 assassination ; and to this letter, in the State Paper Office, was
 
 152 THE PEBVEKSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 if it were not, the outcry would still be ridiculous in the 
 face of the unquestioned fact that Knox, in his history 
 (L, 235), declares that "that pultron and vyle knave 
 Davie was justlie punished" , and complains that the titled 
 assassins, Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay, and the rest, "for 
 thare just act, and most worthy of all praise, ar now unworthely 
 left of thare brethren, and suffer the bitterness of banishe- 
 ment and exyle ". Dr. McCrie ("Life," p. 253) concedes 
 that "it is probable" Knox had " expressed his satisfac- 
 f action " at the murder, but does not think fit to cite the 
 above passage. One wants to know what great moral dif- 
 ference there is between pronouncing a given assassina- 
 tion, after the event, to have been a just act, worthy of all 
 praise, and being privy to it beforehand ? I am not 
 making it an indictment against Knox that in an age of 
 blood he gave his countenance to deeds of blood : I simply 
 state the facts, and submit that he was doing nothing to 
 purify his age. 
 
 It is claimed for the Reformers, with inveterate fatuity, 
 that they introduced a higher moral tone when they de- 
 nounced Mary for the killing of Darnley. There could be 
 no more decisive test of the abject empiricism of the ethics 
 of the eulogists and the eulogised. Here was the leading 
 Reformer proclaiming the murder of Rizzio, guilty only 
 of zeal for his mistress and his Church, to be a noble and 
 laudable action, while the murder of the really vile Darnley, 
 most scoundrelly of traitors and most filthy of adulterers, 
 at the instance (real or presumed) of his outraged and 
 nauseated wife, was execrated as the grossest of crimes. 
 Morality becomes a farce in the face of such decisions. 
 No rational reader of history will dispute for a moment 
 that for such an act as the murder of her secretary any 
 
 found pinned a list of names, dated "Martii, 1565" [=1566 by 
 modern reckoning], in the hand of Cecil's clerk, with the endorse- 
 ment, " Names of such as were, consenting to the death of David ". 
 At the bottom of the list are the names of Knox and his colleague 
 Craig, and there is subjoined a statement beginning: "All these 
 Avere present at the death of Davy and privy thereunto ". It is known 
 that all those named were not present, and Tytler argues that the 
 and = or, a perfectly probable construction. The ecclesiastics, with 
 professional candor, found on the fact that Knox was not present, and 
 declare that the construction and=or is monstrous. They ignore the 
 fact that the literal construction would make Randolph a crazy 
 gomp.
 
 THE PEBVEBSION OF SCOTLAND. 153 
 
 contemporary sovereign in Mary's place would have felt 
 justified thrice over in beheading the assassins ; and look- 
 ing to the fact that Darnley was one of the framers of the 
 plot, the execration of Mary resolves itself into saying that 
 for a Queen to put her husband to death is the worst of 
 crimes even when he has deserved death by her country's 
 laws. The fact is that the current of popular feeling 
 against Mary in Scotland was determined by the obvious 
 folly of her course and not by its guilt. A mediaeval popu- 
 lace never detested a guilty or perfidious sovereign who 
 carried crime regally and remained master of the situation : 
 witness the popular attitude towards Henry VIII. in 
 England and towards his daughter Elizabeth. Mary 
 Stewart, bringing to a desperately difficult situation one 
 of the cleverest heads queen ever had, contrived to lose 
 it more hopelessly than queen ever did ; carrying her race's 
 unwisdom in affection to the last stage of possibility. The 
 crowd pardons everything in a ruler save weakness ; 
 though, as in Mary's case, it will readily fasten its outcry 
 on a crime by way of justifying its wrath, once aroused.. 
 It has, of course, one moral code for kings and another for 
 queens ; but, even in that view, to pretend that the clamor 
 raised in Scotland over the killing of Darnley meant pure 
 moral horror at the taking of life even at the taking of a 
 husband's life is to water history into a moral tale for 
 the domestic hearth. In these matters the Protestant 
 clergy were exactly on a par with their lay contemporaries 
 alike in the barbarism of their ethics and their transparent 
 personal bias ; just as in the next reign they approved of 
 the kidnapping of the King because the kidnappers were 
 in the Protestant interest, while the king was supposed to 
 lean to Catholicism. Their professed respect for law was 
 even as that of the barons, an ingrained cant for the 
 sixteenth century had its cant like the nineteenth. And 
 so far as Murray, the most reputable of the Protestant 
 leaders, directed the administration of justice, there was 
 even a retrogression frond the standards of the time ; the 
 poor men concerned in the Darnley tragedy being zealously 
 put to death, while their masters, notoriously the true 
 criminals, went scot free. 
 
 In the matter of liberty there is really not the shadow 
 of a case for the early Kirk. As we have seen, it had 
 never entertained the principle of freedom, as such, for a
 
 154 THE PERVEESION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 moment. From the first it sought to keep social life under 
 its thumb, taking up the threads where the Church of 
 Rome had dropped them. As early as 1563 we find the 
 ecclesiastical Superintendent of Fife delating four women 
 for witchcraft, and the Assembly calling on the civil power 
 to act, the new Church thus early rivalling the old in 
 sanguinary superstition ("Acts and Proceedings of the 
 General Assemblies," Bannatyne Club ed., Pt. 1, p. 44). 
 Then in 1567 a baronet who harbors an excommunicated 
 man is ordered by the Assembly to send him forth (Ibid., 
 p. 98). Two years later the new clerical power takes upon 
 it to assert an absolute censorship of the press and to order 
 that the Edinburgh printer of the day, Thomas Bassandine, 
 " is not to print without license of the supreme magistrate, 
 and revising of such things as pertain to religion by some 
 of the Kirk appointed to that purpose" (Ibid., p. 126); 
 and in 1574 a Committee of Assembly is appointed "to 
 oversee all manner of books or works that shall be proposed 
 to be printed, and to give their judgment themipon if the 
 same be allowed and approved by the law of Grod or 
 not". New Protestant was but old priest writ large, 
 and when the Protestant became a full-fledged Presbyter 
 the correspondence was still more emphatic. We have 
 seen how, at his outset, ho laid his hand on popular 
 amusements ; and we shall see later the full effect of his 
 censorship of the press and his general intellectual in- 
 fluence. Meanwhile, simultaneously with the definite 
 establishment of the censorship, the Assembly made 
 elaborate arrangements for the extinction of the love of 
 beauty in the popular mind, with what results innumerable 
 later comments on the squalor and uncleanliness of the 
 Scottish common people can testify. 
 
 The reverend brethren thus express themselves on the 
 subject of dress: "We thinke all kynd of brodering 
 vnseimlie ; all vagaries of velvett on gownes, hoses, or 
 coat ; and all superfluous and vaine cutting out, steiking 
 with silks ; all kynd of costlie sewing on passments, or 
 sumptuous or large steiking with silks ; all kynd of costly 
 sewing or variant hews in sarks ; all kynd of light and 
 variant hewes in cloathing, as red, blew, yeallow, and 
 sicklyke, wliilk declares the lightnes of the mynd ; all wearing 
 of rings, bracelets, buttons of silver, gold, or other mettall ; 
 all kynd of superfluitie of cloath in makeing of hose ; all
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 155 
 
 vsing of plaids in the Kirk be Eeidars or Ministers . . . ; 
 all kynd of gowning, coating or doubliting, or breiches 
 of velvett, satine, taffettie, or sicklyke; all costly gilting 
 of whingers and knyves, or sicklyke ; all silk hatts, or 
 hatts of divers and light collours. But that their haill 
 habite be of grave collour, as black russet, sad grey, sad 
 browne, or serges, wirsett chamlet, growgrame-lytes, 
 wirsett, or sicklike " (Ibid., p. 335). And a "daring 
 obligation", as Dr. Burton terms it, was under- 
 taken by the brethren for "their wives to be subject 
 to the same ordour ". The significance of such a piece 
 of sumptuary legislation goes further than the un- 
 speakable catalogue of haberdashery it presents, further 
 than its mere direct prohibitions. Such a list of forbidden 
 embellishments is the work of men who were capable of 
 carrying priestly inquisition into the minutise of life as no 
 clergy had ever done before, and who were determined to 
 get hold alike of the bodies and the souls of the multitude 
 around them, crushing all individual instinct within their 
 rigid scheme and deadening all the hues of life to their 
 own joyless monotone of asceticism. 
 
 This was in 1573, and after the final fall of Morton in 
 1581 the Church year by year gained in social and even in 
 political influence, though its constitution had still vicis- 
 situdes before it. In 1580, before Morton's arrest, the 
 Assembly is found deciding that " the office of ane bishop, 
 as it is now used and commonly taken within this realm, 
 has no sure warrant, authority or good ground out of the 
 scripture of Grod, but is brought in by folly and corruption, 
 to the great overthrow of the kirk of Grod". The office 
 accordingly was abolished, and the existing bishops were 
 called on to surrender their functions, under pain of ex- 
 communication (Burton v., 2012). Next came the 
 "Second Book of Discipline", in which the Kirk's Con- 
 stitution is placed on a definitely Presbyterian basis, that 
 polity being now strenuously urged by a new school of 
 ecclesiastics, at the head of whom was Alexander Melville, 
 lately returned from the continent, and bringing with him 
 the latest developments of Protestant ecclesiasticism, as 
 Knox and others had brought the creed of Geneva. The 
 Parliament, as before, refused to give legal force to the 
 Church's scheme of discipline (Ibid., 204) but the clergy 
 adhered to it for themselves ; and in the beginning of 1581
 
 156 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 they obtained the boy king's signature to a document 
 wordily repudiating "all kinds of Papistry", variously 
 known as the First Covenant, the Second Confession of 
 Faith (the First being that of 1560), the King's Confession, 
 and the Negative Confession. With the King on their 
 side, the clergy forcibly imposed this Covenant on the 
 nation, a royal mandate being obtained empowering them 
 to compel the signatures of their parishioners and to 
 proceed against Recusants according to civil and church 
 law. (Ibid., 208.) Presbyterianism now began to take 
 hold of the popular mind (p. 210). The boy king remained 
 a childish monarch at maturity ; and only his passion for 
 absolutism a revulsion from the democratic teachings of 
 his tutor George Buchanan prevented the clergy from 
 fully attaining the political power it sought. The episode 
 known as the Eaid of Euthven, the kidnapping of the 
 young King in 1582, had their full approbation as being 
 the work of Protestant lords ; but though James had many 
 skirmishes with the Kirk, he judged it prudent to leave 
 an influential clergyman instead of a noble to act as regent 
 during his matrimonial expedition to Denmark in 1589 ; 
 and in 1592 episcopacy was formally abolished and Pres- 
 byterianism established by Act of Parliament ; this step 
 being followed up in 1593 by an Act "for punishment of 
 the contemn ers of the decreets and judicatories of the 
 Kirk " (Burton, iv., 27780). Thus in the period from 
 1560 to 1592, Scotland saw established, first a Protestant 
 system with something like virtual episcopacy, under which 
 Catholic hierarchical titles were still recognised; then a 
 regular and legalised Protestant episcopacy ; and then a 
 system of pure Presbyterianism. 
 
 And how did the national life develop all the while ? 
 Dr. Burton, dating the strictly Presbyterian movement 
 from a "religious revival " about 1580, sums up the moral 
 history of the previous twenty years in the sentence : "On 
 the present occasion, speaking of the mere social and moral 
 influences set at work, a stranger might welcome the 
 advent of efforts which, whether spiritually orthodox or 
 not, yet had something in them tending to check or modify 
 the spirit of ferocity, rapacity, and sensuality that was 
 spreading moral desolation over the land" (v., 201). His 
 own account of the state of things thirty years later still, 
 tells us how far such a hypothetical hope had been ful-
 
 THE- PEE VERSION OJ 1 SCOTLAND. 15? 
 
 filled. But first let us hear the old historian of the Kirk 
 proclaiming at once the triumph of Presbyterian polity 
 and the concurrent demoralisation, civil and religious, of 
 the land: "The Kirk of Scotland was now come to her 
 perfection, and the greatest puritie that ever she atteaned 
 unto, both in doctrine and discipline, so that her beautie 
 was admirable to forraine kirks. The assembleis of the 
 sancts were never so glorious, nor profitable to everie one 
 of the true members thereof, than in the beginning of this 
 yeere " [1596] (Calderwood, v., 387). And in the Assembly 
 of the spring of this very year, as reported by the same 
 writer (p. 409), official complaint is made of " the commonn 
 corruptions of all estats within this realme ", as follows : 
 "An universall coldnesse and decay of zeale in all estats, 
 joyned with ignorance and contempt of the Word, ministrie, 
 and sacraments ; and where knowledge is, no sense or 
 
 feeling Superstitioun and idolatrie is interteaned, 
 
 which uttereth itself in keeping of festivall dayes, bone- 
 fires, pilgrimages, singing of carrolls at Yuille. Great 
 blasphemie of the holie name of God in all estats, with 
 horrible banning and cursing in all their speeches. Pro- 
 fanation of the Sabboth, and speciallie in seed-tyme and 
 
 harvest Little care, reverence, and obedience of 
 
 inferiours to their superiours, as siclyke of superiours in 
 
 discharging of their duteis to their inferiours A 
 
 flood of bloodshed and deadlie feuds rising thereupon ; 
 an universall assisting of bloodsheds, for eluding of lawes. 
 Adulteries, fornications, incests, unlawfull marriages, and 
 divorcements . . . . ; excessive drinking and waughting ; 
 gluttonie, which is no doubt the cause of the dearth and 
 famine . . . . ; Sacrilege in all estats, without anie con- 
 science, growing continuallie more and more, to the utter 
 undoing of the Kirk ; . . . . cruel oppression of the poore 
 tenents, whereby the whole commouns of the countrie are 
 
 utterly wracked A greate number of idle persons 
 
 without lawfull calling, as pypers, fiddlers, songsters, 
 sorners, plesents, strong beggars, living in harlotrie, and 
 having their children unbaptized, without all kinde of re- 
 pairing to the "Word Universall neglect of justice 
 
 both in civil and criminal causes . . . . ; no executioun of 
 good lawes made against vices, or in favour of the kirk. 
 In parliament sacrilegious persons, as abbots, pryours, 
 dumbe bishops, voting in name of the kirk, contrare the
 
 158 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 laws of the countrie The sessioun [_i.e., the law 
 
 courts] is charged with buying of pleyes [pleas'] delaying 
 of justice, and briberie." It is further stated, on p. 416, 
 that "the land is overflowed with Atheisme and all 
 kinds of vice, there being above foure hundreth parish 
 kirks destituted of the ministrie of the Word, by 
 and attour [i.e., over and above] the kirks of Argile 
 and the lies." And it is proposed, by way of re- 
 forming the pastorate, "That suche as are light and 
 wantoun in behaviour .... in speeche, in using light and 
 profane companie, unlawf ull gaming, as dancing, cairding 
 [Y.<?., card-playing], dyeing [dicing] and suche like .... 
 be sharpelie and gravelie reproved by the presbyterie. 
 .... That ministers being found swearers .... pro- 
 fainers of the Sabboth, drunkards, fighters, guiltie of all 
 
 these, or anie of them, to be deposed simpliciter 
 
 That ministers given to unlawful! and uncompetent trades 
 and occupations for filthie gaine, as holding of ostlareis 
 [hostelries], talking of ocker [usury] beside [against] 
 conscience and good lawes, and bearing worldlie offices in 
 noble and gentlemen's houses, merchandice and such like, 
 buying of victualls, and keeping to dearth .... be ad- 
 monished .... and if they continue therein, to be de- 
 posed" (pp. 404-5). Such were the concomitants of purity 
 and perfection in the assemblies of the saints : such the 
 palmy days of primeval Presbyterianism. At the end of 
 the report of this Assembly's proceedings (p. 420) Calder- 
 wood writes: "Heere end all the sincere Assembleis 
 Grenerall of the Kirk of Scotland, injoying the libertie of 
 the Gospell under the free government of Christ", the 
 statement having reference to the fact that in 1597 the 
 political see-saw again brought about an establishment of 
 episcopacy by the Estates. On the whole it might be 
 thought that the intermission of the "sincere Assemblies" 
 was a good thing. On their own showing they had co- 
 existed not only with general demoralisation but with the 
 most scandalous backwardness in those very matters of 
 religion which the clergy professed to have specially at 
 heart. And the situation is not hard to understand. The 
 moral and intellectual elevation of any people is a complex 
 process, in which the pursuit of the liberal arts and of 
 commerce is a most important element. In a nation 
 accustomed to violence there is no other way of attaining
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 159 
 
 peaceful civilisation. But instead of availing itself of these 
 means of amelioration the Kirk was positively hostile to 
 the first and cold towards the second. Its trusted spiritual 
 weapons were those of fanatical exhortation, of monition, 
 of ascetic denunciation : violence it opposed with violence, 
 justifying its own deeds as wrought in the service of God, 
 though accomplished with the weapons of carnal wicked- 
 ness ; and trampling the idea of religious tolerance under 
 foot. Such a policy made men neither just nor humane, 
 neither pure nor charitable ; while all the special fruits of 
 intense superstition were present in rank luxuriance. To 
 that end the Kirk exercised a double influence, spreading 
 fanaticism by direct methods on the one hand, and on the 
 other crushing out all leanings towards intellectual light. 
 A close study of Scottish history suggests that the nation's 
 ecclesiastical experience has something to do with the 
 growth of one species of intellectual capacity, but against 
 this service, be it worth what it may, there is to be set 
 a tremendous account of disservice to the nation's best 
 interests. Before the Eeformation Scotland had begun to 
 build up a literature of poetry and drama ; and the pros- 
 perity of Catholicism insured a certain effort towards art. 
 True, the progress of the country under the Stewarts had 
 been but slow. There are many reasons for accepting the 
 conclusion of Dr. Burton (iii., 432, 438) that the country 
 had been substantially richer before the War of Inde- 
 pendence in the thirteenth century than it was in the 
 middle of the sixteenth; the explanation being that the 
 constant struggle with England on the one hand, and on 
 the other the unending civil convulsions arising out of 
 the military power inevitably acquired by the nobles in a 
 country constantly at war were always draining the nation 
 of material wealth; the poverty so induced making the 
 nobles still more bent on plunder and ever more factious. 
 In the strong though short reign of James the Fourth, 
 however, the country had progressed remarkably alike in 
 wealth and in culture ; and it was in the troubled reign of 
 his son, which began in a long minority, that the Refor- 
 mation movement began. The question is, then, whether 
 that movement, as taking shape in the Protestant Kirk, 
 tended to the nation's intellectual progress, putting the 
 matter of wealth aside; and when we find that it abso- 
 lutely made an end for a whole age of literature proper
 
 160 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 and of every form of art, the question is .pretty well 
 answered in the negative. 
 
 Confining ourselves to the two reigns of the Fourth and 
 Fifth Jameses, we have literature represented by the many- 
 sided poet Dunbar and the satiric and dramatic poet Sir 
 David Lyndsay. two names which will compare with any 
 in English literature up to the same period, with the one 
 exception of Chaucer. But Dunbar, if on the whole less 
 important and permanent, is in his way not less unique 
 and really not less powerful than Chaucer; so unique 
 and so powerful that there is no Scottish lyric poet who 
 can be named beside him down to the time of Burns ; and 
 on Lyndsay's chief dramatic work, the morality play of 
 "The Thrie Estaitis", we have the verdict of Mr. Ward 
 that in vigor and variety it "far exceeds any English 
 effort of the same species", and is further "by far the 
 most elaborate and powerful of all the mediaeval Morali- 
 ties" ("History of English Dramatic Literature", i., 70 
 71). Put beside these writers' works those of Bishop 
 G-avin Douglas, the translator of the JEneid, and the 
 poems attributed to James V., and it becomes clear that 
 Scotland was at the beginning of the sixteenth century 
 far on the way to the possession of a literature at once 
 brilliant and popular the surest manifestation of an 
 upward tendency in civilisation. A people with such a 
 literature promised to become enlightened, artistic, and 
 free from superstition. "What the rise of the Protestant 
 Kirk made them was the direct antithesis of all these. 
 
 Printed by ANNIE BESANT and CBAKLKS BBADLAUGH, 63, Fleet St., E.G. 16G.
 
 THE SINS OF THE CHURCH 
 XI. 
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 BY JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 (III.) 
 
 BLOODY civil strife is always injurious to culture; and 
 in 1560 the impulse given by Dunbar, Douglas, and 
 Lyndsay, was certainly not obviously bearing fruit. But 
 it was the work of the Kirk that instead of a reaction 
 towards culture the whole back-swing of the nation's 
 mind was substantially towards an arid fanaticism. The 
 inner spirit of the new movement was hostile to literature 
 and art as such. I say this advisedly, with full recogni- 
 tion of all that can be said as to the learning of a few of 
 the first Eeformers, and of men like Andrew Melville in the 
 generation immediately following. The essence of living 
 literature, living thought, living science, and living art, is 
 the free play of the mind in all these various directions, 
 and to the Eeformers the idea of giving free play to the 
 mind in any direction whatever was rank profanity. Mel- 
 ville might indeed discuss the classics with a scholar's 
 gusto, and, basing himself on the new scholastic infalli- 
 bilism of the Bible, might boldly challenge in the schools 
 the supremacy of Aristotle ; but here even his intelligence 
 set bounds to its critical action ; and while he could not 
 but have some personal influence for light, if not for sweet- 
 ness, his power was fatally greater in the narrow sphere 
 of doctrine than in the broad sphere of knowledge. At 
 best, his culture had no help for the common people. The 
 very praise given him for his services in furthering the 
 classical movement in Scotland is decisive as to his worse 
 than failure^ to promote the national literature. On the 
 one hand an imitative, insincere, academic classicism; on the 
 other a vulgarised Calvinism such was the literary message 
 of the Eeformation for Scotland. The classicism never took 
 hold of life at all; the Calvinism blighted life at every point 
 of contact. A moral code arbitrarily deduced from the Bible 
 was made to apply to every species of action whatever, with
 
 162 THE PEEVEBSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the result of finding evil in nearly everything men found 
 pleasure in doing. Much has been said in praise of the 
 scheme of the universities and schools projected byKnoxand 
 his colleagues (see Knox, ii., 213, etseq.\ and it may freely 
 be conceded that if the avarice and barbarism of the land- 
 owning class had allowed that scheme to be carried out, 
 some beneficial spread of knowledge might have resulted. 
 But such a result could only have accrued by indirect 
 means, not at all by reason of the kind of policy 
 the kirk would have pursued in education. The typical 
 learned Presbyterian of the age was Andrew Melville, in 
 whom the most copious scholarship bore little save the 
 Dead Sea fruit of factitious polemics. Knox himself has 
 left positively nothing of permanent human value save his 
 vivid record of the movement in which he bore part. And 
 when we set beside this negative indictment, this destitu- 
 tution of healthful teaching, the positive performance of 
 the Kirk in the way of sowing superstition and deepening 
 mental darkness, it is hard to see what room there is left 
 for crediting it with any service to national progress. 
 
 Presbyterian partisans, hard pressed to vindicate their 
 ancestors on the subject of witch-burning, take the line of 
 asserting that the witchcraft mania was an inheritance 
 from Romanism. The ruse is puerile. The Reformers 
 would have made short work of a colleague who refused to 
 see that the exhortation to witch-killing and the authority 
 for the belief in sorcery came from Holy Writ. What 
 historically concerns us here to-day is that whereas in 
 Catholic times there was no witch-burning in Scotland, the 
 Protestant clergy were as zealous in that walk as they were 
 in denouncing Popery and sexual license. The first legal 
 enactment against witchcraft in Scottish history is the Act 
 of the Protestant Parliament of 1563, in which the penalty 
 of death is enacted "alsweill . . . aganis the usar, abusar, 
 as the seikar of the response or consultatioun " (Acts, ii., 
 539) ; this being one of the few things in which the Estates 
 conformed to the wishes of Knox (Burton, iv., 72). As we 
 have seen (ante, p. 154), the clergy at once sought to give 
 effect to the new statute. It is difficult, however, to trace 
 their achievements closely. Pitcairn (" Criminal Trials in 
 Scotland ", I., part ii., p. 49) speaks of the case of Bessie 
 Dunlop in 1576 as one of the earliest witchcraft trials of 
 which detailed record remains ; the only previous case in
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 163 
 
 his compilation, I think (save one in which a woman 
 was only banished), being that of Janet Boyman in 
 1572 (Ibid., p. 38). I find in his collection accounts of 
 fifty-seven prosecutions for witchcraft in all, the accused 
 being burned in nineteen cases and beheaded in three. 
 But he notes (iii., 597) that during the reign of James VI. 
 "hundreds of helpless creatures were destroyed under 
 form of law " on the charge of witchcraft ; "for those who 
 were tried before the High Court of Justiciary bore a very 
 small proportion to the very great numbers who were tried 
 and condemned by the Lords of Regalities, Baron Bailies, 
 and by the Royal Commissioners. A very striking fact 
 mentioned by Baron Hume in his valuable Commentaries 
 [ref. to Hume on Punishment for Crimes, ii., 559] may be 
 here briefly noted, that no fewer than fourteen Commis- 
 sions for Trial of Witches were granted [note : by the Lords 
 of Privy Council] for different quarters of the country, 
 in one sederunt, of the 7th of November, 1661 ; which 
 year seems to have been the most fertile period of this 
 sort of accusation." That is to say, the mania reached 
 its highest point in Scotland one hundred years after the 
 Reformation, the superstition having steadily intensified 
 from the time of Knox, down through the historic Cove- 
 nanting period under Charles I., when the nation became 
 most thoroughly Presbyterian and devout. 
 
 The influence of the clergy to this end, implied in the 
 main facts, is made clear by the details collected by 
 Pitcairn in regard to trials for witchcraft. " There was 
 generally in all cases of this nature," he writes (I., Pt. ii., 
 p. 49), " a previous Precognition [i.e., examination] taken 
 before the Privy Council, most frequently after repeated 
 examinations before the Kirk Session or the Presbytery. . 
 - . . Such inquisitions generally proceeded upon a Special 
 Commission issued by the Privy Council ; when the evi- 
 dence of neighbors was taken down, whose lamentable 
 ignorance and superstitious fears would magnify into 
 Sorcery and Witchcraft the simplest actions of the life of 
 the suspected Witch." It is unnecessary here to go into 
 any description of the ghastly mediaeval mania in question. 
 The case of Bessie Dunlop is typical, it being perfectly 
 evident from the records that that poor woman became in- 
 sane after childbirth, and that her illusions were taken as 
 a reason for burning her. Pitcairn's account of the manner
 
 164 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 of witch- worrying in Puritan Scotland, however, has pre- 
 sent importance. " Solitary confinement," he goes on, 
 "cold and famine, extreme thirst, the want of sleep, and 
 the privation of all the comforts, even the commonest 
 necessaries of life, the desertion of their affrighted rela- 
 tions and friends, added to the cruellest tortures, generally 
 induced them at length, weary of life, to make their ' Con- 
 fession ' as it was called. One of the most powerful in- 
 centives to ' Confession ' was systematically to deprive the 
 suspected witch of the refreshment of her natural rest and 
 sleep ; and the cruellest means were often resorted to, to 
 accomplish this heinous purpose. Even the indulgence of 
 lying in a reclining posture on their handful of straw was 
 frequently denied them. This engine of inhuman oppres- 
 sion was perhaps more effectual in extorting confessions 
 than the actual application of the torture or question itself. 
 Iron collars, or ' witches' bridles ', are still preserved in 
 various parts of Scotland which had formerly been used 
 for such iniquitous purposes. These instruments were so 
 constructed, that by means of a hoop which passed over 
 the head, a piece of iron, having four points or prongs, 
 was forcibly thrust into the mouth, two of these being 
 directed to the tongue and palate, the others pointing out- 
 ward to each cheek. This infernal machine was secured 
 by a padlock. At the back of the collar was fixed a ring 
 by which to attach the witch to a staple in the wall of her 
 cell. Thus equipped, and night and day ' waked ' and 
 watched by some skilful person appointed by her inquisi- 
 tors, the unhappy creature, after a few days of such dis- 
 cipline, maddened by the misery of her forlorn and helpless 
 state, would be rendered fit for ' confessing ' anything, in 
 order to be rid of the dregs of her wretched life. At 
 intervals, fresh examinations took place, and these were 
 repeated from time to time, until her ' contumacy ', as it 
 was termed, was subdued. The Clergy and Kirk Sessions 
 appear to have been the unwearied instruments of ' purg- 
 ing the land of witchcraft ' ; and to them, in the first 
 instance, all such complaints and informations were made." 
 As regards the practice of judicial torture, it is clear 
 that the clergy were assiduous in that insanest of all forms 
 of cruelty the world has seen. Tytler notes (iv., 231) that 
 when the Jesuit Morton was captured in 1595, "the minis- 
 ters of the Kirk insisted that this unhappy person should
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 165 
 
 be subject to the torture of the boots, as the only means of 
 obtaining a full confession " ; and we know from Pitcairn 
 that the victims of the witch mania were tortured in the 
 presence of ministers, who signed the reports. Some of 
 the refinements of atrocity achieved in the pursuit will 
 compare not ineffectively with the choicest exploits of the 
 Holy Inquisition ; witness the case of Alison Balfour, who 
 was tortured in the " caschielawis " for forty-eight hours 
 on end, during part of which time her aged husband, 
 her eldest son, and her little daughter, aged seven, were 
 all tortured before her, not as being themselves guilty, 
 but simply in order to extort her confession. That being 
 obtained, she was loosed, whereupon she at once revoked 
 the statement wrung from her (Pitcairn, I., part ii., p. 375). 
 Two ministers assisted at her execution. The superstition, 
 of course, soon pervaded all classes, King James being 
 one of the devoutest believers; and in time the _ magis- 
 trates became as zealous as the clergy in destroying the 
 wretched women who came under the insensate suspicion 
 of the populace. Here is one contemporary piece of 
 narrative, a memorandum by Thomas, Earl of Haddington, 
 in his Minutes of the Privy Council Proceedings, under 
 date December 1st, 1608 (Haddington MSS. A. 4, 22, Ad- 
 vocates' Library, quoted by Pitcairn, iii., 597) : " The Erie 
 of Mar declairit to the Counsall that sumwemen were tane 
 in Broichtoun " [before the Baron Baillie of the Eegality 
 of Broughton, near Edinburgh, Pitcairn explains] "as 
 Witches ; and being put to ane Assyse and convict, albeit 
 thay perseverit constant in thair denyell to the end, yit 
 thay wer burnit quick, efter sic ane crewell manner, that 
 sum of thame deit in despair, renunceand and blaspheamand ; 
 and otheris, half brunt, brak out of the fire, and wes cast 
 in quick in it agane, quhill thay wer brunt to the deid." 
 Burning "quick" [i.e., alive] was a late development, the 
 witch having usually been "wirreit" or strangled before 
 being burned in the early days. The people seem to have 
 passed from cruelty to cruelty precisely as they became 
 more and more fanatical, more and more devoted to their 
 Church, till after many generations the slow spread of 
 humane science began to counteract the ravages of super- 
 stition ; the clergy, as we shall see, resisting reason and 
 humanity to the last. This is the most salient feature in 
 the mental life of the Scottish people for a century after
 
 166 THE PEKVEESION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the Reformation as contrasted with their life before it 
 this shifting of the balance of superstition from the 
 mainly absurd accessories of Catholicism to the deadly 
 belief in diabolic influences. Hallam has flatly declared 
 ("Literature of Europe," part 1, c. iv., sec. 61) that the 
 theology of Luther was no more acceptable to reason than 
 the theology he assailed : he might similarly have said that 
 in Scotland the Reformation, on the intellectual side, meant 
 for the people the replacement of folly by frenzy, of delusion 
 by mania, of twilight by darkness a darkness which its- 
 few lights of scholarship only serve to make more visible 
 in the retrospect. In the essential mattters of social 
 brotherhood and beneficence I can detect no gain from 
 the theological change in Scottish history. When in 1569 1 
 famine and pestilence visited the harassed land, the new 
 cultus bore no fruit in pity or human kindness. "The 
 public policy was directed rather to the preservation of 
 the untainted than to the recovery of the sick. In other 
 words, selfishness ruled the day. The inhumanity towards 
 the humbler classes was dreadful. Well might Maister 
 Gilbert Skeyne, Doctor in Medicine, remark in his little tract 
 on the pest, now printed in Edinburgh : ' Every ane is- 
 become sae detestable to other (whilk is to be lamentit), 
 and specially the puir in the sight of the rich, as gif they 
 were not equal with them touching their creation, but 
 rather without saul or spirit, as beests degenerate fra 
 mankind ! ' This worthy mediciner tells us, indeed, that 
 he was partly moved to publish his book by ' seeand the 
 puir in Christ inlaik [perish] without assistance or support 
 in body, all men detestand aspection, speech, or commu- 
 nication with them'" (Chambers' "Domestic Annals of 
 Scotland", i., 52 53). Here the new religion failed, on 
 test, to inspire brotherly compassion, about as utterly as- 
 any pagan creed ever did ; and its doctrine of witchcraft 
 wrought directly and enormously for the searing of humane 
 feeling. "Towards those who came under the suspicion 
 of diabolical dealing there was no pity left in the human 
 
 heart Where the suspicion alighted it carried 
 
 belief with it, so as to render this chapter in the history of 
 human wrongs perhaps the very darkest and saddest of 
 them all" (Burton, vii., 115). Such is the feeling of the 
 latest and most temperate historian of Scotland, contem- 
 plating the condition of his country as its religious "re-
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 9 
 
 formation " determined it for a hundred years. 
 
 those who represent the ecclesiastical change as a 
 
 amelioration of the national life, moral and i 
 
 weigh against their theological gains the immoitaj. j.^*. ^ 
 
 of that awful murder roll. 
 
 The history of the Kirk after the Presbyterian climax of 
 1592 is to the full as chequered as that of the generation 
 before. So soon afterwards as 1597 the Estates at the 
 wish of the king passed an Act once more providing that 
 any pastors or ministers On whom the king should confer 
 the office and title of bishop or abbot, or any similar dis- 
 tinction, should sit and vote in Parliament freely as of old 
 (Acts, iv., 130 ; Burton, v., 314). This has been so often 
 represented as a tyrannous interference with the Kirk's 
 internal affairs that it may be well to state plainly how 
 matters really stood. The clergy were as far as could well 
 be conceived from desiring merely to be left alone in their 
 spiritual functions. The Second Book of Discipline (of 
 1581) had expressly stipulated that while the civil power 
 had no right to interfere in Church management, beyond 
 " commanding the spiritual to exercise and do their office 
 according to the Word of God ", on the other hand " the 
 spiritual rulers should require the Christian magistrate to 
 minister justice and punish vice, and to maintain the liberty 
 and quietness of the Kirk within their bounds" (Burton, 
 v., 203). Thus, as Burton comments, "the State could 
 give no effective orders to the Church, but the Church 
 could order the State to give material effect to its rules and 
 punishments". The State did not grant the modest de- 
 mand, but such was the clerical scheme. Again we find 
 Row ("History of the Kirk," Wodrow Society's ed., p. 
 184), representing the clergy in 1597 as perceiving that 
 " plotts were laid down for the alteration of religion or the 
 bringing in of libertie of conscience at the least.' 1 '' When, on 
 the contrary, the Estates re-established episcopacy in 1597, 
 they did nothing to give the bishops any spiritual jurisdic- 
 tion in the Church (Burton, p. 315). Some juggling took 
 place in the Assemblies, in which bribery seems to have 
 played a part, by way of getting the ministers to accept 
 the situation ; and on this being partially secured in 1600, 
 two or three bishops were created (Calderwood, vi., 96 ; 
 Spottiswoode, iii., 82). A strong spirit of time-serving had 
 become conspicuous among the ignorant and ill-paid clergy ;
 
 16668 
 
 THE PERVERSION* OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the king's party in the 1598 Assembly being described by 
 Calderwood, their spiritual brother, as "a sad, subservient 
 rabble", led by a "drunken Orkney asse" (v., 695). Finan- 
 cial or fanatical self-interest was indeed the one political 
 light the clergy possessed ;* and accordingly when, in 1600, 
 the crazy Gowrie Conspiracy to assassinate Jarnes made its 
 futile sputter, the high Presbyterian section almost to a 
 man championed the cause of the would-be assassins, un- 
 justly enough, for the simple reason that the house of 
 Gowrie was known to be strongly Presbyterian, while 
 James was at least Episcopalian and his wife was Catholic. 
 About this time, however, the fortunes of the Puritan 
 party began to sink very low. There is clear reason 
 to conclude that it was only in contrast with the per- 
 sonal folly and weakness of James that they had 
 been politically influential ; and when in 1 603 James ac- 
 ceded to the throne of England, and Scotch affairs were 
 attended to for him by the Privy Council, consisting of 
 nobles now no longer in conflict with the crown, the clergy, 
 as of old, went quickly to the wall before the compact 
 force of the aristocracy. All along, the northern districts, 
 of which Aberdeen may be termed the capital, had been 
 mainly royalist ; standing for Catholicism in Mary's time 
 and for Episcopalianism in James's ; the power of the 
 Melville party being chiefly confined to the south, the west, 
 and Fifeshire. To the people of the northern districts the 
 Puritan party were " the popes of Edinburgh" (Burton, 
 v., 431). Accordingly when, in 1605, the aristocratic party 
 gainsaid " the popes " on the question of the king's rela- 
 tion to the Church, there was a singular collapse on the 
 clerical side. The battle, says Burton (v., 433), "was 
 fought on the question whether General Assemblies be- 
 longed to the Crown, and were called and adjourned in the 
 king's name, or were bodies acting in self-centred inde- 
 pendence". "This question," he adds, "oddly enough, is 
 not yet settled, and is evaded by a subterfuge so abun- 
 dantly ridiculous as to be a standing butt for the jests of 
 
 1 On this head I may cite the judgment of Mr. Robert Louis Steven- 
 son in his essay on "Knox in his Relations to Women ", reprinted in 
 his " Familiar Studies of Men and Books ". That admirable writer's 
 standpoint is different from mine, but he is explicit as to the political 
 benightedness of the Reformation clergy in Scotland, with the partial 
 exception of Knox.
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 169 
 
 the profane" the allusion being to the annual hocus- 
 pocus between the Queen's Commissioner and the General 
 Assembly. What happened was that the Melville party, 
 more brave than prudent, called an Assembly at Aberdeen; 
 which being forbidden by royal proclamation, there met 
 only nine members, these of course being Melvillites. At 
 a second "Assembly", also prohibited, they mustered nine- 
 teen ; whereupon the Privy Council interfered, and im- 
 prisoned fourteen of them. In January, 1606, six of these, 
 including John Welch, Knox's son-in-law, were brought 
 to trial for treason and found guilty by a small majority 
 of the jury; and in October, 1606, they were sentenced 
 to banishment ; while about the same time the unsubduable 
 Melville, his nephew, and six others, were formally in- 
 vited to the English Court to "treat" with his majesty. 
 The end was that a Latin epigram of Melville's brought 
 him into sharp collision with the king and council; he 
 further assailing Episcopalianism in their presence with 
 such audacity and vehemence that he was imprisoned in 
 the Tower for four years, obtaining his liberty only on con- 
 dition of leaving the country ; while his companions were 
 put under surveillance in different towns, English and 
 Scotch. Melville, who was sixty-six years old at the 
 time of his banishment, henceforward drops out of Scottish 
 history, living mainly as a wandering scholar till his death 
 at Sedan in 1622. "His death, "remarks Dr. Burton (v., 439), 
 "was almost unnoticed, and his fame faded away from all 
 memories save those of the remnant of his own peculiar 
 people. His name will not be found in the biographical 
 dictionaries save in a few of recent times, for his fame in 
 the present day is due to its resuscitation by a man who 
 lived in the present generation " [i.e., Dr. McCrie]. 
 
 It thus appears that after a period of fanatical activity 
 the Puritan movement positively subsided before the cold 
 hostility of the Scots governing class, acting together with 
 none of the vacillation and none of the childishness which 
 characterised the personal policy of the king, though 
 refusing to go as far as James required. Doubtless the 
 flame of fanaticism had for the time gone far to exhaust 
 itself. On the expulsion of Welch and his friends, the 
 remnant of the Presbytery of Edinburgh professed to 
 rejoice at the exhibition of his majesty's "just anger", 
 declaring the offenders to be persons whom "the Kirk
 
 170 THE PERVEKSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 here has at last been forced to cut off and excommunicate 
 from her society " (Burton v., 436). So far did the re- 
 action go that in 1606 the Estates passed yet another Act 
 for the establishment of Episcopacy, this time professing 
 to give the bishops not only their honors and dignities but 
 their ancient revenues as well (Burton, v., 441 ; Acts iv., 
 281 ; Calderwood, vi., 496) ; and James, now thoroughly 
 attached to the English system, set about getting the 
 consent of the clergy to the installation of the bishops and 
 archbishops as "constant moderators", or supervisors, of 
 Presbyteries, Synods, and Assemblies. There was some 
 fight left in the high Presbyterians ; and a story is told of 
 a conflict, involving a personal scuffle and some profanity, 
 between the King's emissary Lord Scoon and the Synod 
 of Perth in 1607 (see McCrie's "Sketches", p. 151, and 
 references there). But James was able to obtain in 1610 
 the positive acceptance of the Act of 1606 by a General 
 Assembly, "by dint of bribery and intimidation" as is 
 explained by the true-blue Presbyterians of modern times. 
 It does not appear to be realised by these loyal partisans 
 that the very occurrence of such wholesale bribery as they 
 allege is the most damning impeachment of the Kirk of 
 their devotion. On their own showing, it was then two- 
 thirds corrupt. The evidence is decisive. Sir James- 
 Balfour, the annalist (ii., 18) states that in 1606 the Earl 
 of Dunbar, James's Commissioner and Scottish Lord 
 Treasurer was notoriously understood to have " distributed 
 amongst the most neiddey and clamorous of the ministrey 
 to obtain ther voyces and suffrages, (or ells moue them 
 to be neutralls) forty thousand merkes of money to 
 facilitate the bussines intendit, and cause matters goe 
 the smouthlier one ; " the fact being made certain by 
 the later discovery of Dunbar's accounts. And the 
 clerical historian Kow who, says the younger McCrie, 
 "may have somewhat exaggerated the sum" states 
 ("History of the Kirk", p. 289) that in buying the 
 benefices of the bishops " out of the hands of the noblemen 
 that had them, in buying votes at Assemblies, in defraying 
 of all their other charges ", the King " did employ (by the 
 confession of such as were best acquainted with, and were 
 actors in these businesses) above the summe of three 
 hundreth thowsand pounds sterlin money that is, sixe 
 and thirtie hundreth thowsand pounds, or fiftie-four
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLA1O). 17 1 
 
 hundreth thowsand merks Scots money ". There can be 
 no manner of doubt that Mr. Row exaggerated exten- 
 sively, but the fact of the bribing remains ; and there is no- 
 evidence of any special "intimidation" in the business. 
 Money sufficed to procure a majority for episcopacy in the 
 Glasgow Assembly of 1610 ; the distribution of golden 
 angels being such as to secure the addition of "the an- 
 gelical Assembly " to the list of Scotch historic nicknames. 
 By this arrangement the Kirk positively agreed to have its- 
 annual Assembly regarded as called and constituted by the 
 Crown ; and to place its provincial synods under the per- 
 manent supervision of the bishops, who were further to 
 have jurisdiction in matters formerly in the hands of pres- 
 byteries. The clergy indeed proposed that the bishops 
 should be subject to the censure of the General Assembly, 
 but when the Estates finally ratified the new arrangement 
 in 1612 they simply ignored the stipulation. Here again 
 the aristocratic party nominally arranged the Kirk's con- 
 stitution to their own taste ; but here again their invincible 
 greed eventually brought about the frustration of their 
 own scheme. The landowners were willing and even eager 
 to retain episcopacy, enacting it again and again as we 
 have seen ; but nothing could induce them to provide 
 properly for the class they wanted to establish. The new 
 bishops in their degree had to endure precisely the same 
 sort of financial hardships as the general clergy underwent 
 formerly (see Burton, v., 444-461) ; and this circumstance, 
 as we shall find, at length indirectly brought about a new 
 and intenser development of Presbyterianism, a deeper and 
 more enduring popular fanaticism. 
 
 All this while there was the reverse of a falling-off in 
 the denunciation of Popery and the burning of witches ; 
 venal and fanatical ministers being alike "sound" and 
 zealous on these heads. After the Gunpowder Plot, James's- 
 Protestantism was pretty well above suspicion, and that 
 and other Romish scares gave the Scotch clergy abundant 
 pretext for the inculcation of their first principle the 
 damnableness of Papistry. In 1600 the clergy called upon, 
 the king to prevent the French ambassador from having 
 mass in his own house (Calderwood, vi., 27) ; an insanity 
 which the British Solomon declined to commit. In 1615 
 came the execution of the Jesuit Ogilvie, already mentioned ;. 
 an event in regard to which the pious Calderwood, with
 
 172 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTljLND. 
 
 -characteristic Christian charity, notes (vii., 196) that 
 "some interpreted this execution to have proceedit rather 
 of a care to blesse the king's governement than of anie 
 sincere hatred to the Popish religion. Some deemed that 
 it was done to be a terrour to the sincerer sort of the 
 ministrie not to decline the king's authoritie in anie caus 
 whatsoever." Similarly the reverend historian, telling 
 how three citizens of Edinburgh, who had been sentenced 
 to death for entertaining priests, were reprieved at the 
 scaffold, states (vii., 202) that "the people thought this 
 forme of dealing rather mockerie than punishment". It 
 is plain from whom "the people" would get the hint. 
 The clergy were positively disgusted that a priest's execu- 
 tion should not be indisputably on the sole ground of his 
 religion ; and angry when the civil power had the clemency 
 to spare at the last moment three doomed citizens whose 
 sole crime was the harboring of the priests of their faith. 
 It is worth noting on the other hand, by way of offset to 
 official Catholic misdeeds, that when in 1599 the king was 
 sued by the Eev. Robert Bruce for withheld stipend, and 
 the king in person tried to browbeat the Court of Session 
 to decide in his own favor, the president, Sir Alexander 
 Seton, who was a Catholic, and as such denied the right to 
 the practice of his worship by Bruce's sect, firmly resisted 
 the royal interference, and joined in a judgment against 
 the king (Tytler, iv., 270). 
 
 Expressly trained in religious hate, steeped in the dark- 
 est superstition, and withheld from all art and culture by 
 the precept and example of a clergy who were confessedly 
 coarse and ignorant where not intensely fanatical held 
 aside thus from civilisation on all hands, the Scottish people 
 of all classes still naturally made slow progress in the 
 matter of social order. The Earl of Haddington, whom 
 we have seen exposing the cruelties of the witch mania, is 
 found in 1617 declaring ("State Papers .... of Thomas, 
 Earl of Melrose", published by Abbotsford Club, 1837, 
 i., 273) that whereas his contemporaries could remember 
 a time when disorder was universal, they had now arrived, 
 under the glorious rule of James, at a condition of pros- 
 perity and good government unequalled anywhere ; and 
 he gives a frighful catalogue of notorious oppression, 
 bloodshed, and crime, to bear out the first part of the 
 statement. This Dr. Burton accepts (vi., 16) as a sub-
 
 THE PERVEBSIOX OF SCOTLAND. 173 
 
 stantially accurate description of the condition of Scotland 
 at the union of the Crowns. The picture would probably 
 hold more precisely true of an earlier part of James's- 
 reign, some improvement having taken place before 1603 - r 
 but on the other hand the Earl's account of matters in 
 1617, drawn up as it is in a letter from him to the king, ia 
 certainly untrustworthy in its courtly optimism. Progress- 
 was no doubt made after James's departure, under the 
 rule of a vigorous executive, and of such statesmen as 
 Binning himself ; but lawlessness was still rife. Apart 
 from the virtual barbarism of the Highlands and the Isles, 
 we find it incidentally noticed by Calderwood (vii., 201) 
 that highway robbery was practised round about Edin- 
 burgh in 1615 by "certaine bair and idle gentlemen" 
 whom the common people called " Whilliwhaes " ; and the 
 fact is significant of the condition of the country in general. 
 The same writer briefly tells (vii., 118) how in 1610 a 
 batch of thirty-six pirates was brought to Edinburgh, and 
 twenty-seven hanged en masse at Leith. It was with such 
 recent memories, with such deeds going on around them, 
 with such practice to show for their theological system, 
 that the clergy and their more devout adherents waxed 
 hysterical over the attempts of James, on his Scottish visit 
 in 1617 and later, to impose on the Kirk the methods of 
 worship in vogue in England. Rapine and murder, peren- 
 nial violence and rank vice, might elicit their lamentations, 
 but what touched them to the quick was the suggestion 
 that certain ceremonies should be performed kneeling 
 which had been usually performed sitting or standing ; 
 that Christmas should be kept as a holiday; and that 
 baptism or communion might be gone through in private. 
 James nevertheless contrived to get a majority in the 
 Perth Assembly of 1618 for five such revolutionary changes ; 
 and though the minority predicted the most awful conse- 
 quences, it does not appear that during the twenty years 
 which elapsed before another Assembly was held there 
 was any special alteration in the social life of the country, 
 save in that progressive perversion of the national mind 
 which made trivial formalities and empty shibboleths more 
 and more the main subjects of intellectual exercise. 
 
 When James's fussy meddling with church ceremonies is 
 dignified, as it is by Buckle (iii., 113), with the title of an 
 attempt to " sub vert the liberties of Scotland" as if the
 
 174 THE PEBVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 serious liberties of the people had ever yet been gained at 
 all it is natural that the further and more blundering 
 interferences of his son Charles should be regarded as a 
 still more desperate stretch of tyranny. But these popular 
 notions, hastily adopted as they have been by men of high 
 ability, are seen in the light of later research to be mostly 
 empirical, and to be founded chiefly on clerical prejudice 
 and rhetoric. Even the resistance to the ritualistic inno- 
 vations of James had behind it the ever- vigorous force of 
 the pecuniary interest of the baronage and landowners. An 
 Act of 1617 (Acts, iv., 529) provided for the recovery of 
 the minor temporalities formerly attaching to deaneries, 
 canonries, and prebendaries ; and this measure no doubt 
 was felt by the nobles, as Dr. Burton suggests, to be a 
 means towards the feathering of their own nests ; but in 
 the circumstances they could not well refuse the further 
 Act (Ibid., p. 531) appointing a Parliamentary commission 
 to effect the better remuneration of ministers. This had 
 practical results. "The minimum allowance [fixed by the 
 commission] was equivalent to 500 merks, a sum estimated 
 at 27 15s. 6d. sterling; the maximum reached 800 merks, 
 estimated at 44 9s. sterling. As ecclesiastical lawyers 
 and antiquaries find that the complaints of the Church- 
 men about their incomes were much modified after this 
 commission began its work, there is the inference that it 
 gave them some satisfaction. We may further infer, that 
 to the extent to which the clergy were pleased and satis- 
 fied, the several greedy unscrupulous classes of men who 
 had got possession of the tithes became discontented and 
 hostile " (Burton vi., 45). How much force there is in 
 this inference we shall better estimate when we have 
 looked behind the preposterous assumption generally made 
 by Scotchmen, fanatical and latitudinarian alike, that the 
 <^<m'-religious rising in the reign of Charles I. was set in 
 motion by the inspired rowdyism of a mythical apple- 
 woman. 
 
 The popular notion of the rise of the Covenant move- 
 ment is that when in 1637 Charles and Laud sent down to 
 Scotland a liturgy offensive to the Presbyterianism of the 
 country, an Edinburgh woman of the name of Jenny 
 Geddes, who sold greengroceries, flung a stool at the head 
 of a dean who read the new service, whereupon the whole 
 country incontinently plunged into insurrection. The
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 175 
 
 historical facts, as now ascertained, are rather more com- 
 plex; and the Jenny G-eddes element is found to be 
 apocryphal. 
 
 One of the first public acts of Charles I., after his acces- 
 sion in 1625, was the marrying of a Catholic princess ; 
 and his next act of importance, from the point of view of 
 the Scotch, was a proclamation at the cross of Edinburgh, 
 in the winter of the same year, to the effect that the new 
 king formally revoked all grants by the Crown, and all 
 appropriations to the Crown's prejudice, whether before 
 or after his father's Act of Annexation made on James's 
 attaining majority in 1587. These Acts of Revocation by 
 father and son were in similar terms, but there was the 
 substantial difference that that of Charles included the 
 tithes appropriated by the landowners, whereas James left 
 the tithes alone (Burton, v., 270). This proclamation of 
 Charles, says Burton (vi., 75), " professed to sweep into 
 the royal treasury the whole of the vast ecclesiastical 
 estates which had passed into the hands of the territorial 
 potentates from the Reformation downwards. . . . He 
 held that what the Crown had given the Crown could 
 revoke. . . . This revocation swept up not only the grants 
 made by the Crown, but the transactions, made in a count- 
 less variety of shapes, by which those in possession of 
 Church revenues at the general breaking up, connived at 
 their - conversion into permanent estates to themselves or 
 to relations, or to strangers who rendered something in 
 return. ... It was maintained, on the king's part, that 
 the receivers of these revenues, which had belonged in 
 permanence not to the men who drew them, but to the 
 ecclesiastical offices to which they were attached, were 
 illegal ; and had this view been taken at the beginning, 
 instead of standing over for upwards of sixty years, we, 
 looking back upon it from the doctrines of the present day, 
 must have pronounced it to be a correct view." This, as 
 Sir James Balfour held in that generation ("Annals," ii., 
 128), was the real origin of the later Scottish insurrection, 
 and consequently of the civil war ; and Balfour effectively 
 indicates the tone of the propertied classes when he 
 declares that "whoeuer wer the contriuers of it deserue, 
 they and all ther posterity, to be reputted by thir three 
 kingdomes infamous and accursed for euer ". 
 
 It was, of course, one thing to proclaim a revocation,
 
 176 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 and another thing to carry it out. Charles, according to 
 Bishop Burnet (" History of My Own Time ", Book L, ed. 
 1838, p. 11), tried deep diplomacy, only to overreach himself. 
 In order "that the two great families of Hamilton and 
 Lennox might be good examples to the rest of the nation, 
 he by a secret purchase, and with English money, bought 
 the abbey of Aberbroth of the former, and the lordship of 
 Glasgow of the latter, and gave these to the two arch- 
 bishoprics. These lords made a show of zeal after a good 
 bargain, and surrendered them to the king. He also pur- 
 chased several estates of less value to the several sees ; 
 and all men who pretended to favor at court offered their 
 church lands to sale at a low rate." This, however, was 
 not sufficient, and ere long 1 Charles sent down the Earl of 
 Nithsdale, a noble of Papist leanings, to attempt to bring 
 the tithe-holders to submission ; but the effort was 
 fruitless, Nithsdale finding the service "desperate", 
 and being, according to one story (see Burnet, as cited), in 
 actual danger of his life. It is needless here to discuss 
 the legality of the king's action or the nature of his 
 motives. There was probably truth in his statement (Bur- 
 ton, vi., 79) that the teinds were rapaciously and brutally 
 enf orced by the lay impropriators, and had become "the 
 cause of bloody oppressions, enmities, and of forced de- 
 pendencies ". But the certain and important matter is that, 
 while an arrangement was ultimately made for the commuta- 
 tion of the tithes, the propertied classes cherished a grudge 
 against the king for his interference, and a constant sus- 
 picion of further attempts (Ibid., pp. 84, 225) ; and that, 
 the purpose of the king and Laud having notoriously been 
 to enrich the bishops and promote episcopacy, "the aris- 
 tocracy and the more plebeian party in the Church were 
 arrayed against the crown and the prelates" (p. 78). 
 
 1 Burton (vi., 77) says, in 1628; but Mr. Gardiner ("History of 
 England", vii., 278) holds that it cannot have been so late, and 
 -writes 1626. The latter date is that given by Laing ("History of 
 Scotland ", 2nd ed., iii., 91). But Burnet's narrative (as cited above) 
 would give 1627. 
 
 Printed by ANNIE BESANT and CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 63, Fleet St., E.G. 18S6.
 
 THE SINS OF THE CHURCH 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 BY JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 (IV.) 
 
 NEXT came the permanent establishment of an impost in the 
 nature of an income-tax (p. 85) ; and, the king persisting 
 in enforcing the policy of Laud, there arose a general fear 
 of a reversion to Romanism, complicated and intensified 
 by the crowning consideration that all these acts of Charles 
 were virtually attempts to subject the polity of Scotland 
 to that of England. " The history of Scotland ", as 
 Burton observes (vi., 132), "will not be truly understood 
 by anyone who fails to see that to force any English insti- 
 tution upon the people would be accepted as a gross national 
 insult. This stage of political infatuation had been reached 
 by the Book of Canons, of which Clarendon said : ' It was 
 thought no other than a subjection to England, by receiving 
 laws from thence, of which they were most jealous, and most 
 passionately abhorred. ' ' ' Here then were at work the three 
 forces- of the interested enmity of the landowners to the 
 church policy of Charles and Laud, which always menaced 
 their revenues ; the panic-fear that Laud was re-intro- 
 ducing Romanism ; and the potent spirit of nationalism, 
 fiercely jealous of the influence of the "auld enemy", 
 England. Added to all this there was the impulsive force 
 of the agitation against Charles's absolutism in England 
 a kind of influence which had before operated powerfully 
 at the Reformation, when the natural hunger of the 
 Scottish nobles for the Church's wealth was whetted and 
 stimulated by the spectacle of the doings of Henry VIII. 
 As for the offending liturgy in particular, its purport will 
 be found carefully set forth in Burton's History ; but it 
 must be left to the zealots of ceremonial to explain how 
 a tumult over such a matter can be held by rational people 
 to be a serious vindication of "religious liberty ". Nothing 
 could be more ridiculously unworthy of a great cause than 
 the indecent scuffle usually pointed to as the historic origin
 
 178 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 of the rebellion. Shrewish clamor and stool-throwing by 
 a number of ignorant and disorderly women of all classes 
 is the precious fountain-head of the "religious liberty " of 
 the Covenant, as clerical historians see the matter; and 
 the canonised figure of the fabulous Jenny Geddes 1 fitly 
 poses as the genius of the scene. Whether or not there 
 was any truth in the contemporary theories that the riot 
 had been pre-arranged and that some of the rioters were 
 men in women's clothes ; or whether the clergy were the in- 
 stigators of " the she-zealots " in Edinburgh and elsewhere 
 for the "devouter sex", as a contemporary called them, 
 showed fight in several places (Burton, pp. 153-4 and 
 204) in any case the subsequent movement was a vastly 
 more complex affair than the protest against a liturgy. 
 That weak and blind obstinacy on one hand, and more 
 or less foolish popular excitement on the other, should 
 
 1 The Jenny Geddes story is a demonstrated myth ; and, apart from 
 that, the exhibition of the historic stool in Edinburgh is a sufficiently 
 impudent absurdity. There is no contemporary trace whatever of 
 any Jenny Geddes in the riot ; and the story of her address to the 
 Dean is obviously trumped up out of two narratives in which a " good 
 Christian "woman " or " she-zealot " is represented as having slapped 
 in the face, either with her hand or her Bible, a gentleman who said 
 "Amen " to the Dean's reading of the service, charging the offender 
 with saying Mass at her ear. Compare the contemporary account 
 printed in the Bannatyne Club's edition of Rothes' " Relation ", p. 
 199, and the narrative of Gordon of Rothiemay (" History of Scots 
 Affairs," Spalding Club, ed. I., 7). Kirkton, born about 1620, ex- 
 pressly says it was " ane unknown, obscure woman who first threw a 
 stool" ("Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland", 
 Sharpe's ed.| p. 31). Wodrow, writing in 1705 (" Analecta ", Mait- 
 land Club ed., i., 64) notes a "constant believed tradition" that the 
 thrower of the "first stool" was a Mrs. Mean. The first historic 
 trace of any Jenny Geddes is in 1660, when an Edinburgh green- 
 grocer of that name uproariously burnt her trade-gear publicly in 
 honor of the restoration of Charles II. (See Burton, vi., 151, note). 
 If that personage is the heroine of the Covenant, the fact should be 
 kept properly in view. And if tradition is to be founded on, we 
 should not loso sight of the other tradition that on the Sunday before 
 the historic riot Jenny Geddes had done public penance in the Kirk for 
 fornication. (See Kirkpatrick Sharpe's note on Kirkton, pp. 31-2.) 
 
 Another constantly retailed figment is the story of John Knox's 
 daughter having told King James that she would rather " kep " her 
 husband's head in her apron than persuade him to accept the bishops. 
 This fable, as always told by clerical writers, represents Knox's 
 daughter as saying that her father had no sons. Yet these writers 
 cannot have been unaware that Knox had two sons, one of whom, 
 became an English vicar (Dr. McCrie's "Life ", p. 416).
 
 THE PEE VERSION OF SCOTLAND. 179 
 
 thus turn the course of a nation's history, is an impressive 
 enough reflection ; but our business here is to trace in par- 
 ticular the effect of the Covenant movement on Scottish 
 life, leaving the other historical issues alone. 
 
 First, then, the " Covenant " was a piece of policy in 
 which, as regards its inception, religion had about as 
 much share as in any other stroke of state at the time. It 
 "took" brilliantly; but it was diplomacy that led fanati- 
 cism, not piety that ruled diplomacy. "The strength of 
 the opposition," writes Burton of the situation late in 1637 
 (p. 160), " was still in its political element," though " com- 
 mon cause was made between the politicians and the 
 clergy ; and there was always enough about the grievances 
 of the consciences of the serious to secure their co- operation " 
 this though many of the nobility were known profligates. 
 For the rest, the Covenant was considerably more offensive 
 than defensive, being in the main simply the old repudia- 
 tion and execration of Popery prepared by the Protestants 
 of the first generation. And, warlike action once begun, 
 there was at least no more thought of allowing liberty of 
 conscience to others than had been shown on the side of 
 the King. Under the powerful organisation of the execu- 
 tive body known as "The Tables", "the parochial Com- 
 mittee saw that each adult member of the parish signed, 
 
 or otherwise gave his adhesion to the Covenant 
 
 Over the districts where the organisation had the mastery, 
 no one worth claiming as a partisan was permitted to evade 
 the pledge. Those who would not yield had to seek refuge 
 in the districts where the Cavaliers prevailed." "In In- 
 verness the town's drummer or crier proclaimed the obli- 
 gation of signing the Covenant, with the alternative of 
 heavy penalties against all who were obstinate or slothful" 
 (Ib., p. 205 ; compare pp. 279-80, 287, and 355). So Bur- 
 net: "They forced all people to sign the Covenant" ("Own 
 Times" Book I., p. 21). And the important Assembly of 
 1638 was packed in the anti- royalist interest: "The 
 Tables undertook the working of the elections so as to 
 produce a thoroughly Covenanting Assembly" (Burton, 
 vi., 225). There, however, as at the Keformation, the 
 aristocratic interest was plenipotent ; the lay leaders of the 
 movement adroitly reviving an old Act of Assembly which 
 provided that each presbytery should elect one lay member 
 of Assembly as well as two clergymen, and that the royal
 
 180 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 burghs should send lay commissioners in addition. The 
 clergy vainly protested (pp. 225, 229). They " could not 
 but see that this nominally rigid adherence to their stan- 
 dards was transferring them into the hands of new masters. 
 They could not be blind to the reason why the office 
 destined for men of a religious turn and serious walk in 
 life was wanted for a haughty powerful nobility, many of 
 them profligate livers. Among them, indeed, were men 
 fighting their own personal battle for the preservation of 
 the old ecclesiastical estates, which they believed to be in 
 danger all had a personal dislike of the bishops, as 
 assuming a superiority over them. But it was in such men 
 that the strength of the Assembly as a hostile declaration 
 against the Court lay, and they prevailed in the elections" 
 (pp. 225-6). And thus yet once again was Episcopacy 
 abolished in Scotland, and a pure Presbyterianism set up. 
 
 For the war itself, the general fortune of that was in- 
 disputably the outcome, not at all of religious enthusiasm, 
 but of the important fact that the peace of Westphalia had 
 thrown idle a large number of trained Scots soldiers, and 
 among others an extremely able general, David Leslie. It 
 was the winding up of the Thirty Years' War that ' ' threw 
 loose the materials that were to revive into the civil wars 
 of Britain" (Burton, p. 217). And the covenanting leaders 
 among whom, at first, was Montrose, it should be re- 
 membered conducted their business much as did the 
 other European campaigners of the period ; offering to 
 pay the powerful Marquis of Huntly's debts for him if he 
 would join them (p. 216) ; and not even scrupling to seek 
 aid from the Papist king of France (p. 288) a proceeding 
 perhaps about as easy to reconcile with patriotism as with 
 religious sincerity. Again, when the "Covenanting" army 
 under General Monro occupied Aberdeen in 1640, their 
 conduct was tolerably like that of other European forces 
 the delating of sixty-five unwed mothers before the Cove- 
 nanting church courts being one of the symptoms (p. 322). 
 As for the dealings of the Covenanting nobility with those 
 of their feudal enemies who were now at their mercy, these 
 were precisely like the eld civil wars, full of ''limitless 
 plunder, destruction, and bloodshed " (p. 323). 
 
 It was not for nothing, however, that such a movement, 
 however fundamentally political and bound up with class 
 interests, was associated with the profession of a religious
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 covenant and the cause of the popular church. Through 
 all the cool generalship, the unscrupulous diplomacy, the 
 military rapine and debauchery, the seed of fanaticism was 
 being sown and ripened; growing up, indeed, in the 
 breasts of reprobates and ruffians, as freely as in the 
 merely ignorant and credulous populace. Dr. Burton, I 
 think, goes too far when he says (p. 354) that " some thirty 
 years before, the Scots were a people somewhat indifferent 
 about religious matters " ; but it is clear that from the 
 time of the Covenant they became much more generally 
 fanatical than ever before. 
 
 During the war the clergy were naturally at the highest 
 pitch of fanatical excitement. The "Large Declaration" 
 drawn up for Charles by Walter Balcanquall tells how 
 the Covenanters for a time did homage at Edinburgh to a 
 Mrs. Margaret Nicholson, who had raving fits which were 
 regarded as inspired trances. " The multitude was made 
 believe her words proceeded not from herself, but from 
 God. Thence was that incredible concourse of all sorts of 
 people noblemen, gentlemen, ministers, women of all 
 ranks and qualities who watched or stayed by her day 
 and night during the time of her pretended fits, and did 
 admire her raptures and inspirations as coming from 
 heaven. ... So soon as she was ready to begin, the news 
 of it was blown all the town over, and the house so thronged 
 that thousands at every time could find no access. ; . . 
 Eolloc, her special favorite, . . . being desired sometimes 
 by the spectators to pray with her, and speak to her, 
 answered that he durst not do it, as being no good manners 
 in him to speak while his Master was speaking in her " 
 (Burton, vi., 277-8). Keligious excitement _ of a more 
 normal species was naturally abundant. It is extremely 
 difficult to trace closely the interplay of the various influences 
 through the Covenanting movement, but while we have 
 seen that in its origin it was mainly political, it is clear 
 that the clerical element was that which most tended to 
 aggrandise itself. Once Charles was repelled, it was no 
 part of the interest of the aristocracy to go further. _ Some 
 king they must have: They ultimately realised, indeed, 
 that, whether or not they had made a blunder in begin- 
 ning, the game had gone out of their hands ; and we must 
 largely attribute to this the fact that on Charles' execution 
 the beottish nation decided for his son. Not that the
 
 182 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 clergy were any more Republican or Cromwellian than the 
 nobles : on the contrary, it seems certain that they remained 
 as devoted to the abstract principle or sentiment of king- 
 ship as the nation had always done through its many 
 rebellions and revolutions. The prominent minister, Robert 
 Baillie, who had been a sufficiently zealous Covenanter, 
 is found execrating the regicide. Mere clerical sym- 
 pathy with the decapitated king's son, however, would 
 never have floated the rising in his favor if the powerful 
 classes had not been at least willing to see it take place. 
 Of course the blind impulse of national sentiment again 
 came into play ; and a Covenanting army, of a curiously 
 mixed quality, mustered for Charles II. against Cromwell, 
 with the most disastrous results. Leslie was no longer 
 the best general in Britain ; and his clerical allies con- 
 trived that he should lead against the Ironsides not even 
 the cream of his old troops. It is beyond doubt that, 
 whether or not the preachers forced him to precipitate the 
 battle of Dunbar, they had fatally weakened his army by 
 expelling all the troops who did not satisfy clerical require- 
 ments in the matter of piety. Naturally, the men who had 
 been trained in the Thirty Years' War in many cases fell 
 below the standard. " Thus they drove away, as an 
 astonished onlooker [Sir Edward Walker] tells us, four 
 thousand men, and these, as old experienced soldiers, the 
 best in their army " (Burton, vii., 15). The same onlooker 
 describes them as "placing for the most part in command 
 ministers' sons, clerks, and such other sanctified creatures, 
 who hardly ever saw or heard of any sword but that of 
 the Spirit" (p. 21) which strictly agrees with Leslie's 
 own account of his defeat (p. 26). If it were true that it 
 was religion that made the movement against Charles I., 
 it was certainly religion that lost Dunbar and Worcester. 
 
 As the civil war went on, the fanatics became if possible 
 still more fanatical. The pretence of safeguarding their 
 own liberties with which they had started was now played 
 out ; but they were as zealous in positive as in negative 
 intolerance. Before the battle of Dunbar the prince was 
 made to declare: "He doth now detest and abhor all 
 Popery, superstition, and idolatry, together with Prelacy, 
 and all errors, heresy, schism, and profancness ; and resolves not 
 to tolerate, much less allow of these in any part of his majesty's 
 dominions, but to oppose himself thereto and endeavour the
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 183 
 
 extirpation thereof to the utmost of his power " (/., p. 19 ; 
 compare p. 67). That is the essential note of the Covenant. 
 The main reason why the Scotch clergy and Cromwell 
 never made friends was simply his "damnable doctrine of 
 toleration" (p. 31). To the devout Eow ("Contin. of Blair's 
 Autobiography, p. 335 ; cited by Buckle, iii., 195) he is 
 " that old fox " even when death has struck him down ; 
 so little of brotherhood, not to speak of chivalry, was there 
 in the Puritan sectarianism of the time. But nothing is 
 more curious in the history of Scotland or of England, 
 for that matter than the fashion in which the strong 
 man, hedged by no regal divinity, but using the great 
 engine of his own welding, his army, set his foot on all the 
 forces with which the weak king could only meddle to his 
 own undoing. A study of Cromwell's dealings with the 
 Covenanters makes short work of the notion that the 
 policy of Charles I. was an intolerable despotism. The 
 things which the king tried in vain to do were trifles 
 beside those which the Protector carried through with iron 
 determination and utter completeness. The Estates of the 
 Realm, that grim and turbulent senate, the ancient defier 
 of kings and oligarchies, he absolutely extinguished. But 
 " one important thing had yet to be done. The theolo- 
 gians who had kept Scotland in uproar for so many years 
 had to be silenced as well as the politicians. The two 
 opposing parties the Resolutioners and the Remonstrants 
 ft.0., the royalists and their critics] were girding their 
 loins for a war of extermination. After a long contest, 
 with much surrounding disturbance, the end would be 
 that the majority would drive forth the minority. In July 
 1653 the General Assembly met in Edinburgh, each side 
 charged with material for hot debate " (Burton, vii., 49). 
 Whereupon, as Baillie narrates, a body of Cromwellian 
 musketeers and troopers beset the church, and the reverend 
 brethren were with all possible simplicity marched through 
 the streets, escorted one mile beyond the town, and in- 
 structed that henceforth they "should not dare to meet 
 any more above three in number." And they did not dare. 
 The end of the movement of the Covenant was that Scotland 
 was deprived of its Parliament, and the Kirk of its very right 
 of assembly. In view of which consummation it becomes 
 desirable that the hues of the customary rhetoric against 
 the ecclesiastical and other tyranny of Charles should be
 
 184 THE PEEVEESION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 somehow harmonised with the colours of the adjoining 
 picture. The prevailing anomaly is a trifle absurd, if we are 
 to proceed on any more plausible principle than this, that 
 the unpardonable sin on the part of a tyrant is failure. 
 
 But it was not to idleness that Cromwell relegated the 
 clergy when he suppressed their Assembly. What they 
 could do to thwart progress by methods of State they had 
 pretty well done. In Episcopalian Aberdeen, before the 
 Covenanting outbreak, there was "a society more learned 
 and accomplished than Scotland had hitherto known" 
 (Cosmo Innes's preface to Fasti Aberdonenses, published by 
 Spalding Club, p. xli.) ; and its university, made famous- 
 in Europe by the learning of the " Aberdeen doctors", 
 was quite the most important centre of light in the country. 
 "One cannot," says Eobert Chambers, "reflect without a 
 pang on the wreck it was destined to sustain under the 
 rude shocks imparted by a religious enthusiasm which re- 
 garded nothing but its own dogmas, and for these sacrificed 
 every thing. The university sustained a visitation from 
 the Presbyterian Assembly of 1640, and was thenceforth 
 much changed. 'The Assembly's errand', says Gordon 
 of Eothiemay, 'was thoroughly done; these eminent 
 divines of Aberdeen either dead, deposed, or banished ; in 
 whom fell more learning than was left in all Scotland 
 beside at that time. Nor has that city, nor any city in. 
 Scotland, ever since seen so many learned divines and 
 scholars at one time together as were immediately before 
 this in Aberdeen. From that time forwards, learning 
 began to be discountenanced Learning was nick- 
 named human learning, and some ministers so far cried it 
 down in their pulpits, as they were heard to say: Down 
 doctrine, and tip Christ'" ("Domestic Annals", ii., 121). 
 Their most decisive work, however, was probably that 
 done in ordinary course by the ordinary ecclesiastical 
 machinery ; the account of which by Buckle is well known 
 to the general reader. Never was an inquisition more 
 comprehensive, a tyranny more minute. A few pages of 
 any of the old presbytery records will give a sufficiently 
 clear idea of how the clergy occupied themselves through- 
 out the country. Here are a few illustrations from the 
 "Selections from the Eegisters of the Presbytery of 
 Lanark", published by the Abbotsford Club : 
 
 1627. February. " Ordaines "Wai. Weir, pyper, for playing
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 185 
 
 at Yuile at the gysing [masking] in Douglas, to be summoned 
 with a lybellit summonds " (p. 5). 
 
 1633, September 5. "Mr. Thomas Ballentyne [a minister] 
 censured for travailling and goeing abroad upone the Saturdayes, 
 and is exhorted to mend that fault " (p. 9). 
 
 1646. September 3rd. "The qlk day compeires the Lady 
 Glespen, and confessing shee said, if Montrose and his people 
 were present, she would not be worse vsed than be our awine 
 [by our own], is ordained to confesse her fault privatelie before 
 the sessione " (p. 53). 
 
 From the early pages of the " Extracts from the Presby- 
 tery Book of Strathbogie ", published by the Spalding 
 Club, I cull the following : 
 
 1636. July. "It is ordained that stockes shall be made 
 for the punishment of stubborne and unruly delinquents" (p. 7). 
 
 September. ' ' Margaret Fraser suspect of witchcraft, and 
 having broken waird in Aberdene, is ordained to bring ane 
 testimonial! of her bygone conversation, or otherwyse the re- 
 ceipters [receivers or entertainers] of the said Margaret to be 
 punished" (26). 
 
 September. "Barbara Lowrie compeared also in sackcloth 
 and confessed her adulterye with John Stewart. She was 
 ordained to stand in the jogges and brankes [iron collar, etc.] 
 till the congregation be satisfied, becaus she had no gear" [i.e. 
 no money to pay a fine]. Stewart, who is also accused of 
 an attempt at rape, is merely " ordained to sit in sackcloth till 
 the people be satisfied, and to pay twenty markes penalty e" 
 (p. 8). 
 
 In the same month it is reported that one George Gordoune 
 had been cited before the session at Eynie f or " prophaneing 
 the Sabboth, by gathering grosers [gooseberries] in time of 
 sermon" (p. 9). 
 
 September 29. "It is ordained that drinkers in tyme of 
 divyne service shall be punished as fornicatours " (p. 10). 
 
 1637. March. " It was ordained that every brother should 
 make intimation out of his pulpit, that none of their parish- 
 ioners receipt Margaret Charles, who was lately parted with 
 chylde in the parish of Dumbennand" (p. 14). 
 
 This sort of prying oppression was going on wholesale 
 all over the country at the very time the attempt of Charles 
 to impose a liturgy was being shrieked over as an act of 
 tyranny. These in addition to the constant prosecutions 
 of witches were but a few of the normal forms of eccle- 
 siastical interference with liberty. The mere staying away 
 from Church, not to speak of holding intercourse with.
 
 186 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 papists, was an offence constantly being proceeded against 
 and often punished by the penalty of excommunication, 
 which, where effectual, involved something like entire social 
 ostracism. (Compare Strathbogie Extracts, pp. 15 and 
 42; "The Church and Churchyard of Ordiquhill ", by 
 Win. Cramond, Banff, 1886, pp. 44, 47, 49, 50; and 
 Extracts from Aberdeen Presbytery Records, Spalding 
 Club, pp. 97, 102-3, 109, 139, 143.) In Aberdeen, in 1607, 
 occasional residents abstaining from church attendance were 
 sought to be expelled from the city (Presbytery Records, 
 cited by Buckle, iii., 222). But there was nothing that the 
 Presbyteries did not interfere with. They ordered heads of 
 households to keep rods for the chastisement of children or 
 servants using improper language (see extract in Buckle's 
 notes, iii., 208) ; they censured boys and servants for Sab- 
 bath-breaking (*#.); they searched private houses during 
 sermon time, besides scouring the streets, to find absentees 
 (p. 209) ; they paid spies and secretly terrorised servants 
 to give testimony against their masters (tb.) ; they passed 
 censure for omission to salute a minister (p. 210) ; they im- 
 posed penalties for the employment of pipers at weddings 
 (p. 258); they imprisoned wandering singers and forbade 
 others to give them meat or drink (p. 259) ; they prohibited 
 poor people from giving their children more than two or 
 four godfathers and godmothers (p. 260) ; they caused 
 women to be whipped (p. 262) ; they ordered merchants 
 not to travel to Papist countries (p. 264) ; they caused it to 
 be directed in all the Edinburgh pulpits that no women 
 should be employed as waiters in taverns (i.) ; they 
 insisted that widows should either re-marry or go into 
 service, and not live alone (*'.); they compelled families 
 to break up ($.) ; they rebuked those who travelled, or 
 paid visits, or strolled in the fields or streets, or slept in 
 the open air, on Sunday (pp. 265 6) ; they tried to prevent 
 boys from swimming on any day (?"i.) ; they compelled 
 mothers to refuse shelter to their own sons when excom- 
 municated (p. 278). During the wars, too, they carried 
 to the most extraordinary lengths their aggressions against 
 members of the aristocracy suspected of papistical or 
 cavalier leanings. Of one case the Editor of the Lanark 
 Records writes: "The treatment of the Marquess and 
 Marchioness of Douglas by the Presbytery of Lanark ex- 
 hibits a system of ecclesiastical oppression almost without
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 187 
 
 parallel. They were compelled to profess their belief in 
 the doctrines of a church of which they had never been 
 members, to join in its ordinances under pain of excom- 
 munication (then drawing with it the most serious civil 
 consequences) and of being denounced to the ruling powers 
 as malignants and enemies of their country. They were 
 deprived of all control over the education of their children, 
 latterly even of their society . . . . ; and they were 
 forced to receive into their family a nominee of the Pres- 
 bytery; ostensibly as a chaplain, but truly as a spy on 
 their proceedings. They were under the necessity of dis- 
 missing their confidential servants at the bidding of the 
 Presbytery; and for a series of years were fain to cultivate 
 its forbearance by the most abject and humiliating submis- 
 sions." And "at the time when the Presbytery was most 
 rigorous in its measures against the Marquess to compel his 
 family's adherence to the Church, it was making repeated 
 complaints against his interference with the consciences of 
 his tenantry " (Preface, p. x.). In view of such proceed- 
 ings, it is the less surprising that when the tables were 
 turned at the Restoration, and Episcopacy was set up in 
 a more complete form than ever before, the royalists 
 trampled on the Presbyterians. 
 
 Scottish ecclesiastical history is popularly told so as to 
 bring into high relief the persecutions under Charles II. 
 and James II., leaving the immediately preceding period 
 in the vague as one of general religious well-being. Cer- 
 tainly the Episcopalian persecution was infinitely the 
 bloodier of the two. Apart from the perpetual torturing 
 and burning of suspected witches, the Presbyterian zealots 
 cannot be accused of carrying their tyranny, odious as it 
 was, to the point of savage cruelty. Such a diabolical act 
 as the drowning of eleven gipsy women in the Nor' Loch 
 of Edinburgh in 1624 is doubtless to be set down in the 
 dreary catalogue of the crimes of racial animosity. At all 
 events, it was left to the Episcopal regime to carry sectarian 
 hatred to the point of shooting, sabring, hanging, and 
 drowning, men and women who persisted in following 
 their own form of worship. From the point of view of 
 the non-sectarian student, of course, the fact only consti- 
 tutes one more historical proof that the establishment of 
 any form of religion means oppression, to the extent of 
 the power of the established sect to oppress. It will be
 
 188 THE PEB VERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 well, however, to keep in view the circumstances which 
 determined the specially sanguinary character of the Epis- 
 copal persecutions. First let it be remembered that the 
 Protestant laws had from the first prescribed the death 
 penalty against all persistent Papists, and that this was 
 only evaded by the wholesale flight of the more devoted 
 Catholics and the practice of more or less complete dissimu- 
 lation by the others. What was done to the extreme 
 Presbyterians between 1660 and 1688 was strictly what 
 they had always said ought to be done to Papists. At the 
 Restoration a number are found, as before Dunbar, calling 
 on Charles II. to employ his power "in the reformation 
 of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland in 
 doctrine, worship, discipline, and government " that is, 
 in subverting English religious liberty by enforcing Pres- 
 byterianism " and to the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, 
 superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever 
 shall be found contrary to sound doctrine and the power 
 of godliness ; and that all places of power and trust under 
 your majesty may be filled with such as have taken the 
 Covenant " (Burton, vii., 124). The fanatics who made 
 this demand were now in a minority. "There can be no 
 greater mistake than to suppose, as some people have from 
 what afterwards befell, that these men represented the pre- 
 vailing feeling of the Scots at the juncture of the Restora- 
 tion. Whatever remnant of the old frenzy remained with 
 these zealots of the west, the country at large, Presbyterian 
 and Episcopalian, had little sympathy with it." "With 
 the zealous Covenanters the landowners had now no com- 
 mon cause. A quarter of a century had passed since the 
 climax of their terror, that the Church property gathered 
 by them during the previous seventy-five years would be 
 torn from them. A new generation now held these lands" 
 (p. 126). Under a restored episcopacy, therefore, there 
 was no choice for the zealots between surrender and suffer- 
 ing. But they were made of sterner stuff than the Papists 
 had been ; and, besides, had no such opening of escape to 
 friends on the Continent as the Papists had at the Refor- 
 mation, supposing they had possessed means enough to 
 travel. Last, but not least, it has to be remembered that 
 the new king had at command the military material 
 worked up by the civil war and placed at his disposal by 
 Monk ; and that a military persecution was now possible
 
 THE PEBVEKSION OF SCOTLAND. 189 
 
 such, as would have been practically out of the question in 
 Scotland in the previous reigns. 
 
 Apart from the direct cruelty and iniquity of the perse- 
 cution under Episcopalian auspices, it of course had the 
 usual indirect effect of promoting the other form of bigotry 
 against which it was directed ; Episcopalianism having 
 thus its ample share in that "perversion of Scotland" to 
 barren fanaticism which we have been tracing. The Ab- 
 juration Act of the " drunken Parliament" [really a meet- 
 ing of Privy Council] of 1662, by which three hundred 
 and fifty clergymen were driven from their benefices, was 
 a blunder even from the Episcopalian point of view 
 (Burton, vii., 160, 178) ; and though a number of the 
 expelled were led back by the Act of Indulgence of 1669, 
 sufficient harm had been done to considerably strengthen 
 the ranks and the prestige of the minority, to say nothing 
 of the misery and bloodshed between. 
 
 Between the old forces of spontaneous or instilled zealotry 
 and the ferocious persecutions carried on under Charles II. 
 and James II., the unhappy bias of the country towards 
 fanaticism was developed to an extent now difficult to 
 realise. In England, with the computed issue of 30,000 
 ^pamphlets on mere Church questions between 1640 and 
 1660, there was a sufficiently lamentable waste of energy 
 in polemics ; but in Scotland there seems to have been no 
 other intellectual life whatever. Divisions within divisions 
 reduced all public or social action to a dreary delirium of 
 words, in which the light of political as of every other 
 sort of reason would seem to have gone out. A brief 
 sketch of the disintegration of the Covenant movement 
 will show as well as a lengthy dissertation the value of an 
 impulse of fanaticism as a means to the attainment of 
 good government : 
 
 " The original quarrel was between Covenanters and Episco- 
 palians called otherwise Cavaliers, and, after the manner of the 
 the primitive Christiansin naming their persecutors, Malignants. 
 
 "The 'Engagement' of 1647, to assist the king and inarch 
 into England, told off the Engagers, leaving the Nonengagers, 
 otherwise called Abhorrers. 
 
 "The 'Act of Classes', under Argyle's Government in 1650, 
 secluded from power all the Engagers, with some other persons, 
 all being divided into classes according to the extent of their 
 iniquities. The parties among the Covenanters were now 
 -Argyleites and Classites.
 
 190 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 "The ' Kesolution ' to acknowledge Charles II. made Resolu- 
 tioners, and Remonstrants or Protesters. In the earlier part 
 of Charles II. 's reign the Presbyterians were divided into the 
 Indulged and the Covenanters of the original Covenant, who 
 were again subdivided into Resolutioners and Protesters. 
 
 "By the ' Sanquhar Declaration" a party of the Protesters 
 withdrew under a new Covenant, and were called Sanquhari- 
 ans, Cameronians, Society men, Hill men, Mountain men, and 
 Wild Westland Whigs" (Burton, vii., 248-9). 
 
 And the effect of it all was that the liberties of Scotland 
 were still more utterly submerged than those of England. 
 Where Cromwell had been tyrannous only iu form 1 , 
 dealing with institutions, Charles II. was able to and did 
 oppress in the most grinding fashion ; and the extortions 
 and atrocities of his military administrators failed to pro- 
 voke anything like an effectual rising. Now that the 
 propertied classes had no object in exploiting fanaticism, 
 it was helpless against the military power of the Crown ; 
 and in the absence of any appeal to national sentiment 
 those who did attempt insurrection were contemned by 
 their compatriots. In connexion with the rising in 1666 
 of west country Covenanters, which ended in the battle of 
 Pentland, " we hear of more sufferings to the remnant of 
 their army from the peasantry around the place of their 
 defeat, than from the victorious enemy, cruel as their 
 general was reputed to be" (Ib., p. 172). The abject 
 democratic collapse of 1660 intelligible enough as the 
 result of the enfeebling paternal autocracy of Cromwell 
 was at least as complete in Scotland as in England. 
 Lauderdale and Rothes, who had been leading Covenanters 
 of the profligate aristocratic type, became consummate 
 instruments of monarchism ; and the Estates, now a mere 
 gathering of royalist gentry, voted away funds and liberties 
 alike with an infinite complacency. Licence flourished 
 more freely than ever did bigotry, and it seemed as if 
 any spontaneous democratic life, fanatical or otherwise, 
 was at an end for ever. That this was not so was 
 clearly not the outcome of the old ecclesiastical influences. 
 
 1 With a few exceptions. There is a doubtful story of his sen- 
 tencing one minister to six months' imprisonment for saying, in the 
 discussion which he held with the clergy in Edinburgh, that he had 
 perverted Scripture. (See Wodrow's Analecta, Maitland Club, ii., 
 283-4). It is certain that Scotland enjoyed considerable prosperity 
 under his despotism.
 
 THE PEBYEBSION OF SCOTLAND. 191 
 
 It would indeed be unwarrantable to say that such perse- 
 cutions as those of Charles and James would never have 
 provoked an effectual rebellion. It appears that after the 
 failure of 1666, and still more during the reign of James, 
 increasing sympathy had begun to be felt for the sufferers; 
 and we can gather that the dangers of conventicle worship 
 were gradually exercising an extending fascination. We 
 have, for instance, an account of an open-air service at 
 which 3,200 persons took the communion (McCrie's 
 " Sketches ", p. 466). But it is plain that the prospects of 
 the conventicling party were still very black towards the 
 end of James's reign ; and here again, as in the previous 
 crises of 1560 and 1637, the all-important element of 
 pecuniary interest is foiind to be the decisive factor in 
 precipitating change so far, at least, as the affairs of 
 Scotland separately are concerned. " Looking through the 
 mismanagements of the period for the causes of the coming 
 Revolution ", writes Burton of the situation about the 
 time of James's accession, " less will be found in these 
 cruel inflictions on the western zealots, than in a project 
 for extracting money from certain men of substance 1 
 throughout the country. They were called 'fugitives', as 
 being persons who were liable to punishment under some 
 one or other of the multitudinous penal laws then at work. 
 They were a selected body of about two thousand. The 
 position in which each was put was, that if he would 
 frankly confess his offence and pay a stipulated fine, he 
 would thenceforth be as exempt from all prosecution for 
 the offence he had compounded for, as if he had received 
 a remission under the great seal " (vii., 255-6 ; ref. to 
 Wodrow, iv., 13). Add to this not only the deeply-rooted 
 prejudice against the toleration of Papists, but the well- 
 grounded conviction that James wished to restore Catholic- 
 ism, a step which would soon involve an opening up of 
 the old question of the appropriated Church lands and 
 revenues, and we have the determining forces of the 
 Eevolution of 1688, from the Scottish standpoint. 
 
 Looking to the miseries endured by the conventiclers in 
 the "Killing Time ", it may seem invidious to lay stress 
 on the intellectual disservice done by the sufferers to the 
 
 1 They seem to have largely consisted of well-to-do people of the 
 middle and artisan class. See Wodrow's list.
 
 192 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 interests of the nation ; but this is an element we cannot 
 ignore. Suffering as they did from bigotry, bigotry was 
 the inspiration o their own cause. The minister James 
 GKithrie, hanged in 1661, had denounced toleration as a 
 sin only a few months before his execution (Burton, vii., 
 155) ; and similarly James Ren wick, the last of the 
 "martyrs", on the scaffold in 1688 lifted up his "testi- 
 mony against Popery, Prelacy, Erastianism ; against all 
 profanity and everything contrary to sound doctrine " ; 
 against the king's claim to absolute power ; "and against 
 this toleration flowing from this absolute power" (/#., p. 
 279 ; citing Wodrow, iv., 454). These men and their 
 followers had no notion of the gospel of human brother- 
 hood bound up in later struggles for liberty. When, under 
 William IV., the Cameronian regiment, formed to resist 
 the royalist movement of Viscount Dundee, was employed 
 on the Continent, the protesting Cameronians at home were 
 horrified, not at any practical acts of their former brethren, 
 but at their fighting under the same banner with " Papists, 
 Lutherans, Erastians, Cocceians, Bourignians" (Burton, 
 vii., 325). They had neither political nor ethical prin- 
 ciples to guide them. One of their worst grievances against 
 James II. was that he proposed to include them under 
 the same toleration with Papists (p. 270) ; and Wodrow, 
 ihe zealous historian of their sufferings, is found lamenting 
 that the Quakers had been allowed to spread so terribly, 
 the "good Act" of 1663, which had proposed to drive 
 them out of Edinburgh, having been allowed to lie com- 
 paratively idle (Ibid., p. 271 ; "History of the Sufferings ", 
 ed. 1829, i., 377). He could bring no tolerable argu- 
 ment against the Episcopalian persecution. "That the 
 Restoration Government had taken a lesson from the 
 Covenanters was so obvious that Wodrow had in some 
 measure to admit it, along with a palliation not likely to 
 pass current with all men, in saying : ' It is not my 
 province now to compare the matter of the one with the 
 other here. The difference there is prodigiously great, 
 there being evidently in the Covenants nothing but what 
 was agreeable to the moral law, and what people were 
 really bound to, whether they had sworn them or not ' ' 
 (Burton, vii., 192 ; Wodrow, ii., 390). 
 
 Printed by AXXIE BESAXT and CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 63, Fleet St., B.C. 1SSG.
 
 THE SINS OF THE CHURCH 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 BY JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 (V.) 
 
 FINALLY, the body of later Covenanting zealots included 
 many men of a lawless type, such, as the fanatical ruffians 
 who murdered Archbishop Sharp ; and it is noted that 
 the Cameronian regiment, " ere it gradually lapsed into- 
 the uniform modified licentiousness of other military bodies, 
 exhibited a mixture of fanaticism and profligacy which 
 deeply perplexed its hapless chaplain Shields " (Burton, 
 vii., 326, and ref.). What may truly be said of them all 
 is that they were brave men ; indeed they brought their 
 worst hardships upon themselves by the wild audacity with 
 which they declared war on Charles II., (by the " Sanqu- 
 har Declaration") as a tyrant and usurper, and excom- 
 municated (by the "Torwood Excommunication") the 
 king, his brother, and the leading men in the government 
 of Scotland. As to the "rabbling" of the west- country 
 Episcopalian curates at the Revolution, Macaulay's account 
 may be accepted as impartial : " On Christmas day . . . . 
 the Covenanters held armed musters by concert in many 
 parts of the western shires. Each band marched to the 
 nearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the 
 minister, which at that season were probably better stocked 
 than usual. The priest of Baal was reviled and insulted, 
 sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His furniture was 
 thrown out of the windows ; his wife and children turned 
 out of doors in the snow. He was then carried to the 
 market place and exposed during some time as a malefactor. 
 His gown was torn to shreds over his head : if he had a 
 prayer book in his pocket it was burned ; and he was dis- 
 missed with a charge, never, as he valued his life, to 
 
 officiate in the parish again In fairness to these 
 
 men it must be owned that they had suffered such oppres- 
 sion as may excuse, though it cannot justify, their violence ; 
 and that, though they were rude even to brutality, they
 
 194 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 do not appear to have been guilty of any intentional injury 
 to life or limb" ("History", ed. 1858, iii., 250). The 
 details of the persecutions on the other side are worth 
 summing up. Apart from the six or seven hundred killed 
 in battle, those put to death by the royal troops are es- 
 timated at about five hundred ; 382 are enumerated as 
 executed by form of law ; some 750 were banished to the 
 northern islands, and about 1,700 to the Plantations, 200 
 of the latter perishing by shipwreck ; while over 2,800 
 are calculated to have been imprisoned, and about 7,000 
 to have fled the country (McCrie's "Sketches", p. 558 and 
 note]. These figures are probably not far wide of the 
 mark ; and they represent the main historic testimony as 
 to the advantage of the establishment of an Episcopalian 
 Church in Scotland. 
 
 The effect of these later transactions on the general 
 Scottish character does not fully appear at the time, just 
 as the main influences of the Reformation did not fully 
 assert themselves in the generation which saw it. Under 
 the storm and stress of fanaticism and persecution one can 
 detect certain traces of a popular life which had some of 
 the old freshness, with a fair share of the old savagery. 
 The old genius for commenting on public affairs by nick- 
 names comes out in the name given to the one Presbyterian 
 clergyman left in Edinburgh after the operation of the 
 Abjuration Act. He was popularly called the " nest-egg ". 
 Again, there is a curious story (Lauder's " Historical Ob- 
 serves", Bannatyne Club, pp. 55, 303) of how the Heriot 
 schoolboys in 1681, deciding that the dog at the hospital gate 
 held a public office, voted that he must take " the Test " 
 or be hanged. The poor dog refused the paper, and, on its 
 being presented in a buttered state, licked off the butter : 
 whereupon the boys, by way of ridiculing the case for the 
 Crown in the trial of the Earl of Argyll, tried him at great 
 length for leasing making or treason, and would have hanged 
 him if he had not contrived to escape. This is at least not 
 quite so bad as the exploit of killing a baillie, achieved by 
 some boys of the Edinburgh grammar-school in 1595 
 {" Historie of James the Sext", Bannatyne Club, p. 352). 
 But on the side of general culture, as represented by litera- 
 ture, the effect of over a century of more or less Puritan 
 Protestantism becomes now direfully apparent. The con- 
 sensus of testimony on this point, as Buckle notes, is over-
 
 THE PERVEKSION OF SCOTLAND. 195 
 
 whelming. Principal Robertson, writing his History of 
 Scotland in the middle of last century, sums up (Book viii., 
 ed.' 1806, iii., 199): "Thus during the whole seventeenth 
 century the English were gradually refining their lan- 
 guage and their taste ; in Scotland the former was much 
 debased and the latter almost entirely lost. In the be- 
 ginning of that period both nations were emerging out of 
 barbarity, but the distance between them, which was then 
 inconsiderable, became, before the end of it, immense. 
 Even after science had once dawned upon them, the Scots 
 seemed to be sinking back into ignorance and obscurity ; 
 and, active and intelligent as they naturally are, they con- 
 tinued, while other nations were eager in the pursuit of 
 fame and knowledge, in a state of languor." Laing, writ- 
 ing at the end of last century, is equally emphatic : " The 
 taste and science, the genius and the learning of the age, 
 were absorbed in the gulf of religious controversy. At a 
 time when the learning of Selden and the genius of Milton 
 conspired to adorn England, the Scots were reduced to 
 such writers as Baillie, Eutherford, Gluthrie, and the two 
 Gillespies" (History, 2nd ed., iii., 479-80). Again: " From 
 the Eestoration down to the Union, the only author^ of 
 eminence whom Scotland produced was Burnet " (Ib., iv., 
 390). The scholar Pinkerton, writing in the same genera- 
 tion as Laing, declared that " not one writer who does the 
 least'credit to the nation flourished during the century from 
 
 1615 to 1715, excepting Burnet By a singular 
 
 fatality, the century which stands highest in English history 
 and genius, is one of the darkest in those of Scotland" 
 ("Ancient Scotish Poems", i., p. iv.). The last great 
 name in Scottish intellectual life had been that of Napier, 
 the inventor of logarithms, and Napier was born in 
 1550, ten years before the Eeformation and, it may be 
 added, gained nothing from it but a useless theology. 
 "It might have been expected", observes Eobert 
 Chambers, ("Annals," ii., 444), "that the country of 
 Napier, seventy years after his time [he died ^ in 
 1617], would have had many sons capable of applying 
 his key to such mysteries of nature " as the phseno- 
 mena of comets, concerning which the period yields only 
 a collection of superstitious fancies. "But no one had 
 arisen nor did arise for fifty years onward, when at 
 length Colin Maclaurin unfolded in the Edinburgh Uni-
 
 196 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 versity the sublime philosophy of Newton. There could 
 not be a more expressive signification of the character of 
 the seventeenth century in Scotland. Our unhappy con- 
 tentions about external religious matters had absorbed 
 the whole genius of the people, rendering to us the age of 
 Cowley, of Waller, and of Milton, as barren of elegant 
 literature, as that of Horrocks, of Halley, and of Newton, 
 was of science." Finally, Dr. Burton, who was willing 
 to credit the Eeformation with "bringing forth" the 
 classical scholarship of the few distinguished Latinists 
 connected with it, and who was able to take satisfaction in 
 the literary powers of such men as Baillie, Dickson, and 
 Eutherford, admits that at the Eevolution of 1688 "all 
 this glory was departed, and Scots Presbyterianism had 
 
 scarcely a representative in the world of letters 
 
 There was no theologian ", even, " alive in Scotland at the 
 era of the Eevolution, whose writings have been admitted 
 into the current theological literature of the world " (vii., 
 405-6). As Buckle points out (iii., 286, note] such a 
 writer as Dickson protested against even so much biblical 
 criticism as would go to ascertaining the date and author- 
 ship of any of the Hebrew books. All this obviously im- 
 plies the sterilising of general culture, and we know in, 
 point of fact that the clergy kept a tenacious hold of all 
 means of education. We have seen (ante, p. 143 ; com- 
 pare Buckle iii., 288, note] how at the Eeformation they 
 assumed control of all the schools and universities ; and 
 in 1648 the Fifeshire brethren are found ordering "all 
 young students, who waittes on noblemen or gentlemen 
 within thir bounds, aither to teach ther children, or cate- 
 chise and pray in ther families, to frequent the Pres- 
 byterie, that the brether may cognosce what they ar read- 
 ing, and what proficiencie they make in ther studies, and 
 to know also ther behaviour in the said families and. 
 of ther affectione to the Covenant and present religione" 
 (extract in Buckle, as above). Thus not only in parish 
 school and university, but in private houses, was educa- 
 tion superintended by the class who saw in all notable 
 natural phsenomena instances of miraculous divine action j 
 who regarded disease as amenable only to prayer; who 
 were constantly engaged in impeaching, ferreting out, 
 torturing, and killing, unhappy women on suspicion of an 
 impossible crime ; who preached intolerance as the man-
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 197 
 
 date of the creator of the universe, and who regarded the 
 spinning of theological ropes of sand as the noblest exer- 
 cise of the human mind. So much had the State establish- 
 ment of the Protestant religion done for Scotland by the 
 time of the fall of the Stewart line. 
 
 But there is one more historical fact of perhaps still 
 more salient importance as bearing on the received theory 
 that State Protestantism has always promoted freedom. 
 It is the little noted circumstance that in the seventeenth 
 century the institution of slavery had grown up in Scot- 
 land, in connexion with the working of collieries and salt- 
 works. The laborers who dug coal and made salt they 
 were chiefly located in East Lothian " went to those who 
 bought or succeeded to the property of the works, and 
 they could be sold, bartered, or pawned. What is peculiar 
 and revolting in this institution is, that it was no relic 
 of ancient serfdom, but a growth of the seventeenth 
 century. "We have seen, indeed, that serfdom had a 
 feebler hold on Scotland than on England. We have also 
 seen how astonished and enraged the French auxiliaries of 
 the Scots in the wars with England were at_ the insolent 
 independence of the common people, impoverished as they 
 were. The oldest trace we have of the bondage of the 
 colliers and salt-workers is an Act of the year 1606, passed, 
 as it would seem, to strengthen somewhat as to them ^ the 
 laws so common at the time for restricting the pursuit of 
 all occupations to those embarked in them. By interpre- 
 tations of this Act, but more by the tyrannous power of 
 the strong owners of the soil over a weak and unfriended 
 community, slavery had been as amply established [in 
 Scotland] as ever it had been in Borne, Sparta, or Vir- 
 ginia" (Burton, viii., 7, 8). It subsisted all through the 
 war for "religious liberty" ; it was left untouched at the 
 " glorious revolution " of 1688. The Church of Eome had 
 at least sought to free all slaves but its own : there is no 
 trace that the Protestant clergy of Scotland ever raised 
 a voice against the slavery which grew up before their 
 eyes. And it was not till 1799, after republican and irre- 
 ligious France had set the example, that it was legally 
 abolished (Cockburn's "Memorials", ed. 1856, p. 79). 
 
 The final establishment of Presbyterianism under Wil- 
 liam and Mary brings us within plain prospect of modern 
 -times the ecclesiastical history of the subsequent period
 
 198 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 having practically run in one groove and it may be con- 
 venient here to indicate concisely the ups and downs of the 
 previous century and a half. 
 
 1535. Act of Parliament, following up an earlier, prohibit- 
 ing the importation of the works of " the grete 
 heretik luther ", ordering destruction of copies in 
 hand, and sternly forbidding discussion of hi& 
 "dampnable opinionis". (See Tytler, ii., 357 ; 
 Acts ii., 342.) 
 
 1560. Catholic Church overthrown by Act of Parliament. 
 Hierarchy left an open question. 
 
 1572. " Tulchan " bishops appointed by Government at 
 that time an aristocratic Regency. 
 
 1580. Bishops repudiated by General Assembly. 
 
 1592. Episcopacy abolished by Parliament. 
 
 1597. Episcopacy as a political function re-established l>y 
 Parliament. 1598. This acceded to by General 
 Assembly. 1600. Act of Assembly ratifying the 
 arrangement, and defining the episcopal office as 
 parliamentary. 
 
 1606. King obtains control of Assemblies. Parliament 
 (nominally) confers the old revenues on bishops. 
 1610. This ratified by a packed and bribed Assem- 
 bly, which still stipulated that bishops should be 
 subject to Assembly. 1612. Parliament finally rati- 
 fies, ignoring that stipulation. 
 
 1617. Acts for the recovery of the minor Catholic temporal- 
 ities, and for better payment of ministers. 
 
 1618. James carries ceremonial innovations. 
 
 1626. Attempt by Charles I. to recover the tithes for the 
 Church, by way of strengthening episcopacy. 
 
 1638-9. Episcopacy repudiated by Covenanting Assembly,, 
 Charles yielding; and Parliament ratifying in 
 1640. 
 
 1653. Cromwell suppresses the Assembly, having already 
 suppressed the Parliament. 
 
 1660-1. Episcopacy fully re-established; Sharp, the Pres- 
 byterian delegate to court, turning his coat and be- 
 coming Archbishop of St. Andrews. 350 clergymen 
 expelled under Abjuration Act in 1 662 ; the majority 
 returning under Indulgence Act in 1669. The 
 others persecuted.
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAOT). 199 
 
 1679. Murder of Sharp, followed by second unsuccessful 
 insurrection. Persecution heightened. 
 
 1688. Fall of James II. Expulsion of curates in the Came- 
 ronian districts. 1689. 184 non-juring clergymen 
 deposed by Privy Council. Act abolishing episco- 
 pacy. 1690. Act abolishing civil pains of excom- 
 munication. Act establishing Presbyterianism. 
 
 It was in 1696 that the Scottish Parliament passed an 
 Act for " settling of schools ", which adjusted the famous 
 system of parochial schools, already partly established by 
 the first Protestants, and by Acts of Charles I. and of the 
 Covenanters' Parliament in 1646. It was in the same 
 year of 1696 that the Scottish Presbyterian clergy com- 
 mitted one of the blackest acts of cruelty in the annals of 
 religious persecution. A boy of eighteen, Thomas Aiken- 
 head, a student in Edinburgh, had come to the conclusion 
 that the doctrine of the Trinity was an absurdity, that 
 pantheism was a more philosophic doctrine than theism, 
 and that the authorship of the Old Testament books was 
 otherwise than was commonly stated ; and expressed him- 
 self accordingly, in a fashion which Macaulay in what I 
 cannot but suspect to be a disingenuous passage (iv., 784) 
 says he would probably have been ashamed of if he had 
 lived to maturity. There was no pretence that he had 
 " obtruded his views ", as the bigots of to-day would say ; 
 the witnesses against him being with one exception the 
 young companions to whom he unburdened himself. At 
 the instigation of the clergy, this boy was tried before the 
 High Court of Justiciary for blasphemy, under an Act of 
 the devout Restoration period, and though there was no 
 proper proof of his guilt in the terms of the statute he 
 was sentenced to death. The boy not unnaturally broke 
 down, professing both penitence and orthodoxy, and plead- 
 ing his youth in extenuation ; but the clergy, having been 
 able to carry matters thus far, would hear of no pardon. 
 Just as La Barre was later given up to the priests in Prance, 
 this weeping boy was given up to the Presbyterian bigots 
 of Scotland by the Privy Council there the decision being 
 carried by the casting vote of the Chancellor. This was 
 Sir Patrick Hume, one of the heroes of the Covenanting 
 party, who thus, says Macaulay, accomplished " the worst 
 action of his bad life " ; and the prosecuting Crown lawyer
 
 200 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 was a worthless political time- server. An attempt to get 
 the boy off came to nothing, the execution being hastened 
 as if to prevent the interposition of the king, who was 
 known to be averse to persecution (Burton, viii., 77 ; 
 Macaulay, iv., 785). It is on record by a personage who 
 believed in demoniac possession that the ministers 
 "spok and preached for cutting him off" (State Trials, 
 xiii., 930). 
 
 Ten years after the Kevolution, Scotland is found to be 
 sufficiently far from moral regeneration under the auspices 
 of the now triumphant Presbyterian Church. Fletcher of 
 Saltoun, republican as he was, could see no means, short 
 of the general establishment of domestic slavery, by which 
 the vast pauperism of the country could be grappled with. 
 Here is a part of his testimony : " There are at this day 
 in Scotland (besides a great many poor families very 
 meanly provided for by the church-boxes, with others 
 who by living upon bad food fall into various diseases) two 
 hundred thousand people begging from door to door. . . . And 
 although the number of them be perhaps double to what 
 it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, 
 yet in all times there have been about one hundred 
 thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without any 
 regard or subjection either to the laws of the land, or even 
 those of God and nature ; fathers incestuously accompany- 
 ing with their own daughters, the son with the mother, 
 and the brother with the sister. . . . Many murders have 
 been discovered among them ; and they are not only an 
 unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who if they give 
 not bread or some kind of provision to perhaps forty such 
 villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them), but 
 they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from 
 any neighbourhood. In years of plenty many thousands of 
 them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and 
 riot for many days ; and at country weddings, markets, 
 burials, and other the like publick occasions, they are to be 
 seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, 
 blaspheming, and fighting together" (Fletcher's Works, 
 ed. 1732, pp. 1446). 
 
 And this savage pauperism remained a salient feature in 
 Scottish life for many generations. "Before the general 
 establishment of poor's rates", writes Dr. Thomas Somer- 
 ville in 1813, "the country was overrun with vagrant
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 201 
 
 Beggars. They had access to every house, and received 
 
 their alms in meal and bread Strolling beggars 
 
 often travelled in companies, and used to take up their 
 night quarters at the houses of the tenant farmers " (" My 
 Own Life and Times," p. 370). And Gibson, the historian 
 of Glasgow, writes that in 1707 "the body of the people 
 were but a degree above want ; the streets were crowded 
 with beggars, both old and young, who were willing to 
 work, could they have found employment" ("History of 
 Glasgow", p. 106, cited in Scottish Review, Sept., 1883, 
 p. 250). Such poverty, it need hardly be said, meant vice 
 and degradation; and the case against the Established 
 Church, regarded as a claimant to credit for promoting 
 civilisation, is not merely that it did not check such 
 demoralisation, but that it on the whole resisted those 
 influences which made for better things. To begin with, 
 the clergy habitually represented dearth and distress as 
 a divine punishment for national sin ; never as an evil to 
 be got rid of by strenuous effort ; and such a calamity 
 as the collapse of the Darien Scheme was singled out with 
 special emphasis as the work of a chastising Providence. 
 (See Chambers' "Domestic Annals", iii., 221, 241.) There 
 could hardly be a stronger implicit discouragement to 
 enterprise ; but there was explicit discouragement likewise. 
 Wodrow, who typifies the clerical mind of the time, writes 
 in 1709 of "the sin of our too great fondness for trade, to 
 the neglecting of our more valuable interests " (Wodrow's 
 "Correspondence", ed. 1842, i., 67; cited by Buckle, iii., 
 160; also "Analecta", i., 218). This in a country on 
 which the sword of famine had fallen every few years, as 
 far back as living memory went ; a country whose poverty 
 was not to be paralleled among the northern states of 
 Europe ; and whose largest trading city even then had its 
 streets " crowded with beggars, willing to work, could they 
 have found employment". 
 
 The retardation of material progress might have been 
 forgiven, if any enlightenment had been gained by the 
 loss ; but poverty of mind went with poverty of body. 
 The killing of the boy Aikenhead is an index to the cleri- 
 cal capacity for tolerance at the beginning of the 1 8th 
 century. When the Act of Toleration was passed for the 
 benefit of Scottish Episcopalians in 1712, it met with the 
 bitterest clerical opposition. Dr. Burton (viii., 224, et seq.}
 
 202 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 charitably finds reasons outside of mere intolerance for 
 their outcry, but even such a champion of the Church as 
 the late Dr. Tulloch was unable to shelter himself behind 
 such excuses. "The Toleration Act of 1712," he writes, 
 "was a statute of freedom, obnoxious as it was to the 
 great body of the Presbyterians. It confined the ecclesi- 
 astical power to its own sphere ; and, while it left the 
 Church its anathemas against schism and ' innovations in 
 the worship of God ', protected all who chose to put them- 
 selves voluntarily beyond its pale from all forcible inter- 
 ference. It is melancholy to think that even the Church 
 of Carstares did what it could to oppose such a law, and 
 that it can be said with truth by the modern historian that 
 the Scottish Parliament would never have ventured to pass 
 it" ("The Church of the Eighteenth Century ", St. Giles 
 Lectures, 1881, p. 260). Dr. Somerville. again, expressly 
 confesses that "many of the members of the Established 
 Church, of .... education and of unquestionable piety, 
 regarded the indulgence of Episcopacy as a crime on the 
 part of the legislature " ("Life and Times ", p. 375). And 
 official documents of the time unambiguously spoke of the 
 "grievances of the Church of Scotland, .... as the Act 
 granting so large and almost boundles Tolleration to those 
 of the Episcopal persuasion in Scotland " (Spalding Club 
 Miscellany, i., 229). It is hardly necessary to add that 
 when punishment for witchcraft was abolished in 1736, 
 the Scotch clergy were among the bitterest protesters. 
 
 It is sometimes contended that the remarkable literary 
 revival which took place in Scotland in the middle and 
 latter part of the eighteenth century should go to the 
 credit of the Church, some of the distinguished writers of 
 the period having been in its ministry. Stout old Dr. 
 Alexander Carlyle, of Inveresk, known in his day as 
 " Jupiter Carlyle ", has an eloquent passage implying such 
 a claim, though he was little in sympathy with the devout 
 Presbyterianism of his day. "We have men", he de- 
 clared, "who have successfully enlightened the world on 
 almost every branch of knowledge and of Christian doc- 
 trine and morals. Who have written the best histories, 
 ancient and modern ? It has been clergymen of this 
 Church. Who has written the clearest delineation of the 
 human understanding and all its powers ? A clergyman 
 of this Church. Who wrote a tragedy that has been
 
 THE PEE, VERSION OF SCOTLAND. 203 
 
 deemed perfect ? A clergyman of this Church.. Who was 
 the most profound mathematician of the age he lived in ? 
 A clergyman of this Church" ("Autobiography", p. 561). 
 But it happens that an analysis of that panegyric yields 
 the most crushing refutation of the pretence that the 
 Church had any merit in the matter. Not one of the 
 luminaries mentioned is representative of its true inward- 
 ness and practical influence ; indeed, some of them came 
 in collision with it. Adam Ferguson, who wrote the 
 History of the Roman Republic, never took a parish 
 charge, though he had been licensed to preach. Reid, the 
 friend of Gregory and Dugald Stewart, was utterly outside 
 the spirit of the Scottish Church of his day. Principal 
 Robertson, while, like Carstares, he was the leader of 
 a Church of which the prevailing temper was so widely 
 different from his own, was in reality so alien to its ten- 
 dencies that when in 1779 he advocated the repeal of the 
 laws against Catholics, he was in danger of his life from 
 the raving populace, which was countenanced in its bigotry 
 by the majority of the clergy (Stewart's " Life of Robert- 
 son", Works, ed. 1817, i., 122). Home, the author of the 
 tragedy " deemed perfect" the once famous " Douglas ", 
 now, alas ! utterly forgotten had to leave the ministry be- 
 cause of the outcry against him by his brethren for writing 
 that very tragedy ; and "Jupiter" himself was menaced with 
 a prosecution for countenancing his friend and the theatre 
 in general. But there is no need to pile up evidence : Dr. 
 Tulloch has admitted that "the popular and the moderate 
 clergy of the eighteenth century stand apart" (St. Giles 
 Lectures, p. 285) ; and the men Dr. Carlyle praised were, 
 I believe, without an exception "moderates", as he was 
 himself. And, what is extremely significant, Dr. Tulloch 
 could not lecture even in 1881 without apologising to his 
 fellow-churchmen for the very "moderation" of these 
 men precisely the quality in respect of which they at- 
 tained intellectual distinction. 
 
 But there is a further refutation, even more conclusive 
 than the direct disproof above given. For the true expla- 
 nation of the Scottish literary revival of last century let 
 us turn to the other and greater Carlyle, who, though not 
 a Churchman, was not at all hostilely disposed to the 
 Puritan tradition: "For a long period after Scotland 
 became British we had no literature ; at the date when
 
 204 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Addison and Steele were writing their Spectators, our good 
 John Boston was writing, with the noblest intent, but 
 alike in defiance of grammar and philosophy, his Fourfold 
 State of Man. Then came the schisms in our National 
 Ohurch, and the fiercer schisms in our Body Politic; 
 Theologic ink and Jacobite blood, with gall 'enough in 
 both cases, it seemed, to have blotted out the intellect of 
 
 the country Lord Kames made nearly the first 
 
 attempt at writing English ; and ere long Hume, Eobert- 
 son, Smith, and a whole host of followers, attracted hither 
 the eyes of all Europe. And yet in this brilliant resusci- 
 tation of our 'fervid genius' there was nothing truly 
 Scottish, nothing indigenous ; except, perhaps, the national 
 impetuosity of intellect, which we sometimes claim, and 
 are sometimes upbraided with, as a characteristic of our 
 nation. It is curious to remark that Scotland, so full of 
 writers, had no Scottish culture, nor indeed any English ; 
 our culture was exclusively French. It was by studying 
 Eacine and Voltaire, Batteux and Boileau, that Kames had 
 trained himself to be a critic and philosopher : it was the 
 light of Montesquieu and Mably that guided Eobertson 
 in his political speculations ; Quesnay's lamp that kindled 
 the lamp of Adam Smith. Hume was too rich to borrow, 
 and perhaps he reacted on the French more than he was 
 acted on by them ; but neither had he aught to do with 
 Scotland; Edinburgh, equally with La Fleche, was but 
 the lodging and laboratory, in which he not so much morally 
 lived, as metaphysically investigated" (Essay on Burns, 
 ed. 1840, p. 361). 
 
 That passage, despite Carlyle's aversion which comes 
 out in the context to the rationalism of the writers he 
 mentions, seems to me substantially sound, if we take 
 " indigenous" to imply those intellectual qualities chiefly 
 conspicuous in Scotland from the Eeformation to the 
 Union. Truly the group round Hume got nothing from 
 their predecessors ; there was simply nothing for such 
 minds to get in the Puritan period, and they were too far 
 removed in every way from the prse-Puritaii period to take 
 up the broken strands of the old national literature. At the 
 Union, as we have seen, Scottish literature was a blank, 
 and it was, as Carlyle says, French seed that raised the 
 great crop in the latter half of the century. And Carlyle 
 indirectly, and perhaps unconsciously, points the moral
 
 THE PEBVERSION OF SCOTLAOT). 205' 
 
 when he says that the state of things he describes is 
 " unexampled, so far as we know, except perhaps at Geneva, 
 where the same state of matters appears still to continue". 
 Geneva was from the first Scotland's ecclesiastical model ; 
 and the coincidence in the matter of literary paralysis is 
 indeed significant. The intimate union of democracy and 
 hierocracy obviously does not engender literary genius. It 
 is worth noticing, by the way, that in the England of the 
 period above scanned, where the State Church was then at 
 its most unchallenged supremacy, and there was no French 
 school of culture as in Scotland, there was no intellectual 
 product comparable to the Scotch, if we exclude Gibbon, 
 who again, as Buckle has remarked, was a Frenchman in 
 his culture. 
 
 If we change the line of investigation and ask what the 
 Scottish Church specifically did last century to promote 
 culture of any sort, we find no evidence whatever beyond 
 the item of the introduction of the Bible into the Gaelic 
 districts. It may indeed have some doubtful credit for 
 what it indirectly did by keeping up the parish schools, 
 though the object of these was primarily to strengthen it- 
 self by inculcating its dogmas ; but its failure to promote 
 even ecclesiastical culture effectively is notorious. " When 
 I was a student of divinity", writes Dr. Somerville, who 
 studied at Edinburgh about the middle of the century, 
 " Hebrew was little cultivated, or altogether omitted, by 
 the great number of the theological students" (" Life and 
 Times", p. 18). And Greek, there is good reason to be- 
 lieve, was only a little less unfamiliar. There would be, of 
 course, no very serious weight in the old lamentations over 
 the scarcity of classical culture in Scotland if such scarcity 
 had been balanced by an enlightened promotion of culture 
 of a more vital and valuable kind. An irrational estimate 
 of the value of an academic command of Greek and Latin 
 has notoriously been a serious bar to intellectual advance 
 in England till quite recently, if it is not so still. Apart, 
 however, from the non- ecclesiastical, France-derived cul- 
 ture already spoken of, it is quite impossible to detect in 
 the Scotland of last century any official diffusion of sound 
 knowledge equal in value to the classical cultus of the 
 English universities. The great mass of the clergy had 
 neither Greek nor science, neither philosophy nor art, 
 neither belles-lettres nor general knowledge ; and all the
 
 206 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 evidence goes to show that the spirit of clericalism, as de- 
 veloped by the country's religious history was responsible 
 for this general destitution. There is a comic story pre- 
 served by Lord Cockburn, of how Sidney Smith in the 
 street one dark night overheard old Dalzel, the distinguished 
 Grecian, muttering to himself on his way home, with re- 
 gard to the inferiority of Scotland to England in classicism, 
 that "If it had not been for that confounded Solemn 
 League and Covenant, we would have made as good longs 
 and shorts as they" ("Memorials," p. 20). And yet 
 Dalzel was clerk to the General Assembly another proof 
 of the aloofness of Scottish culture from the spirit of the 
 Church. It is only right to say that while "longs and 
 shorts " were never very successfully cultivated in Scotland, 
 the intellectual movement above sketched included a more 
 methodic treatment of the literature and history of Home 
 than had yet taken place in England; Euddiman and 
 Hunter, for instance, being admittedly among the ablest 
 Latinists of their age ; while the first good English manual 
 of Roman antiquities was that of Adams. But here again, 
 no thanks are due to the Church. Most of us could forgive 
 Covenanterism the most complete dearth of native Latin 
 verses if it had done anything to foster even such a 
 partial organisation of human knowledge as the good 
 Adams aimed at, or such a reconstruction of the past as 
 was represented by the work of the Scottish historians of 
 the century. 
 
 As for the direct and indirect intellectual influence of 
 the Church in other directions, it is only too palpable in 
 a negative fashion. Painting and sculpture could scarcely 
 be said to exist in Scotland last century (Burton, viii., 
 536-7). Of music, beyond the primitive airs, there was 
 none ; the tabooing of the organ in worship keeping the 
 country far behind even England in that regard. "The 
 Earl of Kelly, a man of yesterday, was the first Scotsman 
 who ever composed music for an orchestra " (Chambers' 
 " Traditions of Edinburgh ", ed. 1869, p. 279). And in a 
 matter which many will think rather more important, there 
 is a still more direct indictment standing against the Pro- 
 testant State Church. " The ancient church [i.e. the 
 Catholic] was honorably distinguished by its charity to- 
 wards the poor, and more especially the diseased poor ; and 
 it was a dreary interval of nearly two centuries which in-
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 207 
 
 tervened between the extinction of its lazar-houses and 
 leper-houses, and the time when merely a civilised human- 
 ity dictated the establishment of a regulated means of 
 succor for the sickness-stricken of the humble classes. The 
 date here affixed [August 6, 1729] is an interesting one, as 
 that u-hen a hospital of the modern type was first opened in Scot- 
 land for the reception of poor patients " (Chambers' " Domestic 
 Annals ", iii., 557). And for this first hospital, it should 
 further be noted, the funds were raised " chiefly by the 
 activity of the medical profession " (p. 559). 
 
 In dealing with the condition of Scotland for a genera- 
 tion after the Beformation, we saw reason to reject the 
 view of Buckle hastily adopted by him, I observe, from 
 Dr. McCrie that the Presbyterian clergy had the merit 
 of so stimulating the spirit of independence among the 
 people as to extend their liberties and their political power. 
 In point of fact, the self-assertion of the Scottish democracy, 
 as such, had been more marked and more effectual before 
 the Eeformation than after. We saw, again, how the 
 outcome of the Covenant movement was an effacement of 
 national institutions under Cromwell, followed by an all- 
 penetrating oppression under Charles II. It has now 
 further to be noted that, though under William and Mary 
 the Presbyterian clergy showed something of the old 
 Covenanting turbulence, the political history of Scotland 
 from the beginning to the end of the eighteenth century 
 was one of progressive political retrogression ; till at the 
 opening of the nineteenth century the country could make 
 no more pretence to be governed on genuinely constitu- 
 tional principles than any State on the Continent. After 
 the repression of the Jacobite rising of 1745, it seemed as 
 if the nation had lost the faculty of political initiative. 
 Not that it was governed with actual cruelty : the harm 
 lay rather in the suppression of every democratic aspira- 
 tion, and of the all-important instinct of self-government 
 in every direction save that of the mere domestic economy 
 of the Kirk. But in the long run, when the example oi 
 the French Eevolution bore its full fruit among us in 
 aristocratic reaction, the tyranny became gross and brutal. 
 Everyone who has read the memoirs of the times is aware 
 of the completeness of the repression. " Public political 
 meetings," says Cockburn (" Memorials, "p. 88), "did not 
 arise, for the elements did not exist. I doubt if there was
 
 208 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 one during the twenty-five years that succeeded the year 
 1795 ". That was the period of his own adult experience, 
 up to the beginnings of political reform ; and I cannot 
 discover that matters were different in the previous gene- 
 ration, which was one of considerable political activity in 
 England. "With the people put down and the Whigs 
 powerless," he says again (p. 86), " Government was the 
 master of nearly every individual in Scotland, but especially 
 in Edinburgh, which was the chief seat of its influence ; " 
 and he even testifies (pp. 89-90) that in the matter of 
 Church management the principle of democracy was so 
 entirely discarded that the expression of a wish by an 
 Edinburgh congregation in regard to the appointment of 
 a pastor was made by the Government a reason for 
 appointing someone else. 
 
 Now, this state of things is certainly not in itself an 
 argument against the national Church, but it is a crushing 
 disproof of the common assertion that that Church has all 
 along kept alive the spirit of democracy. That is one 
 more ecclesiastical myth. If there was anything that a 
 liberty-loving Church might be expected to be emphatic 
 about, it was the slavery of the colliers and salters. Yet 
 not only did the clergy never agitate in the matter, but 
 they took positively no notice of the Act of liberation in 
 1799 ; and their flocks generally were so indifferent that 
 there is no record of the event in the Scots Magazine of 
 that year, or of the year 1775, when the first legislative 
 step was taken. "People cared nothing about colliers on 
 their own account, and the taste for improving the lower 
 orders had not then began to dawn" (Cockburn's "Me- 
 morials ", p. 79). In the days of Tory supremacy, those 
 who ventured to attend the annual dinner on Fox's birth- 
 day had their names taken down at the door of the meeting 
 place by sheriff's officers, by way of menace (Hid. p. 91). 
 Ecclesiastical democratism did not meddle with outrages of 
 that kind to say nothing of the iniquitous trials and 
 infamous sentences for so-called sedition. 
 
 Printed by ANJJIE BESAXT and CHABLES BBADLAUGH, 63, Fleet St., B.C. 16SC.
 
 THE SINS OF THE CHURCH. 
 XIV. 
 
 TEE PEBVERSIOX OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 BY JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 (VI.) 
 
 COCKBURN'S testimony as to the political inaction of the 
 Church is decisive. The Whig advocates, as he points out, 
 were the real movers in the cause of political liberty among 
 the educated classes. " The profession of these men armed 
 them with better qualities than any other could supply in 
 
 a country without a Parliament It was among 
 
 them accordingly that independence found its only asylum. 
 It had a few silent though devoted worshippers elsewhere, 
 but the Whig counsel were its only open champions. The 
 Church can boast of Sir Henry Moncreiff alone as its 
 contribution to the cause ; but he was too faithful to his 
 sacred functions to act as a political partisan. John Allen 
 and John Thomson, [of the medical profession, were active 
 and fearless. And the College gave Dugald Stewart, 
 John Playfair, and Andrew Dalzel" ("Memorials," 
 pp. 84-5). 
 
 In all directions, then, a search for proofs of the service 
 so often alleged to have been done for Scotland by the 
 national Church, leads to a demonstration that its influence 
 has on the contrary been substantially for evil. We have 
 iound, to begin with, that the Reformation was the out- 
 come not of high-minded religious fervor, but of aristo- 
 cratic greed ; and we have seen that wherever the ecclesi- 
 astical spirit proper came into play, the result was, with 
 hardly an exception, disaster to the nation's best interests. 
 The new superstitions were darker and deadlier than the 
 old. The Church never raised morals and manners by 
 being, in its practice, ahead of the average ethics of the day. 
 It not only blighted every form of art, but absolutely sus- 
 pended the evolution of Scottish literature for some two 
 hundred years ; so that when a new growth commenced, 
 the inspiration had perforce to come from other countries. 
 The vaunted services of the Church to the cause of political
 
 210 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 liberty are found to be sheer delusion and imposture, inas- 
 much, as, within its own sphere, it all along laid on the 
 people burdens grievous to be borne, while latterly failing 
 to touch political tyranny so much as with the tips of its 
 fingers. 
 
 It is never an easy matter to generalise soundly on the 
 origin and explanation of national characteristics ; but I 
 submit that the case is tolerably clear as to the net effect 
 of the establishment of the national Presbyterian Church 
 on the character of the people of Scotland. Before the 
 Eef ormation they were vivacious, art-loving, full of healthy 
 life: since then they have become "Museless", as Mr. 
 Buskin would say ; and the darkness cast over their life 
 by clericalism has marked them out as the most fanatical of 
 Protestant peoples, with the nominal exception of the 
 Presbyterians of Ulster, who are, indeed mostly of Scotch 
 descent. England, too, has been blighted by Puritanism, 
 as Mr. Arnold has so often told his countrymen ; but the 
 shadow is darker on Scotland. Nowhere, probably, is life 
 made so little of, in the way of all-round enjoyment, pro- 
 portionately to the means available. Cultured Scotchmen 
 have born ample witness to the sinister results of the 
 hierocracy in individual as well as in public life._ Take 
 Professor Masson. His view of the history of the Kirk is to 
 a large extent the conventional one, tinctured with a flavor of 
 Carlyle, but this is his feeling about the general effect of 
 Presbyterian discipline in his native land: "In no country 
 does one see more manly, courageous, and strongly-original 
 faces ; but it might be a fair speculation whether in the 
 'pawky' type of physiognomy which is often to be 
 marked in Scottish streets, conjoined with the soft walk, 
 the sleek black gloves touching each other in front, and 
 the evasive or sidelong glance, there is not a relic of that 
 old ecclesiastical tyranny which drilled a considerable per- 
 centage of Scotsmen through several generations into a 
 look of acquiescence in propositions known to be untenable " 
 ("Drummond of Hawthornden ", p. 375). The portrait 
 is somewhat crude, but every Scotchman can recall the 
 type Dr. Masson is thinking of. It is not so much that 
 the rule of the Kirk forced men to pretend to accept 
 "propositions known to be untenable": unhappily it 
 taught them to believe its worst incredibilities, and crippled 
 their very faculty of thinking for themselves ; but it made
 
 THE PEBVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 211 
 
 hypocrites and fanatics by the thousand. Scotland is not, 
 in a general way, more hypocritical than England : 
 that is impossible : but in matters of religious dissimu- 
 lation, formalism, and lip-service, it makes up for any 
 falling short of English attainment in other forms of in- 
 sincerity. 
 
 Did the Church effect anything in the way of promoting 
 good morals ? The one species of immorality on which it 
 laid anything like the stress it put on witchcraft and 
 Sabbath-breaking was sexual licence ; and what has been 
 the result of its interference ? Only the other day a London 
 journal which makes it its business to be "moral " in the 
 English sense, was congratulating England on having 
 such a very much lower rate of illegitimate births 
 than Scotland. I do not share the conception of morality 
 which looks on the illegitimate birth-rate as the test 
 of a nation's general moral position ; but there is no 
 disputing that it is the index of a large amount of unhap- 
 piness, hardship, and degradation ; and all Churches agree 
 in deploring its existence. "Why then is "Bible-loving", 
 Kirk-governed Scotland such a sinner in this regard? 
 This is not the place to go into the whole question, but 
 here too the policy of the Church is arraigned by com- 
 petent Scotchmen. Dr. Burton (viii., 388-9), sums up in 
 these terms : 
 
 "It does not follow that because the clerical inquisition 
 [i.e., the general presbyterial and sessional discipline] dis- 
 played scenes of revolting licentiousness, it created them. 
 But, on the other hand, it is very obvious to those who 
 read the session records, and otherwise trace the manners 
 of the age, that it did little, if anything, towards their sup- 
 pression The more vice was dragged from the 
 
 dark, the more seemed to be left behind to be dragged 
 forth, and the inquisition went on, ceaseless and ineffective. 
 The people became familiar with the sight sometimes too 
 familiar with its cause. If the degradation on one Sunday 
 were insufficient, it should be followed by another and an- 
 other. It became matter of boast that a parish had risen 
 so much higher in rigidity than its neighbors as to demand 
 more appearances in the place of scorn. A frail victim 
 was sometimes compelled to appear on nine or ten successive 
 Sundays, exposed to the congregation in the seat of shame. 
 The most noticeable effect often produced by the exhibition
 
 212 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 was in the gibes and indecorous talk of the young peasants, 
 who, after a few significant glances during the admonition, 
 and a few words at the church door, adjourned the general 
 question for discussion in the change-house. Sometimes 
 it was noticed that the young Jacobite lairds, who would 
 not be otherwise induced to enter a Presbyterian place of 
 worship, strayed to the parish church to have an opportu- 
 nity of seeing the latest addition to the frail sisterhood of 
 the neighbourhood. The exposure sometimes hardened 
 hearts otherwise redeemable ; or drove the erring to deeper 
 crimes for the concealment of their guilt. Thus this rigid 
 system, however highly it may have purified the virtue of 
 the select few who were the patterns and leaders of the 
 flock, doubtless deserved the reproach often cast upon it, 
 of driving weaker brethren either into hypocrisy or reck- 
 lessness, by compelling the people to be either puritans or 
 reprobates." 
 
 The historian's judgment seems to me to be absolutely 
 just or rather to err only on the side of under-statement. 
 It points to a fact in Scottish life which has misled many 
 observers the coexistence, even in the same circles, of 
 real or assumed fanaticism and more or less demoralising 
 riot. And Dr. Burton's summing-up indicates the expla- 
 nation that the one thing implies the other. Asceticism 
 always has a foil of coarseness ; witness the offensive fact 
 that John Knox, when a decrepit old widower of fifty- 
 nine, with grown-up children, married a girl of at most 
 seventeen years, affianced to him at about sixteen a 
 fact probably not known to one person in a hundred in 
 Scotland, so industriously have his biographers suppressed 
 it. (See Burton, v., 86, and Laing's Knox, vi., 532, 533. 
 Dr. McCrie shirks the truth. ) The life of Burns has brought 
 before English readers the chequered aspect of popular 
 Scottish morality. Austerity and joyless gloom on the one 
 hand produce their natural corrective in dissolute mirth 
 and defiant licence on the other; and the poet, only too 
 able to see the element of hypocrisy in the austerity, 
 brands the picture of it all in his vividest verse ; trium- 
 phantly impeaching the Kirk before posterity in the 
 "Holy Fair", and impaling a typical hypocrite, drawn 
 from the life, on the barbs of a murderous satire. Better 
 than any service the hapless singer could render to culture 
 by any beauty of his song was the moral shock of the
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 213 
 
 breeze and the lightning of his mockery and his human 
 protest, blowing and flashing through the world of Phari- 
 saism and shamefaced good fellowship around him. But 
 his genius could not make an end of cant and bigotry, any 
 more than it could transform debauchery at once into 
 healthy joy. 
 
 A moral duality, so to speak, runs through past Scottish 
 life in a way that becomes at times perplexing. Burton 
 notes (vii., 425) that " the higher order have always in 
 Scotland but scantily partaken in the religious fervor so 
 abundant among the humbler body of the people " ; and 
 this divergence ramified in many directions. Thus we find 
 that when in 1723 a dancing assembly was established in 
 Edinburgh it was almost wholly supported by " Tories 
 and Episcopalians " (Chambers' " Domestic Annals", iii., 
 480). Cruel as the Episcopal Church had been in its 
 period of supremacy, it was certainly more human in its 
 later social influence than the Presbyterian ; the persecu- 
 tion through which it in turn passed after its marked 
 association of itself with Jacobitism having perhaps a 
 salutary effect. It of necessity had affinities for art ; and 
 its adherents appear to have been the main patrons of 
 what music and painting existed in the country. To its 
 ranks, too, seem to have belonged most of those delightful 
 old ladies immortalised for us by Dean Eamsay, with their 
 bracing originality, their vigorous wit, their keen under- 
 standings, and their delicious profanity. The incomparable 
 old lady, widow of a clergyman, told of by Cockburn 
 (" Memorials," p. 58) who, on hearing her granddaughter 
 read a newspaper paragraph telling how the "first gentle- 
 man in Europe " had compromised a lady's reputation, 
 rose to her feet with the startling exclamation, "The 
 dawmed villain, does he kiss and tell ! " that chivalrous 
 moralist of four- score clearly inherited the Cavalier 
 tradition, and not the Covenanting. Beside that estimable 
 dame and her kind, it happens, we have to set a brother- 
 hood not so estimable, of hard-drinking lairds, frantic Jaco- 
 bites, and brutal judges, all exhibiting the riotous and 
 bibulous national strain as opposed to the fanatical, whether 
 or not all Episcopalian ; but perhaps they in their way 
 were not wholly without redeeming merit as correcting in 
 some degree the blanching gloom and cold constriction of 
 the reigning cult.
 
 214 THE TERVERSIOK OF SCOTLAKD. 
 
 One of the plainest marks of the Church's hold on 
 Scottish life one of the strongest evidences of its social 
 influence for harm is the national Sabbatarianism. That 
 is emphatically a social condition of Church manufacture. 
 As early as the twelfth century, it appears, Queen Mar- 
 garet of sainted memory sought to impose strict Sabbatical 
 restraints on the people ; but during the Stewart period, 
 down to the Reformation, Scotland enjoyed the same free- 
 dom in that particular matter as the rest of Catholic 
 Europe. Even the first Reformers, like Calvin, were partly 
 free from the Sabbatarian superstition ; Knox having no 
 objection to feast his friends on preaching day (Burton, 
 v., 86). It was the Judaizing of the later Presbyterians 
 that made the Scotch Sunday the gazing-stock of civilised 
 Europe. The clergy resisted the really sensible attempts 
 of James VI. to liberalise Sabbath observance; in 1640 
 the Covenanting Parliament is found legislating according 
 to their wishes (II., vi., 287) ; and practically ever since 
 they have kept their clutch on the first day of the week. 
 In 1693 the Edinburgh Town Council passed an Act pro- 
 hibiting all standing or strolling on Sundays in the streets 
 or on the Castle Hill the only open space then within 
 the city walls (Chambers' "Annals", iii., 342); and in 
 1709 clerical complaint is made that nevertheless the 
 Sabbath is "profaned by people standing on the streets", 
 "also ly idle gazing out at windows" (Ib., p. 344). 
 
 The superstition got hold of the clear heads as well as 
 the cloudy. Sir John Dick Lander, the careful lawyer, 
 perpends thus judicially in 1686 : " This winter ther hap- 
 pened three fyres at Edinburgh, and all on the Sabbath 
 day, to signify God's displeasure at the profanation of his 
 day : tho ther is no certain conclusion can be drawn from 
 thesse providentiall accidents, for a Jew would draw just 
 the contrare conclusion, that God was dissatisfyed with 
 our worshipping him on that day ; so thesse providences 
 may be variously interpreted " ( " Historical Observes ", 
 p. 246). The faint vestige of common sense here apparent 
 soon faded from the discussion of the subject. 
 
 And yet Cockburn, looking back about 1825 to his own 
 young days, declares that he " could mention many prac- 
 tices of our old pious which would horrify modern zealots. 
 .... In nothing do these differences appear more 
 strikingly than in matters connected with the observance
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 215 
 
 of Sunday. Hearing what is often confidently prescribed 
 now as the only proper mode of keeping the Christian 
 Sabbath, and then recollecting how it was recently kept 
 by Christian men, ought to teach us charity in the enforce- 
 ment of observances" ("Memorials," p. 43). The expla- 
 nation is twofold. For one thing, Cockburn had lived in 
 the Episcopalian stratum ; but apart from that there had 
 really taken place during his lifetime a change for the 
 worse in the intellectual atmosphere of Scotch societythe 
 inevitable result of the steady pressure of the sinister 
 ecclesiastical influence against that culture which, as Car- 
 lyle has shown us, had been imported into Scotland from 
 France in the eighteenth century. The writer of the 
 ecclesiastical chapter at the end of Wright's "History of 
 Scotland " (iii., 607) briefly describes the transition from 
 the restricted and non-popular reign of " moderatism ", 
 after Eobertson's day, to the "evangelicalism" of later 
 times: "Towards the end of the century . . . ; the current 
 began to turn, and, partly from the returning favor of 
 Government, and partly through the earnest and able 
 advocacy of men like Dr. Erskine, Sir Henry Moncrieff, 
 and Dr. Andrew Thomson, the evangelical party gradually 
 gained the upper hand in the Assembly, and finally a new 
 life was given to it, after 1815, by the energy and talents 
 of the celebrated Dr. Thomas Chalmers, while people's 
 attention was extensively carried back again and fixed on 
 the examples and doctrines of the earlier Scottish reformers 
 by the writings of Dr. McCrie and others." In other 
 words, the inherent reactionary bias of the ecclesiastical 
 system had turned back the hands of the social clock. We 
 have sufficiently seen what was the bearing and value of 
 the " examples and doctrines of the earlier Scottish re- 
 formers". 
 
 To do Chalmers justice, he was more than a mere past- 
 worshipping ecclesiastic. He was almost the only Scotch 
 clergyman who has had at once the intelligence and the 
 courage to openly proclaim the vital importance of the 
 principle of population worked out by Malthus ; and he did 
 other service to economic science. But here again the 
 Church has been true to its mission. In all the clerical 
 eulogy of the memory of Chalmers, not a solitary voice 
 dwells on his social philosophy ; and the great majority of 
 Scotchmen now do not even know that he was a Malthusian.
 
 216 THE PERVEKSION OF SCOTLASTD. 
 
 I have gone through two biographies of him without light- 
 ing on a single allusion to the fact. 
 
 It will perhaps be argued that, seeing the " evangelical ' y 
 movement of the present century was synchronous with 
 the beginnings of political liberty, the inner spirit of the 
 Church was thus after all influential for democracy. But 
 the facts will not square with such a theory. That move- 
 ment was independent of the political awakening, of which 
 the active spirits were such men as Jeffrey and Cockburn, 
 who though not unbelievers were in favor of the exclu- 
 sion of religion from the public schools, in view of the 
 irreconcilable dissensions of the sects. This last social 
 feature is one of the things for which we have to thank 
 the institution of State religion. As Cockburn notes in hi& 
 Journal (ed. 1874, i., pp. 236, 238-9), Churchmen endea- 
 vored to prevent the endowment of the education of Dis- 
 senters, while Dissenters similarly sought to foil Church- 
 men. Lord- Advocate Eutherford writes Cockburn in 1839 
 that "when it is proposed to extend the benefit of educa- 
 tion [by giving the Privy Council power to apply 10,000 
 to jfche education of Dissenters], there is a cry, responded 
 to in shouts by the House of Commons, that you are under- 
 mining and ruining the Church ". But Cockburn, a Scotch- 
 man who lived his life in Scotland, has a more sweeping 
 indictment against the Church in connexion with the com- 
 mon claim that it has promoted popular education. "It 
 is clear to my mind", he writes ("Journal", ii., 305) 
 "that keeping the popular education any longer in the 
 hands of the Church is nonsense. The Church has not per- 
 formed this duty even decently for above a hundred years." How 
 much the clerical influence had availed towards spreading 
 that "passion for education" with which the Scottish 
 people is sometimes credited, may be gathered from the 
 same writer's remarks ("Memorials", p. 186) on the 
 Schoolmasters' Act of 1803, which compelled heritors to 
 provide houses for schoolmasters, " but prescribes that the 
 house need not contain more than two rooms, including the 
 Kitchen. This shabbiness was abused at the time, and 
 seems incredible now [twenty years later]. But Hope 
 [the Lord Advocate] told me that he had considerable 
 difficulty in getting even the two rooms, and that a great 
 majority of the lairds and Scotch members were indignant 
 at being obliged to ' erect palaces for dominies '."
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 217 
 
 On this matter of popular education, it may "be well to 
 point out finally that Scotland stood relatively high in that 
 regard long before the Reformation. <( In almost all the 
 periods of the history of Scotland, whatever documents 
 deal with the social condition of the country, reveal a 
 machinery for education always abundant, when compared 
 with any traces of art, or the other elements of education. . . . 
 In documents much older than the War of Independence, 
 the school and the schoolmaster are familiar objects of 
 reference. They chiefly occur in the chartularies of the 
 religious houses ; and there is little doubt that the earliest 
 schools were supported out of the superfluous wealth of 
 these houses [ref . to Innes's ' Sketches of Early Scottish 
 History', 134, et seq]. ... In later times, schools are 
 found attached to the burgh corporations. They got the 
 name of grammar-schools, and .... Latin was taught 
 
 in them We hear, at the commencement of the 
 
 sixteenth century, of men acquiring distinction as mere 
 schoolmasters a sure sign of the respect in which the 
 teacher's mission was held " (Burton, iii., 399-401). 
 
 If Scotch Protestants were half as ready to give credit 
 to the Romish Church for what it did for civilization, as 
 they are to magnify the scanty achievement of Presby- 
 terianism, the former body would have a very different 
 reputation from that which it has at present. Those who 
 lay stress on the fancied services of the Presbyterian 
 Church as a reason for keeping up its endowments, never 
 think of mentioning that it was the reviled monks of old 
 who alone fostered agriculture in early feudal times ; and 
 that they were far the best landlords of their age (Burton, 
 i., 107-9; citing Innes, "Scotland in the Middle Ages", 
 138-140, 147). The truth is, that the Catholic Church in 
 Scotland was in the main favorable to general culture, 
 interfering only with religious thought ; while its Presby- 
 terian successor was and is hostile to general science and 
 all popular art. To this day it is good for nothing but the 
 propagation of its own dogmas. The series of clerical 
 lectures which have of late years been given in Edinburgh 
 with the professed purpose of spreading a knowledge of 
 the nation's past, and of its distinguished sons, are purely 
 ecclesiastical. The " worthies " they introduce to the 
 public are the otherwise deservedly forgotten fanatics and 
 rhapsodists of the Kirk's early days, extinct volcanoes,
 
 218 THE PERVEESION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 whose remains offer no healthy pabulum for any sound 
 mind. Bigots who taught that unbaptized children would 
 eternally burn in hell are extolled for their spiritual 
 graces; and the whole dust-heap of their polemics is 
 turned over by way of edifying the nineteenth 
 century. Such is "education" as the Church affects 
 it. On the other hand, I have no hesitation in saying 
 that Scotchmen, with all their nationalism, are more 
 generally ignorant of the bygone scientific achievements 
 of men of their own nation than are the general public 
 of almost any other country in the world; and this 
 clearly by reason of their past clericalism. Let any 
 of my Scotch freethinking readers cast about for any 
 popular acquaintance with the lives and doings, or even 
 the names, of Black, Leslie, Hutton, Cullen, and Hunter ; 
 and they will see cause to endorse my statement. ^ The 
 first generally accessible account the first worthy estimate 
 of these great men collectively is in the work of Buckle. 
 The name of James "Watt did indeed get into the books for 
 boys; and Scotchmen know something of Adam Smith, 
 simply because Political Economy fell so largely into 
 Scotch hands, and because Smith's name has been kept in 
 the public eye by newspapers and politicians in connexion 
 with Free Trade ; but at this moment there is no popular 
 Scotch edition of the philosophical works of Hume, the 
 greatest thinker Scotland has produced ; while the cheap 
 English edition in one volume the only one obtainable 
 by the average purchaser though professing to be com- 
 plete, is actually castrated of the essays on miracles and a 
 future state : a scandal calling for redress, by the way, 
 apart from the issues above discussed. Those of us who 
 have noted these and other facts in connexion with Scotch 
 culture, have our misgivings about the compliments some- 
 times paid to it. 
 
 Enough has been already said to show how deadly has 
 been the power of the Kirk as regards what are at once 
 the most subtle and among the most potent influences of 
 civilisation the arts. The notorious and barbarous 
 Presbyterian prejudice against church music has sup- 
 pressed a means of musical culture which has flourished 
 everywhere else throughout the world; so that the un- 
 doubted national musical faculty remained till practically 
 the present generation pretty much in the state it had
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 219 
 
 attained in the Middle Ages; otherwise educated people 
 still seeing the highest musical possibilities in the early 
 "ballads. In the matter of the theatre, the Church is not 
 merely guilty of extinguishing the vigorous prse-Reforma- 
 tion drama ; she has done her best to starve and stunt it 
 in its modern revival. As soon as the clergy were able, 
 they obtained the suppression of the small theatre estab- 
 lished by Allan Ramsay in Edinburgh about the middle of 
 last century; and a noted Presbyterian Tartufe of the 
 time even sought to put down Ramsay's venture of a 
 circulating library (Burton, viii., 551 ; compare Tul- 
 loch, St. Giles Lectures, p. 282). And I believe _that 
 as regards the position of the drama in the provinces 
 generally, Scotland is, relatively speaking, more backward 
 than she was a hundred years ago, when Burns wrote pro- 
 logues for companies who performed at Dumfries. I could 
 lay my finger at this moment on half-a-dozen small Scotch 
 towns in which, for sheer lack of a theatre or any other 
 recreation, a large proportion of the youths become unin- 
 tellectual, sottish, and dissolute. The more ambitious 
 eagerly flock to the large towns ; those left behind have 
 no resource but the tap-room. But every attempt made 
 to establish theatres in these towns is met by shrieks from 
 the clergy, predictive of untold contingent demoralisation 
 in blatant disregard of the demoralisation actually 
 taking place. 
 
 This darkening and worsening of life at the behest of 
 bigotry is to-day the main net outcome of clerical influence 
 in Scotland. If the English people has not yet learned 
 how to enjoy itself, the Scotch is still further behind. In 
 1838, commenting on the Scottish observance of Corona- 
 tion Day, Cockburn could say of the Scotchman of the 
 people : "The tippling-house is his natural refuge against 
 a system of moral Calvinism which considers the social 
 and public recreation of whole families as dangerous or 
 shameful" ("Journal" i., 187). A slow improvement is 
 going on, but whatever advance may be suggested whether 
 the Sunday opening of museums or picture galleries, Sunday 
 secular lectures, or Sunday picnics finds a certain and 
 strenuous opponent in the Kirk. It is the nature of the 
 ecclesiastical mind to make no advance of its own will : its 
 every modification is the result of outside pressure. As 
 Cockburn said at the Disruption time (Ibid., ii., 43),
 
 220 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAIfD. 
 
 "Two centuries have not changed the Presbyterian in- 
 tellect one inch". While educated opinion has progressed 
 immeasurably from the mediaeval positions, the Church 
 nominally stands on its old creed ; the only denomination 
 which has made the slightest official change being the 
 United Presbyterian that in which lay influence is 
 strongest. The spirit of the Church goes back rather than 
 forward. Till quite recent times the ecclesiastical tone 
 and practice of rural districts whatever might go on at 
 Edinburgh were exactly what they were at the time of 
 the Civil War. We saw how a clergyman was then 
 rebuked by his colleagues for going about his business on 
 Saturday the clerical mind, not content with Sabbatarian- 
 ism, extending the sacredness of the Sabbath over the 
 day before and the day after ; and I can testify that 
 among my own " forbears " of a generation back the same 
 doctrine was in force ; the Sabbath gloom being caused to 
 set in on the Saturday afternoon. The whole cult was a 
 petrifaction of life and mind. 
 
 After all, perhaps no Scotchman can fully appreciate 
 how far the work of the Kirk has gone how completely 
 it has taken his race as it were by the throat and choked 
 down its genial impulses. The impulses are certainly 
 there. The people had once cause for their phrase " a 
 kindly Scot " : we see it in that antithesis of conviviality 
 which has lived cheek-by-jowl with the fanaticism. Every 
 Scotchman knows the intensity of the strain of good- 
 fellowship in the national character. It comes out in that 
 curious avowal of Cockburn ("Memorials," p. 41): "I 
 doubt if from the year 1811, when I married, I have closed 
 above one day in the month of my town life, at home and 
 alone. It is always some scene of domestic conviviality 
 either in my own house or in a friend's. And this is the 
 habit of all my best friends." It comes out in the almost 
 hysterical good-will and mirth of the New Year time a 
 manifestation which is now year by year toning down just 
 as the general emotional life of the people is becoming 
 broader and freer. But strangers can perhaps best see 
 the force of the contrary element in the national character, 
 though their judgment may not always be quite intelligent. 
 Foreign observation of any people rarely is. In the com- 
 ments of the young Niebuhr, during his stay in Edinburgh 
 at the end of last century, there is a certain priggishness,
 
 THE PEKVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 221 
 
 and indeed a certain bald stupidity, as when he writes 
 ("Life and Letters," English ed., 1852, i., 132) that 
 Scotch people have no deep affection for each other ; and 
 that though they are "much more ready and obliging in 
 undertaking trouble for their acquaintance " than Germans 
 are, it is "no great merit in them", seeing that "bodily 
 activity is an enjoyment to them ". Still, we must allow 
 some weight to his declaration, "I have never witnessed 
 nor heard of family life full of deep and tender affection, 
 nor of a hearty, enthusiastic, mutual confidence between 
 young men " ; and even to his exaggerated statement 
 that he finds among young Englishmen [here meaning 
 Scotchmen in particular] a "universal licentiousness", 
 which he ascribes to a dearth of the better emotional life. 
 He saw the strength of the race as well as its weakness. 
 "The number of vigorous, thinking minds", he writes 
 (llid.\ " is incontestably much larger in this than in most 
 other countries, but the bonds which hold them together 
 are just as much weaker and slighter" a judgment which 
 is not confuted by any exhibition of national sentiment 
 commonly so-called. 
 
 I have seen a curious story of how a Scotch father, dying 
 in the prime of life, said a gentle "Ta-ta " to his young 
 children as he kissed them farewell, and sent them out to 
 play while he breathed his last with his hand in his wife's. 
 There is something in that idiosyncrasy which a Niebuhr 
 could not very well appreciate ; but it must be confessed 
 that even such Puritan stoicism in the long run means an 
 extinction of those impulses and faculties which constitute 
 genius. It is an eminently significant fact that the line of 
 Scotchmen of high literary, intellectual, and artistic faculty 
 contains hardly a name that is in friendly association with 
 the national ecclesiasticism. Hume was infidel ; Smith 
 was a deist ; the clerical historians Robertson and Henry 
 were "moderates"; Adam Ferguson evaded the gown. 
 The other Fergusson, the poet, Burns' s predecessor, was 
 obnoxious to the cloth ; so was Burns in an eminent degree ; 
 Scott's treatment of Presbyterianism, which he never loved, 
 offended most of his countrymen, and brought on him the 
 assault of Dr. McCrie. Even Carlyle, Puritan in blood as 
 he was, could not rub along with the doctrines of the 
 Kirk ; Mr. Euskin's Scotch blood could not reconcile him 
 to the "deadly Muselessness " of Presbyterianism; and
 
 222 THE PEEVEESION OF SCOTLAITD. 
 
 Macaulay's Scotch, strain is not appreciable in his character 
 or in his relations with his Edinburgh constituency. To 
 take minor men, Wilson was no Calvinist, and Jeffrey 
 nothing of an evangelical. Dr. John Brown and Hugh 
 Miller are the only Scotchmen of genius I can remember 
 to have been in sympathy with the Kirk ; and we knew 
 that in Brown the sympathy was in hereditary alliance 
 with a tendency to insanity ; while Miller seems to have 
 broken his heart because he could not reconcile Genesis 
 with geology. And to-day ? It is a singular fact that at 
 this moment there is no Scottish writer or artist of Euro- 
 pean distinction if we except such a litterateur as Pro- 
 fessor Masson resident in Scotland. Our best men, in 
 art, letters, and science, seem to gravitate to England. 
 Even Professor Elint, who has contrived to be heard-of 
 in France and Germany by his questionable compilation 
 on the " Philosophy of History", has publicly lamented 
 the inglorious position of his clerical colleagues in their 
 own pursuit of theology. As Eenan has said : " Tedium, 
 stupidity, and mediocrity are the punishment of certain 
 Protestant countries, where, under pretext of good sense 
 and Christian sentiment, art has been suppressed and 
 science treated as .something ignoble" ("Les Apotres," 
 Introd., ed. 1866, p. Ixiv.). 
 
 I have not sought in these sketches to deal with the 
 question, so often raised in connexion with the disestablish- 
 ment movement in England, as to the right of the State to 
 meddle with the endowments of the Church. In Scotland 
 the denial of such a right would be too preposterous to be 
 worth a churchman's while. There the entire institution 
 is notoriously on a basis of State legislation and systematic 
 fiscal endowment ; and the pleas for the retention of the 
 establishment take perforce a different shape. With the 
 commonest the formula as to the deep and beneficent 
 union of the Church with the nation's history I have 
 dealt at large in the foregoing pages ; and it need only be 
 said further that if the Church had really done good where 
 we have seen it has only done evil, the fact would be quite 
 pointless in regard to the question of disendowment. A 
 Church, politically speaking, is only a name for the men 
 and women who constitute its membership ; and it is with 
 the endowments and privileges of these fellow citizens that 
 we have to do. The rest is abstraction. If there is good
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 reason to strip the Church's members of undeserved 
 emoluments, no supposed rights or merits of " the Church" 
 can avail a tittle to the contrary. 
 
 There is, however, one ^was^-practical plea sometimes 
 urged on behalf of the Church by such of its members as 
 are Liberal in politics and friendly to liberalism of thought 
 the claim, namely, that whereas the Dissenting Presby- , 
 terian churches must needs be narrow in their doctrine, 
 being subject to the rule of the ignorant, the clergy of the 
 Established Church tend to be broader in their views and 
 more tolerant in their teaching and practice, as being com- 
 paratively untrammelled. There is a certain speciousness 
 in this reasoning, and it influences not a few minds ^ in 
 Scotland. It is, however, curiously ill-supported by specific 
 facts. Those who look only at the cases of heresy-hunting 
 in the Tree Church reason precipitately that it is the less 
 tolerant of the two, because there seem to be fewer such 
 cases in the Establishment. In point of fact the prepon- 
 derance is chiefly in respect of the famous case of Pro- 
 fessor Robertson Smith ; and no Scotchman can well doubt 
 that that distinguished heretic would have been prosecuted 
 just the same if he had been a member of the Establish- 
 ment. What is true in regard to the latter body is that 
 even its most bigoted clergy are somewhat averse to venti- 
 lating questions of heresy for sheer fear of helping the dis- 
 establishment movement. Its ministers are sworn to teach 
 certain doctrines, which many of them do not believe ; and 
 the more generally this is realised the more widely would 
 it be asked, by Liberals and by bigots alike, on what 
 grounds their endowments should be maintained. But 
 there is a more conclusive answer than this to the conten- 
 tion before us. 
 
 During the last few years there have come before the 
 public two politico-religious questions, one of enduring 
 character and interest, the other more transient, but still 
 important I allude to the case of Mr. Bradlaugh in 
 Parliament and the appointment of Lord Eipon, a Roman 
 Catholic, as Yiceroy of India. These questions constituted 
 fair tests of the enlightenment and friendliness to liberty 
 of those parties and individuals whd expressed opinions in 
 regard to them. Both, as it happened, came before the 
 assemblies of the Established and Free Churches in 
 Scotland probably also, though on this head I am
 
 224 THE PERVERSION OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 uncertain, before the United Presbyterian Synod. What- 
 ever may in that case have been the vote of the latter 
 body, it is found that "the Established Church Assembly 
 protested against Lord Kipon's appointment, and the 
 proposal to make affirmation free to all members of 
 Parliament, by much larger majorities than were obtained 
 in the Free Assembly " (article in Edinburgh Evening News, 
 February 13th, 1882). That is decisive. Whatever measure 
 of light may be possessed by a few clergymen of the 
 Establishment, the great majority, like their brethren of 
 the Church of England, are foes to reasonable freedom, 
 whether of thought, word, or deed. 
 
 It cannot, of course, be hoped that the mere turning of 
 the Church's endowments to educational purposes will 
 speedily impair the influence for harm which we have seen 
 that the Church possesses. The Establishment at this 
 moment pretends to much the same "spiritual position" 
 as the Free Church as shown by the puerile annual 
 mummery of the E,oyal Commissioner proroguing the 
 Assembly in the name of the Queen while the Moderator 
 prorogues it in the name of Jesus Christ. Its clergy are 
 chosen by popular election, after a preaching match, just 
 as are those of the Dissenting bodies ; and while the Free 
 Church, whatever may be the diplomacy of its leaders, is 
 nominally committed to the principle of Establishment, it 
 follows that when the Establishment is made an end of, 
 there will be plenty of the typical clerical spirit left to 
 cramp and confine the national intelligence, to retard art, 
 to resist freedom, and to disseminate a paralysing super- 
 stition. Still, the transfer of the endowments will be one 
 positive gain ; and we have seen enough to conclude that 
 while an Established Church may have periods of 
 "Moderatism" which partly make for culture and light, 
 the mere presence of its endowments is a constant oppor- 
 tunity for the aggrandisement of that spirit of fanaticism 
 which has never been long asleep in Scotland in modern 
 times. On the whole, that spirit will do less harm when 
 left to itself than when fed and fostered by national funds. 
 
 Printed by AXXIE BESAXT and CHABLES BBADLAUGH, 63, Fleet St., B.C. 1866.
 
 ROYALISM 
 
 A NOTE ON THE QUEEN'S JUBILEE. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 FKEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 63, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 1886.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED ET ANNIE BESANT AND CHAELES BEADLAUGH, 
 63, FLEET STEEET, B.C.
 
 IN the early part of 1886, shortly after the fall of the 
 Salisbury ministry the first of that year it began to be 
 noticed that the Queen of England was unusually active in 
 the discharge of such of her functions as brought her 
 before the public eye ; that is, in the laying of foundation- 
 stones, opening hospitals, witnessing military reviews, and 
 ,so on. It had already been remarked that Her Majesty 
 had done a most unusual thing for her in presiding at 
 the opening of Parliament ; but that had been generally 
 .set down to her known wish to strengthen the Conservative 
 Government by every means in her power. The subsequent 
 activity, however, had obviously some other purpose ; and, 
 looked at in connexion with the coming jubilee and with 
 certain admonitions addressed to Her Majesty by London 
 journalists, the new departure was intelligible enough. 
 The journalists in question had told their Queen that they 
 regarded her with inexpressible respect, but that they were 
 not at all satisfied with the manner in which she had lately 
 performed her duties. She had not laid foundation-stones 
 enough, had not been seen enough, had not been sufficiently 
 talked about ; hence hisses on the day of the opening of 
 Parliament, and a certain general coldness towards the 
 institution of the throne. Her Majesty, it now became 
 apparent from her conduct, graciously accepted the rebuke ; 
 and her now frequent public appearances represented her 
 determination to consolidate the monarchy. The crown, 
 like other old- establi shed houses, had acknowledged the 
 virtue of advertising, so long the specialty of younger 
 concerns.
 
 4 EOYALISM. 
 
 To the people who had prescribed the policy, its adoption 
 naturally gave entire satisfaction. It has come to this with 
 the institution of monarchy in England, that those who 
 profess to believe in it are yet not ashamed to represent 
 the sovereignty as having its raison d'etre in the expediency 
 of providing a certain kind of vulgar attraction in con- 
 nexion with public celebrations. If it were seriously 
 believed that royalty possessed any political value or 
 importance, its active adherents could hardly thus liken it 
 to a brass band or the procession of a travelling circus. 
 At all times, doubtless, shrewd monarchs have seen in 
 show-making a means of fortifying their dynasty and 
 filling their coffers with a saving of friction ; but in the 
 England of to-day, where dynastic rivalry is an impossible 
 conception, and where the royal stipend and State expendi- 
 ture are alike controlled by the legislature, the counsel to 
 royalty to make itself a gazing-stock would appear to 
 imply either that there is nothing else of importance for 
 royalty to do, or that the institution, however otherwise 
 advantageous, depends for its continuance on the indus- 
 trious fulfilment of that particular function. It will 
 perhaps be worth while, in the season of jubilee, to look 
 into the merits alike of such an institution and of its- 
 upholders. 
 
 Sir Henry Maine, little as he desires to aid, either 
 directly or indirectly, the spread of democratic notions, has 
 probably done as much as most men to undermine the 
 symmetrical theory with which Sir Robert Filmer estab- 
 lished in their faith the monarchists of two hundred years- 
 ago. Whether or not Sir Robert's circle believed in a 
 patriarchal succession, meandering from Adam by way of 
 Abraham down to Charles II., it is not now fashionable 
 to point to such an explanation of the monarchies of 
 modern Europe. The envy of surrounding nations has now 
 for a hundred years been the recognised after-dinner 
 vindication of the English throne, as of the rest of the 
 constitution ; and if it is felt to be losing its edge from 
 tear and wear, there is still not the least hurry about 
 getting a solider pretext. In short, of rational justification 
 of the monarchy among us there is none. The average 
 Englishman no more seeks to defend it than he or an. 
 Ashantee would "defend" the existence of his deity. It 
 is there, and that is enough for him. Like the Ashantee
 
 ROYAUSM. 5 
 
 his fetish, he may grumble against his sovereign, but 
 the idea of doing without one, or of analysing the fact of 
 the sovereignty, never of his own will crosses his mind. 
 And, what is more to the point, the suggestion of such 
 an idea from outside moves the passive royalist to some- 
 thing like fright, while those of the active type the 
 anonymous journalist and the tribe who aspire to " shape 
 the whisper of the throne " reserve for such a suggestion 
 the most solemn invective in their venerable vocabulary. 
 It is the Conservative's last impeachment of the Liberal 
 an impeachment which he reserves for special crises, as 
 Napoleon did the Old Guard that the tendencies of 
 Liberalism point to the abolition of royalty ; that if the 
 House of Lords goes there will be no security for the 
 throne. What is the thing thus spoken of as Eomans 
 might speak of the republic this national palladium and 
 fountain of honor ? 
 
 I have not the slightest wish to make the present an 
 occasion for a personal attack on any member of the 
 royal family. Neither her Majesty nor any of her house 
 can conceivably be less deserving of ordinary respect than 
 ihe individualities which prosternate before them in court 
 and in press; and to abuse the royalty instead of the 
 royalism would in the circumstances be to fall into crass 
 iallacy, not to say downright injustice. For people educated 
 enough and magnanimous enough to govern themselves, 
 either politically or privately, at this time of day, it cannot 
 matter a whit, politically speaking, what is the character 
 or the capacity of the sovereign or the heir to the throne. 
 A well-conducted or estimable king is no fitter to hold the 
 regal position than "an immoral or foolish one. In Britain, 
 above all existing or bygone monarchies, that is an irre- 
 levant issue from the point of view of practical politics. 
 But inasmuch as we are here looking into the nature of 
 royalism as a cult or opinion, it is necessary to set forth 
 what the royalist worships, if we would fully realise his 
 .place in the scale of humanity. 
 
 Now, it is a matter too notorious to be gainsaid, except 
 by anonymous journalists and after-dinner speakers, that 
 the British royal family, with perhaps one or two partial 
 exceptions, does not include one lady or gentleman of more 
 than average intellectual gifts, and that it does include 
 ^several who fall below the average. The latter fact is not
 
 EOTA1I8M. 
 
 the fault of those concerned ; I do not even say that it is 
 their misfortune : it is simply a datum. Nor can it greatly 
 matter whether the most prominent members of the family 
 belong to the last indicated order of minds. It would, 
 however, be an affectation not to note here that the lady 
 whose jubilee is at hand must be so classed ; and we can 
 hardly look at the matter without having our sensations 
 qualified by that fact. Her Majesty has written certain 
 books, the briefest perusal of which makes it clear that 
 they would never have been published or even written 
 if she were not the Queen of England. No other English 
 lady would have been allowed by her domestic circle, if it 
 had any control over her actions, to put such matter to- 
 gether as constitutes these volumes. That being so, the 
 occasion becomes one for compassion rather than for blame. 
 A woman whose lot is laid in a position in which she is- 
 loudly flattered on the score of her worst imbecilities, and 
 lured to virtual moral humiliation by the united voices 
 of the morally and mentally worthless of all classes in her 
 nation, is not happily placed, from the point of view of 
 those who keep any dignified ideal of human life before 
 themselves. No one of us can have the least right to 
 assume that he or she would not be morally unbalanced 
 by such conditions ; and if Queen Victoria happens to have 
 made a rather egregious exhibition of defective powers as 
 beside crowned heads generally, the fact only comes under 
 the previous datum as to intellectual averages. She being* 
 the personality she is, her appearance in the sphere of the 
 intellectual life follows of necessity. Candid people admit 
 that a monarch who should write a really good book would 
 give proof of natural gifts and judgment higher than 
 those which might produce such a work in ordinary 
 societ}*; and it follows that even the issue of an extrava- 
 gantly weak book by a queen should not be made a special 
 ground for impugning her mental calibre. 
 
 But what is to be said of those who, whether by personal 
 adulation and encouragement or by printed praise, fooled 
 to the top of her bent the royal lady they professed to- 
 revere ? To jest over the newspaper part of the process 
 would be like satirising a farce; so gross was the laudation,, 
 so brazen the pretence ; and the spectacle of the typical 
 journalist writing with his tongue in his cheek has in it 
 too much suggestion of moral disease to call forth simple
 
 EOYALISM:. 7 
 
 indignation. This sort of corruption, like certain forms of 
 vice, makes one grow hopeless rather than angry. It i& 
 bad enough that there should be well-intentioned people 
 by the hundred thousand to whom the Queen's compositions 
 are matter of reverential interest ; bad enough that, apart 
 from the chorus of fashion, the average middle-class family 
 should make the purchase of these volumes the largest 
 part of its scanty expenditure on books for the year, and 
 should exhibit them on the drawing-room table with un- 
 affected pride. These things point to an amount of banal 
 sentiment, intellectual destitution, and sheer uncivilised- 
 ness, which, existing in such a society as ours, promises 
 badly enough for the early future of culture. But the 
 hypocrisy, the puffery, the cant are these not still worse 
 and stronger forces of frustration to the assumed upward 
 tendency of things ? The gods, according to Schiller and 
 Carlyle, fight in vain against stupidity ; how then against 
 stupidity with a guiding and inspiring Asmodeus that can 
 out-Grundy Mrs. Grundy and out-roar Caliban ? 
 
 To be sure, the "guide of public opinion " is not always 
 entirely insincere. Even the man who writes up any cause 
 for hire cannot escape having a bias or sentiment of some 
 sort ; and his sentiment of course tends to be worthy of 
 his trade something cheap and coarsely convenient ; so 
 that there are many prestidigitators who believe in and 
 applaud monarchy per se as honestly as it is possible for 
 them to do anything. And then there is always a strong 
 force of instructors of the public who are providentially 
 fitted to it, as the parodist's fat driver to his fat oxen. 
 This type of oracle it is who anticipates and eclipses the 
 flattest platitudes of the fattest heads in the commonwealth 
 at any given juncture ; and the changes he can ring on 
 the themes of loyalty and royalty give the crowning proof 
 of his powers. He is the genius of fustian. To the bankrupt 
 claptrap of the primaeval toast-speech he gives a new gloss 
 and an undreamt-of unctuousness ; till the simple citizen, 
 seeing his vague ineptitudes of floating sentiment thus 
 fulmined across the realm with front and throat of brass, 
 learns to respect his most abject instincts, and to see in 
 the clanging vacuity of his echo-fetish the witness of his 
 own sagacity. The self-styled leader actually does lead 
 his public to the very Utopia of fatuous make-believe, to 
 the uttermost limbo of buncombe.
 
 ROYAUSM. 
 
 History warns us, memorably enough, not to suppose 
 that the devoutest worshipper of the squalidest idol in its 
 motley pantheon must needs be either base or small. At 
 the junction of Pall Mall and Cockspur Street, London, 
 there stands an equestrian statue of a microcephalous 
 man, which is probably not to be equalled in the carved- 
 work of the civilised world for meanness. The head, seen 
 up there, seems the very model of the ignoble, so trivial is 
 it, so beggarly, so graceless. It is the effigy of George the 
 Third, to whom, in his day, many a good and true English 
 gentleman did homage, as did Walter Scott to his suc- 
 cessor, with an unfaltering enthusiasm, that would have 
 cherished as a priceless thing the cup from which that 
 paltry mouth had drunk. Such worthlessness of breed as 
 is proclaimed by this statue, shamelessly salient in the 
 heart of the empire city, stirs an observer to that kind of 
 uncalculating aversion which, in the case of meritless 
 human deformity, is analogous to the instinct that moves 
 the rearer of animals to destroy the hopelessly puny. It 
 is unjust to contemn the unworthy organism as such ; but 
 just that monstrous elevation of it makes it almost odious. 
 Yet there can be no question that, just as Walter Scott 
 was entirely sincere in his strangest homage to his king, 
 many a manly and generous soul in those generations took 
 delight as he did in honouring as regal the man who held 
 the regal place, never dreaming of his unworthiness. So 
 Bishop Ken could kneel by the bedside of Charles the 
 Second as reverently as could any disciple by his dying 
 master. Such things in his own day might have made 
 intelligible to Milton the worship of stocks and stones. 
 
 Not mean and not small, surely, was Sir Walter Scott ; 
 but you do not worship stocks and stones for nothing. 
 "Whoever meanly worships a mean thing," was Thack- 
 eray's account of a snob. But even when the worship is 
 not mean, but merely childlike, it cannot well fail to bring 
 about some resemblance in the worshipper to the thing 
 worshipped. The most notable aspect of Scott for us to- 
 day is, to put it briefly, that with the imagination and the 
 impulses of a man of genius he had the political and social 
 ideals of a schoolboy ; and it is mainly because so many 
 honest men among us are schoolboys in his fashion, and 
 because so many others can only rise above the schoolboy 
 ideal to attain that of the pedant, that the throne of Queen
 
 11OYALISM. 
 
 Victoria can be said to be " broad based upon her people's 
 will". Now, the schoolboys and the pedants must needs, 
 so far as their collective will is concerned, have a polity in. 
 keeping with their notions : no people can long have any 
 other. The question is whether these citizens are in the 
 line of progress; whether their walk and conversation- 
 promises anything for an advance of the community in 
 health and strength; and there is only one answer. In 
 its best type, that of Scott, the loyalist class is seen to be 
 void of upward political impulse ; fit only, whatever be its 
 own virtue in the way of sincerity, to bring to pass a 
 Chinese millennium of mindless convention, a stucco Para- 
 dise of all starched and gilded things, with who knows 
 what vile underworld of rottenness and bruteward- verging 
 woe. One sometimes feels as if the foolishest Eepublican 
 were in one way a more hopeful spectacle than the soberest 
 convinced monarchist, in that the first has at least the 
 sense for and the yearning towards an ideal of human 
 things in which man shall not of necessity be despicable, 
 while the other has willingly embraced the ideal ^ of ^the 
 slave, giving his vote for a perpetual session of indignity ; 
 ifixed in the faith that mankind has none but low destinies, 
 because himself well pleased with such. Surely the last 
 are the true vulgar. 
 
 I should expect competent minds to admit this. I should 
 expect the really cultured people to agree that the level of 
 life and mind indicated by the crush to a royal levee, the 
 thronging to a theatre where royalty will appear, the 
 doing of things because the Prince of Wales does them, 
 and going to places because he goes there, and the wheezy 
 bombast in connexion with his and the Queen's public 
 .appearances that all this is rather further away from 
 human dignity and upward social evolution than even the 
 rant of the pot-house. The life of the upper mob is ^not 
 .merely sterile, socially speaking; it is already realised 
 decaythe decay that history whispers-of in the places of 
 Babylon and Nineveh, and reveals in the grimy vestiges 
 of Borne. On the other hand, the outcry of discontent, 
 however cheap and frothy, is, in the terms of the ease, a 
 struggle for better things, hinting of all the race's imme- 
 morial aspiration and life-giving unrest. 
 
 There are among us, however, able men with a very 
 <keen eye for the alloy in all aspiration, who take much
 
 10 ROYALISM. 
 
 pains to insist on its presence, and to save us from being 
 taken in by it. So far as it goes, theirs is a perfectly 
 proper work, there being no more good, and indeed worse 
 harm, in democratic pinchbeck than in any other. Inas- 
 much, however, as these critics of democracy are in many 
 cases seen to desire not so much its purification as its 
 discredit, it becomes at least interesting to know what 
 state of things, what political practice, it is that does or 
 would satisfy them. One can understand distrust and dis- 
 esteem of republican morals and mouthing as they are to 
 be seen in contemporary republics : what one has a diffi- 
 culty in understanding is a quite contented civility towards 
 our own domestic drama. On the one hand, the written 
 and other performances of her Majesty ; the comedy of her 
 political functions ; the chronic marrying of her descendants 
 to princely but accommodating Germans, and the accom- 
 panying dignified appeal to the British taxpayer, with the 
 always resulting popular protest that the Queen is well 
 known to have immense accumulations of her own : on the 
 other hand the devotion, unalterable by any scandal, with 
 which the upper classes fix their eyes on the Prince of 
 Wales as a divine ensample in all things ; and the edifying 
 national custom of producing one or other member of the 
 family, if possible, at the inauguration of every new public 
 building ; the royal performer on such occasions being felt 
 to combine, as it were, the functions of the ark of Grod in 
 Israel and of the Tichborne claimant or a champion sculler 
 at a London music-hall. Just as the critics of democracy 
 overlook a myriad items of iniquity in their praise of the 
 strong governments of the past, so do they stedfastly 
 ignore the whole question of the influence of the royalist 
 cult on the mental and moral tone of nations, treating the 
 problem of government as if it were solely one of the 
 maintenance of a permanent executive. 
 
 Much has been heard among us, and rightly, of the 
 political corruption of the United States. That cannot be 
 too well remembered by democrats, for whom it is more 
 important to keep the fact in view than to point out that 
 their critics have a convenient way of forgetting alike the 
 corruption that filled monarchic England only a few 
 generations ago and the unique conditions lately existing in 
 the States. But there is one more question worth keeping 
 before the public mind, and that is whether the presence
 
 BOYAUCSM. 
 
 11 
 
 of any of the special vices of the United States polity has 
 had a more degrading effect on the American people than 
 the fashion of royalism has had on the English. One of 
 Sir Henry Maine's weighty objections to the democratic 
 formulas of the past is that they have "enervated the 
 human intellect ". That is a serious matter, and m so far 
 as the statement is true it is entirely cogent so cogent that 
 I could wish Sir Henry Maine would bring his tests to bear 
 on other branches of thought than politics. But to stick 
 to politics if enervation of the human intellect is a crass 
 vice in a political theory, what is to be said of the influence 
 of British monarchism ? 
 
 It is a very puzzling business to go back in history a lew 
 centuries, say to the time of the Tudors or the prse- 
 Eevolution Stuarts, and ask oneself what was the effect of 
 a reverence for Henry VIII. or Elizabeth or James I. on 
 the mind of the average Englishman, and what would 
 have been the effect on his character of some other political 
 system. These inquiries belong to the obscurest depart- 
 ments of that science of " Hypothetics " for which Sir 
 Henry Maine has such a passion that, even while describing 
 it as futile, he repeatedly resorts to it, on the pretext_ of 
 queries as to whether we should have had the Gregorian 
 calendar or the steam engine under universal suffrage, and 
 so forth. But " Hypothetics " so-called, like other forms 
 of speculation, has points of direct connexion with practical 
 lif e, as when we ask whether the substitution of a republic 
 for a monarchy in England now would raise or lower the 
 national character ; and it is an almost necessary prelude 
 or rider to such a question as this last, to ask whether m 
 recent times the habit of regarding the monarchy with 
 devotion has not been degrading. 
 
 ""What seems to us baseness," says Sir Henry Maine, 
 speaking of the old flattery of kings, " passed two hundred 
 years ago at Versailles for gentleness and courtliness; 
 and many people have every day before them a monu- 
 ment of what was once thought suitable language to use 
 to a King of England, in the Dedication of the English 
 Bible to James I." It is a curious thing that a writer of 
 Sir Henry's sagacity, with such a thought in his _ mind, 
 should be only concerned to append to it a reflexion on 
 the existing fashion of flattering the populace. Does he 
 suppose that the last is a new development ? and, above
 
 12 ROYALISM. 
 
 all, does lie think the conventional attitude towards sove- 
 reigns to-day is greatly changed from what it was at the 
 times he mentions ? He is perfectly right in calling notice 
 to the one evil ; but it gives his teaching a certain air of 
 partisanship that he should so completely avoid the other 
 considerations of the case. Flattery of the people must 
 more or less lower Loth the people if they swallow it 
 and the flatterers ; and sincere but unwise eulogy may do 
 similar harm. But if there be any value in the principles 
 on which all such judgments proceed, this period of jubilee 
 in particular, and the worship of royalty in general, is 
 corrupting, lowering, and enervating. Most of us have 
 some sympathetic shame at the spectacle of a Scott at the 
 feet of a G-uelph : Thackeray, if no one else, has stung us 
 into a sense of the abasement implied in the nation's 
 homage to the " first gentleman in Europe ". Even the 
 shuffling protest of Trollope, one hopes, has done little to 
 restore that utter deadness of moral sense which permitted 
 not merely the payment of respect to the regal function, 
 but fulsome and debasing adulation of the known man, 
 gross, treacherous, foolish: one hopes, that is, that 
 Englishmen have generally got past the stage of cherish- 
 ing the memory of George the Fourth ; whether or not 
 they feel as hotly about him as Thackeray did. They 
 wince at the thought of the state of things in which a man 
 of letters could be put in jail for cracking a joke at the 
 expense of such a personage, and in which the attention of 
 the country could be fastened on the band of loose fish 
 and demoralised wits who shared his society ; while what 
 was best in the nation brave endeavor, patient science, 
 eager philanthropy, fine faculty, and wise thought went 
 its obscure way as best it might, and what tolerable 
 performance had any recognition was held as honored in 
 being associated with such a reign. These things suggest 
 that while England was ostensibly covered with glory it 
 was in the main besotted and unworthy, wedded to base 
 ideals, and for the time positively going downwards in its 
 moral and mental pitch, much as it had sunk in some re- 
 spects during the century and a half before. 
 
 There always forces itself the question, however, whether 
 >we are much better to-day ; granted that our moral level 
 or at least our taste is on the whole more creditable 
 than that of our fathers. To keep the issue quite free
 
 BOYALISM. 
 
 13- 
 
 from doubtful personal matters, let us take the case of the 
 late Prince Consort, generally allowed to have been an 
 estimable and cultured gentleman. In his case we have 
 no worship of naked unworthiness, but only a quasi- 
 reverential homage to a quite ordinary personality. What 
 was or is the effect? Certainly a lowering of ideals and 
 an enormous cultivation of mediocrity. All the arts have 
 here combined to treat as an immortal a well-meaning 
 gentleman because, being the Queen's husband, he took 
 some intelligent interest in national progress, and in his 
 way sought to promote it. A great poet hymns his memory 
 as he might do that of a great man, and British taste does 
 its villanous worst in his monumental commemoration. 
 It is with the moral side of the process as with the artistic 
 
 standards of judgment are vitiated ; facts are falsified ; 
 
 the small is made to seem the great and the cheap the 
 precious. "What can more "enervate the human intellect' 
 than this vast perversion of all the instincts of admiration 
 through a whole age and a whole people ? The very func- 
 tion of the laureate here stamps his art with the stigma of 
 the mercenary and the commonplace. Poetry in his hands 
 here becomes but one more of the world's venalities ; one 
 more prociiress for the lords of Vanity Fair. 
 
 The cult is carried on, one sees, just as easily without 
 any pretext of personal worth as with it. The sovereign's 
 son's "son possibly a good lad enough, though he must 
 find it hard work to stay so goes to Edinburgh when 
 there is an exhibition to open; and straightway the' 
 fountains of civic drivel are broken-up; the incense is 
 burned; the local muse is invoked, and the elders of the 
 people abase themselves just the same for a raw unknow- 
 ing boy as for his sire or his sire's sire. And in the land 
 where leal once meant good and bravely true, this serf- 
 like subserviency is known as loyalty ; a vulgar vice here 
 as everywhere taking the name of a virtue. Despite all 
 literary pretence, there is no country with a duller public 
 sense of humor than England. The Mayor and Corpora- 
 tion of Eastbourne, like others, thought fit to humbly 
 felicitate the newly adult prince on his coming of age, 
 and the answer went throughout the empire : " Whatever 
 the future may have in store, the kindly care of my 
 parents will never be forgotten by me." The good youth! 
 The inanity is too flat for a smile; but is the heart o
 
 14 
 
 ROYALISM. 
 
 England that fat-encumbered organ aught but well 
 pleased ? 
 
 Turn Elizabethan phraseology into modern, and you 
 have in the dedication of the Bible just the kind of 
 sycophancy that flourishes round the throne to-day. That 
 the old sample happens to be printed on a fly-leaf of the 
 national sacred-book is neither here nor there. What more 
 of abjection is implied in that than in the unspeakable 
 fact of a national thanksgiving to the gods, after pagan 
 precedent, for the recovery of the Prince of Wales from a 
 fever ? What interval is there between the eternal singing 
 of " God save the Queen " by assemblies of her subjects 
 that simple summary of the national religion and the 
 panegyric of Elizabeth and James by the translating 
 bishops ? The fact that any one should miss seeing the 
 ^perfect correspondence simply proves how the habit of 
 royalism stupefies. A few years ago, when a lunatic fired 
 at the Queen, a priest came forward with a freshly inspired 
 ;stanza-and-a-half for the national "anthem", as the 
 royalist song is very fitly termed, by way of embodying 
 the feelings supposed to be stirred up by the lunatic's 
 procedure. Remarkable verses they were. 
 
 "Angels around her [Majesty's] way 
 Watch, while by night and day, 
 Millions with fervor pray 
 God save the Queen ! " 
 
 <was part of the reverend bard's contribution to the body 
 vof revealed religious truth ; and instead of that poetic 
 adjuration so dear to loyalty 
 
 " CW-found their pauly-ticks, 
 Frustrate their knavish tricks " 
 
 sentiments which, as the Rode thoughtfully observed at 
 the time, " touch so nearly on secular questions," the 
 .servant of God and the Queen, always apropos of the 
 lunatic, proposed the more devotional prayer : 
 
 " Break thou rebellious wings, 
 
 Smite when dark treason springs." 
 
 Perhaps impressed by the celerity with which the reverend 
 innovator's curse had come home to roost on the wings of 
 his Pegasus, the respectable British public did not take to 
 .the revised psalm ; but they went about breathing fire and
 
 EOYALISM. 15 
 
 slaughter against the lunatic in such a way as to suggest 
 how much he and they had in common. It is always the 
 same. Nobody but a madman ever did shoot at the 
 Queen, but every fresh fiasco elicits the same blatant 
 execration, the same shrieks for blood. And the gentlemen 
 of the Saturday Review, with that genteel blackguardism 
 which seems to be maintained among them by the laying 
 on of hands, take such an opportunity to compare the 
 crazy culprit with the " average Northampton elector " ; 
 while the otherwise inspired Tablet announces that the 
 madman's attempt may "fairly be referred" to men of 
 Atheistic opinions. So do bigotry and royalism join hands 
 on the common ground of native brutality. 
 
 " Dummheit tmd Bosheit buhlten hier 
 Gleich Hunden auf freier Gasse." 
 
 There is, perhaps, no clearer proof of the vicious influence 
 of the whole royalist gospel than the fashion in which the 
 Prince of Wales is at once flocked after and vilified by 
 London society. Even in those society journals which are 
 wont to dog him with foetid flattery and snobbish gossip, 
 he is liable at any moment to insolent attack ; but in the 
 world at large his name is found at one season the centre 
 of an offensive scandal, and at another the watchword of 
 fashion. He is told by journalists of the backstairs that 
 he is -the "social sovereign" of England; that it was he 
 who taught his countrymen to smoke cigarettes ; that to 
 him men owe the modification of the dress-suit by a white 
 waistcoat; that he is a profound judge of character; that 
 when he was absent " the season was a failure, and the 
 entire social system (!) was dislocated. Society, in fact, 
 went to pieces. Nobody knew what to be at or what to 
 do, because the Marlborough House ideal was not visible 
 in their midst." In him at length, in short, the valet had 
 found his hero. But of all the mindless mob thus repre- 
 .sented as looking to him for an " ideal " of life, how many 
 are there who have not chuckled or tittered over every 
 story told to his shame ? 
 
 With these unclean records, in detail, I have here 
 nothing to do, whether by way of founding on them or 
 examining them. The point is that again and again since 
 his early manhood, England has resounded with a scandal 
 in which he figures disgracefully ; that the great majority
 
 16 EOYALISM. 
 
 of Ms countrymen affect to believe each infamy in turn : 
 and that he yet retains his precious "social" prestige 
 unimpaired. If he is in the main innocent as may well 
 be no man is better deserving of sympathy; and if he 
 were guilty, followed as he has been from his youth up by 
 a herd of sycophants mean enough to laud him for any 
 vileness, he would at least be no worse a personality than 
 the people who make him their " ideal ", to say nothing of 
 his actual corrupters. But whatever has life may have 
 been, there can be neither mistake nor doubt about the 
 moral spectacle presented by the "society" which makes 
 Mm its lawgiver. Purposeless as that of the Restoration, 
 and tasteless as that of the first Georges ; frivolous as ever 
 was that of France, and undignified as ever was that of a 
 German principality ; it is the most unwholesome limb of 
 the English race ; a danger to civilisation and a confusion 
 to all high hopes of human tMngs. 
 
 II. 
 
 To turn from the intimate study of royalism as it 
 flourishes among us to the tracing of its natural history, 
 is to change our outlook without greatly altering our 
 sensations ; though the latter inquiry has the saving 
 quality of generalness. Sociologically considered, the- 
 royalist cultus has the interest of standing alone among 
 human superstitions, in that it has up till now obeyed 
 none of the laws of decay which affect all the rest. It 
 is a remarkable fact that there is no case in all history 
 of a State getting rid of the monarcMc form, of govern- 
 ment by a peaceful process, as it might get rid of any 
 other institution which its members had deliberately de- 
 cided to make an end of. All suspensions of monarchy 
 have been by revolution. The American habit of talking 
 of the monarcMes of to-day as " effete", and of assuming 
 that thrones are now less secure than in the middle or 
 early ages, is quite fallacious. Kings in those days were 
 unseated by rebellion and revolution just as often as now 
 nay, much oftener; and the supposed spread of Republican 
 principles is made far too much of when it is pointed to as 
 involving the euthanasia of kingship. Such an euthanasia
 
 EOYALISM. 1 7 
 
 that is, a peaceful ending as opposed to a violent may 
 be in store, but there are no very good grounds for pre- 
 dicting it. Whatever might be the measure of freedom 
 existing in the old democracies, there was at least plenty 
 of Eepublican intelligence and enthusiasm at various times 
 in the antique world ; but it never led to the orderly re- 
 moval of one sovereignty by affecting the intelligence of 
 any nation that had a different polity. Men could rebel 
 against a tyranny rather more easily in the past than at 
 present : what reason is there to infer that, either in the 
 case of a despotism or in that of a dummy monarchy, they 
 will in future abolish thrones on the sheer impulse of pro- 
 gressive common sense ? For that there would need some 
 movement at once strenuous and dignified, serious without 
 violence and yet really forcible, and where is there such a 
 movement ? If there were one in England, these particular 
 pages need not have been written. 
 
 In keeping with the blindness of the critics of democracy 
 to the moral bearings of royalism is their complete omission 
 to analyse its intellectual basis. Of late years we have 
 had any number of demonstrations of the "metaphysical" 
 and " abstract " character of many democratic formulas; 
 but what could be more essentially metaphysical than the 
 sentiment of monarchism? The only doubt is whether, 
 according to Comte's categories, it is not rather of the 
 "theological" order that is, belonging to the fetishistic 
 line of thought instead of the idealising, as commonly 
 understood. The early savage saw deities in things : the 
 later man explained things in terms of deity : the royalist 
 may be held to do either of these things. But in any 
 view his habit of mind is far enough away from the 
 scientific methods professedly followed by the critics in 
 question. The reasoning which dismisses as baseless the 
 plea that men are naturally equal, or possessed of " rights", 
 must have hard work to find a solid place in the mirage of 
 blind emotion that has surrounded kings and dynasties 
 from the dawn of history. The curious thing is it is 
 another way of putting the uniqueness of the royalist 
 delusion that men were nearer a positive or rational 
 notion of the matter in barbaric times than in modern. 
 Even after the establishment of the hereditary principle 
 had introduced metaphysical obscurity, a rebellious baron 
 very nearly saw his king for what, biologically speaking, 
 he really was a feudal superior putting on airs; and
 
 1 8 BOYALI8M. 
 
 there was generally an appreciable crop of rebellious 
 barons. And even for the non-rebellious there was nothing 
 outlandish in the idea of putting down one king and 
 making another. Here there was a certain hold on facts 
 and forces, on matter and motion. But the history of 
 monarchic civilisation is a record of the passing of such a 
 positive and factual way of thinking into one partaking 
 largely of the nature of hallucination. Certain it is that 
 for many a century kings have been as truly hedged by 
 divinity as ever were any claimants of supernatural powers. 
 The feeling towards them has been on precisely the same 
 psychological plane as that of the devout towards idols and 
 consecrated things. It is mere idle pedantry 1 to explain it 
 as a sense of respect for the holder of the highest office in 
 the State. It is unreasoning, unreflecting, rising in obscure 
 hereditary sensations, in all likelihood deriving from pree- 
 human conditions, but certainly much developed in late 
 times ; and it is only by a conscious effort of reasoning 
 that one bred in a monarchic country makes his first step 
 to a saner state of mind. 
 
 It is clearly a superstition, or something strictly of that 
 nature, that makes men insist on keeping the crown in 
 the line of family succession. It may be superficially 
 compared to the ordinary principle of inheritance, or to 
 the early custom of keeping handicrafts in particular 
 families ; but a glance at history shows that the hereditary- 
 principle is adhered to in royalism where it is discarded in 
 other affairs. The property of a traitor or a convicted 
 felon escheated to the crown, his children's rights falling to 
 the ground ; and in the case of hereditary offices we do 
 not find that a son was held to be entitled to a post from 
 which his father was summarily dismissed. But the regal 
 right of a deposed king's son has been almost invariably 
 held to subsist despite the deposition so held even by those 
 
 1 Professor Freeman, whose historic generalisations are invariably 
 either second-hand or worthless, and are frequently both, has laid it 
 down that the spirit of Christianity is fundamentally opposed to the 
 recognition of any pre-eminence in a person or a family as such. If 
 that were the fact, it would be one more proof of the supernatural 
 failure of Christianity to carry its supposed spirit into practice. But 
 the Professor's further statement that kings to-day are appointed for 
 T easons of political expediency, serves as a measure of the value of 
 his opinion. The solemn elevation of one maniac to the throne 
 vacated by another in Bavaria, is only a rather picturesque instance of 
 the rooted practice of modern Christendom.
 
 BOYALISM. 19 
 
 who deposed the father. Thus in Scotland those who re- 
 belled against James III. did it by way of setting up his 
 son ; similarly Mary's subjects professed to be fighting 
 against her on behalf of her infant ; and indeed there seems 
 to have been no time of life at which a Scotch monarch's 
 crown was so absolutely undisputed as in his childhood ; 
 his person at that stage, instead of being menaced, being 
 fought for by all factions as a sort of talisman. No con- 
 junction of events could break down this instinct of the 
 heredity of royalty. Rebellion against Charles I., for 
 that matter, never meant to anyone in Scotland, and seems 
 to have meant to no one in England up to the last com- 
 plications, any design against the King's kingship ; and 
 there can be little doubt that but for the dominance of the 
 army, England would have followed Scotland in declaring 
 for Charles II. as soon as his father was beheaded. Sir 
 Henry Maine very truly says that the popular enthusiasm 
 was only for the Restoration, never for the Commonwealth. 
 Royalism is a cult, not a conviction. 
 
 The Revolution of 1688 proved this once for all. A 
 king was exiled as being intolerable to the greater part of 
 the nation ; but, it being no more possible for them to 
 abandon all at once the royalist superstition than for a 
 tribe of savages suddenly to become scientific Agnostics, 
 the next step was to crown a new king whose claim con- 
 sisted in his being the husband of the daughter of the 
 exile. If the transaction had been carried through by 
 men who were free from the superstition, they would un- 
 doubtedly have taken the most politic course open to them 
 in the situation ; but the diplomatists were in point of fact 
 as devout in their reverence for the sacred descent as the 
 mass of their countrymen. The faith has never dwindled 
 since. Through a line of sovereigns which has not in- 
 cluded one respectable intelligence, and whose lives, in 
 the case of the males, have without exception defied the 
 morality which English cant has always claimed for 
 English society, the average run of English men and 
 women have stood fast in what they call their "loyalty". 
 Such loyalty inspires the sheep which leaps an open space 
 where the bell-wether jumped a gate. The one supporta- 
 ble figure in the list is that of the man who got into it by 
 the chance of his having married the daughter of a king 
 declared unfit to rule. After him comes another daughter, 
 in whose life we have the spectacle of a nation's destinies
 
 20 ROTALIS3J. 
 
 hanging on the forlorn decisions of a worried woman who 
 could by no chance have changed places with one of her 
 chambermaids without putting a clearer head under the 
 crown than her own. Then in succession two ignorant 
 boors ; then a mischievous cretin, beside whose twilight 
 intelligence the blundering prejudice of his ancestors seems 
 actual sagacity; and here loyalty touches its high-water 
 mark. Descending in the scale of religions, we find the 
 least human-looking idol receiving the intensest adoration : 
 so, in the royalism of England, the king who began with 
 a nutshell of mind and died insane has obtained the most 
 reverential devotion. And in his case history has come 
 within living memory. It was patriotic of Sir Henry 
 Maine to cast in the direction of France for a case of base 
 flattery of a king; and only to hint that in the far-off 
 times of James the Sixth English royalism might tend to 
 hyperbole. But it happens that Louis XIV. and Louis 
 XV. were competent minds in comparison with our Hano- 
 verian kings ; that they were tolerable company for fairly 
 clever men ; and that the malignant idiocy of George the 
 Third did not prevent his being exalted as highly in the 
 moribund rhetoric of the churchmen of his day as was 
 James in the tropes of the bishops. 
 
 Next to George the Third came George the Fourth, 
 whom Mr. Trollope thought Mr. Thackeray ought to have 
 spoken of with respect because the people whom Mr. 
 Thackeray called snobs were well pleased to have him 
 as their king. Here, almost in Sir Henry Maine's own 
 time, were English aristocracy and English respectability 
 at the feet of one of the shamefullest specimens of king- 
 hood that modern mankind has seen ; and Sir Henry, 
 making evil cheer over the risk of his countrymen's getting 
 into rough water in the attempt to sail their own boat, 
 cannot find a word of comfort on their having contrived to 
 drift out of that putrid sea. For whom then is Sir Hubert 
 Stanley's praise reserved ? What is that condition of the 
 human intellect, that bearing of a nation's forehead, that 
 seems to him manly ? 
 
 Coming again to our own time, I again disclaim all 
 desire to make a personal attack ; though it has to be 
 pointed out that the right to protest against such an 
 attack is forfeited by those who thrust on the world a list 
 of the sovereign's personal virtues, and compel criticism 
 by their measureless eulogies. On this head I will just
 
 ROYALIST. 21 
 
 Say tliat there are details in the domestic conduct of the 
 reigning sovereign which can call forth nothing but repro- 
 bation from men and women with anything like a rounded 
 ethical code ; and that in view of these details the all- 
 round laudation now going on is a corruption of practical 
 morals. In the case of a private person, it would be im- 
 proper to make such items of conduct the ground for a 
 public censure ; and were the sovereign treated by the 
 champions of the throne as strictly a political functionary 
 there would be no fair warrant for challenging them with 
 details of her personal action, any more than for com- 
 menting on the private life of a Cabinet Minister; though, 
 as it happens, nobody ever scruples to pass judgment on a 
 public man who has figured in the Divorce Court. But 
 when the country is flooded with a literature of venal 
 panegyric on the score of the royal jubilee, it would, I 
 submit, be perfectly justifiable to confute certain of its 
 figments with specific facts. Let us, however, concede that 
 the royal position is in itself a demoralising and perverting 
 one, and accordingly put all particular acts in the back- 
 ground. There remains more than enough in the general 
 and impersonal statement of the situation to provoke 
 grave question. 
 
 The situation is, then, that while the country is said to be 
 progressing in culture, it has shown itself, as a whole, no 
 whit nearer getting rid of the central superstition of 
 royalism than it was a generation ago. Monarchism to- 
 day is as unreasoning, as undignified, as backward as ever. 
 It is still essentially a worship of a sacred family, unquali- 
 fied by any criticism of the merits of its members. Neither 
 character nor quasi-political function having anything to do 
 with the general mental attitude, the appearance of a child 
 of the royal line will make more sensation than that of 
 any celebrity whatever, short of a political party-leader. 
 As the royal gens multiplies year by year, it is as scrupu- 
 lously provided for by the nation as ever was that of Con- 
 fucius in China, though the chronic grumbling suggests 
 that, like other species, that of royalty in England may 
 one day be found to have pressed too heavily on its means 
 of subsistence. As it is, the random discontent is only one 
 more testimony to the lowering influence of the cult, 
 representing as it does the mere ill-temper of taxpayers 
 at increased outlay on an institution whose moral demerits 
 would be the same, however many thousands it might cost
 
 22 ROYALISM. 
 
 per annum. In time, doubtless, the mere cost, at the 
 present rate of increase, may bring the demerit home to 
 the general mind. In that case the royalist instinct would 
 be held to have died outright of those irritants which in 
 past times have spoilt the chances of some individual 
 sovereigns. But if the house of Guelph would but pay 
 some heed to Malthus, there seems no reason, as things 
 go, why it should outlive the delusion on which dynasties 
 have hitherto flourished ; so potent still is the habit of 
 homage, so scanty the general self-respect, so feeble the 
 reasoning impulse in the average mind, and so far-reaching 
 the forces of perversion. Men of some education can 
 apparently be found in any number to write in good set 
 terms, for the public's reading, of the satisfaction and the 
 good fortune of Britons in having a sovereign and a royal 
 family to love, while some States have none, and of the 
 likelihood of France coming one day to covet similar 
 privileges. Such writers have their audience the people 
 who call themselves " loyal subjects ", drink the Queen's 
 health at public dinners, and cheer when she is seen in the 
 streets. In two English households out of three the 
 coming of the Prince of Wales to the throne of his parent 
 seems as much a matter of course as the daily rising of 
 the sun. The conception of the royal succession is at this 
 moment as strictly a doctrine of divine right as it ever was 
 in history. 
 
 in. 
 
 As has been said, there is no weighty movement in 
 England for the abolition of the monarchy, and it becomes 
 important to realise what that means. We of these islands 
 have never been lacking in self-complacence ; and we have 
 long been wont to regard our national condition, whatever 
 may be the political troubles of the hour, as something 
 peculiarly healthful and majestic in comparison with that 
 of any State of antiquity or of the Middle Ages, except, 
 perhaps, the England of Elizabeth. Our tutors, as Sir 
 Henry Maine, point to the hollowness of French society in 
 past centuries, and exhort us to take joy in and maintain 
 our present or at least recent superiority. Yet a resort 
 to the methods of comparison employed by some of these
 
 BOYALISM. 23 
 
 very authorities would, as we have seen, lead us to con- 
 clude that modern England has never been one whit less 
 morally or intellectually unsound, relatively speaking, than 
 any of the so-called corrupt States of the past. At this 
 moment not a writer of standing raises his voice in protest 
 against a regime which, as is here contended, is as trivial 
 and despicable as any history records. Its vices are, of 
 course, in keeping with the surroundings. We do not 
 affect gladiatorial shows, and royalty, accordingly, does not 
 promote them. It takes up pigeon-shooting and horse- 
 racing instead. We are little given to murder, and our 
 monarchism is therefore free of such associations. But we 
 contrive that the upper strata in our society shall do as 
 little credit to contemporary civilisation as did the similar 
 strata of the world of Nero, or of Sardanapalus. We in 
 England speak of ours as the age of the telegraph and the 
 electric light, of steam, parliamentary government, and 
 evolution : it does not occur to us that history will write 
 us down also the age of the worship of George the Fourth, 
 of the adulation of the author of the " Journal of Our 
 Life in the Highlands " the age in which, even as he of 
 the backstairs proclaims, the Prince of Wales gives its 
 "ideal" to "society". 
 
 I cannot see that, all things considered, we have any 
 cause to hold ourselves better than our ancestors of Charles 
 the Second's time. The best thinking and teaching of the 
 day, brought beside our performance, reveals us no less 
 unworthy than they, no less false to our best instincts, no 
 less meanly acquiescent in the reign of the tawdry and the 
 vulgar. With our ethics and our philosophy, we are about 
 as poor creatures in our civic life as ever lived. Nay, there 
 was in the Restoration period some remnant of Puritan 
 conscience which, if fanatical, was honorably high-minded : 
 but who to-day, whether in the name of religion or of any 
 national memory, protests against the prostration of the 
 mind of England before enshrined commonplace, trans- 
 figured incompetence, and deified inanity ? The jubilee is 
 one banal chorus of shoddy sentiment, in which all orders 
 of " loyal " intelligence fraternise on the broad ground of 
 bathos. "A bagman's millennium" is the title said to 
 have been given to Cobden's political ideal by an English 
 lady, who had doubtless been presented at court. The 
 year of jubilee, on that scale, should be the millennium of 
 the scullery -maid and the pot-man. And the better sort
 
 24 ROYALISM. 
 
 are implicated by their consenting silence. If the men of 
 mind and culture in England are to be held to have any 
 share in the national life at all, they are accountable for 
 their utter failure to hold up any better standard to their 
 fellows than that now in force. 
 
 Poor Mr. Kuskin has for this many a year been de- 
 nouncing the unworthiness of the life around him ; and 
 what has he had to say on this typical and national 
 vice ? Once, that he and Carlyle alone in England at the 
 moment " stood for Grod and the Queen " an announce- 
 ment which must have given great comfort to the pair of 
 powers in question, whatever effect it had on Carlyle. 
 The latter moralist, if incapable of such superlative rant, 
 never once raised his voice against the royalist sham. 
 There has been, in fact, all along a conspiracy of silence 
 on this subject among those writers who were not in a 
 conspiracy of cant. The reception of the Queen's last 
 book is a proof. A Macaulay could perhaps again be 
 found to chastise a second Montgomery, if need were ; but 
 Macaulay was not the man to speak out about the Queen's 
 diaries ; and the literary class does not appear to include 
 one who will, or an editor who would let him. Only 
 among men who have set their faces against imposture in 
 general among Freethinkers has there been more than 
 a whisper of dispraise. The nearest approach to honest 
 speech in ordinary current literature was in the most ad- 
 vanced of the reviews, and there the protest was so absurdly 
 ceremonious and diffident as to make the obsession of the 
 national mind only the more obvious. It was as if the 
 Times should regretfully and respectfully but firmly demur 
 to the fatuities of an after-dinner speech by an elderly 
 officer, unaccustomed to public speaking. One thought of 
 the clerical criticism of " the extraordinary conduct of 
 Judas Iscariot ". 
 
 Now while it is difficult to suppose that the absence of 
 any avowed utterance on such a matter from the leading 
 literary men of the day arises from a general acquiescence 
 on their part in the common tone, it is almost equally 
 difficult to understand their thus keeping silence if they 
 at all deplored what was going on. A particular habit of 
 public speech really cannot go on unchallenged for genera- 
 tions without getting into minds of the better order as well 
 as the worse. And nearly every other species of public 
 folly has been derided more or less extensively. The
 
 25 
 
 platitudes and absurdities of mere patriotism, the claptrap 
 of parties, the commonplaces of political argument and 
 newspaper rhetoric all these have been held up to the 
 light by writers of authority ; but the same critics sted- 
 fastly hold aloof from the topic of royalism. What, then, 
 are we to infer ? Sir Henry Maine, noting how in the 
 generation after Rousseau it was the fashion in France to 
 talk of a past golden age, says of the " countless " essays 
 written on that theme before 1789, that "they furnish 
 very disagreeable proof that the intellectual flower of a 
 cultivated nation may be brought, by fanatical admiration 
 of a social and political theory, into a condition of down- 
 right mental imbecility ". This is extravagant enough, in 
 all conscience, as a description of the intellect of France 
 before the revolution ; but here again one's uppermost 
 sensation is curiosity as to what Sir Henry's line of 
 criticism would lead to if applied impartially. Is a literary 
 belief in a bygone golden age really more imbecile than 
 the adoration of a Prince Albert or a Queen Victoria by 
 the mass of a nation, whether by way of countless ambi- 
 tious and costly monuments much more durable, un- 
 happily, than essays or of a year of jubilee ? We have 
 heard a good deal of the blind hysterics of the Celt, from 
 poets and others not quite undistinguished for hysteria ; 
 but can Gaul point to any kind of national demonstration 
 more significant of brainless sentiment than that made in 
 England over the Prince of Wales's recovery from an ill- 
 ness ? Yet the intellectual flower of the nation have never 
 done aught but countenance these doings. 
 
 To see the bearings of the literary complaisance towards 
 the throne, let us make a list of some of the best known 
 writers on questions of public morals the writers who are 
 accustomed to comment on our social and intellectual con- 
 ditions, to hold up ideals, and to condemn shortcomings. 
 Take the names of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Arnold, Mr. Harrison, 
 Mr. John Morley, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mr. Hutton, Mr. 
 Goldwin Smith. These gentlemen are accustomed, with 
 varying emphasis, frequency, and accuracy, to point out the 
 weak points in our manners and morals; and one can 
 scarcely conceive their entirely ignoring a particular public 
 vice, recognised by them as such, provided there were 
 nothing "unsavory", as Mrs. Grundy's phrase goes, in 
 the discussion of it. Seeing therefore that none of them 
 have ever dwelt explicitly on the pheenomena of royalism,
 
 26 ROYALISM. 
 
 we are shut up to one of two conclusions either that they 
 do not see anything ignoble or vulgar or demoralising in 
 the matter, or that they are deterred by the force of the 
 reigning convention from speaking their minds. It would 
 be difficult to say which of these conclusions is the more 
 unwelcome. The first would imply that all that has been 
 said in the foregoing pages of the unworthiness of the 
 royalist superstition applies in some measure to these 
 writers ; the second, plainly by far the more probable, im- 
 plies that, while professing to act as serious and responsi- 
 ble critics of the national life, to rebuke fearlessly and to 
 counsel earnestly, they have timorously or weakly held 
 their tongues where it much behoved them to speak out. 
 
 What, for instance, does Mr. Arnold think of the ques- 
 tion before us? He has claimed not loudly, but with 
 some right to have set before his countrymen warnings 
 as to their failings and their follies ; and he evidently has 
 their higher welfare at heart. He believes in equality, 
 and points to that as a condition of national well-being. 
 Does he then suppose that men in general are going to 
 attain intellectual maturity and dignity while continuing 
 to kiss the steps of the throne as they have done ? Sup- 
 posing the marrying of one's deceased wife's sister to be 
 really as tasteless a proceeding as he represents, is there 
 much good in hammering away at an idiosyncrasy of that 
 sort while the collective taste and tone of the nation are 
 perpetually being vulgarised and degraded by the worship 
 of the "ideals", and the personalities, presented to it 
 by royalty ? And the Queen's books ? Mr. Arnold would 
 perhaps reason that monarchism cannot be attacked with- 
 out some reflexions on living royal personages ; and that 
 such criticism is to be deprecated ; but I cannot find that 
 he has acted on such scruples in other cases where personal 
 matters were bound up with broad questions. I cannot 
 see why the Queen's book should escape judgment any 
 more than Bishop Colenso's. If Mr. Arnold is simply 
 deterred by his official position from saying anything 
 about royalism whatever, I can only say that it is very 
 unfortunate that he should have so gagged himself. And it 
 is a curious official gag which leaves him free to write down 
 Mr. Gladstone, and the policy of any Government, but 
 keeps him silent as to the institution of the sovereignty. 
 
 To Mr. Spencer, again, applies the general objection 
 which lies against Sir Henry Maine on this issue. The
 
 ROYALISM. 27 
 
 philosopher complains, rightly enough, of the looseness 
 and inconsistency of the bulk of political thinking ; and he 
 has commented weightily on various anti-social tendencies. 
 Almost alone among public men he has condemned 
 military immorality. Yet, whatever he may suggest as to 
 the development of political institutions, he has no passage 
 that I can recall on the general aspect and influence of the 
 royalist cult among us. He, too, would seem to count on 
 getting men to advance while keeping their minds on one 
 important point in a state of paralysis or abasement. All 
 schools are alike in this regard. Mill and Carlyle, from 
 their different standpoints, touched royalism as gingerly 
 as they were emphatic on other themes. Nobody with 
 literary authority will speak, and John Bull goes on 
 unweariedly bellowing his loyalty. 
 
 But it is to Sir Henry Maine in particular, after all, that 
 the appeal for consistency may most fitly be addressed. 
 Nobody has been more distinct in insisting on the necessity 
 of a lucid and dignified cast of mind to a nation which 
 seeks to govern itself, and nothing could exceed the rigor 
 of his criticisms, unless it be the eccentricity with which 
 he applies his canons. On his view, popular folly and 
 lack of self-respect is the most serious danger to demo- 
 cratic or semi-democratic States ; and it is surely impos- 
 sible to believe that such an acute critic can really look 
 with satisfaction on the rdle now played in England by 
 the royal family, or on the response made by the people. 
 Such a keen analyst of claptrap cannot reasonably be con- 
 ceived as throwing up his hat for the family virtues of the 
 Queen, and for the blessedness of a nation which has such 
 a royal house as ours to love and honor for so benignly 
 presiding over its destinies. To think of Sir Henry Maine 
 as an average courtier or "loyal subject" would be to 
 class his last book as the product of spleen and prejudice, 
 and himself as a partisan instead of a philosophic political 
 thinker. We all, on the contrary, whether we agree with 
 him or not, regard his as an efficient and vigorous mind, 
 incapable of the mere inherited imbecilities of aristocrats 
 and snobs. Why then is he so absolutely silent on what 
 is, to say the least, the worst weakness, the most enfeebling 
 intellectual vice of this community, regarded as a political 
 whole? Again, if we are not to class the moralist with 
 the mob, there is but one answer that, however, he may 
 denounce particular shams and delusions, there is one
 
 28 feOYALISlf. 
 
 sham lie winks at, one delusion before which he smugly 
 dissembles. 
 
 Once more and now the inquiry becomes more than 
 ever practical what is the notion as to royalism in the 
 minds of those who declare that social conditions will not 
 be tolerable before they are utterly revolutionised ? Of all 
 the extravagances of the Socialists of what may be called, 
 for want of a better term, the Slap-Bang school, none is 
 more glaring than this, that they vociferously demand the 
 speedy adoption of that social system which most empha- 
 tically requires a high standard of citizenship, without 
 even proposing to get along without an institution which, 
 as here contended, is the negation of such a standard. 
 The only Socialist programme before the British public 
 makes no specific mention whatever of royalism. It can 
 hardly be supposed that this means attachment to the 
 throne, or even a willingness to retain the monarchy as 
 part of the constitution ; it can only signify a feeling that 
 to agitate for the abolition of the monarchy at present 
 would be useless, though it is far from clear on what 
 grounds it is held that certain other suggestions in the 
 same programme are more immediately practicable. What 
 then does this imply ? That the programme-makers count 
 on, or hope for, the realisation of a polity of enlightened 
 altruism in a society which is unable to rise to such a 
 point of self-respect as to give over adoring the members 
 of a particular family because they are of royal descent. 
 Inconsequence could no further go. It was bad enough 
 mad enough to imagine that Socialism could be accom- 
 plished off-hand in a society in which as regards its 
 commerce the self -regarding impulses are relatively 
 about as deeply -rooted as those of a herd of wolves. But 
 to suppose that the revolution would be effected without 
 even a beginning of upward political progress in the 
 substitution of a true democratic spirit for the ignoble 
 temper which cherishes monarchy this was to attain the 
 very topmost degree of forethoughtlessness, the sublimity 
 of political unwisdom. 
 
 Where, then, are we to look for better things ? I can 
 offer but one answer, and that is conditional. The one 
 quarter in which there has ever appeared any marked 
 feeling of healthy aversion to the monarchy as such, apart 
 from incidental grievances as to its operation, is that of the 
 working classes, chiefly those of London. There may be
 
 BOYAMSM. 29 
 
 plenty of room for criticism as to tho fashion in which the 
 feeling at times manifests itself ; but it is inconceivable to 
 me that it can ever be so foolish or so gross as the fashion 
 to which it is opposed ; and at worst these Republicans of 
 the populace have kept on record an honorable protest 
 when, save for one or two democratic politicians latterly, 
 I believe, only one the whole of the rest of England 
 hugged humilation. To the people, then, if anywhere, 
 the Republican has to look for his party. 
 
 IV. 
 
 From the point of view here taken, what is first to be 
 desired in a movement for the abolition of the monarchy 
 is that it shall be deliberate and persistent. It may or 
 may not be that the actual abolition, supposed to be in 
 store, will take an orderly shape : there is indeed, as Sir 
 Henry Maine has sought to show, and as has been above 
 urged, no such decisive reason for counting on the peaceful 
 abolition, as some democratic writers have assumed. It 
 may be that the present era of civilisation will spend itself 
 without our reaching even that much of democratic 
 fruition in the countries now monarchic. That, however, 
 would mean that our civilisation is already rotting towards 
 collapse ; in which case it would matter nothing what 
 forecasts we now make ; so that the only practical course 
 is to reason on the assumption that the removal of all 
 thrones is not only feasible but likely ; and that it behoves 
 us to be active in preparing the way. Now, one of the 
 most obvious weaknesses of democratism 1 among us is the 
 tendency to make important reforms turn on accidents. 
 The late furore about the Hoxise of Lords is an instance. 
 That movement, controlled as it was by a statesman whose 
 policy is above all things opportunist, rose and fell in such a 
 way as to imply the condemnation of most of those con- 
 cerned. Tho attack on the House of Lords for fulfilling 
 its ostensible function was a mere partisan immorality if 
 the assailants did not believe that the function ought not 
 to exist ; and if such was their belief they wrote them- 
 selves down shufflers, in so far as they willingly gave over 
 
 1 " Democracy ", as its latest critic feelingly insists, " is a form of 
 Government". I use the term "democratism" to designate 
 democratic tendencies and impulses in general.
 
 30 BOYALISM. 
 
 the campaign. To judge from the result, the talk of 
 " mending or ending " was mainly braggadocio, and none 
 the less so "because it terrorised the enemy. The Upper 
 House is neither mended nor ended ; and the gentlemen 
 who threatened these alternatives appear to go on their 
 way without chagrin. Even the "People's League", 
 formed for the express purpose of carrying on the move- 
 ment, visibly declined in its zeal when the immediate 
 pretext was removed ; some of the leading politicians who 
 joined it being found to discourage the idea of a steady 
 and strenuous activity towards the purpose in view, and to 
 recommend instead a lying in wait until the House of 
 Lords should again do something to irritate the majority. 
 It is not the people who are unwilling to respond ; it is 
 their ostensible leaders who fail to keep any principle, as 
 such, steadily before them, and make legislation a game of 
 campaigns and stratagems, panics, spurts, intrigues, and 
 revivals. These are not the methods of principled 
 politics ; and if Eepublicanism is thus to make headway 
 merely by turning to account the indiscretions or misdeeds 
 of members of the royal family, half the moral gain that 
 might accrue from the process will be lost. In so far as it 
 might make capital in that fashion, indeed, it would be no 
 worse than other political movements in general ; but one 
 hopes that it will spread rather by means of a simple per- 
 ception of the essential unmanliness and unworthmess of 
 the monarchic cult as such of the incurable discord 
 between its whole phsenomena and the profession of self- 
 government. 
 
 Much, indeed, might be said as to the mere financial 
 burden represented by the monarchy. It is one of the 
 demoralising elements in the royal position that it involves, 
 over and above the pressure of social conditions as they 
 are, a further grinding of the faces of the poor, and a 
 fleecing of the merest paupers, to maintain the idle 
 splendors of the throne and its domestic appendages. But 
 still one would rather that the people should look at the 
 central evil, and not merely at the minor consequence. 
 The real harm of royalism lies not nearly so much in the 
 wasting of some million sterling per annum as in the 
 sapping of the nation's self-respect, and in the partial 
 paralysis of the impulses which make for political advance. 
 Worse than the intensifying of material poverty bad 
 enough as that may be is that poverty of the spirit which
 
 KOYALISM. 31 
 
 is in no sense blessed. A movement for the abolition of 
 monarchy, then, should be above all things a moral move- 
 ment, and would come even more fitly from the ranks 
 of culture than from those of the poor. 
 
 The survey of the situation, however, goes to show, as 
 we have seen, that the ranks of culture are standing 
 very much at ease under the regime of shoddy and inanity, 
 thinking much less about their own vulgar compromises 
 and mean conformities than about the dangers arising 
 from the misguided sincerities of the lower orders. Con- 
 sequently the chances are that it will be left to the rank 
 and file of Eadicalism to bring the question to the front 
 in its own way, with what of uproar and asperity be- 
 longs to a cause denied a hearing in high places. And 
 this process, be it remembered, involves certain risks. 
 If we are not entitled to assume with Mr. Bancroft that 
 there is going on an obvious evolution towards demo- 
 cracy, equally little have we the right to suppose that the 
 long spell of peaceful transition we have had in England 
 will never be broken by a crash. To say nothing of the 
 spectacle in Germany and Russia, we can see in Denmark 
 at this moment a distinct possibility of a collision between 
 a patient people and a foolishly obstinate king ; and his- 
 tory shows that these collisions tend to communicate their 
 impulses. Now, there is a certain amount of inflam- 
 mable 'material in England at this moment, and it is not 
 very difficult to conceive that the apparent complicity of 
 the upper and educated classes in such a flagrant abuse 
 as the monarchy, with its futility, its cost, its hollowness, 
 and its greed, may at a critical moment be interpreted by 
 discontent as a proof that these classes are as unfit to 
 survive as the monarchy itself. What such a view might 
 lead to is a matter for speculation. 
 
 In any case, this much is clear, that those who now try 
 to remove the central blot from our system of self-govern- 
 ment are striving to purify the state; while those who 
 would callously leave it, or who deny that it is a blot 
 at all, are promoters of social corruption. It is idle for 
 the Conservative moralist to prate of the dangers of popu- 
 lar ignorance and demagoguism while he constitutes a 
 living proof that culture can tolerate and even champion 
 the grossest political impostures. He is himself the worst 
 of charlatans, the type noted by Carlyle and perhaps in 
 part exemplified by him in which the traffic in empty
 
 32 ROYALISM. 
 
 phrases leads in the long run to sheer hallucination. The 
 restive proletarian has some hold on fact ; his own discon- 
 tent is a leading political fact of the time ; and the dema- 
 gogue is dealing with solid things even if he be insincere 
 that, indeed, is the Conservative's complaint. But, 
 once more, what shall we say of the political ideal in which 
 loyalty to the throne is a constant quantity ; and a vista of 
 reigns such as the present, with starry points of jubilee, 
 constitutes the historic future? What of " Grod Save the 
 Queen " as a marching-song for civilised humanity ? Let 
 the demagogue do his worst, his claptrap is at a discount 
 while his royalist critic keeps the field. 
 
 This, then, is the upshot, that if the " men of light and 
 leading " will do nothing to purge the commonweal of a 
 cult which is at once a superstition and a vice, the movement 
 must come from the people, where its germs have so long 
 lain that is, if it is ever to come to vigorous growth at 
 all. And the alternative, I repeat, is a spreading moral 
 paralysis, which means a great failure of civilisation. On 
 the one hand a consummation of the national life in all 
 ignobleness, on the other a forward movement towards a 
 real democracy. For not only does the democratic principle 
 theoretically exclude the form as well as the substance of 
 monarchy, but democracy remains a mere formula while 
 men are capable of supposing that the shell of monarchy 
 subserves any political good. If we are unable to carry on 
 our Parliamentary Government without a pretended centre 
 of authority and fountain of honor in a sacred family, then 
 the fact that the sovereign is a political nullity both in 
 theory and in practice, does not hinder us from being far 
 below the point of democratic efficiency. The phenomena 
 of the throne and the second chamber jointly constitute a 
 proof that we do not really trust the principle of self- 
 government. While that is so we are clearly not self- 
 governing at all; and it is equally clear that we never 
 shall be until we actually take the step of removing our 
 sham safeguards. Not till the nation deliberately exercises 
 its political will without that abject avowal of fear of itself 
 which is the formula of the second chamber, will it cease 
 to have need to fear itself. Its fear and its danger are 
 correlatives. And just so it is with the throne. We shall 
 never be fit to be Republicans until we are ashamed of 
 being Monarchists. We shall always be fit to crawl before 
 and kiss the feet of clay until we bury the image.
 
 THOMAS PAINE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN M. ROBERTSON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 FEEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 63 FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 1888. 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PEIKTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES . BKADLAUGH, 
 63 FLEET STREET, B.C.
 
 THOMAS PAINE: AN INVESTIGATION. 
 
 IN Mr. Leslie Stephen's "History of English Thought in 
 the Eighteenth Century" there occur a number of allu- 
 sions to Thomas Paine, and in particular two passages in 
 which the historian discusses Paine's work as an anti- 
 theologian and as a politician, prefacing the second with 
 what purports to be a brief sketch of his later life and an 
 estimate of his character. Mr. Stephen's work is in two 
 volumes ; and his account of the " Age of Reason ", with- 
 out biographic elucidation, occurs in the first; the criticism 
 of the " Eights of Man" coming separately, with the 
 elucidation, in the second, where it was necessary to 
 contrast Paine with Burke. The biographical notice, 
 which is extremely brief, presents the markedly hostile 
 version given of Paine's life and character in the professed 
 biography of him by Cheetham, Mr. Stephen making no 
 reference to any other authority, though he shows he is 
 aware of the existence of other Lives. The falsity of 
 Cheetham's and Mr. Stephen's account has been pointed 
 out before now ; several subsequent biographies having 
 exposed Cheetham's, and Mr. Stephen's paragraph being 
 indirectly answered for English readers by Mr. Moncure 
 Conway's valuable article in the Fortnightly Review of 
 March, 1879. A direct and explicit answer to Mr. 
 Stephen's statements and criticism as a whole, however, 
 seems still awanting ; and as his book continues to be a 
 standard source of information on Paine for English 
 readers, such an examination seems worth attempting in 
 the interests of truth and justice. 
 
 I quote first Mr. Stephen's biographical paragraph as it 
 appears in his first edition : 
 
 "We have already encountered Paine as an assailant of the
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 reKgious belief of the day. No ingenuity of hero-worship can 
 represent him as an altogether edifying phenomenon. Indeed, 
 he is commonly made to serve the purpose of a scarecrow in 
 religious tracts. One of his biographers describes his first inter- 
 views with the old reprobate after his final flight to America. 
 Paine appeared shabbily dressed, with a beard of a week's 
 growth, and a ' face well carbuncled, fiery as the setting sun '. 
 Sitting over a table loaded with leer, brandy, and a beefsteak 
 he repeated the introduction of his reply to Watson ; a process 
 which occupied half an hour, and was performed with perfect 
 clearness, in spite of the speaker's intoxication. The details of his 
 habits during the few remaining years of his life are simply 
 disgusting ; he was constantly drunk, filthy beyond all powers 
 of decent expression, brutal to the woman he had seduced from 
 her husband, constantly engaged in the meanest squabbles, and, 
 in short, as disreputable an old wretch as was at that time to 
 be found in New York. Two or three weli-meaning persons 
 tried to extort some sort of confession from the dying infidel ; 
 but he died in a state of surly adherence to his principles. The 
 wretched carcase, about which he seems to have felt some 
 anxiety was buried in his farm " (" History of English Thought 
 in the Eighteenth Century," ii. 261). 
 
 The "one of his biographers" here cited is Cheetham, 
 whose relations with Paine before he composed Paine^s 
 "Life " were those of open and violent enmity; and it is 
 to Cheetham that Mr. Stephen owes his statements as to 
 filthiness and drunkenness. On the points as to whether 
 Paine, immediately after landing from a long voyage, 
 undertaken in a weak state of health for it was then that 
 Cheetham professes to have first met him may really 
 have appeared shabbily dressed and unshaven, it seems 
 scarcely necessary to spend inquiry. It is enough to point 
 out that the devotion of one-third of the paragraph of 
 biography in Mr. Stephen's "History" to an enemy's 
 description of Paine, made up of such details as these, is 
 more suggestive of unthinking prejudice than of literary 
 judgment. The "face well carbuncled" I pass over for 
 the moment ; and the clause on the " table loaded with 
 beer, brandy, and a leef steak " might perhaps be left to 
 dispose of itself, with the slight help of italics. Mr. 
 Stephen is evidently trying to create the impression that 
 Paine's way of life was brutal and disgusting, and to that 
 end he catches at the items in question. Beer and a 
 beefsteak, it will probably be admitted, might innocently 
 appear on any man's table ; and even brandy is not un-
 
 THOMAS PAINE. O 
 
 known in respectable households in our own time, to say 
 nothing of the drinking usages of Paine's. But the alli- 
 terative effect got by coupling it with the beer and the 
 beefsteak is calculated to convey the requisite idea to 
 readers who combine sensitiveness with carelessness, and 
 so the description is produced. Of Dreaders who possess 
 only the former quality I have to ask pardon for pausing 
 over such topics, a passing comment being necessitated by 
 Mr. Stephen's having thought them fit garniture for a 
 " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century ". 
 
 To come to more important matters, I would ask the 
 reader first to notice the rare verisimilitude of the state- 
 ment that Paine while in a state of intoxication repeated 
 with "perfect clearness ", at half-an-hour's length, the "in- 
 troduction" of his reply to Watson. 1 Most unprejudiced in- 
 quirers would pronounce the story an un plausible falsehood; 
 and a falsehood, I think, it will finally be pronounced when 
 the evidence as to Paine's way of life has been set forth. 
 But by way of prefatory indication of the value of Cheet- 
 ham's testimony, and of the general trustworthiness of Mr. 
 Stephen's paragraph, it will be expedient to state the facts 
 as to the allegation of Paine's having seduced a woman 
 from her husband and then behaved brutally to her. 
 
 There is, I think, only one such story current concerning 
 Paine, and the allusion is doubtless to Madame Bonneville, 
 the wife of one Nicholas Bonneville of Paris, who with her 
 children came to America with Paine when the latter finally 
 returned to his adopted country. Paine had boarded with 
 Bonneville during part of his stay in Paris, and is said to 
 have been " much indebted " to his hospitality. Bonneville 
 had often declared his intention to emigrate to the United 
 States as soon as he could, and when Paine was able to 
 leave France he invited the Bonnevilles to accompany him, 
 which they promptly agreed to do. 
 
 "But", says Sherwin, "as Mr. Bonneville could not get 
 ready by the time appointed, it was agreed that his wife and 
 three sons should embark with Mr. Paine, and that their father 
 
 1 All that has been published of Paine's reply to the Bishop of 
 Llandaff might be recited in about half-an-hour, and there is no part 
 that can be marked off as introductory. If Paine recited all or part 
 of what is published, he was recapitulating a close and detailed argu- 
 ment. Mr. Stephen of course attempts no investigation on the point.
 
 6 THOMAS PAIXE. 
 
 should follow them as soon as he conveniently could. Whether 
 this was a design on the part of Bonneville to rid himself of 
 his wife is more than I can say, but it is certain that he never 
 troubled himself about her or the children for some years after- 
 wards, and they were entirely abandoned to the generosity of 
 Mr. Paine. In addition to his estate at New Eochelle, Mr. 
 Paine had likewise a small house with some land attached to 
 it, at Bordentown: these he offered to Mrs. Bonneville, and 
 proposed to establish her as a schoolmistress, but this she de- 
 clined. Mr. Paine was therefore charged with her entire 
 maintenance, and that of the children, an act of kindness which 
 he cheerfully performed. ... It is a fact that they scarcely 
 ever lived together after our author's return to America " (W. 
 T. Sherwin's "Life of Thomas Paine ", 1819, pp. 208-210). 
 
 Sherwin is partly in error as to the " entire mainten- 
 ance ", since it appears that Madame Bonneville gave 
 lessons in French to help to maintain herself. But as to 
 the substantial truth of his story there can be no reason- 
 able doubt. Taken by itself, it might stand as an un- 
 supported testimony by a friend of Paine ; but it is 
 sufficiently made good by the result of the legal proceed- 
 ings instituted by Madame Bonneville against Cheetham 
 when the latter published his slanderous work after 
 Paine's death. Cheetham declared Madame Bonneville 
 to be Paine's mistress, offering no proof save an angry 
 letter from one Carver, written after a quarrel with Paine. 
 On the action for slander being raised, Cheetham's counsel 
 admitted the falsehood of the charge, and pleaded simply 
 that Carver's letter justified Cheetham, as a historian, in 
 repeating the statement. At first it was pleaded that the 
 statement was true, but when "several ladies of the first 
 distinction, whose daughters had been entrusted to the care 
 of Madame Bonneville to learn the French language, 
 appeared in court, and attested to the unblemished 
 character of this much-injured female ", this plea was 
 abandoned, Carver besides backing out of his statement 
 under examination. Further, Carver later published the 
 avowal that his letter had been written in anger, and that 
 it was " first printed by Cheetham without my consent for 
 base purposes, after he became a tory and political turn- 
 coat " ; also printing a letter of reconciliation he had 
 addressed to Paine when the latter was on his deathbed, 
 with the remark : " This shows what opinion I had of 
 him ; I think he was one of the greatest men that ever
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 7 
 
 lived ". (See the documents in the preface to GK Vale's 
 I' Life of Thomas Paine ", New York, 1841.) The judge 
 in the libel case, in summing up for the jury, took occasion 
 to remind them that Cheetham's book was calculated to 
 aid the cause of Christianity. The jury, however, brought 
 in a verdict against him with 100 damages ; and 
 Cheetham, who had admitted the falsity of his statement, 
 was ordered to expunge it from later editions of his book. 
 (See "Refutation of the Calumnies on the Character of 
 Thomas Paine", Providence, E. I. 1830, p. 2.) Thus a 
 wholly or partly Christian jury pronounced the story a 
 slander ; Cheetham and his informant alike withdrew from 
 it ; and it is left for Mr. Stephen to revive it in an im- 
 portant work without a word of qualification or an attempt 
 at inquiry. 
 
 It is worth noting, finally, as to the Bonneville episode, 
 that Paine left some money by his will to Nicolas Bonne- 
 ville, and the bulk of his property to Madame Bonneville, 
 in trust for her and her children, "in order that she may 
 bring them well up, give them good and useful learning, 
 and instruct them in their duty to God and the practice of 
 morality". The aspersion thrown out by Mr. Stephen as 
 to Paine' s "brutality" to Madame Bonneville rests partly 
 on Carver's letter, in which Paine appears as disputing a 
 payment on Madame Bonneville's account, partly on other 
 statements of Cheetham. We have seen something of that 
 authority's trustworthiness ; but there is yet further evi- 
 dence to be taken. 
 
 Cheetham's Life of Paine is not only thus discredited on 
 one important point by explicit proofs : it was recognised 
 and proclaimed as collectively untrustworthy by orthodox 
 American writers in Paine's own time and later. I quote 
 first from Mr. Conway : 
 
 "It is important .... to state that the most eminent 
 Christian writers in America were .not deceived by these libels 
 [as to Madame Bonneville]. Thus, the Rev. Solomon South- 
 wick, editor of the Christian Visitor when Cheetham's book 
 appeared, wrote : ' Had Thomas Paine been guilty of any crime, 
 we should be the last to eulogise his memory. But we cannot 
 find that he was ever guilty of any other crime than that of 
 advancing his opinions freely upon all subjects connected with 
 public liberty and happiness .... We may safely affirm that 
 Paine's conduct in America was that of a real patriot. In the 
 French Convention he displayed the same pure and disinterested
 
 8 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 spirit .... His life, it is true, was written by a ministerial 
 hireling, who strove in vain to blacken his moral character. 
 The late James Cheetham likewise wrote his life, and we have 
 no hesitation in saying that we knew perfectly well at the time 
 the motives of that author for writing and publishing a work 
 which, we have every reason to believe, is a libel almost from 
 beginning to end. In fact, Cheetham had become tired of this 
 country, and had formed a plan to return to England and be- 
 come a ministerial editor in opposition to Cobbett, and his 
 Life, of P aim was written to pave his way back again.' " (Art. 
 on "Thomas Paine", in Fortnightly Review, March, 1879, p. 
 400, citing the " Testimonials to Thomas Paine", compiled by 
 J. N. Moreau, 1861 an American pamphlet, not in the British 
 Museum). , 
 
 The impartial judgment of Paine's own generation is 
 endorsed by that of the next. An unsigned article on 
 "Thomas Paine's Second Appearance in the United States" 
 appears in the Atlantic Monthly for July, 1859. Its author 
 thinks (p. 16) that "The 'Age of Eeason ' is a shallow 
 deistical essay, in which the author's opinions are set forth 
 .... in a most offensive and irreverend style " ; that he 
 " drank more brandy than was good for him"; and (p. 13) 
 that he "was no exception to the general rule, that we 
 find no persons so intolerant and illiberal as men profess- 
 ing Liberal principles ". There is here small prejudice in 
 Paine's favor. But the same unfriendly critic says : "We 
 suspect that most of our readers, if they cannot date back 
 to the first decade of the century, will find, when they sift 
 their information, that they have only a speaking ac- 
 quaintance with Thomas Paine, and can give no good 
 reason for their dislike of him " (p. 15). And this is how 
 he comments on the biography by Cheetham : 
 
 'This libellous performance was written shortly after Paine's 
 death. It was intended as a peace offering to the English 
 Government. The ex-hatter had made up his mind to return 
 home, and he wished to prove the sincerity of his conversion 
 from Radicalism by trampling on the remains of its high-priest. 
 So long as Cheetham remained in good standing with the 
 Democrats, Paine and he were fast friends; but when he 
 became heretical and schismatic on the Embargo question, 
 some three or four years later, and was formally read out of the 
 party, Paine laid the rod across his back with all his remaining 
 strength. He had vigor enough left, it seems, to make the 
 Citizen [edited by Cheetham] smart, for Cheetham cuts and 
 stabs with a spite which shows that the work was as agreeable
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 to his feelings as useful to his plans. His reminiscences must 
 be read multis cum granis " (Id., p. 12). 
 
 The reader will now probably not hesitate to accept the 
 statement made by Mr. Vale in his " Life of of Paine" (p. 
 2) that it " was the opinion of the intimate friend of 
 Cheetham, Mr. Charles Christian, who gave this relation 
 to Mr. John Fellows and others whom we have seen, and 
 from whom we have learned this fact ", that Cheetham 
 meant his book "as a passport to the British treasury 
 favor." 
 
 I have thus far dealt with Mr. Stephen's account of 
 Paine as it appears in the first edition of his book, for 
 the moment excluding considerations of certain alterations 
 which he has silently made in his second edition. And I 
 have taken this course on two grounds ; first, that the for- 
 mer version is still in the hands of many readers, whose 
 attention has not been publicly called to the partial retrac- 
 tations Mr. Stephen makes ; second, that he has made his 
 qualifications in a manner that only aggravates the offence 
 of his first misstatement. Let the reader judge. The altera- 
 tions are as follows: (1) For "one of his biographers" 
 we now read " a hostile biographer ", the rest of the 
 passage being left unaltered down to and including the 
 word " principles ". Then we have these sentences : 
 
 " The portrait is drawn by an enemy, and represents what we 
 may call the orthodox version of the last days of a notorious 
 infidel. Paine was not likely to receive full justice from his 
 adversaries, and his admirers urge that his career was sincere 
 and disinterested." 
 
 Yet while these qualifications are introduced, the " enemy's" 
 picture is left as it was at first drawn; the expressions 
 which were first used with the most grossly opprobrious 
 intent are left unchanged, and the reader is left to settle 
 for himself how much he will believe of the disgusting 
 charges made, Mr. Stephen simply suggesting that an 
 enemy was " not likely " to do " full justice " ! I do not 
 know a more extraordinary piece of procedure in literary 
 history. If the story first told was an enemy's, and is only 
 " what we may call the orthodox version " of a Free- 
 thinker's life, why, in the name of common decency, was it
 
 10 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 allowed to stand? Does Mr. Stephen, like the average 
 Christian bigot, owe neither truth nor justice to an infidel ? 
 His first paragraph was bad enough in all conscience. 
 His discovery that Cheetham was Paine's enemy would 
 have been arrived at by most men in his place at the first 
 glance through Cheetham' s book ; but he apparently only 
 reached it after the publication of Mr. Conway's article. 
 Yet though that article not only revealed this fact, but 
 showed Cheetham's absolute untrustworthiness all round, 
 Mr. Stephen has gone to no other source for his facts, has 
 left his pages befouled with half-admitted falsehoods, 
 neither standing to them nor withdrawing them, and has 
 made no overt avowal that his first edition has at this 
 point undergone alteration. Such a course only adds to 
 the need for exposing the baselessness of the whole story. 
 He who would defend Paine must still furnish the full 
 disproof just as if the first were the only edition of Mr. 
 Stephen's book ; and in view of the fashion in which the 
 matter is handled in the second, it is very meet that Mr. 
 Stephen should receive in full what discredit attaches to 
 his production of both versions. It is difficult to say which 
 shows the less readiness io deal justly by the memory of a 
 man held in common odium. 
 
 Evidence has been led at length as to the notorious un- 
 trustworthiness of Cheetham's book, the venality of his 
 general motives, and his bitter enmity to Paine, though 
 it is not easy to understand how any critic of ordinary 
 fairness of mind, after reading (or even dipping into) 
 Cheetham's book, could require much evidence of its worth- 
 lessness. It is on the very face of it a bitter attack on a 
 dead man's memory by his enemy, an attack exceptionally 
 scurrilous even for that time, in which unscrupulous slander 
 went perhaps further than it has ever done in England 
 before or since. Of a previous American " Life " of Paine, 
 nominally by " Francis Oldys ", Mr. Edward Smith has 
 observed in his Life of Cobbett (ii. 210, note) that it was 
 " one of the most horrible collections of abuse which even 
 that venal day produced". That book was written in 
 reality by George Chalmers, then one of the clerks of the 
 Board of Plantation, to the order of Lord Hawksbury, 
 afterwards Lord Liverpool, who paid or at least promised 
 him 500 for the work (Sherwin, pref.}. Such transactions 
 were not uncommon in the period, and a historian of English
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 11 
 
 Thought might have been expected as a matter of course 
 to be on his guard, accordingly, in reading any Life of 
 such a man as Paine. And Cheetham's book, I repeat, is 
 so gross in its aspersions,- so patently malignant in its 
 general drift, that no reader of average judgment, unless 
 much swayed by prejudice, can well suppose it to be a 
 true record. Its slander is the slander of the slums; 
 obscene falsehood retailed with the zest of prostitutes in 
 their cups. To a healthy mind, I should think, some of 
 Cheetham's hearsay and other stories would be a decisive 
 proof, not that Paine was drunken or dirty, but that 
 Cheetham was an offensive blackguard. But since Mr. 
 Stephen, even after remonstrance, declines to make up his 
 mind on this head, and as he is a writer of distinction, I 
 will cite some further evidence to show that Paine was not 
 what he still half-insinuates him to be. 
 
 It is often assumed even by Freethinkers who esteem 
 Paine's memory that in his latter years he sometimes 
 " drank more than was good for him ". Mr. Conway, like 
 Sherwin, has accepted the tradition to that effect, sensibly 
 pointing out, however, its small virtual importance in the 
 eyes of just-minded people. There are, nevertheless, very 
 strong reasons for doubting whether there is any more 
 positive truth in this tradition than in any of the other 
 stories to Paine's discredit. I quote the temperate and 
 impressive summing-up of Mr. Vale : 
 
 " In commencing our inquiries we really thought the fact 
 that Mr. Paine was a drunkard in old age was well established. 
 In seeking, however, for the proofs of this we arrive at a very 
 different conclusion." "It is by [Cheetham] that the public 
 have been informed that Paine was drunken and dirty in his 
 person; and so industriously and faithfully have the clergy 
 preached and circulated these calumnies, that we shall scarcely 
 be believed in contradicting them on the very best evidence, 
 that of his companions now alive, and in some cases the very men 
 whom Cneetham impudently names as sources of his informa- 
 tion. Thus Mr. Jarvis, the celebrated painter, with whom Mr. 
 Paine lived, informs us distinctly that Mr. Paine was neither 
 dirty in his habits nor drunken ; nay, he goodhumoredly 
 added that he always drank a great deal more than ever Paine 
 did. Mr. John Fellows lived in the same house with Mr. 
 Paine above a twelvemonth, and was his intimate friend for 
 many years after his return to this country, and never saw him 
 but once even elevated with liquor, and then he had been to a
 
 12 
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 dinner party. We know more than twenty persons who are 
 more or less acquainted with Mr. Paine, and not one of whom 
 ever saw him in liquor. His habit appears to have been to 
 take one glass of rum and water with sugar in it, after dinner, 
 and another after supper. His limit at one period, when at 
 Kochelle, was one quart of rum a week, for himself and friends, 
 for Mr. Paine was rather penurious in his old age. This, and 
 this alone, is the only moral fault we find in his character, and 
 we wish to be his impartial historian. His manner of life at 
 this time we get from Mr. Burger, a respectable watchmaker 
 in New York, but then a clerk in the only store at RocheUe, 
 who served Mr. Paine with his liquor, and waited upon him 
 when sick, and drove him about the neighborhood at the 
 request of his employer, and thus saw much of his social habits. 
 This gentleman never saw Mr. Paine intoxicated. Carver, 
 with whom Paine lived, but from whom he parted in anger, is 
 the only man we know who has not spoken distinctly on the 
 subject ; and he remarks that ' Paine was like other men [at 
 that period] he would sometimes take too much ' ! But Carver 
 had unfortunately committed himself on this subject in an 
 angry letter, the same on which Cheetham based his libel. In 
 fact, this letter is the groundwork for all Cheetham's calum- 
 nies" (Vale's Life of Paine, pref. pp. 1214: cf. pp. 142, 163). 
 
 People who are scrupulous in weighing testimony may feel 
 that even this is not decisive proof that Paine never in his 
 life drank to excess ; but it will probably satisfy even the 
 majority of Christians as to the untruth of Cheetham's 
 assertion, reproduced by Mr. Stephen, that Paine was a 
 habitual drunkard. Is it necessary, further, to disprove 
 the slander as to the habits "filthy beyond all powers of 
 decent expression " ? I will not quote the beastly gossip 
 on which the decent Mr. Stephen founds his phrase, but I 
 will quote again from Mr. Conway : 
 
 "Paine was described by Aaron Burr, hypercritical in such 
 matters, as a gentleman; and the sense in which he was so 
 may be understood from a passage in one of Lord Edward 
 Fitzgerald's letters from Paris to his mother: 'I lodge with 
 my friend Paine ; we breakfast, dine, and sup together. The 
 more I see of his interior the more I like and respect him. I 
 cannot express how kind he has been to me. There is a simpli- 
 city of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in 
 him that I never knew a man before to possess ' " (Art. cited 
 p. 409). 
 
 It is not for a vindicator of Paine, answering Mr. Stephen, 
 to conceal any known facts ; and I will mention that in the
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 13 
 
 literature of the subject there is one piece of evidence as to 
 Paine's having been in one short period of his life some- 
 what careless of his domestic amenities. A Mr. Yorke, 
 who knew Paine in England, published in 1802 a volume 
 of "Letters from France", in which he tells how he 
 visited his friend after he had been released from imprison- 
 ment. He was received by Paine in a room, not a bed- 
 room, which he describes as exceedingly dirty, the only 
 details given being, however, that 
 
 "the chimney hearth was an heap of dirt; there was not a 
 speck of cleanliness to be seen ; three shelves were filled with 
 pasteboard boxes, each labelled after the manner of a Minister 
 of Foreign Affairs, Correspondence Americaine, Brittannique, 
 Fran$aise; Notices Politiques ; Le citoyen Fran^ais, etc. In one 
 corner of the room stood several huge bars of iron, curiously 
 shaped, and two large trunks ; opposite the fireplace, a board 
 covered with pamphlets and journals, haying more the ap- 
 pearance of a dresser in a scullery. Such was the wretched 
 habitation", etc. ("Letters from France in 1802", by Henry 
 Redhead York, 1804, ii. 339-340. See the passage also in 
 Sherwin's "Life", pp. 188-9). 
 
 Mr. Yorke states that he " never sat down in such a filthy 
 apartment in the whole course of his life ", which is per- 
 fectly credible, he being a person of means ; but the reader 
 will. see that even this statement does not make out Paine 
 to have been generally offensive in his habits. Paine was 
 at that moment preparing to return to America, as Mr. 
 Yorke goes on to intimate ; the " bars of iron " were parts 
 of his model iron bridge ; and his trunks and papers were 
 presumably packed for transport. The room was not 
 Paine's living-room, and in the circumstances it will be 
 intelligible t(\ most people that without becoming de- 
 moralised he should let such an apartment remain un- 
 swept. Beyond this Mr. York has not a word to say 
 against the habits of his old acquaintance, though like 
 many other Englishmen at the time he had become con- 
 servative in his opinions, and was a good deal worried by 
 Paine's freethinking. He makes an explanation, however, 
 which would decently account* for worse carelessness than 
 he tells of. " I was forcibly struck ", he says, " with 
 his altered appearance. Time seemed to have made 
 dreadful ravages with his whole frame, and a settled 
 melancholy was visible on his countenance." And this
 
 14 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 recalls a circumstance of importance which is not disclosed 
 by Mr. Stephen's biographic notice. 
 
 Paine, it will be remembered, after being eagerly wel- 
 comed in France and made a member of the National 
 Convention, came under the displeasure of the extreme 
 Jacobin party by strongly opposing the execution of Louis 
 XVI., such a step being repugnant to his essentially 
 humane cast of mind. Like so many others, he was 
 cast in prison at the order of Robespierre's Committee 
 of Public Safety. The accident by which, on one occa- 
 sion, he escaped execution a mark being made on the 
 inside instead of the outside of his cell door is well 
 known. But it is less well known that during his im- 
 prisonment of eleven months he not only had a violent 
 and almost fatal fever (which again preserved him from 
 execution) but became permanently affected with an abs- 
 cess in the side, which during the remainder of his life 
 caused him much pain. Now, if a man thus afflicted had 
 really fallen into a habit of drinking too much, or of 
 neglecting appearances, or of even worse slovenliness, a 
 fair-minded critic would have felt it only just to mention 
 the fact of his painful disease. And if, further, a man so 
 situated labored under Paine's grief of feeling that the 
 great cause in which he believed had utterly wrecked 
 itself in France, such a critic would further have recog- 
 nised that a resort to strong drink on the sufferer's part 
 was a pathetic and painful, rather than a crudely dis- 
 graceful proceeding. And if, finally, such a sufferer, on 
 returning to his adopted country, of whose freedom he 
 was one of the most influential founders, saw himself 
 shunned and vilified by old associates on account of his 
 conscientious religious opinions, the same hypothetic just- 
 minded critic would have seen in the fact a very adequate 
 apology for indulgence in stimulants. But Mr. Stephen, 
 while believing in the story of Paine's intemperance, hints 
 at none of these circumstances ; and after all, as has been 
 pointed out, the alleged indulgence did not really take 
 place. 
 
 We have seen evidence that Paine's habits were not 
 drunken in America even in his last darkened and lonely 
 days. There is equally good proof that his habits were 
 sober in Paris. Joel Barlow, the author of that defunct 
 epic " The Columbiad ", was applied to by Cheetham for
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 15 
 
 evidence as to Paine's habits in Paris, where Barlow had 
 been one of his intimates. " He was a great drunkard 
 
 here ", wrote Cheetham from New York, " and Mr. M , 
 
 a merchant of this city, who lived with him when he was 
 arrested by order of Robespierre, tells me he was intoxi- 
 cated when that event happened" (Sherwin, Appendix, 
 p. xxxiii). This letter, as Mr. Vale has pointed out, with 
 similar hearsays, misled Barlow, who had never been in 
 Paine's neighborhood after leaving Paris, into believing 
 that the latter had really become latterly intemperate, 
 and he expresses this belief in his answer. But he is 
 explicit as to Paine's sobriety in Paris : 
 
 " I never heard before that Paine was intoxicated that night. 
 Indeed, the officers brought him directly to my house, which 
 was two miles from his lodgings, and about as much from the 
 place where he had been dining. He was not intoxicated when 
 
 they came to me You ask what company he kept he 
 
 always kept the best, both in England and France, till .... 
 he conceived himself neglected and despised by his former 
 
 friends in the United States Thomas Paine, as a visiting 
 
 acquaintance and as a literary friend, the only points of vieiv in 
 which I knew him, was one of the most instructive men I ever 
 
 have known He was always charitable to the poor 
 
 beyond his means . . . ." (Sherwin, Appendix, pp. xxxvii-viii). 
 
 The remaining items in Mr. Stephen's biographical 
 paragraph are the phrases as to " the meanest squabbles ", 
 the " surly adherence to his principles ", and the "wretched 
 carcase, about which he seems to have felt some anxiety". 
 The first I will let pass in the present connexion, admitting 
 simply that Paine, broken in health and disordered in 
 nerves, had some quarrels. The "constantly" is Mr. 
 Stephen's own characteristic touch. The " surliness " 
 consisted in this, that Paine, vexed in his last painful 
 hours by the indecent intrusion of Mr. Stephen's " well- 
 meaning persons", sharply dismissed one of the most 
 brutally offensive, and finally gave orders that they should 
 all be excluded. One old lady he had previously turned 
 away with a grimly humorous comment which even Mr. 
 Stephen would hardly call surly. One other lady there 
 was to whom he was indeed stern. She had once been his 
 intimate friend and correspondent, but during his stay in 
 France she had married, and when he returned to America 
 she and her husband were among those who refused to
 
 16 THOMAS PAINS. 
 
 resume his acquaintance. During his last illness she was 
 moved to visit him ; but when he saw her he refused to 
 shake hands, saying, " You have neglected me, and I beg 
 you will leave the room '*. She went out into the garden, 
 the story goes, and wept bitterly ; and we may believe, I 
 think, that had the life-weary Paine seen her tears he 
 would have relented. 
 
 It is true, as Mr. Stephen puts it in his first edition, that 
 Paine's " wretched carcase " was buried in his farm. But 
 the " anxiety", as to which the historian offers no parti- 
 culars, had merely consisted in a wish to be buried in the 
 graveyard of the Quakers, in whose denomination Paine 
 had been brought up, his father having been of that per- 
 suasion. " Though he did not think well of any Christian 
 sect, he thought better of the Quakers than of any other." 
 The Quakers refused the request, and Paine, who in his 
 dying state was " affected considerably " by the refusal, 
 was buried in his own ground. I can hardly trust myself 
 to characterise the kind of criticism which can only describe 
 this as showing " anxiety " about a " miserable carcase ", 
 withdrawing the statement later, evidently not with regret 
 for having made it, but simply to make room in the page for 
 a few lines necessarily added. One has a difficulty, indeed, 
 in passing fitting judgment on Mr. Stephen's two accounts 
 of Paine as wholes. One recalls the story of the Duke of 
 Wellington's attitude towards the performance of a careless 
 officer who, by disobeying an important order, placed the 
 army for a time in dire jeopardy. " What did you say ? " 
 asked a friend to whom he afterwards related the episode. 
 "Oh, by God, I said nothing!" was his Grace's answer. 
 That were perhaps the best course with Mr. Stephen. But 
 I believe I shall have the support of any unbiassed literary 
 man who examines the matter, in saying that the biogra- 
 phical paragraph I have dealt with in Mr. Stephen's book, 
 alike in its original and in its amended form, is a disgrace 
 to literature. 
 
 It is hardly necessary, of course, to express the belief 
 that Mr. Stephen would not have written what he did at 
 first if he had properly investigated the matter. One does 
 not for a moment compare him to Oheetham, whose slanders 
 he so recklessly retailed. One simply says that, having 
 erred first through culpable prejudice, and still more 
 culpable carelessness, he had not the candor later to make
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 17 
 
 rightemis amends even when his error had been made 
 fairly plain. It would seem as if, having once judged 
 unjustly on insufficient knowledge, he cannot disabuse his 
 mind of his first impressions. But in our further exami- 
 nation of his non- biographical observations on Paine we 
 shall, I fear, see cause to deny him credit for dealing fairly 
 even with matters which were all along fully before him. 
 His remaining criticisms not only commit that kind of 
 injustice which is disputable as turning on matters of 
 opinion, but once more, and this time with no qualifications, 
 injustice which is indisputable, as consisting of flat misre- 
 presentation of matters of fact. The latter I will first deal 
 with. 
 
 Though it is only in contrasting Paine with Burke that 
 Mr. Stephen avails himself of the help of Cheetham, his 
 earlier notices betray no tendency to show fair play to the 
 unpopular infidel. The following is from the passage 
 which introduces Paine in the theological section : 
 
 "Good Englishmen expressed their disgust for the irreverent 
 infidel by calling him Torn, and the name still warns all men 
 that its proprietor does not deserve even posthumous civility. 
 Paine indeed is, in a sense, but the echo of Collins and 
 
 Woolston ; but the tone of the speaker is altered The 
 
 early deists wrote for educated men. Paine is appealing to the 
 
 mob His ignorance was vast, and his language brutal ; 
 
 but he had the gift of a true demagogue, the power of wielding 
 a fine vigorous English, a fit vehicle for fanatical passion. His 
 tracts may be set without too (sic) much disadvantage beside 
 the attack upon Wood's half-pence, or the best pieces of Cob- 
 bett" (''History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury ", i. 458). 
 
 It was thus presumably by way of showing he was a 
 " good Englishman " that Mr. Stephen himself repeatedly 
 names Paine "Tom" in his incidental allusions; and if 
 scrupulous incivility to the dead unbeliever will suffice, he 
 certainly ought to stand well with his orthodox country- 
 men. It will be noticed that where, as in the foregoing 
 paragraph, he has occasion to accord such praise as it is 
 impossible for a rationalist decently to withhold, Mr. 
 Stephen is careful to so phrase it that it shall have a 
 certain flavor of detraction. Thus Paine's fine vigorous 
 English must needs be further labelled as a "fit vehicle 
 for fanatical passion ". Now, if fanatical passion be an 
 offset to a man's literary power, there is no cas*. in which
 
 18 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 more deduction must be made than in that of Burke, who 
 in his later utterances on the French Revolution carried 
 such passion to an extent hardly attained in any im- 
 portant composition of the period, and certainly not by 
 Paine. Yet it never occurs to Mr. Stephen in criticising 
 Burke, for whom he has an extreme admiration, to make 
 such a qualification concerning him. Again, if Paine be 
 a demagogue in that he wrote like Swift in the Drapier 
 Letters, Swift is properly to be termed a demagogue in 
 the same connexion. But I do not recall that Mr. Stephen, 
 in his book on Swift, ever thought it necessary to bestow 
 on the Dean the epithet in question. On the contrary, 
 even in admitting that the Drapier Letters contained many 
 falsehoods, Mr. Stephen puts it that the Dean "went to 
 work with unscrupulous audacity of statement, guided by 
 the keenest strategical instinct" ("Swift", p. 154). These 
 are small matters, but they are illustrative of Mr. Stephen's 
 critical practice. 
 
 Paine, says Mr. Stephen, wrote for the mob. He did 
 indeed appeal to the general population, who were habit- 
 ually appealed to by the Church he wished to overthrow ; 
 but anyone not bent on casting epithets at him would see, 
 I think, that he never appealed to "the mob" in the sense 
 of striving to stir the passions of the unreasoning. I 
 should say there is at least as much appeal to reason in 
 any one of Paine's chief works as in Burke's " Reflections 
 on the French Revolution ", though the latter certainly 
 appealed more to upper-class sentiment. And Wesley and 
 Whitefield daily appealed to " the mob " in the true sense 
 of the term, since they addressed those who could not 
 read, and those on whom sheer argument would have 
 been lost. But Mr. Stephen never uses the word in con- 
 nexion with Methodism. In that regard we are told that 
 " all warmth of sentiment had passed to the side of Wesley 
 and Whitefield " as compared with preachers like Blair 
 (ii. 346) ; Whitefield, the great mob orator of evangeli- 
 calism, is classed as an "enthusiast " (378), and his power 
 is "dramatic rather than .... intellectual" but not 
 demagogic or fanatical; and while Wesley's writing is 
 "full of a doctrine which frequently leads to an unlovely 
 superstition ", yet " as clearly it implies a vivid sentiment, 
 never to be despised for its ugly clothing " (ii. 432). It is 
 only when a man's sentiment is unpopular that it is
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 19 
 
 to be despised for its clothing, in Hr. Stephen's critical 
 system. 
 
 Let us come to more precise issues. "We are told that 
 Paine is "in a sense but the echo of Collins and Woolston, 
 but the tone of the speaker is altered " a choice Hibernicism, 
 better worth preserving than most of Mr. Stephen's sayings 
 on Paine. But when the critic asserts that Collins and 
 Woolston wrote for educated men as compared with Paine, 
 we are on another ground. Will the reader believe that 
 Mr. Stephen had already pointed out that Collins had 
 discredited his cause by translating the Latin word idiotis 
 in the well-known edict of Anastasius concerning the 
 idiotis evangelistis, by the English form " idiotic " ; and 
 that the critic had also referred to " poor mad Woolston " 
 as the " most scandalous of the deists " (i. 87) ? Chubb 
 he similarly described as ' ' the good Salisbury tallow- 
 chandler, who ingenuously confesses, whilst criticising 
 the Scriptures, that he knows no language but his own ". 
 Take Mr. Stephen's detailed criticisms of Woolston : 
 
 "The argument [against miracles] was the more offensive 
 because there is no sign that Woolston appreciated the diffi- 
 culties which may be suggested by criticism, or by a priori 
 objections to miracles. His contention is simply that the 
 
 narratives are on the face of them preposterous This 
 
 strange performance would have been sufficient of itself to 
 raise doubts of its author's sanity." "Through six straggling 
 discourses, Woolston attempts to make fun of the miracles. 
 There are, at intervals, queer gleams of distorted sense, and 
 even of literary power, in the midst of his buffoonery. Occa- 
 sionally he hits a real blot " [the miracles in general not being 
 blots]; "more frequently he indulges in the most absurd 
 quibbles, aud throughout he shows almost as little approxima- 
 tion to a genuine critical capacity as to reverential appreciation, 
 of the beauty of many of the narratives. He is a mere buffoon 
 jingling his cap and bells in a sacred shine ; and his strange 
 ribaldry is painful even to those for whom the supernatural 
 glory of the temple has long faded away. Even where some 
 straggling shreds of sense obtrude themselves, the language 
 is obtrusively coarse and occasionally degenerates into mere 
 slang "(ii. 229-232). 
 
 Observe that whereas Woolston in one set of passages is 
 pronounced mad, in another he is criticised as being sane, 
 so as to leave the most unpleasant impressien about 
 freethinking in the reader's mind. Now compare
 
 20 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 with this one of Mr. Stephen's explicit criticisms of 
 Paine. 
 
 "Paine .... reproduces the objections to the Bible which 
 occurred to him on a hasty reading, or which had reached 
 him through the diffused scepticism of the time. It must be 
 added, however, that such arguments might be effective 
 enough with popular readers who regarded every letter of the 
 English version as directly dictated by the Holy Ghost ; and 
 moreover keen mother- wit supplies many deficiencies, and Paine's 
 reasoning often hits real blots, whilst it loses little (.') by not 
 being smothered in masses of erudition. His reasoning, indeed, 
 though defaced by much ribaldry, is simply the translation into 
 popular language of a theory expounded by more accomplished 
 
 critics He is apparently ignorant that anything of the 
 
 kind had been said before ; and makes no reference to the deists, 
 such as Tindal or Morgan, who had put his arguments into 
 
 more decent language Paine's creed .... is simply 
 
 the creed of all the deists of the eighteenth century. Paine's 
 peculiarity consists in the freshness with which he comes upon 
 very old discoveries, and the vehemence with which he 
 announces them " (i. 459-461). 
 
 Here, contradictions apart, Paine is characterised in terms 
 almost identical with those previously applied to Woolston, 
 except that he is made out much the better reasoner of the 
 two. But, it being necessary to discredit him in the long 
 run, we later learn that the ribald and futile Woolston 
 wrote for educated men, and Paine only for the mob. I 
 need now hardly remark to careful readers that Mr. 
 Stephen's account of any unpopular freethinker is not 
 much more to be trusted, without close enquiry, than his 
 account of Paine. 
 
 When Mr. Stephen observes that Paine's " ignorance 
 was vast" a phrase which might loosely be used of any 
 man we are forced to assume that he has in view some of 
 the matters on which he himself expressly comments, as 
 this : 
 
 "He [Paine] explains .... that his chronology is taken 
 from the dates printed on the margins of the ' larger Bibles ', 
 which he apparently supposes to be part of the original docu- 
 ments" (i. 459). 
 
 I am here once more in a difficulty as to the proper way of 
 answering Mr. Stephen. The plain truth is that this is a 
 scandalous perversion of the plain fact. So far from there
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 21 
 
 being the slightest reason for believing that Paine made 
 the incredible blunder here wantonly charged on him, the 
 passage itself shows that he did no such thing. It runs 
 thus: 
 
 "The chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology, 
 for I mean not to go out of the Bible for evidence of anything, 
 but to make the Bible itself prove historically and chronologi- 
 cally that Moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him. 
 It is therefore proper that I inform the reader (such an one at 
 least as may not have opportunity of knowing it) that in the 
 larger Bibles, and also in some smaller ones, there is a series of 
 chronology printed in the margin of every page, for the purpose 
 of showing how long the historical matters stated in each page 
 happened, or are supposed to have happened, before Christ, and 
 consequently the distance of time between one historical circum- 
 stance and another." 
 
 Will Mr. Stephen next tell us that Paine, in the very act 
 of analysing the biblical books with a view to questions of 
 authorship, held that a pre-Christian scribe wrote in his 
 margin the year B.C. in which the events he narrated were 
 " supposed to have happened" ? I doubt whether wilful 
 dishonesty could reach worse results in the way of false 
 witness than Mr. Stephen contrives to get to through mere 
 carelessness and prejudice. 
 
 Take next the derisive passage following : 
 
 "Wishing to prove that much of [the Bible] is so poetical 
 that even the translation retains ' the air and style of poetry ', 
 and remembering that some of his readers may consider that 
 poetry means rhyming, he [Paine] adds to a verse from Isaiah 
 a line of his own composition " (i. 459). 
 
 Let me remind the reader that in the passage in question 
 is a footnote, which Paine begins thus : "As there are 
 many readers who do not see that a composition is poetry 
 unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add 
 this note ". That is to say, the footnote is expressly added 
 for the benefit of uncultured readers. Is this a proof either 
 of gross ignorance or of fatuity ? If Lord Selborne teaches 
 a Bible class, does this prove him unfit to hold the Chan- 
 cellorship ? I am not arguing that Paine was a scholar. 
 On the contrary, we know that he read comparatively 
 little, his power lying in his original faculty of thought 
 and speech. But I observe that it matters nothing to Mr. 
 Stephen whether Paine were well-informed or not : either
 
 22 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 way he will contrive to belittle him. Take as illustration 
 the following sentences : 
 
 " The most remarkable argument in the second part [of the 
 ' Age of Eeason '] is a collection of the various passages which, 
 if occurring in the original, show that the so-called books of 
 Moses cannot have been composed by Moses or his contem- 
 poraries The remarks are creditable to Fame's shrewd- 
 ness. The same difficulties had been suggested long before by 
 Spinoza and by Newton ; but those writers were apparently 
 beyond the range of his reading " (i. 461). 
 
 Anybody but Mr. Stephen, I think, would have admitted 
 that if Paine detected for himself, without any help, a 
 number of the proofs that Moses could not have written 
 the Pentateuch, he would have given proof of great critical 
 acuteness. Mr. Stephen believes he did so discover them, 
 but will only concede that the discovery showed " shrewd- 
 ness " ; just as elsewhere he follows the impudently absurd 
 academic usage of making out good reasoning to be un- 
 worthy of respectful comment when it is arrived at by 
 "mother- wit". Thus can a learned historian arrive at 
 the sage decision that a man's reasoning " loses little by 
 not being smothered ". Judicious concession ! With Mr. 
 Stephen, it is rather better to be obtuse with culture than 
 clear-headed without it. But in the passage before us he 
 contrives to err in his facts in one direction as well as to 
 pervert justice in another. Paine did know something of 
 Spinoza's criticism of the Bible. In the second part of the 
 Age of Reason, the very section to which Mr. Stephen 
 alludes, he states that he has " seen the opinion of two 
 Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and Spinoza", on the 
 subject of the authorship of the book of Job. It is indeed 
 a small matter, compared with the others, that Mr. Stephen 
 should assume Paine to have had no help from Spinoza, 
 since in any case it is certain he had not much ; but it is 
 interesting to have this further light on Mr. Stephen's way 
 of going to work. It now appears that he had not thought 
 it worth while to do more than glance into the book he 
 was criticising. 
 
 Take yet another of his imputations : 
 
 " The ' Age of Eeason ' indeed sometimes amuses by the 
 author's impudent avowals of ignorance. In the last part, he 
 mentions a few authorities, and appears to have been dabbling 
 in some inquiries as to the origin of the Jewish and Christian
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 23 
 
 faiths. This, however, was an afterthought. In the first part 
 he avows, with some ostentation, that he has not even a copy 
 of the Bible. Quoting Addison's paraphrase of the nineteenth 
 psalm, he adds, ' I recollect not the prose, and when I write 
 this I have not the opportunity of seeing it '. Before the pub- 
 lication of the second part, he had ' furnished himself with a 
 Bible and a Testament ', and found them to be ' much worse 
 books than he had conceived ' " (i. 458-9). 
 
 Again, what are the facts ? The first part of the Age of 
 Reason was written by Paine in Paris while in hourly 
 expectation of arrest and consequent death ; it being his 
 earnest wish to leave behind him a protest against the 
 irrationality of the popular religion. The manuscript was 
 only finished a few hours before the arrest came. English 
 or any other Bibles were not likely to be very abundant 
 in Paris at that time, and Paine expressly states in the 
 First Part that he "had not the opportunity of seeing 
 one ", and again in the preface to the Second Part that 
 he "could not procure any". To call this an impudent 
 avowal of ignorance is just to add one more to Mr. Stephen's 
 sins against literary good morals. Paine knew the Bible 
 in general extremely well : he had been brought up on it, 
 and he had an excellent memory ; only it required the later 
 perusal with an emancipated mind to see all its flaws. In 
 any case, the First Part of the Age of Reason is a general 
 argument such as any thinker might fitly write in his study 
 without specially consulting the Bible at all. It attacked 
 central principles and not details. And the fact remains, 
 as Paine was entitled to boast, that he had "produced a 
 work that no Bible believer, though writing at his ease, 
 with a library of Church books about him, can refute " ; 
 whatever Mr. Stephen may choose to suggest by the safe 
 process of insinuation. One would have thought that a 
 book of such earnestness and force, written under such 
 circumstances, would extort from any critic of repute an 
 admission of the writer's elevation of mind : that the man 
 who wrote such a treatise while in hourly expectation of 
 death on the scaffold would receive at least credit for 
 courage and magnanimity. But no : all that Mr. Stephen 
 can discover is an "impudent avowal of ignorance". 
 
 Mr. Stephen's language implies, if words mean anything, 
 that Paine's arguments were weighty mainly as against 
 those who believed in the literal inspiration "of the English
 
 24 THOilAS PAINE. 
 
 version of the Scriptures. A criticism so egregiously wide 
 of the mark is really not worth detailed refutation ; but as 
 so often happens with him, Mr. Stephen himself supplies 
 the answer. Paine's arguments, deduced from a " hasty" 
 reading of the Bible, while mainly adapted to the most 
 ignorant believers, yet have their defects largely atoned 
 for by "keen mother-wit", and "moreover" often "hit 
 real blots". It is inimitable, this blowing hot and cold 
 in the same breath : I know no rival to Mr. Stephen in the 
 art. But the triumph of his method is attained only in 
 this sentence : 
 
 " Paiue's book announced a startling fact, against which all 
 the flimsy collection of conclusive proofs were powerless. It 
 amounted to a proclamation that the creed no longer satisfied 
 the instincts of rough common sense any more than the intellects 
 of cultivated scholars " (i. 463). 
 
 Here the historian's exquisitely balanced mind contrives 
 to imply at once that the orthodox answers to Paine were 
 one and all flimsy, and yet that Paine's being right was 
 no great proof of his being a competent thinker. It was 
 only " rough common-sense " ! 
 
 Need I here state that the implication as to the "culti- 
 vated scholars " having generally seen the truth before 
 Paine is not true? The general effect of Mr. Stephen's 
 own book is to show that there were cultivated scholars in 
 abundance who could not see what Paine perceived by his 
 deplorably unvarnished common sense. Thecritic's favorite, 
 Burke, could not see it, remaining a blind and unreasoning 
 believer ; the scholarly Horsley had just been showing, in 
 controversy with Priestley, that scholarship could very 
 well be on the side of irrational faith. 
 
 When all is said Mr. Stephen is obliged to admit of 
 Paine's "Age of Reason" and I fear the avowal must 
 have cost him discomfort that the book made powerfully 
 for righteousness as well as for right reason. In a passage 
 considerably earlier than the detailed notice of the book, 
 he had observed that " Wesley from one side, and Tom 
 Paine from another, forced more serious thoughts upon 
 the age" (i. 273) this after " the attack and defence " of 
 previous writers had "lowered the general tone of reli- 
 gious feeling ", and generally furthered intellectual stag- 
 nation. And the admission is once more made later on.
 
 THOMAS PAItfE. 25 
 
 Mr. Stephen is a critic not devoid of conscientiousness; 
 and when' he really feels a truth he does not hesitate to 
 state it. But his idiosyncrasies will not let him reduce his 
 criticism in order even by a methodical balancing of pros 
 and cons : he must needs leave only a distracted series of 
 contradictions. This is the note of his criticism in general, 
 but least of all could he contrive to produce a clear 
 generalisation as to Paine. 
 
 " Paine, indeed, deserved moral reprobation for his brutality ; 
 and his book has in it an unpleasant flavor. Yet there was a 
 fact which the respectable public tried hard to ignore. Paine's 
 appeal was not simply to licentious hatred of religion, but to 
 genuine moral instincts. His ' blasphemy ' was not against 
 
 the Supreme God, but against Jehovah Paine, in 
 
 short, with all his brutalities, had the conscience of his hearers 
 on his side, and we must prefer his rough exposure of popular 
 errors to the unconscious blasphemy of his supporters " (i, 463). 
 [Sic. Query "their supporters" or "his opponents".] 
 
 It will be necessary in conclusion to examine this reite- 
 rated charge of " brutality " against Paine ; and the 
 inquiry will bring us to a final decision on Mr. Stephen's 
 fitness for the work of comparative criticism. 
 
 No quotations being given by Mr. Stephen in support of 
 his reiterated charge of brutality, we can but assume that 
 he has in view some of those passages in the Age of Reason 
 in which Paine attacks some Biblical absurdities with a 
 rough derision that some might call coarse. Were the 
 latter epithet used against him in these cases, I for one 
 should not be much concerned to object, since I have no 
 wish to pretend that Paine's polemic is always of the most 
 refined kind. It could not well be, since he wrote for the 
 people or, as Mr. Stephen prefers to say, for the mob. 
 It would seem to follow from the latter view that in Mr. 
 Stephen's opinion the mob should have no literature what- 
 ever, since he will hardly say that it would have been 
 profitable in Paine's time to write for them in a refined 
 style. Cobbett, who could and did write for them, is 
 admitted to have been tolerably brutal. It would pro- 
 bably stand for little if I were simply to counter Mr. 
 Stephen on this head, and say that Paine was not a brutal 
 writer, especially for his time. Such dicta in matters 
 of taste are unconvincing, and in mere authority Mr. 
 Stephen's dictum of course outweighs mine. I will there-
 
 26 
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 fore simply cite one other expression of opinion on the 
 point before resorting to comparative critical tests. Mr. 
 Conway writes as follows : 
 
 I know of no similar investigation in which the writer's 
 mind is so generally fixed upon the simple question of truth 
 
 talsehood, and so rarely addicted to ridicule. Few will 
 deny the difficulty, however reverent the reciter, of relating the 
 story of Jonah and the whale without causing a smile. Paine's 
 smile is in two sentences ; in one place he says it would have 
 been nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swaUowed 
 the whale, elsewhere that if credulity could swallow Jonah and 
 the whale it could swallow anything. But after this, for him 
 unusual approach to the ribaldry of which he is so freely 
 accused Paine gives over three pages of criticism on the Book 
 of Jonah, not only grave and careful, but presenting perhaps 
 the earliest appreciation of the moral elevation and large aim 
 of the much-neglected legend" (Article on " Thomas Paine" 
 in Fortmghtly Review, March, 1879, p. 413). 
 
 This also, of course, is not conclusive ; but neither I 
 trust is Mr. Stephen's simple epithet ; and the next step is 
 to weigh his characterisation of Paine's tone and method 
 against his treatment of other writers. Let us take one of 
 his own sentences : 
 
 " Johnson turns the roughest side of his contempt to anyone 
 suspected of scepticism, and calls Adam Smith a ' son of a 
 bitch'" (ii. 369.) 
 
 I am loth to attempt a precise definition of the term 
 "brutal", since I fear it might be difficult to frame one 
 which should not cover some of Mr. Stephen's own 
 language against Paine; but I think it will be generally 
 agreed that the word would apply to this utterance of 
 Johnson 1 . If it is possible for a man of letters to speak 
 brutally, Johnson did it when he thus spoke of Smith. 
 Now, it is a simple matter of fact that there is nothing 
 nearly so coarse in the whole of Paine ; yet Mr. Stephen 
 must needs speak austerely of the latter's "brutalities", 
 
 1 I say nothing as to the validity of the story. In his " Johnson " 
 (p. 115) Mr. Stephen tells the other story that Smith applied the same 
 expression to Johnson, to his face. I do not believe the latter version ; 
 but Mr. Stephen thinks " it is too good to allow us to suppose that it 
 was without some (sic) foundation " . Another sample of Mr. Stephen's 
 critical method. Need I point out that the presumption against both 
 versions of the story being true is enormous ? Mr. Stephen, however, 
 seems to accept both.
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 27 
 
 while the ruffianism of Johnson is genteelly described in 
 the same book as the "roughest side of his contempt". 
 Again, in his chapter on Warburton, Mr. Stephen quotes, 
 by way of showing some of that divine's tendencies of 
 style, two passages in which indecent words have to be 
 represented by dashes (i. 352). On any theory of critical 
 justice that I can formulate for myself, the term " bru- 
 tality" should either be applied to such achievements as 
 these of Johnson and Warburton, or else reserved for 
 something still worse. Mr. Stephen never once uses it in 
 regard to the sentences referred to. There is, however, in 
 all Paine's writing, I repeat, nothing coarse enough to be 
 put beside these passages. What is the inference as to 
 Mr. Stephen's critical equity ? 
 
 The points just dealt with lie on the face of Mr. 
 Stephen's own narrative, but there is a further proof of 
 his bias in the fact that he has entirely suppressed all 
 mention of the frantic violences of Burke against the 
 promoters of the French Revolution. The catalogue lies 
 to the reader's hand in Buckle (3-vol. ed. i. 471-5). 
 Burke in his later years saw fit to speak of the pure- 
 minded Condorcet as a determined villain ; to gloat over 
 the sufferings of the imprisoned Lafayette, terming him a 
 "horrid ruffian " ; to shriek against France as a " Cannibal 
 Castle", against the National Assembly as the "prostitute 
 outcasts of mankind ", and against the French people as 
 the " scum of the earth " ; and to urge that the war waged 
 against them by England should be carried on revenge- 
 fully, bloodily, and for a long space of time. And all these 
 insane ferocities are never once hinted at in a compendium 
 which professes to compare Burke with the thinkers and 
 publicists of his time ; while again and again the unen- 
 venomed crudities and coarsenesses of the unsanguinary 
 Paine, who braved death by opposing the execution of the 
 French king, are stigmatised, forsooth, as "brutalities". 
 Thus can history be written. 
 
 We come finally to the question of Paine's general 
 calibre, or comparative intellectual standing among the 
 men of his day. Comparative, one says, for it is difficult 
 to imagine any other criterion by which a man's mind is 
 to be finally measured or classified. And Mr. Stephen, 
 though as we have seen he generally leaves the compara- 
 tive method carefully alone, does fall back upon it here.
 
 28 
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 It is after his memorable biographical paragraph that he 
 proceeds to draw a comparison between Paine and Burke. 
 In his first edition it began thus : "And yet Paine, though 
 even his earlier years " again wanton aspersion, this 
 time without even a biographical reference "were but 
 too good a preparation for this miserable close, had in him 
 the seeds of something like genius ". The paragraph in 
 the second edition runs : 
 
 " Yet Paine, whatever may be the truth " [the discovery of 
 that being modestly left by the historian to the general reader] 
 " as to his private life, or the motives which guided his restless 
 political activity, had in him a dash of genius. Of his chief 
 political writings the tract called ' Common Sense ', published 
 in January 1776, had, as was thought at the time, very great 
 influence in promoting the Declaration of Independence ; and 
 the 'Eights of Man', published in 1791, in answer to Burke's 
 'Reflections', had an enormous sale. The attack upon the 
 established creed in politics showed, in fact, the same qualities 
 as his attack upon the established creed in religion. He was 
 confronted, indeed, in his later writings by an opponent of 
 incomparably greater power than the orthodox theologians who 
 shrieked at the blasphemies of the 'Age of Eeason '. But 
 though Burke moves in an intellectual sphere altogether superior 
 to that in (sic] which Paine was able to rise, and though the 
 richness of Burke's speculative power is as superior to Paine's 
 meagre philosophy as his style is superior in the amplitude of 
 its rhetoric, it is not to be denied that Paine's plain-speaking 
 is more fitted to reach popular passions, and even (! !) that he 
 has certain advantages in point of argument " (ii. 261-2). 
 
 Here, despite the syntactical infirmity of the last sen- 
 tence, there is no difficulty in tracing Mr. Stephen's usual 
 bias. The fact, as stated by almost all other historians, 
 is that " Common Sense " really had a most decisive in- 
 fluence in bringing about the Declaration of Independence : 
 it was not only thought so then; it is known now. In 
 that matter, Paine affected the people of the States just as 
 comprehensively and as powerfully as Burke later affected 
 Englishmen towards the French Eevolution : he was not 
 merely appealing to the mob : he stirred a people to fate- 
 ful action ; and he maintained the impulsion by his further 
 writings at critical moments. This, one would say, repre- 
 sented a genius at least for that sort of thing ; but Mr. 
 Stephen's measure makes out the faculty involved to be 
 but a "dash " of genius. Wherein then lay the amplitude
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 29 
 
 of the genius of Burke ? There is a danger that in de- 
 fending Paine against Mr. Stephen's special pleading we 
 may be tempted into doing Burke injustice ; but I think 
 we shall not be so beguiled when we say that Burke's 
 eminence and merit lay in the breadth and elevation of 
 his social sentiment in his prse-Revolution period, and in 
 the literary and dialectic skill with which he enforced his 
 sentiment at all times, for good or for evil. Alike in his 
 earlier sociology and in his self-expression then and at all 
 times, he was powerful and original. But to say this is 
 not to credit him with an all-round vigor of intellect, or to 
 place him in the front rank of great men. To sum up a 
 man, on the comparative principle, we have to take note 
 of his limitations. 
 
 Now, Mr. Stephen is not slack to attribute limitations 
 to Paine : as usual he can furnish the list without being 
 at pains to collect the proofs. Burke is in an " altogether 
 superior" intellectual sphere, revelling in il richness of 
 speculative power"; while Paine's philosophy is "meagre". 
 But what are the data ? In what respect is Burke's 
 speculation "rich" as distinguished from his rhetoric? 
 There is really no "speculative " element in Burke's pol- 
 itics whatever : his great characteristic is the vehement 
 and various eloquence with which he enounces his instinc- 
 tive attitude towards the social tendencies of his time ; now 
 resisting what he felt to be blind pedantry and inhumane 
 conservatism ; anon finding a wealth of ingenious and 
 imaginative justification for a pedantry and a conservat- 
 ism in which he shared as in resisting the claims of the 
 Dissenters ; and yet again exhausting the power of words 
 to hurl hatred at those who outraged his habits of 
 emotional attachment to historic institutions. He might 
 be right or he might be wrong, but at least he was not 
 speculative in his philosophy : he was a man of deep and 
 strong sentiments and glowing sympathies, with an in- 
 comparable gift of vivid dialectic ; a Gladstone raised to a 
 higher power, because more intense, original, and organic 
 in his convictions, endowed with a genius rather than a 
 talent for expression, and carrying passion in his blood 
 and senses, as well as in his brain. Is it not the express 
 statement of all his admirers, Mr. Stephen included, that 
 he hated the speculative men, who thought out schemes of 
 policy without due regard to " prescription "? I cannot
 
 30 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 see how this squares with richness of speculative power. 
 What Mr. Stephen was really thinking of was just the 
 richness of dialectic, of illustration and figure ; of all, in 
 short, that makes Burke really answer to that much abused 
 designation a prose poet. 
 
 Try him by his relation to non-political ideas, and the 
 limitations become clear. He thought freely and freshly 
 on law, history, and language, but what was his cos- 
 mogony, what his religion ? When Mr. Stephen wishes 
 to discredit Buckle, he asserts that the latter evaded the 
 theological problems of his day ; insisting that this proves 
 intellectual restriction. Of Buckle the statement is simply 
 not true : of Burke it is true. He contrived to set aside, 
 by his sheer force of prejudice, all the religious question- 
 ings of his time, and to rest in the exulting, blatant 
 orthodoxy of the rural Tories of his and our day. And 
 his science ? I cannot recal a trace of proof that he 
 gained anything seminal from the scientific movement of 
 his age : on that side he was at bottom non-receptive. 
 What Paine could see in regard to traditional faith by 
 " rough common-sense", Burke could not see with all his 
 endowment ; where Paine was natively alive to the great 
 problem of the physical universe, Burke was wrapped in 
 a husk of literature, book- culture, and every-day human 
 association. 
 
 Consider in particular, however, the attitude of the two 
 men towards the French Revolution, the issue on which 
 they can best be weighed against each other in respect of 
 breadth and sanity of mind, as distinguished from bril- 
 liance of rhetoric. It is presumably in this connexion, 
 indeed, that Mr. Stephen draws his comparison of the two 
 men ; since he does not refer to Burke's bigotry, and 
 appears to know nothing of Paine save as a writer on 
 politics, and against the Bible. It is like Mr. Stephen 
 to say that the " Reflections " are pitched on an intellectual 
 plane "altogether superior" to that represented by the 
 "Rights of Man", but the proposition, like so many 
 others of his, will not bear examination. Burke, after a 
 lifetime of succes d'estime, suddenly attained a popular 
 success just because he voiced with incomparable elo- 
 quence and energy the sentiments of the average English- 
 man at the Revolution crisis. To say that the work by 
 which he first caught the upper-class and middle-class
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 31 
 
 mind, and produced a general and enduring reaction, is 
 addressed to intellects of a comparatively high order this 
 is only a sample of that unreasoning panegyric of Burke 
 which has so long discredited English criticism. To any 
 one who will apply fair tests it is plain that the elevation 
 lies in the style and not in the thought, which is again 
 merely typical Tory sentiment dignified by an uncommon 
 range of association and argument. So to dignify it was 
 assuredly a great feat, which let us duly admire ; but let 
 us not pretend that the great rhetorician is a great 
 thinker. 
 
 Even Mr. Stephen has a feeling that such a performance 
 as the Reflections of which the sounder elements are not 
 profoundly original, while the unsound are shallow with 
 the shallowness of George the Third will not survive im- 
 partial comparative criticism, much less such arbitrary 
 treatment as he accords to Paine; and he indicates his 
 apprehension in the fashion with which we are now so 
 familiar : 
 
 " Paine fully believed, or appeared to believe, in the speedy 
 advent of the millennium. His vanity, it is true, was interested 
 in the assumption. The American Eevolution, he thought, had 
 brought about the grand explosion, and the foundation of the 
 American Constitution had given the first example of a govern- 
 ment founded on purely reasonable principles. Now the pamphlet 
 ' Common Sense ' had led to the Eevolution, and therefore Paine 
 had fired the match which blew into ruin the whole existing 
 structure of irrational despotism. Still the belief was probably 
 not the less genuine, though thus associated with an excessive 
 estimate of personal merits, and Paine is at times eloquent in 
 expressing the anticipations of universal peace and fraternity 
 destined to such speedy disappointment. His retort upon 
 Burke' s sentimentalism about chivalry and Marie Antoinette is 
 not without dignity .... A degraded representative of the 
 popular sympathies, Paine yet feels for the people, instead of 
 treating their outcry as too (sic] much puling jargon. And 
 therefore he gives utterance to sentiments not to be entirely 
 quenched by Burke' s philosophy " (ii. 263-4). 
 
 Like nearly every passage of Mr. Stephen's that we have 
 had under notice, the foregoing would suffice by itself to 
 convict him of a singular incapacity for equity. Assuming 
 that he had made good his point as to Paine' s vanity, 
 which again is worded with hostile animus, what becomes 
 of the insinuation of insincerity ? Either Paine believed,
 
 32 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 as lie was well entitled to do, that his "Common Sense" 
 had been a main influence in precipitating the Revolution, 
 or he did not. If not, there was no vanity ; yet even in 
 that case he might surely be perfectly sincere in the hope 
 at which Mr. Stephen sneers. We know he lost it later ; 
 but we (nous atttres, that is, excluding Mr. Stephen) know 
 him to have been full of it before the collapse in France. 
 But if, as Mr. Stephen is satisfied, Paine vaingloriously 
 believed he had brought about a beneficent revolution in 
 America, where is there any pretext for hinting at in- 
 sincerity in his words as to the movement of things in 
 Europe ? "The belief," our acute historian finally decides, 
 was "probably not the less genuine though thus associ- 
 ated" with personal vanity; this just after pointing out 
 that the vanity was " interested in " that very belief. As 
 who should say, Cromwell was probably "not the less" 
 sincere in believing Grod was with him after he had won 
 Dunbar. One would be inclined to say that explicit 
 absurdity was Mr. Stephen's strong point, were there not 
 so many reminders that he can be worse than absurd. 
 The deduction as to Paine's probable sincerity, despite 
 vanity, in a belief which flourished on vanity, is worthy to 
 be treasured beside that other that an argument "loses 
 little from not being smothered " ; but we are not allowed 
 to forget dissatisfaction in amusement. The question in 
 hand is the validity of Paine's answer to Burke, from the 
 point of view of right reason. Mr. Stephen will not say 
 that Burke's defence of " prescription" will stand, or that 
 his attitude towards the Revolution was that of one who 
 rightly appreciated the case. He does not like to defend 
 the treatment of the hoarse cry of a wretched people as 
 "too much puling jargon". He feels that Paine has 
 " even some advantages in point of argument ", is not 
 always "without dignity", and utters sentiments "not to 
 be entirely (!) quenched by Burke's philosophy". Partially 
 quenched they may perhaps be (that is for the reader to 
 ascertain) but not entirely. Is Burke's "philosophy then, 
 after all, left in possession of the field ? On the contrary, 
 the conclusion of Mr. Stephen's chapter, after all this un- 
 speakable see-sawing, is that Burke's political philosophy 
 is a mere wreck on the shore of time ! But before this 
 was conceded, the man who had the right end of the stick 
 must needs be described as "degraded", as appealing to
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 popular passions, as a meagre intelligence, as excessively 
 vain ; and his failure to reach finality of political science 
 must be alleged with contempt before the other's failure 
 could be admitted with reluctance and respect. 
 
 A final comparison of Mr. Stephen's dismissals of Paine 
 and Burke respectively will serve to close an examination 
 of which, in that connexion, the reader is perhaps already 
 weary. It is after he has given a "pejorative" account 
 of the drift of the " Rights of Man " that the critic thus 
 pronounces judgment : 
 
 " The doctrines thus vigorously laid down [by Paine in poli- 
 tics] have become tolerably threadbare, and every scribbler can 
 expose their fallacy " (ii. 263). 
 
 The said doctrines included, even on Mr. Stephen's showing, 
 the proposition that the hereditary principle in Government 
 is an absurdity ; that morality consists mainly in doing as 
 we would be done by, and not, as Burke insisted, in reve- 
 rently regarding all constituted authorities in their order ; 
 that the British Constitution was predisposed to corruption ; 
 and that the representative system " meets the reason of 
 man " theses which some of us are fain to maintain still, 
 against even Mr. Stephen and " every scribbler". Nay, Mr. 
 Stephen himself concedes, with his inalienable grace of 
 modification, that Paine spoke " pretty forcibly " when he 
 said that " a body of men holding themselves accountable 
 to nobody ought to be trusted by nobody". But one 
 hastens from such details to a contemplation of the histor- 
 ian's final judgment on Burke, which presents a consumma- 
 tion of dead-lock in antithetic allegation not easily to be 
 paralleled in critical literature. 
 
 " Burke' s magnificent imagination and true philosophical in- 
 sight led him more nearly than any of his contemporaries, and 
 even than any of his successors in English political life, to a 
 genuine historical theory. Unluckily his hatred of unsound meta- 
 physical doctrine induced him to adopt a view which seems often 
 to amount to a denial of the possibility of basing any general 
 principles upon experience. Like the cruder empiricists, he ad- 
 mires the ' rule of thumb ' as the ultimate rule, and conservates 
 mere prejudice under the name of prescription. Godwin's title, 
 1 Political Justice ', indicates the weak side of his great opponent. 
 Burke had not solved the problem of reconciling expediency 
 with morality, though he indicated the road to a solution " 
 (ii. 280).
 
 34 THOMAS PAIItE. 
 
 That is to say, his true philosophical insight led Burke 
 nearer the truth than any man of his time, or any English 
 politician since ; and at the same time his hatred of bad 
 philosophy made him such a had philosopher that he landed 
 in the philosophy of the "cruder empiricists ", videlicet, the 
 rule of thumb. And yet, after all, though he attained no 
 solution of his problem, he "indicated the road to a solu- 
 tion ". And the solution which no English politician has 
 yet hit on ? In the very act of coming to a fair conclu- 
 sion on Burke Mr. Stephen must needs drown decision in 
 contradiction and leave the reader facing blank frustration. 
 It were superfluous to deduce at length the net value of the 
 correlative judgment on Paine ; and in any case the task 
 has become too monotonous to be supportable. One grows 
 weary of this suicidal process of vacillating commentary 
 and incoherent prejudice parading as analytical criticism. 
 Turning from counsel darkened to the stage of darkness 
 visible, let the reader attempt fairly to measure Paine by 
 his relation to his age on the main grounds of universal 
 mental activity. There are some further materials for such 
 a judgment, of the existence of which Mr. Stephen does 
 not appear to be aware. 
 
 We have seen that, even by the admission of a critic 
 with small gift for fairness, Paine did two very remark- 
 able things in his day. Without political or social in- 
 fluence, he roused the American people to revolution by 
 one stirring manifesto ; without learning, he began a new 
 epoch of rationalism by a new and straightforward criti- 
 cism of the reigniog religion. These, be- it observed, 
 were not the transient successes of a demagogue ; they 
 were performances which gave trend to history, and 
 notably affected the courses of thought and civilisation. 
 Wilkes made more local uproar, but Wilkes did not ap- 
 preciably influence universal politics, and Wilkes's scep- 
 ticism bore no fruit in influence on his nation's mind. 
 The constant note of Paine's writing is a commanding and 
 compulsive sincerity, which won for his writings a hearing 
 and a following without precedent in English affairs. In 
 his gift of getting at the heart of any matter he took up 
 he is excelled by no writer of his age ; if he could not, 
 like Burke, " wind into a subject like a serpent ", he 
 struck into it as with the hammer of Thor. By sheer 
 murderous directness of stroke, his pamphlet on English
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 35 
 
 finance at one blow vanquished and convinced Cobbett, 
 who had hated Paine by repute with all his robust gift of 
 hatred, and assailed him with the ferocity in which he 
 excelled his whole generation ; and the bitter enemy was 
 thenceforth the extravagant worshipper and champion of 
 the dead man he had vituperated living. Genius is a word 
 very loosely used, and it is not necessary to commit Paine's 
 case to any definition of it ; but if not the note of genius, 
 then certainly the note of power, is felt in Paine's swift 
 exertions of living force ; as when, after precipitating the 
 American Revolution and inspiring it till its consummation, 
 he felt convinced that if he could only get quietly to 
 England and issue a pamphlet he could sway the nation 
 to a new purpose, and did so sway it with a rapidity which 
 startled into new fear the holders of power. And to the 
 end his faculty of conquering conviction never left him. 
 In the leaflet he wrote on " Gunboats " shortly before his 
 death, every phrase is a blow. 
 
 But this faculty and this achievement, eminent as they 
 are, do not nearly exhaust Paine's intellectual inventory. 
 Let me again quote from the competent and appreciative 
 essay of Mr. Con way, who I believe has been the first 
 to do full justice to the range of ability exhibited in the 
 "Age of Reason" : 
 
 " What homage should we have heard if, in any orthodox 
 work of the last century, had occurred the far-seeing astronomic 
 speculations of the Aye of Reason ? It was from the humble 
 man who in early life studied his globes, purchased at cost of 
 many a dinner, and attended the lectures of Martin, Ferguson, 
 and Bevis, that there came twenty-one years before HerschePs 
 famous paper on the Nebulge, the sentence : ' The probability, 
 therefore, is that each of those fixed stars is also a sun, round 
 which another system of worlds or planets, though too remote 
 for us to discover, performs its revolutions '." (Article on 
 " Thomas Paine", Fortnightly Review, March, 187D, p. 413.) 
 
 But that is not the only exhibition on Paine's part of an 
 energy and endowment of mind which carried forward 
 human achievement in other directions than politics. In 
 the appendix to Sherwin's Life, and in some other quarters, 
 will be found an account of Paine's invention of an. arched 
 iron bridge, which compelled the approval of the scientific 
 men of his day, and which has been the pioneer of the long 
 line of great modern works of bridge-making in metal. The
 
 36 THOJIAS PAINE. 
 
 credit for the first use of iron in bridge-building, like so many 
 other first steps in human progress, appears to be due to 
 the unprogressive Chinese ; but Paine seems to have had 
 no predecessor's hint or help in his introduction of the idea 
 among his race. I cannot ascertain the date at which, in 
 his first sojourn in the States, he constructed his model of 
 an arched iron bridge to cross the Schuylkill at Phila- 
 delphia, and it may be that he was preceded in point of 
 time by the English projector of the iron bridge built over 
 the Severn at Coalbrookdale in 1779; but I believe I am 
 right in saying that this small structure was essentially 
 different from Paine's in its principles. Certainly there is 
 no trace of his having got his idea from it, and the French 
 Academy of Sciences dealt with his as a new invention, 
 furnishing " a new example of the application of a metal 
 of which sufficient us has not hitherto been made on a 
 grand scale ". It is in 1789 that we find him superintend- 
 ing the construction of his bridge at Eotheram in England, 
 and his accounts of the work give striking proof of his 
 practical capacity in the walk of engineering, for which he 
 had had no formal training. He had been moved to the 
 task by the difficulty of bridging the Schuylkill, where the 
 periodical passage of vast masses of ice made piers impos- 
 sible, and the 400 feet span precluded the erection of a 
 stone arch. And coming to the problem of the bridge 
 with the same native vigor of insight which he brought to 
 bear on politics and religion, he " took the idea of con- 
 structing it from a spider's web, of which it resembles a 
 section ". I am not competent to speak of the degree of 
 engineering originality implied in this inspiration ; but it 
 is, I believe, the fact that he made a very great advance 
 in his perception of the tubular principle, which dates from 
 the same time. " Another idea I have taken from nature ", 
 he writes, "is that of increasing the strength of matter by 
 causing it to act over a larger space than it would occupy 
 in a solid state, as is evidenced in the bones of animals, 
 quills of birds, reeds, canes, etc., which, were they solid 
 with the same quantity of matter, would have the same 
 weight with a much less degree of strength ". 
 
 Had Mr. Stephen bethought him to ascertain these 
 matters, which alone would seem to some of us enough to 
 prove Paine a man of uncommon ability, he might per- 
 haps have allowed that they pointed to yet another " dash "
 
 THOMAS PAIXE. 37 
 
 of genius. But it never occurs to Mr. Stephen, in writing 
 the history of the English "Thought" of last century, to 
 take any trouble about estimating the nature, amount, and 
 value of the thinking done in connexion with ^ physical 
 science. His critical method is not concerned with these 
 sides of mind. Let me, in exposition of a critical question 
 of some general importance, beg the reader's jaded atten- 
 tention to the passage in which Mr. Stephen passes general 
 judgment on the intellect of Priestley : 
 
 "Priestley .... possessed one of those restless intellects 
 which are incapable of confining themselves to any single task, 
 and, unfortunately, incapable in consequence of sounding the 
 
 depths of any philosophical system He gave to the 
 
 world a numerous series of dissertations which, with the excep- 
 tion of his scientific writings, bear the marks of hasty and super- 
 ficial thought. As a man of science he has left his mark upon 
 the intellectual history of the century; but, besides being a 
 man of science,, he aimed at being a metaphysician, a theo- 
 logian, a politician, a classical scholar, and a historian 
 
 So discursive a thinker could hardly do much thorough work, 
 ncr really work out or co-ordinate his own opinions. Pushing 
 rationalism to conclusions which shocked the orthodox, he yet 
 retained the most puerile superstitions. He disbelieved in the 
 inspiration of the Apostles, and found fault with St. Paul's 
 reasoning, but had full faith in the prophecies, and at a late 
 period of his life expected the coming of Christ within twenty 
 
 years He flashes out at times some quick and instructive 
 
 estimate of one side of a disputed argument, only to relapse at 
 the next moment into crude dogmas and obsolete supersti- 
 tions" (i. 430-1). 
 
 Did it ever before occur to a historian to sum up a man's 
 performance by enlarging condenmatorily on what are 
 alleged to be his failures, and dismissing in an incidental 
 clause the great successes which have kept his name alive ? 
 To see what such a method would lead to if consistently 
 applied, let us just take one of Mr. Stephen's own sentences, 
 concerning Newton : 
 
 "Newton himself was unconscious of the bearing of his dis- 
 coveries upon the traditional theology, and bent his mighty 
 intellect to that process of solving riddles which he called in- 
 terpreting the prophecies " (i. 82). 
 
 This is, by comparison, a sufficiently lenient way of speak- 
 ing of Newton; seeing that the belief in "prophecy" is,
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 in the eye of pure reason, to the full as puerile a supersti- 
 tion as any of Priestley's, being indeed the very form of 
 superstition which Mr. Stephen specially so characterised 
 in Priestley's case. But anyhow Mr. Stephen admits that 
 Newton was a consummate failure as a rationalist theo- 
 logian, apart from his Arianism. Yet what in Priestley's 
 case is made the justification of a substantially belittling 
 verdict is in Newton's only made an occasion for a respect- 
 ful remark on the weaknesses of greatness ; and Newton 
 is reverently adjudged " mighty " on the strength of his 
 notorious scientific success, while Priestley's notorious 
 scientific success is barely reckoned as a mentionable off- 
 set to his theological weaknesses and inconsistencies. The 
 thing would be ludicrous if it were not so displeasing a 
 violation of the simplest instincts of critical justice. Mr. 
 Stephen undertakes his history of a century's " Thought " 
 without a glimpse of a scientific interpretation of his term ; 
 and he passes judgments on men by the score without an 
 attempt to arrive at a reasoned or uniform standard of 
 measurement. He has neither test nor method. 
 
 Such criticism is but a formal restatement of the drift of 
 general prejudice, deflected by prejudice that is personal. 
 And to come back finally to the matter in hand, it is just 
 the drift of general prejudice that has settled Paine' s place 
 in ordinary history. His singular powers have been in 
 part ignored, in part treated as mere genius for evil, for 
 the simple reason that he was identified with two causes 
 which passed before his death into common odium, the 
 French Revolution and Freethought. In the immense 
 reaction against the evil outcome of the Eevolution, all 
 pretence of fair criticism of the men who had incited it 
 disappeared ; and in the English imagination Paine was 
 slumped with Robespierre and Marat, who sought to slay 
 him because he boldly resisted them. Burke's to-day is 
 seen to be the really lost cause ; but eighty years ago he 
 seemed a kind of archangel assaulting the dragon ; and 
 the gradual change of sentiment has left his legend almost 
 intact ; while Paine, who became identified with the 
 dragon forthwith, is whelmed in limitless slander. His 
 Freethought was taken as a dispensation for every form 
 of calumny that Christian malignity could devise ; and in 
 his adopted country the result was a new revelation of the 
 possibilities of human baseness. No tale of national in-
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 39 
 
 gratitude in the annals of antiquity, where they are so 
 plentiful, will eclipse the record of the repudiation of 
 Paine by the Bepublic he had helped to make, when he 
 recorded his hostility to its superstitions. Others, known 
 to be as unbelieving as he, dissembled, and retained their 
 place on the roll of fame : his name became the chosen 
 target of the great tribe of dastards. " A bust of [Paine], 
 by Jarvis, in the possession of the New York Historical 
 Society, is kept under lock and key because it was defaced 
 and defiled by visitors" (Article in Atlantic Monthly, July, 
 1859, p. 15). And men who are far above the moral plane 
 of the Christian blackguard can still be found to carry on 
 the defilement with pen on paper. Where the known 
 vices of great men are habitually palliated, one falsely 
 imputed vice is made out to be Paine's main characteristic. 
 Addison suffers no diminution of esteem for his confessed 
 intemperance ; Lamb is loved no less for his pathetic 
 weakness ; the licence of Burns leaves him worshipful to 
 his countrymen ; but the disproved charge against Paine 
 is forever iniquitously fastened on his memory, and his 
 unquestioned innocence of life in other regards only stimu- 
 lated to new fury of obloquy the bigots whose creed he 
 had impeached. The thrice disproved lie as to his death- 
 bed terror and remorse is still part of the stock-in-trade 
 of " Christian Evidence " ; and I have just had sent me a 
 copy of a tract entitled "The Inspiration of the Bible", 
 by H. L. Hastings, published by the reputable firm of 
 Bagster and Sons, circulated by the late Lord Shaftesbury, 
 and marked " Fifth Hundred Thousand ", in which the 
 lie is retailed with the " Circumstance " that it was vouched 
 for in 1876 by a woman of eighty-eight, who at the age 
 of eleven was "invited by a distant connexion .... to 
 go and see T. Paine on his death-bed ". And this precious 
 story the pietist offers by way of answering, as he says, 
 the statements of " infidels who were not present ", and 
 who speak of " events which occurred years before they 
 were born". The inspiration of the Bible apparently 
 cannot be defended without false witness against un- 
 believers, and the story is deliberately told in such a way 
 as to prevent the pious reader from suspecting that the 
 death-bed figment was exposed, after personal investiga- 
 tion, by Cobbett, who was Paine's contemporary. And 
 all the while piety is complacent over the assertion that
 
 40 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 a child of eleven was taken by a Christian relative to hear, 
 for edification, the delirious blasphemies and shrieks for 
 mercy of an infidel dying in extreme bodily agony. 
 
 In the face of these crass mendacities of average Chris- 
 tian controversy, it is but just to mention that Mr. 
 Stephen from the first rejected the death-bed story as a 
 fiction. I am sorry there is so little more to say in praise 
 of his treatment of the subject.
 
 TORYISM AND BARBARISM. 
 
 BY JOHN EOBEKTSON. 
 
 " In the involuntary errors of the understanding there can be little to excite, or 
 at least to justify, resentment. That which alone, in a manner, calls for rigid 
 censure, is the sinister bias of the affections." Bentham. 
 
 " The past turns to snakes." Emerson. 
 
 " The chief causes of the low morality of savages, as judged by our standard, 
 are, firstly, the confinement of sympathy to the same tribe. Secondly, powers of 
 reasoning insufficient to recognise the bearing of many virtues .... on the general 
 welfare of the tribe." Darwin. 
 
 No man who has seen anything of the world, he he 
 enthusiast or cynic, will expect to find in any public asso- 
 ciation or party a complete immunity from any form of 
 personal misconduct. Liberal and Conservative, Christian 
 and Freethinker, Protestant and Catholic, if candid, will 
 alike admit that there are black sheep on their own side 
 of ^ the hedge and white ones on the other; Tightness of 
 opinion, from any point of view, being no guarantee of 
 moral merit, any more than ordinary good conduct involves 
 high intelligence. A fair-minded party-man or disputant, 
 therefore, will never urge against any school or set of 
 opinion^ the fact that specific vices can be charged against 
 certain individuals who adhere to it. The canons of fair 
 impeachment will only allow the contention that if a par- 
 ticular way of thinking is found to be frequently associated 
 with a form of wrong-doing w T hich is markedly less common 
 among those who think differently, the onus of self-vin- 
 dication lies with the party stigmatised. And as party 
 controversy is usually neither fair nor methodical, it may 
 T)e set down that a large number of the imputations most 
 usual in politics and polemics are either false or exag- 
 gerated; and indeed it is understood to be one of the 
 charms of the higher politics, as prosecuted in Parliament, 
 that you converse amicably with men whom you publicly 
 proclaim to be the allies of assassins ; and courteously send 
 to congratulate on his improved health the personage 
 whom you brand as the destroyer of his country's liberties. 
 " The man who loudly denounces, "says Goethe, "I always 
 suspect " of what, is not quite clear, but we may assume 
 insincerity. It is needless to examine in detail, then, the 
 general charges of turpitude brought by rival parties
 
 TORYISM AND BARBARISM. 
 
 against each other as wholes, and against leaders in par- 
 ticular. Such charges have their foundation, such as it is, 
 in the scattered acts of unfairness, equivocation, dishonesty, 
 and treachery which are committed by a number of in- 
 dividuals under varying circumstances acts more or less 
 inexcusable, but practically inevitable at the present stage 
 of moral progress. Besides, it lies on the surface that in 
 many cases measure of inconsistency or tergiversation, 
 as the accuser is pretty sure to call it is made the measure 
 of imputed criminality ; whereas the more a man knows- 
 of human nature the more clearly does he see, if he will 
 be candid, that the most striking, the most speedy, and 
 the most extreme changes of view on a particular point 
 may be made in perfect sincerity. Such changes, of 
 course, are proofs of weakness of some sort weakness 
 of perception, of purpose, or of reasoning power; and 
 are not to be lightly condoned as such. It is difficult to- 
 say which of the prominent party leaders of modern times 
 Peel, Disraeli, Gladstone, or Salisbury has the most 
 humiliating record of intellectual vacillation, of hasty 
 belief and hasty conversion, thoughtless denial and 
 thoughtless assertion, standing against him in the passion- 
 less compilation of "Hansard"; and it will be bad for 
 posterity if these men's successors do not learn something 
 of self-criticism and forethought from a study of their 
 careers. For the rest, however, it is plain that the moral 
 is pointed with nearly equal clearness all round. And 
 something is perhaps to be allowed for the stress of the 
 practical difficulties of statesmanship in such a State as 
 ours, where the traditions and the exigencies of party 
 Government make it so hard for leaders to maintain perfect 
 singleness of purpose. If Mr. Bright has stood almost 
 alone among our great politicians in his character for 
 honesty, it is not improbably because he has had so little 
 to do with actual Ministerial work ; for even he is found 
 to incur a charge of inconsistency in connexion with his 
 last tenure of office ; his withdrawal, on its merits, being 
 somewhat tardy. 
 
 To find a statesman turn his back on himself, then, and 
 to find his party turn with him, is not to convict him or 
 them of any uncommon flagitiousness. If Lord Salisbury 
 took service under a man whom he had denounced as an 
 unscrupulous adventurer, Mr. Gladstone, on the other 
 hand, collaborated with one whom he had accused of niean- 
 mindedness; and Sir William Harcourt has vociferously
 
 TORYISM AJTD BARBARISM. 3 
 
 sung the praises of a leader whom lie once bitterly derided. 
 Even the assumption of Lord Eandolph Churchill into the 
 Cabinet, if it casts into the shade all previous surrenders 
 of embarrassed statesmen to detested domestic foes, is not 
 a political transaction unique in kind in the annals of 
 either party. In 'short, the most frequently discussed 
 charges in party warfare are common property and of a 
 common application; and in the present study of Tory 
 morals I shall adopt none of these commonplaces of plat- 
 form recrimination. There is, indeed, some reason to ques- 
 tion whether the recent tactics of the Conservative leaders 
 do not represent an unprecedented lowering of the 
 political standard of morals. The brazen avowal that criti- 
 cism in opposition is one thing and action in office another; 
 the unabashed concession to and alliance with the Horna 
 Rule party after the unmeasured denunciations of the 
 " Kilmainham treaty" and the impassioned demands for 
 coercion in Ireland these are certainly most conspicuous 
 displays of political improbity. Still, while this is noted, 
 it must be remembered that such a policy is only an extension, 
 of the moral licence permitted themselves by party leaders 
 on both sides for generations past. If Mr. Gladstone has 
 not expressly discriminated between his words in opposition 
 and his course in power, it must not be forgotten that in 
 one important particular, to say nothing of others, he has 
 utterly abstained from doing what he easily might to sup- 
 port a profession of principle made by him before his last 
 accession to office. Nothing could be more impressive, 
 more apparently sincere, than his prse-triumphal declaration 
 that the people of these kingdoms ought to have the power 
 of deliberating in Parliament on the expediency of any 
 war in which Ministers desired to embark; and nothing 
 could be more complete than his virtual repudiation of 
 that principle since. He has made war as madly, as mis- 
 takenly, as unpardonably as ever did his antagonists ; and 
 though his Cabinet has shown some redeeming sensitive- 
 ness to just blame, he has perhaps personally carried his 
 policy with as high a hand as the worst of his predecessors. 
 The reminiscence is an evil one for those who have been 
 deceived in him: let it be dismissed with the confession 
 that righteousness in dealings with the inferior races can- 
 not be dwelt on as a virtue which notably distinguishes 
 Liberal from Conservative thus far ; and let it at the same 
 time be allowed that Mr. Gladstone's shifty prevarications 
 go some little way to balance the bolder falsities of his
 
 4 TORYISM A2TD BAEBABISM. 
 
 rival ; though, the elder casuist has in fairness to be credited 
 with his recent confession of error a confession probably 
 not to be paralleled in the history of British statesmanship. 
 What, then, is to be taken as a test of the comparative 
 development of morality among political parties ? Is there 
 any test that can fairly be called crucial ? I think there 
 is. First let it be asked what are the special vices that a 
 dispassionate inquirer might reasonably expect to find 
 common among Liberals and Conservatives respectively ? 
 If we assume, as we reasonably may, that political sympa- 
 thies are the result of a certain bias of mind and f eeling, 
 it is fair to suppose that they will generally consist with a 
 particular intellectual or moral flaw. Now, it is pretty 
 clear that, comparatively, the special element in Liberalism, 
 historically speaking, is intellectual ; while the special 
 element in Conservatism is emotional or aff ectional ; that is 
 to say, the minds which desire change are ex facto more 
 speculative, more inquiring, than those which are averse 
 to it. Not that the Liberal is deficient in those sub-rational 
 tendencies which are so strong in the Conservative ; but 
 that, in whatever degree he may possess the latter, he has 
 the former in addition ; and, keeping this in view, we find 
 it natural that while the Liberal, like the Conservative, has 
 his bad wars to answer for, he is often dead against the other 
 party's wars, while the Conservative is as a rule in favor 
 of any war whatever, and usually condemns the Liberal for 
 not fighting vigorously enough. The element of difference 
 is the intermittent assertion of the Liberal's reasoning 
 faculty, which is obviously and demonstrably the chief 
 factor in all moral progress. The special failing of the 
 Liberal, then, in the terms of the case, is to be looked for 
 on the intellectual side, in that direction in which he con- 
 stitutionally diverges from his opponent ; and it will per- 
 haps be found most philosophic to say that his shortcoming 
 lies in his tendency to believe that his pet set of measures 
 his " machinery ", as Mr. Arnold calls it will work pro- 
 found changes in things, or at least will sufficiently modify 
 the world for all practical purposes. Hence the tendency 
 of every generation of Liberals to imagine that their favor- 
 ite reforms are the consummation of progress. Conservatives 
 may perhaps reject this view, and put it that the Liberal 
 vice is, in the mildest terms, the unreasoning desire for 
 change. As to that, the independent inquirer must be left 
 to decide for himself ; as indeed must be the case when we 
 come to diagnose the moral diathesis of the Tory.
 
 TORYISM AITO BAEBAEISM. 
 
 On our assumption that the Tory specialty is the supre- 
 macy of feeling, commonly so-called, it will follow that his 
 special vices arise from the ebullition of his hereditary im- 
 pulses. Using the word "defect" in its strict sense, we 
 might say that he is seriously defective in that he entirely 
 lacks the element of mental ferment, so to speak ; but it 
 seems hardly fair to blame a man for his entire lack of a 
 particular faculty. Mill struck the right note when he 
 explained that in calling the Conservatives the stupid party 
 he did not mean to say Conservatives were generally stupid, 
 but that stupid people were generally Conservatives a 
 distinction which will appeal to all accurate thinkers. We 
 do not say, then, that the Tory's vice lies in any defect. It 
 is something positive. In the first place, his lack of specu- 
 lative turn tends to make him do extreme injustice to the 
 motives of those who have it, and to condone and uphold 
 established injustices ; but beyond this he is clearly liable 
 to obey his passions and prejudices to an inordinate degree ; 
 which amounts to saying that he is in a serious sense 
 nearer the primitive state than his opponents. I trust the 
 argument is clear thus far, and I challenge a scientific 
 scrutiny of it. 
 
 Let it here be granted that the Tory's specialty may at 
 times have its good side comparatively speaking. While 
 more given to delight in war than the politician of more 
 speculative turn, he may show a generous if ill-judged 
 sympathy where the latter exhibits a somewhat cold cau- 
 tion. If the Tory's taste for intervention is apt to lead to 
 mischief, it is at least not always repugnant to our " better 
 feelings ", as they are called ; while the prudence of the 
 Manchester School is not always free from a touch of the 
 sordid. On the whole, while bad landlords are only too 
 common, a generous Tory- landlord is perhaps as common 
 as a generous Liberal manufacturer. But all this only 
 makes it the clearer that where the Tory's feelings happen 
 to make definitively for evil his wrong-doing will tend to 
 be the more atrocious. If his good feelings tend to out- 
 run judgment, what of his bad ? In the terms of the case, 
 he is at his best a species of noble savage, who may- 
 do a chivalrous thing on occasion, but who is at any mo- 
 ment capable of working a gross injustice. The question 
 is a scientific one. What is the prominent evil of the bar- 
 barous state the state in which feeling is least trammelled 
 by intellect? Plainly the active injustice of brute force 
 the sacrifice of every consideration of natural equity to the
 
 O TORYISM AXD BARBARISM. 
 
 impulses of dislike and affection. Tyrannous power, 
 lawless hatred, deliberate and complacent injury 
 these are the salient moral phenomena of barbarism. 
 The barbarian, who is a bundle of emotions con- 
 trolled by no tribunal of reflection, but swaying him to 
 good or evil as they happen to be stimulated without or 
 within the out-and-out emotionalist knows nothing of 
 right and wrong beyond the narrowest limits. Towards 
 his enemy he is absolutely unscrupulous; and where 
 he has given his allegiance he is uncritically, brutally 
 obedient. So, mutatis mutandis, with the unspeculative 
 political emotionalist of to-day. The history of Liberalism 
 shows no such blind obedience of rank* and file to leader as 
 we find in Toryism. Peel might be cold-shouldered, but 
 Disraeli's after-career showed that, if he knows his business, 
 mere change of front need lose no Tory leader a handful of 
 his followers. It was not for a reasoned principle that they 
 joined his flag, and once he has got hold of them by their 
 instincts he may manipulate his and their official creed as 
 he pleases. All party Government tends to develop un- 
 conscientious obedience; but it is past all question that 
 Conservatives have carried it to a maximum. It is very 
 idle for them to retort on their opponents the stigma of 
 "mechanical majority" when they seek at the same 
 time to make their chief capital out of the known 
 discordancy of the elements of the Liberal party. For- 
 tunately for themselves, the Liberals' claim to unity of 
 creed falls to the ground before the competing programmes ; 
 "while the readiness of the antagonist body to follow its 
 leaders en masse anywhere is plain to a demonstration. The 
 Churchill scandal is no disproof. That is essentially a 
 transient trouble. A section of " dolphins " there might 
 indeed be who grinningly encouraged Lord 'Arry to dis- 
 comfit his elders ; but there was no schism of opinion what- 
 ever ; and his absorption into the bosom of the family brings 
 about a delighted fraternisation throughout the ranks. It was 
 with the Churchill sub-faction as with the faction proper 
 the ruling impulses were personal feeling and the instinct of 
 pugnacity ; and the reunion is as purely a matter of temper 
 as the dissension. Lord 'Arry was the natural leader for 
 the more puerile minds of the party, appealing to them as 
 he did with no reasoned doctrine whatever, but tickling 
 their ears with a series of ad captandum proposals of various 
 kinds, effectively flavored with invariable vituperation of 
 the other side. That, by the way, is a. constant aspect of
 
 TOEYISM AXD BARBARISM. 7 
 
 the Tory specialty. Liberals are not without the faculty 
 of invective, but in practice we find, what in theory we 
 might expect, a much less constant resort to it on their 
 part than on that of their opponents. Mr. Gladstone, with 
 all his serious faults, may be cited as a decisive illustration 
 of the Liberal superiority in that direction ; his most im- 
 passioned impeachments of, say, Lord Beaconsfield, being 
 amenity itself beside that statesman's attacks on Peel. 
 Beaconsfield, of course, was in no sense either a sincere or 
 a typical Conservative, and owed his success entirely to 
 his clear perception of the nature of the Conservative idio- 
 syncrasy ; so that Lord Salisbury is the better antithesis 
 to point to. The contrast in that case becomes decisive ; 
 his lordship's every speech, almost, containing some abusive 
 references to one or other of his leading antagonists ; while 
 Mr. Gladstone hardly ever flings a personality in return ; 
 and even Mr. Chamberlain's attacks are impersonal and 
 dignified in comparison with the angry insolences and un- 
 measured imputations of the Marquis. The latter is above 
 all things the beau sabreur, the wrathful assailant, prone to 
 -charge, barbarian-like, without regard to his following. 
 He is the Berserker of politics. 
 
 But his supremacy in scurrility is clearly the less serious 
 aspect of the Tory's vice. If that were all, it might be 
 dismissed as amounting to the venomous shrewishness of 
 consciously inferior strength; but there is worse behind. 
 His capacity for brutal injustice, always frightfully prompt 
 of exercise where there is a chance of coercing, is specially 
 at the service of any movement of tyrannous fanaticism 
 that chimes with his prejudices. The worst oppressor 
 of Ireland, the bigoted persecutor of struggling sects, he is 
 in his element when he gets an opportunity of denying an 
 Atheist his constitutional rights ; and he adds insult to 
 injury, cowardly slander to gross iniquity, with a zest that 
 sometimes makes it difficult to conceive him as in some 
 respects a civilised personality, with decent habits and some 
 inoffensive tastes. Here, at length, is our crucial test. 
 The authentic mark of the beast, the stamp of the savage, 
 is the shameless assertion of force where passion prompts, 
 in absolute disregard of every appeal to natural right or 
 established law ; and precisely such a shameless, lawless, 
 iniquitous denial of an unquestionable civil right has been 
 perpetrated with almost complete unanimity by the Con- 
 servative party in the case of Mr. Bradlaugh. It has been 
 said that the blame of that injustice lies with those Liberals
 
 8 TORYISM AND BARBARISM. 
 
 who were false to the principles of their party in the 
 matter ; but anyone who studies the question dispassion- 
 ately will see in that defection the last proof of the funda- 
 mental connexion between Tory instinct and the worst kind 
 of social wrong-doing. 
 
 What are the facts ? That Mr. Gladstone, notoriously 
 an eager, emotional Christian, explicitly declared the 
 clear right of the disbarred member to sit. I should be 
 the last person to eulogise the ex-Premier for his slack and 
 reluctant championship of the cause of simple justice in 
 this matter; but though he has stood coldly by while the 
 wrong was being endured, the fact remains that he so far 
 did violence to his religious sympathies as to make even an 
 emphatic declaration on the side of fair-play ; and in this 
 he was supported by a majority of his party ; while Mr. 
 Bright made a chivalrous demonstration on the same side. 
 On the other hand, there came from the Conservative side 
 not a solitary word of the dictates of justice; not an admis- 
 sion of the hardship that was being inflicted ; nothing but 
 a dastardly chorus of boorish contumely and currish 
 hostility the outcry of a body of upper-class rowdies 
 indecently delighting in the oppression of a man in whom 
 they saw an enemy, and by wronging whom they hoped to 
 strengthen their cause among their fellow barbarians. 
 Now, it lies on the face of the matter that the action of 
 the Conservatives in the House of Commons was not the 
 outcome of religious earnestness. The pretence that it was 
 so, and that the opposite attitude of Messrs. Gladstone and 
 Bright came of sympathy with Atheism, might be pointed 
 to as the crowning achievement in partisan lying, if it 
 were not so entirely ludicrous. Religious belief, no doubt, 
 entered into the matter to a considerable extent. Curious 
 as it may seem, it is perfectly credible to the student of 
 human nature that politicians who make gun-wadding of 
 the decalogue in their wars of aggression may be more or 
 less essentially devout men, with a natural affinity for 
 religious mysteries. To suppose, however, that such men 
 as Beaconsfield, Salisbury, and Iddesleigh have anything 
 like the fervor of religious feeling which is found in Bright 
 and Gladstone, is too absurd. No man of the world, 
 further, will believe for a moment that the Conservative 
 leaders would cast off a follower whom they knew to be an 
 Atheist, supposing he were a libertine into the bargain. 
 That the party includes a few sceptics and a great many 
 libertines is sufficiently notorious ; and the party leaders
 
 TORYISM: AND BARBARISM. 9 
 
 would no more ostracise these titan wear the blue ribbon 
 or refuse to meet a Roman Catholic at dinner. A few of 
 their followers have felt so far coerced by these considera- 
 tions as to avow that they would not have kept out Mr. 
 Bradlaugh if he had dissembled decorously at the start, 
 like so many other members ; and the admission is some- 
 thing. It in no way alters the fact, however, that the 
 pretence of piety has been almost unanimously used by the 
 party to justify what is really an act of pure and simple 
 ruffianism. I use that word advisedly, to express the patent 
 spirit of unhesitating, zealous, impish iniquity which has 
 been displayed in the matter. Coleridge has defined 
 wickedness as " egoism designedly unconscientious " ; and 
 if that formula overlaps the Tory action in the case before 
 us it at least partly covers it. The element of deliberate 
 infliction of wrong, which is the chief ingredient in wicked- 
 ness, is present to the full in their conduct ; and if egoism, 
 in the ordinary sense, has not been their inspiration, they 
 figure none the better when we reflect that they have 
 shown a spontaneous delight in tyranny which is commonly 
 associated with the state of savagery, or semi-savage 
 militarism. This may perhaps seem to a calm enquirer an 
 extravagant indictment of the action of a political party ;. 
 but let him see if any less severe construction can be right- 
 fully put on the episode. 
 
 I have said that the defection of a number of Liberals 
 from the cause of religious freedom is the last proof of 
 the essential connexion of the spirit of Toryism with that 
 of social wrong-doing of the kind under consideration. 
 The Liberals who apostatised were with scarcely an excep- 
 tion men whose politics had been determined by the acci- 
 dents of heredity or Dissentership ; and who, accordingly, 
 had little of the typical Liberal tendency to ratiocination 
 in politics. The Fitzwilliams, for instance, belong to the 
 barbarian class, as Mr. Arnold would say ; and Mr. Samuel 
 Morley's is a case in which the exigencies of evangelical 
 life, acting on a conscience of the Bulstrode order, produce 
 a line of action to fully parallel which we must go back 
 a few centuries in history. The kind of pietism which in 
 Mr. Gladstone is regulated by a highly developed intelli- 
 gence, is in him an incalculable hysterical force ; and hia 
 oscillation from his prse-election frenzy of partisanship to 
 his subsequent religious remorse, marks him out as a 
 mediaeval survival. In his way, he too belongs to the 
 Tory type. It may be urged that the effort implied in the
 
 10 TORYISM AND BARBARISM. 
 
 abstention of the Liberal members in question is a proof 
 of their sincerity, and no doubt that is so, up to a certain 
 point. That is to say, the hostility and the fanaticism 
 which inspired them were genuine enough ; just as there 
 was a good deal of genuine hostility and fanaticism on the 
 Tory side. But the point is that while dishonest Tories 
 add dishonesty to oppression, the others, and their quasi- 
 Liberal congeners, are constitutionally prone to injustice, 
 and ought, in the interests of society, to be branded as 
 dangerously vicious organisms in that respect. The apos- 
 tate Liberals acted under the sway of their ineradicated 
 vice, not on an intellectual decision. Had their action 
 been truly and conscientiously political they would have 
 made a more open and explicit profession of their reasons, 
 and would not have merely stayed away from the debates 
 as in so many cases they did. Their policy was the war 
 policy of Bedouins, capable of abandoning a cause at a 
 critical moment for no better reason than superstition and 
 tribal hatred. 
 
 It was not the purpose of this paper to look into the 
 tactics of the Home Rulers who have cooperated with their 
 old enemies in the Bradlaugh case ; but it is worth pointing 
 out that their action illustrates the whole of the foregoing 
 thesis ; and the matter has practical importance for thought- 
 ful students of politics. The deplorable conditions of past 
 Irish life have produced, in the Home Eule party, a body 
 of men whose idiosyncrasy is clearly near that of the Tory 
 in order of development : who, that is to say, are swayed 
 rather by feeling than by the spirit of speculation ; though 
 their situation has developed in them a noteworthy species 
 of adroitness in adapting means to ends. The essentially 
 blind and barbarian character of their main impulse 
 race spirit and national hatred makes their moral range 
 at least as primitively narrow as that of the typical Con- 
 servative ; and their public life is consequently a constant 
 outflow of monomaniac passion and prejudice or profligate 
 slander. There was a scientific truth in the observation 
 of the Parliamentary humorist that " a man must have 
 some principles, unless he is a Home Kuler". All they 
 need to act on is an instinct. Thus we may, unhappily, 
 look to them for the very grossest displays of shameless 
 injustice, and, setting aside as we here may their other 
 misdeeds, we find such a display in their treatment of Mr. 
 Bradlaugh. To the guilt of the Tories they have added 
 that of an unspeakable ingratitude such ingratitude as
 
 TORYISM AM) BARBARISM. 11 
 
 belongs to an almost premoral state of things. All Mr. 
 Bradlaugh's services to their nation, his strenuous vindica- 
 tion of its rights when these were for the most part cal- 
 lously ignored in England, his constant sympathy with 
 the Irish people in their hardships, have been not merely 
 overlooked but denied, and calumny has been bestowed 
 where gratitude and help were due. Of all the clouds 
 on the prospect before the Irish people this is perhaps the 
 darkest, that their representatives, with sins enough to 
 answer for where they had some pretext for resentment, 
 have shown themselves capable of doing with light hearts 
 a reckless wrong to a tried benefactor whom they thought 
 it politic to repudiate. Mr. Bradlaugh, when in the House, 
 moved the rejection of the Coercion Bill when the Home 
 Rule leader had timorously deserted his post, and he has 
 had his reward in a hostility and vilification which have 
 out-Toried the Tories. And why? First, because the 
 craven leader, thus compromised, became an unscrupulous 
 enemy, and, having a body of dependent followers chiefly 
 of the emotional and prejudiced type, has been able to 
 sway them to his purposes ; secondly, because Ireland is 
 mainly Eoman Catholic, and ready to obey its priests so 
 long as they do not resist its main political bias. There 
 are perhaps some other causes, which may one day be 
 made clear. 
 
 But if such a state of things promises ill for the moral 
 or social progress of Ireland, no less do the kindred phe- 
 nomena of Tory barbarism suggest future trouble in Eng- 
 land. Let the unprejudiced reader judge. In the course 
 of the present electoral campaign, of all the hundreds of 
 Conservative candidates who have spoken, certainly not 
 not more than a dozen [I speak under correction : I have 
 only noted four] have consented to so much as support an 
 Affirmation Bill ; while of all the hundreds of Liberal 
 candidates, not more than a dozen, if so many, have de- 
 clared against admitting Atheists to Parliament. And 
 while the Liberals have in certainly the majority of cases 
 protested that they have no sympathy with Mr. Bradlaugh's 
 views, and have thus evidently acted on an intellectual 
 decision, the majority of the Tories have seized the oppor- 
 tunity to more or less brutally vilify the man they are 
 seeking to crush. The language of their aristocrats has 
 in many cases literally been the language of blackguards 
 one of the decisive evidences of reversion to a prior an- 
 cestral type. But it is not only the thinly-veneered bar-
 
 12 TORYISM A2TD BARBARISM. 
 
 barians who thus testify to the prevailing tendency of 
 Toryism : the tactics of the leaders clearly point to a calcu- 
 lation that to wrong the Atheist is the profitable course to 
 take. Lord Iddesleigh, sometimes complimented by Liberal 
 journalists in an expansive mood as being a gentleman in 
 comparison with his colleagues, was long ago legible to 
 closer observers as a weak tool, incapable of winning ad- 
 herence to his own views, and always ignobly ready to 
 compromise them rather than offend his half-supporters. 
 But Lord Iddesleigh's course in the Bradlaugh case has 
 been something worse than ignoble. He is recognisably, 
 by rights, not a typical Tory, but a weak Liberal that is, 
 a man with a certain endowment of the intellectual quali- 
 ties which dispose men to Liberalism, and no great share of 
 the barbarism which makes them Tories ; but his weakness 
 has kept him where his lot was first cast, in the Tory camp ; 
 and the effect of his surroundings has -been to gradually 
 worsen him, till his thinking faculty appears chiefly to serve 
 him to lend himself with blundering caution to the brutality 
 in which he has no natural part. His action in this matter 
 has been that of a man who saw clearly enough what was 
 the reasonable thing to do, and who, without the bar- 
 barian's excuse of innate ruffianism, yet conformed to the 
 bias of the worst members of his party and ultimately be- 
 came their mere catspaw, stultifying himself in the process 
 with a facility only less memorable than his moral collapse. 
 So that the man who might have been a decent Liberal 
 becomes in the Tory environment, in a sense, even worse 
 than his surroundings, he doing against his lights what 
 the others do because of lack of light ; even as, it is said, 
 when white men settle down among savages they tend to 
 become more slothful and depraved even than their neigh- 
 bors. It is perhaps well that such a personage as this 
 should be shelved in the House of Lords, out of the way of 
 the strife that may be to come. 
 
 Perhaps even a more convincing illustration, to somo 
 minds, of the evil influence of the Tory cult on those within 
 its sphere, is to be found in the case of Mr. Arthur J. 
 Balfour, nephew of Lord Salisbury, and late member of 
 the Fourth Party. That gentleman, who is a cultured 
 metaphysician, has written an able and interesting book 
 entitled "A Defence of Philosophic Doubt", in which, 
 with much literary and dialectic skill, he supplements the 
 philosophic achievement of Hume by a demonstration that 
 the beliefs of those of us who call ourselves nationalists, in
 
 TOEYISM ASD BAHBAEISM. 13 
 
 regard to the persistence of Law in Nature, have no better 
 ultimate foundation than the constitutional tendency to 
 take a scientific view, while a tendency to believe in 
 mythology is similarly the sole foundation of Mr. Bal- 
 four's belief in the religious mysteries on which he 
 spiritually subsists. I believe Rationalists are not un- 
 willing to endorse Mr. Balfour's sceptical philosophy, and 
 are content to explain that organisms of his type, with a 
 constitutional thirst for avowedly unintelligible mysteries, 
 are in process of disappearing, while the scientific type of 
 mind is destined to survive. But I wish here to point out 
 how strikingly Mr. Balfour's conduct in the Bradlaugh 
 case establishes the conclusion that psychologically he 
 represents a transient reversion to a primitive type. He 
 has recently spoken in public on the subject to the follow- 
 ing effect : 
 
 " Mr. Hopkinson was of opinion that disabilities on account 
 of opinions on religion ought to be removed at once, and an 
 Affirmation Bill passed. He [Mr. Balfour] did not share that 
 opinion (applause) and he would explain why. The practi- 
 cal object of an Affirmation Bill would be to enable Mr. Brad- 
 laugh, who was already prepared to take the oath, to enter the 
 House without taking it. Nobody could deny that to bring in a 
 Bill and deliberately exclude belief in God from the oath taken 
 by a member of Parliament would meet with great opposition, 
 and, -mistakenly or not, it would undoubtedly shock the most 
 respectable feelings of the country. He would ask Mr. Hop- 
 kinson whether he was prepared to delay public business by in- 
 troducing a Bill which it would cause a large amount of friction 
 to pass. ' If I have any say in the matter ', Mr. Balfour added, 
 ' it will not be one of the first duties of Parliament when it 
 meets to bring in an Affirmation Bill.' " 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine anything more nakedly 
 discreditable than the tone here taken. There is not a 
 word of justice or principle : the sole pretext is that many 
 people, to whom Mr. Balfour is pleased to attribute the 
 "most respectable feelings of the country," would be 
 shocked, "mistakenly or not"; on which ground Mr. 
 Balfour would deny Atheists their civil rights for ever and 
 a day for if there is any meaning in his despicable plea 
 about shocking respectable feelings it will hold good at 
 any time as well as when Parliament meets. I do not 
 pretend to estimate how far Mr. Balfour who certainly 
 knows something of how the intelligence of the nation is 
 distributed is sincere in his account of what are the most 
 respectable feelings in the country; but I submit that
 
 14 TOKYISM AXD BARBARISM. 
 
 whatever feelings underlie the nefarious policy he adopts 
 \vill ere long cease to be respectable in the eyes of decent 
 men. If religion is to be the sole and constant excuse for 
 conduct of deliberate turpitude, the end will be that reli- 
 gion will acquire the infamy of the proceedings it is used 
 to sanction. 
 
 Let the bigot and the aristocrat look to it. They have 
 been teaching that tyrannous prejudice may be "respecta- 
 ble " when it inflicts outrageous wrong on a few ; and they 
 have also been wont to say there is a danger that the 
 prejudices of the working classes, if given legislative effect 
 to, may inflict wrong on the owners of property. It ia 
 possible ; though the assurance comes from such authori- 
 ties. The singular thing is that they thus persistently 
 exhibit to those working classes their own perfect readiness 
 to inflict a monstrous wrong when it suits them to do so, 
 or when they can gratify their own or their allies' enmities 
 by doing it ; and that all the while they produce no better 
 reason than that it is their pleasure so to do. Now, the 
 working classes of this country are every day becoming 
 less actively superstitious, and they are at least not growing 
 less disposed to resent iniquitous tyranny, wherever exer- 
 cised; nor are they remarkable for a capacity to forget 
 those who have espoused their cause. Mr. Bright has- 
 averred his belief that they care as little for the dogmas of 
 Christianity as the upper classes care for its practice : how- 
 ever that may be, it is certain that they are now less likely 
 than ever to tolerate an act of high-handed oppression, 
 perpetrated chiefly at the instance of aristocrats, pluto- 
 crats, and churchmen, and zealously assisted-in by Papist 
 prelates and unscrupulous Home Rulers. Prejudice might 
 come in there ; though, taking them all over, the working 
 classes are less given to act oppressively on the promptings 
 of prejudice than any other class in the community. If 
 there were not abundant proof of this in the past, the facts 
 we have been considering would supply enough. Mr. 
 Arnold, in his famous classification of his fellow-creatures 
 as "Barbarians, Philistines, Populace," lays it down that 
 the characteristic .of the populace is to crush by brute force 
 those who oppose it ; founding his opinion, apparently, on 
 the Hyde Park riots, so-called, in which connexion, with 
 unwonted facility in fallacy, he has omitted to notice that 
 brute force had been used against the populace to begin 
 with. Mr. Arnold would probably admit to-day, in respect 
 of the Bradlaugh case at least, that blind force has beea
 
 TORYISM AND BARBARISM. 
 
 employed without scruple by the Barbarians and the 
 Philistines ; while the populace have remained patient for 
 five years under the outrage done to the man whom Mr. 
 Arnold singled out as their typical leader that leader all 
 the while fighting his case with scrupulous legality, and 
 never hinting at any appeal to that force of the populace 
 which he is admittedly able to sway. Mr. Arnold will 
 have to revise his formula. 
 
 Popular patience might, of course, give way one day ; 
 and it is reassuring to be able to conclude that it wiU not 
 be tried much longer. But nothing can now alter what 
 has been done, and the lesson of the whole matter for the 
 populace is, as has been said, one that bodes ill for the 
 Conservatives. The people have seen what is the real 
 value of upper-class declamations about justice and class 
 prejudices : they are able to judge of the attitude of mind 
 which is devout about the " sacred rights of property " and 
 is more than willing to violate the rights of citizenship. 
 They have had reason in other ways to scrutinise the devo- 
 tion to established Christianity professed by men who, as 
 M. Eochefort puts it, make cigarette papers of the Bible ; 
 and if there be any risk of their forgetting all these things 
 there are some who will take pains to provide that they 
 shall not. The dice of political destiny are accordingly be- 
 ing loaded against the Salisbury's and Balfours, the priests 
 and "respectabilities". But is that all that is to be ap- 
 prehended ? 
 
 If there is any force in what has been urged in these 
 pages as to the fundamental barbarism of Tory instinct, it 
 follows either that Toryism must crumble away or that it 
 will manifest itself in various fashions in the near future. 
 Some years ago people began to say that Toryism proper 
 was nearly extinct ; but the facts we have discussed have 
 shown how hasty was the assumption. ' The historic spirit 
 of Toryism did but appear to be dying out because for a 
 trine the issues tried between parties were such as only 
 divided the upper and middle classes argumentatively 
 among themselves : the moment an efficient test case arises 
 the old temper is found to assert itself freely. And the 
 Bradlaugh case is in all probability the prelude to a period 
 in which the entire remainder not only of downright 
 disability but of Protean privilege will be assailed with 
 a persistency and vigor never seen in British politics 
 before. Here then are the main elements of the political 
 history that is about to be made in England : on the one
 
 16 TORYISM AND BARBARISM. 
 
 hand a Conservative party as essentially anti-popular and 
 tyrannous as ever, as full as ever of upper-class insolence 
 and aristocratic ruffianism ; on the other a populace daily 
 becoming more practically educated and more efficiently 
 organised; a populace which has seen the seamy side of 
 Conservative morals unrolled before it with a completeness 
 that leaves nothing to the imagination. And the move- 
 ment of things at the moment is evidently towards an in- 
 tensification of Toryism and a counterbalancing development 
 of Liberalism. Some dozen of the apostate Liberals of the 
 late Parliament have either been dismissed from political 
 life or sternly menaced by avenging Eadicalism; while 
 on the Tory side, it is plain, the word has gone round to play 
 the card of religion and "respectability ". In the ordinary 
 course of things the recrudescence of bigotry over the oath 
 question would have waned in five years, whereas the Con- 
 servative attitude on the subject is to-day more determined 
 than it was in 1880 ; which amounts to saying that the 
 forces of oppression have been deliberately organised and 
 recruited. What are the probable motives of the handful 
 of Conservatives who have approved of an Affirmation Bill 
 it would be invidious to enquire: whether they are all 
 sincerely desirous of seeing one passed, or in the least pre- 
 pared to push it, is open to question. But in any case 
 their appearance only serves to emphasise the more strongly 
 the damning force of the inference to be drawn from the 
 general Tory policy on the so-called oath question. The 
 slight variation they constitute on the main tendency of 
 Toryism, like the few remnants of determined bigotry on 
 the side of nominal Liberalism, does but establish our 
 conviction that in such an investigation as the present we 
 are dealing with substantial tendencies in human nature, 
 from which we may reason with confidence to a working 
 political philosophy. 
 
 PRICE TWOPENCE. 
 
 Printed by ANN-IE BESAXT and CHARLES BRADLAUGH, 63, Fleet St., London. 1885.
 
 SOCIALISM AND IALTHUSIANISM. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ROBERTSON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
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 63, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 1885. 
 
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 LONDON : 
 
 FEINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHABLES BEADLATJGH, 
 63, FLEET STREET, E.G.
 
 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIANISM. 
 
 A REMARKABLE feature in current Socialist propaganda is 
 the almost complete unanimity with which the doctrines of 
 Malthus are there derided, denounced, and repudiated. 
 Alike in the English Socialist journals, in works such as 
 Mr. Grronlund's and Dr, Bebel's, and in semi-Socialistic 
 productions like Mr. George's "Progress and Poverty", 
 that law of population which is one of the foundations of 
 the Darwinian system is bitterly assailed; terms of vitupera- 
 tion being only varied by those of contempt the latter, 
 however, being too much flavored with wrath to carry any 
 impression of real intellectual security. Such a state of 
 things whatever be the truth as to the point in dispute 
 is in itself sufficient to dispose of the claim so often made 
 by present-day Socialists, that their movement is a scientific 
 one. The spirit of science does not assail a patiently and 
 thoughtfully constructed theory with mere cheap abuse and 
 vulgar ridicule. "Where it doubts it gives its reasons for 
 doubting; and when it meets a candid, scrupulous, and 
 temperate reasoner, it gives him credit for his labor and 
 his temper, even if it dissents from his conclusions. Such 
 a thinker would Malthus be admitted to be by any student 
 of sociology at once honest and judicial in attitude ; but 
 never a word of becoming recognition do his great qualities 
 receive from the militant Socialists. Aware as some of 
 them are that Malthus is endorsed by Darwin, they affect 
 to regard his theory as exploded. Prepared as they are 
 to work with clergymen who share their views, they think 
 it tasteful to allude to him as " Parson Malthus ", as if the 
 title in his case served to discredit his theories. We who 
 <5all ourselves Secularists will not be accused of show- 
 ing too much respect to priests ; but I trust we shall never
 
 SOCIALISM AND MAXTHUSIANISM. 
 
 be guilty of using such, banal discourtesy to any men who, 
 while holding religious opinions which we reject, have a 
 claim on our respect in the devotion of their lives to 
 humane science and in the tolerant and philosophic cast of 
 their minds. 
 
 The treatment of Malthus by Socialists and semi-Social- 
 ists of course varies somewhat in tone ; and it is only right 
 in this connexion to take note of a recent contribution 1 
 from the latter school in which, if the acquaintance shown 
 with the subject be inadequate and the spirit unscientific, 
 there is yet an attempt to dispose of Malthusianism by ar- 
 gument instead of by impertinence. The unscientific 
 character of Mr. Wicksteed's method is apparent in the 
 opening sentence of his chapter on Population. "The 
 theory of over-population," he observes, "means, as I take 
 it, that in a given part of the world there are more people 
 than can obtain food and clothing from its surface without 
 an excessive amount of toil " ; and he goes on to assume, 
 with professions of a desire to be fair, that Malthusians 
 hold " that as soon as a country does not produce its own 
 food it is over-populated, and the smaller portion it pro- 
 duces the more it is over-populated." Now, this opinion 
 may conceivably be held by persons holding the Malthusian 
 principle ; but it forms no part of Malthusianism proper. 
 The law of Malthus as Mr. "Wicksteed knows, for he quotes 
 it is that " there is a natural tendency and constant effort 
 in population to increase beyond the means of subsistence" ; 
 and though Malthus, applying his law to conduct, recom- 
 mended certain prudential experiments, and Neo-Malthusi- 
 ans to-day suggest expedients they consider better, the law 
 of population remains the law of population, not any set of 
 political suggestions for providing against poverty and 
 misery. Failing to understand this, Mr. "Wicksteed pro- 
 ceeds to urge a number of arguments which, while they 
 may tell against the practical politics of some Malthusians, 
 only serve to confuse the issue between him and Malthusi- 
 anism. 
 
 Mr. Wicksteed supposes himself to be arguing against 
 the "population theory" when he proceeds to show that 
 there is poverty in France, where the population increases 
 very slowly ; that there is destitution in thinly-populated 
 
 1 "The Land for the People : how to obtain it : how to manage it." 
 By Charles "Wicksteed. London : Win. Keeves, 185, Fleet Street, E.C.
 
 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIANISM. 5 
 
 countries ; and that we may have brisk trade in England 
 a few years hence, as we had some years ago, although 
 population continues to increase. If he would only read 
 the " Essay on the Principle of Population ", he will find 
 that Malthus was as fully alive to these obvious facts as he 
 is ; and that the question goes a great way beyond such 
 preliminary considerations. What Malthus did was to 
 show that in every country and at all periods, among 
 savages and among the civilised, there is a tendency to 
 produce more children than can be reared to manhood; and 
 that it is by such children dying early, from insufficient 
 nurture, or by general disease, or by war, or by famine, 
 or by vice, that population is always kept, as it must 
 always remain, more or less within the margin of subsist- 
 ence. What Mr. Wicksteed does at best is to show that 
 in any given country, if men in general were wiser than 
 they are, more people might be comfortably supported 
 than are supported at present ; which very few people will 
 deny. As for his argument from the fluctuations in na- 
 tional prosperity, that only amounts to saying that sub- 
 sistence varies in abundance a truth which Malthus took 
 a good deal of pains to illustrate ; as he did the correlative 
 truth that when a positive check happens to bring down 
 population considerably below the level of subsistence, the 
 fall, is likely to be followed by a rapid increase in propaga- 
 tion. On that point he simply showed that excess ulti- 
 mately arises, and that such excess is always removed by 
 one cause or another war, disease, poverty, famine, or 
 emigration. But Malthus never taught, as so many people 
 seem to suppose, that if only population be restrained by 
 preventive checks, poverty is bound to disappear. He was 
 not given to the headlong reasoning of the Socialist and 
 land-nationalising schools of our time ; and if he were alive 
 to-day, and were asked why France suffered from a good 
 deal of poverty, he would probably lay his finger on the 
 true explanation, which is that its enormous burden of 
 militarism largely countervails the advantage of a restricted 
 population. With the fact that in England to-day, as Mr. 
 Wicksteed points out, land is being withdrawn from culti- 
 vation, he would only be concerned as constituting a datum 
 to be recorded. For him the fact would stand thus : "Under 
 a certain land system, given certain conditions of industry 
 and free trade in foreign corn, land may go out of cultivation. 
 Either such lapse from cultivation reduces the available sub-
 
 6 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIANISM. 
 
 sistence of the population or not [Mr. Wicksteed seems to- 
 say it does not, asserting that ' we are not suffering from 
 any shortness of food '] either way the tendency to over- 
 populate remains, and the acute stage of suffering is reached 
 sooner or later as the case may be ". If Mr. Wicksteed 
 were searching for scientific truth instead of merely for 
 arguments for land nationalisation (a perfectly proper end 
 in itself), he would see that not one of his facts invalidates 
 the Malthusian law ; though they may have cogency as 
 against any fanatical Malthusians who say that no reform 
 in the land laws is needed. To say as he does that ' ' by 
 the Malthusian theory we ought to be getting richer" is 
 simply to quibble very idly over the proposition that as 
 population increases fresh land must be brought into culti- 
 vation. Our extra food to-day is got by cultivating lands 
 in other countries ; and it will hardly be pretended that 
 our population has long been steadily decreasing in pro- 
 portion to the food obtained. 
 
 But besides facts, Mr. Wicksteed offers theories. He 
 " considers that Henry George has shown " the Malthusian 
 theory to be " ridiculously untrue " ; and he delivers himself 
 as follows : 
 
 " No matter where we look, as Mr. George lias so forcibly 
 shown, we find that it is tmder-population that we are suffering 
 from. Countries once prosperous and rich with teeming popu- 
 lations are now miserable and poor with scant. Eead a lecture 
 given by Mr. Arnold Lupton, M.I.C.E., F.G.S., etc., 'Our 
 Inheritance in the Earth ' . . . . where the enormous capacity 
 of our earth is clearly shown. Even with our present knowledge, 
 he shows that the earth could well support 100,000 millions of 
 people, or seventy times its present population." 
 
 Note here the spasmodic inconsequence of the argument. 
 Not a single detail is given about the countries alleged to 
 be once prosperous and populous and now poor and bare ; 
 and it appears to be assumed that to say the earth might 
 le made to support so many more millions amounts to a 
 proof that "it is under-population that we are suffering 
 from ". But as Mr. Wicksteed invokes the name of Mr. 
 Henry George, it will be advisable to examine that writer's 
 pretended refutation of Malthusianism. Mr. George, like 
 Mr. Wicksteed, believes in a God whose ineptitude almost 
 attains the sublime by exhausting one's sense of the ridicu- 
 lous. He is Omnipotent, this God, and he "intended" 
 that men should always hold the land in common; but
 
 SOCIALISM: AND MALTHUSIANISM. 7 
 
 liiunan folly has conquered Omnipotence, and God has 
 never been able to get his own way. With this puerile 
 theosophy men like Mr. George and Mr. Wicksteed recom- 
 mend their land policy to the minds in which theism ope- 
 rates as a fluid keeping all sorts of inconsistencies in solu- 
 tion. Naturally enough, an irrational theory of the uni- 
 verse is accompanied by an uscientific scheme of taxation, 
 in which rent is singled out from every other form of in- 
 come for appropriation ; the man who lives on dividends 
 from consols being unmolested while the landowner is 
 mulcted. But enough for our present study is the reason- 
 ing of Mr. George on the law of population. That is a 
 formidably ravelled process. 
 
 After admitting that the principle of Malthus " stands in 
 the world of thought as an accepted truth ", and that it is 
 incorporated in the Darwinian theory, Mr. George declares 
 that it is " utterly untenable ". He begins his argument 
 thus : 
 
 " Population always tending to pass the limit of subsistence! 
 How is it, then, that this globe of ours, after all the thousands, 
 and it is now thought millions, of years that man has been 
 upon the earth, is yet so thinly populated ? " 
 
 If Mr. George has read Malthus' Essay, "which", as he 
 says, "is much oftener spoken of than read," he has found 
 the'answer there : " one of the most crushing answers," as 
 it has been put in an economic treatise not strongly Mal- 
 thusian in its teaching "one of the most crushing answers 
 that patient and hard-working science has ever given to 
 the reckless assertions of its adversaries". Malthus showed 
 in the most exhaustive detail how population has been 
 checked in all countries and at all times by one or other of 
 the preventive or positive checks of prudence, vice, in- 
 fanticide, famine, poverty, pestilence, injurious toil, disease, 
 and war. Mr. George, admitting that there has been 
 plenty of misery in the world, announces that in every case 
 it has arisen " either from unsocial ignorance and rapacity, 
 or from bad government, unjust laws, or destructive war- 
 fare ". Now, to use such language by way of discrediting 
 Malthus is only to show incompetence to gather Malthus' 
 meaning. No man ever did more to show how ' ' unsocial 
 ignorance" hindered human well-being: the very object 
 of his treatise was to dispel such ignorance. But Mr. 
 George in the very same chapter (Book II., ch. ii.), after
 
 8 SOCIALISE AXD XALTETCSIANISM. 
 
 admitting that " unsocial ignorance " may produce misery, 
 goes on to declare that " nowhere can want be properly 
 attributed to the pressure of population against the power 
 to procure subsistence in the then existing degree of human 
 knowledge ". Here, besides the self-contradiction, we have 
 one of Mr. George's main fallacies in a nutshell. He 
 virtually tells us that when the savages of the Andaman 
 islands died for lack of the shell-fish they usually picked 
 up by the sea, it was their own fault, because they knew 
 how precarious were these supplies, and they ought to 
 have accumulated other stores of food; that when the 
 Digger Indians live on grasshoppers, and the aboriginal 
 Australians on the worms they get in rotten wood, they 
 are not making proper use of their knowledge. What is 
 to be said of a writer who sociologises in this fashion ? He 
 asks us to believe that the savage "knows" how to get 
 better food if he only would ; and dies out of obstinacy. 
 What is the meaning of such a doctrine ? Any ordinary 
 mind, unpossessed by a pre-conceived theory, will admit 
 that it is idle to the last degree ; but it is not more idle 
 than Mr. George's teaching that men and women ought to 
 propagate freely to-day because more food might be pro- 
 duced if only the majority of men were wiser. His thesis is 
 that "in the existing state of knowledge" that is, of 
 some people's knowledge it is certain that the amount of 
 food produced might be increased. But what does such 
 an assertion practically amount to? What is the immediate 
 effect of a " knowledge " which the majority have not 
 acquired ? Are we to bring children into the world for 
 premature death because we "know" that the land 
 "could" yield more food, if only it were nationalised 
 while we also know that it will nevertheless not be 
 nationalised for some time to come ? Mr. George is not 
 a very clear-headed thinker, and he may not see that his 
 book tends to convey such a precept ; but such is the fact. 
 And equally certain is it that his implied denial of the 
 helplessness of starved savages involves an extremely 
 repulsive form of Calvinism. 
 
 If the above imputation on Mr. George's clearness of 
 perception be demurred to, let the further steps in his 
 criticism of Malthus be taken as a test. After an untrust- 
 worthy, and in any case irrelevant, set of assertions as to 
 the populousness of ancient nations, he deliberately ad- 
 vances as an argument against the law of population the
 
 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIANISM. 9 
 
 iact that only in recent times has it been formulated. How 
 is it, he asks, that the more civilised peoples of the world 
 have never recognised or admitted this law down to our 
 own time, but on the contrary have always encouraged 
 propagation ? It is difficult to deal respectfully with such 
 a question. Would Mr. George allege that the fact that 
 almost the whole of mankind before Galileo held the earth 
 to be flat, is a reason for doubting that the earth is round ? 
 What is the purpose of his reference to the "wisdom of 
 the centuries" if it is not a catchpenny appeal to popular 
 ignorance ? It may or may not be the outcome of intel- 
 lectual confusion on his part, but as to his next argument 
 there can be no doubt. "If the tendency to reproduce", 
 he asks, "be so strong as Malthusianism supposes, how is 
 it that families so often become extinct families in which 
 want is unknown?" And he goes on to argue that "on 
 the presumption that population tends to double every 
 twenty-five years ", the descendants of Confucius ought, in 
 2,150 years after Confucius' death, to have amounted to 
 859, 559, 193, 106, 709, 670, 198, 710, 528 souls; whereas 
 in fact they only numbered some 22,000. It is depressing 
 to think that such an exhibition of childish folly can have 
 impressed anybody as an argument. Does Mr. George, or 
 does he not, understand the meaning of the words " tends 
 to " ?. It would really seem not. Setting aside the case of 
 the descendants of Confucius which eimply serves further 
 to confuse the issue, for Malthus never pretended to say what 
 would ultimately happen to a family "enjoying peculiar 
 privileges and consideration " in China or anywhere else 
 the Malthusian assertion in regard to China may be thus set 
 forth, for the benefit of Mr. George's admirers: The 
 tendency there, as everywhere else, has been to produce 
 children beyond the available subsistence ; and the super- 
 fluous population produced under the operation of this law 
 has simply been perpetually cropped off by disease, poverty, 
 famine, war, and infanticide; while vice has to a large 
 extent kept the tendency in check. Does Mr. George 
 pretend even to say that the descendants of Confucius have 
 not lessened or thwarted their reproductive powers by 
 vicious practices ? It matters not to the argument whether 
 their failure to attain greater numbers result from vice or 
 the enervation of luxury, or whether their particular stock 
 happened to be comparatively infecund the fact remains 
 that not only is the tendency of population to double itself
 
 10 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIANISM. 
 
 under favourable conditions in twenty-five years; but it 
 has actually been known to do so, as Mr. George himself 
 admits. His Confucian figures are mere dust for his readers' 
 eyes. 
 
 After this achievement, Mr. George goes on to argue in 
 detail that in every thickly-populated country where people 
 are chronically miserable, it is not because there are too 
 many of them, but because they might have provided 
 better for themselves if they had been wiser the old 
 barren formula which nobody ever denied. Mr. George 
 apparently cannot realise that the question in hand is 
 whether or not there were too many people for the food 
 they did produce ; and just as little, apparently, can he 
 apprehend the Malthusian argument that, supposing the 
 people of any country at any time had used ever so much 
 better means of producing food, and had good laws, they 
 would on that very account have multiplied to the point of 
 disaster the more rapidly, unless they deliberately practised 
 parental prudence, or impaired their generative powers by 
 vice. A historical case founded on by Mr. George will 
 make the issue clear. He points out that in Ireland, dur- 
 ing the great famine, food continued to be exported to pay 
 rent ; and he alleges that 
 
 " Had this food been left to those who raised it ; had the culti- 
 vators of the soil been permitted to retain and use the capital 
 their labor produced ; had security stimulated industry and per- 
 mitted the adoption of economical methods, there would have 
 been enough to support in bounteous comfort the largest popu- 
 lation Ireland ever had, and the potato blight might have come 
 and gone without stinting a single human being of a full meal." 
 
 Now, the Malthusian contradiction to that piece of wild 
 optimism is simply this, that the Irish people had populated 
 up to the limit of the subsistence left them after paying 
 their rents ; that, if they had owned their own land with- 
 out having learned to check their child-bearing, they would 
 have populated up to the full limit of subsistence per- 
 mitted them by the land ; and that when the famine came 
 there would just have been so many millions more to die. 
 Observe, it is not asserted that the Irish people would have 
 been so recklessly prolific if they had been their own land- 
 lords. Mill, who was a convinced Malthusian, held that 
 property was one of the strongest factors in making people 
 prudent in the matter of their families. But such prudence
 
 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIANTSM. 11 
 
 is action in recognition of the law of population, not a dis- 
 proof of it. It is the triumph of Malthusianism. 
 
 Mr. George, however, not only denies that population 
 has ever exceeded the available means of subsistence : he 
 explicitly declares that "in any given state of civilisation 
 a greater number of people can collectively be provided 
 for than a smaller", and that "in a state of equality the 
 natural increase of population would constantly tend to- 
 make every individual richer instead of poorer ". Yet, just 
 before, he has declared that "the tendency to increase- 
 .... weakens just as the higher development of the in- 
 dividual becomes possible and the perpetuity of the race- 
 is assured" ; and this tendency he represents as a "beau- 
 tiful adaptation ". So that, on Mr. George's contention, it 
 is a " beautiful adaptation " that the human race tends to- 
 fall off in its rate of increase just at the time when its rapid 
 increase begins to be entirely advantageous ! Such are the 
 arrangements of Mr. George's "All- Wise and All-Benefi- 
 cent ". But he finds support for both of these propositions- 
 among Socialists who are not given to predicating a paternal 
 Providence whose optimism rather takes the shape of the 
 assumption that only the selfishness of certain classes stands- 
 between humanity and unmitigated well-being. Of these 
 Socialists not a few practice the Neo-Malthusian principle 
 which they dishonestly disown : and it becomes every day 
 more important to examine the morality and the tendency 
 of their policy to see what evidence there is either for the 
 view that as social improvement is promoted, the rate of 
 increase of population will decline to just the right extent 
 without any volition on the part of the part of the people 
 for that is the argument ; or for the belief that under 
 improved social arrangements any increase of population 
 can be comfortably sustained. Mr. George asserts both of 
 these things, and the random and reckless utterances of 
 many Socialists imply both propositions likewise. Let us 
 see what basis there is for either one or the other. Mr. 
 George supplies none. We have simply his word for 
 the "beautiful adaptation"; and when he professes to 
 " submit to the test of facts " his allegation that the denser 
 population is, the more easily it can support itself, he merely 
 cites a quantity of evidence to show that in the most densely 
 populated countries there are found the greatest accumu- 
 lations of wealth a statement which is entirely beside the 
 case ; and which, besides, is countered by his own conten-
 
 12 SOCIALISM AND MALTHTJSIANTSM. 
 
 tion that in these very countries is also found the greatest 
 poverty. His demonstration simply resolves itself as usual 
 into the protest that men "might" have unlimited food 
 if they would only act more wisely; and such a thesis 
 cannot be sustained by reference to the facts of past history, 
 unless the ideal be shown to have been at some period 
 realised. That of course cannot be shown, and we must 
 fall back on the purely deductive argument of the Socialists 
 their contention as to what might be accomplished if we 
 adopted Socialism. 
 
 In a vindication of Malthusianism against the attacks of 
 Socialists, it is hardly necessary to show that nationalisa- 
 tion of the land cannot abolish poverty. That is asserted 
 by the Socialists against the land-nationalisers. We have 
 rather to consider whether a resort to Socialism would 
 abolish poverty without recourse being had to parental 
 prudence. The Socialists applaud Mr. George's quasi- 
 refutation of Malthus, but tell him all the same that his own 
 principle of land nationalisation is of little more value than 
 that of population. They alone have the cure. Now, it 
 is not easy to say what are the practical proposals of 
 Socialists, seeing that they almost entirely confine them- 
 selves to generalities ; but for the purposes of this discus- 
 sion it may be set down that there are two methods by 
 which they propose to apportion the means of subsistence 
 among the workers when all the means of production have 
 been nationalised. One is the payment of what is con- 
 sidered a just wage to the workers individually ; the other 
 is the simple bestowal upon each individual of an equal 
 or adequate share in all means of subsistence, education, 
 ,nd enjoyment. By the first method each worker would 
 have to devote his or her wage to the rearing of his or her 
 -children while they are too young to support themselves. 
 It is clear as noonday, then, that if under Socialism of this 
 description men and women have large families they will 
 set up serious inequalities of comfort. If Jack and Jill 
 have half a dozen children while Tom the bachelor has 
 none, they will clearly be poor relatively to Tom, who can 
 arn as much wages as Jack, if not more ; and if Dick has 
 two children they will be better provided for than Jack's 
 six. If Socialism is ever realised there will probably be 
 payment of wages in the first stage ; and we should thus 
 have under a Socialist regime poverty and comfort as before. 
 Por if the average wage be enough to keep a family of
 
 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIAJflSM. 1& 
 
 six in complete comfort, it clearly cannot do as much for a 
 family of twelve. 
 
 If, however, we assume an equal division of all means 
 of subsistence, &c., or the apportionment to each " accord- 
 ing to his needs ", the position of the fecund parents and 
 their children will Tbe no worse than that of the prudent 
 or the sterile. But will the prudent and the infecund be 
 content to bear the burden of the philoprogenitiveness of 
 their fellows ? Whatever may be thought as to the 
 possibility of increasing the food supply, children are 
 clearly a burden. Is it supposed that in the Socialist state 
 the majority will be indifferent to the selfishness of those 
 who blindly gratify their propensities at the expense of 
 adding to the burdens of the whole ? I can conceive no- 
 plausible answer to this question save that which falls 
 back on the vague theory the urging of which is a 
 virtual admission that there has been over-population in 
 the past that as civilisation progresses fecundity spon- 
 taneously diminishes to the requisite extent. "What then 
 are the evidences for that ? Nothing beyond the fact that 
 under- fed people and animals are frequently more prolific 
 than the well-fed and the over-fed ; and the physiological 
 reasons we have for believing that when men and women 
 become purely brain-workers their sexual vigor declines. 
 There is no reason whatever to suppose that healthy 
 working people will for ages to come be incapable of 
 having large families. Many of the loose data on which 
 Socialists so hastily found are really testimonies to the 
 spread of that parental prudence which Malthusians* 
 inculcate. 
 
 For instance, Mr. Laurence Gronlund, who tells us that 
 Mr. George has " laid bare the utter absurdity of the 
 Malthusian philosophy", gives us the following precious 
 proof that population tends to go all right of its own 
 accord : "In the beginning of this century families with 
 from ten to fifteen children each were not rare in New 
 England ; now one with more than six is found only among 
 the poor" And Mr. Gronlund believes that this is a 
 cosmic pre-adjustment, resting on the nature of things ! 
 Is he so ill-informed on the subject on which he writes as 
 not to be aware that parental prudence is deliberately and 
 extensively practised in New England ; that women there 
 are very cautious about becoming mothers ; and that there 
 have been protests that the native stock is falling off
 
 14 SOCIALISM: JLXD MALTHUSIANISM. 
 
 through too great reluctance to propagate ? The truth is 
 that, on the one hand, the lessons of Neo-Malthusianism 
 are being widely learned in civilised countries ; and that, 
 on the other, women as they gain knowledge and status 
 grow averse to making themselves the mere child-breeders 
 they so commonly were in the past. They see that the old 
 saws about olive branches and replenishing the earth and 
 trusting in Providence have only served to keep them in a 
 state of subjection and domestic martyrdom ; and they 
 desire to be something more than overworked nurses 
 during the best part of their lives. And all men who 
 desire to see women cultured and intelligent sympathise 
 with them heartily. But while the more thoughtful men 
 and women are thus practising parental prudence and 
 deliberately limiting their families, sciolists and Socialists 
 actually point to the results of their prudence as showing 
 that no prudence is necessary, and tell the imprudent and 
 the thoughtless among the working classes that they need 
 have no scruple about propagating in the freest fashion 
 that when they get good wages their fecundity will diminish 
 to precisely the right point ! Such advice may be the 
 outcome of delusion ; but it is none the less pernicious ; and 
 the delusion assuredly does small credit to the intelligence 
 of those who cherish it. 
 
 The broad facts of organic life on the earth are patent 
 enough. Even Mr. George can see that vegetable life and 
 the lower animal life beat " wastefully " against their 
 barriers ; and Tennyson has sung for theists of Nature 
 " red in tooth and claw ", wasting millions of lives to 
 preserve a type, and yet letting even types go. Emerson 
 has told them that all appetites are in excess. Every 
 naturalist knows that plants bear seed a thousandfold in 
 excess of the possibilities of their spreading ; that the life 
 of insects and fish rests on the constant waste of myriads 
 of organisms ; that birds perish by the thousand in cold 
 seasons; that whole strata of fish are found killed by 
 catastrophe ; that beasts die off like flies from drought and 
 famine and murrain ; but the Georgian theist, whose " All- 
 Wise and All-Beneficent " arranged all this, believes that 
 the moment you rise in the animal scale to man, everything 
 is for the best ; that his appetites need never be restrained ; 
 that his food can never fail him ; that he can always see 
 the right thing to do ; and that his miseries are simply the 
 result of his deliberate refusal to do what he knows he
 
 SOCIALISM AXD HALTHUSIANISitt. 15 
 
 ought. And Socialists who have seen reason to eliminate 
 Providence from their scheme of life are not ashamed to 
 join him in a fatuous paean on the beneficent nature of 
 things in which every prospect pleases, and only the capi- 
 talist is vile ! How plausible ! how probable ! how scien- 
 tific! 
 
 It is time there should be a plain exposure of the evil 
 tendency be it the outcome of folly or of a nefarious 
 policy inhering in these Socialist utterances on the law 
 of population. Unhappily one cannot be sure that some 
 agitators are not desirous of keeping up the pressure of 
 over-population and misery in order to facilitate revolution ; 
 but there is no room for doubt as to the irrationality which 
 such an aim supposing it to exist is promoted by the 
 sentimentalists. Let a Malthusian advise workers to keep 
 their families small, and straightway some Socialist shrieks 
 that the adviser is seeking to rob them of the one solace 
 they had left as if any good-hearted or sane workman 
 could find pleasure in seeing around him a swarm of poorly 
 clad and poorly fed children, presumably destined to a life 
 of hardship like his own. Of course it is the men who talk 
 so. The Socialist father to judge by his utterances is 
 as far as the worst Philistine from proposing to restrict the 
 animal and menial sphere of his wife's duties. She is to 
 go on supplying him with " solace "year after year, going 
 through her eternal round of cooking, washing, mending" 
 cleaning; passing periodically through long spells of weak- 
 ness and pain ; while her helpmeet, in his increased leisure, 
 considers the present and future condition of Socialism. 
 Doubtless many Socialists sincerely desire the bettering of 
 the lot of women ; and Dr. Bebel has written a book with 
 that object ; but as has been pointed out by Mrs. Besant, 
 he denounces Malthusianism while by implication he is 
 committed to profiting by its lessons. It is for the Socialists 
 to reconcile their professed championship of women with 
 their repudiation of every suggestion for the alleviation of 
 women's domestic burdens. 
 
 As for the Georgian chimsera of " the more hands the 
 more food", that may perhaps be left to the common-sense 
 of all who know anything of the processes of agriculture. 
 It is mere impudent nonsense to say that the soil in culti- 
 vation can be made to go on doubling its yield as fast as 
 unchecked population doubles. All Mr. George's mock 
 illustrations assume the prematura dying-off of a large
 
 16 SOCIALISM AND MALTHUSIANIS1I. 
 
 proportion of the children of the poor, and what Mal- 
 thusians urge is that these children need never have been 
 born. The scientific Malthusian's message to the workers 
 is clear, consistent, and perfectly sympathetic. He tells 
 them that they share with every other species of organism 
 the tendency to produce superfluous offspring; and that 
 they can only avoid the evil results of this tendency by 
 applying to their parental action the caution and foresight 
 they have to apply to every other department of conduct, 
 and which animals for the most part lack. He points out 
 that by propagating recklessly they not only impoverish 
 themselves, and injure the children they produce, but flood 
 the labor market and perpetuate the miseries of their 
 class. As a Malthusian he does not tell them not to aim 
 at political and social reform ; if he carries his scientific 
 method into his politics, he urges them to combine for the 
 reduction and proper apportionment of national burdens, 
 and for the restriction of idle living on the general industry. 
 He does not, as a Malthusian, seek to turn them against 
 Socialism : but he teaches, as Mill taught, that Socialism 
 must positively involve methodical restriction of propaga- 
 tion ; while, as some of the really philosophic Socialists 
 hold, it is likely to ultimately involve the most scrupulous 
 selective care in the process. The empirical Socialist ignores 
 the wisdom of his teachers. 
 
 One thing more. The worker may sometimes hear it 
 said that pressure of population is necessary to progress. 
 Let him reflect what this means that his class is to suffer 
 in order that invention and the arts may flourish. And 
 this doctrine he will find half -implied in the teaching of 
 some Socialists, as in this remark of Mr. Gronlund: "If 
 the smart fellows of the Stone Age had been Malthusians 
 and had been able to prevent increase of population beyond 
 the supply of the then existing caves, we should never have 
 had brown-stone-fronts or architects." If that sentence 
 which is certainly irrelevant to its context has any mean- 
 ing in regard to present policy, it is that by keeping up 
 the friction and misery of superfluous population we shall 
 secure thoroughgoing reform faster. Let true-hearted 
 workers say whether they will endorse such a doctrine of 
 progress by bringing children into a life of misery and 
 making their wives bear the worst of the burden.
 
 OYEK-POPULATION. 
 
 ''HE doctrine, commonly associated with the name of 
 Malthus, that mankind need to guard against a too 
 high birth-rate, is at once an ancient and a modern 
 idea in human affairs. We may reasonably infer, from the 
 extensive practice of female infanticide among savage tribes, 
 that in primeval times the pressure of population on subsis- 
 tence was frequently felt, reasoned upon, and resisted in 
 that frightful fashion. Among the Greeks and Eomans, 
 again, though the avowed opinion and legislative practice 
 was mostly in favor of multiplying numbers, we know that 
 the habit of exposing infants for death or slavery was for 
 many centuries extremely common, people knowing from 
 their own experience that, whatever might be the view of 
 rulers, the rearing of children was burdensome to them as 
 individuals. It is worth remembering, in this connection, 
 that in Terence's comedy, " The Self-Tormentor," in which 
 occurs the celebrated sentiment: "I am a man; nothing 
 that is human is alien to me," the very man who speaks 
 these pretentious words has himself, earlier in the story, 
 insisted on exposing his infant daughter. Such was classic- 
 morality in the days of the Eepublic. The law at one and 
 the same time authorised parents to destroy their children 
 by exposure, and imposed a tax on bachelors by way of 
 encouraging marriage. But indeed the entire public opinion 
 of antiquity authorised infanticide, even where children were 
 not unhealthy, and made it almost a matter of course where 
 they were sickly or maimed. 
 
 Among the Jews, on the other hand, we know that the 
 later practice (of the earlier we really know nothing) was 
 extremely philoprogenitive ; this being a result not merely, 
 as Tacitus puts it, of their belief in immortality, but of the 
 frequent subjection and depopulation of their country by
 
 war, which both stimulated the domestic affections, and 
 favored the view that it was a duty to be as fruitful as 
 possible. And as the higher humanity bred by the un war- 
 like life of later Kome a humanity which rather made 
 Christianity than was made by it gradually shrank from 
 infanticide ; and as, further, the sacred books of the Jews, 
 with their exhortations to fruitfulness, became the moral 
 literature of the northern nations, the notion that population 
 ought to be restrained passed for a long time into discredit, 
 or rather disregard. Indeed, the chronic warfare of the 
 Dark and Middle Ages, keeping population in check in a 
 very forcible manner, made the practice of restraint in other 
 forms, as a rule, comparatively unnecessary. 
 
 It is only with the advent of what we call the Modern 
 Period the period after the Eeformation had settled down 
 that statesmen and thinkers are found looking at the 
 question of population in a partially scientific manner, apart 
 alike from the precepts of religious tradition and the con- 
 ventions of government. Doubtless the revival of letters, 
 reintroducing the study of Plato and Aristotle, prepared 
 men's minds for new views on the subject. Both of these 
 thinkers had seen that human affairs must tend to go ill if 
 population at all times increased without check or control. 
 Plato, indeed, displays little practical wisdom in his social 
 schemes; but at least he saw and taught that, in an ideally 
 well-ruled community, population must not be left to chance ; 
 and Aristotle saw it still more clearly; pointing out, further, 
 that any scheme for equalising wealth must involve, in order 
 to succeed, a strict control of births ; just as Mill has more 
 recently pointed out that a Socialist or Communist com- 
 munity must above all others control its rate of increase. 
 These views, of course, were not adopted by the humanists 
 of Europe any more than was Plato's prescription of infanti- 
 cide ; but they would at least tend to set men thinking. 
 And in Bacon's essay. "Of Seditions and Troubles," we find 
 expressly laid down this principle of government: " Gener- 
 ally it is to be foreseen that the population of a kingdom 
 (especially if it be not mown down by wars) do not exceed 
 the stock of the kingdom which should maintain them." 
 Bacon's politics, it is true, is a mixture of wisdom and com- 
 mon prejudices; and on the same page we find him teaching 
 that nations can only prosper by beggaring each other that 
 when one gains another must lose. But on the question of 
 the internal balance of a nation's well-being he spoke with
 
 sagacity; pointing out both in this essay and that "Of the 
 True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates," that in States 
 where the nobility and gentry multiplied fast, the common 
 subject "grew to be a peasant and base swain, driven out 
 of heart." A little later, Sir Walter Ealeigh, in his History, 
 points out more than once how population would long ago 
 have overflowed the earth but for the checks of disease, war, 
 famine, and celibacy. And in the next century, Sir Josiah 
 Child, in his " New Discourse of Trade," expressly points 
 out how the extension of population depends on the increase 
 of industry. 
 
 But stray teachings like these counted for little : indeed, 
 as we shall see, the most complete demonstration of a great 
 sociological truth such as is here involved gives no security 
 that mankind will act upon it. As has been truly said by 
 the economist McCulloch : " Those who have got together 
 a considerable number of works in any department of science 
 or literature, or who have bestowed any pains in tracing its 
 history, can hardly fail to be struck, on the one hand, with 
 the indications and explanations of sound principles and 
 doctrines to be found among its earlier cultivators, and on 
 the other, with the continued revival of exploded errors and 
 fallacies. But if this be true in general, it is most especially 
 so in all that relates to politics and national economy." It 
 is only towards the latter part of the eighteenth century 
 that we find scientific ideas in regard to population gaining 
 ground even among careful observers. Montesquieu saw 
 how superfluous human beings could at times become, and 
 pointed out that "there are countries in which a man is 
 worth nothing : there are some where he is worth less than 
 nothing." Hume remarked that if legislation were to re- 
 move the obstacles to multiplication, the force of reproduc- 
 tion would suffice to more than double the number of man- 
 kind in each generation. And his countryman, Wallace 
 who opposed him on the question of the populousness of 
 antiquity, quite agreed with him that if the checks to in- 
 creasewhich he distinguished as natural, or uncontrollable, 
 and moral, or of human institution if these checks could 
 be removed, population would greatly increase And yet 
 again Franklin, looking at the question as a naturalist saw 
 that there was no limit to the spread of plants and animals 
 save that created by the pressure of these plants and animals 
 upon each other their struggle for subsistence; and that
 
 the propagation of the human species necessarily rested on 
 the same footing. Any one nation, he pointed out, would 
 soon overrun the earth if the other nations had not already 
 occupied it. In all directions, thoughtful men saw the same 
 truth. In England, France, Germany, Italy ; travellers, 
 philosophers, and economists had seen and stated the gene- 
 ral principle before Malthus came upon the scene. What 
 he did was not to discover a new law but to work out in 
 detail the demonstration of a law that had been grasped by 
 many. 
 
 Let us see, then, what the law of population precisely is. 
 Briefly, as put by Malthus, it is that population tends to 
 increase faster than the means of subsistence that is, faster 
 than the means of subsistence can be increased in the normal 
 state of society. Now by far the greater part of the opposi- 
 tion to Malthus' doctrine arises from, or at least takes the 
 shape of, a misconception of the meaning of his formula. 
 Nothing is commoner, for instance, than to hear thoughtless 
 people say that the law of population is disproved by the 
 fact that on the whole wealth increases faster than popula- 
 tion. Those who talk so have not realised what it is that is 
 asserted. In the first place, wealth is not "means of sub- 
 sistence." Wealth is the sum of all desirable objects ; but 
 you may amass a great many of these without producing 
 more food. Wealth, too, is calculated in money price, and 
 money price gives no clue to the total amount of the things 
 priced, relatively to the number of people. But that is not 
 all. Even if it were proved that in actual fact, taking periods 
 of ten years, the actual sum of food produced annually is 
 found to grow greater even in proportion to the population, 
 that would still not disprove the law. When we say that 
 population tends to increase, we mean that, where there is 
 no adequate prudential check, children get born, but do not 
 live to maturity to beget children in turn. They, as it were, 
 fall over the edge, crowded off in the struggle. Let us take 
 another illustration. At the battle of Ulundi, you may re- 
 member, the British force was drawn up in square to meet 
 the Zulus. So deadly was the fire of the breechloaders and 
 the Gatling guns that the attacking Zulus, with all their 
 splendid courage, never reached the British square at all. 
 Their masses were shrivelled up before they got to spearing 
 distance. Now, in that case there was a very distinct " ten- 
 dency " on the part of the Zulus to reach the square. Any
 
 one who should deny the tendency because they never did 
 reach the square would be merely stumbling over words. 
 But that denial would be exactly the same thing as to deny 
 that there is a tendency in population to increase faster 
 than subsistence because in the long run the excessive in- 
 crease does not take place. The Zulu tendency was checked 
 by direct and deliberate slaughter. At home, the slaughter 
 is indirect and involuntary, and the victims are in large part 
 poor babes and sucklings. That is the difference. 
 
 Population, we say, tends to increase faster than subsis- 
 tence, but obviously it cannot in the long run actually make 
 the increase, because people cannot live on nothing. The 
 superfluous births are just translated into deaths that is 
 how the tendency is frustrated. But observe, there is a long 
 range of possibilities between comfort and starvation ; and 
 you may very well have, and you do have, not merely child- 
 ren and adults dying of misery, but many more children and 
 adults living in misery, just living and no more. As it was 
 put by one economist, population is like a weighted spring, 
 the weight varying from time to time. The attacking Zulus 
 did not reach the square at Ulundi : at other times they did. 
 And since then there have been battles in which the resist- 
 ing force was so weak, relatively to the attack, that the 
 square was swept away. Absit omen. At any moment, ia 
 this country, there are more human beings than there is 
 adequate existing subsistence for; and even if there were 
 enough, and comfort were suddenly substituted for poverty 
 and hunger, with the result of saving alive myriads who, as 
 it is, die, it would only take a few years to make it an im- 
 possibility for you to produce the mere food for your doubling 
 population, to say nothing of decent housing unless in that 
 time your population should learn the lesson of prudence in 
 propagation. 
 
 It is strange that, as so often happens, people in insisting 
 on the fact that population does not increase faster than 
 wealth, should forget how it is that it is hindered from in- 
 creasing. Malthus formulated the causes plainly enough. 
 The tendency, resting on sexual instinct, is restrained by 
 two sorts of causes, destructive checks and preventive 
 checks the checks which kill off the superfluous births, 
 and those which lessen the number of births taking place. 
 The destructive checks are famine, misery, disease, pesti- 
 lence, and war. The preventive checks, as seen by Malthus,
 
 are late marriages and prostitution. Another check, namely 
 that of parental prudence with early marriage, he did not 
 approve of a point I shall discuss anon. What remains 
 clear is that without that last check, population is only 
 kept from going to ruinous excess by bloodshed, by disease, 
 by crime, by murderous conditions of life, by the prolonged 
 celibacy of many women, by the degradation of many more, 
 and by the prudence which keeps men for many years of 
 their lives either celibate or supporters of the prostitute. 
 
 Now the question in dispute between the old Malthusian 
 and the new resolves itself into that between the Neo-Mal- 
 thusian and his present day opponents. The position taken 
 up by these always comes to this : that excess of population 
 at any moment is due to the remissness of society in utilis- 
 ing its forces, not to any tendency in the species to breed 
 too fast. If only, say these reasoners, if only society would 
 put its affairs on a sound basis, either by nationalising the 
 land or by nationalising all the means of industry, there 
 would be produced plenty of subsistence for everybody. I 
 would ask you to look into that contention to see what it is 
 worth. 
 
 The law of the tendency of healthy species to increase in 
 excess, you will remember, applies to the whole of organic 
 life ; and Darwin confessedly took his root principle of the 
 struggle for existence from Malthus. Either, then, anti- 
 Malthusians deny that non-human species tend to propagate 
 in excess of their possibilities of life, or they assert that 
 man forms an exception to the general rule of organic 
 nature. That any one can deny the general statement 
 that is, as regards non-human species I cannot well under- 
 stand. It is a well-ascertained fact that one cod-fish, for 
 instance, can produce in a season two million eggs ; and it 
 will hardly be disputed that if all the eggs spawned by all 
 the fish came to maturity, it would not take many years to 
 choke up the ocean. In point of fact, only a small per- 
 centage of the eggs ever reach the fish stage at all, and of 
 these the number is constantly kept down by a hundred 
 destructive forces. That is to say, a " viable " species, a 
 species that maintains itself, in a state of nature, is one 
 that propagates greatly in excess of the possibilities of con- 
 tinued life. Among the higher animals, of course, among 
 the mammals the germs of life are not produced in such 
 enormous profusion as among the lower, but there too
 
 there is always, as it were, provision in excess for the risks 
 to be run. Any one animal could easily overrun an entire 
 country in a few years if it were not checked by other ani- 
 mals or by failure of its food. The power of propagation is 
 always there, and the more increase the more risks arise. 
 Among the animals under our control, propagation is, how- 
 ever, deliberately and systematically checked by wholesale 
 slaughter and artificial sterilisation. 
 
 What reason, then, is there to suppose that man is an 
 exception from this general law that he, of all creatures, has 
 no tendency to propagate in excess of his power of subsis- 
 tence ? I want to deal with the question as one of human 
 science, and would therefore prefer not to discuss purely 
 theological solutions, though it is difficult to ignore these, 
 pressed as they are by many disputants. And the trouble 
 is, that a perfectly baseless theological assumption serves 
 to satisfy thousands of people out of hand. How many 
 people, for instance, have their minds set at rest, their 
 opinions decided, by such a strange doctrine as that of Mr. 
 Henry George that the Deity meant that there should be 
 a particular distribution of the land, but that he has not 
 been able carry out his purpose ! Grant this, and of course 
 it may follow that the Deity arranged human affairs to go 
 right in every other particular, if only he had not been 
 frustrated by the landlords. But on such assumptions, 
 science becomes a game of speculation for schoolgirls ; and 
 1 prefer to suppose that my" audience wish me to apply to 
 the concrete problems of human life the methods which 
 alone have yielded durable results in other kinds of research. 
 And in point of fact the theologers do profess to offer us 
 practical arguments, though they so constantly play the 
 card of divinity. I will therefore discuss simply the non- 
 theological arguments of the writer to whom I have just 
 alluded, who is one of the most vehement of the recent 
 opponents of Malthusian doctrine. 
 
 To a large extent, of course, Mr. George's arguments come 
 under the heading of nine-tenths of the opposition to Mal- 
 thus the heading of misconceptions. I hardly care to say 
 what I think of his way of dealing with Malthus's statements 
 of "tendency" his fooling about the dog's tail and the 
 descendants of Confucius. Malthus asserted a constant ten- 
 dency in population to excess : Mr. George satirically asks 
 if a dog's tail must always grow because it grows in its
 
 8 
 
 puppyhood. As Mr. Harrison has said of some of his other 
 reasonings, " this kind goeth not out but by prayer and 
 fasting." Mr. George, in point of fact, began his argument 
 without mastering the meaning of the word tendency. How 
 is it, he asks, that this globe, after all the ages that man 
 has been upon the earth, is yet so thinly populated, if pop- 
 ulation is always tending to pass the limit of subsistence ? 
 There are two ways in which Mr. George might have got an 
 answer to this question : one being to read Malthus ; the 
 other, to stop for a few minutes to think. The reason why 
 the globe is not more fully populated is that the destructive 
 forces of disease, war, pestilence, famine, crime, and cruelty, 
 and in part prudential restraint, and, more largely, vicious 
 or cruel restraints as among the Greeks and Eomans, 
 where slaves were hindered from breeding that all these 
 influences have kept in check the tendency to increase. 
 Clearly the alleged tendency of population to increase be- 
 yond subsistence must always be kept in check somehow; 
 and the whole question in a nutshell is this : Is the check 
 always to be a premature destruction of human beings born, 
 and misery for millions, or is it to be a providing that fewer 
 human beings shall be born ? 
 
 But Mr. George has some more plausible arguments than 
 these. He says, for instance, that human misery has al- 
 ways been the result of unsocial ignorance and rapacity. 
 Well, clearly these have been active forces enough it is 
 unsocial ignorance that I am. now arguing against. But 
 to what purpose do we point to ignorance as the reason why 
 a people who in one year are fairly prosperous are in the 
 next decimated by famine? Other nations, you may say r 
 might have helped them. Yes, but in the then state of 
 knowledge and politics the other nations were not going to- 
 help them, and the fact remains that subsistence fell short 
 of need. But the main argument is, of course, that if only 
 men were wiser and more social to-day, they might raise a 
 good deal more food than they do. Assuredly they might : 
 very much more : but what then ? At this moment, with a 
 given social system and land system, we produce and import 
 a given amount of food. That might be increased if our 
 system were improved. So be it ; but in the meantime we 
 have to note that procreation is proceeding in excess, in 
 regard to the present system. If, then, the system be im- 
 proved, we shall save alive many thousands who now die,.
 
 9 
 
 and feed better many thousands more ; thus making possible 
 a much greater rate of increase than is actually going on. 
 Now we come to the crucial position. Malthus pointed out 
 that where the conditions are comparatively favorable, pop- 
 ulation has actually been found to double itself in twenty- 
 five years. If, then, you create highly favorable conditions 
 here, you will presumably, in twenty-five years, have twice 
 as large a population as now ; and in another twenty-five 
 years, a population twice as large again. Does anybody 
 then pretend that the yield of food can go on doubling at as 
 rapid a rate as that, to say nothing of house-room ? That 
 the total yield of the earth's surface can be multiplied six- 
 teen times in every hundred years ? 
 
 Perhaps some will assert as much : assertion costs nothing; 
 but even the most sanguine are pulled up at this point by the 
 reflection that, while the additional cultivation is going on, 
 the mounting millions must be swiftly building over land that 
 was once cultivated ; and that it would only be a question 
 of time when the face of the earth would be covered. It is 
 all very well to talk of emigration ; but, to say nothing of 
 the fact that even now emigration is not enthusiastic, emi- 
 gration must one day be played out for mathematical rea- 
 sons. So the optimists meet us with a new proposition : 
 the tendency to increase, they say, will spontaneously fall 
 off precisely as men and women are better fed and more 
 comfortable. This, the most adroit of the arguments 
 against Neo-Malthusianism, has been adopted by not a 
 few publicists, among them Mr. Henry George. That 
 writer, as it happens, has also adopted another early 
 argument against Malthus, which I ask you to compare 
 with the first : the argument, namely, that increase of 
 population means increase of human resources: that the 
 more people there are, the more labor power is there 
 to produce food and everything else. Now, observe the 
 harmony of those two positions. On the one hand: The 
 more people the easier to provide for all, if only you 
 go the right way to work : in Mr. George's own words,. 
 " In any given state of civilisation a greater number of 
 people can collectively be better provided for than a small- 
 er." But on the other hand there is this " beautiful adapt- 
 ation," as Mr. George theologically puts it, that " the ten- 
 dency to increase weakens just as the higher development 
 of the individual becomes possible and the perpetuity of the
 
 10 
 
 race is assured." Then the adaptation amounts to this, 
 that the tendency to increase falls off just at the time when 
 it would be highly advantageous for it to continue since 
 the more people you have, on Mr. George's own declaration, 
 the more easily they can be provided for ! Such are the 
 harmonies of theological economics. Now, I submit that 
 when a man thus employs two mutually exclusive argu- 
 ments he cannot be proceeding on a clear understanding of 
 the problem : he is over-reaching himself in a headlong 
 attempt to discredit a doctrine he does not like. 
 
 And why does he not like it ? Here, perhaps, the Mal- 
 thusians are not free from blame. Malthus, you will 
 remember, began his argument originally by way of refuting 
 Godwin, who maintained that what he called political justice 
 would suffice to redress political evils. Godwin was not a 
 Socialist, though some Socialists to-day seem to think so ; 
 on the contrary, he was an ardent Individualist, strongly 
 opposed to State action. The fact remained, however, that 
 Godwin was arguing for reform, while Malthus seemed I 
 say seemed to be making light of reform, and refusing to 
 help the poor. In point of fact, there was no more deeply 
 benevolent man in his time ; and he has gone so far as to 
 say this : "If all could be completely relieved, and poverty 
 banished from the country, even at the expense of three- 
 fourths of the fortunes of the rich, I would be the last person 
 to say a single syllable against relieving all, and making the 
 degree of distress alone the measure of our bounty." But 
 this, unfortunately, was not the temper of many who adopted 
 his teaching. The late Mr. Senior, who himself was a 
 Malthusian, and came to complete agreement with Malthus 
 in private discussion, wrote to him that in his social experi- 
 ence he had found the principle of population made " the 
 stalking-horse of negligence and injustice, the favorite ob- 
 jection to every project for rendering the resources of the 
 country more productive." It is not unnatural that when 
 democratic reformers are told Malthusianisrn is against 
 them, they should be against Malthusianism. In point of 
 fact, the law of population is no more opposed to any moral 
 or social reform than is the law of gravitation. Its lesson 
 is simply this, that while you effect your reform, you must 
 also begin to secure a better control of the instinct which 
 brings about reproduction of the species, because without 
 that reform all other reforms will in the long run be futile.
 
 11 
 
 Let political and social reformers accept the law of popula- 
 tion, and their position is strengthened a hundred-fold. 
 
 To return for one moment to Mr. George. Perhaps the 
 most plausible of all his arguments is that drawn from the 
 circumstances of the great Irish famine. It seems to be the 
 iact, as he alleges, that during that famine, when people 
 were dying of hunger, food was actually being exported from 
 Ireland by way of paying rent to absentee landlords. Mr. 
 George accordingly argues that but for landlordism the Irish 
 would have had plenty to eat during the potato blight. Now 
 the Malthusian answer to this argument involves no defence 
 whatever of Irish landlordism. With the ethics of that we 
 have here nothing to do. I will just point out, firstly, that 
 exportation of food-products from Ireland would tend to go 
 on, to pay for imports, apart altogether from landlordism ; 
 and, further, that it is extravagant to suppose that, when 
 the great mass of the people were living on potatoes, their 
 production of other foods could suffice to feed them for a 
 whole season during a total lack of potatoes. But the main 
 point is this. At the time of the famine, the Irish peasantry 
 had for subsistence only what agricultural products were 
 left them after paying the rent. That was what they under- 
 stood they had to live on. Now we know they populated 
 up to the limit of that subsistence. Suppose, then, that for 
 a generation before the famine there had been no landlords, 
 and that the peasantry had all the products to themselves, 
 barring taxation. In that case, one of two things would 
 have happened. They might possibly have intelligently 
 controlled their own rate of increase, as the French peas- 
 antry have done. The heightened standard of comfort, or, 
 above all, the feeling that the amount of the land was 
 limited, and that the occupiers must therefore be limited 
 too this might have made them learn the lesson of parental 
 prudence, and limit the number of their families. In that 
 case, instead of disproving the law of population, they would 
 have acknowledged it and acted on their knowledge. But 
 if they did not do that, they would have done this popu- 
 lated up to the extended limit of subsistence as they had 
 populated up to the narrowed limit, cultivating cheap food 
 as they had done under landlordism ; so that when at length 
 the famine came, it would have found not eight millions but 
 twelve or sixteen millions to decimate, and the misery would 
 have been greater in proportion. Either way, the teaching
 
 12 
 
 of Malthus would be vindicated, as the teaching of Newton 
 is vindicated alike when a house stands and when it falls. 
 
 But let us come now to that physiological argument that 
 the rate of increase tends to fall off when organisms rise in 
 the scale of culture. That argument, I submit, has been 
 very hastily used against Malthusianism by writers who 
 have not considered the serious practical question immedi- 
 ately involved. Suppose it were true in some measure it 
 is true that highly cultured and intellectualised people do 
 not have as many children as average working people, what 
 does that prove ? We are told by some that on this score 
 the proper way to control population is to raise and refine 
 the populace. Well, do so by all means, but how fast are 
 you going to do it ? How fast are you doing it ? At this 
 moment the children of your poor are dying off like flies, 
 and half your adults are stunted, starved, and undersized : 
 are the multitude to go on producing that predestinate host 
 of victims, babes to wither in their cradles, or to grow up to 
 to a life of physical and moral penury, until your ideal 
 machinery for elevating the masses is in working order? 
 Is that the way to secure the elevation, saving an ultimate 
 percentage out of the slaughter-house, and letting instinct 
 lor a few more years go unchecked, because you believe that 
 one day instinct will not need to be checked ? It should 
 suffice to point out to every thinking person that no theory 
 of the ultimate effects of mere refinement on rate of increase 
 can give any help while nine-tenths of the human race are 
 not refined and not visibly in the way of becoming so. 
 
 And after all, what does this doctrine really amount to ? 
 We admit that people of refined nervous organisation may 
 be less prolific than those of coarse organisation. But let 
 us quantify this statement. To what extent, and why, are 
 they less prolific? First, presumably, because delicate 
 women cannot support the strain of frequent maternity. 
 Well, but, in future, are all the refined women to be physic- 
 ally delicate ? At this moment, many highly intellectual 
 men are physically robust in a high degree, capable, in a 
 polygamous state, of patriarchal propagation ; and the 
 modern ideal of education is the combination of brain power 
 and skill with bodily health and strength. Your delicate 
 specimens of refined people are not, and cannot be, speci- 
 mens of what the race is coming to: these are already 
 physically degenerate : were all like these there would cer-
 
 13 
 
 tainly be no danger of over-population. But just because 
 these are lacking in vitality, other types crowd in in their 
 places. Now, the professed aim of our professed education- 
 ists is to produce men and women of high physical vitality ; 
 and who will dispute that such men and women, if they 
 merely obey natural impulses, will be capable of having as 
 large families as the multitude of prolific middle-class and 
 lower-class people of the present day ? * But the physio- 
 logical plea is inadequate in other ways. Many of the 
 delicately organised married women who escape over-much 
 maternity do so voluntarily and not involuntarily by act- 
 
 * I formerly stated in error, being misled by a biological friend, 
 that Mr. Spencer endorsed the theory that propagation would tend 
 to fall off as people were better fed. His doctrine is in reality very 
 different. It is that " in the human race, as in all other races, such 
 absolute or relative abundance of nutriment as leaves a large excess 
 after defraying the cost of carrying on parental life, is accompanied by 
 a high rate of genesis." This, as Mr. Spencer points out, "is exactly 
 the reverse of Mr. Doubleday's doctrine ; which is, that throughout 
 both the animal and vegetal kingdoms, ' over-feeding checks in- 
 crease ; whilst, on the other hand, a limited or deficient nutriment 
 stimulates and adds to it.' " Mr. Spencer shows the fallacy of the 
 argument about good feeding. "The cases of infertility accompany- 
 ing fatness, which he [Doubleday] cites in proof that over-feeding 
 checks increase, are not cases of high nutrition properly so called, 
 but cases of such defective absorption or assimilation as constitutes 
 low nutrition." [In other words, a fat man's body does not get the 
 good of his food.] "It may be added that much of the evidence by 
 which Mr. Doubleday seeks to show that among men, highly fed 
 classes are infertile classes, may be outbalanced by counter-evidence. 
 Many years ago Mr. Lewes pointed this out, extracting from a book 
 on the peerage the names of sixteen peers who had, at that time, 
 186 children, giving an average of 11-6 in a family." (Principles of 
 Biology, ii., 483-4.) Doubleday and others have confounded the 
 effects of vice and excess with those of good feeding. For the rest, 
 Mr. Spencer demolishes their argument by a reductio ad absurdum. 
 As for his own theory, that in future Man's fertility will decline 
 (which is not necessarily a view opposed to Neo-Malthusianism), I 
 have partly criticised it above, and may here add that Mr. Spencer 
 assumes an ever-increasing intensity of competition, which is far 
 from being a certainty, and overlooks the probable removal of many 
 existing checks to marriage. But in any case I am not here con- 
 cerned to discuss a theory which really forecasts a distant future : 
 my contention bears on the existing state of things. Indeed, Mr. 
 Spencer might perhaps argue that Neo-Malthusianism is an expression 
 of that higher "Individuation" which he says will check fertility.
 
 14 
 
 ing on the teaching of Neo-Malthusianism, by practising 
 prudence. There are delicate women in the slums as well 
 as in the squares. Why, the majority of the women in the 
 slums, whatever their nervous organisation, are necessarily 
 unhealthy, and are therefore unfit for child-bearing. But 
 they do go on bearing children : children which die : and 
 they themselves die prematurely, their lives curtailed by 
 futile and joyless maternity as well as by other misery. 
 And the expedients to which many of them ignorantly 
 resort to avoid maternity, just because knowledge of the 
 right expedients is repressed by insensate pietism and 
 Grundyism, for which the blame lies at the door of the 
 middle and upper classes the respectable classes I say 
 some of the expedients they do employ are injurious to a 
 degree heart-breaking to think of. It is enough to turn a 
 man's hair grey in a week to go through the warrens of the 
 poor and learn what life there really is ; where hunger and 
 lust forever strangle each other in a living death ; where the 
 dying child of a few months old seems to carry in its eyes the 
 memory of ages of despair. The righteousness of Grundy- 
 ism, as a covering for the filthy rags of the East End, is a 
 ghastly enhancement of the spectacle. 
 
 And yet, observe, it is owing to the diffusion of Neo- 
 Malthusian doctrine among the workers that the misery at 
 this moment is not a great deal worse. That has been 
 going on despite of terrorism, despite of bigotry, despite 
 of scurrilous and senseless abuse. And, what is more, the 
 results due to it are taken credit for as proofs of beautiful 
 adaptation in nature by its opponents. One writer, for 
 instance, points out that whereas at the beginning of the 
 century it was common in America to have a family of 
 twelve or thirteen children, nowadays it is rare to find one 
 of more than six, except among the poor. And this, forsooth, 
 is because it is somehow divinely arranged that when there 
 is less opening for labor fewer children will be born that 
 people are not poor because they have too many children, 
 but have too many children because they are poor a sin- 
 gular stroke of Divine beneficence ! Why, these smaller 
 families, unless where they are the result of positive phy- 
 sical degeneration which can hardly be called a beautiful 
 adaptation are the result of deliberate prudence, the put- 
 ting in practice of the teachings of those Neo-Malthusians 
 whom the optimists attack. I should add, indeed, the
 
 15 
 
 qualification that ' some of the limitation of families in 
 America would seem to be accomplished by very undesir- 
 able means namely, by the practice of abortion. I only 
 speak from imperfect knowledge, and may be in error ; but 
 there is some reason to suppose that there is in the States 
 a freedom of practice in this regard which is only less in- 
 jurious than our own usage because we, in our wisdom, add 
 to the misery of an abortion that of punishment (as if any- 
 body would be tempted to resort to abortion for its own 
 sake), and so terrify others into undesired maternity, with 
 the result sometimes of infanticide and often of adding to 
 the misery of the mother that of a child for whom there is 
 no room. We are so zealous that all germs of life shall be 
 cultivated in order to be indirectly killed and formally 
 buried. We insist that every possible child shall be born ; 
 after that, let the devil take the hindmost. The means of 
 checking population without crime, without vice, and with- 
 out misery are known and have been tested ; and one large 
 section of the respectable public contrives to know nothing 
 about them ; another is shocked if they are alluded to; and 
 a third would like to put in jail everybody concerned. 
 
 On this head let me say one serious and well-weighed 
 word. I am aware that there are many well-meaning 
 people- who denounce the line of argument I am pursuing : 
 there may be some such in this audience. They call Neo- 
 Malthusianism by opprobrious names. I will not pause to 
 ask whether they do not sometimes themselves deserve these 
 names : I know that hypocrisy is to the full as common in 
 this as in other departments of English discussion ; but I 
 will not dwell on that. I will not even dwell on the ques- 
 tion whether behind much of the vituperation there is not 
 vice of other kinds, morbid vice, as injurious to society and 
 humanity as any other. I will just say two things : first, 
 that if there be any impurity in the Neo-Malthusian con- 
 ception of marriage, as these opponents say, then there is 
 impurity in all marriage, and the whole scheme of nature 
 rests on impurity ; and if it has a personal Creator it is all 
 his doing. On the other hand, I would remind the scurrilous 
 vindicators of virtue and they are sometimes very scurrilous 
 that not only is constitutional asceticism no more a virtue 
 than constitutional dislike of alcohol or of olives, but the 
 cultus of asceticism has been repeatedly bound up in the 
 world's history with vices of temper and conduct as hateful
 
 16 
 
 as mere unbridled sensuality can ever be. If anyone does 
 not realise this, let him compare, say, the clement and sen- 
 sual Csesar, in his main aspects, with the mean and ferocious 
 ascetics of early Christendom, vice for vice, and say which 
 type is humanly the more tolerable, and which would in 
 ordinary course in a peaceful society work the less harm 
 to humanity. 
 
 It is argued by some recent writers, however and this is 
 indeed the strangest of the many contentions against restric- 
 tion of families that we are in danger of under-population 
 rather than of over-population. Mr. Grant Allen has just 
 told us that Mr. Galton has shown that six children per 
 marriage are necessary to keep up our present population, 
 in view of the death-rate. Six children in whose families ? 
 Death-rate in what classes ? Why, the death-rate is out of 
 all proportion greatest in the poorer classes ; and there it is 
 high just because the birth-rate is high. And, forsooth, in- 
 stead of lessening our death-rate, we are to keep up the 
 birth-rate which feeds it ! Among the comfortable classes, 
 a propagation of three children per family would suffice to 
 maintain their present number ; nay, would more than suf- 
 fice to maintain it, were it not that the struggle resulting 
 from prolificacy, among the middle classes, with their more 
 luxurious standards, is such that an increasing number of 
 the men are avoiding marriage. On the one hand the large 
 middle-class family : on the other, what shall I say ? The 
 brothel for one thing; the army of celibate women for 
 another. And you are to encourage marriage by demanding 
 families of six ! It is deplorable that well-meaning writers 
 should publish serious counsels to the community after so 
 little study of the facts. 
 
 But that is not the worst. Mr. Galton, according to Mr. 
 Allen, has further "shown" that a certain amount of over- 
 population is necessary to secure the survival of the fittest. 
 Now the murder is out ! We are back to the old fallacy of 
 reading the problem of evolution backwards, as Mr. Spencer 
 has too often read it, as Darwin was guilty of reading it, 
 over this very question of population. The doctrine is, that 
 because civilisation in the past has involved a murderous 
 struggle for survival, it must involve it in the future : the 
 struggle, we are told, has caused the civilisation. Do pro- 
 fessed evolutionists still think it possible that progress can 
 be made with such a principle consciously taken for guid-
 
 ance ? Is it not plain that when once humanity becomes 
 conscious of the struggle as struggle, sees what the struggle 
 is, realises that it has been the result of blind instinct in the 
 past that when once this is seen and understood, an 
 entirely new factor is introduced, and an entirely new pro- 
 blem raised ? Conscious progress, under a scientific morality, 
 must have different conditions from those of unconscious 
 progress, under a morality merely instinctive. Cannot 
 evolutionists all round yet read the lesson, formulated almost 
 as soon as Darwinism, that the problem of the future is the 
 struggle against the struggle for existence ? 
 
 But, indeed, there could not well be a more hasty assump- 
 tion than that common one, that the process of survival of 
 the fittest in the past has been so satisfactory to the in- 
 structed intelligence that it is desirable to maintain a like 
 selective struggle in the future. What is really meant by 
 survival of the fittest ? Fittest for what ? Fittest simply 
 to survive in such a struggle : it is an argument in a circle. 
 Are the fittest-to-survive-in-a-struggle, then, the fittest con- 
 ceivable inhabitants of the planet, the fittest in wisdom, in 
 morals, in intelligence, in refinement ? In the terms of the 
 case they are not : they are merely the fittest for a state of 
 struggle, in which wisdom and goodness and refinement are 
 not the main conditions of success. They are the fittest for 
 the life of blind instinct only or, if you will, for the kind of 
 skill that overreaches your neighbor. We are producing 
 plenty of brains highly fit for stock- broking, for buying 
 cheap and selling dear, for making bad work look good, for 
 producing inferior literature and art, windy religion and 
 shallow philosophy ; but are we as rapidly multiplying those 
 fittest to produce the highest literature and art, the best 
 fiction, the best drama, the best music, the deepest thought? 
 I do not deny that the struggle evolves some good gifts ; we 
 produce good engineers and chemists : but man shall not 
 live by machinery alone ; and match-box houses are not 
 compensated for by the electric light. Now, the pressure 
 of population continually tends to multiply the bad things ; 
 whereas the good might conceivably be had without that 
 pressure. Great inventions and great discoveries are the 
 outcome of great brains, not of supply and demand. Great 
 men do not multiply in the ratio of the increase of a popula- 
 tion struggling for existence. Survival of the fittest ? We 
 have no time to sit still and think wherein true fitness con-
 
 18 
 
 sists ; the torrent of population is forever thundering at our 
 heels ; we must run for our lives. The struggle for exist- 
 ence is, and always was, not joyous but grievous ; and when 
 it is sought to make out that human well-being is to be 
 secured by giving it free play, we have simply an inversion 
 of scientific method, reducing biological science to the very 
 position from which in modern times it has been sought to 
 lift it. Leibnitz saw in the world a pre-ordained harmony, 
 a machinery for working out only the most desirable results. 
 How much more philosophical is the theory that the blind 
 clash of instinct necessarily brings about the highest civilisa- 
 tion? Our naturalists must be reminded that if morality is 
 not the appanage of the pulpit, neither is it that of the 
 menagerie and the museum. 
 
 I have undertaken to speak of the menace as well as of 
 the meaning of the law of population. To a large extent 
 you state the menace when you state the meaning; but 
 there is a menace in our present position over and above the 
 evils to which I have alluded. 
 
 At the present moment, while, as I have pointed out, pre- 
 ventive checks to population are only in partial use, the 
 growing sense of sympathy is making society more and more 
 disposed to modify the destructive checks. It is becoming 
 increasingly difficult to stand by and let people die of 
 hunger. Mr. Spencer's logic cannot alter the great fact 
 which it attacks, that sensitiveness to the sight of misery is 
 becoming more and more a motive to action. So we have 
 attempts feeble as yet, doubtless, but still attempts, to im- 
 prove the slums, to help the poor workers when they strike, 
 and when they are out of work. Hospitals multiply; we try 
 to take slum children into the country : to feed the multi- 
 tude of little ones who go to the State schools unfed, whom 
 to think of is to realise the most intolerably pathetic side of 
 human suffering. Now, every one of these expedients, in- 
 cluding the State schools themselves, is a stimulus to popu- 
 lation ; and if unaccompanied by rational teaching as regards 
 future parentage, they all amount to pouring oil on the fire. 
 Save ten thousand infants from death this year, without 
 lowering the birth-rate, and the chances are that you have 
 proportionally more destitution next year. Contrive to save 
 them still, and after some years you will have so many more 
 thousands of unemployed. Find relief works for these 
 always without teaching prudence and in a few years you 
 have doubled your number of unemployed.
 
 19 
 
 Is the lesson, then, that we should stop feeding the 
 starving little ones, and trying to better their lives ? Certainly 
 not. I don't want to see the penny dinners reduced to 
 farthing dinners : I had rather see them raised to twopenny 
 and threepenny dinners. I would extend every demand on 
 the sympathy, the conscience, of the more comfortable 
 classes, who live on the products of the labor of the poor 
 extend every appeal to them to do something for the poor 
 in return. And I would do this because I can see no other 
 way of opening the eyes of the so-called educated classes to 
 the nature of the case ; no other way of breaking down the 
 insane convention which resists the true cure of the evil. 
 When Mrs. Grundy finds the demands on her purse multi- 
 ply from year to year, the scales may begin to fall from her 
 glazed eyes : the stuffing may be withdrawn from her capa- 
 cious ears. Or perhaps, which might be better, Mrs. Grundy 
 may be positively turned out of office by a resolute band of 
 sane citizens grown impatient of the reign of imbecility and 
 nescience, of timid rationalists made bold by extremity of 
 need. On the latter development one speculates with some 
 interest. During the last year or two there have been some 
 stirrings of a movement of respectable people who knew 
 what was needed, these being perhaps emboldened by the 
 fact that an occasional peer and cardinal is beginning to say 
 that there is such a thing as over-population. The respect- 
 able people have held meetings without reporters always 
 without reporters and they are waiting to see, I understand, 
 what will come of it all. One result has been a lecture or 
 two of a very careful character, under very respectable au- 
 spices ; lectures in which the strongest sentiment has been 
 fear lest the spread of physiological knowledge should do 
 harm. That is the stage we are in at present. Mr. Ho wells 
 has remarked that the Anglo-American novel-reading public, 
 for which he so ably caters, recoils in its reading from the 
 most diffident suggestion of adultery, but faces with forti- 
 tude bigamy and murder. So it is with our respectable 
 treatment of the population question. The respectable 
 citizen would rather, would infinitely rather, risk all possible 
 evils of infanticide, moral destruction of women's whole 
 nature, the life-long death of their imprisonment, or the 
 life-long suffering of illegitimate children, on whose natures 
 are indelibly imprinted the grief and the despair of the 
 dolorous mothers our friend would rather face all that than
 
 face the risk of what he calls illicit intercourse without these 
 results. He would only give information to people already 
 married, and this privately, by letter. This still passes for 
 scientific morality towards the end of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 Well, so be it. Go on securing that illicit intercourse 
 shall as far as possible result in illegitimate children or 
 infanticide ; to this end convey physiological knowledge as 
 secretly as possible, so that nine-tenths of the proletariat 
 shall never hear of it ; and let us see the result. I am not 
 going to commit myself to absolute predictions. I confess 
 I cannot conceive that this fantastic morality will long sur- 
 vive ; in any case, I cannot but believe that the saner policy 
 of at once encouraging and preparing the unmarried to marry, 
 and popularising the knowledge essential to married people, 
 will be carried further and further. But if that hope be 
 mistaken ; if we are destined to see sane science trodden 
 under foot by traditional ignorance and pious imbecility, 
 then there is no risk of having predictions of evil falsified by 
 the result. The evil is as inevitable as the course of the 
 seasons. It is resulting in abundance at this moment. But 
 if the conditions worsen instead of bettering, you will see evils 
 of a different sort. At present you have slums, disease, phy- 
 sical degeneration, overwork side by side with want of work, 
 the spread of inferior intellectual standards, the spread of 
 gambling to an extent hitherto unknown, a fostering of brutal 
 tastes, making the prize-fighter the most popular of all heroes. 
 You have also the spread of vice, which distracted respect- 
 ability hopes to check by suppressing translations of foreign 
 writers much more essentially moral than half our classics, 
 and by bullying the music-halls. All the while the menacing 
 multitude increases. 
 
 After a time I am assuming that the true lesson is not 
 learned you will feel driven to reform somehow the land 
 laws ; the sooner the better, say I, for there is much hope 
 that by putting people on the land with a chance of well- 
 being you will put them in the way of seeing the need [of 
 limiting their families. But possibly hypocrisy and Puritan- 
 ism, instinct and ignorance, may still triumph. Then you 
 may try new reforms. But one day, lacking the sine qua 
 non of all reform, you will be at the end of your tether. We 
 are accustomed in this country to think we are safe from 
 violent revolution. Well, it is a certified historical fact that
 
 the French Eevolution was precipitated by the influx info 
 Paris of a large superfluous and hungry population, after a 
 series of bad harvests. I cannot see how an industrial 
 civilisation, which provides ever larger mobs of unemployed, 
 mobs which are learning to organise themselves, can be held 
 safe to escape a revolution in these days. 
 
 And to prevent this consummation, what means are being 
 employed what expedients are there that can compete with 
 the teachings of Neo-Malthusianism the teaching that men 
 should not postpone marriage but should marry and be 
 prudent ? There are still some people, I suppose, who hold 
 with Malthus that the postponement of marriage till late in 
 life is the proper course. On that I can only say that if any 
 man goes among the proletariat and urges on them that 
 course, and gets his head broken for his pains, some of us 
 will not be prodigal of our sympathy. To tell these people 
 that they are to live most of their lives without even the 
 solace of sexual communion, is a folly worse than any of 
 theirs. What are the other respectable expedients ? Em- 
 igration, to be sure. Well, I am not at this time of day 
 going to go into the good old question, so dear to Mr. Poulett 
 Scrope and Mr. Carlyle, as to how much available room 
 there is for mankind in South America. I will grant any 
 proposition on that head. I would simply ask what prospect 
 there is of any Government of this or any other country 
 getting rid of its superfluous population in perpetuity by 
 emigrating them to South America or anywhere else. Let 
 Messieurs the emigrationists commence. As soon as they 
 get their system in working order, regularly and peacefully 
 shipping off the unemployed and the half -employed, I for 
 one promise to abandon Malthusian propaganda. In the 
 meantime I would deprecate nailing their ears to the pump ; 
 but I do maintain that ears have been cropped for less 
 strange philosophy than that which expatiates on the acreage 
 of the planet as a consolation for an annual massacre of in- 
 fants innumerable, and a state of life for millions which calls 
 up visions of the lowest circle of Dante's hell. 
 
 More substantial, on the face of it, is the reasoning which 
 points to the stationary state of population in France, even 
 with an influx of foreign labor. But here, too, the argument 
 is fallacious. The stationary condition of population in 
 France at this moment is the main reason why the burdens 
 of that country are bearable. With an enormous debt, an
 
 22 
 
 enormous military system, a vicious system of taxation, 
 which presses on food and entirely spares incomes, you yet 
 have less distress than is seen in England. Compare the 
 poorer parts of Paris with the grimy wildernesses of Bast 
 London, and you see one of the gains of limitation of fami- 
 lies. And let us not pretend that we have less vice than 
 the French, with the whispers of nameless evil tainting all 
 our public schools, and our periodical horrors of " revela- 
 tion." Were the French poor as prolific as ours, the French 
 system could not subsist. Some say that it were better 
 then that they were prolific, and so brought about revolu- 
 tion. Alas, they have had revolutions enough there, if 
 these could suffice. No : the lesson of the case is that 
 French politicians should reform their fiscal and financial 
 system, lessening the burdens on labor, limiting the idle 
 classes : then families will increase as much as it is desir- 
 able they should. As for the foreign influx, at worst France 
 will but have to adopt the course resorted to by the pros- 
 perous United States, and keep out foreign pauperism, so 
 forcing neighboring nations to look to population likewise 
 a course which is not unsuggested among ourselves. 
 
 But enough of controversy. I venture to think I have 
 given reasons enough to justify an appeal to thoughtful 
 citizens to face and deal with the facts. I repeat that the 
 problem is serious beyond all comparison. Its seriousness, 
 I know, is admitted by thousands ; but the action taken is 
 not adequate to the exigency. One of the most estimable 
 of our politicians I say this while opposed to him on some 
 important points Mr. Leonard Courtney, has solemnly de- 
 clared that "you might as reasonably hope to build a house 
 in disregard of the laws of gravitation, as to secure social 
 well-being in a community where the principle of population 
 is treated as of no account." But how far does any political 
 party recognise this in its practice ? What has even Mr. 
 Courtney done to enforce and publish the truth ? What 
 leading politician in these days has preached it ? * I know of 
 only one the man who now lies sore sick,f and whose battle 
 
 * Since this was said, Mr. John Morley, in a speech to the Eighty 
 Club, has spoken of the "vital importance" of the population ques- 
 tion, to which be claimed to be "as alive as anybody in this country." 
 " / urish," he added, "that we did not shirk it so much." I echo the 
 wish, with special reference to Mr. Morley. 
 
 t At the time of speaking Mr. Bradlaugh lay dangerously ill.
 
 ft 
 
 in life has been made doubly hard because he insisted on 
 maintaining this truth in the teeth of brutal bigotry, and 
 despite the timorous silence of many who knew he was right 
 but would not openly say so. Now they begin to give him 
 some credit after the worst of the fight is over. He, and 
 those who have wrought with him* these have done nearly 
 all the work. I know of only two journals which maintain 
 the population principle in Englandf neither of them popu- 
 lar Mr. Bradlaugh's journal and that of the Malthusian 
 League. And that League is now appealing for funds to 
 carry on its propaganda among the poor, and to pay its 
 debts. The sale of cheap Malthusian literature among the 
 workers is large ; but it is plain that the buyers must be 
 mostly among the careful and naturally prudent ; and you 
 want to reach the thriftless and thoughtless. To this end 
 special action is needed. The " new journalism," so far as 
 I have seen, gives no help an occasional allusion at most 
 no steady advocacy ; the apparent assumption being that 
 remedial legislation can cure all human ills. 
 
 The are a hundred forces of resistance : unreasoning 
 bigotry, convention, tradition, hypocrisy, ignorance ; and 
 not only these, but the natural instinct of mankind to deny 
 that the scheme of nature sternly demands forethought of 
 every living creature that would prosper. It is noteworthy 
 that some of the earliest and bitterest opponents of Malthus 
 Godwin, Coleridge, Hazlitt were men slow to realise, or 
 too weak to grapple rightly with that necessity : men lack- 
 ing in force of character in their individual lives. But let 
 us not speak of such men without sympathy because of 
 their weakness, though they spared no asperity in attack- 
 ing a teaching far more scientific than their own. Nor 
 would I seem to take up a position mainly hostile to any 
 party which has resisted Malthusianism because of being 
 more anxious than some Malthusians have seemed to re- 
 
 * The lawsuit recently brought by Mrs. Besant against a priest 
 for libel is a reminder of what advocates of prudence have had to 
 meet and of what treatment they may look for in the law courts. 
 
 f I had forgotten the Weekly Times and Echo, which has of late 
 very courageously propagated Neo-Malthusianism. And I must not 
 omit to recal the disinterested service done during fifteen years by 
 Mr. George Standring in his journal, sometime the Republican, later 
 the Radical, now defunct. A less single-minded policy might have 
 led to more financial success.
 
 24 
 
 dress evil in other ways. I appeal to all such not to beat 
 wastefully against an iron law because they do not like the 
 other teaching of some who expound the law ; as I would 
 appeal to all Malthusians not to discredit their science by 
 tying to it doctrines which are no part of it. This is no 
 party strife : not even a conflict of class with class, though 
 it is of the profoundest importance to democracy. The 
 final issue is between reasoning man and brute nature ; 
 between conscious humanity and the blind instincts which 
 have hitherto swayed human destinies ; between ordered 
 life and all the forces of death. Surely those who insist on 
 the impossibility of social well-being under a reign of self- 
 seeking individualism should be the last to suppose that one 
 of the most fundamental of all instincts can possibly be 
 allowed unguided sway without general disaster. And if, 
 on the other hand, there be any who take such optimistic 
 views of the scheme of nature that they cannot bring them- 
 selves to admit the need for human vigilance and precaution 
 in every direction, but are fain to cling to the faith of igno- 
 rance and instinct, and to let these have free play in the 
 future as in the past then I would with all possible earn- 
 estness appeal to these once more to look around them, and 
 count the cost. 
 
 BARBARA
 
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