From racks, indeed, and from all penalties | a single instance in which the system which directed against the persons, the property, and he recommends has succeeded. the liberty of heretics, the humane spirit of Mr. Gladstone shrinks with horror. He only maintains that conformity to the religion of the state ought to be an indispensable qualification for office; and he would think it his duty, if he had the power, to revive the Test Act, to enforce it rigorously, and to extend it to important classes who were formerly exempt from its operation. This is indeed a legitimate consequence of his principles. But why stop here? Why not roast Dissenters at slow fires? All the general reasonings on which this theory rests evidently lead to a sanguinary persecution. If the propagation of religious truth be a principal end of government, as government; if it be the duty of a government to employ for that end its constitutional power; if the constitutional power of governments extends, as it most unquestionably does, to the making of laws for the burning of heretics; if burning be, as it most assuredly is, in many cases, a most effectual mode of suppressing opinions-why should we not burn? If the relation in which government ought to stand to the people be, as Mr. Gladstone tells us, a paternal relation, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that persecution is justifiable. For the right of propagating opinions by punishment is one which belongs to parents as clearly as the right to give instruction. A boy is compelled to attend family worship; he is forbidden to read irreligious books; if he will not learn his catechism, he is sent to bed without his supper; if he plays truant at church-time, a task is set him. If he should display the precocity of his talents by expressing impious opinions before his brothers and sisters, we should not much blame his father for cutting short the controversy with a horsewhip. All the reasons which lead us to think that parents are peculiarly fitted to conduct the education of their children, and that education is a principal end of the parental relation, lead us also to think, that parents ought to be allowed to use punishment, if necessary, for the purpose of forcing children, who are incapable of judging for themselves, to receive religious instruction and to attend religious worship. Why, then, is this prerogative of punishment, so eminently paternal, to be withheld from a paternal government? It seems to us, also, to be the height of absurdity to employ civil disabilities for the propagation of an opinion, and then to: hrink from employing other punishments for the same purpose. For nothing can be clearer than that if you punish at all, you ought to punish enough. The pain caused by punishment is pure unmixed evil, and never ought to be inflicted except for the sake of some good. It is mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties which torment the criminal without preventing the crime. Now it is possible, by sanguinary persecution unrelentingly inflicted, to suppress opinions. In this way the Albigenses were put down. In his way the Lollards were put down. In this way the fair promise of the Reformation was blighted in Italy and Spain. But we may safely defy Mr. Gladstone to point out And why should he be so tender-hearted? What reason can he give for hanging a mur derer, and suffering a heresiarch to escape without even a pecuniary mulct? Is the heresiarch a less pernicious member of society than the murderer? Is not the loss of one soul a greater evil than the extinction of many lives? And the number of murders committed by the most profligate bravo that ever let out his poniard to hire in Italy, or by the most savage buccanier that ever prowled on the Windward Station, is small indeed, when compared with the number of souls which have been caught in the snares of one dexterous heresiarch. If, then, the heresiarch causes infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is he not as proper an object of penal legisla tion as the murderer? We can give a reason, -a reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do not extenuate the evil which the heresiarch produces; but we say that it is not evil of that sort against which it is the end of government to guard. But how Mr. Gladstone, who considers the evil which the heresiarch produces as evil of the sort against which it is the end of government to guard, can escape from the obvious consequences of his doctrine, we do not understand. The world is full of parallel cases. An orange-woman stops up the pavement with her wheelbarrow, and a policeman takes her into custody. A miser who has amassed a million, suffers an old friend and benefactor to die in a workhouse, and cannot be questioned before any tribunal for his baseness and ingratitude. Is this because legislators think the orange-woman's conduct worse than the miser's? Not at all. It is because the stopping up of the pathway is one of the evils against which it is the business of the public authorities to protect society, and heartlessness is not one of those evils. It would be the height of folly to say, that the miser ought, indeed, to be punished, but that he ought to be punished less severely than the orange-woman. The heretical Constantius persecutes Athanasius; and why not? Shall Cæsar execute the robber who has taken one purse, and spare the wretch who has taught millions to rob the Creator of his honour, and to bestow it on the creature? The orthodox Theodosius persecutes the Arians, and with equal reason. Shall an insult offered to the Cæsarean majesty be expiated by death, and shall there be no penalty for him who degrades to the rank of a creature the Almighty, the infinite Creator? We have a short answer for both: "ToCesar the things which are Cæsar's. Cæsar is appointed for the punishment of robbers and rebels. He is not appointed for the purpose of either propa gating or exterminating the doctrine of consub stantiality of the Father and the Son." "Not so," says Mr. Gladstone. "Cæsar is bound in conscience to propagate whatever he thinks to be the truth as to this question. Constantius is bound to establish the Arian worship throughout the empire, and to displace the bravest captains of his legions, and the ablest ministers of his Treasury, if they hold the Nice no faith. Theodosius is equally bound to turn out every | to have had any reference to the wound inflicted public servant whom his Arian predecessors by Peter on Malchus. They were addressed to have put in. But if Constantius lays on Pilate, in answer to the question, "Art thou the Athanasius a fine of a single aureus, if Theodo- King of the Jews?" We cannot help saying, sius imprisons an Arian presbyter for a week, that we are surprised that Mr. Gladstone should his is most unjustifiable oppression." Our not have more accurately verified a quotation readers will be curious to know how this dis-on which, according to him, principally deinction is made out. The reasons which Mr. Gladstone gives against persecution affecting life, limb, and property, may be divided into two classes; first, reasons which can be called reasons only by extreme courtesy, and which nothing but the most deplorable necessity would ever have induced a man of his abilities to use; and, secondly, reasons which are really reasons, and which have so much force, that they not only completely prove his exception, but completely upset his general rule. His artillery on this occasion is composed of two sets of pieces, pieces which will not go off at all, and pieces which go off with a vengeance, and recoil with most crushing effect upon himself. "We, as fallible creatures," says Mr. Gladstone, "have no right, from any bare speculations of our own, to administer pains and penalties to our fellow-creatures, whether on social or religious grounds. We have the right to enforce the laws of the land by such pains and penalties, because it is expressly given by Him who has declared that the civil rulers are to bear the sword or the punishment of evildoers, and for the encouragement of them that do well. And so, in things spiritual, had it pleased God to give to the Church or to the State this power, to be permanently exercised over their members, or mankind at large, we should have the right to use it; but it does not appear to have been so received, and, consequently, it should not be exercised." We should be sorry to think that the security of our lives and property from persecution rested on no better ground than this. Is not a teacher of heresy an evildoer? Has not heresy been condenined in many countries, and in our own among them, by the laws of the land, which, as Mr. Gladstone says, it is justifiable to enforce by penal sanctions? If a heretic is not specially mentioned in the text to which Mr. Gladstone refers, neither is an assassin, a kidnapper, or a highwayman. And if the silence of the New Testament as to all interference of government to stop the progress of heresy be a reason for not fining or imprisoning heretics, it is surely just as good a reason for not excluding them from office. "God," says Mr. Gladstone, "has seen fit to authorize the employment of force in the one case and not in the other; for it was with re gard to chastisement inflicted by the sword for an insult offered to himself, that the Redeemer declared his kingdom not to be of this world; pends the right of a hundred millions of his fellow-subjects, idolaters and Dissenters, to their property, their liberty, and their lives. Mr. Gladstone's interpretations of Scripture are lamentably destitute of one recommendation, which he considers as of the highest value:-they are by no means in accordance with the general precepts or practice of the Church, from the time when the Christians became strong enough to persecute down to a very recent period. A dogma favourable to toleration is certainly not a dogma "quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus." Bossuet was able to say, we fear with too much truth, that on one point all Christians had long been unanimous, the right of the civil magistrate to propagate truth by the sword; that even heretics had been orthodox as to this right, and that the Anabaptists and Socinians were the first who called it in question. We will not pretend to say what is the best explanation of the text under consideration; but we are sure Mr. Gladstone's is the worst. According to him, government ought to exclude Dissenters from office, but not to fine them, because Christ's kingdom is not of this world. We do not see why the line may not be drawn at a hundred other places as well as at that which he has chosen. We do not see why Lord Clarendon, in recommending the act of 1664 against conventicles, might not have said, "It hath been thought by some that this classis of men might with advantage be not only imprisoned, but pilloried. But methinks, my lords, we are inhibited from the punishment of the pillory by that scripture, 'My kingdom is not of this world."" Archbishop Laud, when he sate on Burton in the Star-Chamber, might have said, "I pronounce for the pillory; and, indeed, I could wish that all such wretches were delivered to the fire, but that our Lord hath said that his kingdom is not of this world." And Gardiner might have written to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire, "See that execution be done without fail on Master Ridley and Master Latimer, as you will answer the same to the queen's grace at your peril. But if they shall desire to have some gunpowder for the shortening of their torment, I see not but that you grant it, as it is written, Regnum meum non is not of this world."" est de hoc mundo; that is to say, 'My kingdom But Mr. Gladstone has other arguments against persecution,-arguments which are of so much weight, that they are decisive, not only against persecution, but against his whole theory. The government," he says, "is in competent to exercise minute and constant su the infers, that a "government exceeds its pro pervision over religious opinion." And hence vince when it comes to adapt a scale of punish Now here, Mr. Gladstone, quoting from me-ments to variations in religious opinion, ac ory, has fallen into an error. The very re-cording to their respective degrees of variation markable words, which he cites do not appear from the established creed. To decline afford meaning, apparently in an especial manner, that it should be otherwise than after this world's fashion, in respect to the sanctions by which its laws should be maintained." ing countenance to sects is a single and simple rule. To punish their professors, according to their several errors, even were there no other objection, is one for which the state may assume functions wholly ecclesiastical, and for which it is not intrinsically fitted." Hindoo peasant a rupee for going on a pil grimage to Juggernaut! Mr. Gladstone, "are privileges which belong "To solicit and persuade one another," says to us all; and the wiser and better man is bound to advise the less wise and good: but he is not only not bound, he is not allowed, speaking generally, to coerce him. It is untrue, then, that the same considerations which bind choice of the people, would therefore justify a government to submit a religion to the free their enforcing its adoption." senters, are to be excluded from all power and honours. A great hostile fleet is on the sea: but Nelson is not to command in the Channel if in the mystery of the Trinity he confounds the persons! An invading army has landed in Kent; but the Duke of Wellington is not to This is, in our opinion, quite true, but how be at the head of our forces if he divides the does it agree with Mr. Gladstone's theory? substance! And, after all this, Mr. Gladstone What! The government incompetent to exer- tells us that it would be wrong to imprison a cise even such a degree of supervision over Jew, a Mussulman, or a Budhist, for a day; religious opinion as is implied by the punish- because really a government cannot underment of the most deadly heresy! The govern- stand these matters, and ought not to meddle ment incompetent to measure even the grossest with questions which belong to the Church. deviations from the standard of truth! The A singular theologian, indeed, this government! government not intrinsically qualified to judge -so learned that it is competent to exclude of the comparative enormity of any theological Grotius from office for being a Semi-Pelagian, errors! The government so ignorant on these so unlearned that it is incompetent to fine a subjects, that it is compelled to leave, not merely subtle heresies,--discernible only by the eye of a Cyril or a Bucer,--but Socinianism, Deism, Mohammedanism, Idolatry, Atheism, unpunished! To whom does Mr. Gladstone assign the office of selecting a religion for the state, from among hundreds of religions, every one of which lays claim to truth? Even to this same government, which he now pronounces to be so unfit for theological investigations, that it cannot venture to condemn a man for worshipping a lump of stone with a score of heads and hands! We do not remember ever to have fallen in with a more extraordinary Granted. But it is true that all the same instance of inconsistency. When Mr. Glad- considerations which would justify a governstone wishes to prove that the government ment in propagating a religion by means of ought to establish and endow a religion, and to civil disabilities, would justify the propagating fence it with a test act,--government is to av of that religion by penal laws. To solicit! Is in the moral world. Those who would confine it solicitation to tell a Catholic duke, that he it to secular ends take a low view of its nature. must abjure his religion or walk out of the A religion must be attached to its agency; and House of Lords? To persuade! Is it perthis religion must be that of the conscience of suasion to tell a barrister of distinguished elothe governor, or none. It is for him to decide quence and learning, that he shall grow old in between Papists and Protestants, Jansenists his stuff gown while his pupils are seated above and Molinists, Arminians and Calvinists, him in ermine, because he cannot digest the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Sabellians damnatory clauses of the Athanasian creed! and Tritheists, Homoosians and Homoiousians, Would Mr. Gladstone think, that a religious Nestorians and Eutychians, Monothelites and system which he considers as false-SocinianMonophysites, Pædobaptists and Anabaptists. ism, for example-was submitted to his free It is for him to rejudge the Acts of Nice and choice, if it were submitted in these terms. Rimini, of Ephesus and Chalcedon, of Con- "If you obstinately adhere to the faith of the stantinople and St. John Lateran, of Trent and Nicene fathers, you shall not be burned in Dort. It is for him to arbitrate betweeen the Smithfield--you shall not be sent to Dorchester Greek and the Latin procession, and to deter-jail-you shall not even pay double land tax. mine whether that mysterious filioque shall or But you shall be shut out from all situations shall not have a place in the national creed. in which you might exercise your talents with When he has made up his mind, he is to tax honour to yourself and advantage to the counthe whole community, in order to pay people try. The House of Commons, the bench of to teach his opinion, whatever it may be. He magistracy, are not for such as you. You shall is to rely on his own judgment, though it may see younger men, your inferiors in station and be opposed to that of nine-tenths of the society. talents, rise to the highest dignities and attract He is to act on his own judgment, at the risk the gaze of nations, while you are doomed to of exciting the most formidable discontents. neglect and obscurity. If you have a son of He is to inflict, perhaps on a great majority the highest promise--a son such as other faof the population, what, whether Mr. Gladstone thers would contemplate with delight-the devemay choose to call it persecution or not, will lopement of his fine talents and of his generous always be felt as persecution by those who ambition shall be a torture to you. You shall suffer it. He is on account of differences, look on him as a being doomed to lead, as you often too slight for vulgar comprehension, to have led, the abject life of a Roman, or a Neadeprive the state of the services of the ablest politan, in the midst of the great English people. nen. He is to debase and enfeeble the com- All those high honours, so much more precious munity which he governs, from an empire into than the most costly gifts of despots, with a sect. In our own country, for example, mil- which a free country decorates its illustrious ons of Catholics, millions of Protestant Dis-citizens, shall be to him, as they have been in you, objects, not of hope and virtuous_emula- | darkest ages would be a most happy event. It tion, but of hopeless, envious pining. Educate is not necessary that a man should be a Chrishim, if you wish him to feel his degradation. tian to wish for the propagation of Christianity Educate him, if you wish to stimulate his crav-in India. It is sufficient that he should be a ing for what he never must enjoy. Educate European not much below the ordinary Eurohim, if you would imitate the barbarity of that pean level of good sense and humanity. Competty Celtic tyrant who fed his prisoners on pared with the importance of the interests at salted food till they called eagerly for drink, stake, all those Scotch and Irish questions and then let down an empty cup into the dun- which occupy so large a portion of Mr. Gladgeon, and left them to die of thirst." Is this to so- stone's book sink into insignificance. In no licit, to persuade, to submit religion to the free part of the world, since the days of Theodosius, choice of man? Would a fine of a thousand has so large a heathen population been subject pounds-would imprisonment in Newgate for to a Christian government. In no part of the six months, under circumstances not disgrace-world is heathenism more cruel, more licenful-give Mr. Gladstone the pain which he would feel, if he were to be told that he was to be dealt with in the way in which he would himself deal with more than one-half of his countrymen? of Kalee. The plain red brick buildingAdullam's Cave, or Ebenezer Chapel-where uneducated men hear a half educated man talk of the Christian law of love, and the Christian hope of glory, is unworthy of the indulgence which is reserved for the shrine where the Thug suspends a portion of the spoils of mur tious, more fruitful of absurd rites and pernicious laws. Surely, if it be the duty of government to use its power and its revenue in order to bring seven millions of Irish Catholics over to the Protestant Church, it is a We are not at all surprised to find such in- fortiori the duty of the government to use its consistency even in a man of Mr. Gladstone's power and its revenue in order to make setalents. The truth is, that every man is, to a venty millions of idolaters Christians. If it be great extent. the creature of the age. It is to a sin to suffer John Howard or William Penn no purpose that he resists the influence which to hold any office in England, because they are the vast mass, in which he is but an atom, not in communion with the Established Church, must exercise on him. He may try to be a surely it must be a crying sin indeed to admit man of the tenth century: but he cannot to high situations men who bow down, in temWhether he will or no, he must be a man of ples covered with emblems of vice, to the the nineteenth century. He shares in the mo-hideous images of sensual or malevolent gods tion of the moral as well as in that of the phy- But no. Orthodoxy, it seems, is more shocksical world. He can no more be as intoleranted by the priests of Rome than by the priests as he would have been in the days of the Tudors, than he can stand in the evening exactly where he stood in the morning. The globe goes round from west to east; and he must go round with it. When he says that he is where he was, he means only that he has moved at the same rate with all around him. When he says that he has gone a good way to the west-dered travellers; and for the car which grinds ward, he means only that he has not gone to the eastward quite so rapidly as his neighbours. Mr. Gladstone's book is, in this respect, a very gratifying performance. It is the measure of what a man can do to be left behind by the world. It is the strenuous effort of a very vigorous mind to keep as far in the rear of the general progress as possible. And yet, with the most intense exertion, Mr. Gladstone cannot help being, on some important points, greatly in advance of Locke himself; and with whatever admiration he may regard Laud, it is well for him, we can tell him, that he did not write in the days of that zealous primate, who would certainly have refuted the expositions of Scripture which we have quoted by one of the keenest arguments that can be addressed to human ears. This is not the only instance in which Mr. Gladstone has shrunk in a very remarkable manner from the consequences of his own theory. If there be in the whole world a state to which this theory is applicable, that state is the British Empire in India. Even we, who detest paternal governments in general, shall admit that the duties of the governments of India are, to a considerable extent, paternal. There the superiority of the governors to the governed in moral science is unquestionable. The conversion of the whole people to the worst form that Christianity ever wore in the its way through the bones of self-immolated pilgrims. "It would be," says Mr. Gladstone, "an absurd exaggeration to maintain it as the part of such a government as that of the British in India to bring home to the door of every subject at once the ministrations of a new and totally unknown religion." The government ought indeed to desire to propagate Christianity. But the extent to which they must do so must be "limited by the degree in which the people are found willing to receive it." He proposes no such limitation in the case of Ireland. He would give the Irish a Protestant Church whether they like it or not. "We believe," says he, "that that which we place before them is, whether they know it or not, calculated to be beneficial to them; and that, if they know it not now, they will know it when it is presented to them fairly. Shall we, then, purchase their applause at the expense of their substantial, nay, their spiritual in terests?" And why does Mr. Gladstone allow to the Hindoo a privilege which he denies to the Irishman? Why does he reserve his greatest liberality for the most monstrous errors? Why does he pay most respect to the opinion of the least enlightened people? Why does he with hold the right to exercise paternal authority from that one government which is fitter to ex ercise paternal authority than any government that ever existed in the world? We will give | which his system would produce if tried in the reason in his own words. India, but that he did not like to say so lest he "In British India," he says, "a small number of persons advanced to a higher grade of civilization, exercise the powers of government over an immensely greater number of less cultivated persons, not by coercion, but under free stipulation with the governed. Now, the rights of a government, in circumstances thus peculiar, obviously depend neither upon the unrestricted theory of paternal principles, nor upon any primordial or fictiLious contract of indefinite powers, but upon an express and known treaty, matter of posi-neral rule is laid down and obstinately main tive agreement, not of natural ordinance." tained, wherever the consequences are not too monstrous for human bigotry. But when they become so horrible that even Christchurch shrinks-that even Oriel stands aghast-the rule is evaded by means of a fictitious contract. One imaginary obligation is set up against another. Mr. Gladstone first preaches to governments the duty of undertaking an enterprise just as rational as the Crusades-and then dispenses them from it on the ground of a treaty which is just as authentic as the dona. tion of Constantine to Pope Sylvester. His system resembles nothing so much as a forged bond with a forged release endorsed on the back of it. Where Mr. Gladstone has seen this treaty we cannot guess; for, though he calls it a "known treaty," we will stake our credit that it is quite unknown both at Calcutta and Madras, both in Leadenhall Street and Cannon Row-that it is not to be found in any of the enormous folios of papers relating to India which fill the book-cases of members of Parliament-that it has utterly escaped the researches of all the historians of our Eastern empire-that, in the long and interesting debates of 1813 on the admission of missionaries to India, debates of which the most valuable part has been excellently preserved by the care of the speakers, no allusion to this im- With more show of reason he rests the portant instrument is to be found. The truth claims of the Scotch Church on a contract. is, that this treaty is a nonentity. It is by co- He considers that contract, however, as most ercion, it is by the sword, and not by free sti- unjustifiable, and speaks of the setting up of pulation with the governed, that England rules the Kirk as a disgraceful blot on the reign of India; nor is England bound by any contract William the Third. Surely it would be amuswhatever not to deal with Bengal as she deals ing, if it were not melancholy, to see a man with Ireland. She may set up a Bishop of of virtue and abilities unsatiséed with the caPatna and a Dean of Hoogley-she may grant lamities which one church, constituted on false away the public revenue for the maintenance principles, has brought upon the empire, and of prebendaries of Benares and canons of repining that Scotland is not in the same state Moorshedabad-she may divide the country with Ireland-that no Scottish agitator is raisinto parishes, and place a rector with a stipending rent and putting county members in and in every one of them, without infringing any positive agreement. If there be such a treaty, Mr. Gladstone can have no difficulty in making known its date, its terms, and, above all, the precise extent of the territory within which we have sinfully bound ourselves to be guilty of practical atheism. The last point is of great importance. For as the provinces of our Indian empire were acquired at different times, and in very different ways, no single treaty, indeed no ten treaties, will justify the system pursued by our government there. The plain state of the case is this: No man in his senses would dream of applying Mr. Gladstone's theory to India, because, if so applied, it would inevitably destroy our empire, and, with our empire, the best chance of spreading Christianity among the natives. This Mr. Gladstone felt. In some way or other his theory was to be saved, and the monstrous consequences avoided. Of intentional misrepresentation we are quite sure that he is incapable. But we cannot acquit him of that unconscious disingenuousness from which the most upright man, when strongly attached to an opinion, is seldom wholly free. We believe that he recoiled from the ruinous consequences out-that no Presbyterian association is divid ing supreme power with the government—that no meetings of precursors and repealers are covering the side of the Calton Hill-that twenty-five thousand troops are not required to maintain order on the north of the Tweed-that the anniversary of the battle of Bothwell Bridge is not regularly celebrated by insult, riot, and murder. We could hardly find a stronger argu ment against Mr. Gladstone's system than that which Scotland furnishes. The policy which has been followed in that country has been directly opposed to the policy which he recommends. And the consequence is that Scotland, having been one of the rudest, one of the poor. est, one of the most turbulent countries in Europe, has become one of the most highly civilized, one of the most flourishing, one of the most tranquil. The atrocities which were of common occurrence while an unpopularchurch was dominant are unknown. In spite of a mutual aversion as bitter as ever separated one people from another, the two kingdoms which compose our island have been indissolubly joined together. Of the ancient national feeling there remains just enough to be ornamental and useful; just enough to inspire the poet and |