queen found that it would be madness to attempt the restoration of the abbey lands. She found that her subjects would never suffer her to make her hereditary kingdom a fief of Castile. On these points she encountered a steady Whitehall was, that they should be the mild and paternal sovereigns of England. They were under the same restraints with regard to their people under which a military despot is placed with regard to his army. They would have found it as dangerous to grind their sub-resistance, and was compelled to give way. If jects with cruel taxation as Nero would have found it to leave his prætorians unpaid. Those who immediately surrounded the royal person, and engaged in the hazardous game of ambition, were exposed to the most fearful dangers. Buckingham, Cromwell, Surrey, Sudley, Somerset, Suffolk, Norfolk, Percy, Essex, perished on the scaffold. But in general the country gentleman hunted and the merchant traded in peace. Even Henry, as cruel as Domitian but far more politic, contrived, while reeking with the blood of the Lamiæ, to be the favourite with the cobblers. she was able to establish the Catholic worship and to persecute those who would not conform to it, it was evidently because the people cared far less for the Protestant religion than for the rights of property and for the independence of the English crown. In plain words, they did not think the difference between the hostile sects worth a struggle. There was undoubtedly a zealous Protestant party and a zealous Catholic party. But both these parties were, we believe, very small. We doubt whether both together made up, at the time of Mary's death, the twentieth part of the nation. The The Tudors committed very tyrannical acts. remaining nineteen-twentieths halted between But in their ordinary dealings with the people the two opinions, and were not disposed to they were not, and could not safely be tyrants. risk a revolution in the government for the Some excesses were easily pardoned. For the purpose of giving to either of the extreme facnation was proud of the high and fiery bloodtions an advantage over the other. of its magnificent princes; and saw, in many proceedings which a lawyer would even then have condemned, the outbreak of the same noble spirit which so manfully hurled foul scorn at Parma and at Spain. But to this endurance there was a limit. If the government ventured to adopt measures which the great body of the people really felt to be oppressive, it was soon compelled to change its course. When Henry the Eighth attempted to raise a forced loan of unusual amount by proceedings of unusual rigour, the opposition which he encountered was such as appalled even his stubborn and imperious spirit. The people, we are told, said that if they were to be taxed thus, "then were it worse than the taxes of France, and England should be bond, and not free." The county of Suffolk rose in arms. The king prudently yielded to an opposition which, if he had persisted, would in all probability have taken the form of a general rebellion. Towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the people felt themselves aggrieved by the monopolíes. The queen, proud and courageous as she was, shrunk from a contest with the nation, and, with admirable sagacity, conceded all that her subjects had demanded, while it was yet in her power to concede with dignity and grace. We possess no data which will enable us to compare with exactness the force of the two sects. Mr. Butler asserts that, even at the accession of James the First, a majority of the population of England were Catholics. This is pure assertion, and is not only unsupported by evidence, but, we think, completely disproved by the strongest evidence. Dr. Lingard is of opinion that the Catholics were one-half of the nation in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. Richton says, that when Elizabeth came to the throne, the Catholics were two-thirds of the nation, and the Protestants only onethird. The most judicious and impartial of English historians, Mr. Hallam, is, on the contrary, of opinion that two-thirds were Protestants, and only one-third Catholics. To us, we must confess, it seems altogether inconceivable that, if the Protestants were really two to one, they should have borne the government of Mary; or that, if the Catholics were really two to one, they should have borne the government of Elizabeth. It is absolutely incredible that a sovereign who has no standing army, and whose power rests solely on the loyalty of his subjects, can continue for years to persecute a religion to which the majority of his subjects are sincerely attached. In fact, the Protestants did rise up against one sister, and the Catholics against the other. Those risings clearly showed how small and feeble both the parties were. Both in the one case and in the other the nation ranged itself on the side of the government, and the insurgents were speedily put down and punished. The Kentish gentlemen who took up arms for the reformed doctrines against Mary, and the Great Northern Earls who displayed the banner of the Five Wounds against Elizabeth, were alike considered by the great body of their countrymen as wicked disturbers of the public peace. It cannot be supposed that a people who had in their own hands the means of checking their princes, would suffer any prince to impose upon them a religion generally detested. It is absurd to suppose that, if the nation had been decidedly attached to the Protestant faith, Mary could have re-established the Papal supremacy. It is equally absurd to suppose that, if the nation had been zealous for the ancient religion, Elizabeth could have restored the Protestant Church. The truth is, that the people were not disposed to engage in a struggle either for the new or for the old doctrines. Abundance The account which Cardinal_Bentivoglio of spirit was shown when it seemed likely that gave of the state of religion in England well Mary would resume her father's grants of deserves consideration. The zealous Cathochurch property, or that she would sacrifice lics he reckoned at one-thirtieth part of the the interests of England to the husband whom nation. The people who would without the she regarded with unmerited tenderness. That least scruple become Catholics if the Catho1i religion were established he estimated at four- "Who sought the beeves that made their broth "Nine times outlawed had been By England's king and Scotland's queen.” They were sometimes Protestants, sometimes common people entertained the strongest prejudices against his order, and that a clergyman had no chance of fair play before a lay tribunal. The London juries, he said, entertained such a spite to the Church, that they would find Abel guilty of the murder of Cain. This was said a few months before the time when Martin Luther began to preach at Wittemberg against indulgences. As the Reformation did not find the English bigoted Papists, so neither was it conducted in such a manner as to make them zealous Pro testants. It was not under the direction of men like that fiery Saxon, who swore that he would go to Worms, though he had to face as many devils as there were tiles on the houses, or like that brave Switzer, who was struck down while praying in front of the ranks of Zurich. No preacher of religion had the same power here which Calvin had at Geneva, and Knox in Scotland. The government put itself early at the head of the movement, and thus acquired power to regulate, and occasionally to arrest, the movement. To many persons it appears extraordinary that Henry the Eighth should have been able to maintain himself so long in an intermediate position between the Catholic and Protestant parties. Most extraordinary, it would indeed be, if we were to suppose that the nation consisted of none but decided Catholics and deThe English had not, for ages, been bigoted cided Protestants. The fact is, that the great Papists. In the fourteenth century, the first, mass of the people were neither Catholic nor and perhaps the greatest of the reformers, John Protestant; but was, like its sovereign, midWickliffe, had stirred the public mind to its in- way between the two sects. Henry, in that most depths. During the same century, a very part of his conduct which has been repre scandalous schism in the Catholic church had sented as most capricious and inconsistent, diminished, in many parts of Europe, the re- was probably following a policy far more verence in which the Roman pontiffs were pleasing to the majority of his subjects, than held. It is clear that a hundred years before a policy like that of Edward or a policy like the time of Luther, a great party in this king- that of Mary would have been. Down even dom was eager for a change, at least as exten- to the very close of the reign of Elizabeth, the sive as that which was subsequently effected people were in a state somewhat resembling by Henry the Eighth. The House of Com- that in which, as Machiavelli says, the inha mons, in the reign of Henry the Fourth, pro- bitants of the Roman empire were, during the posed a confiscation of ecclesiastical property, transition from Heathenism to Christianity; more sweeping and violent even than that "sendo la maggior parte di loro incerti a quale which took place under the administration of Dio dovessero ricorrere." They were geneThomas Cromwell; and, though defeated in rally, we think, favourable to the royal suprethis attempt, they succeeded in depriving the macy. They disliked the policy of the court clerical order of some of its most oppressive of Rome. Their spirit rose against the interprivileges. The splendid conquests of Henry ference of a foreign priest with their national the Fifth turned the attention of the nation concerns. The bull which pronounced sen from domestic reform. The Council of Con- tence of deposition against Elizabeth, the plots stance removed some of the grossest of those which were formed against her life, the usurpascandals which had deprived the Church of tion of her titles by the Queen of Scotland, the the public respect. The authority of that hostility of Philip, excited their strongest invenerable synod propped up the sinking au- dignation. The cruelties of Bonner were rethority of the Popedom. A considerable reac-membered with disgust. Some parts of the tion took place. It cannot, however, be doubted, new system, the use of the English language, that there was still much concealed Lollardism for example, in public worship, and the comin England; or that many who did not absolutely dissent from any doctrine held by the Church of Rome, were jealous of the wealth and power enjoyed by her ministers. At the very beginning of the reign of Henry the Eighth. a struggle took place between the clergy and the courts of law, in which the courts of law remained victorious. One of the it in childhood. bishops on that occasion declared, that the munion in both kinds, were undoubtedly popu lar. On the other hand, the early lessons of the nurse and the priest were not forgotten. The ancient ceremonies were long remembered with affectionate reverence. A large por tion of the ancient theology lingered to the last in the minds which had been imbued with The best proof that the religion of the people was of this mixed kind, is furnished by the drama of that age. No man would bring unpopular opinions prominently forward in a play intended for representation. And we may safely conclude, that feelings and opinions which pervade the whole dramatic literature of an age, are feelings and opinions of which the men of that age generally partook. The greatest and most popular dramatists of the Elizabethan age treat religious subjects in a very remarkable manner. They speak respectfully of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But they speak neither like Catholics nor like Protestants, but like persons who are wavering between the two systems; or who have made a system for themselves out of parts selected from both. They seem to hold some of the Romish rites and doctrines in high respect. They treat the vow of celibacy, for example, so tempting, and, in after times, so common a subject for ribaldry, with mysterious reverence. The members of religious orders whom they introduce are almost always holy and venerable men. We remember in their plays nothing resembling the coarse ridicule with which the Catholic religion and its ministers were assailed, two generations later, by dramatists who wished to please the multitude. We remember no Friar Dominic, no Father Foigard, among the characters drawn by those great poets. The scene at the close of the Knight of Mal ta might have been written by a fervent Catholic. Massinger shows a great fondness for ecclesiastics of the Romish church; and has even gone so far as to bring a virtuous and interesting Jesuit on the stage. Ford, in that fine play, which it is painful to read, and scarcely decent to name, assigns a highly creditable part to the Friar. The partiality of Shakspeare for Friars is well known. In Hamlet, the Ghost complains that he died without extreme unction, and, in defiance of the article which condemns the doctrine of purgatory, declares that he is "Confined to fast in fires, Til the foul crimes, done in his days of nature, These lines, we suspect, would have raised a tremendous storm in the theatre at any time during the reign of Charles the Second. They were clearly not written by a zealous Protestant, or for zealous Protestants. Yet the author of King John and Henry the Eighth was surely no friend to papal supremacy. populace, Elizabeth herself was not exempt from them. A crucifix, with wax-lights burning round it, stood in her private chapel. She always spoke with disgust and anger of the marriage of priests. “I was in horror," says Archbishop Parker, "to hear such words to come from her mild nature and Christian learned conscience, as she spake concerning God's holy ordinance and institution of matrimony." Burghley prevailed on her to connive at the marriages of churchmen. But she would only connive; and the children sprung from such marriages were illegitimate till the accession of James the First. That which is, as we have said, the great stain on the character of Burghley, is also the great stain on the character of Elizabeth. Being herself an Adiaphorist, having no scruple about conforming to the Romish church, when conformity was necessary to her own safety, retaining to the last moment of her life a fondness for much of the doctrine and much of the ceremonial of that church, she yet subjected that church to a persecution even more odious than the persecution with which her sister had harassed the Protestants. We say more odious. For Mary had at least the plea of fanaticism. She did nothing for her religion which she was not prepared to suffer for it. She had held it firmly under persecution. She fully believed it to be essential to salvation. If she burned the bodies of her subjects, it was in order to rescue their souls. Elizabeth had no such pretext. In opinion, she was little more than half a Protestant. She had professed, when it suited her, to be wholly a Catholic. There is an excuse, a wretched excuse, for the massacre of Piedmont and the autos-da-fe of Spain. But what can be said in defence of a ruler who is at once indifferent and intolerant? If the great queen, whose memory is still held in just veneration by Englishmen, had possessed sufficient virtue and sufficient enlargement of mind to adopt those principles which More, wiser in speculation than in action, had avowed in the preceding generation, and by which the excellent l'Hospital regulated his conduct in her own time, how different would be the colour of the whole history of the last two hundred and fifty years! She had the happiest opportunity ever vouchsafed to any sovereign, of establishing perfect freedom of conscience throughout her dominions, There is, we think, only one solution of the without danger to her government, or scandal phenomena which we find in the history and to any large party among her subjects. The in the drama of that age. The religion of nation, as it was clearly ready to profess either England was a mixed religion, like that of the religion, would, beyond all doubt, have been Samaritan settlers, described in the second ready to tolerate both. Unhappily for her own book of Kings, who "feared the Lord, and glory and for the public peace, she adopted a seryed their graven images;" like that of the policy, from the effects of which the empire is Judaizing Christians, who blended the ceremo- still suffering. The yoke of the Established nies and doctrines of the synagogue with those Church was pressed down on the people til of the church; like that of the Mexican In- they would bear it no longer. Then a reaction dians, who, for many generations after the sub-came. Another reaction followed. To the jugation of their race, continued to unite with the rites learned from their conquerors, the worship of the grotesque idols which had been adored by Montezuma and Guatemozin. These feelings were not confined to the tyranny of the establishment succeeded the tumultuous conflict of sects, infuriated by man fold wrongs, and drunk with unwonted freedom. To the conflict of sects succeeded again the cruel domination of one persecuting church At length oppression put off its most horrible he would have dissolved the Parliament, and form, and took a milder aspect. The penal imprisoned the most popular members. He laws against dissenters were abolished. But would have called another Parliament. He exclusions and disabilities still remained. would have given some vague and delusive These exclusions and disabilities, after having promises of relief in return for subsidies. generated the most fearful discontents, after having rendered all government in one part of the kingdom impossible, after having brought the state to the very brink of ruin, have, in our times, been removed; but, though removed, have left behind them a rankling which may last for many years. It is melancholy to think with what ease Elizabeth might have united all the conflicting sects under the shelter of the same impartial laws and the same paternal throne; and thus have placed the nation in the same situation, as far as the rights of conscience are concerned, in which we at length stand, after all the heart-burnings, the persecutions, the conspiracies, the seditions, the revolutions, the judicial murders, the civil wars, of ten generations. When entreated to fulfil his promises, he Elizabeth, before the House of Commons could address her, took out of their mouths the words which they were about to utter in the name of the nation. Her promises went be close upon her promise. She did not treat the nation as an adverse party; as a party which had an interest opposed to hers; as a party to which she was to grant as few advantages as possible, and from which she was to extort as much money as possible. Her benefits were given, not sold; and when once given, they were not withdrawn. She gave them, too, with a frankness, an effusion of heart, a princely dignity, a motherly tenderness, which enhanced their value. They were received by the sturdy country gentleman, who had come up to Westminster full of resentment, with tears of joy and shouts of God save the Queen. Charles the First gave up half the preroga tives of his crown to the Commons; and the Commons sent him in return the Grand Remonstrance. This is the dark side of her character. Yet she surely was a great woman. Of all the sovereigns who exercised a power which was seemingly absolute, but which in fact depended for support on the love and confidence of their subjects, she was by far the most illus-yond their desires. Her performance followed trious. It has often been alleged, as an excuse for the misgovernment of her successors, that they only followed her example;-that precedents might be found in the transactions of her reign for persecuting the Puritans, for levying money without the sanction of the House of Commons, for confining men without bringing them to trial, for interfering with the liberty of parliamentary debate. All this may be true. But it is no good plea for her successors, and for this plain reason, that they were her successors. She governed one generation, they governed another; and between the two generations there was almost as little in common as between the people of two different countries. It was not by looking at the particular measures which Elizabeth had adopted, but by looking at the great general principles of her government, that those who followed her were likely to learn the art of managing untractable subjects. If, instead of searching the records of her reign for precedents which might seem to vindicate the mutilation of Prynne and the imprisonment of Eliot, the Stuarts had attempted to discover the fundamental rules which guided her conduct in all her dealings with her people, they would have perceived that their policy was then most unlike to hers when, to a superficial observer, it would have seemed most to resemble hers. Firm, haughty, sometimes unjust and cruel in her proceedings towards individuals or towards small parties, she avoided with care, or retracted with speed, every measure which seemed likely to alienate the great mass of the people. She gained more honour and more love by the manner in which she repaired her errors, than she would have gained by never committing errors. If such a man as Chanes the First had been in her place when the whole nation was crying out against the monopolies, he would have refused all redress: We had intended to say something concernis the central figure-that group which the ing that illustrious group of which Elizabeth last of the bards saw in vision from the top of Snowdon, encircling the Virgin Queen— "Many a baron bold, And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old We had intended to say something concerning 21 chase to a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party in the House of Commons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love-songs too near the ears of her highness's maids of honour, and soon after poring over the Talmud, or collating Polybius with Livy. We had intended also to say something concerning the literature of that splendid period, and especially concerning those two incomparable men, the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Philosophers, who have made the Elizabethan age a more glorious and important era in the history of the human mind, than the age of Pericles, of Augustus, or of Leo. But subjects so vast require a space far larger than we can at present afford. We therefore stop here, fearing that, if we proceed, our article may swell to a bulk exceeding that of all other reviews, as much as Doctor Nares's book exceeds the bulk of all other histories. DUMONT'S RECOLLECTIONS OF MIRABEAU.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1832.] THIS is a very amusing and a very in- great original thinker, and to a sincere and structive book; but, even if it were less amus- ardent friend of the human race. If a few ing and less instructive, it would still be inte- weaknesses were mingled with his eminent resting as a relic of a wise and virtuous man. virtues, if a few errors insinuated themselves M. Dumont was one of those persons, the care among the many valuable truths which he of whose fame belongs in an especial manner taught, this is assuredly no time for noticing to mankind, for he was one of those persons those weaknesses or those errors in an unkind who have, for the sake of mankind, neglected or sarcastic spirit. A great man has gone the care of their own fame. In his walk from among us, full of years, of good works, through life there was no obtrusiveness, no and of deserved honours. In some of the highpushing, no elbowing, none of the little arts est departments in which the human intellect which bring forward little men. With every can exert itself, he has not left his equal or his right to the head of the board, he took the low-second behind him. From his contemporaries est room, and well deserved to be greeted with- he has had, according to the usual lot, more or Friend, go up higher. Though no man was less than justice. He has had blind flatterers more capable of achieving for himself a sepa- and blind detractors; flatterers who could see rate and independent renown, he attached him- nothing but perfection in his style, detractors self to others; he laboured to raise their fame; who could see nothing but nonsense in his he was content to receive, as his share of the matter. He will now have judges. Posterity reward, the mere overflowings which redound- will pronounce its calm and impartial decision, ed from the full measure of their glory. Not and that decision will, we firmly believe, place that he was of a servile and idolatrous habit in the same rank with Galileo and with Locke of mind; not that he was one of the tribe of the man who found jurisprudence a gibberish Boswells, those literary Gibeonites, born to be and left it a science. Never was there a lite hewers of wood and drawers of water to the rary partnership so fortunate as that of Mr higher intellectual castes. Possessed of talents Bentham and M. Dumont. The raw material and acquirements which made him great, he which Mr. Bentham furnished was most prewished only to be useful. In the prime of cious, but it was unmarketable. He was, assumanhood, at the very time of life at which am-redly, at once a great logician and a great bitious men are most ambitious, he was not solicitous to proclaim that he furnished information, arguments, and eloquence to Mirabeau. In his later years he was perfectly willing that his renown should merge in that of Mr. Bentham. rhetorician. But the effect of his logic was injured by a vicious arrangement, and the effect of his rhetoric by a vicious style. His mind was vigorous, comprehensive, subtile, fertile of arguments, fertile of illustrations. But he spoke in an unknown tongue; and, that the congregation might be edified, it was necessary that some brother having the gift of interpretation should expound the invaluable jargon. His oracles were of high import, but they were traced on leaves and flung loose to the wind. So negligent was he of the arts of selection, distribution, and compression, that to persons who formed their judgment of him from his works in their undigested state, he seemed to be the least systematic of all philosophers. *Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, et sur les deux Premières The truth is, that his opinions formed a sysAssemblées Législatives. Par ETIENNE DUMONT, de Ge-tem which, whether sound or unsound, is more neve: ouvrage posthume publié par M. J. L. Duval, exact, more entire, and more consistent with Membre du Conseil Représentatif du Canton du Genève. itself than any other. Yet, to superficial rea The services which M. Dumont has rendered to society can be fully appreciated only by those who have studied Mr. Bentham's works, both in their rude and in their finished state. The difference both for show and for use is as great as the difference between a lump of golden ore and a rouleau of sovereigns fresh from the mint. Of Mr. Bentham we would at all times speak with the reverence which is due to a Svo. Paris. 1832, |