ners.

This course, as it seems to us, | The language, even where most faulty, has all the disadvantages of a division is weighty and massive, and indicates of labour, and none of its advantages. strong sense in every line. It often We understand the expediency of rises to an eloquence, not florid or imkeeping the functions of cook and passioned, but high, grave, and sober; coachman distinct. The dinner will be such as would become a state paper, or better dressed, and the horses better a judgment delivered by a great magismanaged. But where the two situations trate, a Somers or a D'Aguesseau. are united, as in the Maître Jacques of Molière, we do not see that the matter is much mended by the solemn form with which the pluralist passes from one of his employments to the other. We manage these things better in England. Sir Walter Scott gives us a novel; Mr. Hallam a critical and argumentative history. Both are occupied with the same matter. But the former looks at it with the eye of a sculptor. His intention is to give an express and lively image of its external form. The latter is an anatomist. His task is to dissect the subject to its inmost recesses, and to lay bare before us all the springs of motion and all the causes of decay.

In this respect the character of Mr. Hallam's mind corresponds strikingly with that of his style. His work is eminently judicial. Its whole spirit is that of the bench, not that of the bar. He sums up with a calm, steady impartiality, turning neither to the right nor to the left, glossing over nothing, exaggerating nothing, while the advocates on both sides are alternately biting their lips to hear their conflicting misstatements and sophisms exposed. On a general survey, we do not scruple to pronounce the Constitutional History the most impartial book that we ever read. We think it the more incumbent on us to bear this testimony strongly at first setting out, because, in the course of our remarks, we shall think it right to dwell principally on those parts of it from which we dissent.

Mr. Hallam is, on the whole, far better qualified than any other writer of our time for the office which he has undertaken. He has great industry and great acuteness. His knowledge is extensive, various, and profound. His mind is equally distinguished by the amplitude of its grasp, and by the delicacy of its tact. His speculations have none of that vagueness which is the common fault of political philosophy. On the contrary, they are strikingly practical, and teach us not only the general rule, but the mode of ap-imposing forms, its mythological fables plying it to solve particular cases. In this respect they often remind us of the Discourses of Machiavelli.

The style is sometimes open to the charge of harshness. We have also here and there remarked a little of that unpleasant trick, which Gibbon brought into fashion, the trick, we mean, of telling a story by implication and allusion. Mr. Hallam, however, has an excuse which Gibbon had not. His work is designed for readers who are already acquainted with the ordinary books on English history, and who can therefore unriddle these little enigmas without difficulty. The manner of the book is, on the whole, not unworthy of the matter.

There is one peculiarity about Mr. Hallam which, while it adds to the value of his writings, will, we fear, take away something from their popularity. He is less of a worshipper than any historian whom we can call to mind. Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school, its abstract doctrines for the initiated, its visible symbols, its

for the vulgar. It assists the devotion of those who are unable to raise themselves to the contemplation of pure truth by all the devices of Pagan or Papal superstition. It has its altars and its deified heroes, its relics and pilgrimages, its canonized martyrs and confessors, its festivals and its legendary miracles. Our pious ancestors, we are told, deserted the High Altar of Canterbury, to lay all their oblations on the shrine of St. Thomas. In the same manner the great and comfortable doctrines of the Tory creed, those particularly which relate to restrictions on worship and on trade, are adored by squires and rectors in Pitt

altogether untinctured with cynicism, but free from the slightest touch of passion, party spirit, or caprice.

Clubs, under the name of a minister of goods, or a friend to order without who was as bad a representative of the taking under his protection the foulest system which has been christened after excesses of tyranny. His admiration him as Becket of the spirit of the oscillates between the most worthless of Gospel. On the other hand, the cause rebels and the most worthless of opfor which Hampden bled on the field pressors, between Marten, the disgrace and Sydney on the scaffold is enthusi- of the High Court of Justice, and Laud, astically toasted by many an honest the disgrace of the Star Chamber. He radical who would be puzzled to ex- can forgive any thing but temperance plain the difference between Ship- and impartiality. He has a certain money and the Habeas Corpus Act. It sympathy with the violence of his opmay be added that, as in religion, so in ponents, as well as with that of his aspolitics, few even of those who are en-sociates. In every furious partisan he lightened enough to comprehend the sees either his present self or his former meaning latent under the emblems of self, the pensioner that is, or the Jacotheir faith can resist the contagion of bin that has been. But he is unable to the popular superstition. Often, when comprehend a writer who, steadily atthey flatter themselves that they are tached to principles, is indifferent about merely feigning a compliance with the names and badges, and who judges of prejudices of the vulgar, they are them-characters with equable severity, not selves under the influence of those very prejudices. It probably was not altogether on grounds of expediency that Socrates taught his followers to honour the gods whom the state honoured, and bequeathed a cock to Esculapius with his dying breath. So there is often a portion of willing credulity and enthusiasm in the veneration which the most discerning men pay to their political | idols. From the very nature of man it must be so. The faculty by which we inseparably associate ideas which have often been presented to us in conjunction is not under the absolute control of the will. It may be quickened into morbid activity. It may be reasoned into sluggishness. But in a certain degree it will always exist. The almost absolute mastery which Mr. Hallam has obtained over feelings of this class is perfectly astonishing to us, and will, we believe, be not only astonishing but offensive to many of his readers. It must particularly disgust those people It is vehemently maintained by some who, in their speculations on politics, writers of the present day that Elizaare not reasoners but fanciers; whose beth persecuted neither Papists nor Puopinions, even when sincere, are not ritans as such, and that the severe meaproduced, according to the ordinary sures which she occasionally adopted law of intellectual births, by induction were dictated, not by religious intoleor inference, but are equivocally gene-rance, but by political necessity. Even rated by the heat of fervid tempers out the excellent account of those times of the overflowing of tumid imaginations. A man of this class is always in extremes. He cannot be a friend to liberty without calling for a community

We should probably like Mr. Hallam's book more if, instead of pointing out with strict fidelity the bright points and the dark spots of both parties, he had exerted himself to whitewash the one and to blacken the other. But we should certainly prize it far less. Eulogy and invective may be had for the asking. But for cold rigid justice, the one weight and the one measure, we know not where else we can look.

No portion of our annals has been more perplexed and misrepresented by writers of different parties than the history of the Reformation. In this labyrinth of falsehood and sophistry the guidance of Mr. Hallam is peculiarly valuable. It is impossible not to admire the even-handed justice with which he deals out castigation to right and left on the rival persecutors.

which Mr. Hallam has given has not altogether imposed silence on the authors of this fallacy. The title of the Queen, they say, was annulled by the

Pope; her throne was given to another; | fered, not from those which they had her subjects were incited to rebellion; committed, that the existence of disher life was menaced; every Catholic content among them must be inferred. was bound in conscience to be a traitor; it was therefore against traitors, not against Catholics, that the penal laws were enacted.

In order that our readers may be fully competent to appreciate the merits of this defence, we will state, as concisely as possible, the substance of some of these laws.

There were libels, no doubt, and prophecies, and rumours, and suspicions, strange grounds for a law inflicting capital penalties, ex post facto, on a large body of men.

Eight years later, the bull of Pius deposing Elizabeth produced a third law. This law, to which alone, as we conceive, the defence now under our consideration can apply, provides that, if any Catholic shall convert a Protestant to the Romish Church, they shall both suffer death as for high treason.

As soon as Elizabeth ascended the throne, and before the least hostility to her government had been shown by the Catholic population, an act passed prohibiting the celebration of the rites We believe that we might safely conof the Romish Church on pain of for- tent ourselves with stating the fact, feiture for the first offence, of a year's and leaving it to the judgment of every imprisonment for the second, and of plain Englishman. Recent controperpetual imprisonment for the third. versies have, however, given so much A law was next made in 1562, enact-importance to this subject, that we ing, that all who had ever graduated will offer a few remarks on it. at the Universities or received holy In the first place, the arguments orders, all lawyers, and all magistrates, which are urged in favour of Elizabeth should take the oath of supremacy apply with much greater force to the when tendered to them, on pain of case of her sister Mary. The Catholics forfeiture and imprisonment during the did not, at the time of Elizabeth's accesroyal pleasure. After the lapse of sion, rise in arms to seat a Pretender three months, the oath might again be on her throne. But before Mary had tendered to them; and, if it were again given, or could give, provocation, the refused, the recusant was guilty of high most distinguished Protestants attemptreason. A prospective law, however ted to set aside her rights in favour of severe, framed to exclude Catholics the Lady Jane. That attempt, and from the liberal professions, would the subsequent insurrection of Wyatt, have been mercy itself compared with this odious act. It is a retrospective statute; it is a retrospective penal statute; it is a retrospective penal statute against a large class. We will The fact is that both pleas are not positively affirm that a law of this worthless alike. If such arguments description must always, and under all are to pass current, it will be easy to circumstances, be unjustifiable. But prove that there was never such a the presumption against it is most thing as religious persecution since violent; nor do we remember any crisis, the creation. For there never was a either in our own history, or in the religious persecution in which some history of any other country, which odious crime was not, justly or unwould have rendered such a provi- justly, said to be obviously deducible sion necessary. In the present case, from the doctrines of the persecuted what circumstances called for extraor-party. We might say, that the Cæsars dinary rigour? There might be dis- did not persecute the Christians; that affection among the Catholics. The they only punished men who were prohibition of their worship would na- charged, rightly or wrongly, with burnturally produce it. But it is from ing Rome, and with committing the their situation, not from their conduct, foulest abominations in secret assemfrom the wrongs which they had suf-blies; and that the refusal to throw

furnished at least as good a plea for the burning of Protestants, as the conspiracies against Elizabeth furnish for the hanging and embowelling of Papists.

frankincense on the altar of Jupiter was not the crime, but only evidence of the crime. We might say, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was intended to extirpate, not a religious sect, but a political party. For, beyond all doubt, the proceedings of the Huguenots, from the conspiracy of Amboise to the battle of Moncontour, had given much more trouble to the French monarchy than the Catholics have ever given to the English monarchy since the Reformation; and that too with much less excuse. The true distinction is perfectly obvious. To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

generally thought that licentiousness and cruelty of the worst description are likely to be the fruits, as they often have been the fruits, of Antinomian opinions. This chain of reasoning, we think, is as perfect in all its parts as that which makes out a Papist to be necessarily a traitor. Yet it would be rather a strong measure to hang all the Calvinists, on the ground that, if they were spared, they would infallibly commit all the atrocities of Matthias and Knipperdoling. For, reason the matter as we may, experience shows us that a man may believe in election without believing in reprobation, that he may believe in reprobation without being an Antinomian, and that he may be an Antinomian without being a bad citizen. Man, in short, is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

We do not believe that every EnWhen Elizabeth put Ballard and glishman who was reconciled to the Babington to death, she was not per-Catholic Church would, as a necessary secuting. Nor should we have accused consequence, have thought himself her government of persecution for pass-justified in deposing or assassinating ing any law, however severe, against Elizabeth. It is not sufficient to say overt acts of sedition. But to argue that the convert must have acknowthat, because a man is a Catholic, he must think it right to murder a heretical sovereign, and that because he thinks it right he will attempt to do it, and then, to found on this conclusion a law for punishing him as if he had done it, is plain persecution.

If, indeed, all men reasoned in the same manner on the same data, and always did what they thought it their duty to do, this mode of dispensing punishment might be extremely judicious. But as people who agree about premises often disagree about conclusions, and as no man in the world acts up to his own standard of right, there are two enormous gaps in the logic by which alone penalties for opinions can be defended. The doctrine of reprobation, in the judgment of many very able men, follows by syllogistic necessity from the doctrine of election. Others conceive that the Antinomian heresy directly follows from the doctrine of reprobation; and it is very

ledged the authority of the Pope, and that the Pope had issued a bull against the Queen. We know through what strange loopholes the human mind contrives to escape, when it wishes to avoid a disagreeable inference from an admitted proposition. We know how long the Jansenists contrived to believe the Pope infallible in matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe doctrines which he pronounced to be heretical. Let it pass, however, that every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth might be lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the business of everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely to hold good in a case in which a cruel death is the almost inevitable consequence of making any attempt.

Of the ten thousand clergymen of the Church of England, there is scarcely one who would not say that a man who should leave his country and friends to preach the Gospel among

savages, and who should, after labour- | founders of the Church were guilty of ing indefatigably without any hope of religious persecution mean only that reward, terminate his life by martyr- the founders of the Church were not dom, would deserve the warmest ad- influenced by any religious motive, we miration. Yet we doubt whether ten perfectly agree with them. Neither of the ten thousand ever thought of the penal code of Elizabeth, nor the going on such an expedition. Why more hateful system by which Charles should we suppose that conscientious the Second attempted to force Episcomotives, feeble as they are constantly pacy on the Scotch, had an origin so found to be in a good cause, should be noble. The cause is to be sought in omnipotent for evil? Doubtless there some circumstances which attended the was many a jolly Popish priest in the Reformation in England, circumstances old manor-houses of the northern coun- of which the effects long continued to ties, who would have admitted, in be felt, and may in some degree be theory, the deposing power of the Pope, traced even at the present day. but who would not have been ambitious to be stretched on the rack, even though it were to be used, according to the benevolent proviso of Lord Burleigh, "as charitably as such a thing can be," or to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, even though, by that rare indulgence which the Queen, of her special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, sometimes extended to very mitigated cases, he were allowed a fair time to choke before the hangman began to grabble in his entrails.

In Germany, in France, in Switzerland, and in Scotland, the contest against the Papal power was essentially a religious contest. In all those countries, indeed, the cause of the Reformation, like every other great cause, attracted to itself many supporters influenced by no conscientious principle, many who quitted the Established Church only because they thought her in danger, many who were weary of her restraints, and many who were greedy for her spoils. But it was not But the laws passed against the Pu- by these adherents that the separation ritans had not even the wretched ex- was there conducted. They were welcuse which we have been considering. come auxiliaries; their support was In this case, the cruelty was equal, the too often purchased by unworthy comdanger infinitely less. In fact, the pliances; but, however exalted in rank danger was created solely by the cruelty. or power, they were not the leaders in But it is superfluous to press the argu- the enterprise. Men of a widely difment. By no artifice of ingenuity can ferent description, men who redeemed the stigma of persecution, the worst great infirmities and errors by sincerity, blemish of the English Church, be ef- disinterestedness, energy, and courage, faced or patched over. Her doctrines, men who, with many of the vices of we well know, do not tend to intoler-revolutionary chiefs and of polemic diance. She admits the possibility of vines, united some of the highest quasalvation out of her own pale. But this circumstance, in itself honourable to her, aggravates the sin and the shame of those who persecuted in her name. Dominic and De Montfort did not, at least, murder and torture for differences of opinion which they considered as trifling. It was to stop an infection which, as they believed, hurried to certain perdition every soul which it seized, that they employed their fire and steel. The measures of the English government with respect to the Papists and Puritans sprang from a widely different principle. If those who deny that the

litics of apostles, were the real directors. They might be violent in innovation and scurrilous in controversy. They might sometimes act with inexcusable severity towards opponents, and sometimes connive disreputably at the vices of powerful allics. But fear was not in them, nor hypocrisy, nor avarice, nor any petty selfishness. Their one great object was the demolition of the idols and the purification of the sanctuary. If they were too indulgent to the failings of eminent men from whose patronage they expected advantage to the church, they never flinched before