the audacity to undertake, and which, for a time, it was really thought that he had performed. This description is surely by no means ap. plicable to a statesman who had, through the whole course of his life, carefully avoided exposing himself in seasons of trouble: who had repeatedly refused, in the most critical con junctures, to be Secretary of State; and who now, in the midst of revolutions, plots, foreign and domestic wars, was quietly writing_non sense about the visits of Lycurgus to the Brah mins, and the tunes which Arion played to the Dolphin. We must not omit to mention that, while the controversy about Phalaris was raging, Swift, in order to show his zeal and attachment, wrote the "Battle of the Books;"-the earliest piece in which his peculiar talents are discernible. We may observe, that the bitter dislike of Bentley, bequeathed by Temple to Swift, seems to have been communicated by Swift to Pope, to Arbuthnot, and to others who continued tease the great critic, long after he had shaken hands very cordially both with Boyle and Atterbury. The illusion was soon dispelled. Bentley's answer forever settled the question, and established his claim to the first place amongst classical scholars. Nor do those do him justice who represent the controversy as a battle between wit and learning. For, though there is a lamentable deficiency of learning on the side of Boyle, there is no want of wit on the side of Bentley. Other qualities too, as valuable as either wit or learning, appear conspieuously in Bentley's book ;-a rare sagacity, an unrivalled power of combination, a perfect mastery of all the weapons of logic. He was greatly indebted to the furious outcry which the misrepresentations, sarcasms, and intrigues of his opponents had raised against him;-an outcry in which fashionable and political circles joined, and which was re-echoed by thou-to sands who did not know whether Phalaris ruled in Sicily or in Siam. His spirit, daring even to rashness-self-confident, even to negligence and proud, even to insolent ferocity, -was awed for the first and for the last time -awed, not into meanness or cowardice, but into wariness and sobriety. For once he ran no risks; he left no crevice unguarded; he wantoned in no paradoxes; above all, he returned no railing for the railing of his enemies. In almost every thing that he has written we can discover proofs of genius and learning. But it is only here that his genius and earning appear to have been constantly under the guidance of good sense and good temper. Here we find none of that besotted reliance on his own powers and on his own luck, which he showed when he undertook to edite Milton; none of that perverted ingenuity which deforms so many of his notes on Horace; none of that disdainful carelessness by which he laid himself open to the keen and dexterous thrusts of Middleton; none of that extravagant vaunting and savage scurrility by which he afterwards dishonoured his studies and his profession, and degraded himself almost to the level of De Paucs. Sir William Temple died at Moor Park in January, 1699. He appeared to have suffered no intellectual decay. His heart was buried under a sun-dial which still stands in his fa vourite garden. His body was laid in Westminster Abbey by the side of his wife; and a place hard by was set apart for Lady Giffard, who long survived him. Swift was his literary executor, and superintended the publication of his Letters and Memoirs, not without some acrimonious contests with the family. Of Temple's character little more rema: to be said. Burnet accuses him of holding ir religious opinions, and corrupting everybody. who came near him. But the vague assertion of so rash and partial a writer as Burnet, about a man with whom, as far as we know, he never exchanged a word, is of very little weight. It is, indeed, by no means improbable that Temple may have been a free-thinker. The Osbornes thought him so when he was a very young man. And it is certain that a large proportion of the gentlemen of rank and fashion who made their entrance into society while the Puritan party was at the height of Temple did not live to witness the utter and power, and while the memory of the reign of irreparable defeat of his champions. He died, that party was still recent, conceived a strong indeed, at a fortunate moment, just after the disgust for all religion. The imputation was appearance of Boyle's book, and while all common between Temple and all the most disEngland was laughing at the way in which the tinguished courtiers of the age. Rochester Christchurch men had handled the pedant. In and Buckingham were open scoffers, and MulBoyle's book, Temple was praised in the high-grave very little better. Shaftesbury, though est terms, and compared to Memmius-not a more guarded, was supposed to agree with very happy comparison; for the only particu- them in opinion. All the three noblemen who lar information which we have about Mem- were Temple's colleagues during the short mius is, that in agitated times he thought it time of his continuance in the cabinet, were his duty to attend exclusively to politics; and of very indifferent repute as to orthodoxy that his friends could not venture, except when Halifax, indeed, was generally considered as the republic was quiet and prosperous, to in- an atheist; but he solemnly denied the charge; trude on him with their philosophical and and, indeed, the truth seems to be, that he was poetical productions. It is on this account, more religiously disposed than most of the that Lucretius puts up the exquisitely beauti-statesmen of that age; though two impulses ful prayer for peace with which his poem opens: which were unusually strong in him,—à passion for ludicrous images, and a passion for subtle speculations,-sometimes prompted him to talk on serious subjects in a manner which gave great and just offence. It is not even unlikely that Temple, who seldom went below | he seems to us to have been excessively self the surface of any question, may have been infected with the prevailing skepticism. All that we can say on the subject is, that there is no trace of impiety in his works; and that the ease with which he carried his election for a university, where the majority of the voters were clergymen, though it proves nothing as to his opinions, must, we think, be considered as proving that he was not, as Burnet seems to insinuate, in the habit of talking atheism to all who came near him. Temple, however, will scarcely carry with him any great accession of authority to the side either of religion or of infidelity. He was no profound thinker. He was merely a man of lively parts and quick observation, —a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world. Mere scholars were dazzled by the ambassador and cabinet councillor; mere politicians by the essayist and historian. But neither as a writer nor as a statesman can we allot to him any very high place. As a man, ish, but very sober, wary, and far-sighted in his selfishness;—to have known better than most people know what he really wanted in life; and to have pursued what he wanted with much more than ordinary steadiness and sagacity;-never suffering himself to be drawn aside either by bad or by good feelings. It was his constitution to dread failure more than he desired success,-to prefer security, com fort, repose, leisure, to the turmoil and anxiety which are inseparable from greatness;-and this natural languor of mind, when contrasted with the malignant energy of the keen and restless spirits among whom his lot was cast, sometimes appears to resemble the moderation of virtue. But we must own, that he seems to us to sink into littleness and meanness when we compare him-we do not say with any high ideal standard of morality,--but with many of those frail men who, aiming at noble ends, but often drawn from the right path by strong pas sions and strong temptations, have left to pos terity a doubtful and checkered fame CHURCH AND STATE.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW FOR APRIL, 1839.] 66 THE author of this volume is a young man | it less the second time, and still less the third of unblemished character and of distinguished time; and now it seems to me to be nc defence parliamentary talents, the rising hope of those at all." My good friend," said Lysias, “you stern and unbending Tories, who follow, re- quite forget that the judges are to hear it only luctantly and mutinously, a leader, whose ex- once." The case is the same in the English perience and eloquence are indispensable to Parliament. It would be as idle in an orator them, but whose cautious temper and moderate to waste deep meditation and long research on opinions they abhor. It would not be at all his speeches, as it would be in the manager of strange if Mr. Gladstone were one of the most a theatre to adorn all the crowd of courtiers unpopular men in England. But we believe and ladies who cross over the stage in a prothat we do him no more than justice when we cession with real pearls and diamonds. It is say, that his abilities and his demeanour have not by accuracy or profundity that men become obtained for him the respect and good-will of the masters of great assemblies. And why be all parties. His first appearance in the cha- at the charge of providing logic of the best racter of an author is therefore an interesting quality, when a very inferior article will be event; and it is natural that the gentle wishes equally acceptable? Why go as deep into a of the public should go with him to his trial. question as Burke, only in order to be, like Burke, coughed down, or left speaking to green benches and red boxes? This has long appeared to us to be the most serious of the evils which are to be set off against the many blessings of popular government. It is a fine and true saying of Bacon, that reading makes a full man, talking a ready man, and writing an exact man. The tendency of institutions like those of England is to encourage readiness in public men, at the expense both of fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous minds of every generation, minds often admirably fitted for the investigation of truth, are habitually employed in producing arguments, such as no man of sense would ever put into a treatise intended for publication,-arguments which are just good enough to be used once, when aided by fluent delivery and pointed language. The habit of discussing questions in this way necessarily reacts on the intelligence of our ablest men, particularly of those who are introduced into Parliament at a very early age, before their minds have expanded to full maturity. The talent for debate is developed in such men to a degree which, to the multitude, seems as marvellous as the performances of an Italian improvisatore. But they are fortunate, indeed, if they retain unimpaired the faculties which are required for close reasoning or for enlarged speculation. Indeed, we should sooner expect a great original work on political science--such a work, for example, as the "Wealth of Nations"--from an apothe cary in a country town, or from a minister in the Hebrides, than from a statesman who, ever since he was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater in the House of Commons. We are much pleased, without any reference to the soundness or unsoundness of Mr. Gladstone's theories, to see a grave and elaborate treatise on an important part of the philosophy of government proceed from the pen of a young man who is rising to eminence in the House of Commons. There is little danger that people engaged in the conflicts of active life will be too much addicted to general speculation. The opposite vice is that which most easily besets them. The times and tides of business and debate tarry for no man. A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill-informed respecting a question; all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must; and if he is a man of talents, of tact, and of intrepidity, ne soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully. He finds that there is a great difference between the effect of written words, which are perused and reperused in the stillness of the closet, and the effect of spoken words, which, set off by the graces of utterance and gesture, vibrate for a single moment on the ear. He finds that he may blunder without much chance of being detected, that he may reason sophistically, and escape unrefuted. He finds that, even on knotty questions of trade and legislation, he can, without reading ten pages, or thinking ten minutes, draw forth loud plaudits, and sit down with the credit of having made an excellent speech. Lysias, says Plutarch, wrote a defence for a man who was to be tried before one of the Athenian tribunals. Long before the defendant had learned the speech by heart, he became so much dissatisfied with it, that he went in great distress to the author. "I was delighted with your speech the first time I read it; but I liked We therefore hail with pleasure, though assuredly not with unmixed pleasure, the appear. ance of this work. That a young politician should, in the intervals afforded by his parlia mentary avocations, have constructed and proGLADSTONE, Esq., Student of Christchurch, and M. P. pounded, with much study and mental toil, an The State in its relations with the Church. By W. E. for Newark 8vo. Second Edition. London. 1839. original theory on a great problem in politics, is a circumstance which, abstracted from all consideration of the soundness or unsoundness of his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone's doctrines may become fashionable among public men. But we heartily wish that his laudable desire to penetrate beneath the surface of questions, and to arrive, by long and intent meditation, at the knowledge of great general laws, were much more fashionable than we at all expect it to become. Mr. Gladstone seems to us to be, in many respects, exceedingly well qualified for philosophical investigation. His mind is of large grasp; nor is he deficient in dialectical skill. But he does not give his intellect fair play. There is no want of light, but a great want of what Bacon would have called dry light. Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted and distorted by a false medium of passions and prejudices. His style bears a remarkable analogy to his mode of thinking, and indeed exercises great influence on his mode of thinking. His rhetoric, though often good of its kind, darkens and perplexes the logic which it should illustrate. Half his acuteness and diligence, with a barren imagination and a scanty vocabulary, would have saved him from almost all his mistakes. He has one gift most dangerous to a speculator,--a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import,-of a kind of language which affects us much in the same way in which the lofty diction of the chorus of Clouds affected the simple-hearted Athenian. ω γη του φθεγματος, ως ιερόν, και σεμνον, και τερατώδες. When propositions have been established, and nothing remains but to amplify and decorate them, this dim magnificence may be in place. But if it is admitted into a demonstra*ion, it is very much worse than absolute nonsense--just as that transparent haze through which the sailor sees capes and mountains of false sizes and in false bearings, is more dangerous than utter darkness. Now, Mr. Gladstone is fond of employing the phraseology of which we speak in those parts of his work which require the utmost perspicuity and precision of which human language is capable, and in this way he deludes first himself, and then his readers. The foundations of his theory, which ought to be buttresses of adamant, are made out of the flimsy materials which are fit only for perorations. This fault is one which no subsequent care or industry can correct. The more strictly Mr. Gladstone reasons on his premises, the more absurd are the conclusions which he brings out; and when at last his good sense and good nature recoil from the horrible practical inferences to which his theory leads, he is reduced some times to take refuge in arguments inconsistent with his fundamental doctrines; and sometimes to escape from the legitimate consequences of his false principles under cover of equally false history. It would be unjust not to say that this book, though not a good book, shows more talent than many good books. It contains some eloquent and ingenious passages. It bears the signs of much patient thought. It is written throughout with excellent taste and excellent temper; nor is it, so far as we have observed, disfigured by one expression unworthy of a gentleman, a scholar, or a Christian. But the doctrines which are put 1orth in it appear to us, after full and calm consideration, to be false; to be in the highest degree pernicious; to be such as, if followed out in practice to their legitimate consequences, would inevitably produce the dissolution of society; and for this opinion we shall proceed to give our reasons with that freedom which the importance of the subject requires, and which Mr. Gladstone both by precept and by example invites us to use, but, we hope, without rudeness, and, we are sure, without malevolence. Before we enter on an examination of this theory, we wish to guard ourselves against one misconception. It is possible that some persons who have read Mr. Gladstone's book carelessly, and others who have merely heard in conversation or seen in a newspaper that the member for Newark has written in defence of the Church of England against the support. ers of the Voluntary System, may imagine that we are writing in defence of the Voluntary System, and that we desire the abolition of the Established Church. This is not the case. It would be as unjust to accuse us of attacking the Church because we attack Mr. Gladstone's doctrines, as it would be to accuse Locke of wishing for anarchy because he refuted Fil mer's patriarchal theory of government; cr to accuse Blackstone of recommending the condenied that the right of the rector to tithe was fiscation of ecclesiastical property because he derived from the Levitical law. It is to be observed that Mr. Gladstone rests his case on entirely new grounds, and does not differ more widely from us than from some of those who have hitherto been considered as the most illustrious champions of the Church. He is Lot content with the "Ecclesiastical Polity," and rejoices that the latter part of that cele brated work "does not carry with it the weight of Hooker's plenary authority." He is not content with Bishop Warburton's "Alliance of Church and State." "The propositions of that work generally," he says, "are to be received with qualification;" and he agrees with Bolingbroke in thinking that Warburton's whole the ory rests upon a fiction. He is still less satisfied with Paley's "Defence of the Church," which he pronounces to be "tainted by the original vice of false ethical principles," and "full of the seeds of evil." He conceives that Dr. Chalmers has taken a partial view of the subject, and "put forth much questionable matter." In truth, on almost every point on which we are opposed to Mr. Gladstone, we have ou our side the authority of some divine, eminent as a defender of existing establishments. Mr. Gladstone's whole theory rests on this great fundamental proposition—that the Propagation of Religious Truth is one of the principal ends of government, as government. I' Mr. Gladstone has not proved this proposition, his system vanishes at once. We are desirous, before we enter on the dis cussion of this important question, to point out limited to this short life and to this visible world. He finds himself surrounded by the signs of a power and wisdom higher than his own; and, in all ages and nations, men of all orders of intellect, from Bacon and Newton down to the rudest tribes of cannibals, have believed in the existence of some superior mind. Thus far the voice of mankind is almost unanimous. But whether there be one God or many-what may be his natural and what his moral attributes-in what relation his creatures stand to him-whether he have ever disclosed himself to us by any other revelation than that which is written in all the parts of the glorious and well-ordered world which he has made-whether his revelation be contained in any permanent record-how that record should be interpreted, and whether it have pleased him to appoint any unerring interpreter on earth-these are questions respecting which there exists the widest diversity of opinion, and respecting which the great majority of our race has, ever since the dawn of regular history, been deplorably in error. clearly a distinction which, though very obvious, seems to be overlooked by many excellent people. In their opinion, to say that the ends of government are temporal and not spiritual, is tantamount to saying that the temporal welfare of man is of more importance than his spiritual welfare. But this is an entire mistake. The question is not whether spiritual interests be or be not superior in importance to temporal interests, but whether the machinery which happens at any moment to be employed for the purpose of protecting certain temporal interests of a society, be necessarily such a machinery as is fitted to promote the spiritual interests of that society. It is certain that without a division of duties the world could not go on. It is of very much more importance that men should have food than that they should have pianofortes. Yet it by no means follows that every pianoforte-maker ought to add the business of a baker to his own; for if he did so, we should have both much worse music and much worse bread. It is of much more importance that the knowledge of religious truth should be widely diffused than that the art of sculpture should flourish among us. Yet it by no means follows that the Royal Academy ought to unite with its present functions those of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, to distribute theological tracts, to send forth missionaries, to turn out Nollekens for being a Catholic, Bacon for being a Methodist, and Flaxman for being a Swedenborgian. For the effect of such folly would be that we should have the worst possible Academy of Arts, and the worst possible Society for the Promotion of Christian Know-taining it, differ as widely as possible respect ledge. The community, it is plain, would be thrown into universal confusion, if it were supposed to be the duty of every association which is formed for one good object to promote every other good object. Now here are two great objects:-One is the protection of the persons and estates of citi zens from injury; the other is the propagation of religious truth. No two objects more entirely distinct can well be imagined. The former belongs wholly to the visible and tangible world in which we live; the latter belongs to that higher world which is beyond the reach of our senses. The former belongs to this life; the latter to that which is to come. Men who are perfectly agreed as to the importance of the former object, and as to the way of at ing the latter object. We must therefore pause before we admit that the persons, be they whe they may, who are intrusted with power for the promotion of the former object, ought always to use that power for the promotion of the latter object. As to some of the ends of civil government, all people are agreed. That it is designed to Mr. Gladstone conceives that the duties of protect our persons and our property,-that it governments are paternal;-a doctrine which is designed to compel us to satisfy our wants, we will not believe till he can show us some not by rapine, but by industry,-that it is de- government which loves its subjects as a fasigned to compel us to decide our differences, ther loves a child, and which is as superior in not by the strong hand, but by arbitration,-intelligence to its subjects as a father is supe that it is designed to direct our whole force, as rior to a child. He tells us, in lofty, though that of one man, against any other society somewhat indistinct language, that "Governwhich may offer us injury,-these are propo- ment occupies in moral the place of To av in sitions which will hardly be disputed. physical science." If government be indeed Now these are matters in which man, with-ro way in moral science, we do not understand out any reference to any higher being or to why rulers should not assume all the functions any future state, is very deeply interested. which Plato assigned to them. Why should Every man, be he idolater, Mohammedan, Jew, they not take away the child from the mother, Papist, Socinian, Deist, or Atheist, naturally select the nurse, regulate the school, overlook loves life, shrinks from pain, desires those the play-ground, fix the hours of labour and of comforts which can be enjoyed only in com- recreation, prescribe what ballads shall be munities where property is secure. To be sung, what tunes shall be played, what books murdered, to be tortured, to be robbed, to be shall be read, what physic shall be swallowed! sold into slavery, to be exposed to the outrages-why should not they choose our wives, limit of gangs of foreign banditti calling themselves our expenses, and stint us to a certain number patriots-these are evidently evils from which of dishes, of glasses of wine, and of cups of men of every religion and men of no religion wish to be protected; and therefore it will hardly be disputed that men of every religion and of no religion have thus far a common interest in being well governed. But the hopes and fears of man are not tea? Plato, whose hardihood in speculation was perhaps more wonderful than any other peculiarity of his extraordinary mind, and who shrank from nothing to which his principles led, went this whole length. Mr. Gladstone is not so intrepid. He contents himself with law |