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September 1828
The Constitutional History of England, from the Accession of Henry VII. to the
Death of George II. By Henry Hallam. In 2 vols. 1827
History, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound of poetry and
philosophy. It impresses general truths on the mind by a vivid representation of
particular characters and incidents. But, in fact, the two hostile elements of
which it consists have never been known to form a perfect amalgamation; and at
length, in our own time, they have been completely and professedly separated.
Good histories, in the proper sense of the word, we have not. But we have good
historical romances, and good historical essays. The imagination and the reason,
if we may use a legal metaphor, have made partition of a province of literature
of which they were formerly seized per my et per tout; and now they hold their
respective portions in severalty, instead of holding the whole in common.
To make the past present, to bring the distant near, to place us in the society
of a great man or on the eminence which overlooks the field of a mighty battle,
to invest with the reality of human flesh and blood beings whom we are too much
inclined to consider as personified qualities in an allegory, to call up our
ancestors before us with all their peculiarities of language, manners, and garb,
to show us over their houses, to seat us at their tables, to rummage their
old-fashioned ward-robes, to explain the uses of their ponderous furniture,
these parts of the duty which properly belongs to the historian have been
appropriated by the historical novelist. On the other hand, to extract the
philosophy of history, to direct on judgment of events and men, to trace the
connection of cause and effects, and to draw from the occurrences of former time
general lessons of moral and political wisdom, has become the business of a
distinct class of writers.
Of the two kinds of composition into which history has been thus divided, the
one may be compared to a map, the other to a painted landscape. The picture,
though it places the country before us, does not enable us to ascertain with
accuracy the dimensions, the distances, and the angles. The map is not a work of
imitative art. It presents no scene to the imagination; but it gives us exact
information as to the bearings of the various points, and is a more useful
companion to the traveler or the general than the painted landscape could be,
though it were the grandest that ever Rosa peopled with outlaws, or the sweetest
over which Claude ever poured the mellow effulgence of a setting sun.
It is remarkable that the practice of separating the two ingredients of which
history is composed has become prevalent on the Continent as well as in this
country. Italy has already produced a historical novel, of high merit and of
still higher promise. In France, the practice has been carried to a length
somewhat whimsical. M. Sismondi publishes a grave and stately history of the
Merovingian Kings, very valuable, and a little tedious. He then sends forth as a
companion to it a novel, in which he attempts to give a lively representation of
characters and manners. This course, as it seems to us, has all the
disadvantages of a division of labor, and none of its advantages. We understand
the expediency of keeping the functions of cook and coachman distinct. The
dinner will be better dressed, and the horses better managed. But where the two
situations are united, as in the Maitre Jacques of Moliere, 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.
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 applying 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. The language,
even where most faulty, is weighty and massive, and indicates strong sense in
every line. It often rises to an eloquence, not florid or impassioned, but high,
grave, and sober; such as would become a state paper, or a judgment delivered by
a great magistrate, a Somers or a D'Aguesseau.
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.
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 imposing forms, its mythological
fables 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 Clubs, under the name of a minister who was as bad a
representative of the system which has been christened after him as Becket of
the spirit of the Gospel. On the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on
the field and Sidney on the scaffold is enthusiastically toasted by many an
honest radical who would be puzzled to explain the difference between Ship-money
and the Habeas Corpus Act. It may be added that, as in religion, so in politics,
few even of those who are enlightened enough to comprehend the meaning latent
under the emblems of their faith can resist the contagion of the popular
superstition. Often, when they flatter themselves that they are merely feigning
a compliance with the prejudices of the vulgar, they are themselves under the
influence of those very prejudices. It probably was not altogether on grounds of
expediency that Socrates taught his followers to honor the gods whom the state
honored, 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 who, in their
speculations on politics, are not reasoners but fanciers; whose opinions, even
when sincere, are not produced, according to the ordinary law of intellectual
births, by induction or inference, but are equivocally generated by the heat of
fervid tempers out 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 of goods, or a friend to order without taking under his protection the
foulest excesses of tyranny. His admiration oscillates between the most
worthless of rebels and the most worthless of oppressors, between Marten, the
disgrace of the High Court of justice, and Laud, the disgrace of the
Star-Chamber. He can forgive anything but temperance and impartiality. He has a
certain sympathy with the violence of his opponents, as well as with that of his
associates. In every furious partisan he sees either his present self or his
former self, the pensioner that is, or the Jacobin that has been. But he is
unable to comprehend a writer who, steadily attached to principles, is
indifferent about names and badges, and who judges of characters with equable
severity, not altogether untinctured with cynicism, but free from the slightest
touch of passion, party spirit, or caprice.
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.
It is vehemently maintained by some writers of the present day that Elizabeth
persecuted neither Papists nor Puritans as such, and that the severe measures
which she occasionally adopted were dictated, not by religious intolerance, but
by political necessity. Even the excellent account of those times 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; her subjects were incited to rebellion; her life was
menaced; every Catholic 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 defense, we will state, as concisely as possible, the substance of some of
these laws.
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 of the Romish Church on pain of forfeiture for the
first offence, of a year's imprisonment for the second, and of perpetual
imprisonment for the third.
A law was next made in 1562, enacting, that all who had ever graduated at the
Universities or received holy orders, all lawyers, and all magistrates, should
take the oath of supremacy when tendered to them, on pain of forfeiture and
imprisonment during the royal pleasure. After the lapse of three mouths, the
oath might again be tendered to them; and if it were again refused, the recusant
was guilty of high treason. A prospective law, however severe, framed to exclude
Catholics from the liberal professions, would 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 not
positively affirm that a law of this description must always, and under all
circumstances, be unjustifiable. But the presumption against it is most violent;
nor do we remember any crisis either in our own history, or in the history of
any other country, which would have rendered such a provision necessary. In the
present case, what circumstances called for extraordinary rigor? There might be
disaffection among the Catholics. The prohibition of their worship would
naturally produce it. But it is from their situation, not from their conduct,
from the wrongs which they had suffered, not from those which they had
committed, that the existence of discontent among them must be inferred. There
were libels, no doubt, and prophecies, and rumors 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 defense 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.
We believe that we might safely content ourselves with stating the fact, and
leaving it to the judgment of every plain Englishman. Recent controversies have,
however, given so much importance to this subject, that we will offer a few
remarks on it.
In the first place, the arguments which are urged in favor of Elizabeth apply
with much greater force to the case of her sister Mary. The Catholics did not,
at the time of Elizabeth's accession, rise in arms to seat a Pretender on her
throne. But before Mary had given, or could give, provocation, the most
distinguished Protestants attempted to set aside her rights in favor of the Lady
Jane. That attempt, and the subsequent insurrection of Wyatt, furnished at least
as good a plea for the burning of Protestants, as the conspiracies against
Elizabeth furnish for the hanging and emboweling of Papists.
The fact is that both pleas are worthless alike. If such arguments are to pass
current, it will be easy to prove that there was never such a thing as religious
persecution since the creation. For there never was a religious persecution in
which some odious crime was not, justly or unjustly, said to be obviously
deducible from the doctrines of the persecuted party. We might say, that the
Caesars did not persecute the Christians; that they only punished men who were
charged, rightly or wrongly, with burning Rome, and with committing the foulest
abominations in secret assemblies; and that the refusal to throw 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.
When Elizabeth put Ballard and Babington to death, she was not persecuting. Nor
should we have accused her government of persecution for passing any law,
however severe, against overt acts of sedition. But to argue that, 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 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 Englishman who was reconciled to the Catholic
Church would, as a necessary consequence, have thought himself justified in
deposing or assassinating Elizabeth. It is not sufficient to say that the
convert must have acknowledged 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 laboring indefatigably without
any hope of reward, terminate his life by martyrdom, would deserve the warmest
admiration. Yet we can doubt whether ten of the ten thousand ever thought of
going on such an expedition. Why should we suppose that conscientious motives,
feeble as they are constantly found to be in a good cause, should be omnipotent
for evil? Doubtless there was many a jolly Popish priest in the old manor-houses
of the northern counties, who would have admitted, in theory, the deposing power
of the Pope, 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.
But the laws passed against the Puritans had not even the wretched excuse which
we have been considering. In this case, the cruelty was equal, the danger,
infinitely less. In fact, the danger was created solely by the cruelty. But it
is superfluous to press the argument. By no artifice of ingenuity can the stigma
of persecution, the worst blemish of the English Church, be effaced or patched
over. Her doctrines, we well know, do not tend to intolerance. She admits the
possibility of salvation out of her own pale. But this circumstance, in itself
honorable 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 founders of the Church were
guilty of religious persecution mean only that the founders of the Church were
not influenced by any religious motive, we perfectly agree with them. Neither
the penal code of Elizabeth, nor the more hateful system by which Charles the
Second attempted to force Episcopacy on the Scotch, had an origin so noble. The
cause is to be sought in some circumstances which attended the Reformation in
England, circumstances of which the effects long continued to be felt, and may
in some degree be traced even at the present day.
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 by
these adherents that the separation was there conducted. They were welcome
auxiliaries; their support was too often purchased by unworthy compliances; but,
however exalted in rank or power, they were not the leaders in the enterprise.
Men of a widely different description, men who redeemed great infirmities and
errors by sincerity, disinterestedness, energy and courage, men who, with many
of the vices of revolutionary chiefs and of polemic divines, united some of the
highest qualities 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 allies. 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 persecuting tyrants and hostile armies. For
that theological system to which they sacrificed the lives of others without
scruple, they were ready to throw away their own lives without fear. Such were
the authors of the great schism on the Continent and in the northern part of
this island. The Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, the Prince of
Conde and the King of Navarre, the Earl of Moray and the Earl of Morton, might
espouse the Protestant opinions, or might pretend to espouse them; but it was
from Luther, from Calvin, from Knox, that the Reformation took its character.
England has no such names to show; not that she wanted men of sincere piety, of
deep learning, of steady and adventurous courage. But these were thrown into the
background. Elsewhere men of this character were the principals. Here they acted
a secondary part. Elsewhere worldliness was the tool of zeal. Here zeal was the
tool of worldliness. A King, whose character may be best described by saying
that he was despotism itself personified, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious
aristocracy, a servile Parliament, such were the instruments by which England
was delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been begun by Henry, the
murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother,
and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest. Sprung from brutal
passion, nurtured by selfish policy, the Reformation in England displayed little
of what had, in other countries, distinguished it; unflinching and unsparing
devotion, boldness of speech, and singleness of eye. These were indeed to be
found; but it was in the lower ranks of the party which opposed the authority of
Rome, in such men as Hooper, Latimer, Rogers, and Taylor. Of those who had any
important share in bringing the Reformation about, Ridley was perhaps the only
person who did not consider it as a mere political job. Even Ridley did not play
a very prominent part. Among the statesmen and prelates who principally gave the
tone to the religious changes, there is one, and one only, whose conduct
partiality itself can attribute to any other than interested motives. It is not
strange, therefore, that his character should have been the subject of fierce
controversy. We need not say that we speak of Cranmer.
Mr. Hallam has been severely censured for saying with his usual placid severity,
that, "if we weigh the character of this prelate in an equal balance, he will
appear far indeed removed from the turpitude imputed to him, by his enemies; yet
not entitled to any extraordinary veneration." We will venture to expand the
sense of Mr. Hallam, and to comment on it thus:--If we consider Cranmer merely
as a statesman, he will not appear a much worse man than Wolsey, Gardiner,
Cromwell, or Somerset. But, when an attempt is made to set him up as a saint, it
is scarcely possible for any man of sense who knows the history of the times to
preserve his gravity. If the memory of the archbishop had been left to find its
own place, he would have soon been lost among the crowd which is mingled
"A quel cattivo coro Degli angeli, che non furon ribelli, Ne fur fedeli a Dio,
per se foro."
And the only notice which it would have been necessary to take of his name would
have been
"Non ragioniam di lui; ma guarda, e passa."
But, since his admirers challenge for him a place in the noble army of martyrs,
his claims require fuller discussion.
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume I
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