Leading Articles on Various Subjects Part 10

We must again express our regret that the article on the Duke of Buccleuch, which has proved the occasion of so much remark, spoken and written, should have ever appeared in our columns; and this, not, as the agent of the Duke a.s.serts, because it has been _exposed_, but because of the unhappy unsolidity of its facts, and because of that diversion of the public attention which it has effected from cases such as those of Can.o.bie and Wanlockhead, and from such a death-bed as that of the Rev. Mr. Innes. Our readers are already in possession of our explanation, and have seen it fully borne out by the incidental statement of Mr. Parker. We would crave leave to remind them that the _Witness_ is now in the ninth year of its existence; and that during that time the Editor stated many facts, from his own observation, connected with the refusal of sites, and other matters of a similar character. He saw congregations worshipping on bare hill-sides in the Highlands of Sutherland, and on an oozy sea-beach on the coast of Lochiel; he sailed in the Free Church yacht the _Betsey_, and worshipped among the islanders of Eigg and of Skye. Nor did he shrink from very minutely describing what he had witnessed on these occasions, nor yet from denouncing the persecution that had thrust out some of the best men and best subjects of the country, to worship unsheltered amid bleak and desert wastes, or on the bare sea-sh.o.r.e.

And yet, of all the many facts which he thus communicated on his own authority, because resting on his own observation, not one of them has ever yet been disproved; nay, scarce one of them has ever yet been so much as challenged.

Of course, in reference to the statements which he has had to make on the testimony of others, his position was necessarily different; and a very delicate matter he has sometimes found it to be, to deal with these statements. A desire, on the one hand, to expose to the wholesome breathings of public opinion whatever was really oppressive and unjust; a fear, on the other, lest he should compromise the general cause, or injure the character of his paper, by giving publicity to what either might not be true, or could not be proven to be true,--have often led him to retain communications beside him for weeks and months, until some circ.u.mstance occurred that enabled him to determine regarding their real character and value. And such--with more, however, than the ordinary misgivings, and with an unfavourable opinion frankly and decidedly expressed--was the course which he took with the communicated article on the Duke of Buccleuch.

That the testing circ.u.mstance which _did_ occur in the course of the long period during which it was thus held _in retentis_ was not communicated to him, or to any other official connected with the _Witness_, he much regrets, but could not possibly help.

In the discussion on the Sites Bill of Wednesday last, the Honourable Fox Maule is made to say, that 'the _Witness_ contained many articles which had been condemned by the Church.'

Now this must be surely a misreport, as nothing could be more grossly incorrect than such a statement. The voice of the Free Church--that by which she condemns or approves--can be emitted through but her deliberative courts, and recorded in but the decisions of her solemn a.s.semblies. On the merits or demerits of the _Witness_, through these her only legitimate organs, she has not yet spoken; and Mr. Maule is, we are sure, by far too intelligent a Churchman to mistake the voice of a mere political coterie, irritated mayhap by the loss of an election, for the solemn deliverance of a Church of Christ. With respect to his reported statement, to the effect that the _Witness_ 'contained many articles which had done great harm to the Free Church,' the report may, we think, be quite correct. The _Witness_ contained a good many articles on the special occasion when the Free Churchmen of Edinburgh conspired--'ungratefully and dishonourably,' as Mr. Maule must have deemed it--to eject a Whig Minister, and to place in his seat, as their representative, a shrewd citizen and honest man.

And these lucubrations accomplished, we daresay, their modic.u.m of harm. With regard, however, to the articles of the _Witness_ in general, we think we can confidently appeal in their behalf to such of our readers as perused them, not as they were garbled, misquoted, interpolated, and mis-represented by unscrupulous enemies, but as they were first given to the public from the pen of the Editor. Among these readers we reckon men of all cla.s.ses, from the peer to the peasant--Conservative landowners, magistrates, merchants, ministers of the gospel. Dr. Chalmers was a reader of the _Witness_ from its first commencement to his death; and he, perusing its editorial articles as they were originally written--not as they were garbled or interpolated in other prints--saw in them very little to blame.

Not but that some of our sentences look sufficiently formidable in extracts when twisted from their original meaning; and this, just as the Decalogue itself might be instanced as a code of licentiousness, violence, and immorality, were it to be exhibited in garbled quotations, divested of all the _nots_. In the _Edinburgh Advertiser_ of yesterday, for instance, we find the following pa.s.sage:--'It [_The Witness_] has menaced our n.o.bles with the horrors of the French Revolution, when the guillotine plied its nightly task, and when the "b.l.o.o.d.y hearts of aristocrats dangled on b.u.t.ton-holes in the streets of Paris." It has reminded them of the time when a "grey discrowned head sounded hollow on the scaffold at Whitehall;" insinuating that, if they persisted in opposing the claims of the Free Church, a like fate might overtake the reigning dynasty of our time.'

When, asks the reader, did these most atrocious threats appear in the _Witness_?

They never, we reply, appeared in the _Witness_ as threats at all. The one pa.s.sage, almost in the language of Chateaubriand, was employed in an article in which we justified the sentence p.r.o.nounced on the atheist Patterson. The other formed part of a purely historic reference--in an article on Puseyism, written ere the Free Church had any existence--to the Canterburianism of the times of Charles I., and the fate of that unhappy monarch. We thought not of threatening the aristocracy when quoting the one pa.s.sage, nor yet of foreboding evil to the existing dynasty when writing the other. On exactly the same principle on which these pa.s.sages have been instanced to our disadvantage, the description of the _Holoptychius n.o.bilissimus_, which appeared a few years ago in the _Witness_, might be paraded as a personal attack on Sir James Graham; and the remarks on the construction of the _Pterichthys_, as a gross libel on the Duke of Buccleuch. It is, we hold, not a little to the credit of the _Witness_, that, in order to blacken its character, means should be resorted to of a character so disreputable and dishonest. From truth and fair statement it has all to hope, and nothing to fear.

_June 14, 1848._

BAILLIE'S LETTERS AND JOURNALS.

This is at once the handsomest and one of the best editions of the curious and very interesting cla.s.s of works to which it belongs, that has yet been given to the public. It is scarce possible to appreciate too highly the tact, judgment, and research displayed by the editor; and rarely indeed, so far as externals are concerned, has the typography of Scotland appeared to better advantage. It is a book decked out for the drawing-room in a suit of the newest pattern,--a tall, modish, well-built book, that has to be fairly set a-talking ere we discover from its tongue and style that it is a production not of our own times, but of the times of Charles and the Commonwealth. The good, simple minister of Kilwinning would fail to recognise himself in its fair open pages, that more than rival those of his old _Elzevirs_.

For his old-fashioned suit of home-spun grey, we find him sporting here a modern dress-coat of Saxony broadcloth, and a pair of unexceptionable cashmere trousers; and it is not until we step forward and address the worthy man, and he turns upon us his broad, honest face, that we see the grizzled moustache and peaked beard, and discover that his fears are still actively engaged regarding the prelatic leanings of Charles II., 'now at Breda;' though perchance not quite without hope that the counsel of the 'wise and G.o.dly youth'

James Sharpe may have the effect of setting all right again in the royal mind. We address what we take, from the garb, to be a contemporary, and find that we have stumbled on one of the seven sleepers.

We deem it no slight advantage to the reading public of the present day, that it should have works of this character made so easy of access. It is only a very few years since the student of Scottish ecclesiastical history could not have acquainted himself with the materials on which the historian can alone build, without pa.s.sing through a course of study at least as prolonged as an ordinary college course, and much more laborious. Let us suppose that he lived in some of the provinces. He would have, in the first place, to come and reside in Edinburgh, and get introduced, at no slight expense of trouble, mayhap, to the brown, half-defaced ma.n.u.scripts of our public libraries. He would require next to study the old hand, with all its baffling contractions. If he succeeded in mastering the difficulties of Melville's _Diary_ after a quarter of a year's hard conning, he might well consider himself a lucky man. Row's _History_ would occupy him during at least another quarter; Baillie's _Letters and Journals_ would prove work enough for two quarters more. If he succeeded in getting access to the papers of Woodrow, he would find little less than a twelvemonth's hard labour before him; Calderwood's large _History_ would furnish employment for at least half that time; and if curious to peruse it in its best and fullest form, he would find it necessary to quit Edinburgh for London, to pore there over the large ma.n.u.script copy stored up in the British Museum. As he proceeded in his course, he would be continually puzzled by references, allusions, initials; he would have to consult register offices, records of baptisms and deaths, session books, old and scarce works, hardly less difficult to be procured than even the ma.n.u.scripts themselves; and if he at length escaped the fate of the luckless antiquary, who produced the famous history of the village of Wheatfield, he might deem himself more than ordinarily fortunate. 'When I first engaged in this work,' said the poor man, 'I had eyes of my own; but now I cannot see even with the a.s.sistance of art: I have gone from spectacles of the first sight to spectacles of the third; the Chevalier Taylor gives my eyes over, and my optician writes me word he can grind no higher for me.' It will soon be no such Herculean task to penetrate to the foundations of our national ecclesiastical history. From publications such as those of the Woodrow Club, and of the _Letters and Journals_, the student will be able to acquire in a few weeks what would have otherwise cost him the painful labour of years. Nor can we point out a more instructive course of reading. In running over our modern histories, however able, we almost always find our point of view fixed down by the historian to the point occupied by himself. We cannot take up another on our own behalf, unless we differ from him altogether, nor select for ourselves the various subjects which we are to survey. We are in leading-strings for the time: the vigour of our author's thinking militates against the exercise of our own; his philosophy enters our minds in a too perfect form, and lies inert there, just as the condensed extract of some nourishing food often fails to nourish at all, because it gives no employment to the digestive faculty. A survey of the historian's materials has often, on the contrary, the effect of setting the mind free. We see the events of the times which he describes in their own light, and simply as events,--we select and arrange for ourselves,--they call up novel traits of character,--they lead us to draw on our experience of men,--they confirm principles,--they suggest reflections.

Some of our readers will perhaps remember that we noticed at considerable length the two first volumes of this beautiful edition of Baillie rather more than a twelvemonth ago. The third and concluding volume has but lately appeared. It embraces a singularly important period,--extending from shortly before the rise of the unhappy and ultimately fatal quarrel between the Resolutioners and Protesters, till the re-establishment of Episcopacy at the Restoration, when the curtain closes suddenly over the poor chronicler, evidently sinking into the grave at the time, the victim of a broken heart. He sees a stormy night settling dark over the Church,--Presbytery pulled down, the bishops set up, persecution already commenced; and, longing to be released from his troubles, he affectingly a.s.sures his correspondent, in the last of his many letters, that 'it was the matter of his daily grief that had brought his bodily trouble upon him,' and that it would be 'a favour to him to be gone.' From a very learned, concise, and well-written Life, the production of the accomplished editor, which serves as a clue to guide the reader through the mazes of the correspondence, we learn that he died three months after.

Where there is so much that is interesting, one finds it difficult to select. The light in which the infamous Sharpe is presented in this volume is at least curious. Prelacy, careful of the reputation of her archbishops, makes a great deal indeed of the b.l.o.o.d.y death of the man, but says as little as possible regarding his life and character. The sentimental Jacobitism of the present day--an imaginative principle that feeds on novels, and admires the persecutors because Claverhouse was brave and had an elegant upper lip--goes a little further, and speaks of him as the venerable Archbishop. When the famous picture of his a.s.sa.s.sination was exhibiting in Edinburgh, some ten or twelve years ago, he rose with the cla.s.s almost to the dignity of a martyr: there were young ladies that could scarce look at the piece without using their handkerchiefs; the victim was old, greyhaired, reverend, an archbishop, and eminently saintly, as a matter of course, whatever the barbarous fanatics might say; and all that his figure seemed to want in order to make it complete, was just a halo of yellow ochre round the head. In Baillie's _Letters_ we see him exhibited, though all unwittingly on the part of the writer, in his true character, and find that the yellow ochre would be considerably out of place. Rarely, indeed, does nature, all lost and fallen as it is, produce so consummate a scoundrel. Treachery seems to have existed as so uncontrollable an instinct in the man, that, like the appropriating faculty of the thief, who amused himself by picking the pocket of the clergyman who conducted him to the scaffold, it seems to have been incapable of lying still. He appears never to have had a friend who did not learn to detest and denounce him: his Presbyterian friends, whom he deceived and betrayed, did so in the first instance; his Episcopalian friends, whom he at least strove to deceive and betray, did so in the second. We are a.s.sured by Burnet, that even Charles, a monarch certainly not over-nice in the moral sense, declared James Sharpe to be one of the worst of men. His life was a continuous lie; and he has left more proofs of the fact in the form of letters under his own hand, than perhaps any other bad man that ever lived.

In Baillie he makes his first appearance as the Presbyterian minister of Crail, and as one of the honest chronicler's greatest favourites.

The unhappy disputes between the Resolutioners and Protesters were running high at the time. Baillie was a Resolutioner, Sharpe a zealous Resolutioner too; and Baillie, naturally unsuspicious, and bia.s.sed in his behalf by that spirit of party which can darken the judgment of even the most discerning, seems to have regarded him as peculiarly the hope of the Church. He was indisputably one of its most dexterous negotiators; and no man of the age made a higher profession of religion. Burnet, who knew him well in his after character as Archbishop of St. Andrews, tells us that never, save on one solitary occasion, did he hear him make the slightest allusion to religion. But in his letters to Baillie, almost every paragraph closes with the aspirations of a well-simulated devotion. They seem as if strewed over with the fragments of broken doxologies. The old man was, as we have said, thoroughly deceived. He a.s.sures his continental correspondent, Spang, that 'the great instrument of G.o.d to cross the evil designs of the Protesters, was that _very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young man_, Mr. James Sharpe.' In some of his after epistles we learn that he remembered him in his prayers, no doubt very sincerely, as, under G.o.d, one of the mainstays of the Church. What first strikes the reader in the character of Sharpe, as here exhibited, is his exclusively diplomatic cast of talent. Baillie himself was a controversialist: he wrote books to influence opinion, and delivered argumentative speeches. He was a man of business too: he drew up remonstrances, pet.i.tions, protests, and carried on the war of his party above-board.

All his better friends and correspondents, such as Douglas and d.i.c.kson, were persons of a resembling cast. But Sharpe's vocation lay in dealing with men in closets and window recesses: he could do nothing until he had procured the private ear of the individual on whom he wished to act. Is he desirous to influence the decisions of the Supreme Civil Court in behalf of his party? He straightway ingratiates himself with President Broghill, and the court becomes more favourable in consequence. Is he wishful to propitiate the English Government? He goes up to London, gets closeted with its more influential members. It was this peculiar talent that pointed him out to the Church as so fit a person to treat with Charles at Breda.

And it is when employed in this mission that we begin truly to see the man, and to discover the sort of ability on which the success of his closetings depended. We find Baillie holding, in his simplicity, that in order to draw the heart of the King from Episcopacy, nothing more could be necessary than just fairly to submit to him some sound controversial work, arranged on the plan of the good man's own _Ladensium_; and urging on Sharpe, that a few able divines should be employed in getting up a compilation for the express purpose. Sharpe writes in return, in a style sufficiently quiet, that His Majesty, in his very first address, 'has been pleased to ask very graciously about Robert Baillie,' a person for whom he has a particular kindness, and whom, if favours were dealing, he would be sure not to forget. He adds, further, that however matters might turn out in England, the Presbyterian Establishment of Scotland was in no danger of violation; and lest his Scotch friends should fall into the error of thinking too much about other men's business, he gives fervent expression to the hope 'that the Lord would give them to prize their own mercies, and know their own duties.' Even a twelvemonth after, when on the eve of setting out for London to be created a bishop, he writes his old friend, that whatever 'occasion of jealousies and false surmises his journey might give,' of one thing he might be a.s.sured, 'it was not in order to a change in the Church,' as he 'would convince his dear friend Mr. Baillie, through the Lord's help, when the Lord would return him.' He has an under-plot of treachery carrying on at the same time, that affects his 'dear friend' personally. In one of his letters to the unsuspecting chronicler, he a.s.sures him that he was 'doing his best, by the Lord's help,' to get him appointed Princ.i.p.al of the University of Glasgow. In one of his letters to Lauderdale, after stating that the office, 'in the opinion of many,' would require a man 'of more acrimony and weight' than 'honest Baillie,' he urges that the presentation should be sent him, with a blank s.p.a.ce, in which the name of the presentee might be afterwards inserted.

Baillie, naturally slow to suspect, does not come fully to understand the character of the man until a very few months before his death. He then complains bitterly to his continental correspondent, amid the ruin of the Church, and from the gloom of his sick-chamber, that Sharpe was the traitor who, 'piece by piece, had so cunningly trepanned them, that the cause had been suffered to sink without even a struggle.' The apostate had gained his object, however, and become 'His Grace the Lord Primate.' There were great rejoicings. 'The new bishops were magnificklie received;' they were feasted by the Lord Commissioner's lady on one night, by the Chancellor on another; and in especial, 'the Archbishop had bought a new coach at London, at the sides whereof two lakqueys in purple did run.'

The vanity of Sharpe is well brought out on another occasion by Burnet. The main object of one of his journeys to London, undertaken a little more than a twelvemonth after the death of Baillie, was to urge on the King that, as Primate of Scotland, he should of right take precedence of the Scottish Lord Chancellor, and to crave His Majesty's letter to that effect. In this trait, as in several others, he seems to have resembled Robespierre. His cruelty to his old friends the Presbyterians is well ill.u.s.trated by the fact that he could make the comparative leniency of Lauderdale, apostate and persecutor as Lauderdale was, the subject of an accusation against him to Charles.

But there is no lack of still directer instances in the biographies of the worthies whom his malice pursued. His meanness, too, seems to have been equal to his malice and pride. When Lauderdale on one occasion turned fiercely upon him, and threatened to impeach him for _leasing-making_, he 'straightway fell a-trembling and weeping,' and, to avoid the danger, submitted to appear in the royal presence; and there, in the coa.r.s.est terms, to confess himself a liar. It is a bishop who tells the story, and it is only one of a series. Truly the Primate of all Scotland was fortunate in the death he died. 'The dismal end of this unhappy man,' says Burnet, 'struck all people with horror, and softened his enemies into some tenderness; so that his memory was treated with decency by those who had very little respect for him during his life.'

In almost every page in this instructive volume the reader picks up pieces of curious information, or finds matters suggestive of interesting thought. There start up ever and anon valuable hints that germinate and bear fruit in the mind. We would instance, by way of ill.u.s.tration, a hint which occurs in a letter to Lauderdale, written shortly after the Restoration, and which, though apparently slight, leads legitimately into a not unimportant train of thinking. Scotchmen are much in the habit of referring to the political maxim that the king can do no wrong, as a fundamental principle of the const.i.tution, which concerns them as directly as it does their neighbours the English. Dr. Chalmers alluded to it no later than last week, in his admirable speech in the Commission. The old maxim, that the king could do no wrong, he said, had now, it would seem, descended from the throne to the level of courts co-ordinate with the Church. Would it not be a somewhat curious matter to find that this doctrine is one which has in reality not entered Scotland at all? It stands in England, a guardian in front of the throne, transferring every blow which would otherwise fall on the sovereign himself, to the sovereign's ministers: it is ministers, not sovereigns, who are responsible to the people of England. But it would at least seem, that with regard to the people of Scotland the responsibility extends further. At least the English doctrine was regarded as _exclusively_ an English one in the days of Baillie, nearly half a century prior to the Union, and more than a whole century ahead of those times in which the influence of that event began to have the effect of mixing up in men's minds matters peculiar to England with matters common to Britain. We find Baillie, in his letter written immediately after the pa.s.sing of the Act Recissory, p.r.o.nouncing the doctrine that the 'king can do no fault,' as in his judgment 'good and wise,' but referring to it at the same time as a doctrine, not of the Scottish Const.i.tution, but of the 'State of England.'

The circ.u.mstance is of importance chiefly from the light which it serves to cast on an interesting pa.s.sage in Scottish history. The famous declaration of our Scotch Convention at the Revolution, that James VII. had _forfeited_ the throne, as contrasted with the singularly inadequate though virtually corresponding declaration of the English Convention, that James II. 'had _abdicated_ the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant,' has been often remarked by the historians. Hume indirectly accounts for the employment of the stronger word, by prominently stating that the more zealous among the Scotch Royalists, regarding the a.s.sembly as illegal, had forborne to appear at elections, and that the antagonist party commanded a preponderating majority in consequence; whereas in England the Tories mustered strong, and had to be conciliated by the employment of softer language. Malcolm Laing, in noticing the fact, contents himself by simply contrasting the indignation on the part of the Scotch, which had been aroused by their recent sufferings, with the quieter temper of the English, who had been less tried by the pressure of actual persecution, and who were anxious to impart to Revolution at least the colour of legitimate succession. And Sir James Mackintosh, in his _Vindiciae Gallicae_, contents himself with simply remarking that the 'absurd debates in the English Convention were better cut short by the Parliament of Scotland, when they used the correct and manly expression that James VII. _had forfeited the throne_.' We are of opinion that the very different styles of the two Conventions may be accounted for on the ground that, in the one kingdom, the monarch, according to the genius of the const.i.tution, was regarded as incapable of committing wrong; whereas, in the other, he was no less const.i.tutionally regarded as equally peccable with any of his subjects. A peccable monarch may _forfeit_ his throne; an impeccable one can only _abdicate_ it. The argument must of course depend on the soundness of Baillie's statement. Was the doctrine that the king can do no wrong a Scottish doctrine at the time of the Revolution, or was it not?

It was at least not a Scottish one in the days of Buchanan,--nor for a century after, as we may learn very conclusively, not from Buchanan himself, nor his followers--for the political doctrines of a school of writers may be much at variance with those of their country--but from the many Scottish controversialists on the antagonist side, who entered the lists against both the master and his disciples. Buchanan maintained, in his philosophical treatise, _De Jure Regni apud Scotos_, that there are conditions by which the King of Scotland is bound to his people, on the fulfilment of which the allegiance of the people depends, and that 'it is lawful to depose, and even to punish tyrants.' Knox, with the other worthies of the first Reformation, held exactly the same doctrine. The _Lex Rex_ of Rutherford testifies significantly to the fact that among the worthies of the second Reformation it was not suffered to become obsolete. It takes a prominent place in writings of the later Covenanters, such as the _Hind let Loose_; and at the Revolution it received the practical concurrence of the National Convention, and of the country generally.

Now the doctrine, be it remembered, was an often disputed one.

Buchanan's little work was the very b.u.t.t of controversy for considerably more than an hundred years. It was prohibited by Parliament, denounced by monarchs, condemned to the flames by universities; great lawyers wrote treatises against it at home, and some of the most celebrated scholars of continental Europe took the field against it abroad. We learn from Dr. Irving, in his _Cla.s.sical Biography_, that it was a.s.sailed among our own countrymen by Blackwood, Winzet, Barclay, Sir Thomas Craig, Sir John Wemyss, Sir Lewis Stewart, Sir James Turner, and last, not least, among the writers who preceded the Revolution, by the meanly obsequious and b.l.o.o.d.y Sir George Mackenzie. And how did these Scotchmen meet with the grand doctrine which it embodied? The 'old maxime of the state of England,' had it extended to the sister kingdom, would have at once furnished the materials of reply. If const.i.tutionally the King of Scotland could do no wrong, then _const.i.tutionally_ the King of Scotland could not be deposed. But of an entirely different complexion was the argument of which the Scottish a.s.sailants of Buchanan availed themselves. It was an argument subversive to the English maxim.

Admitting fully that the king _could_ do wrong, they maintained merely that, for whatever wrong he did, he was responsible, not to his subjects, but to G.o.d only. Whatever the amount of wrong he committed, it was the duty of his subjects, they said, pa.s.sively to submit to it.

On came the Revolution. In England, in perfect agreement with the doctrine of the king's impeccability--in perfect agreement, at least, so far as words were concerned--it was declared that James had abdicated the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant; and certainly it cannot be alleged by even the severest moralist, that in either abdicating a government or vacating a throne, there is the slightest shadow of moral evil involved. In Scotland the decision was different. The battle fought in the Convention was exactly that which had been previously fought between Buchanan and his antagonists.

'Paterson, Archbishop of Glasgow, and Sir George Mackenzie, a.s.serted,' says Malcolm Laing, 'the doctrine of divine right, or maintained, with more plausibility, that every illegal measure of James's government was vindicated by the declaration of the late Parliament, that _he was an absolute monarch, ent.i.tled to unreserved obedience_, AND ACCOUNTABLE TO NONE; while Sir James Montgomery and Sir John Dalrymple, who conducted the debate on the other side, averred that the Parliament was neither competent to grant, nor the king to acquire, _an absolute power, irreconcilable with the_ RECIPROCAL OBLIGATIONS DUE TO THE PEOPLE.' The doctrines of Buchanan prevailed; and the estates declared that James VII. having, through '_the advice of evil and wicked councillors_, invaded the fundamental const.i.tution of the kingdom, and altered it from a legal limited monarchy to an arbitrary despotic power,' he had thereby _forfaulted_ his right to the crown.' The terms of the declaration demonstrate that Baillie was quite in the right regarding the 'old maxime, that the king can do no fault,' as exclusively a 'maxime of the State of England.' By acting on the advice of 'evil and wicked councillors,' it was declared that a peccable king had forfeited the throne. The fact that there were councillors in the case did not so much even as extenuate the offence: it was the advisers of the King who then, as now, were accountable to the King's English subjects for the advice they gave; it was the King in person who was accountable to his Scottish subjects for the advice he took. This principle, hitherto little adverted to, throws, as we have said, much light on the history of the Revolution in Scotland.

FIRST PRINCIPLES.

There is a pa.s.sage in the _Life of Sir Matthew Hale_ which has struck us as not only interesting in itself, from the breadth and rect.i.tude of judgment which it discloses, but also from the very direct bearing of the principle involved in it on some of the recent interdicts of the Supreme Civil Court. It serves to throw a kind of historic light, if we may so speak, on the judicial talent of our country in the present age as exhibited by the majority of our judges of the Court of Session--such a light as the ecclesiastical historian of a century hence will be disposed to survey it in, when coolly exercising his judgment on the present eventful struggle.

One of not the least prominent nor least remarkable features of the Rebellion of 1745, says a shrewd chronicler of this curious portion of our history, was an utter dest.i.tution of military talent among the general officers of the British army. And the time is in all probability not very distant, in which the extreme lack of judicial genius betrayed by our courts of law in their present collision with the courts ecclesiastical, shall be regarded, in like manner, as one of the more striking characteristics of the _Rebellion_ of the present day.

Sir Matthew Hale, as most of our readers must be aware, was a devoted Royalist. He was rising in eminence as a barrister at the time the Civil Wars broke out, and during that troublesome period he was employed as counsel for almost all the more eminent men of the King's party who were impeached by the Parliament. He was counsel for the Earl of Strafford, for Archbishop Laud, for the Duke of Hamilton, for the Earl of Holland, and for Lords Capel and Craven; and in every instance he exhibited courage the most unshrinking and devoted, and abilities of the highest order. When threatened in open court on one occasion by the Attorney-General, he replied that the threat might be spared: he was pleading in defence of those laws which the Government had declared it would maintain and preserve, and no fear of personal consequences should deter him in such circ.u.mstances from doing his duty to his client. When Charles himself was brought to his trial, Sir Matthew came voluntarily forward, and offered to plead for him also; but as the King declined recognising the competency of his judges, the offer was of course rejected. We all know how Malesherbes fared for acting a similar part in France. The counsel of Louis XVI. closed his honourable career on the scaffold not long after his unfortunate master: his generous advocacy of the devoted monarch cost him his life. But Cromwell, that 'least flagitious of all usurpers,' according to even Clarendon's estimate, was no Robespierre; and were we called on to ill.u.s.trate by a single instance from the history of each the very opposite characters of the Puritan Republicans of England and the Atheistical Republican of France, we would just set off against one another the fate of Malesherbes and the treatment of Sir Matthew.

Cromwell, unequalled in his ability of weighing the capabilities of men, had been carefully scanning the course of the courageous and honest barrister; and, convinced that so able a lawyer and so good and brave a man could scarce fail of making an excellent judge, he determined on raising him to the bench. At this stage, however, a difficulty interposed, not in the liberal and enlightened policy of the Protector, who had no objections whatever to a conscientious Royalist magistrate, but in the scruples of Sir Matthew, who at first doubted the propriety of taking office under what he deemed a usurped power.

The process of argument by which he overcame the difficulty, simple as it may seem, is worthy of all heed. Its very simplicity may be regarded as demonstrating the soundness of the understanding that originated and then acted upon it as a firm first principle, especially when we take into account the exquisitely nice character of the conscience which it had to satisfy. It is absolutely necessary for the wellbeing of society, argued Sir Matthew, that justice be administered between man and man; and the necessity exists altogether independently of the great political events which affect the sources of power, by changing dynasties or revolutionizing governments. The claim of the supreme ruler _de facto_ may be a bad one; he may owe his power to some act of great political injustice--to an iniquitous war--to an indefensible revolution--to a foul conspiracy; but the flaw in his t.i.tle cannot be regarded as weakening in the least the claim of the people under him to the administration of justice among them as the ordinance of G.o.d. The _right_ of the honest man to be protected by the magistrate from the thief--the right of the peaceable man to be protected by the magistrate from the a.s.sa.s.sin--is not a conditional right, dependent on the t.i.tle of the ruler: it is as clear and certain during those periods so common in history, when the supreme power is illegitimately vested, as during the happier periods of undisputed legitimacy. And to be a minister of G.o.d for the administration of justice, if the office be attainable without sin, is as certainly right at all times as the just exercise of the magistrate's functions is right at all times. If it be right that society be protected by the magistrate, it is as unequivocally right in the magistrate to protect.

But it is wrong to recognise as legitimate the supreme ruler of a country if his power be palpably usurped. English society, under Cromwell, retains its right to have justice administered, wholly unaffected by the flaw in Cromwell's t.i.tle; but it would be wrong to recognise his t.i.tle, contrary to one's conviction, as void of any flaw. In short, to use the simple language of Burnet, Sir Matthew, 'after mature deliberation, came to be of opinion, that as it was absolutely necessary to have justice and property kept up at all times, it was no sin to take a commission from usurpers, if there was declaration made of acknowledging their authority.' Cromwell had breadth enough to demand no such declaration from Sir Matthew, and so the latter took his place on the bench. Nor is it necessary to say how he adorned it. In agreement with his political views, he declined taking any part in trials for offences against the State; but in cases of ordinary felonies, no one could act with more vigour and decision.

During the trial of a Republican soldier, who had waylaid and murdered a Royalist, the colonel of the soldier came into court to arrest judgment, on the plea that his man had done only his duty, for that the person whom he had killed had been disobeying the Protector's orders at the time; and to threaten the judge with the vengeance of the supreme authority, if he urged matters to an extremity against him. Sir Matthew listened coolly to his threats and his reasonings, and then, p.r.o.nouncing sentence of death against the felon, agreeably to the finding of the jury, he ordered him out to instant execution, lest the course of justice should be interrupted by any interference on the part of Government. On another occasion, in which he had to preside in a trial in which the Protector was deeply concerned, he found that the jury had been returned, not by the sheriff or his lawful officer, but by order of the Protector himself. He immediately dismissed them, and, refusing to go on with the trial, broke up the court. Cromwell, says Burnet, was highly displeased with him on this occasion, and on his return from the circuit in which it had occurred, told him in great anger that 'he was not fit to be a judge.'

'Very true,' replied Sir Matthew, whose ideas of the requirements of the office were of the most exalted character,--'Very true;' and so the matter dropped.

'It is absolutely necessary,' argued Sir Matthew, 'to have justice kept up at all times,' whatever flaws may exist in the t.i.tle of the men in whom the supreme authority may chance to be vested. Never yet was there a simpler proposition; but there is sublimity in its breadth. It involves the true doctrine of subjection to the magistrate, as enforced by St. Paul. The New Testament furnishes us with no disquisitions on political justice: it does not say whether the t.i.tle of Domitian to the supreme authority was a good t.i.tle or no, or whether he should have been succeeded by Caligula, and Caligula by Claudius, or no; or whether or no the fact that Claudius was poisoned by the mother of Nero, derived to Nero any right to Claudius's throne.

We hear nothing of these matters. The magistracy described by St. Paul is the magistracy conceived of by Sir Matthew Hale 'as necessary to be kept up at all times.' An application of this simple principle to some of the more marked proceedings of our civil courts during the last two years will be found an admirable means of testing their degree of judicial wisdom. 'It is absolutely necessary to have justice kept up at all times,' and this not less necessary surely within than beyond the pale of the Church. It is necessary that a minister of the gospel 'be blameless'--no drunkard, no swindler, no thief, no grossly obscene person; nor can any supposed flaw in the const.i.tution of an ecclesiastical court disannul the necessity. A man may sit in that court in a judicial capacity whose competency to take his seat there may not have been determined by some civil court that challenges for itself an equivocal and disputed right to decide in the matter. There may exist some supposed, or even some real, flaw in that supreme ecclesiastical authority of the country, through the exertion of which the Church is to be protected from the infection of vice and irreligion; but this flaw, real or supposed, furnishes no adequate cause why justice in the Church 'should not be kept up.' 'Justice,'

said Sir Matthew, 'must be kept up at all times,' whatever the irregularities of t.i.tle which may occur in the supreme authority. The great society of the Church has a right to justice, whether it be decided that the ministers of _quoad sacra_ parishes have what has been termed a _legal_ right to sit in ecclesiastical courts or no. The devout and honest church member has a right to be protected from the blasphemous profanities of the wretched minister who is a thief or wretched swindler; the chaste and sober have a right to be protected from the ministrations of the drunken and the obscene wretch, whose preaching is but mockery, and his dispensations of the sacrament sacrilege. The Church has a right to purge itself of such ministers; and these sacred rights no supposed, even no real, flaw in the const.i.tution of its courts ought to be permitted to affect. 'Justice may be kept up at all times.' We have said that the principle of Sir Matthew Hale serves to throw a kind of historic light on the judicial talent of our country in the present age, as represented by the majority of our Lords of Session. It enables us, in some sort, to antic.i.p.ate regarding it the decision of posterity. The list of cases of protection afforded by the civil court will of itself form a curious climax in the page of some future historian. Swindling will come after drunkenness in the series, theft will follow after swindling, and the miserable catalogue will be summed up by an offence which we must not name. And it will be remarked that all these gross crimes were fenced round and protected in professed ministers of the gospel by the interference of the civil courts, just because a majority of the judges were men so defective in judicial genius that they lost sight of the very first principles of their profession, and held that 'justice is _not_ to be kept up at all times.' But we leave our readers to follow up the subject. Some of the principles to which we have referred may serve to throw additional light on the remark of Lord Ivory, when recalling the interdict in the Southend case. 'Even were the objection against the competency of _quoad sacra_ ministers to be ultimately sustained,' said his Lordship, 'I am disposed to hold that the judicial acts and sentences of the General a.s.sembly and its Commission, _bona fide_ p.r.o.nounced in the interim, should be given effect to notwithstanding.'

AN UNSPOKEN SPEECH.

We enjoyed the honour on Wednesday last of being present as a guest at the annual soiree of the Scottish Young Men's Society, and derived much pleasure from the general appearance of the meeting, and the addresses of the members and their friends. The body of the great Waterloo Room was crowded on the occasion with a respectable, intellectual-looking audience, including from about a hundred and fifty to two hundred members of the Society, all of them young men banded together for mutual improvement, and most of them in that important decade of life--by far the most important of the appointed seven--which intervenes between the fifteenth and the five-and-twentieth year. The platform was equally well filled, and the Sheriff of Edinburgh occupied the chair. We felt a particular interest in the objects of the Society, and a deep sympathy with its members; for, as we listened to the various speakers, and our eyes glanced over the intelligent countenances that thronged the area of the apartment, we thought of past difficulties encountered in a cause similar to that which formed the uniting bond of the Society, and of not a few wrecks which we had witnessed of men who had set out in life from the humbler levels, with the determination of pressing their way upwards. And feeling somewhat after the manner that an old sailor would feel who saw a crew of young ones setting out to thread their way through some dangerous strait, the perils of which he had already encountered, or to sail round some formidable cape, which, after many an unsuccessful attempt, he had doubled, we fancied ourselves in the position of one qualified to give them some little advice regarding the navigation of the seas on which they were just entering. But, be the fact of qualification as it may, we found ourselves, after leaving the room, addressing them, in imagination, in a few plain words, regarding some of the rocks, and shoals, and insidious currents, which we knew lay in their course. Men whose words come slowly and painfully when among their fellows, can be quite fluent enough when they speak inwards without breaking silence, and have merely an imaginary a.s.semblage for their audience; and so our short address went off glibly, without break or interruption, in the style of ordinary conversational gossip. There are curious precedents on record for the printing of unspoken speeches. Rejecting, however, all the higher ones, we shall be quite content to take our precedent from the famous speech which the 'indigent philosopher' addresses, in one of Goldsmith's _Essays_, to Mr.

Bellowsmender and the Cateaton Club. The philosopher begins, it will be remembered, by telling his imaginary audience, that though Nathan Ben Funk, the rich Jew, might feel a natural interest in the state of the stocks, it was nothing to them, who had no money; and concludes by quoting the 'famous author called Lilly's Grammar.'

'Members of the Scottish Young Men's Society,' we said, 'it is rather late in life for the individual who now addresses you to attempt acquiring the art of the public speaker. Those who have been most in the habit of noticing the effect of the several mechanical professions on character and intellect, divide them into two cla.s.ses--the _sedentary_ and the _laborious_; and they remark, that while in the _sedentary_, such as the printing, weaving, tailoring, and shoemaking trades, there are usually a considerable proportion of fluent speakers, in the _laborious_ trades, on the other hand, such as those of the mason, ship-carpenter, ploughman, and blacksmith, one generally meets with but taciturn, slow-speaking men. We need scarce say in which of these schools we have been trained. You will at once see--to borrow from one of the best and most ancient of writers--that we are "not eloquent," but "a man of slow speech, and of a slow tongue." And yet we think we may venture addressing ourselves, in a few plain words, to an a.s.sociation of young men united for the purpose of mutual improvement. We ought and we do sympathize with you in your object; and we congratulate you on the facilities which your numbers, and your library, and your residence in one of the most intellectual cities in the world, cannot fail to afford you in its pursuit. We ourselves have known what it is to prosecute in solitude, with but few books, and encompa.s.sed by many difficulties, the search after knowledge; and we have seen year after year pa.s.s by, and the obstacles in our way remaining apparently as great as at first. And were we to sum up the condensed result of our experience in two brief words of advice, it would amount simply to this, "Never despair." We are told of Commodore Anson--a man whose sense and courage ultimately triumphed over a series of perhaps the most appalling disasters man ever encountered, and who won for himself, by his magnanimity, sagacity, and cool resolution, the applauses of even his enemies, so that Rousseau and Voltaire eulogized him, the one in history, the other in romance,--we are told, we say, of this Anson, that when raised to the British peerage, he was permitted to select his own motto, and that he chose an eminently characteristic one--"_Nil Desperandum_." By all means let it be your motto also--not as a thing to be paraded on some heraldic label, but to be engraved upon your hearts. We wish that, amid the elegancies of this hall, we could bring up before you some of the scenes of our past life. They would form a curious panorama, and might serve to teach that in no circ.u.mstances, however apparently desperate, should men lose hope. Never forget that it is not necessary, in order to overcome gigantic difficulties, that one's strength should be gigantic. Persevering exertion is much more than strength. We owe to shovels and wheelbarrows, and human muscles of the average size and vigour, the great railway which connects the capitals of the two kingdoms. And the difficulties which encompa.s.s the young man of humble circ.u.mstances and imperfect education, must be regarded as coming under the same category as difficulties of the purely physical kind. Interrupted or insulated efforts, however vigorous, will be found to be but of little avail. It is to the element of continuity that you must trust. There is a world of sense in Sir Walter Scott's favourite proverb, "_Time_ and I, gentlemen, against any two." But though it be unnecessary, in order to secure success, that one's efforts in the contest with gigantic difficulties should be themselves gigantic, it is essentially necessary that they should employ one's whole strength. Half efforts never accomplish anything.

"No man ever did anything well," says Johnson, "to which he did not apply the whole bent of his mind." And unless a man keep his head cool, and his faculties undissipated, he need not expect that his efforts can ever be other than half efforts, or other than of a desultory, fitful, non-productive kind. We do not stand here in the character of a modern Rechabite. But this we must say: Let no young man ever beguile himself with the hope that he is to make a figure in society, or rise in the world, unless, as the apostle expresses it, he be "temperate in all things." Scotland has produced not a few distinguished men who were unfortunately _not_ temperate; but it is well known that of one of the greatest of them all--perhaps one of the most vigorous-minded men our country ever produced--the intemperate habits were not formed early. Robert Burns, up till his twenty-sixth year, when he had mastered all his powers, and produced some of his finest poems, was an eminently sober man. Climbing requires not only a steady foot, but a strong head; and we question whether any one ever climbed the perilous steep, where, according to Beattie, "Fame's proud temple shines afar," who did not keep his head cool during the process. So far as our own experience goes, we can truly state, that though we have known not a few working men, possessed some of them of strong intellects, and some of them of fine taste, and even of genius, not one have we ever known who rose either to eminence or a competency under early formed habits of intemperance. These indeed are the difficulties that cannot be surmounted, and the only ones. Rather more than thirty years ago, the drinking usages of the country were more numerous than they are now. In the mechanical profession in which we laboured they were many: when a foundation was laid, the workmen were treated to drink; they were treated to drink when the walls were levelled; they were treated to drink when the building was finished; they were treated to drink when an apprentice joined the squad; treated to drink when his ap.r.o.n was washed; treated to drink when his "time was out;" and occasionally they learned to treat one another to drink. At the first house upon which we were engaged as a slim apprentice boy, the workmen had a royal founding-pint, and two whole gla.s.ses of whisky came to our share. A full-grown man might not deem a gill of usquebhae an over-dose, but it was too much for a boy unaccustomed to strong drink; and when the party broke up, and we got home to our few books--few, but good, and which we had learned at even an earlier period to pore over with delight--we found, as we opened the page of a favourite author, the letters dancing before our eyes, and that we could no longer master his sense. The state was perhaps a not very favourable one for forming a resolution in, but we believe the effort served to sober us. We determined in that hour that never more would we sacrifice our capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking usage; and during the fifteen years which we spent as an operative mason, we held, through G.o.d's help, by the determination. We are not sure whether, save for that determination, we would have had the honour of a place on this platform to-night. But there are other kinds of intoxication than that which it is the nature of strong drink or of drugs to produce. Bacon speaks of a "natural drunkenness." And the hallucinations of this natural drunkenness must be avoided if you would prosper. Let us specify one of these. Never let yourselves be beguiled by the idea that fate has misplaced you in life, and that were you in some other sphere you would rise. It is true that some men _are_ greatly misplaced; but to brood over the idea is not the best way of getting the necessary exchange effected. It is not the way at all. Often the best policy in the case is just to forget the misplacement. We remember once deeming ourselves misplaced, when, in a season of bad health and consequent despondency, we had to work among labourers in a quarry. But the feeling soon pa.s.sed, and we set ourselves carefully to examine the quarry. Cowper describes a prisoner of the Bastile beguiling his weary hours by counting the nail-studs on the door of his cell, upwards, downwards, and across,--

"Wearing out time in numbering to and fro, The studs that thick emboss his iron door; Then downward and then upwards, then aslant And then alternate; with a sickly hope By dint of change to give his tasteless task Some relish; till, the sum exactly found In all directions, he begins again."

It was idle work; for to reckon up the door-studs never so often was not the way of opening up the door. But in carefully examining and recording for our own use the appearances of the stony bars of our prison, we were greatly more profitably employed. Nay, we had stumbled on one of the best possible modes of escaping from our prison. We were in reality getting hold of its bolts and its stancheons, and converting them into tools in the work of breaking out. We remember once pa.s.sing a whole season in one of the dreariest districts of the north-western Highlands,--a district included in that unhappy tract of country, doomed, we fear, to poverty and suffering, which we find marked in the rain-map of Europe with a double shade of blackness. We had hard work, and often soaking rain, during the day; and at night our damp fuel filled the turf hut in which we sheltered with suffocating smoke, and afforded no light by which to read. Nor--even ere the year got into its wane, and when in the long evenings we _had_ light--had we any books to read by it, or a single literary or scientific friend with whom to exchange an idea. We remember at another time living in an agricultural district in the low country, in a hovel that was open along the ridge of the roof from gable to gable, so that as we lay a-bed we could tell the hours of the night by the stars that were pa.s.sing overhead across the chasm. There were about half-a-dozen farm-servants, victims to the bothie system, that ate and slept in the same place; and often, long after midnight, a disreputable poacher used to come stealthily in, and fling himself down on a lair of straw that he had prepared for himself in a corner. Now, both the Highland hut and the Lowland hovel, with their accompaniments of protracted and uncongenial labour, might be regarded as dreary prisons; and yet we found them to be in reality useful schools, very necessary to our education.

And now, when we hear about the state of the Highlands, and the character of our poor Highlanders, and of the influence of the bothie system and of the game-laws, we feel that we know considerably more about such matters than if our experience had been of a more limited or more pleasant kind. There are few such prisons in which a young man of energy and a brave heart can be placed, in which he will not gain more by taking kindly to his work, and looking well about him, than by wasting himself in convulsive endeavours to escape. If he but learn to think of his prison as a school, there is good hope of his ultimately getting out of it. Were a butcher's boy to ask us--you will not deem the ill.u.s.tration too low, for you will remember that Henry Kirke White was once a butcher's boy--were he to ask us how we thought he could best escape from his miserable employment, we would at once say, You have rare opportunities of observation; you may be a butcher's boy in body, but in mind you may become an adept in one of the profoundest of the sciences, that of comparative anatomy;--think of yourself as not in a prison, but in a school, and there is no fear but you will rise. There is another delusion of that "natural drunkenness" referred to, against which you must also be warned. Never sacrifice your independence to a phantom. We have seen young men utterly ruin themselves through the vain belief that they were too good for their work. They were mostly lads of a literary turn, who had got a knack of versifying, and who, in the fond belief that they were poets and men of genius, and that poets and men of genius should be above the soil and drudgery of mechanical labour, gave up the profession by which they had lived, poorly mayhap, but independently, and got none other to set in its place.

A mistake of this character is always a fatal one; and we trust all of you will ever remember, that though a man may think himself above his work, no man _is_, or no man ought to think himself, above the high dignity of being independent. In truth, he is but a sorry, weak fellow who measures himself by the conventional status of the labour by which he lives. Our great poet formed a correcter estimate:

"What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hodden grey, and a' that?