as in the field. Look for a moment at the house of Cecil. The interest
in this house was national, and at the same time romantic. Two families
started off--one might say _simultaneously_--from the same radix, for
the difference in point of years was but that which naturally divided
the father and the son. Both were Prime Ministers of England, rehearsing
by anticipation the relations between the two William Pitts--the
statesmen who guided, first, the _Seven Years' War_, from 1757 to 1763;
and, secondly, the French Revolutionary War, from the murder of Louis
XVI. in 1793 to the battle of Trafalgar in October, 1805. Sir William
Cecil, the father, had founded the barony of Burleigh, which
subsequently was raised into the earldom of Exeter. Sir Robert Cecil,
the son, whose personal merits towards James I. were more conspicuous
than those of his father towards Queen Elizabeth, had leaped at once
into the earldom of Salisbury. Through two centuries these distinguished
houses--Exeter the elder and Salisbury the junior--had run against each
other. At length the junior house ran ahead of its elder, being raised
to a marquisate. But in this century the elder righted itself, rising
also to a marquisate. In an ordinary case this would not have won any
notice, but the historic cradle of the two houses, amongst burning feuds
of Reformation and anti-Reformation policy, fiery beyond all that has
ever raged amongst men, fixed the historic eye upon them. Neck and neck
they ran together. Hatfield House for the family of Salisbury, Burleigh
House (founded by the original Lord Burleigh) for the family of Exeter,
expressed in the nineteenth century that fraternal conflict which had
commenced in the sixteenth. Personal merits, if any such had varied and
coloured the pretensions of this or that generation, had, in the midst
of wealth and ease and dignity, withdrawn themselves from notice, except
that about the splendid decennium of the Regency and the second
decennium of George IV.'s reign, no lady of the Court had been so
generally acceptable to the world of fashion and elegance, domestic or
foreign, as the Marchioness of Salisbury, whose tragical death by fire
at Hatfield House, in spite of her son's heroic exertions, was as
memorable for the last generation as the similar tragedy at the Austrian
Ambassador's continued to be for the Court and generation of
Napoleon.[45] It is not often that two kindred houses, belonging in the
Roman sense to the same _gens_ or clan, run against each other with
parity of honour and public consideration through nearly three
centuries. The present representative of the Exeter house of the
Cecils[46] was not individually considered a very interesting person.
Or, at least, any interest that might distinguish him did not adapt
itself to conversational display. His personal story was more remarkable
than he was himself.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] Napoleon attached a superstitious importance to this event. In
1813, upon the sudden death of Moreau, whilst as yet the circumstances
were entirely unknown, he fancied strangely enough that the ambassador
(Prince Schwartzenberg) whose fête had given birth to the tragedy, must
himself have been prefigured.
[46] 'The present representative of the Exeter Cecils' was the father of
the present peer, Brownlow, 2nd Marquis; born 2nd July, 1785; succeeded
1st May, 1804, and died 16th Jan., 1867.--ED.
_VIII. THE ANTI-PAPAL MOVEMENT._
The sincerity of an author sometimes borrows an advantageous
illustration from the repulsiveness of his theme. That a subject is
dull, however unfortunately it may operate for the impression which he
seeks to produce, must at least acquit him of seeking any aid to that
impression from alien and meretricious attractions. Is a subject
hatefully associated with recollections of bigotry, of ignorance, of
ferocious stupidity, of rancour, and of all uncharitableness? In that
case, the reader ought to be persuaded that nothing less than absolute
consciousness--in that case he ought to know that nothing short of TRUTH
(not necessarily as it _is_, but at least as it _appears_ to the writer)
can have availed to draw within an arena of violence and tiger-like
_acharnement_ one who, by temperament and by pressure of bodily disease,
seeks only for repose. Most unwillingly I enter the ring. Mere disgust
at the wicked injustice, which I have witnessed silently through the
last three months, forces me into the ranks of the combatants. Mere
sympathy with the ill-used gives me any motive for stirring. People have
turned Christian from witnessing the torments suffered with divine
heroism by Christian martyrs. And I think it not impossible that many
hearts may be turned favourably towards Popery by the mere recoil of
disgust from the savage insolence with which for three weeks back it has
in this country been tied to a stake, and baited. The actors, or at
least the leaders, in such scenes seem to forget that Popery has
peculiar fascinations of her own; her errors, supposing even all to be
errors which Protestantism denounces for such, lie in doctrinal points;
but her merit, and her prodigious advantage over Protestantism, lies in
the devotional spirit which she is able to kindle and to sustain amongst
simple, docile, and confiding hearts. In mere prudence it ought to be
remembered, that to love, to trust, to adore, is a far more contagious
tendency amongst the poor, the wretched, and the despised, than to
question, investigate, and reflect.
How, then, did this movement begin? By _that_, perhaps, we may learn
something of its quality. Who was it that first roused this movement?
The greater half of the nation, viz., all the lower classes, cannot be
said to have shared in the passions of the occasion; but the educated
classes, either upon a sincere impulse, or in a spirit of excessive
imitation, have come forward with a perseverance, which (in a case of
perils confessedly so vague) is more like a moonstruck infatuation than
any other recorded in history. Until Parliament met on the 4th of
February, when a Roman Catholic member of the House of Commons first
attempted to give some specific account of the legal effects incident to
a substitution of bishops for vicars apostolic, no man has made the very
cloudiest sketch of the evils that were apprehended, or that _could_ be
apprehended, or that were in the remotest way possible. Sir Edward
Sugden, indeed, came forward with a most unsatisfactory effort to show
how Cardinal Wiseman might be punished, or might be restrained,
supposing that he had done wrong; but not at all to show that the
Cardinal _had_ done wrong, and far less to show that, if wrong could be
alleged, any evils would follow from it. Sir Edward most undoubtedly did
not satisfy himself, and so little did he satisfy anybody else, that
already his letter is forgotten; nor was it urged or relied upon by any
one of the great meetings which succeeded it. Too painful it would be to
think that Sir Edward had in this instance stepped forward
sycophantically, as so many prominent people undoubtedly did, to meet
and to aid a hue and cry of fanaticism simply because it had emanated
from a high quarter. But _what_ quarter? Again I ask, _who_ was it that
originated this fierce outbreak of bigotry? Much depends upon _that_. It
was Lord John Russell, it was the First Minister of the Crown, that
abused the power of his place for a purpose of desperate fanaticism;
yes, and for a purpose which his whole life had been dedicated to
opposing, to stigmatizing, to overthrowing. Right or wrong, he has to
begin life anew. Bigotry may _not_ be bigotry, change of position may
show it under a new aspect. But still upon that, which once was _called_
bigotry, Lord John must now take his stand. Neither will _ratting_ a
second time avail to set him right. These things do not stand under
algebraical laws, as though ratting to the right hand could balance a
ratting to the left, and leave the guilt = 0. On the contrary, five
rattings, of which each is valued at ten, amount to fifty degrees of
crime; or, perhaps, if moral computations were better understood, amount
to a crime that swells by some secret geometrical progression
unintelligible to man.
But now, reader, pause. Suppose that Lord John Russell, aware of some
evil, some calamity or disease, impending over the established Church
of England--sure of this evil, but absolutely unable to describe it by
rational remarks or premonitory symptom, had cast about for a channel by
which he might draw attention to the evil, and, by exposing, make an end
of it. But who could have dreamed that he would have chosen the means he
has chosen? What propriety was there in Lord John's addressing himself
upon such a subject to the Bishop of Durham? Who is that Bishop? And
what are his pretensions to public authority? He is a respectable Greek
scholar; and has re-edited the Prosodiacal Lexicon of Morell--a service
to Greek literature not easily overestimated, and beyond a doubt not
easily executed. But in relation to the Church he is not any official
organ; nor was there either decorum or good sense in addressing a letter
essentially official from the moment that it was published with consent
of the writer, to a person clothed with no sort of official powers or
official relation to the Church of England. If Lord John should have
occasion to communicate with the Bank of England, what levity, and in
the proper sense of the word what impertinence, it would be to invoke
the attention--not of the Governor--but of some clerk in a special
department of that establishment whom Lord John might happen to know.
Which of us, that wishes to bring a grievance before the authorities of
the Post-Office, would address himself to his private friend that might
happen to hold a respectable situation in the Money Order or in the Dead
Letter Office? Of mere necessity, that he might gain for his own
application an official privilege, he would address it to the
Postmaster-General through the Secretary. Not being so addressed, his
communication would take rank as gossip; neither meriting nor obtaining
any serviceable notice. Two points are still in suspense: whether the
people of England as a nation have taken any interest in the uproar
caused by Lord John's letter; and secondly, whether the writer of that
letter took much interest in it himself. Spite of all the noise and
tumult kept up for three months by the Low-Church party, clerks and
laymen, it is still a question with many vigilant lookers-on--whether
the great neutral majority in the lower strata of society (five-sixths
in short of what we mean by the nation) have taken any real interest in
the agitation. Any real share in it, beyond all doubt, they have _not_
taken: the movers in these meetings from first to last would not make
fifteen thousand; and the inert subscribers of Petitions would not make
seventy thousand. Secondly, in spite of the hysterical violence
manifested by the letter of the Premier, and partly in consequence of
that violence (so theatrical and foreign to Lord John's temperament),
many doubt whether he himself carried any sincerity with the movement.
And this doubt is strengthened by the singular indecorum of his having
addressed himself to Dr. Maltby.
Counterfeit zeal is likely enough to have recoiled from its own act in
the very moment of its execution. The purpose of Lord John was
sufficiently answered, if he succeeded in diverting public attention
from quarters in which it might prove troublesome: and to that extent
was sure of succeeding by an extra-official note addressed to any bishop
whatever--whether zoological like the late Bishop of Norwich, or
Prosodiacal like Dr. Maltby. A storm in a slop-basin was desirable for
the moment. But had the desire been profoundly sincere, and had it
soared to that height which _real_ fears for religious interests are apt
to attain, then beyond all doubt the Minister would not have addressed
himself to a Provincial bishop, but to the two Metropolitan bishops of
Canterbury and York. They, but not an inferior prelate, represent the
Church of England.
The letter therefore, had it been solemn and austere in the degree
suitable to an _unsimulated_ panic, would have taken a different
direction. Gossip may be addressed to anybody. He that will listen is
sought for; and not he that can co-operate. But earnest business,
soaring into national buoyancy on the wings of panic, turns by instinct
to the proper organs for giving it effect and instant mobility. Yet, on
the other hand, if the letter really _had_ been addressed to the Primate
(as in all reason it would have been, if thoroughly in earnest), that
change must have consummated the false step, diplomatically valued,
which Lord John Russell has taken. Mark, reader! We are told, and so
often that the very echoes of Killarney and Windermere will be
permanently diseased by this endless iteration of lies, that His
Holiness has been insulting us. Ancient Father of Christendom, under
whose sheltering shadow once slept in peace for near a thousand years
the now storm-tossed nations of Western and Central Christendom, couldst
thou indeed, when turned out a houseless[47] fugitive like Lear upon a
night of tempest, still retain aught of thy ancient prestige, and
through the might of belief rule over those who have exiled thee?
EDITOR'S NOTE.
The famous Durham Letter which excited so much controversy, and
re-opened what can only be called so many old sores, was addressed by
Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, to Dr. Maltby, in November, 1850.
At first it was received with great approbation, as presenting a
decisive front against Papal assumption; the Pope having recently issued
a Bull, dividing England into twelve Sees, and appointing Dr. Wiseman,
who was made a Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster. But some expressions
in Lord John's letter, especially the expression 'unworthy sons,'
applied to High Churchmen, aroused the active opposition of a class,
with whom, he never had much sympathy, looking on the attitude and
spirit of Drs. Pusey and Newman with unaffected dislike. Catholics, of
course, and with them many moderate Roman Catholics, set up an
agitation, and soon the Durham Letter was in everybody's mouth. De
Quincey, of course, writes from his own peculiar philosophic point of
view; and when he somewhat sarcastically alludes to the informality of
addressing such a letter to the Bishop of Durham, and not to one or
other of the Archbishops, he was either ignorant of, or of set purpose
ignored, the exceptionally intimate relations in which Lord John had for
many years stood to Dr. Maltby, such relations as might well have been
accepted as explaining, if not justifying, such a departure from strict
formal propriety. Lord Russell's biographer writes:
'Dr. Maltby, who in 1850 held the See of Durham, to which he had been
promoted on Lord John's own recommendation in 1836, was one of Lord
John's oldest and closest friends. He had been his constant
correspondent for more than twenty years; he had supplied him with much
information for the religious chapters of the "Affairs of Europe," and
he had been his frequent counsellor on questions affecting the Church,
and on the qualifications and characters of the men who were candidates
for promotion in it. It was natural, therefore, to Lord John, to open
his mind freely to the Bishop' (ii. 119, 120).
Lord John had added in a postscript: 'If you think it will be of any
use, you have my full permission to publish this letter.'
FOOTNOTES:
[47] 'A houseless fugitive.' No one expression of petty malice has
struck the generous as more unworthy, amongst the many insolences
levelled at the Pope, than the ridicule so falsely fastened upon the
mode of his escape from Rome, and upon the apparently tottering tenure
of his temporal throne. His throne rocked with subterraneous heavings.
True, and was _his_ the only throne that rocked? Or which was it amongst
continental thrones that did _not_ rock? But he escaped in the disguise
of a livery servant. What odious folly! In such emergencies, no disguise
can be a degradation. Do we remember our own Charles II. assuming as
many varieties of servile disguise as might have glorified a pantomime?
Do we remember Napoleon reduced to the abject resource of entreating one
of the Commissioners to _whistle_, by way of misleading the infuriated
mob into the belief that _l'empereur_ could not be supposed present in
that carriage when such an indecency was attempted? As to the insecurity
of his throne, we must consider that other thrones, and amongst them
some of the first rank (as those of Turkey and Persia) redress their own
weakness by means of alien strength. In the jealousies of England and
France is found a bulwark against the overshadowing ambition of Russia.
_IX. THEORY AND PRACTICE:_
_Review of Kant's Essay on the Common Saying, that such and
such a thing may be true in theory, but does not hold good
in practice._