but one dominant aim with many was the founding of a commonwealth in
which church and state should be identified, somewhat after the pattern
of the old Hebrew theocracy. To this end the suffrage in Massachusetts
and New Haven was limited to persons qualified to receive the sacrament
in Congregational churches. This Massachusetts idea was never adopted by
Plymouth, and the founding of Connecticut was at least in part a liberal
protest against it. In New Haven it was soon suppressed by the act of
Charles II. which put an end to the separate existence of the colony. In
Massachusetts, where this theocratic policy prevailed for half a
century, the result was the growth of an unenfranchised class which came
to include four fifths of the community. During the first generation,
when the policy was administered by broad-minded, sagacious men like
Winthrop and Cotton, its evils were not flagrant. But after 1650, with
such fanatics as Norton and the aged Endicott at the helm, it soon
became evident that the rulers were at variance on many points with the
mass of the people. This was shown with glaring force in the Quaker
persecution, when the violence of Endicott's party produced a popular
reaction of feeling, which enabled the Quakers to carry their point and
remain in the colony in defiance of statutes. It was further shown in
the Half-way Covenant and the founding of the Old South Church in 1669,
as parts of a movement toward extending the suffrage; and again in the
rise of the Tory party under the lead of Joseph Dudley, opposed to the
pretensions of the clergy. The magnificent work of the Massachusetts
theocracy in resisting the crown throughout the whole reign of Charles
II. can never be forgotten. Nothing was ever done in America that
contributed more toward the maintenance of political freedom. But in
spite of its merits, the faults of the theocracy were such that we
cannot regret its speedy overthrow. When that overthrow was effected, by
the charter of 1692, there were a great many people in Massachusetts
more or less hostile to the kind of Puritanism entertained by their
grandfathers, and thus prepared for a more liberal mental habit. There
was also a marked secularization of thought, a diminution of interest in
theological problems, and a deadening of religious zeal. A wonderful
series of changes was set on foot by the writings and preaching of
Jonathan Edwards, and the group of revivals between 1735 and 1750 known
as "the Great Awakening." Few figures in history are more pathetic or
more sublime than that of Jonathan Edwards in the lonely woodlands of
Northampton and Stockbridge, a thinker for depth and acuteness surpassed
by not many that have lived, a man with the soul of a poet and prophet,
wrestling with the most terrible problems that humanity has ever
encountered, with more than the courage and candour of Augustine or
Calvin, with all the lofty inspiration of Fichte or Novalis. An
interesting historical essay might be devoted to tracing the effects
wrought upon New England by this giant personality. The Great
Awakening, in which he took part, and to which his preaching powerfully
contributed, revived the popular interest in theological questions,
disencumbered of the ever present political implications of the previous
century. In many ways his theories acted as a disintegrating solvent
upon the beliefs of the time. For example, the prominence which he gave
to spiritual conversion, or what was called "change of heart," brought
about the overthrow of the doctrine of the Half-way Covenant. It also
weakened the logical basis of infant baptism, and led to the winning of
hosts of converts by the Baptists. Moreover, the uses to which Edwards
put his doctrine of the will produced a reaction toward Arminianism,
which not only affected the teachings of the Baptists, but predisposed
many persons to join in the wave of Methodism which was just about to
sweep over the country. A similar reaction against Edwards's views of
divine justice, reinforced by some first faint inklings of Biblical
criticism, pointed the way toward Universalism. Still more, the
discussions aroused by Edwards's speculations on original sin and the
atonement began to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity and prepare
men's minds for the Unitarian movement. No such results would have been
possible save in a country where education was universal and the Sunday
sermon a favourite theme of discussion. Sooner or later, the perpetual
appeal to reason, with the familiar use of metaphysical arguments and
citations of Scripture, must lead to novelties of doctrine and to
negative criticism; while for the education of the popular intelligence
nothing could be more effective. In seventeenth-century Puritanism,
therefore, in spite of its rigid narrowness, there were latent the
speculations of an Edwards, the further conclusions to which some of
them were pushed, the reactions against them, the keen edge of the
critical faculty in New England, and much of the free thinking of a
later age.
In the course of the eighteenth century some influence was doubtless
exercised in America by the English deists, and at the very end of the
century by Thomas Paine. There is no reason to suppose that any
appreciable effect was produced by the atheism of the French
encyclopædists, which was mainly a reaction, largely emotional and aided
by the shallowest of metaphysics, against the effete ecclesiastical
system in France. It was too remote from American ideas to exert much
influence here. The deism of Voltaire found a few scattered admirers. A
quiet religion of humanity, which set little store by miracles, or
abstruse doctrines, or the divine authority of Scripture, was held by a
number of eminent persons of strong prosaic common sense and feeble
spirituality, among whom may be named Franklin and Jefferson and John
Adams. This phase of free thought was of considerable importance, but
the dominant influence in New England down to the rise of the
transcendental movement was that which could be traced back to Edwards.
In the early part of the present century, the most advanced phase of
liberal thought, represented by the Unitarians in Massachusetts, was
trying to hold an utterly untenable position, halfway between narrow
orthodoxy and untrammelled free thinking, when the ground began to be
cut from under it by the transcendentalists, whose native temperaments,
not wanting in kinship with that of Edwards, were stimulated by a brief
contact with Kantian and post-Kantian speculation in Germany. In
Emerson's poetic soul the result was a seminal influence upon high
thinking, in America and in the Old World, the power of which we cannot
but feel, but which it is as yet too soon to estimate. In the middle of
the century some wholesome destructive work still needed to be done, and
it was well done. When German criticism, with the other weapons in the
powerful hands of Theodore Parker, freed us from the spectre of
bibliolatry, it might indeed be said that the promise of the Protestant
Reformation was at length fulfilled. The change wrought in the Unitarian
church since Parker began his preaching has been to some extent followed
by analogous changes in other churches. On every side, the last quarter
of the nineteenth century has been preëminently the age of the
decomposition of orthodoxies. Here and there and everywhere they are
crumbling into ruins; and as the world has long since left behind the
age of trilobites and the age of dinosaurs, so in the world to which we
are coming there will be neither a place nor a use for orthodoxies.
For, as I must observe in conclusion, there is all about us a resistless
and world-wide influence at work, to which all the temporary and local
causes I have mentioned have been but the ministering servants. From age
to age, our knowledge is growing from more to more. From the discovery
of America, from the astronomy of Copernicus and the physics of Galileo,
down to the universal doctrine of evolution in our own time, there has
been one grand coherent and consecutive tale of ever enlarging, ever
more organized knowledge of the world in which we live. By this enlarged
experience our minds are affected, from day to day and from year to
year, in more ways than we can detect or enumerate. It opens our minds
to some notions, and makes them incurably hostile to others; so that,
for example, new truths well-nigh beyond comprehension, like some of
those connected with the luminiferous ether, are accepted, and old
beliefs once universal, like witchcraft, are scornfully rejected. Vast
changes in mental attitude are thus wrought before it is generally
realized. Into the new scheme of things old beliefs no longer fit, and
are therefore thrown aside and forgotten. Now our orthodoxies are of
older date than the goodly fabric of modern knowledge. They are the
outcome of more primitive and childlike thinking, they have ceased to
fit the world as we know it, and therefore they fade and fall away from
us, in spite of all our efforts to retain undisturbed the venerable and
hallowed associations. In this inevitable struggle there has always been
more or less pain, and hence free thought has not usually been popular.
It has come to our life feast as a guest unbidden and unwelcome; but it
has come to stay with us, and already proves more genial than was
expected. Deadening, cramping finality has lost its charm for him who
has tasted of the ripe fruit of the tree of knowledge. In this broad
universe of God's wisdom and love, not leashes to restrain us are
needed, but wings to sustain our flight. Let bold but reverent thought
go on and probe creation's mysteries, till faith and knowledge "make one
music as before, but vaster."
_October, 1895._
VI
SIR HARRY VANE[22]
With the single exception of Cromwell, the greatest statesman of the
heroic age of Puritanism was unquestionably the younger Henry Vane. He
did as much as any one to compass the downfall of Strafford; he brought
the military strength of Scotland to the aid of the hard-pressed
Parliament; he administered the navy with which Blake won his
astonishing victories; he dared even withstand Cromwell at the height of
his power, when his measures savoured too much of violence. After the
death of Pym in 1643, Sir Henry Vane, then thirty-one years of age, was
the foremost man in the Long Parliament, and so remained as long as that
Parliament controlled the march of events. As Baxter said, "he was that
within the House that Cromwell was without." Yet before the beginning of
his brilliant career in England, this young man had written his name
indelibly upon one of the earliest pages in the history of the American
people. It is pleasant to remember that this admirable man was once the
chief magistrate of an American commonwealth. Thorough republican and
enthusiastic lover of liberty, he was spiritually akin to Jefferson and
to Samuel Adams. His career furnishes an excellent illustration of Mr.
Doyle's remark, that "by looking at the colony of Massachusetts, we can
see what sort of a commonwealth was constructed by the best men of the
Puritan party, and to some extent what they would have made of the
government of England if they could have had their way unchecked."
An adequate biography of this great statesman was a thing much to be
desired. Half a century ago Mr. C. W. Upham contributed to Sparks's
"American Biography" an interesting life of Vane; and about the same
time Mr. John Forster, in his "Statesmen of the Commonwealth," made a
sketch characterized by his usual brilliancy. But both these writers
indulged themselves in that kind of indiscriminate eulogy which used in
those days to be thought necessary for biographers; and by way of foil
to their hero they seemed to feel bound to underrate and misinterpret
Cromwell, even as Carlyle seemed to think he was exalting the great,
Protector in belittling Vane. The remarkable advance in fairness and
breadth of view which historical studies have made within the last fifty
years is nowhere better illustrated than in the spirit in which the
seventeenth century in England is treated by Masson and Gardiner as
contrasted with Macaulay. It is no longer the fashion to depict
individuals or parties as wholly saintlike or quite the reverse, and it
is beginning to be practically recognized that there are two sides to
almost every question.
The need for an adequate life of Sir Harry Vane has been most thoroughly
and admirably satisfied by Mr. Hosmer. As a biography and as a
historical monograph, it deserves to be ranked among the best books of
the day. It paints a lifelike picture of the man, and it describes, in a
broad, generous spirit and with keen philosophical insight, the causal
succession of events in one of the most momentous political contests the
world has ever seen. We are getting far enough away from the seventeenth
century to realize the critical importance of the struggle in which
kingship was struck down in England just as it was attaining unchecked
supremacy in all the other great nations of Europe. We can put the Great
Rebellion into its proper place in the series of conflicts which have so
far resulted in spreading constitutional government far and wide over
two hemispheres; and we can begin to see how disastrous in its
consequences would have been the victory of the Cavaliers, true and
gallant men as most of them doubtless were. Without dealing too much in
generalities, Mr. Hosmer's narrative keeps before us the gravity of the
issues at stake, while our attention is seldom drawn away from the
powerful but quiet and gracious personality that occupies the centre of
the canvas. It is customary for great eras to live in the twilight of
popular memory in association with some one surpassing name, while other
heroes of the time are dimly remembered or quite forgotten. The work of
these other men gets unconsciously transferred to the credit of the most
brilliant or striking hero, as Hamilton, for example, is apt to get
associated not merely with his own all-important achievements, but
likewise with those of Madison and the Federal Convention generally. In
accordance with this labour-saving habit of mind, the Great Rebellion in
popular memory means Oliver Cromwell, while such men as Eliot and Pym,
Fairfax and Ireton, are passed over; and if Hampden stays, it is partly
due to the often-quoted line of the poet Gray. So there are many who
know Vane only through Milton's sonnet,--itself perhaps the noblest
literary tribute ever paid to a statesman. In Mr. Hosmer's pages Sir
Harry lives again, one of the brightest figures of the Puritan age,
cheerful and affectionate, full of sacred enthusiasm, yet shrewd and
self-contained. "He was indeed a man of extraordinary parts, a pleasant
wit, a great understanding which pierced into and discerned the purposes
of men with wonderful sagacity, whilst he had himself _vultum clausum_,
that no man could make a guess of what he intended." So says Clarendon,
who loved him not, but could not help admiring the skill which, at the
most critical moment of the war, when many stout adherents of the
parliamentary cause were inclined to abandon it as lost, all at once
brought light out of darkness, as the signing of the Solemn League and
Covenant summoned Alexander Leslie and twenty thousand brawny Scots
across the border to stand side by side with Cromwell and Fairfax at
Marston Moor. In later days it became matter of common report that the
northern Covenanters had fallen a prey to the wiles of "that sweet
youth," and allowed themselves to be hoodwinked and cozened by "sly Sir
Harry," until, in the hope of establishing Presbyterianism south of the
Tweed, they lent themselves to the work of setting the monster
Independency upon its feet. Mr. Hosmer carefully examines this charge,
and, we think, successfully refutes it. It was neither the first nor the
last contract on record which has afterward come to receive conflicting
interpretations from the two parties without any tricksome intent on
either side. "The Scots," says Mr. Hosmer, "understood that England
assumed their own narrow Presbyterianism, with its complete intolerance;
Vane and his friends gave the instrument a different interpretation,
which they honestly felt it would bear." The amendments which Vane
partly succeeded in engrafting upon the Scottish proposals at Edinburgh
are sufficient evidence of his straightforwardness. It was plain enough
that, in making a league to overcome the King, the Scots wanted one
thing, while the English wanted another. Vane did not hide this fact; to
have emphasized it would have been to forfeit all claim to diplomatic
tact. His part in the memorable negotiation is tersely summed up by
Clarendon: "Sir Harry Vane was one of the commissioners, and therefore
the others need not be named, since he was all in any business where
others were joined with him." In the Committee of Both Kingdoms which
the league created he was equally effective, and it was mainly through
his persistent dexterity that the committee acquired the control of
military affairs, and thus gave to the operations of the parliamentary
army that unity which they had hitherto lacked.
The firstfruits of Vane's diplomacy were Marston Moor and Naseby, and it
would be unreasonable to find fault with Mr. Hosmer for pausing to
describe those battles. They are brilliant episodes in his narrative. We
have nowhere seen the two battles more lucidly explained. The author has
been himself a soldier, and has looked at the ground with a military
eye. One quite envies him the pleasant journey, as on his tricycle he
follows the route of the Ironsides over the smooth roads and smiling
fields of Merry England. His pages are redolent of the mellow cheer and
fragrance of the summer day under that mild northern sun. One catches,
with the author, the spirit of the deadly fight, and realizes, as Naseby
spire fades away in the distance, the gravity of the crisis and the
completeness of the victory. Said stout old Sir Jacob Astley, when the
Roundheads took him captive a few months afterward, "Gentlemen, ye may
now sit down and play, for you have done all your work, if you fall not
out among yourselves."
They were already falling out among themselves; how seriously, Dunbar
and Worcester were by and by to show. "Their own generation," says Mr.
Hosmer, "believed that the Independents drew their origin from America."
Certainly there had been witnessed in Boston, in the year when Harvard
College was founded, some noteworthy manifestations of Independency, and
scenes had been enacted which had left a deep impress upon Sir Harry's
youthful mind. In 1635 the gossips wrote: "Sir Henry Vane hath as good
as lost his eldest son, who is gone into New England for conscience'
sake; he likes not the discipline of the Church of England;... no
persuasions of our bishops nor authority of his parents could prevail
with him: let him go." The fascinating boy arrived in Boston in October,
1635, and in the following March, having won all hearts, was elected
governor of Massachusetts. He witnessed the Pequot war, the beautiful
heroism and rare diplomacy of Roger Williams, and the bitter strife
which ensued upon the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson. Mr. Hosmer gives a
vivid picture of the life in the little colony, the theological warfare,
and the passionate tears of the young man as the difficulties thickened
around him. Perhaps his indiscreet threat of an appeal to the throne in
favour of the Antinomians, as he sailed for England in the summer of
1637, may have served to hasten the banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson; but
the lesson of toleration was already taking shape in his mind, as was
clearly shown in his controversy with Winthrop. His friendly relations
with Roger Williams began at the time of the Pequot war; and in 1643,
when Williams visited England in quest of a charter for Rhode Island, he
was Vane's guest at his house in London, and also at his country seat in
Lincolnshire. It was then that Williams wrote that noble book, "The
Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience," in the preface to
which he thus refers to his friend: "Mine ears were glad and late
witnesses of an heavenly speech of one of the most eminent of that High
Assembly of Parliament: _Why should the labours of any be suppressed, if
sober, though never so different? We now profess to seek God, we desire
to see light!_"[23] Mr. Hosmer gives in facsimile a touching letter from
Vane to Winthrop in 1645, in which he urges his friends in New England
to respect the liberty of conscience.
In 1648, in order to save the cause of liberty from losing to intrigue
and chicanery all the ground it had won by the sword, the Ironsides felt
themselves called upon to take things into their own hands. This period
of the story, extending to the forcible dissolution of the Rump
Parliament in 1653, Mr. Hosmer treats under the rubric of American
England. For the moment, the spirit of Independency, which reigned
supreme in Massachusetts, asserted itself in England in the temporary
overthrow of the crown and the aristocracy. In this period Sir Harry
appears as the opponent of the extreme measures of his party. He
heartily disapproves of such irregular proceedings as Pride's Purge and
the execution of the King. Here is shown the strong conservatism of
temperament of this law-abiding American-Englishman. He had all the
ingrained reverence of our sturdy practical race for constitutional
methods, and withal a far-sighted intelligence that could discern ways
of settling the difficulty which were for the moment impracticable,
because his contemporaries had not grown up to them. In his mind were
the rudiments of the idea of a written constitution, upon which a new
government for England might be built, with powers neatly defined and
limited. One fancies that in some respects he would have felt himself
more at home if he could have been suddenly translated from the Rump
Parliament of 1653 to the Federal Convention of 1787, in which immortal
assembly there sat perhaps no man of loftier spirit than his. It was
natural enough that Cromwell, whose stern common sense discerned the
practical need of the moment and reluctantly fulfilled it, should cry,
"The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" In spite of this antagonism
at the supreme crisis, however, the Protector recognized the worth of
his opponent, and seems to have borne him no deep-seated ill will. There
was no downright break between them until the Healing Question came up,
in 1656.
In Vane's last years there seemed to be some good reasons for
distrusting his judgment on practical questions. The element of dreamy
enthusiasm always present in him began to come into the foreground as
his more sober ideas and plans were thwarted. Some of his latest
utterances are like the rhapsodies of the Fifth Monarchists. Herein
again appears his spiritual kinship with his friends in Massachusetts.
The theocratic ideal of the founders of Massachusetts, as developed
freely in the American wilderness, was kept within rational bounds; but
if hemmed in by such inexorable circumstances as checked the early
growth of republicanism in England, it would very likely have flowered
grotesquely enough in Fifth Monarchist vagaries. From Edward Johnson, of
Woburn, author of the "Wonder-Working Providence," there often came the
dithyrambic utterances of an extreme Fifth Monarchy man.
When Charles II. came back to his father's throne, there was but one
thing to be done with such a representative republican as Sir Harry
Vane. His head must come off, for there was not room enough in England
to hold him and the son of Charles I. at the same time. He died on Tower
Hill, with all the fearlessness and charming sweetness that had always
marked his life. His memory is a precious possession for all coming
generations; and the book in which Mr. Hosmer has told the story of his
life, with such warm sympathy and such broad intelligence, is worthy of
its subject.
_January, 1889._
VII
THE ARBITRATION TREATY
After negotiations which had been pending for nearly two years, the
general Arbitration Treaty between the United States and Great Britain
was signed on the 11th of January [1897] by Mr. Richard Olney and Sir
Julian Pauncefote, representing the two countries concerned; and on the
following day the document was sent by President Cleveland to the Senate
for ratification. The provisions of this important treaty may be
summarized as follows:--
It is expected that differences arising between the two countries will
ordinarily admit of settlement by the customary methods of diplomacy. It
is only with cases where such customary methods fail that the provisions
of the present treaty are concerned; and the parties hereby agree to
submit all such cases to arbitration after the manner herein provided.
The "questions in difference" that are liable to arise are arranged in
three grades or classes: (1) small pecuniary claims; (2) large pecuniary
claims, and others not involving questions of territory; (3)
territorial claims. For each of these grades there is to be a special
method of settlement.
First, "all pecuniary claims or groups of claims, which in the aggregate
do not exceed $500,000 in amount and do not involve the determination of
territorial claims," shall be decided by a tribunal constituted as
follows: "Each party shall nominate one arbitrator, who shall be a
jurist of repute, and the two arbitrators so nominated shall, within two
months of their nomination, select an umpire. In the event of their
failing to do so within the limit of time, the umpire shall be appointed
by agreement between the members of the Supreme Court of the United
States and the members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in
Great Britain." In case these persons fail to agree upon an umpire
within three months, the King of Sweden and Norway shall appoint one.
Among public personages of unquestionable dignity and importance, this
sovereign is as likely as any to be free from bias against either the
United States of Great Britain; but should either party object to him,
they may adopt a substitute, if they can agree upon one. It does not
seem likely that the failure to select an umpire would often reach the
stage where an appeal to the Swedish King would be necessary. The
umpire, when and however appointed, shall be president of the tribunal
of three, and the award of a majority of the members shall be final.
Under these provisions, it may be expected that all petty claims can be
disposed of without unreasonable delay, and with as little risk of
unfairness as one would find in any court whatever.
Secondly, "all pecuniary claims or groups of claims exceeding $500,000,
and all other matters in respect whereof either of the parties shall
have rights against the other, under the treaty or otherwise, provided
they do not involve territorial claims," shall be dealt with as follows:
Such claims must be submitted to the tribunal of three, as above
described, and its award, if unanimous, shall be final. If the award is
not unanimous, either party may demand a review of it, but such demand
must be made within six months from the date of the award. In such case,
the appellate tribunal shall consist of five jurists of repute, no one
of whom has been a member of the tribunal of three whose award is to be
reviewed. Of these five jurists, two shall be selected by each party,
and these four shall agree upon their umpire within three months after
their nomination. In case of their failure, the umpire shall be selected
(as in the former case) by the members of the Supreme Court and the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and if these do not agree
within three months, the selection shall be left (as before) to the King
of Sweden and Norway. The umpire, when selected, shall preside. The
award of the tribunal of three shall be reviewed by this tribunal of
five, and the award of a majority of the five shall be final.