Have those public endowments contributed in general, to promote the end of

their institution? Have they contributed to encourage the diligence, and

to improve the abilities, of the teachers? Have they directed the course

of education towards objects more useful, both to the individual and to

the public, than those to which it would naturally have gone of its own

accord? It should not seem very difficult to give at least a probable

answer to each of those questions.

In every profession, the exertion of the greater part of those who

exercise it, is always in proportion to the necessity they are under of

making that exertion. This necessity is greatest with those to whom the

emoluments of their profession are the only source from which they expect

their fortune, or even their ordinary revenue and subsistence. In order to

acquire this fortune, or even to get this subsistence, they must, in the

course of a year, execute a certain quantity of work of a known value;

and, where the competition is free, the rivalship of competitors, who are

all endeavouring to justle one another out of employment, obliges every

man to endeavour to execute his work with a certain degree of exactness.

The greatness of the objects which are to be acquired by success in some

particular professions may, no doubt, sometimes animate the exertions of a

few men of extraordinary spirit and ambition. Great objects, however, are

evidently not necessary, in order to occasion the greatest exertions.

Rivalship and emulation render excellency, even in mean professions, an

object of ambition, and frequently occasion the very greatest exertions.

Great objects, on the contrary, alone and unsupported by the necessity of

application, have seldom been sufficient to occasion any considerable

exertion. In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some

very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy

fortunes, have ever in this country been eminent in that profession?

The endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished, more

or less, the necessity of application in the teachers. Their subsistence,

so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund,

altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular

professions.

In some universities, the salary makes but a part, and frequently but a

small part, of the emoluments of the teacher, of which the greater part

arises from the honoraries or fees of his pupils. The necessity of

application, though always more or less diminished, is not, in this case,

entirely taken away. Reputation in his profession is still of some

importance to him, and he still has some dependency upon the affection,

gratitude, and favourable report of those who have attended upon his

instructions; and these favourable sentiments he is likely to gain in no

way so well as by deserving them, that is, by the abilities and diligence

with which he discharges every part of his duty.

In other universities, the teacher is prohibited from receiving any

honorary or fee from his pupils, and his salary constitutes the whole of

the revenue which he derives from his office. His interest is, in this

case, set as directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set

it. It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can;

and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or

does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest,

at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it

altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer

him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that

authority will permit. If he is naturally active and a lover of labour, it

is his interest to employ that activity in any way from which he can

derive some advantage, rather than in the performance of his duty, from

which he can derive none.

If the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate, the

college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and in which the

greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either

are, or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a common cause, to

be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his

neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect

his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public

professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the

pretence of teaching.

If the authority to which he is subject resides, not so much in the body

corporate, of which he is a member, as in some other extraneous persons,

in the bishop of the diocese, for example, in the governor of the

province, or, perhaps, in some minister of state, it is not, indeed, in

this case, very likely that he will be suffered to neglect his duty

altogether. All that such superiors, however, can force him to do, is to

attend upon his pupils a certain number of hours, that is, to give a

certain number of lectures in the week, or in the year. What those

lectures shall be, must still depend upon the diligence of the teacher;

and that diligence is likely to be proportioned to the motives which he

has for exerting it. An extraneous jurisdiction of this kind, besides, is

liable to be exercised both ignorantly and capriciously. In its nature, it

is arbitrary and discretionary; and the persons who exercise it, neither

attending upon the lectures of the teacher themselves, nor perhaps

understanding the sciences which it is his business to teach, are seldom

capable of exercising it with judgment. From the insolence of office, too,

they are frequently indifferent how they exercise it, and are very apt to

censure or deprive him of his office wantonly and without any just cause.

The person subject to such jurisdiction is necessarily degraded by it,

and, instead of being one of the most respectable, is rendered one of the

meanest and most contemptible persons in the society. It is by powerful

protection only, that he can effectually guard himself against the bad

usage to which he is at all times exposed; and this protection he is most

likely to gain, not by ability or diligence in his profession, but by

obsequiousness to the will of his superiors, and by being ready, at all

times, to sacrifice to that will the rights, the interest, and the honour

of the body corporate, of which he is a member. Whoever has attended for

any considerable time to the administration of a French university, must

have had occasion to remark the effects which naturally result from an

arbitrary and extraneous jurisdiction of this kind.

Whatever forces a certain number of students to any college or university,

independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers, tends more or less

to diminish the necessity of that merit or reputation.

The privileges of graduates in arts, in law, physic, and divinity, when

they can be obtained only by residing a certain number of years in certain

universities, necessarily force a certain number of students to such

universities, independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers. The

privileges of graduates are a sort of statutes of apprenticeship, which

have contributed to the improvement of education just as the other

statutes of apprenticeship have to that of arts and manufactures.

The charitable foundations of scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc.

necessarily attach a certain number of students to certain colleges,

independent altogether of the merit of those particular colleges. Were the

students upon such charitable foundations left free to choose what college

they liked best, such liberty might perhaps contribute to excite some

emulation among different colleges. A regulation, on the contrary, which

prohibited even the independent members of every particular college from

leaving it, and going to any other, without leave first asked and obtained

of that which they meant to abandon, would tend very much to extinguish

that emulation.

If in each college, the tutor or teacher, who was to instruct each student

in all arts and sciences, should not be voluntarily chosen by the student,

but appointed by the head of the college; and if, in case of neglect,

inability, or bad usage, the student should not be allowed to change him

for another, without leave first asked and obtained; such a regulation

would not only tend very much to extinguish all emulation among the

different tutors of the same college, but to diminish very much, in all of

them, the necessity of diligence and of attention to their respective

pupils. Such teachers, though very well paid by their students, might be

as much disposed to neglect them, as those who are not paid by them at all

or who have no other recompense but their salary.

If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant

thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing to his students, that

he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better

than nonsense. It must, too, be unpleasant to him to observe, that the

greater part of his students desert his lectures; or perhaps, attend upon

them with plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision. If he is

obliged, therefore, to give a certain number of lectures, these motives

alone, without any other interest, might dispose him to take some pains to

give tolerably good ones. Several different expedients, however, may be

fallen upon, which will effectually blunt the edge of all those

incitements to diligence. The teacher, instead of explaining to his pupils

himself the science in which he proposes to instruct them, may read some

book upon it; and if this book is written in a foreign and dead language,

by interpreting it to them into their own, or, what would give him still

less trouble, by making them interpret it to him, and by now and then

making an occasional remark upon it, he may flatter himself that he is

giving a lecture. The slightest degree of knowledge and application will

enable him to do this, without exposing himself to contempt or derision,

by saying any thing that is really foolish, absurd, or ridiculous. The

discipline of the college, at the same time, may enable him to force all

his pupils to the most regular attendance upon his sham lecture, and to

maintain the most decent and respectful behaviour during the whole time of

the performance.

The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not

for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or, more properly

speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to

maintain the authority of the master, and, whether he neglects or performs

his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he

performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume

perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and

folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really perform their duty,

there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students

ever neglect theirs. No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance

upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known

wherever any such lectures are given. Force and restraint may, no doubt,

be in some degree requisite, in order to oblige children, or very young

boys, to attend to those parts of education, which it is thought necessary

for them to acquire during that early period of life; but after twelve or

thirteen years of age, provided the master does his duty, force or

restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carry on any part of education.

Such is the generosity of the greater part of young men, that so far from

being disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their master,

provided he shews some serious intention of being of use to them, they are

generally inclined to pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the

performance of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a

good deal of gross negligence.

Those parts of education, it is to be observed, for the teaching of which

there are no public institutions, are generally the best taught. When a

young man goes to a fencing or a dancing school, he does not, indeed,

always learn to fence or to dance very well; but he seldom fails of

learning to fence or to dance. The good effects of the riding school are

not commonly so evident. The expense of a riding school is so great, that

in most places it is a public institution. The three most essential parts

of literary education, to read, write, and account, it still continues to

be more common to acquire in private than in public schools; and it very

seldom happens, that anybody fails of acquiring them to the degree in

which it is necessary to acquire them.

In England, the public schools are much less corrupted than the

universities. In the schools, the youth are taught, or at least may be

taught, Greek and Latin; that is, everything which the masters pretend to

teach, or which it is expected they should teach. In the universities, the

youth neither are taught, nor always can find any proper means of being

taught the sciences, which it is the business of those incorporated bodies

to teach. The reward of the schoolmaster, in most cases, depends

principally, in some cases almost entirely, upon the fees or honoraries of

his scholars. Schools have no exclusive privileges. In order to obtain the

honours of graduation, it is not necessary that a person should bring a

certificate of his having studied a certain number of years at a public

school. If, upon examination, he appears to understand what is taught

there, no questions are asked about the place where he learnt it.

The parts of education which are commonly taught in universities, it may

perhaps be said, are not very well taught. But had it not been for those

institutions, they would not have been commonly taught at all; and both

the individual and the public would have suffered a good deal from the

want of those important parts of education.

The present universities of Europe were originally, the greater part of

them, ecclesiastical corporations, instituted for the education of

churchmen. They were founded by the authority of the pope; and were so

entirely under his immediate protection, that their members, whether

masters or students, had all of them what was then called the benefit of

clergy, that is, were exempted from the civil jurisdiction of the

countries in which their respective universities were situated, and were

amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals. What was taught in the

greater part of those universities was suitable to the end of their

institution, either theology, or something that was merely preparatory to

theology.

When Christianity was first established by law, a corrupted Latin had

become the common language of all the western parts of Europe. The service

of the church, accordingly, and the translation of the Bible which were

read in churches, were both in that corrupted Latin; that is, in the

common language of the country, After the irruption of the barbarous

nations who overturned the Roman empire, Latin gradually ceased to be the

language of any part of Europe. But the reverence of the people naturally

preserves the established forms and ceremonies of religion long after the

circumstances which first introduced and rendered them reasonable, are no

more. Though Latin, therefore, was no longer understood anywhere by the

great body of the people, the whole service of the church still continued

to be performed in that language. Two different languages were thus

established in Europe, in the same manner as in ancient Egypt: a language

of the priests, and a language of the people; a sacred and a profane, a

learned and an unlearned language. But it was necessary that the priests

should understand something of that sacred and learned language in which

they were to officiate; and the study of the Latin language therefore

made, from the beginning, an essential part of university education.

It was not so with that either of the Greek or of the Hebrew language. The

infallible decrees of the church had pronounced the Latin translation of

the Bible, commonly called the Latin Vulgate, to have been equally

dictated by divine inspiration, and therefore of equal authority with the

Greek and Hebrew originals. The knowledge of those two languages,

therefore, not being indispensably requisite to a churchman, the study of

them did not for a long time make a necessary part of the common course of

university education. There are some Spanish universities, I am assured,

in which the study of the Greek language has never yet made any part of

that course. The first reformers found the Greek text of the New

Testament, and even the Hebrew text of the Old, more favourable to their

opinions than the vulgate translation, which, as might naturally be

supposed, had been gradually accommodated to support the doctrines of the

Catholic Church. They set themselves, therefore, to expose the many errors

of that translation, which the Roman catholic clergy were thus put under

the necessity of defending or explaining. But this could not well be done

without some knowledge of the original languages, of which the study was

therefore gradually introduced into the greater part of universities; both

of those which embraced, and of those which rejected, the doctrines of the

reformation. The Greek language was connected with every part of that

classical learning, which, though at first principally cultivated by

catholics and Italians, happened to come into fashion much about the same

time that the doctrines of the reformation were set on foot. In the

greater part of universities, therefore, that language was taught previous

to the study of philosophy, and as soon as the student had made some

progress in the Latin. The Hebrew language having no connection with

classical learning, and, except the Holy Scriptures, being the language of

not a single book in any esteem the study of it did not commonly commence

till after that of philosophy, and when the student had entered upon the

study of theology.

Originally, the first rudiments, both of the Greek and Latin languages,

were taught in universities; and in some universities they still continue

to be so. In others, it is expected that the student should have

previously acquired, at least, the rudiments of one or both of those

languages, of which the study continues to make everywhere a very

considerable part of university education.

The ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three great branches;

physics, or natural philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and logic.

This general division seems perfectly agreeable to the nature of things.

The great phenomena of nature, the revolutions of the heavenly bodies,

eclipses, comets; thunder and lightning, and other extraordinary meteors;

the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals;

are objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they

naturally call forth the curiosity of mankind to inquire into their

causes. Superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by

referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the

gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them from more

familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with, than

the agency of the gods. As those great phenomena are the first objects of

human curiosity, so the science which pretends to explain them must

naturally have been the first branch of philosophy that was cultivated.

The first philosophers, accordingly, of whom history has preserved any

account, appear to have been natural philosophers.

In every age and country of the world, men must have attended to the

characters, designs, and actions of one another; and many reputable rules

and maxims for the conduct of human life must have been laid down and

approved of by common consent. As soon as writing came into fashion, wise

men, or those who fancied themselves such, would naturally endeavour to

increase the number of those established and respected maxims, and to

express their own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct,

sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are called

the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one of apophthegms

or wise sayings, like the proverbs of Solomon, the verses of Theognis and

Phocyllides, and some part of the works of Hesiod. They might continue in

this manner, for a long time, merely to multiply the number of those

maxims of prudence and morality, without even attempting to arrange them

in any very distinct or methodical order, much less to connect them

together by one or more general principles, from which they were all

deducible, like effects from their natural causes. The beauty of a

systematical arrangement of different observations, connected by a few

common principles, was first seen in the rude essays of those ancient

times towards a system of natural philosophy. Something of the same kind

was afterwards attempted in morals. The maxims of common life were

arranged in some methodical order, and connected together by a few common

principles, in the same manner as they had attempted to arrange and

connect the phenomena of nature. The science which pretends to investigate

and explain those connecting principles, is what is properly called Moral

Philosophy.

Different authors gave different systems, both of natural and moral

philosophy. But the arguments by which they supported those different

systems, far from being always demonstrations, were frequently at best but

very slender probabilities, and sometimes mere sophisms, which had no

other foundation but the inaccuracy and ambiguity of common language.

Speculative systems, have, in all ages of the world, been adopted for

reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgment of any man of common

sense, in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest. Gross sophistry has

scarce ever had any influence upon the opinions of mankind, except in

matters of philosophy and speculation; and in these it has frequently had

the greatest. The patrons of each system of natural and moral philosophy,

naturally endeavoured to expose the weakness of the arguments adduced to

support the systems which were opposite to their own. In examining those

arguments, they were necessarily led to consider the difference between a

probable and a demonstrative argument, between a fallacious and a

conclusive one; and logic, or the science of the general principles of

good and bad reasoning, necessarily arose out of the observations which a

scrutiny of this kind gave occasion to; though, in its origin, posterior

both to physics and to ethics, it was commonly taught, not indeed in all,

but in the greater part of the ancient schools of philosophy, previously

to either of those sciences. The student, it seems to have been thought,

ought to understand well the difference between good and bad reasoning,

before he was led to reason upon subjects of so great importance.

This ancient division of philosophy into three parts was, in the greater

part of the universities of Europe, changed for another into five.

In the ancient philosophy, whatever was taught concerning the nature

either of the human mind or of the Deity, made a part of the system of

physics. Those beings, in whatever their essence might be supposed to

consist, were parts of the great system of the universe, and parts, too,

productive of the most important effects. Whatever human reason could

either conclude or conjecture concerning them, made, as it were, two

chapters, though no doubt two very important ones, of the science which

pretended to give an account of the origin and revolutions of the great

system of the universe. But in the universities of Europe, where

philosophy was taught only as subservient to theology, it was natural to

dwell longer upon these two chapters than upon any other of the science.

They were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many

inferior chapters; till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so

little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of

philosophy as the doctrine of bodies, of which so much can be known. The

doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two

distinct sciences. What are called metaphysics, or pneumatics, were set in

opposition to physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime,

but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful

science of the two. The proper subject of experiment and observation, a

subject in which a careful attention is capable of making so many useful

discoveries, was almost entirely neglected. The subject in which, after a

very few simple and almost obvious truths, the most careful attention can

discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequently

produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatly cultivated.

When those two sciences had thus been set in opposition to one another,

the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a third, to what was

called ontology, or the science which treated of the qualities and

attributes which were common to both the subjects of the other two

sciences. But if subtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the

metaphysics or pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this

cobweb science of ontology, which was likewise sometimes called

metaphysics.

Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not

only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of

the great society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral

philosophy proposed to investigate. In that philosophy, the duties of

human life were treated of as subservient to the happiness and perfection

of human life, But when moral, as well as natural philosophy, came to be

taught only as subservient to theology, the duties of human life were

treated of as chiefly subservient to the happiness of a life to come. In

the ancient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as

necessarily productive, to the person who possessed it, of the most

perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was

frequently represented as generally, or rather as almost always,

inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life; and heaven was to

be earned only by penance and mortification, by the austerities and

abasement of a monk, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of

a man. Casuistry, and an ascetic morality, made up, in most cases, the

greater part of the moral philosophy of the schools. By far the most

important of all the different branches of philosophy became in this

manner by far the most corrupted.

Such, therefore, was the common course of philosophical education in the

greater part of the universities in Europe. Logic was taught first;

ontology came in the second place; pneumatology, comprehending the

doctrine concerning the nature of the human soul and of the Deity, in the

third; in the fourth followed a debased system of moral philosophy, which

was considered as immediately connected with the doctrines of

pneumatology, with the immortality of the human soul, and with the rewards

and punishments which, from the justice of the Deity, were to be expected

in a life to come: a short and superficial system of physics usually

concluded the course.

The alterations which the universities of Europe thus introduced into the

ancient course of philosophy were all meant for the education of

ecclesiastics, and to render it a more proper introduction to the study of

theology. But the additional quantity of subtlety and sophistry, the

casuistry and ascetic morality which those alterations introduced into it,

certainly did not render it more for the education of gentlemen or men of

the world, or more likely either to improve the understanding or to mend

the heart.

This course of philosophy is what still continues to be taught in the

greater part of the universities of Europe, with more or less diligence,

according as the constitution of each particular university happens to

render diligence more or less necessary to the teachers. In some of the

richest and best endowed universities, the tutors content themselves with

teaching a few unconnected shreds and parcels of this corrupted course;

and even these they commonly teach very negligently and superficially.

The improvements which, in modern times have been made in several

different branches of philosophy, have not, the greater part of them, been

made in universities, though some, no doubt, have. The greater part of

universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements

after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen

to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and

obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection, after they had been

hunted out of every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and

best endowed universities have been slowest in adopting those

improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable change in the

established plan of education. Those improvements were more easily

introduced into some of the poorer universities, in which the teachers,

depending upon their reputation for the greater part of their subsistence,

were obliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of the world.

But though the public schools and universities of Europe were originally

intended only for the education of a particular profession, that of

churchmen; and though they were not always very diligent in instructing

their pupils, even in the sciences which were supposed necessary for that

profession; yet they gradually drew to themselves the education of almost

all other people, particularly of almost all gentlemen and men of fortune.

No better method, it seems, could be fallen upon, of spending, with any

advantage, the long interval between infancy and that period of life at

which men begin to apply in good earnest to the real business of the

world, the business which is to employ them during the remainder of their

days. The greater part of what is taught in schools and universities,

however, does not seem to be the most proper preparation for that

business.

In England, it becomes every day more and more the custom to send young

people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon their leaving

school, and without sending them to any university. Our young people, it

is said, generally return home much improved by their travels. A young

man, who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at

one-and-twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went

abroad; and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in

three or four years. In the course of his travels, he generally acquires

some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however,

which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them

with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more

conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any

serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well

have become in so short a time had he lived at home. By travelling so very

young, by spending in the most frivolous dissipation the most precious

years of his life, at a distance from the inspection and control of his

parents and relations, every useful habit, which the earlier parts of his

education might have had some tendency to form in him, instead of being

riveted and confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakened or effaced.

Nothing but the discredit into which the universities are allowing

themselves to fall, could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a

practice as that of travelling at this early period of life. By sending

his son abroad, a father delivers himself, at least for some time, from so

disagreeable an object as that of a son unemployed, neglected, and going

to ruin before his eyes.

Such have been the effects of some of the modern institutions for

education.

Different plans and different institutions for education seem to have

taken place in other ages and nations.

In the republics of ancient Greece, every free citizen was instructed,

under the direction of the public magistrate, in gymnastic exercises and

in music. By gymnastic exercises, it was intended to harden his body, to

sharpen his courage, and to prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of

war; and as the Greek militia was, by all accounts, one of the best that

ever was in the world, this part of their public education must have

answered completely the purpose for which it was intended. By the other

part, music, it was proposed, at least by the philosophers and historians,

who have given us an account of those institutions, to humanize the mind,

to soften the temper, and to dispose it for performing all the social and

moral duties of public and private life.

In ancient Rome, the exercises of the Campus Martius answered the same

purpose as those of the Gymnasium in ancient Greece, and they seem to have

answered it equally well. But among the Romans there was nothing which

corresponded to the musical education of the Greeks. The morals of the

Romans, however, both in private and public life, seem to have been, not

only equal, but, upon the whole, a good deal superior to those of the

Greeks. That they were superior in private life, we have the express

testimony of Polybius, and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, two authors well

acquainted with both nations; and the whole tenor of the Greek and Roman

history bears witness to the superiority of the public morals of the

Romans. The good temper and moderation of contending factions seem to be

the most essential circumstances in the public morals of a free people.

But the factions of the Greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary;

whereas, till the time of the Gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any

Roman faction; and from the time of the Gracchi, the Roman republic may be

considered as in reality dissolved. Notwithstanding, therefore, the very

respectable authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius, and

notwithstanding the very ingenious reasons by which Mr Montesquieu

endeavours to support that authority, it seems probable that the musical

education of the Greeks had no great effect in mending their morals,

since, without any such education, those of the Romans were, upon the

whole, superior. The respect of those ancient sages for the institutions

of their ancestors had probably disposed them to find much political

wisdom in what was, perhaps, merely an ancient custom, continued, without

interruption, from the earliest period of those societies, to the times in

which they had arrived at a considerable degree of refinement. Music and

dancing are the great amusements of almost all barbarous nations, and the

great accomplishments which are supposed to fit any man for entertaining

his society. It is so at this day among the negroes on the coast of

Africa. It was so among the ancient Celtes, among the ancient

Scandinavians, and, as we may learn from Homer, among the ancient Greeks,

in the times preceding the Trojan war. When the Greek tribes had formed

themselves into little republics, it was natural that the study of those

accomplishments should for a long time make a part of the public and

common education of the people.

The masters who instructed the young people, either in music or in

military exercises, do not seem to have been paid, or even appointed by

the state, either in Rome or even at Athens, the Greek republic of whose

laws and customs we are the best informed. The state required that every

free citizen should fit himself for defending it in war, and should upon

that account, learn his military exercises. But it left him to learn them

of such masters as he could find; and it seems to have advanced nothing

for this purpose, but a public field or place of exercise, in which he

should practise and perform them.

In the early ages, both of the Greek and Roman republics, the other parts

of education seem to have consisted in learning to read, write, and

account, according to the arithmetic of the times. These accomplishments

the richer citizens seem frequently to have acquired at home, by the

assistance of some domestic pedagogue, who was, generally, either a slave

or a freedman; and the poorer citizens in the schools of such masters as

made a trade of teaching for hire. Such parts of education, however, were

abandoned altogether to the care of the parents or guardians of each

individual. It does not appear that the state ever assumed any inspection

or direction of them. By a law of Solon, indeed, the children were

acquitted from maintaining those parents who had neglected to instruct

them in some profitable trade or business.

In the progress of refinement, when philosophy and rhetoric came into

fashion, the better sort of people used to send their children to the

schools of philosophers and rhetoricians, in order to be instructed in

these fashionable sciences. But those schools were not supported by the

public. They were, for a long time, barely tolerated by it. The demand for

philosophy and rhetoric was, for a long time, so small, that the first

professed teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one

city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place. In this manner

lived Zeno of Elea, Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and many others. As the

demand increased, the school, both of philosophy and rhetoric, became

stationary, first in Athens, and afterwards in several other cities. The

state, however, seems never to have encouraged them further, than by

assigning to some of them a particular place to teach in, which was

sometimes done, too, by private donors. The state seems to have assigned

the Academy to Plato, the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno of

Citta, the founder of the Stoics. But Epicurus bequeathed his gardens to

his own school. Till about the time of Marcus Antoninus, however, no

teacher appears to have had any salary from the public, or to have had any

other emoluments, but what arose from the honoraries or fees of his

scholars. The bounty which that philosophical emperor, as we learn from

Lucian, bestowed upon one of the teachers of philosophy, probably lasted

no longer than his own life. There was nothing equivalent to the

privileges of graduation; and to have attended any of those schools was

not necessary, in order to be permitted to practise any particular trade

or profession. If the opinion of their own utility could not draw scholars

to them, the law neither forced anybody to go to them, nor rewarded

anybody for having gone to them. The teachers had no jurisdiction over

their pupils, nor any other authority besides that natural authority which

superior virtue and abilities never fail to procure from young people

towards those who are entrusted with any part of their education.

At Rome, the study of the civil law made a part of the education, not of

the greater part of the citizens, but of some particular families. The

young people, however, who wished to acquire knowledge in the law, had no

public school to go to, and had no other method of studying it, than by

frequenting the company of such of their relations and friends as were

supposed to understand it. It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, that

though the laws of the twelve tables were many of them copied from those

of some ancient Greek republics, yet law never seems to have grown up to

be a science in any republic of ancient Greece. In Rome it became a

science very early, and gave a considerable degree of illustration to

those citizens who had the reputation of understanding it. In the

republics of ancient Greece, particularly in Athens, the ordinary courts

of justice consisted of numerous, and therefore disorderly, bodies of

people, who frequently decided almost at random, or as clamour, faction,

and party-spirit, happened to determine. The ignominy of an unjust

decision, when it was to be divided among five hundred, a thousand, or

fifteen hundred people (for some of their courts were so very numerous),

could not fall very heavy upon any individual. At Rome, on the contrary,

the principal courts of justice consisted either of a single judge, or of

a small number of judges, whose characters, especially as they deliberated

always in public, could not fail to be very much affected by any rash or

unjust decision. In doubtful cases such courts, from their anxiety to

avoid blame, would naturally endeavour to shelter themselves under the

example or precedent of the judges who had sat before them, either in the

same or in some other court. This attention to practice and precedent,

necessarily formed the Roman law into that regular and orderly system in

which it has been delivered down to us; and the like attention has had the

like effects upon the laws of every other country where such attention has

taken place. The superiority of character in the Romans over that of the

Greeks, so much remarked by Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was

probably more owing to the better constitution of their courts of justice,

than to any of the circumstances to which those authors ascribe it. The

Romans are said to have been particularly distinguished for their superior

respect to an oath. But the people who were accustomed to make oath only

before some diligent and well informed court of justice, would naturally

be much more attentive to what they swore, than they who were accustomed

to do the same thing before mobbish and disorderly assemblies.

The abilities, both civil and military, of the Greeks and Romans, will

readily be allowed to have been at least equal to those of any modern

nation. Our prejudice is perhaps rather to overrate them. But except in

what related to military exercises, the state seems to have been at no

pains to form those great abilities; for I cannot be induced to believe

that the musical education of the Greeks could be of much consequence in

forming them. Masters, however, had been found, it seems, for instructing

the better sort of people among those nations, in every art and science in

which the circumstances of their society rendered it necessary or

convenient for them to be instructed. The demand for such instruction

produced, what it always produces, the talent for giving it; and the

emulation which an unrestrained competition never fails to excite, appears

to have brought that talent to a very high degree of perfection. In the

attention which the ancient philosophers excited, in the empire which they

acquired over the opinions and principles of their auditors, in the

faculty which they possessed of giving a certain tone and character to the

conduct and conversation of those auditors, they appear to have been much

superior to any modern teachers. In modern times, the diligence of public

teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances which render them

more or less independent of their success and reputation in their

particular professions. Their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who

would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a

merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty, in competition with those

who trade with a considerable one. If he sells his goods at nearly the

same price, he cannot have the same profit; and poverty and beggary at

least, if not bankruptcy and ruin, will infallibly be his lot. If he

attempts to sell them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers,

that his circumstances will not be much mended. The privileges of

graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or at least

extremely convenient, to most men of learned professions, that is, to the

far greater part of those who have occasion for a learned education. But

those privileges can be obtained only by attending the lectures of the

public teachers. The most careful attendance upon the ablest instructions

of any private teacher cannot always give any title to demand them. It is

from these different causes that the private teacher of any of the

sciences, which are commonly taught in universities, is, in modern times,

generally considered as in the very lowest order of men of letters. A man

of real abilities can scarce find out a more humiliating or a more

unprofitable employment to turn them to. The endowments of schools and

colleges have in this manner not only corrupted the diligence of public

teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private

ones.

Were there no public institutions for education, no system, no science,

would be taught, for which there was not some demand, or which the

circumstances of the times did not render it either necessary or

convenient, or at least fashionable to learn. A private teacher could

never find his account in teaching either an exploded and antiquated

system of a science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally

believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense.

Such systems, such sciences, can subsist nowhere but in those incorporated

societies for education, whose prosperity and revenue are in a great

measure independent of their industry. Were there no public institutions

for education, a gentleman, after going through, with application and

abilities, the most complete course of education which the circumstances

of the times were supposed to afford, could not come into the world

completely ignorant of everything which is the common subject of

conversation among gentlemen and men of the world.

There are no public institutions for the education of women, and there is

accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantastical, in the common course

of their education. They are taught what their parents or guardians judge

it necessary or useful for them to learn, and they are taught nothing

else. Every part of their education tends evidently to some useful

purpose; either to improve the natural attractions of their person, or to

form their mind to reserve, to modesty, to chastity, and to economy; to

render them both likely to became the mistresses of a family, and to

behave properly when they have become such. In every part of her life, a

woman feels some conveniency or advantage from every part of her

education. It seldom happens that a man, in any part of his life, derives

any conveniency or advantage from some of the most laborious and

troublesome parts of his education.

Ought the public, therefore, to give no attention, it may be asked, to the

education of the people? Or, if it ought to give any, what are the

different parts of education which it ought to attend to in the different

orders of the people? and in what manner ought it to attend to them?

In some cases, the state of society necessarily places the greater part of

individuals in such situations as naturally form in them, without any

attention of government, almost all the abilities and virtues which that

state requires, or perhaps can admit of. In other cases, the state of the

society does not place the greater part of individuals in such situations;

and some attention of government is necessary, in order to prevent the

almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people.

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far

greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of

the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations;

frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of

men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose

whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the

effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no

occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in

finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He

naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally

becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to

become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing

or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any

generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just

judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of

the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether

incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to

render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in

war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage

of his mind, and makes him regard, with abhorrence, the irregular,

uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the

activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength

with vigour and perseverance in any other employment, than that to which

he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this

manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and

martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the

state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the

people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to

prevent it.

It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called,

of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of

husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures, and the

extension of foreign commerce. In such societies, the varied occupations

of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity, and to invent

expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring.

Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that

drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the

understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those

barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has already been

observed, is a warrior. Every man, too, is in some measure a statesman,

and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society,

and the conduct of those who govern it. How far their chiefs are good

judges in peace, or good leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of

almost every single man among them. In such a society, indeed, no man can

well acquire that improved and refined understanding which a few men

sometimes possess in a more civilized state. Though in a rude society

there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of every individual,

there is not a great deal in those of the whole society. Every man does,

or is capable of doing, almost every thing which any other man does, or is

capable of being. Every man has a considerable degree of knowledge,

ingenuity, and invention but scarce any man has a great degree. The

degree, however, which is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for

conducting the whole simple business of the society. In a civilized state,

on the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupations of the

greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite variety in those

of the whole society. These varied occupations present an almost infinite

variety of objects to the contemplation of those few, who, being attached

to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to

examine the occupations of other people. The contemplation of so great a

variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless

comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an

extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. Unless those few,

however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their

great abilities, though honourable to themselves, may contribute very

little to the good government or happiness of their society.

Notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of

the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and

extinguished in the great body of the people.

The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and

commercial society, the attention of the public, more than that of people

of some rank and fortune. People of some rank and fortune are generally

eighteen or nineteen years of age before they enter upon that particular

business, profession, or trade, by which they propose to distinguish

themselves in the world. They have, before that, full time to acquire, or

at least to fit themselves for afterwards acquiring, every accomplishment

which can recommend them to the public esteem, or render them worthy of

it. Their parents or guardians are generally sufficiently anxious that

they should be so accomplished, and are in most cases, willing enough to

lay out the expense which is necessary for that purpose. If they are not

always properly educated, it is seldom from the want of expense laid out

upon their education, but from the improper application of that expense.

It is seldom from the want of masters, but from the negligence and

incapacity of the masters who are to be had, and from the difficulty, or

rather from the impossibility, which there is, in the present state of

things, of finding any better. The employments, too, in which people of

some rank or fortune spend the greater part of their lives, are not, like

those of the common people, simple and uniform. They are almost all of

them extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than the

hands. The understandings of those who are engaged in such employments,

can seldom grow torpid for want of exercise. The employments of people of

some rank and fortune, besides, are seldom such as harass them from

morning to night. They generally have a good deal of leisure, during which

they may perfect themselves in every branch, either of useful or

ornamental knowledge, of which they may have laid the foundation, or for

which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of life.

It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to spare for

education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them, even in

infancy. As soon as they are able to work, they must apply to some trade,

by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so

simple and uniform, as to give little exercise to the understanding;

while, at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe,

that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or

even to think of any thing else.

But though the common people cannot, in any civilized society, be so well

instructed as people of some rank and fortune; the most essential parts of

education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so

early a period of life, that the greater part, even of those who are to be

bred to the lowest occupations, have time to acquire them before they can

be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense, the public can

facilitate, can encourage and can even impose upon almost the whole body

of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of

education.

The public can facilitate this acquisition, by establishing in every

parish or district a little school, where children maybe taught for a

reward so moderate, that even a common labourer may afford it; the master

being partly, but not wholly, paid by the public; because, if he was

wholly, or even principally, paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect

his business. In Scotland, the establishment of such parish schools has

taught almost the whole common people to read, and a very great proportion

of them to write and account. In England, the establishment of charity

schools has had an effect of the same kind, though not so universally,

because the establishment is not so universal. If, in those little

schools, the books by which the children are taught to read, were a little

more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a little

smattering in Latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes

taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them, they were

instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics; the literary

education of this rank of people would, perhaps, be as complete as can be.

There is scarce a common trade, which does not afford some opportunities

of applying to it the principles of geometry and mechanics, and which

would not, therefore, gradually exercise and improve the common people in

those principles, the necessary introduction to the most sublime, as well

as to the most useful sciences.

The public can encourage the acquisition of those most essential parts of

education, by giving small premiums, and little badges of distinction, to

the children of the common people who excel in them.

The public can impose upon almost the whole body of the people the

necessity of acquiring the most essential parts of education, by obliging

every man to undergo an examination or probation in them, before he can

obtain the freedom in any corporation, or be allowed to set up any trade,

either in a village or town corporate.

It was in this manner, by facilitating the acquisition of their military

and gymnastic exercises, by encouraging it, and even by imposing upon the

whole body of the people the necessity of learning those exercises, that

the Greek and Roman republics maintained the martial spirit of their

respective citizens. They facilitated the acquisition of those exercises,

by appointing a certain place for learning and practising them, and by

granting to certain masters the privilege of teaching in that place. Those

masters do not appear to have had either salaries or exclusive privileges

of any kind. Their reward consisted altogether in what they got from their

scholars; and a citizen, who had learnt his exercises in the public

gymnasia, had no sort of legal advantage over one who had learnt them

privately, provided the latter had learned them equally well. Those

republics encouraged the acquisition of those exercises, by bestowing

little premiums and badges of distinction upon those who excelled in them.

To have gained a prize in the Olympic, Isthmian, or Nemaean games, gave

illustration, not only to the person who gained it, but to his whole

family and kindred. The obligation which every citizen was under, to serve

a certain number of years, if called upon, in the armies of the republic,

sufficiently imposed the necessity of learning those exercises, without

which he could not be fit for that service.

That in the progress of improvement, the practice of military exercises,

unless government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to

decay, and, together with it, the martial spirit of the great body of the

people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demonstrates. But the

security of every society must always depend, more or less, upon the

martial spirit of the great body of the people. In the present times,

indeed, that martial spirit alone, and unsupported by a well-disciplined

standing army, would not, perhaps, be sufficient for the defence and

security of any society. But where every citizen had the spirit of a

soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite. That spirit,

besides, would necessarily diminish very much the dangers to liberty,

whether real or imaginary, which are commonly apprehended from a standing

army. As it would very much facilitate the operations of that army against

a foreign invader; so it would obstruct them as much, if unfortunately

they should ever be directed against the constitution of the state.

The ancient institutions of Greece and Rome seem to have been much more

effectual for maintaining the martial spirit of the great body of the

people, than the establishment of what are called the militias of modern

times. They were much more simple. When they were once established, they

executed themselves, and it required little or no attention from

government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour. Whereas to

maintain, even in tolerable execution, the complex regulations of any

modern militia, requires the continual and painful attention of

government, without which they are constantly falling into total neglect

and disuse. The influence, besides, of the ancient institutions, was much

more universal. By means of them, the whole body of the people was

completely instructed in the use of arms; whereas it is but a very small

part of them who can ever be so instructed by the regulations of any

modern militia, except, perhaps, that of Switzerland. But a coward, a man

incapable either of defending or of revenging himself, evidently wants one

of the most essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much

mutilated and deformed in his mind as another is in his body, who is

either deprived of some of its most essential members, or has lost the use

of them. He is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two;

because happiness and misery, which reside altogether in the mind, must

necessarily depend more upon the healthful or unhealthful, the mutilated

or entire state of the mind, than upon that of the body. Even though the

martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the

society, yet, to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity, and

wretchedness, which cowardice necessarily involves in it, from spreading

themselves through the great body of the people, would still deserve the

most serious attention of government; in the same manner as it would

deserve its most serious attention to prevent a leprosy, or any other

loathsome and offensive disease, though neither mortal nor dangerous, from

spreading itself among them; though, perhaps, no other public good might

result from such attention, besides the prevention of so great a public

evil.

The same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and stupidity which, in

a civilized society, seem so frequently to benumb the understandings of

all the inferior ranks of people. A man without the proper use of the

intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than

even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more

essential part of the character of human nature. Though the state was to

derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks of people,

it would still deserve its attention that they should not be altogether

uninstructed. The state, however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from

their instruction. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are

to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among ignorant

nations frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and

intelligent people, besides, are always more decent and orderly than an

ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more

respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful

superiors, and they are, therefore, more disposed to respect those

superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing

through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition; and they are,

upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary

opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the

safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which

the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest

importance, that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or

capriciously concerning it.

Art. III.—Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Instruction of

People of all Ages.

The institutions for the instruction of people of all ages, are chiefly

those for religious instruction. This is a species of instruction, of

which the object is not so much to render the people good citizens in this

world, as to prepare them for another and a better world in the life to

come. The teachers of the doctrine which contains this instruction, in the

same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their

subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers; or they may

derive it from some other fund, to which the law of their country may

entitle them; such as a landed estate, a tythe or land tax, an established

salary or stipend. Their exertion, their zeal and industry, are likely to

be much greater in the former situation than in the latter. In this

respect, the teachers of a new religion have always had a considerable

advantage in attacking those ancient and established systems, of which the

clergy, reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up

the fervour of faith and devotion in the great body of the people; and

having given themselves up to indolence, were become altogether incapable

of making any vigorous exertion in defence even of their own

establishment. The clergy of an established and well endowed religion

frequently become men of learning and elegance, who possess all the

virtues of gentlemen, or which can recommend them to the esteem of

gentlemen; but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and

bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of

people, and which had perhaps been the original causes of the success and

establishment of their religion. Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of

popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel

themselves as perfectly defenceless as the indolent, effeminate, and full

fed nations of the southern parts of Asia, when they were invaded by the

active, hardy, and hungry Tartars of the north. Such a clergy, upon such

an emergency, have commonly no other resource than to call upon the civil

magistrate to persecute, destroy, or drive out their adversaries, as

disturbers of the public peace. It was thus that the Roman catholic clergy

called upon the civil magistrate to persecute the protestants, and the

church of England to persecute the dissenters; and that in general every

religious sect, when it has once enjoyed, for a century or two, the

security of a legal establishment, has found itself incapable of making

any vigorous defence against any new sect which chose to attack its

doctrine or discipline. Upon such occasions, the advantage, in point of

learning and good writing, may sometimes be on the side of the established

church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes,

are constantly on the side of its adversaries. In England, those arts have

been long neglected by the well endowed clergy of the established church,

and are at present chiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the

methodists. The independent provisions, however, which in many places have

been made for dissenting teachers, by means of voluntary subscriptions, of

trust rights, and other evasions of the law, seem very much to have abated

the zeal and activity of those teachers. They have many of them become

very learned, ingenious, and respectable men; but they have in general

ceased to be very popular preachers. The methodists, without half the

learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue.

In the church of Rome the industry and zeal of the inferior clergy are

kept more alive by the powerful motive of self-interest, than perhaps in

any established protestant church. The parochial clergy derive many of

them, a very considerable part of their subsistence from the voluntary

oblations of the people; a source of revenue, which confession gives them

many opportunities of improving. The mendicant orders derive their whole

subsistence from such oblations. It is with them as with the hussars and

light infantry of some armies; no plunder, no pay. The parochial clergy

are like those teachers whose reward depends partly upon their salary, and

partly upon the fees or honoraries which they get from their pupils; and

these must always depend, more or less, upon their industry and

reputation. The mendicant orders are like those teachers whose subsistence

depends altogether upon their industry. They are obliged, therefore, to

use every art which can animate the devotion of the common people. The

establishment of the two great mendicant orders of St Dominic and St.

Francis, it is observed by Machiavel, revived, in the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, the languishing faith and devotion of the catholic

church. In Roman catholic countries, the spirit of devotion is supported

altogether by the monks, and by the poorer parochial clergy. The great

dignitaries of the church, with all the accomplishments of gentlemen and

men of the world, and sometimes with those of men of learning, are careful

to maintain the necessary discipline over their inferiors, but seldom give

themselves any trouble about the instruction of the people.

“Most of the arts and professions in a state,” says by far the most

illustrious philosopher and historian of the present age, “are of such a

nature, that, while they promote the interests of the society, they are

also useful or agreeable to some individuals; and, in that case, the

constant rule of the magistrate, except, perhaps, on the first

introduction of any art, is, to leave the profession to itself, and trust

its encouragement to the individuals who reap the benefit of it. The

artizans, finding their profits to rise by the favour of their customers,

increase, as much as possible, their skill and industry; and as matters

are not disturbed by any injudicious tampering, the commodity is always

sure to be at all times nearly proportioned to the demand.

“But there are also some callings which, though useful and even necessary

in a state, bring no advantage or pleasure to any individual; and the

supreme power is obliged to alter its conduct with regard to the retainers

of those professions. It must give them public encouragement in order to

their subsistence; and it must provide against that negligence to which

they will naturally be subject, either by annexing particular honours to

profession, by establishing a long subordination of ranks, and a strict

dependence, or by some other expedient. The persons employed in the

finances, fleets, and magistracy, are instances of this order of men.

“It may naturally be thought, at first sight, that the ecclesiastics

belong to the first class, and that their encouragement, as well as that

of lawyers and physicians, may safely be entrusted to the liberality of

individuals, who are attached to their doctrines, and who find benefit or

consolation from their spiritual ministry and assistance. Their industry

and vigilance will, no doubt, be whetted by such an additional motive; and

their skill in the profession, as well as their address in governing the

minds of the people, must receive daily increase, from their increasing

practice, study, and attention.

“But if we consider the matter more closely, we shall find that this

interested diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will

study to prevent; because, in every religion except the true, it is highly

pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the truth, by

infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion.

Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and

sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most

violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavour, by some

novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be

paid to truth, morals, or decency, in the doctrines inculcated. Every

tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the

human frame. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry

and address, in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace.

And, in the end, the civil magistrate will find that he has dearly paid

for his intended frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the

priests; and that, in reality, the most decent and advantageous

composition, which he can make with the spiritual guides, is to bribe

their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession, and

rendering it superfluous for them to be farther active, than merely to

prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastors. And in this

manner ecclesiastical establishments, though commonly they arose at first

from religious views, prove in the end advantageous to the political

interests of society.”

But whatever may have been the good or bad effects of the independent

provision of the clergy, it has, perhaps, been very seldom bestowed upon

them from any view to those effects. Times of violent religious

controversy have generally been times of equally violent political

faction. Upon such occasions, each political party has either found it, or

imagined it, for his interest, to league itself with some one or other of

the contending religious sects. But this could be done only by adopting,

or, at least, by favouring the tenets of that particular sect. The sect

which had the good fortune to be leagued with the conquering party

necessarily shared in the victory of its ally, by whose favour and

protection it was soon enabled, in some degree, to silence and subdue all

its adversaries. Those adversaries had generally leagued themselves with

the enemies of the conquering party, and were, therefore the enemies of

that party. The clergy of this particular sect having thus become complete

masters of the field, and their influence and authority with the great

body of the people being in its highest vigour, they were powerful enough

to overawe the chiefs and leaders of their own party, and to oblige the

civil magistrate to respect their opinions and inclinations. Their first

demand was generally that he should silence and subdue all their

adversaries; and their second, that he should bestow an independent

provision on themselves. As they had generally contributed a good deal to

the victory, it seemed not unreasonable that they should have some share

in the spoil. They were weary, besides, of humouring the people, and of

depending upon their caprice for a subsistence. In making this demand,

therefore, they consulted their own ease and comfort, without troubling

themselves about the effect which it might have, in future times, upon the

influence and authority of their order. The civil magistrate, who could

comply with their demand only by giving them something which he would have

chosen much rather to take, or to keep to himself, was seldom very forward

to grant it. Necessity, however, always forced him to submit at last,

though frequently not till after many delays, evasions, and affected

excuses.

But if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the

conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than those of

another, when it had gained the victory, it would probably have dealt

equally and impartially with all the different sects, and have allowed

every man to choose his own priest, and his own religion, as he thought

proper. There would, and, in this case, no doubt, have been, a great

multitude of religious sects. Almost every different congregation might

probably have had a little sect by itself, or have entertained some

peculiar tenets of its own. Each teacher, would, no doubt, have felt

himself under the necessity of making the utmost exertion, and of using

every art, both to preserve and to increase the number of his disciples.

But as every other teacher would have felt himself under the same

necessity, the success of no one teacher, or sect of teachers, could have

been very great. The interested and active zeal of religious teachers can

be dangerous and troublesome only where there is either but one sect

tolerated in the society, or where the whole of a large society is divided

into two or three great sects; the teachers of each acting by concert, and

under a regular discipline and subordination. But that zeal must be

altogether innocent, where the society is divided into two or three

hundred, or, perhaps, into as many thousand small sects, of which no one

could be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquillity. The

teachers of each sect, seeing themselves surrounded on all sides with more

adversaries than friends, would be obliged to learn that candour and

moderation which are so seldom to be found among the teachers of those

great sects, whose tenets, being supported by the civil magistrate, are

held in veneration by almost all the inhabitants of extensive kingdoms and

empires, and who, therefore, see nothing round them but followers,

disciples, and humble admirers. The teachers of each little sect, finding

themselves almost alone, would be obliged to respect those of almost every

other sect; and the concessions which they would mutually find it both

convenient and agreeable to make one to another, might in time, probably

reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational

religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism,

such as wise men have, in all ages of the world, wished to see

established; but such as positive law has, perhaps, never yet established,

and probably never will establish in any country; because, with regard to

religion, positive law always has been, and probably always will be, more

or less influenced by popular superstition and enthusiasm. This plan of

ecclesiastical government, or, more properly, of no ecclesiastical

government, was what the sect called Independents (a sect, no doubt, of

very wild enthusiasts), proposed to establish in England towards the end

of the civil war. If it had been established, though of a very

unphilosophical origin, it would probably, by this time, have been

productive of the most philosophical good temper and moderation with

regard to every sort of religious principle. It has been established in

Pennsylvania, where, though the quakers happen to be the most numerous,

the law, in reality, favours no one sect more than another; and it is

there said to have been productive of this philosophical good temper and

moderation.

But though this equality of treatment should not be productive of this

good temper and moderation in all, or even in the greater part of the

religious sects of a particular country; yet, provided those sects were

sufficiently numerous, and each of them consequently too small to disturb

the public tranquillity, the excessive zeal of each for its particular

tenets could not well be productive of any very hurtful effects, but, on

the contrary, of several good ones; and if the government was perfectly

decided, both to let them all alone, and to oblige them all to let alone

one another, there is little danger that they would not of their own

accord, subdivide themselves fast enough, so as soon to become

sufficiently numerous.

In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of

ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two

different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of

which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal,

or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and

revered by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and

adopted by what are called the people of fashion. The degree of

disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity, the vices

which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from the excess of

gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction

between those two opposite schemes or systems. In the liberal or loose

system, luxury, wanton, and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure

to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of

the two sexes, etc. provided they are not accompanied with gross

indecency, and do not lead to falsehood and injustice, are generally

treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or

pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, those

excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The

vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single

week’s thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor

workman for ever, and to drive him, through despair, upon committing the

most enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people,

therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such

excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to

people of their condition. The disorder and extravagance of several years,

on the contrary, will not always ruin a man of fashion; and people of that

rank are very apt to consider the power of indulging in some degree of

excess, as one of the advantages of their fortune; and the liberty of

doing so without censure or reproach, as one of the privileges which

belong to their station. In people of their own station, therefore, they

regard such excesses with but a small degree of disapprobation, and

censure them either very slightly or not at all.

Almost all religious sects have begun among the common people, from whom

they have generally drawn their earliest, as well as their most numerous

proselytes. The austere system of morality has, accordingly, been adopted

by those sects almost constantly, or with very few exceptions; for there

have been some. It was the system by which they could best recommend

themselves to that order of people, to whom they first proposed their plan

of reformation upon what had been before established. Many of them,

perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavoured to gain credit by

refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it to some degree of

folly and extravagance; and this excessive rigour has frequently

recommended them, more than any thing else, to the respect and veneration

of the common people.

A man of rank and fortune is, by his station, the distinguished member of

a great society, who attend to every part of his conduct, and who thereby

oblige him to attend to every part of it himself. His authority and

consideration depend very much upon the respect which this society bears

to him. He dares not do anything which would disgrace or discredit him in

it; and he is obliged to a very strict observation of that species of

morals, whether liberal or austere, which the general consent of this

society prescribes to persons of his rank and fortune. A man of low

condition, on the contrary, is far from being a distinguished member of

any great society. While he remains in a country village, his conduct may

be attended to, and he may be obliged to attend to it himself. In this

situation, and in this situation only, he may have what is called a

character to lose. But as soon as he comes into a great city, he is sunk

in obscurity and darkness. His conduct is observed and attended to by

nobody; and he is, therefore, very likely to neglect it himself, and to

abandon himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice. He never emerges

so effectually from this obscurity, his conduct never excites so much the

attention of any respectable society, as by his becoming the member of a

small religious sect. He from that moment acquires a degree of

consideration which he never had before. All his brother sectaries are,

for the credit of the sect, interested to observe his conduct; and, if he

gives occasion to any scandal, if he deviates very much from those austere

morals which they almost always require of one another, to punish him by

what is always a very severe punishment, even where no evil effects attend

it, expulsion or excommunication from the sect. In little religious sects,

accordingly, the morals of the common people have been almost always

remarkably regular and orderly; generally much more so than in the

established church. The morals of those little sects, indeed, have

frequently been rather disagreeably rigorous and unsocial.

There are two very easy and effectual remedies, however, by whose joint

operation the state might, without violence, correct whatever was unsocial

or disagreeably rigorous in the morals of all the little sects into which

the country was divided.

The first of those remedies is the study of science and philosophy, which

the state might render almost universal among all people of middling or

more than middling rank and fortune; not by giving salaries to teachers in

order to make them negligent and idle, but by instituting some sort of

probation, even in the higher and more difficult sciences, to be undergone

by every person before he was permitted to exercise any liberal

profession, or before he could be received as a candidate for any

honourable office, of trust or profit. If the state imposed upon this

order of men the necessity of learning, it would have no occasion to give

itself any trouble about providing them with proper teachers. They would

soon find better teachers for themselves, than any whom the state could

provide for them. Science is the great antidote to the poison of

enthusiasm and superstition; and where all the superior ranks of people

were secured from it, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to it.

The second of those remedies is the frequency and gaiety of public

diversions. The state, by encouraging, that is, by giving entire liberty

to all those who, from their own interest, would attempt, without scandal

or indecency, to amuse and divert the people by painting, poetry, music,

dancing; by all sorts of dramatic representations and exhibitions; would

easily dissipate, in the greater part of them, that melancholy and gloomy

humour which is almost always the nurse of popular superstition and

enthusiasm. Public diversions have always been the objects of dread and

hatred to all the fanatical promoters of those popular frenzies. The

gaiety and good humour which those diversions inspire, were altogether

inconsistent with that temper of mind which was fittest for their purpose,

or which they could best work upon. Dramatic representations, besides,

frequently exposing their artifices to public ridicule, and sometimes even

to public execration, were, upon that account, more than all other

diversions, the objects of their peculiar abhorrence.

In a country where the law favoured the teachers of no one religion more

than those of another, it would not be necessary that any of them should

have any particular or immediate dependency upon the sovereign or

executive power; or that he should have anything to do either in

appointing or in dismissing them from their offices. In such a situation,

he would have no occasion to give himself any concern about them, further

than to keep the peace among them, in the same manner as among the rest of

his subjects, that is, to hinder them from persecuting, abusing, or

oppressing one another. But it is quite otherwise in countries where there

is an established or governing religion. The sovereign can in this case

never be secure, unless he has the means of influencing in a considerable

degree the greater part of the teachers of that religion.

The clergy of every established church constitute a great incorporation.

They can act in concert, and pursue their interest upon one plan, and with

one spirit as much as if they were under the direction of one man; and

they are frequently, too, under such direction. Their interest as an

incorporated body is never the same with that of the sovereign, and is

sometimes directly opposite to it. Their great interest is to maintain

their authority with the people, and this authority depends upon the

supposed certainty and importance of the whole doctrine which they

inculcate, and upon the supposed necessity of adopting every part of it

with the most implicit faith, in order to avoid eternal misery. Should the

sovereign have the imprudence to appear either to deride, or doubt himself

of the most trifling part of their doctrine, or from humanity, attempt to

protect those who did either the one or the other, the punctilious honour

of a clergy, who have no sort of dependency upon him, is immediately

provoked to proscribe him as a profane person, and to employ all the

terrors of religion, in order to oblige the people to transfer their

allegiance to some more orthodox and obedient prince. Should he oppose any

of their pretensions or usurpations, the danger is equally great. The

princes who have dared in this manner to rebel against the church, over

and above this crime of rebellion, have generally been charged, too, with

the additional crime of heresy, notwithstanding their solemn protestations

of their faith, and humble submission to every tenet which she thought

proper to prescribe to them. But the authority of religion is superior to

every other authority. The fears which it suggests conquer all other

fears. When the authorized teachers of religion propagate through the

great body of the people, doctrines subversive of the authority of the

sovereign, it is by violence only, or by the force of a standing army,

that he can maintain his authority. Even a standing army cannot in this

case give him any lasting security; because if the soldiers are not

foreigners, which can seldom be the case, but drawn from the great body of

the people, which must almost always be the case, they are likely to be

soon corrupted by those very doctrines. The revolutions which the

turbulence of the Greek clergy was continually occasioning at

Constantinople, as long as the eastern empire subsisted; the convulsions

which, during the course of several centuries, the turbulence of the Roman

clergy was continually occasioning in every part of Europe, sufficiently

demonstrate how precarious and insecure must always be the situation of

the sovereign, who has no proper means of influencing the clergy of the

established and governing religion of his country.

Articles of faith, as well as all other spiritual matters, it is evident

enough, are not within the proper department of a temporal sovereign, who,

though he may be very well qualified for protecting, is seldom supposed to

be so for instructing the people. With regard to such matters, therefore,

his authority can seldom be sufficient to counterbalance the united

authority of the clergy of the established church. The public

tranquillity, however, and his own security, may frequently depend upon

the doctrines which they may think proper to propagate concerning such

matters. As he can seldom directly oppose their decision, therefore, with

proper weight and authority, it is necessary that he should be able to

influence it; and he can influence it only by the fears and expectations

which he may excite in the greater part of the individuals of the order.

Those fears and expectations may consist in the fear of deprivation or

other punishment, and in the expectation of further preferment.

In all Christian churches, the benefices of the clergy are a sort of

freeholds, which they enjoy, not during pleasure, but during life or good

behaviour. If they held them by a more precarious tenure, and were liable

to be turned out upon every slight disobligation either of the sovereign

or of his ministers, it would perhaps be impossible for them to maintain

their authority with the people, who would then consider them as mercenary

dependents upon the court, in the sincerity of whose instructions they

could no longer have any confidence. But should the sovereign attempt

irregularly, and by violence, to deprive any number of clergymen of their

freeholds, on account, perhaps, of their having propagated, with more than

ordinary zeal, some factious or seditious doctrine, he would only render,

by such persecution, both them and their doctrine ten times more popular,

and therefore ten times more troublesome and dangerous, than they had been

before. Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of govermnent,

and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who

have the smallest pretensions to independency. To attempt to terrify them,

serves only to irritate their bad humour, and to confirm them in an

opposition, which more gentle usage, perhaps, might easily induce them

either to soften, or to lay aside altogether. The violence which the

French government usually employed in order to oblige all their

parliaments, or sovereign courts of justice, to enregister any unpopular

edict, very seldom succeeded. The means commonly employed, however, the

imprisonment of all the refractory members, one would think, were forcible

enough. The princes of the house of Stuart sometimes employed the like

means in order to influence some of the members of the parliament of

England, and they generally found them equally intractable. The parliament

of England is now managed in another manner; and a very small experiment,

which the duke of Choiseul made, about twelve years ago, upon the

parliament of Paris, demonstrated sufficiently that all the parliaments of

France might have been managed still more easily in the same manner. That

experiment was not pursued. For though management and persuasion are

always the easiest and safest instruments of government as force and

violence are the worst and the most dangerous; yet such, it seems, is the

natural insolence of man, that he almost always disdains to use the good

instrument, except when he cannot or dare not use the bad one. The French

government could and durst use force, and therefore disdained to use

management and persuasion. But there is no order of men, it appears I

believe, from the experience of all ages, upon whom it is so dangerous or

rather so perfectly ruinous, to employ force and violence, as upon the

respected clergy of an established church. The rights, the privileges, the

personal liberty of every individual ecclesiastic, who is upon good terms

with his own order, are, even in the most despotic governments, more

respected than those of any other person of nearly equal rank and fortune.

It is so in every gradation of despotism, from that of the gentle and mild

government of Paris, to that of the violent and furious government of

Constantinople. But though this order of men can scarce ever be forced,

they may be managed as easily as any other; and the security of the

sovereign, as well as the public tranquillity, seems to depend very much

upon the means which he has of managing them; and those means seem to

consist altogether in the preferment which he has to bestow upon them.

In the ancient constitution of the Christian church, the bishop of each

diocese was elected by the joint votes of the clergy and of the people of

the episcopal city. The people did not long retain their right of

election; and while they did retain it, they almost always acted under the

influence of the clergy, who, in such spiritual matters, appeared to be

their natural guides. The clergy, however, soon grew weary of the trouble

of managing them, and found it easier to elect their own bishops

themselves. The abbot, in the same manner, was elected by the monks of the

monastery, at least in the greater part of abbacies. All the inferior

ecclesiastical benefices comprehended within the diocese were collated by

the bishop, who bestowed them upon such ecclesiastics as he thought

proper. All church preferments were in this manner in the disposal of the

church. The sovereign, though he might have some indirect influence in

those elections, and though it was sometimes usual to ask both his consent

to elect, and his approbation of the election, yet had no direct or

sufficient means of managing the clergy. The ambition of every clergyman

naturally led him to pay court, not so much to his sovereign as to his own

order, from which only he could expect preferment.

Through the greater part of Europe, the pope gradually drew to himself,

first the collation of almost all bishoprics and abbacies, or of what were

called consistorial benefices, and afterwards, by various machinations and

pretences, of the greater part of inferior benefices comprehended within

each diocese, little more being left to the bishop than what was barely

necessary to give him a decent authority with his own clergy. By this

arrangement the condition of the sovereign was still worse than it had

been before. The clergy of all the different countries of Europe were thus

formed into a sort of spiritual army, dispersed in different quarters

indeed, but of which all the movements and operations could now be

directed by one head, and conducted upon one uniform plan. The clergy of

each particular country might be considered as a particular detachment of

that army, of which the operations could easily be supported and seconded

by all the other detachments quartered in the different countries round

about. Each detachment was not only independent of the sovereign of the

country in which it was quartered, and by which it was maintained, but

dependent upon a foreign sovereign, who could at any time turn its arms

against the sovereign of that particular country, and support them by the

arms of all the other detachments.

Those arms were the most formidable that can well be imagined. In the

ancient state of Europe, before the establishment of arts and

manufactures, the wealth of the clergy gave them the same sort of

influence over the common people which that of the great barons gave them

over their respective vassals, tenants, and retainers. In the great landed

estates, which the mistaken piety both of princes and private persons had

bestowed upon the church, jurisdictions were established, of the same kind

with those of the great barons, and for the same reason. In those great

landed estates, the clergy, or their bailiffs, could easily keep the

peace, without the support or assistance either of the king or of any

other person; and neither the king nor any other person could keep the

peace there without the support and assistance of the clergy. The

jurisdictions of the clergy, therefore, in their particular baronies or

manors, were equally independent, and equally exclusive of the authority

of the king’s courts, as those of the great temporal lords. The tenants of

the clergy were, like those of the great barons, almost all tenants at

will, entirely dependent upon their immediate lords, and, therefore,

liable to be called out at pleasure, in order to fight in any quarrel in

which the clergy might think proper to engage them. Over and above the

rents of those estates, the clergy possessed in the tithes a very large

portion of the rents of all the other estates in every kingdom of Europe.

The revenues arising from both those species of rents were, the greater

part of them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle, poultry, etc. The

quantity exceeded greatly what the clergy could themselves consume; and

there were neither arts nor manufactures, for the produce of which they

could exchange the surplus. The clergy could derive advantage from this

immense surplus in no other way than by employing it, as the great barons

employed the like surplus of their revenues, in the most profuse

hospitality, and in the most extensive charity. Both the hospitality and

the charity of the ancient clergy, accordingly, are said to have been very

great. They not only maintained almost the whole poor of every kingdom,

but many knights and gentlemen had frequently no other means of

subsistence than by travelling about from monastery to monastery, under

pretence of devotion, but in reality to enjoy the hospitality of the

clergy. The retainers of some particular prelates were often as numerous

as those of the greatest lay-lords; and the retainers of all the clergy

taken together were, perhaps, more numerous than those of all the

lay-lords. There was always much more union among the clergy than among

the lay-lords. The former were under a regular discipline and

subordination to the papal authority. The latter were under no regular

discipline or subordination, but almost always equally jealous of one

another, and of the king. Though the tenants and retainers of the clergy,

therefore, had both together been less numerous than those of the great

lay-lords, and their tenants were probably much less numerous, yet their

union would have rendered them more formidable. The hospitality and

charity of the clergy, too, not only gave them the command of a great

temporal force, but increased very much the weight of their spiritual

weapons. Those virtues procured them the highest respect and veneration

among all the inferior ranks of people, of whom many were constantly, and

almost all occasionally, fed by them. Everything belonging or related to

so popular an order, its possessions, its privileges, its doctrines,

necessarily appeared sacred in the eyes of the common people; and every

violation of them, whether real or pretended, the highest act of

sacrilegious wickedness and profaneness. In this state of things, if the

sovereign frequently found it difficult to resist the confederacy of a few

of the great nobility, we cannot wonder that he should find it still more

so to resist the united force of the clergy of his own dominions,

supported by that of the clergy of all the neighbouring dominions. In such

circumstances, the wonder is, not that he was sometimes obliged to yield,

but that he ever was able to resist.

The privileges of the clergy in those ancient times (which to us, who live

in the present times, appear the most absurd), their total exemption from

the secular jurisdiction, for example, or what in England was called the

benefit of clergy, were the natural, or rather the necessary, consequences

of this state of things. How dangerous must it have been for the sovereign

to attempt to punish a clergyman for any crime whatever, if his order were

disposed to protect him, and to represent either the proof as insufficient

for convicting so holy a man, or the punishment as too severe to be

inflicted upon one whose person had been rendered sacred by religion? The

sovereign could, in such circumstances, do no better than leave him to be

tried by the ecclesiastical courts, who, for the honour of their own

order, were interested to restrain, as much as possible, every member of

it from committing enormous crimes, or even from giving occasion to such

gross scandal as might disgust the minds of the people.

In the state in which things were, through the greater part of Europe,

during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and for

some time both before and after that period, the constitution of the

church of Rome may be considered as the most formidable combination that

ever was formed against the authority and security of civil government, as

well as against the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind, which can

flourish only where civil government is able to protect them. In that

constitution, the grossest delusions of superstition were supported in

such a manner by the private interests of so great a number of people, as

put them out of all danger from any assault of human reason; because,

though human reason might, perhaps, have been able to unveil, even to the

eyes of the common people, some of the delusions of superstition, it could

never have dissolved the ties of private interest. Had this constitution

been attacked by no other enemies but the feeble efforts of human reason,

it must have endured for ever. But that immense and well-built fabric,

which all the wisdom and virtue of man could never have shaken, much less

have overturned, was, by the natural course of things, first weakened, and

afterwards in part destroyed; and is now likely, in the course of a few

centuries more, perhaps, to crumble into ruins altogether.

The gradual improvements of arts, manufactures, and commerce, the

same causes which destroyed the power of the great barons, destroyed,

in the same manner, through the greater part of Europe, the whole

temporal power of the clergy. In the produce of arts, manufactures, and

commerce, the clergy, like the great barons, found something for which

they could exchange their rude produce, and thereby discovered the

means of spending their whole revenues upon their own persons, without

giving any considerable share of them to other people. Their charity

became gradually less extensive, their hospitality less liberal, or

less profuse. Their retainers became consequently less numerous, and,

by degrees, dwindled away altogether. The clergy, too, like the great

barons, wished to get a better rent from their landed estates, in order

to spend it, in the same manner, upon the gratification of their own

private vanity and folly. But this increase of rent could be got only

by granting leases to their tenants, who thereby became, in a great

measure, independent of them. The ties of interest, which bound the

inferior ranks of people to the clergy, were in this manner gradually

broken and dissolved. They were even broken and dissolved sooner than

those which bound the same ranks of people to the great barons; because

the benefices of the church being, the greater part of them, much smaller

than the estates of the great barons, the possessor of each benefice was

much sooner able to spend the whole of its revenue upon his own person.

During the greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the

power of the great barons was, through the greater part of Europe, in

full vigour. But the temporal power of the clergy, the absolute command

which they had once had over the great body of the people was very much

decayed. The power of the church was, by that time, very nearly reduced,

through the greater part of Europe, to what arose from their spiritual

authority; and even that spiritual authority was much weakened, when it

ceased to be supported by the charity and hospitality of the clergy. The

inferior ranks of people no longer looked upon that order as they had

done before; as the comforters of their distress, and the relievers of

their indigence. On the contrary, they were provoked and disgusted by the

vanity, luxury, and expense of the richer clergy, who appeared to spend

upon their own pleasures what had always before been regarded as the

patrimony of the poor.

In this situation of things, the sovereigns in the different states of

Europe endeavoured to recover the influence which they had once had in the

disposal of the great benefices of the church; by procuring to the deans

and chapters of each diocese the restoration of their ancient right of

electing the bishop; and to the monks of each abbacy that of electing the

abbot. The re-establishing this ancient order was the object of several

statutes enacted in England during the course of the fourteenth century,

particularly of what is called the statute of provisors; and of the

pragmatic sanction, established in France in the fifteenth century. In

order to render the election valid, it was necessary that the sovereign

should both consent to it before hand, and afterwards approve of the

person elected; and though the election was still supposed to be free, he

had, however all the indirect means which his situation necessarily

afforded him, of influencing the clergy in his own dominions. Other

regulations, of a similar tendency, were established in other parts of

Europe. But the power of the pope, in the collation of the great benefices

of the church, seems, before the reformation, to have been nowhere so

effectually and so universally restrained as in France and England. The

concordat afterwards, in the sixteenth century, gave to the kings of

France the absolute right of presenting to all the great, or what are

called the consistorial, benefices of the Gallican church.

Since the establishment of the pragmatic sanction and of the concordat,

the clergy of France have in general shewn less respect to the decrees of

the papal court, than the clergy of any other catholic country. In all the

disputes which their sovereign has had with the pope, they have almost

constantly taken part with the former. This independency of the clergy of

France upon the court of Rome seems to be principally founded upon the

pragmatic sanction and the concordat. In the earlier periods of the

monarchy, the clergy of France appear to have been as much devoted to the

pope as those of any other country. When Robert, the second prince of the

Capetian race, was most unjustly excommunicated by the court of Rome, his

own servants, it is said, threw the victuals which came from his table to

the dogs, and refused to taste any thing themselves which had been

polluted by the contact of a person in his situation. They were taught to

do so, it may very safely be presumed, by the clergy of his own dominions.

The claim of collating to the great benefices of the church, a claim in

defence of which the court of Rome had frequently shaken, and sometimes

overturned, the thrones of some of the greatest sovereigns in Christendom,

was in this manner either restrained or modified, or given up altogether,

in many different parts of Europe, even before the time of the

reformation. As the clergy had now less influence over the people, so the

state had more influence over the clergy. The clergy, therefore, had both

less power, and less inclination, to disturb the state.

The authority of the church of Rome was in this state of declension, when

the disputes which gave birth to the reformation began in Germany, and

soon spread themselves through every part of Europe. The new doctrines

were everywhere received with a high degree of popular favour. They were

propagated with all that enthusiastic zeal which commonly animates the

spirit of party, when it attacks established authority. The teachers of

those doctrines, though perhaps, in other respects, not more learned than

many of the divines who defended the established church, seem in general

to have been better acquainted with ecclesiastical history, and with the

origin and progress of that system of opinions upon which the authority of

the church was established; and they had thereby the advantage in almost

every dispute. The austerity of their manners gave them authority with the

common people, who contrasted the strict regularity of their conduct with

the disorderly lives of the greater part of their own clergy. They

possessed, too, in a much higher degree than their adversaries, all the

arts of popularity and of gaining proselytes; arts which the lofty and

dignified sons of the church had long neglected, as being to them in a

great measure useless. The reason of the new doctrines recommended them to

some, their novelty to many; the hatred and contempt of the established

clergy to a still greater number: but the zealous, passionate, and

fanatical, though frequently coarse and rustic eloquence, with which they

were almost everywhere inculcated, recommended them to by far the greatest

number.

The success of the new doctrines was almost everywhere so great, that the

princes, who at that time happened to be on bad terms with the court of

Rome, were, by means of them, easily enabled, in their own dominions, to

overturn the church, which having lost the respect and veneration of the

inferior ranks of people, could make scarce any resistance. The court of

Rome had disobliged some of the smaller princes in the northern parts of

Germany, whom it had probably considered as too insignificant to be worth

the managing. They universally, therefore, established the reformation in

their own dominions. The tyranny of Christiern II., and of Troll

archbishop of Upsal, enabled Gustavus Vasa to expel them both from Sweden.

The pope favoured the tyrant and the archbishop, and Gustavus Vasa found

no difficulty in establishing the reformation in Sweden. Christiern II.

was afterwards deposed from the throne of Denmark, where his conduct had

rendered him as odious as in Sweden. The pope, however, was still disposed

to favour him; and Frederic of Holstein, who had mounted the throne in his

stead, revenged himself, by following the example of Gustavus Vasa. The

magistrates of Berne and Zurich, who had no particular quarrel with the

pope, established with great ease the reformation in their respective

cantons, where just before some of the clergy had, by an imposture

somewhat grosser than ordinary, rendered the whole order both odious and

contemptible.

In this critical situation of its affairs the papal court was at

sufficient pains to cultivate the friendship of the powerful sovereigns of

France and Spain, of whom the latter was at that time emperor of Germany.

With their assistance, it was enabled, though not without great

difficulty, and much bloodshed, either to suppress altogether, or to

obstruct very much, the progress of the reformation in their dominions. It

was well enough inclined, too, to be complaisant to the king of England.

But from the circumstances of the times, it could not be so without giving

offence to a still greater sovereign, Charles V., king of Spain and

emperor of Germany. Henry VIII., accordingly, though he did not embrace

himself the greater part of the doctrines of the reformation, was yet

enabled, by their general prevalence, to suppress all the monasteries, and

to abolish the authority of the church of Rome in his dominions. That he

should go so far, though he went no further, gave some satisfaction to the

patrons of the reformation, who, having got possession of the government

in the reign of his son and successor completed, without any difficulty,

the work which Henry VIII. had begun.

In some countries, as in Scotland, where the government was weak,

unpopular, and not very firmly established, the reformation was strong

enough to overturn, not only the church, but the state likewise, for

attempting to support the church.

Among the followers of the reformation, dispersed in all the different

countries of Europe, there was no general tribunal, which, like that of

the court of Rome, or an oecumenical council, could settle all disputes

among them, and, with irresistible authority, prescribe to all of them the

precise limits of orthodoxy. When the followers of the reformation in one

country, therefore, happened to differ from their brethren in another, as

they had no common judge to appeal to, the dispute could never be decided;

and many such disputes arose among them. Those concerning the government

of the church, and the right of conferring ecclesiastical benefices, were

perhaps the most interesting to the peace and welfare of civil society.

They gave birth, accordingly, to the two principal parties or sects among

the followers of the reformation, the Lutheran and Calvinistic sects, the

only sects among them, of which the doctrine and discipline have ever yet

been established by law in any part of Europe.

The followers of Luther, together with what is called the church of

England, preserved more or less of the episcopal government, established

subordination among the clergy, gave the sovereign the disposal of all the

bishoprics, and other consistorial benefices within his dominions, and

thereby rendered him the real head of the church; and without depriving

the bishop of the right of collating to the smaller benefices within his

diocese, they, even to those benefices, not only admitted, but favoured

the right of presentation, both in the sovereign and in all other lay

patrons. This system of church government was, from the beginning,

favourable to peace and good order, and to submission to the civil

sovereign. It has never, accordingly, been the occasion of any tumult or

civil commotion in any country in which it has once been established. The

church of England, in particular, has always valued herself, with great

reason, upon the unexceptionable loyalty of her principles. Under such a

government, the clergy naturally endeavour to recommend themselves to the

sovereign, to the court, and to the nobility and gentry of the country, by

whose influence they chiefly expect to obtain preferment. They pay court

to those patrons, sometimes, no doubt, by the vilest flattery and

assentation; but frequently, too, by cultivating all those arts which best

deserve, and which are therefore most likely to gain them, the esteem of

people of rank and fortune; by their knowledge in all the different

branches of useful and ornamental learning, by the decent liberality of

their manners, by the social good humour of their conversation, and by

their avowed contempt of those absurd and hypocritical austerities which

fanatics inculcate and pretend to practise, in order to draw upon

themselves the veneration, and upon the greater part of men of rank and

fortune, who avow that they do not practise them, the abhorrence of the

common people. Such a clergy, however, while they pay their court in this

manner to the higher ranks of life, are very apt to neglect altogether the

means of maintaining their influence and authority with the lower. They

are listened to, esteemed, and respected by their superiors; but before

their inferiors they are frequently incapable of defending, effectually,

and to the conviction of such hearers, their own sober and moderate

doctrines, against the most ignorant enthusiast who chooses to attack

them.

The followers of Zuinglius, or more properly those of Calvin, on the

contrary, bestowed upon the people of each parish, whenever the church

became vacant, the right of electing their own pastor; and established, at

the same time, the most perfect equality among the clergy. The former part

of this institution, as long as it remained in vigour, seems to have been

productive of nothing but disorder and confusion, and to have tended

equally to corrupt the morals both of the clergy and of the people. The

latter part seems never to have had any effects but what were perfectly

agreeable.

As long as the people of each parish preserved the right of electing their

own pastors, they acted almost always under the influence of the clergy,

and generally of the most factious and fanatical of the order. The clergy,

in order to preserve their influence in those popular elections, became,

or affected to become, many of them, fanatics themselves, encouraged

fanaticism among the people, and gave the preference almost always to the

most fanatical candidate. So small a matter as the appointment of a parish

priest, occasioned almost always a violent contest, not only in one

parish, but in all the neighbouring parishes who seldom failed to take

part in the quarrel. When the parish happened to be situated in a great

city, it divided all the inhabitants into two parties; and when that city

happened, either to constitute itself a little republic, or to be the head

and capital of a little republic, as in the case with many of the

considerable cities in Switzerland and Holland, every paltry dispute of

this kind, over and above exasperating the animosity of all their other

factions, threatened to leave behind it, both a new schism in the church,

and a new faction in the state. In those small republics, therefore, the

magistrate very soon found it necessary, for the sake of preserving the

public peace, to assume to himself the right of presenting to all vacant

benefices. In Scotland, the most extensive country in which this

presbyterian form of church government has ever been established, the

rights of patronage were in effect abolished by the act which established

presbytery in the beginning of the reign of William III. That act, at

least, put in the power of certain classes of people in each parish to

purchase, for a very small price, the right of electing their own pastor.

The constitution which this act established, was allowed to subsist for

about two-and-twenty years, but was abolished by the 10th of queen Anne,

ch.12, on account of the confusions and disorders which this more popular

mode of election had almost everywhere occasioned. In so extensive a

country as Scotland, however, a tumult in a remote parish was not so

likely to give disturbance to government as in a smaller state. The 10th

of queen Anne restored the rights of patronage. But though, in Scotland,

the law gives the benefice, without any exception to the person presented

by the patron; yet the church requires sometimes (for she has not in this

respect been very uniform in her decisions) a certain concurrence of the

people, before she will confer upon the presentee what is called the cure

of souls, or the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the parish. She sometimes,

at least, from an affected concern for the peace of the parish, delays the

settlement till this concurrence can be procured. The private tampering of

some of the neighbouring clergy, sometimes to procure, but more frequently

to prevent this concurrence, and the popular arts which they cultivate, in

order to enable them upon such occasions to tamper more effectually, are

perhaps the causes which principally keep up whatever remains of the old

fanatical spirit, either in the clergy or in the people of Scotland.