In days of old it was the remark of more than one philosopher, that,
if it were possible to exhibit virtue in a personal form, and clothed
with attributes of sense, all men would unite in homage to her
supremacy. The same thing is true of other abstractions, and
especially of the powers which work by social change. Could these
powers be revealed to us in any symbolic incarnation--were it possible
that, but for one hour, the steadfast march of their tendencies, their
promises, and their shadowy menaces, could be made apprehensible to
the bodily eye--we should be startled, and oftentimes appalled, at the
grandeur of the apparition. In particular, we may say that the advance
of civilization, as it is carried forward for ever on the movement
continually accelerated of England and France, were it less stealthy
and inaudible than it is, would fix, in every stage, the attention of
the inattentive and the anxieties of the careless. Like the fabulous
music of the spheres, once allowed to break sonorously upon the human
ear, it would render us deaf to all other sounds. Heard or not heard,
however, marked or not marked, the rate of our advance is more and
more portentous. Old things are passing away. Every year carries us
round some obstructing angle, laying open suddenly before us vast
reaches of fresh prospect, and bringing within our horizon new
agencies by which civilization is henceforth to work, and new
difficulties against which it is to work; other forces for
co-operation, other resistances for trial. Meantime the velocity of
these silent changes is incredibly aided by the revolutions, both
moral and scientific, in the machinery of nations; revolutions by
which knowledge is interchanged, power propagated, and the methods of
communication multiplied. And the vast aerial arches by which these
revolutions mount continually to the common zenith of Christendom, so
as to force themselves equally upon the greatest of nations and the
humblest, express the aspiring destiny by which, already and
irresistibly, they are coming round upon all other tribes and families
of men, however distant in position, or alien by system and
organization. The nations of the planet, like ships of war
man[oe]uvring prelusively to some great engagement, are silently
taking up their positions, as it were, for future action and reaction,
reciprocally for doing and suffering. And, in this ceaseless work of
preparation or of noiseless combination, France and England are seen
for ever in the van. Whether for evil or for good, they _must_ be in
advance. And if it were possible to see the relative positions of all
Christendom, its several divisions, expressed as if on the monuments
of Persepolis by endless evolutions of cities in procession or of
armies advancing, we should be awakened to the full solemnity of our
duties by seeing two symbols flying aloft for ever in the head of
nations--two recognizances for hope or for fear--the roses of England
and the lilies of France.
Reflections such as these furnish matter for triumphal gratulation,
but also for great depression: and in the enormity of our joint
responsibilities, we French and English have reason to forget the
grandeur of our separate stations. It is fit that we should keep alive
these feelings, and continually refresh them, by watching the
everlasting motions of society, by sweeping the moral heavens for ever
with our glasses in vigilant detection of new phenomena, and by
calling to a solemn audit, from time to time, the national acts which
are undertaken, or the counsels which in high places are avowed.
Amongst these acts and these counsels none justify a more anxious
attention than such as come forward in the senate. It is true that
great revolutions may brood over us for a long period without
awakening any murmur or echo in Parliament; of which we have an
instance in Puseyism, which is a power of more ominous capacities than
the gentleness of its motions would lead men to suspect, and is well
fitted (as hereafter we may show) to effect a volcanic explosion--such
as may rend the Church of England by schisms more extensive and
shattering than those which have recently afflicted the Church of
Scotland. Generally, however, Parliament becomes, sooner or later, a
mirror to the leading phenomena of the times. These phenomena, to be
valued thoroughly, must be viewed, indeed, from different stations and
angles. But one of these aspects is that which they assume under the
legislative revision of the people. It is more than ever requisite
that each session of Parliament should be searched and reviewed in the
capital features of its legislation. Hereafter we may attempt this
duty more elaborately. For the present we shall confine ourselves to a
hasty survey of some few principal measures in the late session which
seem important to our social progress.
We shall commence our review by the fewest possible words on the
paramount nuisance of the day--viz. the corn-law agitation. This is
that question which all men have ceased to think sufferable. This is
that "mammoth" nuisance of our times by which "the gaiety of nations
is eclipsed." We are thankful that its "damnable iterations" have now
placed it beyond the limits of public toleration. No man hearkens to
such debates any longer--no man reads the reports of such debates: it
is become criminal to quote them; and recent examples of torpor beyond
all torpor, on occasion of Cobden meetings amongst the inflammable
sections of our population, have shown--that not the poorest of the
poor are any longer to be duped, or to be roused out of apathy, by
this intolerable fraud. Full of "gifts and lies" is the false fleeting
Association of these Lancashire Cottoneers. But its gifts are too
windy, and its lies are too ponderous. To the Association is "given a
mouth speaking great things and blasphemies;" and out of this mouth
issues "fire," it is true, against all that is excellent in the land,
but also "smoke"--as the consummation of its overtures. During many
reigns of the Caesars, a race of swindlers infested the Roman court,
technically known as "sellers of smoke," and often punished under that
name. They sold, for weighty considerations of gold, castles in the
air, imaginary benefices, ideal reversions; and, in short, contracted
wholesale or retail for the punctual delivery of unadulterated
moonshine. Such a dealer, such a contractor, is the Anti-Corn-Law
Association; and for such it has always been known amongst intelligent
men. But its character has now diffused itself among the illiterate:
and we believe it to be the simple truth at this moment, that every
working man, whose attention has at any time been drawn to the
question, is now ready to take his stand upon the following
answer:--"We, that is our order, Mr Cobden, are not very strong in
faith. Our faith in the Association is limited. So much, however, by
all that reaches us, we are disposed to believe--viz. that ultimately
you might succeed in reducing the price of a loaf, by three parts in
forty-eight, which is one sixteenth; with what loss to our own landed
order, and with what risk to the national security in times of war or
famine, is no separate concern of ours. On the other hand, Mr Cobden,
in _your_ order there are said to be knaves in ambush; and we take it,
that the upshot of the change will be this: We shall save three
farthings in a shilling's worth of flour; and the _honest_ men of your
order--whom candour forbid that we should reckon at only twenty-five
per cent on the whole--will diminish our wages simply by that same
three farthings in a shilling; but the knaves (we are given to
understand) will take an excuse out of that trivial change to deduct
four, five, or six farthings; they will improve the occasion in
evangelical proportions--some sixty-fold, some seventy, and some a
hundred."
This is the settled _practical_ faith of those hard-working men, who
care not to waste their little leisure upon the theory of the
corn-laws. It is this practical result only which concerns _us_; for
as to the speculative logic of the case, as a question for economists,
we, who have so often discussed it in this journal, (which journal, we
take it upon us to say, has, from time to time, put forward or
reviewed every conceivable argument on the corn question,) must really
decline to re-enter the arena, and _actum agere_, upon any occasion
ministered by Mr Cobden. Very frankly, we disdain to do so; and now,
upon quitting the subject, we will briefly state why.
Mr Cobden, as we hear and believe, is a decent man--that is to say,
upon any ground not connected with politics; equal to six out of any
ten manufacturers you will meet in the Queen's high road--whilst of
the other four not more than three will be found conspicuously his
superiors. He is certainly, in the senate, not what Lancashire rustics
mean by a _hammil sconce_;[28] or, according to a saying often in the
mouth of our French emigrant friends in former times, he "could not
have invented the gun-powder, though perhaps he might have invented
the hair-powder." Still, upon the whole, we repeat, that Mr Cobden is
a decent man, wherever he is not very indecent. Is he therefore a
decent man on this question of the corn-laws? So far from it, that we
now challenge attention to one remarkable fact. All the world knows
how much he has talked upon this particular topic; how he has
itinerated on its behalf; how he has perspired under its business. Is
there a fortunate county in England which has yet escaped his
harangues? Does that happy province exist which has not reverberated
his yells? Doubtless, not--and yet mark this: Not yet, not up to the
present hour, (September 20, 1843,) has Mr Cobden delivered one
argument properly and specially applicable to the corn question. He
has uttered many things offensively upon the aristocracy; he has
libelled the lawgivers; he has insulted the farmers; he has exhausted
the artillery of _political_ abuse: but where is the _economic_
artillery which he promised us, and which, (strange to say!) from the
very dulness of his theme making it a natural impossibility to read
him, most people are willing to suppose that he has, after one fashion
or other, actually discharged. The Corn-League benefits by its own
stupidity. Not being read, every leaguer has credit for having uttered
the objections which, as yet, he never did utter. Hence comes the
popular impression, that from Mr Cobden have emanated arguments, of
some quality or other, against the existing system. True, there are
arguments in plenty on the other side, and pretty notorious arguments;
but, _pendente lite_, and until these opposite pleas are brought
forward, it is supposed that the Cobden pleas have a brief provisional
existence--they are good for the moment. Not at all. We repeat that,
as to economic pleas, none of any kind, good or bad, have been placed
on the record by any orator of that faction; whilst all other pleas,
keen and personal as they may appear, are wholly irrelevant to any
real point at issue. In illustration of what we say, one (and very
much the most searching) of Mr Cobden's questions to the farmers, was
this--"Was not the object," he demanded, "was not the very purpose of
all corn-laws alike--simply to keep up the price of grain? Well; had
the English corn-laws accomplished that object? Had they succeeded in
that purpose? Notoriously they had not; confessedly they had failed;
and every farmer in the corn districts would avouch that often he had
been brought to the brink of ruin by prices ruinously low." Now, we
pause not to ask, why, if the law already makes the prices of corn
ruinously low, any association can be needed to make it lower? What we
wish to fix attention upon, is this assumption of Mr Cobden's, many
times repeated, that the known object and office of our corn-law,
under all its modifications, has been to elevate the price of our
corn; to sustain it at a price to which naturally it could not have
ascended. Many sound speculators on this question we know to have been
seriously perplexed by this assertion of Mr Cobden's; and others, we
have heard, not generally disposed to view that gentleman's doctrines
with favour, who insist upon it, that, in mere candour, we must grant
this particular postulate. "Really," say they, "_that_ cannot be
refused him; the law _was_ for the purpose he assigns; its final cause
_was_, as he tells us, to keep up artificially the price of our
domestic corn-markets. So far he is right. But his error commences in
treating this design as an unfair one, and, secondly, in denying that
it has been successful. It _has_ succeeded; and it ought to have
succeeded. The protection sought for our agriculture was no more than
it merited; and that protection has been faithfully realized."
[28] A _hammil sconce_, or light of the hamlet, is the
picturesque expression in secluded parts of Lancashire
for the local wise man, or village counsellor.
We, however, vehemently deny Mr Cobden's postulate _in toto_. He is
wrong, not merely as others are wrong in the principle of refusing
this protection, not merely on the question of fact as to the reality
of this protection, (to enter upon which points would be to adopt that
hateful discussion which we have abjured;) but, above all, he is wrong
in assigning to corn-laws, as their end and purpose, an absolute
design of sustaining prices. To raise prices is an occasional means of
the corn-laws, and no end at all. In one word, what _is_ the end of
the corn-laws? It is, and ever has been, to equalize the prospects of
the farmer from year to year, with the view, and generally with the
effect, of drawing into the agricultural service of the nation, as
nearly as possible, the same amount of land at one time as at another.
This is the end; and this end is paramount. But the means to that end
must lie, according to the accidents of the case, alternately through
moderate increase of price, or moderate diminution of price. The
besetting oversight, in this instance, is the neglect of the one great
peculiarity affecting the manufacture of corn--viz. its inevitable
oscillation as to quantity, consequently as to price, under the
variations of the seasons. People talk, and encourage mobs to think,
that Parliaments cause, and that Parliaments could heal if they
pleased, the evil of fluctuation in grain. Alas! the evil is as
ancient as the weather, and, like the disease of poverty, will cleave
to society for ever. And the way in which a corn-law--that is, a
restraint upon the free importation of corn--affects the case, is
this:--Relieving the domestic farmer from that part of his anxiety
which points to the competition of foreigners, it confines it to the
one natural and indefeasible uncertainty lying in the contingencies of
the weather. Releasing him from all jealousy of man, it throws him, in
singleness of purpose, upon an effort which cannot be disappointed,
except by a power to which, habitually, he bows and resigns himself.
Secure, therefore, from all superfluous anxieties, the farmer enjoys,
from year to year, a pretty equal encouragement in distributing the
employments of his land. If, through the dispensations of Providence,
the quantity of his return falls short, he knows that some rude
indemnification will arise in the higher price. If, in the opposite
direction, he fears a low price, it comforts him to know that this
cannot arise for any length of time but through some commensurate
excess in quantity. This, like other severities of a natural or
general system, will not, and cannot, go beyond a bearable limit. The
high price compensates grossly the defect of quantity; the overflowing
quantity in turn compensates grossly the low price. And thus it
happens that, upon any cycle of ten years, taken when you will, the
manufacture of grain will turn out to have been moderately profitable.
Now, on the other hand, under a system of free importation, whenever a
redundant crop in England coincides (as often it does) with a similar
redundancy in Poland, the discouragement cannot but become immoderate.
An excess of one-seventh will cause a fall of price by three-sevenths.
But the simultaneous excess on the Continent may raise the one-seventh
to two-sevenths, and in a much greater proportion will these depress
the price. The evil will then be enormous; the discouragement will be
ruinous; much capital, much land, will be withdrawn from the culture
of grain; and, supposing a two years' succession of such excessive
crops, (which effect is more common than a single year's excess,) the
result, for the third year, will be seen in a preternatural
deficiency; for, by the supposition, the number of acres applied to
corn is now very much less than usual, under the unusual
discouragement; and according to the common oscillations of the season
according to those irregularities that, in effect, are often found to
be regular--this third year succeeding to redundant years may be
expected to turn out a year of scarcity. Here, then, in the absence of
a corn-law, comes a double deficiency--a deficiency of acres applied,
from jealousy of foreign competition, and upon each separate acre a
deficiency of crop, from the nature of the weather. What will be the
consequence? A price ruinously high; higher beyond comparison than
could ever have arisen under a temperate restriction of competition;
that is, in other words, under a British corn-law.
Many other cases might be presented to the reader, and especially
under the action of a doctrine repeatedly pressed in this journal,
but steadily neglected elsewhere--viz. the "_devolution_" of foreign
agriculture upon lower qualities of land, (and consequently its
_permanent_ exaltation in price,) in case of any certain demand on
account of England. But this one illustration is sufficient. Here we
see that, under a free trade in corn, and _in consequence_ of a free
trade, ruinous enhancements of price would arise--such in magnitude as
never could have arisen under a wise limitation of foreign
competition. And further, we see that under our present system no
enhancement is, or could be, _absolutely_ injurious; it might be so
_relatively_--it might be so in relation to the poor consumer; but in
the mean time, that guinea which might be lost to the consumer would
be gained to the farmer. Now, in the case supposed, under a free corn
trade the rise is commensurate to the previous injury sustained by the
farmer; and much of the extra bonus reaped goes to a foreign interest.
What we insist upon, however, is this one fact, that alternately the
British corn-laws have raised the price of grain and have sunk it;
they have raised the price in the case where else there would have
been a ruinous depreciation--ruinous to the prospects of succeeding
years; they have sunk it under the natural and usual oscillations of
weather to be looked for in these succeeding years. And each way their
action has been most moderate. For let not the reader forget, that on
the system of a sliding-scale, this action cannot be otherwise than
moderate. Does the price rise? Does it threaten to rise higher?
Instantly the very evil redresses itself. As the evil, _i.e._ the
price, increases, in that exact proportion does it open the gate to
relief; for exactly so does the duty fall. Does the price fall
ruinously?--(in which case it is true that the _instant_ sufferer is
the farmer; but through him, as all but the short-sighted must see,
the consumer will become the reversionary sufferer)--immediately the
duty rises, and forbids an accessary evil from abroad to aggravate the
evil at home. So gentle and so equable is the play of those weights
which regulate our whole machinery, whilst the late correction applied
even here by Sir Robert Peel, has made this gentle action still
gentler; so that neither of the two parties--consumers who to live
must buy, growers who to live must sell--can, by possibility, feel an
incipient pressure before it is already tending to relieve itself. It
is the very perfection of art to make a malady produce its own
medicine--an evil its own relief. But that which here we insist on,
is, that it never _was_ the object of our own corn-laws to increase
the price of corn; secondly, that the real object was a condition of
equipoise which abstractedly is quite unconnected with either rise of
price or fall of price; and thirdly, that, as a matter of fact, our
corn-laws have as often reacted to lower the price, as directly they
have operated to raise it; whilst eventually, and traced through
succeeding years, equally the raising and the lowering have
co-operated to that steady temperature (or nearest approximation to it
allowed by nature) which is best suited to a _comprehensive_ system of
interests. Accursed is that man who, in speaking upon so great a
question, will seek, or will consent, to detach the economic
considerations of that question from the higher political
considerations at issue. Accursed is that man who will forget the
noble yeomanry we have formed through an agriculture chiefly domestic,
were it even true that so mighty a benefit had been purchased by some
pecuniary loss. But this it is which we are now denying. We affirm
peremptorily, and as a fact kept out of sight only by the neglect of
pursuing the case through a succession of years under the _natural_
fluctuation of seasons, that, upon the series of the last seventy
years, viewed as a whole, we have paid less for our corn by means of
the corn-laws, than we should have done in the absence of such laws.
It was, says Mr Cobden, the purpose of such laws to make corn dear; it
is, says he, the effect, to make it cheap. Yes, in the last clause his
very malice drove him into the truth. Speaking to farmers, he found it
requisite to assert that they had been injured; and as he knew of no
injury to them other than a low price, _that_ he postulated at the
cost of his own logic, and quite forgetting that if the farmer had
lost, the consumer must have gained in that very ratio. Rather than
not assert a failure _quoad_ the intention of the corn-laws, he
actually asserts a national benefit _quoad_ the result. And, in a
rapture of malice to the lawgivers, he throws away for ever, at one
victorious sling, the total principles of an opposition to the
law.[29]
[29] Those who fancy a possible evasion of the case
supposed above, by saying, that if a failure, extensive
as to England, should coincide with a failure extensive
as to Poland, remedies might be found in importing from
many other countries combined, forget one objection,
which is decisive--these supplementary countries must be
many, and they must be distant. For no country could
singly supply a defect of great extent, unless it were a
defect annually and regularly anticipated. A surplus
never designed as a fixed surplus for England, but
called for only now and then, could never be more than
small. Therefore the surplus, which could not be yielded
by one country, must be yielded by many. In that
proportion increase the probabilities that a number will
have no surplus. And, secondly, from the widening
distances, in that proportion increases the extent of
shipping required. But now, even from Mr Porter, a most
prejudiced writer on this question, and not capable of
impartiality in speaking upon any measure which he
supposes hostile to the principle of free trade, the
reader may learn how certainly any great _hiatus_ in our
domestic growth of corn is placed beyond all hope of
relief. For how is this grain, this relief, to be
brought? In ships, you reply. Ay, but in what ships? Do
you imagine that an extra navy can lie rotting in docks,
and an extra fifty thousand of sailors can be held in
reserve, and borne upon the books of some colossal
establishment, waiting for the casual seventh, ninth, or
twelfth year in which they may be wanted--kept and paid
against an "_in case_," like the extra supper, so called
by Louis XIV., which waited all night on the chance that
it might be wanted? _That_, you say, is impossible. It
is so; and yet without such a reserve, all the navies of
Europe would not suffice to make up such a failure of
our home crops as is likely enough to follow redundant
years under the system of unlimited competition.--See
PORTER.
But enough, and more than enough, of THE nuisance. It will be
expected, however, that we should notice two collateral points, both
wearing an air of the marvellous, which have grown out of the nuisance
during the recent session. One is the relaxation of our laws with
respect to Canadian corn; a matter of no great importance in itself,
but furnishing some reasons for astonishment in regard to the
disproportioned opposition which it has excited. Undoubtedly the
astonishment is well justified, if we view the measure for what it was
really designed by the minister--viz. as a momentary measure, suited
merely to the _current_ circumstances of our relation to Canada. Long
before any evil can arise from it, through changes in these
circumstances, the law will have been modified. Else, and having,
regard to the remote contingencies of the case (possible or probable)
rather than to its instant certainties, we are disposed to think, that
the irritation which this little anomalous law has roused amongst some
of the landholders, is not quite so unaccountable, or so
disproportionate, as the public have been taught to imagine. True it
is, that for the present, _lis est de paupere regno_. Any surplus of
grain which, at this moment, Canada could furnish, must be quite as
powerless upon our home markets, as the cattle, living or salted which
have been imported under the tariff in 1842 and 1843. But the fears of
Canada potentially, were not therefore unreasonable, because the
actual Canada is not in a condition for instantly using her new
privileges. Corn, that hitherto had not been grown, both may be grown,
and certainly will be grown, as soon as the new motive for growing it,
the new encouragement, becomes operatively known. Corn, again, that
from local difficulties did not find its way to eastern markets, will
do so by continual accessions, swelling gradually into a powerful
stream, as the many improvements of the land and water communication,
now contemplated, or already undertaken, come into play. Another fear
connects itself with possible evasions of the law by the United
States. Cross an imaginary frontier line, and _that_ will become
Canadian which was not Canadian by its origin. We are told, indeed,
that merely by its bulk, grain will always present an obstacle to any
extensive system of smuggling. But obstacles are not impossibilities.
And these obstacles, it must be remembered, are not founded in the
vigilance of revenue officers, but simply in the cost; an element of
difficulty which is continually liable to change. So that upon the
whole, and as applying to the reversions of the case, rather than to
its present phenomena, undoubtedly there _are_ dangers a-head to our
own landed interest from that quarter of the horizon. For the present,
it should be enough to say, that these dangers are yet remote. And
perhaps it _would_ have been enough under other circumstances. But it
is the tendency of the bill which suggests alarm. All changes in our
day tend to the consummation of free trade: and this measure,
travelling in that direction, reasonably becomes suspicious by its
principle, though innocent enough by its immediate operation.
The other point connected with the corn question is personal. Among
the many motions and notices growing out of the dispute, which we hold
it a matter of duty to neglect, was one brought forward by Lord John
Russell. Upon what principle, or with what object? Strange to say, he
refused to explain. That it must be some modification applied to a
fixed duty, every body knew; but of what nature Lord John declined to
tell us, until he should reach a committee which he had no chance of
obtaining. This affair, which surprised every body, is of little
importance as regards the particular subject of the motion. But in a
more general relation, it is worthy of attention. No man interested in
the character and efficiency of Parliament, can fail to wish that
there may always exist a strong opposition, vigilant, bold,
unflinching, full of partizanship, if you will, but uniformly
suspending the partizanship at the summons of paramount national
interests, and acting harmoniously upon some systematic plan. How
little the present unorganized opposition answers to this description,
it is unnecessary to say. The nation is ashamed of a body so
determinately below its functions. But Lord John Russell is
individually superior to his party. He is a man of sense, of
information, and of known official experience. Now, if he, so
notoriously the wise man of "her Majesty's Opposition," is capable of
descending to harlequin caprices of this extreme order, the nation
sees with pain, that a constitutional function of control is extinct
in our present senate, and that her Majesty's Ministers must now be
looked to as their own controllers. With the levity of a child, Lord
John makes a motion, which, if adopted, would have landed him in
defeat; but through utter want of judgment and concert with his party,
he does not get far enough to be defeated: he does not succeed in
obtaining the prostration for which he man[oe]uvres; but is saved from
a final exposure of his little statesmanship by universal mockery of
his miserable partizanship. Alas for the times in which Burke and Fox
wielded the forces of Parliamentary opposition, and redoubled the
energies of Government by the energies of their enlightened
resistance!
In quitting the subject of the corn agitation, (obstinately pursued
through the session,) we may remark--and we do so with pain--that all
laws whatsoever, strong or lax, upon this question are to be regarded
as provisional. The temper of society being what it is, some small
gang of cotton-dealers, moved by the rankest self-interest, finding
themselves suffered to agitate almost without opposition, and the
ancient landed interest of the country, if not silenced, being silent,
it is felt by all parties that no law, in whatever direction, upon
this great problem, can have a chance of permanence. The natural
revenge which we may promise ourselves is--that the lunacies of the
free-trader, when acted upon, as too surely they will be, may prove
equally fugitive. Meantime, it is not by provisional acts, or acts of
sudden emergency, that we estimate the service of a senate. It is the
solemn and deliberate laws, those which are calculated for the wear
and tear of centuries, which hold up a mirror to the legislative
spirit of the times.
Of laws bearing this character, if we except the inaugural essays at
improving the law of libel, and at founding a system of national
education, of which the latter has failed for the present in a way
fitted to cause some despondency, the last session offers us no
conspicuous example, beyond the one act of Lord Aberdeen for healing
and tranquillizing the wounds of the Scottish church. Self-inflicted
these wounds undeniably were; but they were not the less severe on
that account, nor was the contagion of spontaneous martyrdom on that
account the less likely to spread. In reality, the late astonishing
schism in the Scottish church (astonishing because abrupt) is, in one
respect, without precedent. Every body has heard of persecutions that
were courted; but in such a case, at least, the spirit of persecution
must have had a local existence, and to some extent must have uttered
menaces--or how should those menaces have been defied? Now, the
"persecutions," before which a large section of the Scottish church
has fallen by an act of spontaneous martyrdom, were not merely
needlessly defied, but were originally self-created; they were evoked,
like phantoms and shadows, by the martyrs themselves, out of blank
negations. Without provocation _ab extra_, without warning on their
own part, suddenly they place themselves in an attitude of desperate
defiance to the known law of the land. The law firmly and tranquilly
vindicates itself; the whole series of appeals is threaded; the
original judgment, as a matter of course, is finally re-affirmed--and
this is the persecution insinuated; whilst the necessity of complying
with that decision, which does not express any novelty even to the
extent of a new law, but simply the ordinary enforcement of an old
one, is the kind of martyrdom resulting. The least evil of this
fantastic martyrdom, is the exit from the pastoral office of so many
persons trained, by education and habit, to the effectual performance
of the pastoral duties. That loss--though not without signal
difficulty, from the abruptness of the summons--will be supplied. But
there is a greater evil which cannot be healed--the breach of unity in
the church. The scandal, the offence, the occasion of unhappy
constructions upon the doctrinal soundness of the church, which have
been thus ministered to the fickle amongst her own children--to the
malicious amongst her enemies, are such as centuries do not easily
furnish, and centuries do not remove. In all Christian churches alike,
the conscientiousness which is the earliest product of heartfelt
religion, has suggested this principle, that schism, for any cause, is
a perilous approach to sin; and that, unless in behalf of the
weightiest interests or of capital truths, it is inevitably criminal.
And in connexion with this consideration, there arise two scruples to
all intelligent men upon this crisis in the Scottish church, and they
are scruples which at this moment, we are satisfied, must harass the
minds of the best men amongst the seceders--viz. First, whether the
new points contended for, waiving all controversy upon their abstract
doctrinal truth, are really such, in _practical_ virtue, that it could
be worth purchasing them at the cost of schism? Secondly, supposing a
good man to have decided this question in the affirmative for a young
society of Christians, for a church in its infancy, which, as yet,
might not have much to lose in credit or authentic influence--whether
the same free license of rupture and final secession _could_ belong to
an ancient church, which had received eminent proofs of Divine favour
through a long course of spiritual prosperity almost unexampled?
Indeed, this last question might suggest another paramount to the
other two--viz. not whether the points at issue were weighty enough to
justify schism and hostile separation, but whether those points could
even be safe as mere speculative _credenda_, which, through so long a
period of trial, and by so memorable a harvest of national services,
had been shown to be unnecessary?
Very sure we are, that no eminent servant of the Scottish church could
abandon, without anguish of mind, the multitude of means and channels,
that great machinery for dispensing living truths, which the power and
piety of the Scottish nation have matured through three centuries of
pure Christianity militant. Solemn must have been the appeal, and
searching, which would force its way to the conscience on occasion of
taking the last step in so sad an _exodus_ from the Jerusalem of his
fathers. Anger and irritation can do much to harden the obduracy of
any party conviction, especially whilst in the centre of fiery
partisans. But sorrow, in such a case, is a sentiment of deeper
vitality than anger; and this sorrow for the result will co-operate
with the original scruples on the casuistry of the questions, to
reproduce the demur and the struggle many times over, in consciences
of tender sensibility.
Exactly for men in this state of painful collision with their own
higher nature, is Lord Aberdeen's bill likely to furnish the bias
which can give rest to their agitations, and firmness to their
resolutions. The bill, according to some, is too early, and, according
to others, too late. Why too early? Because, say they, it makes
concessions to the church, which as yet are not proved to be called
for. These concessions travel on the very line pursued by the
seceders, and must give encouragement to that spirit of religious
movement which it has been found absolutely requisite to rebuke by
acts of the legislature. Why, on the other hand, is Lord Aberdeen's
bill too late? Because, three years ago, it would, or it might, have
prevented the secession. But is this true? Could this bill have
prevented the secession? We believe not. Lord Aberdeen, undoubtedly,
himself supposes that it might. But, granting that this were true,
whose fault is it that a three years' delay has intercepted so happy a
result? Lord Aberdeen assures us that the earlier success of the bill
was defeated entirely by the resistance of the Government at that
period, and chiefly by the personal resistance of Lord Melbourne. Let
that minister be held responsible, if any ground has been lost that
could have been peacefully pre-occupied against the schism. This,
however, seems to us a chimera. For what is it that the bill concedes?
Undoubtedly it restrains and modifies the right of patronage. It
grants a larger discretion to the ecclesiastical courts than had
formerly been exercised by the usage. Some contend, that in doing so
the bill absolutely alters the law as it stood heretofore, and ought,
therefore, to be viewed as enactory; whilst others maintain that is
simply a declaratory bill, not altering the law at all, but merely
expressing, in fuller or in clearer terms, what had always been law,
though silently departed from by the usage, which, from the time of
Queen Anne, had allowed a determinate preponderance to the rights of
property in the person of the patron. Those, indeed, who take the
former view, contending that it enacts a new principle of law, very
much circumscribing the old right of patronage, insist upon it that
the bill virtually revokes the decision of the Lords in the
Auchterarder case. Technically and formally speaking, this is not
true; for the presbytery, or other church court, is now tied up to a
course of proceeding which at Auchterarder was violently evaded. The
court cannot now peremptorily challenge the nominee in the arbitrary
mode adopted in that instance. An examination must be instituted
within certain prescribed limits. But undoubtedly the contingent power
of the church court, in the case of the nominee not meeting the
examination satisfactorily, is much larger now, under the new bill,
than it was under the old practice; so that either this practice must
formerly have swerved from the letter of the law, or else the new law,
differing from the old, is really more than declaratory. Yet, however
this may be, it is clear that the jurisdiction of the church in the
matter of patronage, however ample it may seem as finally ascertained
or created by the new bill, falls far within the extravagant outline
marked out by the seceders. We argue, therefore, that it could not
have prevented their secession even as regards that part of their
pretensions; whilst, as regards the monstrous claim to decide in the
last resort what shall be civil and what spiritual--that is, in a
question of clashing jurisdiction, to settle on their own behalf where
shall fall the boundary line--it may be supposed that Lord Aberdeen
would no more countenance their claim in any point of practice, than
all rational legislators would countenance it as a theory. How,
therefore, could this bill have prevented the rent in the church, so
far as it has yet extended? On the other hand, though apparently
powerless for that effect, it is well calculated to prevent a second
secession. Those who are at all disposed to follow the first seceders,
stand in this situation. By the very act of adhering to the
Establishment when the _ultra_ party went out, they made it abundantly
manifest that they do not go to the same extreme in their
requisitions. But, upon any principle which falls short of that
extreme being at all applicable to this church question, it is certain
that Lord Aberdeen's measure will be found to satisfy their wishes;
for that measure, if it errs at all, errs by conceding too much rather
than too little. It sustains all objections to a candidate on their
own merit, without reference to the quarter from which they arise, so
long as they are relevant to the proper qualifications of a parish
clergyman. It gives effect to every argument that can reasonably be
urged against a nominee--either generally, on the ground of his moral
conduct, his orthodoxy, and his intellectual attainments; or
specially, in relation to his fitness for any local varieties of the
situation. A Presbyterian church has always been regarded as, in some
degree, leaning to a republican character, but a republic may be
either aristocratic or democratic: now, Lord Aberdeen has favoured the
democratic tendency of the age by making the probationary examination
of the candidate as much of a popular examination, and as open to the
impression of objections arising with the body of the people, as could
be done with any decent regard either to the rights yet recognised in
the patron, or, still more, to the professional dignity of the
clerical order.
Upon the whole, therefore, we look upon Lord Aberdeen as a national
benefactor, who has not only turned aside a current running headlong
into a revolution, but in doing this exemplary service, has contrived
to adjust the temperament very equitably between, 1st, the individual
nominee, having often his livelihood at stake; 2dly, the patron,
exercising a right of property interwoven with our social system, and
not liable to any usurpation which would not speedily extend itself to
other modes of property; 3dly, the church, considered as the trustee
or responsible guardian of orthodoxy and sound learning; 4thly, the
same church considered as a professional body, and, therefore, as
interested in upholding the dignity of each individual clergyman, and
his immunity from frivolous cavils, however much against him they are
interested in detecting his insufficiency; and, 5thly, the body of the
congregation, as undoubtedly entitled to have the qualifications of
their future pastor rigorously investigated. All these separate
claims, embodied in five distinct parties, Lord Aberdeen has
delicately balanced and fixed in a temperate equipoise by the
machinery of his bill. Whilst, if we enquire for the probable effects
of this bill upon the interests of pure and spiritual religion, the
promise seems every way satisfactory. The Jacobinical and precipitous
assaults of the Non-intrusionists upon the rights of property are
summarily put down. A great danger is surmounted. For if the rights of
patrons were to be arbitrarily trampled under foot on a pretence of
consulting for the service of religion; on the next day, with the same
unprincipled levity, another party might have trampled on the
patrimonial rights of hereditary descent, on primogeniture, or any
institution whatever, opposed to the democratic fanaticism of our age.
No patron can now thrust an incompetent or a vicious person upon the
religious ministrations of the land. It must be through their own
defect of energy, if any parish is henceforth burdened with an
incumbent reasonably obnoxious. It must be the fault of the presbytery
or other church court, if the orthodox standards of the church are not
maintained in their purity. It must be through his own fault, or his
own grievous defects, if any qualified candidate for the church
ministry is henceforth vexatiously rejected. It must be through some
scandalous oversight in the selection of presentees, if any patron is
defeated of his right to present.
Contrast with these great services the menaces and the tendencies of
the Non-Intrusionists, on the assumption that they had kept their
footing in the church. It may be that, during this generation, from
the soundness of the individual partisans, the orthodox standards of
the church would have been maintained as to doctrine. But all the
other parties interested in the church, except the church herself, as
a depositary of truth, would have been crushed at one blow. This is
apparent, except only with regard to the congregation of each parish.
That body, it may be thought, could not but have benefited by the
change; for the very motive and the pretence of the movement arose on
their behalf. But mark how names disguise facts, and to what extent a
virtual hostility may lurk under an apparent protection. Lord
Aberdeen, because he limits the right of the congregation, is supposed
to destroy it; but in the mean time he secures to every parish in
Scotland a true and effectual influence, so far as that body ought to
have it, (that is, _negatively_,) upon the choice of its pastor. On
the other hand, the whole storm of the Non-intrusionists was pointed
at those who refused to make the choice of a pastor altogether
popular. It was the people, considered as a congregation, who ought
to appoint the teacher by whom they were to be edified. So far, the
party of seceders come forward as martyrs to their democratic
principles. And they drew a colourable sanction to their democracy
from the great names of Calvin, Zuinglius, and John Knox. Unhappily
for them, Sir William Hamilton has shown, by quotations the most
express and absolute from these great authorities, that no such
democratic appeal as the Non-intrusionists have presumed, was ever
contemplated for an instant by any one amongst the founders of the
Reformed churches. That Calvin, whose jealousy was so inexorable
towards princes and the sons of princes--that John Knox, who never
"feared the face of man that was born of woman"--were these great
Christian champions likely to have flinched from installing a popular
tribunal, had they believed it eligible for modern times, or warranted
by ancient times? In the learning of the question, therefore,
Non-intrusionists showed themselves grossly wrong. Meantime it is
fancied that at least they were generously democratic, and that they
manifested their disinterested love of justice by creating a popular
control that must have operated chiefly against their own clerical
order. What! is that indeed so? Now, finally, take another instance
how names belie facts. The people _were_ to choose their ministers;
the council for election of the pastor _was_ to be a popular council
abstracted from the congregation: but how? but under what conditions?
but by whom abstracted? Behold the subtle design:--This pretended
congregation was a small faction; this counterfeit "people" was the
petty gathering of COMMUNICANTS; and the communicants were in effect
within the appointment of the clergyman. They formed indirectly a
secret committee of the clergy. So that briefly, Lord Aberdeen, whilst
restraining the popular courts, gives to them a true popular
authority; and the Non-intrusionists, whilst seeming to set up a
democratic idol, do in fact, by dexterous ventriloquism, throw their
own all-potential voice into its passive organs.
We may seem to owe some apology to our readers for the space which we
have allowed to this great moral _emeute_ in Scotland. But we hardly
think so ourselves. For in our own island, and in our own times,
nothing has been witnessed so nearly bordering on a revolution.
Indeed, it is painful to hear Dr Chalmers, since the secession,
speaking of the Scottish aristocracy in a tone of scornful hatred, not
surpassed by the most Jacobinical language of the French Revolution in
the year 1792. And, if this movement had not been checked by
Parliament, and subsequently by the executive Government, in its
comprehensive provision for the future, by the measure we have been
reviewing, we cannot doubt that the contagion of the shock would have
spread immediately to England, which part of the island has been long
prepared and manured, as we might say, for corresponding struggles, by
the continued conspiracy against church-rates. In both cases, an
attack on church property, once allowed to prosper or to gain any
stationary footing, would have led to a final breach in the life and
serviceable integrity of the church.
Of the Factory bill, we are sorry that we are hardly entitled to
speak. In the loss of the educational clauses, that bill lost all
which could entitle it to a separate notice; and, where the Government
itself desponds as to any future hope of succeeding, private parties
may have leave to despair. One gleam of comfort, however, has shone
out since the adjournment of Parliament. The only party to the bitter
resistance under which this measure failed, whom we can sincerely
compliment with full honesty of purpose--viz. the Wesleyan
Methodists--have since expressed (about the middle of September)
sentiments very like compunction and deep sorrow for the course they
felt it right to pursue. They are fully aware of the malignity towards
the Church of England, which governed all other parties to the
opposition excepting themselves; and in the sorrowful result of that
opposition, which has terminated in denying all extension of education
to the labouring youth of the nation, they have learned (like the
conscientious men that they are) to suspect the wisdom and the
ultimate principle of the opposition itself. Fortunately, they are a
most powerful body; to express regret for what they have done, and
hesitation at the casuistry of those motives which reconciled them to
their act at the moment is possibly but the next step to some change
in their counsels; in which case this single body, in alliance with
the Church of England, would be able to carry the great measure which
has been crushed for the present by so unexampled a resistance. Much
remains to be said, both upon the introductory statements of Lord
Ashley, with which (in spite of our respect for that nobleman) we do
not coincide, and still more upon the extensive changes, and the
_principles_ of change, which must be brought to bear upon a national
system of education, before it can operate with that large effect of
benefit which so many anticipate from its adoption. But this is ample
matter for a separate discussion.
Lastly, let us notice the Irish Arms' bill; which, amongst the
measures framed to meet the momentary exigence of the times, stands
foremost in importance. This is one of those fugitive and casual
precautions, which, by intense seasonableness, takes its rank amongst
the permanent means of pacification. Bridling the instant spirit of
uproar, carrying the Irish nation over that transitional state of
temptation, which, being once gone by, cannot, we believe, be renewed
for generations, this, with other acts in the same temper, will face
whatever peril still lingers in the sullen rear of Mr O'Connell's
dying efforts. For that gentleman, personally, we believe him to be
nearly extinct. Two months ago we expressed our conviction, so much
the stronger in itself for having been adopted after some hesitation,
that Sir Robert Peel had taken the true course for eventually and
finally disarming him. We are thankful that we have now nothing to
recant. Progress has been made in that interval towards that
consummation, quite equal to any thing we could have expected in so
short a lapse of weeks. Mr O'Connell is now showing the strongest
symptoms of distress, and of conscious approach to the condition of
"check to the king." Of these symptoms we will indicate one or two. In
January 1843, he declared solemnly that an Irish Parliament should
instal itself at Dublin before the year closed. Early in May, he
promised that on the anniversary of that day the great change should
be solemnized. On a later day in May, he proclaimed that the event
would come off (according to a known nautical mode of advertising the
time of sailing) not upon a settled day of that month but "in all May"
of 1844. Here the matter rested until August 12, when again he shifted
his day to the corresponding day of 1844. But September arrived, and
then "before those shoes were old" in which he had made his promise,
he declares by letter, to some correspondent, that he must have
_forty-three months_ for working out his plan. Anther symptom, yet
more significant, is this: and strange to say it has been overlooked
by the daily press. Originally he had advertised some pretended
Parliament of 300 Irishmen, to which admission was to be had for each
member by a fee of L.100. And several journals are now telling him
that, under the Convention Act, he and his Parliament will be arrested
on the day of assembling. Not at all. They do not attend to his
harlequin motions. Already he has declared that this assembly, which
was to have been a Parliament, is only to be a conciliatory committee,
an old association under some new name, for deliberating on means
_tending to_ a Parliament in some future year, as yet not even
suggested.
May we not say, after such facts, that the game is up? The agitation
may continue, and it may propagate itself. But for any interest of Mr
O'Connell's, it is now passing out of his hands.
In the joy with which we survey that winding up of the affair, we can
afford to forget the infamous display of faction during the discussion
of the Arms' bill. Any thing like it, in pettiness of malignity, has
not been witnessed during this century: any thing like it, in
impotence of effect, probably will not be witnessed again during our
times. Thirteen divisions in one night--all without hope, and without
even a verbal gain! This conduct the nation will not forget at the
next election. But in the mean time the peaceful friends of this yet
peaceful empire rejoice to know, that without war, without rigour,
without an effort that could disturb or agitate--by mere silent
precautions, and the sublime magnanimity of simply fixing upon the
guilty conspirator one steadfast eye of vigilant preparation, the
conspiracy itself is melting into air, and the relics of it which
remain will soon become fearful only to him who has evoked it.
The game, therefore, is up, if we speak of the purposes originally
contemplated. This appears equally from the circumstances of the case
without needing the commentary of Mr O'Connell, and from the acts no
less than the words of that conspirator. True it is--and this is the
one thing to be feared--that the agitation, though extinct for the
ends of its author, may propagate itself through the maddening
passions of the people, now perhaps uncontrollably excited. Tumults
may arise, at the moment when further excitement is impossible, simply
through that which is already in operation. But that stage of
rebellion is open at every turn to the coercion of the law: and it is
not such a phasis of conspiracy that Mr O'Connell wishes to face, or
_can_ face. Speaking, therefore, of the _real_ objects pursued in this
memorable agitation, we cannot but think that as the roll of possible
meetings is drawing nearer to exhaustion, as all other arts fail, and
mere _written_ addresses are renewed, (wanting the inflammatory
contagion of personal meetings, and not accessible to a scattered
peasantry;) but above all, as the day of instant action is once again
adjourned to a period both remote and indefinite, the agitation must
be drooping, and virtually we may repeat that the game is up. But the
last moves have been unusually interesting. Not unlike the fascination
exercised over birds by the eye of the rattlesnake, has been the
impression upon Mr O'Connell from the fixed attention turned upon him
by Government. What they _did_ was silent and unostentatious; more,
however, than perhaps the public is aware of in the way of preparation
for an outbreak. But the capital resource of their policy was, to make
Mr O'Connell deeply sensible that they were watching him. The eye that
watched over Waterloo was upon him: for six months that eagle glance
has searched him and nailed him: and the result, as it is now
revealing itself, may at length be expressed in the two lines of
Wordsworth otherwise applied--
"The vacillating bondsman of the Pope
Shrinks from the verdict of that steadfast eye."
_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._