Casuistry, therefore, justly, and without infringing any truth of

Christianity, urges the care of health as the basis of all moral

action, because, in fact, of all _perfectly voluntary_ action.

Every impulse of bad health jars or untunes some string in the fine

harp of human volition; and because a man cannot be a moral being

but in the proportion of his free action, therefore it is clear that

no man can be in a high sense moral, except in so far as through

health he commands his bodily powers, and is not commanded by them.

CASE II.

LAWS OF HOSPITALITY IN COLLISION WITH CIVIC DUTIES.

Suppose the case, that taking shelter from a shower of rain in a

stranger's house, you discover proofs of a connection with smugglers.

Take this for one pole of such case, the trivial extreme; then

for the other pole, the greater extreme, suppose the case, that,

being hospitably entertained, and happening to pass the night in a

stranger's house, you are so unfortunate as to detect unquestionable

proofs of some dreadful crime, say murder, perpetrated in past times

by one of the family. The principle at issue is the same in both

cases: viz., the command resting upon the conscience to forget

private consideration and personal feelings in the presence of any

solemn duty; yet merely the difference of degree, and not any at

all in the kind of duty, would lead pretty generally to a separate

practical decision for the several cases. In the last of the two,

whatever might be the pain to a person's feelings, he would feel

himself to have no discretion or choice left. Reveal he must; not

only, if otherwise revealed, he must come forward as a witness, but,

if not revealed, he must denounce--he must lodge an information,

and that instantly, else even in law, without question of morality,

he makes himself a party to the crime--an accomplice after the act.

That single consideration would with most men at once cut short all

deliberation. And yet even in such a situation, there is a possible

variety of the case that might alter its complexion. If the crime

had been committed many years before, and under circumstances which

precluded all fear that the same temptation or the same provocation

should arise again, most reflecting people would think it the

better course to leave the criminal to his conscience. Often in

such denunciations it is certain that human impertinence, and the

spirit which sustains the habit of gossip, and mere incontinence

of secrets, and vulgar craving for being the author of a sensation,

have far more often led to the publication of the offence, than

any concern for the interests of morality.

On the other hand, with respect to the slighter extreme--viz. in

a case where the offence is entirely created by the law, with no

natural turpitude about it and besides (which is a strong argument

in the case) enjoying no special facilities of escaping justice--no

man in the circumstances supposed would have a reason for hesitating.

The laws of hospitality are of everlasting obligation; they are

equally binding on the host and on the guest. Coming under a man's

roof for one moment, in the clear character of guest, creates an

absolute sanctity in the consequent relations which connect the

parties. That is the popular feeling. The king in the old ballads is

always represented as feeling that it would be damnable to make a

legal offence out of his own venison which he had eaten as a guest.

There is a cleaving pollution, like that of the Syrian leprosy,

in the act of abusing your privileges as a guest, or in any way

profiting by your opportunities as a guest to the injury of your

confiding host. Henry VII. though a prince, was no gentleman; and

in the famous case of his dining with Lord Oxford, and saying at his

departure, with reference to an infraction of his recent statute,

'My Lord, I thank you for my good cheer, but my attorney must speak

with you;' Lord Oxford might have justly retorted, 'If he does,

then posterity will speak pretty plainly with your Majesty;' for

it was in the character of Lord Oxford's guest that he had learned

the infraction of his law. Meantime, the general rule, and the

_rationale_ of the rule, in such cases, appears to be this:

Whenever there is, or can be imagined, a sanctity in the obligations

on one side, and only a benefit of expediency in the obligations

upon the other, the latter must give way. For the detection of

smuggling, (the particular offence supposed in the case stated,)

society has an express and separate machinery maintained. If their

activity droops, that is the business of government. In such a

case, government is entitled to no aid from private citizens; on the

express understanding that no aid must be expected, has so expensive

an establishment been submitted to. Each individual refuses to

participate in exposure of such offences, for the same reason that

he refuses to keep the street clean even before his own door--he

has already paid for having such work discharged by proxy.

CASE III.

GIVING CHARACTERS TO SERVANTS WHO HAVE MISCONDUCTED THEMSELVES.

No case so constantly arises to perplex the conscience in private

life as this--which, in principle, is almost beyond solution.

Sometimes, indeed, the coarse realities of law step in to cut

that Gordian knot which no man can untie; for it is an actionable

offence to give a character wilfully false. That little fact at

once exorcises all aerial phantoms of the conscience. True: but

this coarse machinery applies only to those cases in which the

servant has been guilty in a way amenable to law. In any case short

of _that_, no plaintiff would choose to face the risks of an

action; nor could he sustain it; the defendant would always have

a sufficient resource in the vagueness and large latitude allowed

to opinion when estimating the qualities of a servant. Almost universally,

therefore, the case comes back to the forum of conscience. Now in

that forum how stands the pleading? Too certainly, we will suppose,

that the servant has not satisfied your reasonable expectations.

This truth you would have no difficulty in declaring; here, as much

as anywhere else, you would feel it unworthy of your own integrity

to equivocate--you open your writing-desk, and sit down to tell

the mere truth in as few words as possible. But then steps in the

consideration, that to do this without disguise or mitigation, is

oftentimes to sign a warrant for the ruin of a fellow-creature--and

that fellow-creature possibly penitent, in any case thrown upon

your mercy. Who can stand this? In lower walks of life, it is true

that mistresses often take servants without any certificate of

character; but in higher grades this is notoriously uncommon, and

in great cities dangerous. Besides, the candidate may happen to

be a delicate girl, incapable of the hard labor incident to such

a lower establishment. Here, then, is a case where conscience says

into your left ear--_Fiat justitia, ruat caelum_--'Do your

duty without looking to consequences.' Meantime, into the right

ear conscience says, 'But mark, in that case possibly you consign

this poor girl to prostitution.' Lord Nelson, as is well known,

was once placed in a dilemma equally trying;[Footnote: On the first

expedition against Copenhagen, (in 1801.) He was unfortunately

second in command; his principal, a brave man in person, wanted

moral courage--he could not face responsibility in a trying shape.

And had he not been blessed with a disobedient second in command,

he must have returned home _re infecta_.] on one side, an

iron tongue sang out from the commander-in-chief--_retreat_;

on the other, his own oracular heart sang to him--_advance_.

How he decided is well known; and the words in which he proclaimed

his decision ought to be emblazoned for ever as the noblest of all

recorded repartees. Waiving his hand towards the Admiral's ship,

he said to his own officers, who reported the signal of recall--'You

may see it; I cannot; you know I am blind on that side.' Oh,

venerable blindness! immortal blindness! None so deaf as those who

will not hear; none so gloriously blind as those who will not see

any danger or difficulty--who have a dark eye on that side, whilst

they reserve another blazing like a meteor for honor and their

country's interest. Most of us, we presume, in the case stated

about the servant, hear but the whispering voice of conscience as

regards the truth, and her thundering voice as regards the poor girl's

interest. In doing this, however, we (and doubtless others) usually

attempt to compromise the opposite suggestions of conscience by

some such jesuitical device as this. We dwell pointedly upon those

good qualities which the servant really possesses, and evade speaking

of any others. But how, if minute, searching and circumstantial

inquiries are made by way of letter? In that case, we affect to

have noticed only such as we can answer with success, passing the

dangerous ones as so many rocks, _sub silentio_. All this

is not quite right, you think, reader. Why, no; so think we; but

what alternative is allowed? 'Say, ye severest, what would ye have

done?' In very truth, this is a dilemma for which Casuistry is not

a match; unless, indeed, Casuistry as armed and equipped in the

school of Ignatius Loyola. But that is with us reputed a piratical

Casuistry. The whole estate of a servant lies in his capacity of

serving; and often if you tell the truth, by one word you ruin this

estate for ever. Meantime, a case very much of the same quality,

and of even greater difficulty, is

CASE IV.

CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF FRAUDULENT SERVANTS.

Any reader, who is not deeply read in the economy of English life,

will have a most inadequate notion of the vast extent to which this

case occurs. We are well assured, (for our information comes from

quarters _judicially_ conversant with the question,) that in

no other channel of human life does there flow one-hundredth part

of the forbearance and the lenity which are called into action by

the relation between injured masters and their servants. We are

informed that, were every third charge pursued effectually, half

the courts in Europe would not suffice for the cases of criminality

which emerge in London alone under this head. All England would, in

the course of five revolving years, have passed under the torture

of _subpoena_, as witnesses for the prosecution or the defence.

This multiplication of cases arises from the coincidence of hourly

opportunity with hourly temptation, both carried to the extreme

verge of possibility, and generally falling in with youth in the

offenders. These aggravations of the danger are three several

palliations of the crime, and they have weight allowed to them by

the indulgent feelings of masters in a corresponding degree; not

one case out of six score that are discovered (while, perhaps,

another six score go undiscovered) being ever prosecuted with rigor

and effect.

In this universal laxity of temper lies an injury too serious to

public morals; and the crime reproduces itself abundantly under an

indulgence so Christian in its motive, but unfortunately operating

with the full effect of genial culture. Masters, who have

made themselves notorious by indiscriminate forgiveness, might be

represented symbolically as gardeners watering and tending luxuriant

crops of crime in hot-beds or forcing-houses. In London, many are

the tradesmen, who, being reflective as well as benevolent, perceive

that something is amiss in the whole system. In part the law has

been to blame, stimulating false mercy by punishment disproportioned

to the offence. But many a judicious master has seen cause to

suspect his own lenity as more mischievously operative even than

the law's hardness, and as an effeminate surrender to luxurious

sensibilities. Those have not been the severest masters whose names

are attached to fatal prosecutions: on the contrary, three out of

four have been persons who looked forward to general consequences--having,

therefore, been more than usually thoughtful, were, for that reason,

likely to be more than usually humane. They did not suffer the less

acutely, because their feelings ran counter to the course of what

they believed to be their duty. Prosecutors often sleep with less

tranquillity during the progress of a judicial proceeding than the

objects of the prosecution. An English judge of the last century,

celebrated for his uprightness, used to balance against that

pity so much vaunted for the criminal, the duty of 'a pity to the

country.' But private prosecutors of their own servants, often feel

both modes of pity at the same moment.

For this difficulty a book of Casuistry might suggest a variety

of resources, not so much adapted to a case of that nature already

existing, as to the prevention of future cases. Every mode of trust

or delegated duty would suggest its own separate improvements;

but all improvements must fall under two genuine heads--first, the

diminution of temptation, either by abridging the amount of trust

reposed; or, where that is difficult, by shortening its duration,

and multiplying the counterchecks: secondly, by the moderation

of the punishment in the event of detection, as the sole means of

reconciling the public conscience to the law, and diminishing the

chances of impunity. There is a memorable proof of the rash extent

to which the London tradesmen, at one time, carried their confidence

in servants. So many clerks, or apprentices, were allowed to hold

large balances of money in their hands through the intervals of their

periodical settlings, that during the Parliamentary war multitudes

were tempted, by that single cause, into absconding. They had

always a refuge in the camps. And the loss sustained in this way

was so heavy, when all payments were made in gold, that to this

one evil suddenly assuming a shape of excess, is ascribed, by some

writers, the first establishment of goldsmiths as bankers.[Footnote:

Goldsmiths certainly acted in that capacity from an earlier period.

But from this era, until the formation of the Bank of England in

1696, they entered more fully upon the functions of bankers, issuing

notes which passed current in London.]

Two other weighty considerations attach to this head--1. The known

fact that large breaches of trust, and embezzlements, are greatly

on the increase, and have been since the memorable case of Mr.

Fauntleroy. America is, and will be for ages, a city of refuge for

this form of guilt. 2. That the great training of the conscience

in all which regards pecuniary justice and fidelity to engagements,

lies through the discipline and _tyrocinium_ of the humbler

ministerial offices--those of clerks, book-keepers, apprentices.

The law acts through these offices, for the unconfirmed conscience,

as leading-strings to an infant in its earliest efforts at walking.

It forces to go right, until the choice may be supposed trained and

fully developed. That is the great function of the law; a function

which it will perform with more or less success, as it is more or

less fitted to win the cordial support of masters.

CASE V.

VERACITY.

Here is a special 'title,' (to speak with the civil lawyers,)

under that general claim put in for England with respect to a moral

pre-eminence amongst the nations. Many are they who, in regions

widely apart, have noticed with honor the English superiority

in the article of veneration for truth. Not many years ago, two

Englishmen, on their road overland to India, fell in with a royal

_cortege_, and soon after with the prime minister and the crown

prince of Persia. The prince honored them with an interview; both

parties being on horseback, and the conversation therefore reduced

to the points of nearest interest. Amongst these was the English

character. Upon this the prince's remark was--that what had most

impressed him with respect for England and her institutions was,

the remarkable spirit of truth-speaking which distinguished her

sons; as supposing her institutions to grow out of her sons, and

her sons out of her institutions. And indeed well he might have

this feeling by comparison with his own countrymen: Persians have

no _principles_ apparently on this point--all is impulse and

accident of feeling. Thus the journal of the two Persian princes

in London, as lately reported in the newspapers, is one tissue of

falsehoods: not, most undoubtedly, from any purpose of deceiving,

but from the overmastering habit (cherished by their whole training

and experience) of repeating everything in a spirit of amplification,

with a view to the _wonder_ only of the hearer. The Persians

are notoriously the Frenchmen of the East; the same gaiety, the same

levity, the same want of depth both as to feeling and principle.

The Turks are much nearer to the English: the same gravity

of temperament, the same meditativeness, the same sternness of

principle. Of all European nations, the French is that which least

regards truth. The whole spirit of their private memoirs and their

anecdotes illustrates this. To point an anecdote or a repartee, there

is no extravagance of falsehood that the French will not endure. What

nation but the French would have tolerated that monstrous fiction

about La Fontaine, by way of illustrating his supposed absence of

mind--viz. that, on meeting his own son in a friend's house, he

expressed his admiration of the young man, and begged to know his

name. The fact probably may have been that La Fontaine was not

liable to any absence at all: apparently this 'distraction' was

assumed as a means of making a poor sort of sport for his friends.

Like many another man in such circumstances, he saw and entered

into the fun which his own imaginary forgetfulness produced. But

were it otherwise, who can believe so outrageous a self-forgetfulness

as that which would darken his eyes to the very pictures of his

own hearth? Were such a thing possible, were it even real, it would

still be liable to the just objection of the critics--that, being

marvelous in appearance, even as a fact it ought not to be brought

forward for any purpose of wit, but only as a truth of physiology,

or as a fact in the records of a surgeon. The _'incredulus odi'_

is too strong in such cases, and it adheres to three out of every

four French anecdotes. The French taste is, indeed, anything but

good in all that department of wit and humor. And the ground lies in

their national want of veracity. To return to England--and having

cited an Oriental witness to the English character on this point, let

us now cite a most observing one in the West. Kant, in Konigsberg,

was surrounded by Englishmen and by foreigners of all nations--foreign

and English students, foreign and English merchants; and he pronounced

the main characteristic feature of the English as a nation to lie

in their severe reverence for truth. This from him was no slight

praise; for such was the stress he laid upon veracity, that upon

this one quality he planted the whole edifice of moral excellence.

General integrity could not exist, he held, without veracity as its

basis; nor that basis exist without superinducing general integrity.

This opinion, perhaps, many beside Kant will see cause to approve.

For ourselves we can truly say--never did we know a human being,

boy or girl, who began life as an habitual undervaluer of truth,

that did not afterwards exhibit a character conformable to that

beginning--such a character as, however superficially correct

under the steadying hand of self-interest, was not in a lower key

of moral feeling as well as of principle.

But out of this honorable regard to veracity in Immanuel Kant,

branched out a principle in Casuistry which most people will

pronounce monstrous. It has occasioned much disputing backwards

and forwards. But as a practical principle of conduct, (for which

Kant meant it,) inevitably it must be rejected--if for no other

reason because it is at open war with the laws and jurisprudence of

all Christian Europe. Kant's doctrine was this; and the illustrative

case in which it is involved, let it be remembered, is his own:--So

sacred a thing, said he, is truth--that if a murderer, pursuing

another with an avowed purpose of killing him, were to ask of a

third person by what road the fleeing party had fled, that person

is bound to give him true information. And you are at liberty

to suppose this third person a wife, a daughter, or under any

conceivable obligations of love and duty to the fugitive. Now this

is monstrous: and Kant himself, with all his parental fondness for

the doctrine, would certainly have been recalled to sounder thoughts

by these two considerations--

1_st_. That by all the codes of law received throughout Europe,

he who acted upon Kant's principle would be held a _particeps

criminis_--an accomplice before the fact.

2_d_. That, in reality, a just principle is lurking under

Kant's error; but a principle translated from its proper ground.

Not truth, individual or personal--not truth of mere facts, but

truth doctrinal--the truth which teaches, the truth which changes

men and nations--this is the truth concerned in Kant's meaning,

had he explained his own meaning to himself more distinctly.

With respect to that truth, wheresoever it lies, Kant's doctrine

applies--that all men have a right to it; that perhaps you have no

right to suppose of any race or nation that it is not prepared to

receive it; and, at any rate, that no circumstances of expedience

can justify you in keeping it back.

CASE VI.

THE CASE OF CHARLES I.

Many cases arise from the life and political difficulties of

Charles I. But there is one so peculiarly pertinent to an essay

which entertains the general question of Casuistry--its legitimacy,

its value--that with this, although not properly a domestic case,

or only such in a mixed sense, we shall conclude.

No person has been so much attacked for his scruples of conscience

as this prince; and what seems odd enough, no person has been so much

attacked for resorting to books of Casuistry, and for encouraging

literary men to write books of Casuistry. Under his suggestion and

sanction, Saunderson wrote his book on the obligation of an oath,

(for which there was surely reason enough in days when the democratic

tribunals were forcing men to swear to an _et caetera_;) and,

by an impulse originally derived from him, Jeremy Taylor wrote

afterwards his _Ductor Dubitantium_, Bishop Barlow wrote his

_Cases of Conscience_, &c. &c.

For this dedication of his studies, Charles has been plentifully

blamed in after times. He was seeking evasions for plain duties,

say his enemies. He was arming himself for intrigue in the school

of Machiavel. But now turn to his history, and ask in what way any

man could have extricated himself from that labyrinth which invested

his path _but_ by Casuistry. Cases the most difficult are

offered for his decision: peace for a distracted nation in 1647,

on terms which seemed fatal to the monarchy; peace for the same

nation under the prospect of war rising up again during the Isle

of Wight treaty in 1648, but also under the certainty of destroying

the Church of England. On the one side, by refusing, he seemed to

disown his duties as the father of his people. On the other side,

by yielding, he seemed to forget his coronation oath, and the ultimate

interests of his people--to merge the future and the reversionary

in the present and the fugitive. It was not within the possibilities

that he could so act as not to offend one half of the nation. His

dire calamity it was, that he must be hated, act how he would, and

must be condemned by posterity. Did his enemies allow for the

misery of this internal conflict? Milton, who never appears to

more disadvantage than when he comes forward against his sovereign,

is indignant that Charles should have a conscience, or plead a

conscience, in a public matter. Henderson, the celebrated Scotch

theologian, came post from Edinburgh to London (whence he went to

Newcastle) expressly to combat the king's scruples. And he also

(in his private letters) seems equally enraged as Milton, that

Charles should pretend to any private conscience in a state question.

Now let us ask--what was it that originally drove Charles to books

of Casuistry? It was the deep shock which he received, both in his

affections and his conscience, from the death of Lord Strafford.

Every body had then told him, even those who felt how much the law

must be outraged to obtain a conviction of Lord Strafford, how many

principles of justice must be shaken, and how sadly the royal word

must suffer in its sanctity,--yet all had told him that it was

expedient to sacrifice that nobleman. One man ought not to stand

between the king and his alienated people. It was good for the common

welfare that Lord Strafford should die. Charles was unconvinced.

He was sure of the injustice; and perhaps he doubted even of the

expedience. But his very virtues were armed against his peace. In

all parts of his life self-distrust and diffidence had marked his

character. What was he, a single person, to resist so many wise

counsellors, and what in a representative sense was the nation ranged

on the other side? He yielded: and it is not too much to say that

he never had a happy day afterwards. The stirring period of his

life succeeded--the period of war, camps, treaties. Much time was

not allowed him for meditation. But there is abundant proof that

such time as he had, always pointed his thoughts backwards to the

afflicting case of Lord Stratford. This he often spoke of as the

great blot--the ineffaceable transgression of his life. For this

he mourned in penitential words yet on record. To this he traced

back the calamity of his latter life. Lord Stratford's memorable

words--'Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of princes,'--rang

for ever in his ear. Lord Stafford's blood lay like a curse upon

his throne.

Now, by what a pointed answer, drawn from this one case, might

Charles have replied to the enemies we have noticed--to those,

like so many historians since his day, who taxed him with studying

Casuistry for the purposes of intrigue--to those, like Milton and

Henderson, who taxed him with exercising his private conscience on

public questions.

'I had studied no books of Casuistry,' he might have replied, 'when

I made the sole capital blunder in a case of conscience, which the

review of my life can show.

'I did not insist on my private conscience; woe is me that I did

not: I yielded to what was called the public conscience in that

one case which has proved the affliction of my life, and which,

perhaps, it was that wrecked the national peace.'

A more plenary answer there cannot be to those who suppose that

Casuistry is evaded by evading books of Casuistry. That dread forum

of conscience will for ever exist as a tribunal of difficulty. The

discussion must proceed on some principle or other, good or bad;

and the only way for obtaining light is by clearing up the grounds

of action, and applying the principles of moral judgment to such

facts or circumstances as most frequently arise to perplex the

understanding, or the affections, or the conscience.

GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.[Footnote: By George Finlae]

[1844.]

What is called _Philosophical History_ we believe to be yet

in its infancy. It is the profound remark of Mr. Finlay--profound

as we ourselves understand it, _i. e.,_ in relation to this

philosophical treatment, 'That history will ever remain inexhaustible.'

How inexhaustible? Are the _facts_ of history inexhaustible?

In regard to the _ancient_ division of history with which he

is there dealing, this would be in no sense true; and in any case

it would be a lifeless truth. So entirely have the mere facts of

Pagan history been disinterred, ransacked, sifted, that except by

means of some chance medal that may be unearthed in the illiterate

East (as of late towards Bokhara), or by means of some mysterious

inscription, such as those which still mock the learned traveller

in Persia, northwards near Hamadan (Ecbatana), and southwards at

Persepolis, or those which distract him amongst the shadowy ruins

of Yucatan (Uxmal, suppose, and Palenque),--once for all, barring

these pure godsends, it is hardly 'in the dice' that any downright

novelty of fact should remain in reversion for this nineteenth

century. The merest possibility exists, that in Armenia, or in a

Graeco-Russian monastery on Mount Athos, or in Pompeii, &c., some

authors hitherto αιεχδοτοι may yet be concealed; and by

a channel in that degree improbable, it is possible that certain

new facts of history may still reach us. But else, and failing these

cryptical or subterraneous currents of communication, for us the

record is closed. History in that sense has come to an end, and

sealed up as by the angel in the Apocalypse. What then? The facts

_so_ understood are but the dry bones of the mighty past. And

the question arises here also, not less than in that sublimest of

prophetic visions, 'Can these dry bones live?'. Not only can they

live, but by an infinite variety of life. The same historic facts,

viewed in different lights, or brought into connection with other

facts, according to endless diversities of permutation and combination,

furnish grounds for such eternal successions of new speculations

as make the facts themselves virtually new. The same Hebrew words

are read by different sets of vowel points, and the same hieroglyphics

are deciphered by keys everlastingly varied.

To us we repeat that oftentimes it seems as though the _science_

of history were yet scarcely founded. There will be such a science,

if at present there is not; and in one feature of its capacities

it will resemble chemistry. What is so familiar to the perceptions

of man as the common chemical agents of water, air, and the soil

on which we tread? Yet each one of these elements is a mystery to

this day; handled, used, tried, searched experimentally, in ten

thousand ways--it is still unknown; fathomed by recent science down

to a certain depth, it is still probably by its destiny unfathomable.

Even to the end of days, it is pretty certain that the minutest

particle of earth--that a dew-drop scarcely distinguishable as

a separate object--that the slenderest filament of a plant will

include within itself secrets inaccessible to man. And yet, compared

with the mystery of man himself, these physical worlds of mystery

are but as a radix of infinity. Chemistry is in this view mysterious

and spinosistically sublime--that it is the science of the latent

in all things, of all things as lurking in all. Within the lifeless

flint, within the silent pyrites, slumbers an agony of potential

combustion. Iron is imprisoned in blood. With cold water (as

every child is now-a-days aware) you may lash a fluid into angry

ebullitions of heat; with hot water, as with the rod of Amram's

son, you may freeze a fluid down to the temperature of the Sarsar

wind, provided only that you regulate the pressure of the air. The

sultry and dissolving fluid shall bake into a solid, the petrific

fluid shall melt into a liquid. Heat shall freeze, frost shall thaw;

and wherefore? Simply because old things are brought together in

new modes of combination. And in endless instances beside we see the

same Panlike latency of forms and powers, which gives to the external

world a capacity of self-transformation, and of _polymorphosis_

absolutely inexhaustible.

But the same capacity belongs to the facts of history. And we

do not mean merely that, from subjective differences in the minds

reviewing them, such facts assume endless varieties of interpretation

and estimate, but that objectively, from lights still increasing

in the science of government and of social philosophy, all the

primary facts of history become liable continually to new theories,

to new combinations, and to new valuations of their moral relations.

We have seen some kinds of marble, where the veinings happened to

be unusually multiplied, in which human faces, figures, processions,

or fragments of natural scenery seemed absolutely illimitable,

under the endless variations or inversions of the order, according

to which they might be combined and grouped. Something analogous

takes effect in reviewing the remote parts of history. Rome, for

instance, has been the object of historic pens for twenty centuries

(dating from Polybius); and yet hardly so much as twenty years have

elapsed since Niebuhr opened upon us almost a new revelation, by

re-combining the same eternal facts, according to a different set

of principles. The same thing may be said, though not with the

same degree of emphasis, upon the Grecian researches of the late

Ottfried Mueller. Egyptian history again, even at this moment,

is seen stealing upon us through the dusky twilight in its first

distinct lineaments. Before Young, Champollion, and the others

who have followed on their traces in this field of history, all

was outer darkness; and whatsoever we _do_ know or _shall_

know of Egyptian Thebes will now be recovered as if from the

unswathing of a mummy. Not until a flight of three thousand years

has left Thebes the Hekatompylos a dusky speck in the far distance,

have we even _begun_ to read her annals, or to understand her

revolutions.

Another instance we have now before us of this new historic faculty

for resuscitating the buried, and for calling back the breath to

the frozen features of death, in Mr. Finlay's work upon the Greeks

as related to the Roman empire. He presents us with old facts, but

under the purpose of clothing them with a new life. He rehearses

ancient stories, not with the humble ambition of better adorning

them, of more perspicuously narrating, or even of more forcibly

pointing their moral, but of extracting from them some new meaning,

and thus forcing them to arrange themselves, under some latent

connection, with other phenomena now first detected, as illustrations

of some great principle or agency now first revealing its importance.

Mr. Finlay's style of intellect is appropriate to such a task; for

it is subtle and Machiavellian. But there is this difficulty in

doing justice to the novelty, and at times we may say with truth

to the profundity of his views, that they are by necessity thrown

out in continued successions of details, are insulated, and, in

one word, _sporadic_. This follows from the very nature of his

work; for it is a perpetual commentary on the incidents of Grecian

history, from the era of the Roman conquest to the commencement of

what Mr. Finlay, in a peculiar sense, calls the Byzantine empire.

These incidents have nowhere been systematically or continuously

recorded; they come forward by casual flashes in the annals, perhaps,

of some church historian, as they happen to connect themselves with

his momentary theme; or they betray themselves in the embarrassments

of the central government, whether at Rome or at Constantinople,

when arguing at one time a pestilence, at another an insurrection,

or an inroad of barbarians. It is not the fault of Mr. Finlay, but

his great disadvantage, that the affairs of Greece have been thus

discontinuously exhibited, and that its internal changes of condition

have been never treated except obliquely, and by men _aliud

agentibus_. The Grecian _race_ had a primary importance on

our planet; but the Grecian name, represented by Greece considered

as a territory, or as the original seat of the Hellenic people,

ceased to have much importance, in the eyes of historians, from

the time when it became a conquered province; and it declined

into absolute insignificance after the conquest of so many other

provinces had degraded Hellas into an arithmetical unit, standing

amongst a total amount of figures, so vast and so much more

dazzling to the ordinary mind. Hence it was that in ancient times

no complete history of Greece, through all her phases and stages,

was ever attempted. The greatness of her later revolutions, simply

as changes, would have attracted the historian; but, as changes

associated with calamity and loss of power, they repelled his

curiosity, and alienated his interest. It is the very necessity,

therefore, of Mr. Finlay's position, when coming into such an

inheritance, that he must splinter his philosophy into separate

individual notices; for the records of history furnish no grounds

for more. _Spartam, quam nactus est, ornavit_. But this does

not remedy the difficulty for ourselves, in attempting to give a

representative view of his philosophy. General abstractions he had

no opportunity for presenting; consequently we have no opportunity

for valuing; and, on the other hand, single cases selected from a

succession of hundreds would not justify any _representative_

criticism, more than the single brick, in the anecdote of Hierocles,

would serve representatively to describe or to appraise the house.

Under this difficulty as to the possible for ourselves, and the

just for Mr. Finlay, we shall adopt the following course. So far as

the Greek people collected themselves in any splendid manner with

the Roman empire, they did so with the eastern horn of that empire,

and in point of time from the foundation of Constantinople as an

eastern Rome, in the fourth century, to a period not fully agreed

on; but for the moment we will say with Mr. Finlay, up to the early

part of the eighth century. A reason given by Mr. Finlay for this

latter date is--that about that time the Grecian blood, so widely

diffused in Asia, and even in Africa, became finally detached by

the progress of Mahometanism and Mahometan systems of power from

all further concurrence or coalition with the views of the Byzantine

Caesar. Constantinople was from that date thrown back more upon its

own peculiar heritage and jurisdiction, of which the main resources

for war and peace lay in Europe and (speaking by the narrowest

terms) in Thrace. Henceforth, therefore, for the city and throne

of Constantine, resuming its old Grecian name of Byzantium, there

succeeded a theatre less diffusive, a population more concentrated,

a character of action more determinate and jealous, a style of

courtly ceremonial more elaborate as well as more haughtily repulsive,

and universally a system of interests, as much more definite and

selfish, as might naturally be looked for in a nation now everywhere

surrounded by new thrones gloomy with malice, and swelling with the

consciousness of youthful power. This new and final state of the

eastern Rome Mr. Finlay denominates the Byzantine empire. Possibly

this use of the term may be capable of justification: but more

questions would arise in the discussion than Mr. Finlay has thought

it of importance to notice. And for the present we shall take the

word _Byzantine_ in its most ordinary acceptation, as denoting

the local empire founded by Constantine in Byzantium early in the

fourth century, under the idea of a translation from the old western

Rome, and overthrown by the Ottoman Turks in the year 1453. In

the fortunes and main stages of this empire, what are the chief

arresting phenomena, aspects, or relations, to the greatest of

modern interests? We select by preference these:

I. _First_, this was the earliest among the kingdoms of our

planet _which connected itself with Christianity_. In Armenia,

there had been a previous _state_ recognition of Christianity.

But _that_ was neither splendid nor distinct. Whereas the

Byzantine Rome built avowedly upon Christianity as its own basis,

and consecrated its own nativity by the sublime act of founding the

first provision ever attempted for the poor, considered simply as

poor (_i.e._ as objects of pity, not as instruments of ambition).

II. _Secondly, as the great aegis of western Christendom_,

nay, the barrier which made it possible that any Christendom should

ever exist, this Byzantine empire is entitled to a very different

station in the enlightened gratitude of us Western Europeans from

any which it has yet held. We do not scruple to say--that, by

comparison with the services of the Byzantine people to Europe, no

nation on record has ever stood in the same relation to any other

single nation, much less to a whole family of nations, whether as

regards the opportunity and means of conferring benefits, or as

regards the astonishing perseverance in supporting the succession

of these benefits, or as regards the ultimate event of these

benefits. A great wrong has been done for ages; for we have all been

accustomed to speak of the Byzantine empire with scorn, [Footnote:

_'With scorn.'_--This has arisen from two causes: one is the

habit of regarding the whole Roman empire as in its 'decline' from

so early a period as that of Commodus; agreeably to which conceit,

it would naturally follow that, during its latter stages, the

Eastern empire must have been absolutely in its dotage. If already

declining in the second century, then, from the tenth to the

fifteenth, it must have been paralytic and bed-ridden The other

cause may be found in the accidental but reasonable hostility

of the Byzantine court to the first Crusaders, as also in the

disadvantageous comparison with respect to manly virtues between the

simplicity of these western children, and the refined dissimulation

of the Byzantines.] as chiefly known by its effeminacy; and the

greater is the call for a fervent palinode.

III. _Thirdly._ In a reflex way, as the one great danger

which overshadowed Europe for generations, and against which the

Byzantine empire proved the capital bulwark, Mahometanism may rank

as one of the Byzantine aspects or counterforces. And if there is

any popular error applying to the history of that great convulsion,

as a political effort for revolutionizing the world, some notice

of it will find a natural place in connection with these present

trains of speculation.

Let us, therefore, have permission to throw together a few remarks

on these three subjects--1st, on the remarkable distinction by

which the eldest of Christian rulers proclaimed and inaugurated

the Christian basis of his empire; 2dly, on the true but forgotten

relation of this great empire to our modern Christendom, under

which idea we comprehend Europe and the whole continent of America;

3dly, on the false pretensions of Mahometanism, whether advanced

by itself or by inconsiderate Christian speculators on its behalf.

We shall thus obtain this advantage, that some sort of unity will

be given to our own glances at Mr. Finlay's theme; and, at the same

time, by gathering under these general heads any dispersed comments

of Mr. Finlay, whether for confirmation of our own views, or for

any purpose of objection to his, we shall give to those comments

also that kind of unity, by means of a reference to a common purpose,

which we could not have given them by citing each independently

for itself.

I. First, then, as to that memorable act by which Constantinople

(_i. e._ the Eastern empire) connected herself for ever with

Christianity; viz. the recognition of pauperism as an element in the

state entitled to the maternal guardianship of the state. In this

new principle, introduced by Christianity, we behold a far-seeing

or proleptic wisdom, making provision for evils before they had

arisen; for it is certain that great expansions of pauperism did

not exist in the ancient world. A pauper population is a disease

peculiar to the modern or Christian world. Various causes latent

in the social systems of the ancients prevented such developments

of surplus people. But does not this argue a superiority in the social

arrangements of these ancients? Not at all; they were atrociously

worse. They evaded this one morbid affection by means of others

far more injurious to the moral advance of man. The case was then

everywhere as at this day it is in Persia. A Persian ambassador

to London or Paris might boast that, in his native Iran, no such

spectacles existed of hunger-bitten myriads as may be seen everywhere

during seasons of distress in the crowded cities of Christian

Europe. 'No,' would be the answer, 'most certainly not; but why?

The reason is, that your accursed form of society and government

_intercepts_ such surplus people, does not suffer them to

be born. What is the result? You ought, in Persia, to have three

hundred millions of people; your vast territory is easily capacious

of that number. You _have_--how many have you? Something

less than eight millions.' Think of this, startled reader. But, if

_that_ be a good state of things, then any barbarous soldier

who makes a wilderness, is entitled to call himself a great philosopher

and public benefactor. This is to cure the headache by amputating

the head. Now, the same principle of limitation to population

_a parte ante_, though not in the same savage excess as in

Mahometan Persia, operated upon Greece and Rome. The whole Pagan

world escaped the evils of redundant population by vicious repressions

of it beforehand. But under Christianity a new state of things

was destined to take effect. Many protections and excitements to

population were laid in the framework of this new religion, which,

by its new code of rules and impulses, in so many ways extended the

free-agency of human beings. Manufacturing industry was destined

first to arise on any great scale under Christianity. Except in Tyre

and Alexandria (see the Emperor Hadrian's account of this last),

there was no town or district in the ancient world where the

populace could be said properly to work. The rural laborers worked

a little--not much;--and sailors worked a little;--nobody else worked

at all. Even slaves had little more work distributed amongst each

ten than now settles upon one. And in many other ways, by protecting

the principle of life, as a mysterious sanctity, Christianity has

favored the development of an excessive population. There it is

that Christianity, being answerable for the mischief, is answerable

for its redress. Therefore it is that, breeding the disease,

Christianity breeds the cure. Extending the vast lines of poverty,

Christianity it was that first laid down the principle of a relief

for poverty. Constantine, the first Christian potentate, laid the

first stone of the mighty overshadowing institution since reared

in Christian lands to poverty, disease, orphanage, and mutilation.

Christian instincts, moving and speaking through that Caesar,

first carried out that great idea of Christianity. Six years was

Christianity in building Constantinople, and in the seventh she

rested from her labors, saying, 'Henceforward let the poor man

have a haven of rest for ever; a rest from his work for one day

in seven; a rest from his anxieties by a legal and fixed relief.'

Being legal, it could not be open to disturbances of caprice in the

giver; being fixed, it was not open to disturbances of miscalculation

in the receiver. Now, first, when first Christianity was installed

as a public organ of government (and first owned a distinct political

responsibility), did it become the duty of a religion which assumed,

as it were, the _official_ tutelage of poverty, to proclaim

and consecrate that function by some great memorial precedent. And,

accordingly, in testimony of that obligation, the first Christian

Caesar, on behalf of Christianity, founded the first system of

relief for pauperism. It is true, that largesses from the public

treasury, gratuitous coin, or corn sold at diminished rates, not

to mention the _sportulae_ or stated doles of private Roman

nobles, had been distributed amongst the indigent citizens of Western

Rome for centuries before Constantine; but all these had been the

selfish bounties of factious ambition or intrigue.

To Christianity was reserved the inaugural act of public charity

in the spirit of charity. We must remember that no charitable

or beneficent institutions of any kind, grounded on disinterested

kindness, existed amongst the Pagan Romans, and still less amongst

the Pagan Greeks. Mr. Coleridge, in one of his lay sermons, advanced

the novel doctrine--that in the Scripture is contained all genuine

and profound statesmanship. Of course he must be understood to

mean--in its capital principles; for, as to subordinate and executive

rules for applying such principles, these, doubtless, are in part

suggested by the local circumstances in each separate case. Now,

amongst the political theories of the Bible is this--that pauperism

is not an accident in the constitution of states, but an indefeasible

necessity; or, in the scriptural words, that 'the poor shall

never cease out of the land.' This theory or great canon of social

philosophy, during many centuries, drew no especial attention from

philosophers. It passed for a truism, bearing no particular emphasis

or meaning beyond some general purpose of sanction to the impulses

of charity. But there is good reason to believe, that it slumbered,

and was meant to slumber, until Christianity arising and moving

forwards should call it into a new life, as a principle suited to

a new order of things. Accordingly, we have seen of late that this

scriptural dictum--'The poor shall never cease out of the land'--has

terminated its career as a truism (that is, as a truth, either obvious

on one hand, or inert on the other), and has wakened into a polemic

or controversial life. People arose who took upon them utterly to

deny this scriptural doctrine. Peremptorily they challenged the

assertion that poverty must always exist. The Bible said that it

was an affection of human society which could not be exterminated;

the economist of 1800 said that it was a foul disease, which must

and should be exterminated. The scriptural philosophy said, that

pauperism was inalienable from man's social condition in the same

way that decay was inalienable from his flesh. 'I shall soon see

_that_,' said the economist of 1800, 'for as sure as my name

is M----, I will have this poverty put down by law within one

generation, if there's a law to be had in the courts of Westminster.'

The Scriptures have left word--that, if any man should come to the

national banquet declaring himself unable to pay his contribution,

that man should be accounted the guest of Christianity, and should

be privileged to sit at the table in thankful remembrance of what

Christianity had done for man. But Mr. M---- left word with all

the servants, that, if any man should present himself under those

circumstances, he was to be told, 'the table is full'--(_his_

words, not ours); 'go away, good man.' Go away! Mr, M----? Where

was he to go to? Whither? In what direction?--'Why, if you come to

_that_,' said the man of 1800, 'to any ditch that he prefers:

surely there's good choice of ditches for the most fastidious taste.'

During twenty years, viz. from 1800 to 1820, this new philosophy,

which substituted a ditch for a dinner, and a paving-stone for a

loaf, prevailed and prospered. At one time it seemed likely enough

to prove a snare to our own aristocracy--the noblest of all ages.

But that peril was averted, and the further history of the case

was this: By the year 1820, much discussion having passed to and

fro, serious doubts had arisen in many quarters; scepticism had

begun to arm itself against the sceptic; the economist of 1800 was

no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being

fallible; and what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself

to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly

to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion to mention

immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that, in a dispute

loaded with such prodigious practical consequences, good sense

and prudence demanded a more extended inquiry than had yet been

instituted. Whether poverty would ever cease from the land, might

be doubted by those who balanced their faith in Scripture against

their faith in the man of 1800. But this at least could not be

doubted--that as yet poverty _had_ not ceased, nor indeed had

made any sensible preparations for ceasing from any land in Europe. It

was a clear case, therefore, that, howsoever Europe might please

to dream upon the matter when pauperism should have reached

that glorious euthanasy predicted by the alchemist of old and the

economist of 1800, for the present she must deal actively with her

own pauperism on some avowed plan and principle, good or evil--gentle

or harsh. Accordingly, in the train of years between 1820 and

1830, inquiries were made of every separate state in Europe, what

_were_ those plans and principles. For it was justly said--'As

one step towards judging rightly of our own system, now that it

has been so clamorously challenged for a bad system, let us learn

what it is that other nations think upon the subject, but above all

what it is that they _do_.' The answers to our many inquiries

varied considerably; and some amongst the most enlightened nations

appear to have adopted the good old plan of _laissez faire_,

giving nothing from any public fund to the pauper, but authorizing

him to levy contributions on that gracious allegoric lady, Private

Charity, wherever he could meet her taking the air with her babes.

This reference appeared to be the main one in reply to any application

of the pauper; and for all the rest they referred him generally to

the 'ditch,' or to his own unlimited choice of ditches, according

to the approved method of public benevolence published in 4to and

in 8vo by the man of 1800. But there were other and humbler states

in Europe, whose very pettiness has brought more fully within their

vision the whole machinery and watchwork of pauperism, as it acted

and reacted on the industrious poverty of the land, and on other

interests, by means of the system adopted in relieving it. From

these states came many interesting reports, all tending to some

good purpose. But at last, and before the year 1830, amongst other

results of more or less value, three capital points were established,

not more decisive for the justification of the English system of

administering national relief to paupers, and of all systems that

reverenced the authority of Scripture, than they were for the

overthrow of Mr. M----, the man of 1800. These three points are

worthy of being used as buoys in mapping out the true channels, or

indicating the breakers on this difficult line of navigation; and

we now rehearse them. They may seem plain almost to obviousness;

but it is enough that they involve all the disputed questions of

the case.

_First_. That, in spite of the assurances from economists, no

progress whatever had been made by England or by any state which

lent any sanction to the hope of ever eradicating poverty from

society.

_Secondly_. That, in absolute contradiction of the whole

hypothesis relied on by M--- and his brethren, in its most fundamental

doctrine, a legal provision for poverty did not act as a bounty on

marriage. The experience of England, where the trial had been made

on the largest scale, was decisive on this point; and the opposite

experience of Ireland, under the opposite circumstances, was equally

decisive. And this result had made itself so clear by 1820, that

even M--- (as we have already noticed by anticipation) was compelled

to publish a recantation as to this particular error, which in

effect was a recantation of his entire theory.

_Thirdly_. That, according to the concurring experience of

all the most enlightened states of Christendom, the public suffered

least (not merely in molestation but in money), pauperism benefited

most, and the growth of pauperism was retarded most, precisely as

the provision for the poor had been legalized as to its obligation,

and fixed as to its amount. Left to individual discretion, the

burden was found to press most unequally; and, on the other hand,

the evil itself of pauperism, whilst much less effectually relieved,

nevertheless through the irregular action of this relief was much

more powerfully stimulated.

Such is the abstract of our latest public warfare on this great

question through a period of nearly fifty years. And the issue is

this--starting from the contemptuous defiance of the scriptural

doctrine upon the necessity of making provision for poverty as an

indispensable element in civil communities, the economy of the age

has lowered its tone by graduated descents, in each one successively

of the four last _decennia_. The philosophy of the day as to

this point at least is at length in coincidence with Scripture. And

thus the very extensive researches of this nineteenth century, as

to pauperism, have re-acted with the effect of a full justification

upon Constantine's attempt to connect the foundation of his empire

with that new theory of Christianity upon the imperishableness of

poverty, and upon the duties corresponding to it.

Meantime, Mr. Finlay denies that Christianity had been raised by

Constantine into the religion of the state; and others have denied

that, in the extensive money privileges conceded to Constantinople,

he contemplated any but political principles. As to the first point,

we apprehend that Constantine will be found not so much to have

shrunk back from fear of installing Christianity in the seat of

supremacy, as to have diverged in policy from our modern _methods_

of such an installation. Our belief is, that according to _his_

notion of a state religion, he supposed himself to have conferred

that distinction upon Christianity. With respect to the endowments

and privileges of Constantinople, they were various; some lay

in positive donations, others in immunities and exemptions; some

again were designed to attract strangers, others to attract nobles

from old Rome. But, with fuller opportunities for pursuing that

discussion, we think it would be easy to show, that in more than

one of his institutions and his decrees he had contemplated the

special advantage of the poor as such; and that, next after the

august distinction of having founded the first Christian throne, he

had meant to challenge and fix the gaze of future ages upon this

glorious pretension--that he first had executed the scriptural

injunction to make a provision for the poor, as an order of society

that by laws immutable should 'never cease out of the land.'

II. Let us advert to the value and functions of Constantinople as

the tutelary genius of western or dawning Christianity.

The history of Constantinople, or more generally of the Eastern Roman

empire, wears a peculiar interest to the children of Christendom;

and for two separate reasons--_first_, as being the narrow

isthmus or bridge which connects the two continents of ancient

and modern history, and _that_ is a philosophic interest; but

_secondly_, which in the very highest degree is a practical

interest, as the record of our earthly salvation from Mahometanism.

On two horns was Europe assaulted by the Moslems; first, last, and

through the largest tract of time, on the horn of Constantinople;

there the contest raged for more than eight hundred years, and

by the time that the mighty bulwark fell (1453), Vienna and other

cities upon or near the Danube had found leisure for growing up;

so that, if one range of Alps had slowly been surmounted, another

had now slowly reared and embattled itself against the westward

progress of the Crescent. On the western horn, _in_ France,

but _by_ Germans, once for all Charles Martel had arrested

the progress of the fanatical Moslem almost in a single battle;

certainly a single generation saw the whole danger dispersed,

inasmuch as within that space the Saracens were effectually forced

back into their original Spanish lair. This demonstrates pretty

forcibly the difference of the Mahometan resources as applied to

the western and the eastern struggle. To throw the whole weight

of that difference, a difference in the result as between eight

centuries and thirty years, upon the mere difference of energy in

German and Byzantine forces, as though the first did, by a rapturous

fervor, in a few revolutions of summer what the other had protracted

through nearly a millennium, is a representation which defeats itself

by its own extravagance. To prove too much is more dangerous than

to prove too little. The fact is, that vast armies and mighty

nations were continually disposable for the war upon the city of

Constantine; nations had time to arise in juvenile vigor, to grow

old and superannuated, to melt away, and totally to disappear,

in that long struggle on the Hellespont and Propontis. It was a

struggle which might often intermit and slumber; armistices there

might be, truces, or unproclaimed suspensions of war out of mutual

exhaustion, but peace there could _not_ be, because any resting

from the duty of hatred towards those who reciprocally seemed to

lay the foundations of their creed in a dishonoring of God, was

impossible to aspiring human nature. Malice and mutual hatred,

we repeat, became a duty in those circumstances. Why had they

_begun_ to fight? Personal feuds there had been none between

the parties. For the early caliphs did not conquer Syria and other

vast provinces of the Roman empire, because they had a quarrel with

the Caesars who represented Christendom; but, on the contrary, they

had a quarrel with the Caesars because they had conquered Syria,

or, at the most, the conquest and the feud (if not always lying

in that exact succession as cause and effect) were joint effects

from a common cause, which cause was imperishable as death, or the

ocean, and as deep as are the fountains of animal life. Could the

ocean be altered by a sea-fight? Or the atmosphere be tainted for

ever by an earthquake? As little could any single reign or its

events affect the feud of the Moslem and the Christian; a feud which

could not cease unless God could change, or unless man (becoming

careless of spiritual things) should sink to the level of a brute.

These are considerations of great importance in weighing the value

of the Eastern Empire. If the cause and interest of Islamism, as

against Christianity, were undying--then we may be assured that the

Moorish infidels of Spain did not reiterate their trans-Pyrenean

expeditions after one generation--simply because they _could_

not. But we know that on the south-eastern horn of Europe they

_could_, upon the plain argument that for many centuries they

_did._ Over and above this, we are of opinion that the Saracens

were unequal to the sort of hardships bred by cold climates; and

there lay another repulsion for Saracens from France, &c., and not

merely the Carlovingian sword. We children of Christendom show our

innate superiority to the children of the Orient upon this scale

or tariff of acclimatizing powers. We travel as wheat travels

through all reasonable ranges of temperature; they, like rice, can

migrate only to warm latitudes. They cannot support our cold, but

we _can_ support the countervailing hardships of their heat.

This cause alone would have weatherbound the Mussulmans for ever

within the Pyrenean cloisters. Mussulmans in cold latitudes look

as blue and as absurd as sailors on horseback. Apart from which

cause, we see that the fine old Visigothic races in Spain found

them full employment up to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella,

which reign first created a kingdom of Spain; in that reign the

whole fabric of their power thawed away, and was confounded with

forgotten things. Columbus, according to a local tradition, was

personally present at some of the latter campaigns in Grenada: he

saw the last of them. So that the discovery of America may be used

as a convertible date with that of extinction for the Saracen power

in western Europe. True that the overthrow of Constantinople had

forerun this event by nearly half a century. But then we insist

upon the different proportions of the struggle. Whilst in Spain

a province had fought against a province, all Asia militant had

fought against the eastern Roman empire. Amongst the many races

whom dimly we decry in those shadowy hosts, tilting for ages in the

vast plains of Angora, are seen latterly pressing on to the van,

two mighty powers, the children of Persia and the Ottoman family

of the Turks. Upon these nations, both now rapidly decaying, the

faith of Mahomet has ever leaned as upon her eldest sons; and these

powers the Byzantine Cæsars had to face in every phasis of their

energy, as it revolved from perfect barbarism, through semi-barbarism,

to that crude form of civilization which Mahometans can support. And

through all these transmigrations of their power we must remember

that they were under a martial training and discipline, never

suffered to become effeminate. One set of warriors after another

_did_, it is true, become effeminate in Persia: but upon that

advantage opening, always another set stepped in from Torkistan or

from the Imaus. The nation, the individuals melted away; the Moslem

armies were immortal.

Here, therefore, it is, and standing at this point of our review,

that we complain of Mr. Finlay's too facile compliance with historians

far beneath himself. He has a fine understanding: oftentimes his

commentaries on the past are ebullient with subtlety; and his fault

strikes us as lying even in the excess of his sagacity applying itself

too often to a basis of facts, quite insufficient for supporting

the superincumbent weight of his speculations. But in this instance

he surrenders himself too readily to the ordinary current of history.

How would _he_ like it, if he happened to be a Turk himself,

finding his nation thus implicitly undervalued? For clearly, in

undervaluing the Byzantine resistance, he _does_ undervalue

the Mahometan assault. Advantages of local situation cannot

_eternally_ make good the deficiencies of man. If the Byzantines

(being as weak as historians would represent them) yet for ages

resisted the whole impetus of Mahometan Asia, then it follows,

either that the Crescent was correspondingly weak, or that, not being

weak, she must have found the Cross pretty strong. The _facit_

of history does not here correspond with the numerical items.

Nothing has ever surprised us more, we will frankly own, than this

coincidence of authors in treating the Byzantine empire as feeble

and crazy. On the contrary, to us it is clear that some secret

and preternatural strength it must have had, lurking where the eye

of man did not in those days penetrate, or by what miracle did it

undertake our universal Christian cause, fight for us all, keep

the waters open from freezing us up, and through nine centuries

prevent the ice of Mahometanism from closing over our heads for ever?

Yet does Mr. Finlay (p. 424) describe this empire as laboring, in

A. D. 623, equally with Persia, under 'internal weakness,' and as

'equally incapable of offering any popular or national resistance

to an active or enterprising enemy.' In this Mr. Finlay does but agree

with other able writers; but he and they should have recollected,

that hardly had that very year 623 departed, even yet the knell

of its last hour was sounding upon the winds, when this effeminate

empire had occasion to show that she could clothe herself with

consuming terrors, as a belligerent both defensive and aggressive.

In the absence of her great emperor, and of the main imperial

forces, the golden capital herself, by her own resources, routed

and persecuted into wrecks a Persian army that had come down upon

her by stealth and a fraudulent circuit. Even at that same period,

she advanced into Persia more than a thousand miles from her

own metropolis in Europe, under the blazing ensigns of the cross,

kicked the crown of Persia to and fro like a tennis-ball, upset

the throne of Artaxerxes, countersigned haughtily the elevation of

a new _Basileus_ more friendly to herself, and then recrossed

the Tigris homewards, after having torn forcibly out of the heart

and palpitating entrails of Persia, whatever trophies that idolatrous

empire had formerly wrested from herself. These were not the acts

of an effeminate kingdom. In the language of Wordsworth we may

say--

'All power was giv'n her in the dreadful trance;

Infidel kings she wither'd like a flame.'

Indeed, no image that we remember can do justice to the first of

these acts, except that Spanish legend of the Cid, which assures

us that, long after the death of the mighty cavalier, when the

children of those Moors who had fled from his face whilst living,

were insulting the marble statue above his grave, suddenly the statue

raised its right arm, stretched out its marble lance, and drifted

the heathen dogs like snow. The mere sanctity of the Christian

champion's sepulchre was its own protection; and so we must suppose,

that, when the Persian hosts came by surprise upon Constantinople--her

natural protector being absent by three months' march--simply the

golden statues of the mighty Caesars, half rising on their thrones,

must have caused that sudden panic which dissipated the danger.

Hardly fifty years later, Mr. Finlay well knows that Constantinople

again stood an assault--not from a Persian hourrah, or tempestuous

surprise, but from a vast expedition, armaments by land and sea,

fitted out elaborately in the early noontide of Mahometan vigor--and

that assault, also, in the presence of the caliph and the crescent,

was gloriously discomfited. Now if, in the moment of triumph, some

voice in the innumerable crowd had cried out, 'How long shall this

great Christian breakwater, against which are shattered into surge

and foam all the mountainous billows of idolators and misbelievers,

stand up on behalf of infant Christendom?' and if from the clouds

some trumpet of prophecy had replied, 'Even yet for eight hundred

years!' could any man have persuaded himself that such a fortress

against such antogonists--such a monument against a millennium

of fury--was to be classed amongst the weak things of this earth?

This oriental Rome, it is true, equally with Persia, was liable to

sudden inroads and incursions. But the difference was this--Persia

was strongly protected in all ages by the wilderness on her main

western frontier; if this were passed, and a hand-to-hand conflict

succeeded, where light cavalry or fugitive archers could be of little

value, the essential weakness of the Persian empire then betrayed

itself. Her sovereign was assassinated, and peace was obtained from

the condescension of the invader. But the enemies of Constantinople,

Goths, Avars, Bulgarians, or even Persians, were strong only

by their weakness. Being contemptible, they were neglected; being

chased, they made no stand; and _thus_ only they escaped. They

entered like thieves by means of darkness, and escaped like sheep

by means of dispersion. But, if caught, they were annihilated.

No; we resume our thesis; we close this head by reiterating our

correction of history; we re-affirm our position--that in Eastern

Rome lay the salvation of Western and Central Europe; in Constantinople

and the Propontis lay the _sine qua non_ condition of any future

Christendom. Emperor and people _must_ have done their duty;

the result, the vast extent of generations surmounted, furnish the

triumphant argument. Finally, indeed, they fell, king and people,

shepherd and flock; but by that time their mission was fulfilled.

And doubtless, as the noble Palaeologus lay on heaps of carnage,

with his noble people, as life was ebbing away, a voice from heaven

sounded in his ears the great words of the Hebrew prophet, 'Behold!

YOUR WORK IS DONE; your warfare is accomplished.'

III. Such, then, being the unmerited disparagement of the Byzantine

government, and so great the ingratitude of later Christendom to

that sheltering power under which themselves enjoyed the leisure of

a thousand years for knitting and expanding into strong nations; on

the other hand, what is to be thought of the Saracen revolutionists?

Everywhere it has passed for a lawful postulate, that the Saracen

conquests prevailed, half by the feebleness of the Roman government

at Constantinople, and half by the preternatural energy infused

into the Arabs by their false prophet and legislator. In either of

its faces, this theory is falsified by a steady review of facts.

With regard to the Saracens, Mr. Finlay thinks as we do, and

argues that they prevailed through the _local_, or sometimes

the _casual_, weakness of their immediate enemies, and rarely

through any strength of their own. We must remember one fatal

weakness of the Imperial administration in those days, not due to

men or to principles, but entirely to nature and the slow growth

of scientific improvements--viz.: the difficulties of locomotion.

As respected Syria, Egypt, Cyrenaica, and so on to the most western

provinces of Africa, the Saracens had advantages for moving rapidly

which the Caesar had not. But is not a water movement speedier than

a land movement, which for an army never has much exceeded fourteen

miles a-day? Certainly it is; but in this case there were two desperate

defects in the imperial control over that water service. To use a

fleet, you must have a fleet; but their whole naval interest had

been starved by the intolerable costs of the Persian war. Immense

had been the expenses of Heraclius, and annually decaying had been

his Asiatic revenues. Secondly, the original position of the Arabs

had been better than that of the emperor, in every stage of the

warfare which so suddenly arose. In Arabia they stood nearest to

Syria, in Syria nearest to Egypt, in Egypt nearest to Cyrenaica.

What reason had there been for expecting a martial legislator at that

moment in Arabia, who should fuse and sternly combine her distracted

tribes? What blame, therefore, to Heraclius, that Syria--the first

object of assault, being also by much the weakest part of the

empire, and immediately after the close of a desolating war--should

in four campaigns be found indefensible? We must remember the

unexampled abruptness of the Arabian revolution. The year sixteen

hundred and twenty-two, by its very name of Hegira, does not record a

triumph but a humiliation. In that year, therefore, and at the very

moment when Heraclius was entering upon his long Persian struggle,

Mahomet was yet prostrate, and his destiny was doubtful. Eleven

years after, viz. in six hundred and thirty-three, the prophet was

dead and gone; but his first successor was already in Syria as a

conqueror. Such had been the velocity of events. The Persian war

had then been finished by three years, but the exhaustion of the

empire had perhaps, at that moment, reached its maximum. We are

satisfied, that ten years' repose from this extreme state of collapse

would have shown us another result. Even as it was, and caught at

this enormous disadvantage, Heraclius taught the robbers to tremble,

and would have exterminated them, if not baffled by two irremediable

calamities, neither of them due to any act or neglect of his own.

The first lay in the treason of his lieutenants. The governors of

Damascus, of Aleppo, of Emesa, of Bostra, of Kinnisrin, all proved

traitors. The root of this evil lay, probably, in the disorders

following the Persian invasion, which had made it the perilous

interest of the emperor to appoint great officers from amongst

those who had a local influence. Such persons it might have been

ruinous too suddenly to set aside, as, in the event, it proved

ruinous to employ them. A dilemma of this kind, offering but

a choice of evils, belonged to the nature of any Persian war; and

that particular war was bequeathed to Heraclius by the management

of his predecesors. But the second calamity was even more fatal; it

lay in the composition of the Syrian population, and its original

want of vital cohesion. For no purpose could this population be

united: they formed a rope of sand. There was the distraction of

religion (Jacobites, Nestorians, &c.); there was the distraction

of races--slaves and masters, conquered and conquerors, modern

intruders mixed, but not blended with, aboriginal mountaineers.

Property became the one principle of choice between the two governments.

Where was protection to be had for _that_? Barbarous as were

the Arabs, they saw their present advantage. Often it would happen

from the position of the armies, that they could, whilst the emperor

could not, guarantee the instant security of land or of personal

treasures; the Arabs could also promise, sometimes, a total immunity

from taxes, very often a diminished scale of taxation, always a

remission of arrears; none of which demands could be listened to

by the emperor, partly on account of the public necessities, partly

from jealousy of establishing operative precedents. For religion,

again, protection was more easily obtained in that day from the

Arab, who made war on Christianity, than from the Byzantine emperor,

who was its champion. What were the different sects and subdivisions

of Christianity to the barbarian? Monophysite, Monothelite, Eutychian,

or Jacobite, all were to him as the scholastic disputes of noble

and intellectual Europe to the camps of gypsies. The Arab felt

himself to be the depository of one sublime truth, the unity of

God. His mission, therefore, was principally against idolaters. Yet

even to _them_ his policy was to sell toleration for tribute.

Clearly, as Mr. Finlay hints, this was merely a provisional moderation,

meant to be laid aside when sufficient power was obtained; and it

_was_ laid aside, in after ages, by many a wretch like Timor

or Nadir Shah. Religion, therefore, and property once secured, what

more had the Syrians to seek? And if to these advantages for the

Saracens we add the fact, that a considerable Arab population was

dispersed through Syria, who became so many emissaries, spies, and

decoys for their countrymen, it does great honor to the emperor,

that through so many campaigns he should at all have maintained

his ground, which at last he resigned only under the despondency

caused by almost universal treachery.

The Saracens, therefore, had no great merit even in their earliest

exploits; and the _impetus_ of their movement forwards, that

principle of proselytism which carried them so strongly 'ahead'

through a few generations, was very soon brought to a stop.

Mr. Finlay, in our mind, does right to class these barbarians as

'socially and politically little better than the Gothic, Hunnish,

and Avar monarchies.' But, on consideration, the Gothic monarchy

embosomed the germs of a noble civilization; whereas the Saracens

have never propagated great principles of any kind, nor attained

even a momentary grandeur in their institutions, except where

coalescing with a higher or more ancient civilization.

Meantime, ascending from the earliest Mahometans to their prophet,

what are we to think of _him_? Was Mahomet a great man? We

think not. The case was thus: the Arabian tribes had long stood

ready, like dogs held in a leash, for a start after distant game.

It was not Mahomet who gave them that impulse. But next, what

was it that had hindered the Arab tribes from obeying the impulse?

Simply this, that they were always in feud with each other; so

that their expeditions, beginning in. harmony, were sure to break

up in anger on the road. What they needed was, some one grand

compressing and unifying principle, such as the Roman found in the

destinies of his city. True; but this, you say, they found in the

sublime principle that God was one, and had appointed them to be

the scourges of all who denied it. Their mission was to cleanse

the earth from Polytheism; and, as ambassadors from God, to tell

the nations--'Ye shall have no other Gods but me.' That was grand;

and _that_ surely they had _from_ Mahomet? Perhaps so; but where

did he get it? He stole it from the Jewish Scriptures, and from the

Scriptures no less than from the traditions of the Christians.

Assuredly, then, the first projecting impetus was not impressed

upon Islamism by Mahomet. This lay in a revealed truth; and by

Mahomet it was furtively translated to his own use from those

oracles which held it in keeping. But possibly, if not the

_principle_ of motion, yet at least the steady conservation

of this motion was secured to Islamism by Mahomet. Granting (you

will say) that the launch of this religion might be due to an alien

inspiration, yet still the steady movement onwards of this religion

through some centuries, might be due exclusively to the code of laws

bequeathed by Mahomet in the Koran. And this has been the opinion

of many European scholars. They fancy that Mahomet, however worldly

and sensual as the founder of a pretended revelation, was wise in

the wisdom of this world; and that, if ridiculous as a prophet,

he was worthy of veneration as a statesman. He legislated well and

presciently, they imagine, for the interests of a remote posterity.

Now, upon that question let us hear Mr. Finlay. He, when commenting

upon the steady resistance offered to the Saracens by the African

Christians of the seventh and eighth centuries--a resistance which

terminated disastrously for both sides--the poor Christians being

exterminated, and the Moslem invaders being robbed of an indigenous

working population, naturally inquires what it was that led to so

tragical a result. The Christian natives of these provinces were,

in a political condition, little favorable to belligerent efforts;

and there cannot be much doubt, that, with any wisdom or any

forbearance on the part of the intruders, both parties might soon

have settled down into a pacific compromise of their feuds. Instead of

this, the cimeter was invoked and worshipped as the sole possible

arbitrator; and truce there was none until the silence of

desolation brooded over those once fertile fields. How savage was

the fanaticism, and how blind the worldly wisdom, which could have

co-operated to such a result! The cause must have lain in the

unaccommodating nature of the Mahometan institutions, in the bigotry

of the Mahometan leaders, and in the defect of expansive views on

the part of their legislator. He had not provided even for other

elimates than that of his own sweltering sty in the Hedjas, or

for manners more polished, or for institutions more philosophic,

than those of his own sunbaked Ishmaelites. 'The construction of

the political government of the Saracen empire'--says Mr. Finlay

(p. 462-3)--'was imperfect, and shows that Mahomet had neither

contemplated extensive foreign conquests, nor devoted the energies

of his powerful mind to the consideration of the questions

of administration which would arise out of the difficult task of

ruling a numerous and wealthy population, possessed of property,

but deprived of equal rights.' He then shows how the whole power of

the state settled into the hands of a chief priest--systematically

irresponsible. When, therefore, that momentary state of

responsibility had passed away, which was created (like the state

of martial law) 'by national feelings, military companionship, and

exalted enthusiasm,' the administration of the caliphs became 'far

more oppressive than that of the Roman empire.' It is in fact an

insult to the majestic Romans, if we should place them seriously

in the balance with savages like the Saracens. The Romans were

essentially the leaders of civilization, according to the possibilities

then existing; for their earliest usages and social forms involved

a high civilization, whilst promising a higher: whereas all Moslem

nations have described a petty arch of national civility--soon

reaching its apex, and rapidly barbarizing backwards. This fatal

gravitation towards decay and decomposition in Mahometan institutions,

which, at this day, exhibits to the gaze of mankind one uniform

spectacle of Mahometan ruins, all the great Moslem nations being

already in a _Strulbrug_ state, and held erect only by the colossal

support of Christian powers, could not, as a _reversionary_

evil, have been healed by the Arabian prophet. His own religious

principles would have prevented _that_, for they offer a permanent

bounty on sensuality; so that every man who serves a Mahometan

state faithfully and brilliantly at twenty-five, is incapacitated

at thirty-five for any further service, by the very nature of the

rewards which he receives from the state. Within a very few years,

every public servant is usually emasculated by that unlimited

voluptuousness which equally the Moslem princes and the common

Prophet of all Moslems countenance as the proper object of

human pursuit. Here is the mortal ulcer of Islamism, which can

never cleanse itself from death and the odor of death. A political

ulcer would or might have found restoration for itself; but this

ulcer is higher and deeper:--it lies in the religion, which is

incapable of reform: it is an ulcer reaching as high as the paradise

which Islamism promises, and deep as the hell which it creates.

We repeat, that Mahomet could not effectually have neutralized

a poison which he himself had introduced into the circulation and

life-blood of his Moslem economy. The false prophet was forced to

reap as he had sown. But an evil which is certain, may be retarded;

and ravages which tend finally to confusion, may be limited for

many generations. Now, in the case of the African provincials which

we have noticed, we see an original incapacity of Islamism, even

in its palmy condition, for amalgamating with any _superior_

culture. And the specific action of Mahometan ism in the African

case, as contrasted with the Roman economy which it supplanted,

is thus exhibited by Mr. Finlay in a most instructive passage,

where every negation on the Mahometan side is made to suggest

the countervailing usage positively on the side of the Romans. O

children of Romulus! how noble do you appear when thus fiercely

contrasted with the wild boars who desolated your vineyards! 'No

local magistrates elected by the people, and no parish priests

connected by their feelings and interests both with their superiors

and inferiors, bound society together by common ties; and no system

of legal administration, independent of the military and financial

authorities, preserved the property of the people from the rapacity

of the government.'

Such, we are to understand, was not the Mahometan system; such had

been the system of Rome. 'Socially and politically,' proceeds the

passage, 'the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic,

Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable,

with almost equal oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful

enthusiasm of Mahomet's religion, which tempered for some time its

avarice and tyranny.' The same sentiment is repeated still more

emphatically at p. 468--' The political policy of the Saracens was

of itself utterly barbarous; and it only caught a passing gleam of

justice from the religious feeling of their prophet's doctrines.'

Thus far, therefore, it appears that Mahometanism is not much

indebted to its too famous founder; it owes to him a principle,

viz. the unity of God, which, merely through a capital blunder,

it fancies peculiar to itself. Nothing but the grossest ignorance

in Mahomet, nothing but the grossest non-acquaintance with Greek

authors on the part of the Arabs, could have created or sustained

the delusion current amongst that illiterate people--that it was

themselves only who rejected Polytheism. Had but one amongst the

personal enemies of Mahomet been acquainted with Greek, _there_

was an end of the new religion in the first moon of its existence.

Once open the eyes of the Arabs to the fact, that Christians

had anticipated them in this great truth of the divine unity, and

Mahometanism could only have ranked as a subdivision of Christianity.

Mahomet would have ranked only as a Christian heresiarch or

schismatic; such as Nestorius or Marcian at one time, such as Arius

or Pelagius at another. In his character of _theologian_,

therefore, Mahomet was simply the most memorable of blunderers,

supported in his blunders by the most unlettered of nations. In

his other character of _legislator_, we have seen that already

the earliest stages of Mahometan experience exposed decisively his

ruinous imbecility. Where a rude tribe offered no resistance to

his system, for the simple reason that their barbarism suggested

no motive for resistance, it could be no honor to prevail. And

where, on the other hand, a higher civilization had furnished

strong points of repulsion to his system, it appears plainly that

this pretended apostle of social improvements had devised or hinted

no readier mode of conciliation than by putting to the sword all

dissentients. He starts as a theological reformer, with a fancied

defiance to the world which was no defiance at all, being exactly

what Christians had believed for six centuries, and Jews for

six-and-twenty. He starts as a political reformer, with a fancied

conciliation to the world, which was no conciliation at all, but

was sure to provoke imperishable hostility wheresoever it had any

effect at all.

We have thus reviewed some of the more splendid aspects connected

with Mr. Finlay's theme; but that theme, in its entire compass,

is worthy of a far more extended investigation than our own limits

will allow, or than the historical curiosity of the world (misdirected

here as in so many other cases) has hitherto demanded. The Greek

race, suffering a long occultation under the blaze of the Roman

empire, into which for a time it had been absorbed, but again

emerging from this blaze, and reassuming a distinct Greek agency and

influence, offers a subject great by its own inherent attractions,

and separately interesting by the unaccountable neglect which it

has suffered. To have overlooked this subject, is one amongst the

capital oversights of Gibbon. To have rescued it from utter oblivion,

and to have traced an outline for its better illumination, is the

peculiar merit of Mr. Finlay. His greatest fault is--to have been

careless or slovenly in the niceties of classical and philological

precision. His greatest praise, and a very great one indeed, is--to

have thrown the light of an original philosophic sagacity upon a

neglected province of history, indispensable to the arrondissement

of Pagan archaeology.