'If we, whom the second Empire has so poisoned through its
infamous press, have not energy enough to make a reaction
against Parisian manners and Parisian _esprit_, we shall
fall as low as our neighbours, and shall soon imbibe that
scorn of truth and reason which they have shown.'
This, from a Belgian, is at least as humiliating to Paris as any of the
Prussian victories.
From politics, as from warlike criticism, M. Leclercq abstains almost
wholly: of course, he cannot help wondering at Bazaine's behaviour at
Metz; as we heard it lately expressed by a great English financier,
unable, like most financiers, to help liking the Emperor after all:--'I
won't say Bazaine was a traitor; that is not quite fair upon him. But I
will say that he thought more of his government than he did of France.
He might have prevented the investment of Paris, there is not a doubt of
it.' The decay of the Napoleonic idea is put in a startling light, when
we reflect that Bazaine was, before the end of last September, almost
the only Imperialist in France. Paris, which had been so delighted at
the prospect of glory as to forget all about the _coup d'état_, went
round as one man. In fact, Sedan was hurried on because Paris could not
be trusted: there was no sincerity in the ex-Emperor's professions and
concessions. The Parisians knew that, and though they had been ready
enough to shout against the Prussians, they were only waiting for their
opportunity to get rid of their own ruler. It is the old story of a
house divided against itself. The poor men were mowed down at Sedan by
shells from such a distance that they could not see whence they were
fired, simply because it was 'useless' for Napoleon to go to Paris. The
idea of really honestly trusting to the country, and giving pledges for
future conduct, never presented itself as possible in 1870 any more than
in 1814 and 1815.
On one point M. Leclercq finds just fault with the Republican
government: they decreed a second expulsion of Germans from Paris, and
they vowed not only never to yield an inch of French soil, but never to
raze a stone of one of her fortresses:--'As to the soil (says our
author), let the inhabitants decide; but the offer to dismantle Metz and
Strasburg, and, above all, the little fortresses which have so long
wished to be made open towns, would at once have set them right with all
the noblest minds in Europe: to act as they did was to play into the
hands of the King of Prussia.' But M. Leclercq is somewhat of a
peace-at-any-price man.
He is a prophet, too, and delights in the thought that France, before
long, will be a federation like the United States. Its provinces will
then (he says) resume their old importance--'the life now heaped up in
Paris will be spread abroad where it is needed.' Paris, no doubt, has
done nobly, and there is, after all, a good side to her character. He is
as little desirous as we are to deny this; but, then, the fault was
mainly hers. Had she last autumn stood firmly by the Republican party,
instead of falling so readily and blindly into the trap which Louis
Napoleon laid for her, war would have been impossible. She enabled the
Emperor to begin; and then, by her fickle restlessness, she hampered his
movements and forced him to fight, as it were, with one hand tied up.
Instead of Hugo's _Paris-cerveau_, M. Leclercq calls her
_Paris-spectacle, Paris-plaisir, Paris-panache_, and he sees no future
for France except in her humiliation: _il faut trépaner_ (he says) _le
cerveau de la France_.
The _Papiers Secrets_ need not occupy us long; they were hardly worth
the trouble of unearthing. The Government of National Defence might
surely have found better work for men like De Kératry, Lavertujon, and
Cochut, than to be rummaging among the rubbish found at the Tuileries,
at St. Cloud, and at Meudon. If they had so destroyed the environs of
Paris as to prevent the Prussians from finding shelter; if they had (as
common sense would have dictated) fortified Versailles, connecting it
with the _enceinte_ by a strong military line, and used their abundant
labour to make the works impregnable, it would have been far better than
to have wasted precious time in docketing papers which are certainly
disappointing. They reveal nothing, for we already know that the Empire
was based upon corruption and _espionnage_; and all they do is to enable
the curious reader to follow the ramifications of this imperial system
into unsuspected corners.
Thus, at the outset, we have a letter from the Empress _en route_ for
Suez, which shows her grammar and orthography as much at fault as those
of the fine ladies of Queen Anne's time, and which is sadly like what
Henrietta of France might have written to Charles I.:--
'Plus on aura besoin de force plus tard, et plus il sera
nécessaire de prouver au pays qu' on a _des idées_ et non
_des expédients_.' "Amuse-toi" (is her advice to her
husband) 'il faut se refaire un moral, comme on se refait
une constitution affaiblie, et une idée constante finie
(sic) par user le cerveau le mieux organisé.'
Altogether Eugenie does not come off badly in the published
correspondence.
Of the chapter on Napoleon's mistresses we need say nothing except that
it will disappoint the prurient reader. Marguerite Bellanger, who first
fathered a son on him, and then (after being managed by the _président
du cour_, poor M. Devienne) confessed she had cheated him, and Miss
Howard, are the only two who come to the front; the latter, by the way,
appears to have received in the course of two years five and a half
millions of francs--good interest for having paid 'the Prince's' debts
when he was in England. It is unsafe to state anything about the
ex-Emperor's private property. The 'facts' have been contradicted and
re-asserted; but there they are, in this little pamphlet, with full
details, sixty-three millions of francs, including the accounts with
Baring of London, with Kindlet of Vienna, with Funder and Plitz of St.
Petersburg, with Berg von Dussen of Amsterdam, and Jecker in Mexico, and
Brown Brothers of New York. What he had in the French funds the author,
of course, professes himself unable to tell; but _en revanche_ he gives
(in the chapter headed _ce que coûtaient les impérialists_) the whole of
the enormous civil list, a great deal of which was (as is proved by
marginal notes on the documents) paid by the Emperor over and above the
allowance, without the intervention of the Ministry.
We all know how persistently Pierre Bonaparte begged for money, and how
recklessly money was wasted on affairs like the Prince Imperial's
baptism, but the amount expended per month on men like Baron Jérome
David, M. Granier de Cassagnac, and others of the 'vendus' is
prodigious; and we are told that of the actual total we can form no
notion, the usual plan of payment having been one which may be
recommended to our own 'man in the moon'--a trusty go-between used to
breathe on the glass of the office door, and then write with his finger
the sum which he was authorised to draw, whereupon it was paid without
question.
Of the _Cabinet Noir_, where letters were opened, according to a system
adopted in France at any rate since Louis XIV.'s day, we have all heard
a good deal. The actual letter-stealers were certain _concierges_ with
whom the postmen were instructed to leave all letters addressed to
certain persons. These letters were then carried off to M. Saintonier,
18, Rue Les Cases, who opened them, had them copied, if necessary, and,
if possible, returned them in time for the next delivery. Among the
copies found is a remarkable letter from Ducrot, at Strasburg, to
Trochu, dated 1st December, 1866, setting forth the dangerous state of
feeling in Germany, and pointing out that Prussia can get ready 600,000
men and 1,200 guns far sooner than France can muster half the number.
Ducrot animadverts severely on the 'stupid vanity' which makes his
countrymen think they can choose their own time, and get their Great
Exhibition well over before they begin. He says, too, that the frontier
swarms with Prussian agents, and that the feeling between the Moselle
and the Vosges is far less French than people fancy:
'They are sons and grandsons of the men who, in 1815,
petitioned the Holy Alliance that Alsace might be re-united
to Germany.... The Prussians are working here just as I am
told they did in Bohemia three months before their war with
Austria began.'
Surely the Emperor was warned; and that, in spite of all warnings, he
should have acted as he did, justifies as well as explains the scorn
which all parties alike have manifested for him.
These papers, in fact, remind us that imperialism was based on
_surveillance publique_, on a spy system so vast as to embrace lists of
all the 'dangerous men,' of whatever views, throughout the Empire. The
prop of this system was the terrible power of arbitrary arrest given to
all prefects by the 10th article of the Criminal Code. How the nation
which boasts of being exceptionally _logique_ reconciles such an article
with the principles of 1789 we cannot imagine; but it is clear that a
Government, resting on such a basis, could only stand by its prestige.
At whatever cost, it was necessary last July 'to do something,' and at
Sedan the ex-Emperor judged rightly that he had better fall into
Prussian hands than trust to feelings which even his uncle had not
ventured to rely on.
Persigny, according to the letters contained in the _Papiers Secrets_,
was Louis Napoleon's Strafford. As late as December, 1867, he
memorialises the Emperor at great length on the state of the nation, and
exclaims against the folly of concessions:
'Your enemies,' (says he) 'under the pretence of setting up
Parliamentary rule, are working your ruin. I see it in
their every movement. I watch them and note the bitterest
hatred--hatred! and something more--showing itself in look,
word, and gesture; and your Ministers bow down and humbly
beg the Opposition to withdraw their motions.... If your
majesty sees no harm in all this, it's no use my making
plans to put out the fire that's burning up your house;
but, anyhow, I can't go on with abstract studies amid such
moral anarchy as this.'
Persigny, at any rate, was faithful, and, we believe, felt proper scorn
for the miserable policy which tried to secure the _bourgeoisie_ by
alarming them every now and then with sham plots. Except the Orsini and
Pianori plots, and the Villette affair of last summer, all the plots
were, we are told, hatched by Pietri and Lagrange. Thus Greco, who was
condemned to life transportation in 1853, was let out one night from
Mazas by M. Lagrange himself, lived for years in America on a pension of
£250 and then came back to Paris under a feigned name, and worked as a
detective. The man, we read, is now in prison, and has made a full
confession of his antecedents.
That Ollivier, at the end of 1869, was anxious to infuse new blood into
the Imperial councils, and also to win over 'the few men of talent between
thirty and forty years of age _who had not already been driven into
the revolutionary ranks_,' is a proof that the Constitutional-Imperialist
was more clear-sighted than his enemies will admit. That the Empress,
after Wörth, should have telegraphed to her husband not on any account
to return to Paris, as she could not be answerable for the consequences,
shows a weakness of character which the admirers of Eugenie certainly
did not anticipate.
These quotations from Paris newspapers and secret documents help to show
why the Empire fell. It was unsound. However we may differ as to the
amount of culpability shared by the French nation, or even by the
Parisians, there is no doubt of the rottenness of the whole system. That
it has been swept away is a gain for the world--a gain for France which
will outweigh all her hopes, if only (in the words of the _Siècle_) the
_esprit boulevardier_, the street-idler spirit, disappears along with
the _régime_ which fostered it; and if that hardness towards the poor,
and indifference to their sufferings, which are too characteristic of
the French wealthier classes, can be modified.
And now for a very few facts to show what a poor idol was the uncle of
such a nephew. The three writers, Lanfrey, Barni, and Erckmann-Châtrian,
have done more than any others to disabuse the French mind about
Napoleonism. The cheap edition of Barni, from which the analysis and
_seriatim_ confutation of M. Thiers' books are omitted, has been
immensely read; that such a book could be published in France in 1870
was a sign of the times quite as alarming to imperialists as the known
disaffection of a part of the army. Besides these Charras, Scherer,
Quinet, and Eugene Pelletan had for years been working against the
worship of which Thiers was so long the prophet, and had succeeded in
proving to all thoughtful Frenchmen that Fichte and Channing were much
nearer the truth than was the romancer who wrote the 'Consulate and
Empire.'
Our remarks must necessarily be brief; but we would call special
attention to what M. Lanfrey tells about the early life of Napoleon: so
much seems accounted for by such circumstances acting on such a
temperament. Corsica was passing through a crisis when he was a boy; his
father, head of one of the most influential families, went over to the
French side when he saw resistance was hopeless. The son, who began life
an ardent patriot, cursed his father for not having shared Paoli's
exile. The family, however, profited by his change of side. He himself,
displaying that same skill in managing men, above all Frenchmen, for
which his son was afterwards so remarkable, became the confidential
adviser of the governor and his cabinet. His children were provided for
on the different royal foundations then so common in France. Napoleon
went to Brienne, and thence to Paris; the great poverty of his family,
and the humiliating position in which he found himself among the cadets
of noble houses, accustomed to spend money as recklessly at their
military colleges as our boys nowadays do at Sandhurst, made him
cynical. The references to his want of means are frequent in his early
journals; but this consciousness of poverty did not deprive him of his
keen power of observation. His journals are an admixture of practical
shrewdness and of originality expressed in wild bombast. He soon took
the measure of those with whom he was brought in contact, fathomed their
weaknesses, and adroitly made use of them. Life in Paris in the days
when young Bonaparte first went there must have been trying to a young
man's faith. Bonaparte had been 'finished' under the _régime_ which was
said to have existed _par les femmes et pour les femmes_; but before he
was fully a man the old system was swept away, and Paris was a scene on
which the most fantastic absurdities were enacted in the name of
liberty. The selfish greed of the Republicans seems to have done more
than anything else to make the young man a disbeliever in the grand
phrases which he so freely used. His determination to act for himself
comes out strikingly in his first Italian campaign, when by his happy
boldness against Wurmser he had made the convention of Loeben
inevitable. Throughout the preliminaries he behaved as an independent
prince. He told the Directory what he was doing, and received their
instructions, and from time to time acted upon them; but the only way in
which he showed himself a faithful servant of the government was by
putting money and art-treasures in their way. The greed which these
Parisian deputies displayed was something incredible: and their young
general encouraged them in it. He told them that Italy was rich and able
to pay; and the contributions which he levied--though trifling compared
with the amounts of recent Prussian requisitions--were sufficiently
grievous to drive the people of the Milanese to revolt. Leghorn, for
instance, had to pay two million francs for the _privilege_ of being
protected against the English. How Venice was treated is well known.
'The child of the revolution' betrayed that city to Austria as cynically
as he afterwards crushed the Ligurian republic. 'Give them (said he,
writing of the Corfiotes), plenty of talk about old Greece and liberty:
it will please them, and it means nothing.' He is always the same,
pitiless in his scorn of that _bavardage_, to put a stop to which he
tells Menou that he was leaving Egypt. No success ever pleased him more
than the way in which he fooled Sièyes, the man of ideas--making use of
his reputation as a constitution-builder, and then showing 'the head'
that as soon as its work was done it must give way to the arm.
Lanfrey's account of the 18th Brumaire, when only two of the five
directors, Gohier and Moulins, stood firm, and when the affair of the
Orangerie consummated by force what had been begun by corruption, is
exceedingly instructive. It shows how, out of such a chaos, the rise of
the ablest man was inevitable. Had Napoleon been a Washington he would,
of course, have risen for far other than selfish ends; he would at once
have taken in hand the constitution of which he so well knew the
defects, and would have perfected it. Even had he been a Cromwell,
earnest and impressed with a really noble idea, he would have looked at
home instead of abroad, and have proved that 'the empire is peace.'
Being what he was, the successful military commander, with no rule of
action, except to make everything further his own advancement, he began
by destroying representative life, and making even the judges his
creatures, at the same time that he entered on that career of war in
which he never paused save for short breathing times. A true instinct
told him that either the French must have _bonâ fide_ freedom, or must
be drawn away from politics by being kept always at war. He may have
mistrusted his ability to play the part of Washington; or what he had
seen of Frenchmen may well have made him doubt whether they would
appreciate his self-denial. Anyhow he never tried them; war became a
necessity of his position; and to make war he did not shrink from so
thoroughly exhausting France that we may doubt if she has suffered so
much by this last ruinous war, and yet more ruinous peace, as she did by
the long struggle which ended at Waterloo. The recklessness of last July
was but a recognition by the nephew of the uncle's maxim, that 'by war,
and war only, can our position be kept safe.'
Another point in common between uncle and nephew, is reckless
expenditure; we do not sufficiently remember that, besides the
conscription, the first Napoleon had the whole wealth of the nation
under his personal control. He used it as the resources of the Second
Empire have been used. The vast salaries of senators, the bribes, direct
and indirect, the encouragement of a luxury which made large means
essential--all this soon destroyed 'the austere simplicity of the
republic.' '_Il faut se montrer_' was the phrase in everybody's mouth,
'for if we do not come forward as friends of things as they are, we
shall have none of the prizes which are being so lavishly distributed.'
It was imperial Rome over again.
Such a system could not last; and the way in which France succumbed
after Waterloo, while it does not exalt our opinion of French gratitude
(for, after all, the first Napoleon had for years given France all that
the mass of Frenchmen ask for), shows how inherently weak the strongest
'tyranny' (in the Greek sense) must always be. Any one who wants a
simple and natural account of how Napoleonism grew up out of the folly
and corruption and strife of the republicans, and of the helpless
disgust with which the mass of the nation submitted when they saw what
Napoleonism really meant, should study the Erckmann-Châtrian series. We
do not wonder that the writers should have been elected as deputies for
the Meurthe and the Haut Rhin, so thoroughly do their books photograph
life and thought in these most republican departments. The peasant
proprietor, who has bought with his hard-earned savings a little patch
of confiscated land, is as fiercely bent on keeping it as ever tigress
was on defending her cubs. He is told that kings and nobles, creatures
of Pitt and Coburg, are sworn to wrest it from him; and his previous
experience of kings and nobles assures him that he has nothing to hope
if he fall into their clutches. That was the secret of Napoleon's
strength; he went forth as the soldier of the Republic, predestined to
show Europe that it was hopeless to dream of restoring the _émigrés_.
How the true Republicans, who formed the nucleus of his armies, got
gradually depraved until they became the 'dogs of war' of the Old Guard
is wonderfully well set forth; and is, we fear, only too truly
paralleled in this recent war, in which the moral deterioration of the
German citizen-soldier has, like everything else, gone on at railroad
pace.
The Erckmann-Châtrian novels have been compared with the Waverley
series. We do not think the comparison a happy one. They do not aim at
Sir Walter Scott's intricacy of plot; the stories are exceedingly
simple, and the events (_péripéties_ is the untranslateable word which
best describes them) are unfolded historically, rather than after the
manner of a romance; the human agent merely serves to string together a
number of sketches from actual affairs. On the other hand, the
Erckmann-Châtrian books show that rare power of accurate nature-painting
which belongs almost wholly to very modern times, and which shines forth
so conspicuously in our own George Eliot as well as in Dickens, and
which among French writers is best seen, perhaps, in Georges Sand. Very
different this from the landscape style of Scott, which has beauties of
its own, but which differs from them much as a picture of Wilson, or
Constable, or 'old Crome' differs from one by Tenniel. In the 'Romans
Nationaux,' too, there is a vast deal more direct political teaching
than 'the author of Waverley' ever attempted. He no doubt had very
strong views of his own; and he managed, strangely enough, to make a
sentimental Jacobitism fashionable at the very time when 'his most
Sacred Majesty George IV.' was visiting North Britain. He is answerable
for several inversions of historical truth: he makes Balfour of Burley
and his class contemptible, and throws a halo of glory round
Claverhouse, like that with which Byron invests his Werterian villains.
But he never directly teaches politics. The 'Romans,' on the contrary,
do this in almost every page. They assume, moreover, an amount of
political knowledge on the part of their readers which would be very
unwisely assumed by any English novel-writer. The fact is, the average
Frenchman does know his own history since '89 far better than most
Englishmen know the tortuous politics of the Georgian era--knows it
better because he take a vastly more personal interest in it. For us,
Mr. Disraeli well pointed out, history from the Revolution to the Reform
Bill is chiefly the record of the quarrels of a few 'great houses;' to
the Frenchman the earlier half of the eighteenth century is the time
when his country was in the labour pangs of the strange, wild birth
which was to follow; and the close of it is the fitful period in which
the Revolution, surfeited with blood, sank helplessly under the yoke of
military despotism. No need to urge Frenchmen to do what her Majesty's
inspectors have so often recommended in our elementary schools, to begin
history at the modern end and work backwards. Our boys and our men
prefer woad-stained Britons and the strife of Dane and Saxon to the
Rockinghams and Walpoles, and even the Pitts; but in France it is wholly
different. Hence an amount of political knowledge in the country, for
which we rarely give our neighbours credit. Your diligence-driver
between Caen and Falaise will point out the Château Turgot, and will
tell you all about the minister whose name it bears in a way which would
have astonished any of the old mail-coachmen along the Western road, who
knew, indeed, Burke's name in connection with High Wycombe, but who knew
nothing but the name. This is one of the errors of 'our own
correspondent:' because Frenchmen have not that blatant freedom of
speech to which he is used at English hustings, he writes home that they
know little and care less about politics--and this of people who seldom
hesitate, on occasion, to die for their opinions. Their peculiar way of
managing things arises from their habit of looking to authority, of
moving under pressure of a _force majeure_; they have not, and can form
but a faint idea of, that English liberty which is in our air, which M.
de Montalembert used to call a _bain de vie_; but they have generally
speaking, historically at any rate, more political knowledge than we
have.
This accounts for much in the 'Romans' which, to the English reader, is
wearying; they appeal to what he does not possess, a knowledge of the
state of parties from '89 downwards. Every one, however, must appreciate
the way in which the rise of Napoleon is shown to have been due to the
corruption, the gross corruption, as well as imbecility of the
Directory. No wonder Bonaparte despised mankind, when such poor
specimens--vain, self-seeking, blindly conceited--were presented to him
as the pick of republican France. Thus politics, as well as national
character and habits (the habits, be it remembered, of that Alsace which
is now to become the Ireland of Germany), are abundantly illustrated in
these novels. We do not mean to analyse any of them, or to give samples
which would be about as satisfactory as a single stone picked out of a
Greek temple. The most touching of them is 'Madame Thérèse,' which,
showing as it does how heartily the Germans on the frontier sympathized
with the ideas of which Hoche was the expounder, bears on the question,
'How will the annexed districts get on under Junker rule?' Quiet Dr.
Jacob, the hero of the story, is already so smitten with revolutionary
ideas, that when he hears them commented on by the wounded _vivandière_
whose life he has saved, he forgets that she is only the daughter of a
village schoolmaster who had volunteered and had fallen, with his three
sons, at Valmy, and, marrying her, joins Hoche as army surgeon. Men of
this stamp are found on both sides of the Rhine; and to force Junkerism
upon them would provoke a speedy break-up of the German empire. German
optimists say that this danger is imaginary: acknowledging the
disagreeable features in the Prussian character, they say that 'Germany
will open Prussia out.' If not, trouble must ensue.
The 'Blocus' is, perhaps, the most picturesque of the whole series. The
old Jew who, despite his timidity and his hatred of war, gradually
becomes an effective national guard, is admirably drawn; the details of
the siege, the misery, the excitement, are told so differently from the
half flippant, half bombastic manner of even the best of 'our own
correspondents.' The old soldier who, churl as he is supposed to be,
meets the Jew's kindness with still greater kindness, and who, long
refusing to believe in the Emperor's abdication, shoots himself when the
truth is forced upon him, is a finished picture of which any artist
might be proud. And the town thus immortalised is Phalsbourg, which
henceforth is to be German. But we hope our readers will go to the books
themselves: their appearance marks an era in novel-writing; it has done
much more, for they are all novels with a purpose, and have been very
powerful in pulling down the Napoleonic idol, in hastening the decay of
the imperial idea.
The idol is overthrown; what will be reared in its place is doubtful.
Political wisdom is not to be learned in six months, no matter how
sternly its lessons may be enforced. The France which accepted Louis
Napoleon, which gloried in the absurd boast, 'When France is satisfied
the world is at rest,' which suffered itself to be kept in
leading-strings for twenty years, giving full control over its wealth,
its resources, its foreign and domestic policy, to an unscrupulous
adventurer and his stock-jobbing associates, is not likely to rise at
once to the dignity of a free people. 'Unstable as water' has hitherto
been the curse of France's efforts at free government. The mission she
has chosen has been to teach ideas to others, not to work them
practically out for herself. When we read in old files of the approving
_Times_ of the revels at Compiègne, the luxury, the extravagance, we are
reminded of the answer made to the first Napoleon, when he asked, 'Have
I not got back the old system _in toto_?' 'Yes, but you forget that two
million Frenchmen died to root out that old system; and you can't bring
them to life again.'
Why is France, as a whole, sick of 'ideas?' Why, although they could
dance round the statue of Strasburg when they ought to have been making
peace and husbanding their strength for by-and-by, were the besieged
Parisians incapable of any serious effort? Why was Trochu paralysed by
the fear of Blanqui? Why should Bourbaki's wretched army have behaved so
differently from that of Hoche, which was equally shoeless, and almost
as much in want of everything, and which its enthusiastic leader kept at
fighting point by allowing no tents during the bitterest winter that had
been known for years? Man for man, Germans have always been superior to
the French; to succeed, these last must move in masses welded together
by one overmastering idea. They had no idea, no union, last year. Will
this terrible lesson give them that unity of sentiment which Germany,
since 1808, has been gradually feeling after, and has only just
attained? Let us hope that sad experience may, at any rate, teach them
the insufficiency of the very grandest of all merely human ideals. The
noble thoughts of the 'Marseillaise'--
'Nous entrerons dans la carrière quand nous aînés ne seront plus,
Nous y trouverons leur poussière et la trace de leur vertus,'
led to the brutal _Carmagnole_ and the sickening excesses of the Terror,
because, though noble, they were not sanctified. The sickness that comes
from aiming at too much brought on a reaction which has lasted ever
since; and the fact that Romanism is the hereditary religion of the
French masses increases the difficulty of hearty national union. No
earnest political reformer can ever look on the priests as more than
temporary allies; no ultramontane can ever be an honest Republican.
What may come if Rome changes in the direction indicated by the Abbé (so
he styled himself) and now lately by Père Hyacinthe, we cannot say;
anyhow, such changes must be slow. At present the French priesthood must
be reckoned among the bitter opponents of all free constitutional
development.
The next few months will better enable us to determine whether Paris
will still hold its own against France, or whether M. Leclercq's hope
will be realized.[218] We may be quite sure that thousands of Frenchmen
feel what he so well expresses--that it is Paris which made Louis
Napoleon possible, even as it was Paris which enabled his uncle to be
what he was. They both, indeed, used 'France' against Paris; but it was
Paris which gave them a _status_ at the outset. Those who think thus
will feel that in the changed character of the capital is the best
safeguard for the good government as well as for the moral regeneration
of France; and if this change of character seems hopeless, the dangerous
experiment must be tried of moving the Legislature out of such an
unhealthy atmosphere.
We have thus striven to trace the growth and decay of Imperialism--which
in its re-establishment was the practical expression of the Napoleonic
idea--and to contrast it indirectly with the old _régime_, and with the
sad delusion which, beginning so nobly in 1789, too soon ended in
perhaps the bloodiest tyranny that modern Europe has ever seen. We
decline to draw any horoscope of the future; such prophesying is always
useless. Let us hope that God, who 'fulfils Himself in many ways,' will
comfort the faith which this cruel satire on modern progress has so
rudely shaken, by showing plainly that good has come out of all the
evil. We cannot hope that nations will yet recognise the truth that war
is organised crime; but we may hope that for a long time imperialism,
based, as we have shown it to be, on lawlessness and on the
glorification of the individual, will be impossible.
That the beaten nation always deserves to suffer is a maxim which
nothing but a distorted view of Scripture will propound. Berlin is not
many degrees above Paris in morality; and France, despite the character
given of her in her filthy novels, is certainly not without home life
and deep pure home affections.
All that we can say is that we, believing in God's providence, are very
sure that, however strangely things may seem to turn out, the course of
this world is ordered by Him.
ART. VI.--_Religious Tests and National Universities._ By F. A. PALEY,
M.A. Williams and Norgate, 1871.
(2.) _Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on
University Tests._
Owing to the energy with which Her Majesty's Government have pushed
through its earlier stages, the identical Universities Tests Bill which
was so adroitly shelved last year by the resolution of the Marquis of
Salisbury, we may confidently anticipate that, before these pages reach
the public, every hindrance which kept men from the enjoyment of prizes
which they had fairly won, and from posts of honour and usefulness which
they were well qualified to fill, simply and solely because they were
Nonconformists, will be swept away for ever. It would be gratifying if
as reasonable a hope could be entertained that the far more stringent
and objectionable religious test which is a practical bar to the
enjoyment of half the fellowships of Oxford and Cambridge, not only to
Nonconformists, but to all such as cannot say they believe in their
hearts that they are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost, and called,
according to the Will of Our Lord Jesus Christ to His ministry, as
defined by the Church of England, would be as speedily removed from the
threshold of offices which in no way require, and, practically, are
seldom associated with the exercise of this professedly divinely imposed
ministry. The progress of events may discredit our hopes or our fears,
but this need not prevent a review of the struggle for the abolition of
those tests at the universities which are obnoxious to Nonconformists
alone, as though it were a thing of the past; nor a prospective glance
at the clerical test which is obnoxious to all conscientious laymen who
object to give in their adhesion to a complex creed, and hesitate to
assume functions which are imposed by the Majesty of Heaven, but defined
by the Majesty of Britain. This is the point upon which we must next
concentrate our forces.
In the course of a few years it will, no doubt, be a source of wonder
that religious disabilities should have been retained at the
universities so long after they have been removed from almost all civil
and municipal offices throughout the realm. This wonder will certainly
not be lessened by an enquiry into the nature of the offices they are
supposed to guard, or the value of the emoluments which attach to those
offices. That any man otherwise qualified to explain the laws which
govern the physical forces of light and heat, or the principles of
comparative anatomy, should be cut off from a professorship in these
sciences, because he will not conform to a liturgy containing the
Athanasian Creed, can never appear less absurd by the lapse of time. A
fellowship at one of our colleges, is, as Mr. Paley correctly defines
it, wholly and absolutely a sinecure. No duties whatever are required as
a condition of its tenure. Fellowships are held by gentlemen who are
absent from, as well as by those who are resident at their colleges, and
if the residents in any way promote the discipline or education of the
students in those colleges, they have extra payment for such services
altogether apart from their incomes as fellows. The word 'sinecure,'
however, as applied to a fellowship, loses much, if not all the odium
usually attached to that term from the fact that fellows are elected
absolutely according to their merit as scholars, as that merit is proved
by success in the university and college examinations. It seems strange
that one-half of the nation should have been so long content to be
excluded from participation in the prizes of pure scholarship, when the
possession of these, unlike the enjoyment of livings and benefices,
involved no duties either lay or cleric. That creed or conformity should
be required of those whose sole duty was to enjoy an income of £300 per
annum is ridiculous, unless we adopt the theory that the disabilities
were meant to be punitive in their character. The same remarks apply to
the yet more lucrative headships of colleges. Nor can it be supposed
that exclusion from these rewards of learning by a religious test was
submitted to because the rewards were insignificant in amount, either
singly or in the aggregate. Mr. Paley estimates the gross annual revenue
of the two universities and their colleges at half a million of money,
£50,000 of which goes to the heads of forty colleges and halls, while
730 fellows enjoy average incomes of not less than £300 a year. Thirty
years' residence at Cambridge has given Mr. Paley the right to speak
with some authority in these matters, but we think he has understated
the amount of these emoluments. We should not be surprised if, at no
distant day, a commission of enquiry should reveal, that the gross
revenue of these institutions, calculated on the real value of their
rapidly increasing property, is double the sum named. The apathy of
other sects in not urging more determinedly their claims to have the
prizes of the university course open to them, when the course itself is
open to all comers, is not to be accounted for on the ground that they
can afford to despise those prizes. The explanation lies in the fact
that the injustice done them has never till lately assumed a practical
and tangible form. The indifference of the English to theoretical
grievances is proverbial, and a conjunction of circumstances has tended
to mask the character of the injustice.
The circumstances referred to will in a few short years become hard to
understand unless we seize the present moment to record them. On the one
hand Nonconformists had not yet recovered from the repeated blows dealt
upon them by the legislature--blows of which the Act of Uniformity may
be taken as a striking example. Content to be tolerated and glad to be
hidden, finding neither social comfort nor encouragement in the pursuit
of the liberal professions, they sought in commerce a fair field and no
favour, and entered on this avocation with an energy which has not a
little tended to establish our national importance. At the present time
we claim free entrance to the offices and emoluments of our
universities, because they are _national_ institutions, but to a
dissenter a few years ago the very term _national_ conveyed the idea of
exclusion, as it still does in such phrases as 'National Church' and
'National School.' Nonconformists had almost learned to regard
themselves as aliens, for so the legislature had taught them to consider
themselves. The idea of demanding equal privileges with all other
subjects of the Crown, had scarcely entered their thoughts. Hence the
universities were regarded by them, as were also the army, navy, and the
bar, as inhospitable places where they would be slighted and ignored.
On the other hand the universities them selves had, at the commencement
of the present century, fallen from their high estate, and become
corrupt, servile, and dead to all the higher aims which should
distinguish institutions for learning and education. At that period a
very narrow stream of conventional scholarship ran through a very wide
meadow of mediocrity, which it never overflowed or irrigated. The
modicum of knowledge required of the [Greek: hoi polloi] was
contemptible, and every arrangement seemed to be based on the principle
of letting through as easily as possible those who could afford to pay,
and rendering the course of study of the studious as useless as the
nature of study would permit. At the time when Gunning was the
repository of university gossip, it is evident that both university and
colleges were dishonest in their distribution of both honours and
emoluments; they were willing to set the university stamp of education
upon men whose only claim to be considered educated consisted in their
being able to bear the lavish expenditure of college life. From this
depth of degradation the universities have been slowly extricating
themselves, while during the same period Nonconformity has been
relieving itself from civil disabilities, and increasing in wealth and
influence. The two circles, which were once far apart, have by
synchronous enlargement at length cut one another. Despite every
discouragement, Dissenters began to send their sons to the ancient
universities, especially to that of Cambridge. Of those sent up a large
proportion were men of great ability. Messrs. Stirling, Aldis, Wilkins,
and Hartog--and during the present year Dr. Hopkinson--and many others,
obtained the highest places in the competitive examination. These men
were no doubt consciously fighting the battle of liberty of conscience
in general, and of their co-religionists in particular. The stimulus
afforded to their competitors by the prizes incident to a high place in
the tripos lists was, in their case, substituted by a desire to break
down a system of injustice which oppressed their several sects, and the
nobler impulse produced the noblest results. From the time of the
triumph of such men the question assumed a new character. The injustice
had ceased to be theoretical, and appealed for redress to every
right-minded man in language which could neither be misunderstood nor
disregarded. The tacit eloquence of unrewarded merit addressed itself
most powerfully to the most influential quarters. However averse to
self-reform the governing bodies at the universities might be, since
they were composed of men who had climbed to their present dignity by
the arduous path of study, these could not be altogether without
sympathy for men of like ability. Hence the party for the abolition of
tests within the universities has wonderfully augmented of late years,
and, as is natural, numbers as its own the men of the greatest talent.
These tests which had been regarded as the heavy armour of defence began
so to gall that they are now looked upon as more cumbersome than useful.
Whatever might be the necessity for the maintenance of tests, the
incidental evil that men of such industry and acquirement should fail of
their appropriate rewards could not but be deplored by all generous
minds. Henceforth candid enquirers began to ask what were the uses of
tests which were to counterbalance these palpably bad results? and men
not celebrated for candour saw the necessity of finding some arguments
in their favour.
Attention having been imperatively called to the question of tests,
their abolition became certain. Besides the direct injustice done, it
was soon perceived that tests inflicted indirect injury upon the whole
body of Nonconformists, upon the universities themselves, and on the
nation at large. Religion, discredited by her uncharitable janizaries,
longed to repudiate them, and both religion and morality discarded
safeguards which could exclude the man who was so loyal to the God of
truth that he would not violate His truth in the slightest particular,
but could include any infidel, provided he were not only infidel to his
God, but also to his own conscience.
Nonconformists became alive to the necessity of claiming a perfect
political and social equality with all other of her Majesty's subjects:
they perceived that their practical exclusion from the old universities
gave some colour to the imputation of ignorance and narrow-mindedness
which their enemies had sedulously endeavoured to fix upon them.
University reformers, bent on opening the universities to all classes
for the furtherance of every branch of study, saw the necessity of
removing every invidious distinction, and welcoming on equal terms that
half of the nation which had hitherto regarded these institutions as
places where their sons would not have fair play. The rapid growth and
wide influence of the London University, where no such disabilities
existed, no doubt quickened the perception of these reformers, each of
whom beheld his _Alma Mater_ beginning to weep like Niobe for the loss
of her children.
To oppose this rising current of opinion that set against the tests,
their defenders had only such arguments as could be ranged under two
categories; the one retrospective, and the other prospective. It was
contended that by abolishing the tests the wills of the founders and
donors would be violated, and the violence done to them would have a
tendency to weaken the rights of property, and dry up the streams of
benevolence. It was further argued that these tests were the only
safeguards which could defend the minds of our youth from the inroads of
infidelity, and from the hydra-headed monster of unbelief which was
quickening into such active life. These were the two sheet anchors cast
out astern and astem to keep the tests from drifting to destruction. The
cogent logic of facts soon showed that, however good the anchors might
be, their cables could not hold. The application of these arguments was
singularly unfortunate. For the benefit of such uncompromising advocates
of the tests as the Rev. E. H. Perowne, who, if sincere, must now be
pacing the deck of his forlorn craft in fear of instant and imminent
shipwreck, we may show the insecurity of the stays to which he trusted.
It is notorious that the offices and emoluments guarded by the tests
were made, not for churchmen by churchmen, but for Catholics by
Catholics. In the case of the writer of the pamphlet at the head of this
article, we have a singular instance of cruel disregard of the wills of
the founders. Mr. Paley is one of the best instructors in classics, and
perhaps the most voluminous classical author in the University of
Cambridge. He is in every way qualified for any post of classical
instruction, but because he is an adherent of that church to which the
founders of nine-tenths of the colleges belonged, he could receive no
benefit from emoluments which were specially intended, where there was
any limit to their application at all, for his co-religionists. On the
narrowest conservative grounds Mr. Paley might urge his right to enjoy
promotion in the university he adorns. If he were told by an advocate
for tests, that the offices and emoluments were secured to the
adherents of the religion of the state, and that they were since
reserved for the professors of a different faith, because the state had
adopted that new faith, he would doubtless reply;--that his church had
never stooped so low as to admit that articles of faith could be matters
of state legislation, and that the Catholic founders of the colleges
would have stood aghast at the astounding anomaly of a state-made
church. Surely none but an outlaw to the realms of logic and ethics
could after that maintain that he ought to be excluded. Mr. Paley has
chosen to advocate the abolition of tests on broader grounds. He is a
Roman Catholic of the most liberal type, but as a Catholic citizen,
whether liberal or ultramontane, his defence of his right to participate
in the honours of the university is impregnable. We can readily imagine
the just indignation with which the claim to these universities, as
Church of England institutions still carrying out the wills and wishes
of the original Catholic founders, made by those who are perpetually
taunting Catholics with a want of veracity, would be flung aside as a
sophism unworthy of men who ought to identify religion with the
strictest honesty and truth.
But, even if this sophism were more worthy of the adoption of honourable
men, it has become quite obsolete and inapplicable at the present time.
The abolitionists might concede, for the sake of argument, that it is
right that donors, living in a remote age, should be assisted by the
present administration of law to attach conditions to the tenure of
property which have a tendency to modify, restrain, and stereotype the
political and religious opinions of a nation centuries after they had
ceased to mingle with the affairs of men. They might even admit that no
considerations of the wishes and convenience of the present holders of
the property, nor the promotion of that education which is the main
object for which the colleges and universities were founded, nor the
requirements of the nation, ought to be permitted to modify the
administration of the property by the present governing bodies. They
might further forget that the universities were constituted by royal
charter, and upheld by continual renewals of their charters. If colleges
were looked upon as corporations irresponsibly holding property more
absolutely than corporate bodies have ever been permitted to do in any
enlightened state, yet these admissions would in no way affect or
enfeeble the action of those who are now urging on the abolition of all
religious tests. They, at least, are not responsible for introducing
any novel principle of action dangerous to the stability of property.
For, to say nothing of all past legislation,--including that act of
uniformity which by limiting the election to headships, fellowships,
chaplaincies, and the office of tutor to a certain class of persons,
recognises an imperial authority to remove these limits--we have the
recent Oxford and Cambridge University Acts. The latter Act specially
and distinctly empowers the governing body of any college to repeal from
its deeds of constitution, &c., disqualifications to office, and to
abolish oaths and declarations. The Oxford Act has a section of the same
tenor, but owing to its having been passed two years earlier, it is less
distinct and explicit. This interference of the legislature has already
been accepted by many of the colleges. Proceeding under the provisions
of that Act, many of the governing bodies have removed the necessity for
celibacy from the holding of fellowships, and made other important
modifications with regard to the tenure of office, and the receipt of
emoluments. It has therefore been recognised on all hands by Churchmen
and Dissenters, by the authors of the act of uniformity, and the
supporters of the University Acts, by Parliament as well as by the
colleges, that the special provisions of the donors may be set aside in
order to promote the main object of their benefactions. It is strange
that men conversant with these facts should be content to occupy ground
which, while it is completely commanded by their opponents, is to them a
labyrinth of absurdities.
In some cases the Tests Bill will absolutely restore to the colleges
their ancient rights and liberty which the legislature had previously
ruthlessly curtailed. In the statutes of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, it is
expressly and advisedly provided that no religious disabilities shall
bar their offices. At the last annual meeting of the fellows of Trinity
College, the following resolution was passed by twenty-five votes
against ten: "That the master and seniors take such steps as may be
necessary in order to repeal the religious restrictions in the election
and conditions of tenure of fellows at present contained in the
statutes." This vote is rendered nugatory, so far as nonconformists are
concerned, because of an unrepealed clause in the Act of Uniformity.
Thus, at Trinity, we have a governing body intent on rendering its means
of education efficient, and administering rewards strictly in accordance
with merit, but debarred from doing so, not by the wills of the
founders, but by a subsequent innovation which restricts the rights of
the present holders of the college property. Such a state of things
appeals to every true conservative as well as to every wise liberal
instinct for speedy and complete legislation.
The stern cable of the maintainers of tests having parted, is the fibre
of the other more reliable? The confidence in the efficiency of tests,
which was once almost universal, is being every day shaken by fresh
revelations of their futility. At the Universities the tests have been
themselves tested and found to be base metal, stamped indeed with the
die of authority, but current only in those marts where credulity holds
commerce with cruelty. Bishop Colenso was long a resident and, so far as
his powers of imparting mathematical instruction are concerned, an
ornament to the University of Cambridge, yet Bishop Colenso denies the
inspiration of writings which the Church of England holds to be
canonical. If it be maintained that his heterodoxy was subsequent to his
residence, it may be replied, that he has ceased to reside at Cambridge
because he has accepted preferment to an office which involves
submission to a multiplicity of tests, each more stringent than that
which attaches to a fellowship. Professors Baden Powell and Jowitt, two
of the ablest writers in the volume which was once popularly called 'The
Challenge of the Seven Champions of _un_-Christendom,' occupied
distinguished places in the University of Oxford. Probably if we were to
search for the home of the most dangerous kind of skepticism we should
find it not far removed from the Combination rooms of Oxford and
Cambridge, where 'the dons' discuss high matters at their ease 'across
the walnuts and the wine.' This is certainly the case if we may take the
evidence of Mr. Paley, who thus writes:--
'In plain words, every one knows that a person may be an
avowed member of the Church of England, and yet be a
downright rationalist. Thousands are undoubtedly such. To
talk therefore of "admitting free-thinking" by removing
tests, can only raise a smile in those who know intimately
the working of the present system. Indeed, it has been well
said, that if the religious nonconformists who are excluded
from fellowships could hear the conversation of many who
now hold them, they would be as much shocked as surprised
at the fruits which the test-system is producing.'
It is easy to conceive of a case in which these arguments for the
retention of tests might be urged with great force. It is scarcely
possible to imagine a case in which they could be rendered more feeble
and futile by the comment of circumstance.
The progress of events and the logic of facts could scarcely render the
University tests more absurd, did not these make them day by day more
pernicious to the charity and concord of Christians of all
denominations, more galling and injurious to the Universities, now
striving nobly and efficiently to meet the requirements of the age, and
more detrimental to the interests and highest aspirations of the British
nation.
In tracing the causes why these University Tests have existed so long,
it has been impossible to avoid incidentally producing the reasons why
they should endure no longer.
The test imposed at Cambridge, by requiring the graduate when he
proceeds to his B.A. degree to declare himself a _bonâ fide_ member of
the Church of England, not only excludes the nonconformist from a voice
in the senate, which body is the popular and ultimate regulator of the
studies of the university, but it also denies to him a vote for the
members representing the university in Parliament. This is the only
constituency in which a religious belief is made to curtail the exercise
of the franchise.
Headships and fellowships in colleges, as distinguished from the offices
of tutor, lecturer, and dean, are sinecures involving no onerous duties,
and not necessarily connected with the imparting of instruction of any
kind, whether religious or secular. They are posts of honour and not of
trust. Their occupants, no doubt, influence and control the course of
study at their colleges, but they need not be and are not by their
offices personally concerned in education. These posts, therefore, not
only involve no clerical duty, they do not demand the exercise of those
debateable functions which lie between the lay and clerical offices,
such as the education of youth is supposed to imply. To use an
illustration now rendered familiar to most by the practical working of
the Education Act; the master and fellows of a college occupy the
position of a school board, while the tutors and lecturers alone
instruct. Lecturers in the several departments of study are, it is true,
generally chosen from the body of fellows, but by no means necessarily
so. Hence, there is no analogy between the test imposed on the clergy,
and that which is taken by the heads and fellows of the colleges. The
former is a pledge to perform definite functions for which the
functionaries receive a definite stipend, the latter is a test applied
to those who require service to be performed. The test as applied to
these offices has become an unparalleled anomaly. It is the last remnant
of the revengeful policy exercised by the Anglican upon the Puritan
party, after these were driven from their short-lived supremacy.
Thus viewed, the tests at the universities are like the Needle rocks,
which once were continuous with the neighbouring cliff, but are now
become strange and fantastic through the isolation imposed upon them by
the waves of the ever advancing ocean. As political change is as rapid
and certain as geologic change is slow and sure, their bold position is
an evidence not of their immunity from, but of their amenableness to the
influence of the forces which play upon their bases.
The offices of tutor, dean, lecturer, &c., inasmuch as they are directly
connected with the moral supervision and education of the undergraduates
in all branches of study, including theology, stand in a somewhat
different position with regard to tests. To those unacquainted with the
universities, the distinction between these two classes of office is not
obvious. The general impression obtains that these national institutions
are training schools for the clergy of the Establishment, in which
training all resident officials are concerned; but the members of the
governing bodies themselves are quite aware of the difference pointed
out. Unless this distinction could be made there would be no _locus
standi_ for the select committee of the House of Lords appointed for the
purpose of inquiring into the best mode of giving effect to the
following resolution of the house--
'That in any measure for enabling persons not members of
the Church of England to hold offices to which they are not
now eligible in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and
Durham, and the colleges and halls in those universities,
it is essential to provide by law proper safeguards for the
maintenance of religious instruction and worship, and for
the religious character of the education to be given
therein.'
All the gentlemen who gave evidence before that committee, with the
exception of the Rev. E. H. Perowne, who has the reputation of being the
most uncompromising and indiscriminating advocate of tests, recognise
this distinction; and all suggest that while fellowships, or some of
them, be thrown open to all, a modified test be applied to the
functional posts.
The pernicious principle that Government has a right to interfere
between parents and their children in the regulation of the religious
instruction of youth, has, no doubt, been often acted upon. Thus that
Act of Uniformity, which is now the main prop of university tests,
requires subscription not only from persons in holy orders and
university officials, but also from schoolmasters in private as well as
in public schools, and even from tutors in private families.
The recent legislation for the primary education of the country has,
however, thrown a flood of light on the relations of education to
religion, and of the State to both. It is scarcely conceivable that the
Parliament which passed the Elementary Education Act of 1870, should
retain a sectarian test as a safeguard to offices because they are posts
of education. The Education Act was avowedly tentative and incomplete.
It was a compromise, in which the representatives of old ideas obtained
more recognition than they had anticipated. The bill will certainly be
modified before many years are gone, and if so the modification is sure
to be in the direction of eliminating the sectarian element from
education. Yet there was great unanimity of opinion among the parties to
the discussion in certain principles embodied in the Act. These
principles were: 1. That the State might neither provide nor require
definite religious instruction. 2. That where, owing to existing methods
of denominational education, it was necessary for the State to make the
various sects its allies to effect the common object of secular
education, it should deal to all denominations even-handed justice. 3.
That wherever the State interfered or was concerned with education, no
child who was the recipient of the benefactions applied to instruction
should be placed at any disadvantage on account of the religious belief
of the parents of that child.
If the House of Lords should endeavour so to mutilate the University
Tests bill as to substitute a test, however modified or limited in its
action, in place of that imposed by the Act of Uniformity, it would ask
the legislature to violate every one of the aforesaid principles, and
thus to stultify itself. Such an attempt is certain to be successfully
resisted. We had better not legislate at all than re-endorse a time
_dis_-honoured practice.
The Elementary Education Act, while it thus indicated the nature of the
reform required, also furnished the most urgent reason for the immediate
adoption of that reform at the universities. If primary education ought
to be the care of the State, secondary education is not less its duty.
By secondary education we mean a higher education than that rudimentary
training which is thought essential to all children; that is, a higher
class education, not education for a higher class. That the child of a
poor man who has shown himself capable of wider and higher culture by
the readiness with which he has responded to the lower, should not be
able to proceed to a higher class school, because of the poverty of his
parents, would be even more deplorable than that dull ones should lack
education altogether. The universities form the natural apex of the
pyramid of national education. The nation can never rightly economise
and utilise its intellect until every one of its children, capable of
such culture, can pass freely up through all the grades of education to
the very summit. If this is to be the case the capital must be rendered
congruous with the column it should surmount. By reason of tests the
national universities are rendered so incongruous with the rest of the
structure that is in course of erection, that no cement could make them
cohere. If by common consent we must eliminate sectarian religion from
elementary education in the interests of the child whose father is so
stolidly indifferent to the higher needs of that child that he must be
compelled to send him to school; how absurd it is to provide that when
he has grown into manhood and shown a capacity for the reception of the
highest culture, he should be handed over for instruction to a body
rendered exclusively sectarian by the retention of antiquated religious
tests. The inauguration of a national scheme of education is an _epoch_
in the history of the nation. It is a _crisis_ in the history of the
universities. On the present settlement of this question in some measure
depends whether the ancient universities shall stand in the position of
the Doric capitals which crown the columns and support the architrave of
the classic temple, or lie like those same capitals after the earthquake
has dashed them to the ground--the broken and isolated fragments of a
former grandeur.
From a review of the past struggle, in which we have endeavoured to show
how the march of events, the advance of ideas, and the change of
position of parties, rendered the old line of defence formed by these
tests, not only indefensible, but deserted by its defenders, we turn to
examine the ground of the next battle-field.
The necessity of taking holy orders as a condition for holding or
retaining offices and emoluments at the universities and their colleges
is a test of the most stringent and pernicious character. Every argument
against tests in the abstract, may be urged with double force against
this clerical test. Every consideration of the welfare of
nonconformists, of the universities, and of the nation, which has
determined the abolition of the simple tests, is of greater force when
applied to the complex test implied in the taking of holy orders.
Fully one-half of the fellowships of Oxford and Cambridge, and nearly
two-thirds of the headships, can be enjoyed only by clergy of the
Establishment. This clerical test is therefore a practical bar to
Nonconformists of half the preferments of these wealthy national
institutions; and the fact that all conscientious laymen are included
under this academic ban certainly does not commend this test to
exceptional retention. Colleges, where there is a certain minimum of
clerical fellowships, are at the present moment compelled to elect
inferior men when all their lay fellowships are filled. In colleges like
Trinity and St. John's, Cambridge, where all must take orders at a
certain date from their degrees, the more able and energetic men usually
become absorbed in other pursuits and vacate their fellowships to serve
in turn to younger men as means of defying the impecuniosity which
notoriously dogs the early stages of a professional career; while the
idlers as naturally become sinecure pluralists, because the dignity of
the priest need not interfere with the fellow's ease. By this system the
colleges are equally dishonoured by those whom they retain and those
whom they reject. By this system the nation also suffers, by allowing
the large revenues of national institutions to be squandered on cureless
priests, which, by some such arrangement as is explained by Mr. Paley,
might secure to literature and science the labours of our greatest
scholars and ablest investigators. To this catalogue of ill effects may
be added the damage done by the clerical test to the Church of England.
Many years of university life is admitted to be the very worst
preparation for parish work. As a rule, fellows manifest great
repugnance to take upon themselves, in middle life, the duties involved
in the acceptance of a college living; and the man who allows himself to
drift first into holy orders and then into a college benefice, from
sheer inanity, is not likely to bring much zeal to his work.
We are quite aware that a very different view of this result of clerical
fellowships is taken by their advocates; and this brings us to the
examination of those reasons which may be brought forward to show that
the clerical test stands on a footing different from that of other
tests. The advocates of clerical fellowships would state, first, that
the clerical test was not imposed _ab extra_ by the Imperial
Legislature, but rested wholly and solely on the wills of the founders
and donors of the emoluments and offices it guarded. They would argue,
secondly, that by removing the tests from lay fellowships a sufficient
number were thrown open to satisfy and reward all the Nonconformist
scholars who were likely to seek education at the universities, and that
by retaining the clerical fellowships a preponderance would be secured
at the seats of learning in favour of Protestant Christianity, which
preponderance is a desideratum with nine-tenths of the English people.
They would show, thirdly, that these clerical fellowships induced men,
having the reputation and acquirements of scholars, to enter, and
thereby adorn and strengthen a Church which more than ever needs learned
divines to meet scientific sceptics on their own ground.
All this may be true, but it is very little to the purpose. Whether the
colleges, or any of them, were originally monastic institutions is a
curious antiquarian question, but the requirement of holy orders and
celibacy, from every member of the fraternity, in many instances, at
least, originated in times when the recognition of a distinction between
the regular and secular clergy was a part of the public opinion of the
day. A community which accepted the theory that good works could be
performed by a sacerdotal order which would benefit men's souls after
death, quite irrespective of any effect which could be produced upon
them during life, might look with complacency on fraternities freed from
social ties, and consecrated to spiritual uses when these uses were not
apparent. Nowadays, however, a collegiate priest is of all men least
likely to give himself to works of supererogation. The duties of a
fellow of a college and a priest without cure can be defined only as
Bishop Blomfield once defined the functions of an archdeacon, namely, as
archidiaconal. These duties may both once have been burdensome, but now
the academic Issachar crouches down between them, and declares rest to
be good and the land pleasant. The plain teaching of the clerical test
is, not that we ought to follow the letter of the wills of the founders
when it contravenes their spirit, but that well-meaning men can do
little good, and may do much harm, by endeavouring to impose the ideas
of one age on the customs and manners of a remotely future one.
It is a wild expectation that the maintenance of a Christian and
Protestant ascendancy at the universities will establish oases in the
midst of the barren desert of doubt, or clearings in the forest of
Papist superstition, such as the several religious alarmists, according
to their bent and temperament, would induce us to believe our country
will soon become. Let those who delight in clothing bugbears with
imaginary terrors speculate on the possibility of a Mussulman or a
Parsee becoming an examiner for the theological degree, or a positivist
becoming a professor of exegesis. A reasonable man will consider the
conditions upon which such a thing could occur. Our nation must have
forsaken a faith which has existed among us for a thousand years. Our
legislature and our universities, both equally transcripts of the
popular mind, must have forgotten their God. In such a case is it
conceivable that a religion alike abandoned by a people which it has
raised to power and prosperity, and by the Deity which promulgated it,
should be preserved to our colleges by the operation of a test which is
even now profaned by men who avow their readiness to swear _et ceteras_?
The great classical scholar Person, himself a sufferer under, and a
protester against the clerical test, used to say that a fellow's life
was like the lime-tree avenue at Trinity--a long walk with a church at
the end of it. This was said in reference to Coton spire seen in the
distance.
The present Bishop of Carlisle said in a sermon addressed to the
University of Cambridge, 'We want men to enter the ministry of our
Church who, if they went to the bar, would succeed at the bar.' There
was a curious admission implied in these words, but to do Dean Goodwin
justice, he was then speaking, not in defence of clerical fellowships,
but to rouse the voluntary enthusiasm of the students he addressed.
That scholars are induced by the practical working of the system of
clerical fellowships to take their places among the clergy of the
Establishment cannot be denied, but the argument deducible from this,
savours both of bigotry and worldliness. A clerical fellowship is in
this view a skilfully-baited trap to catch a Church decoration. We have
many instances to show that by placing upon learned men the badge of
orthodoxy you do not make them defenders of the faith. Too often the
false position of a man, thus entrapped, makes him cynically sceptical.
Of such an one it may often be said, 'A little grain of conscience makes
him sour,' and causes him--
'Like a dog, that is compelled to fight,
Snatch at his master, that doth tarre him on.'
This endeavour to affix a plume to the helmet of faith worn by the
church militant is in strange relation to the thanksgiving which
proceeded from the Head of the Church, 'I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' This is evidently solely a
Churchman's consideration, and does not deserve our further notice; but
it is intimately related to the wider question of the influence of this
test on morality and religion.
We cannot better preface our concluding remarks on this important
bearing of the subject than by quoting the evidence given by the Rev. D.
P. Chase and Professor J.B. Lightfoot before the Committee of the House
of Lords:--
'286. Lord Rosebery: You say that there are Free-thinkers
already amongst the body of fellows at Oxford, who, under
the irritation produced by their false positions, express
their feelings and opinions with some freedom.'
'Dr. Chase: Yes.
'289. Have you reason to think that these gentlemen
deliberately swallow their opinions in order to obtain the
advantage of a fellowship?
'I would hardly put it in that way: I think they have
persuaded themselves that the imposition of any such test
being in itself immoral, they may act in a way in which
they would not act towards an obligation which they
acknowledged.'