trivial in themselves, tend to prove that the author is not always very
scrupulous in speaking of things he has not studied. A purist so severe
as to write "Kelt" for "Celt" ought not to call Mercury, originally a
very different personage from Hermes, one of "the legendary authors of
Greek civilisation" (p. 43); and we do not believe that anybody who had
read the writings of the two primates could call Bramhall "an inferior
counterpart of Laud" (p. 105). In a loftier mood, and therefore
apparently with still greater license, Mr. Goldwin Smith declares that
"the glorious blood of Orange could scarcely have run in a low
persecutor's veins" (p. 123). The blood of Orange ran in the veins of
William the Silent, the threefold hypocrite, who confessed Catholicism
whilst he hoped to retain his influence at court, Lutheranism when there
was a chance of obtaining assistance from the German princes, Calvinism
when he was forced to resort to religion in order to excite the people
against the crown, and who persecuted the Protestants in Orange and the
Catholics in Holland. These, however, are matters of no consequence
whatever in a political history of Ireland; but we find ourselves at
issue with the author on the important question of political freedom.
"Even the highly civilised Kelt of France, familiar as he is with
theories of political liberty, seems almost incapable of sustaining
free institutions. After a moment of constitutional government, he
reverts, with a bias which the fatalist might call irresistible, to
despotism in some form" (p. 18). The warning so frequently uttered by
Burke in his last years, to fly from the liberty of France, is still
more needful now that French liberty has exhibited itself in a far more
seductive light. The danger is more subtle, when able men confound
political forms with popular rights. France has never been governed by a
Constitution since 1792, if by a Constitution is meant a definite rule
and limitation of the governing power. It is not that the French failed
to preserve the forms of parliamentary government, but that those forms
no more implied freedom than the glory which the Empire has twice given
in their stead. It is a serious fault in our author that he has not
understood so essential a distinction. Has he not read the _Rights of
Man_, by Tom Paine?--
It is not because a part of the government is elective that makes it
less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a
parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes
separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for
despotism.[323]
Napoleon once consulted the cleverest among the politicians who served
him, respecting the durability of some of his institutions. "Ask
yourself," was the answer, "what it would cost you to destroy them. If
the destruction would cost no effort, you have created nothing; for
politically, as well as physically, only that which resists endures." In
the year 1802 the same great writer said: "Nothing is more pernicious in
a monarchy than the principles and the forms of democracy, for they
allow no alternative, but despotism and revolutions." With the
additional experience of half a century, a writer not inferior to the
last repeats exactly the same idea:--
Of all societies in the world, those which will always have most
difficulty in permanently escaping absolute government will be
precisely those societies in which aristocracy is no more, and can
no more be.[324]
French constitutionalism was but a form by which the absence of
self-government was concealed. The State was as despotic under Villele
or Guizot as under either of the Bonapartes. The Restoration fenced
itself round with artificial creations, having no root in the condition
or in the sympathies of the people; these creations simply weakened it
by making it unpopular. The hereditary peerage was an anomaly in a
country unused to primogeniture, and so was the revival, in a nation of
sceptics, of the Gallican union between Church and State. The monarchy
of July, which was more suited to the nature of French society, and was
thus enabled to crush a series of insurrections, was at last forced, by
its position and by the necessity of self-preservation, to assume a very
despotic character. After the fortifications of Paris were begun, a
tendency set in which, under a younger sovereign, would have led to a
system hardly distinguishable from that which now prevails; and there
are princes in the House of Orleans whose government would develop the
principle of democracy in a manner not very remote from the institutions
of the second Empire. It is liberalism more than despotism that is
opposed to liberty in France; and it is a most dangerous error to
imagine that the Governments of the French Charter really resemble ours.
There are States without any parliament at all, whose principles and
fundamental institutions are in much closer harmony with our system of
autonomy. Mr. Goldwin Smith sees half the truth, that there is something
in the French nation which incapacitates it for liberty; but he does not
see that what they have always sought, and sometimes enjoyed, is not
freedom; that their liberty must diminish in proportion as their ideal
is attained; and that they are not yet familiar with the theory of
political rights. With this false notion of what constitutes liberty, it
is not surprising that he should repeatedly dwell on its connection
with Protestantism, and talk of "the political liberty which
Protestantism brought in its train" (p. 120). Such phrases may console a
Protestant reader of a book fatal to the Protestant ascendency in
Ireland; but as there are no arguments in support of them, and as they
are strangely contradicted by the facts in the context, Mr. Goldwin
Smith resorts to the ingenious artifice of calling to mind as many ugly
stories about Catholics as he can. The notion constantly recurs that,
though the Protestants were very wicked in Ireland, it was against their
principles and general practice, and is due to the Catholics, whose
system naturally led them to be tyrannical and cruel, and thus provoked
retaliation. Mr. Smith might have been reminded by Peter Plymley that
when Protestantism has had its own way it has uniformly been averse to
freedom: "What has Protestantism done for liberty in Denmark, in Sweden,
throughout the north of Germany, and in Prussia?"--not much less than
democracy has done in France. An admirer of the constitutions of 1791,
1814, or 1830 may be excused if he is not very severe on the absolutism
of Protestant countries.
Mr. Goldwin Smith mistakes the character of the invasion of Ireland
because he has not understood the relative position of the civilisation
of the two countries at the time when it occurred. That of the Celts was
in many respects more refined than that of the Normans. The Celts are
not among the progressive, initiative races, but among those which
supply the materials rather than the impulse of history, and are either
stationary or retrogressive. The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and
the Teutons are the only makers of history, the only authors of
advancement. Other races possessing a highly developed language, a
copious literature, a speculative religion, enjoying luxury and art,
attain to a certain pitch of cultivation which they are unable either to
communicate or to increase. They are a negative element in the world;
sometimes the barrier, sometimes the instrument, sometimes the material
of those races to whom it is given to originate and to advance. Their
existence is either passive, or reactionary and destructive, when, after
intervening like the blind forces of nature, they speedily exhibit their
uncreative character, and leave others to pursue the course to which
they have pointed. The Chinese are a people of this kind. They have long
remained stationary, and succeeded in excluding the influences of
general history. So the Hindoos; being Pantheists, they have no history
of their own, but supply objects for commerce and for conquest. So the
Huns, whose appearance gave a sudden impetus to a stagnant world. So the
Slavonians, who tell only in the mass, and whose influence is
ascertainable sometimes by adding to the momentum of active forces,
sometimes by impeding through inertness the progress of mankind.
To this class of nations also belong the Celts of Gaul. The Roman and
the German conquerors have not altered their character as it was drawn
two thousand years ago. They have a history, but it is not theirs; their
nature remains unchanged, their history is the history of the invaders.
The revolution was the revival of the conquered race, and their reaction
against the creations of their masters. But it has been cunning only to
destroy; it has not given life to one constructive idea, or durability
to one new institution; and it has exhibited to the world an
unparalleled political incapacity, which was announced by Burke, and
analysed by Tocqueville, in works which are the crowning pieces of two
great literatures.
The Celts of these islands, in like manner, waited for a foreign
influence to set in action the rich treasure which in their own hands
could be of no avail. Their language was more flexible, their poetry and
music more copious, than those of the Anglo-Normans. Their laws, if we
may judge from those of Wales, display a society in some respects highly
cultivated. But, like the rest of that group of nations to which they
belong, there was not in them the incentive to action and progress which
is given by the consciousness of a part in human destiny, by the
inspiration of a high idea, or even by the natural development of
institutions. Their life and literature were aimless and wasteful.
Without combination or concentration, they had no star to guide them in
an onward course; and the progress of dawn into day was no more to them
than to the flocks and to the forests.
Before the Danish wars, and the decay, which is described by St. Bernard
in terms which must not be taken quite literally, had led to the English
invasion, there was probably as much material, certainly as much
spiritual, culture in Ireland as in any country in the West; but there
was not that by whose sustaining force alone these things endure, by
which alone the place of nations in history is determined--there was no
political civilisation. The State did not keep pace with the progress of
society. This is the essential and decisive inferiority of the Celtic
race, as conspicuous among the Irish in the twelfth century as among the
French in our own. They gave way before the higher political aptitude of
the English.
The issue of an invasion is generally decided by this political
aptitude, and the consequences of conquest always depend on it.
Subjection to a people of a higher capacity for government is of itself
no misfortune; and it is to most countries the condition of their
political advancement. The Greeks were more highly cultivated than the
Romans, the Gauls than the Franks; yet in both cases the higher
political intelligence prevailed. For a long time the English had,
perhaps, no other superiority over the Irish; yet this alone would have
made the conquest a great blessing to Ireland, but for the separation of
the races. Conquering races necessarily bring with them their own system
of government, and there is no other way of introducing it. A nation can
obtain political education only by dependence on another. Art,
literature, and science may be communicated by the conquered to the
conqueror; but government can be taught only by governing, therefore
only by the governors; politics can only be learnt in this school. The
most uncivilised of the barbarians, whilst they slowly and imperfectly
learned the arts of Rome, at once remodelled its laws. The two kinds of
civilisation, social and political, are wholly unconnected with each
other. Either may subsist, in high perfection, alone. Polity grows like
language, and is part of a people's nature, not dependent on its will.
One or the other can be developed, modified, corrected; but they cannot
be subverted or changed by the people itself without an act of suicide.
Organic change, if it comes at all, must come from abroad. Revolution is
a malady, a frenzy, an interruption of the nation's growth, sometimes
fatal to its existence, often to its independence. In this case
revolution, by making the nation subject to others, may be the occasion
of a new development. But it is not conceivable that a nation should
arbitrarily and spontaneously cast off its history, reject its
traditions, abrogate its law and government, and commence a new
political existence.
Nothing in the experience of ages, or in the nature of man, allows us to
believe that the attempt of France to establish a durable edifice on the
ruins of 1789, without using the old materials, can ever succeed, or
that she can ever emerge from the vicious circle of the last seventy
years, except by returning to the principle which she then repudiated,
and by admitting, that if States would live, they must preserve their
organic connection with their origin and history, which are their root
and their stem; that they are not voluntary creations of human wisdom;
and that men labour in vain who would construct them without
acknowledging God as the artificer.
Theorists who hold it to be a wrong that a nation should belong to a
foreign State are therefore in contradiction with the law of civil
progress. This law, or rather necessity, which is as absolute as the law
that binds society together, is the force which makes us need one
another, and only enables us to obtain what we need on terms, not of
equality, but of dominion and subjection, in domestic, economic, or
political relations. The political theory of nationality is in
contradiction with the historic nation. Since a nation derives its ideas
and instincts of government, as much as its temperament and its
language, from God, acting through the influences of nature and of
history, these ideas and instincts are originally and essentially
peculiar to it, and not separable from it; they have no practical value
in themselves when divided from the capacity which corresponds to them.
National qualities are the incarnations of political ideas. No people
can receive its government from another without receiving at the same
time the ministers of government. The workman must travel with the work.
Such changes can only be accomplished by submission to a foreign State,
or to another race. Europe has seen two great instances of such
conquests, extending over centuries,--the Roman Empire, and the
settlement of the barbarians in the West. This it is which gives unity
to the history of the Middle Ages. The Romans established a universal
empire by subjecting all countries to the authority of a single power.
The barbarians introduced into all a single system of law, and thus
became the instrument of a universal Church. The same spirit of freedom,
the same notions of the State, pervade all the _Leges Barbarorum_, and
all the polities they founded in Europe and Asia. They differ widely in
the surrounding conditions, in the state of society, in the degree of
advancement, in almost all external things. The principle common to them
all is to acknowledge the freedom of the Church as a corporation and a
proprietor, and in virtue of the principle of self-government to allow
religion to develop her influence in the State. The great migration
which terminated in the Norman conquests and in the Crusades gave the
dominion of the Latin world to the Teutonic chivalry, and to the Church
her proper place. All other countries sank into despotism, into schism,
and at last into barbarism, under the Tartars or the Turks. The union
between the Teutonic races and the Holy See was founded on their
political qualities more than on their religious fervour. In modern
times, the most pious Catholics have often tyrannised over the Church.
In the Middle Ages her liberty was often secured and respected where her
spiritual injunctions were least obeyed.
The growth of the feudal system coinciding with the general decay of
morals led, in the eleventh century, to new efforts of the Church to
preserve her freedom. The Holy See was delivered from the Roman factions
by the most illustrious of the emperors, and a series of German Popes
commenced the great reform. Other princes were unwilling to submit to
the authority of the imperial nominees, and the kings of France and
Castile showed symptoms of resistance, in which they were supported by
the heresy of Berengarius. The conduct of Henry IV. delivered the Church
from the patronage of the Empire, whilst the Normans defended her
against the Gallican tendencies and the feudal tyranny. In Sicily, the
Normans consented to hold their power from the Pope; and in Normandy,
Berengarius found a successful adversary, and the King of France a
vassal who compelled him to abandon his designs. The chaplain of the
Conqueror describes his government in terms which show how singularly it
fulfilled the conditions which the Church requires. He tells us that
William established in Normandy a truly Christian order; that every
village, town, and castle enjoyed its own privileges; and that, while
other princes either forbade the erection of churches or seized their
endowments, he left his subjects free to make pious gifts. In his reign
and by his conduct the word "bigot" ceased to be a term of reproach, and
came to signify what we now should call "ultramontane." He was the
foremost of those Normans who were called by the Holy See to reclaim
what was degenerate, and to renovate the declining States of the North.
Where the Church addressed herself to the conversion of races of purely
Teutonic origin, as in Scandinavia, her missionaries achieved the work.
In other countries, as in Poland and Hungary, political dependence on
the Empire was the channel and safeguard of her influence. The Norman
conquest of England and of Ireland differs from all of these. In both
islands the faith had been freely preached, adopted, and preserved. The
rulers and the people were Catholic. The last Saxon king who died
before the Conquest was a saint. The last archbishop of Dublin appointed
before the invasion was a saint. Neither of the invasions can be
explained simply by the demoralisation of the clergy, or by the
spiritual destitution of the people.
Catholicism spreads among the nations, not only as a doctrine, but as an
institution. "The Church," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, "is not a disembodied
spirit, but a spirit embodied in human society." Her teaching is
directed to the inner man, and is confined to the social order; but her
discipline touches on the political. She cannot permanently ignore the
acts and character of the State, or escape its notice. Whilst she
preaches submission to authorities ordained by God, her nature, not her
interest, compels her to exert an involuntary influence upon them. The
jealousy so often exhibited by governments is not without reason, for
the free action of the Church is the test of the free constitution of
the State; and without such free constitution there must necessarily
ensue either persecution or revolution. Between the settled organisation
of Catholicism and every form of arbitrary power, there is an
incompatibility which must terminate in conflict. In a State which
possesses no security for authority or freedom, the Church must either
fight or succumb. Now, as authority and freedom, the conditions of her
existence, can only be obtained through the instrumentality of certain
nations, she depends on the aid of these nations. Religion alone cannot
civilise men, or secure its own conquest. It promotes civilisation where
it has power; but it has not power where its way is not prepared. Its
civilising influence is chiefly indirect, and acts by its needs and
wants as much as by the fulness of its ideas. So Christianity extends
itself by the aid of the secular power, relying, not on the victories of
Christian arms, but on the progress of institutions and ideas that
harmonise with ecclesiastical freedom. Hence, those who have most
actively served the interests of the Church are not always those who
have been most faithful to her doctrines. The work which the Goth and
the Frank had done on the continent of Europe the Normans came to do in
England, where it had been done before but had failed, and in Ireland,
where neither Roman nor German influences had entered.
Thus the theory of nationality, unknown to Catholic ages, is
inconsistent both with political reason and with Christianity, which
requires the dominion of race over race, and whose path was made
straight by two universal empires. The missionary may outstrip, in his
devoted zeal, the progress of trade or of arms; but the seed that he
plants will not take root, unprotected by those ideas of right and duty
which first came into the world with the tribes who destroyed the
civilisation of antiquity, and whose descendants are in our day carrying
those ideas to every quarter of the world. It was as impossible to
realise in Ireland the mediaeval notions of ecclesiastical liberty
without a great political reform, as to put an end to the dissolution of
society and the feuds of princes without the authority of a supreme
lord.
There is one institution of those days to which Mr. Goldwin Smith has
not done entire justice.
It is needless to say that the Eric, or pecuniary composition for
blood, in place of capital or other punishment, which the Brehon law
sanctioned, is the reproach of all primitive codes, and of none. It
is the first step from the license of savage revenge to the ordered
justice of a regular law (p. 41).
Pecuniary composition for blood belongs to an advanced period of defined
and regular criminal jurisprudence. In the lowest form of civil society,
when the State is not yet distinct from the family, the family is
compelled to defend itself; and the only protection of society is the
vendetta. It is the private right of self-defence combined with the
public office of punishment, and therefore not only a privilege but an
obligation. The whole family is bound to avenge the injury; but the duty
rests first of all with the heir. Precedency in the office of avenger is
naturally connected with a first claim in inheritance; and the
succession to property is determined by the law of revenge. This leads
both to primogeniture, because the eldest son is most likely to be
capable of punishing the culprit; and, for the same reason, to
modifications of primogeniture, by the preference of the brother before
the grandson, and of the male line before the female. A practice which
appears barbarous is, therefore, one of the foundations of civilisation,
and the origin of some of the refinements of law. In this state of
society there is no distinction between civil and criminal law; an
injury is looked upon as a private wrong, not, as religion considers it,
a sin, or, as the State considers it, a crime.
Something very similar occurs in feudal society. Here all the barons
were virtually equal to each other, and without any superior to punish
their crimes or to avenge their wrongs. They were, therefore, compelled
to obtain safety or reparation, like sovereigns, by force of arms. What
war is among States, the feud is in feudal society, and the vengeance of
blood in societies not yet matured into States--a substitute for the
fixed administration of justice.
The assumption of this duty by the State begins with the recognisance of
acts done against the State itself. At first, political crimes alone are
visited with a public penalty; private injuries demand no public
expiation, but only satisfaction of the injured party. This appears in
its most rudimentary form in the _lex talionis_. Society requires that
punishment should be inflicted by the State, in order to prevent
continual disorders. If the injured party could be satisfied, and his
duty fulfilled without inflicting on the criminal an injury
corresponding to that which he had done, society was obviously the
gainer. At first it was optional to accept or to refuse satisfaction;
afterwards it was made obligatory.