Again: the primary instinct of self-preservation alone would have
assuredly impelled the bravest of the brave amongst the nine malefactors,
including Tresham, who were incarcerated in the Tower of London, either to
seek to save his life when awaiting his trial in Westminster Hall, or, at
any rate, when expecting the scaffold, the ripping knife, the embowelling
fork, and the quartering block, in St. Paul’s Churchyard or in the old
Palace Yard, Westminster, to seek to save his life, _by divulging the
mighty secret respecting his responsibility for the Letter of Letters, had
anyone of them in point of fact penned the document. For “skin for skin
all that a man hath will he give for his life.”_
Hence, from the silence of one and all of the survivors——a silence as
unbroken as that of the grave——we can, it stands to reason, draw but this
one conclusion, namely, that the nine surviving Gunpowder conspirators
were stayed and restrained by the omnipotence of the impossible from
declaring that _anyone of them_ had saved his King and Parliament.
Hence, by consequence, _the revealing conspirator must be found amongst
that small band of four who survived not to tell the tale_.
Therefore is our Inquiry reduced to within a narrow compass, a fact which
simplifies our task unspeakably.
If it be objected that “a point of honour” may have stayed and restrained
one of the nine conspirators from “discovering” or revealing his share in
the laudable deed, it is demonstrable that it would be a _false_, not a
_true_, sense of duty that prompted such an unrighteous step.
For the revealing plotter, whoever he was, had duties to his kinsfolk as
well as to himself, and, indeed, to his Country, to Humanity at large, and
also to his Church, which _ought, in justice_, to have actuated——and it is
reasonable to believe would have assuredly actuated——a disclosure of the
truth respecting the facts of the revelation.
But I hold that the nine conspirators told nothing as to the origin of
this Letter of Letters, _because they had none of them, anything to tell_.
Moreover, I suggest that what Archbishop Usher[139][A] meant when he is
reported to have divers times said, “that if Papists knew what he knew,
the blame of the Gunpowder Treason would not lie on them,”[140][B] was
this:——
[Footnote A: Protestant Archbishop of Armagh.]
[Footnote B: Such a secret as the answer to the problem “Who revealed the
Gunpowder Plot?” was a positive burden for Humanity, whereof it should
have been, in justice, relieved. For it tends to demonstrate the existence
of a realm of actualities having relations to man, but the workings of the
causes, processes, and consequences of which realm are invisible to mortal
sight; in other words, of the contact and intersection of two circles or
spheres, whereof one is bounded by the finite, the other by the infinite.
Now, in the case of strong-minded and intelligent Catholics, the weight of
_this_ fact would have almost inevitably impelled to an avowal of the fact
of revelation had not the omnipotence of the impossible stayed and
restrained. Hence, the absence of avowal demonstrates, with moral
certitude, the absence of ability to avow. And this latter, with moral
certitude, proves my point, namely, that one of the four slain divulged
the Plot.]
_That it was “the Papist Doctrine” of the non-binding force of a secret,
unlawful oath that (Deo juvante) had been primarily the joint-efficient
cause of the spinning right round on its axis of the hell-begotten
Gunpowder Plot._
It is plain that King James’s Government[A] were mysteriously stayed and
restrained in their legislative and administrative action after the
discovery of the diabolically atrocious Gunpowder Treason Plot.
[Footnote A: It is the duty of every Government to see that it is true,
just, and strong. Governments should confine their efforts to the calm and
faithful attainment of these three ideals. Then they win respect and
confidence, even from those who fear them but do not love. James and the
first Earl of Salisbury, and that type of princes and statesmen, oscillate
betwixt the two extremes, injustice and hysterical generosity, which is a
sure sign of a lack of consciousness of absolute truth, justice, and
strength.]
And illogical and inconstant as many English rulers too often have been
throughout England’s long and, by good fortune, glorious History, this
extraordinary illogicalness and inconstancy of the Government of King
James I. betokens to him that can read betwixt the lines, and who “knows
what things belong to what things”——betokens Evidence of what?
Unhesitatingly I answer: _Of that Government’s not daring, for very
decency’s sake, to proceed to extremities._
Now, by reason of the primal instincts of human nature, this consciousness
would be sure to be generated by, and would be certain to operate upon,
any and every civilized, even though heathen, government with staying and
restraining force.
Now, the Government of James I. was a civilized government, and it was not
a heathen government. Moreover, it certainly was a Government composed of
human beings, who, after all, were the persecuted Papists’
fellow-creatures.
Therefore, I suggest that this manifest hesitancy to proceed to
extremities sprang from, and indeed itself demonstrates, this fact,
namely, that the then British Government realized that _it was an
essentially Popish Doctrine of Morals which had been the primary motive
power for securing their temporal salvation. That doctrine being, indeed,
none other than the hated and dreaded “Popish Doctrine” of the
“non-binding force” upon the Popish Conscience of a secret, morally
unlawful oath which thereby, ipso facto, “the Papal Church” prohibited and
condemned._
Hence, that was, I once more suggest, what Archbishop Usher referred to,
in his oracular words, which have become historic, but which have been
hitherto deemed to constitute an insoluble riddle.
For certainly behind those oracular words lay some great State mystery.
The same fact possibly accounts for the traditional tale that the second
Earl of Salisbury confessed that the Plot was “his father’s
contrivance.”——See Gerard’s “_What was the Gunpowder Plot?_” p. 160.
For the Plot _was_ “his father’s contrivance,” considered as to its broad
ultimate _effects_ on the course of English History, in that the Plot was
made a seasonable handle of for the destruction of English Popery. And a
valuable and successful handle it proved too, as mankind knows very well
to-day. Though “what’s bred in the bone” is apt, in this world, “to come
out in the flesh.” Therefore, the British statesman or philosopher needs
not be unduly alarmed if and when, from time to time, he discerns about
him incipient signs, among certain members of the English race, of that
“staggering back to Popery,” whereof Ralph Waldo Emerson once sagely
spoke.
“_’Tis a strange world, my masters! And the whirligig of Time brings round
strange revenges!_”