No More Learning

They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures


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9402
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
and their sorrows; but not for the things of this world. Enthu-
siasm had made them Stoics; had cleared their minds from every
vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influ-
ence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them
to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They
went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with
his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with
human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirm-
ities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not to be
pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.
Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans.
We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sul-
len gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the
tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things
too high for mortal reach: and we know that in spite of their
hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that
bad system,-intolerance and extravagant austerity; that they had
their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De
Montforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all cir-
cumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to
pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body.
SPAIN UNDER PHILIP II.
From the Essay on Lord Mahon's "History of the War of the Succession in
Spain >
WH
HOEVER wishes to be well acquainted with the morbid anat-
omy of governments, whoever wishes to know how great
States may be made feeble and wretched, should study
the history of Spain. The empire of Philip the Second was
undoubtedly one of the most powerful and splendid that ever
existed in the world. In Europe, he ruled Spain, Portugal, the
Netherlands on both sides of the Rhine, Franche Comté, Rous-
sillon, the Milanese, and the Two Sicilies. Tuscany, Parma,
and the other small States of Italy, were as completely dependent
on him as the Nizam and the Rajah of Berar now are on the
East India Company. In Asia, the King of Spain was master of
the Philippines, and of all those rich settlements which the Por-
tuguese had made on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, in
the Peninsula of Malacca, and in the spice islands of the Eastern


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THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9403
Archipelago. In America, his dominions extended on each side
of the equator into the temperate zone. There is reason to
believe that his annual revenue amounted, in the season of his
greatest power, to a sum near ten times as large as that which
England yielded to Elizabeth. He had a standing army of fifty
thousand excellent troops, at a time when England had not a
single battalion in constant pay. His ordinary naval force con-
sisted of a hundred and forty galleys. He held, what no other
prince in modern times has held, the dominion both of the land
and of the sea. During the greater part of his reign, he was
supreme on both elements. His soldiers marched up to the capi-
tal of France; his ships menaced the shores of England.
It is no exaggeration to say that during several years, his
power over Europe was greater than even that of Napoleon.
The influence of the French conqueror never extended beyond
low-water mark. The narrowest strait was to his power what it
was of old believed that a running stream was to the sorceries
of a witch. While his army entered every metropolis from
Moscow to Lisbon, the English fleets blockaded every port from
Dantzic to Trieste. Sicily, Sardinia, Majorca, Guernsey, enjoyed
security through the whole course of a war which endangered
every throne on the Continent. The victorious and imperial
nation which had filled its museums with the spoils of Antwerp,
of Florence, and of Rome, was suffering painfully from the want
of luxuries which use had made necessaries. While pillars and
arches were rising to commemorate the French conquests, the
conquerors were trying to manufacture coffee out of succory and
sugar out of beet-root. The influence of Philip on the Continent
was as great as that of Napoleon. The Emperor of Germany
was his kinsman. France, torn by religious dissensions, was
never a formidable opponent, and was sometimes a dependent
ally. At the same time, Spain had what Napoleon desired in
vain, ships, colonies, and commerce. She long monopolized the
trade of America and of the Indian Ocean. All the gold of the
West, and all the spices of the East, were received and distributed
by her. During many years of war, her commerce was inter-
rupted only by the predatory enterprises of a few roving pri-
vateers. Even after the defeat of the Armada, English statesmen
continued to look with great dread on the maritime power of
Philip. "The King of Spain," said the Lord Keeper to the two
Houses in 1593, "since he hath usurped upon the kingdom of


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9404
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Portugal, hath thereby grown mighty by gaining the East Indies;
so as, how great soever he was before, he is now thereby mani-
festly more great. . . . He keepeth a navy armed to impeach
all trade of merchandise from England to Gascoigne and Guienne,
which he attempted to do this last vintage; so as he is now
become as a frontier enemy to all the west of England, as well
as all the south parts, as Sussex, Hampshire, and the Isle of
Wight. Yea, by means of his interest in St. Maloes, a port full of
shipping for the war, he is a dangerous neighbor to the Queen's
isles of Jersey and Guernsey, ancient possessions of this crown,
and never conquered in the greatest wars with France. "
The ascendency which Spain then had in Europe was in
one sense well deserved. It was an ascendency which had been
gained by unquestioned superiority in all the arts of policy and
of war.
In the sixteenth century, Italy was not more decidedly
the land of the fine arts, Germany was not more decidedly the
land of bold theological speculation, than Spain was the land
of statesmen and of soldiers. The character which Virgil has
ascribed to his countrymen might have been claimed by the
grave and haughty chiefs who surrounded the throne of Ferdi-
nand the Catholic, and of his immediate successors. That majes-
tic art, "regere imperio populos," was not better understood
by the Romans in the proudest days of their republic than
by Gonsalvo and Ximenes, Cortez and Alva. The skill of the
Spanish diplomatists was renowned throughout Europe. In Eng-
land the name of Gondomar is still remembered. The sovereign
nation was unrivaled both in regular and irregular warfare.
The impetuous chivalry of France, the serried phalanx of Switz-
erland, were alike found wanting when brought face to face with
the Spanish infantry. In the wars of the New World, where
something different from ordinary strategy was required in the
general and something different from ordinary discipline in the
soldier, where it was every day necessary to meet by some new
expedient the varying tactics of a barbarous enemy, the Spanish
adventurers, sprung from the common people, displayed a fertility
of resource, and a talent for negotiation and command, to which
history scarcely affords a parallel.
The Castilian of those times was to the Italian what the Ro-
man, in the days of the greatness of Rome, was to the Greek.
The conqueror had less ingenuity, less taste, less delicacy of
perception, than the conquered; but far more pride, firmness, and


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THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9405
courage, a more solemn demeanor, a stronger sense of honor.
The subject had more subtlety in speculation, the ruler more
energy in action. The vices of the former were those of a
coward; the vices of the latter were those of a tyrant. It may
be added, that the Spaniard, like the Roman, did not disdain to
study the arts and the language of those whom he oppressed. A
revolution took place in the literature of Spain, not unlike that
revolution which, as Horace tells us, took place in the poetry of
Latium: "Capta ferum victorem cepit. " The slave took prisoner
the enslaver. The old Castilian ballads gave place to sonnets
in the style of Petrarch, and to heroic poems in the stanza of
Ariosto, as the national songs of Rome were driven out by imi-
tations of Theocritus and translations from Menander.
In no modern society, not even in England during the reign
of Elizabeth, has there been so great a number of men eminent
at once in literature and in the pursuits of active life, as Spain
produced during the sixteenth century. Almost every distin-
guished writer was also distinguished as a soldier and a politi-
cian. Boscan bore arms with high reputation. Garcilaso de Vega,
the author of the sweetest and most graceful pastoral poem of
modern times, after a short but splendid military career, fell
sword in hand at the head of a storming party. Alonzo de
Ercilla bore a conspicuous part in that war of Arauco which he
afterwards celebrated in one of the best heroic poems that Spain
has produced. Hurtado de Mendoza, whose poems have been
compared to those of Horace, and whose charming little novel is
evidently the model of Gil Blas, has been handed down to us by
history as one of the sternest of those iron proconsuls who were
employed by the House of Austria to crush the lingering pub-
lic spirit of Italy. Lope sailed in the Armada; Cervantes was
wounded at Lepanto.
It is curious to consider with how much awe our ancestors in
those times regarded a Spaniard. He was in their apprehension
a kind of dæmon; horribly malevolent, but withal most sagacious
and powerful. They be verye wyse and politicke," says an
honest Englishman, in a memorial addressed to Mary, "and can,
thorowe ther wysdome, reform and brydell theyr owne natures
for a tyme, and applye their conditions to the manners of those
men with whom they meddell gladlye by friendshippe: whose
mischievous manners a man shall never knowe untyll he come
under ther subjection: but then shall he parfectlye parceyve and
«<


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9406
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
fele them; which thynge I praye God England never do: for
in dissimulations untyll they have ther purposes, and afterwards
in oppression and tyrannye when they can obtayne them, they
do exceed all other nations upon the earthe. ” This is just such
language as Arminius would have used about the Romans, or as
an Indian statesman of our times might use about the English.
It is the language of a man burning with hatred, but cowed by
those whom he hates; and painfully sensible of their superiority,
not only in power, but in intelligence.
St
THE CHARACTER OF CHARLES II. OF ENGLAND
From the Essay on Mackintosh's History of the Revolution in England'
UCH was England in 1660. In 1678 the whole face of things
had changed. At the former of those epochs eighteen years
of commotion had made the majority of the people ready to
buy repose at any price. At the latter epoch eighteen years of
misgovernment had made the same majority desirous to obtain.
security for their liberties at any risk. The fury of their return-
ing loyalty had spent itself in its first outbreak. In a very few
months they had hanged and half-hanged, quartered and embow-
eled, enough to satisfy them. The Roundhead party seemed to
be not merely overcome, but too much broken and scattered ever
to rally again. Then commenced the reflux of public opinion.
The nation began to find out to what a man it had intrusted
without conditions all its dearest interests, on what a man it had
lavished all its fondest affection.
On the ignoble nature of the restored exile, adversity had
exhausted all her discipline in vain. He had one immense
advantage over most other princes. Though born in the purple,
he was far better acquainted with the vicissitudes of life and the
diversities of character than most of his subjects. He had known
restraint, danger, penury, and dependence. He had often suffered
from ingratitude, insolence, and treachery. He had received many
signal proofs of faithful and heroic attachment. He had seen, if
ever man saw, both sides of human nature. But only one side
remained in his memory. He had learned only to despise and
to distrust his species; to consider integrity in men, and modesty
in women, as mere acting: nor did he think it worth while to
keep his opinion to himself. He was incapable of friendship; yet


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THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9407
he was perpetually led by favorites, without being in the small-
est degree duped by them. He knew that their regard to his
interests was all simulated; but from a certain easiness which had
no connection with humanity, he submitted, half laughing at him-
self, to be made the tool of any woman whose person attracted
him or of any man whose tattle diverted him. He thought
little and cared less about religion. He seems to have passed
his life in dawdling suspense between Hobbism and Popery.
He was crowned in his youth with the Covenant in his hand;
he died at last with the Host sticking in his throat; and dur-
ing most of the intermediate years was occupied in persecuting
both Covenanters and Catholics. He was not a tyrant from
the ordinary motives. He valued power for its own sake little,
and fame still less. He does not appear to have been vindictive,
or to have found any pleasing excitement in cruelty. What he
wanted was to be amused, to get through the twenty-four hours
pleasantly without sitting down to dry business. Sauntering
was, as Sheffield expresses it, the true Sultana Queen of his
Majesty's affections. A sitting in council would have been insup-
portable to him if the Duke of Buckingham had not been there
to make mouths at the Chancellor. It has been said, and is
highly probable, that in his exile he was quite disposed to sell
his rights to Cromwell for a good round sum. To the last, his
only quarrel with his Parliaments was that they often gave him
trouble and would not always give him money. If there was a
person for whom he felt a real regard, that person was his
brother. If there was a point about which he really entertained
a scruple of conscience or of honor, that point was the descent
of the crown. Yet he was willing to consent to the Exclusion
Bill for six hundred thousand pounds; and the negotiation was
broken off only because he insisted on being paid beforehand.
To do him justice, his temper was good; his manners agreeable;
his natural talents above mediocrity. But he was sensual, frivo-
lous, false, and cold-hearted, beyond almost any prince of whom
history makes mention.
Under the government of such a man, the English people
could not be long in recovering from the intoxication of loyalty.


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9408
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
THE CHURCH OF ROME
From the Essay on Ranke's 'History of the Popes >
THE
HERE is not, and there never was on the earth, a work of
human policy so well deserving of examination as the
Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins
together the two great ages of human civilization. No other in-
stitution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times.
when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when
camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The
proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with
the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an
unbroken series from the pope who crowned Napoleon in the
nineteenth century to the pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth;
and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till
it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came
next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when
compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone,
and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not
a mere antique, but full of life and useful vigor. The Catholic
Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world
missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augus-
tin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with
which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is
greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New
World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the
Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries
which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn,
countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain
a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The
members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hun-
dred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all
other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty
millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term
of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commence-
ment of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical estab-
lishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance
that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was
great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain,
before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence
still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshiped in the


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THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9409
temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor
when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a
vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge
to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.
We often hear it said that the world is constantly becoming
more and more enlightened, and that this enlightening must be
favorable to Protestantism and unfavorable to Catholicism. We
wish that we could think so. But we see great reason to doubt
whether this be a well-founded expectation. We see that during
the last two hundred and fifty years the human mind has been
in the highest degree active; that it has made great advances in
every branch of natural philosophy; that it has produced innu-
merable inventions tending to promote the convenience of life;
that medicine, surgery, chemistry, engineering, have been very
greatly improved; that government, police, and law have been
improved, though not to so great an extent as the physical sci-
ences. But we see that during these two hundred and fifty
years, Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of.
Nay, we believe that as far as there has been a change, that
change has on the whole been in favor of the Church of Rome.
We cannot, therefore, feel confident that the progress of knowl-
edge will necessarily be fatal to a system which has, to say the
least, stood its ground in spite of the immense progress made by
the human race in knowledge since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
Indeed, the argument which we are considering seems to us
to be founded on an entire mistake. There are branches of
knowledge with respect to which the law of the human mind.
is progress. In mathematics, when once a proposition has been
demonstrated, it is never afterwards contested. Every fresh story
is as solid a basis for a new superstructure as the original
foundation was. Here, therefore, there is a constant addition to
the stock of truth. In the inductive sciences, again, the law is
progress. Every day furnishes new facts, and thus brings theory
nearer and nearer to perfection. There is no chance that either
in the purely demonstrative or in the purely experimental sci-
ences, the world will ever go back or even remain stationary.
Nobody ever heard of a reaction against Taylor's theorem, or
of a reaction against Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the
blood.
But with theology the case is very different. As respects nat-
ural religion,-revelation being for the present altogether left out
XVI-589


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9410
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
of the question,-it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the
present day is more favorably situated than Thales or Simonides.
He has before him just the same evidences of design in the
structure of the universe which the early Greek had.
We say
just the same; for the discoveries of modern astronomers and
anatomists have really added nothing to the force of that argu-
ment which a reflecting mind finds in every beast, bird, insect,
fish, leaf, flower, and shell. The reasoning by which Socrates,
in Xenophon's hearing, confuted the little atheist Aristodemus,
is exactly the reasoning of Paley's Natural Theology. Socrates
makes precisely the same use of the statues of Polycletus and the
pictures of Zeuxis which Paley makes of the watch. As to the
other great question, the question what becomes of man after
death, we do not see that a highly educated European, left to
his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a
Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in
which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light
on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth,
all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted
without the help of revelation to prove the immortality of man,
from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to have failed de-
plorably.
Of the dealings of God with man, no more has been revealed
to the nineteenth century than to the first, or to London than to
the wildest parish in the Hebrides. It is true that in those
things which concern this life and this world, man constantly
becomes wiser and wiser. But it is no less true that, as respects
a higher power and a future state, man, in the language of
Goethe's scoffing fiend,
·
"bleibt stets von gleichem Schlag,
Und ist so wunderlich als wie am ersten Tag. ”*
The history of Catholicism strikingly illustrates these observa-
tions. During the last seven centuries the public mind of Europe
has made constant progress in every department of secular knowl-
edge. But in religion we can trace no constant progress. The
ecclesiastical history of that long period is a history of movement
to and fro. Four times, since the authority of the Church of
Rome was established in Western Christendom, has the human
*«-
remains always of the same stamp,
And is as unaccountable as on the first day. "


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THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9411
intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice that Church remained.
completely victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict
bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life
still strong within her. When we reflect on the tremendous
assaults which she has survived, we find it difficult to conceive in
what way she is to perish.
LOYOLA AND THE JESUITS
From the Essay on Ranke's 'History of the Popes›
I™
Is not, therefore, strange that the effect of the great outbreak
of Protestantism in one part of Christendom should have
been to produce an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal
in another. Two reformations were pushed on at once with
equal energy and effect: a reformation of doctrine in the North,
a reformation of manners and discipline in the South. In the
course of a single generation, the whole spirit of the Church of
Rome underwent a change. From the halls of the Vatican to
the most secluded hermitage of the Apennines, the great revival
was everywhere felt and seen. All the institutions anciently
devised for the propagation and defense of the faith were
furbished up and made efficient. Fresh engines of still more
formidable power were constructed. Everywhere old religious
communities were remodeled and new religious communities
called into existence. Within a year after the death of Leo, the
order of Camaldoli was purified. The Capuchins restored the old
Franciscan discipline, the midnight prayer and the life of silence.
The Barnabites and the society of Somasca devoted themselves
to the relief and education of the poor. To the Theatine order
a still higher interest belongs. Its great object was the same
with that of our early Methodists; namely, to supply the defi-
ciencies of the parochial clergy. The Church of Rome, wiser than
the Church of England, gave every countenance to the good
work. The members of the new brotherhood preached to great
multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the beds
of the sick, and administered the last sacraments to the dying.
Foremost among them in zeal and devotion was Gian Pietro
Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul the Fourth.
In the convent of the Theatines at Venice, under the eye
of Caraffa, a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended the
poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved himself almost


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9412
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
to death, and often sallied into the streets, mounted on stones,
and waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began to preach in
a strange jargon of mingled Castilian and Tuscan. The Thea-
tines were among the most zealous and rigid of men: but to
this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed lax, and their
movements sluggish; for his own mind, naturally passionate and
imaginative, had passed through a training which had given to
all its peculiarities a morbid intensity and energy. In his early
life he had been the very prototype of the hero of Cervantes.
The single study of the young Hidalgo had been chivalrous ro-
mance; and his existence had been one gorgeous day-dream of
princesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had chosen a Dul-
cinea, no countess, no duchess, "- these are his own words,-
"but one of far higher station;" and he flattered himself with
the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and
the jeweled turbans of Asiatic kings.
«<
In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosper-
ous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness.
His constitution was shattered, and he was doomed to be a crip-
ple for life. The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly
exercises, was no longer for him. He could no longer hope to
strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favor in the sight of
beautiful women. A new vision then arose in his mind, and
mingled itself with his own delusions in a manner which to most
Englishmen must seem singular, but which those who know how
close was the union between religion and chivalry in Spain will
be at no loss to understand. He would still be a soldier; he
would still be a knight-errant: but the soldier and knight-errant
of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon.
He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun.
He would break the charm under which false prophets held
the souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit led him to the
Syrian deserts and to the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. Thence
he wandered back to the farthest West, and astonished the con-
vents of Spain and the schools of France by his penances and
vigils. The same lively imagination which had been employed in
picturing the tumult of unreal battles and the charms of unreal
queens, now peopled his solitude with saints and angels. The
Holy Virgin descended to commune with him. He saw the
Savior face to face with the eye of flesh. Even those mysteries
of religion which are the hardest trial of faith were in his case
palpable to sight. It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile


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THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9413
that in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take
place; and that as he stood praying on the steps of the Church
of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud
with joy and wonder. Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola,
who in the great Catholic reaction bore the same part which
Luther bore in the great Protestant movement.
Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic
Spaniard turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without
a patron, without recommendations, he entered the city where
now two princely temples, rich with painting and many-colored
marble, commemorate his great services to the Church; where
his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones,
enshrined amidst jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God.
His activity and zeal bore down all opposition; and under his
rule the order of Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to
the full measure of his gigantic powers. With what vehemence,
with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless
courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the
dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to
a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the
choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their church,
is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several
generations. In the Order of Jesus was concentrated the quint-
essence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the Order of
Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order
possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the
public mind: of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of
the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached, the church was
too small for the audience. The name of Jesuit on a title-page
secured the circulation of a book. It was in the ears of the
Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, and the beautiful breathed
the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit
that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought
up from childhood to manhood, from the first rudiments to the
courses of rhetoric and philosophy. Literature and science, lately
associated with infidelity or with heresy, now became the allies
of orthodoxy.
Dominant in the South of Europe, the great order soon went
forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and deserts,
of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons
and racks, of gibbets and quartering-blocks, Jesuits were to be


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9414
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
found under every disguise and in every country; scholars, phy
sicians, merchants, serving-men; in the hostile court of Sweden,
in the old manor-house of Cheshire, among the hovels of Con-
naught; arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away the hearts
of the young, animating the courage of the timid, holding up
the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Nor was it less their
office to plot against the thrones and lives of the apostate kings,
to spread evil rumors, to raise tumults, to inflame civil wars,
to arm the hand of the assassin. Inflexible in nothing but in
their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal
in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom.
Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty,
the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every
one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad ruler,
were inculcated by the same man, according as he addressed
himself to the subject of Philip or to the subject of Elizabeth.
Some described these divines as the most rigid, others as the
most indulgent of spiritual directors; and both descriptions were
correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and
saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his
rival through the body, the frail beauty who had forgotten her
marriage vow, found in the Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the
world, who knew how to make allowance for the little irregu-
larities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict or lax,
according to the temper of the penitent. The first object was to
drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were
bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than
bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a
bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making
him a heretic too.
The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activ-
ity. The Jesuits invaded all the countries which the great mari-
time discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to European
enterprise. They were to be found in the depths of the Peru-
vian mines, at the marts of the African slave-caravans, on the
shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China. They
made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had
tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and dis-
puted in tongues of which no other native of the West understood
a word.


## p. 9415 (#439) ###########################################

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
THE REIGN OF TERROR
From the Essay on ‘Barère›
9415
N-[disinterested enthusiasts].
O GREAT party can be composed of such materials as these
It is the inevitable law that
such zealots as we have described shall collect around them
a multitude of slaves, of cowards, and of libertines, whose savage
tempers and licentious appetites, withheld only by the dread of
law and magistracy from the worst excesses, are called into full
activity by the hope of impunity. A faction which, from what-
ever motive, relaxes the great laws of morality, is certain to be
joined by the most immoral part of the community. This has
been repeatedly proved in religious wars. The war of the Holy
Sepulchre, the Albigensian war, the Huguenot war, the Thirty
Years' war, all originated in pious zeal. That zeal inflamed the
champions of the Church to such a point that they regarded all
generosity to the vanquished as a sinful weakness. The infidel,
the heretic, was to be run down like a mad dog. No outrage
committed by the Catholic warrior on the miscreant enemy could
deserve punishment. As soon as it was known that boundless
license was thus given to barbarity and dissoluteness, thousands
of wretches who cared nothing for the sacred cause, but who
were eager to be exempted from the police of peaceful cities and
the discipline of well-governed camps, flocked to the standard of
the faith. The men who had set up that standard were sincere,
chaste, regardless of lucre, and perhaps, where only themselves
were concerned, not unforgiving; but round that standard were
assembled such gangs of rogues, ravishers, plunderers, and fero-
cious bravoes, as were scarcely ever found under the flag of any
State engaged in a mere temporal quarrel. In a very similar
way was the Jacobin party composed. There was a small nucleus
of enthusiasts; round that nucleus was gathered a vast mass
of ignoble depravity; and in all that mass there was nothing so
depraved and so ignoble as Barère.
Then came those days when the most barbarous of all
codes was administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals;
when no man could greet his neighbors, or say his prayers, or
dress his hair, without danger of committing a capital crime;
when spies lurked in every corner; when the guillotine was long
and hard at work every morning; when the jails were filled as


## p. 9416 (#440) ###########################################

9416
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
close as the hold of a slave-ship; when the gutters ran foaming
with blood into the Seine; when it was death to be great-niece
of a captain of the royal guards, or half-brother of a doctor of
the Sorbonne, to express a doubt whether assignats would not
fall, to hint that the English had been victorious in the action.
of the first of June, to have a copy of one of Burke's pamphlets
locked up in a desk, to laugh at a Jacobin for taking the name
of Cassius or Timoleon, or to call the Fifth Sans-culottide by its
old superstitious name of St. Matthew's Day. While the daily
wagon-loads of victims were carried to their doom through the
streets of Paris, the proconsuls whom the sovereign committee
had sent forth to the departments reveled in an extravagance of
cruelty unknown even in the capital. The knife of the deadly
machine rose and fell too slow for their work of slaughter. Long
rows of captives were mowed down with grape-shot. Holes were
made in the bottom of crowded barges. Lyons was turned into
a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of a speedy death was
denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from Saumur to
the sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked corpses,
twined together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown to
sex or age. The number of young lads and of girls of seven-
teen who were murdered by that execrable government is to be
reckoned by hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed
from pike to pike along the Jacobin ranks. One champion of
liberty had his pockets well stuffed with ears. Another swag.
gered about with the finger of a little child in his hat. A few
months had sufficed to degrade France below the level of New
Zealand.
It is absurd to say that any amount of public danger can
justify a system like this, we do not say on Christian principles,
we do not say on the principles of a high morality, but even on
principles of Machiavellian policy. It is true that great emer-
gencies call for activity and vigilance; it is true that they justify
severity which, in ordinary times, would deserve the name of
cruelty. But indiscriminate severity can never, under any cir-
cumstances, be useful. It is plain that the whole efficacy of
punishment depends on the care with which the guilty are dis-
tinguished. Punishment which strikes the guilty and the innocent
promiscuously operates merely like a pestilence or a great con-
vulsion of nature, and has no more tendency to prevent offenses
than the cholera, or an earthquake like that of Lisbon, would


## p. 9417 (#441) ###########################################

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9417
have. The energy for which the Jacobin administration is praised
was merely the energy of the Malay who maddens himself with
opium, draws his knife, and runs a-muck through the streets,
slashing right and left at friends and foes. Such has never been
the energy of truly great rulers; of Elizabeth, for example, of
Oliver, or of Frederick. They were not, indeed, scrupulous. But
had they been less scrupulous than they were, the strength and
amplitude of their minds would have preserved them from crimes
such as those which the small men of the Committee of Public
Safety took for daring strokes of policy. The great Queen who
so long held her own against foreign and domestic enemies,
against temporal and spiritual arms; the great Protector who gov-
erned with more than regal power, in despite both of royalists
and republicans; the great King who, with a beaten army and
an exhausted treasury, defended his little dominions to the last
against the united efforts of Russia, Austria, and France, with
what scorn would they have heard that it was impossible for
them to strike a salutary terror into the disaffected without send-
ing schoolboys and schoolgirls to death by cart-loads and boat-
loads!
-
The popular notion is, we believe, that the leading Terrorists
were wicked men, but at the same time great men. We can see
nothing great about them but their wickedness. That their policy
was daringly original is a vulgar error. Their policy is as old
as the oldest accounts which we have of human misgovernment.
It seemed new in France and in the eighteenth century only
because it had been long disused, for excellent reasons, by the
enlightened part of mankind. But it has always prevailed, and
still prevails, in savage and half-savage nations, and is the chief
cause which prevents such nations from making advances towards
civilization. Thousands of deys, of beys, of pachas, of rajahs, of
nabobs, have shown themselves as great masters of statecraft as
the members of the Committee of Public Safety. Djezzar, we
imagine, was superior to any of them in their new line. In fact,
there is not a petty tyrant in Asia or Africa so dull or so un-
learned as not to be fully qualified for the business of Jacobin
police and Jacobin finance. To behead people by scores without
caring whether they are guilty or innocent, to wring money
out of the rich by the help of jailers and executioners; to rob
the public creditor, and to put him to death if he remonstrates;
to take loaves by force out of the bakers' shops; to clothe and


## p. 9418 (#442) ###########################################

9418
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
mount soldiers by seizing on one man's wool and linen, and on
another man's horses and saddles, without compensation,-is of
all modes of governing the simplest and most obvious. Of its
morality we at present say nothing. But surely it requires no
capacity beyond that of a barbarian or a child.
By means like those which we have described, the Commit-
tee of Public Safety undoubtedly succeeded, for a short time, in
enforcing profound submission and in raising immense funds.
But to enforce submission by butchery, and to raise funds by spo-
liation, is not statesmanship. The real statesman is he who,
in troubled times, keeps down the turbulent without unnecessa-
rily harassing the well-affected; and who, when great pecuniary
resources are needed, provides for the public exigencies without
violating the security of property and drying up the sources of
future prosperity. Such a statesman, we are confident, might in
1793 have preserved the independence of France without shed-
ding a drop of innocent blood, without plundering a single ware.
house. Unhappily, the republic was subject to men who were
mere demagogues and in no sense statesmen. They could declaim
at a club. They could lead a rabble to mischief. But they had
no skill to conduct the affairs of an empire. The want of skill
they supplied for a time by atrocity and blind violence. For
legislative ability, fiscal ability, military ability, diplomatic ability,
they had one substitute,- the guillotine. Indeed, their exceeding
ignorance and the barrenness of their invention are the best
excuse for their murders and robberies. We really believe that
they would not have cut so many throats and picked so many
pockets, if they had known how to govern in any other way.
That under their administration the war against the European
coalition was successfully conducted, is true. But that war had
been successfully conducted before their elevation, and continued
to be successfully conducted after their fall. Terror was not the
order of the day when Brussels opened its gates to Dumourier.
Terror had ceased to be the order of the day when Piedmont
and Lombardy were conquered by Bonaparte. The truth is, that
France was saved, not by the Committee of Public Safety, but by
the energy, patriotism, and valor of the French people. Those
high qualities were victorious in spite of the incapacity of rulers
whose administration was a tissue, not merely of crimes, but of
blunders.


## p. 9419 (#443) ###########################################

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS
From the Essay on Gleig's 'Memoirs of Warren Hastings>
9419
IN
N THE mean time, the preparations for the trial had proceeded
rapidly; and on the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings
of the Court commenced. There have been spectacles more
dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewelry and cloth of
gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was
then exhibited at Westminster; but perhaps there never was a
spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflect-
ing, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which
belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the
past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents
and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and
civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that could
be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step
in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through
many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of
our constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and
deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshiping
strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left.
The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms.
handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an English-
man accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city
of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude.
The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall
of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations
at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed
the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers,
the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed
and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the
hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice
with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame.
Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were
lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry.
The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshaled by the
heralds under Garter King-at-arms. The judges in their vest-
ments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a
hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House as
the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their


## p. 9420 (#444) ###########################################

9420
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
暑
​usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron
present led the way,-George Elliot, Lord Heathfield, recently
ennobled for his memorable defense of Gibraltar against the fleets
and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed
by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great
dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of
all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and
noble bearing. The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The
long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely
excited the fears or the emulations of an orator. There were
gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and
prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning,
the representatives of every science and of every art. There
were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of
the House of Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings
and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which
no other country in the world could present. /There Siddons, in
the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene
surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of
the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the
cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a Senate which
still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against
the oppressor of Africa. There were seen side by side the great-
est painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle
had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us
the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and
the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced
Parr to suspend his labors in that dark and profound mine from
which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition; a treasure
too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious
and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splen-
did. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the
heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too
was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the St. Cecilia
whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has
rescued from the common decay. There were the members of
that brilliant society which quoted, criticized, and exchanged rep-
artees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And
there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox
himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and
treasury, shone around Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.


## p. 9421 (#445) ###########################################

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9421
The serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the
bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of
that great presence.
He had ruled an extensive and populous
country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had
set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had
so borne himself that all had feared him, that most had loved
him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory
except virtue.
He looked like a great man, and not like a bad
man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a
carriage which while it indicated deference to the court, indicated
also habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellect-
ual forehead, a brow pensive but not gloomy, a mouth of inflex-
ible decision, a face pale and worn but serene, on which was
written, as legibly as under the picture in the council chamber at
Calcutta, Mens æqua in arduis: such was the aspect with which
the great proconsul presented himself to his judges.
His counsel accompanied him,-men all of whom were after-
wards raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts in
their profession: the bold and strong-minded Law, afterwards
Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the more humane and elo-
quent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and
Plomer, who near twenty years later successfully conducted in
the same high court the defense of Lord Melville, and subse-
quently became Vice-Chancellor and Master of the Rolls.
But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much
notice as the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery,
a space had been fitted up with green benches and tables for the
Commons. The managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in
full dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that
even Fox, generally so regardless of his appearance, had paid
to the illustrious tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and
sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the
impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous elo-
quence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age
and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public
prosecutor; and his friends were left without the help of his
excellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. But in spite of the
absence of these two distinguished members of the lower House,
the box in which the managers stood contained an array of speak-
ers such as perhaps had not appeared together since the great


## p. 9422 (#446) ###########################################

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9422
age of Athenian eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the
English Demosthenes and the English Hyperides. There was
Burke, ignorant indeed, or negligent, of the art of adapting his
reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers,
but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination
superior to every orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes
reverentially fixed on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the
age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his face beam-
ing with intelligence and spirit, the ingenious, the chivalrous,
the high-souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such men,
did the youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most
of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending
for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a
conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or
connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splen-
did talents and his unblemished honor. At twenty-three he had
been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who
appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of
the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone,
are gone, culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is
now in the vigor of life, he is the sole representative of a great
age which has passed away. But those who within the last ten
years have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on
the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated
eloquence of Charles, Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate
of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the
foremost.
--
—
HORATIUS
A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX
ARS PORSENA of Clusium
L
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.


## p. 9423 (#447) ###########################################

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9423
East and west and south and north
The messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage
Have heard the trumpet's blast.
Shame on the false Etruscan
Who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the march for Rome.
The horsemen and the footmen
Are pouring in amain.
From many a stately market-place,
From many a fruitful plain;
From many a lonely hamlet,
Which, hid by beech and pine,
Like an eagle's nest hangs on the crest
Of purple Apennine;
From lordly Volaterræ,
Where scowls the far-famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants
For godlike kings of old;
From seagirt Populonia,
Whose sentinels descry
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops
Fringing the southern sky;
From the proud mart of Pisæ,
Queen of the western waves,
Where ride Massilia's triremes,
Heavy with fair-haired slaves;
From where sweet Clanis wanders
Through corn and vines and flowers;
From where Cortona lifts to heaven
Her diadem of towers.
Tall are the oaks whose acorns
Drop in dark Auser's rill;
Fat are the stags that champ the boughs
Of the Ciminian hill;
Beyond all streams Clitumnus
Is to the herdsman dear;
Best of all pools the fowler loves
The great Volsinian mere.


## p. 9424 (#448) ###########################################

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
9424
But now no stroke of woodman
Is heard by Auser's rill;
No hunter tracks the stag's green path
Up the Ciminian hill;
Unwatched along Clitumnus
Grazes the milk-white steer;
Unharmed the water-fowl may dip
In the Volsinian mere.
The harvests of Arretium,
This year, old men shall reap;
This year, young boys in Umbro
Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
And in the vats of Luna,
This year, the must shall foam
Round the white feet of laughing girls
Whose sires have marched to Rome.
There be thirty chosen prophets,
The wisest of the land,
Who alway by Lars Porsena
Both morn and evening stand;
Evening and morn the Thirty
Have turned the verses o'er,
Traced from the right on linen white
By mighty seers of yore.
And with one voice the Thirty
Have their glad answer given:-
"Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena;
Go forth, beloved of Heaven;
Go, and return in glory
To Clusium's royal dome;
And hang round Nurscia's altars
The golden shields of Rome. "
And now hath every city
Sent up her tale of men;
The foot are fourscore thousand,
The horse are thousands ten.
Before the gates of Sutrium
Is met the great array:
A proud man was Lars Porsena
Upon the trysting day.