No More Learning

"And
now," he cried with a loud voice, "I lay this information before God,
before this court, and before the English people. We shall soon see
whether Mr. Attorney will do his duty. "

It was resolved that, before the punishment was inflicted, Johnson
should be degraded from the priesthood. The prelates who had been
charged by the Ecclesiastical Commission with the care of the diocese
of London cited him before them in the chapter house of Saint Paul's
Cathedral. The manner in which he went through the ceremony made a deep
impression on many minds. When he was stripped of his sacred robe he
exclaimed, "You are taking away my gown because I have tried to keep
your gowns on your backs. " The only part of the formalities which seemed
to distress him was the plucking of the Bible out of his hand. He made
a faint struggle to retain the sacred book, kissed it, and burst into
tears. "You cannot," he said, "deprive me of the hopes which I owe to
it. " Some attempts were made to obtain a remission of the flogging. A
Roman Catholic priest offered to intercede in consideration of a bribe
of two hundred pounds. The money was raised; and the priest did his
best, but in vain.

"Mr. Johnson," said the King, "has the spirit of a martyr; and it is fit
that he should be one. " William the Third said, a few years later, of
one of the most acrimonious and intrepid Jacobites, "He has set his
heart on being a martyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him. "
These two speeches would alone suffice to explain the widely different
fates of the two princes.

The day appointed for the flogging came. A whip of nine lashes was used.
Three hundred and seventeen stripes were inflicted; but the sufferer
never winced. He afterwards said that the pain was cruel, but that, as
he was dragged at the tail of the cart, he remembered how patiently the
cross had been borne up Mount Calvary, and was so much supported by the
thought that, but for the fear of incurring the suspicion of vain glory,
he would have sung a psalm with as firm and cheerful a voice as if he
had been worshipping God in the congregation. It is impossible not to
wish that so much heroism had been less alloyed by intemperance and
intolerance. [116]

Among the clergy of the Church of England Johnson found no sympathy. He
had attempted to justify rebellion; he had even hinted approbation of
regicide; and they still, in spite of much provocation, clung to the
doctrine of nonresistance. But they saw with alarm and concern the
progress of what they considered as a noxious superstition, and, while
they abjured all thought of defending their religion by the sword,
betook themselves manfully to weapons of a different kind. To preach
against the errors of Popery was now regarded by them as a point of duty
and a point of honour. The London clergy, who were then in abilities
and influence decidedly at the head of their profession, set an example
which was bravely followed by their ruder brethren all over the country.
Had only a few bold men taken this freedom, they would probably have
been at once cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission; but it was
hardly possible to punish an offence which was committed every Sunday
by thousands of divines, from Berwick to Penzance. The presses of
the capital, of Oxford, and of Cambridge, never rested. The act which
subjected literature to a censorship did not seriously impede the
exertions of Protestant controversialists; for it contained a proviso
in favour of the two Universities, and authorised the publication of
theological works licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was
therefore out of the power of the government to silence the defenders of
the established religion. They were a numerous, an intrepid, and a
well appointed band of combatants. Among them were eloquent declaimers,
expert dialecticians, scholars deeply read in the writings of the
fathers and in all parts of ecclesiastical history. Some of them, at a
later period, turned against one another the formidable arms which they
had wielded against the common enemy, and by their fierce contentions
and insolent triumphs brought reproach on the Church which they had
saved. But at present they formed an united phalanx. In the van appeared
a rank of steady and skilful veterans, Tillotson, Stillingfleet,
Sherlock, Prideaux, Whitby, Patrick, Tenison, Wake. The rear was brought
up by the most distinguished bachelors of arts who were studying for
deacon's orders. Conspicuous amongst the recruits whom Cambridge sent to
the field was a distinguished pupil of the great Newton, Henry Wharton,
who had, a few months before, been senior wrangler of his year, and
whose early death was soon after deplored by men of all parties as an
irreparable loss to letters. [117] Oxford was not less proud of a youth,
whose great powers, first essayed in this conflict, afterwards troubled
the Church and the State during forty eventful years, Francis Atterbury.
By such men as these every question in issue between the Papists and
the Protestants was debated, sometimes in a popular style which boys and
women could comprehend, sometimes with the utmost subtlety of logic, and
sometimes with an immense display of learning. The pretensions of the
Holy See, the authority of tradition, purgatory, transubstantiation, the
sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the host, the denial of the cup
to the laity, confession, penance, indulgences, extreme unction, the
invocation of saints, the adoration of images, the celibacy of the
clergy, the monastic vows, the practice of celebrating public worship in
a tongue unknown to the multitude, the corruptions of the court of Rome,
the history of the Reformation, the characters of the chief reformers,
were copiously discussed. Great numbers of absurd legends about miracles
wrought by saints and relics were translated from the Italian and
published as specimens of the priestcraft by which the greater part of
Christendom had been fooled. Of the tracts put forth on these subjects
by Anglican divines during the short reign of James the Second many have
probably perished. Those which may still be found in our great libraries
make up a mass of near twenty thousand pages. [118]

The Roman Catholics did not yield the victory without a struggle. One
of them, named Henry Hills, had been appointed printer to the royal
household and chapel, and had been placed by the King at the head of
a great office in London from which theological tracts came forth by
hundreds. Obadiah Walker's press was not less active at Oxford. But,
with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable
works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It
was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic
to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and
acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on
the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them,
even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had
been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities;
nor had they ever, till the accession of James, found England an
agreeable, or even a safe, residence. They had therefore passed the
greater part of their lives on the Continent, and had almost unlearned
their mother tongue. When they preached, their outlandish accent moved
the derision of the audience. They spelt like washerwomen. Their diction
was disfigured by foreign idioms; and, when they meant to be eloquent,
they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as fine
writing in those Italian academies where rhetoric had then reached the
last stage of corruption. Disputants labouring under these disadvantages
would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able to make
head against men whose style is eminently distinguished by simple purity
and grace. [119]

The situation of England in the year 1686 cannot be better described
than in the words of the French Ambassador. "The discontent," he wrote,
"is great and general: but the fear of incurring still worse evils
restrains all who have anything to lose. The King openly expresses his
joy at finding himself in a situation to strike bold strokes. He likes
to be complimented on this subject. He has talked to me about it, and
has assured me that he will not flinch. " [120]

Meanwhile in other parts of the empire events of grave importance had
taken place. The situation of the episcopalian Protestants of Scotland
differed widely from that in which their English brethren stood. In the
south of the island the religion of the state was the religion of
the people, and had a strength altogether independent of the strength
derived from the support of the government. The sincere conformists were
far more numerous than the Papists and the Protestant Dissenters taken
together. The Established Church of Scotland was the Church of a small
minority. The majority of the lowland population was firmly attached to
the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body
of Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign
institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the
abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud
of the memory of Wallace and Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns
had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in name
only. The episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public
mind with all the evils produced by twenty-five years of corrupt and
cruel maladministration. Nevertheless this polity stood, though on a
narrow basis and amidst fearful storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by
the civil magistrate, and leaning for support, whenever danger became
serious, on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament
were thick set with laws denouncing vengeance on those who in any
direction strayed from the prescribed pale. By an Act passed in the time
of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass,
and the third offence was capital. [121] An Act recently passed, at
the instance of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian
conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open
air. [122] The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil
test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament, or
could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under
the sanction of an oath, a declaration which condemned in the strongest
terms the principles both of the Papists and of the Covenanters. [123]

In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to
the two parties which were contending against each other at Whitehall.
William Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, was Lord Treasurer, and had,
during some years, been considered as first minister. He was nearly
connected by affinity, by similarity of opinions, and by similarity of
temper, with the Treasurer of England. Both were Tories: both were men
of hot temper and strong prejudices; both were ready to support their
master in any attack on the civil liberties of his people; but both
were sincerely attached to the Established Church. Queensberry had early
notified to the court that, if any innovation affecting that Church were
contemplated, to such innovation he could be no party. But among his
colleagues were several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland. In
truth the Council chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of
a century, a seminary of all public and private vices; and some of
the politicians whose character had been formed there had a peculiar
hardness of heart and forehead to which Westminster, even in that bad
age, could hardly show anything quite equal. The Chancellor, James
Drummond, Earl of Perth, and his brother, the Secretary of State, John
Lord Melfort, were bent on supplanting Queensberry. The Chancellor had
already an unquestionable title to the royal favour. He had brought into
use a little steel thumbscrew which gave such exquisite torment that it
had wrung confessions even out of men on whom His Majesty's favourite
boot had been tried in vain. [124] But it was well known that even
barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To
apostasy, therefore, Perth and Melfort resorted with a certain audacious
baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared
that the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had
converted them both to the true faith; and they began to confess and to
hear mass. [125] How little conscience had to do with Perth's change of
religion he amply proved by taking to wife, a few weeks later, in direct
defiance of the laws of the Church which he had just joined, a lady who
was his cousin german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the good
Pope learned this, he said, with scorn and indignation which well became
him, that this was a strange sort of conversion. [126] But James was
more easily satisfied. The apostates presented themselves at Whitehall,
and there received such assurances of his favour, that they ventured to
bring direct charges against the Treasurer. Those charges, however,
were so evidently frivolous that James was forced to acquit the accused
minister; and many thought that the Chancellor had ruined himself by his
malignant eagerness to ruin his rival. There were a few, however,
who judged more correctly. Halifax, to whom Perth expressed some
apprehensions, answered with a sneer that there was no danger. "Be of
good cheer, my Lord; thy faith hath made thee whole. " The prediction was
correct. Perth and Melfort went back to Edinburgh, the real heads of the
government of their country. [127] Another member of the Scottish Privy
Council, Alexander Stuart, Earl of Murray, the descendant and heir of
the Regent, abjured the religion of which his illustrious ancestor had
been the foremost champion, and declared himself a member of the
Church of Rome. Devoted as Queensberry had always been to the cause of
prerogative, he could not stand his ground against competitors who
were willing to pay such a price for the favour of the court. He had to
endure a succession of mortifications and humiliations similar to those
which, about the same time, began to embitter the life of his friend
Rochester. Royal letters came down authorising Papists to hold offices
without taking the test. The clergy were strictly charged not to reflect
on the Roman Catholic religion in their discourses. The Chancellor took
on himself to send the macers of the Privy Council round to the few
printers and booksellers who could then be found in Edinburgh, charging
them not to publish any work without his license. It was well understood
that this order was intended to prevent the circulation of Protestant
treatises. One honest stationer told the messengers that he had in his
shop a book which reflected in very coarse terms on Popery, and begged
to know whether he might sell it. They asked to see it; and he showed
them a copy of the Bible. [128] A cargo of images, beads, crosses and
censers arrived at Leith directed to Lord Perth. The importation of such
articles had long been considered as illegal; but now the officers of
the customs allowed the superstitious garments and trinkets to pass.
[129] In a short time it was known that a Popish chapel had been fitted
up in the Chancellor's house, and that mass was regularly said there.
The mob rose. The mansion where the idolatrous rites were celebrated
was fiercely attacked. The iron bars which protected the windows were
wrenched off. Lady Perth and some of her female friends were pelted
with mud. One rioter was seized, and ordered by the Privy Council to be
whipped. His fellows rescued him and beat the hangman. The city was
all night in confusion. The students of the University mingled with the
crowd and animated the tumult. Zealous burghers drank the health of the
college lads and confusion to Papists, and encouraged each other to face
the troops. The troops were already under arms. They were received with
a shower of stones, which wounded an officer. Orders were given to fire;
and several citizens were killed. The disturbance was serious; but
the Drummonds, inflamed by resentment and ambition, exaggerated it
strangely. Queensberry observed that their reports would lead any
person, who had not been a witness of the tumult, to believe that
a sedition as formidable as that of Masaniello had been raging at
Edinburgh. They in return accused the Treasurer, not only of extenuating
the crime of the insurgents, but of having himself prompted it, and
did all in their power to obtain evidence of his guilt. One of the
ringleaders, who had been taken, was offered a pardon if he would own
that Queensberry had set him on; but the same religious enthusiasm,
which had impelled the unhappy prisoner to criminal violence, prevented
him from purchasing his life by a calumny. He and several of his
accomplices were hanged. A soldier, who was accused of exclaiming,
during the affray, that he should like to run his sword through a
Papist, was shot; and Edinburgh was again quiet: but the sufferers
were regarded as martyrs; and the Popish Chancellor became an object of
mortal hatred, which in no long time was largely gratified. [130]

The King was much incensed. The news of the tumult reached him when the
Queen, assisted by the Jesuits, had just triumphed over Lady Dorchester
and her Protestant allies. The malecontents should find, he declared,
that the only effect of the resistance offered to his will was to make
him more and more resolute. [131] He sent orders to the Scottish Council
to punish the guilty with the utmost severity, and to make unsparing use
of the boot. [132] He pretended to be fully convinced of the Treasurer's
innocence, and wrote to that minister in gracious words; but the
gracious words were accompanied by ungracious acts. The Scottish
Treasury was put into commission in spite of the earnest remonstrances
of Rochester, who probably saw his own fate prefigured in that of his
kinsman. [133] Queensberry was, indeed, named First Commissioner, and
was made President of the Privy Council: but his fall, though thus
broken, was still a fall. He was also removed from the government of the
castle of Edinburgh, and was succeeded in that confidential post by the
Duke of Gordon, a Roman Catholic. [134]

And now a letter arrived from London, fully explaining to the Scottish
Privy Council the intentions of the King. What he wanted was that the
Roman Catholics should be exempted from all laws imposing penalties and
disabilities on account of nonconformity, but that the persecution
of the Covenanters should go on without mitigation. [135] This scheme
encountered strenuous opposition in the Council. Some members were
unwilling to see the existing laws relaxed. Others, who were by no means
averse to some relaxation, yet felt that it would be monstrous to admit
Roman Catholics to the highest honours of the state, and yet to
leave unrepealed the Act which made it death to attend a Presbyterian
conventicle. The answer of the board was, therefore, less obsequious
than usual. The King in reply sharply reprimanded his undutiful
Councillors, and ordered three of them, the Duke of Hamilton, Sir George
Lockhart, and General Drummond, to attend him at Westminster. Hamilton's
abilities and knowledge, though by no means such as would have sufficed
to raise an obscure man to eminence, appeared highly respectable in one
who was premier peer of Scotland. Lockhart had long been regarded as
one of the first jurists, logicians, and orators that his country had
produced, and enjoyed also that sort of consideration which is derived
from large possessions; for his estate was such as at that time very few
Scottish nobles possessed. [136] He had been lately appointed President
of the Court of Session. Drummond, a younger brother of Perth and
Melfort, was commander of the forces in Scotland. He was a loose
and profane man: but a sense of honour which his two kinsmen wanted
restrained him from a public apostasy. He lived and died, in the
significant phrase of one of his countrymen, a bad Christian, but a good
Protestant. [137]

James was pleased by the dutiful language which the three Councillors
used when first they appeared before him. He spoke highly of them to
Barillon, and particularly extolled Lockhart as the ablest and most
eloquent Scotchman living. They soon proved, however, less tractable
than had been expected; and it was rumoured at court that they had been
perverted by the company which they had kept in London. Hamilton lived
much with zealous churchmen; and it might be feared that Lockhart, who
was related to the Wharton family, had fallen into still worse society.
In truth it was natural that statesmen fresh from a country where
opposition in any other form than that of insurrection and assassination
had long been almost unknown, and where all that was not lawless fury
was abject submission, should have been struck by the earnest and
stubborn, yet sober, discontent which pervaded England, and should have
been emboldened to try the experiment of constitutional resistance to
the royal will. They indeed declared themselves willing to grant large
relief to the Roman Catholics; but on two conditions; first, that
similar indulgence should be extended to the Calvinistic sectaries; and,
secondly, that the King should bind himself by a solemn promise not to
attempt anything to the prejudice of the Protestant religion.

Both conditions were highly distasteful to James. He reluctantly agreed,
however, after a dispute which lasted several days, that some indulgence
should be granted to the Presbyterians but he would by no means consent
to allow them the full liberty which he demanded for members of his own
communion. [138] To the second condition proposed by the three Scottish
Councillors he positively refused to listen. The Protestant religion,
he said, was false and he would not give any guarantee that he would not
use his power to the prejudice of a false religion. The altercation was
long, and was not brought to a conclusion satisfactory to either party.
[139]

The time fixed for the meeting of the Scottish Estates drew near; and it
was necessary that the three Councillors should leave London to attend
their parliamentary duty at Edinburgh. On this occasion another affront
was offered to Queensberry. In the late session he had held the office
of Lord High Commissioner, and had in that capacity represented the
majesty of the absent King. This dignity, the greatest to which a
Scottish noble could aspire, was now transferred to the renegade Murray.

On the twenty-ninth of April the Parliament met at Edinburgh. A letter
from the King was read. He exhorted the Estates to give relief to his
Roman Catholic subjects, and offered in return a free trade with England
and an amnesty for political offences. A committee was appointed to draw
up an answer. That committee, though named by Murray, and composed of
Privy Councillors and courtiers, framed a reply, full indeed of dutiful
and respectful expressions, yet clearly indicating a determination to
refuse what the King demanded. The Estates, it was said, would go as far
as their consciences would allow to meet His Majesty's wishes respecting
his subjects of the Roman Catholic religion. These expressions were far
from satisfying the Chancellor; yet, such as they were, he was forced
to content himself with them, and even had some difficulty in persuading
the Parliament to adopt them. Objection was taken by some zealous
Protestants to the mention made of the Roman Catholic religion. There
was no such religion. There was an idolatrous apostasy, which the laws
punished with the halter, and to which it did not become Christian men
to give flattering titles. To call such a superstition Catholic was
to give up the whole question which was at issue between Rome and the
reformed Churches. The offer of a free trade with England was treated as
an insult. "Our fathers," said one orator, "sold their King for southern
gold; and we still lie under the reproach of that foul bargain. Let
it not be said of us that we have sold our God! " Sir John Lauder of
Fountainhall, one of the Senators of the College of Justice, suggested
the words, "the persons commonly called Roman Catholics. " "Would you
nickname His Majesty? " exclaimed the Chancellor. The answer drawn by
the committee was carried; but a large and respectable minority voted
against the proposed words as too courtly. [140] It was remarked that
the representatives of the towns were, almost to a man, against the
government. Hitherto those members had been of small account in the
Parliament, and had generally, been considered as the retainers of
powerful noblemen. They now showed, for the first time, an independence,
a resolution, and a spirit of combination which alarmed the court. [141]

The answer was so unpleasing to James that he did not suffer it to be
printed in the Gazette. Soon he learned that a law, such as he wished to
see passed, would not even be brought in. The Lords of Articles, whose
business was to draw up the acts on which the Estates were afterwards to
deliberate, were virtually nominated by himself. Yet even the Lords of
Articles proved refractory. When they met, the three Privy Councillors
who had lately returned from London took the lead in opposition to the
royal will. Hamilton declared plainly that he could not do what was
asked. He was a faithful and loyal subject; but there was a limit
imposed by conscience. "Conscience! " said the Chancellor: "conscience is
a vague word, which signifies any thing or nothing. " Lockhart, who sate
in Parliament as representative of the great county of Lanark, struck
in. "If conscience," he said, "be a word without meaning, we will change
it for another phrase which, I hope, means something. For conscience let
us put the fundamental laws of Scotland. " These words raised a fierce
debate.
General Drummond, who represented Perthshire, declared that he
agreed with Hamilton and Lockhart. Most of the Bishops present took the
same side. [142]

It was plain that, even in the Committee of Articles, James could not
command a majority. He was mortified and irritated by the tidings.
He held warm and menacing language, and punished some of his mutinous
servants, in the hope that the rest would take warning. Several
persons were dismissed from the Council board. Several were deprived
of pensions, which formed an important part of their income. Sir George
Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was the most distinguished victim. He had long
held the office of Lord Advocate, and had taken such a part in the
persecution of the Covenanters that to this day he holds, in the
estimation of the austere and godly peasantry of Scotland, a place not
far removed from the unenviable eminence occupied by Claverhouse. The
legal attainments of Mackenzie were not of the highest order: but, as
a scholar, a wit, and an orator, he stood high in the opinion of his
countrymen; and his renown had spread even to the coffeehouses of London
and the cloisters of Oxford. The remains of his forensic speeches prove
him to have been a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he
doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces, interjections which show more
art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises
above epithet in wearisome climax. He had now, for the first time, been
found scrupulous. He was, therefore, in spite of all his claims on the
gratitude of the government, deprived of his office. He retired into the
country, and soon after went up to London for the purpose of clearing
himself, but was refused admission to the royal presence. [143]
While the King was thus trying to terrify the Lords of Articles into
submission, the popular voice encouraged them to persist. The utmost
exertions of the Chancellor could not prevent the national sentiment
from expressing itself through the pulpit and the press. One tract,
written with such boldness and acrimony that no printer dared to put it
in type, was widely circulated in manuscript. The papers which appeared
on the other side of the question had much less effect, though they were
disseminated at the public charge, and though the Scottish defenders
of the government were assisted by an English auxiliary of great note,
Lestrange, who had been sent down to Edinburgh, and had apartments in
Holyrood House. [144]

At length, after three weeks of debate, the Lords of Articles came to a
decision. They proposed merely that Roman Catholics should be permitted
to worship God in private houses without incurring any penalty; and it
soon appeared that, far as this measure was from coming up to the King's
demands and expectations, the Estates either would not pass it at all,
or would pass it with great restrictions and modifications.

While the contest lasted the anxiety in London was intense. Every
report, every line, from Edinburgh was eagerly devoured. One day the
story ran that Hamilton had given way and that the government would
carry every point. Then came intelligence that the opposition had
rallied and was more obstinate than ever. At the most critical moment
orders were sent to the post-office that the bags from Scotland should
be transmitted to Whitehall. During a whole week not a single private
letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London. In our age such
an interruption of communication would throw the whole island into
confusion: but there was then so little trade and correspondence between
England and Scotland that the inconvenience was probably much smaller
than has been often occasioned in our own time by a short delay in the
arrival of the Indian mail. While the ordinary channels of information
were thus closed, the crowd in the galleries of Whitehall observed
with attention the countenances of the King and his ministers. It was
noticed, with great satisfaction, that, after every express from the
North, the enemies of the Protestant religion looked more and more
gloomy. At length, to the general joy, it was announced that the
struggle was over, that the government had been unable to carry
its measures, and that the Lord High Commissioner had adjourned the
Parliament. [145]

If James had not been proof to all warning, these events would have
sufficed to warn him. A few months before this time the most obsequious
of English Parliaments had refused to submit to his pleasure. But
the most obsequious of English Parliaments might be regarded as an
independent and high spirited assembly when compared with any Parliament
that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish
Parliaments was always to be found in the highest perfection, extracted
and condensed, among the Lords of Articles. Yet even the Lords of
Articles had been refractory. It was plain that all those classes, all
those institutions, which, up to this year, had been considered as the
strongest supports of monarchical power, must, if the King persisted
in his insane policy, be reckoned as parts of the strength of the
opposition. All these signs, however, were lost upon him. To every
expostulation he had one answer: he would never give way; for concession
had ruined his father; and his unconquerable firmness was loudly
applauded by the French embassy and by the Jesuitical cabal.

He now proclaimed that he had been only too gracious when he had
condescended to ask the assent of the Scottish Estates to his wishes.
His prerogative would enable him not only to protect those whom he
favoured, but to punish those who had crossed him. He was confident
that, in Scotland, his dispensing power would not be questioned by any
court of law. There was a Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the
sovereign such a control over the Church as might have satisfied Henry
the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in crowds to offices
and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld, who, as a Lord of Parliament, had
opposed the government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and
a successor was appointed. Queensberry was stripped of all his
employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of
the Treasury during his administration had been examined and approved.
[146] As the representatives of the towns had been found the most
unmanageable part of the Parliament, it was determined to make a
revolution in every burgh throughout the kingdom. A similar change had
recently been effected in England by judicial sentences: but in Scotland
a simple mandate of the prince was thought sufficient. All elections of
magistrates and of town councils were prohibited; and the King assumed
to himself the right of filling up the chief municipal offices. [147] In
a formal letter to the Privy Council he announced his intention to fit
up a Roman Catholic chapel in his palace of Holyrood; and he gave orders
that the Judges should be directed to treat all the laws against Papists
as null, on pain of his high displeasure. He however comforted the
Protestant Episcopalians by assuring them that, though he was determined
to protect the Roman Catholic Church against them, he was equally
determined to protect them against any encroachment on the part of the
fanatics. To this communication Perth proposed an answer couched in
the most servile terms. The Council now contained many Papists; the
Protestant members who still had seats had been cowed by the King's
obstinacy and severity; and only a few faint murmurs were heard.
Hamilton threw out against the dispensing power some hints which he made
haste to explain away. Lockhart said that he would lose his head rather
than sign such a letter as the Chancellor had drawn, but took care to
say this in a whisper which was heard only by friends. Perth's words
were adopted with inconsiderable modifications; and the royal commands
were obeyed; but a sullen discontent spread through that minority of the
Scottish nation by the aid of which the government had hitherto held the
majority down. [148]

When the historian of this troubled reign turns to Ireland, his task
becomes peculiarly difficult and delicate. His steps,--to borrow the
fine image used on a similar occasion by a Roman poet,--are on the thin
crust of ashes, beneath which the lava is still glowing. The seventeenth
century has, in that unhappy country, left to the nineteenth a fatal
heritage of malignant passions. No amnesty for the mutual wrongs
inflicted by the Saxon defenders of Londonderry, and by the Celtic
defenders of Limerick, has ever been granted from the heart by either
race. To this day a more than Spartan haughtiness alloys the many noble
qualities which characterize the children of the victors, while a Helot
feeling, compounded of awe and hatred, is but too often discernible in
the children of the vanquished. Neither of the hostile castes can justly
be absolved from blame; but the chief blame is due to that shortsighted
and headstrong prince who, placed in a situation in which he might have
reconciled them, employed all his power to inflame their animosity, and
at length forced them to close in a grapple for life and death.

The grievances under which the members of his Church laboured in Ireland
differed widely from those which he was attempting to remove in England
and Scotland. The Irish Statute Book, afterwards polluted by intolerance
as barbarous as that of the dark ages, then contained scarce a single
enactment, and not a single stringent enactment, imposing any penalty on
Papists as such. On our side of Saint George's Channel every priest who
received a neophyte into the bosom of the Church of Rome was liable to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered. On the other side he incurred no such
danger. A Jesuit who landed at Dover took his life in his hand; but he
walked the streets of Dublin in security. Here no man could hold office,
or even earn his livelihood as a barrister or a schoolmaster, without
previously taking the oath of supremacy, but in Ireland a public
functionary was not held to be under the necessity of taking that oath
unless it were formally tendered to him. [149] It therefore did not
exclude from employment any person whom the government wished
to promote. The sacramental test and the declaration against
transubstantiation were unknown nor was either House of Parliament
closed against any religious sect.

It might seem, therefore, that the Irish Roman Catholic was in a
situation which his English and Scottish brethren in the faith might
well envy. In fact, however, his condition was more pitiable and
irritating than theirs. For, though not persecuted as a Roman Catholic,
he was oppressed as an Irishman. In his country the same line of
demarcation which separated religions separated races; and he was of the
conquered, the subjugated, the degraded race. On the same soil dwelt two
populations, locally intermixed, morally and politically sundered. The
difference of religion was by no means the only difference, and was
perhaps not even the chief difference, which existed between them. They
sprang from different stocks. They spoke different languages. They had
different national characters as strongly opposed as any two national
characters in Europe. They were in widely different stages of
civilisation. Between two such populations there could be little
sympathy; and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated a strong
antipathy. The relation in which the minority stood to the majority
resembled the relation in which the followers of William the Conqueror
stood to the Saxon churls, or the relation in which the followers of
Cortes stood to the Indians of Mexico.

The appellation of Irish was then given exclusively to the Celts and to
those families which, though not of Celtic origin, had in the course of
ages degenerated into Celtic manners. These people, probably somewhat
under a million in number, had, with few exceptions, adhered to the
Church of Rome. Among them resided about two hundred thousand colonists,
proud of their Saxon blood and of their Protestant faith. [150]

The great preponderance of numbers on one side was more than compensated
by a great superiority of intelligence, vigour, and organization on the
other. The English settlers seem to have been, in knowledge, energy,
and perseverance, rather above than below the average level of the
population of the mother country. The aboriginal peasantry, on the
contrary, were in an almost savage state. They never worked till they
felt the sting of hunger. They were content with accommodation inferior
to that which, in happier countries, was provided for domestic cattle.
Already the potato, a root which can be cultivated with scarcely any
art, industry, or capital, and which cannot be long stored, had become
the food of the common people. [151] From a people so fed diligence and
forethought were not to be expected. Even within a few miles of Dublin,
the traveller, on a soil the richest and most verdant in the world, saw
with disgust the miserable burrows out of which squalid and half naked
barbarians stared wildly at him as he passed. [152]

The aboriginal aristocracy retained in no common measure the pride
of birth, but had lost the influence which is derived from wealth and
power. Their lands had been divided by Cromwell among his followers.
A portion, indeed, of the vast territory which he had confiscated had,
after the restoration of the House of Stuart, been given back to the
ancient proprietors. But much the greater part was still held by English
emigrants under the guarantee of an Act of Parliament. This act had been
in force a quarter of a century; and under it mortgages, settlements,
sales, and leases without number had been made. The old Irish gentry
were scattered over the whole world. Descendants of Milesian chieftains
swarmed in all the courts and camps of the Continent. Those despoiled
proprietors who still remained in their native land, brooded gloomily
over their losses, pined for the opulence and dignity of which they had
been deprived, and cherished wild hopes of another revolution. A person
of this class was described by his countrymen as a gentleman who would
be rich if justice were done, as a gentleman who had a fine estate if
he could only get it. [153] He seldom betook himself to any peaceful
calling. Trade, indeed, he thought a far more disgraceful resource than
marauding. Sometimes he turned freebooter. Sometimes he contrived, in
defiance of the law, to live by coshering, that is to say, by quartering
himself on the old tenants of his family, who, wretched as was their own
condition, could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they
still regarded as their rightful lord. [154] The native gentleman who
had been so fortunate as to keep or to regain some of his land too often
lived like the petty prince of a savage tribe, and indemnified himself
for the humiliations which the dominant race made him suffer by
governing his vassals despotically, by keeping a rude haram, and
by maddening or stupefying himself daily with strong drink. [155]
Politically he was insignificant. No statute, indeed, excluded him from
the House of Commons: but he had almost as little chance of obtaining
a seat there as a man of colour has of being chosen a Senator of the
United States. In fact only one Papist had been returned to the Irish
Parliament since the Restoration. The whole legislative and executive
power was in the hands of the colonists; and the ascendency of the
ruling caste was upheld by a standing army of seven thousand men, on
whose zeal for what was called the English interest full reliance could
be placed. [156]

On a close scrutiny it would have been found that neither the Irishry
nor the Englishry formed a perfectly homogeneous body. The distinction
between those Irish who were of Celtic blood, and those Irish who
sprang from the followers of Strong-bow and De Burgh, was not altogether
effaced. The Fitzes sometimes permitted themselves to speak with scorn
of the Os and Macs; and the Os and Macs sometimes repaid that scorn with
aversion. In the preceding generation one of the most powerful of
the O'Neills refused to pay any mark of respect to a Roman Catholic
gentleman of old Norman descent. "They say that the family has been
here four hundred years. No matter. I hate the clown as if he had come
yesterday. " [157] It seems, however, that such feelings were rare, and
that the feud which had long raged between the aboriginal Celts and
the degenerate English had nearly given place to the fiercer feud which
separated both races from the modern and Protestant colony.

The colony had its own internal disputes, both national and religious.
The majority was English; but a large minority came from the south of
Scotland. One half of the settlers belonged to the Established Church;
the other half were Dissenters. But in Ireland Scot and Southron were
strongly bound together by their common Saxon origin. Churchman and
Presbyterian were strongly bound together by their common Protestantism.
All the colonists had a common language and a common pecuniary interest.
They were surrounded by common enemies, and could be safe only by means
of common precautions and exertions. The few penal laws, therefore,
which had been made in Ireland against Protestant Nonconformists, were
a dead letter. [158] The bigotry of the most sturdy churchman would not
bear exportation across St. George's Channel. As soon as the Cavalier
arrived in Ireland, and found that, without the hearty and courageous
assistance of his Puritan neighbours, he and all his family would run
imminent risk of being murdered by Popish marauders, his hatred of
Puritanism, in spite of himself, began to languish and die away. It
was remarked by eminent men of both parties that a Protestant who, in
Ireland, was called a high Tory would in England have been considered as
a moderate Whig. [159]

The Protestant Nonconformists, on their side, endured, with more
patience than could have been expected, the sight of the most absurd
ecclesiastical establishment that the world has ever seen. Four
Archbishops and eighteen Bishops were employed in looking after about a
fifth part of the number of churchmen who inhabited the single diocese
of London. Of the parochial clergy a large proportion were pluralists
and resided at a distance from their cures. There were some who drew
from their benefices incomes of little less than a thousand a year,
without ever performing any spiritual function. Yet this monstrous
institution was much less disliked by the Puritans settled in Ireland
than the Church of England by the English sectaries. For in Ireland
religious divisions were subordinate to national divisions; and the
Presbyterian, while, as a theologian, he could not but condemn the
established hierarchy, yet looked on that hierarchy with a sort of
complacency when he considered it as a sumptuous and ostentatious trophy
of the victory achieved by the great race from which he sprang. [160]

Thus the grievances of the Irish Roman Catholic had hardly anything
in common with the grievances of the English Roman Catholic. The Roman
Catholic of Lancashire or Staffordshire had only to turn Protestant; and
he was at once, in all respects, on a level with his neighbours: but,
if the Roman Catholics of Munster and Connaught had turned Protestants,
they would still have continued to be a subject people. Whatever
evils the Roman Catholic suffered in England were the effects of harsh
legislation, and might have been remedied by a more liberal legislation.
But between the two populations which inhabited Ireland there was an
inequality which legislation had not caused and could not remove. The
dominion which one of those populations exercised over the other was
the dominion of wealth over poverty, of knowledge over ignorance, of
civilised over uncivilised man.

James himself seemed, at the commencement of his reign, to be perfectly
aware of these truths. The distractions of Ireland, he said, arose, not
from the differences between the Catholics and the Protestants, but
from the differences between the Irish and the English. [161] The
consequences which he should have drawn from this just proposition
were sufficiently obvious; but unhappily for himself and for Ireland he
failed to perceive them.

If only national animosity could be allayed, there could be little doubt
that religious animosity, not being kept alive, as in England, by cruel
penal acts and stringent test acts, would of itself fade away. To allay
a national animosity such as that which the two races inhabiting Ireland
felt for each other could not be the work of a few years. Yet it was a
work to which a wise and good prince might have contributed much; and
James would have undertaken that work with advantages such as none of
his predecessors or successors possessed. At once an Englishman and a
Roman Catholic, he belonged half to the ruling and half to the subject
caste, and was therefore peculiarly qualified to be a mediator between
them. Nor is it difficult to trace the course which he ought to have
pursued. He ought to have determined that the existing settlement of
landed property should be inviolable; and he ought to have announced
that determination in such a manner as effectually to quiet the anxiety
of the new proprietors, and to extinguish any wild hopes which the old
proprietors might entertain. Whether, in the great transfer of estates,
injustice had or had not been committed, was immaterial. That transfer,
just or unjust, had taken place so long ago, that to reverse it would be
to unfix the foundations of society. There must be a time of limitation
to all rights. After thirty-five years of actual possession, after
twenty-five years of possession solemnly guaranteed by statute, after
innumerable leases and releases, mortgages and devises, it was too late
to search for flaws in titles. Nevertheless something might have been
done to heal the lacerated feelings and to raise the fallen fortunes of
the Irish gentry. The colonists were in a thriving condition. They had
greatly improved their property by building, planting, and fencing. The
rents had almost doubled within a few years; trade was brisk; and the
revenue, amounting to about three hundred thousand pounds a year, more
than defrayed all the charges of the local government, and afforded a
surplus which was remitted to England. There was no doubt that the
next Parliament which should meet at Dublin, though representing almost
exclusively the English interest, would, in return for the King's
promise to maintain that interest in all its legal rights, willingly
grant to him a very considerable sum for the purpose of indemnifying, at
least in part, such native families as had been wrongfully despoiled.
It was thus that in our own time the French government put an end to the
disputes engendered by the most extensive confiscation that ever took
place in Europe. And thus, if James had been guided by the advice of
his most loyal Protestant counsellors, he would have at least greatly
mitigated one of the chief evils which afflicted Ireland. [162]

Having done this, he should have laboured to reconcile the hostile races
to each other by impartially protecting the rights and restraining the
excesses of both. He should have punished with equal severity the native
who indulged in the license of barbarism, and the colonist who abused
the strength of civilisation. As far as the legitimate authority of
the crown extended,--and in Ireland it extended far,--no man who
was qualified for office by integrity and ability should have been
considered as disqualified by extraction or by creed for any public
trust. It is probable that a Roman Catholic King, with an ample revenue
absolutely at his disposal, would, without much difficulty, have secured
the cooperation of the Roman Catholic prelates and priests in the great
work of reconciliation. Much, however, must still have been left to the
healing influence of time. The native race would still have had to learn
from the colonists industry and forethought, the arts of life, and the
language of England. There could not be equality between men who lived
in houses and men who lived in sties, between men who were fed on bread
and men who were fed on potatoes, between men who spoke the noble tongue
of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride,
boasted that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such
a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise
Lost were written. [163] Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if
the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed by
the government, all distinctions would gradually have been effaced, and
that there would now have been no more trace of the hostility which has
been the curse of Ireland than there is of the equally deadly hostility
which once raged between the Saxons and the Normans in England.

Unhappily James, instead of becoming a mediator became the fiercest and
most reckless of partisans. Instead of allaying the animosity of the two
populations, he inflamed it to a height before unknown. He determined
to reverse their relative position, and to put the Protestant colonists
under the feet of the Popish Celts. To be of the established religion,
to be of the English blood, was, in his view, a disqualification
for civil and military employment. He meditated the design of again
confiscating and again portioning out the soil of half the island, and
showed his inclination so clearly that one class was soon agitated by
terrors which he afterwards vainly wished to soothe, and the other by
hopes which he afterwards vainly wished to restrain. But this was the
smallest part of his guilt and madness. He deliberately resolved, not
merely to give to the aboriginal inhabitants of Ireland the entire
possession of their own country, but also to use them as his instruments
for setting up arbitrary government in England. The event was such as
might have been foreseen. The colonists turned to bay with the stubborn
hardihood of their race. The mother country justly regarded their cause
as her own. Then came a desperate struggle for a tremendous stake.
Everything dear to nations was wagered on both sides: nor can we
justly blame either the Irishman or the Englishman for obeying, in that
extremity, the law of self-preservation. The contest was terrible, but
short. The weaker went down. His fate was cruel; and yet for the cruelty
with which he was treated there was, not indeed a defence, but an
excuse: for, though he suffered all that tyranny could inflict, he
suffered nothing that he would not himself have inflicted. The effect of
the insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ireland was that the
Irish became hewers of wood and drawers of water to the English. The
old proprietors, by their effort to recover what they had lost, lost
the greater part of what they had retained. The momentary ascendency of
Popery produced such a series of barbarous laws against Popery as made
the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout Christendom.
Such were the bitter fruits of the policy of James.

We have seen that one of his first acts, after he became King, was to
recall Ormond from Ireland. Ormond was the head of the English interest
in that kingdom: he was firmly attached to the Protestant religion;
and his power far exceeded that of an ordinary Lord Lieutenant, first,
because he was in rank and wealth the greatest of the colonists, and,
secondly, because he was not only the chief of the civil administration,
but also commander of the forces. The King was not at that time disposed
to commit the government wholly to Irish hands. He had indeed been heard
to say that a native viceroy would soon become an independent sovereign.
[164] For the present, therefore, he determined to divide the power
which Ormond had possessed, to entrust the civil administration to an
English and Protestant Lord Lieutenant, and to give the command of the
army to an Irish and Roman Catholic General. The Lord Lieutenant was
Clarendon; the General was Tyrconnel.

Tyrconnel sprang, as has already been said, from one of those degenerate
families of the Pale which were popularly classed with the aboriginal
population of Ireland. He sometimes, indeed, in his rants, talked with
Norman haughtiness of the Celtic barbarians: [165] but all his sympathies
were really with the natives. The Protestant colonists he hated; and
they returned his hatred. Clarendon's inclinations were very different:
but he was, from temper, interest, and principle, an obsequious
courtier. His spirit was mean; his circumstances were embarrassed; and
his mind had been deeply imbued with the political doctrines which the
Church of England had in that age too assiduously taught. His abilities,
however, were not contemptible; and, under a good King, he would
probably have been a respectable viceroy.

About three quarters of a year elapsed between the recall of Ormond and
the arrival of Clarendon at Dublin. During that interval the King
was represented by a board of Lords Justices: but the military
administration was in Tyrconnel's hands.