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Title: The History of Freedom, and Other Essays

Author: Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

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THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM AND
OTHER ESSAYS

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

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TORONTO

THE

HISTORY OF FREEDOM

AND OTHER ESSAYS
BY

JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG-ACTON

First Baron ACTON
D.C.L., L.L.D., ETC. ETC.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDGE

EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN NEVILLE FIGGIS, Litt.D.
SOMETIME LECTURER IN ST. CATHARINE'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

AND

REGINALD VERE LAURENCE, M.A.
FELLOW AND LECTURER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1909
First Edition 1907
Reprinted 1909

PREFATORY NOTE
The Editors desire to thank the members of the Acton family for their help and advice
during the preparation of this volume and of the volume of Historical Essays and
Studies. They have had the advantage of access to many of Acton's letters, especially
those to Döllinger and Lady Blennerhasset. They have thus been provided with valuable
material for the Introduction. At the same time they wish to take the entire responsibility
for the opinions expressed therein. They are again indebted to Professor Henry Jackson
for valuable suggestions.
This volume consists of articles reprinted from the following journals: The Quarterly
Review, The English Historical Review, The Nineteenth Century, The Rambler, The
Home and Foreign Review, The North British Review, The Bridgnorth Journal. The
Editors have to thank Mr. John Murray, Messrs. Longmans, Kegan Paul, Williams and
Norgate, and the proprietors of The Bridgnorth Journal for their kind permission to
republish these articles, and also the Delegacy of the Clarendon Press for allowing the
reprint of the Introduction to Mr. Burd's edition of Il Principe. They desire to point out
that in Lord Acton and his Circle the article on "The Protestant Theory of Persecution"
is attributed to Simpson: this is an error.
J
.
N
.
F
.
R
.
V
.
L
.
August 24, 1907.

CONTENTS
Portrait of Lord Acton

Chronicle

Introduction

I. The History of Freedom in Antiquity
II. The History of Freedom in Christianity
III. Sir Erskine May's Democracy in Europe
IV. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew
V. The Protestant Theory of Persecution
VI. Political Thoughts on the Church
VII. Introduction To L.A. Burd's Edition Of Il Principe by Machiavelli
VIII. Mr. Goldwin Smith's Irish History
IX. Nationality
X. Döllinger on the Temporal Power
XI. Döllinger's Historical Work
XII. Cardinal Wiseman and the Home and Foreign Review
XIII. Conflicts With Rome
XIV. The Vatican Council
XV. A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. By Henry Charles Lea
XVI. The American Commonwealth. By James Bryce
XVII. Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium and Switzerland.
By Robert Flint

Appendix

Index

CHRONICLE
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, born at Naples, 10th January 1834, son of Sir
Ferdinand Richard Edward Dalberg-Acton and Marie de Dalberg, afterwards Countess
Granville.

French school near Paris.
1843-1848. Student at Oscott
" " Edinburgh.
1848-1854. " " Munich University, living with Döllinger.
1855. Visits America in company with Lord Ellesmere.
1858-1862. Becomes editor of The Rambler.
1859-1865. M.P. for Carlow.
1862-1864. Founds, edits, and concludes The Home and Foreign Review.
1864. Pius IX. issued Quanta Cura, with appended Syllabus Errorum.
1865-1866. M.P. for Bridgnorth
1865. Marries Countess Marie Arco-Valley.
1867-1868. Writes for The Chronicle.
1869. Created Baron Acton.
1869-1871. Writes for North British Review.
Vatican Council. Acton at Rome. Writes "Letters of Quirinus" in
1869-1870.
alleging Zeitung.
1872. Honorary degree at Munich.
1874. Letters to The Times on "The Vatican Decrees."
1888. Honorary degree at Cambridge.
1889. " " Oxford.
1890. Honorary Fellow of All Souls'.
1892-1895. Lord-in-Waiting.
1895-1902. Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge
Honorary Fellow of Trinity College.
19th June
Died at Tegernsee.
1902.

INTRODUCTION
The two volumes here published contain but a small selection from the numerous
writings of Acton on a variety of topics, which are to be found scattered through many
periodicals of the last half-century. The result here displayed is therefore not complete.
A further selection of nearly equal quantity might be made, and still much that is
valuable in Acton's work would remain buried. Here, for instance, we have extracted
nothing from the Chronicle; and Acton's gifts as a leader-writer remain without
illustration. Yet they were remarkable. Rarely did he show to better advantage than in
the articles and reviews he wrote in that short-lived rival of the Saturday Review. From
the two bound volumes of that single weekly, there might be made a selection which
would be of high interest to all who cared to learn what was passing in the minds of the
most acute and enlightened members of the Roman Communion at one of the most
critical epochs in the history of the papacy. But what could never be reproduced is the
general impression of Acton's many contributions to the Rambler, the Home and
Foreign, and the North British Review. Perhaps none of his longer and more
ceremonious writings can give to the reader so vivid a sense at once of the range of
Acton's erudition and the strength of his critical faculty as does the perusal of these
short notices. Any one who wished to understand the personality of Acton could not do
better than take the published Bibliography and read a few of the articles on
"contemporary literature" furnished by him to the three Reviews. In no other way could
the reader so clearly realise the complexity of his mind or the vast number of subjects
which he could touch with the hand of a master. In a single number there are twenty-
eight such notices. His writing before he was thirty years of age shows an intimate and
detailed knowledge of documents and authorities which with most students is the "hard
won and hardly won" achievement of a lifetime of labour. He always writes as the
student, never as the littérateur. Even the memorable phrases which give point to his
briefest articles are judicial, not journalistic. Yet he treats of matters which range from
the dawn of history through the ancient empires down to subjects so essentially modern
as the vast literature of revolutionary France or the leaders of the romantic movement
which replaced it. In all these writings of Acton those qualities manifest themselves,
which only grew stronger with time, and gave him a distinct and unique place among
his contemporaries. Here is the same austere love of truth, the same resolve to dig to the
bed-rock of fact, and to exhaust all sources of possible illumination, the same breadth of
view and intensity of inquiring ardour, which stimulated his studies and limited his
productive power. Above all, there is the same unwavering faith in principles, as
affording the only criterion of judgment amid the ever-fluctuating welter of human
passions, political manœuvring, and ecclesiastical intrigue. But this is not all. We note
the same value for great books as the source of wisdom, combined with the same
enthusiasm for immediate justice which made Acton the despair of the mere academic

student, an enigma among men of the world, and a stumbling-block to the politician of
the clubs. Beyond this, we find that certainty and decision of judgment, that crisp
concentration of phrase, that grave and deliberate irony and that mastery of subtlety,
allusion, and wit, which make his interpretation an adventure and his judgment a sword.
A few instances may be given. In criticising a professor of history famous in every way
rather than as a student, Acton says, "his Lectures are indeed not entirely unhistorical,
for he has borrowed quite discriminatingly from Tocqueville." Of another writer he says
that "ideas, if they occur to him, he rejects like temptations to sin." Of Ranke, thinking
perhaps also of himself, he declares that "his intimate knowledge of all the
contemporary history of Europe is a merit not suited to his insular readers." Of a
partisan French writer under Louis Napoleon he says that "he will have a fair grievance
if he fails to obtain from a discriminating government some acknowledgment of the
services which mere historical science will find it hard to appreciate." Of Laurent he
says, that "sometimes it even happens that his information is not second-hand, and there
are some original authorities with which he is evidently familiar. The ardour of his
opinions, so different from those which have usually distorted history, gives an interest
even to his grossest errors. Mr. Buckle, if he had been able to distinguish a good book
from a bad one, would have been a tolerable imitation of M. Laurent." Perhaps,
however, the most characteristic of these forgotten judgments is the description of Lord
Liverpool and the class which supported him. Not even Disraeli painting the leader of
that party which he was destined so strangely to "educate" could equal the austere and
accurate irony with which Acton, writing as a student, not as a novelist, sums up the
characteristics of the class of his birth.
Lord Liverpool governed England in the greatest crisis of the war, and for
twelve troubled years of peace, chosen not by the nation, but by the
owners of the land. The English gentry were well content with an order of
things by which for a century and a quarter they had enjoyed so much
prosperity and power. Desiring no change they wished for no ideas. They
sympathised with the complacent respectability of Lord Liverpool's
character, and knew how to value the safe sterility of his mind. He
distanced statesmen like Grenville, Wellesley, and Canning, not in spite of
his inferiority, but by reason of it. His mediocrity was his merit. The secret
of his policy was that he had none. For six years his administration outdid
the Holy Alliance. For five years it led the liberal movement throughout
the world. The Prime Minister hardly knew the difference. He it was who
forced Canning on the King. In the same spirit he wished his government
to include men who were in favour of the Catholic claims and men who
were opposed to them. His career exemplifies, not the accidental
combination but the natural affinity, between the love of conservatism and
the fear of ideas.

The longer essays republished in these volumes exhibit in most of its characteristics a
personality which even those who disagreed with his views must allow to have been one
of the most remarkable products of European culture in the nineteenth century. They
will show in some degree how Acton's mind developed in the three chief periods of his
activity, something of the influences which moulded it, a great deal of its preferences
and its antipathies, and nearly all its directing ideals. During the first period—roughly to
be dated from 1855 to 1863—he was hopefully striving, under the influence of
Döllinger (his teacher from the age of seventeen), to educate his co-religionists in
breadth and sympathy, and to place before his countrymen ideals of right in politics,
which were to him bound up with the Catholic faith. The combination of scientific
inquiry with true rules of political justice he claimed, in a letter to Döllinger, as the aim
of the Home and Foreign Review. The result is to be seen in a quarterly, forgotten, like
all such quarterlies to-day, but far surpassing, alike in knowledge, range, and certainty,
any of the other quarterlies, political, or ecclesiastical, or specialist, which the
nineteenth century produced. There is indeed no general periodical which comes near to
it for thoroughness of erudition and strength of thought, if not for brilliance and ease;
while it touches on topics contemporary and political in a way impossible to any
specialist journal. A comparison with the British Critic in the religious sphere, with the
Edinburgh in the political, will show how in all the weightier matters of learning and
thought, the Home and Foreign (indeed the Rambler) was their superior, while it
displayed a cosmopolitan interest foreign to most English journals.
We need not recapitulate the story so admirably told already by Doctor Gasquet of the
beginning and end of the various journalistic enterprises with which Acton was
connected. So far as he was concerned, however, the time may be regarded as that of
youth and hope.
Next came what must be termed the "fighting period," when he stood forth as the leader
among laymen of the party opposed to that "insolent and aggressive faction" which
achieved its imagined triumph at the Vatican Council. This period, which may perhaps
be dated from the issue of the Syllabus by Pius IX. in 1864, may be considered to close
with the reply to Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on "The Vatican Decrees," and with the
attempt of the famous Cardinal, in whose mind history was identified with heresy, to
drive from the Roman communion its most illustrious English layman. Part of this story
tells itself in the letters published by the Abbot Gasquet; and more will be known when
those to Döllinger are given to the world.
We may date the third period of Acton's life from the failure of Manning's attempt, or
indeed a little earlier. He had now given up all attempt to contend against the dominant
influence of the Court of Rome, though feeling that loyalty to the Church of his
Baptism, as a living body, was independent of the disastrous policy of its hierarchy.
During this time he was occupied with the great unrealised project of the history of
liberty or in movements of English politics and in the usual avocations of a student. In
the earlier part of this period are to be placed some of the best things that Acton ever

wrote, such as the lectures on Liberty, here republished. It is characterised by his
discovery in the "eighties" that Döllinger and he were divided on the question of the
severity of condemnation to be passed on persecutors and their approvers. Acton found
to his dismay that Döllinger (like Creighton) was willing to accept pleas in arrest of
judgment or at least mitigation of sentence, which the layman's sterner code repudiated.
Finding that he had misunderstood his master, Acton was for a time profoundly
discouraged, declared himself isolated, and surrendered the outlook of literary work as
vain. He found, in fact, that in ecclesiastical as in general politics he was alone, however
much he might sympathise with others up to a certain point. On the other hand, these
years witnessed a gradual mellowing of his judgment in regard to the prospects of the
Church, and its capacity to absorb and interpret in a harmless sense the dogma against
whose promulgation he had fought so eagerly. It might also be correct to say that the
English element in Acton came out most strongly in this period, closing as it did with
the Cambridge Professorship, and including the development of the friendship between
himself and Mr. Gladstone.
We have spoken both of the English element in Acton and of his European importance.
This is the only way in which it is possible to present or understand him. There were in
him strains of many races. On his father's side he was an English country squire, but
foreign residence and the Neapolitan Court had largely affected the family, in addition
to that flavour of cosmopolitan culture which belongs to the more highly placed
Englishmen of the Roman Communion. On his mother's side he was a member of one
of the oldest and greatest families in Germany, which was only not princely. The
Dalbergs, moreover, had intermarried with an Italian family, the Brignoli. Trained first
at Oscott under Wiseman, and afterwards at Munich under Döllinger, in whose house he
lived, Acton by education as well as birth was a cosmopolitan, while his marriage with
the family of Arco-Valley introduced a further strain of Bavarian influence into his life.
His mother's second marriage with Lord Granville brought him into connection with the
dominant influences of the great Whig Houses. For a brief period, like many another
county magnate, he was a member of the House of Commons, but he never became
accustomed to its atmosphere. For a longer time he lived at his house in Shropshire, and
was a stately and sympathetic host, though without much taste for the avocations of
country life. His English birth and Whig surroundings were largely responsible for that
intense constitutionalism, which was to him a religion, and in regard both to
ecclesiastical and civil politics formed his guiding criterion. This explains his
detestation of all forms of absolutism on the one hand, and what he always called "the
revolution" on the other.
It was not, however, the English strain that was most obvious in Acton, but the German.
It was natural that he should become fired under Döllinger's influence with the ideals of
continental scholarship and exact and minute investigation. He had a good deal of the
massive solidity of the German intellect. He liked, as in the "Letter to a German
Bishop," to make his judgment appear as the culmination of so much weighty evidence,
that it seemed to speak for itself. He had, too, a little of the German habit of breaking a

butterfly upon a wheel, and at times he makes reading difficult by a more than Teutonic
allusiveness. It was not easy for Acton to bear in mind that the public is often ignorant
of even the names of distinguished scholars, and that "a European reputation" is
sometimes confined to the readers of specialist publications.
The Italian strain in Acton is apparent in another quality, which is perhaps his one point
of kinship with Machiavelli, the absence of hesitation from his thought, and of mystery
from his writing. Subtle and ironic as his style is, charged with allusion and weighted
with passion, it is yet entirely devoid both of German sentiment and English vagueness.
There was no haze in his mind. He judges, but does not paint pictures. It may have been
this absence of half-tones in his vein of thought, and of chiaroscuro in his imagination
that made Manning, an intelligent however hostile critic, speak of "the ruthless talk of
undergraduates."
But however much or little be allowed to the diverse strains of hereditary influence or
outward circumstances, the interest of Acton to the student lies in his intense
individuality. That austerity of moral judgment, that sense of the greatness of human
affairs, and of the vast issues that lie in action and in thought, was no product of outside
influences, and went beyond what he had learnt from his master Döllinger. To treat
politics as a game, to play with truth or make it subservient to any cause other than
itself, to take trivial views, was to Acton as deep a crime as to waste in pleasure or
futility the hours so brief given for salvation of the soul would have seemed to Baxter or
Bunyan; indeed, there was an element of Puritan severity in his attitude towards
statesmen both ecclesiastical and civil. He was no "light half-believer of a casual creed,"
but had a sense of reality more like Dante than many moderns.
This, perhaps, it was that drew him ever closer to Mr. Gladstone, while it made the
House of Commons and the daily doings of politicians uncongenial. There is no doubt
that he had learned too well "the secret of intellectual detachment." Early in his life his
shrewd and kindly stepfather had pointed out to him the danger of losing influence by a
too unrestrained desire to escape worshipping the idols of the marketplace. There are, it
is true, not wanting signs that his view of the true relations of States and Churches may
become one day more dominant, for it appears as though once more the earlier Middle
Ages will be justified, and religious bodies become the guardians of freedom, even in
the political sphere. Still, a successful career in public life could hardly be predicted for
one who felt at the beginning that "I agree with nobody, and nobody agrees with me,"
and towards the close admitted that he "never had any contemporaries." On the other
hand, it may be questioned whether, in the chief of his self-imposed tasks, he failed so
greatly as at first appeared. If he did not prevent "infallibility" being decreed, the action
of the party of Strossmayer and Hefele assuredly prevented the form of the decree being
so dangerous as they at first feared. We can only hazard a guess that the mild and
minimising terms of the dogma, especially as they have since been interpreted, were in
reality no triumph to Veuillot and the Jesuits. In later life Acton seems to have felt that
they need not have the dangerous consequences, both in regard to historical judgments

or political principles, which he had feared from the registered victory of ultramontane
reaction. However this may be, Acton's whole career is evidence of his detachment of
mind, and entire independence even of his closest associates. It was a matter to him not
of taste but of principle. What mainly marked him out among men was the intense
reality of his faith. This gave to all his studies their practical tone. He had none of the
pedant's contempt for ordinary life, none of the æsthete's contempt for action as a "little
vulgar," and no desire to make of intellectual pursuits an end in themselves. His
scholarship was to him as practical as his politics, and his politics as ethical as his faith.
Thus his whole life was a unity. All his various interests were inspired by one
unconquered resolve, the aim of securing universally, alike in Church and in State, the
recognition of the paramountcy of principles over interests, of liberty over tyranny, of
truth over all forms of evasion or equivocation. His ideal in the political world was, as
he said, that of securing suum cuique to every individual or association of human life,
and to prevent any institution, however holy its aims, acquiring more.
To understand the ardour of his efforts it is necessary to bear in mind the world into
which he was born, and the crises intellectual, religious, and political which he lived to
witness and sometimes to influence. Born in the early days of the July monarchy, when
reform in England was a novelty, and Catholic freedom a late-won boon, Acton as he
grew to manhood in Munich and in England had presented to his regard a series of
scenes well calculated to arouse a thoughtful mind to consideration of the deepest
problems, both of politics and religion. What must have been the "long, long thoughts"
of a youth, naturally reflective and acutely observant, as he witnessed the break-up of
the old order in '48 and the years that followed. In the most impressionable age of life
he was driven to contemplate a Europe in solution; the crash of the kingdoms; the Pope
a Liberal, an exile, and a reactionary; the principle of nationality claiming to supersede
all vested rights, and to absorb and complete the work of '89; even socialism for once
striving to reduce theory to practice, till there came the "saviour of society" with the
coup d'état and a new era of authority and despotism. This was the outward aspect. In
the world of thought he looked upon a period of moral and intellectual anarchy.
Philosopher had succeeded philosopher, critic had followed critic, Strauss and Baur
were names to conjure with, and Hegel was still unforgotten in the land of his birth.
Materialistic science was in the very heyday of its parvenu and tawdry intolerance, and
historical knowledge in the splendid dawn of that new world of knowledge, of which
Ranke was the Columbus. Everywhere faith was shaken, and except for a few resolute
and unconquered spirits, it seemed as though its defence were left to a class of men who
thought the only refuge of religion was in obscurity, the sole bulwark of order was
tyranny, and the one support of eternal truth plausible and convenient fiction. What
wonder then that the pupil of Döllinger should exhaust the intellectual and moral
energies of a lifetime, in preaching to those who direct the affairs of men the paramount
supremacy of principle. The course of the plebiscitary Empire, and that gradual
campaign in the United States by which the will of the majority became identified with
that necessity which knows no law, contributed further to educate his sense of right in

politics, and to augment the distrust of power natural to a pupil of the great Whigs, of
Burke, of Montesquieu, of Madame de Staël. On the other hand, as a pupil of Döllinger,
his religious faith was deeper than could be touched by the recognition of facts, of
which too many were notorious to make it even good policy to deny the rest; and he
demanded with passion that history should set the follies and the crimes of ecclesiastical
authority in no better light than those of civil.
We cannot understand Acton aright, if we do not remember that he was an English
Roman Catholic, to whom the penal laws and the exploitation of Ireland were a burning
injustice. They were in his view as foul a blot on the Protestant establishment and the
Whig aristocracy as was the St. Bartholomew's medal on the memory of Gregory XIII.,
or the murder of the duc d'Enghien on the genius of Napoleon, or the burning of
Servetus on the sanctity of Calvin, or the permission of bigamy on the character of
Luther, or the September Massacres on Danton.
Two other tendencies dominant in Germany—tendencies which had and have a great
power in the minds of scholars, yet to Acton, both as a Christian and a man, seemed
corrupting—compelled him to a search for principles which might deliver him from
slavery alike to traditions and to fashion, from the historian's vice of condoning
whatever has got itself allowed to exist, and from the politician's habit of mere
opportunist acquiescence in popular standards.
First of these is the famous maxim of Schiller, Die Welt-Geschichte ist das Welt-Gericht,
which, as commonly interpreted, definitely identifies success with right, and is based,
consciously or unconsciously, on a pantheistic philosophy. This tendency, especially
when envisaged by an age passing through revolutionary nationalism back to
Machiavelli's ideals and Realpolitik, is clearly subversive of any system of public law or
morality, and indeed is generally recognised as such nowadays even by its adherents.
The second tendency against which Acton's moral sense revolted, had arisen out of the
laudable determination of historians to be sympathetic towards men of distant ages and
of alien modes of thought. With the romantic movement the early nineteenth century
placed a check upon the habit of despising mediæval ideals, which had been increasing
from the days of the Renaissance and had culminated in Voltaire. Instead of this, there
arose a sentiment of admiration for the past, while the general growth of historical
methods of thinking supplied a sense of the relativity of moral principles, and led to a
desire to condone if not to commend the crimes of other ages. It became almost a trick
of style to talk of judging men by the standard of their day and to allege the spirit of the
age in excuse for the Albigensian Crusade or the burning of Hus. Acton felt that this was
to destroy the very bases of moral judgment and to open the way to a boundless
scepticism. Anxious as he was to uphold the doctrine of growth in theology, he allowed
nothing for it in the realm of morals, at any rate in the Christian era, since the thirteenth
century. He demanded a code of moral judgment independent of place and time, and not
merely relative to a particular civilisation. He also demanded that it should be

independent of religion. His reverence for scholars knew no limits of creed or church,
and he desired some body of rules which all might recognise, independently of such
historical phenomena as religious institutions. At a time when such varied and
contradictory opinions, both within and without the limits of Christian belief, were
supported by some of the most powerful minds and distinguished investigators, it
seemed idle to look for any basis of agreement beyond some simple moral principles.
But he thought that all men might agree in admitting the sanctity of human life and
judging accordingly every man or system which needlessly sacrificed it. It is this
preaching in season and out of season against the reality of wickedness, and against
every interference with the conscience, that is the real inspiration both of Acton's life
and of his writings.
It is related of Frederick Robertson of Brighton, that during one of his periods of
intellectual perplexity he found that the only rope to hold fast by was the conviction, "it
must be right to do right." The whole of Lord Acton's career might be summed up in a
counterphrase, "it must be wrong to do wrong." It was this conviction, universally and
unwaveringly applied, and combined with an unalterable faith in Christ, which gave
unity to all his efforts, sustained him in his struggle with ecclesiastical authority,
accounted for all his sympathies, and accentuated his antipathies, while it at once
expanded and limited his interests. It is this that made his personality so much greater a
gift to the world than any book which he might have written—had he cared less for the
end and more for the process of historical knowledge.
He was interested in knowledge—that it might diminish prejudice and break down
barriers. To a world in which the very bases of civilisation seemed to be dissolving he
preached the need of directing ideals.
Artistic interests were not strong in him, and the decadent pursuit of culture as a mere
luxury had no stronger enemy. Intellectual activity, apart from moral purpose, was
anathema to Acton. He has been censured for bidding the student of his hundred best
books to steel his mind against the charm of literary beauty and style. Yet he was right.
His list of books was expressly framed to be a guide, not a pleasure; it was intended to
supply the place of University direction to those who could not afford a college life, and
it throws light upon the various strands that mingled in Acton and the historical,
scientific, and political influences which formed his mind. He felt the danger that lurks
in the charm of literary beauty and style, for he had both as a writer and a reader a
strong taste for rhetoric, and he knew how young minds are apt to be enchained rather
by the persuasive spell of the manner than the living thought beneath it. Above all, he
detested the modern journalistic craze for novelty, and despised the shallowness which
rates cleverness above wisdom.
In the same way his eulogy of George Eliot has been censured far more than it has been
understood. It was not as an artist superior to all others that he praised the author of
Daniel Deronda and the translator of Strauss. It was because she supplied in her own

person the solution of the problem nearest to his heart, and redeemed (so far as teaching
went) infidelity in religion from immorality in ethics. It was, above all, as a constructive
teacher of morals that he admired George Eliot, who might, in his view, save a daily
increasing scepticism from its worst dangers, and preserve morals which a future age of
faith might once more inspire with religious ideals. Here was a writer at the summit of
modern culture, saturated with materialistic science, a convinced and unchanging
atheist, who, in spite of this, proclaimed in all her work that moral law is binding, and
upheld a code of ethics, Christian in content, though not in foundation.
In the same way his admiration for Mr. Gladstone is to be explained. It was not his
successes so much as his failures that attracted Acton, and above all, his refusal to admit
that nations, in their dealings with one another, are subject to no law but that of greed.
Doubtless one who gave himself no credit for practical aptitude in public affairs,
admired a man who had gifts that were not his own. But what Acton most admired was
what many condemned. It was because he was not like Lord Palmerston, because
Bismarck disliked him, because he gave back the Transvaal to the Boers, and tried to
restore Ireland to its people, because his love of liberty never weaned him from loyalty
to the Crown, and his politics were part of his religion, that Acton used of Gladstone
language rarely used, and still more rarely applicable, to any statesman. For this very
reason—his belief that political differences do, while religious differences do not, imply
a different morality—he censured so severely the generous eulogy of Disraeli, just as in
Döllinger's case he blamed the praise of Dupanloup. For Acton was intolerant of all
leniency towards methods and individuals whom he thought immoral. He could give
quarter to the infidel more easily than to the Jesuit.
We may, of course, deny that Acton was right. But few intelligent observers can dispute
the accuracy of his diagnosis, or deny that more than anything else the disease of
Western civilisation is a general lack of directing ideals other than those which are
included in the gospel of commercialism. It may surely be further admitted that even
intellectual activity has too much of triviality about it to-day; that if people despise the
schoolmen, it is rather owing to their virtues than their defects, because impressionism
has taken the place of thought, and brilliancy that of labour. On the other hand, Acton's
dream of ethical agreement, apart from religion, seems further off from realisation than
ever.
Acton, however, wrote for a world which breathed in the atmosphere created by Kant.
His position was something as follows: After the discovery of facts, a matter of honesty
and industry independent of any opinions, history needs a criterion of judgment by
which it may appraise men's actions. This criterion cannot be afforded by religion, for
religion is one part of the historic process of which we are tracing the flow. The
principles on which all can combine are the inviolable sanctity of human life, and the
unalterable principle of even justice and toleration. Wherever these are violated our
course is clear. Neither custom nor convenience, neither distance of time nor difference
of culture may excuse or even limit our condemnation. Murder is always murder,

whether it be committed by populace or patricians, by councils or kings or popes. Had
they had their dues, Paolo Sarpi would have been in Newgate and George I. would have
died at Tyburn.
The unbending severity of his judgment, which is sometimes carried to an excess almost
ludicrous, is further explained by another element in his experience. In his letters to
Döllinger and others he more than once relates how in early life he had sought guidance
in the difficult historical and ethical questions which beset the history of the papacy
from many of the most eminent ultramontanes. Later on he was able to test their
answers in the light of his constant study of original authorities and his careful
investigation of archives. He found that the answers given him had been at the best but
plausible evasions. The letters make it clear that the harshness with which Acton always
regarded ultramontanes was due to that bitter feeling which arises in any reflecting mind
on the discovery that it has been put off with explanations that did not explain, or left in
ignorance of material facts.
Liberalism, we must remember, was a religion to Acton—i.e. liberalism as he
understood it, by no means always what goes by the name. His conviction that
ultramontane theories lead to immoral politics prompted his ecclesiastical antipathies.
His anger was aroused, not by any feeling that Papal infallibility was a theological error,
but by the belief that it enshrined in the Church monarchical autocracy, which could
never maintain itself apart from crime committed or condoned. It was not intellectual
error but moral obliquity that was to him here, as everywhere, the enemy. He could
tolerate unbelief, he could not tolerate sin. Machiavelli represented to him the worst of
political principles, because in the name of the public weal he destroyed the individual's
conscience. Yet he left a loophole in private life for religion, and a sinning statesman
might one day become converted. But when the same principles are applied, as they
have been applied by the Jesuit organisers of ultramontane reaction (also on occasion by
Protestants), ad majorem dei gloriam, it is clear that the soul is corrupted at its highest
point, and the very means of serving God are made the occasion of denying him.
Because for Acton there was no comparison between goodness and knowledge, and
because life was to him more than thought, because the passion of his life was to secure
for all souls the freedom to live as God would have them live, he hated in the Church
the politics of ultramontanism, and in the State the principles of Machiavelli. In the
same way he denied the legitimacy of every form of government, every economic
wrong, every party creed, which sacrificed to the pleasures or the safety of the few the
righteousness and salvation of the many. His one belief was the right of every man not
to have, but to be, his best.
This fact gives the key to what seems to many an unsolved contradiction, that the man
who said what he did say and fought as he had fought should yet declare in private that
it had never occurred to him to doubt any single dogma of his Church, and assert in
public that communion with it was "dearer than life itself" Yet all the evidence both of
his writings and his most intimate associates confirms this view. His opposition to the

doctrine of infallibility was ethical and political rather than theological. As he wrote to
Döllinger, the evil lay deeper, and Vaticanism was but the last triumph of a policy that
was centuries old. Unless he were turned out of her he would see no more reason to
leave the Church of his baptism on account of the Vatican Decrees than on account of
those of the Lateran Council. To the dogma of the Immaculate Conception he had no
hostility. And could not understand Döllinger's condemnation of it, or reconcile it with
his previous utterances. He had great sympathy with the position of Liberal High
Anglicans; but there is not the slightest reason to suppose that he ever desired to join the
English Church. Even with the old Catholic movement he had no sympathy, and
dissuaded his friends from joining it.[1] All forms of Gallicanism were distasteful to
Acton, and he looked to the future for the victory of his ideas. His position in the
Roman Church symbolises in an acute form what may be called the soul's tragedy of the
whole nineteenth century, but Acton had not the smallest inclination to follow either
Gavazzi or Lamennais. It was, in truth, the unwavering loyalty of his churchmanship
and his far-reaching historical sense that enabled him to attack with such vehemence
evils which he believed to be accidental and temporary, even though they might have
endured for a millennium. Long searching of the vista of history preserved Acton from
the common danger of confusing the eternal with what is merely lengthy. To such a
mind as his, it no more occurred to leave the Church because he disapproved some of its
official procedure, than it would to an Englishman to surrender his nationality when his
political opponents came into office. He distinguished, as he said Froschammer ought to
have done, between the authorities and the authority of the Church. He had a strong
belief in the doctrine of development, and felt that it would prove impossible in the long
run to bind the Christian community to any explanation of the faith which should have a
non-Christian or immoral tendency. He left it to time and the common conscience to
clear the dogma from association with dangerous political tendencies, for his loyalty to
the institution was too deep to be affected by his dislike of the Camarilla in power. He
not only did not desire to leave the Church, but took pains to make his confession and
receive absolution immediately after his letters appeared in the Times. It must also be
stated that so far from approving Mr. Gladstone's attack on Vaticanism, he did his
utmost to prevent its publication, which he regarded as neither fair nor wise.
It is true that Acton's whole tendency was individualistic, and his inner respect for mere
authority apart from knowledge and judgment was doubtless small. But here we must
remember what he said once of the political sphere—that neither liberty nor authority is
conceivable except in an ordered society, and that they are both relative to conditions
remote alike from anarchy and tyranny. Doubtless he leaned away from those in power,
and probably felt of Manning as strongly as the latter wrote of him. Yet his
individualism was always active within the religious society, and never contemplated
itself as outside. He showed no sympathy for any form of Protestantism, except the
purely political side of the Independents and other sects which have promoted liberty of
conscience.

Acton's position as a churchman is made clearer by a view of his politics. At once an
admirer and an adviser of Mr. Gladstone, he probably helped more than any other single
friend to make his leader a Home Ruler. Yet he was anything but a modern Radical: for
liberty was his goddess, not equality, and he dreaded any single power in a State,
whether it was the King, or Parliament, or People. Neither popes nor princes, not even
Protestant persecutors, did Acton condemn more deeply than the crimes of majorities
and the fury of uncontrolled democracy. It was not the rule of one or many that was his
ideal, but a balance of powers that might preserve freedom and keep every kind of
authority subject to law. For, as he said, "liberty is not a means to a higher end, it is
itself the highest political end." His preference was, therefore, not for any sovereign one
or number, such as formed the ideal of Rousseau or the absolutists; but for a monarchy
of the English type, with due representation to the aristocratic and propertied classes, as
well as adequate power to the people. He did not believe in the doctrine of numbers, and
had no sympathy with the cry Vox populi Vox Dei; on the other hand, he felt strongly
that the stake in the country argument really applied with fullest force to the poor, for
while political error means mere discomfort to the rich, it means to the poor the loss of
all that makes life noble and even of life itself. As he said in one of his already
published letters:—
The men who pay wages ought not to be the political masters of those who
earn them, for laws should be adapted to those who have the heaviest stake
in the country, for whom misgovernment means not mortified pride or
stinted luxury, but want and pain and degradation, and risk to their own
lives and to their children's souls.
While he felt the dangers of Rousseau's doctrine of equality, declaring that in the end it
would be destructive alike of liberty and religion, he was yet strongly imbued with the
need of reconciling some of the socialists' ideals with the regard due to the principles
which he respected. He was anxious to promote the study of Roscher and the historical
economists, and he seems to have thought that by their means some solution of the great
economic evils of the modern world might be found, which should avoid injustice either
to the capitalist or the wage-earner. He had a burning hatred of injustice and tyranny,
which made him anxious to see the horrors of the modern proletariat system mitigated
and destroyed; but combined with this there was a very deep sense of the need of acting
on principles universally valid, and a distrust of any merely emotional enthusiasm
which might, in the future, create more evils than it cured. Acton was, in truth, the
incarnation of the "spirit of Whiggism," although in a very different sense of the phrase
from that in which it became the target for the arrows of Disraeli's scorn and his
mockery of the Venetian constitution. He was not the Conservative Whig of the
"glorious revolution," for to him the memory of William of Orange might be immortal
but was certainly not pious: yet it was "revolution principles" of which he said that they
were the great gift of England to the world. By this he meant the real principles by
which the events of 1688 could be philosophically justified, when purged of all their
vulgar and interested associations, raised above their connection with a territorial

oligarchy, and based on reasoned and universal ideals. Acton's liberalism was above all
things historical, and rested on a consciousness of the past. He knew very well that the
roots of modern constitutionalism were mediæval, and declared that it was the stolid
conservatism of the English character, which had alone enabled it to preserve what other
nations had lost in the passion for autocracy that characterised the men of the
Renaissance and the Reformation. Constitutional government was for him the sole
eternal truth in politics, the rare but the only guardian of freedom. He loved to trace the
growth of the principle of power limiting itself and law triumphant alike over king,
aristocracies, and majorities; and to show how it arose out of the cruel conflicts of the
religious wars and rested upon the achievements of Constance and the efforts of Basle,
and how it was influenced in expression by the thinkers of the ancient world and the
theologians of the modern, by the politics of Aristotle, by the maxims of Ulpian and of
Gaius, by the theology of St. Thomas and Ockham, and even by Suarez and Molina.
What Acton feared and hated was the claim of absolutism to crush the individuality and
destroy the conscience of men. It was indifferent to him whether this claim was
exercised by Church or State, by Pope or Council, or King or Parliament. He felt,
however, that it was more dangerous because more absorbing when exercised in
religious matters, and thus condemned the Protestant theory more deeply than the
Catholic permission of persecution. He also felt that monarchy was more easily checked
than pure democracy, and that the risk of tyranny was greater in the latter.
Provided that freedom was left to men to do their duty, Acton was not greatly careful of
mere rights. He had no belief in the natural equality of men, and no dislike of the
subordination of classes on the score of birth. His ideal of freedom as of the Church was
in some respects that of the earlier Middle Ages. He did not object to serfdom, provided
that it safeguarded the elementary rights of the serf to serve God as well as man. In the
great struggle in America, he had no sympathy with the North, which seemed to him to
make majority rule the only measure of right: and he wrote, if not in favour, at least in
palliation, of slavery. It may be doubted how far he would have used the same language
in later life, but his reasons were in accord with all his general views. Slavery might be
rendered harmless by the State, and some form of compulsion might be the only way of
dealing with child-races, indeed, it might be merely a form of education no more
morally blameworthy than the legal disabilities of minors. But the absolute state
recognising no limits but its own will, and bound by no rule either of human or Divine
law, appeared to him definitely immoral.
Acton's political conscience was also very broad on the side technically called moral.
No one had higher ideals of purity. Yet he had little desire to pry into the private
morality of kings or politicians. It was by the presence or absence of political principles
that he judged them. He would have condemned Pope Paul the Fourth more than
Rodrigo Borgia, and the inventor of the "dragonnades" more than his great-grandson.
He did not view personal morality as relevant to political judgment.

In this, if in nothing else, he agreed with Creighton. His correspondence with the latter
throws his principles into the strongest light, and forms the best material for a judgment.
For it must, we think, be admitted that he applied these doctrines with a rigidity which
human affairs will not admit, and assumed a knowledge beyond our capacity. To declare
that no one could be in a state of grace who praised S. Carlo Borromeo, because the
latter followed the evil principle of his day in the matter of persecution, is not merely to
make the historian a hanging judge, but to ignore the great truth that if crime is always
crime, degrees of temptation are widely variable. The fact is, Acton's desire to maintain
the view that "morality is not ambulatory," led him at times to ignore the
complementary doctrine that it certainly develops, and that the difficulties of statesmen
or ecclesiastics, if they do not excuse, at least at times explain their less admirable
courses. At the very close of his life Acton came to this view himself. In a pathetic
conversation with his son, he lamented the harshness of some of his judgments, and
hoped the example would not be followed.
Still, Acton, if he erred here, erred on the nobler side. The doctrine of moral relativity
had been overdone by historians, and the principles of Machiavelli had become so
common a cry of politicians, that severe protest was necessary. The ethics of Nietzsche
are the logical expansion of Machiavelli, and his influence is proof that, in the long-run,
men cannot separate their international code from their private one. We must remember
that Acton lived in a time when, as he said, the course of history had been "twenty-five
times diverted by actual or attempted crime," and when the old ideals of liberty seemed
swallowed up by the pursuit of gain. To all those who reflect on history or politics, it
was a gain of the highest order that at the very summit of historical scholarship and
profound political knowledge there should be placed a leader who erred on the
unfashionable side, who denied the statesmen's claim to subject justice to expediency,
and opposed the partisan's attempt to palter with facts in the interest of his creed.
It is these principles which both explain Acton's work as a student, and make it so
difficult to understand. He believed, that as an investigator of facts the historian must
know no passion, save that of a desire to sift evidence; and his notion of this sifting was
of the remorseless scientific school of Germany, which sometimes, perhaps, expects
more in the way of testimony than human life affords. At any rate, Acton demanded that
the historian must never misconceive the case of the adversaries of his views, or leave in
shade the faults of his own side. But on the other hand, when he comes to interpret facts
or to trace their relation, his views and even his temperament will affect the result. It is
only the barest outline that can be quite objective. In Acton's view the historian as
investigator is one thing, the historian as judge another. In an early essay on Döllinger
he makes a distinction of this kind. The reader must bear it in mind in considering
Acton's own writing. Some of the essays here printed, and still more the lectures, are
anything but colourless; they show very distinctly the predilections of the writer, and it
is hardly conceivable that they should have been written by a defender of absolutism, or
even by an old-fashioned Tory. What Acton really demanded was not the academic
aloofness of the pedant who stands apart from the strife of principles, but the honesty of

purpose which "throws itself into the mind of one's opponents, and accounts for their
mistakes," giving their case the best possible colouring. For, to be sure of one's ground,
one must meet one's adversaries' strongest arguments, and not be content with merely
picking holes in his armour. Otherwise one's own belief may be at the mercy of the next
clever opponent. The reader may doubt how far Acton succeeded in his own aim, for
there was a touch of intolerance in his hatred of absolutism, and he believed himself to
be divided from his ecclesiastical and political foes by no mere intellectual difference
but by a moral cleavage. Further, his writing is never half-hearted. His convictions were
certitudes based on continual reading and reflection, and admitting in his mind of no
qualification. He was eminently a Victorian in his confidence that he was right. He had
none of the invertebrate tendency of mind which thinks it is impartial, merely because it
is undecided, and regards the judicial attitude as that which refrains from judging.
Acton's was not a doubting mind. If he now and then suspended his judgment, it was as
an act of deliberate choice, because he had made up his mind that the matter could not
be decided, not because he could not decide to make up his mind. Whether he was right
or wrong, he always knew what he thought, and his language was as exact an expression
of his meaning as he could make it. It was true that his subtle and far-sighted
intelligence makes his style now and then like a boomerang, as when he says of Ranke's
method "it is a discipline we shall all do well to adopt, and also do well to relinquish."
Indeed, it is hardly possible to read a single essay without observing this marked
characteristic. He has been called a "Meredith turned historian," and that there is truth in
this judgment, any one who sees at once the difficulty and the suggestiveness of his
reviews can bear witness. He could hardly write the briefest note without stamping his
personality upon it and exhibiting the marks of a very complex culture. But the main
characteristic of his style is that it represents the ideals of a man to whom every word
was sacred. Its analogies are rather in sculpture than painting. Each paragraph, almost
every sentence is a perfectly chiselled whole, impressive by no brilliance or outside
polish, so much as by the inward intensity of which it is the symbol. Thus his writing is
never fluent or easy, but it has a moral dignity rare and unfashionable.
Acton, indeed, was by no means without a gift of rhetoric, and in the "Lecture on
Mexico," here republished, there is ample evidence of a power of handling words which
should impress a popular audience. It is in gravity of judgment and in the light he can
draw from small details that his power is most plainly shown. On the other hand, he had
a little of the scholar's love of clinging to the bank, and, as the notes to his "Inaugural"
show, he seems at times too much disposed to use the crutches of quotation to prop up
positions which need no such support. It was of course the same habit—the desire not to
speak before he had read everything that was relevant, whether in print or manuscript—
that hindered so severely his output. His projected History of Liberty was, from the first,
impossible of achievement. It would have required the intellects of Napoleon and Julius
Cæsar combined, and the lifetime of the patriarchs, to have executed that project as
Acton appears to have planned it. A History of Liberty, beginning with the ancient world
and carried down to our own day, to be based entirely upon original sources, treating

both of the institutions which secured it, the persons who fought for it, and the ideas
which expressed it, and taking note of all that scholars had written about every several
portion of the subject, was and is beyond the reach of a single man. Probably towards
the close of his life Acton had felt this. The Cambridge Modern History, which required
the co-operation of so many specialists, was to him really but a fragment of this great
project.
Two other causes limited Acton's output. Towards the close of the seventies he began to
suspect, and eventually discovered, that he and Döllinger were not so close together as
he had believed. That is to say, he found that in regard to the crimes of the past,
Döllinger's position was more like that of Creighton than his own—that, while he was
willing to say persecution was always wrong, he was not willing to go so far as Acton in
rejecting every kind of mitigating plea and with mediæval certainty consigning the
persecutors to perdition. Acton, who had as he thought, learnt all this from Döllinger,
was distressed at what seemed to him the weakness and the sacerdotal prejudice of his
master, felt that he was now indeed alone, and for the time surrendered, as he said, all
views of literary work. This was the time when he had been gathering materials for a
History of the Council of Trent. That this cleavage, coming when it did, had a paralysing
effect on Acton's productive energy is most probable, for it made him feel that he was
no longer one of a school, and was without sympathy and support in the things that lay
nearest his heart.
Another cause retarded production—his determination to know all about the work of
others. Acton desired to be in touch with university life all over Europe, to be aware, if
possible through personal knowledge, of the trend of investigation and thought of
scholars working in all the cognate branches of his subject. To keep up thoroughly with
other people's work, and do much original writing of one's own, is rarely possible. At
any rate we may say that the same man could not have produced the essay on German
schools of history, and written a magnum opus of his own.
His life marks what, in an age of minute specialism, must always be at once the crown
and the catastrophe of those who take all knowledge for their province. His achievement
is something different from any book. Acton's life-work was, in fact, himself. Those
who lament what he might have written as a historian would do well to reflect on the
unique position which he held in the world of letters, and to ask themselves how far he
could have wielded the influence that was his, or held the standard so high, had his own
achievement been greater. Men such as Acton and Hort give to the world, by their
example and disposition, more than any written volume could convey. In both cases a
great part of their published writings has had, at least in book form, to be posthumous.
But their influence on other workers is incalculable, and has not yet determined.
To an age doubting on all things, and with the moral basis of its action largely
undermined, Acton gave the spectacle of a career which was as moving as it was rare.
He stood for a spirit of unwavering and even childlike faith united to a passion for

scientific inquiry, and a scorn of consequences, which at times made him almost an
iconoclast. His whole life was dedicated to one high end, the aim of preaching the need
of principles based on the widest induction and the most penetrating thought, as the only
refuge amid the storm and welter of sophistical philosophies and ecclesiastical intrigues.
The union of faith with knowledge, and the eternal supremacy of righteousness, this was
the message of Acton to mankind. It may be thought that he sometimes exaggerated his
thesis, that he preached it out of season, that he laid himself open to the charge of being
doctrinaire, and that in fighting for it he failed to utter the resources of his vast learning.
Enough, however, is left to enable the world to judge what he was. No books ever do
more than that for any man. Those who are nice in comparisons may weigh against the
book lost the man gained. Those who loved him will know no doubt.

The following document was found among Lord Acton's Papers. It records in an
imaginative form the ideals which he set before him. Perhaps it forms the most fitting
conclusion to this Introduction.
This day's post informed me of the death of Adrian, who was the best of all
men I have known. He loved retirement, and avoided company, but you
might sometimes meet him coming from scenes of sorrow, silent and
appalled, as if he had seen a ghost, or in the darkest corner of churches, his
dim eyes radiant with light from another world. In youth he had gone
through much anxiety and contention; but he lived to be trusted and
honoured. At last he dropped out of notice and the memory of men, and
that part of his life was the happiest.
Years ago, when I saw much of him, most people had not found him out.
There was something in his best qualities themselves that baffled
observation, and fell short of decided excellence. He looked absent and
preoccupied, as if thinking of things he cared not to speak of, and seemed
but little interested in the cares and events of the day. Often it was hard to
decide whether he had an opinion, and when he showed it, he would
defend it with more eagerness and obstinacy than we liked. He did not
mingle readily with others or co-operate in any common undertaking, so
that one could not rely on him socially, or for practical objects. As he never
spoke harshly of persons, so he seldom praised them warmly, and there
was some apparent indifference and want of feeling. Ill success did not
depress, but happy prospects did not elate him, and though never
impatient, he was not actively hopeful. Facetious friends called him the
weather-cock, or Mr. Facingbothways, because there was no heartiness in
his judgments, and he satisfied nobody, and said things that were at first
sight grossly inconsistent, without attempting to reconcile them. He was

reserved about himself, and gave no explanations, so that he was
constantly misunderstood, and there was a sense of failure, of
disappointment, of perplexity about him.
These things struck me, as well as others, and at first repelled me. I could
see indeed, at the same time, that his conduct was remarkably methodical,
and was guided at every step by an inexhaustible provision of maxims. He
had meditated on every contingency in life, and was prepared with rules
and precepts, which he never disobeyed. But I doubted whether all this
was not artificial,—a contrivance to satisfy the pride of intellect and
establish a cold superiority. In time I discovered that it was the perfection
of a developed character. He had disciplined his soul with such wisdom
and energy as to make it the obedient and spontaneous instrument of God's
will, and he moved in an orbit of thoughts beyond our reach.
It was part of his religion to live much in the past, to realise every phase of
thought, every crisis of controversy, every stage of progress the Church has
gone through. So that the events and ideas of his own day lost much of
their importance in comparison, were old friends with new faces, and
impressed him less than the multitude of those that went before. This
caused him to seem absent and indifferent, rarely given to admire, or to
expect. He respected other men's opinions, fearing to give pain, or to tempt
with anger by contradiction, and when forced to defend his own he felt
bound to assume that every one would look sincerely for the truth, and
would gladly recognise it. But he could not easily enter into their motives
when they were mixed, and finding them generally mixed, he avoided
contention by holding much aloof. Being quite sincere, he was quite
impartial, and pleaded with equal zeal for what seemed true, whether it
was on one side or on the other. He would have felt dishonest if he had
unduly favoured people of his own country, his own religion, or his own
party, or if he had entertained the shadow of a prejudice against those who
were against them, and when he was asked why he did not try to clear
himself from misrepresentation, he said that he was silent both from
humility and pride.
At last I understood that what we had disliked in him was his virtue itself.
J
.
N
.
F
.
R

.
V
.
L
.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] There is no foundation for the statement of Canon Meyrick in his Reminiscences, that
Acton, had he lived on the Continent, would have undoubtedly become an Old Catholic. He
did very largely live on the Continent. Nor did even Döllinger, of whom Dr. Meyrick also
asserts it, ever become an adherent of that movement.

I
THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN ANTIQUITY[2]
Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of
crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand four hundred and sixty
years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate
fruit of a mature civilisation; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew
the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress has been beset by
its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of
ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food.
During long intervals it has been utterly arrested, when nations were being rescued from
barbarism and from the grasp of strangers, and when the perpetual struggle for
existence, depriving men of all interest and understanding in politics, has made them
eager to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, and ignorant of the treasure they
resigned. At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have
been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries
whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always
dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of
opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success. No obstacle
has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching
the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have
wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as
in the improvement of laws. The history of institutions is often a history of deception
and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that
preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed
away.
A few familiar examples from modern politics will explain why it is that the burden of
my argument will lie outside the domain of legislation. It is often said that our
Constitution attained its formal perfection in 1679, when the Habeas Corpus Act was
passed. Yet Charles II. succeeded, only two years later, in making himself independent
of Parliament. In 1789, while the States-General assembled at Versailles, the Spanish
Cortes, older than Magna Charta and more venerable than our House of Commons,
were summoned after an interval of generations, but they immediately prayed the King
to abstain from consulting them, and to make his reforms of his own wisdom and
authority. According to the common opinion, indirect elections are a safeguard of
conservatism. But all the Assemblies of the French Revolution issued from indirect
elections. A restricted suffrage is another reputed security for monarchy. But the
Parliament of Charles X., which was returned by 90,000 electors, resisted and overthrew
the throne; while the Parliament of Louis Philippe, chosen by a Constitution of 250,000,

obsequiously promoted the reactionary policy of his Ministers, and in the fatal division
which, by rejecting reform, laid the monarchy in the dust, Guizot's majority was
obtained by the votes of 129 public functionaries. An unpaid legislature is, for obvious
reasons, more independent than most of the Continental legislatures which receive pay.
But it would be unreasonable in America to send a member as far as from here to
Constantinople to live for twelve months at his own expense in the dearest of capital
cities. Legally and to outward seeming the American President is the successor of
Washington, and still enjoys powers devised and limited by the Convention of
Philadelphia. In reality the new President differs from the Magistrate imagined by the
Fathers of the Republic as widely as Monarchy from Democracy, for he is expected to
make 70,000 changes in the public service; fifty years ago John Quincy Adams
dismissed only two men. The purchase of judicial appointments is manifestly
indefensible; yet in the old French monarchy that monstrous practice created the only
corporation able to resist the king. Official corruption, which would ruin a
commonwealth, serves in Russia as a salutary relief from the pressure of absolutism.
There are conditions in which it is scarcely a hyperbole to say that slavery itself is a
stage on the road to freedom. Therefore we are not so much concerned this evening with
the dead letter of edicts and of statutes as with the living thoughts of men. A century ago
it was perfectly well known that whoever had one audience of a Master in Chancery
was made to pay for three, but no man heeded the enormity until it suggested to a young
lawyer that it might be well to question and examine with rigorous suspicion every part
of a system in which such things were done. The day on which that gleam lighted up the
clear hard mind of Jeremy Bentham is memorable in the political calendar beyond the
entire administration of many statesmen. It would be easy to point out a paragraph in St.
Augustine, or a sentence of Grotius that outweighs in influence the Acts of fifty
Parliaments, and our cause owes more to Cicero and Seneca, to Vinet and Tocqueville,
than to the laws of Lycurgus or the Five Codes of France.
By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he
believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in
its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can
only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which
prevail against temptation,—religion, education, and the distribution of wealth. In
ancient times the State absorbed authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of
personal freedom. In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered
others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses. The most certain test
by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by
minorities. Liberty, by this definition, is the essential condition and guardian of religion;
and it is in the history of the Chosen People, accordingly, that the first illustrations of
my subject are obtained. The government of the Israelites was a Federation, held
together by no political authority, but by the unity of race and faith, and founded, not on
physical force, but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was

carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120 families; and there
was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before the law. Monarchy was so alien to
the primitive spirit of the community that it was resisted by Samuel in that momentous
protestation and warning which all the kingdoms of Asia and many of the kingdoms of
Europe have unceasingly confirmed. The throne was erected on a compact; and the king
was deprived of the right of legislation among a people that recognised no lawgiver but
God, whose highest aim in politics was to restore the original purity of the constitution,
and to make its government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the
sanctions of heaven. The inspired men who rose in unfailing succession to prophesy
against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the laws, which were
divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed from the established authorities,
from the king, the priests, and the princes of the people, to the healing forces that slept
in the uncorrupted consciences of the masses. Thus the example of the Hebrew nation
laid down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won—the doctrine of
national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution
grows from a root, by process of development, and not of essential change; and the
principle that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code
which was not made by man. The operation of these principles, in unison, or in
antagonism, occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.
The conflict between liberty under divine authority and the absolutism of human
authorities ended disastrously. In the year 622 a supreme effort was made at Jerusalem
to reform and preserve the State. The High Priest produced from the temple of Jehovah
the book of the deserted and forgotten Law, and both king and people bound themselves
by solemn oaths to observe it. But that early example of limited monarchy and of the
supremacy of law neither lasted nor spread; and the forces by which freedom has
conquered must be sought elsewhere. In the very year 586, in which the flood of Asiatic
despotism closed over the city which had been, and was destined again to be, the
sanctuary of freedom in the East, a new home was prepared for it in the West, where,
guarded by the sea and the mountains, and by valiant hearts, that stately plant was
reared under whose shade we dwell, and which is extending its invincible arms so
slowly and yet so surely over the civilised world.
According to a famous saying of the most famous authoress of the Continent, liberty is
ancient, and it is despotism that is new. It has been the pride of recent historians to
vindicate the truth of that maxim. The heroic age of Greece confirms it, and it is still
more conspicuously true of Teutonic Europe. Wherever we can trace the earlier life of
the Aryan nations we discover germs which favouring circumstances and assiduous
culture might have developed into free societies. They exhibit some sense of common
interest in common concerns, little reverence for external authority, and an imperfect
sense of the function and supremacy of the State. Where the division of property and
labour is incomplete there is little division of classes and of power. Until societies are
tried by the complex problems of civilisation they may escape despotism, as societies
that are undisturbed by religious diversity avoid persecution. In general, the forms of the

patriarchal age failed to resist the growth of absolute States when the difficulties and
temptations of advancing life began to tell; and with one sovereign exception, which is
not within my scope to-day, it is scarcely possible to trace their survival in the
institutions of later times. Six hundred years before the birth of Christ absolutism held
unbounded sway. Throughout the East it was propped by the unchanging influence of
priests and armies. In the West, where there were no sacred books requiring trained
interpreters, the priesthood acquired no preponderance, and when the kings were
overthrown their powers passed to aristocracies of birth. What followed, during many
generations, was the cruel domination of class over class, the oppression of the poor by
the rich, and of the ignorant by the wise. The spirit of that domination found passionate
utterance in the verses of the aristocratic poet Theognis, a man of genius and
refinement, who avows that he longed to drink the blood of his political adversaries.
From these oppressors the people of many cities sought deliverance in the less
intolerable tyranny of revolutionary usurpers. The remedy gave new shape and energy
to the evil. The tyrants were often men of surprising capacity and merit, like some of
those who, in the fourteenth century, made themselves lords of Italian cities; but rights
secured by equal laws and by sharing power existed nowhere.
From this universal degradation the world was rescued by the most gifted of the nations.
Athens, which like other cities was distracted and oppressed by a privileged class,
avoided violence and appointed Solon to revise its laws. It was the happiest choice that
history records. Solon was not only the wisest man to be found in Athens, but the most
profound political genius of antiquity; and the easy, bloodless, and pacific revolution by
which he accomplished the deliverance of his country was the first step in a career
which our age glories in pursuing, and instituted a power which has done more than
anything, except revealed religion, for the regeneration of society. The upper class had
possessed the right of making and administering the laws, and he left them in
possession, only transferring to wealth what had been the privilege of birth. To the rich,
who alone had the means of sustaining the burden of public service in taxation and war,
Solon gave a share of power proportioned to the demands made on their resources. The
poorest classes were exempt from direct taxes, but were excluded from office. Solon
gave them a voice in electing magistrates from the classes above them, and the right of
calling them to account. This concession, apparently so slender, was the beginning of a
mighty change. It introduced the idea that a man ought to have a voice in selecting those
to whose rectitude and wisdom he is compelled to trust his fortune, his family, and his
life. And this idea completely inverted the notion of human authority, for it inaugurated
the reign of moral influence where all political power had depended on moral force.
Government by consent superseded government by compulsion, and the pyramid which
had stood on a point was made to stand upon its base. By making every citizen the
guardian of his own interest Solon admitted the element of Democracy into the State.
The greatest glory of a ruler, he said, is to create a popular government. Believing that
no man can be entirely trusted, he subjected all who exercised power to the vigilant
control of those for whom they acted.

The only resource against political disorders that had been known till then was the
concentration of power. Solon undertook to effect the same object by the distribution of
power. He gave to the common people as much influence as he thought them able to
employ, that the State might be exempt from arbitrary government. It is the essence of
Democracy, he said, to obey no master but the law. Solon recognised the principle that
political forms are not final or inviolable, and must adapt themselves to facts; and he
provided so well for the revision of his constitution, without breach of continuity or loss
of stability, that for centuries after his death the Attic orators attributed to him, and
quoted by his name, the whole structure of Athenian law. The direction of its growth
was determined by the fundamental doctrine of Solon, that political power ought to be
commensurate with public service. In the Persian war the services of the Democracy
eclipsed those of the Patrician orders, for the fleet that swept the Asiatics from the
Egean Sea was manned by the poorer Athenians. That class, whose valour had saved the
State and had preserved European civilisation, had gained a title to increase of influence
and privilege. The offices of State, which had been a monopoly of the rich, were thrown
open to the poor, and in order to make sure that they should obtain their share, all but
the highest commands were distributed by lot.
Whilst the ancient authorities were decaying, there was no accepted standard of moral
and political right to make the framework of society fast in the midst of change. The
instability that had seized on the forms threatened the very principles of government.
The national beliefs were yielding to doubt, and doubt was not yet making way for
knowledge. There had been a time when the obligations of public as well as private life
were identified with the will of the gods. But that time had passed. Pallas, the ethereal
goddess of the Athenians, and the Sun god whose oracles, delivered from the temple
between the twin summits of Parnassus, did so much for the Greek nationality, aided in
keeping up a lofty ideal of religion; but when the enlightened men of Greece learnt to
apply their keen faculty of reasoning to the system of their inherited belief, they became
quickly conscious that the conceptions of the gods corrupted the life and degraded the
minds of the public. Popular morality could not be sustained by the popular religion.
The moral instruction which was no longer supplied by the gods could not yet be found
in books. There was no venerable code expounded by experts, no doctrine proclaimed
by men of reputed sanctity like those teachers of the far East whose words still rule the
fate of nearly half mankind. The effort to account for things by close observation and
exact reasoning began by destroying. There came a time when the philosophers of the
Porch and the Academy wrought the dictates of wisdom and virtue into a system so
consistent and profound that it has vastly shortened the task of the Christian divines. But
that time had not yet come.
The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies
of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to
substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then
beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the
profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress

accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the
political knowledge we possess. Pericles, who was at the head of the Athenian
Government, was the first statesman who encountered the problem which the rapid
weakening of traditions forced on the political world. No authority in morals or in
politics remained unshaken by the motion that was in the air. No guide could be
confidently trusted; there was no available criterion to appeal to, for the means of
controlling or denying convictions that prevailed among the people. The popular
sentiment as to what was right might be mistaken, but it was subject to no test. The
people were, for practical purposes, the seat of the knowledge of good and evil. The
people, therefore, were the seat of power.
The political philosophy of Pericles consisted of this conclusion. He resolutely struck
away all the props that still sustained the artificial preponderance of wealth. For the
ancient doctrine that power goes with land, he introduced the idea that power ought to
be so equitably diffused as to afford equal security to all. That one part of the
community should govern the whole, or that one class should make laws for another, he
declared to be tyrannical. The abolition of privilege would have served only to transfer
the supremacy from the rich to the poor, if Pericles had not redressed the balance by
restricting the right of citizenship to Athenians of pure descent. By this measure the
class which formed what we should call the third estate was brought down to 14,000
citizens, and became about equal in numbers with the higher ranks. Pericles held that
every Athenian who neglected to take his part in the public business inflicted an injury
on the commonwealth. That none might be excluded by poverty, he caused the poor to
be paid for their attendance out of the funds of the State; for his administration of the
federal tribute had brought together a treasure of more than two million sterling. The
instrument of his sway was the art of speaking. He governed by persuasion. Everything
was decided by argument in open deliberation, and every influence bowed before the
ascendency of mind. The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the
predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal care the
independence of labour and the security of property; to make the rich safe against envy,
and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship
of Greece. It hardly survived the great patriot who conceived it; and all history has been
occupied with the endeavour to upset the balance of power by giving the advantage to
money, land, or numbers. A generation followed that has never been equalled in talent—
a generation of men whose works, in poetry and eloquence, are still the envy of the
world, and in history, philosophy, and politics remain unsurpassed. But it produced no
successor to Pericles, and no man was able to wield the sceptre that fell from his hand.
It was a momentous step in the progress of nations when the principle that every interest
should have the right and the means of asserting itself was adopted by the Athenian
Constitution. But for those who were beaten in the vote there was no redress. The law
did not check the triumph of majorities or rescue the minority from the dire penalty of
having been outnumbered. When the overwhelming influence of Pericles was removed,
the conflict between classes raged without restraint, and the slaughter that befell the

higher ranks in the Peloponnesian war gave an irresistible preponderance to the lower.
The restless and inquiring spirit of the Athenians was prompt to unfold the reason of
every institution and the consequences of every principle, and their Constitution ran its
course from infancy to decrepitude with unexampled speed.
Two men's lives span the interval from the first admission of popular influence, under
Solon, to the downfall of the State. Their history furnishes the classic example of the
peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favourable. For the Athenians were not
only brave and patriotic and capable of generous sacrifice, but they were the most
religious of the Greeks. They venerated the Constitution which had given them
prosperity, and equality, and freedom, and never questioned the fundamental laws which
regulated the enormous power of the Assembly. They tolerated considerable variety of
opinion and great licence of speech; and their humanity towards their slaves roused the
indignation even of the most intelligent partisan of aristocracy. Thus they became the
only people of antiquity that grew great by democratic institutions. But the possession
of unlimited power, which corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds
the understanding of monarchs, exercised its demoralising influence on the illustrious
democracy of Athens. It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be
oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it
is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire
people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason. The humblest and most
numerous class of the Athenians united the legislative, the judicial, and, in part, the
executive power. The philosophy that was then in the ascendant taught them that there is
no law superior to that of the State—the lawgiver is above the law.
It followed that the sovereign people had a right to do whatever was within its power,
and was bound by no rule of right or wrong but its own judgment of expediency. On a
memorable occasion the assembled Athenians declared it monstrous that they should be
prevented from doing whatever they chose. No force that existed could restrain them;
and they resolved that no duty should restrain them, and that they would be bound by no
laws that were not of their own making. In this way the emancipated people of Athens
became a tyrant; and their Government, the pioneer of European freedom, stands
condemned with a terrible unanimity by all the wisest of the ancients. They ruined their
city by attempting to conduct war by debate in the marketplace. Like the French
Republic, they put their unsuccessful commanders to death. They treated their
dependencies with such injustice that they lost their maritime Empire. They plundered
the rich until the rich conspired with the public enemy, and they crowned their guilt by
the martyrdom of Socrates.
When the absolute sway of numbers had endured for near a quarter of a century, nothing
but bare existence was left for the State to lose; and the Athenians, wearied and
despondent, confessed the true cause of their ruin. They understood that for liberty,
justice, and equal laws, it is as necessary that Democracy should restrain itself as it had
been that it should restrain the Oligarchy. They resolved to take their stand once more

upon the ancient ways, and to restore the order of things which had subsisted when the
monopoly of power had been taken from the rich and had not been acquired by the poor.
After a first restoration had failed, which is only memorable because Thucydides, whose
judgment in politics is never at fault, pronounced it the best Government Athens had
enjoyed, the attempt was renewed with more experience and greater singleness of
purpose. The hostile parties were reconciled, and proclaimed an amnesty, the first in
history. They resolved to govern by concurrence. The laws, which had the sanction of
tradition, were reduced to a code; and no act of the sovereign assembly was valid with
which they might be found to disagree. Between the sacred lines of the Constitution
which were to remain inviolate, and the decrees which met from time to time the needs
and notions of the day, a broad distinction was drawn; and the fabric of a law which had
been the work of generations was made independent of momentary variations in the
popular will. The repentance of the Athenians came too late to save the Republic. But
the lesson of their experience endures for all times, for it teaches that government by the
whole people, being the government of the most numerous and most powerful class, is
an evil of the same nature as unmixed monarchy, and requires, for nearly the same
reasons, institutions that shall protect it against itself, and shall uphold the permanent
reign of law against arbitrary revolutions of opinion.

Parallel with the rise and fall of Athenian freedom, Rome was employed in working out
the same problems, with greater constructive sense, and greater temporary success, but
ending at last in a far more terrible catastrophe. That which among the ingenious
Athenians had been a development carried forward by the spell of plausible argument,
was in Rome a conflict between rival forces. Speculative politics had no attraction for
the grim and practical genius of the Romans. They did not consider what would be the
cleverest way of getting over a difficulty, but what way was indicated by analogous
cases; and they assigned less influence to the impulse and spirit of the moment, than to
precedent and example. Their peculiar character prompted them to ascribe the origin of
their laws to early times, and in their desire to justify the continuity of their institutions,
and to get rid of the reproach of innovation, they imagined the legendary history of the
kings of Rome. The energy of their adherence to traditions made their progress slow,
they advanced only under compulsion of almost unavoidable necessity, and the same
questions recurred often, before they were settled. The constitutional history of the
Republic turns on the endeavours of the aristocracy, who claimed to be the only true
Romans, to retain in their hands the power they had wrested from the kings, and of the
plebeians to get an equal share in it. And this controversy, which the eager and restless
Athenians went through in one generation, lasted for more than two centuries, from a
time when the plebs were excluded from the government of the city, and were taxed,
and made to serve without pay, until, in the year 286, they were admitted to political
equality. Then followed one hundred and fifty years of unexampled prosperity and

glory; and then, out of the original conflict which had been compromised, if not
theoretically settled, a new struggle arose which was without an issue.
The mass of poorer families, impoverished by incessant service in war, were reduced to
dependence on an aristocracy of about two thousand wealthy men, who divided among
themselves the immense domain of the State. When the need became intense the
Gracchi tried to relieve it by inducing the richer classes to allot some share in the public
lands to the common people. The old and famous aristocracy of birth and rank had made
a stubborn resistance, but it knew the art of yielding. The later and more selfish
aristocracy was unable to learn it. The character of the people was changed by the
sterner motives of dispute. The fight for political power had been carried on with the
moderation which is so honourable a quality of party contests in England. But the
struggle for the objects of material existence grew to be as ferocious as civil
controversies in France. Repulsed by the rich, after a struggle of twenty-two years, the
people, three hundred and twenty thousand of whom depended on public rations for
food, were ready to follow any man who promised to obtain for them by revolution
what they could not obtain by law.
For a time the Senate, representing the ancient and threatened order of things, was
strong enough to overcome every popular leader that arose, until Julius Cæsar,
supported by an army which he had led in an unparalleled career of conquest, and by the
famished masses which he won by his lavish liberality, and skilled beyond all other men
in the art of governing, converted the Republic into a Monarchy by a series of measures
that were neither violent nor injurious.
The Empire preserved the Republican forms until the reign of Diocletian; but the will of
the Emperors was as uncontrolled as that of the people had been after the victory of the
Tribunes. Their power was arbitrary even when it was most wisely employed, and yet
the Roman Empire rendered greater services to the cause of liberty than the Roman
Republic. I do not mean by reason of the temporary accident that there were emperors
who made good use of their immense opportunities, such as Nerva, of whom Tacitus
says that he combined monarchy and liberty, things otherwise incompatible; or that the
Empire was what its panegyrists declared it, the perfection of Democracy. In truth it was
at best an ill-disguised and odious despotism. But Frederic the Great was a despot; yet
he was a friend to toleration and free discussion. The Bonapartes were despotic; yet no
liberal ruler was ever more acceptable to the masses of the people than the First
Napoleon, after he had destroyed the Republic, in 1805, and the Third Napoleon at the
height of his power in 1859. In the same way, the Roman Empire possessed merits
which, at a distance, and especially at a great distance of time, concern men more
deeply than the tragic tyranny which was felt in the neighbourhood of the Palace. The
poor had what they had demanded in vain of the Republic. The rich fared better than
during the Triumvirate. The rights of Roman citizens were extended to the people of the
provinces. To the imperial epoch belong the better part of Roman literature and nearly
the entire Civil Law; and it was the Empire that mitigated slavery, instituted religious

toleration, made a beginning of the law of nations, and created a perfect system of the
law of property. The Republic which Cæsar overthrew had been anything but a free
State. It provided admirable securities for the rights of citizens; it treated with savage
disregard the rights of men; and allowed the free Roman to inflict atrocious wrongs on
his children, on debtors and dependants, on prisoners and slaves. Those deeper ideas of
right and duty, which are not found on the tables of municipal law, but with which the
generous minds of Greece were conversant, were held of little account, and the
philosophy which dealt with such speculations was repeatedly proscribed, as a teacher
of sedition and impiety.
At length, in the year 155, the Athenian philosopher Carneades appeared at Rome, on a
political mission. During an interval of official business he delivered two public
orations, to give the unlettered conquerors of his country a taste of the disputations that
flourished in the Attic schools. On the first day he discoursed of natural justice. On the
next he denied its existence, arguing that all our notions of good and evil are derived
from positive enactment. From the time of that memorable display, the genius of the
vanquished held its conquerors in thrall. The most eminent of the public men of Rome,
such as Scipio and Cicero, formed their minds on Grecian models, and her jurists
underwent the rigorous discipline of Zeno and Chrysippus.
If, drawing the limit in the second century, when the influence of Christianity becomes
perceptible, we should form our judgment of the politics of antiquity by its actual
legislation, our estimate would be low. The prevailing notions of freedom were
imperfect, and the endeavours to realise them were wide of the mark. The ancients
understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty. They
concentrated so many prerogatives in the State as to leave no footing from which a man
could deny its jurisdiction or assign bounds to its activity. If I may employ an expressive
anachronism, the vice of the classic State was that it was both Church and State in one.
Morality was undistinguished from religion and politics from morals; and in religion,
morality, and politics there was only one legislator and one authority. The State, while it
did deplorably little for education, for practical science, for the indigent and helpless, or
for the spiritual needs of man, nevertheless claimed the use of all his faculties and the
determination of all his duties. Individuals and families, associations and dependencies
were so much material that the sovereign power consumed for its own purposes. What
the slave was in the hands of his master, the citizen was in the hands of the community.
The most sacred obligations vanished before the public advantage. The passengers
existed for the sake of the ship. By their disregard for private interests, and for the moral
welfare and improvement of the people, both Greece and Rome destroyed the vital
elements on which the prosperity of nations rests, and perished by the decay of families
and the depopulation of the country. They survive not in their institutions, but in their
ideas, and by their ideas, especially on the art of government, they are—
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

To them, indeed, may be tracked nearly all the errors that are undermining political
society—Communism, Utilitarianism, the confusion between tyranny and authority, and
between lawlessness and freedom.
The notion that men lived originally in a state of nature, by violence and without laws,
is due to Critias. Communism in its grossest form was recommended by Diogenes of
Sinope. According to the Sophists, there is no duty above expediency and no virtue
apart from pleasure. Laws are an invention of weak men to rob their betters of the
reasonable enjoyment of their superiority. It is better to inflict than to suffer wrong; and
as there is no greater good than to do evil without fear of retribution, so there is no
worse evil than to suffer without the consolation of revenge. Justice is the mask of a
craven spirit; injustice is worldly wisdom; and duty, obedience, self-denial are the
impostures of hypocrisy. Government is absolute, and may ordain what it pleases, and
no subject can complain that it does him wrong, but as long as he can escape
compulsion and punishment, he is always free to disobey. Happiness consists in
obtaining power and in eluding the necessity of obedience; and he that gains a throne by
perfidy and murder, deserves to be truly envied.
Epicurus differed but little from the propounders of the code of revolutionary
despotism. All societies, he said, are founded on contract for mutual protection. Good
and evil are conventional terms, for the thunderbolts of heaven fall alike on the just and
the unjust. The objection to wrongdoing is not the act, but in its consequences to the
wrongdoer. Wise men contrive laws, not to bind, but to protect themselves; and when
they prove to be unprofitable they cease to be valid. The illiberal sentiments of even the
most illustrious metaphysicians are disclosed in the saying of Aristotle, that the mark of
the worst governments is that they leave men free to live as they please.
If you will bear in mind that Socrates, the best of the pagans, knew of no higher
criterion for men, of no better guide of conduct, than the laws of each country; that
Plato, whose sublime doctrine was so near an anticipation of Christianity that celebrated
theologians wished his works to be forbidden, lest men should be content with them,
and indifferent to any higher dogma—to whom was granted that prophetic vision of the
Just Man, accused, condemned and scourged, and dying on a Cross—nevertheless
employed the most splendid intellect ever bestowed on man to advocate the abolition of
the family and the exposure of infants; that Aristotle, the ablest moralist of antiquity,
saw no harm in making raids upon a neighbouring people, for the sake of reducing them
to slavery—still more, if you will consider that, among the moderns, men of genius
equal to these have held political doctrines not less criminal or absurd—it will be
apparent to you how stubborn a phalanx of error blocks the paths of truth; that pure
reason is as powerless as custom to solve the problem of free government; that it can
only be the fruit of long, manifold, and painful experience; and that the tracing of the
methods by which divine wisdom has educated the nations to appreciate and to assume
the duties of freedom, is not the least part of that true philosophy that studies to

Assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
But, having sounded the depth of their errors, I should give you a very inadequate idea
of the wisdom of the ancients if I allowed it to appear that their precepts were no better
than their practice. While statesmen and senates and popular assemblies supplied
examples of every description of blunder, a noble literature arose, in which a priceless
treasure of political knowledge was stored, and in which the defects of the existing
institutions were exposed with unsparing sagacity. The point on which the ancients were
most nearly unanimous is the right of the people to govern, and their inability to govern
alone. To meet this difficulty, to give to the popular element a full share without a
monopoly of power, they adopted very generally the theory of a mixed Constitution.
They differed from our notion of the same thing, because modern Constitutions have
been a device for limiting monarchy; with them they were invented to curb democracy.
The idea arose in the time of Plato—though he repelled it—when the early monarchies
and oligarchies had vanished, and it continued to be cherished long after all democracies
had been absorbed in the Roman Empire. But whereas a sovereign prince who
surrenders part of his authority yields to the argument of superior force, a sovereign
people relinquishing its own prerogative succumbs to the influence of reason. And it has
in all times proved more easy to create limitations by the use of force than by
persuasion.
The ancient writers saw very clearly that each principle of government standing alone is
carried to excess and provokes a reaction. Monarchy hardens into despotism.
Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of
numbers. They therefore imagined that to restrain each element by combining it with the
others would avert the natural process of self-destruction, and endow the State with
perpetual youth. But this harmony of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy blended
together, which was the ideal of many writers, and which they supposed to be exhibited
by Sparta, by Carthage, and by Rome, was a chimera of philosophers never realised by
antiquity. At last Tacitus, wiser than the rest, confessed that the mixed Constitution,
however admirable in theory, was difficult to establish and impossible to maintain. His
disheartening avowal is not disowned by later experience.
The experiment has been tried more often than I can tell, with a combination of
resources that were unknown to the ancients—with Christianity, parliamentary
government, and a free press. Yet there is no example of such a balanced Constitution
having lasted a century. If it has succeeded anywhere it has been in our favoured
country and in our time; and we know not yet how long the wisdom of the nation will
preserve the equipoise. The Federal check was as familiar to the ancients as the
Constitutional. For the type of all their Republics was the government of a city by its
own inhabitants meeting in the public place. An administration embracing many cities
was known to them only in the form of the oppression which Sparta exercised over the
Messenians, Athens over her Confederates, and Rome over Italy. The resources which,

in modern times, enabled a great people to govern itself through a single centre did not
exist. Equality could be preserved only by Federalism; and it occurs more often
amongst them than in the modern world. If the distribution of power among the several
parts of the State is the most efficient restraint on monarchy, the distribution of power
among several States is the best check on democracy. By multiplying centres of
government and discussion it promotes the diffusion of political knowledge and the
maintenance of healthy and independent opinion. It is the protectorate of minorities, and
the consecration of self-government. But although it must be enumerated among the
better achievements of practical genius in antiquity, it arose from necessity, and its
properties were imperfectly investigated in theory.
When the Greeks began to reflect on the problems of society, they first of all accepted
things as they were, and did their best to explain and defend them. Inquiry, which with
us is stimulated by doubt, began with them in wonder. The most illustrious of the early
philosophers, Pythagoras, promulgated a theory for the preservation of political power
in the educated class, and ennobled a form of government which was generally founded
on popular ignorance and on strong class interests. He preached authority and
subordination, and dwelt more on duties than on rights, on religion than on policy; and
his system perished in the revolution by which oligarchies were swept away. The
revolution afterwards developed its own philosophy, whose excesses I have described.
But between the two eras, between the rigid didactics of the early Pythagoreans and the
dissolving theories of Protagoras, a philosopher arose who stood aloof from both
extremes, and whose difficult sayings were never really understood or valued until our
time. Heraclitus, of Ephesus, deposited his book in the temple of Diana. The book has
perished, like the temple and the worship, but its fragments have been collected and
interpreted with incredible ardour, by the scholars, the divines, the philosophers, and
politicians who have been engaged the most intensely in the toil and stress of this
century. The most renowned logician of the last century adopted every one of his
propositions; and the most brilliant agitator among Continental Socialists composed a
work of eight hundred and forty pages to celebrate his memory.
Heraclitus complained that the masses were deaf to truth, and knew not that one good
man counts for more than thousands; but he held the existing order in no superstitious
reverence. Strife, he says, is the source and the master of all things. Life is perpetual
motion, and repose is death. No man can plunge twice into the same current, for it is
always flowing and passing, and is never the same. The only thing fixed and certain in
the midst of change is the universal and sovereign reason, which all men may not
perceive, but which is common to all. Laws are sustained by no human authority, but by
virtue of their derivation from the one law that is divine. These sayings, which recall the
grand outlines of political truth which we have found in the Sacred Books, and carry us
forward to the latest teaching of our most enlightened contemporaries, would bear a
good deal of elucidation and comment. Heraclitus is, unfortunately, so obscure that
Socrates could not understand him, and I won't pretend to have succeeded better.

If the topic of my address was the history of political science, the highest and the largest
place would belong to Plato and Aristotle. The Laws of the one, the Politics of the other,
are, if I may trust my own experience, the books from which we may learn the most
about the principles of politics. The penetration with which those great masters of
thought analysed the institutions of Greece, and exposed their vices, is not surpassed by
anything in later literature; by Burke or Hamilton, the best political writers of the last
century; by Tocqueville or Roscher, the most eminent of our own. But Plato and
Aristotle were philosophers, studious not of unguided freedom, but of intelligent
government. They saw the disastrous effects of ill-directed striving for liberty; and they
resolved that it was better not to strive for it, but to be content with a strong
administration, prudently adapted to make men prosperous and happy.
Now liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent
reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It
is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration
that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society,
and of private life. Increase of freedom in the State may sometimes promote mediocrity,
and give vitality to prejudice; it may even retard useful legislation, diminish the capacity
for war, and restrict the boundaries of Empire. It might be plausibly argued that, if many
things would be worse in England or Ireland under an intelligent despotism, some
things would be managed better; that the Roman Government was more enlightened
under Augustus and Antoninus than under the Senate, in the days of Marius or of
Pompey. A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no
account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved. It is better to be the
citizen of a humble commonwealth in the Alps, without a prospect of influence beyond
the narrow frontier, than a subject of the superb autocracy that overshadows half of Asia
and of Europe. But it may be urged, on the other side, that liberty is not the sum or the
substitute of all the things men ought to live for; that to be real it must be circumscribed,
and that the limits of circumscription vary; that advancing civilisation invests the State
with increased rights and duties, and imposes increased burdens and constraint on the
subject; that a highly instructed and intelligent community may perceive the benefit of
compulsory obligations which, at a lower stage, would be thought unbearable; that
liberal progress is not vague or indefinite, but aims at a point where the public is subject
to no restrictions but those of which it feels the advantage; that a free country may be
less capable of doing much for the advancement of religion, the prevention of vice, or
the relief of suffering, than one that does not shrink from confronting great emergencies
by some sacrifice of individual rights, and some concentration of power; and that the
supreme political object ought to be sometimes postponed to still higher moral objects.
My argument involves no collision with these qualifying reflections. We are dealing, not
with the effects of freedom, but with its causes. We are seeking out the influences which
brought arbitrary government under control, either by the diffusion of power, or by the
appeal to an authority which transcends all government, and among those influences the
greatest philosophers of Greece have no claim to be reckoned.

It is the Stoics who emancipated mankind from its subjugation to despotic rule, and
whose enlightened and elevated views of life bridged the chasm that separates the
ancient from the Christian state, and led the way to freedom. Seeing how little security
there is that the laws of any land shall be wise or just, and that the unanimous will of a
people and the assent of nations are liable to err, the Stoics looked beyond those narrow
barriers, and above those inferior sanctions, for the principles that ought to regulate the
lives of men and the existence of society. They made it known that there is a will
superior to the collective will of man, and a law that overrules those of Solon and
Lycurgus. Their test of good government is its conformity to principles that can be
traced to a higher legislator. That which we must obey, that to which we are bound to
reduce all civil authorities, and to sacrifice every earthly interest, is that immutable law
which is perfect and eternal as God Himself, which proceeds from His nature, and
reigns over heaven and earth and over all the nations.
The great question is to discover, not what governments prescribe, but what they ought
to prescribe; for no prescription is valid against the conscience of mankind. Before God,
there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor poor, and the slave is as good as his
master, for by birth all men are free; they are citizens of that universal commonwealth
which embraces all the world, brethren of one family, and children of God. The true
guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to
dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we
know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of
the heavenly spirit within.
What the teaching of that divine voice is, the philosophers who had imbibed the sublime
ethics of the Porch went on to expound: It is not enough to act up to the written law, or
to give all men their due; we ought to give them more than their due, to be generous and
beneficent, to devote ourselves for the good of others, seeking our reward in self-denial
and sacrifice, acting from the motive of sympathy and not of personal advantage.
Therefore we must treat others as we wish to be treated by them, and must persist until
death in doing good to our enemies, regardless of unworthiness and ingratitude. For we
must be at war with evil, but at peace with men, and it is better to suffer than to commit
injustice. True freedom, says the most eloquent of the Stoics, consists in obeying God.
A State governed by such principles as these would have been free far beyond the
measure of Greek or Roman freedom; for they open a door to religious toleration, and
close it against slavery. Neither conquest nor purchase, said Zeno, can make one man
the property of another.
These doctrines were adopted and applied by the great jurists of the Empire. The law of
nature, they said, is superior to the written law, and slavery contradicts the law of
nature. Men have no right to do what they please with their own, or to make profit out
of another's loss. Such is the political wisdom of the ancients, touching the foundations
of liberty, as we find it in its highest development, in Cicero, and Seneca, and Philo, a
Jew of Alexandria. Their writings impress upon us the greatness of the work of

preparation for the Gospel which had been accomplished among men on the eve of the
mission of the Apostles. St. Augustine, after quoting Seneca, exclaims: "What more
could a Christian say than this Pagan has said?" The enlightened pagans had reached
nearly the last point attainable without a new dispensation, when the fulness of time was
come. We have seen the breadth and the splendour of the domain of Hellenic thought,
and it has brought us to the threshold of a greater kingdom. The best of the later classics
speak almost the language of Christianity, and they border on its spirit.
But in all that I have been able to cite from classical literature, three things are wanting,
—representative government, the emancipation of the slaves, and liberty of conscience.
There were, it is true, deliberative assemblies, chosen by the people; and confederate
cities, of which, both in Asia and Africa, there were so many leagues, sent their
delegates to sit in Federal Councils. But government by an elected Parliament was even
in theory a thing unknown. It is congruous with the nature of Polytheism to admit some
measure of toleration. And Socrates, when he avowed that he must obey God rather than
the Athenians, and the Stoics, when they set the wise man above the law, were very near
giving utterance to the principle. But it was first proclaimed and established by
enactment, not in polytheistic and philosophical Greece, but in India, by Asoka, the
earliest of the Buddhist kings, two hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ.
Slavery has been, far more than intolerance, the perpetual curse and reproach of ancient
civilisation, and although its rightfulness was disputed as early as the days of Aristotle,
and was implicitly, if not definitely, denied by several Stoics, the moral philosophy of
the Greeks and Romans, as well as their practice, pronounced decidedly in its favour.
But there was one extraordinary people who, in this as in other things, anticipated the
purer precept that was to come. Philo of Alexandria is one of the writers whose views
on society were most advanced. He applauds not only liberty but equality in the
enjoyment of wealth. He believes that a limited democracy, purged of its grosser
elements, is the most perfect government, and will extend itself gradually over all the
world. By freedom he understood the following of God. Philo, though he required that
the condition of the slave should be made compatible with the wants and claims of his
higher nature, did not absolutely condemn slavery. But he has put on record the customs
of the Essenes of Palestine, a people who, uniting the wisdom of the Gentiles with the
faith of the Jews, led lives which were uncontaminated by the surrounding civilisation,
and were the first to reject slavery both in principle and practice. They formed a
religious community rather than a State, and their numbers did not exceed 4000. But
their example testifies to how great a height religious men were able to raise their
conception of society even without the succour of the New Testament, and affords the
strongest condemnation of their contemporaries.
This, then, is the conclusion to which our survey brings us: There is hardly a truth in
politics or in the system of the rights of man that was not grasped by the wisest of the
Gentiles and the Jews, or that they did not declare with a refinement of thought and a
nobleness of expression that later writers could never surpass. I might go on for hours,

reciting to you passages on the law of nature and the duties of man, so solemn and
religious that though they come from the profane theatre on the Acropolis, and from the
Roman Forum, you would deem that you were listening to the hymns of Christian
Churches and the discourse of ordained divines. But although the maxims of the great
classic teachers, of Sophocles, and Plato, and Seneca, and the glorious examples of
public virtue were in the mouths of all men, there was no power in them to avert the
doom of that civilisation for which the blood of so many patriots and the genius of such
incomparable writers had been wasted in vain. The liberties of the ancient nations were
crushed beneath a hopeless and inevitable despotism, and their vitality was spent, when
the new power came forth from Galilee, giving what was wanting to the efficacy of
human knowledge to redeem societies as well as men.
It would be presumptuous if I attempted to indicate the numberless channels by which
Christian influence gradually penetrated the State. The first striking phenomenon is the
slowness with which an action destined to be so prodigious became manifest. Going
forth to all nations, in many stages of civilisation and under almost every form of
government, Christianity had none of the character of a political apostolate, and in its
absorbing mission to individuals did not challenge public authority. The early Christians
avoided contact with the State, abstained from the responsibilities of office, and were
even reluctant to serve in the army. Cherishing their citizenship of a kingdom not of this
world, they despaired of an empire which seemed too powerful to be resisted and too
corrupt to be converted, whose institutions, the work and the pride of untold centuries of
paganism, drew their sanctions from the gods whom the Christians accounted devils,
which plunged its hands from age to age in the blood of martyrs, and was beyond the
hope of regeneration and foredoomed to perish. They were so much overawed as to
imagine that the fall of the State would be the end of the Church and of the world, and
no man dreamed of the boundless future of spiritual and social influence that awaited
their religion among the race of destroyers that were bringing the empire of Augustus
and of Constantine to humiliation and ruin. The duties of government were less in their
thoughts than the private virtues and duties of subjects; and it was long before they
became aware of the burden of power in their faith. Down almost to the time of
Chrysostom, they shrank from contemplating the obligation to emancipate the slaves.
Although the doctrine of self-reliance and self-denial, which is the foundation of
political economy, was written as legibly in the New Testament as in the Wealth of
Nations, it was not recognised until our age. Tertullian boasts of the passive obedience
of the Christians. Melito writes to a pagan Emperor as if he were incapable of giving an
unjust command; and in Christian times Optatus thought that whoever presumed to find
fault with his sovereign exalted himself almost to the level of a god. But this political
quietism was not universal. Origen, the ablest writer of early times, spoke with approval
of conspiring for the destruction of tyranny.
After the fourth century the declarations against slavery are earnest and continual. And
in a theological but yet pregnant sense, divines of the second century insist on liberty,

and divines of the fourth century on equality. There was one essential and inevitable
transformation in politics. Popular governments had existed, and also mixed and federal
governments, but there had been no limited government, no State the circumference of
whose authority had been defined by a force external to its own. That was the great
problem which philosophy had raised, and which no statesmanship had been able to
solve. Those who proclaimed the assistance of a higher authority had indeed drawn a
metaphysical barrier before the governments, but they had not known how to make it
real. All that Socrates could effect by way of protest against the tyranny of the reformed
democracy was to die for his convictions. The Stoics could only advise the wise man to
hold aloof from politics, keeping the unwritten law in his heart. But when Christ said:
"Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's,"
those words, spoken on His last visit to the Temple, three days before His death, gave to
the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed,
and bounds it had never acknowledged; and they were the repudiation of absolutism and
the inauguration of freedom. For our Lord not only delivered the precept, but created the
force to execute it. To maintain the necessary immunity in one supreme sphere, to
reduce all political authority within defined limits, ceased to be an aspiration of patient
reasoners, and was made the perpetual charge and care of the most energetic institution
and the most universal association in the world. The new law, the new spirit, the new
authority, gave to liberty a meaning and a value it had not possessed in the philosophy
or in the constitution of Greece or Rome before the knowledge of the truth that makes
us free.

FOOTNOTES:
[2] An address delivered to the members of the Bridgnorth Institution at the Agricultural Hall,
26th February 1877.

II
THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN CHRISTIANITY[3]
When Constantine the Great carried the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople he
set up in the marketplace of the new capital a porphyry pillar which had come from
Egypt, and of which a strange tale is told. In a vault beneath he secretly buried the seven
sacred emblems of the Roman State, which were guarded by the virgins in the temple of
Vesta, with the fire that might never be quenched. On the summit he raised a statue of
Apollo, representing himself, and enclosing a fragment of the Cross; and he crowned it
with a diadem of rays consisting of the nails employed at the Crucifixion, which his
mother was believed to have found at Jerusalem.
The pillar still stands, the most significant monument that exists of the converted
empire; for the notion that the nails which had pierced the body of Christ became a fit
ornament for a heathen idol as soon as it was called by the name of a living emperor
indicates the position designed for Christianity in the imperial structure of Constantine.
Diocletian's attempt to transform the Roman Government into a despotism of the
Eastern type had brought on the last and most serious persecution of the Christians; and
Constantine, in adopting their faith, intended neither to abandon his predecessor's
scheme of policy nor to renounce the fascinations of arbitrary authority, but to
strengthen his throne with the support of a religion which had astonished the world by
its power of resistance, and to obtain that support absolutely and without a drawback he
fixed the seat of his government in the East, with a patriarch of his own creation.
Nobody warned him that by promoting the Christian religion he was tying one of his
hands, and surrendering the prerogative of the Cæsars. As the acknowledged author of
the liberty and superiority of the Church, he was appealed to as the guardian of her
unity. He admitted the obligation; he accepted the trust; and the divisions that prevailed
among the Christians supplied his successors with many opportunities of extending that
protectorate, and preventing any reduction of the claims or of the resources of
imperialism.
Constantine declared his own will equivalent to a canon of the Church. According to
Justinian, the Roman people had formally transferred to the emperors the entire
plenitude of its authority, and, therefore, the Emperor's pleasure, expressed by edict or
by letter, had force of law. Even in the fervent age of its conversion the Empire
employed its refined civilisation, the accumulated wisdom of ancient sages, the
reasonableness and subtlety of Roman law, and the entire inheritance of the Jewish, the
Pagan, and the Christian world, to make the Church serve as a gilded crutch of
absolutism. Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome,

nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition
of antiquity. Something was wanted beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience—a
faculty of self-government and self-control, developed like its language in the fibre of a
nation, and growing with its growth. This vital element, which many centuries of
warfare, of anarchy, of oppression had extinguished in the countries that were still
draped in the pomp of ancient civilisation, was deposited on the soil of Christendom by
the fertilising stream of migration that overthrew the empire of the West.
In the height of their power the Romans became aware of a race of men that had not
abdicated freedom in the hands of a monarch; and the ablest writer of the empire
pointed to them with a vague and bitter feeling that, to the institutions of these
barbarians, not yet crushed by despotism, the future of the world belonged. Their kings,
when they had kings, did not preside at their councils; they were sometimes elective;
they were sometimes deposed; and they were bound by oath to act in obedience with the
general wish. They enjoyed real authority only in war. This primitive Republicanism,
which admits monarchy as an occasional incident, but holds fast to the collective
supremacy of all free men, of the constituent authority over all constituted authorities, is
the remote germ of Parliamentary government. The action of the State was confined to
narrow limits; but, besides his position as head of the State, the king was surrounded by
a body of followers attached to him by personal or political ties. In these, his immediate
dependants, disobedience or resistance to orders was no more tolerated than in a wife, a
child, or a soldier; and a man was expected to murder his own father if his chieftain
required it. Thus these Teutonic communities admitted an independence of government
that threatened to dissolve society; and a dependence on persons that was dangerous to
freedom. It was a system very favourable to corporations, but offering no security to
individuals. The State was not likely to oppress its subjects; and was not able to protect
them.
The first effect of the great Teutonic migration into the regions civilised by Rome was to
throw back Europe many centuries to a condition scarcely more advanced than that
from which the institutions of Solon had rescued Athens. Whilst the Greeks preserved
the literature, the arts, and the science of antiquity and all the sacred monuments of
early Christianity with a completeness of which the rended fragments that have come
down to us give no commensurate idea, and even the peasants of Bulgaria knew the
New Testament by heart, Western Europe lay under the grasp of masters the ablest of
whom could not write their names. The faculty of exact reasoning, of accurate
observation, became extinct for five hundred years, and even the sciences most needful
to society, medicine and geometry, fell into decay, until the teachers of the West went to
school at the feet of Arabian masters. To bring order out of chaotic ruin, to rear a new
civilisation and blend hostile and unequal races into a nation, the thing wanted was not
liberty but force. And for centuries all progress is attached to the action of men like
Clovis, Charlemagne, and William the Norman, who were resolute and peremptory, and
prompt to be obeyed.

The spirit of immemorial paganism which had saturated ancient society could not be
exorcised except by the combined influence of Church and State; and the universal
sense that their union was necessary created the Byzantine despotism. The divines of the
Empire who could not fancy Christianity flourishing beyond its borders, insisted that the
State is not in the Church, but the Church in the State. This doctrine had scarcely been
uttered when the rapid collapse of the Western Empire opened a wider horizon; and
Salvianus, a priest at Marseilles, proclaimed that the social virtues, which were
decaying amid the civilised Romans, existed in greater purity and promise among the
Pagan invaders. They were converted with ease and rapidity; and their conversion was
generally brought about by their kings.
Christianity, which in earlier times had addressed itself to the masses, and relied on the
principle of liberty, now made its appeal to the rulers, and threw its mighty influence
into the scale of authority. The barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular
knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely
acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men
whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine;
and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely
vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States. The clergy supplied the means
of conducting the new governments, and were made exempt from taxation, from the
jurisdiction of the civil magistrate, and of the political administrator. They taught that
power ought to be conferred by election; and the Councils of Toledo furnished the
framework of the Parliamentary system of Spain, which is, by a long interval, the oldest
in the world. But the monarchy of the Goths in Spain, as well as that of the Saxons in
England, in both of which the nobles and the prelates surrounded the throne with the
semblance of free institutions, passed away; and the people that prospered and
overshadowed the rest were the Franks, who had no native nobility, whose law of
succession to the Crown became for one thousand years the fixed object of an
unchanging superstition, and under whom the feudal system was developed to excess.
Feudalism made land the measure and the master of all things. Having no other source
of wealth than the produce of the soil, men depended on the landlord for the means of
escaping starvation; and thus his power became paramount over the liberty of the
subject and the authority of the State. Every baron, said the French maxim, is sovereign
in his own domain. The nations of the West lay between the competing tyrannies of
local magnates and of absolute monarchs, when a force was brought upon the scene
which proved for a time superior alike to the vassal and his lord.
In the days of the Conquest, when the Normans destroyed the liberties of England, the
rude institutions which had come with the Saxons, the Goths, and the Franks from the
forests of Germany were suffering decay, and the new element of popular government
afterwards supplied by the rise of towns and the formation of a middle class was not yet
active. The only influence capable of resisting the feudal hierarchy was the
ecclesiastical hierarchy; and they came into collision, when the process of feudalism

threatened the independence of the Church by subjecting the prelates severally to that
form of personal dependence on the kings which was peculiar to the Teutonic state.
To that conflict of four hundred years we owe the rise of civil liberty. If the Church had
continued to buttress the thrones of the kings whom it anointed, or if the struggle had
terminated speedily in an undivided victory, all Europe would have sunk down under a
Byzantine or Muscovite despotism. For the aim of both contending parties was absolute
authority. But although liberty was not the end for which they strove, it was the means
by which the temporal and the spiritual power called the nations to their aid. The towns
of Italy and Germany won their franchises, France got her States-General, and England
her Parliament out of the alternate phases of the contest; and as long as it lasted it
prevented the rise of divine right. A disposition existed to regard the crown as an estate
descending under the law of real property in the family that possessed it. But the
authority of religion, and especially of the papacy, was thrown on the side that denied
the indefeasible title of kings. In France what was afterwards called the Gallican theory
maintained that the reigning house was above the law, and that the sceptre was not to
pass away from it as long as there should be princes of the royal blood of St. Louis. But
in other countries the oath of fidelity itself attested that it was conditional, and should be
kept only during good behaviour; and it was in conformity with the public law to which
all monarchs were held subject, that King John was declared a rebel against the barons,
and that the men who raised Edward III. to the throne from which they had deposed his
father invoked the maxim Vox populi Vox Dei.
And this doctrine of the divine right of the people to raise up and pull down princes,
after obtaining the sanctions of religion, was made to stand on broader grounds, and was
strong enough to resist both Church and king. In the struggle between the House of
Bruce and the House of Plantagenet for the possession of Scotland and Ireland, the
English claim was backed by the censures of Rome. But the Irish and the Scots refused
it, and the address in which the Scottish Parliament informed the Pope of their
resolution shows how firmly the popular doctrine had taken root. Speaking of Robert
Bruce, they say: "Divine Providence, the laws and customs of the country, which we
will defend till death, and the choice of the people, have made him our king. If he
should ever betray his principles, and consent that we should be subjects of the English
king, then we shall treat him as an enemy, as the subverter of our rights and his own,
and shall elect another in his place. We care not for glory or for wealth, but for that
liberty which no true man will give up but with his life." This estimate of royalty was
natural among men accustomed to see those whom they most respected in constant
strife with their rulers. Gregory VII. had begun the disparagement of civil authorities by
saying that they are the work of the devil; and already in his time both parties were
driven to acknowledge the sovereignty of the people, and appealed to it as the
immediate source of power.
Two centuries later this political theory had gained both in definiteness and in force
among the Guelphs, who were the Church party, and among the Ghibellines, or

Imperialists. Here are the sentiments of the most celebrated of all the Guelphic writers:
"A king who is unfaithful to his duty forfeits his claim to obedience. It is not rebellion to
depose him, for he is himself a rebel whom the nation has a right to put down. But it is
better to abridge his power, that he may be unable to abuse it. For this purpose, the
whole nation ought to have a share in governing itself; the Constitution ought to
combine a limited and elective monarchy, with an aristocracy of merit, and such an
admixture of democracy as shall admit all classes to office, by popular election. No
government has a right to levy taxes beyond the limit determined by the people. All
political authority is derived from popular suffrage, and all laws must be made by the
people or their representatives. There is no security for us as long as we depend on the
will of another man." This language, which contains the earliest exposition of the Whig
theory of the revolution, is taken from the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, of whom Lord
Bacon says that he had the largest heart of the school divines. And it is worth while to
observe that he wrote at the very moment when Simon de Montfort summoned the
Commons; and that the politics of the Neapolitan friar are centuries in advance of the
English statesman's.
The ablest writer of the Ghibelline party was Marsilius of Padua. "Laws," he said,
"derive their authority from the nation, and are invalid without its assent. As the whole
is greater than any part, it is wrong that any part should legislate for the whole; and as
men are equal, it is wrong that one should be bound by laws made by another. But in
obeying laws to which all men have agreed, all men, in reality, govern themselves. The
monarch, who is instituted by the legislature to execute its will, ought to be armed with
a force sufficient to coerce individuals, but not sufficient to control the majority of the
people. He is responsible to the nation, and subject to the law; and the nation that
appoints him, and assigns him his duties, has to see that he obeys the Constitution, and
has to dismiss him if he breaks it. The rights of citizens are independent of the faith they
profess; and no man may be punished for his religion." This writer, who saw in some
respects farther than Locke or Montesquieu, who, in regard to the sovereignty of the
nation, representative government, the superiority of the legislature over the executive,
and the liberty of conscience, had so firm a grasp of the principles that were to sway the
modern world, lived in the reign of Edward II., five hundred and fifty years ago.
It is significant that these two writers should agree on so many of the fundamental
points which have been, ever since, the topic of controversy; for they belonged to
hostile schools, and one of them would have thought the other worthy of death. St.
Thomas would have made the papacy control all Christian governments. Marsilius
would have had the clergy submit to the law of the land; and would have put them under
restrictions both as to property and numbers. As the great debate went on, many things
gradually made themselves clear, and grew into settled convictions. For these were not
only the thoughts of prophetic minds that surpassed the level of contemporaries; there
was some prospect that they would master the practical world. The ancient reign of the
barons was seriously threatened. The opening of the East by the Crusades had imparted
a great stimulus to industry. A stream set in from the country to the towns, and there was

no room for the government of towns in the feudal machinery. When men found a way
of earning a livelihood without depending for it on the good will of the class that owned
the land, the landowner lost much of his importance, and it began to pass to the
possessors of moveable wealth. The townspeople not only made themselves free from
the control of prelates and barons, but endeavoured to obtain for their own class and
interest the command of the State.
The fourteenth century was filled with the tumult of this struggle between democracy
and chivalry. The Italian towns, foremost in intelligence and civilisation, led the way
with democratic constitutions of an ideal and generally an impracticable type. The
Swiss cast off the yoke of Austria. Two long chains of free cities arose, along the valley
of the Rhine, and across the heart of Germany. The citizens of Paris got possession of
the king, reformed the State, and began their tremendous career of experiments to
govern France. But the most healthy and vigorous growth of municipal liberties was in
Belgium, of all countries on the Continent, that which has been from immemorial ages
the most stubborn in its fidelity to the principle of self-government. So vast were the
resources concentrated in the Flemish towns, so widespread was the movement of
democracy, that it was long doubtful whether the new interest would not prevail, and
whether the ascendency of the military aristocracy would not pass over to the wealth
and intelligence of the men that lived by trade. But Rienzi, Marcel, Artevelde, and the
other champions of the unripe democracy of those days, lived and died in vain. The
upheaval of the middle class had disclosed the need, the passions, the aspirations of the
suffering poor below; ferocious insurrections in France and England caused a reaction
that retarded for centuries the readjustment of power, and the red spectre of social
revolution arose in the track of democracy. The armed citizens of Ghent were crushed
by the French chivalry; and monarchy alone reaped the fruit of the change that was
going on in the position of classes, and stirred the minds of men.
Looking back over the space of a thousand years, which we call the Middle Ages, to get
an estimate of the work they had done, if not towards perfection in their institutions, at
least towards attaining the knowledge of political truth, this is what we find:
Representative government, which was unknown to the ancients, was almost universal.
The methods of election were crude; but the principle that no tax was lawful that was
not granted by the class that paid it—that is, that taxation was inseparable from
representation—was recognised, not as the privilege of certain countries, but as the right
of all. Not a prince in the world, said Philip de Commines, can levy a penny without the
consent of the people. Slavery was almost everywhere extinct; and absolute power was
deemed more intolerable and more criminal than slavery. The right of insurrection was
not only admitted but defined, as a duty sanctioned by religion. Even the principles of
the Habeas Corpus Act, and the method of the Income Tax, were already known. The
issue of ancient politics was an absolute state planted on slavery. The political produce
of the Middle Ages was a system of states in which authority was restricted by the
representation of powerful classes, by privileged associations, and by the
acknowledgment of duties superior to those which are imposed by man.

As regards the realisation in practice of what was seen to be good, there was almost
everything to do. But the great problems of principle had been solved, and we come to
the question, How did the sixteenth century husband the treasure which the Middle
Ages had stored up? The most visible sign of the times was the decline of the religious
influence that had reigned so long. Sixty years passed after the invention of printing,
and thirty thousand books had issued from European presses, before anybody undertook
to print the Greek Testament. In the days when every State made the unity of faith its
first care, it came to be thought that the rights of men, and the duties of neighbours and
of rulers towards them, varied according to their religion; and society did not
acknowledge the same obligations to a Turk or a Jew, a pagan or a heretic, or a devil
worshipper, as to an orthodox Christian. As the ascendency of religion grew weaker, this
privilege of treating its enemies on exceptional principles was claimed by the State for
its own benefit; and the idea that the ends of government justify the means employed
was worked into system by Machiavelli. He was an acute politician, sincerely anxious
that the obstacles to the intelligent government of Italy should be swept away. It
appeared to him that the most vexatious obstacle to intellect is conscience, and that the
vigorous use of statecraft necessary for the success of difficult schemes would never be
made if governments allowed themselves to be hampered by the precepts of the copy-
book.
His audacious doctrine was avowed in the succeeding age by men whose personal
character stood high. They saw that in critical times good men have seldom strength for
their goodness, and yield to those who have grasped the meaning of the maxim that you
cannot make an omelette if you are afraid to break the eggs. They saw that public
morality differs from private, because no Government can turn the other cheek, or can
admit that mercy is better than justice. And they could not define the difference or draw
the limits of exception; or tell what other standard for a nation's acts there is than the
judgment which Heaven pronounces in this world by success.
Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government,
for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. But it gave an
immense impulse to absolutism by silencing the consciences of very religious kings,
and made the good and the bad very much alike. Charles V. offered 5000 crowns for the
murder of an enemy. Ferdinand I. and Ferdinand II., Henry III. and Louis XIII., each
caused his most powerful subject to be treacherously despatched. Elizabeth and Mary
Stuart tried to do the same to each other. The way was paved for absolute monarchy to
triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of
wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime and so thorough a perversion of the
moral sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the morality of
paganism.
The clergy, who had in so many ways served the cause of freedom during the prolonged
strife against feudalism and slavery, were associated now with the interest of royalty.
Attempts had been made to reform the Church on the Constitutional model; they had

failed, but they had united the hierarchy and the crown against the system of divided
power as against a common enemy. Strong kings were able to bring the spirituality
under subjection in France and Spain, in Sicily and in England. The absolute monarchy
of France was built up in the two following centuries by twelve political cardinals. The
kings of Spain obtained the same effect almost at a single stroke by reviving and
appropriating to their own use the tribunal of the Inquisition, which had been growing
obsolete, but now served to arm them with terrors which effectually made them
despotic. One generation beheld the change all over Europe, from the anarchy of the
days of the Roses to the passionate submission, the gratified acquiescence in tyranny
that marks the reign of Henry VIII. and the kings of his time.
The tide was running fast when the Reformation began at Wittenberg, and it was to be
expected that Luther's influence would stem the flood of absolutism. For he was
confronted everywhere by the compact alliance of the Church with the State; and great
part of his country was governed by hostile potentates who were prelates of the Court of
Rome. He had, indeed, more to fear from temporal than from spiritual foes. The leading
German bishops wished that the Protestant demands should be conceded; and the Pope
himself vainly urged on the Emperor a conciliatory policy. But Charles V. had outlawed
Luther, and attempted to waylay him; and the Dukes of Bavaria were active in
beheading and burning his disciples, whilst the democracy of the towns generally took
his side. But the dread of revolution was the deepest of his political sentiments; and the
gloss by which the Guelphic divines had got over the passive obedience of the apostolic
age was characteristic of that mediæval method of interpretation which he rejected. He
swerved for a moment in his later years; but the substance of his political teaching was
eminently conservative, the Lutheran States became the stronghold of rigid immobility,
and Lutheran writers constantly condemned the democratic literature that arose in the
second age of the Reformation. For the Swiss reformers were bolder than the Germans
in mixing up their cause with politics. Zurich and Geneva were Republics, and the spirit
of their governments influenced both Zwingli and Calvin.
Zwingli indeed did not shrink from the mediæval doctrine that evil magistrates must be
cashiered; but he was killed too early to act either deeply or permanently on the political
character of Protestantism. Calvin, although a Republican, judged that the people are
unfit to govern themselves, and declared the popular assembly an abuse that ought to be
abolished. He desired an aristocracy of the elect, armed with the means of punishing not
only crime but vice and error. For he thought that the severity of the mediæval laws was
insufficient for the need of the times; and he favoured the most irresistible weapon
which the inquisitorial procedure put into the hand of the Government, the right of
subjecting prisoners to intolerable torture, not because they were guilty, but because
their guilt could not be proved. His teaching, though not calculated to promote popular
institutions, was so adverse to the authority of the surrounding monarchs, that he
softened down the expression of his political views in the French edition of his
Institutes.

The direct political influence of the Reformation effected less than has been supposed.
Most States were strong enough to control it. Some, by intense exertion, shut out the
pouring flood. Others, with consummate skill, diverted it to their own uses. The Polish
Government alone at that time left it to its course. Scotland was the only kingdom in
which the Reformation triumphed over the resistance of the State; and Ireland was the
only instance where it failed, in spite of Government support. But in almost every other
case, both the princes that spread their canvas to the gale and those that faced it,
employed the zeal, the alarm, the passions it aroused as instruments for the increase of
power. Nations eagerly invested their rulers with every prerogative needed to preserve
their faith, and all the care to keep Church and State asunder, and to prevent the
confusion of their powers, which had been the work of ages, was renounced in the
intensity of the crisis. Atrocious deeds were done, in which religious passion was often
the instrument, but policy was the motive.
Fanaticism displays itself in the masses, but the masses were rarely fanaticised, and the
crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the calculations of dispassionate politicians.
When the King of France undertook to kill all the Protestants, he was obliged to do it by
his own agents. It was nowhere the spontaneous act of the population, and in many
towns and in entire provinces the magistrates refused to obey. The motive of the Court
was so far from mere fanaticism that the Queen immediately challenged Elizabeth to do
the like to the English Catholics. Francis I. and Henry II. sent nearly a hundred
Huguenots to the stake, but they were cordial and assiduous promoters of the Protestant
religion in Germany. Sir Nicholas Bacon was one of the ministers who suppressed the
mass in England. Yet when the Huguenot refugees came over he liked them so little that
he reminded Parliament of the summary way in which Henry V. at Agincourt dealt with
the Frenchmen who fell into his hands. John Knox thought that every Catholic in
Scotland ought to be put to death, and no man ever had disciples of a sterner or more
relentless temper. But his counsel was not followed.
All through the religious conflict policy kept the upper hand. When the last of the
Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for
the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached and Bellarmine lectured, but Machiavelli
reigned. Before the close of the century three events occurred which mark the beginning
of a momentous change. The massacre of St. Bartholomew convinced the bulk of
Calvinists of the lawfulness of rebellion against tyrants, and they became advocates of
that doctrine in which the Bishop of Winchester had led the way,[4] and which Knox and
Buchanan had received, through their master at Paris, straight from the mediæval
schools. Adopted out of aversion to the King of France, it was soon put in practice
against the King of Spain. The revolted Netherlands, by a solemn Act, deposed Philip
II., and made themselves independent under the Prince of Orange, who had been, and
continued to be, styled his Lieutenant. Their example was important, not only because
subjects of one religion deposed a monarch of another, for that had been seen in
Scotland, but because, moreover, it put a republic in the place of a monarchy, and forced
the public law of Europe to recognise the accomplished revolution. At the same time,

the French Catholics, rising against Henry III., who was the most contemptible of
tyrants, and against his heir, Henry of Navarre, who, as a Protestant, repelled the
majority of the nation, fought for the same principles with sword and pen.
Many shelves might be filled with the books which came out in their defence during
half a century, and they include the most comprehensive treatises on laws ever written.
Nearly all are vitiated by the defect which disfigured political literature in the Middle
Ages. That literature, as I have tried to show, is extremely remarkable, and its services
in aiding human progress are very great. But from the death of St. Bernard until the
appearance of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, there was hardly a writer who did not make
his politics subservient to the interest of either Pope or King. And those who came after
the Reformation were always thinking of laws as they might affect Catholics or
Protestants. Knox thundered against what he called the Monstrous Regiment of Women,
because the Queen went to mass, and Mariana praised the assassin of Henry III. because
the King was in league with Huguenots. For the belief that it is right to murder tyrants,
first taught among Christians, I believe, by John of Salisbury, the most distinguished
English writer of the twelfth century, and confirmed by Roger Bacon, the most
celebrated Englishman of the thirteenth, had acquired about this time a fatal
significance. Nobody sincerely thought of politics as a law for the just and the unjust, or
tried to find out a set of principles that should hold good alike under all changes of
religion. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity stands almost alone among the works I am
speaking of, and is still read with admiration by every thoughtful man as the earliest and
one of the finest prose classics in our language. But though few of the others have
survived, they contributed to hand down masculine notions of limited authority and
conditional obedience from the epoch of theory to generations of free men. Even the
coarse violence of Buchanan and Boucher was a link in the chain of tradition that
connects the Hildebrandine controversy with the Long Parliament, and St. Thomas with
Edmund Burke.
That men should understand that governments do not exist by divine right, and that
arbitrary government is the violation of divine right, was no doubt the medicine suited
to the malady under which Europe languished. But although the knowledge of this truth
might become an element of salutary destruction, it could give little aid to progress and
reform. Resistance to tyranny implied no faculty of constructing a legal government in
its place. Tyburn tree may be a useful thing, but it is better still that the offender should
live for repentance and reformation. The principles which discriminate in politics
between good and evil, and make States worthy to last, were not yet found.
The French philosopher Charron was one of the men least demoralised by party spirit,
and least blinded by zeal for a cause. In a passage almost literally taken from St.
Thomas, he describes our subordination under a law of nature, to which all legislation
must conform; and he ascertains it not by the light of revealed religion, but by the voice
of universal reason, through which God enlightens the consciences of men. Upon this
foundation Grotius drew the lines of real political science. In gathering the materials of

international law, he had to go beyond national treaties and denominational interests for
a principle embracing all mankind. The principles of law must stand, he said, even if we
suppose that there is no God. By these inaccurate terms he meant that they must be
found independently of revelation. From that time it became possible to make politics a
matter of principle and of conscience, so that men and nations differing in all other
things could live in peace together, under the sanctions of a common law. Grotius
himself used his discovery to little purpose, as he deprived it of immediate effect by
admitting that the right to reign may be enjoyed as a freehold, subject to no conditions.
When Cumberland and Pufendorf unfolded the true significance of his doctrine, every
settled authority, every triumphant interest recoiled aghast. None were willing to
surrender advantages won by force or skill, because they might be in contradiction, not
with the Ten Commandments, but with an unknown code, which Grotius himself had
not attempted to draw up, and touching which no two philosophers agreed. It was
manifest that all persons who had learned that political science is an affair of conscience
rather than of might or expediency, must regard their adversaries as men without
principle, that the controversy between them would perpetually involve morality, and
could not be governed by the plea of good intentions, which softens down the asperities
of religious strife. Nearly all the greatest men of the seventeenth century repudiated the
innovation. In the eighteenth, the two ideas of Grotius, that there are certain political
truths by which every State and every interest must stand or fall, and that society is knit
together by a series of real and hypothetical contracts, became, in other hands, the lever
that displaced the world. When, by what seemed the operation of an irresistible and
constant law, royalty had prevailed over all enemies and all competitors, it became a
religion. Its ancient rivals, the baron and the prelate, figured as supporters by its side.
Year after year, the assemblies that represented the self-government of provinces and of
privileged classes, all over the Continent, met for the last time and passed away, to the
satisfaction of the people, who had learned to venerate the throne as the constructor of
their unity, the promoter of prosperity and power, the defender of orthodoxy, and the
employer of talent.
The Bourbons, who had snatched the crown from a rebellious democracy, the Stuarts,
who had come in as usurpers, set up the doctrine that States are formed by the valour,
the policy, and the appropriate marriages of the royal family; that the king is
consequently anterior to the people, that he is its maker rather than its handiwork, and
reigns independently of consent. Theology followed up divine right with passive
obedience. In the golden age of religious science, Archbishop Ussher, the most learned
of Anglican prelates, and Bossuet, the ablest of the French, declared that resistance to
kings is a crime, and that they may lawfully employ compulsion against the faith of
their subjects. The philosophers heartily supported the divines. Bacon fixed his hope of
all human progress on the strong hand of kings. Descartes advised them to crush all
those who might be able to resist their power. Hobbes taught that authority is always in
the right. Pascal considered it absurd to reform laws, or to set up an ideal justice against

actual force. Even Spinoza, who was a Republican and a Jew, assigned to the State the
absolute control of religion.
Monarchy exerted a charm over the imagination, so unlike the unceremonious spirit of
the Middle Ages, that, on learning the execution of Charles I., men died of the shock;
and the same thing occurred at the death of Louis XVI. and of the Duke of Enghien. The
classic land of absolute monarchy was France. Richelieu held that it would be
impossible to keep the people down if they were suffered to be well off. The Chancellor
affirmed that France could not be governed without the right of arbitrary arrest and
exile; and that in case of danger to the State it may be well that a hundred innocent men
should perish. The Minister of Finance called it sedition to demand that the Crown
should keep faith. One who lived on intimate terms with Louis XIV. says that even the
slightest disobedience to the royal will is a crime to be punished with death. Louis
employed these precepts to their fullest extent. He candidly avows that kings are no
more bound by the terms of a treaty than by the words of a compliment; and that there is
nothing in the possession of their subjects which they may not lawfully take from them.
In obedience to this principle, when Marshal Vauban, appalled by the misery of the
people, proposed that all existing imposts should be repealed for a single tax that would
be less onerous, the King took his advice, but retained all the old taxes whilst he
imposed the new. With half the present population, he maintained an army of 450,000
men; nearly twice as large as that which the late Emperor Napoleon assembled to attack
Germany. Meanwhile the people starved on grass. France, said Fénelon, is one
enormous hospital. French historians believe that in a single generation six millions of
people died of want. It would be easy to find tyrants more violent, more malignant,
more odious than Louis XIV., but there was not one who ever used his power to inflict
greater suffering or greater wrong; and the admiration with which he inspired the most
illustrious men of his time denotes the lowest depth to which the turpitude of absolutism
has ever degraded the conscience of Europe.
The Republics of that day were, for the most part, so governed as to reconcile men with
the less opprobrious vices of monarchy. Poland was a State made up of centrifugal
forces. What the nobles called liberty was the right of each of them to veto the acts of
the Diet, and to persecute the peasants on his estates—rights which they refused to
surrender up to the time of the partition, and thus verified the warning of a preacher
spoken long ago: "You will perish, not by invasion or war, but by your infernal
liberties." Venice suffered from the opposite evil of excessive concentration. It was the
most sagacious of Governments, and would rarely have made mistakes if it had not
imputed to others motives as wise as its own, and had taken account of passions and
follies of which it had little cognisance. But the supreme power of the nobility had
passed to a committee, from the committee to a Council of Ten, from the Ten to three
Inquisitors of State; and in this intensely centralised form it became, about the year
1600, a frightful despotism. I have shown you how Machiavelli supplied the immoral
theory needful for the consummation of royal absolutism; the absolute oligarchy of
Venice required the same assurance against the revolt of conscience. It was provided by

a writer as able as Machiavelli, who analysed the wants and resources of aristocracy,
and made known that its best security is poison. As late as a century ago, Venetian
senators of honourable and even religious lives employed assassins for the public good
with no more compunction than Philip II. or Charles IX.
The Swiss Cantons, especially Geneva, profoundly influenced opinion in the days
preceding the French Revolution, but they had had no part in the earlier movement to
inaugurate the reign of law. That honour belongs to the Netherlands alone among the
Commonwealths. They earned it, not by their form of government, which was defective
and precarious, for the Orange party perpetually plotted against it, and slew the two
most eminent of the Republican statesmen, and William III. himself intrigued for
English aid to set the crown upon his head; but by the freedom of the press, which made
Holland the vantage-ground from which, in the darkest hour of oppression, the victims
of the oppressors obtained the ear of Europe.
The ordinance of Louis XIV., that every French Protestant should immediately renounce
his religion, went out in the year in which James II. became king. The Protestant
refugees did what their ancestors had done a century before. They asserted the deposing
power of subjects over rulers who had broken the original contract between them, and
all the Powers, excepting France, countenanced their argument, and sent forth William
of Orange on that expedition which was the faint dawn of a brighter day.
It is to this unexampled combination of things on the Continent, more than to her own
energy, that England owes her deliverance. The efforts made by the Scots, by the Irish,
and at last by the Long Parliament to get rid of the misrule of the Stuarts had been
foiled, not by the resistance of Monarchy, but by the helplessness of the Republic. State
and Church were swept away; new institutions were raised up under the ablest ruler that
had ever sprung from a revolution; and England, seething with the toil of political
thought, had produced at least two writers who in many directions saw as far and as
clearly as we do now. But Cromwell's Constitution was rolled up like a scroll;
Harrington and Lilburne were laughed at for a time and forgotten, the country confessed
the failure of its striving, disavowed its aims, and flung itself with enthusiasm, and
without any effective stipulations, at the feet of a worthless king.
If the people of England had accomplished no more than this to relieve mankind from
the pervading pressure of unlimited monarchy, they would have done more harm than
good. By the fanatical treachery with which, violating the Parliament and the law, they
contrived the death of King Charles, by the ribaldry of the Latin pamphlet with which
Milton justified the act before the world, by persuading the world that the Republicans
were hostile alike to liberty and to authority, and did not believe in themselves, they
gave strength and reason to the current of Royalism, which, at the Restoration,
overwhelmed their work. If there had been nothing to make up for this defect of
certainty and of constancy in politics England would have gone the way of other
nations.

At that time there was some truth in the old joke which describes the English dislike of
speculation by saying that all our philosophy consists of a short catechism in two
questions: "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." The only accepted
appeal was to tradition. Patriots were in the habit of saying that they took their stand
upon the ancient ways, and would not have the laws of England changed. To enforce
their argument they invented a story that the constitution had come from Troy, and that
the Romans had allowed it to subsist untouched. Such fables did not avail against
Strafford; and the oracle of precedent sometimes gave responses adverse to the popular
cause. In the sovereign question of religion, this was decisive, for the practice of the
sixteenth century, as well as of the fifteenth, testified in favour of intolerance. By royal
command, the nation had passed four times in one generation from one faith to another,
with a facility that made a fatal impression on Laud. In a country that had proscribed
every religion in turn, and had submitted to such a variety of penal measures against
Lollard and Arian, against Augsburg and Rome, it seemed there could be no danger in
cropping the ears of a Puritan.
But an age of stronger conviction had arrived; and men resolved to abandon the ancient
ways that led to the scaffold and the rack, and to make the wisdom of their ancestors
and the statutes of the land bow before an unwritten law. Religious liberty had been the
dream of great Christian writers in the age of Constantine and Valentinian, a dream
never wholly realised in the Empire, and rudely dispelled when the barbarians found
that it exceeded the resources of their art to govern civilised populations of another
religion, and unity of worship was imposed by laws of blood and by theories more cruel
than the laws. But from St. Athanasius and St. Ambrose down to Erasmus and More,
each age heard the protest of earnest men in behalf of the liberty of conscience, and the
peaceful days before the Reformation were full of promise that it would prevail.
In the commotion that followed, men were glad to get tolerated themselves by way of
privilege and compromise, and willingly renounced the wider application of the
principle. Socinus was the first who, on the ground that Church and State ought to be
separated, required universal toleration. But Socinus disarmed his own theory, for he
was a strict advocate of passive obedience.
The idea that religious liberty is the generating principle of civil, and that civil liberty is
the necessary condition of religious, was a discovery reserved for the seventeenth
century. Many years before the names of Milton and Taylor, of Baxter and Locke were
made illustrious by their partial condemnation of intolerance, there were men among the
Independent congregations who grasped with vigour and sincerity the principle that it is
only by abridging the authority of States that the liberty of Churches can be assured.
That great political idea, sanctifying freedom and consecrating it to God, teaching men
to treasure the liberties of others as their own, and to defend them for the love of justice
and charity more than as a claim of right, has been the soul of what is great and good in
the progress of the last two hundred years. The cause of religion, even under the
unregenerate influence of worldly passion, had as much to do as any clear notions of

policy in making this country the foremost of the free. It had been the deepest current in
the movement of 1641, and it remained the strongest motive that survived the reaction
of 1660.
The greatest writers of the Whig party, Burke and Macaulay, constantly represented the
statesmen of the Revolution as the legitimate ancestors of modern liberty. It is
humiliating to trace a political lineage to Algernon Sidney, who was the paid agent of
the French king; to Lord Russell, who opposed religious toleration at least as much as
absolute monarchy; to Shaftesbury, who dipped his hands in the innocent blood shed by
the perjury of Titus Oates; to Halifax, who insisted that the plot must be supported even
if untrue; to Marlborough, who sent his comrades to perish on an expedition which he
had betrayed to the French; to Locke, whose notion of liberty involves nothing more
spiritual than the security of property, and is consistent with slavery and persecution; or
even to Addison, who conceived that the right of voting taxes belonged to no country
but his own. Defoe affirms that from the time of Charles II. to that of George I. he never
knew a politician who truly held the faith of either party; and the perversity of the
statesmen who led the assault against the later Stuarts threw back the cause of progress
for a century.
When the purport of the secret treaty became suspected by which Louis XIV. pledged
himself to support Charles II. with an army for the destruction of Parliament, if Charles
would overthrow the Anglican Church, it was found necessary to make concession to
the popular alarm. It was proposed that whenever James should succeed, great part of
the royal prerogative and patronage should be transferred to Parliament. At the same
time, the disabilities of Nonconformists and Catholics would have been removed. If the
Limitation Bill, which Halifax supported with signal ability, had passed, the
monarchical constitution would have advanced, in the seventeenth century, farther than
it was destined to do until the second quarter of the nineteenth. But the enemies of
James, guided by the Prince of Orange, preferred a Protestant king who should be nearly
absolute, to a constitutional king who should be a Catholic. The scheme failed. James
succeeded to a power which, in more cautious hands, would have been practically
uncontrolled, and the storm that cast him down gathered beyond the sea.
By arresting the preponderance of France, the Revolution of 1688 struck the first real
blow at Continental despotism. At home it relieved Dissent, purified justice, developed
the national energies and resources, and ultimately, by the Act of Settlement, placed the
crown in the gift of the people. But it neither introduced nor determined any important
principle, and, that both parties might be able to work together, it left untouched the
fundamental question between Whig and Tory. For the divine right of kings it
established, in the words of Defoe, the divine right of freeholders; and their domination
extended for seventy years, under the authority of John Locke, the philosopher of
government by the gentry. Even Hume did not enlarge the bounds of his ideas; and his
narrow materialistic belief in the connection between liberty and property captivated
even the bolder mind of Fox.

By his idea that the powers of government ought to be divided according to their nature,
and not according to the division of classes, which Montesquieu took up and developed
with consummate talent, Locke is the originator of the long reign of English institutions
in foreign lands. And his doctrine of resistance, or, as he finally termed it, the appeal to
Heaven, ruled the judgment of Chatham at a moment of solemn transition in the history
of the world. Our Parliamentary system, managed by the great revolution families, was
a contrivance by which electors were compelled, and legislators were induced to vote
against their convictions; and the intimidation of the constituencies was rewarded by the
corruption of their representatives. About the year 1770 things had been brought back,
by indirect ways, nearly to the condition which the Revolution had been designed to
remedy for ever. Europe seemed incapable of becoming the home of free States. It was
from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their own business, and that
the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State,—ideas long locked in the
breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios,—burst forth like a conqueror
upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man.
Whether the British legislature had a constitutional right to tax a subject colony was
hard to say, by the letter of the law. The general presumption was immense on the side
of authority; and the world believed that the will of the constituted ruler ought to be
supreme, and not the will of the subject people. Very few bold writers went so far as to
say that lawful power may be resisted in cases of extreme necessity. But the colonisers
of America, who had gone forth not in search of gain, but to escape from laws under
which other Englishmen were content to live, were so sensitive even to appearances that
the Blue Laws of Connecticut forbade men to walk to church within ten feet of their
wives. And the proposed tax, of only £12,000 a year, might have been easily borne. But
the reasons why Edward I. and his Council were not allowed to tax England were
reasons why George III. and his Parliament should not tax America. The dispute
involved a principle, namely, the right of controlling government. Furthermore, it
involved the conclusion that the Parliament brought together by a derisive election had
no just right over the unrepresented nation, and it called on the people of England to
take back its power. Our best statesmen saw that whatever might be the law, the rights
of the nation were at stake. Chatham, in speeches better remembered than any that have
been delivered in Parliament, exhorted America to be firm. Lord Camden, the late
Chancellor, said: "Taxation and representation are inseparably united. God hath joined
them. No British Parliament can separate them."
From the elements of that crisis Burke built up the noblest political philosophy in the
world. "I do not know the method," said he, "of drawing up an indictment against a
whole people. The natural rights of mankind are indeed sacred things, and if any public
measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that
measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. Only a sovereign reason,
paramount to all forms of legislation and administration, should dictate." In this way,
just a hundred years ago, the opportune reticence, the politic hesitancy of European
statesmanship, was at last broken down; and the principle gained ground, that a nation

can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control. The Americans placed it at
the foundation of their new government. They did more; for having subjected all civil
authorities to the popular will, they surrounded the popular will with restrictions that the
British legislature would not endure.
During the revolution in France the example of England, which had been held up so
long, could not for a moment compete with the influence of a country whose institutions
were so wisely framed to protect freedom even against the perils of democracy. When
Louis Philippe became king, he assured the old Republican, Lafayette, that what he had
seen in the United States had convinced him that no government can be so good as a
Republic. There was a time in the Presidency of Monroe, about fifty-five years ago,
which men still speak of as "the era of good feeling," when most of the incongruities
that had come down from the Stuarts had been reformed, and the motives of later
divisions were yet inactive. The causes of old-world trouble,—popular ignorance,
pauperism, the glaring contrast between rich and poor, religious strife, public debts,
standing armies and war,—were almost unknown. No other age or country had solved
so successfully the problems that attend the growth of free societies, and time was to
bring no further progress.
But I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my
task. In the ages of which I have spoken, the history of freedom was the history of the
thing that was not. But since the Declaration of Independence, or, to speak more justly,
since the Spaniards, deprived of their king, made a new government for themselves, the
only known forms of liberty, Republics and Constitutional Monarchy, have made their
way over the world. It would have been interesting to trace the reaction of America on
the Monarchies that achieved its independence; to see how the sudden rise of political
economy suggested the idea of applying the methods of science to the art of
government; how Louis XVI., after confessing that despotism was useless, even to
make men happy by compulsion, appealed to the nation to do what was beyond his skill,
and thereby resigned his sceptre to the middle class, and the intelligent men of France,
shuddering at the awful recollections of their own experience, struggled to shut out the
past, that they might deliver their children from the prince of the world and rescue the
living from the clutch of the dead, until the finest opportunity ever given to the world
was thrown away, because the passion for equality made vain the hope of freedom.
And I should have wished to show you that the same deliberate rejection of the moral
code which smoothed the paths of absolute monarchy and of oligarchy, signalised the
advent of the democratic claim to unlimited power,—that one of its leading champions
avowed the design of corrupting the moral sense of men, in order to destroy the
influence of religion, and a famous apostle of enlightenment and toleration wished that
the last king might be strangled with the entrails of the last priest. I would have tried to
explain the connection between the doctrine of Adam Smith, that labour is the original
source of all wealth, and the conclusion that the producers of wealth virtually compose
the nation, by which Sieyès subverted historic France; and to show that Rousseau's

definition of the social compact as a voluntary association of equal partners conducted
Marat, by short and unavoidable stages, to declare that the poorer classes were absolved,
by the law of self-preservation, from the conditions of a contract which awarded to them
misery and death; that they were at war with society, and had a right to all they could
get by exterminating the rich, and that their inflexible theory of equality, the chief
legacy of the Revolution, together with the avowed inadequacy of economic science to
grapple with problems of the poor, revived the idea of renovating society on the
principle of self-sacrifice, which had been the generous aspiration of the Essenes and
the early Christians, of Fathers and Canonists and Friars, of Erasmus, the most
celebrated precursor of the Reformation, of Sir Thomas More, its most illustrious
victim, and of Fénelon, the most popular of bishops, but which, during the forty years of
its revival, has been associated with envy and hatred and bloodshed, and is now the
most dangerous enemy lurking in our path.
Last, and most of all, having told so much of the unwisdom of our ancestors, having
exposed the sterility of the convulsion that burned what they adored, and made the sins
of the Republic mount up as high as those of the monarchy, having shown that
Legitimacy, which repudiated the Revolution, and Imperialism, which crowned it, were
but disguises of the same element of violence and wrong, I should have wished, in order
that my address might not break off without a meaning or a moral, to relate by whom,
and in what connection, the true law of the formation of free States was recognised, and
how that discovery, closely akin to those which, under the names of development,
evolution, and continuity, have given a new and deeper method to other sciences, solved
the ancient problem between stability and change, and determined the authority of
tradition on the progress of thought; how that theory, which Sir James Mackintosh
expressed by saying that Constitutions are not made, but grow; the theory that custom
and the national qualities of the governed, and not the will of the government, are the
makers of the law; and therefore that the nation, which is the source of its own organic
institutions, should be charged with the perpetual custody of their integrity, and with the
duty of bringing the form into harmony with the spirit, was made, by the singular co-
operation of the purest Conservative intellect with red-handed revolution, of Niebuhr
with Mazzini, to yield the idea of nationality, which, far more than the idea of liberty,
has governed the movement of the present age.
I do not like to conclude without inviting attention to the impressive fact that so much
of the hard fighting, the thinking, the enduring that has contributed to the deliverance of
man from the power of man, has been the work of our countrymen, and of their
descendants in other lands. We have had to contend, as much as any people, against
monarchs of strong will and of resources secured by their foreign possession, against
men of rare capacity, against whole dynasties of born tyrants. And yet that proud
prerogative stands out on the background of our history. Within a generation of the
Conquest, the Normans were compelled to recognise, in some grudging measure, the
claims of the English people. When the struggle between Church and State extended to
England, our Churchmen learned to associate themselves with the popular cause; and,

with few exceptions, neither the hierarchical spirit of the foreign divines, nor the
monarchical bias peculiar to the French, characterised the writers of the English school.
The Civil Law, transmitted from the degenerate Empire to be the common prop of
absolute power, was excluded from England. The Canon Law was restrained, and this
country never admitted the Inquisition, nor fully accepted the use of torture which
invested Continental royalty with so many terrors. At the end of the Middle Ages
foreign writers acknowledged our superiority, and pointed to these causes. After that,
our gentry maintained the means of local self-government such as no other country
possessed. Divisions in religion forced toleration. The confusion of the common law
taught the people that their best safeguard was the independence and the integrity of the
judges.
All these explanations lie on the surface, and are as visible as the protecting ocean; but
they can only be successive effects of a constant cause which must lie in the same native
qualities of perseverance, moderation, individuality, and the manly sense of duty, which
give to the English race its supremacy in the stern art of labour, which has enabled it to
thrive as no other can on inhospitable shores, and which (although no great people has
less of the bloodthirsty craving for glory and an army of 50,000 English soldiers has
never been seen in battle) caused Napoleon to exclaim, as he rode away from Waterloo,
"It has always been the same since Crecy."
Therefore, if there is reason for pride in the past, there is more for hope in the time to
come. Our advantages increase, while other nations fear their neighbours or covet their
neighbours' goods. Anomalies and defects there are, fewer and less intolerable, if not
less flagrant than of old.
But I have fixed my eyes on the spaces that Heaven's light illuminates, that I may not
lay too heavy a strain on the indulgence with which you have accompanied me over the
dreary and heart-breaking course by which men have passed to freedom; and because
the light that has guided us is still unquenched, and the causes that have carried us so far
in the van of free nations have not spent their power; because the story of the future is
written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.

FOOTNOTES:
[3] An address delivered to the members of the Bridgnorth Institution at the
Agricultural Hall, 28th May 1877.
[4] [Poynet, in his Treatise on Political Power.]

III
SIR ERSKINE MAY'S DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE[5]
Scarcely thirty years separate the Europe of Guizot and Metternich from
these days of universal suffrage both in France and in United Germany;
when a condemned insurgent of 1848 is the constitutional Minister of
Austria; when Italy, from the Alps to the Adriatic, is governed by friends of
Mazzini; and statesmen who recoiled from the temerities of Peel have
doubled the electoral constituency of England. If the philosopher who
proclaimed the law that democratic progress is constant and irrepressible
had lived to see old age, he would have been startled by the fulfilment of
his prophecy. Throughout these years of revolutionary change Sir Thomas
Erskine May has been more closely and constantly connected with the
centre of public affairs than any other Englishman, and his place, during
most of the time, has been at the table of the House of Commons, where he
has sat, like Canute, and watched the rising tide. Few could be better
prepared to be the historian of European Democracy than one who, having
so long studied the mechanism of popular government in the most
illustrious of assemblies at the height of its power, has written its history,
and taught its methods to the world.
It is not strange that so delicate and laborious a task should have remained
unattempted. Democracy is a gigantic current that has been fed by many
springs. Physical and spiritual causes have contributed to swell it. Much has
been done by economic theories, and more by economic laws. The
propelling force lay sometimes in doctrine and sometimes in fact, and error
has been as powerful as truth. Popular progress has been determined at one
time by legislation, at others by a book, an invention, or a crime; and we
may trace it to the influence of Greek metaphysicians and Roman jurists, of
barbarian custom and ecclesiastical law, of the reformers who discarded the
canonists, the sectaries who discarded the reformers, and the philosophers
who discarded the sects. The scene has changed, as nation succeeded
nation, and during the most stagnant epoch of European life the new world
stored up the forces that have transformed the old.

A history that should pursue all the subtle threads from end to end might be
eminently valuable, but not as a tribute to peace and conciliation. Few
discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of
ideas. Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis would displace the veil
beneath which society dissembles its divisions, would make political
disputes too violent for compromise and political alliances too precarious
for use, and would embitter politics with all the passion of social and
religious strife. Sir Erskine May writes for all who take their stand within
the broad lines of our constitution. His judgment is averse from extremes.
He turns from the discussion of theories, and examines his subject by the
daylight of institutions, believing that laws depend much on the condition
of society, and little on notions and disputations unsupported by reality. He
avows his disbelief even in the influence of Locke, and cares little to
inquire how much self-government owes to Independency, or equality to the
Quakers; and how democracy was affected by the doctrine that society is
founded on contract, that happiness is the end of all government, or labour
the only source of wealth; and for this reason, because he always touches
ground, and brings to bear, on a vast array of sifted fact, the light of sound
sense and tried experience rather than dogmatic precept, all men will read
his book with profit, and almost all without offence.
Although he does not insist on inculcating a moral, he has stated in his
introductory pages the ideas that guide him; and, indeed, the reader who
fails to recognise the lesson of the book in every chapter will read in vain.
Sir Erskine May is persuaded that it is the tendency of modern progress to
elevate the masses of the people, to increase their part in the work and the
fruit of civilisation, in comfort and education, in self-respect and
independence, in political knowledge and power. Taken for a universal law
of history, this would be as visionary as certain generalisations of
Montesquieu and Tocqueville; but with the necessary restrictions of time
and place, it cannot fairly be disputed. Another conclusion, supported by a
far wider induction, is that democracy, like monarchy, is salutary within
limits and fatal in excess; that it is the truest friend of freedom or its most
unrelenting foe, according as it is mixed or pure; and this ancient and
elementary truth of constitutional government is enforced with every
variety of impressive and suggestive illustration from the time of the
Patriarchs down to the revolution which, in 1874, converted federal

Switzerland into an unqualified democracy governed by the direct voice of
the entire people.
The effective distinction between liberty and democracy, which has
occupied much of the author's thoughts, cannot be too strongly drawn.
Slavery has been so often associated with democracy, that a very able writer
pronounced it long ago essential to a democratic state; and the philosophers
of the Southern Confederation have urged the theory with extreme fervour.
For slavery operates like a restricted franchise, attaches power to property,
and hinders Socialism, the infirmity that attends mature democracies. The
most intelligent of Greek tyrants, Periander, discouraged the employment of
slaves; and Pericles designates the freedom from manual labour as the
distinguishing prerogative of Athens. At Rome a tax on manumissions
immediately followed the establishment of political equality by Licinius.
An impeachment of England for having imposed slavery on America was
carefully expunged from the Declaration of Independence; and the French
Assembly, having proclaimed the Rights of Man, declared that they did not
extend to the colonies. The abolition controversy has made everybody
familiar with Burke's saying, that men learn the price of freedom by being
masters of slaves.
From the best days of Athens, the days of Anaxagoras, Protagoras, and
Socrates, a strange affinity has subsisted between democracy and religious
persecution. The bloodiest deed committed between the wars of religion
and the revolution was due to the fanaticism of men living under the
primitive republic in the Rhætian Alps; and of six democratic cantons only
one tolerated Protestants, and that after a struggle which lasted the better
part of two centuries. In 1578 the fifteen Catholic provinces would have
joined the revolted Netherlands but for the furious bigotry of Ghent; and the
democracy of Friesland was the most intolerant of the States. The
aristocratic colonies in America defended toleration against their
democratic neighbours, and its triumph in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania
was the work not of policy but of religion. The French Republic came to
ruin because it found the lesson of religious liberty too hard to learn. Down
to the eighteenth century, indeed, it was understood in monarchies more
often than in free commonwealths. Richelieu acknowledged the principle
whilst he was constructing the despotism of the Bourbons; so did the
electors of Brandenburg, at the time when they made themselves absolute;

and after the fall of Clarendon, the notion of Indulgence was inseparable
from the design of Charles II. to subvert the constitution.
A government strong enough to act in defiance of public feeling may
disregard the plausible heresy that prevention is better than punishment, for
it is able to punish. But a government entirely dependent on opinion looks
for some security what that opinion shall be, strives for the control of the
forces that shape it, and is fearful of suffering the people to be educated in
sentiments hostile to its institutions. When General Grant attempted to
grapple with polygamy in Utah, it was found necessary to pack the juries
with Gentiles; and the Supreme Court decided that the proceedings were
illegal, and that the prisoners must be set free. Even the murderer Lee was
absolved, in 1875, by a jury of Mormons.
Modern democracy presents many problems too various and obscure to be
solved without a larger range of materials than Tocqueville obtained from
his American authorities or his own observation. To understand why the
hopes and the fears that it excites have been always inseparable, to
determine under what conditions it advances or retards the progress of the
people and the welfare of free states, there is no better course than to follow
Sir Erskine May upon the road which he has been the first to open.
In the midst of an invincible despotism, among paternal, military, and
sacerdotal monarchies, the dawn rises with the deliverance of Israel out of
bondage, and with the covenant which began their political life. The tribes
broke up into smaller communities, administering their own affairs under
the law they had sworn to observe, but which there was no civil power to
enforce. They governed themselves without a central authority, a
legislature, or a dominant priesthood; and this polity, which, under the
forms of primitive society, realised some aspirations of developed
democracy, resisted for above three hundred years the constant peril of
anarchy and subjugation. The monarchy itself was limited by the same
absence of a legislative power, by the submission of the king to the law that
bound his subjects, by the perpetual appeal of prophets to the conscience of
the people as its appointed guardian, and by the ready resource of
deposition. Later still, in the decay of the religious and national
constitution, the same ideas appeared with intense energy, in an
extraordinary association of men who lived in austerity and self-denial,

rejected slavery, maintained equality, and held their property in common,
and who constituted in miniature an almost perfect Republic. But the
Essenes perished with the city and the Temple, and for many ages the
example of the Hebrews was more serviceable to authority than to freedom.
After the Reformation, the sects that broke resolutely with the traditions of
Church and State as they came down from Catholic times, and sought for
their new institutions a higher authority than custom, reverted to the
memory of a commonwealth founded on a voluntary contract, on self-
government, federalism, equality, in which election was preferred to
inheritance, and monarchy was an emblem of the heathen; and they
conceived that there was no better model for themselves than a nation
constituted by religion, owning no lawgiver but Moses, and obeying no
king but God. Political thought had until then been guided by pagan
experience.
Among the Greeks, Athens, the boldest pioneer of republican discovery,
was the only democracy that prospered. It underwent the changes that were
the common lot of Greek society, but it met them in a way that displayed a
singular genius for politics. The struggle of competing classes for
supremacy, almost everywhere a cause of oppression and bloodshed,
became with them a genuine struggle for freedom; and the Athenian
constitution grew, with little pressure from below, under the intelligent
action of statesmen who were swayed by political reasoning more than by
public opinion. They avoided violent and convulsive change, because the
rate of their reforms kept ahead of the popular demand. Solon, whose laws
began the reign of mind over force, instituted democracy by making the
people, not indeed the administrators, but the source of power. He
committed the Government not to rank or birth, but to land; and he
regulated the political influence of the landowners by their share in the
burdens of the public service. To the lower class, who neither bore arms nor
paid taxes, and were excluded from the Government, he granted the
privilege of choosing and of calling to account the men by whom they were
governed, of confirming or rejecting the acts of the legislature and the
judgments of the courts. Although he charged the Areopagus with the
preservation of his laws, he provided that they might be revised according
to need; and the ideal before his mind was government by all free citizens.
His concessions to the popular element were narrow, and were carefully

guarded. He yielded no more than was necessary to guarantee the
attachment of the whole people to the State. But he admitted principles that
went further than the claims which he conceded. He took only one step
towards democracy, but it was the first of a series.
When the Persian wars, which converted aristocratic Athens into a maritime
state, had developed new sources of wealth and a new description of
interests, the class which had supplied many of the ships and most of the
men that had saved the national independence and founded an empire,
could not be excluded from power. Solon's principle, that political influence
should be commensurate with political service, broke through the forms in
which he had confined it, and the spirit of his constitution was too strong
for the letter. The fourth estate was admitted to office, and in order that its
candidates might obtain their share, and no more than their share, and that
neither interest nor numbers might prevail, many public functionaries were
appointed by lot. The Athenian idea of a Republic was to substitute the
impersonal supremacy of law for the government of men. Mediocrity was a
safeguard against the pretensions of superior capacity, for the established
order was in danger, not from the average citizens, but from men, like
Miltiades, of exceptional renown. The people of Athens venerated their
constitution as a gift of the gods, the source and title of their power, a thing
too sacred for wanton change. They had demanded a code, that the
unwritten law might no longer be interpreted at will by Archons and
Areopagites; and a well-defined and authoritative legislation was a triumph
of the democracy.
So well was this conservative spirit understood, that the revolution which
abolished the privileges of the aristocracy was promoted by Aristides and
completed by Pericles, men free from the reproach of flattering the
multitude. They associated all the free Athenians with the interest of the
State, and called them, without distinction of class, to administer the powers
that belonged to them. Solon had threatened with the loss of citizenship all
who showed themselves indifferent in party conflicts, and Pericles declared
that every man who neglected his share of public duty was a useless
member of the community. That wealth might confer no unfair advantage,
that the poor might not take bribes from the rich, he took them into the pay
of the State during their attendance as jurors. That their numbers might give
them no unjust superiority, he restricted the right of citizenship to those who

came from Athenian parents on both sides; and thus he expelled more than
4000 men of mixed descent from the Assembly. This bold measure, which
was made acceptable by a distribution of grain from Egypt among those
who proved their full Athenian parentage, reduced the fourth class to an
equality with the owners of real property. For Pericles, or Ephialtes—for it
would appear that all their reforms had been carried in the year 460, when
Ephialtes died—is the first democratic statesman who grasped the notion of
political equality. The measures which made all citizens equal might have
created a new inequality between classes, and the artificial privilege of land
might have been succeeded by the more crushing preponderance of
numbers. But Pericles held it to be intolerable that one portion of the people
should be required to obey laws which others have the exclusive right of
making; and he was able, during thirty years, to preserve the equipoise,
governing by the general consent of the community, formed by free debate.
He made the undivided people sovereign; but he subjected the popular
initiative to a court of revision, and assigned a penalty to the proposer of
any measure which should be found to be unconstitutional. Athens, under
Pericles, was the most successful Republic that existed before the system of
representation; but its splendour ended with his life.
The danger to liberty from the predominance either of privilege or
majorities was so manifest, that an idea arose that equality of fortune would
be the only way to prevent the conflict of class interests. The philosophers,
Phaleas, Plato, Aristotle, suggested various expedients to level the
difference between rich and poor. Solon had endeavoured to check the
increase of estates; and Pericles had not only strengthened the public
resources by bringing the rich under the control of an assembly in which
they were not supreme, but he had employed those resources in improving
the condition and the capacity of the masses. The grievance of those who
were taxed for the benefit of others was easily borne so long as the tribute
of the confederates filled the treasury. But the Peloponnesian war increased
the strain on the revenue and deprived Athens of its dependencies. The
balance was upset; and the policy of making one class give, that another
might receive, was recommended not only by the interest of the poor, but by
a growing theory, that wealth and poverty make bad citizens, that the
middle class is the one most easily led by reason, and that the way to make
it predominate is to depress whatever rises above the common level, and to

raise whatever falls below it. This theory, which became inseparable from
democracy, and contained a force which alone seems able to destroy it, was
fatal to Athens, for it drove the minority to treason. The glory of the
Athenian democrats is, not that they escaped the worst consequences of
their principle, but that, having twice cast out the usurping oligarchy, they
set bounds to their own power. They forgave their vanquished enemies; they
abolished pay for attendance in the assembly; they established the
supremacy of law by making the code superior to the people; they
distinguished things that were constitutional from things that were legal,
and resolved that no legislative act should pass until it had been pronounced
consistent with the constitution.
The causes which ruined the Republic of Athens illustrate the connection of
ethics with politics rather than the vices inherent to democracy. A State
which has only 30,000 full citizens in a population of 500,000, and is
governed, practically, by about 3000 people at a public meeting, is scarcely
democratic. The short triumph of Athenian liberty, and its quick decline,
belong to an age which possessed no fixed standard of right and wrong. An
unparalleled activity of intellect was shaking the credit of the gods, and the
gods were the givers of the law. It was a very short step from the suspicion
of Protagoras, that there were no gods, to the assertion of Critias that there
is no sanction for laws. If nothing was certain in theology, there was no
certainty in ethics and no moral obligation. The will of man, not the will of
God, was the rule of life, and every man and body of men had the right to
do what they had the means of doing. Tyranny was no wrong, and it was
hypocrisy to deny oneself the enjoyment it affords. The doctrine of the
Sophists gave no limits to power and no security to freedom; it inspired that
cry of the Athenians, that they must not be hindered from doing what they
pleased, and the speeches of men like Athenagoras and Euphemus, that the
democracy may punish men who have done no wrong, and that nothing that
is profitable is amiss. And Socrates perished by the reaction which they
provoked.
The disciples of Socrates obtained the ear of posterity. Their testimony
against the government that put the best of citizens to death is enshrined in
writings that compete with Christianity itself for influence on the opinions
of men. Greece has governed the world by her philosophy, and the loudest
note in Greek philosophy is the protest against Athenian democracy. But

although Socrates derided the practice of leaving the choice of magistrates
to chance, and Plato admired the bloodstained tyrant Critias, and Aristotle
deemed Theramenes a greater statesman than Pericles, yet these are the men
who laid the first stones of a purer system, and became the lawgivers of
future commonwealths.
The main point in the method of Socrates was essentially democratic. He
urged men to bring all things to the test of incessant inquiry, and not to
content themselves with the verdict of authorities, majorities, or custom; to
judge of right and wrong, not by the will or sentiment of others, but by the
light which God has set in each man's reason and conscience. He
proclaimed that authority is often wrong, and has no warrant to silence or to
impose conviction. But he gave no warrant to resistance. He emancipated
men for thought, but not for action. The sublime history of his death shows
that the superstition of the State was undisturbed by his contempt for its
rulers.
Plato had not his master's patriotism, nor his reverence for the civil power.
He believed that no State can command obedience if it does not deserve
respect; and he encouraged citizens to despise their government if they were
not governed by wise men. To the aristocracy of philosophers he assigned a
boundless prerogative; but as no government satisfied that test, his plea for
despotism was hypothetical. When the lapse of years roused him from the
fantastic dream of his Republic, his belief in divine government moderated
his intolerance of human freedom. Plato would not suffer a democratic
polity; but he challenged all existing authorities to justify themselves before
a superior tribunal; he desired that all constitutions should be thoroughly
remodelled, and he supplied the greatest need of Greek democracy, the
conviction that the will of the people is subject to the will of God, and that
all civil authority, except that of an imaginary state, is limited and
conditional. The prodigious vitality of his writings has kept the glaring
perils of popular government constantly before mankind; but it has also
preserved the belief in ideal politics and the notion of judging the powers of
this world by a standard from heaven. There has been no fiercer enemy of
democracy; but there has been no stronger advocate of revolution.
In the Ethics Aristotle condemns democracy, even with a property
qualification, as the worst of governments. But near the end of his life,

when he composed his Politics, he was brought, grudgingly, to make a
memorable concession. To preserve the sovereignty of law, which is the
reason and the custom of generations, and to restrict the realm of choice and
change, he conceived it best that no class of society should preponderate,
that one man should not be subject to another, that all should command and
all obey. He advised that power should be distributed to high and low; to the
first according to their property, to the others according to numbers; and
that it should centre in the middle class. If aristocracy and democracy were
fairly combined and balanced against each other, he thought that none
would be interested to disturb the serene majesty of impersonal
government. To reconcile the two principles, he would admit even the
poorer citizens to office and pay them for the discharge of public duties; but
he would compel the rich to take their share, and would appoint magistrates
by election and not by lot. In his indignation at the extravagance of Plato,
and his sense of the significance of facts, he became, against his will, the
prophetic exponent of a limited and regenerated democracy. But the
Politics, which, to the world of living men, is the most valuable of his
works, acquired no influence on antiquity, and is never quoted before the
time of Cicero. Again it disappeared for many centuries; it was unknown to
the Arabian commentators, and in Western Europe it was first brought to
light by St. Thomas Aquinas, at the very time when an infusion of popular
elements was modifying feudalism, and it helped to emancipate political
philosophy from despotic theories and to confirm it in the ways of freedom.
The three generations of the Socratic school did more for the future reign of
the people than all the institutions of the States of Greece. They vindicated
conscience against authority, and subjected both to a higher law; and they
proclaimed that doctrine of a mixed constitution, which has prevailed at last
over absolute monarchy, and still has to contend against extreme
Republicans and Socialists, and against the masters of a hundred legions.
But their views of liberty were based on expediency, not on justice. They
legislated for the favoured citizens of Greece, and were conscious of no
principle that extended the same rights to the stranger and the slave. That
discovery, without which all political science was merely conventional,
belongs to the followers of Zeno.
The dimness and poverty of their theological speculation caused the Stoics
to attribute the government of the universe less to the uncertain design of

gods than to a definite law of nature. By that law, which is superior to
religious traditions and national authorities, and which every man can learn
from a guardian angel who neither sleeps nor errs, all are governed alike, all
are equal, all are bound in charity to each other, as members of one
community and children of the same God. The unity of mankind implied
the existence of rights and duties common to all men, which legislation
neither gives nor takes away. The Stoics held in no esteem the institutions
that vary with time and place, and their ideal society resembled a universal
Church more than an actual State. In every collision between authority and
conscience they preferred the inner to the outer guide; and, in the words of
Epictetus, regarded the laws of the gods, not the wretched laws of the dead.
Their doctrine of equality, of fraternity, of humanity; their defence of
individualism against public authority; their repudiation of slavery,
redeemed democracy from the narrowness, the want of principle and of
sympathy, which are its reproach among the Greeks. In practical life they
preferred a mixed constitution to a purely popular government. Chrysippus
thought it impossible to please both gods and men; and Seneca declared that
the people is corrupt and incapable, and that nothing was wanting, under
Nero, to the fulness of liberty, except the possibility of destroying it. But
their lofty conception of freedom, as no exceptional privilege but the
birthright of mankind, survived in the law of nations and purified the equity
of Rome.
Whilst Dorian oligarchs and Macedonian kings crushed the liberties of
Greece, the Roman Republic was ruined, not by its enemies, for there was
no enemy it did not conquer, but by its own vices. It was free from many
causes of instability and dissolution that were active in Greece—the eager
quickness, the philosophic thought, the independent belief, the pursuit of
unsubstantial grace and beauty. It was protected by many subtle
contrivances against the sovereignty of numbers and against legislation by
surprise. Constitutional battles had to be fought over and over again; and
progress was so slow, that reforms were often voted many years before they
could be carried into effect. The authority allowed to fathers, to masters, to
creditors, was as incompatible with the spirit of freedom as the practice of
the servile East. The Roman citizen revelled in the luxury of power; and his
jealous dread of every change that might impair its enjoyment portended a
gloomy oligarchy. The cause which transformed the domination of rigid and

exclusive patricians into the model Republic, and which out of the
decomposed Republic built up the archetype of all despotism, was the fact
that the Roman Commonwealth consisted of two States in one. The
constitution was made up of compromises between independent bodies, and
the obligation of observing contracts was the standing security for freedom.
The plebs obtained self-government and an equal sovereignty, by the aid of
the tribunes of the people, the peculiar, salient, and decisive invention of
Roman statecraft. The powers conferred on the tribunes, that they might be
the guardians of the weak, were ill defined, but practically were irresistible.
They could not govern, but they could arrest all government. The first and
the last step of plebeian progress was gained neither by violence nor
persuasion, but by seceding; and, in like manner, the tribunes overcame all
the authorities of the State by the weapon of obstruction. It was by stopping
public business for five years that Licinius established democratic equality.
The safeguard against abuse was the right of each tribune to veto the acts of
his colleagues. As they were independent of their electors, and as there
could hardly fail to be one wise and honest man among the ten, this was the
most effective instrument for the defence of minorities ever devised by
man. After the Hortensian law, which in the year 286 gave to the plebeian
assembly co-ordinate legislative authority, the tribunes ceased to represent
the cause of a minority, and their work was done.
A scheme less plausible or less hopeful than one which created two
sovereign legislatures side by side in the same community would be hard to
find. Yet it effectually closed the conflict of centuries, and gave to Rome an
epoch of constant prosperity and greatness. No real division subsisted in the
people, corresponding to the artificial division in the State. Fifty years
passed away before the popular assembly made use of its prerogative, and
passed a law in opposition to the senate. Polybius could not detect a flaw in
the structure as it stood. The harmony seemed to be complete, and he
judged that a more perfect example of composite government could not
exist. But during those happy years the cause which wrought the ruin of
Roman freedom was in full activity; for it was the condition of perpetual
war that brought about the three great changes which were the beginning of
the end—the reforms of the Gracchi, the arming of the paupers, and the gift
of the Roman suffrage to the people of Italy.

Before the Romans began their career of foreign conquest they possessed an
army of 770,000 men; and from that time the consumption of citizens in
war was incessant. Regions once crowded with the small freeholds of four
or five acres, which were the ideal unit of Roman society and the sinew of
the army and the State, were covered with herds of cattle and herds of
slaves, and the substance of the governing democracy was drained. The
policy of the agrarian reform was to reconstitute this peasant class out of the
public domains, that is, out of lands which the ruling families had possessed
for generations, which they had bought and sold, inherited, divided,
cultivated, and improved. The conflict of interests that had so long
slumbered revived with a fury unknown in the controversy between the
patricians and the plebs. For it was now a question not Of equal rights but
of subjugation. The social restoration of democratic elements could not be
accomplished without demolishing the senate; and this crisis at last exposed
the defect of the machinery and the peril of divided powers that were not to
be controlled or reconciled. The popular assembly, led by Gracchus, had the
power of making laws; and the only constitutional check was, that one of
the tribunes should be induced to bar the proceedings. Accordingly, the
tribune Octavius interposed his veto. The tribunician power, the most sacred
of powers, which could not be questioned because it was founded on a
covenant between the two parts of the community and formed the keystone
of their union, was employed, in opposition to the will of the people, to
prevent a reform on which the preservation of the democracy depended.
Gracchus caused Octavius to be deposed. Though not illegal, this was a
thing unheard of, and it seemed to the Romans a sacrilegious act that shook
the pillars of the State, for it was the first significant revelation of
democratic sovereignty. A tribune might burn the arsenal and betray the
city, yet he could not be called to account until his year of office had
expired. But when he employed against the people the authority with which
they had invested him, the spell was dissolved. The tribunes had been
instituted as the champions of the oppressed, when the plebs feared
oppression. It was resolved that they should not interfere on the weaker side
when the democracy were the strongest. They were chosen by the people as
their defence against the aristocracy. It was not to be borne that they should
become the agents of the aristocracy to make them once more supreme.
Against a popular tribune, whom no colleague was suffered to oppose, the
wealthy classes were defenceless. It is true that he held office, and was

inviolable, only for a year. But the younger Gracchus was re-elected. The
nobles accused him of aiming at the crown. A tribune who should be
practically irremovable, as well as legally irresistible, was little less than an
emperor. The senate carried on the conflict as men do who fight, not for
public interests but for their own existence. They rescinded the agrarian
laws. They murdered the popular leaders. They abandoned the constitution
to save themselves, and invested Sylla with a power beyond all monarchs,
to exterminate their foes. The ghastly conception of a magistrate legally
proclaimed superior to all the laws was familiar to the stern spirit of the
Romans. The decemvirs had enjoyed that arbitrary authority; but practically
they were restrained by the two provisions which alone were deemed
efficacious in Rome, the short duration of office, and its distribution among
several colleagues. But the appointment of Sylla was neither limited nor
divided. It was to last as long as he chose. Whatever he might do was right;
and he was empowered to put whomsoever he pleased to death, without
trial or accusation. All the victims who were butchered by his satellites
suffered with the full sanction of the law.
When at last the democracy conquered, the Augustan monarchy, by which
they perpetuated their triumph, was moderate in comparison with the
licensed tyranny of the aristocratic chief. The Emperor was the
constitutional head of the Republic, armed with all the powers requisite to
master the senate. The instrument which had served to cast down the
patricians was efficient against the new aristocracy of wealth and office.
The tribunician power, conferred in perpetuity, made it unnecessary to
create a king or a dictator. Thrice the senate proposed to Augustus the
supreme power of making laws. He declared that the power of the tribunes
already supplied him with all that he required. It enabled him to preserve
the forms of a simulated republic. The most popular of all the magistracies
of Rome furnished the marrow of Imperialism. For the Empire was created,
not by usurpation, but by the legal act of a jubilant people, eager to close
the era of bloodshed and to secure the largess of grain and coin, which
amounted, at last, to 900,000 pounds a year. The people transferred to the
Emperor the plenitude of their own sovereignty. To limit his delegated
power was to challenge their omnipotence, to renew the issue between the
many and the few which had been decided at Pharsalus and Philippi. The
Romans upheld the absolutism of the Empire because it was their own. The

elementary antagonism between liberty and democracy, between the
welfare of minorities and the supremacy of masses, became manifest. The
friend of the one was a traitor to the other. The dogma, that absolute power
may, by the hypothesis of a popular origin, be as legitimate as constitutional
freedom, began, by the combined support of the people and the throne, to
darken the air.
Legitimate, in the technical sense of modern politics, the Empire was not
meant to be. It had no right or claim to subsist apart from the will of the
people. To limit the Emperor's authority was to renounce their own; but to
take it away was to assert their own. They gave the Empire as they chose.
They took it away as they chose. The Revolution was as lawful and as
irresponsible as the Empire. Democratic institutions continued to develop.
The provinces were no longer subject to an assembly meeting in a distant
capital. They obtained the privileges of Roman citizens. Long after Tiberius
had stripped the inhabitants of Rome of their electoral function, the
provincials continued in undisturbed enjoyment of the right of choosing
their own magistrates. They governed themselves like a vast confederation
of municipal republics; and, even after Diocletian had brought in the forms
as well as the reality of despotism, provincial assemblies, the obscure germ
of representative institutions, exercised some control over the Imperial
officers.
But the Empire owed the intensity of its force to the popular fiction. The
principle, that the Emperor is not subject to laws from which he can
dispense others, princeps legibus solutus, was interpreted to imply that he
was above all legal restraint. There was no appeal from his sentence. He
was the living law. The Roman jurists, whilst they adorned their writings
with the exalted philosophy of the Stoics, consecrated every excess of
Imperial prerogative with those famous maxims which have been balm to
so many consciences and have sanctioned so much wrong; and the code of
Justinian became the greatest obstacle, next to feudalism, with which liberty
had to contend.
Ancient democracy, as it was in Athens in the best days of Pericles, or in
Rome when Polybius described it, or even as it is idealised by Aristotle in
the Sixth Book of his Politics, and by Cicero in the beginning of the
Republic, was never more than a partial and insincere solution of the

problem of popular government. The ancient politicians aimed no higher
than to diffuse power among a numerous class. Their liberty was bound up
with slavery. They never attempted to found a free State on the thrift and
energy of free labour. They never divined the harder but more grateful task
that constitutes the political life of Christian nations.
By humbling the supremacy of rank and wealth; by forbidding the State to
encroach on the domain which belongs to God; by teaching man to love his
neighbour as himself; by promoting the sense of equality; by condemning
the pride of race, which was a stimulus of conquest, and the doctrine of
separate descent, which formed the philosopher's defence of slavery; and by
addressing not the rulers but the masses of mankind, and making opinion
superior to authority, the Church that preached the Gospel to the poor had
visible points of contact with democracy. And yet Christianity did not
directly influence political progress. The ancient watchword of the Republic
was translated by Papinian into the language of the Church: "Summa est
ratio quæ pro religione fiat:" and for eleven hundred years, from the first to
the last of the Constantines, the Christian Empire was as despotic as the
pagan.
Meanwhile Western Europe was overrun by men who in their early home
had been Republicans. The primitive constitution of the German
communities was based on association rather than on subordination. They
were accustomed to govern their affairs by common deliberation, and to
obey authorities that were temporary and defined. It is one of the desperate
enterprises of historical science to trace the free institutions of Europe and
America, and Australia, to the life that was led in the forests of Germany.
But the new States were founded on conquest, and in war the Germans were
commanded by kings. The doctrine of self-government, applied to Gaul and
Spain, would have made Frank and Goth disappear in the mass of the
conquered people. It needed all the resources of a vigorous monarchy, of a
military aristocracy, and of a territorial clergy, to construct States that were
able to last. The result was the feudal system, the most absolute
contradiction of democracy that has coexisted with civilisation.
The revival of democracy was due neither to the Christian Church nor to the
Teutonic State, but to the quarrel between them. The effect followed the
cause instantaneously. As soon as Gregory VII. made the Papacy

independent of the Empire, the great conflict began; and the same
pontificate gave birth to the theory of the sovereignty of the people. The
Gregorian party argued that the Emperor derived his crown from the nation,
and that the nation could take away what it had bestowed. The Imperialists
replied that nobody could take away what the nation had given. It is idle to
look for the spark either in flint or steel. The object of both parties was
unqualified supremacy. Fitznigel has no more idea of ecclesiastical liberty
than John of Salisbury of political. Innocent IV. is as perfect an absolutist as
Peter de Vineis. But each party encouraged democracy in turn, by seeking
the aid of the towns; each party in turn appealed to the people, and gave
strength to the constitutional theory. In the fourteenth century English
Parliaments judged and deposed their kings, as a matter of right; the Estates
governed France without king or noble; and the wealth and liberties of the
towns, which had worked out their independence from the centre of Italy to
the North Sea, promised for a moment to transform European society. Even
in the capitals of great princes, in Rome, in Paris, and, for two terrible days,
in London, the commons obtained sway. But the curse of instability was on
the municipal republics. Strasburg, according to Erasmus and Bodin, the
best governed of all, suffered from perpetual commotions. An ingenious
historian has reckoned seven thousand revolutions in the Italian cities. The
democracies succeeded no better than feudalism in regulating the balance
between rich and poor. The atrocities of the Jacquerie, and of Wat Tyler's
rebellion, hardened the hearts of men against the common people. Church
and State combined to put them down. And the last memorable struggles of
mediæval liberty—the insurrection of the Comuneros in Castile, the
Peasants' War in Germany, the Republic of Florence, and the Revolt of
Ghent—were suppressed by Charles V. in the early years of the
Reformation.
The middle ages had forged a complete arsenal of constitutional maxims:
trial by jury, taxation by representation, local self-government,
ecclesiastical independence, responsible authority. But they were not
secured by institutions, and the Reformation began by making the dry bones
more dry. Luther claimed to be the first divine who did justice to the civil
power. He made the Lutheran Church the bulwark of political stability, and
bequeathed to his disciples the doctrine of divine right and passive
obedience. Zwingli, who was a staunch republican, desired that all

magistrates should be elected, and should be liable to be dismissed by their
electors; but he died too soon for his influence, and the permanent action of
the Reformation on democracy was exercised through the Presbyterian
constitution of Calvin.
It was long before the democratic element in Presbyterianism began to tell.
The Netherlands resisted Philip II. for fifteen years before they took
courage to depose him, and the scheme of the ultra-Calvinist Deventer, to
subvert the ascendency of the leading States by the sovereign action of the
whole people, was foiled by Leicester's incapacity, and by the consummate
policy of Barnevelt. The Huguenots, having lost their leaders in 1572,
reconstituted themselves on a democratic footing, and learned to think that
a king who murders his subjects forfeits his divine right to be obeyed. But
Junius Brutus and Buchanan damaged their credit by advocating regicide;
and Hotoman, whose Franco-Gallia is the most serious work of the group,
deserted his liberal opinions when the chief of his own party became king.
The most violent explosion of democracy in that age proceeded from the
opposite quarter. When Henry of Navarre became the next heir to the throne
of France, the theory of the deposing power, which had proved ineffectual
for more than a century, awoke with a new and more vigorous life. One-half
of the nation accepted the view, that they were not bound to submit to a
king they would not have chosen. A Committee of Sixteen made itself
master of Paris, and, with the aid of Spain, succeeded for years in excluding
Henry from his capital. The impulse thus given endured in literature for a
whole generation, and produced a library of treatises on the right of
Catholics to choose, to control, and to cashier their magistrates. They were
on the losing side. Most of them were bloodthirsty, and were soon
forgotten. But the greater part of the political ideas of Milton, Locke, and
Rousseau, may be found in the ponderous Latin of Jesuits who were
subjects of the Spanish Crown, of Lessius, Molina, Mariana, and Suarez.
The ideas were there, and were taken up when it suited them by extreme
adherents of Rome and of Geneva; but they produced no lasting fruit until,
a century after the Reformation, they became incorporated in new religious
systems. Five years of civil war could not exhaust the royalism of the
Presbyterians, and it required the expulsion of the majority to make the
Long Parliament abandon monarchy. It had defended the constitution
against the crown with legal arts, defending precedent against innovation,

and setting up an ideal in the past which, with all the learning of Selden and
of Prynne, was less certain than the Puritan statesmen supposed. The
Independents brought in a new principle. Tradition had no authority for
them, and the past no virtue. Liberty of conscience, a thing not to be found
in the constitution, was more prized by many of them than all the statutes of
the Plantagenets. Their idea that each congregation should govern itself
abolished the force which is needed to preserve unity, and deprived
monarchy of the weapon which made it injurious to freedom. An immense
revolutionary energy resided in their doctrine, and it took root in America,
and deeply coloured political thought in later times. But in England the
sectarian democracy was strong only to destroy. Cromwell refused to be
bound by it; and John Lilburne, the boldest thinker among English
democrats, declared that it would be better for liberty to bring back Charles
Stuart than to live under the sword of the Protector.
Lilburne was among the first to understand the real conditions of
democracy, and the obstacle to its success in England. Equality of power
could not be preserved, except by violence, together with an extreme
inequality of possessions. There would always be danger, if power was not
made to wait on property, that property would go to those who had the
power. This idea of the necessary balance of property, developed by
Harrington, and adopted by Milton in his later pamphlets, appeared to
Toland, and even to John Adams, as important as the invention of printing,
or the discovery of the circulation of the blood. At least it indicates the true
explanation of the strange completeness with which the Republican party
had vanished, a dozen years after the solemn trial and execution of the
King. No extremity of misgovernment was able to revive it. When the
treason of Charles II. against the constitution was divulged, and the Whigs
plotted to expel the incorrigible dynasty, their aspirations went no farther
than a Venetian oligarchy, with Monmouth for Doge. The Revolution of
1688 confined power to the aristocracy of freeholders. The conservatism of
the age was unconquerable. Republicanism was distorted even in
Switzerland, and became in the eighteenth century as oppressive and as
intolerant as its neighbours.
In 1769, when Paoli fled from Corsica, it seemed that, in Europe at least,
democracy was dead. It had, indeed, lately been defended in books by a
man of bad reputation, whom the leaders of public opinion treated with

contumely, and whose declamations excited so little alarm that George III.
offered him a pension. What gave to Rousseau a power far exceeding that
which any political writer had ever attained was the progress of events in
America. The Stuarts had been willing that the colonies should serve as a
refuge from their system of Church and State, and of all their colonies the
one most favoured was the territory granted to William Penn. By the
principles of the Society to which he belonged, it was necessary that the
new State should be founded on liberty and equality. But Penn was further
noted among Quakers as a follower of the new doctrine of Toleration. Thus
it came to pass that Pennsylvania enjoyed the most democratic constitution
in the world, and held up to the admiration of the eighteenth century an
almost solitary example of freedom. It was principally through Franklin and
the Quaker State that America influenced political opinion in Europe, and
that the fanaticism of one revolutionary epoch was converted into the
rationalism of another. American independence was the beginning of a new
era, not merely as a revival of Revolution, but because no other Revolution
ever proceeded from so slight a cause, or was ever conducted with so much
moderation. The European monarchies supported it. The greatest statesmen
in England averred that it was just. It established a pure democracy; but it
was democracy in its highest perfection, armed and vigilant, less against
aristocracy and monarchy than against its own weakness and excess. Whilst
England was admired for the safeguards with which, in the course of many
centuries, it had fortified liberty against the power of the crown, America
appeared still more worthy of admiration for the safeguards which, in the
deliberations of a single memorable year, it had set up against the power of
its own sovereign people. It resembled no other known democracy, for it
respected freedom, authority, and law. It resembled no other constitution,
for it was contained in half a dozen intelligible articles. Ancient Europe
opened its mind to two new ideas—that Revolution with very little
provocation may be just; and that democracy in very large dimensions may
be safe.
Whilst America was making itself independent, the spirit of reform had
been abroad in Europe. Intelligent ministers, like Campomanes and
Struensee, and well-meaning monarchs, of whom the most liberal was
Leopold of Tuscany, were trying what could be done to make men happy by
command. Centuries of absolute and intolerant rule had bequeathed abuses

which nothing but the most vigorous use of power could remove. The age
preferred the reign of intellect to the reign of liberty. Turgot, the ablest and
most far-seeing reformer then living, attempted to do for France what less
gifted men were doing with success in Lombardy, and Tuscany, and Parma.
He attempted to employ the royal power for the good of the people, at the
expense of the higher classes. The higher classes proved too strong for the
crown alone; and Louis XVI. abandoned internal reforms in despair, and
turned for compensation to a war with England for the deliverance of her
American Colonies. When the increasing debt obliged him to seek heroic
remedies, and he was again repulsed by the privileged orders, he appealed
at last to the nation. When the States-General met, the power had already
passed to the middle class, for it was by them alone that the country could
be saved. They were strong enough to triumph by waiting. Neither the
Court, nor the nobles, nor the army, could do anything against them. During
the six months from January 1789 to the fall of the Bastille in July, France
travelled as far as England in the six hundred years between the Earl of
Leicester and Lord Beaconsfield. Ten years after the American alliance, the
Rights of Man, which had been proclaimed at Philadelphia, were repeated
at Versailles. The alliance had borne fruit on both sides of the Atlantic, and
for France, the fruit was the triumph of American ideas over English. They
were more popular, more simple, more effective against privilege, and,
strange to say, more acceptable to the King. The new French constitution
allowed no privileged orders, no parliamentary ministry, no power of
dissolution, and only a suspensive veto. But the characteristic safeguards of
the American Government were rejected: Federalism, separation of Church
and State, the Second Chamber, the political arbitration of the supreme
judicial body. That which weakened the Executive was taken: that which
restrained the Legislature was left. Checks on the crown abounded; but
should the crown be vacant, the powers that remained would be without a
check. The precautions were all in one direction. Nobody would
contemplate the contingency that there might be no king. The constitution
was inspired by a profound disbelief in Louis XVI. and a pertinacious belief
in monarchy. The assembly voted without debate, by acclamation, a Civil
List three times as large as that of Queen Victoria. When Louis fled, and the
throne was actually vacant, they brought him back to it, preferring the
phantom of a king who was a prisoner to the reality of no king at all.

Next to this misapplication of American examples, which was the fault of
nearly all the leading statesmen, excepting Mounier, Mirabeau, and Sieyès,
the cause of the Revolution was injured by its religious policy. The most
novel and impressive lesson taught by the fathers of the American Republic
was that the people, and not the administration, should govern. Men in
office were salaried agents, by whom the nation wrought its will. Authority
submitted to public opinion, and left to it not only the control, but the
initiative of government. Patience in waiting for a wind, alacrity in catching
it, the dread of exerting unnecessary influence, characterise the early
presidents. Some of the French politicians shared this view, though with
less exaggeration than Washington. They wished to decentralise the
government, and to obtain, for good or evil, the genuine expression of
popular sentiment. Necker himself, and Buzot, the most thoughtful of the
Girondins, dreamed of federalising France. In the United States there was
no current of opinion, and no combination of forces, to be seriously feared.
The government needed no security against being propelled in a wrong
direction. But the French Revolution was accomplished at the expense of
powerful classes. Besides the nobles, the Assembly, which had been made
supreme by the accession of the clergy, and had been led at first by popular
ecclesiastics, by Sieyès, Talleyrand, Cicé, La Luzerne, made an enemy of
the clergy. The prerogative could not be destroyed without touching the
Church. Ecclesiastical patronage had helped to make the crown absolute. To
leave it in the hands of Louis and his ministers was to renounce the entire
policy of the constitution. To disestablish, was to make it over to the Pope.
It was consistent with the democratic principle to introduce election into the
Church. It involved a breach with Rome; but so, indeed, did the laws of
Joseph II., Charles III., and Leopold. The Pope was not likely to cast away
the friendship of France, if he could help it; and the French clergy were not
likely to give trouble by their attachment to Rome. Therefore, amid the
indifference of many, and against the urgent, and probably sincere,
remonstrances of Robespierre and Marat, the Jansenists, who had a century
of persecution to avenge, carried the Civil Constitution. The coercive
measures which enforced it led to the breach with the King, and the fall of
the monarchy; to the revolt of the provinces, and the fall of liberty. The
Jacobins determined that public opinion should not reign, that the State
should not remain at the mercy of powerful combinations. They held the
representatives of the people under control, by the people itself. They

attributed higher authority to the direct than to the indirect voice of the
democratic oracle. They armed themselves with power to crush every
adverse, every independent force, and especially to put down the Church, in
whose cause the provinces had risen against the capital. They met the
centrifugal federalism of the friends of the Gironde by the most resolute
centralisation. France was governed by Paris; and Paris by its municipality
and its mob. Obeying Rousseau's maxim, that the people cannot delegate its
power, they raised the elementary constituency above its representatives. As
the greatest constituent body, the most numerous accumulation of primary
electors, the largest portion of sovereignty, was in the people of Paris, they
designed that the people of Paris should rule over France, as the people of
Rome, the mob as well as the senate, had ruled, not ingloriously, over Italy,
and over half the nations that surround the Mediterranean. Although the
Jacobins were scarcely more irreligious than the Abbé Sieyès or Madame
Roland, although Robespierre wanted to force men to believe in God,
although Danton went to confession and Barère was a professing Christian,
they imparted to modern democracy that implacable hatred of religion
which contrasts so strangely with the example of its Puritan prototype.
The deepest cause which made the French Revolution so disastrous to
liberty was its theory of equality. Liberty was the watchword of the middle
class, equality of the lower. It was the lower class that won the battles of the
third estate; that took the Bastille, and made France a constitutional
monarchy; that took the Tuileries, and made France a Republic. They
claimed their reward. The middle class, having cast down the upper orders
with the aid of the lower, instituted a new inequality and a privilege for
itself. By means of a taxpaying qualification it deprived its confederates of
their vote. To those, therefore, who had accomplished the Revolution, its
promise was not fulfilled. Equality did nothing for them. The opinion, at
that time, was almost universal, that society is founded on an agreement
which is voluntary and conditional, and that the links which bind men to it
are terminable, for sufficient reason, like those which subject them to
authority. From these popular premises the logic of Marat drew his
sanguinary conclusions. He told the famished people that the conditions on
which they had consented to bear their evil lot, and had refrained from
violence, had not been kept to them. It was suicide, it was murder, to submit
to starve and to see one's children starving, by the fault of the rich. The

bonds of society were dissolved by the wrong it inflicted. The state of
nature had come back, in which every man had a right to what he could
take. The time had come for the rich to make way for the poor. With this
theory of equality, liberty was quenched in blood, and Frenchmen became
ready to sacrifice all other things to save life and fortune.
Twenty years after the splendid opportunity that opened in 1789, the
reaction had triumphed everywhere in Europe; ancient constitutions had
perished as well as new; and even England afforded them neither protection
nor sympathy. The liberal, at least the democratic revival, came from Spain.
The Spaniards fought against the French for a king, who was a prisoner in
France. They gave themselves a constitution, and placed his name at the
head of it. They had a monarchy, without a king. It required to be so
contrived that it would work in the absence, possibly the permanent
absence, of the monarch. It became, therefore, a monarchy only in name,
composed, in fact, of democratic forces. The constitution of 1812 was the
attempt of inexperienced men to accomplish the most difficult task in
politics. It was smitten with sterility. For many years it was the standard of
abortive revolutions among the so-called Latin nations. It promulgated the
notion of a king who should flourish only in name, and should not even
discharge the humble function which Hegel assigns to royalty, of dotting i's
for the people.
The overthrow of the Cadiz constitution, in 1823, was the supreme triumph
of the restored monarchy of France. Five years later, under a wise and
liberal minister, the Restoration was advancing fairly on the constitutional
paths, when the incurable distrust of the Liberal party defeated Martignac,
and brought in the ministry of extreme royalists that ruined the monarchy.
In labouring to transfer power from the class which the Revolution had
enfranchised to those which it had overthrown, Polignac and La
Bourdonnaie would gladly have made terms with the working men. To
break the influence of intellect and capital by means of universal suffrage,
was an idea long and zealously advocated by some of their supporters. They
had not foresight or ability to divide their adversaries, and they were
vanquished in 1830 by the united democracy.
The promise of the Revolution of July was to reconcile royalists and
democrats. The King assured Lafayette that he was a republican at heart;

and Lafayette assured France that Louis Philippe was the best of republics.
The shock of the great event was felt in Poland, and Belgium, and even in
England. It gave a direct impulse to democratic movements in Switzerland.
Swiss democracy had been in abeyance since 1815. The national will had
no organ. The cantons were supreme; and governed as inefficiently as other
governments under the protecting shade of the Holy Alliance. There was no
dispute that Switzerland called for extensive reforms, and no doubt of the
direction they would take. The number of the cantons was the great obstacle
to all improvement. It was useless to have twenty-five governments in a
country equal to one American State, and inferior in population to one great
city. It was impossible that they should be good governments. A central
power was the manifest need of the country. In the absence of an efficient
federal power, seven cantons formed a separate league for the protection of
their own interests. Whilst democratic ideas were making way in
Switzerland, the Papacy was travelling in the opposite direction, and
showing an inflexible hostility for ideas which are the breath of democratic
life. The growing democracy and the growing Ultramontanism came into
collision. The Sonderbund could aver with truth that there was no safety for
its rights under the Federal Constitution. The others could reply, with equal
truth, that there was no safety for the constitution with the Sonderbund. In
1847, it came to a war between national sovereignty and cantonal
sovereignty. The Sonderbund was dissolved, and a new Federal
Constitution was adopted, avowedly and ostensibly charged with the duty
of carrying out democracy, and repressing the adverse influence of Rome. It
was a delusive imitation of the American system. The President was
powerless. The Senate was powerless. The Supreme Court was powerless.
The sovereignty of the cantons was undermined, and their power centred in
the House of Representatives. The Constitution of 1848 was a first step
towards the destruction of Federalism. Another and almost a final step in
the direction of centralisation was taken in 1874. The railways, and the vast
interests they created, made the position of the cantonal governments
untenable. The conflict with the Ultramontanes increased the demand for
vigorous action; and the destruction of State Rights in the American war
strengthened the hands of the Centralists. The Constitution of 1874 is one of
the most significant works of modern democracy. It is the triumph of
democratic force over democratic freedom. It overrules not only the Federal

principle, but the representative principle. It carries important measures
away from the Federal Legislature to submit them to the votes of the entire
people, separating decision from deliberation. The operation is so cumbrous
as to be generally ineffective. But it constitutes a power such as exists, we
believe, under the laws of no other country. A Swiss jurist has frankly
expressed the spirit of the reigning system by saying, that the State is the
appointed conscience of the nation.
The moving force in Switzerland has been democracy relieved of all
constraint, the principle of putting in action the greatest force of the greatest
number. The prosperity of the country has prevented complications such as
arose in France. The ministers of Louis Philippe, able and enlightened men,
believed that they would make the people prosper if they could have their
own way, and could shut out public opinion. They acted as if the intelligent
middle class was destined by heaven to govern. The upper class had proved
its unfitness before 1789; the lower class, since 1789. Government by
professional men, by manufacturers and scholars, was sure to be safe, and
almost sure to be reasonable and practical. Money became the object of a
political superstition, such as had formerly attached to land, and afterwards
attached to labour. The masses of the people, who had fought against
Marmont, became aware that they had not fought for their own benefit.
They were still governed by their employers.
When the King parted with Lafayette, and it was found that he would not
only reign but govern, the indignation of the republicans found a vent in
street fighting. In 1836, when the horrors of the infernal machine had armed
the crown with ampler powers, and had silenced the republican party, the
term Socialism made its appearance in literature. Tocqueville, who was
writing the philosophic chapters that conclude his work, failed to discover
the power which the new system was destined to exercise on democracy.
Until then, democrats and communists had stood apart. Although the
socialist doctrines were defended by the best intellects of France, by
Thierry, Comte, Chevalier, and Georges Sand, they excited more attention
as a literary curiosity than as the cause of future revolutions. Towards 1840,
in the recesses of secret societies, republicans and socialists coalesced.
Whilst the Liberal leaders, Lamartine and Barrot, discoursed on the surface
concerning reform, Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc were quietly digging a
grave for the monarchy, the Liberal party, and the reign of wealth. They

worked so well, and the vanquished republicans recovered so thoroughly,
by this coalition, the influence they had lost by a long series of crimes and
follies, that, in 1848, they were able to conquer without fighting. The fruit
of their victory was universal suffrage.
From that time the promises of socialism have supplied the best energy of
democracy. Their coalition has been the ruling fact in French politics. It
created the "saviour of society," and the Commune; and it still entangles the
footsteps of the Republic. It is the only shape in which democracy has
found an entrance into Germany. Liberty has lost its spell; and democracy
maintains itself by the promise of substantial gifts to the masses of the
people.
Since the Revolution of July and the Presidency of Jackson gave the
impulse which has made democracy preponderate, the ablest political
writers, Tocqueville, Calhoun, Mill, and Laboulaye, have drawn, in the
name of freedom, a formidable indictment against it. They have shown
democracy without respect for the past or care for the future, regardless of
public faith and of national honour, extravagant and inconstant, jealous of
talent and of knowledge, indifferent to justice but servile towards opinion,
incapable of organisation, impatient of authority, averse from obedience,
hostile to religion and to established law. Evidence indeed abounds, even if
the true cause be not proved. But it is not to these symptoms that we must
impute the permanent danger and the irrepressible conflict. As much might
be made good against monarchy, and an unsympathising reasoner might in
the same way argue that religion is intolerant, that conscience makes
cowards, that piety rejoices in fraud. Recent experience has added little to
the observations of those who witnessed the decline after Pericles, of
Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, and of the writer whose brilliant tract
against the Athenian Republic is printed among the works of Xenophon.
The manifest, the avowed difficulty is that democracy, no less than
monarchy or aristocracy, sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and
strives, with an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain,
to override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and
deviation, and to secure, by Plebiscite, Referendum, or Caucus, free play
for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle, that none shall
have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall be able to
restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic principle, that the people

shall not be made to do what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall
never be required to tolerate what it does not like. The true democratic
principle, that every man's free will shall be as unfettered as possible, is
taken to mean that the free will of the collective people shall be fettered in
nothing. Religious toleration, judicial independence, dread of centralisation,
jealousy of State interference, become obstacles to freedom instead of
safeguards, when the centralised force of the State is wielded by the hands
of the people. Democracy claims to be not only supreme, without authority
above, but absolute, without independence below; to be its own master, not
a trustee. The old sovereigns of the world are exchanged for a new one, who
may be flattered and deceived, but whom it is impossible to corrupt or to
resist, and to whom must be rendered the things that are Cæsar's and also
the things that are God's. The enemy to be overcome is no longer the
absolutism of the State, but the liberty of the subject. Nothing is more
significant than the relish with which Ferrari, the most powerful democratic
writer since Rousseau, enumerates the merits of tyrants, and prefers devils
to saints in the interest of the community.
For the old notions of civil liberty and of social order did not benefit the
masses of the people. Wealth increased, without relieving their wants. The
progress of knowledge left them in abject ignorance. Religion flourished,
but failed to reach them. Society, whose laws were made by the upper class
alone, announced that the best thing for the poor is not to be born, and the
next best, to die in childhood, and suffered them to live in misery and crime
and pain. As surely as the long reign of the rich has been employed in
promoting the accumulation of wealth, the advent of the poor to power will
be followed by schemes for diffusing it. Seeing how little was done by the
wisdom of former times for education and public health, for insurance,
association, and savings, for the protection of labour against the law of self-
interest, and how much has been accomplished in this generation, there is
reason in the fixed belief that a great change was needed, and that
democracy has not striven in vain. Liberty, for the mass, is not happiness;
and institutions are not an end but a means. The thing they seek is a force
sufficient to sweep away scruples and the obstacle of rival interests, and, in
some degree, to better their condition. They mean that the strong hand that
heretofore has formed great States, protected religions, and defended the
independence of nations, shall help them by preserving life, and endowing

it for them with some, at least, of the things men live for. That is the
notorious danger of modern democracy. That is also its purpose and its
strength. And against this threatening power the weapons that struck down
other despots do not avail. The greatest happiness principle positively
confirms it. The principle of equality, besides being as easily applied to
property as to power, opposes the existence of persons or groups of persons
exempt from the common law, and independent of the common will; and
the principle, that authority is a matter of contract, may hold good against
kings, but not against the sovereign people, because a contract implies two
parties.
If we have not done more than the ancients to develop and to examine the
disease, we have far surpassed them in studying the remedy. Besides the
French Constitution of the year III., and that of the American Confederates,
—the most remarkable attempts that have been made since the archonship
of Euclides to meet democratic evils with the antidotes which democracy
itself supplies,—our age has been prolific in this branch of experimental
politics.
Many expedients have been tried, that have been evaded or defeated. A
divided executive, which was an important phase in the transformation of
ancient monarchies into republics, and which, through the advocacy of
Condorcet, took root in France, has proved to be weakness itself.
The constitution of 1795, the work of a learned priest, confined the
franchise to those who should know how to read and write; and in 1849 this
provision was rejected by men who intended that the ignorant voter should
help them to overturn the Republic. In our time no democracy could long
subsist without educating the masses; and the scheme of Daunou is simply
an indirect encouragement to elementary instruction.
In 1799 Sieyès suggested to Bonaparte the idea of a great Council, whose
function it should be to keep the acts of the Legislature in harmony with the
constitution—a function which the Nomophylakes discharged at Athens,
and the Supreme Court in the United States, and which produced the Sénat
Conservateur, one of the favourite implements of Imperialism. Sieyès meant
that his Council should also serve the purpose of a gilded ostracism, having

power to absorb any obnoxious politician, and to silence him with a
thousand a year.
Napoleon the Third's plan of depriving unmarried men of their votes would
have disfranchised the two greatest Conservative classes in France, the
priest and the soldier.
In the American constitution it was intended that the chief of the executive
should be chosen by a body of carefully selected electors. But since, in
1825, the popular candidate succumbed to one who had only a minority of
votes, it has become the practice to elect the President by the pledged
delegates of universal suffrage.
The exclusion of ministers from Congress has been one of the severest
strains on the American system; and the law which required a majority of
three to one enabled Louis Napoleon to make himself Emperor. Large
constituencies make independent deputies; but experience proves that small
assemblies, the consequence of large constituencies, can be managed by
Government.
The composite vote and the cumulative vote have been almost universally
rejected as schemes for baffling the majority. But the principle of dividing
the representatives equally between population and property has never had
fair play. It was introduced by Thouret into the constitution of 1791. The
Revolution made it inoperative; and it was so manipulated from 1817 to
1848 by the fatal dexterity of Guizot as to make opinion ripe for universal
suffrage.
Constitutions which forbid the payment of deputies and the system of
imperative instructions, which deny the power of dissolution, and make the
Legislature last for a fixed term, or renew it by partial re-elections, and
which require an interval between the several debates on the same measure,
evidently strengthen the independence of the representative assembly. The
Swiss veto has the same effect, as it suspends legislation only when
opposed by a majority of the whole electoral body, not by a majority of
those who actually vote upon it.
Indirect elections are scarcely anywhere in use out of Germany, but they
have been a favourite corrective of democracy with many thoughtful

politicians. Where the extent of the electoral district obliges constituents to
vote for candidates who are unknown to them, the election is not free. It is
managed by wire-pullers, and by party machinery, beyond the control of the
electors. Indirect election puts the choice of the managers into their hands.
The objection is that the intermediate electors are generally too few to span
the interval between voters and candidates, and that they choose
representatives not of better quality, but of different politics. If the
intermediate body consisted of one in ten of the whole constituency, the
contact would be preserved, the people would be really represented, and the
ticket system would be broken down.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or
rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or
fraud, in carrying elections. To break off that point is to avert the danger.
The common system of representation perpetuates the danger. Unequal
electorates afford no security to majorities. Equal electorates give none to
minorities. Thirty-five years ago it was pointed out that the remedy is
proportional representation. It is profoundly democratic, for it increases the
influence of thousands who would otherwise have no voice in the
government; and it brings men more near an equality by so contriving that
no vote shall be wasted, and that every voter shall contribute to bring into
Parliament a member of his own opinions. The origin of the idea is
variously claimed for Lord Grey and for Considérant. The successful
example of Denmark and the earnest advocacy of Mill gave it prominence
in the world of politics. It has gained popularity with the growth of
democracy, and we are informed by M. Naville that in Switzerland
Conservatives and Radicals combined to promote it.
Of all checks on democracy, federalism has been the most efficacious and
the most congenial; but, becoming associated with the Red Republic, with
feudalism, with the Jesuits, and with slavery, it has fallen into disrepute, and
is giving way to centralism. The federal system limits and restrains the
sovereign power by dividing it, and by assigning to Government only
certain defined rights. It is the only method of curbing not only the majority
but the power of the whole people, and it affords the strongest basis for a
second chamber, which has been found the essential security for freedom in
every genuine democracy.

The fall of Guizot discredited the famous maxim of the Doctrinaires, that
Reason is sovereign, and not king or people; and it was further exposed to
the scoffer by the promise of Comte that Positivist philosophers shall
manufacture political ideas, which no man shall be permitted to dispute. But
putting aside international and criminal law, in which there is some
approach to uniformity, the domain of political economy seems destined to
admit the rigorous certainty of science. Whenever that shall be attained,
when the battle between Economists and Socialists is ended, the evil force
which Socialism imparts to democracy will be spent. The battle is raging
more violently than ever, but it has entered into a new phase, by the rise of a
middle party. Whether that remarkable movement, which is promoted by
some of the first economists in Europe, is destined to shake the authority of
their science, or to conquer socialism, by robbing it of that which is the
secret of its strength, it must be recorded here as the latest and the most
serious effort that has been made to disprove the weighty sentence of
Rousseau, that democracy is a government for gods, but unfit for man.
We have been able to touch on only a few of the topics that crowd Sir
Erskine May's volumes. Although he has perceived more clearly than
Tocqueville the contact of democracy with socialism, his judgment is
untinged with Tocqueville's despondency, and he contemplates the direction
of progress with a confidence that approaches optimism. The notion of an
inflexible logic in history does not depress him, for he concerns himself
with facts and with men more than with doctrines, and his book is a history
of several democracies, not of democracy. There are links in the argument,
there are phases of development which he leaves unnoticed, because his
object has not been to trace out the properties and the connection of ideas,
but to explain the results of experience. We should consult his pages,
probably, without effect, if we wished to follow the origin and sequence of
the democratic dogmas, that all men are equal; that speech and thought are
free; that each generation is a law to itself only; that there shall be no
endowments, no entails, no primogeniture; that the people are sovereign;
that the people can do no wrong. The great mass of those who, of necessity,
are interested in practical politics have no such antiquarian curiosity. They
want to know what can be learned from the countries where the democratic
experiments have been tried; but they do not care to be told how M.
Waddington has emended the Monumentum Ancyranum, what connection

there was between Mariana and Milton, or between Penn and Rousseau, or
who invented the proverb Vox Populi Vox Dei. Sir Erskine May's reluctance
to deal with matters speculative and doctrinal, and to devote his space to the
mere literary history of politics, has made his touch somewhat uncertain in
treating of the political action of Christianity, perhaps the most complex and
comprehensive question that can embarrass a historian. He disparages the
influence of the mediæval Church on nations just emerging from a
barbarous paganism, and he exalts it when it had become associated with
despotism and persecution. He insists on the liberating action of the
Reformation in the sixteenth century, when it gave a stimulus to absolutism;
and he is slow to recognise, in the enthusiasm and violence of the sects in
the seventeenth, the most potent agency ever brought to bear on democratic
history. The omission of America creates a void between 1660 and 1789,
and leaves much unexplained in the revolutionary movement of the last
hundred years, which is the central problem of the book. But if some things
are missed from the design, if the execution is not equal in every part, the
praise remains to Sir Erskine May, that he is the only writer who has ever
brought together the materials for a comparative study of democracy, that
he has avoided the temper of party, that he has shown a hearty sympathy for
the progress and improvement of mankind, and a steadfast faith in the
wisdom and the power that guide it.

FOOTNOTES:
[5] The Quarterly Review, January 1878.

IV
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW[6]
The way in which Coligny and his adherents met their death has been
handed down by a crowd of trustworthy witnesses, and few things in history
are known in more exact detail. But the origin and motives of the tragedy,
and the manner of its reception by the opinion of Christian Europe, are still
subject to controversy. Some of the evidence has been difficult of access,
part is lost, and much has been deliberately destroyed. No letters written
from Paris at the time have been found in the Austrian archives. In the
correspondence of thirteen agents of the House of Este at the Court of
Rome, every paper relating to the event has disappeared. All the documents
of 1572, both from Rome and Paris, are wanting in the archives of Venice.
In the Registers of many French towns the leaves which contained the
records of August and September in that year have been torn out. The first
reports sent to England by Walsingham and by the French Government have
not been recovered. Three accounts printed at Rome, when the facts were
new, speedily became so rare that they have been forgotten. The Bull of
Gregory XIII. was not admitted into the official collections; and the reply to
Muretus has escaped notice until now. The letters of Charles IX. to Rome,
with the important exception of that which he wrote on the 24th of August,
have been dispersed and lost The letters of Gregory XIII. to France have
never been seen by persons willing to make them public. In the absence of
these documents the most authentic information is that which is supplied by
the French Ambassador and by the Nuncio. The despatches of Ferralz,
describing the attitude of the Roman court, are extant, but have not been
used. Those of Salviati have long been known. Chateaubriand took a copy
when the papal archives were at Paris, and projected a work on the events
with which they are concerned. Some extracts were published, with his
consent, by the continuator of Mackintosh; and a larger selection, from the
originals in the Vatican, appeared in Theiner's Annals of Gregory XIII. The
letters written under Pius V. are beyond the limits of that work; and Theiner,
moreover, has omitted whatever seemed irrelevant to his purpose. The
criterion of relevancy is uncertain; and we shall avail ourselves largely of

the unpublished portions of Salviati's correspondence, which were
transcribed by Chateaubriand. These manuscripts, with others of equal
importance not previously consulted, determine several doubtful questions
of policy and design.
The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their
prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572. For many years
the progress of their religion had been incessant. The most valuable of the
conquests it has retained were already made; and the period of its reverses
had not begun. The great division which aided Catholicism afterwards to
recover so much lost ground was not openly confessed; and the effectual
unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet dissolved. In controversial
theology the defence was weaker than the attack. The works to which the
Reformation owed its popularity and system were in the hands of
thousands, while the best authors of the Catholic restoration had not begun
to write. The press continued to serve the new opinions better than the old;
and in literature Protestantism was supreme. Persecuted in the South, and
established by violence in the North, it had overcome the resistance of
princes in Central Europe, and had won toleration without ceasing to be
intolerant. In France and Poland, in the dominions of the Emperor and
under the German prelates, the attempt to arrest its advance by physical
force had been abandoned. In Germany it covered twice the area that
remained to it in the next generation, and, except in Bavaria, Catholicism
was fast dying out. The Polish Government had not strength to persecute,
and Poland became the refuge of the sects. When the bishops found that
they could not prevent toleration, they resolved that they would not restrict
it. Trusting to the maxim, "Bellum Haereticorum pax est Ecclesiae," they
insisted that liberty should extend to those whom the Reformers would have
exterminated.[7] The Polish Protestants, in spite of their dissensions, formed
themselves into one great party. When the death of the last of the Jagellons,
on the 7th of July 1572, made the monarchy elective, they were strong
enough to enforce their conditions on the candidates; and it was thought
that they would be able to decide the election, and obtain a king of their
own choosing. Alva's reign of Terror had failed to pacify the Low
Countries, and he was about to resign the hopeless task to an incapable
successor. The taking of the Brill in April was the first of those maritime
victories which led to the independence of the Dutch. Mons fell in May;

and in July the important province of Holland declared for the Prince of
Orange. The Catholics believed that all was lost if Alva remained in
command.[8]
The decisive struggle was in France. During the minority of Charles IX.
persecution had given way to civil war, and the Regent, his mother, had
vainly striven, by submitting to neither party, to uphold the authority of the
Crown. She checked the victorious Catholics, by granting to the Huguenots
terms which constituted them, in spite of continual disaster in the field, a
vast and organised power in the State. To escape their influence it would
have been necessary to invoke the help of Philip II., and to accept
protection which would have made France subordinate to Spain. Philip
laboured to establish such an alliance; and it was to promote this scheme
that he sent his queen, Elizabeth of Valois, to meet her mother at Bayonne.
In 1568 Elizabeth died; and a rumour came to Catherine touching the
manner of her death which made it hard to listen to friendly overtures from
her husband. Antonio Perez, at that time an unscrupulous instrument of his
master's will, afterwards accused him of having poisoned his wife. "On
parle fort sinistrement de sa mort, pour avoir été advancée," says Brantôme.
After the massacre of the Protestants, the ambassador at Venice, a man
distinguished as a jurist and a statesman, reproached Catherine with having
thrown France into the hands of him in whom the world recognised her
daughter's murderer. Catherine did not deny the truth of the report. She
replied that she was "bound to think of her sons in preference to her
daughters, that the foul-play was not fully proved, and that if it were it
could not be avenged so long as France was weakened by religious
discord."[9] She wrote as she could not have written if she had been
convinced that the suspicion was unjust.
When Charles IX. began to be his own master he seemed resolved to follow
his father and grandfather in their hostility to the Spanish Power. He wrote
to a trusted servant that all his thoughts were bent on thwarting Philip.[10]
While the Christian navies were fighting at Lepanto, the King of France
was treating with the Turks. His menacing attitude in the following year
kept Don Juan in Sicilian waters, and made his victory barren for
Christendom. Encouraged by French protection, Venice withdrew from the
League. Even in Corsica there was a movement which men interpreted as a

prelude to the storm that France was raising against the empire of Spain.
Rome trembled in expectation of a Huguenot invasion of Italy; for Charles
was active in conciliating the Protestants both abroad and at home. He
married a daughter of the tolerant Emperor Maximilian II.; and he carried
on negotiations for the marriage of his brother with Queen Elizabeth, not
with any hope of success, but in order to impress public opinion.[11] He
made treaties of alliance, in quick succession, with England, with the
German Protestants, and with the Prince of Orange. He determined that his
brother Anjou, the champion of the Catholics, of whom it was said that he
had vowed to root out the Protestants to a man,[12] should be banished to the
throne of Poland. Disregarding the threats and entreaties of the Pope, he
gave his sister in marriage to Navarre. By the peace of St. Germains the
Huguenots had secured, within certain limits, freedom from persecution and
the liberty of persecuting; so that Pius V. declared that France had been
made the slave of heretics. Coligny was now the most powerful man in the
kingdom. His scheme for closing the civil wars by an expedition for the
conquest of the Netherlands began to be put in motion. French auxiliaries
followed Lewis of Nassau into Mons; an army of Huguenots had already
gone to his assistance; another was being collected near the frontier, and
Coligny was preparing to take the command in a war which might become a
Protestant crusade, and which left the Catholics no hope of victory.
Meanwhile many hundreds of his officers followed him to Paris, to attend
the wedding which was to reconcile the factions, and cement the peace of
religion.
In the midst of those lofty designs and hopes, Coligny was struck down. On
the morning of the 22nd of August he was shot at and badly wounded. Two
days later he was killed; and a general attack was made on the Huguenots of
Paris. It lasted some weeks, and was imitated in about twenty places. The
chief provincial towns of France were among them.
Judged by its immediate result, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a
measure weakly planned and irresolutely executed, which deprived
Protestantism of its political leaders, and left it for a time to the control of
zealots. There is no evidence to make it probable that more than seven
thousand victims perished. Judged by later events, it was the beginning of a
vast change in the conflict of the churches. At first it was believed that a
hundred thousand Huguenots had fallen. It was said that the survivors were

abjuring by thousands,[13] that the children of the slain were made
Catholics, that those whom the priest had admitted to absolution and
communion were nevertheless put to death.[14] Men who were far beyond
the reach of the French Government lost their faith in a religion which
Providence had visited with so tremendous a judgment;[15] and foreign
princes took heart to employ severities which could excite no horror after
the scenes in France.
Contemporaries were persuaded that the Huguenots had been flattered and
their policy adopted only for their destruction, and that the murder of
Coligny and his followers was a long premeditated crime. Catholics and
Protestants vied with each other in detecting proofs of that which they
variously esteemed a sign of supernatural inspiration or of diabolical
depravity. In the last forty years a different opinion has prevailed. It has
been deemed more probable, more consistent with testimony and with the
position of affairs at the time, that Coligny succeeded in acquiring
extraordinary influence over the mind of Charles, that his advice really
predominated, and that the sanguinary resolution was suddenly embraced
by his adversaries as the last means of regaining power. This opinion is
made plausible by many facts. It is supported by several writers who were
then living, and by the document known as the Confession of Anjou. The
best authorities of the present day are nearly unanimous in rejecting
premeditation.
The evidence on the opposite side is stronger than they suppose. The doom
which awaited the Huguenots had been long expected and often foretold.
People at a distance, Monluc in Languedoc, and the Protestant Mylius in
Italy, drew the same inference from the news that came from the court.
Strangers meeting on the road discussed the infatuation of the Admiral.[16]
Letters brought from Rome to the Emperor the significant intimation that
the birds were all caged, and now was the time to lay hands on them.[17]
Duplessis-Mornay, the future chief of the Huguenots, was so much
oppressed with a sense of coming evil, that he hardly ventured into the
streets on the wedding-day. He warned the Admiral of the general belief
among their friends that the marriage concealed a plot for their ruin, and
that the festivities would end in some horrible surprise.[18] Coligny was
proof against suspicion. Several of his followers left Paris, but he remained

unmoved. At one moment the excessive readiness to grant all his requests
shook the confidence of his son-in-law Téligny; but the doubt vanished so
completely that Téligny himself prevented the flight of his partisans after
the attempt on the Admiral's life. On the morning of the fatal day,
Montgomery sent word to Walsingham that Coligny was safe under
protection of the King's Guards, and that no further stir was to be
apprehended.[19]
For many years foreign advisers had urged Catherine to make away with
these men. At first it was computed that half a dozen victims would be
enough.[20] That was the original estimate of Alva, at Bayonne.[21] When
the Duke of Ferrara was in France, in 1564, he proposed a larger measure,
and he repeated this advice by the mouth of every agent whom he sent to
France.[22] After the event, both Alva and Alfonso reminded Catherine that
she had done no more than follow their advice.[23] Alva's letter explicitly
confirms the popular notion which connects the massacre with the
conference of Bayonne; and it can no longer now be doubted that La
Roche-sur-Yon, on his deathbed, informed Coligny that murderous
resolutions had been taken on that occasion.[24] But the Nuncio, Santa
Croce, who was present, wrote to Cardinal Borromeo that the Queen had
indeed promised to punish the infraction of the Edict of Pacification, but
that this was a very different thing from undertaking to extirpate heresy.
Catherine affirmed that in this way the law could reach all the Huguenot
ministers; and Alva professed to believe her.[25] Whatever studied
ambiguity of language she may have used, the action of 1572 was
uninfluenced by deliberations which were seven years old.
During the spring and summer the Tuscan agents diligently prepared their
master for what was to come. Petrucci wrote on the 19th of March that, for
a reason which he could not trust to paper, the marriage would certainly
take place, though not until the Huguenots had delivered up their
strongholds. Four weeks later Alamanni announced that the Queen's pious
design for restoring unity of faith would, by the grace of God, be speedily
accomplished. On the 9th of August Petrucci was able to report that the plan
arranged at Bayonne was near execution.[26] Yet he was not fully initiated.
The Queen afterwards assured him that she had confided the secret to no
foreign resident except the Nuncio,[27] and Petrucci resentfully complains

that she had also consulted the Ambassador of Savoy. Venice, like Florence
and Savoy, was not taken by surprise. In February the ambassador Contarini
explained to the Senate the specious tranquillity in France, by saying that
the Government reckoned on the death of the Admiral or the Queen of
Navarre to work a momentous change.[28] Cavalli, his successor, judged
that a business so grossly mismanaged showed no signs of deliberation.[29]
There was another Venetian at Paris who was better informed. The Republic
was seeking to withdraw from the league against the Turks; and her most
illustrious statesman, Giovanni Michiel, was sent to solicit the help of
France in negotiating peace.[30] The account which he gave of his mission
has been pronounced by a consummate judge of Venetian State-Papers the
most valuable report of the sixteenth century.[31] He was admitted almost
daily to secret conference with Anjou, Nevers, and the group of Italians on
whom the chief odium rests; and there was no counsellor to whom
Catherine more willingly gave ear.[32] Michiel affirms that the intention had
been long entertained, and that the Nuncio had been directed to reveal it
privately to Pius V.[33]
Salviati was related to Catherine, and had gained her good opinion as
Nuncio in the year 1570. The Pope had sent him back because nobody
seemed more capable of diverting her and her son from the policy which
caused so much uneasiness at Rome.[34] He died many years later, with the
reputation of having been one of the most eminent Cardinals at a time when
the Sacred College was unusually rich in talent. Personally, he had always
favoured stern measures of repression. When the Countess of Entremont
was married to Coligny, Salviati declared that she had made herself liable to
severe penalties by entertaining proposals of marriage with so notorious a
heretic, and demanded that the Duke of Savoy should, by all the means in
his power, cause that wicked bride to be put out of the way.[35] When the
peace of St. Germains was concluded, he assured Charles and Catherine
that their lives were in danger, as the Huguenots were seeking to pull down
the throne as well as the altar. He believed that all intercourse with them
was sinful, and that the sole remedy was utter extermination by the sword.
"I am convinced," he wrote, "that it will come to this." "If they do the tenth
part of what I have advised, it will be well for them."[36] After an audience
of two hours, at which he had presented a letter from Pius V., prophesying

the wrath of Heaven, Salviati perceived that his exhortations made some
impression. The King and Queen whispered to him that they hoped to make
the peace yield such fruit that the end would more than countervail the
badness of the beginning; and the King added, in strict confidence, that his
plan was one which, once told, could never be executed.[37] This might have
been said to delude the Nuncio; but he was inclined on the whole to believe
that it was sincerely meant. The impression was confirmed by the
Archbishop of Sens, Cardinal Pellevé, who informed him that the Huguenot
leaders were caressed at Court in order to detach them from their party, and
that after the loss of their leaders it would not take more than three days to
deal with the rest.[38] Salviati on his return to France was made aware that
his long-deferred hopes were about to be fulfilled. He shadowed it forth
obscurely in his despatches. He reported that the Queen allowed the
Huguenots to pass into Flanders, believing that the admiral would become
more and more presumptuous until he gave her an opportunity of
retribution; for she excelled in that kind of intrigue. Some days later he
knew more, and wrote that he hoped soon to have good news for his
Holiness.[39] At the last moment his heart misgave him. On the morning of
the 21st of August the Duke of Montpensier and the Cardinal of Bourbon
spoke with so much unconcern, in his presence, of what was then so near,
that he thought it hardly possible the secret could be kept.[40]
The foremost of the French prelates was the Cardinal of Lorraine. He had
held a prominent position at the council of Trent; and for many years he had
wielded the influence of the House of Guise over the Catholics of France.
In May 1572 he went to Rome; and he was still there when the news came
from Paris in September. He at once made it known that the resolution had
been taken before he left France, and that it was due to himself and his
nephew, the Duke of Guise.[41] As the spokesman of the Gallican Church in
the following year he delivered a harangue to Charles IX., in which he
declared that Charles had eclipsed the glory of preceding kings by slaying
the false prophets, and especially by the holy deceit and pious dissimulation
with which he had laid his plans.[42]
There was one man who did not get his knowledge from rumour, and who
could not be deceived by lies. The King's confessor, Sorbin, afterwards
Bishop of Nevers, published in 1574 a narrative of the life and death of

Charles IX. He bears unequivocal testimony that that clement and
magnanimous act, for so he terms it, was resolved upon beforehand, and he
praises the secrecy as well as the justice of his hero.[43]
Early in the year a mission of extraordinary solemnity had appeared in
France. Pius V., who was seriously alarmed at the conduct of Charles, had
sent the Cardinal of Alessandria as Legate to the Kings of Spain and
Portugal, and directed him, in returning, to visit the Court at Blois. The
Legate was nephew to the Pope, and the man whom he most entirely
trusted.[44] His character stood so high that the reproach of nepotism was
never raised by his promotion. Several prelates destined to future eminence
attended him. His chief adviser was Hippolyto Aldobrandini, who, twenty
years later, ascended the papal chair as Clement VIII. The companion
whose presence conferred the greatest lustre on the mission was the general
of the Jesuits, Francis Borgia, the holiest of the successors of Ignatius, and
the most venerated of men then living. Austerities had brought him to the
last stage of weakness; and he was sinking under the malady of which he
was soon to die. But it was believed that the words of such a man, pleading
for the Church, would sway the mind of the King. The ostensible purpose of
the Legate's journey was to break off the match with Navarre, and to bring
France into the Holy League. He gained neither object. When he was
summoned back to Rome it was understood in France that he had reaped
nothing but refusals, and that he went away disappointed.[45] The jeers of
the Protestants pursued him.[46] But it was sufficiently certain beforehand
that France could not plunge into a Turkish war.[47] The real business of the
Legate, besides proposing a Catholic husband for the Princess, was to
ascertain the object of the expedition which was fitting out in the Western
ports. On both points he had something favourable to report. In his last
despatch, dated Lyons, the 6th of March, he wrote that he had failed to
prevent the engagement with Navarre, but that he had something for the
Pope's private ear, which made his journey not altogether unprofitable.[48]
The secret was soon divulged in Italy. The King had met the earnest
remonstrances of the Legate by assuring him that the marriage afforded the
only prospect of wreaking vengeance on the Huguenots: the event would
show; he could say no more, but desired his promise to be carried to the
Pope. It was added that he had presented a ring to the Legate, as a pledge of
sincerity, which the Legate refused. The first to publish this story was

Capilupi, writing only seven months later. It was repeated by Folieta,[49]
and is given with all details by the historians of Pius V.—Catena and
Gabuzzi. Catena was secretary to the Cardinal of Alessandria as early as
July 1572, and submitted his work to him before publication.[50] Gabuzzi
wrote at the instance of the same Cardinal, who supplied him with
materials; and his book was examined and approved by Borghese,
afterwards Paul V. Both the Cardinal of Alessandria and Paul V., therefore,
were instrumental in causing it to be proclaimed that the Legate was
acquainted in February 1572 with the intention which the King carried out
in August.
The testimony of Aldobrandini was given still more distinctly, and with
greater definiteness and authority. When he was required, as Pope, to
pronounce upon the dissolution of the ill-omened marriage, he related to
Borghese and other Cardinals what had passed in that interview between the
Legate and the King, adding that, when the report of the massacre reached
Rome, the Cardinal exclaimed: "God be praised! the King of France has
kept his word." Clement referred D'Ossat to a narrative of the journey
which he had written himself, and in which those things would be found.[51]
The clue thus given has been unaccountably neglected, although the Report
was known to exist. One copy is mentioned by Giorgi; and Mazzuchelli
knew of another. Neither of them had read it; for they both ascribe it to
Michele Bonelli, the Cardinal of Alessandria. The first page would have
satisfied them that it was not his work. Clement VIII. describes the result of
the mission to Blois in these words: "Quae rationes eo impulerunt regem ut
semel apprehensa manu Cardinalis in hanc vocem proruperit: Significate
Pontifici illumque certum reddite me totum hoc quod circa id matrimonium
feci et facturus sum, nulla alia de causa facere, quam ulciscendi inimicos
Dei et hujus regni, et puniendi tam infidos rebelles, ut eventus ipse docebit,
nec aliud vobis amplius significare possum. Quo non obstante semper
Cardinalis eas subtexuit difficultates quas potuit, objiciens regi possetne
contrahi matrimonium a fidele cum infidele, sitve dispensatio necessaria;
quod si est nunquam Pontificem inductum iri ut illam concedat. Re ipsa ita
in suspenso relicta discedendum esse putavit, cum jam rescivisset qua de
causa naves parabantur, qui apparatus contra Rocellam tendebant."

The opinion that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a sudden and
unpremeditated act cannot be maintained; but it does not follow that the
only alternative is to believe that it was the aim of every measure of the
Government for two years before. Catherine had long contemplated it as her
last expedient in extremity; but she had decided that she could not resort to
it while her son was virtually a minor.[52] She suggested the idea to him in
1570. In that year he gave orders that the Huguenots should be slaughtered
at Bourges. The letter is preserved in which La Chastre spurned the
command: "If the people of Bourges learn that your Majesty takes pleasure
in such tragedies, they will repeat them often. If these men must die, let
them first be tried; but do not reward my services and sully my reputation
by such a stain."[53]
In the autumn of 1571 Coligny came to Blois. Walsingham suspected, and
was afterwards convinced that the intention to kill him already existed. The
Pope was much displeased by his presence at Court; but he received
assurances from the ambassador which satisfied him. It was said at the time
that he at first believed that Coligny was to be murdered, but that he soon
found that there was no such praiseworthy design.[54]
In December the King knew that, when the moment came, the burghers of
Paris would not fail him. Marcel, the Prévôt des Marchands, told him that
the wealth was driven out of the country by the Huguenots: "The Catholics
will bear it no longer.... Let your Majesty look to it. Your crown is at stake,
Paris alone can save it."[55] By the month of February 1572 the plan had
assumed a practical shape. The political idea before the mind of Charles
was the same by which Richelieu afterwards made France the first Power in
the world; to repress the Protestants at home, and to encourage them
abroad. No means of effectual repression was left but murder. But the idea
of raising up enemies to Spain by means of Protestantism was thoroughly
understood. The Huguenots were allowed to make an expedition to aid
William of Orange. Had they gained some substantial success, the
Government would have followed it up, and the scheme of Coligny would
have become for the moment the policy of France. But the Huguenot
commander Genlis was defeated and taken. Coligny had had his chance. He
had played and lost. It was useless now to propose his great venture against
the King of Spain.[56]

Philip II. perfectly understood that this event was decisive. When the news
came from Hainaut, he sent to the Nuncio Castagna to say that the King of
France would gain more than himself by the loss of so many brave
Protestants, and that the time was come for him, with the aid of the people
of Paris, to get rid of Coligny and the rest of his enemies.[57] It appears from
the letters of Salviati that he also regarded the resolution as having been
finally taken after the defeat of Genlis.
The Court had determined to enforce unity of faith in France. An edict of
toleration was issued for the purpose of lulling the Huguenots; but it was
well known that it was only a pretence.[58] Strict injunctions were sent into
the provinces that it should not be obeyed;[59] and Catherine said openly to
the English envoy, "My son will have exercise but of one Religion in his
Realm." On the 26th the King explained his plan to Mondoucet, his agent at
Brussels: "Since it has pleased God to bring matters to the point they have
now reached, I mean to use the opportunity to secure a perpetual repose in
my kingdom, and to do something for the good of all Christendom. It is
probable that the conflagration will spread to every town in France, and that
they will follow the example of Paris, and lay hands on all the Protestants....
I have written to the governors to assemble forces in order to cut to pieces
those who may resist."[60] The great object was to accomplish the
extirpation of Protestantism in such a way as might leave intact the
friendship with Protestant States. Every step was governed by this
consideration; and the difficulty of the task caused the inconsistencies and
the vacillation that ensued. By assassinating Coligny alone it was expected
that such an agitation would be provoked among his partisans as would
make it appear that they were killed by the Catholics in self-defence.
Reports were circulated at once with that object. A letter written on the 23rd
states that, after the Admiral was wounded on the day before, the
Huguenots assembled at the gate of the Louvre, to avenge him on the
Guises as they came out.[61] And the first explanation sent forth by the
Government on the 24th was to the effect that the old feud between the
Houses of Guise and of Châtillon had broken out with a fury which it was
impossible to quell. This fable lasted only for a single day. On the 25th
Charles writes that he has begun to discover traces of a Huguenot
conspiracy;[62] and on the following day this was publicly substituted for
the original story. Neither the vendetta of the Guises nor the conspiracy at

Paris could be made to explain the massacre in the provinces. It required to
be so managed that the King could disown it; Salviati describes the plan of
operations. It was intended that the Huguenots should be slaughtered
successively by a series of spontaneous outbreaks in different parts of the
country. While Rochelle held out, it was dangerous to proceed with a more
sweeping method.[63] Accordingly, no written instructions from the King
are in existence; and the governors were expressly informed that they were
to expect none.[64] Messengers went into the provinces with letters
requiring that the verbal orders which they brought should be obeyed.[65]
Many governors refused to act upon directions so vague and so hard to
verify. Burgundy was preserved in this way. Two gentlemen arrived with
letters of recommendation from the King, and declared his commands. They
were asked to put them on paper; but they refused to give in writing what
they had received by word of mouth. Mandelot, the Governor of Lyons, the
most ignoble of the instruments in this foul deed, complained that the
intimation of the royal wishes sent to him was obscure and insufficient.[66]
He did not do his work thoroughly, and incurred the displeasure of the
King. The orders were complicated as well as obscure. The public
authorities were required to collect the Huguenots in some prison or other
safe place, where they could be got at by hired bands of volunteer assassins.
To screen the King it was desirable that his officers should not superintend
the work themselves. Mandelot, having locked the gates of Lyons, and shut
up the Huguenots together, took himself out of the way while they were
being butchered. Carouge, at Rouen, received a commission to visit the
other towns in his province. The magistrates implored him to remain, as
nobody, in his absence, could restrain the people. When the King had twice
repeated his commands, Carouge obeyed; and five hundred Huguenots
perished.[67]
It was thought unsafe even for the King's brother to give distinct orders
under his own hand. He wrote to his lieutenant in Anjou that he had
commissioned Puygaillard to communicate with him on a matter which
concerned the King's service and his own, and desired that his orders should
be received as if they came directly from himself. They were, that every
Huguenot in Angers, Saumur, and the adjoining country should be put to
death without delay and without exception.[68] The Duke of Montpensier

himself sent the same order to Brittany; but it was indignantly rejected by
the municipality of Nantes.
When reports came in of the manner in which the event had been received
in foreign countries, the Government began to waver, and the sanguinary
orders were recalled. Schomberg wrote from Germany that the Protestant
allies were lost unless they could be satisfied that the King had not decreed
the extermination of their brethren.[69] He was instructed to explain the
tumult in the provinces by the animosity bequeathed by the wars of religion.
[70]
The Bishop of Valence was intriguing in Poland on behalf of Anjou. He
wrote that his success had been made very doubtful, and that, if further
cruelties were perpetrated, ten millions of gold pieces would not bribe the
venal Poles. He advised that a counterfeit edict, at least, should be
published.[71] Charles perceived that he would be compelled to abandon his
enterprise, and set about appeasing the resentment of the Protestant Powers.
He promised that an inquiry should be instituted, and the proofs of the
conspiracy communicated to foreign Governments. To give a judicial aspect
to the proceedings, two prominent Huguenots were ceremoniously hanged.
When the new ambassador from Spain praised the long concealment of the
plan, Charles became indignant.[72] It was repeated everywhere that the
thing had been arranged with Rome and Spain; and he was especially
studious that there should be no symptoms of a private understanding with
either power.[73] He was able to flatter himself that he had at least partially
succeeded. If he had not exterminated his Protestant subjects, he had
preserved his Protestant allies. William the Silent continued to solicit his
aid; Elizabeth consented to stand godmother to the daughter who was born
to him in October; he was allowed to raise mercenaries in Switzerland; and
the Polish Protestants agreed to the election of his brother. The promised
evidence of the Huguenot conspiracy was forgotten; and the King
suppressed the materials which were to have served for an official history of
the event.[74]
Zeal for religion was not the motive which inspired the chief authors of this
extraordinary crime. They were trained to look on the safety of the
monarchy as the sovereign law, and on the throne as an idol that justified
sins committed in its worship. At all times there have been men, resolute
and relentless in the pursuit of their aims, whose ardour was too strong to be

restricted by moral barriers or the instinct of humanity. In the sixteenth
century, beside the fanaticism of freedom, there was an abject idolatry of
power; and laws both human and divine were made to yield to the
intoxication of authority and the reign of will. It was laid down that kings
have the right of disposing of the lives of their subjects, and may dispense
with the forms of justice. The Church herself, whose supreme pontiff was
now an absolute monarch, was infected with this superstition. Catholic
writers found an opportune argument for their religion in the assertion that
it makes the prince master of the consciences as well as the bodies of the
people, and enjoins submission even to the vilest tyranny.[75] Men whose
lives were precious to the Catholic cause could be murdered by royal
command, without protest from Rome. When the Duke of Guise, with the
Cardinal his brother, was slain by Henry III., he was the most powerful and
devoted upholder of Catholicism in France. Sixtus V. thundered against the
sacrilegious tyrant who was stained with the blood of a prince of the
Church; but he let it be known very distinctly that the death of the Duke
caused him little concern.[76]
Catherine was the daughter of that Medici to whom Machiavelli had
dedicated his Prince. So little did religion actuate her conduct that she
challenged Elizabeth to do to the Catholics of England what she herself had
done to the Protestants of France, promising that if they were destroyed
there would be no loss of her good will.[77] The levity of her religious
feelings appears from her reply when asked by Gomicourt what message he
should take to the Duke of Alva: "I must give you the answer of Christ to
the disciples of St. John, 'Ite et nuntiate quae vidistis et audivistis; caeci
vident, claudi ambulant, leprosi mundantur.'" And she added, "Beatus qui
non fuerit in me scandalizatus."[78]
If mere fanaticism had been their motive, the men who were most active in
the massacre would not have spared so many lives. While Guise was
galloping after Ferrières and Montgomery, who had taken horse betimes,
and made for the coast, his house at Paris was crowded with families
belonging to the proscribed faith, and strangers to him. A young girl who
was amongst them has described his return, when he sent for the children,
spoke to them kindly, and gave orders that they should be well treated as
long as his roof sheltered them.[79] Protestants even spoke of him as a

humane and chivalrous enemy.[80] Nevers was considered to have disgraced
himself by the number of those whom he enabled to escape.[81] The Nuncio
was shocked at their ill-timed generosity. He reported to Rome that the only
one who had acted in the spirit of a Christian, and had refrained from
mercy, was the King; while the other princes, who pretended to be good
Catholics, and to deserve the favour of the Pope, had striven, one and all, to
save as many Huguenots as they could.[82]
The worst criminals were not the men who did the deed. The crime of mobs
and courtiers, infuriated by the lust of vengeance and of power, is not so
strange a portent as the exultation of peaceful men, influenced by no present
injury or momentary rage, but by the permanent and incurable perversion of
moral sense wrought by a distorted piety.
Philip II., who had long suspected the court of France, was at once relieved
from the dread which had oppressed him, and betrayed an excess of joy
foreign to his phlegmatic nature.[83] He immediately sent six thousand
crowns to the murderer of Coligny.[84] He persuaded himself that the breach
between France and her allies was irreparable, that Charles would now be
driven to seek his friendship, and that the Netherlands were out of danger.
[85]
He listened readily to the French ambassador, who assured him that his
court had never swerved from the line of Catholic policy, but had intended
all along to effect this great change.[86] Ayamonte carried his
congratulations to Paris, and pretended that his master had been in the
secret. It suited Philip that this should be believed by Protestant princes, in
order to estrange them still more from France; but he wrote on the margin
of Ayamonte's instructions, that it was uncertain how long previously the
purpose had subsisted.[87] Juan and Diego de Zuñiga, his ambassadors at
Rome and at Paris, were convinced that the long display of enmity to Spain
was genuine, that the death of Coligny had been decided at the last moment,
and that the rest was not the effect of design.[88] This opinion found friends
at first in Spain. The General of the Franciscans undertook to explode it. He
assured Philip that he had seen the King and the Queen-mother two years
before, and had found them already so intent on the massacre that he
wondered how anybody could have the courage to detract from their merit
by denying it.[89] This view generally prevailed in Spain. Mendoça knows
not which to admire more, the loyal and Catholic inhabitants of Paris, or

Charles, who justified his title of the most Christian King by helping with
his own hands to slaughter his subjects.[90] Mariana witnessed the carnage,
and imagined that it must gladden every Catholic heart. Other Spaniards
were gratified to think that it had been contrived with Alva at Bayonne.
Alva himself did not judge the event by the same light as Philip. He also
had distrusted the French Government; but he had not feared it during the
ascendency of the Huguenots. Their fall appeared to him to strengthen
France. In public he rejoiced with the rest. He complimented Charles on his
valour and his religion, and claimed his own share of merit. But he warned
Philip that things had not changed favourably for Spain, and that the King
of France was now a formidable neighbour.[91] For himself, he said, he
never would have committed so base a deed.
The seven Catholic Cantons had their own reason for congratulation. Their
countrymen had been busy actors on the scene; and three soldiers of the
Swiss guard of Anjou were named as the slayers of the Admiral.[92] On the
2nd of October they agreed to raise 6000 men for the King's service. At the
following Diet they demanded the expulsion of the fugitive Huguenots who
had taken refuge in the Protestant parts of the Confederation. They made
overtures to the Pope for a secret alliance against their Confederates.[93]
In Italy, where the life of a heretic was cheap, their wholesale destruction
was confessed a highly politic and ingenious act. Even the sage Venetians
were constrained to celebrate it with a procession. The Grand Duke Cosmo
had pointed out two years before that an insidious peace would afford
excellent opportunities of extinguishing Protestantism; and he derived
inexpressible consolation from the heroic enterprise.[94] The Viceroy of
Naples, Cardinal Granvelle, received the tidings coldly. He was surprised
that the event had been so long postponed, and he reproved the Cardinal of
Lorraine for the unstatesmanlike delay.[95] The Italians generally were
excited to warmer feelings. They saw nothing to regret but the death of
certain Catholics who had been sacrificed to private revenge. Profane men
approved the skill with which the trap was laid; and pious men
acknowledged the presence of a genuine religious spirit in the French court.
[96]
The nobles and the Parisian populace were admired for their valour in
obeying the sanctified commands of the good King. One fervent enthusiast

praises God for the heavenly news, and also St. Bartholomew for having
lent his extremely penetrating knife for the salutary sacrifice.[97] A month
after the event the renowned preacher Panigarola delivered from the pulpit a
panegyric on the monarch who had achieved what none had ever heard or
read before, by banishing heresy in a single day, and by a single word, from
the Christian land of France.[98]
The French churches had often resounded with furious declamations; and
they afterwards rang with canticles of unholy joy. But the French clergy
does not figure prominently in the inception or the execution of the
sanguinary decree. Conti, a contemporary indeed, but too distant for
accurate knowledge, relates that the parish priest went round, marking with
a white cross the dwellings of the people who were doomed.[99] He is
contradicted by the municipal Registers of Paris.[100] Morvilliers, Bishop of
Orleans, though he had resigned the seals which he received from
L'Hôpital, still occupied the first place at the royal council. He was
consulted at the last moment, and it is said that he nearly fainted with
horror. He recovered, and gave his opinion with the rest. He is the only
French prelate, except the cardinals, whose complicity appears to be
ascertained. But at Orleans, where the bloodshed was more dreadful in
proportion than at Paris, the signal is said to have been given, not by the
bishop, but by the King's preacher, Sorbin.
Sorbin is the only priest of the capital who is distinctly associated with the
act of the Government. It was his opinion that God has ordained that no
mercy shall be shown to heretics, that Charles was bound in conscience to
do what he did, and that leniency would have been as censurable in his case
as precipitation was in that of Theodosius. What the Calvinists called
perfidy and cruelty seemed to him nothing but generosity and kindness.[101]
These were the sentiments of the man from whose hands Charles IX.
received the last consolations of his religion. It has been related that he was
tortured in his last moments with remorse for the blood he had shed. His
spiritual adviser was fitted to dispel such scruples. He tells us that he heard
the last confession of the dying King, and that his most grievous sorrow
was that he left the work unfinished.[102] In all that bloodstained history
there is nothing more tragic than the scene in which the last words

preparing the soul for judgment were spoken by such a confessor as Sorbin
to such a penitent as Charles.
Edmond Auger, one of the most able and eloquent of the Jesuits, was at that
time attracting multitudes by his sermons at Bordeaux. He denounced with
so much violence the heretics and the people in authority who protected
them, that the magistrates, fearing a cry for blood, proposed to silence or to
moderate the preacher. Montpezat, Lieutenant of Guienne, arrived in time to
prevent it. On the 30th of September he wrote to the King that he had done
this, and that there were a score of the inhabitants who might be despatched
with advantage. Three days later, when he was gone, more than two
hundred Huguenots were murdered.[103]
Apart from these two instances it is not known that the clergy interfered in
any part of France to encourage the assassins.
The belief was common at the time, and is not yet extinct, that the massacre
had been promoted and sanctioned by the Court of Rome. No evidence of
this complicity, prior to the event, has ever been produced; but it seemed
consistent with what was supposed to have occurred in the affair of the
dispensation. The marriage of Margaret of Valois with the King of Navarre
was invalid and illicit in the eyes of the Church; and it was known that Pius
V. had sworn that he would never permit it. When it had been celebrated by
a Cardinal, in the presence of a splendid court, and no more was heard of
resistance on the part of Rome, the world concluded that the dispensation
had been obtained. De Thou says, in a manuscript note, that it had been
sent, and was afterwards suppressed by Salviati; and the French bishop,
Spondanus, assigns the reasons which induced Gregory XIII. to give way.
[104]
Others affirmed that he had yielded when he learned that the marriage
was a snare, so that the massacre was the price of the dispensation.[105] The
Cardinal of Lorraine gave currency to the story. As he caused it to be
understood that he had been in the secret, it seemed probable that he had
told the Pope; for they had been old friends.[106] In the commemorative
inscription which he put up in the Church of St. Lewis he spoke of the
King's gratitude to the Holy See for its assistance and for its advice in the
matter—"consiliorum ad eam rem datorum." It is probable that he inspired
the narrative which has contributed most to sustain the imputation.

Among the Italians of the French faction who made it their duty to glorify
the act of Charles IX., the Capilupi family was conspicuous. They came
from Mantua, and appear to have been connected with the French interest
through Lewis Gonzaga, who had become by marriage Duke of Nevers, and
one of the foremost personages in France. Hippolyto Capilupi, Bishop of
Fano, and formerly Nuncio at Venice, resided at Rome, busy with French
politics and Latin poetry. When Charles refused to join the League, the
Bishop of Fano vindicated his neutrality in a letter to the Duke of Urbino.
[107]
When he slew the Huguenots, the Bishop addressed him in verse,—
Fortunate puer, paret cui Gallica tellus,
Quique vafros ludis pervigil arte viros,
Ille tibi debet, toti qui praesidet Orbi,
Cui nihil est cordi religione prius....

Qui tibi saepe dolos struxit, qui vincla paravit,
Tu puer in laqueos induis arte senem....

Nunc florent, tolluntque caput tua lilia, et astris
Clarius hostili tincta cruore micant.[108]
Camillo Capilupi, a nephew of the Mantuan bard, held office about the
person of the Pope, and was employed on missions of consequence.[109] As
soon as the news from Paris reached Rome he drew up the account which
became so famous under the title of Lo Stratagemma di Carlo IX. The
dedication is dated the 18th of September 1572.[110] This tract was
suppressed, and was soon so rare that its existence was unknown in 1574 to
the French translator of the second edition. Capilupi republished his book
with alterations, and a preface dated the 22nd of October. The substance and
purpose of the two editions is the same. Capilupi is not the official organ of
the Roman court: he was not allowed to see the letters of the Nuncio. He
wrote to proclaim the praises of the King of France and the Duke of Nevers.
At that moment the French party in Rome was divided by the quarrel
between the ambassador Ferralz and the Cardinal of Lorraine, who had
contrived to get the management of French affairs into his own hands.[111]
Capilupi was on the side of the Cardinal, and received information from
those who were about him. The chief anxiety of these men was that the

official version which attributed the massacre to a Huguenot conspiracy
should obtain no credence at Rome. If the Cardinal's enemies were
overthrown without his participation, it would confirm the report that he
had become a cipher in the State. He desired to vindicate for himself and his
family the authorship of the catastrophe. Catherine could not tolerate their
claim to a merit which she had made her own; and there was competition
between them for the first and largest share in the gratitude of the Holy See.
Lorraine prevailed with the Pope, who not only loaded him with honours,
but rewarded him with benefices worth 4000 crowns a year for his nephew,
and a gift of 20,000 crowns for his son. But he found that he had fallen into
disgrace at Paris, and feared for his position at Rome.[112] In these
circumstances Capilupi's book appeared, and enumerated a series of facts
proving that the Cardinal was cognisant of the royal design. It adds little to
the evidence of premeditation. Capilupi relates that Santa Croce, returning
from France, had assured Pius V., in the name of Catherine, that she
intended one day to entrap Coligny, and to make a signal butchery of him
and his adherents, and that letters in which the Queen renewed this promise
to the Pope had been read by credible witnesses. Santa Croce was living,
and did not contradict the statement. The Stratagemma had originally stated
that Lorraine had informed Sermoneta of the project soon after he arrived at
Rome. In the reprint this passage was omitted. The book had, therefore,
undergone a censorial revision, which enhances the authenticity of the final
narrative.
Two other pieces are extant, which were printed at the Stamperia Camerale,
and show what was believed at Rome. One is in the shape of a letter written
at Lyons in the midst of scenes of death, and describing what the author had
witnessed on the spot, and what he heard from Paris.[113] He reports that the
King had positively commanded that not one Huguenot should escape, and
was overjoyed at the accomplishment of his orders. He believes the thing to
have been premeditated, and inspired by Divine justice. The other tract is
remarkable because it strives to reconcile the pretended conspiracy with the
hypothesis of premeditation.[114] There were two plots which went parallel
for months. The King knew that Coligny was compassing his death, and
deceived him by feigning to enter into his plan for the invasion of the Low
Countries; and Coligny, allowing himself to be overreached, summoned his
friends to Paris, for the purpose of killing Charles, on the 23rd of August.

The writer expects that there will soon be no Huguenots in France. Capilupi
at first borrowed several of his facts, which he afterwards corrected.
The real particulars relative to the marriage are set forth minutely in the
correspondence of Ferralz; and they absolutely contradict the supposition of
the complicity of Rome.[115] It was celebrated in flagrant defiance of the
Pope, who persisted in refusing the dispensation, and therefore acted in a
way which could only serve to mar the plot. The accusation has been kept
alive by his conduct after the event. The Jesuit who wrote his life by desire
of his son, says that Gregory thanked God in private, but that in public he
gave signs of a tempered joy.[116] But the illuminations and processions, the
singing of Te Deum and the firing of the castle guns, the jubilee, the medal,
and the paintings whose faded colours still vividly preserve to our age the
passions of that day, nearly exhaust the modes by which a Pope could
manifest delight.
Charles IX. and Salviati both wrote to Rome on St. Bartholomew's Day;
and the ambassador's nephew, Beauville, set off with the tidings. They were
known before he arrived. On the 27th, Mandelot's secretary despatched a
secret messenger from Lyons with orders to inform the Pope that the
Huguenot leaders were slain, and that their adherents were to be secured all
over France. The messenger reached Rome on the 2nd of September, and
was immediately carried to the Pope by the Cardinal of Lorraine. Gregory
rewarded him for the welcome intelligence with a present of a hundred
crowns, and desired that Rome should be at once illuminated. This was
prevented by Ferralz, who tried the patience of the Romans by declining
their congratulations as long as he was not officially informed.[117]
Beauville and the courier of the Nuncio arrived on the 5th. The King's letter,
like all that he wrote on the first day, ascribed the outbreak to the old hatred
between the rival Houses, and to the late attempt on the Admiral's life. He
expressed a hope that the dispensation would not now be withheld, but left
all particulars to Beauville, whose own eyes had beheld the scene.[118]
Beauville told his story, and repeated the King's request; but Gregory,
though much gratified with what he heard, remained inflexible.[119]
Salviati had written on the afternoon of the 24th. He desired to fling himself
at the Pope's feet to wish him joy. His fondest hopes had been surpassed.
Although he had known what was in store for Coligny, he had not expected

that there would be energy and prudence to seize the occasion for the
destruction of the rest. A new era had commenced; a new compass was
required for French affairs. It was a fair sight to see the Catholics in the
streets wearing white crosses, and cutting down heretics; and it was thought
that, as fast as the news spread, the same thing would be done in all the
towns of France.[120] This letter was read before the assembled Cardinals at
the Venetian palace, and they thereupon attended the Pope to a Te Deum in
the nearest church.[121] The guns of St. Angelo were fired in the evening,
and the city was illuminated for three nights. To disregard the Pope's will in
this respect would have savoured of heresy. Gregory XIII. exclaimed that
the massacre was more agreeable to him than fifty victories of Lepanto. For
some weeks the news from the French provinces sustained the rapture and
excitement of the Court.[122] It was hoped that other countries would follow
the example of France; the Emperor was informed that something of the
same kind was expected of him.[123] On the 8th of September the Pope went
in procession to the French Church of St. Lewis, where three-and-thirty
Cardinals attended at a mass of thanksgiving. On the 11th he proclaimed a
jubilee. In the Bull he said that forasmuch as God had armed the King of
France to inflict vengeance on the heretics for the injuries done to religion,
and to punish the leaders of the rebellion which had devastated his
kingdom, Catholics should pray that he might have grace to pursue his
auspicious enterprise to the end, and so complete what he had begun so
well.[124] Before a month had passed Vasari was summoned from Florence
to decorate the hall of kings with paintings of the massacre.[125] The work
was pronounced his masterpiece; and the shameful scene may still be traced
upon the wall, where, for three centuries, it has insulted every pontiff that
entered the Sixtine Chapel.
The story that the Huguenots had perished because they were detected
plotting the King's death was known at Rome on the 6th of September.
While the sham edict and the imaginary trial served to confirm it in the eyes
of Europe, Catherine and her son took care that it should not deceive the
Pope. They assured him that they meant to disregard the edict. To excuse
his sister's marriage, the King pleaded that it had been concluded for no
object but vengeance; and he promised that there would soon be not a
heretic in the country.[126] This was corroborated by Salviati. As to the
proclaimed toleration, he knew that it was a device to disarm foreign

enmity, and prevent a popular commotion. He testified that the Queen spoke
truly when she said that she had confided to him, long before, the real
purpose of her daughter's engagement.[127] He exposed the hollow pretence
of the plot. He announced that its existence would be established by
formalities of law, but added that it was so notoriously false that none but
an idiot could believe in it.[128] Gregory gave no countenance to the official
falsehood. At the reception of the French ambassador, Rambouillet, on the
23rd of December, Muretus made his famous speech. He said that there
could not have been a happier beginning for a new pontificate, and alluded
to the fabulous plot in the tone exacted of French officials. The Secretary,
Boccapaduli, replying in behalf of the Pope, thanked the King for
destroying the enemies of Christ; but strictly avoided the conventional
fable.[129]
Cardinal Orsini went as Legate to France. He had been appointed in August,
and he was to try to turn the King's course into that line of policy from
which he had strayed under Protestant guidance. He had not left Rome
when the events occurred which altered the whole situation. Orsini was now
charged with felicitations, and was to urge Charles not to stop half-way.[130]
An ancient and obsolete ceremonial was suddenly revived; and the
Cardinals accompanied him to the Flaminian gate.[131] This journey of
Orsini, and the pomp with which it was surrounded, were exceedingly
unwelcome at Paris. It was likely to be taken as proof of that secret
understanding with Rome which threatened to rend the delicate web in
which Charles was striving to hold the confidence of the Protestant world.
[132]
He requested that the Legate might be recalled; and the Pope was
willing that there should be some delay. While Orsini tarried on his way,
Gregory's reply to the announcement of the massacre arrived at Paris. It was
a great consolation to himself, he said, and an extraordinary grace
vouchsafed to Christendom. But he desired, for the glory of God and the
good of France, that the Huguenots should be extirpated utterly; and with
that view he demanded the revocation of the edict. When Catherine knew
that the Pope was not yet satisfied, and sought to direct the actions of the
King, she could hardly restrain her rage. Salviati had never seen her so
furious. The words had hardly passed his lips when she exclaimed that she
wondered at such designs, and was resolved to tolerate no interference in
the government of the kingdom. She and her son were Catholics from

conviction, and not through fear or influence. Let the Pope content himself
with that.[133] The Nuncio had at once foreseen that the court, after crushing
the Huguenots, would not become more amenable to the counsels of Rome.
He wrote, on the very day of St. Bartholomew, that the King would be very
jealous of his authority, and would exact obedience from both sides alike.
At this untoward juncture Orsini appeared at Court. To Charles, who had
done so much, it seemed unreasonable that he should be asked for more. He
represented to Orsini that it was impossible to eradicate all the remnants of
a faction which had been so strong. He had put seventy thousand Huguenots
to the sword; and, if he had shown compassion to the rest, it was in order
that they might become good Catholics.[134]
The hidden thoughts which the Court of Rome betrayed by its conduct on
this memorable occasion have brought upon the Pope himself an amount of
hatred greater than he deserved. Gregory XIII. appears as a pale figure
between the two strongest of the modern Popes, without the intense zeal of
the one and the ruthless volition of the other. He was not prone to large
conceptions or violent resolutions. He had been converted late in life to the
spirit of the Tridentine Reformation; and when he showed rigour it was
thought to be not in his character, but in the counsels of those who
influenced him.[135] He did not instigate the crime, nor the atrocious
sentiments that hailed it. In the religious struggle a frenzy had been kindled
which made weakness violent, and turned good men into prodigies of
ferocity; and at Rome, where every loss inflicted on Catholicism and every
wound was felt, the belief that, in dealing with heretics, murder is better
than toleration prevailed for half a century. The predecessor of Gregory had
been Inquisitor-General. In his eyes Protestants were worse than Pagans,
and Lutherans more dangerous than other Protestants.[136] The Capuchin
preacher, Pistoja, bore witness that men were hanged and quartered almost
daily at Rome;[137] and Pius declared that he would release a culprit guilty
of a hundred murders rather than one obstinate heretic.[138] He seriously
contemplated razing the town of Faenza because it was infested with
religious error, and he recommended a similar expedient to the King of
France.[139] He adjured him to hold no intercourse with the Huguenots, to
make no terms with them, and not to observe the terms he had made. He
required that they should be pursued to the death, that not one should be

spared under any pretence, that all prisoners should suffer death.[140] He
threatened Charles with the punishment of Saul when he forebore to
exterminate the Amalekites.[141] He told him that it was his mission to
avenge the injuries of the Lord, and that nothing is more cruel than mercy to
the impious.[142] When he sanctioned the murder of Elizabeth he proposed
that it should be done in execution of his sentence against her.[143] It
became usual with those who meditated assassination or regicide on the
plea of religion to look upon the representatives of Rome as their natural
advisers. On the 21st of January 1591, a young Capuchin came, by
permission of his superiors, to Sega, Bishop of Piacenza, then Nuncio at
Paris. He said that he was inflamed with the desire of a martyr's death; and
having been assured by divines that it would be meritorious to kill that
heretic and tyrant, Henry of Navarre, he asked to be dispensed from the rule
of his Order while he prepared his measures and watched his opportunity.
The Nuncio would not do this without authority from Rome; but the
prudence, courage, and humility which he discerned in the friar made him
believe that the design was really inspired from above. To make this certain,
and to remove all scruples, he submitted the matter to the Pope, and asked
his blessing upon it, promising that whatever he decided should be executed
with all discretion.[144]
The same ideas pervaded the Sacred College under Gregory. There are
letters of profuse congratulation by the Cardinals of Lorraine, Este, and
Pellevé. Bourbon was an accomplice before the fact. Granvelle condemned
not the act but the delay. Delfino and Santorio approved. The Cardinal of
Alessandria had refused the King's gift at Blois, and had opposed his wishes
at the conclave. Circumstances were now so much altered that the ring was
offered to him again, and this time it was accepted.[145] The one dissentient
from the chorus of applause is said to have been Montalto. His conduct
when he became Pope makes it very improbable; and there is no good
authority for the story. But Leti has it, who is so far from a panegyrist that it
deserves mention.
The theory which was framed to justify these practices has done more than
plots and massacres to cast discredit on the Catholics. This theory was as
follows: Confirmed heretics must be rigorously punished whenever it can
be done without the probability of greater evil to religion. Where that is

feared, the penalty may be suspended or delayed for a season, provided it be
inflicted whenever the danger is past.[146] Treaties made with heretics, and
promises given to them must not be kept, because sinful promises do not
bind, and no agreement is lawful which may injure religion or ecclesiastical
authority. No civil power may enter into engagements which impede the
free scope of the Church's law.[147] It is part of the punishment of heretics
that faith shall not be kept with them.[148] It is even mercy to kill them that
they may sin no more.[149]
Such were the precepts and the examples by which the French Catholics
learned to confound piety and ferocity, and were made ready to immolate
their countrymen. During the civil war an association was formed in the
South for the purpose of making war upon the Huguenots; and it was
fortified by Pius V. with blessings and indulgences. "We doubt not," it
proclaimed, "that we shall be victorious over these enemies of God and of
all humankind; and if we fall, our blood will be as a second baptism, by
which, without impediment, we shall join the other martyrs straightway in
heaven."[150] Monluc, who told Alva at Bayonne that he had never spared
an enemy, was shot through the face at the siege of Rabasteins. Whilst he
believed that he was dying, they came to tell him that the place was taken.
"Thank God!" he said, "that I have lived long enough to behold our victory;
and now I care not for death. Go back, I beseech you, and give me a last
proof of friendship, by seeing that not one man of the garrison escapes
alive."[151] When Alva had defeated and captured Genlis, and expected to
make many more Huguenot prisoners in the garrison of Mons, Charles IX.
wrote to Mondoucet "that it would be for the service of God, and of the
King of Spain, that they should die. If the Duke of Alva answers that this is
a tacit request to have all the prisoners cut to pieces, you will tell him that
that is what he must do, and that he will injure both himself and all
Christendom if he fails to do it."[152] This request also reached Alva through
Spain. Philip wrote on the margin of the despatch that, if he had not yet put
them out of the world, he must do so immediately, as there could be no
reason for delay.[153] The same thought occurred to others. On the 22nd of
July Salviati writes that it would be a serious blow to the faction if Alva
would kill his prisoners; and Granvelle wrote that, as they were all
Huguenots, it would be well to throw them all into the river.[154]

Where these sentiments prevailed, Gregory XIII. was not alone in deploring
that the work had been but half done. After the first explosion of gratified
surprise men perceived that the thing was a failure, and began to call for
more. The clergy of Rouen Cathedral instituted a procession of
thanksgiving, and prayed that the King might continue what he had so
virtuously begun, until all France should profess one faith.[155] There are
signs that Charles was tempted at one moment, during the month of
October, to follow up the blow.[156] But he died without pursuing the
design; and the hopes were turned to his successor. When Henry III. passed
through Italy on his way to assume the crown, there were some who hoped
that the Pope would induce him to set resolutely about the extinction of the
Huguenots. A petition was addressed to Gregory for this purpose, in which
the writer says that hitherto the French court has erred on the side of mercy,
but that the new king might make good the error if rejecting that pernicious
maxim that noble blood spilt weakens a kingdom, he would appoint an
execution which would be cruel only in appearance, but in reality glorious
and holy, and destroy the heretics totally, sparing neither life nor property.
[157]
Similar exhortations were addressed from Rome to Henry himself by
Muzio, a layman who had gained repute, among other things, by
controversial writings, of which Pius V. said that they had preserved the
faith in whole districts, and who had been charged with the task of refuting
the Centuriators. On the 17th of July 1574, Muzio wrote to the King that all
Italy waited in reliance on his justice and valour, and besought him to spare
neither old nor young, and to regard neither rank nor ties of blood.[158]
These hopes also were doomed to disappointment; and a Frenchman,
writing in the year of Henry's death, laments over the cruel clemency and
inhuman mercy that reigned on St. Bartholomew's Day.[159]
This was not the general opinion of the Catholic world. In Spain and Italy,
where hearts were hardened and consciences corrupted by the Inquisition;
in Switzerland, where the Catholics lived in suspicion and dread of their
Protestant neighbours; among ecclesiastical princes in Germany, whose
authority waned as fast as their subjects abjured their faith, the massacre
was welcomed as an act of Christian fortitude. But in France itself the great
mass of the people was struck with consternation.[160] "Which maner of
proceedings," writes Walsingham on the 13th of September, "is by the
Catholiques themselves utterly condemned, who desire to depart hence out

of this country, to quit themselves of this strange kind of government, for
that they see here none can assure themselves of either goods or life." Even
in places still steeped in mourning for the atrocities suffered at the hands of
Huguenots during the civil war, at Nîmes, for instance, the King's orders
produced no act of vengeance. At Carcassonne, the ancient seat of the
Inquisition, the Catholics concealed the Protestants in their houses.[161] In
Provence, the news from Lyons and the corpses that came down in the
poisoned waters of the Rhone awakened nothing but horror and
compassion.[162] Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Walsingham that in England
"the minds of the most number are much alienated from that nation, even of
the very Papists."[163] At Rome itself Zuñiga pronounced the treachery of
which the French were boasting unjustifiable, even in the case of heretics
and rebels;[164] and it was felt as an outrage to public opinion when the
murderer of Coligny was presented to the Pope.[165] The Emperor was filled
with grief and indignation. He said that the King and Queen-mother would
live to learn that nothing could have been more iniquitously contrived or
executed: his uncle Charles V., and his father Ferdinand, had made war on
the Protestants, but they had never been guilty of so cruel an act.[166] At that
moment Maximilian was seeking the crown of Poland for his son; and the
events in France were a weapon in his hands against his rival, Anjou. Even
the Czar of Muscovy, Ivan the Terrible, replying to his letters, protested that
all Christian princes must lament the barbarous and needless shedding of so
much innocent blood. It was not the rivalry of the moment that animated
Maximilian. His whole life proves him to have been an enemy of violence
and cruelty; and his celebrated letter to Schwendi, written long after, shows
that his judgment remained unchanged. It was the Catholic Emperor who
roused the Lutheran Elector of Saxony to something like resentment of the
butchery in France.
For the Lutherans were not disposed to recognise the victims of Charles IX.
as martyrs for the Protestant cause. During the wars of religion Lutheran
auxiliaries were led by a Saxon prince, a margrave of Baden, and other
German magnates, to aid the Catholic forces in putting down the heresy of
Calvin. These feelings were so well known that the French Government
demanded of the Duke of Wirtemberg the surrender of the Huguenots who
had fled into his dominions.[168] Lutheran divines flattered themselves at
first with the belief that it was the Calvinistic error, not the Protestant truth,

that had invited and received the blow.[169] The most influential of them,
Andreæ, declared that the Huguenots were not martyrs but rebels, who had
died not for religion but sedition; and he bade the princes beware of the
contagion of their spirit, which had deluged other lands with blood. When
Elizabeth proposed a league for the defence of Protestantism, the North
German divines protested against an alliance with men whose crime was
not only religious error but blasphemous obstinacy, the root of many
dreadful heresies. The very proposal, they said, argued a disposition to
prefer human succour rather than the word of God.[170] When another
invitation came from Henry of Navarre, the famous divine Chemnitz
declared union with the disciples of Calvin a useless abomination.[171]
The very men whose own brethren had perished in France were not hearty
or unanimous in execrating the deed.[172] There were Huguenots who
thought that their party had brought ruin on itself, by provoking its enemies,
and following the rash counsels of ambitious men.[173] This was the opinion
of their chief, Theodore Beza, himself. Six weeks before, he wrote that they
were gaining in numbers but losing in quality, and he feared lest, after
destroying superstition, they should destroy religion: "Valde metuo ne
superstitioni successerit impietas."[174] And afterwards he declared that
nobody who had known the state of the French Protestants could deny that
it was a most just judgment upon them.[175]
Beza held very stringent doctrines touching the duty of the civil magistrate
to repress religious error. He thought that heresy is worse than murder, and
that the good of society requires no crime to be more severely punished.[176]
He declared toleration contrary to revealed religion and the constant
tradition of the Church, and taught that lawful authority must be obeyed,
even by those whom it persecutes. He expressly recognised this function in
Catholic States, and urged Sigismund not to rest until he had got rid of the
Socinians in Poland;[177] but he could not prevail against the vehement
resistance of Cardinal Hosius. It was embarrassing to limit these principles
when they were applied against his own Church. For a moment Beza
doubted whether it had not received its death-blow in France. But he did not
qualify the propositions which were open to be interpreted so fatally,[178] or
deny that his people, by their vices, if not by their errors, had deserved what
they had suffered.

The applause which greeted their fate came not from the Catholics
generally, nor from the Catholics alone. While the Protestants were ready to
palliate or excuse it, the majority of the Catholics who were not under the
direct influence of Madrid or Rome recognised the inexpiable horror of the
crime. But the desire to defend what the Pope approved survived
sporadically, when the old fierceness of dogmatic hatred was extinct. A
generation passed without any perceptible change in the judgment of Rome.
It was a common charge against De Thou that he had condemned the
blameless act of Charles IX. The blasphemies of the Huguenots, said one of
his critics, were more abominable than their retribution.[179] His History
was put on the Index; and Cardinal Barberini let him know that he was
condemned because he not only favoured Protestants to the detriment of
Catholics, but had even disapproved the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.[180]
Eudæmon-Johannes, the friend of Bellarmine, pronounces it a pious and
charitable act, which immortalised its author.[181] Another Jesuit, Bompiani,
says that it was grateful to Gregory, because it was likely to relieve the
Church.[182] The well-known apology for Charles IX. by Naudé is based
rather on political than religious grounds; but his contemporary Guyon,
whose History of Orleans is pronounced by the censors full of sound
doctrine and pious sentiment, deems it unworthy of Catholics to speak of
the murder of heretics as if it were a crime, because, when done under
lawful authority, it is a blessed thing.[183] When Innocent XI. refused to
approve the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Frenchmen wondered that
he should so far depart from the example which was kept before him by one
of the most conspicuous ornaments of his palace.[184] The old spirit was
decaying fast in France, and the superb indignation of Bossuet fairly
expresses the general opinion of his time. Two works were published on the
medals of the Popes, by a French and an Italian writer. The Frenchman
awkwardly palliates the conduct of Gregory XIII.; the Italian heartily
defends it.[185] In Italy it was still dangerous ground. Muratori shrinks from
pronouncing on the question,[186] while Cienfuegos, a Jesuit whom his
Order esteemed one of the most distinguished Cardinals of the day, judges
that Charles IX. died too soon for his fame.[187] Tempesti, who lived under
the enlightened rule of Benedict XIV., accuses Catherine of having arrested
the slaughter, in order that some cause should remain to create a demand for

her counsels.[188] The German Jesuit Biner and the Papal historian Piatti,
just a century ago, are among the last downright apologists.[189]
Then there was a change. A time came when the Catholics, having long
relied on force, were compelled to appeal to opinion. That which had been
defiantly acknowledged and defended required to be ingeniously explained
away. The same motive which had justified the murder now prompted the
lie. Men shrank from the conviction that the rulers and restorers of their
Church had been murderers and abetters of murder, and that so much
infamy had been coupled with so much zeal. They feared to say that the
most monstrous of crimes had been solemnly approved at Rome, lest they
should devote the Papacy to the execration of mankind. A swarm of facts
were invented to meet the difficulty: The victims were insignificant in
number; they were slain for no reason connected with religion; the Pope
believed in the existence of the plot; the plot was a reality; the medal is
fictitious; the massacre was a feint concerted with the Protestants
themselves; the Pope rejoiced only when he heard that it was over.[190]
These things were repeated so often that they have been sometimes
believed; and men have fallen into this way of speaking whose sincerity
was unimpeachable, and who were not shaken in their religion by the errors
or the vices of Popes. Möhler was pre-eminently such a man. In his lectures
on the history of the Church, which were published only last year,[191] he
said that the Catholics, as such, took no part in the massacre; that no
cardinal, bishop, or priest shared in the councils that prepared it; that
Charles informed the Pope that a conspiracy had been discovered; and that
Gregory made his thanksgiving only because the King's life was saved.[192]
Such things will cease to be written when men perceive that truth is the
only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.

FOOTNOTES:
[6] North British Review, Oct. 1869.
[7] Satius fore ducebam, si minus profligari possent omnes, ut ferrentur omnes,
quo mordentes et comedentes invicem, consumerentur ab invicem (Hosius to
Karnkowsky, Feb. 26, 1568).
[8] The Secretary of Medina Celi to Çayas, June 24, 1572 (Correspondance de
Philippe II., ii. 264).
[9] Quant à ce qui me touche à moy en particulier, encores que j'ayme
unicquement tous mes enffans, je veulx préférer, comme il est bien raysonnable,
les filz aux filles; et pour le regard de ce que me mandez de celluy qui a faict
mourir ma fille, c'est chose que l'on ne tient point pour certaine, et où elle le
seroit, le roy monsieur mondit filz n'en pouvoit faire la vengence en l'estat que
son royaulme estoit lors; mais à présent qu'il est tout uni, il aura assez de moien
et de forces pour sen ressentir quant l'occasion s'en présentera (Catherine to Du
Ferrier, Oct. 1, 1572; Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 15,555). The despatches of Fourquevaulx
from Madrid, published by the Marquis Du Prat in the Histoire d' Elisabeth de
Valois, do not confirm the rumour.
[10] Toutes mes fantaisies sont bandées pour m'opposer à la grandeur des
Espagnols, et délibère m'y conduire le plus dextrement qu'il me sera possible
(Charles IX. to Noailles, May 2, 1572; Noailles, Henri de Valois, i. 8).
[11] Il fault, et je vous prie ne faillir, quand bien il seroit du tout rompu, et que
verriés qu'il n'y auroit nulle espérance, de trouver moyen d'en entrettenir
toujours doucement le propos, d'ici à quelque temps; car cella ne peut que bien
servir à establir mes affaires et aussy pour ma réputation (Charles IX. to La
Mothe, Aug. 9, 1572; Corr. de La Mothe, vii. 311).
[12] This is stated both by his mother and by the Cardinal of Lorraine (Michelet,
La Ligue, p. 26).
[13] In reliqua Gallia fuit et est incredibilis defectio, quae tamen usque adeo non
pacavit immanes illas feras, ut etiam eos qui defecerunt (qui pene sunt
innumerabiles) semel ad internecionem una cum integris familiis trucidare
prorsus decreverint (Beza, Dec. 3, 1572; Ill. vir. Epp. Sel., p. 621, 1617).
[14] Languet to the Duke of Saxony, Nov. 30, 1572 (Arcana, sec. xvi. 183).
[15] Vidi et cum dolore intellexi lanienam illam Gallicam perfidissimam et
atrocissimam plurimos per Germaniam ita offendisse, ut jam etiam de veritate
nostrae Religionis et doctrinae dubitare incoeperint (Bullinger to Wittgenstein,
Feb. 23, 1573; Friedländer, Beiträge zur rel. Gesch., p. 254).
[16] De Thou, Mémoires, p. 9.
[17] Il me dist qu'on luy avoist escript de Rome, n'avoit que trois semaines ou
environ, sur le propos des noces du roy de Navarre en ces propres termes; Que à

ceste heure que tous les oiseaux estoient en cage, on les pouvoit prendre tous
ensemble (Vulcob to Charles IX., Sept. 26, 1572; Noailles, iii. 214).
[18] Mémoires de Duplessis-Mornay, i. 38; Ambert, Duplessis-Mornay, p. 38.
[19] Digges, Compleat Ambassador, pp. 276, 255.
[20] Correr, Relazione; Tommaseo, ii. 116.
[21] He said to Catherine: Que quando quisiesen usar de otro y averlo, con no
mas personas que con cinc o seys que son el cabo de todo esto, los tomasen a su
mano y les cortasen las cabeças (Alva to Philip II., June 21, 1565; Papiers de
Granvelle, ix. 298).
[22] Ci rallegriamo con la maestà sua con tutto l' affetto dell' animo, ch' ella
habbia presa quella risolutione cosi opportunamente sopra la quale noi stesso l'
ultima volta che fummo in Francia parlammo con la Regina Madre.... Dipoi per
diversi gentilhuomini che in varie occorrenze habbiamo mandato in corte siamo
instati nel suddetto ricordo (Alfonso II. to Fogliani, Sept. 13, 1572; Modena
Archives).
[23] Muchas vezes me ha accordado de aver dicho a Su Mag. esto mismo en
Bayona, y de lo que mi offrecio, y veo que ha muy bien desempeñado su palabra
(Alva to Zuñiga, Sept. 9, 1572; Coquerel, La St. Barthélemy, p. 12).
[24] Kluckhohn, Zur Geschichte des angeblichen Bündnisses von Bayonne, p.
36, 1868.
[25] Il signor duca di Alva ... mi disse, che come in questo abboccamento
negotio alcuno non havevano trattato, ne volevano trattare, altro che della
religione, cosi la lor differenza era nata per questo, perchè non vedeva che la
regina ci pigliasse risolutione a modo suo ne de altro, che di buone parole ben
generali.... È stato risoluto che alla tornata in Parigi si farà una ricerca di quelli
che hanno contravenuto all' editto, e si castigaranno; nel che dice S.M. che gli
Ugonotti ci sono talmente compresi, che spera con questo mezzo solo cacciare i
Ministri di Francia.... Il Signor Duca di Alva si satisfa piu di questa deliberatione
di me, perchè io non trovo che serva all' estirpation dell' heresia il castigar quelli
che hanno contravenuto all' editto (Santa Croce to Borromeo, Bayonne, July 1,
1565, MS.).
[26] Desjardins, Négociations avec la Toscane, iii. 756, 765, 802.
[27] Io non no fatto intendere cosa alcuna a nessuno principe; ho ben parlato al
nunzio solo (Desp. Aug. 31; Desjardins, iii. 828).
[28] Alberi, Relazioni Venete, xii. 250.
[29] Alberi, xii. 328.
[30] Son principal but et dessein estoit de sentir quelle espérance ilz pourroient
avoir de parvenir à la paix avec le G.S. dont il s'est ouvert et a demandé ce qu'il
en pouvoit espérer et attendre (Charles IX. to Du Ferrier, Sept. 28, 1572;
Charrière, Négociations dans le Levant, iii. 310).
[31] Ranke, Französische Geschichte, v. 76.

[32] Digges, p. 258; Cosmi, Memorie di Morosini, p. 26.
[33] Alberi, xii. 294.
[34] Mittit eo Antonium Mariam Salviatum, reginae affinem eique pergratum,
qui eam in officio contineat (Cardinal of Vercelli, Comment. de Rebus Gregorii
XIII.; Ranke, Päpste, App. 85).
[35] Desp. Aug. 30, 1570.
[36] Oct. 14, 1570.
[37] Sept. 24, 1570.
[38] Nov. 28, 1570.

[39] Quando scrissi ai giorni passati alla S.V. Illma in cifra, che l'ammiraglio s'
avanzava troppo et che gli darebbero su l' unge, gia mi ero accorto, che non lo
volevano più tollerare, et molto più mi confermai nell' opinione, quando con
caratteri ordinarii glie scrivevo che speravo di dover haver occasione di dar
qualche buona nova a Sua Beatitudine, benchè mai havrei creduto la x. parte di
quello, che al presente veggo con gli occhi (Desp. Aug. 24; Theiner, Annales, i.
329).
[40] Che molti siano stati consapevoli del fatto è necessario, potendogli dizer
che a 21 la mattina, essendo col Cardinal di Borbone et M. de Montpensier,
viddi che ragionavano si domesticamente di quello che doveva seguire, che in
me medesimo restando confuso, conobbi che la prattica andava gagliarda, e
piutosto disperai di buon fine che altrimente (same Desp.; Mackintosh, History
of England, ii. 355).
[41] Attribuisce a se, et al nipote, et a casa sua, la morte del' ammiraglio,
gloriandosene assai (Desp. Oct. 1; Theiner, p. 331). The Emperor told the French
ambassador "que, depuis les choses avenues, on lui avoit mandé de Rome que
Mr. le Cardinal de Lorraine avoit dit que tout le fait avoit esté délibéré avant
qu'il partist de France" (Vulcob to Charles IX., Nov. 8; Groen van Prinsterer,
Archives de Nassau, iv. App. 22).
[42] Marlot, Histoire de Reims, iv. 426. This language excited the surprise of
Dale, Walsingham's successor (Mackintosh, iii. 226).
[43] Archives Curieuses, viii. 305.
[44] Egli solo tra tutti gli altri è solito particolarmente di sostenere le nostre
fatiche.... Essendo partecipe di tutti i nostri consigli, et consapevole de segreti
dell' intimo animo nostro (Pius V. to Philip II., June 20, 1571; Zucchi, Idea del
Segretario, i. 544).
[45] Serranus, Commentarii, iv. 14; Davila, ii. 104.
[46] Digges, p. 193.
[47] Finis hujus legationis erat non tam suadere Regi ut foedus cum aliis
Christianis principibus iniret (id nempe notum erat impossibile illi regno esse);
sed ut rex ille praetermissus non videretur, et revera ut sciretur quo tenderent

Gallorum cogitationes. Non longe nempe a Rocella naves quasdam praegrandes
instruere et armare coeperat Philippus Strozza praetexens velle ad Indias a Gallis
inventas navigare (Relatio gestorum in Legatione Card. Alexandrini MS.).
[48] Con alcuni particulari che io porto, de' quali ragguaglierò N. Signore a
bocca, posso dire di non partirmi affatto mal espedito (Ranke, Zeitschrift, iii.
598). Le temps et les effectz luy témoigneront encores d'advantage (Mémoire
baillé au légat Alexandrin, Feb. 1572; Bib. Imp. F. Dupuy, 523).
[49] De Sacro Foedere, Graevius Thesaurus, i. 1038.
[50] Catena, Vita di Pio V., p. 197; Gabutius, Vita Pii V., p. 150, and the
Dedication.
[51] D'Ossat to Villeroy, Sept. 22, 1599; Lettres, iii. 503. An account of the
Legate's journey was found by Mendham among Lord Guildford's manuscripts,
and is described in the Supplement to his life of Pius V., p. 13. It is written by the
Master of Ceremonies, and possesses no interest. The Relatio already quoted,
which corresponds to the description given by Clement VIII. of his own work, is
among the manuscripts of the Marquis Capponi, No. 164.
[52] Vuol andar con ogni quiete et dissimulatione, fin che il Rè suo figliolo sia in
età (Santa Croce, Desp. June 27, 1563; Lettres du Card. Santa Croce, p. 243).
[53] La Chastre to Charles IX., Jan. 21, 1570; Raynal, Histoire du Berry, iv. 105;
Lavallée, Histoire des Français, ii. 478. Both Raynal and Lavallée had access to
the original.
[54] Il Papa credeva che la pace fatta, e l'aver consentito il Rè che l'Ammiraglio
venisse in corte, fusse con disegno di ammazzarlo; ma accortosi come passa il
fatto, non ha creduto che nel Rè Nostro sia quella brava resoluzione (Letter of
Nov. 28, 1571; Desjardins, iii. 732). Pour le regard de M. l'Admiral, je n'ay failly
de luy faire entendre ce que je devois, suyvant ce qu'il a pleu à V.M. me
commander, dont il est demeuré fort satisfaict (Ferralz to Charles IX., Dec. 25,
1571; Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 16,039; Walsingham to Herbert, Oct. 10, 1571; to Smith,
Nov. 26, 1572; Digges, p. 290).
[55] Marcel to Charles IX., December 20, 1571; Cabinet Historique, ii. 253.
[56] Le Roy estoit d'intelligence, ayant permis à ceux de la Religion de l'assister,
et, cas advenant que leurs entreprises succédassent, qu'il les favoriserait
ouvertement ... Genlis, menant un secours dans Mons, fut défait par le duc
d'Alve, qui avoit comme investi la ville. La journée de Saint-Barthélemi se
résolut (Bouillon, Mémoires, p. 9).
[57] Si potria distruggere il resto, maxime che l'ammiraglio si trova in Parigi,
populo Catholico et devoto del suo Rè, dove potria se volesse facilmente
levarselo dinnanzi per sempre (Castagna, Desp. Aug. 5, 1572; Theiner, i. 327).
[58] Mémoires de Claude Haton, 687.
[59] En quelque sorte que ce soit ledict Seigneur est résollu faire vivre ses
subjectz en sa religion, et ne permettre jamais ny tollérer, quelque chose qui
puisse advenir, qu'il n'y ait aultre forme ny exercice de religion en son royaulme

que de la catholique (Instruction for the Governors of Normandy, Nov. 3, 1572;
La Mothe, vii. 390).
[60] Charles IX. to Mondoucet, Aug. 26, 1572; Compte Rendu de la Commission
Royale d' Histoire, 2e Série, iv. 327.
[61] Li Ugonotti si ridussero alla porta del Louvre, per aspettare che Mons. di
Guisa e Mons. d'Aumale uscissero per ammazzarli (Borso Trotti, Desp. Aug. 23;
Modena Archives).
[62] L'on a commencé à descouvrir la conspiration que ceux de la religion
prétendue réformée avoient faicte contre moy mesmes, ma mère et mes frères
(Charles IX. to La Mothe, Aug. 25; La Mothe, vii. 325).
[63] Desp. Sept. 19, 1572.
[64] Il ne fault pas attendre d'en avoir d'autre commandement du Roy ne de
Monseigneur, car ils ne vous en feront point (Puygaillard to Montsoreau, Aug.
26, 1572; Mourin, La Réforme en Anjou, p. 106).
[65] Vous croirez le présent porteur de ce que je luy ay donné charge de vous
dire (Charles IX. to Mandelot, Aug. 24, 1572; Corr. de Charles IX. avec
Mandelot, p. 42).
[66] Je n'en ay aucune coulpe, n'ayant sceu quelle estoit la volunté que par
umbre, encores bien tard et à demy (Mandelot to Charles IX., Sept. 17, p. 73).
[67] Floquet, Histoire du Parlement de Normandie, iii. 121.
[68] Anjou to Montsoreau, Aug. 26; Mourin, p. 107; Falloux, Vie de Pie V., i.
358; Port, Archives de la Mairie d'Angers, pp. 41, 42.
[69] Schomberg to Brulart, Oct. 10, 1572; Capefigue, La Réforme, iii. 264.
[70] Instructions for Schomberg, Feb. 15, 1573; Noailles, iii. 305.
[71] Monluc to Brulart, Nov. 20, 1572; Jan. 20, 1573: to Charles IX., Jan. 22,
1573; Noailles, iii. 218, 223, 220.
[72] Charles IX. to St. Goard, Jan. 20, 1573; Groen, iv. App. 29.
[73] Letter from Paris in Strype's Life of Parker, iii. 110; "Tocsain contre les
Massacreurs," Archives Curieuses, vii. 7.
[74] Afin que ce que vous avez dressé des choses passées à la Saint-Barthélemy
ne puisse être publié parmi le peuple, et mêmement entre les étrangers, comme il
y en a plusieurs qui se mêlent d'écrire et qui pourraient prendre occasion d'y
répondre, je vous prie qu'il n'en soit rien imprimé ni en français ni en Latin, mais
si vous en avez retenu quelque chose, le garder vers vous (Charles IX. to the
President de Cély, March 24, 1573; Revue Rétrospective, 2 Série. iii. 195).
[75] Botero, Della Ragion di Stato, 92. A contemporary says that the Protestants
were cut to pieces out of economy, "pour afin d'éviter le coust des exécutions
qu'il eust convenu payer pour les faire pendre"; and that this was done "par

permission divine" (Relation des troubles de Rouen par un témoin oculaire, ed.
Pottier, 36, 46).
[76] Del resto poco importerebbe a Roma (Card. Montalto to Card. Morosini;
Tempesti, Vita di Sisto V., ii. 116).
[77] Quand ce seroit contre touts les Catholiques, que nous ne nous en
empescherions, ny altérerions aucunement l'amitié d'entre elle et nous (Catherine
to La Mothe, Sept. 13, 1572; La Mothe, vii. 349).
[78] Alva's Report; Bulletins de l'Académie de Bruxelles, ix. 564.
[79] Jean Diodati, door Schotel, 88.
[80] Œuvres de Brantôme, ed. Lalanne, iv. 38.
[81] Otros que salvò el Duque de Nevers con harto vituperio suyo (Cabrera de
Cordova, Felipe Segundo, p. 722).
[82] Il Rè Christianissimo in tutti questi accidenti, in luogo di giudicio e di
valore ha mostrato animo christiano, con tutto habbia salvato alcuno. Ma li altri
principi che fanno gran professione di Cattolici et di meritar favori e gratie del
papa hanno poi con estrema diligenza cercato a salvare quelli più di Ugonotti
che hanno potuto, e se non gli nomino particolarmente, non si maravigli, per che
indiferentemente tutti hanno fatto a un modo (Salviati, Desp. Sept. 2, 1572).
[83] Estque dictu mirum, quantopere Regem exhilaravit nova Gallica (Hopperus
to Viglius, Madrid, Sept. 7, 1572; Hopperi Epp. 360).
[84] Ha avuto, con questa occasione, dal Rè di Spagna, sei mila scudi a conto
della dote di sua moglie e a richiesta di casa di Guise (Petrucci, Desp. Sept. 16,
1572; Desjardins, iii. 838). On the 27th of December 1574, the Cardinal of Guise
asks Philip for more money for the same man (Bouillé, Histoire des Ducs de
Guise, ii. 505).
[85] Siendo cosa clara que, de hoy mas, ni los protestantes de Alemania, ni la
reyna de Inglaterra se fiaran dél (Philip to Alva, Sept. 18, 1572; Bulletins de
Bruxelles, xvi. 255).
[86] St. Goard to Charles IX., Sept. 12, 1572; Groen, iv. App. 12; Raumer, Briefe
aus Paris, i. 191.
[87] Archives de l'Empire, K. 1530, B. 34, 299.
[88] Zuñiga to Alva, Aug. 31, 1572: No fue caso pensado sino repentino
(Archives de l'Empire, K. 1530, B. 34, 66).
[89] St. Goard to Catherine, Jan. 6, 1573; Groen, iv. App. 28.
[90] Comment. de B. de Mendoça, i. 344.
[91] Alva to Philip, Oct. 13, 1572; Corr. de Philippe II., ii. 287. On the 23rd of
August Zuñiga wrote to Philip that he hoped that Coligny would recover from
his wound, because, if he should die, Charles would be able to obtain obedience
from all men (Archives de l'Empire, K. 1530, B. 34, 65).

[92] Bulletins de la Société pour l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français, viii. 292.
[93] Eidgenössische Abschiede, iv. 2, 501, 503, 506, 510.
[94] Cosmo to Camaiani, Oct. 6, 1570 (Cantù, Gli Eretici d'Italia, iii. 15);
Cosmo to Charles IX., Sept. 4, 1572 (Gachard, Rapport sur les Archives de Lille,
199).
[95] Grappin, Mémoire Historique sur le Card. de Granvelle, 73.
[96] Bardi, Età del Mondo, 1581, iv. 2011; Campana, Historie del Mondo, 1599,
i. 145; B.D. da Fano, Aggiunte all' Historie di Mambrino Roseo, 1583, v. 252;
Pellini, Storia di Perugia, vol. iii. MS.
[97] Si è degnato di prestare alli suoi divoti il suo taglientissimo coltello in cosi
salutifero sacrificio (Letter of Aug. 26; Alberi, Vita di Caterina de' Medici, 401).
[98] Labitte, Démocratie chez les Prédicateurs de la Ligue, 10.
[99] Natalis Comes, Historiae sui temporis, 512.
[100] Capefigue, iii. 150.
[101] Pourront-ils arguer de trahison le feu roy, qu'ils blasphèment luy donnant
le nom de tyran, veu qu'il n'a rien entrepris et exécuté que ce qu'il pouvoit faire
par l'expresse parole de Dieu ... Dieu commande qu'on ne pardonne en façon que
ce soit aux inventeurs ou sectateurs de nouvelles opinions ou hérésies.... Ce que
vous estimez cruauté estre plutôt vraye magnanimité et doulceur (Sorbin, Le
Vray resveille-matin des Calvinistes, 1576, pp. 72, 74, 78).
[102] Il commanda à chacun de se retirer au cabinet et à moy de m'asseoir au
chevet de son lict, tant pour ouyr sa confession, et luy donner ministérialement
absolution de ses péchez, que aussi pour le consoler durant et après la messe
(Sorbin, Vie de Charles IX.; Archives Curieuses, viii. 287). Est très certain que le
plus grand regret qu'il avoit à l'heure de sa mort estoit de ce qu'il voyoit l'idole
Calvinesque n'estre encores du tout chassée (Vray resveille-matin, 88).
[103] The charge against the clergy of Bordeaux is brought by D'Aubigné
(Histoire Universelle, ii. 27) and by De Thou. De Thou was very hostile to the
Jesuits, and his language is not positive. D'Aubigné was a furious bigot. The
truth of the charge would not be proved, without the letters of the President
L'Agebaston and of the Lieutenant Montpezat: "Quelques prescheurs se sont par
leurs sermons (ainsi que dernièrement j'ai escript plus amplement à votre
majesté) estudié de tout leur pouvoir de troubler ciel et terre, et conciter le
peuple à sédition, et en ce faisant à passer par le fil de l'espée tous ceulx de la
prétendue religion réformée.... Après avoir des le premier et deuxième de ceste
mois fait courrir un bruit sourd que vous, Sire, aviez envoyé nom par nom un
rolle signé de votre propre main au Sieur de Montferaud, pour par voie de fait et
sans aultre forme de justice, mettre à mort quarante des principaulx de cette
ville...." (L'Agebaston to Charles IX., Oct. 7, 1572; Mackintosh, iii. 352). "J'ai
trouvé que messieurs de la cour de parlement avoyent arresté que Monsieur
Edmond, prescheur, seroit appellé en ladicte court pour luy faire des
remonstrances sur quelque langaige qu'il tenoit en ses sermons, tendant à
sédition, à ce qu'ils disoyent. Ce que j'ay bien voullu empescher, craignant que

s'il y eust esté appellé cella eust animé plusieurs des habitants et estre cause de
quelque émotion, ce que j'eusse voluntiers souffert quant j'eusse pansé qu'il n'y
en eust qu'une vingtaine de despéchés" (Montpezat to Charles IX., Sept. 30.,
1572; Archives de la Gironde, viii. 337).
[104] Annal. Baronii Contin. ii. 734; Bossuet says: "La dispense vint telle qu'on
la pouvoit désirer" (Histoire de France, p. 820).
[105] Ormegregny, Réflexions sur la Politique de France, p. 121.
[106] De Thou, iv. 537.
[107] Charrière, iii. 154.
[108] Carmina Ill. Poetarum Italorum, iii. 212, 216.
[109] Tiepolo, Desp. Aug. 6, 1575; Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, i. 111.
[110] Parendomi, che sia cosa, la quale possa apportar piacere, e utile al mondo,
si per la qualità del soggetto istesso, come anco per l'eleganza, e bello ordine con
che viene cosi leggiadramente descritto questo nobile, e glorioso fatto ... a fine
che una cosi egregia attione non resti defraudata dell' honor, che merita (The
editor, Gianfrancesco Ferrari, to the reader).

[111] Huc accedit, Oratorem Sermi Regis Galliae, et impulsu inimicorum
saepedicti Domini Cardinalis, et quia summopere illi displicuit, quod
superioribus mensibus Illma Sua Dominatio operam dedisset, hoc sibi mandari,
ut omnia Regis negotia secum communicaret, nullam praetermisisse occasionem
ubi ei potuit adversari (Cardinal Delfino to the Emperor, Rome, Nov. 29, 1572;
Vienna Archives).
[112] Fà ogni favor et gratia gli addimanda il Cardinale di Lorena, il consiglio
del quale usa in tutte le più importanti negotiationi l' occorre di haver a trattar
(Cusano to the Emperor, Rome, Sept. 27, 1572).—Conscia igitur Sua Dominatio
Illma quorundam arcanorum Regni Galliae, creato Pontifice sibi in Concilio
Tridentino cognito et amico, statuit huc se recipere, ut privatis suis rebus
consuleret, et quia tunc foederati contra Thurcam, propter suspicionem Regi
Catholico injectam de Orangio, et Gallis, non admodum videbantur concordes, et
non multo post advenit nuncius mortis Domini de Colligni, et illius asseclarum;
Pontifex justa de causa existimavit dictum Illmum Cardinalem favore et gratia
sua merito esse complectendum. Evenit postmodum, ut ad Serenissimam
Reginam Galliarum deferretur, bonum hunc Dominum jactasse se, quod
particeps fuerit consiliorum contra dictum Colligni; id quod illa Serenissima
Domina iniquo animo tulit, quae neminem gloriae socium vult habere; sibi enim
totam vendicat, quod sola talis facinoris auctor, et Dux extiterit. Idcirco
commorationem ipsius Lotharingiae in hac aula improbare, ac reprehendere
aggressa est. Haec cum ille Illustrissimus Cardinalis perceperit, oblata sibi
occasione utens, exoravit a Sua Sanctitate gratuitam expeditionem quatuor millia
scutorum reditus pro suo Nepote, et 20 millia pro filio praeter sollicitationem,
quam prae se fert, ut dictus Nepos in Cardinalium numerum cooptetur.... Cum
itaque his de causis authoritas hujus Domini in Gallia imminuta videatur,
ipseque praevideat, quanto in Gallia minoris aestimabitur, tanto minori etiam

loco hic se habitum id, statuit optimo judicio, ac pro eo quod suae existimacioni
magis conducit, in Galliam reverti (Delfino, ut supra, both in the Vienna
Archives).
[113] Intiera Relatione della Morte dell' Ammiraglio.
[114] Ragguaglio degli ordini et modi tenuti dalla Majesta Christianissima nella
distruttione della setta degli Ugonotti Con la morte dell' Ammiraglio, etc.
[115] Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 16, 139.
[116] Maffei, Annali di Gregorio XIII., i. 34.
[117] La nouvelle qui arriva le deuxième jour du présent par ung courrier qui
estoit depesché secrétememt de Lyon par ung nommé Danes, secrétaire de M. de
Mandelot ... à ung commandeur de Sainct Anthoine, nommé Mr. de Gou, il luy
manda qu'il allast advertir le Pape, pour en avoir quelque présant ou bienfaict, de
la mort de tous les chefs de ceulx de la religion prétendue refformée, et de tous
les Huguenotz de France, et que V.M. avoit mandé et commandé à tous les
gouverneurs de se saisir de tous iceulx huguenotz en leurs gouvernemens; ceste
nouvelle, Sire, apporta si grand contentement a S.S., que sans ce que je luy
remonstray lors me trouvant sur le lieu, en presence de Monseigneur le C1 de
Lorraine, qu'elle devoit attendre ce que V.M. m'en manderoit et ce que son nonce
luy en escriroit, elle en vouloit incontinent faire des feux de joye.... Et pour ce
que je ne voulois faire ledict feu de joye la première nuict que ledit courrier
envoyé par ledict Danes feust arrivé, ny en recevoir les congratulations que l'on
m'en envoyoit faire, que premièrement je n'eusse eu nouvelles de V.M. pour
sçavoir et sa voulanté et comme je m'avoys a conduire, aucuns commençoient
desjà de m'en regarder de maulvais œills (Ferralz to Charles IX., Rome, Sept. 11,
1572; Bib. Imp. F. Fr. 16,040). Al corriero che porto tal nuova Nostro Signore
diede 100 Scudi oltre li 200 che hebbe dall' Illustrissimo Lorena, che con
grandissima allegrezza se n'ando subito a dar tal nuova per allegrarsene con Sua
Santita (Letter from Rome to the Emperor, Sept. 6, 1572; Vienna Archives).
[118] Charles IX. to Ferralz, Aug. 24, 1572; Mackintosh, iii. 348.
[119] Elle fust merveilheusement ayse d'entendre le discours que mondit neueu
de Beauville luy en feist. Lequel, après luy avoir conté le susdit affayre, supplia
sadicte Saincteté, suyvant la charge expresse qu'il avoit de V.M. de vouloir
concéder, pour le fruict de ceste allegresse, la dispense du mariage du roy et
royne de Navarre, datée de quelques jours avant que les nopces en feussent
faictes, ensemble l'absolution pour Messeigneurs les Cardinaux de Bourbon et
de Ramboilhet, et pour tous les aultres evesques et prélatz qui y avoient
assisté.... Il nous feit pour fin response qu'il y adviseroit (Ferralz, ut supra).
[120] Pensasi che per tutte le citta di Francia debba seguire il simile, subitoche
arrivi la nuova dell' esecutione di Parigi.... A N.S. mi faccia gratia di basciar i
piedi in nome mio, col quale mi rallegro con le viscere del cuore che sia piaciuto
alla Dio. Mtà. d' incaminar nel principio del suo pontificato si felicemente e
honoratamente le cose di questo regno, havendo talmente havuto in protettione il
Rè e Regina Madre che hanno saputo e potuto sbarrare queste pestifere radici
con tanta prudenza, in tempo tanto opportuno, che tutti lor ribelli erano sotto
chiave in gabbia (Salviati, Desp. Aug. 24; Theiner, i. 329; Mackintosh, iii. 355).

[121] Sexta Septembris, mane, in Senatu Pontificis et Cardinalium lectae sunt
literae a legato Pontificio e Gallia scriptae, admiralium et Huguenotos, destinata
Regis voluntate atque consensu, trucidatos esse. Ea re in eodem Senatu decretum
esse, ut inde recta Pontifex cum Cardinalibus in aedem D. Marci concederet,
Deoque Opt. Max. pro tanto beneficio Sedi Romanae orbique Christiano collato
gratias solemni more ageret (Scriptum Roma missum in Capilupi, 1574, p. 84).
Quia Die 2a praedicti mensis Septembris Smus D.N. certior factus fuerat
Colignium Franciae Ammiralium a populo Parisien occisum fuisse et cum eo
multos ex Ducibus et primoribus Ugonotarum haereticorum eius sequacibus
Rege ipso Franciae approbante, ex quo spes erat tranquillitatem in dicto Regno
redituram expulsis haereticis, idcirco Stas Sua expleto concistorio descendit ad
ecclesiam Sancti Marci, praecedente cruce et sequentibus Cardinalibus et
genuflexus ante altare maius, ubi positum fuerat sanctissimum Sacramentum,
oravit gratias Deo agens, et inchoavit cantando hymnum Te Deum (Fr. Mucantii
Diaria, B.M. Add. MSS. 26,811).
[122] Après quelques autres discours qu'il me feist sur le contentement que luy
et le collége des Cardinaux avoient receu de ladicte execution faicte et des
nouvelles qui journellement arrivoient en ceste court de semblables exécutions
que l'on a faicte et font encore en plusieurs villes de vostre royaume, qui, à dire
la vérité, sont les nouvelles les plus agréables que je pense qu'on eust sceu
apporter en ceste ville, sadicte Saincteté pour fin me commanda de vous escrire
que cest évènement luy a esté cent fois plus agréable que cinquante victoires
semblables à celle que ceulx de la ligue obtindrent l'année passée contre le
Turcq, ne voulant oublier vous dire, Sire, les commandemens estroictz qu'il nous
feist à tous, mesmement aux françois d'en faire feu de joye, et qui ne l'eust faict
eust mal senty de la foy (Ferralz, ut supra).
[123] Tutta Roma stà in allegria di tal fatto et frà i più grandi si dice, che 'l Rè di
Francia ha insegnato alli Principi christiani ch' hanno de simili vassalli nè stati
loro a liberarsene, et dicono che vostra Maestà Cesara dovrebbe castigare il
conte Palatino tanto nemico della Serenissima casa d' Austria, et della Religione
cattolica, come l'anni passati fece contra il Duca di Sassonia tiene tuttavia
prigione, che a un tempo vendicarebbe le tante ingiurie ha fatto detto Palatino
alla Chiesa di Dio, et poveri Christiani, et alla Maestà Vostra et sua Casa
Serenissima sprezzando li suoi editti et commandamenti, et privarlo dell'
elettione dell'Imperio et darlo al Duca di Baviera (Cusano to the Emperor, Rome,
Sept. 6, 1572; Vienna Archives).
[124] The Bull, as published in Paris, is printed by Strype (Life of Parker, iii.
197). La prima occasione che a ciò lo mosse fù per lo stratagemma fatto da
Carlo Nono Christianissimo Rè di Francia contra Coligno Ammiraglio, capo d'
Ugonotti, et suoi seguaci, tagliati a pezzi in Parigi (Ciappi, Vita di Gregorio
XIII., 1596, p. 63).
[125] Vasari to Borghini, Oct. 5, 1572; March 5, 1573; to Francesco Medici,
Nov. 17, 1572; Gaye, Carteggio d' Artisti, iii. 328, 366, 341.
[126] Indubitatamente non si osservarà interamente, havendomi in questo modo,
punto che torno dall' audienza promesso il Rè, imponendomi di darne conto in
suo nome a Nostro Signore, di volere in breve tempo liberare il Regno dalli

Ugonotti.... Mi ha parlato della dispensa, escusandosi non haver fatto il
Parentado per ultro, che per liberarsi da suoi inimici (Salviati, Desp. Sept. 3,
Sept. 2, Oct. 11, 1572).
[127] Si vede che l' editto non essendo osservato ne da popoli, ne dal principe,
non è per pigliar piede (Salviati, Desp. Sept. 4). Qual Regina in progresso di
tempo intende pur non solo di revocare tal editto, ma per mezzo della giustitia di
restituir la fede cattolica nell' antica osservanza, parendogli che nessuno ne
debba dubitare adesso, che hanno fatto morire l' ammiraglio con tanti altri
huomini di valore, conforme ai raggionamenti altre volte havuti con esso meco
essendo a Bles, et trattando del parentado di Navarra, et dell' altre cose che
correvano in quei tempi, il che essendo vero, ne posso rendere testimonianza, e a
Nostro Signore e a tutto il mondo (Aug. 27; Theiner, i. 329, 330).
[128] Desp. Sept. 2, 1572.
[129] The reply of Boccapaduli is printed in French, with the translation of the
oration of Muretus, Paris, 1573.
[130] Troverà le cose cosi ben disposte, che durarà poca fattica in ottener quel
tanto si desidera per Sua Beatitudine, anzi haverà più presto da ringratiar quella
Maestà Christianissima di cosi buona et sant' opera, ha fatto far, che da durare
molta fatica in persuaderli l' unione con la Santa Chiesa Romana (Cusano to the
Emperor, Rome, Sept. 6). Sereno (Comment. della guerra di Cipro, p. 329)
understands the mission in the same light.
[131] Omnes mulas ascendentes cappis et galeris pontificalibus induti
associarunt Rmum D. Cardinalem Ursinum Legatum usque ad portam
Flaminiam et extra eam ubi factis multis reverentiis eum ibi reliquerunt, juxta
ritum antiquum in ceremoniali libro descriptum qui longo tempore intermissus
fuerat, ita Pontifice iubente in Concistorio hodierno (Mucantii Diaria). Ista
associatio fuit determinata in Concistorio vocatis X. Cardinalibus et ex
improviso exequuti fuimus (C. Firmani Diaria, B.M. Add. MSS. 8448).
[132] Mette in consideratione alla Santità Sua che havendo deputato un Legato
apostolico sù la morte dell' ammiraglio, et altri capi Ugonotti, ha fatti
ammazzare a Parigi, saria per metterla in molto sospetto et diffidenza delli
Principi Protestanti, et della Regina d' Inghilterra, ch' ella fosse d' accordo con la
sede Apostolica, et Principi Cattolici per farli guerra, i quali cerca d' acquettar
con accertarli tutti, che non ha fatto ammazzar l' ammiraglio et suoi seguaci per
conto della Religione (Cusano to the Emperor, Sept. 27).
[133] Salviati, Desp. Sept. 22, 1572.
[134] Charles IX. to S. Goard, Oct. 5, 1572; Charrière, iii. 330. Ne poteva esser
bastante segno l' haver egli doppo la morte dell' Ammiraglio fatto un editto, che
in tutti i luoghi del suo regno fossero posti a fil di spada quanti heretici vi si
trovassero, onde in pochi giorni n' erano stati ammazzati settanta milla e d'
avantaggio (Cicarelli, Vita di Gregori XIII.; Platina, Vite de' Pontefici, 1715,
592).
[135] Il tengono quasiche in filo et il necessitano a far cose contra la sua natura e
la sua volontà perche S. Sta è sempre stato di natura piacevole e dolce (Relatione

di Gregorio XIII.; Ranke, Päpste, App. 80). Faict Cardinal par le pape Pie IV., le
12e de Mars 1559, lequel en le créant, dit qu'il n'avoit créé un cardinal ains un
pape (Ferralz to Charles IX., May 14, 1572).

[136] Smus Dominus Noster dixit nullam concordiam vel pacem debere nec
posse esse inter nos et hereticos, et cum eis nullum foedus ineundum et
habendum ... verissimum est deteriores esse haereticos gentilibus, eo quod sunt
adeo perversi et obstinati, ut propemodum infideles sint (Acta Concistoralia,
June 18, 1571; Bib. Imp. F. Lat. 12, 561).
[137] Ogni giorno faceva impiccare e squartare ora uno, ora un altro (Cantù, ii.
410).
[138] Legazioni di Serristori, 436, 443.
[139] Elle desire infiniment que vostre Majesté face quelque ressentement plus
qu'elle n'a faict jusques à ceste heure contre ceux qui lui font la guerre, comme
de raser quelques-unes de leurs principales maisons pour une perpétuelle
mémoyre (Rambouillet to Charles IX., Rome, Jan. 17, 1569; Bib. Imp. F. Fr.
17,989).
[140] Pius V. to Catherine, April 13, 1569.
[141] Pius V. to Charles IX., March 28, 1569.
[142] Sa Saincteté m'a dict que j'escrive à vostre majesté que icelle se souvienne
qu'elle combat pour la querelle de Dieu, et que ceste à elle de faire ses
vengeances (Rambouillet to Charles IX., Rome, March 14, 1569; Bib. Imp. F. Fr.
16,039). Nihil est enim ea pietate misericordiaque crudelius, quae in impios et
ultima supplicia meritos confertur (Pius V. to Charles IX., Oct. 20, 1569).
[143] Correspondance de Philippe II., ii. 185.
[144] Inspirato più d' un anno fa di esporre la vita al martirio col procurare la
liberatione della religione, et delle patria per mezzo della morte del tiranno, et
assicurato da Theologi che il fatto saria stato meritorio, non ne haveva con tutto
ciò mai potuto ottenere da superiori suoi la licenza o dispensa.... Io quantunque
mi sia parso di trovarlo pieno di tale humiltà, prudenza, spirito et core che
arguiscono che questa sia inspiratione veramente piuttosto che temerità o
legerezza, non cognoscendo tuttavia di potergliela concedere l' ho persuaso a
tornarsene nel suo covento raccommandarsi a Dio et attendere all' obbedienza
delli suoi superiori finchè io attendessi dallo assenso o ripulsa del Papa che
haverei interpellato per la sua santa beneditione, se questo spirito sia veramente
da Dio donde si potrà conjetturare che sia venendo approvato da Sua Stà, e
perciò sarà più sicuro da essere eseguito.... Resta hora che V.S. Illma mi
favorisca di communicare a S.B. il caso, et scrivermene come la supplico quanto
prima per duplicate et triplicate lettere la sua santa determinatione assicurandosi
che per quanto sarà in me il negotio sarà trattato con la debita circumspetione
(Sega, Desp. Paris, Jan. 23, 1591; deciphered in Rome, March 26).
[145] Ferralz to Charles IX., Nov. 18, Dec. 23, 1572.

[146] De Castro, De Justa Haeret. Punitione, 1547, p. 119. Iure Divino
obligantur eos extirpare, si absque maiori incommodo possint (Lancelottus,
Haereticum quare per Catholicum quia, 1615, p. 579). Ubi quid indulgendum
sit, ratio semper exacta habeatur, an Religioni Ecclesiae, et Reipublicae quid
vice mutua accedat quod majoris sit momenti, et plus prodesse possit (Pamelius,
De Relig. diversis non admittendis, 1589, p. 159). Contagium istud sic grassatum
est, ut corrupta massa non ferat antiquissimas leges, severitasque tantisper
remittenda sit (Possevinus, Animadv. in Thuanum; Zachariae, Iter Litterarium, p.
321).
[147] Principi saeculari nulla ratione permissum est, haereticis licentiam tribuere
haereses suas docendi, atque adeo contractus ille iniustus.... Si quid Princeps
saecularis attentet in praeiudicium Ecclesiasticae potestatis, aut contra eam
aliquid statuat et paciscatur, pactum illud nullum futurum (R. Sweertii, De Fide
Haereticis servanda, 1611, p. 36).
[148] Ad poenam quoque pertinet et odium haereticorum quod fides illis data
servanda non sit (Simancha, Inst. Cath. pp. 46, 52).
[149] Si nolint converti, expedit eos citius tollere e medio, ne gravius postea
damnentur, unde non militat contra mansuetudinem christianam, occidere
Haereticos, quin potius est opus maximae misericordiae (Lancelottus, p. 579).
[150] De Rozoy, Annales de Toulouse, iii. 65.
[151] Alva to Philip, June 5, 1565; Pap. de Granvelle, ix. 288; Comment. de
Monluc, iii. 425.
[152] Charles IX. to Mondoucet, Aug. 31, 1572; Compte Rendu, iv, 349.
[153] Bulletins de Bruxelles, xvi. 256.
[154] Granvelle to Morillon, Sept. 11, 1572; Michelet, p. 475.
[155] Floquet, iii. 137.
[156] Walsingham to Smith, Nov. 1, 1572; Digges, p. 279. Ita enim statutum ab
illis fuit die 27 Octobris (Beza, Dec. 3, 1572; Ill. vir. Epp. Sel. 621). La Mothe, v.
164; Faustino Tasso, Historie de nostri tempi, 1583, p. 343.
[157] Discorso di Monsignor Terracina à Gregorio XIII.; Thesauri Politici
Contin. 1618, pp. 73-76.
[158] Infin che ne viverà grande, o picciolo di loro, mai non le mancheranno
insidie (Lettere del Muzio, 1590, p. 232).
[159] Coupez, tronquez, cisaillez, ne pardonnez à parens ny amis, princes et
subiets, ny à quelque personne de quelque condition qu'ils soient (D'Orléans,
Premier advertissement des Catholiques Anglois aux François Catholiques,
1590, p. 13). The notion that Charles had displayed an extreme benignity recurs
in many books: "Nostre Prince a surpassé tout mesure de clémence" (Le Frère de
Laval Histoire des Troubles, 1576, p. 527).
[160] Serranus, Comment. iv. 51.

[161] Bouges, Histoire de Carcassonne, p. 343.
[162] Sommaire de la Félonie commise á Lyon. A contemporary tract reprinted
by Gonon, 1848, p. 221.
[163] On this point Smith may be trusted rather than Parker (Correspondence, p.
399).
[164] Bulletins de Bruxelles, xvi. 249.
[165] Qui è venuto quello che dette l' archibusata all' ammiraglio di Francia, et è
stato condotto dal Cardinal di Lorena et dall' Ambasciator di Francia, al papa. A
molti non è piaciuto che costui sia venuto in Roma (Prospero Count Arco to the
Emperor, Rome, Nov. 15, 1572; Vienna Archives).
[166] Zuñiga to Philip, March 4, 1573; Arch. de l'Empire, K. 1531, B. 35, 70.
Zuñiga heard it from Lorraine.
[167] Et est toute la dispute encores sur les derniers évènemens de la France,
contre lesquels l'Electeur est beaucoup plus aigre qu'il n'estoyt à mon aultre
voyage, depuys qu'il a esté en l'escole à Vienne (Schomberg to Brulart, May 12,
1573; Groen, iv. App. 76).
[168] Sattler, Geschichte von Würtemberg, v. 23.
[169] Audio quosdam etiam nostralium theologorum cruentam istam nuptiarum
feralium celebrationem pertinaciae Gallorum in semel recepta de
sacramentalibus mysteriis sententia acceptam referre et praeter illos pati
neminem somniare (Steinberger to Crato, Nov. 23, 1572; Gillet, Craio von
Crafftheim, ii. 519).
[170] Heppe, Geschichte des deutschen Protestantismus, iv. 37, 47, 49.
[171] Hachfeld, Martin Chemnitz, p. 137.
[172] Sunt tamen qui hoc factum et excusare et defendere tentant (Bullinger to
Hotoman, Oct. 11, 1572; Hotoman, Epis. 35).
[173] Nec dubium est melius cum ipsis actum fuisse, si quemadmodum a
principio instituerant, cum disciplinam ecclesiasticam inroduxere, viros
modestos et piae veraeque reformationis cupidos tantum in suos coetus
admisissent, reiectis petulantibus et fervidis ingeniis, quae eos in diros tumultus,
et inextricabilia mala coniecerunt (Dinothus, De Bello Civili, 1582, p. 243).
[174] Beza to Tilius, July 5, 1572; Ill. vir. Epp. Sel. 607.
[175] Quoties autem ego haec ipse praedixi! quoties praemonui! Sed sic Deo
visum est, iustissimis de causis irato, et tamen servatori (Beza to Tilius, Sept. 10,
1572, 614). Nihil istorum non iustissimo iudicio accidere necesse est fateri, qui
Galliarum statum norunt (Beza to Crato, Aug. 26. 1573; Gillet, ii. 521).
[176] Ut mihi quidem magis absurde facere videantur quam si sacrilegas
parricidas puniendos negarent, quum sint istis omnibus haeretici infinitis
partibus deteriores.... In nullos unquam homines severius quam in haereticos,

blasphemos et impios debet animadvertere (De Haereticis puniendis, Tract.
Theol. i. 143, 152).
[177] Epist. Theolog. 1575, p. 338.
[178] Beza to Wittgenstein, Pentecost, 1583; Friedländer, 143.
[179] Lobo de Silveis to De Thou, July 7, 1616; Histoire, xv. 371; J.B. Gallus,
Ibid. p. 435.
[180] Le Cardinal Barberini, que je tiens pour Serviteur du Roy, a parlé
franchement sur ceste affaire, et m'a dit qu'il croyoit presqu'impossible qu'il se
trouve jamais remede, si vous ne la voulez recommencer; disant que depuis le
commencement jusqu'à la fin vous vous estes monstré du tout passionné contre
ce qui est de l'honneur et de la grandeur de l'Église, qu'il se trouvera dans vostre
histoire que vous ne parlez jamais des Catholiques qu'avec du mépris et de la
louange de ceux de la religion; que mesme vous avez blasmé ce que feu
Monsieur le président de Thou vostre père avoit approuvé, qui est la S.
Barthelemy (De Brèves to De Thou, Rome, Feb. 18, 1610; Bib. Imp. F. Dupuy,
812).
[181] Crudelitatisne tu esse ac non clementiae potius, pietatisque putas? (Resp.
ad Ep. Casauboni, 1612, p. 118).
[182] Quae res uti Catholicae Religioni sublevandae opportuna, ita maxime
jucunda Gregorio accidit (Hist. Pontif. Gregori XIII., p. 30).
[183] Histoire d'Orléans, pp. 421, 424.
[184] Germain to Bretagne, Rome, Dec. 24, 1685; Valery, Corresp. de Mabillon,
i. 192.
[185] Du Molinet, Hist. S. Pont. per Numismata, 1679, 93; Buorranni,
Numismata Pontificum, i. 336.
[186] Annali d'Italia ad ann. 1572.
[187] Si huviera respirado mas tiempo, huviera dado a entender al mundo, que
avia Rey en la Francia, y Dios en Israel (Vida de S. Francisco De Borja, 446).
[188] Vita di Sisto V., i. 119.
[189] Quo demum res evaderent, si Regibus non esset integrum, in rebelles,
subditos, quietisque publicae turbatores animadvertere? (Apparatus Eruditionis,
vii. 503; Piatti, Storia de' Pontefici XI., p. 271).
[190] Per le notizie che ricevette della cessata strage (Moroni, Dizionario di
Erudizione Ecclesiastica, xxxii. 298).
[191] [1868.]
[192] Kirchengeschichte, iii. 211.

V
THE PROTESTANT THEORY OF PERSECUTION[193]
The manner in which Religion influences State policy is more easily
ascertained in the case of Protestantism than in that of the Catholic Church:
for whilst the expression of Catholic doctrines is authoritative and
unvarying, the great social problems did not all arise at once, and have at
various times received different solutions. The reformers failed to construct
a complete and harmonious code of doctrine; but they were compelled to
supplement the new theology by a body of new rules for the guidance of
their followers in those innumerable questions with regard to which the
practice of the Church had grown out of the experience of ages. And
although the dogmatic system of Protestantism was not completed in their
time, yet the Protestant spirit animated them in greater purity and force than
it did any later generation. Now, when a religion is applied to the social and
political sphere, its general spirit must be considered, rather than its
particular precepts. So that in studying the points of this application in the
case of Protestantism, we may consult the writings of the reformers with
greater confidence than we could do for an exposition of Protestant
theology; and accept them as a greater authority, because they agree more
entirely among themselves. We can be more sure that we have the true
Protestant opinion in a political or social question on which all the
reformers are agreed, than in a theological question on which they differ;
for the concurrent opinion must be founded on an element common to all,
and therefore essential. If it should further appear that this opinion was
injurious to their actual interests, and maintained at a sacrifice to
themselves, we should then have an additional security for its necessary
connection with their fundamental views.
The most important example of this law is the Protestant theory of
toleration. The views of the reformers on religious liberty are not
fragmentary, accidental opinions, unconnected with their doctrines, or
suggested by the circumstances amidst which they lived; but the product of
their theological system, and of their ideas of political and ecclesiastical

government. Civil and religious liberty are so commonly associated in
people's mouths, and are so rare in fact, that their definition is evidently as
little understood as the principle of their connection. The point at which
they unite, the common root from which they derive their sustenance, is the
right of self-government. The modern theory, which has swept away every
authority except that of the State, and has made the sovereign power
irresistible by multiplying those who share it, is the enemy of that common
freedom in which religious freedom is included. It condemns, as a State
within the State, every inner group and community, class or corporation,
administering its own affairs; and, by proclaiming the abolition of
privileges, it emancipates the subjects of every such authority in order to
transfer them exclusively to its own. It recognises liberty only in the
individual, because it is only in the individual that liberty can be separated
from authority, and the right of conditional obedience deprived of the
security of a limited command. Under its sway, therefore, every man may
profess his own religion more or less freely; but his religion is not free to
administer its own laws. In other words, religious profession is free, but
Church government is controlled. And where ecclesiastical authority is
restricted, religious liberty is virtually denied.
For religious liberty is not the negative right of being without any particular
religion, just as self-government is not anarchy. It is the right of religious
communities to the practice of their own duties, the enjoyment of their own
constitution, and the protection of the law, which equally secures to all the
possession of their own independence. Far from implying a general
toleration, it is best secured by a limited one. In an indifferent State, that is,
in a State without any definite religious character (if such a thing is
conceivable), no ecclesiastical authority could exist. A hierarchical
organisation would not be tolerated by the sects that have none, or by the
enemies of all definite religion; for it would be in contradiction to the
prevailing theory of atomic freedom. Nor can a religion be free when it is
alone, unless it makes the State subject to it. For governments restrict the
liberty of the favoured Church, by way of remunerating themselves for their
service in preserving her unity. The most violent and prolonged conflicts for
religious freedom occurred in the Middle Ages between a Church which
was not threatened by rivals and States which were most attentive to
preserve her exclusive predominance. Frederic II., the most tyrannical

oppressor of the Church among the German emperors, was the author of
those sanguinary laws against heresy which prevailed so long in many parts
of Europe. The Inquisition, which upheld the religious unity of the Spanish
nation, imposed the severest restrictions on the Spanish Church; and in
England conformity has been most rigorously exacted by those sovereigns
who have most completely tyrannised over the Established Church.
Religious liberty, therefore, is possible only where the co-existence of
different religions is admitted, with an equal right to govern themselves
according to their own several principles. Tolerance of error is requisite for
freedom; but freedom will be most complete where there is no actual
diversity to be resisted, and no theoretical unity to be maintained, but where
unity exists as the triumph of truth, not of force, through the victory of the
Church, not through the enactment of the State.
This freedom is attainable only in communities where rights are sacred, and
where law is supreme. If the first duty is held to be obedience to authority
and the preservation of order, as in the case of aristocracies and monarchies
of the patriarchal type, there is no safety for the liberties either of
individuals or of religion. Where the highest consideration is the public
good and the popular will, as in democracies, and in constitutional
monarchies after the French pattern, majority takes the place of authority;
an irresistible power is substituted for an idolatrous principle, and all
private rights are equally insecure. The true theory of freedom excludes all
absolute power and arbitrary action, and requires that a tyrannical or
revolutionary government shall be coerced by the people; but it teaches that
insurrection is criminal, except as a corrective of revolution and tyranny. In
order to understand the views of the Protestant reformers on toleration, they
must be considered with reference to these points.
While the Reformation was an act of individual resistance and not a system,
and when the secular Powers were engaged in supporting the authority of
the Church, the authors of the movement were compelled to claim impunity
for their opinions, and they held language regarding the right of
governments to interfere with religious belief which resembles that of
friends of toleration. Every religious party, however exclusive or servile its
theory may be, if it is in contradiction with a system generally accepted and
protected by law, must necessarily, at its first appearance, assume the
protection of the idea that the conscience is free.[194] Before a new authority

can be set up in the place of one that exists, there is an interval when the
right of dissent must be proclaimed. At the beginning of Luther's contest
with the Holy See there was no rival authority for him to appeal to. No
ecclesiastical organism existed, the civil power was not on his side, and not
even a definite system had yet been evolved by controversy out of his
original doctrine of justification. His first efforts were acts of hostility, his
exhortations were entirely aggressive, and his appeal was to the masses.
When the prohibition of his New Testament confirmed him in the belief that
no favour was to be expected from the princes, he published his book on the
Civil Power, which he judged superior to everything that had been written
on government since the days of the Apostles, and in which he asserts that
authority is given to the State only against the wicked, and that it cannot
coerce the godly. "Princes," he says, "are not to be obeyed when they
command submission to superstitious errors, but their aid is not to be
invoked in support of the Word of God."[195] Heretics must be converted by
the Scriptures, and not by fire, otherwise the hangman would be the greatest
doctor.[196] At the time when this was written Luther was expecting the bull
of excommunication and the ban of the empire, and for several years it
appeared doubtful whether he would escape the treatment he condemned.
He lived in constant fear of assassination, and his friends amused
themselves with his terrors. At one time he believed that a Jew had been
hired by the Polish bishops to despatch him; that an invisible physician was
on his way to Wittenberg to murder him; that the pulpit from which he
preached was impregnated with a subtle poison.[197] These alarms dictated
his language during those early years. It was not the true expression of his
views, which he was not yet strong enough openly to put forth.[198]
The Zwinglian schism, the rise of the Anabaptists, and the Peasants' War
altered the aspect of affairs. Luther recognised in them the fruits of his
theory of the right of private judgment and of dissent,[199] and the moment
had arrived to secure his Church against the application of the same
dissolving principles which had served him to break off from his allegiance
to Rome.[200] The excesses of the social war threatened to deprive the
movement of the sympathy of the higher classes, especially of the
governments; and with the defeat of the peasants the popular phase of the
Reformation came to an end on the Continent. "The devil," Luther said,
"having failed to put him down by the help of the Pope, was seeking his

destruction through the preachers of treason and blood."[201] He instantly
turned from the people to the princes;[202] impressed on his party that
character of political dependence, and that habit of passive obedience to the
State, which it has ever since retained, and gave it a stability it could never
otherwise have acquired. In thus taking refuge in the arms of the civil
power, purchasing the safety of his doctrine by the sacrifice of its freedom,
and conferring on the State, together with the right of control, the duty of
imposing it at the point of the sword, Luther in reality reverted to his
original teaching.[203] The notion of liberty, whether civil or religious, was
hateful to his despotic nature, and contrary to his interpretation of Scripture.
As early as 1519 he had said that even the Turk was to be reverenced as an
authority.[204] The demoralising servitude and lawless oppression which the
peasants endured, gave them, in his eyes, no right to relief; and when they
rushed to arms, invoking his name as their deliverer, he exhorted the nobles
to take a merciless revenge.[205] Their crime was, that they were animated
by the sectarian spirit, which it was the most important interest of Luther to
suppress.
The Protestant authorities throughout Southern Germany were perplexed by
their victory over the Anabaptists. It was not easy to show that their
political tenets were revolutionary, and the only subversive portion of their
doctrine was that they held, with the Catholics, that the State is not
responsible for religion.[206] They were punished, therefore, because they
taught that no man ought to suffer for his faith. At Nuremberg the
magistrates did not know how to proceed against them. They seemed no
worse than the Catholics, whom there was no question at that time of
exterminating. The celebrated Osiander deemed these scruples inconsistent.
The Papists, he said, ought also to be suppressed; and so long as this was
not done, it was impossible to proceed to extremities against the
Anabaptists, who were no worse than they. Luther also was consulted, and
he decided that they ought not to be punished unless they refused to
conform at the command of the Government.[207] The Margrave of
Brandenburg was also advised by the divines that a heretic who could not
be converted out of Scripture might be condemned; but that in his sentence
nothing should be said about heresy, but only about sedition and murderous

intent, though he should be guiltless of these.[208] With the aid of this
artifice great numbers were put to death.
Luther's proud and ardent spirit despised such pretences. He had cast off all
reserve, and spoke his mind openly on the rights and duties of the State
towards the Church and the people. His first step was to proclaim it the
office of the civil power to prevent abominations.[209] He provided no
security that, in discharging this duty, the sovereign should be guided by the
advice of orthodox divines;[210] but he held the duty itself to be imperative.
In obedience to the fundamental principle, that the Bible is the sole guide in
all things, he defined the office and justified it by scriptural precedents. The
Mosaic code, he argued, awarded to false prophets the punishment of death,
and the majesty of God is not to be less deeply reverenced or less rigorously
vindicated under the New Testament than under the Old; in a more perfect
revelation the obligation is stronger. Those who will not hear the Church
must be excluded from the communion; but the civil power is to intervene
when the ecclesiastical excommunication has been pronounced, and men
must be compelled to come in. For, according to the more accurate
definition of the Church which is given in the Confession of Schmalkald,
and in the Apology of the Confession of Augsburg, excommunication
involves damnation. There is no salvation to be hoped for out of the
Church, and the test of orthodoxy against the Pope, the devil, and all the
world, is the dogma of justification by faith.[211]
The defence of religion became, on this theory, not only the duty of the civil
power, but the object of its institution. Its business was solely the coercion
of those who were out of the Church. The faithful could not be the objects
of its action; they did of their own accord more than any laws required. "A
good tree," says Luther, "brings forth good fruit by nature, without
compulsion; is it not madness to prescribe laws to an apple-tree that it shall
bear apples and not thorns?"[212] This view naturally proceeded from the
axiom of the certainty of the salvation of all who believe in the Confession
of Augsburg.[213] It is the most important element in Luther's political
system, because, while it made all Protestant governments despotic, it led to
the rejection of the authority of Catholic governments. This is the point
where Protestant and Catholic intolerance meet. If the State were instituted
to promote the faith, no obedience could be due to a State of a different

faith. Protestants could not conscientiously be faithful subjects of Catholic
Powers, and they could not therefore be tolerated. Misbelievers would have
no rights under an orthodox State, and a misbelieving prince would have no
authority over orthodox subjects. The more, therefore, Luther expounded
the guilt of resistance and the Divine sanction of authority, the more
subversive his influence became in Catholic countries. His system was alike
revolutionary, whether he defied the Catholic powers or promoted a
Protestant tyranny. He had no notion of political right. He found no
authority for such a claim in the New Testament, and he held that
righteousness does not need to exhibit itself in works.
It was the same helpless dependence on the letter of Scripture which led the
reformers to consequences more subversive of Christian morality than their
views on questions of polity. When Carlstadt cited the Mosaic law in
defence of polygamy, Luther was indignant. If the Mosaic law is to govern
everything, he said, we should be compelled to adopt circumcision.[214]
Nevertheless, as there is no prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament,
the reformers were unable to condemn it. They did not forbid it as a matter
of Divine law, and referred it entirely to the decision of the civil legislator.
[215]
This, accordingly was the view which guided Luther and Melanchthon
in treating the problem, the ultimate solution of which was the separation of
England from the Church.[216] When the Landgrave Philip afterwards
appealed to this opinion, and to the earlier commentaries of Luther, the
reformers were compelled to approve his having two wives. Melanchthon
was a witness at the wedding of the second, and the only reservation was a
request that the matter should not be allowed to get abroad.[217] It was the
same portion of Luther's theology, and the same opposition to the spirit of
the Church in the treatment of Scripture, that induced him to believe in
astrology and to ridicule the Copernican system.[218]
His view of the authority of Scripture and his theory of justification both
precluded him from appreciating freedom. "Christian freedom," he said,
"consists in the belief that we require no works to attain piety and
salvation."[219] Thus he became the inventor of the theory of passive
obedience, according to which no motives or provocation can justify a
revolt; and the party against whom the revolt is directed, whatever its guilt
may be, is to be preferred to the party revolting, however just its cause.[220]

In 1530 he therefore declared that the German princes had no right to resist
the Emperor in defence of their religion. "It was the duty of a Christian," he
said, "to suffer wrong, and no breach of oath or of duty could deprive the
Emperor of his right to the unconditional obedience of his subjects."[221]
Even the empire seemed to him a despotism, from his scriptural belief that
it was a continuation of the last of the four monarchies.[222] He preferred
submission, in the hope of seeing a future Protestant Emperor, to a
resistance which might have dismembered the empire if it had succeeded,
and in which failure would have been fatal to the Protestants; and he was
always afraid to draw the logical consequences of his theory of the duty of
Protestants towards Catholic sovereigns. In consequence of this fact, Ranke
affirms that the great reformer was also one of the greatest conservatives
that ever lived; and his biographer, Jürgens, makes the more discriminating
remark that history knows of no man who was at once so great an insurgent
and so great an upholder of order as he.[223] Neither of these writers
understood that the same principle lies at the root both of revolution and of
passive obedience, and that the difference is only in the temper of the
person who applies it, and in the outward circumstances.
Luther's theory is apparently in opposition to Protestant interests, for it
entitles Catholicism to the protection of Catholic Powers. He disguised
from himself this inconsistency, and reconciled theory with expediency by
the calculation that the immense advantages which his system offered to the
princes would induce them all to adopt it. For, besides the consolatory
doctrine of justification,—"a doctrine original, specious, persuasive,
powerful against Rome, and wonderfully adapted, as if prophetically, to the
genius of the times which were to follow,"[224]—he bribed the princes with
the wealth of the Church, independence of ecclesiastical authority, facilities
for polygamy, and absolute power. He told the peasants not to take arms
against the Church unless they could persuade the Government to give the
order; but thinking it probable, in 1522, that the Catholic clergy would, in
spite of his advice, be exterminated by the fury of the people, he urged the
Government to suppress them, because what was done by the constituted
authority could not be wrong.[225] Persuaded that the sovereign power
would be on his side, he allowed no limits to its extent. It is absurd, he says,
to imagine that, even with the best intentions, kings can avoid committing
occasional injustice; they stand, therefore, particularly in need—not of

safeguards against the abuse of power, but—of the forgiveness of sins.[226]
The power thus concentrated in the hands of the rulers for the guardianship
of the faith, he wished to be used with the utmost severity against
unregenerate men, in whom there was neither moral virtue nor civil rights,
and from whom no good could come until they were converted. He
therefore required that all crimes should be most cruelly punished and that
the secular arm should be employed to convert where it did not destroy. The
idea of mercy tempering justice he denounced as a Popish superstition.[227]
The chief object of the severity thus recommended was, of course,
efficaciously to promote the end for which Government itself was held to be
instituted. The clergy had authority over the conscience, but it was thought
necessary that they should be supported by the State with the absolute
penalties of outlawry, in order that error might be exterminated, although it
was impossible to banish sin.[228] No Government, it was maintained, could
tolerate heresy without being responsible for the souls that were seduced by
it;[229] and as Ezechiel destroyed the brazen serpent to prevent idolatry, the
mass must be suppressed, for the mass was the worst kind of idolatry.[230] In
1530, when it was proposed to leave the matters in dispute to the decision
of the future Council, Luther declared that the mass and monastic life could
not be tolerated in the meantime, because it was unlawful to connive at
error.[231] "It will lie heavy on your conscience," he writes to the Duke of
Saxony, "if you tolerate the Catholic worship; for no secular prince can
permit his subjects to be divided by the preaching of opposite doctrines.
The Catholics have no right to complain, for they do not prove the truth of
their doctrine from Scripture, and therefore do not conscientiously believe
it."[232] He would tolerate them only if they acknowledged themselves, like
the Jews, enemies of Christ and of the Emperor, and consented to exist as
outcasts of society.[233] "Heretics," he said, "are not to be disputed with, but
to be condemned unheard, and whilst they perish by fire, the faithful ought
to pursue the evil to its source, and bathe their hands in the blood of the
Catholic bishops, and of the Pope, who is a devil in disguise."[234]
The persecuting principles which were involved in Luther's system, but
which he cared neither to develop, to apply, nor to defend, were formed into
a definite theory by the colder genius of Melanchthon. Destitute of Luther's
confidence in his own strength, and in the infallible success of his doctrine,

he clung more eagerly to the hope of achieving victory by the use of
physical force. Like his master he too hesitated at first, and opposed the use
of severe measures against the Zwickau prophets; but when he saw the
development of that early germ of dissent, and the gradual dissolution of
Lutheran unity, he repented of his ill-timed clemency.[235] He was not
deterred from asserting the duty of persecution by the risk of putting arms
into the hands of the enemies of the Reformation. He acknowledged the
danger, but he denied the right. Catholic powers, he deemed, might justly
persecute, but they could only persecute error. They must apply the same
criterion which the Lutherans applied, and then they were justified in
persecuting those whom the Lutherans also proscribed. For the civil power
had no right to proscribe a religion in order to save itself from the dangers
of a distracted and divided population. The judge of the fact and of the
danger must be, not the magistrate, but the clergy.[236] The crime lay, not in
dissent, but in error. Here, therefore, Melanchthon repudiated the theory and
practice of the Catholics, whose aid he invoked; for all the intolerance in
the Catholic times was founded on the combination of two ideas—the
criminality of apostasy, and the inability of the State to maintain its
authority where the moral sense of a part of the community was in
opposition to it. The reformers, therefore, approved the Catholic practice of
intolerance, and even encouraged it, although their own principles of
persecution were destitute not only of connection, but even of analogy, with
it. By simply accepting the inheritance of the mediæval theory of the
religious unity of the empire, they would have been its victims. By asserting
that persecution was justifiable only against error, that is, only when purely
religious, they set up a shield for themselves, and a sword against those
sects for whose destruction they were more eager than the Catholics.
Whether we refer the origin of Protestant intolerance to the doctrines or to
the interests of the Reformation, it appears totally unconnected with the
tradition of Catholic ages, or the atmosphere of Catholicism. All severities
exercised by Catholics before that time had a practical motive; but
Protestant persecution was based on a purely speculative foundation, and
was due partly to the influence of Scripture examples, partly to the
supposed interests of the Protestant party. It never admitted the exclusion of
dissent to be a political right of the State, but maintained the suppression of
error to be its political duty. To say, therefore, that the Protestants learnt
persecution from the Catholics, is as false as to say that they used it by way

of revenge. For they founded it on very different and contradictory grounds,
and they admitted the right of the Catholics to persecute even the Protestant
sects.
Melanchthon taught that the sects ought to be put down by the sword, and
that any individual who started new opinions ought to be punished with
death.[237] He carefully laid down that these severities were requisite, not in
consideration of the danger to the State, nor of immoral teaching, nor even
of such differences as would weaken the authority or arrest the action of the
ecclesiastical organisation, but simply on account of a difference, however
slight, in the theologumena of Protestantism.[238] Thamer, who held the
possibility of salvation among the heathen; Schwenkfeld, who taught that
not the written Word, but the internal illumination of grace in the soul was
the channel of God's influence on man; the Zwinglians, with their error on
the Eucharist, all these met with no more favour than the fanatical
Anabaptists.[239] The State was held bound to vindicate the first table of the
law with the same severity as those commandments on which civil society
depends for its existence. The government of the Church being
administered by the civil magistrates, it was their office also to enforce the
ordinances of religion; and the same power whose voice proclaimed
religious orthodoxy and law held in its hand the sword by which they were
enforced. No religious authority existed except through the civil power.[240]
The Church was merged in the State; but the laws of the State, in return,
were identified with the commandments of religion.[241]
In accordance with these principles, the condemnation of Servetus by a civil
tribunal, which had no authority over him, and no jurisdiction over his
crime—the most aggressive and revolutionary act, therefore, that is
conceivable in the casuistry of persecution—was highly approved by
Melanchthon. He declared it a most useful example for all future ages, and
could not understand that there should be any who did not regard it in the
same favourable light.[242] It is true that Servetus, by denying the divinity of
Christ, was open to the charge of blasphemy in a stricter sense than that in
which the reformers generally applied it. But this was not the case with the
Catholics. They did not represent, like the sects, an element of dissolution
in Protestantism, and the bulk of their doctrine was admitted by the
reformers. They were not in revolt against existing authority; they required

no special innovations for their protection; they demanded only that the
change of religion should not be compulsory. Yet Melanchthon held that
they too were to be proscribed, because their worship was idolatrous.[243] In
doing this he adopted the principle of aggressive intolerance, which was at
that time new to the Christian world; and which the Popes and Councils of
the Catholic Church had condemned when the zeal of laymen had gone
beyond the lawful measure. In the Middle Ages there had been persecution
far more sanguinary than any that has been inflicted by Protestants. Various
motives had occasioned it and various arguments had been used in its
defence. But the principle on which the Protestants oppressed the Catholics
was new. The Catholics had never admitted the theory of absolute
toleration, as it was defined at first by Luther, and afterwards by some of
the sects. In principle, their tolerance differed from that of the Protestants as
widely as their intolerance. They had exterminated sects which, like the
Albigenses, threatened to overturn the fabric of Christian society. They had
proscribed different religions where the State was founded on religious
unity, and where this unity formed an integral part of its laws and
administration. They had gone one step further, and punished those whom
the Church condemned as apostates; thereby vindicating, not, as in the first
case, the moral basis of society, nor, as in the second, the religious
foundation of the State, but the authority of the Church and the purity of her
doctrine, on which they relied as the pillar and bulwark of the social and
political order. Where a portion of the inhabitants of any country preferred a
different creed, Jew, Mohammedan, heathen, or schismatic, they had been
generally tolerated, with enjoyment of property and personal freedom, but
not with that of political power or autonomy. But political freedom had
been denied them because they did not admit the common ideas of duty
which were its basis. This position, however, was not tenable, and was the
source of great disorders. The Protestants, in like manner, could give
reasons for several kinds of persecution. They could bring the Socinians
under the category of blasphemers; and blasphemy, like the ridicule of
sacred things, destroys reverence and awe, and tends to the destruction of
society. The Anabaptists, they might argue, were revolutionary fanatics,
whose doctrines were subversive of the civil order; and the dogmatic sects
threatened the ruin of ecclesiastical unity within the Protestant community
itself. But by placing the necessity of intolerance on the simple ground of
religious error, and in directing it against the Church which they themselves

had abandoned, they introduced a purely subjective test, and a purely
revolutionary system. It is on this account that the tu quoque, or retaliatory
argument, is inadmissible between Catholics and Protestants. Catholic
intolerance is handed down from an age when unity subsisted, and when its
preservation, being essential for that of society, became a necessity of State
as well as a result of circumstances. Protestant intolerance, on the contrary
was the peculiar fruit of a dogmatic system in contradiction with the facts
and principles on which the intolerance actually existing among Catholics
was founded. Spanish intolerance has been infinitely more sanguinary than
Swedish; but in Spain, independently of the interests of religion, there were
strong political and social reasons to justify persecution without seeking
any theory to prop it up; whilst in Sweden all those practical considerations
have either been wanting, or have been opposed to persecution, which has
consequently had no justification except the theory of the Reformation. The
only instance in which the Protestant theory has been adopted by Catholics
is the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Towards the end of his life, Melanchthon, having ceased to be a strict
Lutheran, receded somewhat from his former uncompromising position,
and was adverse to a strict scrutiny into minor theological differences. He
drew a distinction between errors that required punishment and variations
that were not of practical importance.[244] The English Calvinists who took
refuge in Germany in the reign of Mary Tudor were ungraciously received
by those who were stricter Lutherans than Melanchthon. He was consulted
concerning the course to be adopted towards the refugees, and he
recommended toleration. But both at Wesel and at Frankfort his advice was,
to his great disgust, overruled.[245]
The severities of the Protestants were chiefly provoked by the Anabaptists,
who denied the lawfulness of civil government, and strove to realise the
kingdom of God on earth by absorbing the State in the Church.[246] None
protested more loudly than they against the Lutheran intolerance, or
suffered from it more severely. But while denying the spiritual authority of
the State, they claimed for their religious community a still more absolute
right of punishing error by death. Though they sacrificed government to
religion, the effect was the same as that of absorbing the Church in the
State. In 1524 Münzer published a sermon, in which he besought the

Lutheran princes to extirpate Catholicism. "Have no remorse," he says; "for
He to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth means to govern
alone."[247] He demanded the punishment of all heretics, the destruction of
all who were not of his faith, and the institution of religious unity. "Do not
pretend," he says, "that the power of God will accomplish it without the use
of your sword, or it will grow rusty in the scabbard. The tree that bringeth
not forth good fruit must be cut down and cast into the fire." And elsewhere,
"the ungodly have no right to live, except so far as the elect choose to grant
it them."[248] When the Anabaptists were supreme at Münster, they
exhibited the same intolerance. At seven in the morning of Friday, 27th
February 1534, they ran through the streets crying, "Away with the
ungodly!" Breaking into the houses of those who refused their baptism, they
drove the men out of the town, and forcibly rebaptized the women who
remained behind.[249] Whilst, therefore, the Anabaptists were punished for
questioning the authority of the Lutherans in religious matters, they
practically justified their persecution by their own intolerant doctrines. In
fact, they carried the Protestant principles of persecution to an extreme. For
whereas the Lutherans regarded the defence of truth and punishment of
error as being, in part, the object of the institution of civil government, they
recognised it as an advantage by which the State was rewarded for its pains;
but the Anabaptists repudiated the political element altogether, and held that
error should be exterminated solely for the sake of truth, and at the expense
of all existing States.
Bucer, whose position in the history of the Reformation is so peculiar, and
who differed in important points from the Saxon leaders, agreed with them
on the necessity of persecuting. He was so anxious for the success of
Protestantism, that he was ready to sacrifice and renounce important
doctrines, in order to save the appearance of unity;[250] but those opinions in
which he took so little dogmatic interest, he was resolved to defend by
force. He was very much dissatisfied with the reluctance of the Senate of
Strasburg to adopt severe measures against the Catholics. His colleague
Capito was singularly tolerant; for the feeling of the inhabitants was not
decidedly in favour of the change.[251] But Bucer, his biographer tells us,
was, in spite of his inclination to mediate, not friendly to this temporising
system; partly because he had an organising intellect, which relied greatly
on practical discipline to preserve what had been conquered, and on

restriction of liberty to be the most certain security for its preservation;
partly because he had a deep insight into the nature of various religious
tendencies, and was justly alarmed at their consequences for Church and
State.[252] This point in the character of Bucer provoked a powerful
resistance to his system of ecclesiastical discipline, for it was feared that he
would give to the clergy a tyrannical power.[253] It is true that the
demoralisation which ensued on the destruction of the old ecclesiastical
authority rendered a strict attention on the part of the State to the affairs of
religion highly necessary.[254] The private and confidential communications
of the German reformers give a more hideous picture of the moral condition
of the generation which followed the Reformation than they draw in their
published writings of that which preceded it. It is on this account that Bucer
so strongly insisted on the necessity of the interference of the civil power in
support of the discipline of the Church.
The Swiss reformers, between whom and the Saxons Bucer forms a
connecting link, differ from them in one respect, which greatly influenced
their notions of government. Luther lived under a monarchy which was
almost absolute, and in which the common people, who were of Slavonic
origin, were in the position of the most abject servitude; but the divines of
Zürich and Bern were republicans. They did not therefore entertain his
exalted views as to the irresistible might of the State; and instead of
requiring as absolute a theory of the indefectibility of the civil power as he
did, they were satisfied with obtaining a preponderating influence for
themselves. Where the power was in hands less favourable to their cause,
they had less inducement to exaggerate its rights.
Zwingli abolishes both the distinction between Church and State and the
notion of ecclesiastical authority. In his system the civil rulers possess the
spiritual functions; and, as their foremost duty is the preservation and
promotion of the true religion, it is their business to preach. As magistrates
are too much occupied with other things, they must delegate the ministry of
the word to preachers, for whose orthodoxy they have to provide. They are
bound to establish uniformity of doctrine, and to defend it against Papists
and heretics. This is not only their right, but their duty; and not only their
duty, but the condition on which they retain office.[255] Rulers who do not
act in accordance with it are to be dismissed. Thus Zwingli combined

persecution and revolution in the same doctrine. But he was not a fanatical
persecutor, and his severity was directed less against the Catholics than
against the Anabaptists,[256] whose prohibition of all civil offices was more
subversive of order in a republic than in a monarchy. Even, however, in the
case of the Anabaptists the special provocation was—not the peril to the
State, nor the scandal of their errors, but—the schism which weakened the
Church.[257] The punishment of heresy for the glory of God was almost
inconsistent with the theory that there is no ecclesiastical power. It was not
so much provoked in Zürich as elsewhere, because in a small republican
community, where the governing body was supreme over both civil and
religious affairs, religious unity was a matter of course. The practical
necessity of maintaining unity put out of sight the speculative question of
the guilt and penalty of error.
Soon after Zwingli's death, Leo Judæ called for severer measures against
the Catholics, expressly stating, however, that they did not deserve death.
"Excommunication," he said, "was too light a punishment to be inflicted by
the State which wields the sword, and the faults in question were not great
enough to involve the danger of death."[258] Afterwards he fell into doubts
as to the propriety of severe measures against dissenters, but his friends
Bullinger and Capito succeeded in removing his scruples, and in obtaining
his acquiescence in that intolerance, which was, says his biographer, a
question of life and death for the Protestant Church.[259] Bullinger took, like
Zwingli, a more practical view of the question than was common in
Germany. He thought it safer strictly to exclude religious differences than to
put them down with fire and sword; "for in this case," he says, "the victims
compare themselves to the early martyrs, and make their punishment a
weapon of defence."[260] He did not, however, forbid capital punishment in
cases of heresy. In the year 1535 he drew up an opinion on the treatment of
religious error, which is written in a tone of great moderation. In this
document he says "that all sects which introduce division into the Church
must be put down, and not only such as, like the Anabaptists, threaten to
subvert society, for the destruction of order and unity often begins in an
apparently harmless or imperceptible way. The culprit should be examined
with gentleness. If his disposition is good he will not refuse instruction; if
not, still patience must be shown until there is no hope of converting him.
Then he must be treated like other malefactors, and handed over to the

torturer and the executioner."[261] After this time there were no executions
for religion in Zürich, and the number, even in the lifetime of Zwingli, was
less considerable than in many other places. But it was still understood that
confirmed heretics would be put to death. In 1546, in answer to the Pope's
invitation to the Council of Trent, Bullinger indignantly repudiates the
insinuation that the Protestant cantons were heretical, "for, by the grace of
God, we have always punished the vices of heresy and sodomy with fire,
and have looked upon them, and still look upon them, with horror."[262]
This accusation of heresy inflamed the zeal of the reformers against
heretics, in order to prove to the Catholics that they had no sympathy with
them. On these grounds Bullinger recommended the execution of Servetus.
"If the high Council inflicts on him the fate due to a worthless blasphemer,
all the world will see that the people of Geneva hate blasphemers, and that
they punish with the sword of justice heretics who are obstinate in their
heresy.... Strict fidelity and vigilance are needed, because our churches are
in ill repute abroad, as if we were heretics and friends of heresy. Now God's
holy providence has furnished an opportunity of clearing ourselves of this
evil suspicion."[263] After the event he advised Calvin to justify it, as there
were some who were taken aback. "Everywhere," he says, "there are
excellent men who are convinced that godless and blaspheming men ought
not only to be rebuked and imprisoned, but also to be put to death.... How
Servetus could have been spared I cannot see."[264]
The position of Œcolampadius in reference to these questions was
altogether singular and exceptional. He dreaded the absorption of the
ecclesiastical functions by the State, and sought to avoid it by the
introduction of a council of twelve elders, partly magistrates, partly clergy,
to direct ecclesiastical affairs. "Many things," he said, "are punished by the
secular power less severely than the dignity of the Church demands. On the
other hand, it punishes the repentant, to whom the Church shows mercy.
Either it blunts the edge of its sword by not punishing the guilty, or it brings
some hatred on the Gospel by severity."[265] But the people of Basel were
deaf to the arguments of the reformer, and here, as elsewhere, the civil
power usurped the office of the Church. In harmony with this jealousy of
political interference, Œcolampadius was very merciful to the Anabaptists.
"Severe penalties," he said, "were likely to aggravate the evil; forgiveness
would hasten the cure."[266] A few months later, however, he regretted this

leniency. "We perceive," he writes to a friend, "that we have sometimes
shown too much indulgence; but this is better than to proceed tyrannically,
or to surrender the keys of the Church."[267] Whilst, on the other hand, he
rejoiced at the expulsion of the Catholics, he ingeniously justified the
practice of the Catholic persecutors. "In the early ages of the Church, when
the divinity of Christ manifested itself to the world by miracles, God incited
the Apostles to treat the ungodly with severity. When the miracles ceased,
and the faith was universally adopted, He gained the hearts of princes and
rulers, so that they undertook to protect with the sword the gentleness and
patience of the Church. They rigorously resisted, in fulfilment of the duties
of their office, the contemners of the Church."[268] "The clergy," he goes on
to say, "became tyrannical because they usurped to themselves a power
which they ought to have shared with others; and as the people dread the
return of this tyranny of ecclesiastical authority, it is wiser for the Protestant
clergy to make no use of the similar power of excommunication which is
intrusted to them."
Calvin, as the subject of an absolute monarch, and the ruling spirit in a
republic, differed both from the German and the Swiss reformers in his idea
of the State both in its object and in its duty towards the Church. An exile
from his own country, he had lost the associations and habits of monarchy,
and his views of discipline as well as doctrine were matured before he took
up his abode in Switzerland.[269] His system was not founded on existing
facts; it had no roots in history, but was purely ideal, speculative, and
therefore more consistent and inflexible than any other. Luther's political
ideas were bounded by the horizon of the monarchical absolutism under
which he lived. Zwingli's were influenced by the democratic forms of his
native country, which gave to the whole community the right of appointing
the governing body. Calvin, independent of all such considerations, studied
only how his doctrine could best be realised, whether through the
instrumentality of existing authorities, or at their expense. In his eyes its
interests were paramount, their promotion the supreme duty, opposition to
them an unpardonable crime. There was nothing in the institutions of men,
no authority, no right, no liberty, that he cared to preserve, or towards which
he entertained any feelings of reverence or obligation.

His theory made the support of religious truth the end and office of the
State,[270] which was bound therefore to protect, and consequently to obey,
the Church, and had no control over it. In religion the first and highest thing
was the dogma: the preservation of morals was one important office of
government; but the maintenance of the purity of doctrine was the highest.
The result of this theory is the institution of a pure theocracy. If the elect
were alone upon the earth, Calvin taught, there would be no need of the
political order, and the Anabaptists would be right in rejecting it;[271] but the
elect are in a minority; and there is the mass of reprobates who must be
coerced by the sword, in order that all the world may be made subject to the
truth, by the conquerors imposing their faith upon the vanquished.[272] He
wished to extend religion by the sword, but to reserve death as the
punishment of apostasy; and as this law would include the Catholics, who
were in Calvin's eyes apostates from the truth, he narrowed it further to
those who were apostates from the community. In this way, he said, there
was no pretext given to the Catholics to retaliate.[273] They, as well as the
Jews and Mohammedans, must be allowed to live: death was only the
penalty of Protestants who relapsed into error; but to them it applied equally
whether they were converted to the Church or joined the sects and fell into
unbelief. Only in cases where there was no danger of his words being used
against the Protestants, and in letters not intended for publication, he
required that Catholics should suffer the same penalties as those who were
guilty of sedition, on the ground that the majesty of God must be as strictly
avenged as the throne of the king.[274]
If the defence of the truth was the purpose for which power was intrusted to
princes, it was natural that it should be also the condition on which they
held it. Long before the revolution of 1688, Calvin had decided that princes
who deny the true faith, "abdicate" their crowns, and are no longer to be
obeyed;[275] and that no oaths are binding which are in contradiction to the
interests of Protestantism.[276] He painted the princes of his age in the
blackest colours,[277] and prayed to God for their destruction;[278] though at
the same time he condemned all rebellion on the part of his friends, so long
as there were great doubts of their success.[279] His principles, however,
were often stronger than his exhortations, and he had difficulty in
preventing murders and seditious movements in France,[280] When he was

dead, nobody prevented them, and it became clear that his system, by
subjecting the civil power to the service of religion, was more dangerous to
toleration than Luther's plan of giving to the State supremacy over the
Church.
Calvin was as positive as Luther in asserting the duty of obedience to rulers
irrespective of their mode of government[281] He constantly declared that
tyranny was not to be resisted on political grounds; that no civil rights could
outweigh the divine sanction of government; except in cases where a
special office was appointed for the purpose. Where there was no such
office—where, for instance, the estates of the realm had lost their
independence—there was no protection. This is one of the most important
and essential characteristics of the politics of the reformers. By making the
protection of their religion the principal business of government, they put
out of sight its more immediate and universal duties, and made the political
objects of the State disappear behind its religious end. A government was to
be judged, in their eyes, only by its fidelity to the Protestant Church. If it
fulfilled those requirements, no other complaints against it could be
entertained. A tyrannical prince could not be resisted if he was orthodox; a
just prince could be dethroned if he failed in the more essential condition of
faith. In this way Protestantism became favourable at once to despotism and
to revolution, and was ever ready to sacrifice good government to its own
interests. It subverted monarchies, and, at the same time, denounced those
who, for political causes, sought their subversion; but though the
monarchies it subverted were sometimes tyrannical, and the seditions it
prevented sometimes revolutionary, the order it defended or sought to
establish was never legitimate and free, for it was always invested with the
function of religious proselytism,[282] and with the obligation of removing
every traditional, social, or political right or power which could oppose the
discharge of that essential duty.
The part Calvin had taken in the death of Servetus obliged him to develop
more fully his views on the punishment of heresy. He wrote a short account
of the trial,[283] and argued that governments are bound to suppress heresy,
and that those who deny the justice of the punishment, themselves deserve
it.[284] The book was signed by all the clergy of Geneva, as Calvin's
compurgators. It was generally considered a failure; and a refutation

appeared, which was so skilful as to produce a great sensation in the
Protestant world.[285] This famous tract, now of extreme rarity, did not, as
has been said, "contain the pith of those arguments which have ultimately
triumphed in almost every part of Europe;" nor did it preach an
unconditional toleration.[286] But it struck hard at Calvin by quoting a
passage from the first edition of his Institutes, afterwards omitted, in which
he spoke for toleration. "Some of those," says the author, "whom we quote
have subsequently written in a different spirit. Nevertheless, we have cited
the earlier opinion as the true one, as it was expressed under the pressure of
persecution,"[287] The first edition, we are informed by Calvin himself, was
written for the purpose of vindicating the Protestants who were put to death,
and of putting a stop to the persecution. It was anonymous, and naturally
dwelt on the principles of toleration.
Although this book did not denounce all intolerance, and although it was
extremely moderate, Calvin and his friends were filled with horror. "What
remains of Christianity," exclaimed Beza, "if we silently admit what this
man has expectorated in his preface?... Since the beginning of Christianity
no such blasphemy was ever heard."[288] Beza undertook to defend Calvin
in an elaborate work,[289] in which it was easy for him to cite the authority
of all the leading reformers in favour of the practice of putting heretics to
death, and in which he reproduced all the arguments of those who had
written on the subject before him. More systematic than Calvin, he first of
all excludes those who are not Christians—the Jews, Turks, and heathen—
whom his inquiry does not touch; "among Christians," he proceeds to say,
"some are schismatics, who sin against the peace of the Church, or
disbelievers, who reject her doctrine. Among these, some err in all
simplicity; and if their error is not very grave, and if they do not seduce
others, they need not be punished."[290] "But obstinate heretics are far worse
than parricides, and deserve death, even if they repent."[291] "It is the duty
of the State to punish them, for the whole ecclesiastical order is upheld by
the political."[292] In early ages this power was exercised by the temporal
sovereigns; they convoked councils, punished heretics, promulgated
dogmas. The Papacy afterwards arose, in evil times, and was a great
calamity; but it was preferable a hundred times to the anarchy which was
defended under the name of merciful toleration.

The circumstances of the condemnation of Servetus make it the most
perfect and characteristic example of the abstract intolerance of the
reformers. Servetus was guilty of no political crime; he was not an
inhabitant of Geneva, and was on the point of leaving it, and nothing
immoral could be attributed to him. He was not even an advocate of
absolute toleration.[293] The occasion of his apprehension was a dispute
between a Catholic and a Protestant, as to which party was most zealous in
suppressing egregious errors. Calvin, who had long before declared that if
Servetus came to Geneva he should never leave it alive,[294] did all he could
to obtain his condemnation by the Inquisition at Vienne. At Geneva he was
anxious that the sentence should be death,[295] and in this he was
encouraged by the Swiss churches, but especially by Beza, Farel, Bullinger,
and Peter Martyr.[296] All the Protestant authorities, therefore, agreed in the
justice of putting a writer to death in whose case all the secondary motives
of intolerance were wanting. Servetus was not a party leader. He had no
followers who threatened to upset the peace and unity of the Church. His
doctrine was speculative, without power or attraction for the masses, like
Lutheranism; and without consequences subversive of morality, or affecting
in any direct way the existence of society, like Anabaptism.[297] He had
nothing to do with Geneva, and his persecutors would have rejoiced if he
had been put to death elsewhere. "Bayle," says Hallam,[298] "has an
excellent remark on this controversy." Bayle's remark is as follows:
"Whenever Protestants complain, they are answered by the right which
Calvin and Beza recognised in magistrates; and to this day there has been
nobody who has not failed pitiably against this argumentum ad hominem."
No question of the merits of the Reformation or of persecution is involved
in an inquiry as to the source and connection of the opinions on toleration
held by the Protestant reformers. No man's sentiments on the rightfulness of
religious persecution will be affected by the theories we have described, and
they have no bearing whatever on doctrinal controversy. Those who—in
agreement with the principle of the early Church, that men are free in
matters of conscience—condemn all intolerance, will censure Catholics and
Protestants alike. Those who pursue the same principle one step farther and
practically invert it, by insisting on the right and duty not only of professing
but of extending the truth, must, as it seems to us, approve the conduct both
of Protestants and Catholics, unless they make the justice of the persecution

depend on the truth of the doctrine defended, in which case they will divide
on both sides. Such persons, again, as are more strongly impressed with the
cruelty of actual executions than with the danger of false theories, may
concentrate their indignation on the Catholics of Languedoc and Spain;
while those who judge principles, not by the accidental details attending
their practical realisation, but by the reasoning on which they are founded,
will arrive at a verdict adverse to the Protestants. These comparative
inquiries, however, have little serious interest. If we give our admiration to
tolerance, we must remember that the Spanish Moors and the Turks in
Europe have been more tolerant than the Christians; and if we admit the
principle of intolerance, and judge its application by particular conditions,
we are bound to acknowledge that the Romans had better reason for
persecution than any modern State, since their empire was involved in the
decline of the old religion, with which it was bound up, whereas no
Christian polity has been subverted by the mere presence of religious
dissent. The comparison is, moreover, entirely unreasonable, for there is
nothing in common between Catholic and Protestant intolerance. The
Church began with the principle of liberty, both as her claim and as her rule;
and external circumstances forced intolerance upon her, after her spirit of
unity had triumphed, in spite both of the freedom she proclaimed and of the
persecutions she suffered. Protestantism set up intolerance as an imperative
precept and as a part of its doctrine, and it was forced to admit toleration by
the necessities of its position, after the rigorous penalties it imposed had
failed to arrest the process of internal dissolution.[299]
At the time when this involuntary change occurred the sects that caused it
were the bitterest enemies of the toleration they demanded. In the same age
the Puritans and the Catholics sought a refuge beyond the Atlantic from the
persecution which they suffered together under the Stuarts. Flying for the
same reason, and from the same oppression, they were enabled respectively
to carry out their own views in the colonies which they founded in
Massachusetts and Maryland, and the history of those two States exhibits
faithfully the contrast between the two Churches. The Catholic emigrants
established, for the first time in modern history, a government in which
religion was free, and with it the germ of that religious liberty which now
prevails in America. The Puritans, on the other hand, revived with greater
severity the penal laws of the mother country. In process of time the liberty

of conscience in the Catholic colony was forcibly abolished by the
neighbouring Protestants of Virginia; while on the borders of Massachusetts
the new State of Rhode Island was formed by a party of fugitives from the
intolerance of their fellow-colonists.

FOOTNOTES:
[193] The Rambler, March 1862.
[194] "Le vrai principe de Luther est celui-ci: La volonté est esclave par
nature.... Le libre examen a été pour Luther un moyen et non un principe. Il s'en
est servi, et était contraint de s'en servir pour établir son vrai principe, qui était la
toute-puissance de la foi et de la grâce.... C'est ainsi que le libre examen s'imposa
au Protestantisme. L'accessoire devint le principal, et la forme dévora plus ou
moins le fond" (Janet, Histoire de la Philosophie Morale, ii. 38. 39).
[195] "If they prohibit true doctrine, and punish their subjects for receiving the
entire sacrament, as Christ ordained it, compel the people to idolatrous practices,
with masses for the dead, indulgences, invocation of saints, and the like, in these
things they exceed their office, and seek to deprive God of the obedience due to
Him. For God requires from us this above all, that we hear His Word, and follow
it; but where the Government desires to prevent this, the subjects must know that
they are not bound to obey it" (Luther's Werke, xiii. 2244). "Non est, mi
Spalatine, principum et istius saeculi Pontificum tueri verbum Dei, nec ea gratia
ullorum peto praesidium" (Luther's Briefe, ed. De Wette, i. 521, Nov. 4, 1520). "I
will compel and urge by force no man; for the faith must be voluntary and not
compulsory, and must be adopted without violence" ("Sermonen an Carlstadt,"
Werke, xx. 24, 1522).
[196] "Schrift an den christlichen Adel" (Werke, x. 574, June 1520). His
proposition, Haereticos comburi esse contra voluntatem spiritus, was one of
those condemned by Leo X. as pestilent, scandalous, and contrary to Christian
charity.
[197] "Nihil non tentabunt Romanenses, nec potest satis Huttenus me monere,
adeo mihi de veneno timet" (De Wette, i. 487). "Etiam inimici mei quidam
miserti per amicos ex Halberstadio fecerunt moneri me: esse quemdam doctorem
medicinae, qui arte magica factus pro libito invisibilis, quemdam occidit,
mandatum habentem et occidendi Lutheri, venturumque ad futuram Dominicam
ostensionis reliquiarum: valde hoc constanter narratur" (De Wette, i. 441). "Est
hic apud nos Judaeus Polonus, missus sub pretio 2000 aureorum, ut me veneno
perdat, ab amicis per literas mihi proditus. Doctor est medicinae, et nihil non
audere et facere paratus incredibili astutia et agilitate" (De Wette, ii. 616). See
also Jarcke, Studien zur Geschichte der Reformation, p. 176.
[198] "Multa ego premo et causa principis et universitatis nostrae cohibeo, quae
(si alibi essem) evomerem in vastatricem Scripturae et Ecclesiae Romanae....
Timeo miser, ne forte non sim dignus pati et occidi pro tali causa: erit ista
felicitas meliorum hominum, non tam foedi peccatoris. Dixi tibi semper me
paratum esse cedere loco, si qua ego principi ill. viderer periculo hic vivere.
Aliquando certe moriendum est, quanquam jam edita vernacula quadam
apologia satis aduler Romanae Ecclesiae et Pontifici, si quid forte id prosit" (De
Wette, i. 260, 261). "Ubi periculum est, ne iis protectoribus tutus saevius in
Romanenses sim grassaturus, quam si sub principis imperio publicis militarem
officiis docendi.... Ego vicissim, nisi ignem habere nequeam damnabo,

publiceque concremabo jus pontificium totum, id est, lernam illam haeresium; et
finem habebit humilitatis exhibitae hactenusque frustratae observantia qua nolo
amplius inflari hostes Evangelii" (Ibid. pp. 465, 466, July 10, 1520).
[199] "Out of the Gospel and divine truth come devilish lies; ... from the blood
in our body comes corruption; out of Luther come Müntzer, and rebels,
Anabaptists, Sacramentarians, and false brethren" (Werke, i. 75).
[200] "Habemus," wrote Erasmus, "fructum tui spiritus.... Non agnoscis hosce
seditiosos, opinor, sed illi te agnoscunt ... nec tamen efficis quominus credant
homines per tuos libellos ... pro libertare evangelica, contra tyrannidem
humanam, hisce tumultibus fuisse datam occasionem." "And who will deny,"
adds a Protestant classic, "that the fault was partly owing to them?" (Planck,
Geschichte der protestantischen Kirche, ii, 183).
[201] "Ich sehe das wohl, dass der Teufel, so er mich bisher nicht hat mögen
umbringen durch den Pabst, sucht er mich durch die blutdürstigen
Mordpropheten und Rottengeisten, so unter euch sind, zu vertilgen und
auffressen" (Werke, xvi. 77).
[202] Schenkel. Wesen des Protestantismus, iii. 348, 351; Hagen, Geist der
Reformation, ii. 146, 151; Menzel, Neuere Geschichte der Deutschen, i. 115.
[203] See the best of his biographies, Jürgens, Luther's Leben, iii. 601.
[204] "Quid hoc ad me? qui sciam etiam Turcam honorandum et ferendum
potestatis gratia. Quia certus sum non nisi volente Deo ullam potestatem
consistere" (De Wette, i. 236).
[205] "I beg first of all that you will not help to mollify Count Albert in these
matters, but let him go on as he has begun.... Encourage him to go on briskly, to
leave things in the hands of God, and obey His divine command to wield the
sword as long as he can." "Do not allow yourselves to be much disturbed, for it
will redound to the advantage of many souls that will be terrified by it, and
preserved." "If there are innocent persons amongst them, God will surely save
and preserve them, as He did with Lot and Jeremiah. If He does not, then they
are certainly not innocent.... We must pray for them that they obey, otherwise
this is no time for compassion; just let the guns deal with them." "Sentio melius
esse omnes rusticos caedi quam principes et magistratus, eo quod rustici sine
autoritate Dei gladium accipiunt. Quam nequitiam Satanae sequi non potest nisi
mera Satanica vastitas regni Dei, et mundi principes etsi excedunt, tamen
gladium autoritate Dei gerunt. Ibi utrumque regnum consistere potest, quare
nulla misericordia, nulla patientia rusticis debetur, sed ira et indignatio Dei et
hominum" (De Wette, ii. 653, 655, 666, 669, 671).
[206] "Wir lehren die christlich Obrigkeit möge nicht nur, sondern solle auch
sich der Religion und Glaubenssachen mit Ernst annehmen; davon halten die
Wiedertäufer steif das Widerspiel, welches sie auch zum Theil gemein haben mit
den Prälaten der römischen Kirche" (Declaration of the Protestants, quoted in
Jörg, Deutschland von 1522 bis 1526, p. 709).
[207] "As to your question, how they are to be punished, I do not consider them
blasphemers, but regard them in the light of the Turks, or deluded Christians,

whom the civil power has not to punish, at least bodily. But if they refuse to
acknowledge and to obey the civil authority, then they forfeit all they have and
are, for then sedition and murder are certainly in their hearts" (De Wette, ii. 622;
Osiander's opinion in Jörg, p. 706).
[208] "Dass in dem Urtheil und desselben öffentlicher Verkündigung keines
Irrthums oder Ketzereien ... sondern allein der Aufruhr und fürgenommenen
Morderei, die ihm doch laut seiner Urgicht nie lieb gewesen, gedacht werde"
(Jörg, p. 708).
[209] "Principes nostri non cogunt ad fidem et Evangelion, sed cohibent externas
abominationes" (De Wette, iii. 50). "Wenn die weltliche Obrigkeit die
Verbrechen wider die zweite Gesetzestafel bestrafen, und aus der menschlichen
Gesellschaft tilgen solle, wie vielmehr denn die Verbrechen wider die erste?"
(Luther, apud Bucholtz, Geschichte Ferdinands I., iii. 571).
[210] Planck, iv. 61, explains why this was not thought of.
[211] Linde, Staatskirche, p. 23. "Der Papst sammt seinem Haufen glaubt nicht;
darum bekennen wir, er werde nicht selig, das ist verdammt werden" (Table-
Talk, ii. 350).
[212] Kaltenborn, Vorläufer des Grotius, 208.
[213] Möhler, Symbolik, 428.
[214] "Quodsi unam legem Mosi cogimur servare, eadem ratione et
circumcidemur, et totam legem servare oportebit.... Nunc vero non sumus
amplius sub lege Mosi, sed subjecti legibus civilibus in talibus rebus" (Luther to
Barnes, Sept. 5, 1531; De Wette, iv. 296).
[215] "All things that we find done by the patriarchs in the Old Testament ought
to be free and not forbidden. Circumcision is abolished, but not so that it would
be a sin to perform it, but optional, neither sinful nor acceptable.... In like
manner it is not forbidden that a man should have more than one wife. Even at
the present day I could not prohibit it; but I would not recommend it"
(Commentary on Genesis, 1528; see Jarcke, Studien, p. 108). "Ego sane fateor,
me non posse prohibere, siquis plures velit uxores ducere, nec repugnat sacris
literis: verum tamen apud Christianos id exempli nollem primo introduci, apud
quos decet etiam ea intermittere, quae licita sunt, pro vitando scandalo, et pro
honestate vitae" (De Wette, ii. 459, Jan. 13, 1524). "From these instances of
bigamy (Lamech, Jacob) no rule can be drawn for our times; and such examples
have no power with us Christians, for we live under our authorities, and are
subject to our civil laws" (Table-Talk, v. 64).
[216] "Antequam tale repudium, probarem potius regi permitterem alteram
reginam quoque ducere, et exemplo patrum et regum duas simul uxores seu
reginas habere.... Si peccavit ducendo uxorem fratris mortui, peccavit in legem
humanam seu civilem; si autem repudiaverit, peccabit in legem mere divinam"
(De Wette, iv. 296). "Haud dubio rex Angliae uxorem fratris mortui ductam
retinere potest ... docendus quod has res politicas commiserit Deus
magistratibus, neque nos alligaverit ad Moisen.... Si vult rex successioni
prospicere, quanto satius est, id facere sine infamia prioris conjugii. Ac potest id

fieri sine ullo periculo conscientiae cujuscunque aut famae per polygamiam. Etsi
enim non velim concedere polygamiam vulgo, dixi enim supra, nos non ferre
leges, tamen in hoc casu propter magnam utilitatem regni, fortassis etiam propter
conscientiam regis, ita pronuncio: tutissimum esse regi, si ducat secundam
uxorem, priore non abjecta, quia certum est polygamiam non esse prohibitam
jure divino, nec res est omnino inusitata" (Melanthonis Opera, ed.
Bretschneider, ii. 524, 526). "Nolumus esse auctores divortii, cum conjugium
cum jure divino non pugnet. Hi, qui diversum pronunciant, terribiliter
exaggerant et exasperant jus divinum. Nos contra exaggeramus in rebus politicis
auctoritatem magistratus, quae profecto non est levis, multaque justa sunt
propter magistratus auctoritatem, quae alioqui in dubium vocantur"
(Melanchthon to Bucer, Bretschneider, ii. 552).
[217] "Suadere non possumus ut introducatur publice et velut lege sanciatur
permissio, plures quam unam uxores ducendi.... Primum ante omnia cavendum,
ne haec res inducatur in orbem ad modum legis, quam sequendi libera omnibus
sit potestas. Deinde considerare dignetur vestra celsitudo scandalum, nimirum
quod Evangelio hostes exclamaturi sint, nos similes esse Anabaptistis, qui plures
simul duxerunt uxores" (De Wette, v. 236. Signed by Luther, Melanchthon, and
Bucer).
[218] "He that would appear wise will not be satisfied with anything that others
do; he must do something for himself, and that must be better than anything.
This fool (Copernicus) wants to overturn the whole science of astronomy. But,
as the holy Scriptures tell us, Joshua told the sun to stand still, and not the earth"
(Table-Talk, iv. 575).
[219] "Das ist die christliche Freiheit, der einige Glaube, der da macht, nicht
dass wir müssig gehen oder übel thun mögen, sondern dass wir keines Werks
bedürfen, die Frömmigkeit und Seligkeit zu erlangen" (Sermon von der
Freiheit). A Protestant historian, who quotes this passage, goes on to say: "On
the other hand, the body must be brought under discipline by every means, in
order that it may obey and not burden the inner man. Outward servitude,
therefore, assists the progress towards internal freedom" (Bensen, Geschichte
des Bauernkriegs, 269.)
[220] Werke, x. 413.
[221] "According to Scripture, it is by no means proper that one who would be a
Christian should set himself against his superiors, whether by God's permission
they act justly or unjustly. But a Christian must suffer violence and wrong,
especially from his superiors.... As the emperor continues emperor, and princes,
though they transgress all God's commandments, yea, even if they be heathen, so
they do even when they do not observe their oath and duty.... Sin does not
suspend authority and allegiance" (De Wette, iii. 560).
[222] Ranke, Reformation, iii. 183.
[223] Ranke, iv. 7; Jürgens, iii. 601.
[224] Newman, Lectures on Justification, p. 386.

[225] "Was durch ordentliche Gewalt geschieht, ist nicht für Aufruhr zu halten"
(Bensen, p. 269; Jarcke, Studien, p. 312; Janet, ii. 40).
[226] "Princes, and all rulers and governments, however pious and God-fearing
they may be, cannot be without sin in their office and temporal administration....
They cannot always be so exactly just and successful as some wiseacres
suppose; therefore they are above all in need of the forgiveness of sins" (see
Kaltenborn, p. 209).
[227] "Of old, under the Papacy, princes and lords, and all judges, were very
timid in shedding blood, and punishing robbers, murderers, thieves, and all
manner of evil-doers; for they knew not how to distinguish a private individual
who is not in office from one in office, charged with the duty of punishing....
The executioner had always to do penance, and to apologise beforehand to the
convicted criminal for what he was going to do to him, just as if it was sinful and
wrong." "Thus they were persuaded by monks to be gracious, indulgent, and
peaceable. But authorities, princes and lords ought not to be merciful" (Table-
Talk, iv. 159, 160).
[228] "Den weltlichen Bann sollten Könige und Kaiser wieder aufrichten, denn
wir können ihn jetzt nicht anrichten.... Aber so wir nicht können die Sünde des
Lebens bannen und strafen, so bannen wir doch die Sünde der Lehre" (Bruns,
Luther's Predigten, 63).
[229] "Wo sie solche Rottengeister würden zulassen und leiden, so sie es doch
wehren und vorkommen können, würden sie ihre Gewissen gräulich
beschweren, und vielleicht nimmermehr widder stillen können, nicht allein der
Seelen halben, die dadurch verführt und verdammt werden ... sondern auch der
gauzen heiligen Kirchen halben" (De Wette, iv. 355).
[230] "Nu ist alle Abgötterey gegen die Messe ein geringes" (De Wette, v. 191;
sec. iv. 307)
[231] Bucholtz, iii. 570.
[232] "Sie aber verachten die Schrift muthwilliglich, darum wären sie billig aus
der einigen Ursach zu stillen, oder nicht zu leiden" (De Wette, iii. 90).
[233] "Wollen sie aber wie die Juden seyn, nicht Christen heissen, noch Kaisers
Glieder, sondern sich lassen Christus und Kaisers Feinde nennen, wie die Juden;
wohlan, so wollen wir's auch leiden, dass sie in ihren Synagogen, wie die Juden,
verschlossen lästern, so lang sie wollen" (De Wette, iv. 94).
[234] Riffel, Kirchengeschichte, ii. 9; Table-Talk, iii. 175.
[235] "Ego ab initio, cum primum caepi nosse Ciconiam et Ciconiae factionem,
unde hoc totum genus Anabaptistarum exortum est, fui stulte clemens.
Sentiebant enim et alii haereticos non esse ferro opprimendos. Et tunc dux
Fridericus vehementer iratus erat Ciconiae: ac nisi a nobis tectus esset, fuisset de
homine furioso et perdite malo sumtum supplicium. Nunc me ejus clementiae
non parum poenitet.... Brentius nimis clemens est" (Bretschneider, ii. 17, Feb.
1530).

[236] "Sed objiciunt exemplum nobis periculosum: si haec pertinent ad
magistratus, quoties igitur magistratus judicabit aliquos errare, saeviet in eos.
Caesar igitur debet nos opprimere, quoniam ita judicat nos errare. Respondeo:
certe debet errores et prohibere et punire.... Non est enim solius Caesaris
cognitio, sicut in urbibus haec cognitio non est tantum magistratus prophani, sed
est doctorum. Viderit igitur magistratus ut recte judicet" (Bretschneider, ii. 712).
"Deliberent igitur principes, non cum tyrannis, non cum pontificibus, non cum
hypocritis, monachis aut aliis, sed cum ipsa Evangelii voce, cum probatis
scriptoribus" (Bretschneider, iii. 254).
[237] "Quare ita sentias, magistratum debere uti summa severitate in coercendis
hujusmodi spiritibus.... Sines igitur novis exemplis timorem incuti multitudini ...
ad haec notae tibi sint causae seditionum, quas gladio prohiberi oportet....
Propterea sentio de his qui etiamsi non defendunt seditiosos articulos, habent
manifeste blasphemos, quod interfici a magistratu debeant" (ii. 17, 18). "De
Anabaptistis tulimus hic in genere sententiam: quia constat sectam diabolicam
esse, non esse tolerandam: dissipari enim ecclesias per eos, cum ipsi nullam
habeant certam doctrinam.... Ideo in capita factionum in singulis locis ultima
supplicia constituenda esse judicavimus" (ii. 549). "It is clear that it is the duty
of secular government to punish blasphemy, false doctrine, and heresy, on the
bodies of those who are guilty of them.... Since it is evident that there are gross
errors in the articles of the Anabaptist sect, we conclude that in this case the
obstinate ought to be punished with death" (iii. 199). "Propter hanc causam Deus
ordinavit politias ut Evangelium propagari possit ... nec revocamus politiam
Moysi, sed lex moralis perpetua est omnium aetatum ... quandocumque constat
doctrinam esse impiam, nihil dubium est quin sanior pars Ecclesiae debeat malos
pastores removere et abolere impios cultus. Et hanc emendationem praecipue
adjuvare debent magistratus, tanquam potiora membra Ecclesiae" (iii. 242, 244).
"Thammerus, qui Mahometicas seu Ethnicas opiniones spargit, vagatur in
dioecesi Mindensi, quem publicis suppliciis adficere debebant.... Evomuit
blasphemias, quae refutandae sunt non tantum disputatione aut scriptis, sed
etiam justo officio pii magistratus" (ix. 125, 131).
[238] "Voco autem blasphemos qui articulos habent, qui proprie non pertinent ad
civilem statum, sed continent θεωρἱαϛ ut de divinitate Christi et similes. Etsi
enim gradus quidam sunt, tamen huc etiam refero baptismum infantum.... Quia
magistratui commissa est tutela totius legis, quod attinet ad externam
disciplinam et externa facta. Quare delicta externa contra primam tabulam
prohibere ac punire debet.... Quare non solum concessum est, sed etiam
mandatum est magistratui, impias doctrinas abolere, et tueri pias in suis
ditionibus" (ii. 711). "Ecclesiastica potestas tantum judicat et excommunicat
haereticos, non occidit. Sed potestas civilis debet constituere poenas et supplicia
in haereticos, sicut in blasphemos constituit supplicia.... Non enim plectitur
fides, sed haeresis" (xii. 697).
[239] "Notum est etiam, quosdam tetra et δὑσφημα dixisse de sanguine Christi,
quos puniri oportuit, et propter gloriam Christi, et exempli causa" (viii. 553).
"Argumentatur ille praestigiator (Schwenkfeld), verbum externum non esse
medium, quo Deus est efficax. Talis sophistica principum severitate
compescenda erat" (ix. 579).

[240] "The office of preacher is distinct from that of governor, yet both have to
contribute to the praise of God. Princes are not only to protect the goods and
bodily life of their subjects, but the principal function is to promote the honour
of God, and to prevent idolatry and blasphemy" (iii. 199). "Errant igitur
magistratus, qui divellunt gubernationem a fine, et se tantum pacis ac ventris
custodes esse existimant.... At si tantum venter curandus esset, quid differrent
principes ab armentariis? Nam longe aliter sentiendum est. Politias divinitus
admirabili sapientia et bonitate constitutas esse, non tantum ad quaerenda et
fruenda ventris bona, sed multo magis, ut Deus in societate innotescat, ut aeterna
bona quaerantur" (iii. 246).
[241] "Neque illa barbarica excusatio audienda est, leges illas pertinere ad
politiam Mosaicam, non ad nostram. Ut Decalogus ipse ad omnes pertinet, ita
judex ubique omnia Decalogi officia in externa disciplina tueatur" (viii. 520).
[242] "Legi scriptum tuum, in quo refutasti luculenter horrendas Serveti
blasphemias, ac filio Dei gratias ago, qui fuit βραβευτἡς hujus tui agonis. Tibi
quoque Ecclesia et nunc et ad posteros gratitudinem debet et debebit. Tuo judicio
prorsus adsentior. Affirmo etiam, vestros magistratus juste fecisse, quod
hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata, interfecerunt" (Melanchthon to
Calvin, Bretschneider, viii. 362). "Judico etiam Senatum Genevensem recte
fecisse, quod hominem pertinacem et non omissurum blasphemias sustulit. Ac
miratus sum, esse, qui severitatem illam improbent" (viii. 523). "Dedit vero et
Genevensis reip. magistratus ante annos quatuor punitae insanabilis blasphemiae
adversus filium Dei, sublato Serveto Arragone pium et memorabile ad omnem
posteritatem exemplum" (ix. 133).
[243] "Abusus missae per magistratus debet tolli. Non aliter, atque sustulit
aeneum serpentem Ezechias, aut excelsa demolitus est Josias" (i. 480). "Politicis
magistratibus severissime mandatum est, ut suo quisque loco manibus et armis
tollant statuas, ad quas fiunt hominum concursus et invocationes, et puniant
suppliciis corporum insanabiles, qui idolorum cultum pertinaciter retinent, aut
blasphemias serunt" (ix. 77).
[244] "If the French and English community at Frankfort shared the errors of
Servetus or Thamer, or other enemies of the Symbols, or the errors of the
Anabaptists on infant baptism, against the authority of the State, etc., I should
faithfully advise and strongly recommend that they should be soon driven away;
for the civil power is bound to prevent and to punish proved blasphemy and
sedition. But I find that this community is orthodox in the symbolical articles on
the Son of God, and in other articles of the Symbol.... If the faith of the citizens
in every town were inquired into, what trouble and confusion would not arise in
many countries and towns!" (ix. 179).
[245] Schmidt, Philipp Melanchthon, p. 640. His exhortations to the Landgrave
to put down the Zwinglians are characteristic: "The Zwinglians, without waiting
for the Council, persecute the Papists and the Anabaptists; why must it be wrong
for others to prohibit their indefensible doctrine independent of the Council?"
Philip replied: "Forcibly, to prohibit a doctrine which neither contradicts the
articles of faith nor encourages sedition, I do not think right.... When Luther
began to write and to preach, he admonished and instructed the Government that
it had no right to forbid books or to prevent preaching, and that its office did not

extend so far, but that it had only to govern the body and goods.... I had not
heard before that the Zwinglians persecute the Papists; but if they abolish
abuses, it is not unjust, for the Papists wish to deserve heaven by their works,
and so blaspheme the Son of God. That they should persecute the Anabaptists is
also not wrong, for their doctrine is in part seditious." The divines answered: "If
by God's grace our true and necessary doctrine is tolerated as it has hitherto been
by the emperor, though reluctantly, we think that we ought not to prevent it by
undertaking the defence of the Zwinglian doctrine, if that should not be
tolerated. ... As to the argument that we ought to spare the people while
persecuting the leaders, our answer is, that it is not a question of persons, but
only of doctrine, whether it be true or false" (Correspondence of Brenz and
Melanchthon with Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Bretschneider, ii. 95, 98, 101).
[246] Hardwicke, Reformation, p. 274.
[247] Seidemann, Thomas Münzer, p. 35.
[248] Schenkel, iii. 381.
[249] Heinrich Grosbeck's Bericht, ed. Cornelius, 19.
[250] Herzog, Encyclopädie für protestantische Theologie, ii. 418.
[251] Bussierre, Establissement du Protestantisme en Alsace, p. 429.
[252] Baum, Capito und Butzer, p. 489.
[253] Baum, p. 492; Erbkam, Protestantische Sekten, p. 581.
[254] Ursinus writes to Bullinger: "Liberavit nos Deus ab idolatria: succedit
licentia infinita et horribilis divini nominis, ecclesiae doctrinae purioris et
sacramentorum prophanatio et sub pedibus porcorum et canum, conniventibus
atque utinam non defendentibus iis qui prohibere suo loco debebant,
conculcatio" (Sudhoff, Olevianus und Ursinus, p. 340).
[255] "Adserere audemus, neminem magistratum recte gerere ne posse quidem,
nisi Christianus sit" (Zuingli, Opera, iii. 296). "If they shall proceed in an
unbrotherly way, and against the ordinance of Christ, then let them be deposed,
in God's name" (Schenkel, iii. 362).
[256] Christoffel, Huldreich Zwingli, p. 251.
[257] Zwingli's advice to the Protestants of St. Gall, in Pressel, Joachim Vadian,
p. 45.
[258] Pestalozzi, Heinrich Bullinger, p. 95.
[259] Ibid., Leo Judä, p. 50.
[260] Pestalozzi, Heinrich Bullinger, p. 146.
[261] Ibid. p. 149.
[262] Ibid. p. 270.
[263] Pestalozzi, Heinrich Bullinger, p. 426.

[264] In the year 1555 he writes to Socinus: "I too am of opinion that heretical
men must be cut off with the spiritual sword.... The Lutherans at first did not
understand that sectaries must be restrained and punished, but after the fall of
Münster, when thousands of poor misguided men, many of them orthodox, had
perished, they were compelled to admit that it is wiser and better for the
Government not only to restrain wrong-headed men, but also, by putting to death
a few that deserve it, to protect thousands of inhabitants" (Ibid. p. 428).
[265] Herzog, Leben Oekolampads, ii 197.
[266] Ibid. p. 189.
[267] Ibid. p. 206.
[268] Herzog, Leben Oekolampads, ii. 195. Herzog finds an excuse for the harsh
treatment of the Lutherans at Basel in the still greater severity of the Lutheran
Churches against the followers of the Swiss reformation (Ibid. 213).
[269] Hundeshagen, Conflikte des Zwinglianismus und Calvinismus, 41.
[270] "Huc spectat (politia) ... ne idololatria, ne in Dei nomen sacrilegia, ne
adversus ejus veritatem blasphemiae aliaeque religionis offensiones publice
emergant ac in populum spargantur.... Politicam ordinationem probo, quae in hoc
incumbit, ne vera religio, quae Dei lege continetur, palam, publicisque sacrilegiis
impune violetur" (Institutio Christianae Religionis, ed. Tholuck, ii. 477). "Hoc
ergo summopere requiritur a regibus, ut gladio quo praediti sunt utuntur ad
cultum Dei asserendum" (Praelectiones in Prophetas, Opera, v. 233, ed. 1667).
[271] "Huic etiam colligere promptum est, quam stulta fuerit imaginatio eorum
qui volebant usum gladii tollere e mundo, Evangelii praetextu. Scimus
Anabaptistas fuisse tumultuatos, quasi totus ordo politicus repugnaret Christi
regno, quia regnum Christi continetur sola doctrina; deinde nulla futura sit vis.
Hoc quidem verum esset, si essemus in hoc mundo angeli: sed quemadmodum
jam dixi, exiguus est piorum numerus: ideo necesse est reliquam turbam cohiberi
violento freno: quia permixti sunt filii Dei vel saevis belluis, vel vulpibus et
fraudulentis hominibus" (Pr. in Michaeam, v. 310). "In quo non suam modo
inscitiam, sed diabolicum fastum produnt, dum perfectionem sibi arrogant; cujus
ne centesima quidem pars in illis conspicitur" (Institutio, ii. 478).
[272] "Tota igitur excellentia, tota dignitas, tota potentia Ecclesiae debet huc
referri, ut omnia subjaceant Deo, et quicquid erit in gentibus hoc totum sit
sacrum, ut scilicet cultus Dei tam apud victores quam apud victos vigeat" (Pr. in
Michaeam, v. 317).
[273] "Ita tollitur offensio, quae multos imperitos fallit, dum metuunt ne hoc
praetextu ad saeviendum armentur Papae carnifices." Calvin was warned by
experience of the imprudence of Luther's language. "In Gallis proceres in
excusanda saevitia immani allegant autoritatem Lutheri" (Melanchthon. Opera,
v. 176).
[274] "Vous avez deux espèces de mutins qui se sont eslevez entre le roy et
l'estat du royaume: Les uns sont gens fantastiques, qui soubs couleur de
l'évangile vouldroient mettre tout en confusion. Les aultres sont gens obstinés
aux superstitions de l'Antéchrist de Rome. Tous ensemble méritent bien d'estre

réprimés par le glayve qui vous est commis, veu qu'ils s'attaschent non
seulement au roy, mais à Dieu qui l'a assis au siège royal" (Calvin to Somerset,
Oct. 22, 1540: Lettres de Calvin, ed. Bonnet, i. 267. See also Henry, Leben
Calvins, ii. Append. 30).
[275] "Abdicant enim se potestate terreni principes dum insurgunt contra Deum:
imo indigni sunt qui censeantur in hominum numero. Potius ergo conspuere
oportet in ipsorum capita, quam illis parere, ubi ita proterviunt ut velint etiam
spoliare Deum jure suo, et quasi occupare solium ejus, acsi possent eum a coelo
detrahere" (Pr. in Danielem, v. 91).
[276] "Quant au serment qu'on vous a contraincte de faire, comme vous avez
failli et offensé Dieu en le faisant, aussi n'estes-vous tenue de le garder" (Calvin
to the Duchess of Ferrara, Bonnet, ii. 338). She had taken an oath, at her
husband's death, that she would not correspond with Calvin.
[277] "In aulis regum videmus primas teneri a bestiis. Nam hodie, ne repetamus
veteres historias, ut reges fere omnes fatui sunt ac bruti, ita etiam sunt quasi equi
et asini brutorum animalium.... Reges sunt hodie fere mancipia" (Pr. in
Danielem, v. 82). "Videmus enim ut hodie quoque pro sua libidine commoveant
totum orbem principes; quia produnt alii aliis innoxios populus, et exercent
foedam nundinationem, dum quisque commodum suum venatur, et sine ullo
pudore, tantum ut augeat suam potentiam, alios tradit in manum inimici" (Pr. in
Nahum, v. 363). "Hodie pudet reges aliquid prae se ferre humanum, sed omnes
gestus accommodant ad tyrannidem" (Pr. in Jeremiam, v. 257).
[278] "Sur ce que je vous avais allégué, quo David nous instruict par son
exemple de haïr les ennemis de Dieu, vous respondez que c'estoit pour ce temps-
là duquel sous la loi de rigueur il estoit permis de haïr les ennemis. Or, madame,
ceste glose seroit pour renverser toute l'Escriture, et partant il la fault fuir comme
une peste mortelle.... Combien que j'aye tousjours prié Dieu de luy faire mercy,
si est-ce que j'ay souvent désiré que Dieu mist la main sur luy (Guise) pour en
deslivrer son Eglise, s'il ne le vouloit convertir" (Calvin to the Duchess of
Ferrara, Bonnet, ii. 551). Luther was in this respect equally unscrupulous: "This
year we must pray Duke Maurice to death, we must kill him with our prayers;
for he will be an evil man" (MS. quoted in Döllinger, Reformation, iii, 266).
[279] "Quod de praepostero nostrorum fervore scribis, verissimum est, neque
tamen ulla occurrit moderandi ratio, quia sanis consiliis non obtemperant.
Passim denuntio, si judex essem me non minus severe in rabioso, istos impetus
vindicaturum, quam rex suis edictis mandat. Pergendum nihilominus, quando
nos Deus voluit stultis esse debitores" (Calvin to Beza; Henry, Leben Calvins,
iii. Append. 164).
[280] "Il n'a tenu qu'à moi que, devant la guerre, gens de faict et d'exécution ne
se soyent efforcez de l'exterminer du monde (Guise) lesquels ont esté retenus par
ma seule exhortation."—Bonnet, ii. 553.
[281] "Hoc nobis si assidue ob animos et oculos obversetur, eodem decreto
constitui etiam nequissimos reges, quo regum auctoritas statuitur; nunquam in
animum nobis seditiosae illae cogitationes venient, tractandum esse pro meritis
regem nec aequum esse, ut subditos ei nos praestemus, qui vicissim regem nobis
se non praestet.... De privatis hominibus semper loquor. Nam si qui nunc sint

populares magistratus ad moderandam regum libidinem constituti (quales olim
erant ... ephori ... tribuni ... demarchi: et qua etiam forte potestate, ut nunc res
habent, funguntur in singulis regnis tres ordines, quum primarios conventus
peragunt) ... illos ferocienti regum licentiae pro officio intercedere non veto"
(Institutio, ii. 493, 495).
[282] "Quum ergo ita licentiose omnia sibi permittent (Donatistae), volebant
tamen impune manere sua scelera: et in primis tenebant hoc principium: non
esse poenas sumendas, si quis ab aliis dissideret in religionis doctrina:
quemadmodum hodie videmus quosdam de hac re nimis cupide contendere.
Certum est quid cupiant. Nam si quis ipsos respiciat, sunt impii Dei
contemptores: saltem vellent nihil certum esse in religione; ideo labefactare, et
quantum in se est etiam convellere nituntur omnia pietatis principia. Ut ergo
liceat ipsis evomere virus suum, ideo tantopere litigant pro impunitate, et negant
poenas de haereticis et blasphemis sumendas esse" (Pr. in Danielem, v. 51).
[283] "Defensio Orthodoxae Fidei ... ubi ostenditur Haereticos jure gladii
coercendos esse," 1554.
[284] "Non modo liberum esse magistratibus poenas sumere de coelestis
doctrinae corruptoribus, sed divinitus esse mandatum, ut pestiferis erroribus
impunitatem dare nequeant, quin desciscant ab officii sui fide.... Nunc vero
quisquis haereticis et blasphemis injuste paenam infligi contenderet, sciens et
volens se obstringet blasphemiae reatu.... Ubi a suis fundamentis convellitur
religio, detestandae in Deum blasphemiae proferuntur, impiis et pestiferis
dogmatibus in exitium rapiuntur animae; denique ubi palam defectio ab unico
Deo puraque doctrina tentatur, ad extremum illud remedium descendere
necesse" (see Schenkel, iii. 389; Dyer, Life of Calvin, p. 354; Henry, iii. 234).
[285] De Haereticis an sint persequendi, Magdeburgi, 1554. Chataillon, to
whom it is generally attributed, was not the author (see Heppe, Theodor Beza, p.
37).
[286] Hallam, Literature of Europe, ii. 81; Schlosser, Leben des Beza, p. 55. This
is proved by the following passage from the dedication: "This I say not to favour
the heretics, whom I abhor, but because there are here two dangerous rocks to be
avoided. In the first place, that no man should be deemed a heretic when he is
not ... and that the real rebel be distinguished from the Christian who, by
following the teaching and example of his Master, necessarily causes separation
from the wicked and unbelieving. The other danger is, lest the real heretics be
not more severely punished than the discipline of the Church requires" (Baum,
Theodor Beza, i. 215).
[287] "Multis piis hominibus in Gallia exustis grave passim apud Germanos
odium ignes illi excitaverant, sparsi sunt, ejus restinguendi causa, improbi ac
mendaces libelli, non alios tam crudeliter tractari, quam Anabaptistas ac
turbulentos homines, qui perversis deliriis non religionem modo sed totum
ordinem politicum convellerent.... Haec mihi edendae Institutionis causa fuit,
primum ut ab injusta contumelia vindicarem fratres meos, quorum mors pretiosa
erat in conspectu Domini; deinde quum multis miseris eadem visitarent
supplicia, pro illis dolor saltem aliquis et sollicitudo exteras gentes tangeret"

(Praefatio in Psalmos. See "Historia Litteraria de Calvini Institutione." in
Scrinium Antiquarium, ii. 452).
[288] Baum, i. 206. "Telles gens," says Calvin, "seroient contents qu'il n'y eust
ne loy, ne bride au monde. Voilà pourquoy ils ont basti ce beau libvre De non
comburendis Haereticis, où ils out falsifié les noms tant des villes que des
personnes, non pour aultre cause sinon pource que le dit livre est farcy de
blasphèmes insupportables" (Bonnet, ii. 18).
[289] De Haereticis a civili Magistratu puniendis, 1554.
[290] "Absit autem a nobis, ut in eos, qui vel simplicitate peccant, sine aliorum
pernicie et insigni blasphemia, vel in explicando quopiam Scripturae loco
dissident a recepta opinione, magistratum armemus" (Tractatus Theologici, i.
95).
[291] This was sometimes the practice in Catholic countries, where heresy was
equivalent to treason. Duke William of Bavaria ordered obstinate Anabaptists to
be burnt; those who recanted to be beheaded. "Welcher revocir, den soll man
köpfen; welcher nicht revocir, den soll man brennen" (Jörg, p. 717).
[292] "Ex quibus omnibus una conjunctio efficitur, istos quibus haeretici
videntur non esse puniendi, opinionem in Ecclesiam Dei conari longe omnium
pestilentissimam invehere et ex diametro repugnantem doctrinae primum a Deo
Patre proditae, deinde a Christo instauratae, ab universa denique Ecclesia
orthodoxa perpetuo consensu usurpatae, ut mihi quidem magis absurde facere
videantur quam si sacrilegas aut parricidas puniendos negarent, quum sint istis
omnibus haeretici infinitis partibus deteriores" (Tract. Theol. i. 143).
[293] "Verum est quod correctione non exspectata Ananiam et Sapphiram occidit
Petrus. Quia Spiritus Sanctus tunc maxime vigens, quem spreverant, docebat
esse incorrigibiles, in malitia obstinatos. Hoc crimen est morte simpliciter
dignum et apud Deum et apud homines. In aliis autem criminibus, ubi Spiritus
Sanctus speciale quid non docet, ubi non est inveterata malitia, aut obstinatio
certa non apparet aut atrocitas magna, correctionem per alias castigationes
sperare potius debemus" (Servetus, Restitutio Christianismi, 656; Henry, iii.
235).
[294] "Nam si venerit, modo valeat mea authoritas, vivum exire nunquam patiar"
(Calvin to Farel, in Henry, iii. Append. 65; Audin, Vie de Calvin, ii. 314; Dyer,
544).
[295] "Spero capitale saltem fore judicium; poenae vero atrocitatem remitti
cupio" (Calvin to Farel, Henry, iii. 189). Dr. Henry makes no attempt to clear
Calvin of the imputation of having caused the death of Servetus. Nevertheless he
proposed, some years later, that the three-hundredth anniversary of the execution
should be celebrated in the Church of Geneva by a demonstration. "It ought to
declare itself in a body, in a manner worthy of our principles, admitting that in
past times the authorities of Geneva were mistaken, loudly proclaiming
toleration, which is truly the crown of our Church, and paying due honour to
Calvin, because he had no hand in the business (parcequ'il n'a pas trempé dans
cette affaire), of which he has unjustly borne the whole burden." The impudence
of this declaration is surpassed by the editor of the French periodical from which

we extract it. He appends to the words in our parenthesis the following note:
"We underline in order to call attention to this opinion of Dr. Henry, who is so
thoroughly acquainted with the whole question" (Bulletin de la Société de
l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français, ii. 114).
[296] "Qui scripserunt de non plectendis haereticis, semper mihi visi sunt non
parum errare" (Farel to Blaarer, Henry, iii. 202). During the trial he wrote to
Calvin: "If you desire to diminish the horrible punishment, you will act as a
friend towards your most dangerous enemy. If I were to seduce anybody from
the true faith, I should consider myself worthy of death; I cannot judge
differently of another than of myself" (Schmidt, Farel und Viret, p. 33).
Before sentence was pronounced Bullinger wrote to Beza: "Quid vero
amplissimus Senatus Genevensis ageret cum blasphemo illo nebulone Serveto.
Si sapit et officium suum facit, caedit, ut totus orbis videat Genevam Christi
gloriam cupere servatam" (Baum, i. 204). With reference to Socinus he wrote:
"Sentio ego spirituali gladio abscindendos esse homines haereticos" (Henry, iii.
225).
Peter Martyr Vermili also gave in his adhesion to Calvin's policy: "De Serveto
Hispano, quid aliud dicam non habeo, nisi eum fuisse genuinum Diaboli filium,
cujus pestifera et detestanda doctrina undique profliganda est, neque magistratus,
qui de illo supplicium extremum sumpsit, accusandus est, cum emendationis
nulla indiçia in eo possent deprehendi, illiusque blasphemiae omnino
intolerabiles essent" (Loci Communes, 1114. See Schlosser, Leben des Beza und
des Peter Martyr Vermili, 512).
Zanchi, who at the instigation of Bullinger also published a treatise, De
Haereticis Coercendis, says of Beza's work: "Non poterit non probari
summopere piis omnibus. Satis superque respondit quidem ille novis istis
academicis, ita ut supervacanea et inutilis omnino videatur mea tractatio"
(Baum, i. 232).
[297] "The trial of Servetus," says a very ardent Calvinist, "is illegal only in one
point—the crime, if crime there be, had not been committed at Geneva; but long
before the Councils had usurped the unjust privilege of judging strangers
stopping at Geneva, although the crimes they were accused of had not been
committed there" (Haag, La France Protestante, iii. 129).
[298] Literature of Europe, ii. 82.
[299] This is the ground taken by two Dutch divines in answer to the
consultation of John of Nassau in 1579: "Neque in imperio, neque in Galliis,
neque in Belgio speranda esset unquam libertas in externo religionis exercitio
nostris ... si non diversarum religionum exercitia in una eademque provincia
toleranda.... Sic igitur gladio adversus nos armabimus Pontificios, si hanc
hypothesin tuebimur, quod exercitium religionis alteri parti nullum prorsus
relinqui debeat" (Scrinium Antiquarium, i. 335).

VI
POLITICAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHURCH[300]
There is, perhaps, no stronger contrast between the revolutionary times in
which we live and the Catholic ages, or even the period of the Reformation,
than in this: that the influence which religious motives formerly possessed
is now in a great measure exercised by political opinions. As the theory of
the balance of power was adopted in Europe as a substitute for the influence
of religious ideas, incorporated in the power of the Popes, so now political
zeal occupies the place made vacant by the decline of religious fervour, and
commands to an almost equal extent the enthusiasm of men. It has risen to
power at the expense of religion, and by reason of its decline, and naturally
regards the dethroned authority with the jealousy of a usurper. This
revolution in the relative position of religious and political ideas was the
inevitable consequence of the usurpation by the Protestant State of the
functions of the Church, and of the supremacy which, in the modern system
of government, it has assumed over her. It follows also that the false
principles by which religious truth was assailed have been transferred to the
political order, and that here, too, Catholics must be prepared to meet them;
whilst the objections made to the Church on doctrinal grounds have lost
much of their attractiveness and effect, the enmity she provokes on political
grounds is more intense. It is the same old enemy with a new face. No
reproach is more common, no argument better suited to the temper of these
times, than those which are founded on the supposed inferiority or
incapacity of the Church in political matters. As her dogma, for instance, is
assailed from opposite sides,—as she has had to defend the divine nature of
Christ against the Ebionites, and His humanity against Docetism, and was
attacked both on the plea of excessive rigorism and excessive laxity
(Clement Alex., Stromata, iii. 5),—so in politics she is arraigned on behalf
of the political system of every phase of heresy. She was accused of
favouring revolutionary principles in the time of Elizabeth and James I., and
of absolutist tendencies under James II. and his successors. Since Protestant
England has been divided into two great political parties, each of these
reproaches has found a permanent voice in one of them. Whilst Tory writers

affirm that the Catholic religion is the enemy of all conservatism and
stability, the Liberals consider it radically opposed to all true freedom.
"What are we to think," says the Edinburgh Review (vol. ciii. p.
586), "of the penetration or the sincerity of a man who professes
to study and admire the liberties of England and the character of
her people, but who does not see that English freedom has been
nurtured from the earliest times by resistance to Papal authority,
and established by the blessing of a reformed religion? That is,
under Heaven, the basis of all the rights we possess; and the
weight we might otherwise be disposed to concede to M. de
Montalembert's opinions on England is materially lessened by
the discovery that, after all, he would, if he had the power, place
this free country under that spiritual bondage which broods over
the empires of Austria or of Spain."
On the other hand, let us hearken to the Protestant eloquence of the
Quarterly Review (vol. xcii. p. 41):—
Tyranny, fraud, base adulation, total insensibility, not only to the
worth of human freedom, but to the majesty of law and the
sacredness of public and private right; these are the malignant
and deadly features which we see stamped upon the conduct of
the Roman hierarchy.
Besides which, we have the valuable opinion of Lord Derby, which no
Catholic, we should suppose, east of the Shannon has forgotten, that
Catholicism is "religiously corrupt, and politically dangerous." Lord
Macaulay tells us that it exclusively promoted the power of the Crown;
Ranke, that it favours revolution and regicide. Whilst the Belgian and
Sardinian Liberals accuse the Church of being the enemy of constitutional
freedom, the celebrated Protestant statesman, Stahl, taunts her with the
reproach of being the sole support and pillar of the Belgian constitution.
Thus every error pronounces judgment on itself when it attempts to apply
its rules to the standard of truth.
Among Catholics the state of opinion on these questions, whether it be
considered the result of unavoidable circumstances, or a sign of ingenious
accommodation, or a thing to be deplored, affords at least a glaring

refutation of the idea that we are united, for good or for evil, in one
common political system. The Church is vindicated by her defenders,
according to their individual inclinations, from the opposite faults imputed
to her; she is lauded, according to circumstances, for the most contradictory
merits, and her authority is invoked in exclusive support of very various
systems. O'Connell, Count de Montalembert, Father Ventura, proclaim her
liberal, constitutional, not to say democratic, character; whilst such writers
as Bonald and Father Taparelli associate her with the cause of absolute
government. Others there are, too, who deny that the Church has a political
tendency or preference of any kind; who assert that she is altogether
independent of, and indifferent to, particular political institutions, and,
while insensible to their influence, seeks to exercise no sort of influence
over them. Each view may be plausibly defended, and the inexhaustible
arsenal of history seems to provide impartially instances in corroboration of
each. The last opinion can appeal to the example of the Apostles and the
early Christians, for whom, in the heathen empire, the only part was
unconditional obedience. This is dwelt upon by the early apologists:
"Oramus etiam pro imperatoribus, pro ministris eorum et potestatibus, pro
statu saeculi, pro rerum quiete, pro mora finis."[301] It has the authority, too,
of those who thought with St. Augustine that the State had a sinful origin
and character: "Primus fuit terrenae civitatis conditor fratricida."[302] The
Liberals, at the same time, are strong in the authority of many scholastic
writers, and of many of the older Jesuit divines, of St. Thomas and Suarez,
Bellarmine, and Mariana. The absolutists, too, countenanced by Bossuet
and the Gallican Church, and quoting amply from the Old Testament, can
point triumphantly to the majority of Catholic countries in modern times.
All these arguments are at the same time serviceable to our adversaries; and
those by which one objection is answered help to fortify another.
The frequent recurrence of this sort of argument which appears to us as
treacherous for defence as it is popular as a weapon of attack, shows that no
very definite ideas prevail on the subject, and makes it doubtful whether
history, which passes sentence on so many theories, is altogether consistent
with any of these. Nevertheless it is obviously an inquiry of the greatest
importance, and one on which controversy can never entirely be set at rest;
for the relation of the spiritual and the secular power is, like that of
speculation and revelation, of religion and nature, one of those problems

which remain perpetually open, to receive light from the meditations and
experience of all ages, and the complete solution of which is among the
objects, and would be the end, of all history.
At a time when the whole system of ecclesiastical government was under
discussion, and when the temporal power was beginning to predominate
over the Church in France, the greatest theologian of the age made an
attempt to apply the principles of secular polity to the Church. According to
Gerson (Opera, ii. 254), the fundamental forms into which Aristotle divides
all government recur in the ecclesiastical system. The royal power is
represented in the Papacy, the aristocracy by the college of cardinals, whilst
the councils form an ecclesiastical democracy (timocratia). Analogous to
this is the idea that the constitution of the Church served as the model of the
Christian States, and that the notion of representation, for instance, was
borrowed from it. But it is not by the analogy of her own forms that the
Church has influenced those of the State; for in reality there is none
subsisting between them, and Gerson's adoption of a theory of Grecian
origin proves that he scarcely understood the spirit of that mediæval polity
which, in his own country especially, was already in its decay. For not only
is the whole system of government, whether we consider its origin, its end,
or its means absolutely and essentially different, but the temporal notion of
power is altogether unknown in the Church. "Ecclesia subjectos non habet
ut servos, sed ut filios."[303] Our Lord Himself drew the distinction: "Reges
gentium dominantur eorum; et qui potestatem habent super eos, benefici
vocantur. Vos autem non sic: sed qui major est in vobis, fiat sicut minor; et
qui praedecessor, sicut minor" (Luc. xxii. 25, 26). The supreme authority is
not the will of the rulers, but the law of the Church, which binds those who
are its administrators as strictly as those who have only to obey it. No
human laws were ever devised which could so thoroughly succeed in
making the arbitrary exercise of power impossible, as that prodigious
system of canon law which is the ripe fruit of the experience and the
inspiration of eighteen hundred years. Nothing can be more remote from the
political notions of monarchy than the authority of the Pope. With even less
justice can it be said that there is in the Church an element of aristocracy,
the essence of which is the possession of hereditary personal privileges. An
aristocracy of merit and of office cannot, in a political sense, legitimately
bear the name. By baptism all men are equal before the Church. Yet least of

all can anything be detected corresponding to the democratic principle, by
which all authority resides in the mass of individuals, and which gives to
each one equal rights. All authority in the Church is delegated, and
recognises no such thing as natural rights.
This confusion of the ideas belonging to different orders has been
productive of serious and dangerous errors. Whilst heretics have raised the
episcopate to a level with the papacy, the priesthood with the episcopate,
the laity with the clergy, impugning successively the primacy, the episcopal
authority, and the sacramental character of orders, the application of ideas
derived from politics to the system of the Church led to the exaggeration of
the papal power in the period immediately preceding the Reformation, to
the claim of a permanent aristocratic government by the Council of Basel,
and to the democratic extravagance of the Observants in the fourteenth
century.
If in the stress of conflicting opinions we seek repose and shelter in the
view that the kingdom of God is not of this world; that the Church,
belonging to a different order, has no interest in political forms, tolerates
them all, and is dangerous to none; if we try to rescue her from the dangers
of political controversy by this method of retreat and evasion, we are
compelled to admit her inferiority, in point of temporal influence, to every
other religious system. Every other religion impresses its image on the
society that professes it, and the government always follows the changes of
religion. Pantheism and Polytheism, Judaism and Islamism, Protestantism,
and even the various Protestant as well as Mahometan sects, call forth
corresponding social and political forms. All power is from God, and is
exercised by men in His stead. As men's notions are, therefore, in respect to
their position towards God, such must their notion of temporal power and
obedience also be. The relation of man to man corresponds with his
relations to God—most of all his relations towards the direct representative
of God.
The view we are discussing is one founded on timidity and a desire of
peace. But peace is not a good great enough to be purchased by such
sacrifices. We must be prepared to do battle for our religious system in
every other sphere as well as in that of doctrine. Theological error affects
men's ideas on all other subjects, and we cannot accept in politics the

consequences of a system which is hateful to us in its religious aspect.
These questions cannot be decided by mere reasoning, but we may obtain
some light by inquiring of the experience of history; our only sure guide is
the example of the Church herself. "Insolentissima est insania, non modo
disputare, contra id quod videmus universam ecclesiam credere sed etiam
contra id quod videmus eam facere. Fides enim ecclesiae non modo regula
est fidei nostrae, sed etiam actiones ipsius actionum nostrarum, consuetudo
ipsius consuetudinis quam observare debemus."[304]
The Church which our Lord came to establish had a twofold mission to
fulfil. Her system of doctrine, on the one hand, had to be defined and
perpetually maintained. But it was also necessary that it should prove itself
more than a mere matter of theory,—that it should pass into practice, and
command the will as well as the intellect of men. It was necessary not only
to restore the image of God in man, but to establish the divine order in the
world. Religion had to transform the public as well as the private life of
nations, to effect a system of public right corresponding with private
morality and without which it is imperfect and insecure. It was to exhibit
and confirm its victory and to perpetuate its influence by calling into
existence, not only works of private virtue, but institutions which are the
product of the whole life of nations, and bear an unceasing testimony to
their religious sentiments. The world, instead of being external to the
Church, was to be adopted by her and imbued with her ideas. The first, the
doctrinal or intellectual part of the work, was chiefly performed in the
Roman empire, in the midst of the civilisation of antiquity and of that
unparalleled intellectual excitement which followed the presence of Christ
on earth. There the faith was prepared for the world whilst the world was
not yet ready to receive it. The empire in which was concentrated all the
learning and speculation of ancient times was by its intellectual splendour,
and in spite, we might even say by reason, of its moral depravity, the fit
scene of the intellectual establishment of Christianity. For its moral
degradation ensured the most violent antipathy and hostility to the new
faith; while the mental cultivation of the age ensured a very thorough and
ingenious opposition, and supplied those striking contrasts which were
needed for the full discussion and vigorous development of the Christian
system. Nowhere else, and at no other period, could such advantages have
been found.

But for the other, equally essential part of her work the Church met with an
insurmountable obstacle, which even the official conversion of the empire
and all the efforts of the Christian emperors could not remove. This obstacle
resided not so much in the resistance of paganism as a religion, as in the
pagan character of the State. It was from a certain political sagacity chiefly
that the Romans, who tolerated all religions,[305] consistently opposed that
religion which threatened inevitably to revolutionise a state founded on a
heathen basis. It appeared from the first a pernicious superstition
("exitiabilem superstitionem," Tacit. Annal. xv. 44), that taught its followers
to be bad subjects ("exuere patriam," Tacitus, Hist. v. 5), and to be
constantly dissatisfied ("quibus praesentia semper tempora cum enormi
libertate displicent," Vopiscus, Vit. Saturn. 7). This hostility continued in
spite of the protestations of every apologist, and of the submissiveness and
sincere patriotism of the early Christians. They were so far from
recognising what their enemies so vaguely felt, that the empire could not
stand in the presence of the new faith, that it was the common belief
amongst them, founded perhaps on the words of St. Paul, 2 Thess. ii. 7,[306]
that the Roman empire would last to the end of the world.[307]
The persecution of Julian was caused by the feeling of the danger which
menaced the pagan empire from the Christian religion. His hostility was not
founded on his attachment to the old religion of Rome, which he did not
attempt to save. He endeavoured to replace it by a new system which was to
furnish the State with new vigour to withstand the decay of the old
paganism and the invasion of Christianity. He felt that the old religious
ideas in which the Roman State had grown up had lost their power, and that
Rome could only be saved by opposing at all hazards the new ideas. He was
inspired rather with a political hatred of Christianity than with a religious
love of paganism. Consequently Christianity was the only religion he could
not tolerate. This was the beginning of the persecution of the Church on
principles of liberalism and religious toleration, on the plea of political
necessity, by men who felt that the existing forms of the State were
incompatible with her progress. It is with the same feeling of patriotic
aversion for the Church that Symmachus says (Epist. x. 61): "We demand
the restoration of that religion which has so long been beneficial to the State
... of that worship which has subdued the universe to our laws, of those

sacrifices which repulsed Hannibal from our walls and the Gauls from the
Capitol."
Very soon after the time of Constantine it began to appear that the outward
conversion of the empire was a boon of doubtful value to religion. "Et
postquam ad Christianos principes venerint, potentia quidem et divitiis
major sed virtutibus minor facta est," says St. Jerome (in Vita Malchi). The
zeal with which the emperors applied the secular arm for the promotion of
Christianity was felt to be incompatible with its spirit and with its interest as
well. "Religion," says Lactantius (Inst. Div. v. 19), "is to be defended by
exhorting, not by slaying, not by severity, but by patience; not by crime, but
by faith: ... nihil enim est tam voluntarium quam religio."[308] "Deus," says
St. Hilary of Poitiers ("ad Constantium," Opp. i. p. 1221 C), "obsequio non
eget necessario, non requirit coactam confessionem."[309] St. Athanasius
and St. John Chrysostom protest in like manner against the intemperate
proselytism of the day.[310] For the result which followed the general
adoption of Christianity threw an unfavourable light on the motives which
had caused it. It became evident that the heathen world was incapable of
being regenerated, that the weeds were choking the good seed. The
corruption increased in the Church to such a degree that the Christians,
unable to divest themselves of the Roman notion of the orbis terrarum,
deemed the end of the world at hand. St. Augustine (sermo cv.) rebukes this
superstitious fear: "Si non manet civitas quae nos carnaliter genuit, manet
quae nos spiritualiter genuit. Numquid (Dominus) dormitando aedificium
suum perdidit, aut non custodiendo hostes admisit?... Quid expavescis quia
pereunt regna terrena? Ideo tibi coeleste promissum est, ne cum terrenis
perires.... Transient quae fecit ipse Deus; quanto citius quod condidit
Romulus.... Non ergo deficiamus, fratres: finis erit terrenis omnibus regnis."
[311]
But even some of the fathers themselves were filled with despair at the
spectacle of the universal demoralisation: "Totius mundi una vox Christus
est ... Horret animus temporum nostrorum ruinas persequi.... Romanus orbis
ruit, et tamen cervix nostra erecta non flectitur.... Nostris peccatis barbari
fortes sunt. Nostris vitiis Romanus superatur exercitus.... Nec amputamus
causas morbi, ut morbus pariter auferatur.... Orbis terrarum ruit, in nobis
peccata non ruunt."[312] St. Ambrose announces the end still more
confidently: "Verborum coelestium nulli magis quam nos testes sumus,
quos mundi finis invenit.... Quia in occasu saeculi sumus, praecedunt

quaedam aegritudines mundi."[313] Two generations later Salvianus
exclaims: "Quid est aliud paene omnis coetus Christianorum quam sentina
vitiorum?"[314] And St. Leo declares, "Quod temporibus nostris auctore
diabolo sic vitiata sunt omnia, ut paene nihil sit quod absque idolatria
transigatur."[315]
When, early in the fifth century, the dismemberment of the Western empire
commenced, it was clear that Christianity had not succeeded in reforming
the society and the polity of the ancient world. It had arrested for a time the
decline of the empire, but after the Arian separation it could not prevent its
fall. The Catholics could not dissociate the interests of the Church and those
of the Roman State, and looked with patriotic as well as religious horror at
the barbarians by whom the work of destruction was done. They could not
see that they had come to build up as well as to destroy, and that they
supplied a field for the exercise of all that influence which had failed among
the Romans. It was very late before they understood that the world had run
but half its course; that a new skin had been prepared to contain the new
wine; and that the barbarous tribes were to justify their claim to the double
inheritance of the faith and of the power of Rome. There were two principal
things which fitted them for their vocation. The Romans had been unable to
be the instruments of the social action of Christianity on account of their
moral depravity. It was precisely for those virtues in which they were most
deficient that their barbarous enemies were distinguished. Salvianus
expresses this in the following words (De Gubern. Dei, vii. 6): "Miramur si
terrae ... nostrorum omnium a Deo barbaris datae sunt, cum eas quae
Romani polluerant fornicatione, nunc mundent barbari castitate?"[316]
Whilst thus their habits met half-way the morality of the Christian system,
their mythology, which was the very crown and summit of all pagan
religions, predisposed them in like manner for its adoption, by predicting its
own end, and announcing the advent of a system which was to displace its
gods. "It was more than a mere worldly impulse," says a famous northern
divine, "that urged the northern nations to wander forth, and to seek, like
birds of passage, a milder clime." We cannot, however, say more on the
predisposition for Christianity of that race to whose hands its progress
seems for ever committed, or on the wonderful facility with which the
Teutonic invaders accepted it, whether presented to them in the form of
Catholicism or of Arianism.[317] The great marvel in their history, and their

chief claim to the dominion of the world, was, that they had preserved so
long, in the bleak regions in which the growth of civilisation was in every
way retarded, the virtues together with the ignorance of the barbarous State.
At a time when Arianism was extinct in the empire, it assumed among the
Teutonic tribes the character of a national religion, and added a theological
incitement to their animosity against the Romans. The Arian tribes, to
whom the work of destruction was committed, did it thoroughly. But they
soon found that their own preservation depended on their submission to the
Church. Those that persisted in their heresy were extirpated. The Lombards
and Visigoths saved themselves by a tardy conversion from the fate with
which they were threatened so long, as their religion estranged them from
the Roman population, and cut them off from the civilisation of which the
Church was already the only guardian. For centuries the pre-eminence in
the West belonged to that race which alone became Catholic at once, and
never swerved from its orthodoxy. It is a sense of the importance of this
fidelity which dictated the well-known preamble of the Salic law: "Gens
Francorum inclita, Deo auctore condita, ad Catholicam fidem conversa et
immunis ab haeresi," etc.[318]
Then followed the ages which are not unjustly called the Dark Ages, in
which were laid the foundations of all the happiness that has been since
enjoyed, and of all the greatness that has been achieved, by men. The good
seed, from which a new Christian civilisation sprang, was striking root in
the ground. Catholicism appeared as the religion of masses. In those times
of simple faith there was no opportunity to call forth an Augustine or an
Athanasius. It was not an age of conspicuous saints, but sanctity was at no
time so general. The holy men of the first centuries shine with an intense
brilliancy from the midst of the surrounding corruption. Legions of saints—
individually for the most part obscure, because of the atmosphere of light
around them—throng the five illiterate centuries, from the close of the great
dogmatic controversies to the rise of a new theology and the
commencement of new contests with Hildebrand, Anselm, and Bernard. All
the manifestations of the Catholic spirit in those days bear a character of
vastness and popularity. A single idea—the words of one man—electrified
hundreds of thousands. In such a state of the world, the Christian ideas were
able to become incarnate, so to speak, in durable forms, and succeeded in
animating the political institutions as well as the social life of the nations.

The facility with which the Teutonic ideas of Government shaped
themselves to the mould of the new religion, was the second point in which
that race was so peculiarly adapted for the position it has ever since
occupied towards Christianity. They ceased to be barbarians only in
becoming Christians. Their political system was in its infancy, and was
capable of being developed variously, according to the influences it might
undergo. There was no hostile civilisation to break down, no traditions to
oppose which were bound up with the recollections of the national
greatness. The State is so closely linked with religion, that no nation that
has changed its religion has ever survived in its old political form. In Rome
it had proved to be impossible to alter the system, which for a thousand
years had animated every portion of the State; it was incurably pagan. The
conversion of the people and the outward alliance with the Church could
not make up for this inconsistency.
But the Teutonic race received the Catholic ideas wholly and without
reserve. There was no region into which they failed to penetrate. The nation
was collectively Catholic, as well as individually. The union of the Church
with the political system of the Germans was so complete, that when
Hungary adopted the religion of Rome, it adopted at the same time, as a
natural consequence, the institutions of the empire. The ideas of
Government which the barbarians carried with them into every land which
they conquered were always in substance the same. The Respublica
Christiana of the Middle Ages, consisting of those States in which the
Teutonic element combined with the Catholic system, was governed by
nearly the same laws. The mediæval institutions had this also in common,
that they grew up everywhere under the protection and guidance of the
Church; and whilst they subsisted in their integrity, her influence in every
nation, and that of the Pope over all the nations, attained their utmost
height. In proportion as they have since degenerated or disappeared, the
political influence of religion has declined. As we have seen that the Church
was baffled in the full performance of her mission before Europe was
flooded by the great migration, so it may be said that she has never
permanently enjoyed her proper position and authority in any country
where it did not penetrate. No other political system has yet been devised,
which was consistent with the full development and action of Catholic

principles, but that which was constructed by the northern barbarians who
destroyed the Western empire.
From this it does not seem too much to conclude, that the Catholic religion
tends to inspire and transform the public as well as the private life of men;
that it is not really master of one without some authority over the other.
Consequently, where the State is too powerful by long tradition and custom,
or too far gone in corruption, to admit of the influence of religion, it can
only prevail by ultimately destroying the political system. This helps us to
understand the almost imperceptible progress of Christianity against
Mahometanism, and the slowness of its increase in China, where its growth
must eventually undermine the whole fabric of government. On the other
hand, we know with what ease comparatively savage tribes—as the natives
of California and Paraguay—were converted to a religion which first
initiated them in civilisation and government. There are countries in which
the natural conditions are yet wanting for the kingdom of grace. There is a
fulness of time for every nation—a time at which it first becomes capable of
receiving the faith.[319] It is not harder to believe that certain political
conditions are required to make a nation fit for conversion than that a
certain degree of intellectual development is indispensable; that the
language, for instance, must have reached a point which that of some
nations has not attained before it is capable of conveying the truths of
Christianity.
We cannot, therefore, admit that political principles are a matter of utter
indifference to the Church. To what sort of principles it is that she inclines
may be indicated by a single example. The Christian notion of conscience
imperatively demands a corresponding measure of personal liberty. The
feeling of duty and responsibility to God is the only arbiter of a Christian's
actions. With this no human authority can be permitted to interfere. We are
bound to extend to the utmost, and to guard from every encroachment, the
sphere in which we can act in obedience to the sole voice of conscience,
regardless of any other consideration. The Church cannot tolerate any
species of government in which this right is not recognised. She is the
irreconcilable enemy of the despotism of the State, whatever its name or its
forms may be, and through whatever instruments it may be exercised.
Where the State allows the largest amount of this autonomy, the subject
enjoys the largest measure of freedom, and the Church the greatest

legitimate influence. The republics of antiquity were as incapable as the
Oriental despotisms of satisfying the Christian notion of freedom, or even
of subsisting with it. The Church has succeeded in producing the kind of
liberty she exacts for her children only in those States which she has herself
created or transformed. Real freedom has been known in no State that did
not pass through her mediæval action. The history of the Middle Ages is the
history of the gradual emancipation of man from every species of servitude,
in proportion as the influence of religion became more penetrating and
more universal. The Church could never abandon that principle of liberty by
which she conquered pagan Rome. The history of the last three centuries
exhibits the gradual revival of declining slavery, which appears under new
forms of oppression as the authority of religion has decreased. The efforts
of deliverance have been violent and reactionary, the progress of
dependence sure and inevitable. The political benefits of the mediæval
system have been enjoyed by no nation which is destitute of Teutonic
elements. The Slavonic races of the north-east, the Celtic tribes of the north-
west, were deprived of them. In the centre of mediæval civilisation, the
republic of Venice, proud of its unmixed descent from the Romans, was
untouched by the new blood, and that Christian people failed to obtain a
Christian government. Where the influence of the ideas which prevailed in
those times has not been felt, the consequence has been the utmost
development of extreme principles, such as have doomed Asia for so many
ages to perpetual stagnation, and America to endless heedless change. It is a
plain fact, that that kind of liberty which the Church everywhere and at all
times requires has been attained hitherto only in States of Teutonic origin.
We need hardly glance at the importance of this observation in considering
the missionary vocation of the English race in the distant regions it has
peopled and among the nations it has conquered; for, in spite of its religious
apostasy, no other country has preserved so pure that idea of liberty which
gave to religion of old its power in Europe, and is still the foundation of the
greatness of England. Other nations that have preserved more faithfully
their allegiance to the Church have more decidedly broken with those
political traditions, without which the action of the Church is fettered.
It is equally clear that, in insisting upon one definite principle in all
government, the Church has at no time understood that it could be obtained
only by particular political forms. She attends to the substance, not to the

form, in politics. At various times she has successively promoted monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy; and at various times she has been betrayed by
each. The three fundamental forms of all government are founded on the
nature of things. Sovereignty must reside with an individual, or with a
minority, or with the majority. But there are seasons and circumstances
where one or the other is impossible, where one or the other is necessary;
and in a growing nation they cannot always remain in the same relative
proportions. Christianity could neither produce nor abolish them. They are
all compatible with liberty and religion, and are all liable to diverge into
tyranny by the exclusive exaggeration of their principle. It is this
exaggeration that has ever been the great danger to religion and to liberty,
and the object of constant resistance, the source of constant suffering for the
Church.
Christianity introduced no new forms of government, but a new spirit,
which totally transformed the old ones. The difference between a Christian
and a pagan monarchy, or between a Christian and a rationalist democracy,
is as great, politically, as that between a monarchy and a republic. The
Government of Athens more nearly resembled that of Persia than that of
any Christian republic, however democratic. If political theorists had
attended more to the experience of the Christian Ages, the Church and the
State would have been spared many calamities. Unfortunately, it has long
been the common practice to recur to the authority of the Greeks and the
Jews. The example of both was equally dangerous; for in the Jewish as in
the Gentile world, political and religious obligations were made to coincide;
in both, therefore,—in the theocracy of the Jews as in the πολιτἑια of the
Greeks,—the State was absolute. Now it is the great object of the Church,
by keeping the two spheres permanently distinct,—by rendering to Cæsar
the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's—to make
all absolutism, of whatever kind, impossible.
As no form of government is in itself incompatible with tyranny, either of a
person or a principle, nor necessarily inconsistent with liberty, there is no
natural hostility or alliance between the Church and any one of them. The
same Church which, in the confusion and tumult of the great migrations,
restored authority by raising up and anointing kings, held in later times with
the aristocracy of the empire, and called into existence the democracies of
Italy. In the eighth century she looked to Charlemagne for the

reorganisation of society; in the eleventh she relied on the people to carry
out the reformation of the clergy. During the first period of the Middle
Ages, when social and political order had to be reconstructed out of ruins,
the Church everywhere addresses herself to the kings, and seeks to
strengthen and to sanctify their power. The royal as well as the imperial
dignity received from her their authority and splendour. Whatever her
disputes on religious grounds with particular sovereigns, such as Lothar, she
had in those ages as yet no contests with the encroachments of monarchical
power. Later on in the Middle Ages, on the contrary, when the monarchy
had prevailed almost everywhere, and had strengthened itself beyond the
limits of feudal ideas by the help of the Roman law and of the notions of
absolute power derived from the ancients, it stood in continual conflict with
the Church. From the time of Gregory VII., all the most distinguished
pontiffs were engaged in quarrels with the royal and imperial power, which
resulted in the victory of the Church in Germany and her defeat in France.
In this resistance to the exaggeration of monarchy, they naturally
endeavoured to set barriers to it by promoting popular institutions, as the
Italian democracies and the aristocratic republics of Switzerland, and the
capitulations which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were imposed
on almost every prince. Times had greatly changed when a Pope declared
his amazement at a nation which bore in silence the tyranny of their king.
[320]
In modern times the absolute monarchy in Catholic countries has been,
next to the Reformation, the greatest and most formidable enemy of the
Church. For here she again lost in great measure her natural influence. In
France, Spain, and Germany, by Gallicanism, Josephism, and the
Inquisition, she came to be reduced to a state of dependence, the more fatal
and deplorable that the clergy were often instrumental in maintaining it. All
these phenomena were simply an adaptation of Catholicism to a political
system incompatible with it in its integrity; an artifice to accommodate the
Church to the requirements of absolute government, and to furnish absolute
princes with a resource which was elsewhere supplied by Protestantism.
The consequence has been, that the Church is at this day more free under
Protestant than under Catholic governments—in Prussia or England than in
France or Piedmont, Naples or Bavaria.
As we have said that the Church commonly allied herself with the political
elements which happened to be insufficiently represented, and to temper the

predominant principle by encouraging the others, it might seem hardly
unfair to conclude that that kind of government in which they are all
supposed to be combined,—"aequatum et temperatum ex tribus optimis
rerum publicarum modis" (Cicero, Rep. i. 45),—must be particularly suited
to her. Practically—and we are not here pursuing a theory—this is a mere
fallacy. If we look at Catholic countries, we find that in Spain and Piedmont
the constitution has served only to pillage, oppress, and insult the Church;
whilst in Austria, since the empire has been purified in the fiery ordeal of
the revolution, she is free, secure, and on the highroad of self-improvement.
In constitutional Bavaria she has but little protection against the Crown, or
in Belgium against the mob. The royal power is against her in one place, the
popular element in the other. Turning to Protestant countries, we find that in
Prussia the Church is comparatively free; whilst the more popular
Government of Baden has exhibited the most conspicuous instance of
oppression which has occurred in our time. The popular Government of
Sweden, again, has renewed the refusal of religious toleration at the very
time when despotic Russia begins to make a show, at least, of conceding it.
In the presence of these facts, it would surely be absurd to assume that the
Church must look with favour on the feeble and transitory constitutions
with which the revolution has covered half the Continent. It does not
actually appear that she has derived greater benefits from them than she
may be said to have done from the revolution itself, which in France, for
instance in 1848, gave to the Church, at least for a season, that liberty and
dignity for which she had struggled in vain during the constitutional period
which had preceded.
The political character of our own country bears hardly more resemblance
to the Liberal Governments of the Continent,—which have copied only
what is valueless in our institutions,—than to the superstitious despotism of
the East, or to the analogous tyranny which in the Far West is mocked with
the name of freedom. Here, as elsewhere, the progress of the constitution,
which it was the work of the Catholic Ages to build up, on the principles
common to all the nations of the Teutonic stock, was interrupted by the
attraction which the growth of absolutism abroad excited, and by the
Reformation's transferring the ecclesiastical power to the Crown. The
Stuarts justified their abuse of power by the same precepts and the same
examples by which the Puritans justified their resistance to it. The liberty

aimed at by the Levellers was as remote from that which the Middle Ages
had handed down, as the power of the Stuarts from the mediæval monarchy.
The Revolution of 1688 destroyed one without favouring the other. Unlike
the rebellion against Charles I., that which overthrew his son did not fall
into a contrary extreme. It was a restoration in some sort of the principles of
government, which had been alternately assailed by absolute monarchy and
by a fanatical democracy. But, as it was directed against the abuse of kingly
and ecclesiastical authority, neither the Crown nor the established Church
recovered their ancient position; and a jealousy of both has ever since
subsisted. There can be no question but that the remnants of the old system
of polity—the utter disappearance of which keeps the rest of Christendom
in a state of continual futile revolution—exist more copiously in this
country than in any other. Instead of the revolutions and the religious wars
by which, in other Protestant countries, Catholics have obtained toleration,
they have obtained it in England by the force of the very principles of the
constitution. "I should think myself inconsistent," says the chief expounder
of our political system, "in not applying my ideas of civil liberty to
religious." And speaking of the relaxation of the penal laws, he says: "To
the great liberality and enlarged sentiments of those who are the furthest in
the world from you in religious tenets, and the furthest from acting with the
party which, it is thought, the greater part of the Roman Catholics are
disposed to espouse, it is that you owe the whole, or very nearly the whole,
of what has been done both here and in Ireland."[321] The danger which
menaces the continuance of our constitution proceeds simply from the
oblivion of those Christian ideas by which it was originally inspired. It
should seem that it is the religious as well as the political duty of Catholics
to endeavour to avert this peril, and to defend from the attacks of the
Radicals and from the contempt of the Tories the only constitution which
bears some resemblance to those of Catholic times, and the principles
which are almost as completely forgotten in England as they are
misunderstood abroad. If three centuries of Protestantism have not entirely
obliterated the ancient features of our government, if they have not been so
thoroughly barren of political improvement as some of its enemies would
have us believe,—there is surely nothing to marvel at, nothing at which we
may rejoice. Protestants may well have, in some respects, the same
terrestrial superiority over Catholics that the Gentiles had over the people of
God. As, at the fall of paganism, the treasures it had produced and

accumulated during two thousand years became the spoils of the victor,—
when the day of reckoning shall come for the great modern apostasy, it will
surrender all that it has gathered in its diligent application to the things of
this world; and those who have remained in the faith will have into the
bargain those products of the Protestant civilisation on which its claims of
superiority are founded.
When, therefore, in the political shipwreck of modern Europe, it is asked
which political form of party is favoured by the Church, the only answer we
can give is, that she is attached to none; but that though indifferent to
existing forms, she is attached to a spirit which is nearly extinct. Those
who, from a fear of exposing her to political animosity, would deny this,
forget that the truth is as strong against political as against religious error,
and shut their eyes to the only means by which the political regeneration of
the modern world is a possibility. For the Catholic religion alone will not
suffice to save it, as it was insufficient to save the ancient world, unless the
Catholic idea equally manifests itself in the political order. The Church
alone, without influence on the State, is powerless as a security for good
government. It is absurd to pretend that at the present day France, or Spain,
or Naples, are better governed than England, Holland, or Prussia. A country
entirely Protestant may have more Catholic elements in its government than
one where the population is wholly Catholic. The State which is Catholic
par excellence is a by-word for misgovernment, because the orthodoxy and
piety of its administrators are deemed a substitute for a better system. The
demand for a really Catholic system of government falls with the greatest
weight of reproach on the Catholic States.
Yet it is important to remember that in the ages of faith the same unity
prevailed in political ideas, and that the civil as well as the religious
troubles of our time are in great measure due to the Reformation. It is
common to advise Catholics to make up their minds to accept the political
doctrines of the day; but it would be more to the purpose to recall the ideas
of Catholic times. It is not in the results of the political development of the
last three centuries that the Church can place her trust; neither in absolute
monarchy, nor in the revolutionary liberalism, nor in the infallible
constitutional scheme. She must create anew or revive her former creations,
and instil a new life and spirit into those remains of the mediæval system
which will bear the mark of the ages when heresy and unbelief, Roman law,

and heathen philosophy, had not obscured the idea of the Christian State.
These remains are to be found, in various stages of decay, in every State,—
with the exception, perhaps, of France,—that grew out of the mediæval
civilisation. Above all they will be found in the country which, in the midst
of its apostasy, and in spite of so much guilt towards religion, has preserved
the Catholic forms in its Church establishment more than any other
Protestant nation, and the Catholic spirit in her political institutions more
than any Catholic nation. To renew the memory of the times in which this
spirit prevailed in Europe, and to preserve the remains of it, to promote the
knowledge of what is lost, and the desire of what is most urgently needed,
—is an important service and an important duty which it behoves us to
perform. We are greatly mistaken if these are not reflections which force
themselves on every one who carefully observes the political history of the
Church in modern Europe.

FOOTNOTES:
[300] The Rambler, 1858.
[301] Tertullian, Apologeticum, 39; see also 30, 32. "We pray also for the
emperors, for the ministers of their Government, for the State, for the peace of
the world, for the delay of the last day."
[302] De Civil. Dei, xv. 5. "The fratricide was the first founder of the secular
State."
[303] "The Church reckons her subjects not as her servants but as her children."
[304] "It is the maddest insolence, not only to dispute against that which we see
the universal Church believing, but also against what we see her doing. For not
only is the faith of the Church the rule of our faith, but also her actions of ours,
and her customs of that which we ought to observe" (Morinus, Comment. de
Discipl. in administ. Poenitentiae, Preface).
[305] "Apud vos quodvis colere jus est Deum verum" (Tertullian, Apolog. xxiv.).
[306] August. de Civ. Dei, xx. 19. 3.
[307] "Christianus nullius est hostis, nedum imperatoris, quem ... necesse est ut
... salvum velit cum toto Romano imperio quousque saeculum stabit; tamdiu
enim stabit" (Tert. ad Scapulam, 2). "Cum caput illud orbis occiderit et ρὑμη
esse coeperit, quod Sibyllae fore aiunt, quis dubitet venisse jam finem rebus
humanis orbique terrarum?" (Lactantius, Inst. Div. vii. 25). "Non prius veniet
Christus, quam regni Romani defectio fiat" (Ambrose ad ep. i. ad Thess.).
[308] "There is nothing so voluntary as religion."

[309] "God does not want unwilling worship, nor does he require a forced
repentance."
[310] Athanas. i. 363 B and 384 C μἡ ἁναγκἁζειν ἁλλἁ πεἱθειν "not compulsion,
but persuasion" (Chrysost. ii. 540 A and C).
[311] "If the State of which we are the secular children passes away, that of
which we are spiritual children passes not. Has God gone to sleep and let the
house be destroyed, or let in the enemy through want of watchfulness? Why
fearest thou when earthly kingdoms fall? Heaven is promised thee, that thou
mightest not fall with them. The works of God Himself shall pass: how much
sooner the works of Romulus! Let us not quail, my brethren: all earthly
kingdoms must come to an end."
[312] "The cry of the whole world is 'Christ.' The mind is horrified in reviewing
the ruins of our age. The Roman world is falling, and yet our stiff neck is not
bent. The barbarians' strength is in our sins; the defeat of the Roman armies in
our vices. We will not cut off the occasions of the malady, that the malady may
be healed. The world is falling, but in us there is no falling off from sin" (St.
Jerome, ep. 35, ad Heliodorum; ep. 98, ad Gaudentium).
[313] "None are better witnesses of the words of heaven than we, on whom the
end of the world has come. We assist at the world's setting, and diseases precede
its dissolution" (Expos. Ep. sec. Lucam, x.).
[314] "What is well-nigh all Christendom but a sink of iniquity?" (De Gub. Dei,
iii. 9).
[315] "In our age the devil has so defiled everything that scarcely a thing is done
without idolatry."
[316] "Do we wonder that God has granted all our lands to the barbarians, when
they now purify by their chastity the places which the Romans had polluted with
their debauchery?"
[317] Pope Anastasius writes to Clovis: "Sedes Petri in tanta occasione non
potest non laetari, cum plenitudinem gentium intuetur ad eam veloci gradu
concurrere" (Bouquet, iv. 50).
[318] "The noble people of the Franks, founded by God, converted to the
Catholic faith, and free from heresy."
[319] "Vetati sunt a Spiritu sancto loqui verbum Dei in Asia ... Tentabant ire in
Bithyniam, et non permisit eos spiritus Jesu" (Acts xvi. 6, 7).
[320] Innocent IV. wrote in 1246 to the Sicilians: "In omnem terram vestrae
sonus tribulationis exivit ... multis pro miro vehementi ducentibus, quod pressi
tam dirae servitutis opprobrio, et personarum ac rerum gravati multiplici
detrimento, neglexeritis habere concilium, per quod vobis, sicut gentibus
caeteris, aliqua provenirent solatia libertatis ... super hoc apud sedem
apostolicam vos excusante formidine.... Cogitate itaque corde vigili, ut a collo
vestrae servitutis catena decidat, et universitas vestra in libertatis et quietis
gaudio reflorescat; sitque ubertate conspicuum, ita divina favente potentia secura
sit libertate decorum" (Raynaldus, Ann. ad ann. 1246).

[321] Burke's Works, i. 391, 404.

VII
INTRODUCTION TO L.A. BURD'S EDITION OF IL PRINCIPE BY
MACHIAVELLI
Mr. Burd has undertaken to redeem our long inferiority in Machiavellian
studies, and it will, I think, be found that he has given a more completely
satisfactory explanation of The Prince than any country possessed before.
His annotated edition supplies all the solvents of a famous problem in the
history of Italy and the literature of politics. In truth, the ancient problem is
extinct, and no reader of this volume will continue to wonder how so
intelligent and reasonable a man came to propose such flagitious counsels.
When Machiavelli declared that extraordinary objects cannot be
accomplished under ordinary rules, he recorded the experience of his own
epoch, but also foretold the secret of men since born. He illustrates not only
the generation which taught him, but the generations which he taught, and
has no less in common with the men who had his precepts before them than
with the Viscontis, Borgias, and Baglionis who were the masters he
observed. He represents more than the spirit of his country and his age.
Knowledge, civilisation, and morality have increased; but three centuries
have borne enduring witness to his political veracity. He has been as much
the exponent of men whom posterity esteems as of him whose historian
writes: "Cet homme que Dieu, après l'avoir fait si grand, avait fait bon
aussi, n'avait rien de la vertu." The authentic interpreter of Machiavelli, the
Commentarius Perpetuus of the Discorsi and The Prince, is the whole of
later history.
Michelet has said: "Rapportons-nous-en sur ceci à quelqu'un qui fut bien
plus Machiavéliste que Machiavel, à la republique de Venise." Before his
day, and long after, down almost to the time when a price was set on the
heads of the Pretender and of Pontiac, Venice employed assassins. And this
was not the desperate resource of politicians at bay, but the avowed practice
of decorous and religious magistrates. In 1569 Soto hazards an impersonal
doubt whether the morality of the thing was sound: "Non omnibus satis
probatur Venetorum mos, qui cum complures a patria exules habeant

condemnatos, singulis facultatem faciunt, ut qui alium eorum interfecerit,
vita ac libertate donetur." But his sovereign shortly after obtained assurance
that murder by royal command was unanimously approved by divines: "A
los tales puede el Principe mandarlos matar, aunque esten fuera de su
distrito y reinos.—Sin ser citado, secretamente se le puede quitar la vita.—
Esta es doctrina comun y cierta y recevida de todos los theologos." When
the King of France, by despatching the Guises, had restored his good name
in Europe, a Venetian, Francesco da Molino, hoped that the example would
not be thrown away on the Council of Ten: "Permeti sua divina bontà che
questo esempio habbi giovato a farlo proceder come spero con meno fretta
e più sodamente a cose tali e d' importanza." Sarpi, their ablest writer, their
official theologian, has a string of maxims which seem to have been
borrowed straight from the Florentine predecessor: "Proponendo cosa in
apparenza non honesta, scusarla come necessaria, come praticata da altri,
come propria al tempo, che tende a buon fine, et conforme all' opinione de'
molti.—La vendetta non giova se non per fugir lo sprezzo.—Ogn'huomo ha
opinione che il mendacio sia buono in ragion di medicina, et di far bene a
far creder il vero et utile con premesse false." One of his countrymen,
having examined his writings, reports: "I ricordi di questo grand' uomo
furono più da politico che da christiano." To him was attributed the doctrine
of secret punishment, and the use of poison against public enemies: "In casi
d' eccessi incorrigibili si punissero secretamente, a fine che il sangue
patrizio non resti profanato.—Il veleno deve esser l' unico mezzo per levarli
dal mondo, quando alla giustizia non complisse farli passare sotto la manaia
del carnefice." Venice, otherwise unlike the rest of Europe, was, in this
particular, not an exception.
Machiavelli enjoyed a season of popularity even at Rome. The Medicean
popes refused all official employment to one who had been the brain of a
hostile government; but they encouraged him to write, and were not
offended by the things he wrote for them. Leo's own dealings with the
tyrant of Perugia were cited by jurists as a suggestive model for men who
have an enemy to get rid of. Clement confessed to Contarini that honesty
would be preferable, but that honest men get the worst of it: "Io cognosco
certo che voi dicete il vero, et che ad farla da homo da bene, et a far il
debito, seria proceder come mi aricordate; ma bisognerebbe trovar la
corrispondentia. Non vedete che il mondo è ridutto a un termine che colui il

qual è più astuto et cum più trame fa il fatto suo, è più laudato, et estimato
più valente homo, et più celebrato, et chi fa il contrario vien detto di esso;
quel tale è una bona persona, ma non val niente? Et se ne sta cum quel titulo
solo di bona persona.—Chi va bonamente vien trata da bestia." Two years
after this speech the astute Florentine authorised The Prince to be published
at Rome.
It was still unprinted when Pole had it pressed on his attention by
Cromwell, and Brosch consequently suspects the story. Upon the death of
Clement, Pole opened the attack; but it was not pursued during the reaction
against things Medicean which occupied the reign of Farnese. Machiavelli
was denounced to the Inquisition on the 11th of November 1550, by Muzio,
a man much employed in controversy and literary repression, who, knowing
Greek, was chosen by Pius V. for the work afterwards committed to
Baronius: "Senza rispetto alcuno insegna a non servar ne fede, ne charità,
ne religione; et dice che di queste cosi, gli huomini se ne debbono servire
per parer buoni, et per le grandezze temporali, alle quali quando non
servono non se ne dee fare stima. Et non è questo peggio che heretica
dottrina? Vedendosi che ciò si comporta, sono accetate come opere
approvate dalla Santa Madre chiesa." Muzio, who at the same time
recommended the Decamerone, was not acting from ethical motives. His
accusation succeeded. When the Index was instituted, in 1557, Machiavelli
was one of the first writers condemned, and he was more rigorously and
implacably condemned than anybody else. The Trent Commissioners
themselves prepared editions of certain prohibited authors, such as Clarius
and Flaminius; Guicciardini was suffered to appear with retrenchments; and
the famous revision of Boccaccio was carried out in 1573. This was due to
the influence of Victorius, who pleaded in vain for a castigated text of
Machiavelli. He continued to be specially excepted when permission was
given to read forbidden books. Sometimes there were other exceptions,
such as Dumoulin, Marini, or Maimbourg; but the exclusion of Machiavelli
was permanent, and when Lucchesini preached against him at the Gesù, he
had to apply to the Pope himself for licence to read him. Lipsius was
advised by his Roman censors to mix a little Catholic salt in his
Machiavellism, and to suppress a seeming protest against the universal
hatred for a writer qui misera qua non manu hodie vapulat. One of the
ablest but most contentious of the Jesuits, Raynaud, pursued his memory

with a story like that with which Tronchin improved the death of Voltaire:
"Exitus impiissimi nebulonis metuendus est eius aemulatoribus, nam
blasphemans evomuit reprobum spiritum."
In spite of this notorious disfavour, he has been associated with the excesses
of the religious wars. The daughter of the man to whom he addressed The
Prince was Catharine of Medici, and she was reported to have taught her
children "surtout des traictz de cet athée Machiavel." Boucher asserted that
Henry III. carried him in his pocket: "qui perpetuus ei in sacculo atque
manibus est"; and Montaigne confirms the story when he says: "Et dict on,
de ce temps, que Machiavel est encores ailleurs en crédit." The pertinently
appropriate quotation by which the Queen sanctified her murderous resolve
was supplied, not by her father's rejected and discredited monitor, but by a
bishop at the Council of Trent, whose sermons had just been published:
"Bisogna esser severo et acuto, non bisogna esser clemente; è crudeltà l'
esser pietoso, è pietà l' esser crudele." And the argument was afterwards
embodied in the Controversies of Bellarmin: "Haereticis obstinatis
beneficium est, quod de hac vita tollantur, nam quo diutius vivunt, eo plures
errores excogitant; plures pervertunt, et majorem sibi damnationem
acquirunt."
The divines who held these doctrines received them through their own
channels straight from the Middle Ages. The germ theory, that the wages of
heresy is death, was so expanded as to include the rebel, the usurper, the
heterodox or rebellious town, and it continued to develop long after the time
of Machiavelli. At first it had been doubtful whether a small number of
culprits justified the demolition of a city: "Videtur quod si aliqui haeretici
sunt in civitate potest exuri tota civitas." Under Gregory XIII. the right is
asserted unequivocally: "Civitas ista potest igne destrui, quando in ea plures
sunt haeretici." In case of sedition, fire is a less suitable agent: "Propter
rebellionem civitas quandoque supponitur aratro et possunt singuli
decapitari." As to heretics the view was: "Ut hostes latronesque occidi
possunt etiamsi sunt clerici." A king, if he was judged a usurper, was
handed over to extinction: "Licite potest a quolibet de populo occidi, pro
libertate populi, quando non est recursus ad superiorem, a quo possit iustitia
fieri." Or, in the words of the scrupulous Soto: "Tunc quisque ius habet
ipsum extinguendi." To the end of the seventeenth century theologians

taught: "Occidatur, seu occidendus proscribatur, quando non alitur potest
haberi tranquillitas Reipublicae."
This was not mere theory, or the enforced logic of men in thrall to mediæval
antecedents. Under the most carnal and unchristian king, the Vaudois of
Provence were exterminated in the year 1545, and Paul Sadolet wrote as
follows to Cardinal Farnese just before and just after the event: "Aggionta
hora questa instantia del predetto paese di Provenza a quella che da Mons.
Nuntio s'era fatta a Sua Maestà Christianissima a nome di Sua Beatitudine
et di Vostra Reverendissima Signoria, siamo in ferma speranza, che vi si
debbia pigliare qualche bono expediente et farci qualche gagliarda
provisione.—È seguito, in questo paese, quel tanto desiderato et tanto
necessario effetto circa le cose di Cabrieres, che da vostra Signoria
Reverendissima è stato si lungamente ricordato et sollicitato et procurato."
Even Melanchthon was provoked by the death of Cromwell to exclaim that
there is no better deed than the slaughter of a tyrant; "Utinam Deus alicui
forti viro hanc mentem inserat!" And in 1575 the Swedish bishops decided
that it would be a good work to poison their king in a basin of soup—an
idea particularly repugnant to the author of De Rege et Regis Institutione.
Among Mariana's papers I have seen the letter from Paris describing the
murder of Henry III., which he turned to such account in the memorable
sixth chapter: "Communicò con sus superiores, si peccaria mortalmente un
sacerdote que matase a un tirano. Ellos le diceron que non era pecado, mas
que quedaria irregular. Y no contentandose con esto, ni con las disputas que
avia de ordinario en la Sorbona sobre la materia, continuando siempre sus
oraciones, lo preguntò a otros theologos, que le afirmavan lo mismo; y con
esto se resolviò enteramente de executarlo. Por el successo es de collegir
que tuvo el fraile alguna revelacion de Nuestro Señor en particular, y
inspiracion para executar el caso." According to Maffei, the Pope's
biographer, the priests were not content with saying that killing was no sin:
"Cum illi posse, nec sine magno quidem merito censuissent." Regicide was
so acceptable a work that it seemed fitly assigned to a divine interposition.
When, on the 21st of January 1591, a youth offered his services to make
away with Henry IV., the Nuncio remitted the matter to Rome:
"Quantunque mi sia parso di trovarlo pieno di tale humilità, prudenza,
spirito et cose che arguiscono che questa sia inspiratione veramente
piuttosto che temerità e leggerezza." In a volume which, though recent, is