Historical sketches, speeches, and characters

Preface

The papers contained in this volume were published in various periodical works during successive years, and now re-appear only at the suggestion of their publishers, who consider that they may be of some service to the cause of Church and State, for which they were written. They were Conservative before the name of Conservative was known ; and were employed to point out the perils of the Church, when those perils were only shaping themselves into form. In the State, they regarded as the one consummate danger — Democracy ; and in the Church, as the essential object of all vigilance — the power of Rome. It is altogether the reverse of a gratification to the writer, that those conjectures have since advanced, year by year, more towards certainty. But nothing can be clearer, than that a new and disturbing element has mingled with the Constitution ; or, that if a statesman of the last century could stand

VI PREFACE.

again among us, he would be not more ignorant of the political personages of our day, than he would be astonished and alarmed at that vast and gloomy gathering of popular force, which, in its hour of fury, must inevitably sweep away the State ; and which, even in its present hour of suspense, chills and overshadows every prospect of the empire.

The characteristic of our era is an extravagant conception of its own wisdom, and as extravagant a scorn for the wisdom of the past ; a passion for novelty, made still more hazardous by a contempt for experience. This we have learned from France. Her ' Three Days of July' spread their impulse, circle on circle, widening through Europe. England, as the nearest, felt it first and strongest, and it cost her a new modelling of her Constitution.

A Cabinet, since called to power not less by the public necessity, than by the public confidence, has relieved us from the immediate dread of ruinous and irreparable change; but the principle of peril remains : armed associations have shown what ready instruments can be found by conspiracy ; Republican theories, openly avowed, have shown into what frenzy speculation can inflame itself. The mechanical discoveries which distinguish our time, seem to have lent their spirit to the popular feelings ; all is to be sacrificed

PREFACE. vn

to force and velocity ; irresistible strength and irresistible speed in whirling the Masses along, are the grand objects ; while it is willingly forgotten how much the rapidity increases the danger, and how slight an accident may turn the flying machine into the means of comprehensive and remediless ruin.

The prospects of the Church unquestionably are of a more cheering order. She has displayed an energy and activity wholly unexpected by her assailants. Her Diocesan Schools — her rapid erection of churches in the newly -peopled districts of the land — and, above all, her establishment of Colonial Bishoprics, incontestibly the noblest and most comprehensive of her measures, an illustrious enterprize — of all her acts since the Reformation, the most sacredly exhibiting the energies of the Apostolic Age — have formed for the Church a strength in England, and in Europe, which, to survive all change, has only to be seconded by the Nation.

The existence of the Establishment is essential to the Constitution ; for it contains exactly that degree of freedom, with exactly that degree of subordination, which educate a people for limited monarchy.

By the fixed nature of her property, the Church gives the nation security for her conduct, and gives it,

Mil PREFACE.

besides, the important example of a clergy, neither slaves to the populace, nor slaves to the government.

By the publicity of her Articles, she at once prevents all misconception of her principles, and prohibits all corruption of her doctrine.

By her Orders, she makes character and education necessary to her priesthood.

By her Prelacy, she secures conscientious and manly subordination in her clergy ; which, in its turn, is the safest pledge for loyalty, morality, and unity among her people. But her influence extends even beyond her own borders : and, while the Church stands, her example compels Schism to be comparatively learned and decorous, and Superstition to be comparatively tolerant and pure.

Her chief antagonists are Popery and Sectarianism, though there is no equality between those perils. The vigorous and active occupations of the English mind are hostile to the mystical and solitary temperament in which sects in all ages have found their natural origin. Schism is seldom long-lived. A hundred sects have risen and perished in Europe, since the Reformation. They are shaped too much on the fantasy of their founder, to survive him long; they linger for a while over his grave, and then follow him to oblivion — earth to earth.

PREFACE. IX

Strong only where the Church is weak, they disappear before her ascending vigour, like vapours rising in the dusk and chill, but no sooner touched by the sun, than they evaporate by the course of nature. The Church in our day needs waste but little anxiety upon them. Her true hazard is from an enemy of another nature. Sectarianism startles the mind by its arrogance, or its sternness. But Popery has attractions for every failing of man : it assimilates with every strength of the passions, and every weakness of the understanding ; and it assimilates in silence, conquers noiselessly, and melts into the mind. What are the perils of the casual blasts, that echo round the battlements of the Church in her hour of slumber, but are unheard and forgotten, as soon as her dwellers awake and bestir themselves in the business of the day ; compared with the moral malaria, that creeps over the surface, without disfiguring the soil ; glides through gate and loophole, unfelt and unseen ; fills her chambers with gradual decay, and leaving the whole noble edifice uninjured to the eye, yet leaves it tenantless for ever !

But the chief question is, the remedy. It is among the first duties of the Christian, to think as kindly of all men as he can, and to avoid all language that can irritate personal feeling. And the more that he pur-

X PREFACE.

sues this conduct, the more he is doing the will of that Supreme Beneficence, which desires, that " all shall come to the knowledge of the truth." *' The servant of God must not strive," is an inspired command.

In this conviction, the writer of these pages, if he possessed sufficient authority to make his advice available, would say — that, admitting the zeal and ability which have been displayed in the public controversies, it may be doubted whether a simpler mode may not be more effectual. Religious fallacy is so wide a field, that the antagonists may pursue each other endlessly ; the popular triumph ends only in personal resentment ; there is no power to converge the combatants to the truth.

Luther, one of the most powerful controversialists in the presence of an assembly, that the world has ever known, seems never to have converted any of the champions whom he so constantly defeated. The providential solitude which gave him time for the translation of the Scriptures, was the true season of his triumphs; as the publication of the Bible was the true trumpet before which the ancient and armed bulwarks of error fell, without the touch of man.

The first teachers of the Reformation had chiefly begun, by inveighing against the practices of Rome ; but they found that this produced only political

PREFACE. XI

tumult and personal hostility. They abandoned invective ; simply preached the facts and doctrines of Scripture ; and the people followed the Reformer. Bedell tells us, that when in Ireland the Reformers preached the Scripture alone, the people listened ; but when they preached against the Mass, " there was bloodshed." But we have a still higher authority, that of the apostles. St. Peter and St. Paul could not have passed through the Greek or Roman cities, without being startled at the practices of the national worship. Yet we scarcely find the mention of them in their epistles. St. Paul writes from Ephesus, the head-quarters of Asiatic idolatry ; from Corinth, the supreme seat of Greek licentiousness ; from Rome, where the air was thick with the fumes of every strange worship of the earth, mingled with gladiatorial blood ; yet, except in an occasional warning to the disciples, we can scarcely discover that he lived in the midst of the most overwhelming system of religious impurity ever witnessed by man. We certainly find no direct declamation against the heathen altar, no bold exposure of the heathen theatre (then all impurity) no lofty denouncement of the still more debasing superstitions, the magic, and the divination, which corrupted and darkened the latter periods of the whole gentile mind. He

Xll PREFACE.

more effectually assails practice by inculcating principle ; instead of casting down the altar by force, he beams upon it that sacred light which extinguishes its fires.

An enthusiast would have blown the signal for the assault, and with the same sound would have stirred the defenders to sharpen their swords, and rush to the field. But, he " preached righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come," and heathenism " trembled." Its tyranny passed away, and Christianity ascended the universal throne. How much stronger is the case, when the question is between Christians, and the purpose is conversion. One of the most cheering promises of our ultimate triumph is to be found in the greater use which 5 year by year, is made of the Scriptures in the preaching of the Protestant clergy. The facts, as well as the doctrines, of Scripture, cannot be stated too clearly, and too constantly, to the people. The principles, the habits, and the hopes of the original leaders of Christianity, cannot be too distinctly made the habitual knowledge of the people, This is,

" The sword Of Michael, from the armoury of God, And given him, tempered so, that neither keen Nor solid can resist that edge :" —

the only weapon that will not break, and that

PREFACE. xi 11

cannot be wrested from our hands. With this knowledge familiar to the mind, the sophistries of Schism or Superstition will intuitively appear unnatural and frivolous error ; they will be repulsed as the mist is from polished steel, and instead of being received as matter of disquisition, will be shrunk from as matter of astonishment. But the gentleness of the Gospel must accompany its power.

Let the truth be preached, yet with all avoidance of offence; let all personal exacerbation be shunned; let the preacher limit himself to the Gospel, and, avoiding the hasty provocation of prejudice, or the mixture of human passions with the doctrines of peace, leave the rest to the Great Disposer of the mind ; and Truth will prevail.

CONTENTS,

I. England the Fortress of Christianity - 1

II. Politics and Projects of Russia - - 17

III. Providence - Characters of Pitt, Burke,

and Nelson 43

IV. Memoir of Louis Philippe, King of the

V. England and Europe, — Sketch of Canning -------75

VI. The Church in Ireland 89

VII. Speech, at the first anniversary of the City of London Conservative Association, in 1836 - - - - 108

VIII. Speech, at the second Anniversary of

the City of London Association, 1837 120 IX. Memoir of Zuinglius, the Swiss Reformer 153 X. Character of Curran, and the eloquence

of Ireland ----- 204

XI. Memoir of Luther - 225

XII. Speech, at the City of London Conservative Meeting, 1840 - - - 310 XIII. Character of Napoleon - 338

I. England The Fortress Of Christianity

Written in 1828.

There is the strongest reason to believe, that as Judaea was chosen for the especial guardianship of the original Revelation ; so was England chosen for the especial guardianship of Christianity.

The original Revelation declared the one true God; Paganism was its corruption, by substituting many false gods for the true. The second Revelation, Christianity, declared the one true Mediator; Popery was its corruption, by substituting many false mediators for the true. Both Paganism and Popery adopted the same visible sign of corruption, the worship of images !

The Jewish history reveals to us the conduct of Providence with a people appointed to the express

% ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY.

preservation of the faith of God. There every attempt to receive the surrounding idolatries into a participation of the honours of the true worship, even every idolatrous touch, was visited with punishment ; and that punishment not left to the remote working of the corruption, but immediate ; and, by its directness, evidently designed to make the nation feel the high importance of the trust, and the final ruin that must follow its betrayal.

A glance at the British history since the Reformation, will show with what undeniable closeness this Providential system has been exemplified in England. Every reign which attempted to bring back Popery, or even to give it that share of power which could in any degree prejudice Protestantism, has been marked by signal calamity. It is a memorable circumstance, that every reign of this Popish tendency has been followed by one purely Protestant : and, as if to make the source of the national peril plain to all eyes, those alternate reigns have not offered a stronger contrast in their religious principles than in their public fortunes. Let the rank of England be what it might under the Protestant Sovereign, it always went down under the Popish. But let its loss of dignity, or of power, be what it might under the Popish Sovereign, it always recovered under the Protestant, and more than recovered ; was distinguished by sudden success, public renovation, and some remarkable increase of the freedom or honour of the empire.

Protestantism was first thoroughly established in England in the reign of Elizabeth.

Mary had left a dilapidated kingdom ; the nation worn out by disaster and debt ; the national arms disgraced ; nothing in vigour but Popery. Elizabeth, at twenty-five, found her first steps surrounded with the most extraordinary embarrassments ; at home, the whole strength of a party, including the chief names of the kingdom, hostile to her succession and religion: in Scotland, a rival title, supported by France ; in Ireland, a perpetual rebellion, inflamed by Rome ; on the Continent, the whole fury of Spain roused against her by the double stimulant of ambition and bigotry, at a time when Spain commanded almost the whole strength of Europe.

But the cause of Elizabeth was Protestantism : and in that sign she conquered. She shivered the Spanish sword ; she paralyzed the power of Rome ; she gave freedom to the Dutch ; she fought the battle of the French Protestants ; every eye of religious suffering throughout Europe was fixed on this magnanimous woman. At home, she elevated the habits and the heart of her people. She even drained off the bitter waters of religious feud, and sowed in the vigorous soil, which they had so long made unwholesome, the seed of every principle and institution that has since grown up into the strength of empire. But her great work was the establishment of Protestantism. Like the Jewish king, she found the ark b 2 of God without a shelter ; and she built for it the noblest temple in the world ; she consecrated her country into its temple.

She died in the fulness of years and honour : the great Queen of Protestantism throughout the nations : in the memory of England her name and her reign alike immortal.

James the First inherited the principles, with the crown, of Elizabeth. His first act was, to declare his allegiance to Protestantism. From that moment Popery lost all power against him. It tried faction, and failed. It then tried conspiracy, and more than failed. Its conspiracy gave birth to the most memorable instance of national preservation, perhaps, in the annals of Europe. The gunpowder plot would have swept away the King, the Royal Family, and the chief Nobles and Commoners of England, at a blow. The secret was kept for a year and a half. It was never betrayed, to the last. It was discovered by neither treachery, nor repentance, and but on the eve of execution. Yet its success must have l>een national ruin. A popish Government was to have been set up. The country, in its state of distraction and destitution, must have lain exposed to the first invader. The consequences were incalculable. The hand of God alone saved the throne and altar of England. • -

Charles the First ascended a prosperous throne ; England in peace, faction feeble or extinct ; the

ENGLAND THE PORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 5

nation animated by a new spirit of commerce and vigorous adventure. No reign of an English King ever opened a longer or more undisturbed view ol prosperity. But Charles betrayed the sacred trust of Protestantism. He formed a Popish alliance, with the inevitable knowledge that it established a Popish dynasty.* He lent himself to the intrigues of the French Minister, stained with Protestant blood ; for his first armament was a fleet against the Huguenots. If not a friend to Popery, he was madly regardless of its hazards to the Church and the Constitution.

Ill-fortune suddenly gathered round him. Distracted councils, popular feuds met by alternate weakness and violence, the loss of the national respect, finally deepening into civil bloodshed, were the punishments of his neglect of Protestantism. The late discovery of his error, and the solemn repentance of his prison hours, painfully redeemed his memory.

Cromwell's was the sceptre of a broken kingdom. He found the fame and force of England crushed;

* By the marriage compact with the Infanta, the Royal children were to be educated by their mother until they were ten years old. But France, determined on running no risk of their being Protestants, raised the term to thirteen years. Even this was not enough ; Popery was afraid of Protestant milk: and a clause was inserted that — the children should not be suckled by Protestant nurses ! The object of those stipulations was so apparent, that Charles must have looked to a Popish succession ; and the stipulations were so perfectly sufficient for their purpose, that all his sons, even to the last fragment of their line, were Roman Catholics. Even the King's Protestantism was doubtful. Olivarez, the Spanish Minister, openly declared that Charles, in treating for his marriage with the Infanta, had pledged himself to turn Roman Catholic, utter humiliation abroad ; at home, the exhaustion of the civil war ; new and arrogant faction, and old, intractable partizanship, tearing the public strength asunder.

Cromwell was a murderer: yet, in the high designs of Providence, the personal purity of the instrument is not always regarded. The Jews were punished for their idolatry by idolators, and restored by idolators. But, whatever was in the heart of the Protector, the policy of his government was Protestantism. His treasures and his arms were openly devoted to the Protestant cause ; in France, in Italy, throughout the world. He was the first who raised a public fund for the relief of the Vaudois Churches. He sternly repelled the advances which Popery made to seduce him into the path of the late King.

England was instantly lifted on her feet, as by miracle. All her battles were victories; France and Spain bowed before her. All her adventures were conquests; she laid the foundation of her colonial empire : and extended that still more illustrious commercial empire, to which the only limits in either space or time may be those of mankind. She rapidly became the most conspicuous power of Europe ; growing year by year in opulence, public knowledge, and foreign renown : until Cromwell could almost realize the splendid improbability, that, ' before he died, he would make the name of an Englishman as

ENGLAND THE PORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 7

much feared and honoured as ever was that of an ancient Roman.'

Charles the Second ascended an eminently prosperous throne. Abroad it held the foremost rank, the fruit of the vigour of the Protectorate. At home, all faction had been forgotten in the general joy of the Restoration.

But Charles was a concealed Roman Catholic* He attempted to introduce his religion ; the star of England instantly darkened; the country and the king alike became the scorn of the foreign courts ; the royal honour was scandalized by mercenary subserviency to France ; the national arms were humiliated by a disastrous war with Holland ; the capital was swept by the memorable inflictions of pestilence and conflagration !

James the Second still more openly violated the national trust. He publicly became a Roman Catholic. This filled the cup. The Stuarts were cast out, they and their dynasty for ever ; that proud line of kings was sentenced to wither down into a monk; and that monk living on the alms of England, a stipendiary and an exile.

William was called to the throne by Protestantism. He found it, as it was always found at the close of a popish reign, surrounded by a host of difficulties ; at home, the kingdom in a ferment ; Popery, and its

* He had solemnly professed Popery on the eve of the Restoration.

ally Jacobitism, girding themselves for battle ; fierce disturbance in Scotland ; open war in Ireland, with the late king at its head ; abroad the French king domineering over Europe, and threatening invasion. In the scale of nations, England nothing !

But the principle of William's government was Protestantism ; he fought and legislated for it through life ; and it was to him, as it had been to all before him, strength and victory. He silenced English faction ; he crushed the Irish war ; he next attacked the colossal strength of France on its own shore. This was the direct collision, not so much of the two kingdoms, as of the two faiths ; the Protestant champion stood in the field against the Popish persecutor. Before that war closed, the fame of Louis was undone, and England rose to the highest military name. In a train of immortal victories, she defended Protestantism throughout Europe, drove the enemy to his palace-gates, and, before she sheathed the sword, broke the power of France for a hundred years.

The Brunswick line were called to the throne by Protestantism. Their faith was their title. They were honourable men, and they kept their oaths to the religion of England. The country rose under each of those Protestant kings to a still higher rank ; every trivial reverse compensated by some magnificent addition of honour and power, until the throne of England stood on a height from which it looked down upon the world !

ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OP CHRISTIANITY. V

Yet, in our immediate memory, there was one remarkable interruption of that progress ; which, if the most total contrast to the periods preceding and following can amount to proof, proves that every introduction of Popery into the Legislature will be visited as a national crime.

During the war with the French Republic, England had gone on from triumph to triumph. The crimes of the popish continent had delivered it over to be scourged by France ; but the war of England was naval: and in 1805, she consummated that war by the greatest victory ever gained on the seas ; * at one blow she extinguished the navies of France and Spain! The death of her great Statesman at length opened the door to a new administration.! They were men of acknowledged ability, some, of the highest ; and all accustomed to public affairs. But they came in under a pledge to the introduction of popery, sooner or later, into the legislature. They were emphatically ' The Roman Catholic Administration.'

There never was in the memory of man so sudden a change from triumph to disaster. Disgrace came upon them in every shape in which it could assail a government ; in war, finance, and negotiation. Jill their expeditions returned with shame. The British arms were tarnished in the four quarters of the globe. J

* Trafalgar, Oct. 1805. f February, 1806.

+ Thf retreat from Sweden, 1807.— Egypt invaded and evacuated, 1807.

10 ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANTITY.

And, as if to make the shame more conspicuous, they were baffled even in that service, to which the national feeling was most keenly alive ; and in which defeat seemed impossible. England saw, with astonishment, her fleet disgraced before a barbarian without a ship on the waters, and finally hunted out of his seas by the fire from batteries crumbling under the discharge of their own cannon. Those disasters did not amount to National Calamity, but they were indicative. They showed, that the tide had turned.

But the fair fame of the British empire was not to be thus cheaply wasted away. The ministry must perish ; already condemned by the voice of the country, it was now to be its own executioner. It at length made its promised attempt upon the constitution. A harmless measure * was proposed ; notoriously but a cover for the deeper insults that were to follow. It was met with manly repulse ; and, in the midst of public indignation, perished the popish ministry of one month and one year, f

Its successors came in on the express title of resist-

— Whitelock sent out to Buenos Ayres, 1807. — Duckworth's repulse at Constantinople, 1807. All those operations had originated in 1806, excepting Whitelock's, which was the final act of the ministry.

* The granting of commissions in the army. Mr. Perceval opposed this, as only a pretext ; he said, ' It was not so much the individua measure, to which he objected, as the system of which it formed a part, and which was growing every day. From the arguments that he had heard, a man might be almost led to suppose, that one religion was considered as good as another, and that the Reformation was only a measure of political convenience.'

f March, 1807.

ance to popery ; they were emphatically ' The Protestant Administration.' They had scarcely entered on office, when the whole scene of disaster brightened; and the deliverance of Europe was begun, with a vigour that never relaxed, a combination of unexpected means and circumstances, an effective and rapid renown; of which, the very conjecture, but a month before, would have been laughed at as a dream. The scene, and the success, were equally extraordinary.

Of all countries, Spain, sluggish, accustomed to the yoke of France, and with all its old energies melted away in the vices of its government, was the last to to which Europe could have looked for defiance of the universal conqueror. But, if ever the battle was fought by the shepherd's staff and sling against the armed giant, it was then. England was now palpably summoned to begin a new career of triumph. Irresistible on one element, she was now to be led step by step to the first place of glory on another ; and that Protestant ministry saw, what no human foresight could have hoped to see, Europe restored ; the monarch of her monarchs a prisoner in its hands ; and the mighty fabric of the French atheistic empire, so long darkening and distending, like an endless dungeon, over the earth, suddenly scattered with all its malignant pomps and ministers of evil into air.

It is impossible, to conceive that this regular interchange of punishment and preservation can have been without a cause, and without a purpose. Through almost three hundred years, through all varieties of public circumstance, all changes of men, all shades of general polity, we see one thing alone unchanged — the regular connexion of national misfortune with the introduction of popish influence, and of national triumph with its exclusion.

Those remarks were originally published on the eve of the year 1829. The Bill of that calamitous year replaced the Roman Catholic in the Parliament, from which he had been expelled a century before, by the united necessities of religion, freedom, and national safety. The whole experience of our Protestant history had pronounced that evil must follow. And it has followed.

From that hour all has been clouded. British legislation has lost its stability. England has lost alike her pre-eminence abroad, and her confidence at home. Every great institution of the State has tottered. Her Governments have arisen, and passed away, like shadows. The Church in Ireland, bound hand and foot, has been flung into the furnace, and is disappearing from the eye. The Church in England is haughtily threatened with her share of the fiery trial. Every remonstrance of the nation is insolently answered by pointing to rebellion, ready to seize its arms in Ireland. Democracy is' openly proclaimed as a principle of the State, Popery is triumphantly predicted as the universal religion. To guide and embody all ; a new shape of power has started up in the Legislature ; — a new element at once of control and confusion ; a central faction, which has both sides at its mercy ; holding the country in contempt, while it fixes its heel on Cabinets trembling for existence ; possessing all the influence of office without its responsibility ; and engrossing unlimited patronage for the purposes of unlimited domination. Yet these may be " but the beginning of sorrows."

But, if England shall give way to Popery, she sins against the most solemn warnings of Scripture : We have the apostolic declaration, — " Let no man deceive you by any means ; for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition ; — who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped ; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. * * * * And then, shall that Wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming : even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish ; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thess. ii.) This gives the portraiture of the great deluder of the European world in his external and imposing aspect. Another portraiture displays his internal evil : —