The Contemporary Review, January 1883

The programme of the "Two Conservatives" begins with a grand item, the conservation of the liberties of the people. But why "conserve?" Why not extend and advance them? Why should the present stage in the historical growth of our liberties be selected as the point at which conservation becomes a duty? Would not the party which undertakes the task to-day be better pleased if there were fewer of them to conserve? The Tories have always been adepts at conservation, but the things they have been most willing to conserve were not our liberties but the restrictions put upon our liberties. Since the liberties now proposed to be conserved are assumed to be threatened by the Liberals, they must be liberties of a special sort, such as liberty to spread infection, liberty to dispense with vaccination, liberty to send uninspected ships to sea, to keep children away from school, or to send them out at any age to work in the fields, the factory, or the streets. "Personal rights" have good radical sponsors in the hon. members for Stockport and Leicester. Perhaps Parliament as a whole is the best sponsor. The Neo-conservative programme should tell us what is meant by the liberties of the people. The absence of definition may perhaps cover an imposture.

The next object of Neo-conservative devotion is the maintenance of the rights of property. Those rights are of no private interpretation, and belong to sociology rather than to politics. Every man is interested in them who has anything to lose, or who has a chance of acquiring anything. Hence they cannot be claimed as an appanage of Toryism. They are placed under the common championship of all parties. But the exclusive claim set up must have some meaning. The rights of property intended may perhaps be the rights of property as understood by the landlords, in which sense they may include a right to the property of other people; or as understood by the association of which Lord Elcho is president, in which sense they stand in opposition to the rights of the public. We know what is meant by the rights of landed proprietors, of railway corporations, of publicans, of property owners, of shipowners, of pawnbrokers and of corporate bodies, such as the guilds of the city of London. They represent the pretensions of these classes to have their interests preferred to those of the community. It is a case of prescription against equity, of the license assumed by special callings against the checks and guarantees which Parliament has found it necessary to impose for the general welfare. This is a field in which Neo-conservatism can reap no harvest. It will be vain to tell the working man who is the owner of the house in which he lives, that his rights are in the same boat with the right of London companies to squander or misapply the wealth which has descended to them from the Middle Ages. It will be useless to enter an appeal before the tribunal of public opinion in defence of such rights as these on the pretence that they are the rights of property. The unsophisticated reason of the constituencies will resent the assumption as an attempted fraud.

The political institutions which are to be set forth as necessary to the maintenance of the civil and religious liberties of the people are the Established Church, the House of Lords, and the Crown. Of the Crown we have already spoken. It is the least vulnerable of the three, and for this reason it is the least fitted to furnish a party cry. The strength of the Crown resides in its enormous historical prestige, and in the constitutional device, old as the monarchy in principle, but modern in its machinery, by which it is removed from the sphere of responsibility and therefore from party assault. The Crown need not be defended for it is not assailed. If it were assailed there are sufficient grounds for an adequate, perhaps a triumphant, defence. But in mere truth it would be difficult to defend it on the special ground that it is necessary to the maintenance of our civil and religious liberties. Everybody knows that these liberties were won in despite of the Crown, and in opposition to its alleged prerogatives. We had to send a dynasty adrift before we could regard our liberties as moderately secure. No greater disservice can be done to any institution than to advance exaggerated or ill-founded pretensions on its behalf, and this is what Neo-conservatism proposes to do for the Crown. It will be well to keep this institution off the hustings. To utilize it for party purposes seems like an insidious form of treason. The Established Church is fairer game, but absolutely worthless as a means of raising the wind for a forlorn party. An institution which needs all the support it can get has none to share with companions in distress. The Church may have a larger hold upon a portion of the middle classes than it had thirty years ago, but the working classes are separated from it by a wider gulf. Many who attend its services and call themselves Churchmen are utterly indifferent to its political fate. It is preposterous to represent the Established Church as necessary to the maintenance of civil and religious freedom. In the course of her history she has been the unrelenting foe of both, and we have no more of either than she could help our having. The want of disciplinary powers prevents her from interfering with the belief, or, except in grave cases, with the moral conduct of her members, but the paralysis of the authority necessary for internal discipline is not the same thing as religious freedom. The bondage of the Church is not the liberty of the State. Disestablishment has not yet come within the range of practical politics, but if a popular statesman felt it his duty to bring the question fairly before the electorate, it is at least doubtful whether the verdict would not be hostile to the Church. No doubt need be entertained as to the result of such an appeal in the case of the House of Lords. The constitution of the House as an assembly of hereditary legislators is admitted to be indefensible. Its theoretic prerogatives are tolerated only on the understanding that they shall never be exerted. It exists by virtue of habit and indifference, aided by a conviction of its powerlessness. As a decorative institution there is no great eagerness to pull it down, but whenever the House forgets that its functions are ornamental, and commits itself to a serious issue with the Commons, its last hour will be at hand. The step most likely to precipitate its doom would be for the Tory party to glorify it as the palladium of our liberties, and try to get up popular enthusiasm on its behalf. The House of Lords would not long survive that treacherous homage. It would be beaten in one campaign.

No: from whatever point of view we consider the question, it is plain that the attempt to reconstruct the Tory party on a Democratic basis cannot succeed. The open avowal of such an aim would deprive Toryism of all backbone and reduce it to the condition of a moribund jelly-fish. It is not given to any creature to change its nature and yet continue to discharge its old functions. It is true that Toryism in order to get on at all with the present age is obliged occasionally to act on Liberal principles. The device gives no offence so long as it is adopted quietly, and if suspicions are awakened a few heart-stirring speeches in the old orthodox vein suffice to allay them. A formal repudiation of old ideas is quite another thing. Just as Utopian is the project of defending Tory institutions on Democratic principles. There are two arsenals from which political combatants may choose their weapons, the historical and the scientific. It is from the former that the champion equips himself who offers battle on behalf of institutions that have descended to us from hoar antiquity. Weapons taken from the latter are unfit for such a service. Every blow would recoil upon the institution which it was the champion's aim to defend. To abandon the Established Church, the House of Lords, and the Crown to the uncovenanted mercies of modern political criticism is a rash experiment. The hope which sees in such an experiment a fresh lease of life and new chances of ascendency for Toryism is absurd.

Yet there is, and always will be, room for a Conservative party in English politics, only it must move along the historic lines, and not needlessly renounce its old watchwords. We need two brooms to keep our constitutional mansion in a tidy state, one in use, the other undergoing repairs, or put in pickle, and ready to be brought in when wanted. Government by party requires the existence of two parties, and demand is apt to generate supply. It is not necessary that the two parties should be separated by an impassable gulf. It is only necessary that materials for two separate connections should be provided, and in this emergency Nature does much to help us. There are opposite moods of mind in politics as in literature and art; there are antithetical differences of intellect and temperament to be found among men of all countries and all times; there is the standing opposition between what is and what ought to be, between the actual and the ideal, between the desire of the poor human wayfarer to sit down and rest, and the curiosity which ever lures him on. Possession and the desire to possess, divine contentment and still diviner discontent, self-centreing reflectiveness and impulses whose proper object is the welfare of mankind,—here are agencies which play their part in politics as well as in social life. These multifarious forces tend to range themselves on opposite sides, the sympathetic in each class readily finding out their kinsmen in the rest. With such materials to work upon, a Conservatism which chooses to follow the ordinary course of things can never be defunct. Extinction can only come from an endeavour after some monstrous birth against which both Nature and history have pronounced their ban.

Henry Dunckley.

1

That is, to all members of Convocation who are either resident or hold University office. This, besides the Chancellor and a few other great personages, lets in a few professors and examiners who are non-resident.

2

I use Oxford language, as that which I myself best understand; but I believe that, all that I say applies equally to Cambridge also. For "Convocation" one must of course, in Cambridge language, read "Senate."

3

"To see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting."—Lamb's Essays.

4

"Shakspere: His Mind and Art," p. 96.

5

"A Study of Shakespeare," p. 166.

6

We have received this article from a valued correspondent, whose name, for obvious reasons, is not given.—Ed.

7

The eve of Courban Beiram.

8

Henschenius was a man of great physical powers. He always delighted in walking exercise, and executed many of his literary journeys in Italy on foot, even amid the summer heats. Ten years later, when close on seventy, he walked on an emergency ten leagues in one day through the mountains and forests of the Ardennes district, and was quite fresh next day for another journey. He was a man of very full complexion. According to the medical system of the time, he indulged in blood-letting once or twice a year.

9

Since this paper was written the Bollandists have issued a prospectus of an annual publication called "Analecta Bollandiana." From this document we learn that disease and death have now reduced the company very low. De Smedt has had to retire almost as soon as elected.

10

Cf., for instance, Colebrooke's "Life and Essays," i. 309. iii. 360, 399, 474; Wœpké, "Memoir on the Propagation of Indian Cyphers in Jour. Asiatique," 1863.

11

The single act which led to the revival of these long-forgotten claims upon the north-west coast, was the hoisting of the Queen's flag by two native Sàkalàva chieftains in their villages. These were hauled down, and carried away in a French gun-boat, and the flag-staves cut up.

12

This last claim must be preferred either in perfect ignorance of what the 1868 treaty really is, or as an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the newspaper-reading public.

13

It is true that during these seventy years various edicts claiming the country we issued by Louis XIV.; but as the French during all that time did not attempt to occupy a single foot of territory in Madagascar, these grandiloquent proclamations can hardly be considered as of much value. As has been remarked, French pretensions were greatest when their actual authority was least.

14

See "Précis sur les Etablissements Français formés à Madagascar." Paris, 1836, p.4.

15

For fuller details as to the character of French settlements in Madagascar, their gross mismanagement and bad treatment of the people, see Statement of the Madagascar Committee; and Souvenirs de Madagascar, par M. le Dr. H. Lacaze: Paris, 1881, p. xviii.

16

The italics are my own.

17

See also letter of Bishop Ryan, late of Mauritius, Daily News, Dec. 16.

18

See Daily News, Nov. 30 and Dec. 1; La Liberté, Nov. 29, and Le Parlement of same date. Both these French journals speak of an "Act by which the Tanànarivo Government cancelled the Treaty of 1868" (Le Parlement), and of its being "annulled by Queen Ranavàlona of her own authority" (La Liberté). It is only necessary to say that no such "Act" ever had any existence, save in the fertile brains of French journalists, and it is now brought forward apparently with a view to excite animosity towards the Malagasy in the minds of their readers.

19

E.g., The Manchester Guardian, Dec. 1st., 5th., and 6th.

20

Almost all Malagasy words for military tactics and rank are of English origin, so are many of the words used for building operations, and the influence of England is also shown by the fact that almost all the words connected with education and literature are from us, such as school, class, lesson, pen, copybook, pencil, slate, book, gazette, press, print, proof, capital, period, &c., grammar, geography, addition, &c.

21

See Le Parlement, Dec. 15, and other French papers.

22

Among the many unfair statements of the Parisian press is an article in Le Rappel, of Oct. 29, copied by many other papers, in which this Tangéna ordeal is described as if it was now a practice of the Malagasy, the intention being, of course, to lead its readers to look upon them as still barbarous; the fact being that its use has been obsolete ever since 1865 (Art. XVIII. of English Treaty), and its practice is a capital offence, as a form of treason. The Malagasy Envoys are represented as saying that their Supreme Court often condemned criminals to death by its use!

23

See Tract No. II. of the Madagascar Committee.

24

See Lord Granville's speech in reply to the address of the Madagascar Committee, Nov. 28.

25

The Admiral, so it is reported on good authority, congratulated the Queen and her Government on having solved the question of Madagascar by showing that the Hova could govern it. He also said that France and England were in perfect accord on this point, and on the wisdom of recognizing Queen Ranavàlona as sovereign of the whole island. See Daily News, Dec. 14. This will no doubt be confirmed by the publication of the official report which has been asked for by Mr. G. Palmer, M.P.

26

"La Génie des Religions," l. i. c. i.

27

Ibid., c. iv.

28

The author of "Natural Religion" thinks it mistaken in so declaring itself. "Its invectives against God and against Religion do not prove that it is atheistic, but only that it thinks itself so. And why does it think itself so? Because God and Religion are identified in its view with the Catholic Church; and the Catholic Church is a thing so very redoubtable that we need scarcely inquire why it is passionately hated and feared" (p. 37). But this is an error. God and Religion are not identified, in the view of the Revolution, with the Catholic Church. It will be evident to anyone who will read its accredited organs that it is as implacably hostile to religious Protestantism as to Catholicism. Perhaps I may be allowed to refer, on this subject, to some remarks of my own in an article entitled "Free Thought—French and English," published in this Review, in February last, p. 241.

29

See his Preface to the Second Edition.

30

Warburton, a shrewd observer enough, expressed the same view a hundred years ago, with characteristic truculence:—"Mathematicians—I do not mean the inventors and geniuses amongst them, whom I honour, but the Demonstrators of others' inventions, who are ten times duller and prouder than a damned poet—have a strange aversion to everything that smacks of religion."—Letters to Hurd, xix.

31

Preface to Second Edition, p. vii.

32

Ibid., p. v.

33

Summa, 1ma 2de qu. 60, art. 3.

34

"Grammar of Assent," p. 389. 5th ed.

35

What Wordsworth says is—

"We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love,And, even as these are well and wisely fixed,In dignity of being we ascend."

This is widely different from the nude proposition that "we live by admiration."

36

See also p. 127.

37

A good deal of information about Theophilanthropy and the Theophilanthropists, in an undigested and, indeed, chaotic state, will be found in Grégoire's "Histoire des Sectes Religieuses," vol. i.

38

The Theophilanthropists were most anxious that the object of their worship should not be supposed to be the Christian God. Thus in one of their hymns their Deity is invoked as follows:—

"Non, tu n'es pas le Dieu dont le prêtre est l'apôtre,Tu n'as point par la Bible enseigné les humains."

39

The author of "Natural Religion" says, Talleyrand; I do not know on what authority. Grégoire writes:—"Au Directoire même on le raillait sur son zèle thêophilantropique. Un de ses collègues, dit-on, lui proposait de se faire pendre et de ressusciter le troisième jour, comme l'infaillible moyen de faire triompher sa secte, et Carnot lui décoche dans son Mémoire des épigrammes sanglantes à ce sujet."—Histoire des Sectes Religieuses, vol. I. p. 406. Talleyrand was never a member of the Directory.

40

Preface to second edition.

41

"Eight Lectures on Miracles," p. 50.

42

Ibid. See Dr. Mozley's note on this passage.

43

"Analogy." Part I. c. i. I give, of course, Bishop Butler's words as I find them, but, as will be seen a little later, I do not quite take his view of the supernatural.

44

"Three Essays on Religion," p. 174.

45

"Address to the British Association," 1871.

46

I say "primary cause;" of course I do not deny its own proper causality to the non-spiritual or matter.

47

"Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," p. 368. I am, of course, aware of Mr. Mill's remarks upon this view in his "Three Essays on Religion" (pp. 146-150). The subject is too great to be discussed in a footnote. But I may observe that he rests, at bottom, upon the assumption—surely an enormous assumption—that causation is order. Cardinal Newman's argument upon this matter in the "Grammar of Assent" (pp. 66-72, 5th ed.) seems to me to be unanswerable; certainly, it is unanswered. I have no wish to dogmatize—the dogmatism, indeed, appears to be on the other side—but if we go by experience, as it is now the fashion to do, our initial elementary experience would certainly lead us to consider will the great or only cause. To guard against a possible misconception let me here say that I must not be supposed to adopt Mr. Wallace's view in its entirety or precisely as stated by him. Of course, the analogy between the human will and the Divine Will is imperfect, and Mr. Mill appears to me to be well founded in denying that our volition originates. My contention is that Matter is inert until Force has been brought to bear upon it: that all Force must be due to a Primary Force of which it is the manifestation or the effect: that the Primary Force cannot exert itself unless it be self-determined: that to be self-determined is to be living: that to be primarily and utterly self-determined is to be an infinitely self-conscious volition: ergo, the primary cause of Force is the Will of God. This is the logical development of the famous argument of St. Thomas Aquinas. He contends that whatever things are moved must be moved by that which is not moved: a movente non moto. But Suarez and later writers complete the argument by analyzing the term movens non motum, which they consider equivalent to Ens a se, in se, et per se, or Actus Purissimus.

48

"Contra Faustum," 22.

49

Summa, 1, 2, qu. 83, art. 1. But on this and the preceding quotation, see the note on page 118.

50

"Quotidiana Dei miracula ex assiduitate vilescunt."—Hom. xxvi. in Evan.

51

"Stated, fixed, or settled" is a predicate common to natural and supernatural, not the differentia of either. And here let me remark that the expression, "Laws of Nature," is a modern technical expression which the Catholic philosopher would require, probably, to have defined before employing it. "Natura," in St. Thomas Aquinas, is declared to be "Principium operationis cujusque rei," the Essence of a thing in relation to its activity, or the Essence as manifested agendo. Hence "Natura rerum," or "Universitas rerum" (which is the Latin for Nature in the phrase "Laws of Nature") means the Essences of all things created (finite) as manifested and related to each other by their proper inherent activities, which of course are stable or fixed. But since it is not a logical contradiction that these activities should be suspended, arrested, or annihilated (granting an Infinite Creator), it will not be contrary to Reason should a miraculous intervention so deal with them, though their suspension or annihilation may be described, loosely and inaccurately, as against the Laws of Nature. By Reason is here meant the declarations of necessary Thought as to possibility and impossibility, or the canons of contradiction, the only proper significance of the word in discussions about miracles. Hence, to say that miracles have their laws, is not to deny that they are by the Free Will of God. For creation is by the Fiat of Divine Power and Freedom, and yet proceeds upon law—that is to say, upon a settled plan and inherent sequence of cause and effect. But it is common with Mr. Mill and his school to think of law as necessary inviolable sequence; whereas it is but a fixed mode of action whether necessarily or freely determined; and it is a part of law that some activities should be liable to suspension or arrestment by others, and especially by the First Cause.

52

"Vie de Jésus," p. 247.

53

When Mr. Mill says ("Three Essays on Religion," p. 224), "The argument that a miracle may be the fulfilment of a law in the same sense in which the ordinary events of Nature are fulfilments of laws, seems to indicate an imperfect conception of what is meant by a law and what constitutes a miracle," all he really means is that this argument involves a conception of law and of miracle different from his own, which is undoubtedly true. Upon this subject I remark as follows: There is a necessary will (spontaneum non liberum) and a free will(liberum non spontaneum); and these are in God on the scale of infinite perfection, as they are in man finitely. With Mr. Mill, as I have observed in a previous note, Law is taken to signify "invariable, necessary sequence;" and its test is, that given the same circumstances, the same thing will occur. But it is essential to Free Will (whether in God or man) that given the same circumstances, the same thing need not, may not, and perhaps will not, occur. However, an act may be free in causa which hic et nunc must happen; the Free Will having done that by choice which brings as a necessary consequence something else. For there are many things which would involve contradiction and so be impossible, did not certain consequences follow them. This premised, it is clear that the antithesis of Mr. Mill's "Law" is Free Will. Law and antecedent necessity to Mr. Mill are one and the same. But Law in Catholic terminology means the Will of God decreeing freely or not freely, according to the subject-matter; and is not opposed to Free-Will. It guides, it need not coerce or necessitate, though it may. Neither in one sense, is Law synonymous with Reason, for that is according to Reason, simply, which does not involve a contradiction, whether it be done freely or of necessity; and many things are possible, or non-contradictives, that Law does not prescribe. Nor again does Free-Will mean lawless in the sense of irrational; or causeless, in the sense of having no motive: "contra legem," "præter legem" is not "contra rationem," "prater rationem." The Divine Will, then, may be free, yet act according to Law, namely, its own freely-determined Law. And it may act "not according to Law," and yet act according to Reason. In this sense, then, theologians identify the Divine Will with the Divine Reason—I mean, they insist that God's Will is always according to Reason—in this sense, but, as I think, not in any other. For the Divine Will is antecedently free as regards all things which are not God; but the Divine Intellect is not free in the same way. St. Augustine always tends to view things in the concrete, not distinguishing their "rationes formales," or distinguishing them vaguely. And Ratio with him does not mean Reason merely, but living Reason or the Reasoning Being, the Soul. When St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of Lex Æterna he means the Necessary Law of Morality, concerning which God is not free, because in decreeing it, He is but decreeing that there is no Righteousness except by imitation of Him.