Chapter XXIV: Part 24

This, from a Belgian, is at least as humiliating to Paris as any of the Prussian victories.

From politics, as from warlike criticism, M. Leclercq abstains almost wholly: of course, he cannot help wondering at Bazaine's behaviour at Metz; as we heard it lately expressed by a great English financier, unable, like most financiers, to help liking the Emperor after all:--'I won't say Bazaine was a traitor; that is not quite fair upon him. But I will say that he thought more of his government than he did of France. He might have prevented the investment of Paris, there is not a doubt of it.' The decay of the Napoleonic idea is put in a startling light, when we reflect that Bazaine was, before the end of last September, almost the only Imperialist in France. Paris, which had been so delighted at the prospect of glory as to forget all about the _coup d'état_, went round as one man. In fact, Sedan was hurried on because Paris could not be trusted: there was no sincerity in the ex-Emperor's professions and concessions. The Parisians knew that, and though they had been ready enough to shout against the Prussians, they were only waiting for their opportunity to get rid of their own ruler. It is the old story of a house divided against itself. The poor men were mowed down at Sedan by shells from such a distance that they could not see whence they were fired, simply because it was 'useless' for Napoleon to go to Paris. The idea of really honestly trusting to the country, and giving pledges for future conduct, never presented itself as possible in 1870 any more than in 1814 and 1815.

On one point M. Leclercq finds just fault with the Republican government: they decreed a second expulsion of Germans from Paris, and they vowed not only never to yield an inch of French soil, but never to raze a stone of one of her fortresses:--'As to the soil (says our author), let the inhabitants decide; but the offer to dismantle Metz and Strasburg, and, above all, the little fortresses which have so long wished to be made open towns, would at once have set them right with all the noblest minds in Europe: to act as they did was to play into the hands of the King of Prussia.' But M. Leclercq is somewhat of a peace-at-any-price man.

He is a prophet, too, and delights in the thought that France, before long, will be a federation like the United States. Its provinces will then (he says) resume their old importance--'the life now heaped up in Paris will be spread abroad where it is needed.' Paris, no doubt, has done nobly, and there is, after all, a good side to her character. He is as little desirous as we are to deny this; but, then, the fault was mainly hers. Had she last autumn stood firmly by the Republican party, instead of falling so readily and blindly into the trap which Louis Napoleon laid for her, war would have been impossible. She enabled the Emperor to begin; and then, by her fickle restlessness, she hampered his movements and forced him to fight, as it were, with one hand tied up. Instead of Hugo's _Paris-cerveau_, M. Leclercq calls her _Paris-spectacle, Paris-plaisir, Paris-panache_, and he sees no future for France except in her humiliation: _il faut trépaner_ (he says) _le cerveau de la France_.

The _Papiers Secrets_ need not occupy us long; they were hardly worth the trouble of unearthing. The Government of National Defence might surely have found better work for men like De Kératry, Lavertujon, and Cochut, than to be rummaging among the rubbish found at the Tuileries, at St. Cloud, and at Meudon. If they had so destroyed the environs of Paris as to prevent the Prussians from finding shelter; if they had (as common sense would have dictated) fortified Versailles, connecting it with the _enceinte_ by a strong military line, and used their abundant labour to make the works impregnable, it would have been far better than to have wasted precious time in docketing papers which are certainly disappointing. They reveal nothing, for we already know that the Empire was based upon corruption and _espionnage_; and all they do is to enable the curious reader to follow the ramifications of this imperial system into unsuspected corners.

Thus, at the outset, we have a letter from the Empress _en route_ for Suez, which shows her grammar and orthography as much at fault as those of the fine ladies of Queen Anne's time, and which is sadly like what Henrietta of France might have written to Charles I.:--

'Plus on aura besoin de force plus tard, et plus il sera
nécessaire de prouver au pays qu' on a _des idées_ et non
_des expédients_.' "Amuse-toi" (is her advice to her
husband) 'il faut se refaire un moral, comme on se refait
une constitution affaiblie, et une idée constante finie
(sic) par user le cerveau le mieux organisé.'

Altogether Eugenie does not come off badly in the published correspondence.

Of the chapter on Napoleon's mistresses we need say nothing except that it will disappoint the prurient reader. Marguerite Bellanger, who first fathered a son on him, and then (after being managed by the _président du cour_, poor M. Devienne) confessed she had cheated him, and Miss Howard, are the only two who come to the front; the latter, by the way, appears to have received in the course of two years five and a half millions of francs--good interest for having paid 'the Prince's' debts when he was in England. It is unsafe to state anything about the ex-Emperor's private property. The 'facts' have been contradicted and re-asserted; but there they are, in this little pamphlet, with full details, sixty-three millions of francs, including the accounts with Baring of London, with Kindlet of Vienna, with Funder and Plitz of St. Petersburg, with Berg von Dussen of Amsterdam, and Jecker in Mexico, and Brown Brothers of New York. What he had in the French funds the author, of course, professes himself unable to tell; but _en revanche_ he gives (in the chapter headed _ce que coûtaient les impérialists_) the whole of the enormous civil list, a great deal of which was (as is proved by marginal notes on the documents) paid by the Emperor over and above the allowance, without the intervention of the Ministry.

We all know how persistently Pierre Bonaparte begged for money, and how recklessly money was wasted on affairs like the Prince Imperial's baptism, but the amount expended per month on men like Baron Jérome David, M. Granier de Cassagnac, and others of the 'vendus' is prodigious; and we are told that of the actual total we can form no notion, the usual plan of payment having been one which may be recommended to our own 'man in the moon'--a trusty go-between used to breathe on the glass of the office door, and then write with his finger the sum which he was authorised to draw, whereupon it was paid without question.

Of the _Cabinet Noir_, where letters were opened, according to a system adopted in France at any rate since Louis XIV.'s day, we have all heard a good deal. The actual letter-stealers were certain _concierges_ with whom the postmen were instructed to leave all letters addressed to certain persons. These letters were then carried off to M. Saintonier, 18, Rue Les Cases, who opened them, had them copied, if necessary, and, if possible, returned them in time for the next delivery. Among the copies found is a remarkable letter from Ducrot, at Strasburg, to Trochu, dated 1st December, 1866, setting forth the dangerous state of feeling in Germany, and pointing out that Prussia can get ready 600,000 men and 1,200 guns far sooner than France can muster half the number. Ducrot animadverts severely on the 'stupid vanity' which makes his countrymen think they can choose their own time, and get their Great Exhibition well over before they begin. He says, too, that the frontier swarms with Prussian agents, and that the feeling between the Moselle and the Vosges is far less French than people fancy:

'They are sons and grandsons of the men who, in 1815,
petitioned the Holy Alliance that Alsace might be re-united
to Germany.... The Prussians are working here just as I am
told they did in Bohemia three months before their war with
Austria began.'

Surely the Emperor was warned; and that, in spite of all warnings, he should have acted as he did, justifies as well as explains the scorn which all parties alike have manifested for him.

These papers, in fact, remind us that imperialism was based on _surveillance publique_, on a spy system so vast as to embrace lists of all the 'dangerous men,' of whatever views, throughout the Empire. The prop of this system was the terrible power of arbitrary arrest given to all prefects by the 10th article of the Criminal Code. How the nation which boasts of being exceptionally _logique_ reconciles such an article with the principles of 1789 we cannot imagine; but it is clear that a Government, resting on such a basis, could only stand by its prestige. At whatever cost, it was necessary last July 'to do something,' and at Sedan the ex-Emperor judged rightly that he had better fall into Prussian hands than trust to feelings which even his uncle had not ventured to rely on.

Persigny, according to the letters contained in the _Papiers Secrets_, was Louis Napoleon's Strafford. As late as December, 1867, he memorialises the Emperor at great length on the state of the nation, and exclaims against the folly of concessions:

'Your enemies,' (says he) 'under the pretence of setting up
Parliamentary rule, are working your ruin. I see it in
their every movement. I watch them and note the bitterest
hatred--hatred! and something more--showing itself in look,
word, and gesture; and your Ministers bow down and humbly
beg the Opposition to withdraw their motions.... If your
majesty sees no harm in all this, it's no use my making
plans to put out the fire that's burning up your house;
but, anyhow, I can't go on with abstract studies amid such
moral anarchy as this.'

Persigny, at any rate, was faithful, and, we believe, felt proper scorn for the miserable policy which tried to secure the _bourgeoisie_ by alarming them every now and then with sham plots. Except the Orsini and Pianori plots, and the Villette affair of last summer, all the plots were, we are told, hatched by Pietri and Lagrange. Thus Greco, who was condemned to life transportation in 1853, was let out one night from Mazas by M. Lagrange himself, lived for years in America on a pension of £250 and then came back to Paris under a feigned name, and worked as a detective. The man, we read, is now in prison, and has made a full confession of his antecedents.

That Ollivier, at the end of 1869, was anxious to infuse new blood into the Imperial councils, and also to win over 'the few men of talent between thirty and forty years of age _who had not already been driven into the revolutionary ranks_,' is a proof that the Constitutional-Imperialist was more clear-sighted than his enemies will admit. That the Empress, after Wörth, should have telegraphed to her husband not on any account to return to Paris, as she could not be answerable for the consequences, shows a weakness of character which the admirers of Eugenie certainly did not anticipate.

These quotations from Paris newspapers and secret documents help to show why the Empire fell. It was unsound. However we may differ as to the amount of culpability shared by the French nation, or even by the Parisians, there is no doubt of the rottenness of the whole system. That it has been swept away is a gain for the world--a gain for France which will outweigh all her hopes, if only (in the words of the _Siècle_) the _esprit boulevardier_, the street-idler spirit, disappears along with the _régime_ which fostered it; and if that hardness towards the poor, and indifference to their sufferings, which are too characteristic of the French wealthier classes, can be modified.

And now for a very few facts to show what a poor idol was the uncle of such a nephew. The three writers, Lanfrey, Barni, and Erckmann-Châtrian, have done more than any others to disabuse the French mind about Napoleonism. The cheap edition of Barni, from which the analysis and _seriatim_ confutation of M. Thiers' books are omitted, has been immensely read; that such a book could be published in France in 1870 was a sign of the times quite as alarming to imperialists as the known disaffection of a part of the army. Besides these Charras, Scherer, Quinet, and Eugene Pelletan had for years been working against the worship of which Thiers was so long the prophet, and had succeeded in proving to all thoughtful Frenchmen that Fichte and Channing were much nearer the truth than was the romancer who wrote the 'Consulate and Empire.'

Our remarks must necessarily be brief; but we would call special attention to what M. Lanfrey tells about the early life of Napoleon: so much seems accounted for by such circumstances acting on such a temperament. Corsica was passing through a crisis when he was a boy; his father, head of one of the most influential families, went over to the French side when he saw resistance was hopeless. The son, who began life an ardent patriot, cursed his father for not having shared Paoli's exile. The family, however, profited by his change of side. He himself, displaying that same skill in managing men, above all Frenchmen, for which his son was afterwards so remarkable, became the confidential adviser of the governor and his cabinet. His children were provided for on the different royal foundations then so common in France. Napoleon went to Brienne, and thence to Paris; the great poverty of his family, and the humiliating position in which he found himself among the cadets of noble houses, accustomed to spend money as recklessly at their military colleges as our boys nowadays do at Sandhurst, made him cynical. The references to his want of means are frequent in his early journals; but this consciousness of poverty did not deprive him of his keen power of observation. His journals are an admixture of practical shrewdness and of originality expressed in wild bombast. He soon took the measure of those with whom he was brought in contact, fathomed their weaknesses, and adroitly made use of them. Life in Paris in the days when young Bonaparte first went there must have been trying to a young man's faith. Bonaparte had been 'finished' under the _régime_ which was said to have existed _par les femmes et pour les femmes_; but before he was fully a man the old system was swept away, and Paris was a scene on which the most fantastic absurdities were enacted in the name of liberty. The selfish greed of the Republicans seems to have done more than anything else to make the young man a disbeliever in the grand phrases which he so freely used. His determination to act for himself comes out strikingly in his first Italian campaign, when by his happy boldness against Wurmser he had made the convention of Loeben inevitable. Throughout the preliminaries he behaved as an independent prince. He told the Directory what he was doing, and received their instructions, and from time to time acted upon them; but the only way in which he showed himself a faithful servant of the government was by putting money and art-treasures in their way. The greed which these Parisian deputies displayed was something incredible: and their young general encouraged them in it. He told them that Italy was rich and able to pay; and the contributions which he levied--though trifling compared with the amounts of recent Prussian requisitions--were sufficiently grievous to drive the people of the Milanese to revolt. Leghorn, for instance, had to pay two million francs for the _privilege_ of being protected against the English. How Venice was treated is well known. 'The child of the revolution' betrayed that city to Austria as cynically as he afterwards crushed the Ligurian republic. 'Give them (said he, writing of the Corfiotes), plenty of talk about old Greece and liberty: it will please them, and it means nothing.' He is always the same, pitiless in his scorn of that _bavardage_, to put a stop to which he tells Menou that he was leaving Egypt. No success ever pleased him more than the way in which he fooled Sièyes, the man of ideas--making use of his reputation as a constitution-builder, and then showing 'the head' that as soon as its work was done it must give way to the arm.

Lanfrey's account of the 18th Brumaire, when only two of the five directors, Gohier and Moulins, stood firm, and when the affair of the Orangerie consummated by force what had been begun by corruption, is exceedingly instructive. It shows how, out of such a chaos, the rise of the ablest man was inevitable. Had Napoleon been a Washington he would, of course, have risen for far other than selfish ends; he would at once have taken in hand the constitution of which he so well knew the defects, and would have perfected it. Even had he been a Cromwell, earnest and impressed with a really noble idea, he would have looked at home instead of abroad, and have proved that 'the empire is peace.' Being what he was, the successful military commander, with no rule of action, except to make everything further his own advancement, he began by destroying representative life, and making even the judges his creatures, at the same time that he entered on that career of war in which he never paused save for short breathing times. A true instinct told him that either the French must have _bonâ fide_ freedom, or must be drawn away from politics by being kept always at war. He may have mistrusted his ability to play the part of Washington; or what he had seen of Frenchmen may well have made him doubt whether they would appreciate his self-denial. Anyhow he never tried them; war became a necessity of his position; and to make war he did not shrink from so thoroughly exhausting France that we may doubt if she has suffered so much by this last ruinous war, and yet more ruinous peace, as she did by the long struggle which ended at Waterloo. The recklessness of last July was but a recognition by the nephew of the uncle's maxim, that 'by war, and war only, can our position be kept safe.'

Another point in common between uncle and nephew, is reckless expenditure; we do not sufficiently remember that, besides the conscription, the first Napoleon had the whole wealth of the nation under his personal control. He used it as the resources of the Second Empire have been used. The vast salaries of senators, the bribes, direct and indirect, the encouragement of a luxury which made large means essential--all this soon destroyed 'the austere simplicity of the republic.' '_Il faut se montrer_' was the phrase in everybody's mouth, 'for if we do not come forward as friends of things as they are, we shall have none of the prizes which are being so lavishly distributed.' It was imperial Rome over again.

Such a system could not last; and the way in which France succumbed after Waterloo, while it does not exalt our opinion of French gratitude (for, after all, the first Napoleon had for years given France all that the mass of Frenchmen ask for), shows how inherently weak the strongest 'tyranny' (in the Greek sense) must always be. Any one who wants a simple and natural account of how Napoleonism grew up out of the folly and corruption and strife of the republicans, and of the helpless disgust with which the mass of the nation submitted when they saw what Napoleonism really meant, should study the Erckmann-Châtrian series. We do not wonder that the writers should have been elected as deputies for the Meurthe and the Haut Rhin, so thoroughly do their books photograph life and thought in these most republican departments. The peasant proprietor, who has bought with his hard-earned savings a little patch of confiscated land, is as fiercely bent on keeping it as ever tigress was on defending her cubs. He is told that kings and nobles, creatures of Pitt and Coburg, are sworn to wrest it from him; and his previous experience of kings and nobles assures him that he has nothing to hope if he fall into their clutches. That was the secret of Napoleon's strength; he went forth as the soldier of the Republic, predestined to show Europe that it was hopeless to dream of restoring the _émigrés_. How the true Republicans, who formed the nucleus of his armies, got gradually depraved until they became the 'dogs of war' of the Old Guard is wonderfully well set forth; and is, we fear, only too truly paralleled in this recent war, in which the moral deterioration of the German citizen-soldier has, like everything else, gone on at railroad pace.

The Erckmann-Châtrian novels have been compared with the Waverley series. We do not think the comparison a happy one. They do not aim at Sir Walter Scott's intricacy of plot; the stories are exceedingly simple, and the events (_péripéties_ is the untranslateable word which best describes them) are unfolded historically, rather than after the manner of a romance; the human agent merely serves to string together a number of sketches from actual affairs. On the other hand, the Erckmann-Châtrian books show that rare power of accurate nature-painting which belongs almost wholly to very modern times, and which shines forth so conspicuously in our own George Eliot as well as in Dickens, and which among French writers is best seen, perhaps, in Georges Sand. Very different this from the landscape style of Scott, which has beauties of its own, but which differs from them much as a picture of Wilson, or Constable, or 'old Crome' differs from one by Tenniel. In the 'Romans Nationaux,' too, there is a vast deal more direct political teaching than 'the author of Waverley' ever attempted. He no doubt had very strong views of his own; and he managed, strangely enough, to make a sentimental Jacobitism fashionable at the very time when 'his most Sacred Majesty George IV.' was visiting North Britain. He is answerable for several inversions of historical truth: he makes Balfour of Burley and his class contemptible, and throws a halo of glory round Claverhouse, like that with which Byron invests his Werterian villains. But he never directly teaches politics. The 'Romans,' on the contrary, do this in almost every page. They assume, moreover, an amount of political knowledge on the part of their readers which would be very unwisely assumed by any English novel-writer. The fact is, the average Frenchman does know his own history since '89 far better than most Englishmen know the tortuous politics of the Georgian era--knows it better because he take a vastly more personal interest in it. For us, Mr. Disraeli well pointed out, history from the Revolution to the Reform Bill is chiefly the record of the quarrels of a few 'great houses;' to the Frenchman the earlier half of the eighteenth century is the time when his country was in the labour pangs of the strange, wild birth which was to follow; and the close of it is the fitful period in which the Revolution, surfeited with blood, sank helplessly under the yoke of military despotism. No need to urge Frenchmen to do what her Majesty's inspectors have so often recommended in our elementary schools, to begin history at the modern end and work backwards. Our boys and our men prefer woad-stained Britons and the strife of Dane and Saxon to the Rockinghams and Walpoles, and even the Pitts; but in France it is wholly different. Hence an amount of political knowledge in the country, for which we rarely give our neighbours credit. Your diligence-driver between Caen and Falaise will point out the Château Turgot, and will tell you all about the minister whose name it bears in a way which would have astonished any of the old mail-coachmen along the Western road, who knew, indeed, Burke's name in connection with High Wycombe, but who knew nothing but the name. This is one of the errors of 'our own correspondent:' because Frenchmen have not that blatant freedom of speech to which he is used at English hustings, he writes home that they know little and care less about politics--and this of people who seldom hesitate, on occasion, to die for their opinions. Their peculiar way of managing things arises from their habit of looking to authority, of moving under pressure of a _force majeure_; they have not, and can form but a faint idea of, that English liberty which is in our air, which M. de Montalembert used to call a _bain de vie_; but they have generally speaking, historically at any rate, more political knowledge than we have.

This accounts for much in the 'Romans' which, to the English reader, is wearying; they appeal to what he does not possess, a knowledge of the state of parties from '89 downwards. Every one, however, must appreciate the way in which the rise of Napoleon is shown to have been due to the corruption, the gross corruption, as well as imbecility of the Directory. No wonder Bonaparte despised mankind, when such poor specimens--vain, self-seeking, blindly conceited--were presented to him as the pick of republican France. Thus politics, as well as national character and habits (the habits, be it remembered, of that Alsace which is now to become the Ireland of Germany), are abundantly illustrated in these novels. We do not mean to analyse any of them, or to give samples which would be about as satisfactory as a single stone picked out of a Greek temple. The most touching of them is 'Madame Thérèse,' which, showing as it does how heartily the Germans on the frontier sympathized with the ideas of which Hoche was the expounder, bears on the question, 'How will the annexed districts get on under Junker rule?' Quiet Dr. Jacob, the hero of the story, is already so smitten with revolutionary ideas, that when he hears them commented on by the wounded _vivandière_ whose life he has saved, he forgets that she is only the daughter of a village schoolmaster who had volunteered and had fallen, with his three sons, at Valmy, and, marrying her, joins Hoche as army surgeon. Men of this stamp are found on both sides of the Rhine; and to force Junkerism upon them would provoke a speedy break-up of the German empire. German optimists say that this danger is imaginary: acknowledging the disagreeable features in the Prussian character, they say that 'Germany will open Prussia out.' If not, trouble must ensue.

The 'Blocus' is, perhaps, the most picturesque of the whole series. The old Jew who, despite his timidity and his hatred of war, gradually becomes an effective national guard, is admirably drawn; the details of the siege, the misery, the excitement, are told so differently from the half flippant, half bombastic manner of even the best of 'our own correspondents.' The old soldier who, churl as he is supposed to be, meets the Jew's kindness with still greater kindness, and who, long refusing to believe in the Emperor's abdication, shoots himself when the truth is forced upon him, is a finished picture of which any artist might be proud. And the town thus immortalised is Phalsbourg, which henceforth is to be German. But we hope our readers will go to the books themselves: their appearance marks an era in novel-writing; it has done much more, for they are all novels with a purpose, and have been very powerful in pulling down the Napoleonic idol, in hastening the decay of the imperial idea.

The idol is overthrown; what will be reared in its place is doubtful. Political wisdom is not to be learned in six months, no matter how sternly its lessons may be enforced. The France which accepted Louis Napoleon, which gloried in the absurd boast, 'When France is satisfied the world is at rest,' which suffered itself to be kept in leading-strings for twenty years, giving full control over its wealth, its resources, its foreign and domestic policy, to an unscrupulous adventurer and his stock-jobbing associates, is not likely to rise at once to the dignity of a free people. 'Unstable as water' has hitherto been the curse of France's efforts at free government. The mission she has chosen has been to teach ideas to others, not to work them practically out for herself. When we read in old files of the approving _Times_ of the revels at Compiègne, the luxury, the extravagance, we are reminded of the answer made to the first Napoleon, when he asked, 'Have I not got back the old system _in toto_?' 'Yes, but you forget that two million Frenchmen died to root out that old system; and you can't bring them to life again.'

Why is France, as a whole, sick of 'ideas?' Why, although they could dance round the statue of Strasburg when they ought to have been making peace and husbanding their strength for by-and-by, were the besieged Parisians incapable of any serious effort? Why was Trochu paralysed by the fear of Blanqui? Why should Bourbaki's wretched army have behaved so differently from that of Hoche, which was equally shoeless, and almost as much in want of everything, and which its enthusiastic leader kept at fighting point by allowing no tents during the bitterest winter that had been known for years? Man for man, Germans have always been superior to the French; to succeed, these last must move in masses welded together by one overmastering idea. They had no idea, no union, last year. Will this terrible lesson give them that unity of sentiment which Germany, since 1808, has been gradually feeling after, and has only just attained? Let us hope that sad experience may, at any rate, teach them the insufficiency of the very grandest of all merely human ideals. The noble thoughts of the 'Marseillaise'--

'Nous entrerons dans la carrière quand nous aînés ne seront plus,
Nous y trouverons leur poussière et la trace de leur vertus,'

led to the brutal _Carmagnole_ and the sickening excesses of the Terror, because, though noble, they were not sanctified. The sickness that comes from aiming at too much brought on a reaction which has lasted ever since; and the fact that Romanism is the hereditary religion of the French masses increases the difficulty of hearty national union. No earnest political reformer can ever look on the priests as more than temporary allies; no ultramontane can ever be an honest Republican.

What may come if Rome changes in the direction indicated by the Abbé (so he styled himself) and now lately by Père Hyacinthe, we cannot say; anyhow, such changes must be slow. At present the French priesthood must be reckoned among the bitter opponents of all free constitutional development.

The next few months will better enable us to determine whether Paris will still hold its own against France, or whether M. Leclercq's hope will be realized.[218] We may be quite sure that thousands of Frenchmen feel what he so well expresses--that it is Paris which made Louis Napoleon possible, even as it was Paris which enabled his uncle to be what he was. They both, indeed, used 'France' against Paris; but it was Paris which gave them a _status_ at the outset. Those who think thus will feel that in the changed character of the capital is the best safeguard for the good government as well as for the moral regeneration of France; and if this change of character seems hopeless, the dangerous experiment must be tried of moving the Legislature out of such an unhealthy atmosphere.

We have thus striven to trace the growth and decay of Imperialism--which in its re-establishment was the practical expression of the Napoleonic idea--and to contrast it indirectly with the old _régime_, and with the sad delusion which, beginning so nobly in 1789, too soon ended in perhaps the bloodiest tyranny that modern Europe has ever seen. We decline to draw any horoscope of the future; such prophesying is always useless. Let us hope that God, who 'fulfils Himself in many ways,' will comfort the faith which this cruel satire on modern progress has so rudely shaken, by showing plainly that good has come out of all the evil. We cannot hope that nations will yet recognise the truth that war is organised crime; but we may hope that for a long time imperialism, based, as we have shown it to be, on lawlessness and on the glorification of the individual, will be impossible.

That the beaten nation always deserves to suffer is a maxim which nothing but a distorted view of Scripture will propound. Berlin is not many degrees above Paris in morality; and France, despite the character given of her in her filthy novels, is certainly not without home life and deep pure home affections.

All that we can say is that we, believing in God's providence, are very sure that, however strangely things may seem to turn out, the course of this world is ordered by Him.

ART. VI.--_Religious Tests and National Universities._ By F. A. PALEY, M.A. Williams and Norgate, 1871.

(2.) _Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on University Tests._

Owing to the energy with which Her Majesty's Government have pushed through its earlier stages, the identical Universities Tests Bill which was so adroitly shelved last year by the resolution of the Marquis of Salisbury, we may confidently anticipate that, before these pages reach the public, every hindrance which kept men from the enjoyment of prizes which they had fairly won, and from posts of honour and usefulness which they were well qualified to fill, simply and solely because they were Nonconformists, will be swept away for ever. It would be gratifying if as reasonable a hope could be entertained that the far more stringent and objectionable religious test which is a practical bar to the enjoyment of half the fellowships of Oxford and Cambridge, not only to Nonconformists, but to all such as cannot say they believe in their hearts that they are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost, and called, according to the Will of Our Lord Jesus Christ to His ministry, as defined by the Church of England, would be as speedily removed from the threshold of offices which in no way require, and, practically, are seldom associated with the exercise of this professedly divinely imposed ministry. The progress of events may discredit our hopes or our fears, but this need not prevent a review of the struggle for the abolition of those tests at the universities which are obnoxious to Nonconformists alone, as though it were a thing of the past; nor a prospective glance at the clerical test which is obnoxious to all conscientious laymen who object to give in their adhesion to a complex creed, and hesitate to assume functions which are imposed by the Majesty of Heaven, but defined by the Majesty of Britain. This is the point upon which we must next concentrate our forces.

In the course of a few years it will, no doubt, be a source of wonder that religious disabilities should have been retained at the universities so long after they have been removed from almost all civil and municipal offices throughout the realm. This wonder will certainly not be lessened by an enquiry into the nature of the offices they are supposed to guard, or the value of the emoluments which attach to those offices. That any man otherwise qualified to explain the laws which govern the physical forces of light and heat, or the principles of comparative anatomy, should be cut off from a professorship in these sciences, because he will not conform to a liturgy containing the Athanasian Creed, can never appear less absurd by the lapse of time. A fellowship at one of our colleges, is, as Mr. Paley correctly defines it, wholly and absolutely a sinecure. No duties whatever are required as a condition of its tenure. Fellowships are held by gentlemen who are absent from, as well as by those who are resident at their colleges, and if the residents in any way promote the discipline or education of the students in those colleges, they have extra payment for such services altogether apart from their incomes as fellows. The word 'sinecure,' however, as applied to a fellowship, loses much, if not all the odium usually attached to that term from the fact that fellows are elected absolutely according to their merit as scholars, as that merit is proved by success in the university and college examinations. It seems strange that one-half of the nation should have been so long content to be excluded from participation in the prizes of pure scholarship, when the possession of these, unlike the enjoyment of livings and benefices, involved no duties either lay or cleric. That creed or conformity should be required of those whose sole duty was to enjoy an income of £300 per annum is ridiculous, unless we adopt the theory that the disabilities were meant to be punitive in their character. The same remarks apply to the yet more lucrative headships of colleges. Nor can it be supposed that exclusion from these rewards of learning by a religious test was submitted to because the rewards were insignificant in amount, either singly or in the aggregate. Mr. Paley estimates the gross annual revenue of the two universities and their colleges at half a million of money, £50,000 of which goes to the heads of forty colleges and halls, while 730 fellows enjoy average incomes of not less than £300 a year. Thirty years' residence at Cambridge has given Mr. Paley the right to speak with some authority in these matters, but we think he has understated the amount of these emoluments. We should not be surprised if, at no distant day, a commission of enquiry should reveal, that the gross revenue of these institutions, calculated on the real value of their rapidly increasing property, is double the sum named. The apathy of other sects in not urging more determinedly their claims to have the prizes of the university course open to them, when the course itself is open to all comers, is not to be accounted for on the ground that they can afford to despise those prizes. The explanation lies in the fact that the injustice done them has never till lately assumed a practical and tangible form. The indifference of the English to theoretical grievances is proverbial, and a conjunction of circumstances has tended to mask the character of the injustice.

The circumstances referred to will in a few short years become hard to understand unless we seize the present moment to record them. On the one hand Nonconformists had not yet recovered from the repeated blows dealt upon them by the legislature--blows of which the Act of Uniformity may be taken as a striking example. Content to be tolerated and glad to be hidden, finding neither social comfort nor encouragement in the pursuit of the liberal professions, they sought in commerce a fair field and no favour, and entered on this avocation with an energy which has not a little tended to establish our national importance. At the present time we claim free entrance to the offices and emoluments of our universities, because they are _national_ institutions, but to a dissenter a few years ago the very term _national_ conveyed the idea of exclusion, as it still does in such phrases as 'National Church' and 'National School.' Nonconformists had almost learned to regard themselves as aliens, for so the legislature had taught them to consider themselves. The idea of demanding equal privileges with all other subjects of the Crown, had scarcely entered their thoughts. Hence the universities were regarded by them, as were also the army, navy, and the bar, as inhospitable places where they would be slighted and ignored.

On the other hand the universities them selves had, at the commencement of the present century, fallen from their high estate, and become corrupt, servile, and dead to all the higher aims which should distinguish institutions for learning and education. At that period a very narrow stream of conventional scholarship ran through a very wide meadow of mediocrity, which it never overflowed or irrigated. The modicum of knowledge required of the [Greek: hoi polloi] was contemptible, and every arrangement seemed to be based on the principle of letting through as easily as possible those who could afford to pay, and rendering the course of study of the studious as useless as the nature of study would permit. At the time when Gunning was the repository of university gossip, it is evident that both university and colleges were dishonest in their distribution of both honours and emoluments; they were willing to set the university stamp of education upon men whose only claim to be considered educated consisted in their being able to bear the lavish expenditure of college life. From this depth of degradation the universities have been slowly extricating themselves, while during the same period Nonconformity has been relieving itself from civil disabilities, and increasing in wealth and influence. The two circles, which were once far apart, have by synchronous enlargement at length cut one another. Despite every discouragement, Dissenters began to send their sons to the ancient universities, especially to that of Cambridge. Of those sent up a large proportion were men of great ability. Messrs. Stirling, Aldis, Wilkins, and Hartog--and during the present year Dr. Hopkinson--and many others, obtained the highest places in the competitive examination. These men were no doubt consciously fighting the battle of liberty of conscience in general, and of their co-religionists in particular. The stimulus afforded to their competitors by the prizes incident to a high place in the tripos lists was, in their case, substituted by a desire to break down a system of injustice which oppressed their several sects, and the nobler impulse produced the noblest results. From the time of the triumph of such men the question assumed a new character. The injustice had ceased to be theoretical, and appealed for redress to every right-minded man in language which could neither be misunderstood nor disregarded. The tacit eloquence of unrewarded merit addressed itself most powerfully to the most influential quarters. However averse to self-reform the governing bodies at the universities might be, since they were composed of men who had climbed to their present dignity by the arduous path of study, these could not be altogether without sympathy for men of like ability. Hence the party for the abolition of tests within the universities has wonderfully augmented of late years, and, as is natural, numbers as its own the men of the greatest talent. These tests which had been regarded as the heavy armour of defence began so to gall that they are now looked upon as more cumbersome than useful. Whatever might be the necessity for the maintenance of tests, the incidental evil that men of such industry and acquirement should fail of their appropriate rewards could not but be deplored by all generous minds. Henceforth candid enquirers began to ask what were the uses of tests which were to counterbalance these palpably bad results? and men not celebrated for candour saw the necessity of finding some arguments in their favour.

Attention having been imperatively called to the question of tests, their abolition became certain. Besides the direct injustice done, it was soon perceived that tests inflicted indirect injury upon the whole body of Nonconformists, upon the universities themselves, and on the nation at large. Religion, discredited by her uncharitable janizaries, longed to repudiate them, and both religion and morality discarded safeguards which could exclude the man who was so loyal to the God of truth that he would not violate His truth in the slightest particular, but could include any infidel, provided he were not only infidel to his God, but also to his own conscience.

Nonconformists became alive to the necessity of claiming a perfect political and social equality with all other of her Majesty's subjects: they perceived that their practical exclusion from the old universities gave some colour to the imputation of ignorance and narrow-mindedness which their enemies had sedulously endeavoured to fix upon them.

University reformers, bent on opening the universities to all classes for the furtherance of every branch of study, saw the necessity of removing every invidious distinction, and welcoming on equal terms that half of the nation which had hitherto regarded these institutions as places where their sons would not have fair play. The rapid growth and wide influence of the London University, where no such disabilities existed, no doubt quickened the perception of these reformers, each of whom beheld his _Alma Mater_ beginning to weep like Niobe for the loss of her children.

To oppose this rising current of opinion that set against the tests, their defenders had only such arguments as could be ranged under two categories; the one retrospective, and the other prospective. It was contended that by abolishing the tests the wills of the founders and donors would be violated, and the violence done to them would have a tendency to weaken the rights of property, and dry up the streams of benevolence. It was further argued that these tests were the only safeguards which could defend the minds of our youth from the inroads of infidelity, and from the hydra-headed monster of unbelief which was quickening into such active life. These were the two sheet anchors cast out astern and astem to keep the tests from drifting to destruction. The cogent logic of facts soon showed that, however good the anchors might be, their cables could not hold. The application of these arguments was singularly unfortunate. For the benefit of such uncompromising advocates of the tests as the Rev. E. H. Perowne, who, if sincere, must now be pacing the deck of his forlorn craft in fear of instant and imminent shipwreck, we may show the insecurity of the stays to which he trusted.

It is notorious that the offices and emoluments guarded by the tests were made, not for churchmen by churchmen, but for Catholics by Catholics. In the case of the writer of the pamphlet at the head of this article, we have a singular instance of cruel disregard of the wills of the founders. Mr. Paley is one of the best instructors in classics, and perhaps the most voluminous classical author in the University of Cambridge. He is in every way qualified for any post of classical instruction, but because he is an adherent of that church to which the founders of nine-tenths of the colleges belonged, he could receive no benefit from emoluments which were specially intended, where there was any limit to their application at all, for his co-religionists. On the narrowest conservative grounds Mr. Paley might urge his right to enjoy promotion in the university he adorns. If he were told by an advocate for tests, that the offices and emoluments were secured to the adherents of the religion of the state, and that they were since reserved for the professors of a different faith, because the state had adopted that new faith, he would doubtless reply;--that his church had never stooped so low as to admit that articles of faith could be matters of state legislation, and that the Catholic founders of the colleges would have stood aghast at the astounding anomaly of a state-made church. Surely none but an outlaw to the realms of logic and ethics could after that maintain that he ought to be excluded. Mr. Paley has chosen to advocate the abolition of tests on broader grounds. He is a Roman Catholic of the most liberal type, but as a Catholic citizen, whether liberal or ultramontane, his defence of his right to participate in the honours of the university is impregnable. We can readily imagine the just indignation with which the claim to these universities, as Church of England institutions still carrying out the wills and wishes of the original Catholic founders, made by those who are perpetually taunting Catholics with a want of veracity, would be flung aside as a sophism unworthy of men who ought to identify religion with the strictest honesty and truth.

But, even if this sophism were more worthy of the adoption of honourable men, it has become quite obsolete and inapplicable at the present time. The abolitionists might concede, for the sake of argument, that it is right that donors, living in a remote age, should be assisted by the present administration of law to attach conditions to the tenure of property which have a tendency to modify, restrain, and stereotype the political and religious opinions of a nation centuries after they had ceased to mingle with the affairs of men. They might even admit that no considerations of the wishes and convenience of the present holders of the property, nor the promotion of that education which is the main object for which the colleges and universities were founded, nor the requirements of the nation, ought to be permitted to modify the administration of the property by the present governing bodies. They might further forget that the universities were constituted by royal charter, and upheld by continual renewals of their charters. If colleges were looked upon as corporations irresponsibly holding property more absolutely than corporate bodies have ever been permitted to do in any enlightened state, yet these admissions would in no way affect or enfeeble the action of those who are now urging on the abolition of all religious tests. They, at least, are not responsible for introducing any novel principle of action dangerous to the stability of property. For, to say nothing of all past legislation,--including that act of uniformity which by limiting the election to headships, fellowships, chaplaincies, and the office of tutor to a certain class of persons, recognises an imperial authority to remove these limits--we have the recent Oxford and Cambridge University Acts. The latter Act specially and distinctly empowers the governing body of any college to repeal from its deeds of constitution, &c., disqualifications to office, and to abolish oaths and declarations. The Oxford Act has a section of the same tenor, but owing to its having been passed two years earlier, it is less distinct and explicit. This interference of the legislature has already been accepted by many of the colleges. Proceeding under the provisions of that Act, many of the governing bodies have removed the necessity for celibacy from the holding of fellowships, and made other important modifications with regard to the tenure of office, and the receipt of emoluments. It has therefore been recognised on all hands by Churchmen and Dissenters, by the authors of the act of uniformity, and the supporters of the University Acts, by Parliament as well as by the colleges, that the special provisions of the donors may be set aside in order to promote the main object of their benefactions. It is strange that men conversant with these facts should be content to occupy ground which, while it is completely commanded by their opponents, is to them a labyrinth of absurdities.

In some cases the Tests Bill will absolutely restore to the colleges their ancient rights and liberty which the legislature had previously ruthlessly curtailed. In the statutes of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, it is expressly and advisedly provided that no religious disabilities shall bar their offices. At the last annual meeting of the fellows of Trinity College, the following resolution was passed by twenty-five votes against ten: "That the master and seniors take such steps as may be necessary in order to repeal the religious restrictions in the election and conditions of tenure of fellows at present contained in the statutes." This vote is rendered nugatory, so far as nonconformists are concerned, because of an unrepealed clause in the Act of Uniformity. Thus, at Trinity, we have a governing body intent on rendering its means of education efficient, and administering rewards strictly in accordance with merit, but debarred from doing so, not by the wills of the founders, but by a subsequent innovation which restricts the rights of the present holders of the college property. Such a state of things appeals to every true conservative as well as to every wise liberal instinct for speedy and complete legislation.