Chapter IV: Part 4

For many years, during which he held office under the Pelham administration, he was recognized in the House of Commons as one of the ablest supporters of government; and he was frequently opposed in the outset of his career to Mr. Pitt, who, after the elevation of both to the upper house, bore this high testimony, among others, to Murray’s weight as a speaker. “No man is better acquainted with his abilities and learning, nor has a greater respect for them, than I have. I have had the pleasure of sitting with him in the other house, and always listened to him with attention. I have not lost a word of what he said, nor did I ever.” In his official station, he necessarily took a prominent part in the prosecution of the rebel lords, especially at the trial of Lord Lovat in 1747; and his eloquence was set off by his fairness towards the prisoner, whose concern in the rebellion was indeed too evident to admit of hesitation on the part of his judges. We may follow up the history of his legal advancement by briefly stating that, in 1754, he was appointed Attorney-General, and, in 1756, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and, at the same time, raised to the peerage, by the title of Baron Mansfield. It is said that the Duke of Newcastle was extremely unwilling to consent to the removal of his most powerful supporter from the Commons, but was forced to comply by the threat that, if he refused, Murray would no longer act as Attorney-General.

Lord Mansfield’s private life appears for the most part to have been passed in tranquil prosperity, which afforded no incidents for the biographer to dwell on; at least the published records of him are nearly confined to his exertions as an advocate, his speeches in parliament, and reports on the important cases which he adjudicated. It will be sufficient here to mention those events by which Lord Mansfield is connected with the public history of England, and to make a few general observations on his character as a lawyer and a judge.

In 1763, the legality of what were called general warrants, not directed against persons by name specifically, but generally against any person or persons supposed to be guilty of a certain act, was mooted, in consequence of a secretary of state’s warrant to apprehend the “authors, printers and publishers” of the celebrated No. 45 of the ‘North Briton.’ Wilkes, being apprehended by virtue of this warrant, was discharged by Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, when brought up before that court by writ of _habeas corpus_. The question came before Lord Mansfield in a different form. An action of trespass was brought in the court of Common Pleas against the messengers who executed the warrant, and a verdict was given for the plaintiff. A bill of exceptions against Chief Justice Pratt’s directions to the jury was tendered, in pursuance of which the question was again argued before Lord Mansfield, who coincided with his brother chief in holding the instrument illegal under which the defendants had acted. Since this decision, general warrants have been disused.

In 1768, Wilkes, then at the height of his popularity, returned to England, and applied for a reversal of his outlawry. The excitement of his partisans broke out both in riots and in indecent attempts to intimidate the judges before whom the point was to be argued. Lord Mansfield pronounced for the reversal upon the ground of a technical informality, which the Court held fatal to the process; but in his elaborate judgment he took care strongly to censure the seditious efforts which had been made to influence the court, and to impress on his auditors that the apparently trifling objection on which the judgment turned was fatal in law, and could not have been passed over in any other case. This speech has been much admired; nor is it easy to overrate its beauties as a composition: it lies open, however, to the objection of being too theatrical. After overruling the objections made by the defendant’s counsel, it rises into eloquent declamation against the attacks of the press, and the threats of the mob; and, at the moment when all seems ripe for a contrary decision, proceeds to grant the thing so loudly clamoured for. He may safely contemn danger who does not expose himself to it; and it would on this occasion have been more dignified to make less parade of independence.

Lord Mansfield’s view of the law of libel exposed him to much obloquy. He was a resolute assertor of the doctrine that juries were to judge of the fact only, not of the law, or rather of the question, libel or no libel. A prerogative lawyer on the bench, he was a supporter of Tory principles in parliament. He strenuously maintained the right of the British legislature to tax America, and was the advocate, though he probably would not have been the adviser, of those measures which led to the American revolution; for the temper of his mind seems to have been cautious and somewhat timid, and his political conduct was swayed by an habitual moderation, which sometimes prevented his accession to the more violent measures of his party. His course was consistent with what we may suppose to have been his early prejudices, for he came of a Jacobite family; and it was made a matter of accusation against him, while Attorney-General (most unfairly revived by Junius), that, as a schoolboy, he had been known to drink Jacobite toasts. The charge, if true, was too trivial to merit further notice than George II. bestowed upon it: “Whatever they were while they were Westminster boys, they are now my very good friends.” At the same time he was a steady advocate of religious toleration, both on the bench and in the House of Lords. This he showed in 1768, on occasion of the prosecution of a Roman Catholic priest by a common informer, in his strict dealing with the penal laws enacted against that class of men; and in assigning his reasons for admitting a Quaker’s evidence on affirmation in certain cases. And the Dissenters in general, and especially of the city of London, were much indebted to his support in the House of Lords in 1767, for the abolition of that mean and oppressive custom by which they were fined for refusing to serve the office of sheriff, being at the same time subject to legal penalties if they accepted it. Lord Mansfield’s exposition of the iniquity of this practice was unsparing and conclusive.

The unprecedentedly-long period during which Lord Mansfield presided in the King’s Bench is one of considerable importance in the history of British jurisprudence; indeed, the multiplicity of his decisions during a period of thirty-four years could not fail materially to affect the law relating both to commercial and other property, especially in a country so rapidly increasing in wealth, and in which new cases were continually arising out of the ever-changing state of society. By a large body of his admirers, a class including the majority of the nation, he was regarded with almost unlimited admiration; but several of his important judgments have since been overruled; and we probably shall not err in stating it as the general opinion of well-informed persons in the present day, that, indecent and virulent as is Junius’s attack on him as a judge, there is a solid foundation for the charge that he was more prone to enlarge the power of the crown than to protect the liberty of the subject, and more willingly referred to the Roman law and the law of nations than to Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights. But the charge of introducing equitable doctrines into the common law must be received with much more caution. He may have gone too far in his favourite scheme of introducing more enlarged and liberal views than had prevailed before his time; he may have neglected former authorities, and introduced too great laxity in the interpretation of the law; but, dangerous as such licence is, lest, in the uncertainty of law, a greater evil be incurred than by the occasional commission of an essential injustice, yet we must look with complacency on that alleged tendency to relax the strict rigour of law in favour of substantial justice, which seems to have consisted chiefly in a disposition to admit evidence when mere technical disqualification, and not essential unfitness, was urged against it; and rather to let right prevail than give the victory to wrong by rigid adherence to the technicalities of the law. His feelings may be illustrated by a playful saying of his own to Garrick. “A judge on the bench is now and then in your whimsical situation between Tragedy and Comedy; inclination drawing one way, and a long string of precedents the other.” It is certain that to him we owe all that our mercantile law has of system, and of consistency with the principles which govern the practice of other nations. It is no less true that the remedies generally afforded by our courts of law have become much more beneficial, since he enlarged and moulded actions originally of an equitable nature to suit cases to which proceedings in equity are very ill adapted. Nor is it too much to assert that under him the science of law assumed the form of a liberal study.

It is hardly necessary to reply to the graver charges of moral guilt adduced by the able and unscrupulous author to whom we have referred. The spirit in which they are conceived may be estimated from the unmeasured vituperation of the Scotch in general, which forms the opening of the forty-first letter of Junius, addressed to Lord Mansfield. His lordship’s knowledge of English law has been impugned; his innovations upon its doctrines have been censured; his application and extension of its principles have been questioned; and his constitutional doctrines have been often and justly condemned; but we do not believe that his honesty has been seriously doubted, since the violence of party animosity has ceased to inflame men’s passions and pervert their judgment.

Our knowledge of Lord Mansfield’s private history is very limited. His life however seems to have been spent in happiness and tranquillity, until the riots of 1780, in which his house, with its contents, was destroyed. Beside a valuable property in books, pictures, and furniture, he sustained that loss which, to a literary man, is irreparable,—the collected manuscripts of a laborious life. He bore this heavy calamity with honourable fortitude, and declined to accept of pecuniary compensation. To the application of government he returned this answer: “I think it does not become me to claim or expect reparation from the state. I have made up my mind to my misfortune as I ought, with this consolation, that it came from those whose object manifestly was general confusion and destruction at home, in addition to a dangerous and complicated war abroad. If I should lay before you any account or computation of the pecuniary damage I have sustained, it might seem a claim or expectation of being indemnified.” Shortly afterwards he appeared in the House of Lords, to justify the strong measures by which the riots had been quelled. “It was wonderful,” says Bishop Newton in his ‘Life and Anecdotes,’ “after such a shock as he had received, that he could so soon summon his faculties as to make one of the finest and ablest speeches that ever was heard in parliament, to justify the legality of the late proceedings on the part of government, to demonstrate that no royal prerogative had been exerted, no martial law had been exercised, nothing had been done but what every man, civil or military, had a right to do in the like cases. ‘I speak not from books,’ he said, ‘for books I have none;’ having been all consumed in the fire. The effects of his speech were the admiration and conviction of all who heard him, and put an end to the debate without division. Lord Mansfield never appeared greater in any action of his life.” No particular cause connected with the frenzy of the time can be assigned for this attack on the Chief Justice; he had not been active in supporting the measures for the relief of the Catholics, which produced this remarkable ebullition of folly and wickedness. But when once riot is afoot, the causes which have first stirred up men’s minds are readily forgotten; and the violence of party abuse with which Lord Mansfield had been assailed, and the unpopularity of the government, in which he was supposed to exercise a principal though secret influence, are sufficient to account for this calamity.

In 1776, Lord Mansfield, at his own request, was raised to the dignity of an earl. He had no children, and his object was to raise the rank of his paternal family in the person of his nephew Lord Stormont, to whom the succession was secured. In 1784, he was compelled to absent himself from his judicial duties for a season, and spent some time, with considerable benefit to his health, at Tunbridge Wells. He returned to his judicial employment and continued to exercise it with unclouded intellect, being only prevented by bodily infirmity from attending the court during the last year and a half that he held the office. In 1788 he resigned it, at the advanced age of eighty-four, having presided in the court of King’s Bench for the unprecedented period of thirty-two years, and being still in possession of a share of health and power of enjoyment which seldom fall to the lot of so advanced an age. He retained the perfect possession of his faculties until within a week of his death, which took place March 18, 1794, in the ninetieth year of his age.

In the case of this, as of many other eminent men, we may regret that so few particulars of their every-day manners have been preserved. In the relations of private life his conduct was exemplary; and the amenity of his manners, the playfulness of his wit, and his admirable qualifications as a companion, secured the affection of those who enjoyed his society. His talents as a speaker were set off by a graceful and attractive person, and a remarkably harmonious voice; qualifications greatly conducing to good delivery, which it is said he was in the habit of improving in youth, by sedulous cultivation under the direction of Pope.

A gentleman (Mr. Baillie), who had been deeply indebted to Lord Mansfield’s professional abilities, bequeathed 1500_l._ to erect a monument to his memory. The commission was entrusted to worthy hands, for it was given to Flaxman. A sketch of his work forms the vignette to this memoir.

The ‘Life of the Earl of Mansfield,’ by Mr. Halliday, is the only biographical account of this eminent lawyer which we know to exist. It is too manifestly panegyrical, and, as has been intimated, contains a very meagre account of the private history of its noble subject. It is mainly occupied by reports of Lord Mansfield’s speeches and judgments, and must therefore be chiefly acceptable to legal readers.

]

_Engraved by E. Scriven._

BRADLEY.

_From the original Picture by Richardson in the possession of the
Royal Society._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

BRADLEY.

Of all men who have combined both astronomical theory and practice, Bradley is one of the most remarkable. In this respect, we must assign to him the first place in English history; and if we were disposed to add, in that of the world, we are convinced that no country would pretend to offer more than one candidate to dispute his claim.

James Bradley[1] was born in March 1692–3, at Sherbourn in Gloucestershire. He was educated at the Grammar School of Northleach, and admitted of Baliol College, Oxford, in March 1710–11, where he proceeded to the degrees of B.A. and M.A. in the years 1714 and 1717 respectively. His mother’s brother was James Pound (deceased 1724), rector of Wanstead in Essex, and known as an observer, particularly by the observations which he furnished to Newton, as described in the Principia. With him Bradley spent much of his younger life, and was his assistant in his astronomical pursuits; and some observations of 1718–19 on double stars are in good accordance with the relative motions which have been since established in the case of those bodies. His tables of Jupiter’s satellites, on which he was employed at the same time, show that he had detected the greater part of the inequalities in their motions which have since been observed.

Footnote 1:

The facts here given are entirely taken from the searching account of
Bradley given by Professor Rigaud in his “Miscellaneous Works, &c., of
James Bradley, Oxford, 1832.”

In 1718 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society; in 1719 he was ordained to the vicarage of Bridstow, in Monmouthshire; in the following year he received a sinecure preferment. But in 1721 he resigned these livings, on obtaining the Savilian professorship of Astronomy at Oxford, the holder of which, by the statutes, must not have any benefice. To finish what we may call the gazette of his life, he was engaged in observation (with what results we shall presently see) both at Kew and Wanstead till 1732, when he went to reside at Oxford, having since 1729 given yearly courses of lectures on Experimental Philosophy. In 1742 he was appointed to succeed Halley as Astronomer Royal, and he held this appointment for the remainder of his life. In the same year he obtained the degree of D.D. In 1752, having refused the living of Greenwich, because he thought the duty of a pastor to be incompatible with his other studies and necessary engagements, he was presented with a pension of 250_l._ The last observation made by him in the observatory is dated Sept. 1, 1761; and he died July 13, 1762, at Chalford in Gloucestershire, having been afflicted by various diseases for several years, and particularly by a depression of spirits, arising from the fear lest he should survive his faculties. He married in 1744, and left one daughter, who died at Greenwich in 1812.

There are now no lineal descendants of Bradley. Most of his writings, which were few in number, were published in the Philosophical Transactions. His personal merits are proved by the number of his friends, and the warmth with which they endeavoured to serve him when occasion arose, as well as by the strength of the testimonies which those who survived bore to his reputation as a man and a member of society.

We have much abridged the preceding account, in order to make room for a popular exposition of his two great discoveries—the _aberration of light_, and the _nutation of the earth’s axis_. If we were to blot these discoveries out of his life, there would remain an ample stock of useful labours, fully sufficient to justify us in stating that Bradley was unequalled as an observer, and of no mean character as a philosopher. But for the latter we must refer the reader to the excellent account from which our facts have been taken, or to any history of astronomy.

The _parallax_ of the fixed stars had been long a subject of inquiry. If a body describe a circle, and a spectator on that body be unconscious of his own motion, all other bodies will appear to describe circles parallel to that of the spectator’s motion, and, absolutely speaking, equal to it; consequently, the greater the distance of the body from the spectator, the smaller will its apparent annual motion be; and it will not be circular, because the projection of the circle upon the apparent sphere of the heavens will foreshorten, and cause it to appear oval. If we suppose a star to describe an oval in the course of a year, the consequence will be that it will pass the spectator’s meridian sometimes before a star in the centre of the oval, sometimes after it; sometimes nearer to the pole of the heavens, and sometimes more distant; and the nature of the motion of this kind which would arise from parallax can be mathematically deduced. If the star be so distant that the oval is too small to be detected by measurement (which is hitherto the case with the fixed stars), then no alteration of place will be perceived on this account; but if an oval large enough to be observed be described in the course of a year, then the test of the phenomenon arising from the earth’s motion in its orbit is as follows:—Imagine a plane always passing through the centre of the sun, the centre of the earth, and the centre of the oval described by the star, then the place of the star in its oval must be in that plane; or draw the shortest distance on the globe from the centre of the oval to the sun, and the star will be on the point of the oval which lies in that distance.

In and before the time of Bradley, the refraction of light was not well determined, which would throw a doubt over any observations made to detect small quantities, unless the star which furnished them were situated in that part of the observer’s heaven in which there is no refraction, or next to none, that is, in or near his zenith. For the purpose of measuring annual parallax, therefore, stars had always been chosen which passed very nearly over the spot of observation, and instruments called zenith sectors (now almost out of use) were employed, which measured small angles of the meridian near the zenith, the latter point being ascertained by a plumb-line. Mr. Molyneux, a friend of Bradley, and a wealthy man, had caused the celebrated Graham to erect a large instrument of this kind at his house in Kew, afterwards the palace. Bradley and Molyneux observed with this instrument the star γ in the Dragon, which passed nearly through the zenith of that place, in December 1725. The star was found to pass the meridian more and more to the south of the zenith, until the following March, when it was about twenty seconds (about the sixty-five thousandth part of the whole circuit of the heavens) lower than at first. It was afterwards traced back again to its first position in the following December, allowing for the precession of the equinoxes. Other stars were examined in the same way, and the result was, that all stars were found to describe small[2] ovals in the course of the year. But on comparing the situations of the stars in their small orbits with the corresponding places of the sun, it was evident that the cause of the phenomenon could not be the change of place arising from the orbital motion of the earth. Various hypotheses proposed by Bradley were found insufficient. In 1727 he erected a zenith sector for himself at Wanstead; and by further observations, and using different stars, he came at length to this fact, that instead of the star being in the place which annual parallax would give it, it was always in the position which it should have had a quarter of a year later: or that if the observer could measure the oval with sufficient exactness, and were to find the time of the year from the star, on the supposition of annual parallax being the cause of the star’s orbit, he would suppose himself in March instead of December, and so on.

Footnote 2:

The original memorandum of Bradley, on the first night on which a
decided result had been obtained, was accidentally found among his
papers. There is a fac-simile of it in Professor Rigaud’s work.

That the phenomenon then had a regular connexion with the place of the earth was evident; but it was not that sort of connexion arising from the mere change of place of the earth. It is related[3] that he was led to the true explanation by observing that the vane at the top of a boat’s mast changed its direction a little whenever the boat was put about, and made to go in a contrary direction; and that on his remarking that it was curious the wind should shift every time the boat was put about, he was assured by the boatmen that the same thing always happened. Be this as it may, he proposed to the Royal Society, in 1728, his beautiful explanation of the annual motion which he had observed in the stars; namely, that it is caused by the alteration in the apparent direction of the rays of light, arising from the earth being in motion. Suppose a stream of bullets fired into a carriage in motion, in a line perpendicular to its side, and so directed as to hit the middle of the first window, but not with sufficient velocity to reach any part of the second window. It is plain that they will strike the hinder pannel, which the motion of the carriage brings forward, and that to passengers in the inside the direction of the stream will appear to be from the middle of the window at which it enters to the opposite hinder pannel: whereas, had the carriage been at rest, it would have appeared to pass through the centre of both windows. And to make the stream really pass through both windows it must, if the carriage be in motion, be directed through the nearer window towards the foremost pannel on the other side. A ray of light is in the same situation with regard to the spectator, both as to the diurnal and the annual motion of the earth. The former gives an insensible aberration only; the latter, one which though small is sensible. The smallness of the latter aberration arises from the velocity of light being more than ten thousand times that of the earth in its orbit. And it must be remembered that the motion of light was not an hypothesis, invented to form the basis of Bradley’s explanation, but was ascertained before his time, by Römer, from a phenomenon of an entirely different nature; namely, the retardation observed in the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites, as the planet moved from the earth. The absolute deduction of the laws of aberration was completed by Bradley.

Footnote 3:

Professor Rigaud gives this story on the authority of ‘Dr. Thomson’s
History of the Royal Society,’ in which work we find no authority
cited for it. We cannot find it in any other place, but are credibly
informed that it rests on good traditional evidence.

The other great discovery of Bradley, namely, the _nutation_, or oscillatory motion of the earth’s axis, was completed in 1747. In his Wanstead observations he had observed some minute discrepancies, which at that time might be attributed to errors of observation; but after he was able to clear the apparent place of a star from the effects of aberration, the field became open to consider and assign the laws of smaller variations. By continual observation, he found a small irregularity in the places of the stars, depending upon the position of the moon’s node. Newton had already shown it to be a consequence of gravitation, that the sun must produce a small oscillation in the earth’s axis: Bradley showed that a larger oscillation must arise from the moon, and be completed in the course of a revolution, not of the moon, but of the point where her orbit cuts the ecliptic. This discovery is therefore not of so original a character as the last, since astronomers had for some time been in the habit of trying to reconcile every discrepancy which they observed by supposing a nutation; but to Bradley belongs the merit of discovering that small irregularity which really can be reconciled to such a supposition, and its physical causes. The easiest way of conceiving the effect of nutation is as follows:—The precession of the equinoxes, discovered by Hipparchus, has this effect, that the fixed stars, so called, appear to move round the pole of the ecliptic, at the rate of a revolution in about 26,000 years. Instead of a star, let a small oval describe the same course, and let the star in the mean while move round that oval in the course of nineteen years. The motion thus obtained will represent the combined effect of precession and nutation.

To these discoveries of Bradley we owe, as Delambre observes, the accuracy of modern astronomy. It must be remarked, that no individual, whose previous labours have caused public opinion to point him out as most fit for the part of Astronomer Royal, has ever been passed over when occasion occurred, from the time of Flamsteed to that at which we write. It is the fair reward of such a course, that the reputation which each successive occupant brought to that position should be considered as appertaining to him in the public capacity which it gained for him; and this being granted, it may be truly said that there is no institution in the world which has, upon the whole, done so much towards the advancement of correct astronomy as the Observatory of Greenwich.

]

_Engraved by W. Holl._

MELANCTHON.

_From an Engraving by Albert Durer
1526._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

MELANCTHON.

Philip was the son of a respectable engineer named Schwartzerde, that is, Black-earth, a name which he Grecised at a very early age, as soon as his literary tastes and talents began to display themselves,—assuming, in compliance with the suggestion of his distinguished kinsman Reuchlin or Capnio, and according to the fashion of the age, the classical synonyme of Melancthon. He was born at Bretten, a place near Wittemberg, February 16, 1497. He commenced his studies at Heidelberg in 1509; and after three years was removed to Tubingen, where he remained till 1518. These circumstances are in this instance not undeserving of notice, because Melancthon gave from his very boyhood abundant proofs of an active and brilliant genius, and acquired some juvenile distinctions which have been recorded by grave historians, and have acquired him a place among the ‘Enfans Célèbres’ of Baillet. During his residence at Tubingen he gave public lectures on Virgil, Terence, Cicero, and Livy, while he was pursuing with equal ardour his biblical studies; and he had leisure besides to furnish assistance to Reuchlin in his dangerous contests with the monks, and to direct the operations of a printing-press. The course of learning and genius, when neither darkened by early prejudice nor perverted by personal interests, ever points to liberality and virtue. In the case of Melancthon this tendency was doubtless confirmed by the near spectacle of monastic oppression and bigotry; and thus we cannot question that he had imbibed, even before his departure from Tubingen, the principles which enlightened his subsequent career, and which throw the brightest glory upon his memory.

In 1518 (at the age of twenty-one) he was raised to the Professorship of Greek in the University of Wittemberg. The moment was critical. Luther, who occupied the theological chair in the same University, had just published his ‘Ninety-five Propositions against the Abuse of Indulgences,’ and was entering step by step into a contest with the Vatican. He was in possession of great personal authority; he was older by fourteen years, and was endowed with a far more commanding spirit, than his brother professor; and thus, in that intimacy which local circumstances and similarity of sentiments immediately cemented between these two eminent persons, the ascendancy was naturally assumed by Luther, and maintained to the end of his life. Melancthon was scarcely established at Wittemberg when he addressed to the Reformer some very flattering expressions of admiration, couched in indifferent Greek iambics; and in the year following he attended him to the public disputations which he held with Eckius on the supremacy of the Pope. Here he first beheld the strife into which he was destined presently to enter, and learned the distasteful rudiments of theological controversy.

Two years afterwards, when certain of the opinions of Luther were violently attacked by the Faculty of Paris, Melancthon interposed to defend their author, to repel some vain charges which were brought against him, and to ridicule the pride and ignorance of the doctors of the Sorbonne. About the same time he engaged in the more delicate question respecting the celibacy of the clergy, and opposed the Popish practice with much zeal and learning. This was a subject which he had always nearest his heart, and, in the discussions to which it led, he surpassed even Luther in the earnestness of his argument; and he at least had no personal interest in the decision, as he never took orders.

In 1528 it was determined to impose a uniform rule of doctrine and discipline upon the ministers of the Reformed churches; and the office of composing it was assigned to Melancthon. He published, in eighteen chapters, an ‘Instruction to the Pastors of the Electorate of Saxony,’ in which he made the first formal exposition of the doctrinal system of the Reformers. The work was promulgated with the approbation of Luther; and the article concerning the bodily presence in the Eucharist conveyed the opinion of the master rather than that of the disciple. Yet were there other points so moderately treated and set forth in so mild and compromising a temper, as sufficiently to mark Melancthon as the author of the document; and so strong was the impression produced upon the Roman Catholics themselves by its character and spirit, that many considered it the composition of a disguised friend; and Faber even ventured to make personal overtures to the composer, and to hold forth the advantages that he might hope to attain by a seasonable return to the bosom of the Apostolic Church.

The Diet of Augsburg was summoned soon afterwards, and it assembled in 1530, for the reconciliation of all differences. This being at least the professed object of both parties, it was desirable that the conferences should be conducted by men of moderation, disposed to soften the subjects of dissension, and to mitigate by temper and manner the bitterness of controversy. For this delicate office Luther was entirely disqualified, whereas the reputation of Melancthon presented precisely the qualities that seemed to be required; the management of the negotiations was accordingly confided to him. But not without the near superintendence of Luther. The latter was resident close at hand, he was in perpetual communication with his disciple, and influenced most of his proceedings; and, at least during the earlier period of the conferences, he not only suggested the matter, but even authorised the form, of the official documents.

It was thus that the ‘Confession of Augsbourg’ was composed; and we observe on its very surface thus much of the spirit of conciliation, that of its twenty-eight chapters twenty-one were devoted to the exposition of the opinions of the Reformers, while seven only were directed against the tenets of their adversaries. In the tedious and perplexing negotiations that followed, some concessions were privately proposed by Melancthon, which could scarcely have been sanctioned by Luther, as they were inconsistent with the principles of the Reformation and the independence of the Reformers. In some letters written towards the conclusion of the Diet, he acknowledged in the strongest terms the authority of the Roman Church, and all its hierarchy; he asserted that there was positively no doctrinal difference between the parties; that the whole dispute turned on matters of discipline and practice; and that, if the Pope would grant only a provisional toleration on the two points of the double communion and the marriage of the clergy, it would not be difficult to remove all other differences, not excepting that respecting the mass. “Concede,” he says to the Pope’s legate, “or pretend to concede those two points, and we will submit to the bishops; and if some slight differences shall still remain between the two parties, they will not occasion any breach of union, because there is no difference on any point of faith, and they will be governed by the same bishops; and these bishops, having once recovered their authority, will be able in process of time to correct defects which must now of necessity be tolerated.” On this occasion Melancthon took counsel of Erasmus rather than of Luther. It was his object at any rate to prevent the war with which the Protestants were threatened, and from which he may have expected their destruction. But the perfect and almost unconditional submission to the Roman hierarchy, which he proposed as the only alternative, would have accomplished the same purpose much more certainly; and Protestant writers have observed, that the bitterest enemy of the Reformation could have suggested no more effectual or insidious method of subverting it, than that which was so warmly pressed upon the Roman Catholics by Melancthon himself. Luther was indignant when he heard of these proceedings; he strongly urged Melancthon to break off the negotiations, and to abide by the Confession. Indeed, it appears that these degrading concessions to avowed enemies produced, as is ever the case, no other effect than to increase their pride and exalt their expectations, and so lead them to demand still more unworthy conditions, and a still more abject humiliation.

Howbeit, the reputation of Melancthon was raised by the address which he displayed during these deliberations; and the variety of his talents and the extent of his erudition became more generally known and more candidly acknowledged. The modesty of his character, the moderation of his temper, the urbanity of his manners, his flexible and accommodating mind, recommended him to the regard of all, and especially to the patronage of the great. He was considered as the peace-maker of the age. All who had any hopes of composing the existing dissensions and preventing the necessity of absolute schism placed their trust in the mildness of his expedients. The service which he had endeavoured to render to the Emperor was sought by the two other powerful monarchs of that time. Francis I. invited him to France in 1535, to reconcile the growing differences of his subjects; and even Henry VIII. expressed a desire for his presence and his counsels; but the Elector could not be persuaded to consent to his departure from Saxony.

In 1541 he held a public disputation with Eckius at Worms, which lasted three days. The conference was subsequently removed to Ratisbon, and continued, with pacific professions and polemic arguments, during the same year, with no other result than an expressed understanding that both parties should refer their claims to a general council, and abide by its decision.

In the meantime, as the Popes showed great reluctance to summon any such Council, unless it should assemble in Italy and deliberate under their immediate superintendence, and as the Reformers constantly refused to submit to so manifest a compromise of their claims, it seemed likely that some time might elapse before the disputants should have any opportunity of making their appeal. Wherefore the emperor, not brooking this delay, and willing by some provisional measure to introduce immediate harmony between the parties, published in 1548 a formulary of temporary concord, under the name of the Interim. It proclaimed the conditions of peace, which were to be binding only till the decision of the general council. The conditions were extremely advantageous, as might well have been expected, to the Roman Catholic claims. Nevertheless, they gave complete satisfaction to neither party, and only animated to farther arrogance the spirit of those whom they favoured.

The Interim was promulgated at the Diet held at Augsbourg, and it was followed by a long succession of conferences, which were carried on at Leipzig and in other places, under the Protestant auspices of Maurice of Saxony. Here was an excellent field for the talents and character of Melancthon. All the public documents of the Protestants were composed by him. All the acuteness of his reason, all the graces of his style, all the resources of his learning were brought into light and action; and much that he wrote in censure of the Interim was written with force and truth. But here, as on former occasions, the effects of his genius were marred by the very moderation of his principles, and the practical result of his labours was not beneficial to the cause which he intended to serve. For in this instance he not only did not conciliate the enemies to whom he made too large concessions, but he excited distrust and offence among his friends; and these feelings were presently exasperated into absolute schism.

On the death of Luther, two years before these conferences, the foremost place among the reformers had unquestionably devolved upon Melancthon. He had deserved that eminence by his various endowments, and his uninterrupted exertions: yet was he not the character most fitted to occupy it at that crisis. His incurable thirst for universal esteem and regard; his perpetual anxiety to soothe his enemies and soften the bigotry of the hierarchy, frequently seduced him into unworthy compromises, which lowered his own cause, without obtaining either advantage or respect from his adversaries. It is not thus that the ferocity of intolerance can be disarmed. The lust of religious domination cannot be satisfied by soothing words, or appeased by any exercise of religious charity. It is too blind to imagine any motive for the moderation of an enemy, except the consciousness of weakness. It is too greedy to accept any partial concession, except as a pledge of still farther humiliation, to end in absolute submission. It can be successfully opposed only by the same unbending resolution which itself displays, tempered by a calmer judgment and animated by a more righteous purpose.

The general principle by which the controversial writings of Melancthon at this time were guided was this—that there were certain essentials which admitted of no compromise; but that the Interim might be received as a rule, in respect to things which were _indifferent_. Hence arose the necessary inquiry, what could properly be termed indifferent. It was the object of Melancthon to extend their number, so as to include as many as possible of the points in dispute, and narrow the held of contention with the Roman Catholics. In the pursuance of this charitable design he did not foresee—first, that he would not advance thereby a single step towards the conciliation of their animosity—next, that he would sow amongst the Reformers themselves the seeds of intestine discord: but so, unhappily, it proved; and the feeble expedient which was intended to repel the danger from without, multiplied that danger by introducing schism and disorder within.

Indeed, we can scarcely wonder that it was so: for we find that among the matters to be accounted indifferent, and under that name conceded, Melancthon ventured to place the doctrine of justification by faith alone; the necessity of good works to eternal salvation; the number of the sacraments; the jurisdiction claimed by the pope and the bishops; extreme unction; and the observance of certain religious festivals, and several superstitious rites and ceremonies. It was not possible that the more intimate associates of Luther—the men who had struggled by his side, who were devoted to his person and his memory, who inherited his opinions and his principles, and who were animated by some portion of his zeal—should stand by in silence, and permit some of the dearest objects of their own struggles and the vigils of their master to be offered up to the foe by the irresolute hand of Melancthon. Accordingly, a numerous party rose, who disclaimed his principles and rejected his authority. At their head was Illyricus Flacius, a fierce polemic, who possessed the intemperance without the genius of Luther. The contest commonly known as the Adiaphoristic Controversy broke out with great fury; it presently extended its character so as to embrace various collateral points; and the Roman Catholics were once more edified by the welcome spectacle of Protestant dissension.

Melancthon held his last fruitless conference with the Roman Catholics at Worms in the year 1557; and he died three years afterwards, at the age of 63, the same age that had been attained by Luther. His ashes were deposited at Wittemberg, in the same church with those of his master; a circumstance which is thus simply commemorated in his epitaph:

Hic invicte tuus Collega, Luthere, Melancthon
Non procul a tumulo conditur ipse tuo.
Ut pin doctrinæ concordia junxerat ambos,
Sic sacer amborum jungit his ossa locus.

Some days before his death, while it was manifest that his end was fast approaching, Melancthon wrote on a scrap of paper some of the reasons which reconciled him to the prospect of his departure. Among them were these—that he should see God and the Son of God; that he should comprehend some mysteries which he was unable to penetrate on earth, such as these:—why it is that we are created such as we are? what was the union of the two natures in Jesus Christ? that he should sin no more; that he should no longer be exposed to vexations; and that he should escape _from the rage of the theologians_. We need no better proof than this how his peaceable spirit had been tortured during the decline of life by those interminable quarrels, which were entirely repugnant to his temper, and yet were perpetually forced upon him, and which even his own lenity had seemingly tended to augment. And it is even probable that the theologians from whose rage it was his especial hope to be delivered were those who had risen up last against him, and with whom his differences were as nothing compared to the points on which they were agreed, his brother reformers. For being in this respect unfortunate, that his endeavours to conciliate the affections of all parties had been requited by the contempt and insults of all, he was yet more peculiarly unhappy, that the blackest contumely and the bitterest insults proceeded from the dissentients of his own. Thus situated, after forty years of incessant exertions to reform, and at the same time to unite, the Christian world, when he beheld discord multiplied, and its fruits ripening in the very bosom of the Reformation; when he compared his own principles and his own conscience with the taunts which were cast against him; when he discovered how vain had been his mission of conciliation, and how ungrateful a task it was to throw oil upon the waters of theological controversy; when he reflected how much time and forbearance he had wasted in this hopeless attempt,—he could scarcely avoid the unwelcome suspicion that his life had been, in some degree, spent in vain, and that in one of the dearest objects of his continual endeavours he had altogether failed.

The reason was, that the extreme mildness of his own disposition blinded him to the very nature of religious contests, and inspired him with amiable hopes which could not possibly be realized. He may have been a better man than Luther; he may even have been a wiser; he had as great acuteness; he had more learning and a purer and more perspicuous style; he had a more charitable temper; he had a more candid mind; and his love for justice and truth forbade him to reject without due consideration even the argument of an adversary. He was qualified to preside as a judge in the forum of theological litigation; yet was he not well fitted for that which he was called upon to discharge, the office of an advocate. He saw too much, for he saw both sides of the question; his very knowledge, acting upon his natural modesty, made him diffident. He balanced, he reflected, he doubted; and he became, through that very virtue, a tame sectarian and a feeble partisan.

But his literary talents were of the highest order, and were directed with great success to almost all the departments of learning. He composed abridgments of all the branches of philosophy, which continued long in use among the students of Germany, and purified the liberal arts from the dross which was mixed up with them. And it was thus that he would have purified religion; and as he had introduced the one reformation without violence, so he thought to accomplish the other without schism. But he comprehended not the character of the Roman Catholic priesthood, nor could he conceive the tenacity and the passion with which men, in other respects reasonable and respectable, will cling to the interests, the prejudices, the abuses, the very vices, which are associated with their profession. It was an easy matter to him to confound the superstitious rites and tenets of Rome by his profound learning and eloquent arguments; but it was another and a far different task to deal with the offended feelings of an implacable hierarchy. And thus it is, that while we admire his various acquirements and eminent literary talents, and praise the moderation of his charitable temper, we remark the wisdom of that Providence which entrusted the arduous commencement of the work of reformation to firmer and ruder hands than his.

Melancthon’s printed works are very numerous. The most complete edition of them is that of Wittemberg, in 1680,3, in four volumes folio.

_Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

WILLIAM PITT.

_From a Picture by Hoppner in the possession of the Publisher._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

PITT.

The observations made at the beginning of our memoir of Mr. Burke (vol. iii. p. 33) apply with greater force to Mr. Pitt, on account both of the more recent date of his death, and of the more important influence which he exercised over our national welfare. We shall therefore lay before the reader a very succinct account of this celebrated statesman, endeavouring not to colour it by the introduction of our own opinions, and avoiding any statements that can reasonably be controverted. There can be no doubt as to Mr. Pitt’s title to a place in this work; but it is not here that those who have their opinion still to form as to his character and policy should seek for the materials to do so.

William Pitt, the second son of the first Earl of Chatham, was born at Hayes in Kent, May 28, 1759. He suffered much and frequently from ill health until he had nearly reached the age of manhood; and his delicacy of constitution prevented his reading for honours at Pembroke College, Cambridge, of which he became a resident member at the age of fourteen. He therefore took the honorary degree of M.A., to which his birth entitled him, in 1776. His private tutor and biographer, the late Bishop of Winchester, has borne testimony to Mr. Pitt’s proficiency in scholarship at the time when he commenced his residence, and to his diligent study of the ancient languages, of mathematics, and of modern literature, during the long period of seven years which he spent at Cambridge. His illustrious father was not slow to perceive and appreciate this early promise; and the few letters which are extant, addressed by Lord Chatham to his son, contain a most pleasing picture of parental affection, confidence, and esteem.

Mr. Pitt was called to the bar June 12, 1780, and went the western circuit in that year and the following. In January, 1781, he was brought into parliament by Sir James Lowther, for the borough of Appleby. He made his maiden speech in support of Mr. Burke’s bill for the reform of the civil list; and this being in great measure in reply to former speakers, and therefore evidently not premeditated, produced the greater effect, and amply satisfied public expectation, which had been highly raised by his hereditary fame and reputed talents. Young as he was, he took a leading part in denouncing the impolicy and injustice of the American war, then drawing to its close, and in effecting the downfall of Lord North’s administration, which occurred in March, 1782. In the Rockingham administration, which followed, he bore no office: not that his talents were held cheap, for he was offered several important places; but he had already determined, as he declared soon afterwards, never to accept any office without a seat in the cabinet. He gave his support, however, to the measures of government; and, with a determination which he manifested again at a later period, of securing his independence, he continued, notwithstanding his brilliant prospects in public life, his professional attendance at Westminster Hall. During this session he distinguished himself as an advocate of parliamentary reform by supporting three measures upon the subject: a motion, made by himself, for a committee to examine into the state of representation of the Commons; a bill for shortening the duration of parliaments; and a bill for the prevention of bribery, and the diminution of expense at elections. These, not being supported by government, were all thrown out.