Critical and Historical Essays, vol 2 | Page 7

adored by
squires and rectors in Pitt Clubs, under the name of a minister who was
as bad a representative of the system which has been christened after
him as Becket of the spirit of the Gospel. On the other hand, the cause
for which Hampden bled on the field and Sidney on the scaffold is
enthusiastically toasted by many an honest radical who would be
puzzled to explain the difference between Ship-money and the Habeas
Corpus Act. It may be added that, as in religion, so in politics, few even
of those who are enlightened enough to comprehend the meaning latent
under the emblems of their faith can resist the contagion of the popular
superstition. Often, when they flatter themselves that they are merely
feigning a compliance with the prejudices of the vulgar, they are

themselves under the influence of those very prejudices. It probably
was not altogether on grounds of expediency that Socrates taught his
followers to honour the gods whom the state honoured, and bequeathed
a cock to Esculapius with his dying breath. So there is often a portion
of willing credulity and enthusiasm in the veneration which the most
discerning men pay to their political idols. From the very nature of man
it must be so. The faculty by which we inseparably associate ideas
which have often been presented to us in conjunction is not under the
absolute control of the will. It may be quickened into morbid activity. It
may be reasoned into sluggishness. But in a certain degree it will
always exist. The almost absolute mastery which Mr. Hallam has
obtained over feelings of this class is perfectly astonishing to us, and
will, we believe, be not only astonishing but offensive to many of his
readers. It must particularly disgust those people who, in their
speculations on politics, are not reasoners but fanciers; whose opinions,
even when sincere, are not produced, according to the ordinary law of
intellectual births, by induction or inference, but are equivocally
generated by the heat of fervid tempers out of the overflowing of tumid
imaginations. A man of this class is always in extremes. He cannot be a
friend to liberty without calling for a community of goods, or a friend
to order without taking under his protection the foulest excesses of
tyranny. His admiration oscillates between the most worthless of rebels
and the most worthless of oppressors, between Marten, the disgrace of
the High Court of justice, and Laud, the disgrace of the Star-Chamber.
He can forgive anything but temperance and impartiality. He has a
certain sympathy with the violence of his opponents, as well as with
that of his associates. In every furious partisan he sees either his present
self or his former self, the pensioner that is, or the Jacobin that has been.
But he is unable to comprehend a writer who, steadily attached to
principles, is indifferent about names and badges, and who judges of
characters with equable severity, not altogether untinctured with
cynicism, but free from the slightest touch of passion, party spirit, or
caprice.
We should probably like Mr. Hallam's book more if, instead of pointing
out with strict fidelity the bright points and the dark spots of both
parties, he had exerted himself to whitewash the one and to blacken the
other. But we should certainly prize it far less. Eulogy and invective

may be had for the asking. But for cold rigid justice, the one weight and
the one measure, we know not where else we can look.
No portion of our annals has been more perplexed and misrepresented
by writers of different parties than the history of the Reformation. In
this labyrinth of falsehood and sophistry, the guidance of Mr. Hallam is
peculiarly valuable. It is impossible not to admire the even-handed
justice with which he deals out castigation to right and left on the rival
persecutors.
It is vehemently maintained by some writers of the present day that
Elizabeth persecuted neither Papists nor Puritans as such, and that the
severe measures which she occasionally adopted were dictated, not by
religious intolerance, but by political necessity. Even the excellent
account of those times which Mr. Hallam has given has not altogether
imposed silence on the authors of this fallacy. The title of the Queen,
they say, was annulled by the Pope; her throne was given to another;
her subjects were incited to rebellion; her life was menaced; every
Catholic was bound in conscience to be a traitor; it was therefore
against traitors, not against Catholics, that the penal laws were enacted.
In order that our readers may be fully competent to appreciate the
merits of this defence, we will state, as concisely as possible, the
substance of some of these laws.
As soon as Elizabeth ascended the throne, and before the least