HE anniversary of American civil liberty, and nearly the hundredth one, occurs in the month for which the present number of this REVIEW is intended. We deem the time and opportunity not unfitting for an investigation of some of those claims, which have long appropriated the fatherhood of this liberty, and for showing how far those claims are founded in propriety and truth. We well know, of course, that controversial statements are often not very pleasant to make, and have generally the savor of an ill reputation. And, yet, why should this so frequently be? Entire unanimity of opinion, in a world reeking with diversities, is simply and absolutely impossible; and why, then, disagreements in opinion should so often produce angry separation, or downright hostility, is, to us, one of history's philosophical wonders. We are not surprised, a priori, to find a profound theologian, like old Joseph Mede, saying, "I can, with much patience, endure a man to be contraryminded." It is only when one encounters the practical difficulties of such a toleration, he is at all gravelled by it. We ought to be able to draw an easy distinction between principia et hominesprinciples or sentiments and individuals-and to controvert the former, without bitter alienation or caustic virulence toward the latter. We hold, and have long held, and held as familiarities, these premises; and are, therefore, less able than some to anticipate harm from controverting opinions, which people around us may hold with firmness, and maintain with pertinacity. We are not, necessarily, the assailants of themselves in so doing, and, unless constrained to do so, shall not consider ourselves assailed, if any of our own favorite opinions are controverted in return. We can cordially respect the character, and gladly admit the sincerity, of many who entertain opinions that we disavow and deny-which we speak against and write against-and are quite willing to grant the same liberty with any positions taken by ourselves-provided, only, that our own character and honesty shall not suffer in their estimation more than theirs has done in ours. We have not one pulse in sympathy with that merciless self-conceit which, in debatable matters, confounds opinions and persons, and condemns both, as if essentially and inseparably blended. He who has not charity and forbearance for motives and for men, has not the spirit of our great Master, Christ; and may prove none of His, in that most eventful of all scenes, where the issues turn on charity and last for evermore. With these views, we deem it neither unlawful nor inexpedient to controvert an idea which some of our countrymen have entertained and employed, in detriment to our own Church and communion, and which they still fling at it in one way and another, to our annoyance and serious injury. This idea proceeds upon the basis that the ecclesiastical polity and doctrines of Episcopalians are unfavorable to civil liberty-that the first advocates and promoters of such liberty were the early settlers of New England-and that to them exclusively, and in nowise to Episcopalians, are we indebted for the advantages which have been reaped from the American Revolution. If this is an incorrect and most mischievous view of American political history, no better season could be taken to show it than this birth-time of our national independence; and, after uttering such sentiments as we deem fitting the approach to a controverted topic, we hope for allowance to speak with freedom and without fear. We are not permitted, merely, we are bound, to stand up in defence for our Christian peculiarities-to make dлоloria for them, by an apostolical ordinance, I. Pet. iii. 15-and if our Church and religion cannot be vindicated from aspersion, then let them suffer the consequences. If they can be, then our ministers and members ought not to be frowned or scared into cowardly silence. We have suffered as much by a quotation from Hume's History of England as by any one thing-we mean the sentence in which he alleges that in our mother-country the precious spark of liberty had been kindled, and was preserved, by the Puritans alone; and that to them the English owe the whole freedom of their present Constitution Buck's ("Theol. Dict." p. 380). This sentiment, or concession, of an historian, whose testimony against the Puritans is never admitted, has been bandied about in every possible shape-in orations, in political lyrics, in school-books, in parlor-books, and in sermons; and has, on convivial occasions, too numerous to mention, been swallowed down with something stronger than cold water! It has been stereotyped in a Theological Dictionary, where we well knew how to find it; and from which it has readily eked a passage into pulpits, for which that Dictionary has furnished a key-note, or a ringing echo. But, even granting Mr. Hume's allegation to be true-and certainly it is a very singular one for any historian to utter, who remembered the days of Magna Charta, and other seasons of a struggle for liberty in English annals-it seems to be singularly forgotten that England must have had the benefit of Puritan innoculation in her Constitution, a century and a half before the American Revolution, and that, in that long-drawn period, she might have profited by it quite as much as other governments on this side of the Atlantic, and been quite as fit, and quite as comfortable, an abode for freedom as any of our confederated States. It would be somewhat hard to prove that at this passing moment persons, goods, and good names" (the triad of objects which Lord Bacon said the law was instituted to preserve), are better off in the City of New York than in the City of London. It would be equally hard to prove that our Executive Government, with a cabinet which might bid defiance to our whole Congress for four whole years, is more democratic than the Government of England, where a cabinet cannot resist the single House of Commons, and may be changed, should that House insist, four times in a single year! And if it be true (as is claimed), that "the English owe the whole freedom of their Constitution" to the Puritans, it is also most singularly forgotten that if these grand political alchemists did infuse into that Constitution "the precious spark of liberty," they took no special pains to keep it there, and it was never developed by their maternal nursing. They suffered the precious spark to be wofully neglected, and it straight grew cold again. And one incontestable proof of this was, that they themselves became inexor ably intolerant, the moment that power was surely and safely within their exclusive grasp. 2 This was a sad and crying verification of the charge raised against them by Churchmen, viz., that they contended not for toleration, but for self-will-not for liberty, but for supremacy—not for the mending of law by others, but for the making of it themselves.1 They professed to be champions for "unshrinking liberty of thought," and to have an "utter disaffection to arbitrary government." They professed a thorough acquaintance with political predicaments, and pledged themselves to redress political grievances, and to reform political abuses. They commenced this work openly in 1628, with their celebrated Petition of Rights, and followed it up with a resolution "strong as death." Well, then, what is plainer than that such intelligent and alert disciples of liberty, such devoted battlers for liberty, ought to have been the last in Europe to fall back into the practices of their leaden-headed predecessors-the very last in the wide world to constrain their posterity to extenuate their own severities, as Gibbon did the severities of an earlier and ruder age, by saying, "Toleration was not the virtue of the times." 8 Perseverance in political saintship ought to have been a marked and indelible feature in the progress of those, one of whose favorite doctrines was perseverance in theological saintship, even to the last day of mortal history. But we are sadly afraid that they who infused "the precious spark of liberty" into the English Constitution, were, notwithstanding, egregious defalcators from special political grace. So soon did they begin to deny to others the freedom of conscience which they had clamored for in the days of their minority, that years before the death of Charles I. was so much as thought of—and before Archbishop Laud was doomed to a gallows, though his sentence was ungraciously commuted to death upon the block-before either of these events took place the Prayer Book was formally excommunicated from England. Charles I. was beheaded, according to our style, January 30, 1649, and Archbishop Laud in January, 1646. Yet, on the 23d of August, 1645, the following outrageous ordinance was passed by the famous, or in-famous, Long Parliament: And it is further hereby ordained, by the said Lords and Commons, that if any person or persons whatsoever, shall, at any time or times, hereafter, use, or cause the aforesaid Book of Common Prayer to be used, in any church, 'Miller's Phil. of Hist. iii. 327. Lathbury's English Episcopacy, p. 62. 3 or chapel, or public place of worship, or in any private place, or family, within the Kingdom of England, or Dominion of Wales, or port and town of Berwick, that then every such person, so offending, therein, shall, for the first offence, forfeit and pay the sum of five pounds of lawful English money—for the second offence, the sum of ten pounds—and for the third offence, shall suffer one whole year's imprisonment, without bail or mainprise. So the very existence of the Church of England was struck at by those, whose hue and cry and bitter lamentation it had long been, that the Government of England countenanced that Church alone, and would not grant a free and unshackled and comprehensive religious toleration. The moment the sceptre passed into their own hands, such a generous toleration seems to have been the last mercy it could sanction. Then they fly at the Church of England with the prying and remorseless temper of the Spanish Inquisition. They cross every man's threshold, they burst his chamber door open, and any adventurous soul, whatsoever, which is found with a Prayer Book in its heretical ill-keeping, becomes the subject of heavy amercement, and may finally be pitched into a dungeon as an unbailable felon. They do this, moreover, after groaning lustily under an old statute, which taxed them a petty shilling for neglecting the worship for which that Prayer Book was the guide! And for fear the ordinance inflicting such cruelties should not be sufficiently familiar, it was printed at the end of the Directory, which was to be its substitute for every household in the realm-thus hesitating not to stain with the darkest blots of intolerance, one of the chief monuments of their faith! So grimly determined were they -as if they had studied Spanish models-to constitute it a part of every man's inevitable religious duty to become an informer and a persecutor. No wonder that the rule of such people fanned not "the precious spark of liberty," but forged the locks and bolts and fetters of house of bondage. Their domination became at last so insupportable, that when it was but a few years old, a book had to be written as a protest against its dreary forgetfulness of tender mercy. This book was composed with all the ponderous formalities of logic, and all the attractive graces of rhetoric, to convince the wise, and encourage the amiable, under a crusade of proscription which was devastating the land. And the book (if at the time fruitless) became so celebrated that, as a political philosopher admits, the English public has never lost sight of it, or ceased to hold it in estimation.1 'Blakey, ii. 144. Not his work on metaphysics, but politics. |