But none; and every one of them must, | absurd as it would be in the governors in his individual capacity, do what he of a hospital to reject an able surgeon can for the purpose of providing the because he is an Universal Restitusick with such religious instruction and tionist, and to send a bungler to opeconsolation as will, in his opinion, be rate because he is perfectly orthodox. most useful to them. Again, on our principles, no governWe should say the same of government ought to press on the people rement. Government is not an institu- ligious instruction, however sound, in tion for the propagation of religion, such a manner as to excite among any more than St. George's Hospital them discontents dangerous to public is an institution for the propagation of order. For here again government religion: and the most absurd and per- would sacrifice its primary end to an nicious consequences would follow, if end intrinsically indeed of the highest Government should pursue, as its pri- importance, but still only a secondary mary end, that which can never be end of government, as government. more than its secondary end, though This rule at once disposes of the difintrinsically more important than its ficulty about India, a difficulty of which primary end. But a government which Mr. Gladstone can get rid only by considers the religious instruction of putting in an imaginary discharge in the people as a secondary end, and order to set aside an imaginary obligafollows out that principle faithfully, tion. There is assuredly no country will, we think, be likely to do much where it is more desirable that Chrisgood and little harm. tianity should be propagated. there is no country in which the government is so completely disqualified for the task. By using our power in order to make proselytes, we should produce the dissolution of society, and bring utter ruin on all those interests All persecution directed against the for the protection of which governpersons or property of men is, on our ment exists. Here the secondary end principle, obviously indefensible. For, is, at present, inconsistent with the the protection of the persons and pro- primary end, and must therefore be perty of men being the primary end of abandoned. Christian instruction given government, and religious instruction by individuals and voluntary societies only a secondary end, to secure the may do much good. Given by the people from heresy by making their government it would do unmixed harm. lives, their limbs, or their estates inse-At the same time, we quite agree with cure, would be to sacrifice the primary end to the secondary end. It would be as absurd as it would be in the governors of a hospital to direct that the wounds of all Arian and Socinian patients should be dressed in such a way as to make them fester. We will rapidly run over some of the consequences to which this principle leads, and point out how it solves some problems which, on Mr. Gladstone's hypothesis, admit of no satisfactory solution. Mr. Gladstone in thinking that the English authorities in India ought not to participate in any idolatrous rite; and indeed we are fully satisfied that all such participation is not only unchristian, but also unwise and most undignified. Again, on our principles, all civil Supposing the circumstances of a disabilities on account of religious country to be such, that the governopinions are indefensible. For all such ment may with propriety, on our prindisabilities make government less ef- ciples, give religious instruction to a ficient for its main end: they limit its people; we have next to inquire, what choice of able men for the adminis-religion shall be taught. Bishop Wartration and defence of the state; they alienate from it the hearts of the sufferers; they deprive it of a part of its effective strength in all contests with foreign nations. Such a course is as burton answers, the religion of the majority. And we so far agree with him, that we can scarcely conceive any circumstances in which it would be proper to establish, as the one exclu sive religion of the state, the religion | knowledge to the Scotch rather by of the minority. Such a preference means of that imperfect Church, as he could hardly be given without exciting may think it, from which they will most serious discontent, and endan- learn much, than by means of that gering those interests, the protection perfect Church from which they will of which is the first object of govern- learn nothing. The only end of teachment. But we never can admit that a ing is, that men may learn; and it is ruler can be justified in helping to idle to talk of the duty of teaching spread a system of opinions solely be- truth in ways which only cause men cause that system is pleasing to the to cling more firmly to falsehood. majority. On the other hand, we can- On these principles we conceive that not agree with Mr. Gladstone, who a statesman, who might be far indeed would of course answer that the only from regarding the Church of England religion which a ruler ought to propa- with the reverence which Mr. Gladgate is the religion of his own con- stone feels for her, might yet firmly science. In truth, this is an impossi- oppose all attempts to destroy her. bility. And as we have shown, Mr. Such a statesman may be too well acGladstone himself, whenever he sup-quainted with her origin to look upon ports a grant of money to the Church her with superstitious awe. He may of England, is really assisting to pro- know that she sprang from a compropagate, not the precise religion of his mise huddled up between the eager own conscience, but some one or more, zeal of reformers and the selfishness he knows not how many or which, of of greedy, ambitious, and time-serving the innumerable religions which lie politicians. He may find in every page between the confines of Pelagianism of her annals ample cause for censure. and those of Antinomianism, and be- He may feel that he could not, with tween the confines of Popery and those ease to his conscience, subscribe all her of Presbyterianism. In our opinion, articles. He may regret that all the that religious instruction which the attempts which have been made to ruler ought, in his public capacity, to open her gates to large classes of nonpatronise, is the instruction from which conformists should have failed. Her he, in his conscience, believes that the episcopal polity he may consider as of people will learn most good with the purely human institution. He cannot smallest mixture of evil. And thus defend her on the ground that she posit is not necessarily his own religion sesses the apostolical succession; for that he will select. He will, of course, he does not know whether that succesbelieve that his own religion is un- sion may not be altogether a fable. He mixedly good. But the question which cannot defend her on the ground of he has to consider is, not how much her unity; for he knows that her frongood his religion contains, but how tier sects are much more remote from much good the people will learn, if each other, than one frontier is from instruction is given them in that reli- the Church of Rome, or the other from gion. He may prefer the doctrines the Church of Geneva. But he may and government of the Church of think that she teaches more truth with England to those of the Church of less alloy of error than would be taught Scotland. But if he knows that a by those who, if she were swept away, Scotch congregation will listen with would occupy the vacant space. He deep attention and respect while an may think that the effect produced by Erskine or a Chalmers sets before them her beautiful services and by her pulthe fundamental doctrines of Chris- pits on the national mind, is, on the tianity, and that a glimpse of a sur- whole, highly beneficial. He may think plice or a single line of a liturgy would that her civilising influence is usefully be the signal for hooting and riot, and felt in remote districts. He may think would probably bring stools and brick- that, if she were destroyed, a large bats about the ears of the minister, he portion of those who now compose her acts wisely if he conveys religious congregations would neglect all reliVOL. II. G gious duties, and that a still larger world, a national church regarded as portion would fall under the influence heretical by four-fifths of the nation of spiritual mountebanks, hungry for committed to its care, a church estagain, or drunk with fanaticism. While blished and maintained by the sword, he would with pleasure admit that all a church producing twice as many riots the qualities of Christian pastors are as conversions, a church which, though to be found in large measure within possessing great wealth and power, the existing body of Dissenting minis- and though long backed by persecuting ters, he would perhaps be inclined to laws, had, in the course of many gethink that the standard of intellectual nerations, been found unable to propaand moral character among that ex-gate its doctrines, and barely able to emplary class of men may have been raised to its present high point and maintained there by the indirect influence of the Establishment. And he may be by no means satisfied that, if the Church were at once swept away, the place of our Sumners and Whateleys would be supplied by Doddridges and Halls. He may think that the advantages which we have described are obtained, or might, if the existing system were slightly modified, be obtained, without any sacrifice of the paramount objects which all governments ought to have chiefly in view. Nay, he may be of opinion that an institution, so deeply fixed in the hearts and minds of millions, could not be subverted without loosening and shaking all the foundations of civil society. With at least equal ease he would find reasons for supporting the Church of Scotland. Nor would he be under the necessity of resorting to any contract to justify the connection of two religious establishments with one governHe would think scruples on that head frivolous in any person who is zealous for a Church, of which both Dr. Herbert Marsh and Dr. Daniel Wilson have been bishops. Indeed he would gladly follow out his principles much further. He would have been willing to vote in 1825 for Lord Francis Egerton's resolution, that it is expedient to give a public maintenance to the Catholic clergy of Ireland: and he would deeply regret that no such measure was adopted in 1829. ment. In this way, we conceive, a statesman might on our principles satisfy himself that it would be in the highest degree inexpedient to abolish the Church, either of England or of Scotland. But if there were, in any part of the maintain its ground, a church so odious, that fraud and violence, when used against its clear rights of property, were generally regarded as fair play, a church, whose ministers were preaching to desolate walls, and with difficulty obtaining their lawful subsistence by the help of bayonets, such a church, on our principles, could not, we must own, be defended. We should say that the state which allied itself with such a church postponed the primary end of government to the secondary: and that the consequences had been such as any sagacious observer would have predicted. Neither the primary nor the secondary end is attained. The temporal and spiritual interests of the people suffer alike. The minds of men, instead of being drawn to the church, are alienated from the state. The magistrate, after sacrificing order, peace, union, all the interests which it is his first duty to protect, for the purpose of promoting pure religion, is forced, after the experience of centuries, to admit that he has really been promoting error. The sounder the doctrines of such a church, the more absurd and noxious the superstition by which those doctrines are opposed, the stronger are the arguments against the policy which has deprived a good cause of its natural advantages. Those who preach to rulers the duty of employing power to propagate truth would do well to remember that falsehood, though no match for truth alone, has often been found more than a match for truth and power together. A statesman, judging on our principles, would pronounce without hesitation that a church, such as we have last described, never ought to have been set up. Further than this we will not venture to speak for him. He thunder and lightning of the skies. would doubtless remember that the The people of India, when we subdued world is full of institutions which, though they never ought to have been set up, yet, having been set up, ought not to be rudely pulled down; and that it is often wise in practice to be content with the mitigation of an abuse which, looking at it in the abstract, we might feel impatient to destroy. We have done; and nothing remains but that we part from Mr. Gladstone with the courtesy of antagonists who bear no malice. We dissent from his opinions, but we admire his talents; we respect his integrity and benevolence; and we hope that he will not suffer political avocations so entirely to engross him, as to leave him no leisure for literature and philosophy. LORD CLIVE. (JANUARY, 1840.) The Life of Robert Lord Clive; collected from the Family Papers, communicated by the Earl of Powis. By MAJORGENERAL SIR JOHN MALCOLM, K.C.B. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1836. We have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster, half man and half beast, who took a harquebusier for a sorcerer, able to scatter the them, were ten times as numerous as the Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished, and were at the same time quite as highly civilised as the victorious Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendour far surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been expected, that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a handful of his countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but positively distasteful. Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr. Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our language, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read. We fear that the volumes before us will not much attract those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value. But we cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked up. It would, however, be unjust to criticize with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation and by a better arrange ment. We are more disposed to perform the pleasing duty of expressing our gratitude to the noble family to which the public owes so much useful and curious information. The effect of the book, even when we make the largest allowance for the partiality of those who have furnished and of those who have digested the materials, is, on the whole, greatly to raise the character of Lord Clive. We are far indeed from sympathizing with Sir John Malcolm, whose love passes the love of biographers, and who can see nothing but wisdom and justice in the actions of his idol. But we are at least equally far from concurring in the severe judgment of Mr. Mill, who seems to us to show less discrimination in his account of Clive than in any other part of his valuable work. Clive, like most men who are born with strong passions and tried by strong temptations, committed great faults. But every person who takes a fair and enlightened view of his whole career must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and statesmen, has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great either in arms or in council. sustained by a constitutional intrepidity which sometimes seemed hardly compatible with soundness of mind, had begun to cause great uneasiness to his family. "Fighting," says one of his uncles, "to which he is out of measure addicted, gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling occasion." The old people of the neighbourhood still remember to have heard from their parents how Bob Clive climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of MarketDrayton, and with what terror the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout near the summit. They also relate how he formed all the idle lads of the town into a kind of predatory army, and compelled the shopkeepers to submit to a tribute of apples and halfpence, in consideration of which he guaranteed the security of their windows. He was sent from school to school, making very little progress in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the character of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his masters, it is said, was sagacious enough to prophesy that the idle lad would make a great figure in the world. But the The Clives had been settled, ever general opinion seems to have been since the twelfth century, on an estate that poor Robert was a dunce, if not a of no great value, near Market-Dray-reprobate. His family expected noton, in Shropshire. In the reign of thing good from such slender parts and George the First this moderate but such a headstrong temper. It is not ancient inheritance was possessed by strange therefore, that they glady acMr. Richard Clive, who seems to have cepted for him, when he was in his been a plain man of no great tact or eighteenth year, a writership in the capacity. He had been bred to the service of the East India Company, law, and divided his time between pro-and shipped him off to make a fortune fessional business and the avocations of or to die of a fever at Madras. a small proprietor. He married a lady Far different were the prospects of from Manchester, of the name of Gas- Clive from those of the youths whom kill, and became the father of a very the East India College now annually numerous family. His eldest son, sends to the Presidencies of our Asiatic Robert, the founder of the British em- empire. The Company was then purely pire in India, was born at the old seat a trading corporation. Its territory of his ancestors on the twenty-ninth of consisted of a few square miles, for September, 1725. which rent was paid to the native governments. Its troops were scarcely numerous enough to man the batteries of three or four ill-constructed forts, which had been erected for the protection of the warehouses. The natives, who composed a considerable part of these little garrisons, had not yet been Some lineaments of the character of the man were early discerned in the child. There remain letters written by his relations when he was in his seventh year; and from these letters it appears that, even at that early age, his strong will and his fiery passions, |