forbearance and the lenity which are called into action by the relation between injured masters and their servants. We are informed that, were every third charge pursued effectually, half the courts in Europe would not suffice for the cases of criminality which emerge in London alone under this head. All England would, in the course of five revolving years, have passed under the torture of subpæna, as witnesses for the prosecution or the defence. This multiplication of cases arises from the coincidence of hourly opportunity with hourly temptation, both carried to the extreme verge of possibility, and generally falling in with youth in the offenders. These aggravations of the danger are three several palliations of the crime, and they have weight allowed to them by the indulgent feelings of masters in a corresponding degree; not one case out of six score that are discovered (while, perhaps, another six score go undiscovered) being ever prosecuted with rigour and effect.

In this universal laxity of temper lies an injury too serious to public morals; and the crime reproduces itself abundantly under an indulgence so Christian in its motive, but unfortunately operating with the full effect of genial culture. Masters, who have made themselves notorious by indiscriminate forgiveness, might be represented symbolically as gardeners watering and tending luxuriant crops of crime in hot-beds or forcing houses. In London, many are the tradesmen who, being reflective as well as benevolent, perceive that something is amiss in the whole sys. tem. In part the law has been to blame, stimulating false mercy by punishment disproportioned to the offence. But many a judicious master has seen cause to suspect his own lenity as more mischievously operative even than the law's hardness, and as an effeminate surrender to luxurious sensibilities. Those have not been the severest masters whose names are attached to fatal prosecutions: on the contrary, three out of four having been persons who looked

forward to general consequences having, therefore, been more than usually thoughtful, were, for that reason, likely to be more than usually humane. They did not suffer the less acutely, because their feelings ran counter to the course of what they believed to be their duty. Prosecutors often sleep with less tranquillity during the progress of a judicial proceeding than the objects of the prosecution. An English judge of the last century, celebrated for his uprightness, used to balance against that pity so much vaunted for the criminal, the duty of " a pity to the country." But private prosecutors of their own servants, often feel both modes of pity at the same moment.

For this difficulty a book of Casuistry might suggest a variety of resources, not so much adapted to a case of that nature already existing, as to the prevention of future cases. Every mode of trust or delegated duty would suggest its own separate improvements; but all improvements must fall under two genuine heads-first, the diminution of temptation, either by abridging the amount of trust reposed; or, where that is difficult, by shortening its duration, and multiplying the counterchecks: secondly, by the moderation of the punishment in the event of detection, as the sole means of reconciling the public conscience to the law, and diminishing the chances of impunity. There is a memorable proof of the rash extent to which the London tradesmen, at one time, carried their confidence in servants. So many clerks, or apprentices, were allowed to hold large balances of money in their hands through the intervals of their periodical settlings, that during the Parliamentary war multitudes were tempted, by that single cause, into absconding. They had always a refuge in the camps. And the loss sustained in this way was so heavy, when all payments were made in gold, that to this one evil suddenly assuming ashape of excess, is ascribed, by some writers, the first establishment of goldsmiths as bankers.*

Two other weighty considerations

attach to this head-1. The known fact that large breaches of trust, and embezzlements, are greatly on the increase, and have been since the memorable case of Mr Fauntleroy. America is, and will be for ages, a city of refuge for this form of guilt. 2. That the great training of the conscience in all which regards pecuniary justice and fidelity to engagements, lies through the discipline and tyrocinium of the humbler ministerial offices those of clerks, book-keepers, apprentices. The law acts through these offices, for the unconfirmed conscience, as leading-strings to an infant in its earliest efforts at walking. It forces to go right, until the choice may be supposed trained and fully developed. That is the great function of the law: a function which it will perform with more or less success, as it is more or less fitted to win the cordial support of masters.

V.- Veracity.

Here is a special "title," (to speak with the civil lawyers,) under that general claim put in for England with respect to a moral pre-eminence amongst the nations. Many are they who, in regions widely apart, have noticed with honour the English superiority in the article of veneration for truth. Not many years ago, two Englishmen, on their road overland to India, fell in with a royal cortége, and soon after with the prime minister and the crown prince of Persia. The prince honoured them with an interview; both parties being on horseback, and the conversation therefore reduced to the points of nearest interest. Amongst these was the English character. Upon this the prince's remark was that what had most impressed him with respect for England and her institutions was, the remarkablespirit of truth-speaking which distinguished her sons; as supposing her institutions to grow out of her sons, and her sons out of her institutions. And indeed well he might have this feeling by comparison with his own countrymen: Persians have no principles apparently on this point-all is impulse and accident of feeling. Thus the journal of the two Persian princes in London, as lately reported in the newspapers, is one tissue of falsehoods: not, most un

doubtedly, from any purpose of deceiving, but from the overmastering habit (cherished by their whole training and experience) of repeating every thing in a spirit of amplification, with a view to the wonder only of the hearer. The Persians are notoriously the Frenchmen of the East: the same gaiety, the same levity, the same want of depth both as to feeling and principle. The Turks are much nearer to the English: the same gravity of temperament, the same meditativeness, the same sternness of principle. Of all European nations, the French is that which least regards truth. The whole spirit of their private memoirs and their anecdotes illustrates this. To point an anecdote or a repartee, there is no extravagance of falsehood that the French will not endure. What nation but the French would have tolerated that monstrous fiction about La Fontaine, by way of illustrating his supposed absence of mind-viz. that, on meeting his own son in a friend's house, he expressed his admiration of the young man, and begged to know his name. The fact probably may have been that La Fontaine was not liable to any absence at all: apparently this "distraction" was assumed as a means of making a poor sort of sport for his friends. Like many another man in such circumstances, he saw and entered into the fun which his own imaginary forgetfulness produced. But were it otherwise, who can believe so outrageous a self-forgetfulness as that which would darken his eyes to the very pictures of his own hearth? Were such a thing possible, were it even real, it would still be liable to the just objection of the critics - that, being marvellous in appearance, even as a fact it ought not to be brought forward for any purpose of wit, but only as a truth of physiology, or as a fact in the records of a surgeon. The "incredulus odi" is too strong in such cases, and it adheres to three out of every four French anecdotes. The French taste is, indeed, any thing but good in all that department of wit and humour. And the ground lies in their national want of veracity. To return to Englandand having cited an Oriental witness to the English character on this point, let us now cite a most observing one in the West. Kant, in Königsberg, was surrounded by Englishmen and by foreigners of all nations-foreign and English students, foreign and English merchants; and he pronounced the main characteristic feature of the English as a nation to lie in their severe reverence for truth. This from him was no slight praise; for such was the stress he laid upon veracity, that upon this one quality he planted the whole edifice of moral excellence. General integrity could not exist, he held, without veracity as its basis; nor that basis exist with out superinducing general integrity.

This opinion, perhaps, many beside Kant will see cause to approve. For ourselves we can truly say_never did we know a human being, boy or girl, who began life as an habitual undervaluer of truth, that did not afterwards exhibit a character conformable to that beginning-such a character as, however superficially correct under the steadying hand of self-interest, was not in a lower key of moral feeling as well as of principle.

But out of this honourable regard to veracity in Immanuel Kant, branched out a principle in Casuistry which most people will pronounce monstrous. It has occasioned much disputing backwards and forwards. But as a practical principle of conduct, (for which Kant meant it,) inevitably it must be rejected-if for no other reason, because it is at open war with the laws and jurisprudence of all Christian Europe. Kant's doctrine was this; and the illustrative case in which it is involved, let it be remembered, is his own:- So sacred a thing, said he, is truth that if a murderer, pursuing another with an avowed purpose of killing him, were to ask of a third person by what road the fleeing party had fled, that person is bound to give him true information. And you are at liberty to suppose this third person a wife, a daughter, or under any conceivable obligations of love and duty to the fugitive. Now, this is monstrous: and Kant himself, with all his parental fondness for the doctrine, would certainly have been recalled to sounder thoughts by these two considerations

1st, That, by all the codes of law received throughout Europe, he who acted upon Kant's principle would be held a particeps criminis an accomplice before the fact.

2d, That, in reality, a just prin

ciple is lurking under Kant's error; but a principle translated from its proper ground. Not truth, individual or personal-not truth of mere facts, but truth doctrinal-the truth which teaches, the truth which changes men and nations- this is the truth concerned in Kant's meaning, had he explained his own meaning to himself more distinctly. With respect to that truth, wheresoever it lies, Kant's doctrine applies that all men have a right to it; that perhaps you have no right to suppose of any race or nation that it is not prepared to receive it; and, at any rate, that no circumstances of expedience can justify you in keeping it back.

VI.-The Case of Charles I.

Many cases arise from the life and political difficulties of Charles I. But there is one so peculiarly pertinent to an essay which entertains the general question of Casuistry-its legitimacy, its value-that with this, although not properly a domestic case, or only such in a mixed sense, we shall conclude.

No person has been so much attacked for his scruples of conscience as this prince; and, what seems odd enough, no person has been so much attacked for resorting to books of Casuistry, and for encouraging literary men to write books of Casuistry. Under his suggestion and sanction, Saunderson wrote his book on the obligation of an oath, (for which there was surely reason enough in days when the democratic tribunals were forcing men to swear to an et cætera ;) and, by an impulse originally derived from him, Jeremy Taylor wrote afterwards his Ductor Dubitantium, Bishop Barlow wrote his Cases of Conscience, &c. &c.

For this dedication of his studies, Charles has been plentifully blamed in after times. He was seeking evasions for plain duties, say his enemies. He was arming himself for intrigue in the school of Machiavel. But now turn to his history, and ask in what way any man could have extricated himself from that labyrinth which invested his path but by Casuistry. Cases the most difficult are offered for his decision: peace for a distracted nation in 1647, on terms which seemed fatal to the monarchy; peace for the same nation under the prospect of war rising up again during the Isle of Wight treaty in 1648, but also under the certainty of destroying the Church of England. On the one side, by refusing, he seemed to disown his duties as the father of his people. On the other side, by yielding, he seemed to forget his coronation oath, and the ultimate interests of his people_to merge the future and the reversionary in the present and the fugitive. It was not within the possibilities that he could so act as not to offend onehalf of the nation. His dire calamity it was, that he must be hated, act how he would, and must be condemned by posterity. Did his enemies allow for the misery of this internal conflict? Milton, who never appears to more disadvantage than when he comes forward against his sovereign, is indignant that Charles should have a conscience, or plead a conscience, in a public matter. Henderson, the celebrated Scotch theologian, came post from Edinburgh to London (whence he went to Newcastle) expressly to combat the king's scruples. And he also (in his private letters) seems equally enraged as Milton, that Charles should pretend to any private conscience in a state question.

Now let us ask What was it that originally drove Charles to books of Casuistry? It was the deep shock which he received, both in his affections and his conscience, from the death of Lord Strafford. Every body had then told him, even those who felt how much the law must be outraged to obtain a conviction of Lord Strafford, how many principles of justice must be shaken, and how sadly the royal word must suffer in its sanctity, -yet all had told him that it was expedient to sacrifice that nobleman. One man ought not to stand between the king and his alienated people. It was good for the common welfare that Lord Straffordshould die. Charles was unconvinced. He was sure of the injustice; and perhaps he doubted even of the expedience. But his very virtues were armed against his peace. In all parts of his life self-distrust and diffidence had marked his character. What was he, a single person, to resist so many wise counsellors, and

what in a representative sense was the nation ranged on the other side? He yielded: and it is not too much to say that he never had a happy day afterwards. The stirring period of his life succeeded the period of war, camps, treaties. Much time was not allowed him for meditation. But there is abundant proof that such time as he had, always pointed his thoughts backwards to the afflicting case of Lord Strafford. This he often spoke of as the great blot-the ineffaceable transgression of his life. For this he mourned in penitential words yet on record. To this he traced back the calamity of his latter life. Lord Strafford's memorable words-"Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of princes," -rang for ever in his ear. Lord Strafford's blood lay like a curse upon his throne.

Now, by what a pointed answer, drawn from this one case, might Charles have replied to the enemies we have noticed to those, like so many historians since his day, who taxed him with studying Casuistry for the purposes of intrigue to those, like Milton and Henderson, who taxed him with exercising his private conscience on public questions?

"I had studied no books of Casuistry," he might have replied, “when I made the sole capital blunder in a case of conscience, which the review of my life can show."

" I did not insist on my private conscience; woe is me that I did not: I yielded to what was called the public conscience in that one case which has proved the affliction of my life, and which, perhaps, it was that wrecked the national peace.'

A more plenary answer there cannot be to those who suppose that Casuistry is evaded by evading books of Casuistry. That dread forum of conscience will for ever exist as a tribunal of difficulty. The discussion must proceed on some principles or other, good or bad; and the only way for obtaining light is by clearing up the grounds of action, and applying the principles of moral judgment to such facts or circumstances as most frequently arise to perplex the understanding, or the affections, or the conscience.

We have reason to congratulate ourselves that the conquest made in Europe by Goths and Vandals, Franks and Saxons, was altogether of a different nature from that which merely places a new dynasty upon the throne, and that the conquering people became themselves the inhabitants, as well as rulers of the soil, and amalgamated with the nations they subdued. We have reason to congratulate ourselves that no warrior chief, fresh from his woods, seized hold of the central power, and swayed the west of Europe in its combined form. It is well that no Attila-and the Hun was not far from it-possessed himself of a worn-out empire, lifeless, decked only in the panoply of civilisation, there to remain, like a decorated corpse, the subject of renewed combat, and the prize of the last victor in the field. Since the barbarian was to come, we may look without regret at that dismemberment of the empire, that piece-meal conquest and slow but entire appropriation, which at first appear in so great a measure to aggravate the calamity. For many centuries nothing but mischief seems to follow from his irruption and settlement; the very principles of civil government are lost sight of; rude violence every where prevails; learning is almost extinct, and the little leisure and reflection which armed outrage permits to others, or allows to itself, is seized on and appropriated by superstition. Every where darkness and confusion. But by-and-by the cloud rolls off, and a new scene presents itself; and now, where otherwise a great empire might have been seen falling to sleep at the very best in base and sordid security, there is beheld a number of distinct nations, full of vigour, of untameable spirit, inventing new modes of government, and provoking each other by constant rivalry, and a ceaseless jealousy of each other's power, to emulation in all the arts both of war and of peace, all arts by which wealth is to be obtained or protected. Nay, was it not well that the barbarian did come, and that even for the interests of learning, which seem to have suffered most wofully from his advent? It was not, we need hardly say, such an empire as Augustus reigned over that he destroyed and

NO. CCXCII, VOL. XLVII.

overran. Soon after the great imperial government had been established, when the flush of its novelty and the exultation of its triumph had departed, literature began to manifest symptoms of decay, and a lassitude and monotony fell upon the stationary world. Before the reign of Constantine, learning had lamentably declined; and how dark ensuing ages might have become, without aid of the barbarian, it is impossible to say. An old despotismand a despotism is soon old, while free governments, whatever their faults, however fractious and turbulent, retain for ever the vivacity of youth-an old despotism, extending over a wide territory, appears to be a condition least of all propitious to high efforts of literature; affording, as it does, to the people at large none of those national controversies which give at once both scope and stimulant to intellectual enterprise. These have certainly not been wanting to modern Europe, since it was partitioned and re-colonized by the barbarian. And not only has the change in its political condition pro. moted mental activity: we hold that even that multiplicity of strange languages, which grew up amongst its new inhabitants, and which has often been looked on as so unpropitious a circumstance, and has tempted some men of great capacity for wishing, to sigh after an universal tongue, was, and still is, in reality highly favourable to intellectual effort and intellectual wealth. Each nation, by speaking its separate language, has had its own literature to construct-each language has been a fresh soil to be conquered and taken possession of by geniuseach people may boast their own great poet or philosopher, yet has there been no such isolation amongst them, but that each has partaken and appropriated of the stores of the other. This state of things has all the advantage of a number of distinct laboratories where each chemist plies his experiments apart, not uninformed, however, of the results which others have obtained. The same topics of enquiry have occupied the mind of the Frank, the German, the Englishman; and we see to this day how the torch of truth is made to burn more bright by being borne rapidly from country to country.