The description of Highland life and scenery, vivid as it is, displays the faults we are criticising in perfection. "In many dwellings, the furniture, the food, the clothing, nay the very hair and skin of his hosts, would have put the traveller's philosophy to the proof. His lodging would sometimes have been in a hut, of which every nook would have swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with peat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome exhalations. At supper, grain, fit only for horses, would have been set before him, accompanied by a cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which he feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been covered with tar like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be, and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch.”—Vol. iii. p. 306. The remarks which follow a flowing decription of Highland scenery are simply absurd : try then possessed. His demeanour was singularly pleasing, his person handsome, and his temper bland. He was eminently vigilant and adroit, fertile in resources, and skilful in discovcharacter, however, was not without its weak ering the weak parts of a character. His own parts. The consciousness that he was of plebeian origin was the torment of his life. He pined for nobility with a pining at once pitiable and ludicrous. Able, experienced, and accomfluence of this mental disease, descended to the plished as he was, he sometimes, under the inlevel of Molière's Jourdain, and entertained malicious observers with scenes almost as laughable as that in which the honest draper was made a Mamamouchi. It would have been well if this had been the worst. But it is not too much to say that of the difference between right and wrong Avaux had no more notion than a brute.” -Vol. iii. p. 168. Of Breadalbane, he says, àpropos of the Massacre of Glencoe : "That Breadalbane was an accomplice in the crime was not proved: but he did not come off quite clear. In the course of the investigation, it was incidentally discovered that he had, while distributing the money of William among the "Yet none of these sights had power, till a Highland Chiefs, professed to them the warmest recent period, to attract a single poet or painter zeal for the interest of James, and advised them to from more opulent and more tranquil regions. take what they could get from the Usurper, but Indeed, law and police, trade and industry, have to be constantly on the watch for a favourable done far more than people of romantic disposi- opportunity of bringing back the rightful king. tions will readily admit, to develop in our minds Breadalbane's defence was, that he was a greater a sense of the wilder beauties of nature. A tra- villain than his accusers imagined, and that he veller must be freed from all apprehension of had pretended to be a Jacobite only in order to being murdered or starved before he can be get at the bottom of the Jacobite plans. In charmed by the bold outlines and rich tint of truth the depths of this man's knavery were unthe hills. He is not likely to be thrown into ecsta-fathomable. It was impossible to say which of cies by the abruptness of a precipice, from which he is in imminent danger of falling two thousand feet perpendicular; by the boiling waves of a torrent which suddenly whirls away his baggage, and forces him to run for his life; by the gloomy grandeur of a pass, where he finds a corpse, which marauders have just stripped and mangled; or by the screams of those eagles whose next meal may probably be on his own eyes."— Vol. iii. p. 301. How came Mr. Macaulay, when indulging in this strange specimen of tasteless and tawdry smartness, to forget the many travellers who are every year journeying in the most wild and perilous regions of the earth, yet are as alive to the beauties and sublimities of nature as the most tranquil poet who now rolls in his carriage through the Trosach glen, or along the shores of Loch Achray? But it is when describing characters that his excess of language is most apparent. Witness his accounts of Avaux and Breadalbane: "In abilities Avaux had no superior among the numerous able diplomatists whom his coun his treasons were, to borrow the Italian classification, single treasons, and which double treasons. On this occasion the Parliament supposed him to have been guilty only of a single treason, and sent him to the castle of Edinburgh. The Government, on full consideration, gave credit to his assertion, that he had been guilty of a double treason, and let him out again."-Vol. iv. p. 575. After these unfavourable citations, it is but fair to extract two specimens of Mr. Macaulay's peculiarly characteristic style: one a piece of interesting reflection; the other of close, cogent, rapid argument. The first relates to the qualifications of the two generals who commanded at the battle of Landen in 1693, the fragile William, and the deformed and feeble Luxemburg. "Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress of civilisation has produced in the art day. Ajax beating down the Trojan leader of war, more strikingly illustrated than on that with a rock, which two ordinary men could scarcely lift; Horatius defending the bridge against an army; Richard the lion-hearted spurring along the whole Saracen line, without finding an enemy to stand his assault; Robert 1856. Historical Painting.-Macaulay. Bruce crushing with one blow the helmet | We see how much may be said on both "It consisted, if Parliament happened to be sitting, of all the members of the Upper House. When Parliament was not sitting, the Lord High Steward summoned any twelve or more Peers at his discretion, to form a jury. The consequence was, that a Peer accused of high treason during a recess, was tried by a jury which his prosecutors had packed. The Lords now de ter. But their lot had fallen on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the muscles is far inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable that, among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who were marshalled round Neerwinden under all the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblest in body were the hunch-backed dwarf who urged on the fiery onset of France; and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England."-Vol. iv.manded that during a recess, as well as during p. 409. The argumentative passage relates to the law which required two witnesses in cases of high treason. a session, every Peer accused of high treason should be tried by the whole body of the Peer age. "The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed, at first sight, seem unanswerable. It was surely difficult to defend a "The truth is, that the rule is absurd. It is system under which the sovereign nominated a impossible to understand why the evidence conclave of his own creatures to decide the fate which would be sufficient to prove that a man of men whom he regarded as his mortal enemies. has fired at one of his fellow subjects, should not And could anything be more absurd than that a be sufficient to prove that he has fired at his nobleman accused of high treason should be ensovereign. It can by no means be laid down as titled to be tried by the whole body of his Peers, a general maxim, that the assertion of two wit- if his indictment happened to be brought into the nesses is more convincing to the mind, than the House of Lords the minute before a prorogation, assertion of one witness. The story told by one but that, if the indictment arrived the minute witness may be in itself probable; the story after the prorogation, he should be at the mercy of told by two witnesses may be extravagant. The a small junto named by the very authority which story told by one witness may be uncontradict-prosecuted him? That anything could have been ed; the story told by two witnesses may be contradicted by four witnesses. The story told by one witness may be corroborated by a crowd of circumstances; the story told by two witnesses may have no such corroboration. The one witness may be Tillotson or Ken. The two witnesses may be Oates and Bedloe."-Vol. iv. p. 746. said on the other side seems strange; but those who managed the Conference for the Commons were no ordinary men, and seem, on this occasion, to have put forth all their powers. Is it reasonable, you ask, that you should be tried for your lives before a few Members of your House, selected by the Crown? Is it reasonable, we ask in our turn, that you should have the privilege of being tried by all the MemIndeed the most characteristic, and some bers of your House-that is to say, by your of the most valuable portions of Mr. Macau- brothers, your uncles, your first cousins, your lay's History, are those admirable summaries second cousins, your fathers-in-law, your brothwhich he has given us of the several lines of ers-in-law, your most intimate friends? argument which were urged by different Nor is there much danger that even those peers parties on various occasions, and by which who may be unconnected with an accused lord will be disposed to send him to the block, if the most important laws and measures were they can with decency say, Not guilty, upon my decided. He rarely fails to give us a suc- honour. For the ignominious death of a single cinct statement, not only of the course pur- member of a small aristocratic body necessarily sued by each party, and the decisions arriv- leaves a stain on the reputation of his fellows. ed at by the legislative body, but of the mo- If, indeed, your Lordships proposed that every tives, views, and trains of reasoning which The led to these actions and conclusions. value of these summaries can scarcely be overrated, and in no part of his history does Mr. Macaulay's peculiar genius stand out more prominently. We feel that the proceedings of the most irreconcilable antagonists thus become equally intelligible to us. one of your body should be compelled to attend and vote, the Crown might have some chance of obtaining justice against a guilty peer, however attendance shall be voluntary. Is it possible to strongly connected. But you propose that the doubt what the consequence will be? All the prisoner's friends will be in their places to vote for him. Good nature and the fear of making powerful enemies will keep away many who, if "The truth is, that the theory of government which had long been taught by the clergy was they voted at all, would be forced by conscience | Mr. Macaulay then gives a lucid summaand honour to vote against him. The new sys-ry of the arguments, pro and con, by which tem which you propose would, therefore, evi- swearers and non-swearers endeavoured to dently be unfair to the Crown; and you do not justify their respective courses to their own show any reason for believing that the old sys- mind. The historian proceeds:— tem has been found in practice unfair to yourselves. We cannot, therefore, under the mild government which we now possess, feel much apprehension for the safety of any innocent peer. Would that we felt as little apprehension for the safety of that government! But it is notorious that the settlement with which our liberties are inseparably bound up is attacked at once by foreign and by domestic enemies. We cannot consent, at such a crisis, to relax the restraints which have, it may well be feared, already proved too feeble to prevent some men of high rank from plotting the ruin of their country. To sum up the whole: what is asked of us is, that we will consent to transfer a certain power from their Majesties to your Lordships. Our answer is, that at this time, in our opinion, their Majesties have not too much power, and that your Lordships have quite power enough.'"-Vol. iv. p. 156. The respective reasonings of the jurors and non-jurors are thus admirably touched: so absurd that it could lead to nothing but absurdity. Whether the priest who adhered to that theory swore or refused to swear, he was alike unable to give a rational explanation of his conduct. If he swore, he could vindicate his swearing only by laying down propositions against which every honest heart instinctively revolts, only by proclaiming that Christ had commanded the Church to desert the righteous cause as soon as that cause ceased to prosper, and to strengthen virtue. And yet, strong as were the objections the hands of successful villany against afflicted of the nonjuror were, if possible, stronger still. to this doctrine, the objections to the doctrine According to him, a Christian nation ought always to be in a state of anarchy. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices liberty to preserve order. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices order to preserve liberty; for liberty and order are two of the greatest blessings which a society can enjoy and when unfortunately they appear incompatible, much indulgence is due to those who take either side. But the nonjuror sacrificed not liberty to order, not order to liberty, but both order and liberty to a superstition as degrading as the Egyptian worship of cats and onions. While a particular person, differing from other persons by the mere accident of birth, was on the throne, though he might be a Nero, there was to be no on the throne, though he might be an Alfred, there was to be no obedience. It mattered not how frantic and wicked might be the administration of the dynasty which had the hereditary title, or how wise and virtuous might be the administration of the government sprung from a revolution: nor could any time of limitation be "The 1st of August had been fixed by Act of Parliament as the day before the close of which all beneficed clergymen, and all persons holding academical offices, must, on pain of suspension, swear allegiance to William and Mary. During the earlier part of the summer, the Jacobites hoped that the number of non-jurors would be so considerable as seriously to alarm and embarrass the government. But this hope was disappointed. Few indeed of the clergy were Whigs. Few were Tories of that moderate school which insubordination. When any other person was acknowledged, reluctantly and with reserve, that extreme abuses might sometimes justify a nation in resorting to extreme remedies. The great majority of the profession still held the doctrine of passive obedience; but that majority was now divided into two sections. A question which, before the Revolution, had been mere matter of speculation, and had therefore, though|pleaded against the claim of the expelled family. sometimes incidentally raised, been by most persons very superficially considered, had now become practically most important. The doctrine of passive obedience being taken for granted, to whom was that obedience due? While the hereditary right and the possession were conjoined, there was no room for doubt; but the hereditary right and the possession were now separated. One prince, raised by the Revolution, was reigning at Westminster, passing laws, appointing magistrates and prelates, sending forth armies and fleets. His judges decided causes; his sheriffs arrested debtors and executed criminals. Justice, order, property, would cease to exist, and society would be resolved into chaos, but for his Great Seal. Another prince, deposed by the Revolution, was living abroad. He could exercise none of the powers and perform none of the duties of a ruler, and could, as it seemed, be restored only by means as violent as those by which he had been displaced. To which of these two princes did Christian men owe allegiance ?" The lapse of years, the lapse of ages, made no change. To the end of the world Christians were to regulate their political conduct simply according to the genealogy of their ruler. The year 1800, the year 1900, might find princes who derived their title from the votes of the convention, reigning in peace and prosperity, No matter, they would still be usurpers; and if in the twentieth or the twenty-first century, any person who could make out a better right by blood to the Crown should call on a late posterity to acknowledge him as king, the call must be obeyed on peril of eternal perdition. "A Whig might well enjoy the thought that the controversies which had arisen among his adversaries, had established the soundness of his own political creed. The disputants who had long agreed in accusing him of an impious error, had now effectually vindicated him, and refuted one another. The High Churchman who took the oaths, had shown by irrefragable arguments from the Gospels and the Epistles, from the uniform practice of the primitive Church, and from the explicit declarations of the Anglican Church, the reversal of the victory. We could that Christians were not in all cases bound to quote a score of illustrative passages, but pay obedience to the prince who had the here- our space warns us to abstain. And we are ditary title. The High Churchman who would the more willing to do so, because we wish not take the oaths had shewn as satisfactorily that Christians were not in all cases bound to to direct special attention to another characpay obedience to the prince who was actually teristic of our countrymen, which is patent reigning. It followed that, to entitle a govern-in nearly every page, and which in one parment to the allegiance of subjects, something was necessary different from mere legitimacy, and different also from mere possession. What that something was the Whigs had no difficulty in pronouncing. In their view, the end for which all governments had been instituted was the happiness of society. While the magistrate was on the whole an instrument for good, Reason taught mankind to obey him; and Religion, giving her solemn sanction to the teaching of Reason, commanded mankind to revere him as divinely commissioned. But if he proved to be a minister for evil, on what ground was he to be considered as divinely commissioned? The Tories who swore had proved that he ought not to be so considered on account of the origin of his power, the Tories who would not swear had proved as clearly that he ought not to be so considered on account of the existence of his power."—Vol. iii. p. 440. Whatever may be Mr. Macaulay's partialities in the case of individual characters, ticular instance the historian expounds with a lucidity and force which leave nothing to be desired. Our legislation has always been remarkable for its unscientific and practical character. Our laws habitually violate or eschew every general principle, and every notion of completeness and consistency, yet rarely fail to meet effectually the particular purpose for which they were passed. In theory they are often ludicrously indefensi ble; but somehow they work well. Their incongruities are the laughing-stock of every foreign logician; yet their influence may well be the envy of every foreign citizen. Never were these peculiarities more strangely or amply displayed than in the Act passed early in the reign of William, to establish freedom of conscience, or at least to secure tranquillity to Nonconformists. have ever been passed by Parliament, the Tol "Of all the Acts, (says Mr. Macaulay,) that we can trace none in his account of political parties. Few features in his book are more eration Act is perhaps that which most strikdeserving of notice or of praise than the fair-ingly illustrates the peculiar vices and the peness with which he narrates the merits and culiar excellencies of English legislation. misconduct of both Whigs and Tories, and The perfect lawgiver is a just temper between awards to each faction its due meed of ap- the mere man of theory, who can see nothing proval or of blame. The virulence and un- but general principles, and the mere man of scrupulousness of the Whigs are never con- business, who can see nothing but particular cealed or extenuated; while the instances in circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the specwhich their antagonists had justice and wis-ulative element has prevailed to the exclusion of dom on their side, are always put forward with strength and clearness. The whole narrative of those struggles between the two great parties, out of which our present system of polity slowly and painfully emerged, is remarkable in this point of view, and no portion of it more so than the fifteenth chapter. One interesting point in our history is brought out with singular clearness, viz., the constant oscillations of power and success between the two factions, arising from the extent to which each when uppermost abused its power, and the invariable and inevitable reaction which ensued, from the efforts of moderate men whom extremes disgusted, and from the natural fairness of Englishmen whom injustice and cruelty always alienate. Indeed, the great moral of these volumes, as of nearly all our Parliamentary history, may be said to lie in two words compromise and moderation. The abuse of victory, and the desire to push advantages too far, have constantly been avenged in England by the loss of the advantage, and VOL. XXV. D-5 the practical, the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive constitutions, which have lived just long enough to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in the English Legislature the practical element has always predominated, and not seldom unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except where some grievance is felt; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of the grievance; never than the particular case for which it is necesto lay down any proposition of wider extent from the age of John to the age of Victoria, sary to provide, these are the rules which have, generally guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments. Our national distaste for whatever is abstract in political science amounts undoubtedly to a fault. Yet it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side. That must be admitted. But though in other counwe have been far too slow to improve our laws tries there may have occasionally been more rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which there has been so little retrogression. Time would fail us if we were to point out all the passages containing views whose novelty and value entitle them to special attention. Among these are the discussions on the supposed Jacobitism of the Highland chiefs, which is shown to have been mere lawlessness; the criticisms on the bill to exclude placemen from the House of Commons, where the writer shows how needful some such bill was, yet how fatal would have been the bill proposed; the explanation and justification of those Royal vetoes, so frequent in William's reign, so rare, or rather so almost unknown, either before or since; and the rise of and apology for the custom of corrupting members of Parliament which was so prevalent in William's reign. Those who do us the favour to bear in mind a paper in a recent number of this journal, on the question of the present value and price of "Government by Cabinets," will understand our reason for extracting the following account of the origin of cabinets. It is a counter-statement of the clearest character. "The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great English law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not intimately acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties into which the nation was divided at the time of the Revolution, that Act would seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and contradictions. It will not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear to be tried by any principle sound or unsound. The sound principle undoubtedly is, that mere theological error shall not be punished by the civil magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only does not recognise, but positively disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel laws enacted against Nonconformists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is repealed. Persecution continues to be the general rule. Toleration is the exception. Nor is this all. The freedom which is given to conscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by making a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of the Act without signing one of the Thirty-nine Articles. An Independent minister, who is perfectly willing to make the declaration required from the Quaker, but who has doubts about six or seven of the Articles, remains still subject to the penal laws. Howe is liable to punishment if he preaches before he has solemnly declared his assent to the Anglican "It is essential to our liberties that the House doctrine touching the Eucharist. Penn, who of Commons should exercise a control over all altogether rejects the Eucharist, is at perfect the departments of the executive administraliberty to preach without making any declaration tion. And yet it is evident that a crowd of five whatever on the subject. or six hundred people, even if they were intel"These are some of the obvious faults which lectually much above the average of the memmust strike every person who examines the Tolera-bers of the best Parliament, even if every one tion Act by that standard of just reason which is of them were a Burleigh or a Sully, would be the same in all countries and in all ages. But unfit for executive functions. It has been truly these very faults may perhaps appear to be merits, said, that every large collection of human beings, when we take into consideration the passions however well educated, has a strong tendency and prejudices of those for whom the Toleration to become a mob; and a country of which the Act was framed. This law, abounding with Supreme Executive Council is a mob, is surely contradictions which every smatterer in political in a perilous situation. philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of the greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. That the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile, inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of religious liberty, must be acknowledged. All that can be said in their defence is this: that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking a vast mass of prejudice; that they put an end at once and forever, without one division in either House of Parliament, without one riot in the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes most deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during four generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made innumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men of whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of those honest, diligent, and God-fearing yeomen and artisans, who are the true strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the wigwams of Red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence, however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be thought complete by statesmen."-Vol. iii. p. 85. "Happily a way has been found out in which the House of Commons can exercise a paramount influence over the Executive Government, without assuming functions such as can never be well discharged by a body so numerous and so variously composed. An institution which did not exist in the times of the Plantagenets, of the Tudors, or of the Stuarts, an institution not known to the law, an institution not mentioned in any statute, an institution of which such writers as De Lolme and Blackstone take no notice, began to exist a few years after the Revolution, grew rapidly into importance, became firmly established, and is now almost as essential a part of our polity as the Parliament itself. This institution is the MINISTRY. "The ministry is, in fact, a committee of leading members of the two Houses. It is nominated by the Crown; but it consists exclusively of statesmen whose opinions on the pressing questions of the time, agree in the main with the opinions of the majority of the House of Commons. Among the members of this committee, are distributed the great departments of the administration. Each Minister conducts the ordinary business of his own office, without reference to his colleagues. But the most im |