[221] I Remember my last letter ended
abruptly, and a long interval has since passed: so that the thread I had
then spun has slipt from me. I will try to recover it, and to pursue the
task your lordship has obliged me to continue. Besides the pleasure of
obeying your orders, it is likewise of some advantage to myself, to recollect
my thoughts, and resume a study in which I was conversant formerly. For
nothing can be more true than that saying of Solon reported by Plato,
though censured by him, impertinently enough in one of his wild books
of laws: "Assidue addiscens, ad senium venio." The truth is,
the most knowing man, in the course of the longest life, will have always
much to
[222] learn, and the wisest and best
much to improve. This rule will hold in the knowledge and improvement
to be acquired by the study of history; and therefore even he who has
gone to this school in his youth, should not neglect it in his age. "
I read in " Livy," says Montagne, what another man does not:
" and Plutarch read there what I do not." Just so the same man
may read at fifty what he did not read in the same book at five and twenty:
at least I have found it so, by my own experience, on many occasions.
By comparing, in this study, the experience of other
men and other ages with our own, we improve both: we analyse, as it were,
philosophy. We reduce all the abstract speculations of ethics, and all
the general rules of human policy, to their first principles. With these
advantages every man may, though few men do, advance daily towards those
ideas, those increated essences a Platonist would say, which no human
creature can reach in practice, but in the nearest approaches to which
the perfection of our nature consists; because every approach of this
kind renders a man better, and wiser, for himself, for his family, for
the little community of his own country, and for the great community of
the world. Be not surprised, my lord, at the order in which I place these
objects. Whatever order divines and moralists, who contemplate the duties
belonging to these objects, may place them in, this is the order they
hold in nature: and I have always thought that we might lead ourselves
and others to private virtue, more effectually by a due observation of
this order, than by any of those sublime refinements that pervert it.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake;
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake.
The centre mov'd, a circle straight succeeds;
Another still, and still another spreads:
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace,
His country next, and next all human race.
So sings our friend Pope, my lord, and so I believe.
So I shall prove too, if I mistake not, in an epistle I am about to write
to him, in order to complete a set that were written some years ago.
A man of my age, who returns to the study of history,
has no time to lose, because he has little to live: a man of your lordship’s
age has no time to lose, because he has much to do. For different reasons
therefore the same rules will suit us. Neither of us must grope in the
dark, neither of us must wander in the light. I have done the first formerly
a good deal; "ne verba mihi darentur; ne aliquid esse, in hac recondita
antiquitatis scientia, magni ac secreti boni judicaremus." If you
take my word, you will throw none of your time away in the same manner:
and I shall have the less regret for that which I have mis-
[223] spent, if I persuade you to hasten
down from the broken traditions of antiquity, to the more entire as well
as more authentic histories of ages more modern. In the study of these
we shall find many a complete series of events, preceded by a deduction
of their immediate and remote causes, related in their full extent, and
accompanied with such a detail of circumstances, and characters, as may
transport the attentive reader back to the very time, make him a party
to the councils, and an actor in the whole scene of affairs. Such draughts
as these, either found in history or extracted by our own application
from it, and such alone, are truly useful. Thus history becomes what she
ought to be, and what she has been sometimes called, "magistra vitae,"
the mistress, like philosophy, of human life. If she is not this, she
is at best "nuntia vetustatis," the gazette of antiquity, or
a dry register of useless anecdotes. Suetonius says that Tiberius used
to inquire of the grammarians, "quae mater Hecubae? quod Achilles
nomen inter virgines fuisset? quid Syrenes cantare sint solitae?"
Seneca mentions certain Greek authors, who examined very accurately whether
Anacreon loved wine or women best, whether Sappho was a common whore,
with other points of equal importance: and I make no doubt but that a
man, better acquainted than I have the honor to be with the learned persons
of our own country, might find some who have discovered several anecdotes,
concerning the giant Albion, concerning Samothes the son, or Brito the
grandson of Japhet, and concerning Brutus who led a colony into our island
after the siege of Troy, as the others repeopled it after the deluge.
But ten millions of such anecdotes as these, though they were true; and
complete authentic volumes of Egyptian or Chaldean, of Greek or Latin,
of Gallic or British, of French or Saxon records, would be of no value
in my sense, because of no use towards our improvement in wisdom and virtue;
if they contained nothing more than dynasties and genealogies, and a bare
mention of remarkable events in the order of time, like journals, chronological
tables, or dry and meagre annals.
I say the same of all those modern compositions in which
we find rather the heads of history, than any thing that deserves to be
called history. Their authors are either abridgers or compilers. The first
do neither honor to themselves, nor good to mankind; for surely the abridger
is in a form below the translator; and the book, at least the history,
that wants to be abridged, does not deserve to be read. They have done
anciently a great deal of hurt by substituting many a bad book in the
place of a good one; and by giving occasion to men, who contented themselves
with extracts and abridgments, to neglect, and through their neglect,
to lose the invaluable originals: for which reason I
[224] curse Constantine Porphyrogenetes
as heartily as I do Gregory. The second are of some use, as far as they
contribute to preserve public acts, and dates, and the memory of great
events. But they who are thus employed have seldom the means of knowing
those private passages on which all public transactions depend, and as
seldom the skill and the talents necessary to put what they do know well
together: they cannot see the working of the mine, but their industry
collects the matter that is thrown out. It is the business, or it should
be so, of others to separate the pure ore from the dross, to stamp it
into coin, and to enrich, not encumber mankind. When there are none sufficient
to this task, there may be antiquaries, and there may be journalists or
annalists, but there are no historians.
It is worth while to observe the progress that the Romans
and the Greeks made towards history. The Romans had journalists or annalists
from the very beginning of their state. In the sixth century, or very
near it at soonest, they began to have antiquaries, and some attempts
were made towards writing of history. I call these first historical productions
attempts only or essays: and they were no more, neither among the Romans,
nor among the Greeks. "Graeci ipsi sic initio scriptitarunt ut noster
Cato, ut Pictor, ut Piso." It is Antony, not the triumvir, my lord,
but his grandfather the famous orator, who says this in the second book
of Tully De Oratore: he adds afterwards, "Itaque qualis apud
Grecos Pherecydes, Hellanicus, Acusilaus, aliique permulti, talis noster
Cato, et Pictor, et Piso." I know that Antony speaks here strictly
of defect of style and want of oratory. They were, "tantummodo narratores,
non exornatores," as he expresses himself: but as they wanted style
and skill to write in such a manner as might answer all the ends of history,
so they wanted materials. Pherecydes wrote something about Iphigenia,
and the festivals of Bacchus. Hellanicus was a poetical historian, and
Acusilaus graved genealogies on plates of brass. Pictor, who is called
by Livy "scriptorum antiquissimus," published, I think, some
short annals of his own time. Neither he nor Piso could have sufficient
materials for the history of Rome; nor Cato, I presume, even for the antiquities
of Italy. The Romans, with the other people of that country, were then
just rising out of barbarity, and growing acquainted with letters; for
those that the Grecian colonies might bring into Sicily, and the southern
parts of Italy, spread little, or lasted little, and made in the whole
no figure. And whatever learning might have flourished among the ancient
Etrurians, which was perhaps at most nothing better than augury, and divination,
and superstitious rites, which were admired and cultivated in ignorant
ages, even that was almost entirely worn out of memory. Pedants, who would
impose all
[225] the traditions of the four first
ages of Rome, for authentic history, have insisted much on certain annals,
of which mention is made in the very place I have just now quoted. "Ab
initio rerum Romanarum," says the same interlocutor, "usque
ad P. Mucium pontificem maximum, res omnes singulorum annorum mandabat
literis pontifex maximus, efferebatque in album, et proponebat tabulam
domi, potestas ut esset populo cognoscendi; iidemque etiam nunc annales
maximi nominantur." But, my lord, be pleased to take notice, that
the very distinction I make is made here between a bare annalist and a
historian: "erat historia nihil aliud," in these early days,
"nisi annalium confectio." Take notice likewise, by the way,
that Livy, whose particular application it had been to search into this
matter, affirms positively that the greatest part of all public and private
monuments, among which he specifies these very annals, had been destroyed
in the sack of Rome by the Gauls: and Plutarch cites Clodius for the same
assertion, in the life of Numa Pompilius. Take notice, in the last place,
of that which is more immediately to our present purpose. These annals
could contain nothing more than short minutes or memorandums hung up in
a table at the pontiff’s house, like the rules of the game in the
billiard-room, and much such history as we have in the epitomes prefiged
to the books of Livy or of any other historian, in lapidary inscriptions,
or in some modern almanacs. Materials for history they were no doubt,
but scanty and insufficient; such as those ages could produce when writing
and reading were accomplishments so uncommon, that the praetor was directed
by law, "clavum pangere," to drive a nail into the door of a
temple, that the number of years might be reckoned by the number of nails.
Such in short as we have in monkish annalists, and other ancient chroniclers
of nations now in being: but not such as can entitle the authors of them
to be called historians, nor can enable others to write history in that
fulness in which it must be written to become a lesson of ethics and politics.
The truth is, nations, like men, have their infancy: and the few passages
of that time, which they retain, are not such as deserved most to be remembered;
but such as, being most proportioned to that age. made the strongest impressions
on their minds. In those nations that preserve their dominion long, and
grow up to manhood, the elegant as well as the necessary arts and sciences
are improved to some degree of perfection; and history, that was at first
intended only to record the names, or perhaps the general characters of
some famous men, and to transmit in gross the remarkable events of every
age to posterity, is raised to answer another, and a nobler end.
II. Thus it happened among the Greeks, but much more
among
[226] the Romans, notwithstanding the
prejudices in favor of the former, even among the latter. I have sometimes
thought that Virgil might have justly ascribed to his countrymen the praise
of writing history better, as well as that of affording the noblest subjects
for it, in those famous verses,* where the different excellences of the two nations
are so finely touched: but he would have weakened perhaps by lengthening,
and have flattened the climax. Open Herodotus, you are entertained by
an agreeable story-teller, who meant to entertain, and nothing more. Read
Thucydides or Xenophon, you are taught indeed as well as entertained:
and the statesman or the general, the philosopher or the orator, speaks
to you in every page. They wrote on subjects on which they were well informed,
and they treated them fully: they maintained the dignity of history, and
thought it beneath them to vamp up old traditions, like the writers of
their age and country, and to be the trumpeters of a lying antiqnity.
The Cyropaedia of Xenophon may be objected perhaps; but if he gave it
for a romance, not a history, as he might for aught we can tell, it is
out of the case: and if he gave it for a history, not a romance, I should
prefer his authority to that of Herodotus, or any other of his countrymen.
But however this might be, and whatever merit we may justly ascribe to
these two writers, who were almost single in their kind, and who treated
but small portions of history; certain it is in general, that the levity
as well as loquacity of the Greeks made them incapable of keeping up to
the true standard of history: and even Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus
must bow to the great Rorman authors. Many principal men of that commonwealth
wrote memorials of their own actions and their own times: Sylla, Caesar,
Labienus, Pollio, Augustus, and others. What writers of memorials, what
compilers of the materia historica were these? What genius was
necessary to finish up the pictures that such masters had sketched? Rome
afforded men that were equal to the task. Let the remains, the precious
remains, of Sallust, of Livy, and of Tacitus, witness this truth. When
Tacitus wrote, even the appearances of virtue had been long proscribed,
and taste was grown corrupt as well as manners. Yet history preserved
her integrity and her lustre. She preserved them in the writings of some
whom Tacitus mentions, in none perhaps more than his own; every line of
[227] which outweighs whole pages of
such a rhetor as Famianus Strada. I single him out among the moderns,
because he had the foolish presumption to censure Tacitus, and to write
history himself: and your lordship will forgive this short honor of a
favorite author.
What a school of private and public virtue had been opened
to us at the resurrection of learning, if the latter historians of the
Roman commonwealth, and the first of the succeeding monarchy, had come
down to us entire? The few that are come down, though broken and imperfect,
compose the best body of history that we have, nay the only body of ancient
history that deserves to be an object of study. It fails us indeed most
at that remarkable and fatal period, where our reasonable curiosity is
raised the highest. Livy employed five and forty books to bring his history
down to the end of the sixth century, and the breaking out of the third
Punic war: but he employed ninety-five to bring it down from thence to
the death of Drusus; that is, through the course of one hundred and twenty
or thirty years. Apian, Dion Cassius, and others, nay even Plutarch included,
make us but poor amends for what is lost of Livy. Among all the adventitious
helps by which we endeavor to supply this loss in some degree, the best
are those which we find scattered up and down in the works of Tully. His
orations, particularly, and his letters, contain many curious anecdotes
and instructive reflections, concerning the intrigues and machinations
that were carried on against liberty, from Catiline’s conspiracy
to Caesar’s. The state of the government, the constitution and temper
of the several parties, and the characters of the principal persons who
figured at that time on the public stage, are to be seen there in a stronger
and truer light than they would have appeared perhaps if he had written
purposely on this subject, and even in those memorials which he somewhere
promises Atticus to write. "Excudam aliquod Heraclidium opus, quod
lateat in thesauris tuis." He would hardly have unmasked in such
a work, as freely as in familiar occasional letters, Pompey, Cato, Brutus,
nay himself; the four men of Rome, on whose praises he dwelt with the
greatest complacency. The age in which Livy flourished abounded with such
materials as these: they were fresh, they were authentic; it was easy
to procure them, it was safe to employ them. How he did employ them in
executing the second part of his design, we may judge by his execution
of the first: and, I own to your lordship, I should be glad to exchange,
if it were possible, what we have of this history for what we have not.
Would you not be glad, my lord, to see, in one stupendous draught, the
whole progress of that government from liberty to servitude? the whole
series of causes and effects, apparent and real, public
[228] and private? those which all men
saw, and all good men lamented and opposed at the time; and those which
were so disguised to the prejudices, to the partialities of a divided
people, and even to the corruption of mankind, that many did not, and
that many could pretend they did not, discern them, till it was too late
to resist them? I am sorry to say it, this part of the Roman story would
be not only more curious and more authentic than the former, but of more
immediate and more important application to the present state of Britain.
But it is lost: the loss is irreparable, and your lordship will not blame
me for deploring it.
III. They who set up for scepticism may not regret the
loss of such a history: but this I will be bold to assert to them, that
a history must be written on this plan, and must aim at least at these
perfections, or it will answer sufficiently none of the intentions of
history. That it will not answer sufficiently the intention I have insisted
upon in these letters, that of instructing posterity by the example of
former ages, is manifest: and I think it is as manifest, that a history
cannot be said even to relate faithfully, and inform us truly, that does
not relate fully, and inform us of all that is necessary to make a true
judgment concerning the matters contained in it. Naked facts, without
the causes that produced them, and the circumstances that accompanied
them, are not sufficient to characterise actions or counsels. The nice
degrees of wisdom and of folly, of virtue and of vice, will not only be
undiscoverable in them; but we must be very often unable to determine
under which of these characters they fall in general. The sceptics I am
speaking of are therefore guilty of this absurdity: the nearer a history
comes to the true idea of history, the better it informs and the more
it instructs us, the more worthy to be rejected it appears to them. I
have said and allowed enough to content any reasonable man about the uncertainty
of history. I have owned that the best are defective, and I will add in
this place an observation which did not, I think, occur to me before.
Conjecture is not always distinguished perhaps as it ought to be; so that
an ingenious writer may sometimes do very innocently, what a malicious
writer does very criminally as often as he dares, and as his malice requires
it: he may account for events, after they have happened, by a system of
causes and conduct that did not really produce them, though it might possibly
or even probably have produced them. But this observation, like several
others, becomes a reason for examining and comparing authorities, and
for preferring some, not for rejecting all. Davila, a noble historian
surely, and one whom I should not scruple to confess equal in many respects
to Livy, as I should not scruple to prefer his countryman Guicciardin
to Thucydides in every respect; Davila, my lord, was accused, from the
first
[229] publication of his history, or
at least was suspected, of too much refinement and subtlety, in developing
the secret motives of actions, in laying the causes of events too deep,
and deducing them often through a series of progression too complicated,
and too artistly wrought. But yet the suspicious person who should reject
this historian upon such general inducements as these, would have no grace
to oppose his suspicions to the authority of the first duke of Epernon,
who had been an actor, and a principal actor too, in many of the scenes
that Davila recites. Girard, secretary to this duke, and no contemptible
biographer, relates, that this history came down to the place where the
old man resided in Gascony, a little before his death; that he read it
to him, that the duke confirmed the truth of the narrations in it, and
seemed only surprised by what means the author could be so well informed
of the most secret councils and measures of those times.
IV. I have said enough on this head, and your lordship
may be induced, perhaps, by what I have said, to think with me, that such
histories as these, whether ancient or modern, deserve alone to be studied.
Let us leave the credulous learned to write history without materials,
or to study those who do so; to wrangle about ancient traditions, and
to ring different changes on the same set of bells. Let us leave the sceptics,
in modern as well as ancient history, to triumph in the notable discovery
of the ides of one month mistaken for the calends of another, or in the
various dates and contradictory circumstances which they find in weekly
gazettes and monthly mercuries. Whilst they are thus employed, your lordship
and I will proceed, if you please, to consider more closely, than we have
yet done, the rule mentioned above; that, I mean, of using discernment
and choice in the study of the most authentic history, that of not wandering
in the light, which is as necessary as that of not groping in the dark.
Man is the subject of every history; and to know him
well, we must see him and consider him, as history alone can present him
to us, in every age, in every country, in every state, in life and in
death. History, therefore, of all kinds, of civilised and uncivilised,
of ancient and modern nations, in short, all history that descends to
a sufficient detail of human actions and characters, is useful to bring
us acquainted with our species, nay, with ourselves. To teach and to inculcate
the general priuciples of virtue, aud the general rules of wisdom and
good policy, which result from such details of actions and characters,
comes for the the most part, and always should come, expressly and directly
into the design of those who are capable of giving such details: and,
therefore, whilst they narrate as historians, they hint often as philosophers;
they put into our hands, as it were, on every
[230] proper occasion, the end of a
clue, that serves to remind us of searching, and to guide us in the search
of that truth which the example before us either establishes or illustrates.
If a writer neglects this part, we are able, however, to supply his neglect
by our own attention and industry: and when he gives us a good history
of Peruvians or Mexicans, of Chinese or Tartars, of Muscovites or Negroes,
we may blame him, but we must blame ourselves much more, if we do not
make it a good lesson of philosophy. This being the general use of history,
it is not to be neglected. Every one may make it, who is able to read
and reflect on what he reads, and every one who makes it will find in
his degree, the benefit that arises from an early acquaintance contracted
in this manner with mankind. We are not only passengers or sojourners
in this world, but we are absolute strangers at the first step we make
in it. Our guides are often ignorant, often unfaithful. By this map of
the country, which history spreads before us, we may learn, if we please,
to guide ourselves. In our journey through it, we are beset on every side.
We are besieged, sometimes even in our strongest holds. Terrors and temptations,
conducted by the passions of other men, assault us: and our own passions,
that correspond with these, betray us. History is a collection of the
journals of those who have travelled through the same country, and been
exposed to the same accidents: and their good and their ill success are
equally instructive. In this pursuit of knowledge an immense field is
opened to us: general histories, sacred and profane; the histories of
particular countries, particular events, particular orders, particular
men; memorials, anecdotes, travels. But we must not ramble in this field
without discernment or choice, nor even with these must we ramble too
long.
As to the choice of authors, who have written on all
these various subjects, so much has been said by learned men concerning
all those that deserve attention, and their several characters are so
well established, that it would be a sort of pedantic affectation to lead
your lordship through so voluminous, and at the same time so easy, a detail.
I pass it over therefore in order to observe, that as soon as we have
taken this general view of mankind, and of the course of human affairs
in different ages and different parts of the world, we ought to apply,
and, the shortness of human life considered, to confine ourselves almost
entirely in our study of history, to such histories as have an immediate
relation to our professions, or to our rank and situation in the society
to which we belong. Let me instance in the profession of divinity, as
the noblest and the most important.
( 1.) I have said so much concerning the share which
divines of all religions have taken in the corruption of history, that
I
[231] should have anathemas pronounced
against me, no doubt, in the east and the west, by the dairo, the mufti,
and the pope, if these letters were submitted to ecclesiastical censure;
for surely, my lord, the clergy have a better title, than the sons of
Apollo, to be called " genus irritabile vatum." What would it
be, if I went about to show, how many of the Christian clergy abuse, by
misrepresentation and false quotation, the history they can no longer
corrupt? And yet this task would not be, even to me, an hard one. But
as I mean to speak in this place of Christian divines alone, so I mean
to speak of such of them particularly as may be called divines without
any sneer; of such of them, for some such I think there are, as believe
themselves, and would have mankind believe; not for temporal but spiritual
interest, not for the sake of the clergy, but for the sake of mankind.
Now it has been long matter of astonishment to me, how such persons as
these could take so much silly pains to establish mystery on metaphysics,
revelation on philosophy, and matters of fact on abstract reasoning? A
religion founded on the authority of a divine mission, confirmed by prophecies
and miracles, appeals to facts: and the facts must be proved as all other
facts that pass for authentic are proved; for faith so reasonable after
this proof, is absurd before it. If they are thus proved, the religion
will prevail without the assistance of so much profound reasoning: if
they are not thus proved, the authority of it will sink in the world even
with this assistance. The divines object in their disputes with atheists,
and they object very justly, that these men require improper proofs; proofs
that are not suited to the nature of the subject, and then cavil that
such proofs are not furnished. But what then do they mean, to fall into
the same absurdity themselves in their disputes with theists, and to din
improper proofs in ears that are open to proper proofs? The matter is
of great moment my lord, and I make no excuse for the zeal which obliges
me to dwell a little on it. A serious and honest application to the study
of ecclesiastical history, and every part of profane history and chronology
relative to it, is incumbent on such reverend persons as are here spoken
of, on a double account: because history alone can furnish the proper
proofs, that the religion they teach is of God; and because the unfair
manner, in which these proofs have been and are daily furnished, creates
prejudices, and gives advantages against Christianity that require to
be removed. No scholar will dare to deny, that false history, as well
as sham miracles, has been employed to propagate Christianity formerly:
and whoever examines the writers of our own age, will find the same abuse
of history continued. Many and many instances of this abuse might be produced.
It is grown into custom, writers
[232] copy one another, and the mistake
that was committed, or the falsehood that was invented by one, is adopted
by hundreds.
Abbadie says in his famous book, that the Gospel of St.
Matthew is cited by Clemens, bishop of Rome, a disciple of the apostles;
that Barnabas cites it in his epistle; that Ignatius and Polycarp receive
it; and that the same fathers, that give testimony for Matthew, give it
likewise for Mark. Nay your lordship will find, I believe, that the present
bishop of London, in his third pastoral letter, speaks to the same effect.
I will not trouble you nor myself with any more instances of the same
kind. Let this, which occurred to me as I was writing, suffice. It may
well suffice; for I presume the fact advanced by the minister and the
bishop is a mistake. If the fathers of the first century do mention some
passages that are agreeable to what we read in our evangelists, will it
follow that these fathers had the same gospels before them? To say so
is a manifest abuse of history, and quite inexcusable in writers that
knew, or should have known, that these fathers made use of other gospels,
wherein such passages might be contained, or they might be preserved in
unwritten tradition. Besides which, I could almost venture to affirm that
these fathers of the first century do not expressly name the gospels we
have of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. To the two reasons that have been
given why those who make divinity their profession, should study history,
particularly ecclesiastical history, with an honest and serious application;
in order to support Christianity against the attacks of unbelievers, and
to remove the doubts and prejudices that the unfair proceedings of men
of their own order have raised in minds candid but not implicit, willing
to be informed but curious to examine; to these, I say, we may add another
consideration that seems to me of no small importance. Writers of the
Roman religion have attempted to show, that the text of the holy writ
is on many accounts insufficient to be the sole criterion of orthodoxy:
I apprehend too that they have shown it. Sure I am that experience, from
the first promulgation of Christianity to this hour, shows abundantly
with how much ease and success the most opposite, the most extravagant,
nay, the most impious opions, and the most contradictory faiths, may be
founded on the same text; and plausibly defended by the same authority.
Writers of the reformed religion have erected their batteries against
tradition; and the only difficulty they had to encounter in this enterprise
lay in levelling and pointing their cannon so as to avoid demolishing,
in one common ruin, the traditions they retain, and those they reject.
Each side has been employed to weaken the cause and explode the system
of his adversary: and, whilst they have been
[233] so employed, they have jointly
laid their axes to the root of Christianity: for thus men will be apt
to reason upon what they have advanced. " If the text has not that
authenticity, clearness, and precision which are necessary to establish
it as a divine and a certain rule of faith and practice; and if the tradition
of the church, from the first ages of it till the days of Luther and Calvin,
has been corrupted itself, and has served to corrupt the faith and practice
of Christians; there remains at this time no standard at all of Christianity.
By consequence, either this religion was not originally of divine institution,
or else God has not provided effectually for preserving the genuine purity
of it, and the gates of hell have actually prevailed, in contradiction
to his promise, against the church." The best effect of this reasoning
that can be hoped for, is, that men should fall into theism, and subscribe
to the first proposition; he must be worse than an atheist who can affirm
the last. The dilemna is terrible, my lord. Party zeal and private interest
have formed it: the common interest of Christianity is deeply concerned
to solve it. Now, I presume, it can never be solved without a more accurate
examination, not only of the Christian but of the Jewish system, than
learned men have been hitherto impartial enough and sagacious enough to
take, or honest enough to communicate. Whilst the authenticity and sense
of the text of the bible remain as disputable, and whilst the tradition
of the church remains as problematical, to say no worse, as the immense
labors of the Christian divines in several communions have made them appear
to be; Christianity may lean on the civil and ecclesiastical power, and
be supported by the forcible influence of education: but the proper force
of religion, that force which subdues the mind, and awes the conscience
by conviction, will be wanting.
I had reason, therefore, to produce divinity, as one
instance of those professions that require a particular application to
the study of some particular parts of history; and since I have said so
much on the subject in my zeal for Christianity, I will add this further.
The resurrection of letters was a fatal period: the Christian system has
been attacked, and wounded too, very severely since that time. The defence
has been better made indeed by modern divines, than it had been by ancient
fathers and apologists. The moderns have invented new methods of defence,
and have abandoned some posts that were not tenable: but still there are
others, in defending which they lie under great disadvantages. Such are
various facts, piously believed in former times, but on which the truth
of Christianity has been rested very imprudently in more enlightened ages;
because the falsity of some, and the gross improbability of others are
so evident, that, instead of answering the purpose for which they were
in-
[234] vented, they have rendered the
whole tenor of ecclesiastical history and tradition precarious, ever since
a strict but just application of the rules of criticism has been made
to them. I touch these things lightly; but if your lordship reflects upon
them, you will find reason perhaps to think as I do, that it is high time
the clergy in all Christian communions should join their forces, and establish
those historical facts, which are the foundations of the whole system,
on clear and unquestionable historical authority, such as they require
in all cases of moment from others; reject candidly what cannot be thus
established; and pursue their inquiries in the same spirit of truth through
all the ages of the church; without any regard to historians, fathers,
or councils, more than they are strictly entitled to on the face of what
they have transmitted to us, on their own consistency, and on the concurrence
of other authority. Our pastors would be thus, I presume, much better
employed than they generally are. Those of the clergy who make religion
merely a trade, who regard nothing more than the subsistence it affords
them, or in.higher life the wealth and power they enjoy by the means of
it, may say to themselves, that it will last their time, or that policy
and reason of state will preserve the form of a church when the spirit
of religion is extinct. But those whom I mentioned above, those who act
for spiritual not temporal ends, and are desirous that men should believe
and practise the doctrines of Christianity, as well as go to church and
pay tithes, will feel and own the weight of such considerations as these;
and agree, that however the people have been, and may be still amused,
yet Christianity has been in decay ever since the resurrection of letters;
and that it cannot be supported as it was supported before that era, nor
by any other way than that which I propose, and which a due application
to the study of history, chronology, and criticism, would enable our divines
to pursue, no doubt, with success.
I might instance, in other professions, the obligations
men lie under of applying themselves to certain parts of history, and
can hardly forbear doing it in that of the law; in its nature the noblest
and most beneficial to mankind, in its abuse and debasement the most sordid
and the most pernicious. A lawyer now is nothing more, I speak of ninety-nine
in a hundred at least, to use some of Tully’s words, " nisi
leguleius quidam cautus, et acutus praeco actionum, cantor formularum,
auceps syllabarurn." But there have been lawyers that were orators,
philosophers, historians: there have been Bacons and Clarendons, my lord.
There will be none such any more, till, in some better age, true ambition
or the love of fame prevails over avarice; and till men find leisure and
encouragement to prepare themselves for the exercise of this profession,
by climbing up to the "vantage
[235] ground," so my Lord Bacon
calls it, of science; instead of grovelling all their lives below, in
a mean but gainful application to all the little arts of chicane. Till
this happen, the profession of the law will scarce deserve to be ranked
among the learned professions: and whenever it happens, one of the vantage
grounds, to which men must climb, is metaphysical, and the other historical
knowledge. They must pry into the secret recesses of the human heart,
and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover
the abstract reason of all laws: and they must trace the laws of particular
states, especially of their own, from the first rough sketches to the
more perfect draughts; from the first causes or occasions that produced
them, through all the effects, good and bad, that they produced. But I
am running insensibly into a subject, which would detain me too long from
one that relates more immediately to your lordship, and with which I intend
to conclude this long letter.
(2.) I pass from the consideration of those professions
to which particular parts or kinds of history seem to belong: and I come
to speak of the study of history, as a necessary means to prepare men
for the discharge of that duty which they owe to their country, and which
is common to all the members of every society that is constituted according
to the rules of right reason, and with a due regard to the common good.
I have met, in St. Real’s works, or some other French book, with
a ridicule cast on private men who make history a political study, or
who apply themselves in any manner to affairs of state. But the reflection
is too general. In governments so arbitrary by their constitution, that
the will of the prince is not only the supreme, but the sole law, it is
so far from being a duty, that it may be dangerous, and must be impertinent
in men, who are not called by the prince to the administration of public
affairs, to concern themselves about it, or to fit themselves for it.
The sole vocation there is the favor of the court; and whatever designation
God makes by the talents he bestows, though it may serve, which it seldom
ever does, to direct the choice of the prince, yet I presume that it cannot
become a reason to particular men, or create a duty on them, to devote
themselves to the public service. Look on the Turkish government. See
a fellow taken, from rowing in a common passage-boat, by the caprice of
the prince: see him invested next day with all the power the soldans took
under the caliphs, or the mayors of the palace under the successors of
Clovis: see a whole empire governed by the ignorance, inexperience, and
arbitrary will of this tyrant, and a few other subordinate tyrants, as
ignorant and unexperienced as himself. In France indeed, though an absolute
government, things go a little better. Arts and sciences are encouraged,
and here and
[236] there an example may be found
of a man who has risen by some extraordinary talents, amidst innumerable
examples of men who have arrived at the greatest honors and highest posts
by no other merit than that of assiduous fawning, attendance, or of skill
in some despicable puerile amusement; in training wasps, for instance,
to take regular fiights like hawks, and stoop at flies. The nobility of
France, like the children of tribute among the ancient Saracens and modem
Turks, are set apart for wars. They are bred to make love, to hunt, and
to fight: and, if any of them should acquire knowledge superior to this,
they would acquire that which might be prejudicial to themselves, but
could not become beneficial to their country. The affairs of state are
trusted to other hands. Some have risen to them by drudging long in business:
some have been made ministers almost in the cradle: and the whole power
of the government has been abandoned to others in the dotage of life.
There is a monarchy, an absolute monarchy too, I mean that of China, wherein
the administration of the government is carried on, under the direction
of the prince, ever since the dominion of the Tartars has been established,
by several classes of Mandarins, and according to the deliberation and
advice of several orders of councils: the admission to which classes and
orders depends on the abilities of the candidates, as their rise on them
depends on the behavior they hold, and the improvements they make afterwards.
Under such a government, it is neither impertinent nor ridiculous, in
any of the subjects who are invited by their circumstances, or pushed
to it by their talents, to make the history of their own and of other
countries a political study, and to fit themselves by this and all other
ways for the service of the public. It is not dangerous neither; or an
honor, that outweighs the danger, attends it; since private men have a
right by the ancient constitution of this government, as well as councils
of state, to represent to the prince the abuses of his administration.
But still men have not there the same occasion to concern themselves in
the affairs of the state, as the nature of a free government gives to
the members of it. In our own country, for in our own the forms of a free
government at least are hitherto preserved, men are not onlv designed
for the public service by the circumstances of their situation, and their
talents, all which may happen m others: but they are designed to it by
their birth in many cases, and in all cases they may dedicate themselves
to this service, and take, in different degrees some share in it; whether
they are called to it by the prince or no. In absolute governments, all
public service is to the prince, and he nominates all those that serve
the public. In free governments, there is a distinct and a principal service
due to the state. Even the king, of such a limited
[237] monarchy as ours, is but the first
servant of the people. Among his subjects, some are appointed by the constitution,
and others are elected by the people, to carry on the exercise of the
legislative power jointly with him, and to control the executive power
independently on him. Thus your lordship is born a member of that order
of men, in whom a third part of the supreme power of the government resides:
and your right to the exercise of the power belonging to this order not
being yet opened, you are chosen into another body of men, who have different
power and a different constitution, but who possess another third part
of the supreme legislative anthority, for as long a time as the commission
or trust delegated to them by the people lasts. Freemen, who are neither
born to the first, nor elected to the last, have a right however to complain,
to represent, to petition, and, I add, even to do more in cases of the
utmost extremity. For sure there cannot be a greater absurdity, than to
affirm, that the people have a remedy in resistance, when their prince
attempts to enslave them; but that they have none, when their representatives
sell themselves and them.
The sum of what I have been saying is, that, in free
governments, the public service is not confined to those whom the prince
appoints to different posts in the administration under him; that there
the care of the state is the care of multitudes; that many are called
to it in a particular manner by their rank, and by other circumstances
of their situation; and that even those whom the prince appoints are not
only answerable to him, but, like him, and before him, to the nation,
for their behavior in their several posts. It can never be impertinent
nor ridiculous therefore in such a country, whatever it might be in the
abbot of St. Real’s, which was Savoy I think; or in Peru, under the
Incas, where, Garcilasso de la Vega says, it was lawful for none but the
nobility to study—for men of all degrees to instruct themselves in
those affairs wherein they may be actors, or judges of those that act,
or controllers of those that judge. On the contrary, it is incumbent on
every man to instruct himself, as well as the means and opportunities
he has permit, concerning the nature and interests of the government,
and those rights and duties that belong to him, or to his superiors, or
to his inferiors. This in general; but in particular it is certain that
the obligations under which we lie to serve our country increase, in proportion
to the ranks we hold, and the other circumstances of birth, fortune, and
situation that call us to this service; and, above all, to the talents
which God has given us to perform it.
Editorial Note - Letter
I - Letter II - Letter
III - Letter IV - Letter
V - Letter VI - Letter
VII - Letter VIII
