The Press.
London, England, 1857-03-28 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

honour. This is the side of the case supplied
by the " Distinguished Writer." But there
are obvious limits to the rule he endeavours
to lay down.
We may suppose that the head of a depart-
ment—more particularly as in tho case of the
Foreign Department might have strong
reasons for suspecting that one of the officials
betrayed the confidence reposed in him, either
by revealing matters which it was of the first
importance should be kept secret, or by dis-
crediting the gentlemen with whom he was
associated, and thus casting contempt on the
service. What in such a case is the head of
the department to do? His duty would com-
pel him to make some effort to discover the
offender, and he must, in the first instance,
act upon suspicion, as it is only by suspicion
that guilt can be tracked and brought to light.
It is true that no man should be required
to convict himself. The plea of " Not Guilty"
holds good until a strong presumption of
guilt is established, but no longer. For if
the accused then fails to explain the circum-
stances which tell most strongly against him,
it is presumed that he has no valid defence,
and the verdict goes against him.
In the cases supposed by the " Distin-
guished Writer," a call upon suspected parties
to clear themselves may not be a call to prove
a negative, but a call to disprove a strong
affirmative. And we are inclined to think
that the proper check to an abuse of that
power which must be intrusted to the head
of every department must rather lie in his
character, and in the vigilance of opinion, than
in any rule which can be dictated. As a
general rule, it ought to be held 0), that no
official should be so much as questioned con-
cerning any writing or publication which does
not immediately relate to his official duties,
and expressly impair his usefulness as a public
servant; and (2), that he should never be re-
quired to stand on the defensive—that is, to
affirm or prove a denial, unless the suspicion
against him is as strong in degree as would
justify an indictment in a criminal court.
On the more general principle of the moral
right of an author to repudiate his produc
tions, some curious instances are given in this
volume. The positive denial by Scott of the
authorship of the Waverley Novels is well
known. Sydney Smith denied the authorship
of " Peter Plymley's Letters," and with bois-
terous fun charged them on Dugald Stewart;
Swift denied "Drapier's Letters," and Johnson
conceived cases in which a man might fancy
that he had a right to deny his writings.
These examples, with the author's ingenious
reasoning upon them, fail to convince us.
The proper ground for a writer to take is—to
refuse to recognise the right of any person to
question him on the authorship of a particular
publication. Such questions should invari-
ably be treated as impertinent, and as an un-
warrantable interference with that privacy of
action which every man has a right to main-
tain.

It may be said that the refusal to deny
would be construed into an acknowledgment.
We do not see why it should be, and it cer-
tainly could not he, if the rule we have pre-
scribed were generally acted on. Mere imper-
tinence is to be resisted, not in any way to be
submitted to.

311

paper writers and public servants. So were Lord Mans-
field, Lord Cowper, and Walpole. Trenchard, Commis-
sioner of Forfeited Estates in Ireland, wrote " Cato's
Letters." Blackstone was solicitor to the Crown when he
attacked Mr. Grenville in an anonymous pamphlet.
Weston and Draper were both small officials. Charles
Lloyd and John Roberts, two of the reputed authors of
Junius, were Treasury clerks. Nearly all the thirty imr-
sons suspected of having written those letters were officill
men. . . . Edmund Burke wrote for the Innuat
Register while private secretary to Lord Rockingham.
Many of Johnson's political works were written after be
was in receipt of a pension. Lord Grenville charges Pitt
with having "furnished information, for his own purposes,
to the papers." Lord Temple wrote for the North Briton.
Lady Hester Stanhope says that Pitt used to complain of
Canning for " repeating his conversations to people who
published them in the Oracle." Lord Camden was sus-
pected of betraying the secrets of the Cabinet to Lord Chat-
ham, who published them. James Mill, who attacked the
Hon. East India Company in his" History of British India,"
and who was also a writer in the Westminster Review, held
a high appointment in the Company's service. Lord
Abingdon was tried for libel. Nearly all the founders of
the Quarterly Review were men in office.

The conclusion of the writer is, that a public
servant should be left entirely free to publish
what he pleases :

Is there any man in power among us who ventures
plainly to declare that all books written by gentlemen in
the public service should be licensed by some member of
the Government for the time being?—that the old device of
the Inquisition should be revived to purify the public
service of every original thinker? If so, who is to be
licenser? Who will accept the office which Mabbot threw
up as illegal two centuries ago? Where is the man of
nice judgment to be found who shall tell us what books
may be written and read in safety, and what books may
not? What salary shall he have whose judgment is sup-
posed superior to that of the whole nation? Who is to
draw the precise line where a book is, and where it is not,
hurtful to the cause of good government? And why are
the people presumed to require the assistance of this
strange functionary to prevent their being led astray against
their owu interests? Who shall warrant the justice of a
party intrusted with a duty so delicate? Shall books be
revised by the very men interested in concealing the truth?
if so, the public service must become another name for
dishonour and slavery of conscience. Progress and re-
form will be impossible. The principle laid down will
virtually provide that no official shall give serious atten-
tion to his profession, or attempt to devise improvements
for the public good, and that he mast submit his judg-
ment in all cases blindly to his superior.

Admitting the force of this view, common
sense still affirms that there must be some
discretionary power in the head of a depart-
ment to prevent officials from taking advantage
of the opportunities they possess to prejudice
the public service. That power, according to
circumstances, may be exercised in a most
tyrannical and unjust, or in a most moderate
and salutary manner. To prevent abuse, it
should be strictly confined within the limits
we have attempted to prescribe.
The following paragraph shows the natural
effects of long-continued Liberal rule :
All the highest posts in the public service are in posses.
sion of a few families. Subordinates, who do not belong
to those families, revolt against the labour which is not
deemed worthy of its hire. Reform must be at last brought
about by such revolts, if the) are no: put down ; and if
they are to be always violently suppressed, let us in mercy
at once by law declare that all our principal offices are
hereditary. This is really the case. Every place of
power, dignity, and emolument is an appanage of a few
families, who may be numbered on the fingers of a single
hand. There is by no means any undue favour shown, as
is popularly supposed, to the nobility. Everything is in
the power of a few jobbers. It is not against the Lords
that the people should murmur; the Lords have generally
been far more liberal and honest than the Commons.
The Lords have done more than yeoman's service in the
State. The Peers first allowed the publication of their
debates in Parliament, and a hundred times in our history
have shown themselves the most incorruptible body of gen.
tlemen in the land. It is well that every family in the
kingdom also, patrician or otherwise, should have a fair
chance of public honours; but it is not right that a few
families should monopolise all the chances, for a few
families cannot monopolise all the merit.

When the desire for concealment is so strong
as to lead a writer to shield himself under
direct falsehood, it is a proof, in these days at
least, that he has placed himself in a false
position. What right has any man to conduct
himself in such a manner as to render a
direct lie essential to his safety or his
interest?

We should like to know more of the particular
case mentioned by the author at the com-
mencement of his volume, as without details
it is impossible to pass an opinion on Lord
Clarendon's conduct. The volume exhibits
great readiness and talent, of exactly the kind
(there can be no harm in saying) which mark
the productions of that "distinguished writer,"
" The Roving Englishman."

On another question raised by this author
there can be, we imagine, no difference of
opinion. He contends for the right of public
servants to express their sentiments freely,
and he shows that some of the most distin-
guished contributors to the press have been
official men :

The first London newspaper was edited by a clerk in the Histoire de Washington. By Cornelis de Witt.
office of the Secretary of State. All our public men since
the Revolution have been mixed up with the Press, from Paris ; Didier.
Halifax and Somers to Pitt and Canning. For nearly two M. DE Wirr, if we mistake not, is a descendant
centuries the Press has furnished the real battleground of all of the great Pensioner of Holland of that
State questions. It would be absurd to ignore this. Locke name ; and as there are many points of simili-
was a public servant. Swift held Government preferment
when he wrote " Drspier's Letters." Atterbury, Prior, tude between the Pensioner and the founder
Addison, Steele, Palteney, and Bolingbroke, were all news• 8 of the United States, it is natural that be

I

312

should have felt so much sympathy for Wash-
ington as to become his historian. The
Pensioner, for example, strove long and
earnestly and ably to preserve his country
from the domination of a monarch, and
Rashington did the same for his; the Pen-
sioner had a headstrong, selfish, and ignorant
people to struggle against, though he was
really the champion of their cause, as he
understood it, and the same was the case with
Washington; the Pensioner, in short, in the
words of Sir W. Temple, who knew him well,
was " a man of unwearied industry, inflexible
" constancy, sound, clear, and deep under-
" standing, with untainted integrity ; so that
" whenever he was blinded it was by the
" passion he had for that which he esteemed
" the good and interest of his State "—a de-
scription which, with astonishing fidelity, is
applicable to Washington. In fate alone these
two eminent men differed—De Witt failed in
his designs, and Washington succeeded in
his ; the former was massacred by a villainous
populace, and the latter Bud to receive the
acknowledgments of a grateful people.
In writing the history of Washington M. de
Witt must, one would think, have had his
great ancestor constantly in his mind ; yet he
never once mentions nor even alludes to him.
This is a piece of modesty which is really
remarkable in these days of exaggerated
vanity; and it prejudices one strongly in
favour of the author and of his book. But M. de
Witt has other and greater claims to attention
than mere modesty. Diligent in searching
for facts; skilful in sifting them; sagacious
and profound in his appreciations of men and
events ; of judicial impartiality;—he has the
qualities which befit the man to aspire to the
lofty dignity of the historian; and to these he
adds a style of writing which is grave without
pomposity, and eloquent without affectation.
He has, consequently, produced a work which
we should say is the best history of the
American soldier statesman extant ; at least
we have met none to be compared to it in
English, French, or German—and yet we have
read many in our time.

As Englishmen, what has particularly
pleased us in the book is, that it is not
marked with that excessive adoration of
Washington which it is the fashion of most
writers, Europeans as well as native-born
Americans, to adopt as a matter of course.
We admit as cordially as anybody that Wash•
ingten was a great patriot and a good man ;
and we of course entertain no manner of sore-
ness against him for the share he had in
stripping us of the American colonies. But
we are not at all disposed to allow, as his
fervent admirers demand, that the world
never produced another fit to be compared to
him ; for in Greece and Rome, in our own
England, and even iu little Holland, in her
De Witt, we find his equals in patriotlsm and
worth, though they were not called on to show
those qualities in exactly the same way. Still
less can we allow, as the more fanatic of his
adurers require the world to do, that he was
even more perfect in every respect than it is
given to man to be,—that he was, in fact,
superhuman, almost divine; for he had his
failings and his vices, and he did misdeeds.
In exaggerating his undoubted grandeur and
excellence, and in ignoring or altogether deny-
ing his defects and hackslidings, his partisans
seem to us to make him almost as offensive
and as silly as the monsters of physical beauty
and moral perfection one meets with in foolish
novels. It is not in man's nature to be so
very sublime us he is represented to be; and to
hold him up as more than man is absurd.
M. de Witt has carefully avoided falling into
suc'i ridiculous extravagance. Doubtless he
entertains a very exalted opinion of his hero,
and loses no opportunity of placing in its
brightest light his ardent patriotism, his pro-
found political sagacity, his great military
talents, his noble disinterestedness, his moral
purity, his unaffected piety. But he gives the
reverse of the medal as well. He shows that
Washington must have been a cold, repulsive,
and singularly unamiahle man :

Washington knew little of the joys of intimacy. Reserved
from prudence and taciturn by taste, he only very rarely
placedi }' fr'ends, even the most faithful, in the secret of
'sentiments.

THE PRESS.

He is bound to admit, too, that, though
faithful and attentive to his wife, he did not
maintain with her that communion of heart
with heart which constitutes true marriage;
and, though he says it would be wrong to
accuse him of "hardness of heart" because
he " often expressed his most profound sena-
" ments with sobriety of language," he is
obliged to confess that he did not always find
" accents sufficiently pathetic to weep for the
" members of his family Irhorn God took
" away "; and as a proof of this he gives the
cold, chilling letter which Washington wrote
to his sister on the death of their mother
However terrible and painful may be the death of a
mother, there is a consolation in thinking that Heaven
spared her to an age which few exceed, and accorded her
to the end all the intellectual faculties and all the physical
force that can be expected at eighty. These considera-
tions, and the hope that she has been removed to a better
world, should teach her relatives to submit themselves to
the decrees of the Creator.

The great hero, M. de Witt tells us, could
descend to the very small details of life, which
are generally disregarded by men of lofty in-
tellect, or who are engaged in mighty enter-
prises. Here is a letter he wrote to a young
man of his acquaintance :

You should always have to go to church and for great
occasions clothes that you don't put on every day. That
need not occasion any expense. When you want new
clothes those that were first reserved for Sundays and
holidays may become the every-day ones, provided, how.
ever, they be not of superior quality to the new.
And here are a few of the articles for which
he used to write with his own hand to Lon-
don !

Four papers of pins ; a bottle of anchovy sauce ; a large
Cheshire cheese; ten loaves of sugar; six pocket•hand•
kerchiefs.

Disinterested though he was, his historian is
obliged to write thus of him :
The love of property, the passion for extending and im•
proving his domains, is the sentiment which dominated
him when he established himself at Mont Vernon.
" Hunting out good lands," to use his own expression,
was one of his favourite speculations. Constantly on
the watch, he spied with avidity every occasion of making
some useful encroachment on the desert ; . . . . he
seized ou the lot which seemed to him the best.

Further on, too, we read of his refusing to
accept paper money, which was all the Revolu-
tionary Government had to offer in payment of
debts due to him.

Amongst the deeds with which Washington
has to be reproached, is the military murder—
for such it was—of the brave young English
officer, Major Andre, and of the condemnation
to death of Captain Asgill. M. de Witt ex-
cuses the latter as much as he tan, but he
honestly confesses that the former leaves a
" stain "on the fame of Washington. And not
only did Washington cause the death ofAndre
without just cause, but he had the barbarity to
have him hanged on a gibbet, in spite of the
victim's earnest appeal to him, on learning
that his fate was irrevocably fixed, to be shot
like a soldier.

As, then, M. de Witt does not allow himself
to be so blinded by his hero and his career as
not to see the defects which existed in the
character of the one, and the errors which
marked the other, it is evident that his book
possesses the rneritof impartiality, and that con-
sequently it ought to supersede those inflated
biographies in which, partly from foolish enthu-
siasm, partly from hatred of England, Washing
ton is represented as a demi-god without spot or
stain. For Englishmen, at all events, it is the
very book about Washington which they want;
for though they, as cheerfully as any people,
bear testimony to his noble, lofty, and ener-
getic qualities, they cannot be expected to
shut their eyes to his faults. Even the Ame-
ricans themselves ought to accept it, for
though it shows that their idol was but mortal
after all, it still leaves him on a glorious
pedestal, still warrants them in proudly
saying of him as Antony of Brutus,—

- -
Ills life was gentle, and the elements
So mud in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, Mid was a man!
We had almost omitted to mention that the
History of M. de Witt is preceded by an
essay on Washington by M. Guizot, which
displays much of the loftiness of thought and
chaste splendour of style for which he is re-
markable. In contributing this lucubration
M. Guizot plainly intimates that he thinks
the author worthy of hie high protection ; and

SATURDAY,

after reading the book, none will hesitate to
deelare that the protégé dues honour to the
patron.

Liturgical Purity our Rightful Inheritance. By
John C. Fisher, M.A , of the Middle Temple.
London: Hamilton, Adams, and CO.
THE author of this volume deserves the same
respect for his courage and honesty as he is
willing to concede to the most uncompro-
mising of his opponents. We have long
desired to see the question at issue between
the two great Church parties treated in this
method, because we desire to substitute clear-
ness for confusion, and to enable men
to see the extent of the doctrine either on
one side or the other, in which they must be
prepared to acquiesce, if they would remain
members of the Church of England. Could
men be brought to look these facts boldly in
the face, we think it would have a great
tendency to discourage the acrimonious party
warfare of which the last twenty years have
seen so much, to promote the growth of tolera-
tion, and to render the prosecution of either a
Gorham or a Denison, a Hampden or a Pusey,
of impossible recurrence.
The design of Mr. Fisher, then, is to show
that throughout the Liturgy of the Church of
England what he terms the sacerdotal theory
is unmistakeably enunciated—that not only
by the canons, but also by the tct of Uni-
formity, the Liturgy is made equally binding
with the Articles—and that the efforts of the
Evangelical party to explain away the lan-
guage of the former can end in nothing but
miserable failure ; and he comments with
honourable indignation on the use of the
term " non-natural," which has recently been
received among us. Holding, then, that the
language of the Liturgy and the Articles is
hopelessly irreconcileable, and that it is con-
trary to both common sense and conscien-
tiousness to talk of interpreting the one by
the other, he arrives at the conclusion that the
Evangelical party must boldly take up arms
to carry their own point; that they must
destroy their opponents if they would not be
destroyed themselves ; and that the present
is a peculiarly favourable moment for com-
mencing an agitation that shall end in wiping
out every vestige of Catholicism from the
teaching of the Church.
We agree with Mr. Fisher in everything
except his conclusion. We do believe that as
the aim of the Reformation was to widen, and
not to contract, the channel of religious
thought, the Liturgy and Articles of the
Church do respectively represent the tenets
of two theological schools, both of which the
Church, by the mere fact of retaining both
Liturgy and Articles, declares herself able to
embrace. That such was the view of the
Reformers Mr Fisher candidly admits ; and
we all know that it was not upon doctrinal
differences that the Romanists finally seceded
from the Anglican communion. We should
desire, therefore, to adhere to the design of
the great doctors of the Reformation, and to
preserve that latitude of opinion which has
hitherto been one of the greatest blessings of
the national Church. To argue as Mr. Fisher
does, from the decision in the Gorham ease,
that we have now to consider the expediency
of vltering the baptismal service, seems to us
like a reversal of the very principle on which
that decision was founded. The High Church
party had wished to enforce their own theory
of baptism to the exclusion of every other ;
this celebrated judgment forbade it to exer-
cise any such power. It is rather illogical,
therefore, for those who would do precisely the
same with the opposite doctrine to quote that
judgment in their favour.
We give two or three extracts in order to
show that we have not perverted Mr. Fisher's
meaning:—

If, then, the voice of the Church, speaking by her own
accredited authorities, be at all regarded ; it follows, that
her Liturgy must, like every other composition, be esti•
mated simply by its own phraseology; and that any appeal
to the Articles, as being competent to overrule, ab extern°,
its natural signification, is wholly beside the purpose of
the pre sent discussion. Indeed the favourite expression
of those who contend, upon this plea, that there is no real
necessity for alteration, is a singularly unfortunate one for
the credit even of their own cause. They talk of the
Articles "governing " the interpretation of the Liturgy; a

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