The Sun.
London, England, 1834-07-29 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

THE EDINBURGHREVIEW, No. CXX.
Longman and Co. July, 1834.
Ignorance and Toryism—kindred and congenial powers—
have both sad times of it at present. From the scathing,
withering, consuming lightning of Heaven, down to the
baby-brand with which infancy seeks to enliven the shell-
erected dwelling for a creature of silken shreds and
painted wood, every fire appears kindled, every' torch
borne in a direction to discover and expose the baneful in-
fluence which these demons are exercising over the affairs,
and feelings, and passions, and morality of mankind. They
must sink together ; for such is their necessary relation to
each other--such is their mutual dependence—that an at-
tempt to separate matter from form would not be more
ridiculous, than an effort to destroy the one and preserve
the other. But the " Blue and Yellow" aims at nothing
of the kind. It is a mighty mass of God's own thunder,
hurled at the heads of both.
The present number is more than usually rich in scien-
tifical, ethical, and political knowledge. The opening
paper on Mr. Babbage's Calculating Machine, is most elabo-
rately written ; embodying a fund of mathematical know-
ledge which renders it invaluable to men of practical science.
We agree in the justice of the Reviewer's observations on
the debt of gratitude which is due from every country to
such benefactors and ornaments of their race as Mr. Bab-
bage. Trades Unions and Strikes, is a clever exposition
of the folly, the danger, and the loss of all combination on
the part of either masters or men to raise or depreciate
wages. In England and France they have been the signals
of general distress, and- in many -cases, of absolute ruin.
Nothing can be more false than that masters and men
can have distinct and conflicting interests ; and yet upon
this position rests the whole system of combination. Still
we are by no means of opinion that the Reviewer has said
all that might be said or ought to be said on this subject.
He has certainly neglected a most important part in failing
to point out, as he might easily have done, the misery to
which strikes reduced the silk weavers at Lyons, and the
Unionists of every association in this country since the
year 1827. Mrs. Radcliffe's Poetical Works, is written
by a person who well understood the genius of that most
extraordinay woman. But of what admirer of her prose
works might not as much be said ? Few writers of
all that ever wrote possessed a power of personi-
fying themselves in their works to the full and exact extent
that she did. We remember well the awe, and horror, and
creeping dread with which her pages impressed us ; when
we held the very book closer to our breast, and after creep-
ing into bed, dared not change our position, lest our eyes
should encounter some haggard beldame, or scowling monk
bent over us, armed with a dagger or drugged goblet.
Neither can we quite agree with, the Reviewer, that she was
herself a stranger to the fears 'with which she " harrowed
up" the souls of others. Unless we are more or less under
the influence of the passions, we can never wield them with
such dexterity and truth, as to make them raise correspond-
ing emotions in the breasts of those to whom we address
ourselves ; nor is the influence of fear less felt because
known to be groundless.
But the article which will excite the most deep reflections
—which will soonest make its way. to the head and heart of
every thinking man in the couhtry, is Tyler on Oaths. It
is a curious, an able, but a sad record of. English ex-
travagance in the article of adjuration. Our annual
consumption of oaths is truly enormous, and right glad
are we to find that even at this late period of the
world's existence, inquiries are being set on foot to di-
minish it. The great difficulty appears to be in fixing
on some less awful, and in many cases, blasphemous
means of obliging men to speak the truth. Yet this seems
impossible without abolishing oaths altogether, unless men
agree that there is an intrinsic holiness in certain sounds,
or combinations of matter, independent of what is con-
ceded to it by that common consent which raises it up an
arbiter of truth. The Reviewer does not tell us that in
countries in which the gospels are not used as a form of
adjuration, that which is, even among Christians, is gene-
rally regarded as more sacred ; though it might be worth
while to inquire whether objects are sworn by because
they are previously believed to be sacred, or whether such
sacredness is awarded to them because they are objects of
adjuration. Thus, for instance, the common people in
Ireland generally swear by the cross and the altar ; priests
in Ireland by their vestments, the altar, or the mass which
they either have, or are about to celebrate ; the people of
Spain by their patron saints, or the founders of the orders
in which they enrol themselves ; the people of Scotland,
even in courts of justice, by holding up the right hand, and
appealing to God as he shall sit in judgment. Now, in all
these instances, with the exception of the last, the gospels
are relinquished in swearing, not out of the want of any
veneration for them, but because the substitutes used
for them excite a greater degree or awe in the minds
of the people of Ireland and Spain : and therefore it
becomes a theological question, whether an Irish Ca-
tholic, swearing by the Cross to the truth of that which
he knows to be false, is not as much guilty,of perjury in
the sight of God as if the averment was made on the
Evangelists.
But a still further consideration on the subject convinces
us that oaths, among an educated people, are wholly unne-
cessary, and the sooner they are abolished the better. The
Reviewer well observes, that men sleep as soundly before
the King has taken the Coronation Oath as they do after ;
and that although there were a thousand times more oaths
sworn formerly than there is at present, the world has lost
nothing in allegiance, order, or good faith, under the re-
laxed system. Hear himself on this point
The oath was formerly a regular part of every treaty. Let
jurists make out their lists of the broken faith of nations, and put
the sworn treaties of the thirteenth, and the unsworn ones of the
nineteenth century, in contrast with each other. Modern diplo-
macy need not blush. Formerly, the entire male population was
sworn to its allegiance. In England, boys, as soon as they were
twelve years old, attended the Court Leet for that purpose. We
do not know when this comedy was played for the last time.
But there can be no doubt, that it would be a much more difficult
thing to get a single village to turn out into rebellion now, than
it would have been for party leaders to bring out the suitors of
the Court Leets of half the kingdom into the field against their
king. Have oaths of religious allegiance been more successful ?
The Council of Toulouse (A. D. 1129) required of the laity,
that at the age of twelve, (an age which Bishop Philpotts will
admit to be sufficiently early for the responsibilities of technical
divinity,) they should swear to a formulary of faith. The very
necessity, that the Council of Trent could have occasion in its
day to decree that all Catholics should swear to obey the Canons
and the See of Rome, was in itself a proof of the insufficiency of
the precaution which it was once more in the act of recommend-
ing. While the Roman Catholics, however, were profiting by
experience, and this last provision was afterwards wisely limited
to ecclesiastics, the German Protestants became alarmed lest the
annual elections in the imperial cities, and the fluctuating policy
of princes, might check the Reformation. Under this apprehen-
sion the Protestant laity were subjected to an oath of religion
equally stringent, by the supporters of the Augsburgh Confession,
by Luther, and by Calvin. How strange that while the Protes-
tant faith was, by the very fact of its existence, a proof of the
fallibility of this criminal expedient to stop inquiry, they should
imagine it could do for the catechisms of to-day, what it had failed
in accomplishing for the decrees of Councils and the authority of
the Fathers ! The Acts of Uniformity, passed in behalf of
the
Church of England, did not attain their object. No invention of
the kind can. But the Church of England spared itself the dis-
grace of this useless perjury. If the oath ex officio only multi-
plied Dissenters, who can say what reaction might not have fol-
lowed a measure of this description? Looking at the pages of
Sleidan, Seckendorff, and Arnold, and at the religious history of
Germany, England might have had to pass through strange
scenes of contradiction, schism, and confusion, before it arrived
at the age of toleration and repose. Notwithstanding all his ortho-
doxy, the military Chancellor of Oxford has not yet proposed to
swear the population at large to the Thirty-nine Articles' of
Christianity."
And yet, notwithstanding this falling off in our national
expenditure of oaths, a return laid before the House of
Commons states the number taken before the Board of
Customs in 1830 to be no fewer than 101,596 and before
the Board of Excise 194,612 ! while the :consumption at
Chelsea only is estimated at 320,000 !
Tory Proceedings—State of Parties, is a capital hit
at the aristocratic proceedings at Oxford. The re-
marks on the secession of Sir James Graham and
Mr. Stanley, from the Cabinet, cannot fail to make a deep,
lasting, and wholesome impression on the minds of
these gentlemen. We trust, that in all respects they are
as just, as when written they were judicious ; for they were
written during the interregnum in the Administration. The
article contains paragraphs more racy than the following ;
but we never saw it equalled as a fair statement of the
question which produced the actions upon which it is a
commentary :
" The church is not a corporation ; all lawyers admit this. It
has no legal name or existence, as a body, different from the rest
of the community. It consists in the faithful—' the body of faith-
ful men,' according to the definition in the Thirty-nine Articles ;
and the laity are just as much component parts of it as the clergy.
The error consists in confounding church and clergy. The clergy
have property ; but the church has none, and can have done. But