The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-30 00:00:00

TrIE StJN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 80, 1868

THE •" LIFE OF BURKE."

The following letter has been addressed to
the Athomura : .

SIR,—As you have on former occasions
treated me with great courtesy, I trust you
will now permit me to trespass for a short time
on your columns. In your recent notice of my
" Lectures on the Life, Writings, and Times of
Edmund Burke," you have unwittingly fallen
into some mistakes regarding facts personal to
myself, as well as into some misconceptions as
to the social and intellectual influences of the
Catholic Church. These mistakes and these
misconceptions I will now endeavour, with
your permission, to correct within the shortest
space possible.
You begin by saying " that I was once a
pupil of Be Lamennais, and am now an Ultra-
monta,nist." This sentence seems to imply,
that a change has occurred in my religious
sentiments. I was brought up a Catholic ;
and when, in my youth, I was the friend and
the follower of the Abbe de la Mennais, that
ecclesiastic was then the glory of religion,
and the pride of French literature. The Abbe
de la Mennais, who flourished as a writer from
1808 to 1834, was a very different character
from M. Lamennais, who wrote during the
twenty following years. His fall, more ap-
palling even than that of Tertullian, which
had occurred sixteen hundred years before,
opened in the same life an abyss, which sepa-
rated him from his friends, and even in a
manner from himself. Among the many ser-
vices he rendered to religion in the first por-
tion of his life, not the least was to have
banished the Galilean opinions from the Church
of France, and brought back her clergy to
those views of the Papacy proclaimed by the
French Bishops under Louis XIII., and subse-
quently defended by the great Fenelon. But
in the work you notice, I have had no occasion
to enter upon the consideration of those ques-
tions.
2. You say that when, in my dedicatory
letter to Cardinal Cullen, I assert that Burke
and Johnson would, under more favourable
circumstances, have become Catholics, his
Eminence must have smiled. I know not
whether the assertion will provoke or no a
smile on your part, but I can affirm (and I
trust without indiscretion), that Cardinal
Cullen, in common with many others, holds
that Burke had strong Catholic leanings. The
same assertion was made long ago by the Abbe
de la Mennais, and by the eminent convert,
the Baron d'Eckstein ; and those writers had
not then seen Burke's private correspondence,
published in 1844 by the late Earl Fitzwilliam,
and where the semi-Catholic views and feel-
ings of the illustrious statesman are more pro-
minently set forth.
3. You say " that I have no doubt about my
own qualifications" for the task I undertook.
Such confidence I expressly disclaimed. But
as in the Catholic Church all the religious,
moral, and social truths are brought forward
in their plenitude, their integrity, and their
harmony, the Catholic when treating of meta-
physics, moral and social philosophy, and
modern history, has cceteris paribus, an im-
mense advantage over a Protestant, and still
more an infidel. This advantage would not
be questioned by any well-instructed Catholic.
4. You take exception to my statement,
" that a nation's chief strength lies not in its
political, but in its religious institutions." I
should have thought that even a Pagan philo-
sopher, provided he were not a sceptic or an
epicurean, would not have called so obvious a
truth in question. You tell me,- with a sneer,
that I might have illustrated my statement by
the example of Spain. I accept, Sir, your
illustration. The religious institutions of
Spain are so vigorous, so excellent, that they
have made her people (in the words of Fox's
nephew, the late Lord Holland, who was
anything but friendly to the Catholic Church),
" the most virtuous people in Europe." And
this assertion is cited, and apparently approved
of, by the infidel Buckle. In my last work,
entitled " Lectures on mod. History and
Biography," I showed the excellence of Spain's
political institutions down to the middle of
the sixteenth century, as well as the valuable
remnants which had been preserved even down
to our times.
5. You sneer at me for saying that the
Catholic Church offers " supernatural aids to
virtue in rich abundance, and that there is a
renovating efficacy in her Sacraments." I
have a right to protest that you should attri-
bute to me, as a personal idiosyncracy, a truth
held by two hundred and fifty millions of my
co-religionists, as well as by seventy millions
of Greek schismatics, to say nothing of the
Nestorian and Entychian communities.
6. You receive, with a sarcastic smile, my
assertion that, at the outbreak of the Revo-
lution of 1789, France possessed " not only a
pious and heroic clergy, but a vast multitude
of devoted Christians in every order of the
laity." The defence which Burke made of that
clergy I have fully justified in the work you
have noticed. And I shall say no more at pre-
sent, than to appeal to members of the English
Protestant clergy, aristocracy, anti gentry,
whose immediate predecessors received that
exemplary priesthood with such generous hos-
pitality, and who bore witness to the many
virtues which adorned them. I make bold
to say that England, Wales, and Scotland
cannot show such a peasantry as in 1793
rose in defence of the throne and the altar
in Poitou, Brittany, Lower Normandy, Maine,
and Touraine. In other provinces, doubtless,
under equally favourable circumstances, we
should have witnessed a like religious heroism.
The conduct of the Noblesse of those pro-
vinces is a bright specimen of the country-
gentlemen of France, uncontaminated by the
vices and irreligion that prevailed at the court
and in the capital. In all the intermediate
classes of France many and most devoted
Christians were to be found. This fact is
proved by the zeal and courage evinced by
individuals in all ranks of life during the
reign of Terror ; by the fortitude with which
they suffered imprisonment and death in be-
half of their religion ; by the warm reception
the people gave to Pope Pius VI. and Pope
Pius VII., when they severally entered on
the French territory ; and, lastly, by the ala-
crity with which, on the re-opening of the
churches, the masses thronged round the
altars.
Richard Burke, in a letter to his father,
from Coblenz, notices, too, the happy change
which, in 1791, had already taken place in the
religious and political sentiments of the emi-
grant nobles. It was in the high court nobility,
the moneyed and professional classes, and espe-
cially among the literati, irreligion had, in the
eighteenth century, struck the deepest roots.
7. I had said, that in a Catholic country,
where there is a variety of religions, " the most
religious Catholic statesman would have acted
like Burke ; that is, maintained the internal
government of his own Church, and at the
same time advocated the toleration of the Dis-
senting sects. To this assertion you oppose
the Catholic statesmen of Spain " where there is
no variety of religious." May I not retort upon
you, Sir, your own question, " Are you really
serious?" And must not the most inattentive
of your readers see through the fallacy of your
argument?
8. You say " that I have a fixed idea that
the English press is altogether infidel." If a
man were to say that there was a great deal of
drunkenness in London, would he thereby
declare that all its inhabitants were drunkards?
I complained of the rationalizing section of
the Anglican clergy ; I observed " that Deism
was active and influential in the press ;" and
" that a new school of Materialists had arisen,
supported by considerable talents." And can
any one deny that infidelity in this triple form
is active in the press ? But if I said there
were many elements foreboding destruction to
England, did I deny the hopeful signs ? Did I
not speak of the piety and virtue observable in
all classes of Englishmen, and especially of the
remarkable approximations to Catholic truth,
and of the many conversions to the Catholic
Church, which form so striking a contrast be-

tween the religious temper of the eighteenth
and that of the nineteenth century ?
9. I maintained " that political expediency,
and not natural right, is the measure of politi-
cal power." Such, surely, has been the view of
all law-givers, ancient and modern. They
have apportioned political power to the wants
and the capacity of different classes, and of
different descriptions of men. All classes, and
all individuals in a State have an inherent, ab-
solute right to the protection of life, freedem,
and property, but not to the exercise of legisla-
tive power, for example, or to the election of
legislators.
I never said that the clergy had an inhe-
rent, absolute right to political authority.
Take, for example, the French Senate. It
would be more expedient, more fitting, that the
Episcopal body should be there more powerfully
represented; but to such a representation the
French bishops have no absolute, inherent right.
The same remark will apply to the ancient
nobility of that country.
10. You say that " I make Burke a peg
whereon to hang a world of matter." lam
astonished at such an assertion, when I have
given a summary of all the leading events of
his life, analyzed his chief writings, and some
of them even more fully than Mr. Macknight
himself, in his comprehensive biography. I
have vindicated Burke's political principles
more at length than any of his preceding biogra-
phers ; and, if I have indulged in a disquisition
on political philosophy, it was to develope, and
therefore the better to defend and illustrate,
the political views of the great statesman.
11. As to the immense services which the
Catholic Church has rendered to the cause of
European civilization, I beg to refer you to the
testimony of eminent Protestant historians,
like John von Muller, Luden, Voight, Hurter
before his con version to Catholicism, Leo, and
Guizot. The Reformation came fifteen hundred
years too late to found Christian civilization.
12. You pity me for wearing intellectual
fetters. But in the same way as your belief
in the existence of God, the immortality of the
soul, a state of future rewards and punish-
ments, and in the necessity of prayer, cramps
not, but rather invigorates your intellect, so
the doctrines of the Catholic Church, which
is " the pillar and ground of the truth," and
wherewith, according to the promise of her
Divine Founder, " the Spirit of Truth abideth
for ever," enlarge and illuminate the mind.
That Church emancipates its followers from
the dark superstitions of heathenism, and from
the endless uncertainties of Protestantism, and
has consequently produced the mightiest intel-
ligences that have ever adorned the world,
from the Justins and Clements of the second
century down to the Schlegels, the Gorreses,
the Mohlers, and the De -Maistres, the De
Bonalds, and the Newmans of our time. And
the greatest spirits of Protestantism are pre-
cisely those which have partaken most largely
of the illumination.—l remain, Sir, your most
obedient servant,
J. B. ROBERTSON.
Brompton, Sept. 10, 1868.