The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-29

bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse, to which the Wittenberg Reformers lent ! their sanction? No man has been more detestod by Puritans and people of Pur- 1 itan descent than Archbishop, Laud. l No doubt he was martinet in matters of worship, with a hard and intleXlble temper which made him cast into prls- on and drive out of the kingdom good men whose departures from ritual pre- 1 scrptions were treated as heinous crimes, Yet, while in one sphere mar row and consequently cruel, he was, in reference to theology, compared with i his adversares, broad churchman. In that day of conflict between Calvin ist and Arminian, he would make room for both. Repugnant as are the conceit and tyranny of James l., as they were displayed at the Hampton Court confer ence, when he pitted the prelates against the Puritan divines, we must do him the justice to remember that he ee- nied the request of those divinesTto in- sert in the Anglican creed, as new tests of orthodoxy, the Lambeth articles, with their more rigid formulas of pre- destination. On the one side intoler- ance as to the ritual; on the other, intol- erance as to doctrine. Neither party, according to our idea of freedom, was contending for liberty except for itself.
 When partisan acrimony is reinforced by personal i'll will we have but sorry equipment for impartial judgment. It was not without a shock that some, whose youthful enthusiasm foy Macau- lay was not quenched, read in one of his letters in Trevelyan's Life the bit ter reference to his political antagonist, Crocker, that 'impudent, leering Cro
 ker," as he styles him. and the words that follow this expression: See whether I do not dust that varlets jacket for him in the next number of the Blue and Yellow"-that is, the Edinburgh Review for September, 1881. Macaulay's review of Croker's edition of Boswell is in keeping with the words contained in the letter referred to: Il detest him more than cold boiled veal Lockhart's critique of the Edinburgh article, in the Noctes Ambros anae of Blackwood proves lack of candor and how far it fell short of accuracy. Who ever would fully understand the spirit of exaggeration that characterized Ma caulay should read Spedding's two vol umes, entitled Evenings with a Re- viewer" There it is demonstrated that the famous article on Bacon is but the expansion of Pope's line,
 "The wisest, brightest, meanest of man
 kind"-
 where the last epithet of the poet is a monstrous hyperbole. The marvellous l memory of Macaulay, and his eXtraor- dinary power, from mere recollect on, of conjuring up in his mind pictures of the past, with the circumstances and dates fitted into their places, no doubt ex- plains the occurrence of errors, and partly accounts for his persistency in them when they had been pointed out. But it hardly avails to excuse his fai1- ure to acknowledge such a mistake as the confounding of William Penn, the Quaker, with George Penn, the pardon broker
 There is one question In connection with my subject which Is entitled to special attention. What shall be the criterion of moral judgment respecting characters in the past? What is the right touchstone? Some would say that no verdicts at all are to be rendered, and only the data for them are to be furnished. A man not void of moral earnestness can hardly fasten such a paddock on his lips. Dean Stanley, speaking of his old master, Dr. Arno.d of Rugby remarked to me that he had f seen Arnold, when recurring to some in- iquitous act far back in Roman times, "liv!d with rage" Men of less vigor of conscience will experience emotions of this kind in some degree, and are not {@ -+;a ,,t{ {1,. of
 But what shall be the standard? Shall it be the ethical perceptions of an ad- vanced age? Shall it be the rules of conduct that make up the code of good men to-day? So Lord Acton, in his learned and instructive inaugural ad- dress, on the Study of History, strenu- ously contends. "The weight of opin- ion is against me when l exhort you, so he writes. "never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undyng penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong. The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitigation of punishment is perpetual. At every step we are met by arguments which go to excuse, to palliate, to confound right and wrong, and reduce the just man tc the level of the reprobate." So says , Lord Acton. On the contrary, others are positive that a method of judgment so severe is unrighteous. They contend that men of the past must be judged from the point of view of their contem- porares, and according to the measure of light possessed in their own time There is some confusion among the dis putants on this matter Both parties are right and neither excludes the oth- , CT. On the one hand, the ethical law is not to be let down. The ideal standard 7 is not to be forgotten. The conduct oi
 men of every age may profitably bt ]: brought into comparison with it. Nc such plea for the wicked is to be tolera- ted as amounts to an apology for wick edress. On the other hand, however the question of subjective guilt, or the degree of personal il-desert, is another point. Practical ethics, like the art oi house building, is progressive. Some things are always and everywhere known to be wrong and are abhorrent
 to all men. Yet moral discernment o the right in the concrete advances as
 the day advances from dawn to noon tide Morality continually branches