when unaccompanied with malignancy, did not expose a clergyman to ejection from his living. The learning of some of the clergy in the "Centurie" is admitted even by their traducer, White, who says- "And let not the learning of some few of these men (for which if they had any grace to use it well they were considerable) move thee to think they be hardly dealt with, for learning in a man unsanctified is but a pearle in a swine's snout." Our readers are prepared to expect that the character of Archbishop Laud would be virulently assailed by a man who could pen such passages as those which we have already submitted to their notice. With respect, indeed, to Laud's death, Dr. Vaughan has out-Heroded Herod himself, for he has actually justified his execution; whereas all respectable writers admit that the step could not be defended :— "The charge of treason against Laud may not seem to have been clearly sustained in the articles of impeachment preferred against him, but it must be remembered that the man who conspires to defraud the subject of his chartered rights, which it is certain was the case here, must be understood to do so, not merely without the concurrency but against the command of the king. Whether an attempt to destroy the fundamental laws of the kingdom be treason or not, is a question which we shall have occasion presently to consider; but that the conduct of such ministers as the Archbishop of Canterbury makes them justly liable to impeachment is certain."-p. 329. If this is not an attempt to justify the execution of Laud, we are greatly mistaken. We ask, then, what right have The Society for the Diffusion of USEFUL Knowledge to sanction as their own the private opinions of such a man as Dr. Vaughan?—opinions which were never held by any respectable writer. Does the Society profess to impart true knowledge to the middling classes by circulating direct falsehoods? We would not allude to Laud's panygerists, but we would refer our readers to such writers as Mr. Hallam-men who have no prejudices in favour of the Archbishop. The Society will scarcely feel themselves justified in taking a position which that gentleman would condemn. In alluding to the Archbishop's execution, Mr. Hallam remarks with great force and truth "The most unjustifiable act of these zealots, and one of the greatest reproaches of the Long Parliament, was the death of Archbishop Laud. In the first days of the session, while the fall of Strafford struck every one with astonishment, the Commons had carried up an impeachment against him for high treason, in fourteen articles of charge; and he had lain ever since in the tower, his revenues and even private estate sequestered, and in great indigence. After nearly three years' neglect, specific articles were exhibited against him in October, 1643, but not proceeded on with vigour till December, 1644; when, for whatever reason, a determination was taken to pursue this unfortunate prelate to death. Nothing could be more monstrous than the allegation of treason in this case."* Every event, respecting which parties have ever been at issue, seems to be perverted by Dr. Vaughan, in order to inflict a portion of obloquy on the Church of England, her bishops, or the Stuart sovereigns. Thus the massacre in 1641, of which it might reasonably be supposed none but Papists would speak without horror, is softened down and almost justified. "It had been provoked principally by the tyranny of Strafford, raging most in those quarters where his capacity had been chiefly exercised; but must also be traced to those laws against the Catholic (Papist) worship, any relaxation of which was more strongly opposed by the majority of the Protestant settlers than by the viceroy."-p. 345. We are not aware that any such cause has been assigned for the Irish massacre by any respectable authority. Certain it is that Dr. Vaughan has cited none. In all those cases in which he makes statements never before put forth, he takes special care not to mention the authority on which he professes to ground his assertions. This is a crafty, but a very dishonest course. It is true that he cannot be charged with mistaking or perverting his authorities, but he is exposed to a still heavier charge, that of publishing on his own authority statements which are directly at variance with the truth. Mr. Hallam says "The rebellion broke out, as is well known, by a sudden massacre of the Scots and English in Ulster, designed, no doubt, by a vindictive and bigoted people to extirpate those races." Not one word is mentioned by Mr. Hallam respecting Strafford or the penal laws as the cause of the massacre; but Dr. Vaughan is in alliance with Papists for political objects, and he must speak softly of them and their Church. The tyranny of Strafford and the laws against Catholic (Roman) worship were the causes of the massacre! The poor Papists, according to this veracious writer, were actually goaded into the perpetration of the massacre of the oppressive Protestants. Truly Dr. Lingard himself could not set up a better defence for the Irish Papists. Both these gentlemen labour to remove the odium of the massacre from the popish religion; but Dr. Lingard's hypothesis is far more probable than Dr. Vaughan's, though the latter is a profess Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. ii. 228, 229. † Hallam, iii, 520, ing Protestant and a dissenting minister. Dr. Lingard attributes the massacre to the unconstitutional proceedings of the English Parliament.* This is far more probable than that it was caused by Strafford, and the penal laws against popery: but Dr. Vaughan will not say one word against his friends the Parliamentarians: he is too great a lover of the Parliament and too much of an enemy to the king to do that: nor dare he say one word against popery, because, at the present moment, Dissenters and Papists are linked together in one common brotherhood. He has, therefore devised a new scheme which he has sent forth under the auspices of a public society, and he expects it to be credited and received on his own unsupported authority. A little reflection would have shewn him its inconsistency. On many occasions he charges the court and the bishops with countenancing popery; but in speaking of the massacre, he insinuates that the severity practised against the Papists was the cause of the Irish rebellion. At one time he alleges the charge of popery against the government; at another that of severity towards the Papists by enacting laws against their worship; and in the previous extract he actually declares that the massacre was caused in part by those penal laws. He, of course, disapproves of those laws-laws, be it remembered, enacted by a government whom he frequently charges with countenancing popery; and yet the Parliamentarians, whom he admires, proceeded to enact laws more stringent than those of which he complains. The first volume closes with the death of Charles I., who does not meet with much favour at the hands of our author. Nay, he is not willing to grant that he displayed any talent in the discussion on Church government with Henderson, the Scottish Presbyterian : "The disputants ended where they had begun, and victory was claimed by the partisans of each; but it is no reflection on the monarch to suppose him the inferior of a man whose days had been spent in exploring the sources of ecclesiastical learning, instead of being given to the frivolities of a court, or distracted by the cares of government and of civil war."-p. 427. In a note he expresses his opinion that the papers which were published as the production of Charles proceeded from the pen of Clarendon. Thus he would insinuate that no credit is due to his Majesty-in short, that his arrows were taken from another man's quiver. It has been said that Henderson was * Lingard, x. 41. measured weapons with Rome and bowed to her power. Again Carthage arose in her might, shook the empire of Rome to its very base, devastated her territory, massacred her armies, and all but annihilated her fleets; and then fell from her independent state, and became Rome's most powerful subject. During half a century she bore, with patience, the imperiousness of Rome and the depredations of Rome's ally, Massinissa. At last the power of endurance was overtaxed, and Carthage fell. The ruthless old man had spoken her doom. The destruction of this great city, the first in the commercial world of that day, accomplished by cool, deliberate treachery, without provocation from its defenceless inhabitants (who had thrown themselves on the generosity of their masters), was a fine specimen of the cold-blooded policy so successfully cultivated by Rome-one more blot on her already dimmed escutcheon. Swept as was Carthage from the face of the earth, did she leave no record of her sorrows? Has no native poet, orator, philosopher, or historian, left us his record of how men thought and acted within her walls? Not one! "There were Carthaginian writers, we know (says Dr. Arnold). Sallust had heard translations of passages in their historical records; and the Roman senate, when Carthage was destroyed, ordered Mago's book of Agriculture to be translated into Latin. Nor were geographical accounts of their voyages of discovery wanting; but of poets, orators, and philosophers, we hear nothing. It was a Greek who gave what may be called the Carthaginian account of the first Punic war; it was to two Greeks that Hannibal committed the task of recording his own immortal expedition into Italy. Thus Carthage, not having spoken of what was in her heart, it has passed, along with herself, into destruction; and we can now only know something of what she did, without understanding what she was." What a stern lesson does this utter destruction of so rich, so powerful a state, read to the vain-glorious nations of our own day: not one stone left upon another; the relics of her language, a few lines in a Latin play;* not a remnant of her poetry, her *We subjoin a few of the lines of Hanno's speech, that our readers may perceive a near relation of the Punic to the Hebrew "N'yth alonim valonuth sicorath iismason sith, Plauti Panulus, Act i. Scene i. The entire relic contains about sixteen lines, many of which are dotted with semi-Latin words. This, we believe, is the only specimen of the language now extant. philosophy, or her oratory; the whole account of her once famous constitution, a few pages of dark hints in Aristotle, eked out by a chapter in Polybius, a few confused paragraphs in Livy, or a careless sentence or so in Justin. Of all her piles and palaces, there remains not the fragment of a potsherd to take up water! It were no difficult task, though most unsatisfactory, to repeat the wise deductions of those Roman writers who have left us their ideas of what Carthage was and what she did. But those writers saw through such deeply tinted glasses, that their every word requires a careful scrutiny: so imbued were they with the spirit of the Roman constitution, so constantly had they its forms and offices before their eyes, that, seeking for parallels where they wished to find them, every thing in their sight was Roman. The few pages of Aristotle's politics form therefore, our first and only good authority in investigating the polity of Carthage; and were we not sufficiently urged to that investigation by the desire of endeavouring to discover by what internal rules so great an empire was conducted, the approving verdict of that great master-πολιτεύεσθαι δέ δοκοῦσι καὶ καρχηδόνιοι καλῶς the only direct approval registered in his work of all the many constitutions reviewed therein, would in our eyes be no trifling excuse for occupying some few pages with the investigation. On this able and judicious constitution (for were we entirely ignorant of its internal machinery, the fact of its never having suffered to any material extent from either a faction or a tyrant, up to the time of Aristotle, would warrant us in so designating it) Dr. Arnold seems to have bestowed too little time and attention, to render his account of the Carthaginian polity worthy of his History: content to follow the deductions of Heëren and Klüge, rather than to bestow on it that diligence in investigation which characterises the remainder of his valuable work. When we consider the influence which a parent state naturally exercises over an infant colony-the admiration entertained by the majority of all classes for their ancient form of governmentthe utter improbability, if not impossibility, of such a mixed and complicated polity as that of Carthage having been sent out ready-made along with the original colonists-that in the natural order of events a tyranny rises out of a monarchy or a democracy -that we have the word of Aristotle that a tyranny did precede the mixed government of Carthage*-and, lastly, the improba * αλλὰ μεταβάλλει και εις ἀριστοκρατίαν τυραννὶς ὥσπερ εν Καρχηδόνι. Pol. v. 10. |