LOYALTY AND FAITH.
THE discuszion between the Times, Sir George Bowyer, and Archbishop Manning on the possibility of Ultranaontane loyalty has been to some extent a scuffle in the dark,—the Times wishing to raise a prejudice, and the Archbishop, in his anxiety to vindicate himself and his co-religionists, not being particularly desirous to put the admissions of his own lecture in their clearest light. It does not seem to us to admit of a doubt that any earnestly held faith, whatever it may be, if it really exercises a formative and re-constructive influence upon the wishes and aims of the inmost life, must essentially affect the political sympathies and antipathies of those in whose hearts it reigns. Take, for instance, the Quaker creed. That is a creed which, as usually held, forbids all military organisation, and imposes the duty of non-resistance, of passive submission to violence. Well, is it possible for Quakers, even when their country has what, if any cause of war could be in their eyes good, they would call a good cause, to be heartily in sympathy with their country when going to war? We know that it is not possible,—that the Quakers have again and again protested against such wars, and have gone to our adversaries—as they did to Nicholas before the Crimean war—to entreat and expostulate in precisely the same humble terms as they did with the British Government. No one could call that 'loyalty,'—except in the sense in which it might be esteemed loyalty to his School on the part of a Winchester boy to have declared during the recent disputes that the system of tunding and prmfectural discipline was thoroughly bad, and was not to be defended. So far as loyalty consists in taking that side of a quarrel espoused by the great majority of the society to which you belong, it is perfectly obvious that any influence which separates you from that majority, must tend to diminish what will ordinarily be called your loyalty.' You may not love the society the less for that difference of inward principle ; nay, you may love it the more, and be willing to sacrifice everything to save it from the destiny to which it appears to you to be rushing through its own self-will ; but where such a profound difference of inward principle affects only one in a hundred in such a society, it is hardly possible that you can be loyal to the society Of which you are a member in the same sense in which the other ninety-nine in every hundred members use the term 'loyal.' History is full of the proof that this cannot be so. The Christians were not and could not be loyal Jews during the last Jewish struggle for independence. They had different notions from the nationalist Jews 48 to that in which the good of the society to which they belonged consisted,-and the consequence was they were disloyal to the predominant Judaic win of patriotism. No doubt they knew themselves to be the true patriots in disapproving and resisting the great revolt. But that is just the point. As far as regarded the appearances of the time, their patriotism was not patriotism, but a prudent submissiveness to the overwhelming power of Rome. And the same thing has happened again and again. During the Huguenot wars, for example, the French Protestants aided sometimes secretly but powerfully the enemies of France, because they wished to see the Catholics suffer a defeat. And of course, the same thing has frequently happened on the other side. When the State was Protestant, the Catholics hoped to reintroduce the old order of things, and of course their sympathies overrode their feelings of loyalty in the smaller sense of the term,—or say, if that form of expression is more agreeable, their higher loyalty to the nation, as they prayed to see it, over-rode their sympathy with the majority of the nation as it was,—and the result was what the greater part of their fellow-countrymen regarded as utter disloyalty. Nor can we see how it is to be otherwise. So long as faith has a higher influence on the mind than mere habitual sympathy, if that faith, whether Protestant or Catholic, or neither one nor the other, is in conflict with the faith of the majority of the nation, there must be a clashing of aims, and the higher and more religious aim must get the better of the others and make ends seem in the highest sense noble rand even loyal, which the nation at large regards as ignoble and disloyal. It is only the fulfilment of the prophecy, "I am come not to send peace but a sword ;" "from henceforth there all all be fi ve in one house divided, three agai nst two, and two against three ; the father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father ; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother ; the mother-in- law against the daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law." And so far as opposite principles of faith really predominate over different sections of the same nation,—be the root of their opposition what it may,—this deep antagonism between the different notions of loyalty and disloyalty must con- tinue. If, for example, Lord John Russell's Italian policy in 180, had been supported by force of arms, it is simply impossible that the fundamental differences of faith which showed themselves in the formation of an English volunteer force for Garibaldi, and an Irish volunteer legion for the Pope, should not have broken out into bitterer prominence. It is simply inconceivable that Roman Catholics could have supported loyally the Government that should have lent its aid to Cavour, or that the Protestants should have supported loyally any Government which should have adopted Mr. Disraeli's advice of supporting the late French Emperor's notion of Italian federation, on the ground that it would have saved the temporal power of the Pope. The different seeds of different faiths must have brought forth different fruits; and of course the British people would have called the wish that our arms might fail in sustaining Count Cavour's policy,—had our arms been so employed in Italy,—a disloyal wish ; and the Roman Catholics would simply have had to bear the imputation of dis- loyalty as best they might ; just as in a milder form the "Man- chester School" had to bear the imputation of disloyalty when its leaders constantly and bitterly attacked the policy of the Crimean war, and did what in them lay to put an end to that war before the purpose for which the British Government waged it was attained.
But then the Roman Catholics reply,—and there is great force in their reply,—that whatever divergence there may be between their sympathies in relation to foreign politics and the sympathies of the majority of the British people, their own principles as Catholics, the very principles of their canon law, enjoin obedience to the Civil authority in all matters which, properly belong to the province of the civil authority ; and that this so far from being true of most Protestants is usually quite the opposite of true. No doubt ; and there, as far as outward actions go, their loyalty clearly has a great advantage over that of more exigeant spiritual faiths, which claim the absolute direction not only of the inward sentiments, but of the outward actions. If England were at war with a Roman Catholic country on any point not absolutely essential to the Roman Catholic system, undoubtedly it would be the duty of Roman Catholics, however much they might have opposed the war, and however much they might dislike it, to obey their own government, and give it all the support of good citizens, while Quakers, for instance, who opposed it only as war, and not on account of the special cause involved, might feel it their duty to go to prison rather than lend it any support, and other Dissenters might feel bound to revolt actively against the principle of an anti-Protestant war. But that is only saying that the Roman Catholic system enjoins constant respect and submis- sion to the powers that be, just as the early Christians were en- joined to pay constant respect and submission in all matters not of faith to the Roman Government. That, however, by no means implies the sentiment of loyalty, the hearty wish for the success of the nation to which you belong ; it implies only deference to its external orders. We do not see how it is possible that the indi- vidual sentiment should not be guided by the character of the faith. If any man thinks his nation's cause a bad one, even though he lends it support, under the belief that internal order and harmony are even more important than the international question at issue, he can hardly desire its unqualified triumph. To him, true patriotism must consist in wishing for some consummation which may open his fellow-citizens' eyes to the error of their ways, and such a wish must appear to those fellow-citizens essentially un- patriotic.
There is, then, as far as we can see, no possibility that any faith which runs down into principles different from those by which the national life is mainly governed can help being at times inimical to loyalty. Republican principles of the deepest propagandist character are constantly inimical to the loyalty of subjects of a monarchy,—as Algernon Sydney, for instance, showed when he intrigued with France against the restored English monarchy. Quaker principles, as we have seen, are sometimes inimical to loyalty when they condemn all war as evil. Protestant principles, when held by a sect in a nation predominately Roman Catholic, have been fatal to loyalty. Roman Catholic principles, when held by a sect in a Protestant nation, have been fatal to loyalty. Nor can we imagine any deep faith held by a minority only of a nation which does not threaten the loyalty of those who hold it ;—unless, indeed, that faith of a minority be the one suggested the other day by the Pall Mall Gazette, that the nation itself is better worth believing-in than any faith whatever. Such unquestionably was the faith of the Romans, who believed more in Rome than in any religion or creed whatever. Such, as far as we can see, is the faith of a great proportion of the new party of German Liberals, who want to make "Germania locate est " the dictum of a sort of divine authority revealed through the voice of the German people. And no doubt it is conceivable that Great Britain might come to believe in a similar creed, in a sort of quasi- divinity inspiring the ends and aims of British subjects all the world ova, which would constitute a greater claim on the adhesion and obedience of individual Britons than any conceivable moral or religious creed. Anyone holding such a view as this would be com- pelled to be loyal,.because in his opinion the nation itself would be so much more important than any course it might choose to oppose, that even if you thought its policy wrong, you ought to prefer ex animo a bad cause supported by your own people to a good cause supported by any other people. And undoubtedly, if you wanted to be always loyal, that must be your position. It would be the only guarantee for a permanent loyalty of soul. Unfortu- nately such a creed could hardly be wide-spread, could hardly be adopted by a majority of any nation, without a strong presumption that the national life was pretty well exhausted. When any people has so far lost faith in anything higher than itself, that it comes to regard its chief duty as being self-propagandism, we may be pretty sure that the spell of its influence is fast vauishing. It is far better to have elements of difference and disloyalty in a people, springing from the conflict of deeper faiths, than to have the only conceivable guarantee for universal loyalty, —a universal agreement that our own triumph, even when we are wrong, is always better than anyone else's triumph, even though they should be right. The mere dictatorial self-assertion of a race is the last sign of its vital exhaustion. We do not see why men should be afraid to admit that there is a germ of possible disloyalty in their faith. There has again and again been such a germ in almost all faiths that were good for anything. There was such an element in the Jewish faith of men like Jeremiah, in the Christian faith of men like St. Paul, in the Italian faith of men like Dante, in the Romanist faith of Sir Thomas More, in the Calvinist faith of Knox, and in the Puritan faith of Hampden and Cromwell. The deeper faiths have always over-ridden mere political sympathies, and so it must be till faiths begin to strike no deeper than the political stratum of thought. And when that time coines,—though apparently desired by a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette—political faiths will cease, we expect, to be much worth having.
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