THE WHIG CREED. THE WHIG CREED. T HE English public is
apt to be a little too jealous of the dignity of its statesmen. When everybody who has studied Irish politics at all is pouring out his ideas on the impending changes, Lord Russell, who has declined the practical responsibilities of office, is violently upbraided on all sides for contributing his quotum to the public opinion now in process of crystallization, because people choose to assume that a statesman who has so often spoken as the leader of a great party should not condescend to become a mere pamphleteer. Surely that is Lord Russell's business, rather than ours If he thinks a small service better than none, now that he can no longer undertake a greater service, the English public should feel obliged to him for thinking so little of his dignity and so much of the cause which he has at heart. Lord Derby may very likely again accuse his ancient rival of the restless desire to meddle in all public affairs ; but we do not think that a statesman is the less noble for keenly thirsting after the old interests after he has ceased to feel equal to the old burdens. We do not, it is true, had much that is novel or striking in Lord Russell's third letter to Mr. Chichester Fortescue, but we do not admire the old champion of justice to the people the less for his intolerance of passivity in the great battle of opinion now waging in the country. There is something gained for the earnestness of the struggle in the mere evidence that an emeritus statesman of the first rank cannot help brooding over the question that agitates the country, and brooding with an intensity which at least persuades himself that he can contribute something material to the formation of a true opinion. We cannot join them in the harsh criticism which Lord Russell's pamphlet has received from Liberals and Tories alike. It is true, as it seems to us, that he contributes little more than a certain addition of moral impulse to the just solution of the Irish problem ; that his particular recommendation of an equal grant in aid to the three principal Irish religions,—Episcopal Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian,—is specially unfortunate, as not only obsolete, but entirely failing to realize that abstract justice which is the most essential condition of a true solution ; since, if concurrent endowment were still a possible and tenable policy at all, it should be endowment in proportion to the needs, and therefore the numbers of the poorest class belonging to the three different religions ; and finally, that his proposals on the land question are very shadowy. Still it is something to know that Lord Russell feels so strongly about the Irish question, that he is eager to fight even as a pamphleteer on the Liberal side. We may, perhaps, say, to borrow something of Lord Russell's somewhat antiquated historical style, that as it was a good omen for Athens when it showed the vigour to repel the attack of the Corinthians by an improvized army of old men left at home because they were too aged for warfare,—an army which took the field at a few hours' notice under the command of Myronides, so it is a good omen for the Liberal party now, that its most aged statesman can show himself at least far more than equal to the defeat of the enemy, though not, perhaps, the safest counseller of its chosen leaders.
We confess, however, that our own interest in Lord Russell's pamphlet is due more to the characteristic fashion in which the old Whig leader treats moral feelings, religious creeds, and Christian Churches, than to any special political recommendations it contains. The Pall Mall remarks on the oddity of the "Mr." which Lord Russell prefixes to the names of Somers, Burke, Fox, Pitt, Grey, and Canning, while he speaks of Hallam, Crabbe, and Southey without that formal appendage. It is to our ears the key to the Whig posture of mind, which always assumes a real reverence when it approaches any of the great eras of the guiding and planting of the gospel of the Constitution,—of which the old covenant was inaugurated by Somers, and the new by Fox,—a reverence in comparison to which its attitude towards churches and religious creeds is mere easy familiarity and patronizing friendship. The awe with which Lord Russell quotes Somers, Burke, and Fox, anxiously quoting the very texts, and expounding them much as a strict Evangelical will expound the Bible at family prayers, is in quite a curious contrast to the easy generalizations with which he sweeps over the Christian world, commending all the sects and churches for their substantial piety,—describing the adoration of the mass at St: Peter's, and the naked worship of the persecuted Presbyterian on a Scotch moor, and summing up the most complicated controversies with a genial indifference that is quite refreshing. Thus, Lord Russell diverges casually,—for half a page or so,—into the question what is idolatry ?—of which, by the way, his discussion is vague and indeterminate in the very highest conceivable degree ; his sentence apparently being that the Roman Catholics are not idolatrous, because they don't justify indulgences which affect to give people licence' to sin in future, a heresy the connection of which with idolatry it is not very easy to discover. The Whig sect evidently exhausts that textualism, that tendency to believe in a sort of verbal inspiration, that delight in accurate authority and careful exegesis, which most men reserve for the religious department of life, and some for a favourite literary author, on the constitutional lawgivers of the Whig race. Lord Russell is a sort of walking Talmud on the subject of the constitutional principles introduced since the Revolution of 1688, and he has expended so intense a vitality on this sort of literalism, that on questions of an ecclesiastical and theological nature he seems to have no particle of interest even to the extent of individualizing the points at issue. The baldness of his generalizations on the latter class of distinctions, the minuteness of his refinements on the former, are in quite a refreshing and amusing contrast. He does not, indeed, go quite as far as Pope, and speak of "Jehovah, Jove, and Lord," and the worship of "saint, of savage, and of sage," as all one ; but he comes asnear it as he can with a real preference for Christianity of some kind ; and what makes it so much more grotesque in him than in Pope, is that on all questions of political constitutionalism he speaks like a Pharisee of the Pharisees, to 'whom the misreading of a letter in the sacred text would, seem a blasphemy. Note only Lord Russell's minuteness and lucidity in expounding the great Whig creed on the subject of the Sovereign's Coronation Oath,—why it binds the Throne in its executive but not in its legislative capacity,—and then turn to the raw and bald generalizations, on the strength of which he pronounces his Whig blessing on all forms of Christianity, with a half-suppressed sigh at their many distinctions,—(just as if they did not all come to nearly the same thing in the end !)—and it is impossible not to smile at the, strange and complete transfer of the textual spirit from religion to politics which marks the great Whig leader.
It is said that Lord Torrington once sent home a despatch from Ceylon speaking in eulogistic terms of the worship of Buddha's tooth, which he thought much safer for the Singhalese than therevolutionary disposition nourished by pure scepticism. Lord Russell is evidently a man of genuine Christian feeling, and does. not include the worship of Buddha's tooth in the religions which the State is bound to support and religious people to respect and we are far from objecting to his genuine appreciation forwhat is good in Roman Catholicism, or Presbyterism, or any' other form of Christianity ; it is not the appreciation, but thetone of patronage about his praise, which resembles Lord Torrington's encomium on the worship of Buddha's tooth. Lord Russell's approbation of all Christian religions is, as it were, the approbation arising out of a bird's-eye view,—the view which is. elevated too high above the ground to observe any distinction of sufficient importance to arrest the overflow of a statesman's praise. Take this passage, for instance : "Roman Catholic doctrines may appeal more powerfully to the imagination ; Protestant doctrines may appeal more powerfully to the understanding ; but they all appeal to the heart. One form may commend itself more to the Irishman, the Italian, and the Spaniard the other to the Briton, the Dane, and the Swede ; but these are all Christians.. Let us not be mistaken with regard to this matter. When the Roman Catholic, Christian bends in devout worship the elevation of the Host in St 's, amid the strains of sacred music, the pouring-forth of" incense se oenthe fragrant air, and the voices and the gestures and the rich vestments of priests consecrated to the service of the Most High, he. tenders the homage which he believes the most suitable from thehumble creature to the Almighty Creator, Preserver, and Saviour of mankind. But so also the persecuted Presbyterian, when be traversed the barren moor, and crossed the flooded river ; when he sought in the waste and, the solitary places a mountain side where, with no other roof than the inclement sky, and no other floor than tho damp heath, hemight pour forth willa his fellows in faith the sublime Psalm whieh taught that, among the swords of a slaughtering host, and away from, the dungeons of a tyrant, there was still a refuge for those who besought Almighty God for his pardon and His blessing ; he W SIS a true sincere Christian, and felt assured of acceptance by the Lord, the Maker of theWorld. the Sovereign of the Universe.
What is now in peril is not the Established Church of Ireland or the. Established Church of England; it is Christianity itself. What is to be feared is not the increased influence of the Church of Rome, or the progress of the Protestant Liberation Society, but the progress of sceptical opinions, denounced equally by the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Orleans and the Presbyterian Dr. Macleod—opinions which would deprive religion of its authority in making good men and good subjects."
This is indeed the a&-extra view of the Christian religions. The Whigcatechism would include a verycareful catechetical inquiry as to the form of the Coronation Oath, and the reasons which make it lawful for great nobles to throw off their allegiance to a bad dynasty,—but on the subject of religion it would only ask, as follows, "Q. What is the Christian faith which statesmen are bound to protect ?" A. "As much as is held in common by the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and advanced Presbyterians."
There is something very odd in the fact that the Whigs take so much more of an ab-extra view of Churches than statesmen of other schools, and we can only account for it by supposing that it is because their political creed is so much more dogmatic, so much more of the nature of an authoritative tradition based on sacred documents, than the political creed of other parties in the State, and that they have, therefore, no insight left for similar bodies of dogmatic and exegetic thought in another region of inquiry. Just as strait-laced adherents of a sectarian creed in religion are apt to take a very raw and bald view of politics, strait-laced adherents of a sectarian creed in politics are apt to take a very raw and bald view of religions. They have their law and their prophets, their old and new dispensations, in the political world, and do not of course feel attracted to the same sort of thing in another sphere. Lord Russell is almost the last of his sect. But he must not wonder if his eloquent patronage of various forms of Christianity, as seen from afar, should fail to undermine the prejudices of those who have all their life long been taught to contemplate them from close at hand.
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