charitable his disposition, the more comprehensive his views, the more enlightened his philosophy. In religion alone is true philosophy to be found; the philosophy which contemplates man in all his relations, and in his whole nature; which is founded upon a knowledge of that nature, and which is derived from Him who is the Beginning and the End.

The last part of the maxim must, to a certain extent, be admitted. The historian who is under the influence of party spirit will, undoubtedly, be classed among party historians. His work may be good in that class, but in that class its place must be assigned; and temporary and partial applause are dearly obtained at this price of permanent degradation. The greater his industry, and the more conspicuous his talents, the greater is the sacrifice. To this consequence he may, perhaps, be blind; or, perhaps, be indifferent if he foresees it. But there is a worse consequence: the feelings which party-spirit induces are never so injurious to the individual as when they take this direction. In the immediate struggles of party a sort of endemic delirium prevails, which men readily admit as an excuse for the follies and excesses of others, and confess as an apology for their own. There is mingled also with this, in its commonest and still more in its most violent manifestations, a warmth of personal regard; a sense of hereditary obligations and attachments; an adherence to principles, or opinions which are mistaken for principles; and these, even when misdirected, excite a certain elevation of mind, and call forth that kind of generous exertion, which is one of the highest enjoyments, because the heart goes with it. A little may be allowed to this spirit in contemporary history, because it is difficult for those who live in the busy world, to keep themselves entirely free from it: but, between this kind of bias, and the partiality shown in an elaborate account of long-past transactions, the difference is great indeed the one is like the dexterity of an advocate in setting forth what he believes to be a fair case; the other is as the perversion of justice by a judge. The historian who suffers himself to be possessed by this evil spirit, contracts an obliquity of moral vision; his views are narrowed; his understanding is warped; his sense of right and wrong is perverted; he has ceased to be just, and, therefore, he can no longer be generous.

We may gather out of history,' says Sir Walter Raleigh, a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison and application of other men's fore-passed miserics with our own like errors and ill-deservings.' The same sagacious writer, who had learnt true wisdom when, unhappily, it was too late for regulating his own conduct, observes also, that the judgments of God are for ever unchangeable, neither is He wearied by the long process of time,

and

and won to give His blessing in one age to that which He hath cursed in another.' These were his prison thoughts: to this conclusion he came after a comprehensive survey of the events of the ancient world, when he had full leisure for quiet meditation, with a mind which adversity had ripened, and under circumstances where his heart was no longer deceived by the low wisdom of the world. In this spirit it is that history should be written; and they who read it in this spirit will perceive that the mighty maze of human affairs is not without a plan; and that the ways of God are vindicated by the course of Providence even in this world.

Mr. Turner has included the reign of Henry VII. in his History of England during the Middle Ages, as a last act to the tragedy of York and Lancaster. Mr. Hallam, like Hume, takes the accession of that king as the epoch from which our history assumes a new character. One of the great transitions through which the governments of Europe (like the globe itself) have past, was then completed. The power of the feudal nobility had been broken; their turbulent tyranny was subverted by a race of monarchs excellently qualified for the exigencies of the age. A Machiavelian policy, upon which those monarchs acted, had superseded the chivalrous character of their predecessors: it made them better sovereigns, and it may be doubted whether they were, on the whole, worse men; at least it is some gain to humanity when ambitious designs are pursued by cunning rather than by violence. Henry VII. was the best of these contemporary kings; he committed the fewest crimes, and manifested the most enlightened views and the most beneficent intentions. Ferdinand and Louis XI. were men in whom the evil part of their nature predominated; in any condition of life they would have been cruel and perfidious; bad men in any times; and, therefore, eminently bad in an age when the principles of men were as corrupt as their practice: but the actions which have left a stain upon Henry's memory may justly be referred to the perilous situation in which his birth, and the necessity of his fortunes, had placed him; not to any obliquity of the moral sense, or hardness of heart, natural or acquired. Mr. Hallam contradicts the eulogium which Lord Bacon has past upon him, as the best lawgiver to this nation after Edward I.; for his laws,' says that great authority, '(whoso marks them well,) are deep and not vulgar; not made upon the spur of a particular occasion for the present, but out of providence of the future, to make the estate of his people still more and more happy, after the manner of the legislators in ancient and heroical times.' But when we consider,' says Mr. Hallam, how very few kings or statesmen have displayed this prospective wisdom and benevolence in legislation, we may hesitate a little to bestow so rare a

6

praise upon Henry. Like the laws of all other times, his statutes seem to have had no further aim than to remove some immediate mischief, or to promote some particular end.'

We have here an instance how little this kind of history, which presents deductions instead of facts, and sets before us the opinion of the author, instead of the grounds upon which an opinion may be formed, is to be trusted. If a summary of Henry's laws had been given, it would have appeared that there is in them the foresight and the benevolence for which Lord Bacon has extolled him. His anxious desire for bettering the condition of the people is repeatedly and earnestly expressed in the laws themselves; for to him,' it is there said, is no thing more joyous than to know his subjects to live peaceable under his laws, and to increase in wealth and prosperity, and to avoid enormities and injuries, so that they may live restfull under his peace. ... His grace considereth that a great part of the wealth and prosperity of this his land standeth in this, that his subjects may live in surety, under his peace, in their bodies and goods; and that the husbandry of the land may increase and be upholden. And his said highness shall not let for any favour, affection, cost, charge, nor none other cause, but that he shall see his laws to have plain and true execution, that his subjects may live in surety, and increase in wealth and prosperity, to the pleasure of God.' He protests that he has a singular pleasure, above all things, to avoid such enormities and mischiefs as be hurtful to the common weal; and that he most entirely desireth among all earthly things the prosperity and restfulness of this his land, and his subjects of the same to live quietly and surefully to the pleasure of God, and according to his laws; willing, and always of his pity intending, to reduce them thereunto by softer means than by such extreme rigour as was provided by certain statutes of his predecessors.' The tenour of his laws is in accord with this language. Their object was to abate the oppression of the powerful; to prevent the extortions which were practised under the colour of law; to repress the audacity of the lawless part of the people, and to check the general prevalence of corruption and perjury.

The Lord Keeper Guildford used to say, that of all law-books, that termed Henry VII. was the most useful, or rather necessary, for a student to take early into his hand, and go through with because much of the common law which had fluctuated before, received a settlement in that time, and from thence, as from a copious fountain, it hath been derived, through other authors, to us, and is now in the state of common erudition, or maxims of the law. The facilities which in this reign were afforded to the alienation of landed property, and the introduction of actions on

the

the case, are benefits to the jurisprudence of this country which have been duly appreciated. But Henry has claims to a better title than that of the English Justinian. It has not been sufficiently observed that the people of England, before his time, lived as little under the law as the people in certain parts of Ireland at this day. The laws live only where the law doth breed

Obedience to the works it binds us to.'

There was none of this obedience; the people were not conformed to it in their habits and feelings. It had been made an instrument of iniquity, not of justice, an engine of oppression and extortion, a craft for wronging the inoffensive and upright, and securing impunity to those who knew how to bargain or intrigue for it, if they could not obtain their end by direct intimidation. This perversion of the laws, and the consequent dread of all legal proceedings, produced an indifference even to that course of justice, without which no community can exist in peace and safety. A murderer, as at this time in Italy, and Spain, and Portugal, stood in no fear of being arrested by the people; and an indictment could not be preferred against him till a year and day had been allowed for the representatives of the deceased to proceed by way of appeal. During that time it often happened that some composition was made, or that the appellant was wearied and let the suit fall; and as often when the crime had grown old, the prosecution by indictment was neglected. A remedy was provided for this, by enacting that the suit by indictment might be taken at any time, leaving the right of appeal untouched, but securing the purposes of public justice if that right were not enforced; and this enactment, though it went no farther, tended greatly to correct the state of opinion, and the usages which had descended from more barbarous times. By another law, the township was fined if any murderer escaped by day; and, because jurors frequently shrunk from their duty, either for fear or favour, justices of assize and of the peace were empowered to try and punish offences upon information, without indictment, in all cases not extending to life or limb.

That'good law,' as Bacon calls it, which gave the attaint upon a false verdict between party and party,' is censured by Mr. Turner, who says, that'so dangerous an enactment seems to strike at the root of all independent use of these important functions.' He admits, however, that some gross cases of corruption must have occasioned it. In fact, the preamble states that 'perjury in the land is in many causes detestably used, to the disheritance and great damage of many and great number of his subjects well disposed, and to the most high displeasure of Almighty God, the good statute against officers making panels par

tially,

tially, for rewards to them given; against unlawful maintainers, ymbrasours, and jurors; and against jurors wantonly giving their verdict, notwithstanding.' Another law speaks also of perjury, as much and customably used by London jurors, and provides that they may be attainted for corruption, even though the verdict complained of should be found true. It is a proof of improved morals that enactments should be deemed reprehensible now which were thought good by Bacon, and which, beyond all doubt, were necessary when they were enacted. In point of morals, indeed, nations are always worsened by revolutions and civil wars; and where there is faith in a priest's absolution and in indulgences, the foundation of morality rests upon sand. Henry, by these provisions, endeavoured to correct some of the evils which an age of anarchy and violence had produced; and to supply the place of conscience by the fear of human laws,-in the best times a needful support, though a miserable substitution. But he was not one of those legislators who have supposed that every thing is to be effected by severity. His temper and his sound judgment led him to mitigate the rigour of the old laws; and in cases of treason, notwithstanding the insecurity in which he lived, he manifested a clemency of which there was no example under former kings. Mr. Hallam, indeed, whose short view of this reign is in this respect original, that it disputes all the merits which have been heretofore allowed to Henry VII., insinuates that even his clemency sprung from the sordid motive of selling pardons. A little consideration might have shown him, that the remark is as unjust as it is uncharitable; for, however avaricious Henry may have been in the latter part of his reign, it is no proof of avarice that he exacted fines from those persons to whom he was remitting the forfeiture of estates as well as life. Before the justice of Mr. Hallam's censures can be allowed, he must make it appear that a part is greater than the whole.

Blackstone, whose natural sense of equity was less deranged even by the practice of the law than Mr. Hallam's is by strong political prepossessions, has committed a similar injustice towards this king, saying, 'that there is hardly a statute in his reign, introductive of a new law, or modifying the old, but what, either directly or obliquely, tended to the emolument of the exchequer.' So ill-founded is this inference, that Mr. Turner supposes the commentator had forgotten Henry's laws when he thus condemned them. To commute the punishment of murder for a fine, acts upon manners and morals like the papal scheme of selling pardons for all sins at fixed prices. Laws, therefore, that enjoin or allow of such a commutation mark a barbarous state of society. But the substitution of pecuniary penalties, instead of imprison

ment