Part 7 (2/2)
A few days later (December 1st) a second conference between the two Houses condemned No. 45 to be burnt at the Royal Exchange by the common hangman. And so it was on the 3rd, but not without a riot, which conveys a vivid picture of those ”good old” or turbulent days; for the mob, encouraged by well-dressed people from the shops and balconies, who cried out, ”Well done, boys!
bravely done, boys!” set up such a hissing, that the sheriff's horses were frightened, and brave Alderman Hurley with difficulty reached the place where the paper was to be burnt. The mob seized what they could of the paper from the burning torch of the executioner, and finally thrashed the officials from the field.
Practically, too, they had thrashed the custom out of existence, for there were very few such burnings afterwards.
Wilkes was then expelled from the House of Commons; and the same House, becoming suddenly as tender of its privileges as it had previously been indifferent to them, pa.s.sed a resolution, to which the Attorney-General, Sir Fletcher Norton, was said to have declared that he would pay no more regard than ”to the oaths of so many drunken porters in Covent Garden,” to the effect that a general warrant for apprehending and seizing the authors, printers, and publishers of a seditious and treasonable libel was not warranted by law. Such was the vaunted wisdom of our ancestors, that, having first decided that there could be no breach of privilege to protect a seditious libel, they then a.s.serted the illegality of the very proceedings they had already justified! Truly they are not altogether in the wrong who deem that the chief glory of our Const.i.tution lies in its singular elasticity.
All the numbers of the _North Briton_ especially No. 45, have high interest as political and literary curiosities. Comparing even now the King's speech on April 19th, 1763, at the close of the Seven Years' War, with the pa.s.sage in No. 45 which contained the sting of the whole, one feels that Walpole hardly exaggerated when he said that Wilkes had given ”a flat lie to the King himself.” Perhaps so; but are royal speeches as a rule conspicuous for their truth? The King had said: ”My expectations have been fully answered by the happy effects which the several allies of my crown have derived from this salutary measure. The powers at war with my good brother the King of Prussia have been induced to agree to such terms of accommodation as that great prince has approved; and the success which has attended my negotiation has necessarily and immediately diffused the blessings of peace through every part of Europe.” Wilkes's comment was as follows: ”The infamous fallacy of this whole sentence is apparent to all mankind; for it is known that the King of Prussia did not barely approve, but absolutely dictated as conqueror, every article of the terms of peace. No advantage of any kind has accrued to that magnanimous prince from our negotiation; but he was basely deserted by the Scottish Prime Minister of England” (Lord Bute). And, after all, that truth was on the side of Wilkes rather than of the King is the verdict of history.
The House of Lords, soon after its unconst.i.tutional attack upon popular liberties in the case of Wilkes, showed itself as suddenly enamoured of them a few months later, when Timothy Brecknock, a hack writer, published his _Droit le Roy_, or a _Digest of the Rights and Prerogatives of the Imperial Crown of Great Britain_ (February 1764). Timothy, like Cowell in James I.'s time, favoured extreme monarchical pretensions, so much to the offence of the defenders of the people's rights, that they voted it ”a false, malicious, and traitorous libel, inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution to which we owe the present happy establishment, and an audacious insult upon His Majesty, whose paternal care has been so early and so effectually shown to the religion, laws, and liberties of his people; tending to subvert the fundamental laws and liberties of these kingdoms and to introduce an illegal and arbitrary power.” The Commons concurred with the Lords in condemning a copy to the flames at Westminster Palace Yard and the Exchange on February 25th and 27th respectively; and the book is consequently so rare that for practical purposes it no longer exists. Sad to say, the Royalist author came to as bad an end as his book, for in his own person as well he came to require the attentions of the hangman for a murder he committed in Ireland.
The next work which the Lower House concurred with the Upper in consigning to the hangman was _The Present Crisis with regard to America Considered_ (February 24th, 1775); but of this book the fate it met with seems now the only ascertainable fact about it.
It appears to enjoy the real distinction of having been the last book condemned by Parliament in England to the flames; although that honour has sometimes been claimed for the _Commercial Restraints of Ireland_, by Provost Hely Hutchinson (1779); a claim which will remain to be considered after a brief survey of the works which in Scotland the wisdom of Parliament saw fit to punish by fire.
The first order of this sort was dated November 16th, 1700, and sentenced to be burnt by the hangman at Mercat Cross His Majesty's _High Commission and Estates of Parliament_.
In the same way was treated _A Defence of the Scots abdicating Darien, including an Answer to the Defence of the Scots Settlement there_, and _A Vindication_ of the same pamphlet, both by Walter Herries, who was ordered to be apprehended. More interesting to read would doubtless be a lampoon, said to reflect on everything sacred to Scotland, and burnt accordingly, which was called _Caledonia; or, the Pedlar turned Merchant_.
Dr. James Drake, whose _Memorial of the Church of England_ was burnt in England in 1705, published a work two years earlier which stirred the Scotch Parliament to the same fiery point of indignation. This was his already mentioned _Historia Anglo-Scotica: an impartial History of all that happened between the Kings and Kingdoms of England and Scotland from the beginning of the Reign of William the Conqueror to the Reign of Queen Elizabeth_ (1703). This stout volume of 423 pages Drake printed without any date or name, pretending that the ma.n.u.script had come to him in such a way that it was impossible to trace its authors.h.i.+p. He dedicated it to Sir Edward Seymour, one of Queen Anne's commissioners for the then meditated and unpopular union between the two kingdoms. It gave the gravest offence, and was burnt at the Mercat Cross on June 30th for containing ”many reflections on the sovereignty and independence of this crown and nation.” But, apart from the history that attaches to it, I doubt if any one could regard it with interest.
No less offence was given to Scotland by the English Whig writer William Attwood, whose _Superiority and Direct Dominion of the Imperial Crown of England over the Crown and Kingdom of Scotland, the true Foundation of a Compleat Union rea.s.serted_ (1704), was burnt as ”scurrilous and full of falsehoods,” whilst a liberal reward was voted to Hodges and Anderson, who by their pens had advocated the independence of the Scotch crown. Ten years later Attwood contributed another work to the flames, called _The Scotch Patriot Unmasked_ (1715). Attwood was a barrister by profession, a controversialist in practice, writing against the theories of Filmer and the Tories. He had a great knowledge of old charters, and wrote an able but inconclusive answer to Molyneux' _Case for Ireland_. He last appears as Chief Justice in New York, where he became involved in debt and died.
In 1706 two works were condemned to the Mercat Cross: (1) _An Account of the Burning of the Articles of Union at Dumfries_; (2) _Queries to the Presbyterian n.o.blemen, Barons, Burgesses, Ministers, and Commissioners in Scotland who are for the Scheme of an Incorporating Union with England_.
Hutchinson's _Commercial Restraints of Ireland_, published in 1779, and reviewing the progress of English misgovernment, proved the correctness of Molyneux' prognostications nearly a century before. ”Can the history of any fruitful country on the globe,”
he asked (and the question may be asked still), ”enjoying peace for fourscore years, and not visited by plague or pestilence, produce so many recorded instances of the poverty and wretchedness and of the reiterated want and misery of the lower orders of the people? There is no such example in ancient or modern history.”
That a book of such sentiments should have been burnt, as easier so to deal with than to answer, would accord well enough with antecedent probability; but, inasmuch as there is no such record in the Commons' _Journals_, the probability must remain that Captain Valentine Blake, M.P. for Galway, who, in a letter to the _Times_ of February 14th, 1846, appears to have been the first to a.s.sert the fact, erroneously identified the fate of Hutchinson's anonymous work with the then received version of the fate of the work of Molyneux. The rarity of the first edition of the _Commercial Restraints_ may well enough accord with other methods of suppression than burning.
_The Present Crisis_, therefore, of 1775, must retain the distinction of having been the last book to be condemned to the public fire; and with it a practice which can appeal for its descent to cla.s.sical Greece and Rome pa.s.sed at last out of fas.h.i.+on and favour, without any actual legislative abolition.
When, in 1795, the great stir was made by Reeve's _Thoughts on English Government_, Sheridan's proposal to have it burnt met with little approval, and it escaped with only a censure. Reeve, president of an a.s.sociation against Republicans and Levellers, like Cowell and Brecknock before him, gave offence by the extreme claims he made for the English monarch. The relation between our two august chambers and the monarchy he compared to that between goodly branches and the tree itself: they were only branches, deriving their origin and nutriment from their common parent; but though they might be lopped off, the tree would remain a tree still. The Houses could give advice and consent, but the Government and its administration in all its parts rested wholly and solely with the King and his nominees. That a book of such sentiments should have escaped burning is doubtless partly due to the panic of Republicanism then raging in England; but it also shows the gradual growth of a sensible indifference to the power of the pen.
And when we think of the freedom, almost unchecked, of the literature of the century now closing, of the impunity with which speculation attacks the very roots of all our political and theological traditions, and compare this state of liberty with the servitude of literature in the three preceding centuries, when it rested with archbishop or Commons or Lords not only to commit writings to the flames but to inflict cruelties and indignities on the writers, we cannot but recognise how proportionate to the advance we have made in toleration have been the benefits we have derived from it. Possibly this toleration arose from the gradual discovery that the practical consequences of writings seldom keep pace with the aim of the writer or the fears of authority; that, for instance, neither is property endangered by literary demonstrations of its immorality, nor are churches emptied by criticism. At all events, taking the risk of consequences, we have entered on an era of almost complete literary impunity; the bonfire is as extinct as the pillory; the only fiery ordeal is that of criticism, and dread of the reviewer has taken the place of all fear of the hangman.
Whether the change is all gain, or the milder method more effectual than the old one, I would hesitate to affirm. He would be a bold man who would a.s.sert any lack of burnworthy books. The older custom had perhaps a certain picturesqueness which was lost with it. It was a bit of old English life, reaching far back into history--a custom that would have been not unworthy of the brush of Hogarth. For all that we cannot regret it. The practice became so common, and lent itself so readily to abuse by its indiscriminate application in the interests of religious bigotry or political partisans.h.i.+p, that the lesson of history is one of warning against it. Such a practice is only defensible or impressive in proportion to the rarity of its use. Applied not oftener than once or twice in a generation, in the case of some work that flagrantly shocked or injured the national conscience, the book-fire might have retained, or might still recover, its place in the economy of well-organised States; and the stigma it failed of by reason of its frequency might still attach to it by reason of its rarity.
If, then, it were possible (as it surely would be) so to regulate and restrict its use that it should serve only as the last expression of the indignation of an offended community instead of the ready weapon of a party or a clique, one can conceive its revival being not without utility. To take an ill.u.s.tration. With the ordinary daily libels of the public press the community as such has no concern; there is no need to grudge them their traditional impunity. But supposing a newspaper, availing itself of an earlier reputation and a wide circulation, to publish as truths, highly damaging to individuals, what it knows or might know to be forgeries, the limit has clearly been overstepped of the bearable liberty of the press; the cause of the injured individual becomes the cause of the injured community, insulted by the unscrupulous advantage that has been taken of its trustfulness and of its inability to judge soundly where all the data for a sound judgment are studiously withheld. Such an action is as much and as flagrant a crime or offence against the community as an act of robbery or murder, which, though primarily an injury to the individual, is primarily avenged as an injury to the State. As such it calls for punishment, nor could any punishment be more appropriate than one which caused the offending newspaper to atone by dishonour for the dishonour it sought to inflict. Condemnation by Parliament to the flames would exactly meet the exigencies of a case so rare and exceptional, and would succeed in inflicting that disgrace of which such a punishment often formerly failed by very reason of its too frequent application.
APPENDIX.
After the conspiracy, known as the Rye House Plot, to kill Charles II. and his brother, the Duke of York, the University of Oxford ordered the public burning of books which ran counter to the doctrine of the Divine right of kings. As the decree is a literary and political curiosity of the highest order, and not easily accessible, I here transcribe it from Lord Somers'
_Tracts_. The authors whose books were condemned are sometimes referred to quite generally, so that some are difficult to identify, but the following appear to be the princ.i.p.al ones that incurred the fiery indignation of the University:--1.
Rutherford's _Lex Rex_; 2. G. Buchanan's _De Jure Regni apud Scotos_; 3. Bellarmine's _De Potestate Papae_, and his _De Conciliis et Ecclesia Militante_; 4. Milton's _Eikonoklastes_, and his _Defensio Populi Anglicani_; 5. Goodwin's _Obstructours of Justice_; 6. Baxter's _Holy Commonwealth_; 7. Dolman's _Succession_; 8. Hobbes' _De Cive_ and _Leviathan_.
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