of the clergy, in order to please Jews, fanatics, and selfish calculators, who despise the people while they pretend to be their friends; with ignorant and insane cunning contriving means to undermine the power of that clergy who alone are the enlightened and steady advocates of the interests of the poor,men to whom these very governments owe every truth, every good, every thing beautiful and sublime that they possess, and to the paralysing of whose efforts every want and difficulty which distress them ought to be ascribed;1 persevering in the development of an infernal project to injure and destroy the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, taking counsel together, by day and by night, against the Lord and against his Christ, was in those ages absolutely unknown. Such a tyranny, however it might pretend to spare and even favour the material interests of a people, which opposed the spiritual happiness of mankind, could not have been imagined in a religious age, when men were influenced by views of another world; that rage for legislation, the characteristic of later times, is a disease from which the ancient governments of Christendom were in a great measure free. Since the year 1789, the philosophers have given to France eight constitutions, about seven thousand legislators, and thirty thousand laws, dictated more or less by the spirit of destruction, injustice, spoliation, impiety, proscription, inconsistency, and barbarism. This multiplication of laws and of legislators must be ascribed wholly to the increase of light and march of knowledge; for before the sublime age of the Reformation, which first produced this desire of perfectibility, the world could only boast of having possessed about fifteen legislators. In the dark ages, our Christian governments seem to have acted Godefridus. Rubichon, de l'Action du Clergé, p. 290. upon the principle extolled by Dion Cassius, where he says, "Custom is like a king, law is like a tyrant." The Abbé de la Mennais observed, that so far was the Church from favouring arbitrary power, one of the rules of the Roman Index is especially directed against such books "as tend to favour political tyranny, and what are falsely called reasons of state, militating against the evangelical and Christian law." Rulers should reflect upon the equality of all human conditions," says Pope Gregory the Great. "Our ancient fathers," he continues, 'were not kings of men, but the guardians of flocks; and when God desired Noah and his sons to fill the earth, he added, And let the fear of you be upon all the beasts of the earth;' and, according to this command, the fear of man is not to be extended upon men. It is against nature to wish to be an object of fear to an equal, yet rulers must be feared; but this necessity must not fill them with pride, for they are to seek not their own glory, but the justice of their subjects." These were the principles of government which were held by the holy ministers of the Catholic Church. Sophists, poets, generals, and Gallican doctors, might idolise the will of an earthly sovereign in the courts of Versailles ; but Fénelon was obliged to conceal, in banishment and obscurity, his patriotism and his virtue. It must be remembered, besides, that the Christian monarchies of Europe were united with many institutions, which denoted the freedom of the elements out of which they had been originally composed. Such were the Diets of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, the Parliaments of England, the Cortes of Spain, the Champ de Mars (Märzfeld) of the old Franks; all of which were rendered illustrious by the spirit of De Cura Pastorali, II, 6. the eminent and heroic men who occasionally appeared in them. At the same time, the most ardent admirers of these assemblies will be obliged to confess, that they have had their dark periods of history, during which it would be in vain to look to them for any real services to the cause of freedom, justice, or humanity, any counsels or any deeds but such, to use a Thucydidean phrase, olov oxλos φιλεῖ ποιεῖν.1 One of the greatest tyrants that ever disgraced a nation was the parliament of Paris during many periods. There was the leagued parliament, the rebel parliament, the parliament falsifying public acts, dispensing with vows, and banishing the Jesuits (those illustrious men, symbolical, in the persecution they endure, of all wisdom and goodness and sanctity,) for not perjuring themselves, defying them to answer for themselves, and not allowing them to answer. Somewhat of this charge may be advanced also against other assemblies, of which we need not speak, "ne aperiamus mysteria." It is enough to repeat the words of Cicero, "that nothing is more uncertain than the commons, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum." 112 When those great institutions of ancient Europe were established, it is certain that legislators might have reckoned upon the influence of resources, the loss of which might totally alter the moral situation of men with regard to each other and to society. Without doubt, the secret of legislation is to maintain the public happiness, by preserving to each class, to each order, and to each individual, its rights, privileges, and due influence; for a state in which the laws are not equal to all, but only favour a part of the people, should not, as Plato observes, be called a state, but a faction. But whether to 1 Lib. IV, c. 28. 2 Pro L. Murena. 3 Leges, IV. promote these great ends, uniformly and constantly, the ancient elements be not quite as essential as the form of the power which moulded them, is a question which, perhaps, had better be referred to the judgment of future ages. In the meanwhile, the chivalry of nature, as distinguished from the titled nobility of states, may perhaps be convinced that, following the example of its great guide, the holy Church, the time is come for it to leave political society to itself, which seems to reject all principles of generosity and honour and justice, and all divine influence; that its duty even is to take no part in the war of those who combat, the one for despotism, the other for anarchy. Without presuming to undervalue the resources of modern wisdom, it may be allowable to affirm that, if a Socrates were to arise in these days, and to be a Christian, seeing that the whole foundation of social order, the whole theory of political science, all ideas of the origin, rule, and object of government, had been changed since the first establishment of Christian states, he would propose many questions, and require many short and precise answers, before he would admit that men, who hold the original principles, could consistently continue to advise or direct those rulers, who were sure to reject them; though, as a Christian, he would have been the last to deny that the duty of obeying them, "ubi Deo contraria non præcipit homo," remains the same as in the first age of Christianity. Where rash or ignorant practitioners are administering palliatives that are more dangerous to the life than the disease of the patient, a wise physician will not remain, if he be convinced that his counsels are not to prevail. In conclusion of the whole subject, relative to the connexion of chivalry with government, it will be sufficient to remember that no form is absolutely incompatible with the existence of that spirit, excepting despotism or anarchy. Under every other system, whatever may become of rulers and of their ministers, there is no time so miserable but a man may be true; but when a military or legal despotism, that still more extreme evil,1 being the state which results from the democratic doctrines, is once suffered to prevail, the spirit of chivalry must then withdraw from all view of the world; for otherwise, were it to form a close alliance with what would infallibly act as poison to its purity, as a weight and obstacle to its independence, its warmest friends would soon be obliged to confess that indeed its age was then passed, and that nothing remained but "to throw over it the sanctity of death." XXII. This must suffice for a prologue; and I hope that nothing of importance has been omitted or left obscure. We have taken a general view of chivalry, as far as relates to its essential spirit in every age, and to the philosophy which must always belong to it. We have seen that certain leading principles, at variance with many positions which are now maintained by men who profess to teach wisdom, are inseparable from that philosophy, although, perhaps, the ardent admirers of chivalry will disdain such a mode of representing it; and will demand, in the words of Cicero, "Quid opus est in hoc philosophari, cum rem non magnopere philosophia egere videamus?" The limits might, perhaps, have been still further extended, and the abstract theory of the whole more fully developed; but of this enough. Perhaps we have allowed the learning of degree, or the science of nobility, to occupy already too much of our attention; for these subjects are of the lowest interest among all those which are Aristot. Polit. lib. V, c. 8. * Guesses at Truth. Tuscul. Quæst. lib. I. |