LECTURE XVII.

Parallel between the religious peace of Germany and that of the other countries of Europe.-The political system of the Balance of Power, and the principle of false Illuminism prevalent in the eighteenth century.

THE great benefits of the religious peace of Germany, which, founded upon and springing out of a great historical necessity, has struck such deep roots in the public mind, and at last. become a second nature to the Germans, may be best appreciated by a comparison with the state of religious liberty such as it now exists, or did recently exist, among other nations— and those, in truth, which are in every other respect the most civilised of modern Europe. In Germany, indeed, the strict and vigilant maintenance of that religious peace on which her whole political existence depends, and without which she would fall into an anarchic struggle of parties, has received in recent times a new confirmation; and this religious peace, which has been revived, not indeed in its old forms, but in its general spirit and essential import, has become only the more necessary, as, by the recent partitions of territories, a great intermixture of religions has been introduced into states where formerly one religion only prevailed. Thus in that state, which was originally the greatest of all the Protestant states of Germany, and is now even still more powerful than formerly, a full half of the population is Catholic. Nearly to the same extent the same observation will apply, though inversely, to that Catholic state+ in Germany which, next to the Imperial state itself, is the greatest. So strongly has this Magna Charta of the religious liberty of Germany (which scarcely needs any external securities, now that most of those securities no longer exist, or at least have been very materially altered in the forms under which they formerly existed in the The Treaty of Westphalia.

* Prussia.

+ Bavaria.

Confederation and in the Imperial courts of Judicature)—so strongly, I say, has this Magna Charta taken root both in the public mind and state-policy of Germany, that the principle of religious freedom no longer depends on the degree of population, or the relation of numbers. Thus, for example, in the German Catholic provinces of the Austrian Empire, the Protestants, though compared with the rest of the population form so very small a minority, have been long in possession of the most unlimited religious freedom; and in the country* which was the very cradle of Protestantism, the fact that the royal dynasty and a very small minority of the nation profess the Catholic religion has been no obstacle to the most cordial, deep, and solid attachment on the part of the people to their old hereditary rulers—an attachment which has been evinced in the most unequivocal and affecting manner by all classes of the nation at every period of misfortune. If now we look to the other great states and civilised countries of Europe, which like Germany were involved for a century and more in the turmoil of religious wars, and consider what issue these wars have had, what results they have produced, we shall find that in England civil war indeed no longer rages. But how the relations between the Anglican church, on the one hand, which force alone maintains in its political privileges and ascendancy, and the Protestant dissenters (who have a different character from those in Germany, or elsewhere, and are distinguished by a very violent sectarian spirit) and the Catholic population of Ireland, on the other,—how these relations, I say, can be said to exhibit a state of religious peace, I am at a loss to understand; for at no very remote period the latter country was the theatre of a bloody civil war. We must at least allow that a solid and permanent internal peace, a perfect conciliation of minds, and an equitable adjustment of the respective rights and claims of both parties, have apparently not yet been brought to a quiet and satisfactory issue. Nay, to judge from those great parliamentary discussions in England, wherein not unfrequently, and from passages the most obscure, and the least observed by the superficial eye, the most secret motives, the deepest springs of policy, and the most hidden thoughts and disquietudes of the statesman come to light in that wonderful stage

* Saxony.

of public life, it would appear that great self-apprehension reigned in the minds of English politicians; a fear which is the more likely to arise on every serious retrospect that people take of the old abyss of their civil contests; for, more than any other nation, they are conversant with their own annals, and have them ever before their eyes, and live in the past with all the intense feelings of the present. Hence every individual among them knows full well that the fearful and fermenting elements of their great old civil commotion have never been perfectly appeased, and finally allayed, but have been merely repressed from time to time, and prevented from breaking out anew, by means of a constitution, which on that account is reputed glorious. And must not every Englishman ask himself the peremptory question, how a country can be, or be termed, free, when its Catholic inhabitants, amounting to a third part of its entire population, are doomed to undergo indescribable tyranny, and are, in fact, treated like a conquered nation ?*

In France there prevails on matters of religion an indifference of feeling rather than any party contentions or violent animosities, at least among the greater part of the nation; and so long as the matter is not mixed up with political considerations, this feeling of indifference will bend to one opinion or to the other. Even in former times the religious wars, though violent enough, were not of so long and uninterrupted a duration and so widely destructive a nature as in Germany, and, comparatively speaking at least, were not attended with such frightful circumstances as in England. But, on the other hand, they did not lead to those mighty, definite, and permanent results, such as in Germany, a religious pacification-and in England, the establishment of a free constitution. And in the revocation of the edict of Nantes, accomplished in defiance of all antecedent promises, stipulations, and rights, the victory of the Catholic majority of the nation, unjust in itself, was merely apparent and illusive, for all the great problems of moral life remained unsolved, and the hostile and fermenting elements of Protestantism, or a species of semi-Protestantism, retained their full force; till, a hundred years after this arbitrary proceeding, an

* The passing of the Catholic Relief Bill has happily rendered this observation obsolete.-Trans.

immense and formidable reaction occurred in the breaking out of the great Revolution. That grand conflict of the European nations which sprang out of this revolution, and attended its whole course, must be looked upon in no other light than as a religious war; for a formal separation, not only from the church, but from all Christianity-a total abolition of the Christian religion-was an object of this revolution, which lasted nine years before a sort of religious peace was established, by which it seemed to be acknowledged that religion, for a time at least, was not an absolutely superfluous want of the people; for the attempt of theophilanthropy, or the public and legal establishment of a pure rationalist religion, had no success. But as respected persons, this peace was not of long duration, as was but too soon apparent in the ill-treatment and imprisonment of the head of the church. The drama of the old Ghibelline times was renewed, and Ghibelline principles and maxims of policy were openly avowed. If the military success of the French had been of longer continuance, these principles would have made incomparably greater progress, and would have been more clearly unfolded, as there was a secret inclination to a certain Mahometan junction of civil and ecclesiastical power in the hands of the same person. It could not, however, have escaped the keen perception of Buonaparte how much the feelings and opinions of Europe (whatever indifference it may manifest about religion, and however easily it may give its sanction to encroachments on spiritual power, from want of knowledge or of interest in those matters) are ever adverse to a complete and anti-Christian fusion of secular and ecclesiastical authority. That fanatic and destructive character which distinguished the revolutionary struggle in its origin remained the same, though somewhat modified in its form, during the time of the Imperial conquests; and the general resistance of the nations of Europe, down to the final triumph of the allies, retained to the last the character of a religious war, carried on in defence of all that was most sacred to humanity. Thus that great struggle must be considered as a five-and-twenty years' religious war, or rather perhaps in its origin a war of irreligion, though it is not worth while to dispute about a word. For this reason, in the country where this mighty revolution had its birth, the

restoration of monarchy is inseparably connected with that of religion; and it is by a religious regeneration that the statesmen of that kingdom, who are well-wishers to their country, and have in view its permanent well-being, and not the idle and transient splendour of military glory, should endeavour to secure the future destinies of France.

This universal and convulsive crisis of the world in latter times, now that it has happily and entirely passed by, has created a mighty chasm, and thrown up a wall of separation between the present age and the eighteenth century. Now that the conflict is over, and all the illusions incident to that state of struggle have passed away, the eighteenth century, which bore that great revolution in its womb, and at last brought it into life, can be judged with greater impartiality and historic freedom, and better understood and more duly appreciated in all its comprehensive bearings. For during the existence of any struggle, it is apparently given to few mortals to form respecting passing events a judgment which can be truly termed historical; as in general a certain distance of time is requisite to the formation of just and accurate opinions. In this last section of universal history it would be idle and superfluous to enter into a minute detail of facts so generally known. It is on that account the more important for the due illustration and philosophic investigation of a period so near to us, briefly to point out, amid the multitude of well-known facts, the leading and determining causes of all the events which occurred. The leading and stirring principles of all occurrences and enterprises in the eighteenth century, as the history of that age abundantly proves, may be traced, on the one hand, to the system of the balance of power in the internal government and outward relations of states; and on the other, to the principle of illuminism in the department of morals, though this principle was not confined to the sphere of mind, but exerted a great practical influence on real life, and finally brought about a total revolution in the state. Both these principles-the system of the balance of power, which was the protestantism of state-and the principle of illuminism, which, from its negative character, agreed in the main with the protestantism of philosophy, and was only a natural consequence of that philosophy,—had their origin chiefly in England, and there first, or more than