"To solicit and persuade one another," says Mr.Gladstone, "are privileges which belong to us all; and the wiser and better man is bound to advise the less wise and good; but he is not only not bound, he is not allowed, speaking generally, to coerce him.It is untrue, then, that the same considerations which bind a Government to submit a religion to the free choice of the people would therefore justify their enforcing its adoption."Granted.But it is true that all the same considerations which would justify a Government in propagating a religion by means of civil disabilities would justify the propagating of that religion by penal laws.To solicit! Is it solicitation to tell a Catholic Duke, that he must abjure his religion or walk out of the House of Lords? To persuade! Is it persuasion to tell a barrister of distinguished eloquence and learning that he shall grow old in his stuff gown, while his pupils are seated above him in ermine, because he cannot digest the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed? Would Mr.Gladstone think that a religious system which he considers as false, Socinianism for example, was submitted to his free choice, if it were submitted in these terms?--"If you obstinately adhere to the faith of the Nicene fathers, you shall not be burned in Smithfield; you shall not be sent to Dorchester gaol; you shall not even pay double land-tax.But you shall be shut out from all situations in which you might exercise your talents with honour to yourself and advantage to the country.The House of Commons, the bench of magistracy, are not for such as you.You shall see younger men, your inferiors in station and talents, rise to the highest dignities and attract the gaze of nations, while you are doomed to neglect and obscurity.If you have a son of the highest promise, a son such as other fathers would contemplate with delight, the development of his fine talents and of his generous ambition shall be a torture to you.
You shall look on him as a being doomed to lead, as you have led, the abject life of a Roman or a Neapolitan in the midst of a great English people.All those high honours, so much more precious than the most costly gifts of despots, with which a free country decorates its illustrious citizens, shall be to him, as they have been to you, objects not of hope and virtuous emulation, but of hopeless, envious pining.Educate him, if you wish him to feel his degradation.Educate him, if you wish to stimulate his craving for what he never must enjoy.Educate him, if you would imitate the barbarity of that Celtic tyrant who fed his prisoners on salted food till they called eagerly for drink, and then let down an empty cup into the dungeon and left them to die of thirst." Is this to solicit, to persuade, to submit religion to the free choice of man? Would a fine of a thousand pounds, would imprisonment in Newgate for six months, under circumstances not disgraceful, give Mr Gladstone the pain which he would feel, if he were to be told that he was to be dealt with in the way in which he would himself deal with more than one half of his countrymen?
We are not at all surprised to find such inconsistency even in a man of Mr.Gladstone's talents.The truth is, that every man is, to a great extent, the creature of the age.It is to no purpose that he resists the influence which the vast mass, in which he is but an atom, must exercise on him.He may try to be a man of the tenth century: but he cannot.Whether he will or not, he must be a man of the nineteenth century.He shares in the motion of the moral as well as in that of the physical world.He can no more be as intolerant as he would have been in the days of the Tudors than he can stand in the evening exactly where he stood in the morning.The globe goes round from west to east; and he must go round with it.When he says that he is where he was, he means only that he has moved at the same rate with all around him.When he says that he has gone a good way to the westward, he means only that he has not gone to the eastward quite so rapidly as his neighbours.Mr.Gladstone's book is, in this respect, a very gratifying performance.It is the measure of what a man can do to be left behind by the world.It is the strenuous effort of a very vigorous mind to keep as far in the rear of the general progress as possible.And yet, with the most intense exertion Mr.
Gladstone cannot help being, on some important points, greatly in advance of Locke himself; and, with whatever admiration he may regard Laud, it is well for him, we can tell him, that he did not write in the days of that zealous primate, who would certainly have refuted the expositions of Scripture which we have quoted, by one of the keenest arguments that can be addressed to human ears.
This is not the only instance in which Mr.Gladstone has shrunk in a very remarkable manner from the consequences of his own theory.If there be in the whole world a state to which this theory is applicable, that state is the British Empire in India.
