The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

It has always struck us as strange that sensible men, acquainted with history, could maintain that an aspiration after freedom and a higher civilization gave to Germany and England a leaning toward Protestantism. We can understand how the state of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may give a coloring to the statement of a partisan writer, desirous of explaining in these modern times the greater amount of freedom really enjoyed in England, and the advanced material prosperity visible generally among Protestant Northern nations. So much we can understand. But, to make Protestantism the origin of freedom and civilization, and ascribe to it what happened subsequent to its spread indeed, but what really resulted from very different causes, passes our comprehension.

As far as freedom goes, the most superficial reader must know that there was not a particle of it left in England when Protestantism commenced; and it were easy to show that there was less of it in Germany than in Italy, Spain, and even France.

Who can mention English freedom in the same breath with Henry and Elizabeth Tudor? How could the actions of those two members of the family advance it in the least degree, and was it not precisely the slavish disposition of the English people at the time which prepared them so admirably for the reception of German heresy? The people were treated like a set of slaves, and stood for nothing in the designs of those great political rulers. In the very highest of the aristocracy, there lingered not a spark of the old brave spirit which wrung Magna Charta from the heart of a weak sovereign. The king or queen could fearlessly trample on every privilege of the nobility, send the proudest lords of the nation to the block, almost without trial, and confiscate to the swelling of the royal purse the immense estates of the first English families. There is no need of proofs for this. The proofs are the records, the headings, as it were, of the history of the times which one may read as he runs; it constitutes the very essence of their history; and events of the sixteenth century in England scarcely present us with any thing else. This state of things was the natural result of the general anarchy which prevailed during the "Wars of the Roses."

A more interesting and intricate question still might be raised here: how to explain the appearance of such a phenomenon in so proud a nation? Had the Catholic religion, which, up to that time, had been the only religion of the country, anything to do with the matter? These questions might furnish material for a very animated discussion. But, with regard to the fact itself— the slavish disposition of Englishmen at that time under kingly and queenly rule—no doubt can possibly exist.

To show that Catholicity had nothing to do with the introduction of such a despotism, would give rise to a dissertation too long for us to enter upon. We merely offer a few suggestions, which, we think, will prove sufficient and satisfactory for our purpose to every candid reader:

I. Catholic theology had certainly never brought about such a state of affairs. In all Catholic schools of the day, in England as on the Continent, St. Thomas was the great authority, and his work, "De Regimine Principum," was in the hands of all Catholic students. Luther was the first to reject St. Thomas.

In this book, all were taught that, if, among the various kinds of government, "that of a king is best," in the opinion of the author, "that of a tyrant is the worst." And a tyrant he defines as "any ruler who despises the common good, and seeks his private advantage."

In that book of the great doctor, all may read: "The farther the government recedes from the common weal, the more unjust is it. It recedes farther from the common weal in an oligarchy, in which the welfare of a few is sought, than in a democracy, whose object is the good of the many. . . . But farther still does it recede from the common weal in a tyrannous government, by which the good of one alone is sought."

The general consequence which St. Thomas draws from this doctrine is, that, "if a ruler governs a multitude of freemen for the common good of the multitude, the government will be good and just as becomes freemen."

Such was the political doctrine taught in the Catholic universities of Europe until the sixteenth century; but, in all probability, this golden work, "De Regimine Principum," was no longer the text-book in the English schools of the time of Henry Tudor.