Hector, in “Troilus and Cressida,” act ii., scene 2, speaks of “Young men, whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy.”
[163] — Jardine thinks that Oldcorne manifests a disposition “to hesitate and argue about the moral complexion” of the Gunpowder Treason; and this disposition Jardine regards as exhibiting in Oldcorne, “apparently a man of humane and quiet character,” a “distorted perception of right and wrong.” — See “Criminal Trials,” pp. 232, 233.
But it is evident that, for the nonce, the London Magistrate’s judicial temper of mind had deserted him, when he sniffed too closely the moral
air breathed by a Jesuit. For manifest is it that, e.g., all acts of insubordination against an established government are not treasons and rebellions when that government is hopelessly tyrannical, inhuman, and corrupt. Nor are all acts of slaughter of human beings acts of wilful murder. They may be acts of justifiable tyrannicide, as, possibly, in the case of “the man Charles Stuart, King of England;” and acts of justifiable homicide, as in the case of every just war, or of every legitimate slaying upon the gallows.
[164] — In this connection the following words of the conspirator John Grant should be remembered. After the Jury had found a verdict of “guilty” against the prisoners, at Westminster Hall, on being asked what he could say wherefore judgment of death should not be pronounced against him, Grant replied, “He was guilty of a conspiracy intended, but never effected.”
Cf. Wordsworth’s Sonnet on the Gunpowder Plot, which is very penetrating.
[165] — Let it be remembered by the gentle, though unreflecting, reader who is disposed to be unnerved at the sound of the word “Casuist,” as at the sound of something “uncanny,” that Casuistry is that great science, so indispensable to statesmen, warriors, and politicians, especially in these days of democratic self-government, whereby the electing, self-governing people are told by their own authorized expert representatives so much of public affairs as it is for the common good should be known by them, but no more. The late Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone once styled Casuistry “a great and noble science.” Now, the Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., the present Prime Minister of King Edward VII., denominated Mr. Gladstone in the House of Lords, when paying his tribute to the memory of that “king of men,” “a great Christian statesman.” And justly; for although Mr. Gladstone was himself a master in the science of Casuistry, the object that science has in view is to forge a palladium for Truth, and this at the cost of endless intellectual labour. Casuistry, properly understood, counts all mere intellectual toils as cheaply purchased, no matter at what cost, provided only that Truth herself — unsullied Truth — be saved. For, after its kind, in whatever sphere, Truth is infinitely more excellent than the diamond, neither is the ruby so lovely; while partial Truth, according to its degree, is not less true than the full orb of Truth.
[166] — This phrase, “sacrilegious murder,” is used by Shakespeare in “Macbeth,” and so precisely does it express the double crime of the Gunpowder plotters that I feel certain that from this allusion — as well as from the evident allusion to the well-known equivocations of Father Henry Garnet (alias Farmer) before the Privy Council — the great dramatist must have had the Gunpowder Plot in his mind the whole time he wrote this finest of his tragedies.
I suggest, too, that the words “The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan? for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell” are an allusion to the mysterious warning bell that the plotters thought they heard whilst working in the mine. — See Jardine’s “Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,” p. 54.
Compare also Mr. H. W. Mabie’s description of the tragedy of “Macbeth” in his very recent and valuable “Life of Shakespeare” (Macmillan & Co.). Mr. Mabie’s account sounds in one’s ears like a very echo of a recital of the facts and purposes of the Gunpowder Plot.