For our part, it is not without some misgivings that we look forward to the policy of Great Britain, during the next thirty years. We do not lose our faith in God, nor in the power of right principles, nor do we mistrust the indomitable spirit and resources of the country when once fairly roused, disciplined, and utilized with sagacity and skill. But of late years there has been a growing party in the State, who would confine the energies of the Government to its own internal affairs; who would withdraw it from active intervention in European politics; who would employ every shilling of our expenditure upon developing the commercial resources of the country, and who would not even prepare to resist an enemy until they saw him actually approaching our shores. The disciples of this school, fortified by the principles of political economy, refuse to see any other element in our relations with foreign countries than the mere ledger account of barter and gain; and anything which suspends the traffic, or withdraws the national energies into other paths, is denounced by them as suicidal to the national interests. War shatters the doctrines of political economists. It is, therefore, only natural they should attempt to relieve us of warlike armaments and decry military organization. There can be no doubt that the Reform Bills of 1831 and 1868, by throwing power into the hands of the great trading classes, have augmented the strength of this party, until it weighs with preponderating effect on the main-spring of Government. We gladly admit the beneficial influences of the changes which this party have largely contributed to bring about, in interior retrenchment and municipal reforms, in the equalization of political privileges, in the extension of education, in the partial abolition of University Tests, in the liberation of commerce from protective duties, and of religion from State-Church endowments. We heartily accord, moreover, with its denunciations of the war spirit, as such. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that these benefits have not been unalloyed by some admixture of evil. For, to the fact of our applying all our energies in this direction, may be traced the breakdown of our armies before Sebastopol; the acceptance of the declaration of Paris, which strips England of one of its most potent weapons in naval warfare; and the shameful abandonment of Denmark in the affair of the Duchies, which has given rise to three wars and to the present complicated difficulties which we have to face.[241] It even now is a question whether, if Russia were to enter upon a new phase of encroachment in the East, or Prussia were to annex Holland, we could, or dare, interpose with dignity and effect. Any joint scheme of conquest pursued by these two military monarchies, we might certainly as well hope to resist, as a child might venture to arrest an avalanche; and our individual incompetency would, in the eyes of the governing class, be a solid reason for not endeavouring to solicit the aid of a series of disorganized States who are weaker than ourselves. For the last fifty years, our influence abroad has depended very much on the martial spirit and the indomitable pluck we displayed in our struggles with the First Napoleon. But, if we were now to enter upon a Continental war of only one-fifth of the dimensions of that we carried on against Napoleon, we should find ourselves, without allies, as little competent to support our former prestige, as the French have lately found themselves to support the prestige of the First Empire.
But the weakness of England lies not so much in the ascendancy of the non-intervention party, as in the hand-to-mouth policy of the English Executive. Every question of foreign policy is considered exclusively on its own merits, and solely with relation to the circumstances of the hour. It is never considered as evolved out of the events of the past, and linked with the impending events of the future. The Minister, instead of contemplating the question in its philosophic bearings, surrounded with all the lights which his lofty position enables him to command, counts his majorities, feels the pulse of the nation through the organs of the press, and decides upon adopting that course which shall most contribute to strengthen his power. In all these questions, the necessity of preserving a Cabinet is always paramount to that of saving a nation. At this crisis, it is unfortunate we have to do with States which pursue an entirely opposite system. The foreign policy of England fluctuates now in one direction, and then in another, much at the mercy of vulgar opinion, according to whatever whims the Minister may have who happens to be in power. But the foreign policy of Russia and Prussia broadens out like a mighty stream which unceasingly rolls its current in one direction, and never ceases to return with renewed effort upon any point where it may have sustained a temporary defeat. The policy of both Powers is one in act, identical in principle, substance, and complexion. It is the simple abnegation of justice in the comity of nations. Since the days of Peter the Great, and the first Frederic, the policy of these two Powers has been one of continuous annexation and conquest. Prussia has no more intention of arresting her course at the foot of the Carpathians, than Russia at the foot of the Caucasus. It behoves, therefore, the British people to change their course, and adjust their sails to the altered circumstances of affairs. Nor is it less incumbent on Ministers to be alive to the fact, that, though they may receive their home policy from the dictates of the people, it is their high sphere, on all questions of foreign policy, to guide, direct, create, and fashion the opinion of the country. There may be a difference of opinion as to how far the nation is bound to uphold the principles of abstract justice and right in its dealings with other Powers; but there can be no difference of opinion upon the obligation of maintaining these principles with the greatest tenacity, wherever their violation affects our interests. We would claim the support of the most rabid economist for the expediency of maintaining our rank as a first-class Power, if upon no higher principle than with a view to keep open foreign markets for our goods, and to prevent ourselves from being cut off from the sources of our commercial prosperity. A policy, which directed all the energies of the country to its own internal affairs, might be persisted in without radical injury, while the political equilibrium was divided between five States, each bent upon neutralizing its neighbour's power by counter-checks and balances; but the same policy pursued while Europe is in the hands of two military monarchies, apparently having only one game in view, would be simple ruin to the nation.
We therefore regard the present Army Organization Bill as a step in the right direction: our only objection to it is, that it does not go far enough. What the nation wants is increased military efficiency, and diminished expense. The Bill does not secure the one, and only partially realizes the other. We, however, are content to proceed by steps, if we are only secure of going in the right direction. Let us hope this measure is only the prelude to a series of others, which may increase our military efficiency without increasing the military burdens of the country. But union is strength. The liberal States of Europe, like the sticks in the fable, may be weak in themselves, but they can easily become strong by mutual alliance. The time is not inopportune for a League among the smaller States, based upon mutual defence from attack, which, if it could not preserve peace, might afford England, in conjunction with her crippled allies, a fulcrum of support in time of need. At all events, it is our duty, besides attending to our military organizations at home, to enter into closer relationship with the independent States of Europe, that if the autocrats of the North persist in indulging their old freak of enriching themselves at their neighbours' expense, they may not find us unprepared to maintain the power and greatness of this country.
Contemporary Literature.
HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.
The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria. By J. Roderick O'Flanagan, M.R.I.A., Barrister-at-Law. Two vols. Longmans.
These two handsome volumes are the result of twenty-five years' almost continuous industry, and they bear abundant testimony to the variety and interest of the author's researches and lucubrations. It was undoubtedly a bold and happy resolution that led him to follow in Lord Campbell's path, and attempt to accomplish for the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, what that successful lawyer and judge had already done with such vigour, clearness, and liberality for the Lord Chancellors of England. Mr. O'Flanagan has certainly produced a work which will command public attention from the specially skilful manner in which he has furnished, in connection with the personal biography of the great lawyers, an almost continuous review of Irish events, together with a thousand traditionary reminiscences and anecdotes, scandalous or praiseworthy, concerning the Irish bar, from the earliest period. The portraits, especially in the first volume, may be rather indistinct; but, after all, the Lord Chancellors of Ireland, for a period of about six hundred years, stand before us with a remarkable distinctness, in all their variety of opinion, accomplishment, and character; the arrogant churchman, the profound politician, the corrupt judge, the staunch patriot, the fierce fanatic, and the eccentric jester, all playing their parts variously, and at times in a manner but little consistent with the character of their sedate and pacific avocations. The first Irish Chancellor of whom there is any record is John de Worchley, who received his appointment in 1219, in the reign of Henry III. Nearly all the early Chancellors were Englishmen, as well as prelates. Their courts were held in Dublin Castle. Their salaries were originally £40 a year, exclusive of fees and perquisites; now the income of the office is £8,000 a year, with a retiring pension of £4,000. The greatest of all the Irish Chancellors were certainly Lord Clare and Lord Plunket, and Mr. O'Flanagan not inappropriately devotes to their biographies nearly two-thirds of the second volume.
It is very evident to the most cursory reader of this work, that the author is a very staunch Roman Catholic, as well as a most patriotic Irishman; but we should not on this ground hold him disqualified for his present task, if he discovered a general candour and impartiality in those instances in which his religious convictions are concerned. Unhappily, however, in such cases, surgit amari aliquid. It would be impossible for us to note all the evidences of religious partizanship observable in the pages of this extensive work; but we prefer to direct public attention to a very bold though unsuccessful attempt to vindicate the character of one of the most detestable and unprincipled judges who ever disgraced the Irish bench. Mr. O'Flanagan has taken extraordinary pains to wipe the stains from the character of Sir Alexander Fitton, the Irish Lord Chancellor of James II., who certainly appears in no enviable light in the pages of Hume and Macaulay. Though compelled to admit that he may not be 'able to remove the stains altogether,' our author is still bold enough to say, 'with patience and perseverance, I have satisfied myself that party prejudice originated or embellished most of the original accusations.' (Vol. i. p. 467.) The case is one of purely historical evidence. Hume's reference to Fitton is in these words:—Tyrconnell was now vested with full authority, and carried over with him as Chancellor, one Fitton, a man who was taken from a jail, and who had been convicted of forgery and other crimes, but who compensated for all his enormities by his headlong zeal for the Catholic religion. He was even heard to say from the bench, that the Protestants were all rogues, and that there was not one among forty thousand that was not a traitor, a rebel, and a villain.' Macaulay's account is substantially the same; but he adds that Fitton 'often, after hearing a cause in which the interests of his church were concerned, postponed his decision, for the purpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual director, a Spanish priest.' Mr. O'Flanagan disposes of these statements by affirming that both these historians drew their representations from the account of Fitton given in his 'State of the Protestants of Ireland during King James's Government,' by Archbishop King, of Dublin, an avowed enemy. Burnet, however, in his 'History of his own Times,' speaks of Tyrconnell and Fitton as 'not only professed but zealous Papists,' and of Fitton he says, he 'knew no other law but the king's pleasure.' It is a very remarkable fact that Plowden, the Roman Catholic historian, in his 'Historical Review,' published long after these works, does not make the slightest allusion to Fitton, though if he had preserved anything like the spirit of Mr. O'Flanagan, he would not have allowed the memory of James's Irish Chancellor to rot under the 'repulsive reproaches of two centuries.' But we are fully prepared to show that Dr. King did not speak without book in charging Fitton with forgery.
It is not a matter of much consequence whether Fitton was only 'one Fitton,' as Hume calls him, or a descendant of one of the most aristocratic families of Cheshire, as Mr. O'Flanagan, on undoubted evidence, assures us. Neither does anyone dispute the fact that he was convicted of the crime of forgery, and lay several years in prison. The question is, was he guilty of the crime? Our author says—'There is some doubt whether he was chargeable with the guilt which has been so unsparingly imputed to him;' but he cannot deny that a jury of twelve men had no hesitation on their oath in attaching forgery to his name. What, then, are the facts of the case? These are recounted at some length by Mr. O'Flanagan, following the admirable and now rare 'County History of Cheshire,' by Ormerod; but he has not fairly followed his authority, as his narrative omits passage after passage that bears most hardly against Fitton. We are also to remember that Ormerod's own authority was a tract written in Fitton's own justification, under the following title:—'A True Account of the Proceedings in the several suits in Law that have been between the Right Honorable Charles Lord Gerard of Brandon and Alexander Fitton, Esq. Published for general satisfaction by a lover of truth. Hague: Printed mdclxiii. Small 4to, 49 pp.' There was also another tract published, which, perhaps, Ormerod never saw, under the title—'A Reply to a Paper intituled, A New Account of the Unreasonableness of Mr. Fitton's pretences against the Earl of Macclesfield.' (British Museum, Parl. Law Cases, vol. v., p. 117.) The facts of the case as narrated in these tracts by Fitton's friends, may be briefly described. Sir Edward Fitton, who was childless, resolved in 1641, after paying his debts and bequeathing legacies to his sisters' children, to restore the ancient entail of the Gawsworth estates, and sealed it by indenture dated 9th Nov., 17 Car., on William Fitton, his next male kinsman, the father of Alexander Fitton, the Irish Lord Chancellor. In this settlement there was a power of revocation. It is said to have been confirmed by deed-poll, dated April 3, 18 Car., by Sir Edward Fitton, who died two years after at Bristol. The allegation is that this deed-poll was forged by Alexander Fitton, or, at his instance, by Alexander Grainger. After Sir Edward's death, his widow, Lady Fitton, retained possession of Gawsworth as her jointure; but on her death, after a series of lawsuits instituted against the sisters of Sir Edward Fitton, who were determined to retain the estate, William Fitton succeeded in getting Gawsworth into his possession, and his son, Alexander, afterwards succeeded upon his marriage in getting hold of all the property by paying off a number of mortgages against it. But nineteen years after Sir Edward Fitton's death, as this tract states, his nephew, Lord Gerard, produced a will bequeathing the estates to himself, as the son of one of Sir Edward's sisters; though it was stated, on the other side, that immediately before his death, Sir Edward said 'he would rather settle his estate on Ned Fitton, the bonny beggar, than on any one of his sisters' children.' The parties then went to law, Alexander Fitton relying on the deed-poll, and Lord Gerard maintaining that it was not genuine. The High Court of Chancery directed a trial at law to be had at Westminster upon this special issue, whether the deed-poll was the act of Sir Edward Fitton or not; for it had been rumoured that Lord Gerard's solicitor had prevailed upon Abraham Grainger to swear that he had forged Sir Edward's hand to the deed. The question came on for trial; the deed was substantiated—to use Ormerod's words—by the evidence of Mr. Richard Davenport, Mr. Edmund Barwick, and Mr. Thomas Smallwoods, whose deposition was taken on his deathbed by Mr. Edge, a clergyman; but the forgery was, on the other hand, fully acknowledged by Grainger himself, corroborated by the evidence of Gifford and Wheeler; and it was also deposed by Colonel R. Ashton,—Webb, Esq., Thomas Adams, Thomas Cotton, Captain Holland, and others, that they had heard Mr. Fitton confess that Grainger had forged a deed for him for £40. Depositions to Mr. Fitton's character were taken, and three witnesses not named are said to have sworn they had seen the deed-poll before the time alleged for the forgery. It was objected to Fitton that he could not prove where he had the deed, or who engrossed it; that it had not been mentioned at the former trials or at Fitton's marriage; and that the witnesses could not remember where it was executed. The jury found that the deed was forged. Now, let it be remembered that this narration comes from the Fitton party; and yet Mr. O'Flanagan holds Fitton guiltless in the teeth of the verdict of an independent jury in London, who heard both sides of the case. But the narrative does not end here. Processes were issued commanding several of Fitton's witnesses to appear before the King's Bench on an information of perjury. Then, says Mr. O'Flanagan, 'Grainger, conscience-stricken, declared his prevarication in a written document, stating that he had not forged the deed; that this document was signed in the presence of twelve or thirteen gentlemen.' Our author's version of Ormerod's history is singularly defective and one-sided. Ormerod says that Grainger—according to the tract—begged earnestly for an opportunity of acknowledging his guilt to Fitton; and, farther, did so before a citizen of London, not named, and a kinsman of Fitton's, not named; and then wrote a narrative which he read before twelve or thirteen gentlemen. But Ormerod says that these 'gentlemen' 'were all most probably in low situations, and are in no way identified.' The narration itself relates the most improbable circumstances, as, for example, that in March, 1661, Grainger, the narrator, was pulled off his horse, taken before Sir Allen Aspley, who committed him to the Gatehouse without examination; that he was in danger of being murdered in his bed by one Rowe; that he was threatened with hanging, and with getting his hands cut off, if he would not forge the will. Was there ever such an improbable story? And yet Mr. O'Flanagan passes over this statement in silence, without referring to Ormerod's honest judgment, that even the inference from Grainger's facts is in favour of Lord Gerard, and that the evidence of a perjured witness was of no value unless corroborated by independent testimony. We have good reason, then, to believe that not only did Fitton secure the forgery of the deed in the first instance, but that he induced Grainger to issue his recantation in the shape of the narration referred to. For the House of Lords, immediately after its publication, ordered two copies of it to be burned, one at Westminster and another at Chester, 'at such time as Lord Gerard should appoint,' and inflicted the following severe punishment on Fitton and three others:—'That Alexander Fitton should be fined to his Majestie in the summe of £500; and should be committed close prisoner to the King's Bench Prison until he should produce Grainger, and should find sureties for his good behaviour during life; and that Edward Floyd, John Cade, and John Wright (three of the witnesses), should be committed to the Fleet during the King's pleasure, and should, before their enlargement, find sureties for their good behaviour during life.' It is evident from this very stringent proceeding of the House of Lords that they connected Fitton very directly with the disappearance of Grainger, and that Grainger was either unable or unwilling to come forward to stand the ordeal of a public examination upon the circumstances of his recantation.