Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849. Various
with his king to Sardinia, in 1792, by the invasion of Piedmont, his philosophical contempt for the revolutionists was exhibited in his Considerations sur la France, from which, in a former letter, I have made so long a quotation. In this work – in some respects his best – his Ultramontanism is far from extravagant: and not only his religious principles as they were then, but also the effect which everything English was then producing on his mind, is clearly seen in a comment upon the English Church, which, as it passed his review, and was printed again in 1817 with no retractation, must be regarded as somewhat extraordinary. "If ever Christians reunite," says he, "as all things make it their interest to do, it would seem that the movement must take rise in the Church of England. Calvinism was French work, and consequently an exaggerated production. We are pushed too far away by the sectarians of so unsubstantial a religion, and there is no mean by which they may comprehend us: but the Church of England, which touches us with one hand, touches with the other a class whom we cannot reach; and although, in a certain point of view, she may thus appear the butt of two parties, (as being herself rebellious, though preaching authority,) yet in other respects she is most precious, and may be considered as one of those chemical intermèdes, which are capable of producing a union between elements dissociable in themselves." He seldom shows such moderation; for the Greek and Anglican churches he specially hates. In 1804 he was sent ambassador to St Petersburg; and there he resided till 1817, fulfilling his diplomatic duties with that zeal for his master, and that devotion to conservative interests, which are the spirit of his writings. There he published, in 1814, the pithy Essai sur le principe générateur des Constitutions, in which he reduced to an abstract form the doctrines of his former treatise on France. His style is peculiarly relishable, sometimes even sportive; but its main maxims are laid down with a dictatorial dignity and sternness, which associate the tractate, in the minds of many, with the writings of Montesquieu. This essay, so little known in England, has found an able translator and editor in America, who commends it to his countrymen as an antidote to those interpretations which are put upon our constitutional law by the political disciples of Rousseau. I commend the simple fact to your consideration, as a sign of the more earnest tone of thinking, on such matters, which is beginning to be felt among us. The fault of the essay is its practical part, or those applications into which his growing Ultramontanism diverted his sound theories. His principles are often capable of being turned upon himself, as I have noticed in the matter of creeds. His genius also found a congenial amusement in translating Plutarch's Delays of Divine Justice, which he accompanied with learned notes, illustrating the influence of Christianity upon a heathen mind. On his return from St Petersburg in 1817, appeared his violent Ultramontane work, Du Pape, in which he most ingeniously, but very sophistically, uses in support of the papacy an elaborate argument, drawn from the good which an overruling Providence has accomplished, by the very usurpations and tyrannies of the Roman See. As if this were not enough, however, he closes his life and labours with another work, the Soirées de St Petersbourg, in which, with bewitching eloquence, he expends all his powers of varied learning, and pointed sarcasm, and splendid sophistry, upon questions which have but the one point of turning everything to the account of his grand theory of church and state. Thus, from first to last, he identifies his political and moral philosophy with religious dogmas essentially ruinous to liberty, and which, during three centuries, have wasted every kingdom in which they have gained ascendency. To the direct purpose of uprooting the little that remained of Gallicanism, he devoted a treatise, which accompanies his work Du Pape, and of which the first book is entitled, De l'Esprit d'opposition nourri en France contre le Saint-Siège. Its points may be stated in a simple sentence from the works of his coadjutor, Frederick Schlegel, who, in a few words, gives the theory which has been the great mistake of the Reaction. "The disguised half-schism of the Gallican church," says he, – "not less fatal in its historical effects than the open schism of the Greeks– has contributed very materially towards the decline of religion in France, down to the period of the Restoration."7 He illustrates it by the disputes of Louis XIV. with the court of Rome, but forgets to say anything of his extermination of the Huguenots. In one sense, however, he is right. It was precisely the half-schism to which the mischief is attributable. This half-way work it was that enabled Louis XIV. to assert the Gallican theory against a semi-Protestant pope, for the very purpose of fostering genuine Ultramontanism and favouring the Jesuits; while under another pontiff he could repudiate Gallicanism, and force the clergy to retract what he had forced them to adopt! The schism of England was doubtless "an open schism," in the opinion of Schlegel, and if so, it should have been followed, on his theory, by worse effects; but Schlegel lives too long after the days of Bossuet to bring her example into view. The natural appeal would have been to that example, as its history is cotemporary; but he adroitly diverts attention from so instructive a parallel, and cunningly drags in "the open schism of the Greeks!" Thus, against a bristling front of facts, he drives his theory that France has not been Romish enough, and lends all his energies to render her less Gallican and more Tridentine. Were he now alive, he might see reason to amend his doctrine in the condition of Rome itself! But the condition of France is quite as conclusive. Since the Restoration, the French Church has been growing more and more Ultramontane, and the people are worse and worse. Gallicanism is extinct, but results are all against the Reactionary theory. France has no more a la Vendée; there will be no more Chouans; the present Church is incapable of reviving such things. It makes the infidels. I know there is less show of rampant atheism just now than formerly; but if there is less of paroxysm, there is less of life. France dies of a chronic atheism. The Abbé Bonnetat, writing in 1845 on The Religious and Moral Wants of the French Population, expresses nothing but contempt for the alleged improvement in religious feeling. According to him, almost a tenth of the male population, in any given district, not only do not believe in God, but glory in their unbelief. Half of all the rest make no secret of their infidelity as to the immortality of the soul; and their wives are equally sceptical, to the curse of their children's children! "The residue believe," says the Abbé, "only in the sense of not denying. They affirm nothing, but, as compared with the others, they lack the science of misbelief." To go on with his melancholy picture, the divine and salutary institution of the Lord's day no longer effects its purpose. In towns, the working classes and tradespeople scarcely ever enter the churches. In the rural districts, a tenth of the people never go to church at all; and of the rest, one half may hear a mass on the five great festivals, while the other half, though more frequent in attendance, are very irregular. One Sunday they perform the duty perfunctorily; the next they work in the fields; the next they stay at home, amuse themselves, and forget religion as part of "dull care." The young folk, in many places, receive their first and last communion at twelve or fourteen, and that is the end of their conformity. A worse feature yet in the domestic manners, resulting from this state of religion, is the fact that girls and boys are brought up very much in the same way, and are thrown promiscuously together, spending their evenings where they choose. Parents have ceased to ask their children —Why were you not at church? Were you at vespers? Were you at mass? and in fact are the first to corrupt their offspring, by their brutal irreligion, and coarse language, and shameless behaviour.8
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