THE INQUISITION IN ENGLAND. THE tale we have now to tell may We alluded be briefly told. casually to it in the number of this Magazine for last December; and since that time many of our readers must have become acquainted with the details. In the autumn of 1859, Sir John Romilly, the Master of the Rolls, appointed Mr. William Barclay Turnbull one of the Calenderers in the State-Paper Office. That gentleman was eminently qualified to discharge with credit the duties of the office; these duties in his case being the preparation of a complete digest of the foreign papers from the reign of Edward VI. to the Revolution. Mr. Turnbull is a sound and learned antiquarian, a profound student of history, especially of the period which embraces the reigns of Mary, Elizabeth, and the Stuarts-a gentleman of perfect uprightness, and of a keen sense of honour. But the Pro testant Alliance scented a victim. It discovered that Mr. Turnbull was -a Roman Catholic. Hinc illæ lacrymæ. 6 From that moment the whole machinery of clerical agitation has been in motion. Meetings have been held, manifestoes have been circulated, libels have been published, petitions (signed, we are admiringly informed, by ten peers, ten baronets, besides several generals, admirals, and other officers in the army and navy,' who still, like Uncle Toby, we suppose, whistle Lillibullero when excited) have been hawked through the country. The English lion, in short, has been awakened to a sense of the situation. Some time in August last a deputation, headed by the Earl of Shaftesbury, waited upon Lord Palmerston. The 'false Achitophel' of Dryden's immortal satire was the wet-nurse of that famous plot, Raised in extremes and in extremes decried, and the present earl is emulous, it We sometimes fancy that it is not unwise to have at the head of affairs a cheerful Minister with no convictions. Such a man exercises a pacific influence. He moderates. He stands between the rival factions. He is never thrown off his balance by enthusiasm, or that awkward earnestness which unfits the purist for the delicate handling of the weapons with which the battle of political life is fought, and political ascendancy retained. Only the mischief is, that a man unsupported by a strong belief cannot resist pressure. His keen eye and his fine sense resolve him what is just and honest; but he does not admire the martyrs, and he does not mean to join their ranks, if he can help it. So 'the ever-cheerful man of sin' closes his eyes, and pleasantly acquiesces in the inevitable. Lord Palmerston is not singular in his creed, there are few of our statesmen, now that Lord Aberdeen is gone, who would act otherwise. The 'travelled Thane,' indeed, inherited the obstinate earnestness and clumsiness of his race; and when, during the excitement that followed the 'Durham Letter-solitary in the House of Lords he rose to record a solemn protest against the folly of Parliament and the madness of the nation, he stirred feelings which the most finished rhetoric seldom stirs. 'I confess,' said the stout old man, with a confidence which the event has more than justified, that when oppressed by the unanimity which prevails, and the numbers arrayed against me, I remember the "Popish Plot," and am comforted.' The present Premier-fortunately or unfortunately-is not formed of such unmalleable stuff, and worried out of his life by the pertinacity of the enemy, he at length gave way. Sir John Romilly, we have reason to believe, was informed that it would be advisable to dismiss Mr. Turnbull. To such suggestions, Sir John turned a deaf ear, as was indeed to be expected of one who is a sound lawyer, an intelligent patron of learning, and who inherits the traditions as well as the name of an eminent lover of liberty. He knew that he had made an excellent appointment, and he determined to stand by his man.' But the Protestant Alliance was not to lose its victim. Mr. Turnbull, after being hunted and baited, assailed with weapons which no honest man would use, and accused of every crime that base, vulgar, and dishonest minds can conjure up, for nearly two years, determined to resign a post where he was exposed to daily and hourly insult. We regret but cannot blame this determination. Here-in two manly, generous, and memorable lettersis the end of the whole matter : Public Record-office, Calendaring Department, Jan. 28th, 1861. SIR,-I am at a loss to express the pain which I feel at finding myself still the cause of a religious controversy which seems to be becoming more embittered day by day. Strong though my religious convictions may be considered by some, I am not the less conscious of my own rectitude, and I feel that I am the innocent object of a persecution which, consistently with the precepts of our common Christianity, cannot be justified. This state of things, however, must be now brought to an end; for I cannot, for my own individual advantage, allow the public mind to be disturbed by an acrimonious discussion of my merits or demerits, from which no commensurate beneficial results can by any possibility arise. I therefore, with many thanks for your kind patronage, and with deep gratitude for the kind protection which you have so feelingly afforded me, beg to resign into your hands the Calendarership of the Foreign State Papers with which you honoured me in the month of August, 1859. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your most obedient and most obliged servant, W. B. TURNBULL. Right Hon. Sir John Romilly, M. R. Rolls, Jan. 29, 1861. MY DEAR SIR,-It is with much regret that I have read your letter, resigning your present employment. I feel, however, that I cannot press you to retain a situation which subjects you to so much persecution as that to which I have inadvertently exposed you. My regret at your resignation is, however, mainly founded on the public loss which will, I believe, be sustained by the discontinuance of your services; nor will it be easy to find a gentleman both willing to carry on the very arduous task in which you have been engaged, and also possessed of the peculiar knowledge and capacity required for that purpose. I cannot conclude without expressing the high esteem I entertain for yourself personally, and the pain I feel that any society of English gentlemen, professedly founded on religious principles, should have been found to exist in this country who have considered it consistent with the charity on which those principles are based to endeavour, by ex parte statements and confidential canvassing, to remove from an employment for which he is peculiarly fitted a gentleman so honourable and trustworthy as I consider you to be. I am, yours very sincerely, W. B. Turnbull, Esq. We must all feel that the power wielded by the associations which have thus driven an eminent antiquary from the post for which he was specially qualified is very great and perilous. We have seen for what objects that power is exercised. It may be well to consider -and the documents beside us enable us to do so-what is the tone of mind, the habit of thought, the sense of honour, the intellectual force, which directs this dangerous spiritual confederacy, this implacable Puritan inquisition. We are not going to afflict our 1861.]. The Memorial of the Tract Society. readers with many specimens of the taste and argument of these precious manifestoes. It might be instructive to do so, no doubt, but the work would be excessively nauseous, and we have neither time nor patience to undertake so unsavoury a duty. We prefer to select a single document, which, though less offensive in style, is quite as malicious in imputation and childish in argument as any of the lot. This is "The Memorial of the Religious Tract Society' to the Premier: To the Right Honourable the Viscount Palmerston, her Majesty's First Lord of the Treasury. THE MEMORIAL OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY Humbly Sheweth,-That your Memorialists, in the discharge of their duty to prepare sound moral and religious instruction for the people, publish historical works for the young, and are thus practically conversant with the necessity of an accurate guardianship, and a faithful and impartial résumé of all the national historical records; especially of those relating to the most important period of our history, when those principles of the Reformation were adopted by public authority under which the Empire has enjoyed an unprecedented amount of civil and religious liberty, and of general prosperity. The necessity of such guardianship, and of such a faithful résumé, is considerably increased in the present day, when the Romish Church exhibits the most ardent zeal to make proselytes, and restore the kingdom to the oppression of the Papal Hierarchy, and when-amongst its other efforts-it is skilfully attempting to revolutionize the educational histories of the country. That it is, therefore, of the last importance that the Calenderer of the foreign papers in the State Paper Office should be a gentleman whose impartiality should be above all suspicion. That your Memorialists have learned with great regret, that this office has been bestowed upon Mr. William Barclay Turnbull, who, even before his profession as a Roman Catholic, in the preface of a book entitled Legende Catholicæ, and dedicated to the memory of Peter Rabadeneira, of the Society of Jesus, printed at Edinburgh, A.D. 1840; and subsequently, in the preface to the works of Robert Southwell, of the same Jesuit community, 387 expressed himself in the following language: 1. As to the Reformation. 'But the conventual orders were guilty of one unpardonable offence. They were too rich! Hence the "Reformation," and Henry's zeal for religion. The Church must never be opulent in worldly means, for then it is laid open to the assaults of the enemy-sheep-skinned wolves, pious Dissenters.'-Preface to L. C., p. 12. 2. As to Monachism and its frauds. 'I advocate the revival of monastic institutions, and apologize for the pious fictions of the early ages.'-Preface to L. C., p. 14. 3. As to the Jesuits. And these sentiments'-as to Southwell's poetical works-have been induced not by a mere natural bias or respect towards the illustrious society of which he was a member, and which I hold in the highest veneration, honour, and esteem,' &c.-Preface to Southwell, p. 60. 4. As to his resolve and spirit towards all 'heretics.' 'I will do all that in me lies to aid the extinction of heresies, and the establishment of the Catholic Church of Christ upon earth! I repeat, that I am no Romanist; but this I declare, that I had rather be condemned with a Papist than saved with a Puritan.'-Preface to L. C., p. 16. And again, 'It [the Auchinleck MS., from which the Legenda Catholice were taken] has been sadly mutilated by some sacrilegious hand, chiefly for the sake of the illuminations. Would to God, that for his pains the Vandal had been served after a similar fashion, and been qualified to chant shrill treble within the choir of the Sistine chapel.'-Preface to L. C., p. 6. That your Memorialists respectfully submit, that a gentleman who has thus expressed himself, cannot be regarded as above all just suspicion of using his present position in subserviency to the interests of the Foreign Spiritual Power to which he has transferred his allegiance; that no résumé of contents made by him could be received as faithful and impartial; and that it cannot be agreeable to the Protestant portion of the literary and religious men of the kingdom,-i.e., to the vast majority,-to have to solicit documents at his hands. That your Memorialists feel assured that the Master of the Rolls could not have been aware of these facts when he made the appointment, nor the Lords of the Treasury when they confirmed it. Your Memorialists therefore pray that your Lordship will order such steps to be taken in this matter, as may reassure the public, and remove all cause of offence and alarm. One or two observations must be hazarded on this remarkable document; and, following the example set us, we shall treat separately the thoughts which it suggests (I.) as to the honesty, and (II.) as to the logic of its authors. I. Their honesty. The Committee of the Religious Tract Society, in their erudite and original historical investigations, have no doubt become conversant with the shifts to which historians occasionally resort; and it must be owned that they have improved. upon any model they can have had before them. The art of cooking accounts and authorities, though known and practised from an early period, has attained maturity only in our own day. It has long been understood, however, that by selecting one branch of a sentence and omitting another, by throwing together passages that have no connexion, by taking the proposition without the limitation, or by looking at the qualification apart from that which it qualifies, a curious sense of mystification may be produced. It is possible by these and similar expedients to create an utterly false impression of the argument of a statesman or the finance of a company; nay, a master of the craft, by cleverly mutilating isolated passages and divorcing them from the context, may arrive at the most preposterous conclusions may find moderation in Cumming, decency in Spurgeon, charity in Shaftesbury, and learning and sense in Lord Palmerston's bishops. It is an ingenious art; but somehow the vulgar sense of vulgar men who are neither rhetoricians nor divines, has called it by an ugly name. But in the practice of this artwhatever we may choose to call itthe Religious Tract Society clearly excels. The Committee are anxious to blast the character of a fellowcountryman, and this is how they set about it. It will be very hard,' they say, 'if, in the works of a man who has written much from his youth upwards, we do not find half a dozen sentences which cannot be tortured into something very objectionable indeed.' And they forthwith hunt up any jeu d'esprit the victim may have written when a boy, and in the pages of their Monthly Reporter string together the mutilated extracts. It is no good in such a case to use periphrasis. We accuse the Tract Society or its Committee of the crime which it attributes to Mr. Turnbull-the wilful falsification of documentary evidence. The end may justify the means. We do not undertake to argue questions of theological casuistry, but this we say that on whatever grounds it is justified, the divines who addressed the memorial' to Lord Palmerston have been guilty of a 'pious fraud.' (1) The memorial is so worded as to produce the impression that all the passages cited were written before Mr. Turnbull left the Church of England-even before his profession as a Roman Catholic ;' whereas the only one of any importance in the circumstances-the quotation from the preface to Southwell-was not written until after that event, the book not having been published until 1856. (2) The quotations are so 'garbled' that they convey an entirely false impression of the sentiments of the writer. We cannot follow the slanderer through the whole of his dirty work; one example must suffice. Mr. Turnbull is made to observe, 'as to Monachism and its frauds''I advocate the revival of monastic institutions, and apologize for the pious fictions of the early ages.' This is an abrupt and startling confession of faith, and if intended to apply even to ecclesiastical 'frauds,' sufficiently questionable in taste and doctrine. But it is not applied to monastic or any other 'fraud.' The 'fiction' alluded to is the grand and beautiful legendary poetry of the early Christian Church; and the monastic institutions which Mr. Turnbull would revive, are institutions which, as sketched out by him, are not alien, we hope, to the genius and the spirit of Protestantism. In our own times,' he says, 'it were greatly to be desired that religious houses would again lift up their heads among the denselypeopled manufacturing districts and overgrown towns, where the souls of men, women, and children are crushed to the earth, and compelled to drain the bitterest dregs of human misery. Such institutions,' he continues, 'oh! generous and noble Ashley, would aid thy heavenapproved labours; and while they tended (to alleviate the agonies of the toil-worn frame, would teach the suffering sinner to lay the burden of his sins and sorrows at the foot of the cross of his blessed Redeemer.' We are not sure that Mr. Turnbull retains his youthful admiration for the 'generous and noble Ashley;' but we are sure that in these opinions, visionary and chimerical though they may seem to an age which repudiates every manifestation of a visible Christian fellowship, and leaves each man to work out his salvation or his damnation, unsolaced by the assurance of divine aid for his spiritual, and brotherly compassion for his bodily needs, there is nothing for which their author need blush, nothing which should expose him to insulting suspicion or cruel comment. Divorced from its context, and recklessly misconstrued, we see what an ingenious mind may make of the most innocent observation. But this is not all. The passage itself is dismembered. The assailants, eager to prove that Mr. Turnbull was a Romanist before he professed Romanism, cannot afford to quote a single sentence fairly or fully. In the Tract Society's Reporter it stands I advocate the revival of monastic institutions, and apologize for the pious fictions of the early ages. In the preface to the Legendæ Catholicæ it stands Although I advocate the revival of monastic institutions, and apologize for the pious fictions of the early ages, I am not pleading for the growth of Romanism. If any lay historian, if any secular controversialist were found 389 guilty of the crime which we have brought home to these clerical champions of Protestant puritywhat name, we ask again, would the vulgar tongue apply to him? But we have said enough on this topic. Mangled and dismembered though the extracts are, it is obvious at a glance that it is worse than childish to base any charge of dishonest intention upon them. Their author, on the contrary, is plainly a man sufficiently plain-spoken. He is no euphuist; he does not cloak his opinions, nor hide what he strongly feels. And, whatever his religious position may be, he is unquestionably in one respect more English than his assailants. For the men who, with sad countenances and without any sense of the absurdity of what they are doing, can condemn the humorous exaggeration of the antiquary who beholds his sacred 'MS.' violated by sacrilegious hands, are the men who must fail to relish, or indeed to understand, much of the richest comedy in our English classicsthe airy extravagance of Beatrice, the solemn fun of Tristram Shandy, or the delicious enthusiasm of the Laird of Monkbarns. The society of men who have no sense of humour, 'aggravates' us beyond measure; and if the writer of The Memorial represent the historical 'Puritan,' we are not surprised at Mr. Turnbull's very natural desire to have as little as possible to do with him, either here or hereafter. II. Their logic. The argument, in so far as it deserves the name, resolves into the proposition, that the duties of a Calenderer in the Record office are of public utility, and that no Roman Catholic can be expected to discharge public duties with honour or honesty. Such a proposition is utterly untenable. We summarily repudiate an imputation which degrades our national character. We believe that honest Englishmen are to be found everywhere, and that even in the ranks of the Protestant Alliance there are men who regard 'truth, peace, freedom, mercy,' as their birthright. Strict integrity, a |