it either is or may be (according to your own doctrine) either invalidated or disannulled in an instant? Pray, Mr. Penn, consider what your new charter can signify, so long as there is a High Commission Court? Cannot those commissioners take any of your and our preachers, teachers, or ministers to task when they please? Cannot they, when they have a mind to it, suspend Mr. Penn, or George Whitehead, Mr. Alsop, Mr. Lobb?" Then adds the writer," Now let us see, before we leap, whether that will run no further than just Mr. Penn will have it. Can he stop the current of it when he pleases? If he could, we are not sure he would; for formerly he had no great kindness for us Baptists and other Dissenters. Therefore it would be the greatest piece of weakness and folly in the world for us to dance after his and the Jesuit's pipe." That the opinion of Penn entertained by this writer was the general opinion at the time, is manifest from contemporary publications. In this tract he is reminded of "the Magdalen College men." He is charged with acting in concert with Jesuits. In allusion to the excesses committed in the country, the writer says, "If you were truly a friend to liberty for liberty's sake, as you publish and pretend to the world, you would mind and inform us and your brethren of these and the like things, and not mincingly pass them over, and both delude and deceive us and them." Such was the general verdict on Penn's conduct at the time, nor can it be shaken by Lord Macaulay's opponents. Penn, as well as other men, must be judged by his conduct. The Marquis of Halifax, as is clear from his celebrated "Letter to a Dissenter," considered Penn's conduct discreditable. In allusion to the favour in which the Quakers were held by the Romanists, the Marquis says, "so that I should not wonder, though a man of that persuasion, in spite of his hat, should be master of the ceremonies." It is evident that he alludes to Penn, nor is it possible to remove the suspicions which rest upon his character. Undoubtedly he approved of the obnoxious measures of the Court. Lord Macaulay's estimate of his character is therefore correct. Were all his lordship's statements equally well founded with his conclusions relative to the character of William Penn, the value of his history would be greatly enhanced. charge. Nothing has transpired to reverse their decision. Towards the close of the reign of James II. a Jesuit writes, "Our brother Penn and his disciples have done us signal services." Romanists regarded Penn's efforts as favourable to their cause, and he was suspected by all Protestants. It was a curious friendship between him and Father Petre, and they were constantly together. In another contemporary pamphlet we read, "Friend Penn, who has had long commerce with Rome, was stirred up by his new spirit to persuade the nation to part with penal laws and tests. It cannot be doubted that he is as much in earnest as Father Petre himselt." The writer then alludes to Penn's former opinions, adding that men could not "reconcile this new spirit with the old." After quoting from one of Penn's works, the writer asks, "Dear Friend William, how shall we reconcile these things with the new expedient? Since these lights lead different ways, for God's sake tell us which we shall follow." In "Some Queries concerning Liberty of Conscience," the author asks, 'Friend Penn, dost thou believe in the Council of Lateran? If thou dost not, thou art not so good a Catholic as some take thee to be." In a "Letter from a Freeholder," the writer says, " According to the courtesie of England, I shall wish Friend William Penn and his fellow-gamesters a good deliverance." Similar quotations, to a very large extent, might be given from contemporary publications. Lord Macaulay's accusers rest their defence of Penn on his general character, taking no notice whatever of the charges of his contemporaries. 66 We have revived this question because it has not hitherto been examined by the light of contemporary publications. An attempt is now made to defend Penn from the charge of supporting the obnoxious measures of the Court. The evidence which we have submitted to the public is very important, as confirmatory of the conclusions at which Lord Macaulay arrived. Great as may have been the mistakes of his Lordship in other matters, it is but an act of justice to defend his memory against the charge of misrepresenting the character of William Penn. Whatever may have been Penn's virtues, and Lord Macaulay has not assailed his moral character, his conduct in the Court of James II. was, to say the least, most suspicious. The charge has never been disproved; on the contrary, the evidence is so overwhelming, that no unprejudiced person can entertain any doubt on the subject. Had Lord Macaulay slandered Penn, the virtuous indignation of certain gentlemen might have During Penn's life no one stood forward to defend his conduct in his intercourse with the Court. Lord Macaulay simply charges him with supporting the designs of the King, and all his contemporaries alleged the same THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXIX. 1342. been excited; but as the charge is simply one not retracting some of his opinions relative of discreditable conduct in the transactions of to Penn, but as the Bishop's remarks applied the reign of James II., they might have sat only to the transactions under King James isfied themselves of its truth by a reference there was nothing to retract. Clarkson also to the publications of the period. Gentle- intimates that Penn expostulated with the men who can gravely talk of Penn's " truth- King on his conduct towards the fellows of telling loyalty to his sovereign" can have Magdalen, yet the evidence proves that his little regard for truth itself. There is no majesty was satisfied; and as the Quaker direct evidence of Penn's conspiring against recommended submission on the part of the King William; but he was suspected, and college, it is clear that his conduct deserved for a time he was forced to conceal himself. the censure which was inflicted by contemNo such suspicion could have rested upon poraries, and which Lord Macaulay has merehim, if he had acted honestly in the cause ly endorsed. Did Penn act as a patriot in of liberty during the reign of King James. recommending the fellows to submit to his Thousands who never would have given a majesty? On the contrary, did not such thought to William Penn will read his story in conduct give a colour to the report that he Lord Macaulay's pages, and the efforts of cer- was a Papist, if not a Jesuit? We know tain persons to convict the historian of error that Penn was not a Papist, yet his conduct have been the means of furnishing the strong- was most inconsistent in a man professing est evidence in support of the charge of the to be a Protestant. In short, his conduct Quaker's duplicity. Mr. Clarkson calls him, during the reign of James II., to which alone in summing up his character, a "noble pat- Lord Macaulay refers in his summary of his riot; " but the term, at all events, cannot be character, is the dark spot upon his reputaapplied to him during the reign of James II. tion which no sophistry can wipe off. It conFrom Clarkson Lord Macaulay's accusers firms Lord Macaulay's charge, that he was seem to have adopted their views without "the tool of the King and the Jesuits." any inquiry. Clarkson censures Burnet for From the Spectator, April 22. THE FALL OF RICHMOND. THE topic of the week has been the attitude of the North. The great democracy has come well out of its hour of supreme trial. Through four long years of defeat, and discouragement, and feverish effort, amidst the execrations of its foes and the forebodings of many of its friends, the Republic has fought on, opposing to the superior organization of an oligarchy the strength which springs of freedom, and meeting incessant failure with the Anglo-Saxon persistence which the world mistakes for vanity. And now the game is won, and in its first hour of triumph, with the smoke still hovering over the field, and the lists of its dead not yet made up, it is singing psalms to God, promising peace to all mankind, proclaiming freedom to all slaves, and crying to its rulers to issue complete and unpurchased amnesties. The emotion may not last, though we think it will, but the future of a people whose uncalculating emotion in the hour of defeat is to boast of their invincibility, and in the moment of triumph to ask pardon for their foes, must be a grand one. Since the men of the barricades shot their comrades for plundering, democracy has given no sign so full of promise as the conduct of the American people after the fall of Richmond. We were able last week to announce the fall of Richmond, the greatest event of this year, in a second edition. The proximate causes of the event may be easily explained. Lee was reduced to great straits, and nearly isolated from the rest of the Confederacy. Grant, well informed of his opponent's case, moved his army to the left, and fastened on the throat of the Confederate lines. Skirmishing with his centre and right, and using his left to strike, Grant, Sheridan carrying out his plans, rolled up the Confederate right wing. Then the whole army fell on, and by nightfall on the 6th Lee was routed and forced to hurry out of Richmond. Grant instantly moved his troops towards Amelia Court-house and Burkesville Junction, and used such diligence that his troops were first across the roads by which Lee thought to join Johnston. Lee, coming from the Appomattox, essayed a flank march, but he was caught in the fact and crushed, six generals and several thousand men being taken prisoners. Cut off from North Carolina, Lee was last heard from leading a shattered army towards Lynchburg, a town upon which not only Grant, but Hancock from Winchester and Thomas from Knoxville, were marching. In short, by able movements, stern fighting, and a vigorous pursuit, Grant has virtually destroyed the Confederate army. The tidings of these events were of course received in New York with a enthusiasm of joy. The dealers in Wall Street broke out spontaneously into the Old Hundreth, or rather the doxology to the Old Hundreth, and followed it up-they, remember, being Democrats, not Republicans—with John Brown's hymn. People ran about in the street embracing and congratulating one another, and speeches were made in every direction full of kindness towards the South. At Washington, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Stanton all addressed the crowd. Mr. Stanton spoke with deep feeling and earnestness, calling on the people for gratitude to the Almighty and help for the wounded and the suffering. Mr. Seward gave a wouldbe comic sketch of the despatches he should write, but took occasion to say with emphasis that, "if Great Britain would be just to the United States, Canada would remain undisturbed " -a declaration received by the crowd with vehement approval. Even Mr. Johnson was sane, trusting that the nation would display both dignity and clemency. Of course The Times and Mr. Reuter's agent have asserted that he advocated hanging Mr. Davis fifty times as high as Haman,' and of course the statement is a total perversion of an unlucky sentence. What Mr. Johnson did say was, that he had once said that Andrew Jackson would have prevented the war by hanging the first who proclaimed secession, and so would he himself. All the leading Republican papers, including The Tribune and The New York Times, urge upon Mr. Lincoln the rightfulness of proclaiming the widest amnesty. This last victory of the North is to the South more than a great defeat. It is much that after five continuous days of battle the last effective army of the Confederacy should have been driven from its lines in such helpless rout that prisoners were taken by brigades, that the ground for forty miles was strewn with abandoned matériel, that the fugitives had not the power to turn upon cavalry worn with the fierce pursuit of hours, that nine generals are known to have been killed or captured in the retreat, and that the Commander-inChief with the relics of his command should be reduced to straits which make his surrender possible. It is more that the Southern soldiery should have lost their trust in that prestige of invincibility which the loss of the flower of its sons and an apeven after Antietam attached to General preciable portion of all its resources for Lee when fighting on his own ground, war. The "nation" which Mr. Gladstone should feel that not even his skill can affirmed Mr. Davis to have "made" had in equalize the contending forces, should fact strained its muscles to the task of know that they have as little to hope from holding on to its capital, and the relaxing the enemy's blunders as from any failure of its grasp shows that the whole body has in his resources. But nevertheless great been enfeebled. Every blow now delivas has been the overthrow, both these loss-ered anywhere will be but a blow in the es that of the army and that of military air, the despairing effort of a brave man confidence might be reparable, and that who feels that from head to foot his muscles of Richmond is not. Great efforts are have given way. It is the heart which has making in this country by writers more been paralyzed by the shock, not a finger, Southern than the Southerners to show or even a limb. that Richmond is merely a point in space, The "nation" has, as we believe, been that Lee advised its evacuation many defeated in the defeat of its last army, months ago, that its fall releases the South and the only subject for doubt is whether it from a burden, and sets it free for a de- has not been also dissolved. From first to fence suited alike to its genius and its cir- last the strength of the South has been cumstances. But so was Sebastopol a point due to its hard, coherent organization. A in space, a mere fort at the extremity of a few men, never thirty thousand in numvast empire, which when the war was ended ber, bound together by their interests and had through most of its provinces never their prejudices, trained in the habit of seen an invader. So had the best generals command, and soldiers on service from of the Czar recommended the evacuation their boyhood, have ruled with unquesof Sebastopol. But the advice was not tioned authority over a population half of taken, and when the fortress fell, the pow- whom were serfs by law, and the other er of Russia fell with it, for the entire half through the poverty produced by comstrength of the Empire had been strained petition with unpaid toil. The coherent for its defence, 600,000 men had perished substance proved at first too hard for the either before its walls or on their march greater but more fluid mass of the North; to defend them, and when all had failed the it cleft it as a ship cleaves the current blow fell as heavily on Archangel and which nevertheless is bearing it to destrucTobolsk as on "the blood-stained ruins" tion. Throughout the war, orders from so many thousands of miles away. Rich- Richmond have been obeyed with a prompmond was the Sebastopol of the Confeder- titude and vigour which over and over During the four years' siege, army again have given to the little but mobile after army, resource after resource, gen- power a visible advantage over its huge eral after general had been used up in but more cumbrous rival. But this cohedefending that one city, or in other words, rence depends entirely on organization, is in holding possession of the arena selected the result of an artificial system, not of by both sides for the grand trial of strength. inherent strength, and that system is disIn the last months of the campaign every solved. When the bravest and subtlest inregiment that could be procured from the tellect in the States, Mr. Davis, fled from West, every conscript who could be swept Richmond he recognized the approaching up among the hills of the middle region, destruction, not only of the nation he is had been collected in front of Richmond; said to have made, but of the organization Mobile had been left without defenders, by which he had hoped to make it. The and the army in Tennessee without the separate States are little likely to obey a power of movement; Georgia had been fugitive President and a wandering Condenuded not only of soldiers, but of its gress, and nothing but obedience strict as whole population from eighteen to forty- that of an army can even protract the five, the Carolinas had been left without contest. There is no people to appeal to garrisons, and Virginia, the first State of in the last resort, no possibility of an upthe South, had been so utterly exhausted rising such as renewed the struggle against that General Lee announced in a public France in the Peninsula, for the people, order that unless his troops were supplied the artizans and the tillers of the ground, from other regions they must starve. There are the inalienable friends of the invading is not a State in the whole Confederacy power. Men talk of a guerilla war, but to which the fail of Richmond and the not to mention that no guerilla war ever destruction of Lee's army do not involve yet in history succeeded unless aided by acy. regular troops, who ever heard of a guerilla | terms are already known, and are such as war with the peasantry against the gue- involve neither humiliation nor any sufferrillas? Small bands of armed men, moving ing beyond that which is always involved amongst friends, warned of every surprise, in the reparation of wrong. Each State, and wrapped by the sympathy of the peo- as it satisfies itself that the struggle is over, ple in a cloak of invisibility, may accom- has only to liberate its slaves and send its plish something, though very little, against representatives to Congress, and it is ina modern army, but how if the people do stantly free, free not only to control its not sympathize, if every labourer the gue- own internal affairs, but to take its part rillas pass is a spy, every workman who in those of the nation against which it has glances at them an irreconcileable foe, just been waging war à l'outrance, free every boatman and groom and waiter and even to moderate the repression the govserving-woman ready to risk life to bear to erning body might exercise upon its less the enemy tidings of their approach? submissive allies. President Lincoln has Guerilla war is difficult even to a free already offered amnesty to all persons not people, simply impossible to a people en- actually ringleaders, the Confiscation Act compassed by hostile slaves. Slavery is will be suspended for every State that subthe Nemesis of the South. The great of mits, and the retrospective oath of allegifence which created the war, which at ance can be abolished by an executive orevery stage has embarrassed its prosecu- der. The North, it is evident, will exact tion, which has paralyzed military genius neither blood nor fines. In the very height and made heroism of no account, which has of its rapture at the tidings of victory, in sapped an organization marvellous in its the very moment when an excitable people completeness and frustrated a purpose more might have been expected to pour out its marvellous still in its height of evil gran- wrath, its leaders began to recommend still deur, which has rendered even the virtues wider amnesties, and their followers broke useless, made patriotism dangerous, and out into hymns of thanksgiving to the Alself-devotion unwise, still clogs the feet of mighty. We do not know in the whole the South. But for slavery the war would range of history an incident more striking never have commenced; but for slavery than that recorded of Wall Street, that there would have been from the first the sudden uprising of the latent Puritan feellevée en masse which, when made too late, ing through all the deposit with which has failed; but for slavery the North, as money-seeking and war have crusted it, Mr. Lincoln acknowledges, could not in the money-dealers in the very temple of the third year have refilled its worn battal- Mammon breaking out into a spontaneous ions; but for slavery the invaders would Te Deum, pouring out the only hymn familnever have marched unopposed straight iar to every Yankee child. The only across hostile States; but for slavery allies hymn, but not the only song, for the voices would have been found who could in a which had just finished the Old Hundredth month have caused the recognition of the followed it with the rude strain which, betrevolt; and but for slavery now the strug- ter than Whittier's songs or Garrison's gle need not approach its end. Slavery, as speeches, expresses the full fervour of aboMr. Stephens truly said, was the corner- litionism in movement. Praise to the Lord stone of the building, and as it crumbles and freedom to the slave, those were the away the edifice erected upon it is rocking thoughts which came first to the hearts and to its fall. As the coloured brigade entered lips of one of the most corrupted sections Richmond, the advanced guard of a white of the American democracy. Their tenarmy, the stone received the blow after dency certainly will not be either to blood which no human power can reconstruct or plunder; rather their danger is of a lenity even a diamond. amounting to weakness, of a disposition to The fall of Richmond is, we believe, the grant away some of their objects in the fall of the Confederacy, of the slave Empire gladness of reconciliation. The dream of which was to have ruled the Gulf and extend- their lives, the nation covering a continent ed its power to the Equator, and it is not hard and offering a refuge for every wrong, has to form an opinion even as to the immedi- been so close to their hearts, that they ⚫ate course of events. As the central pow- seem ready to embrace the revolutionists er dissolves, the separate States will resume who shattered it because their defeat has their right of action, and will come in one made its realization once more possible. by one. They have no terms to make, no Their gladness is almost infantine in its negotiations to dawdle over, no treaty of demonstrativeness. but they have reason peace either to offer or to implore. The for it. If they have lost scores of thou |