a pocket borough of the ministry in power in England, till at last such a man as Dundas became the tyrant of the country. Abuses went unreformed, till in 1830 the whole country was all but ready for revolution. This was the price to Scotland of a system which, as Malachi Malagrowther taught a Tory Government, made even a dirty Scotch one pound note too sacred to be touched by the reforming hands of the Imperial Parliament. Nor did England escape wholly from damage. The Scotch members were George the III.'s parliamentary body-guard, and we all know what were the ends for which George's parliamentary forces were in the main employed.

In their ecclesiastical arrangements, and indeed in their whole mode of dealing with Irish institutions, Pitt and his colleagues followed the letter and violated the spirit of precedent, set them by the statesmen of the Revolution. The Church of Scotland was made secure by the union with England, so also was the Church of Ireland; but the church strengthened by Godolphin was the church of the Scotch people, whilst the church for the security of which Pitt provided was not the church of the Irish people. In each case a Parliament was abolished, but the destruction of the Parliament which met on College Green was a very different thing at bottom than the destruction of the Parliament which met in Edinburgh. The merits and the vices alike of the Irish Parliament have (impartial students may conjecture) been the subject of much rhetorical exaggeration. The assembly which sat in Dublin had, what the Scotch Parliament had not, strong claims on the sentimental interests of the people whom it represented; it had vindicated national independence; it had freed Irish commerce; it had produced within the twenty years preceding its death a brilliant body of statesmen and orators; it had become in short a centre of national life. To destroy such a centre was no light matter. The destruction further of local political life, which is almost inseparable from schemes of national consolidation, was a far greater evil in Ireland than in Scotland, for politics had been with the Irish what they were not with the Scotch, the main sphere for the display and training of native genius. Nor was political amalgamation with the United Kingdom compensated for by local independence. Ireland since as before the Union has been governed in the main in accordance with English notions, applied in many cases or misapplied by English officials. A trifling fact proves more than pages of argument. It is not much more than thirty years since Lord Campbell ousted from the Irish Chancellorship the Irishman who beyond all others had a moral claim to the place. The transaction excited indeed some comment, but was soon as far as the English public were concerned forgotten. What would Englishmen or Scotchmen think of the sanity of a Premier who promoted the most learned of English lawyers to the presidency of the Court of Session? “Does an Union

under such circumstances by free consent and on just and equal terms deserve to be branded as proposal for subjecting Ireland to a foreign yoke? Is it not rather a free and voluntary association of two great countries which join for their common benefit in one empire, where each will retain its proportional weight and importance under the security of equal laws, reciprocal affection, and inseparable interests, which want nothing but that indissoluble connection to render both invincible?" Change but one word, and this passage might still stand as a noble and deserved tribute to the merits and success of the policy of 1706. Read as what it is-a portion of the elaborate oration in which Pitt vindicated the Union with Ireland -the passage which convinced and charmed the great ministers" hearers now sounds like the bitterest satire on his policy and his work. The fact that words which precisely apply to the Union with Scotland cannot now, except with bitter irony, be applied to the Union with Ireland, tells clearly enough how things stand. A comparison of the two great transactions shows that the success of the Union with Scotland, no less than the failure or partial failure of the Union with Ireland, are each the result of natural, known, and assignable causes. Neither Scotch nor Irish history can, except by the most perverse misreading of past events, be forced into teaching the lesson that the failure of the policy in Ireland is due to the peculiarities of Irish character. It is vain to attribute to the special characteristics of any people consequences which can be explained by the neglect on the part of statesmen to make their policy conform to the nature of things.

If the lesson generally deduced from a comparison between Scotch and Irish history is one which ought to be noticed only to be unlearnt, there is teaching to be drawn from one portion of the history of Scotland well deserving the careful consideration of persons who wish to understand the relation between England and Ireland. From the accession of James I. (1603) to the Union (1706), Scotland was, though theoretically independent, in fact in a condition of partial dependence on the English Crown, and throughout the period of about a century every English Government in succession attempted with more or less vigour to govern the northern part of the island on English principles. James was fully convinced, and from his own point of view not without reason, of the truth of the maxim, "No Bishop, no King." His son, with far more zeal than James and not half the sagacity of his father, was bent under the guidance of Laud on giving effect to episcopalian principles. His attempt to force ecclesiastical innovations on Scotland drove the country to rebellion. Cromwell and Charles had little in common, but Cromwell, like Charles, was an English ruler, and when he got the chance strove with far more vigour and infinitely greater success than the King to make the Scotch accept his notions (and very good notions too in their way) of the mode in which their country should be governed.

By far the truest historical parallel to the Irish Union is the incorporation with England which Cromwell imposed by force of arms on Scotland. Looked at in itself, the measure was a much better one than the Act of Union passed by Pitt. If any scheme could be called wise and good which is opposed to the nature of things and overlooks the prejudices of the people to whom it is intended to be applied, Cromwell's Scotch legislation would well deserve to be called both wise and good. He gave the Scotch people the best administration they had up to his time ever possessed. He opened to them the benefit of free trade. "There was," says Burton, "a theoretical discontent, a latent protestation against the whole arrangement, and a loyal desire to see Charles II. restored. But it had little active vitality, and perhaps it was in human nature that the material prosperity of the people soothed such political irritation as came of mere abstract principles, and preserved the general lull." The people it might be thought nad not any great cause for discontent. Cromwell's policy had but one defect. It was opposed to every sentiment and prejudice of the Scotch people ; it fell of itself amidst the delirious joy of the whole country. Of Charles II.'s dealing with Scotland it is unnecessary to say anything. Readers of Old Mortality know pretty well in a general way what were the results of his Majesty's religious concern for the welfare or the religion of his Scotch subjects.

The Revolution, though it changed the Government in England and Scotland, did not bring such an essential change of spirit as might have been expected. In both parts of Great Britain passion for trade was superseding zeal for religion. The Restoration had deprived the Scotch of the advantages of union, and the mercantile legislation of the Commonwealth as applied to a disunited country was deadly to Scotch commerce. The mention of the African Company, the Darien scheme, and the murder of Captain Green still recalls a state of things bearing a curious resemblance to the condition of Ireland between 1778 and 1800. The point to be carefully noted is the effect of English interference on Scotch sentiment; for the lesson of the seventeenth century is not only that England acted towards Scotland in a spirit similar to the spirit displayed towards Ireland, but that the same faults produced in both cases the same evils. An English statesman of 1706 would, we suspect, have considered the Scotch at least as difficult to manage as the Irish. Oppression and interference produced in Scotland, as it produces everywhere, lawlessness and unreasonableness. An Englishman might well enough argue that the Scotch were irreconcilable. They revolted against Charles I. and betrayed him, they were indignant at Charles's execution, rallied round Charles's son, and attempted to strike a fatal blow at English policy. They hated the good government of Cromwell, they were delirious with joy at the Restoration, yet they were soon again in arms against Charles II. They were not con

tented under the government of William. Under the rule of Anne they passed laws intended to undo all the good which had resulted from the union of the crowns of England and Scotland on the head of one person. If you wished, it might be said, to see a specimen of Scotch cruelty, treachery, suspicion, prejudice, and folly, you should reflect upon the murder of Captain Green. Even now this forgotten transaction is well worth thoughtful study by any one who wants to know what are the follies and cruelties into which a sensible people may be led by offence to national self-love or national interest. The main features of the transaction may be easily summed up. The failure of the Darien scheme had, in 1703 and 1704, been much more than a mercantile calamity. It made every Scotchman feel that Scotch independence was nothing but a name, and led hundreds of Scotchmen to believe, not entirely without reason, that an undertaking in which the credit and interest of their country was concerned had been sacrificed to the selfishness and to the cupidity of England. Under these circumstances an English ship belonging to an English company and connected with the East India trade arrived at Leith. Whether Captain Green and the crew of the Worcester had committed any crime whatever is most uncertain; there never was adduced a single fact to prove that any man on board that ship had even injured a single Scotchman; that Captain Green had not killed the Scotchman he was supposed to have murdered is absolutely certain. Yet, somehow or other, no one knows how, the rumour got abroad that the Captain and his crew were a gang of pirates, who had murdered one Captain Drummond and other Scotchmen. The ship was seized by the officers of the Scotch African Company with circumstances of deliberate treachery which recall the massacre of Glencoe. Green and his men were dragged to trial in deference to the wishes of the Scotch mob. They were tried by Scotch judges, convicted by a Scotch jury, and, though innocent of any proved crime, were executed by order of the Scotch Privy Council in defiance of the wishes of the Crown; and if they had not been put to death by the executioner would doubtless have been hanged, as was Porteus, a generation later, by the citizens of Edinburgh. The plain truth is that, under the rule of Queen Anne, Green and two of his crew were the victims of Scotch animosity to England, and were sacrificed to a "Scotch idea" fully as brutal and fully as irrational as any of the notions which Mr. Froude has been pleased to brand with the name of Irish ideas.

There is no need to press the moral of a forgotten chapter in history. What is worth notice, because it has some bearing on the solution of existing political problems, is that Scotch history before, at, and since the Union shows, not that just policy produces one effect in Ireland and another in Scotland, but that in each country justice and injustice produce each of them its natural fruits.

A. V. DICEY.

THE MORAL COLOUR OF RATIONALISM.

ONE continually meets with persons who, seeming to give intellectual assent to the leading scientific hypothesis of our time, yet deeply mistrust what they conceive to be its moral implications, and who, as a consequence, are reduced to a chaotic condition of opinion, precluding them from taking any cause frankly to heart, or from carrying any theory firmly in the head. It would save a good deal of fruitless discussion if thinkers who find themselves in this uncomfortable ethical predicament would refrain from eloquence until they have given the body of their convictions time to range themselves on one side or the other. But this is the last thing it occurs to them to do. With no apparent ideal to uphold, and with no distinct advice to offer, they yet have quite a noisy literature of their own, and many forcible exponents of their somewhat futile distresses. Such prophets prophesy unto us things the reverse of smooth. They generally begin by admitting, or implying, more or less dejectedly, that the voice of science has to be listened to, as on the whole the most credible voice within earshot of this century. Then, having made this admission, they commonly proceed to dilate on the prospective misery and degeneration such listening will bring upon our ill-fated race.

To one essayist whose writings at least tend in the direction I have indicated, it is my purpose in this paper definitely to reply. Mr. Goldwin Smith has within the past four or five years published several essays, the apparent object of which has been to exhibit the moral shortcomings of scientific philosophy. While nothing that he says leads one to suppose that he considers the objective grounds of the evolution doctrine invalid, his thesis is that the code of ethics he conceives to be suggested and supported by it is certain to prove generally detrimental; and that it in particular negatives the legitimacy of the belief in "human brotherhood," the spread of humane feeling, and the protection of the interests of weaker races against the selfishness of the stronger.

I propose to deal with Mr. Goldwin Smith's arguments in a twofold manner. In the first place to point out how his thesis displays a misconception of the ethical tenets of the evolutionists, and by implication a misconception of the fundamental theory of development itself; in the second, to refute the specific charges advanced in his essays concerning certain recent political and colonial doings cited by him in illustration of that thesis. I believe it may be shown that rationalists in general and that evolutionists in particular are, in the