Chapter 32

All nations are inclined to ascribe their primitive institutions to some national founder, a Lycurgus, a Theseus, a Romulus. It is not necessary now to prove that Alfred did not found trial by jury, or the frank- pledge, or that he was not the first who divided the kingdom into shires, hundreds, or tithings. The part of trial by jury which has been politically of so much importance, its popular character, as opposed to arbitrary trial by a royal or imperial officer--that of which the preservation, amidst the general prevalence of judicial imperialism, has been the glory of England--was simply Teutonic; so was the frank-pledge, the rude machinery for preserving law and order by mutual responsibility in the days before police; so were the hundreds and the tithings, rudimentary institutions marking the transition from the clan to the local community or canton. The shires probably marked some stage in the consolidation of the Saxon settlements; at all events they were ancient divisions which Alfred can at most only have reconstituted in a revised form after the anarchy.

He seems, however, to have introduced a real and momentous innovation by appointing special judges to administer a more regular justice than that which was administered in the local courts of the earls and bishops, or even in the national assembly. In this respect he was the imitator, probably the unconscious imitator, of Charlemagne, and the precursor of Henry II., the institutor of our Justices in Eyre. The powers and functions of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, lie at first enfolded in the same germ, and are alike exercised by the king, or, as in the case of the ancient republics, by the national assembly. It is a great step when the special office of the judiciary is separated from the rest. It is a great step also when uniformity of justice is introduced. Probably, however, these judges, like the itinerant justices of Henry II., were administrative as well as judicial officers; or, in the terms of our modern polity, they were delegates of the Home Office as well as of the Central Courts of Law.

In his laws, Alfred, with the sobriety and caution on which the statesmen of his race have prided themselves, renounces the character of an innovator, fearing, as he says, that his innovations might not be accepted by those who would come after him. His code, if so inartificial a document can be dignified with the name, is mainly a compilation from the laws of his Saxon predecessors. We trace, however, an advance from the barbarous system of weregeld, or composition for murder and other crimes as private wrongs, towards a State system of criminal justice. In totally forbidding composition for blood, and asserting that indefeasible sanctity of human life which is the essential basis of civilization, the code of Moses stands contrasted with other primaeval codes. Alfred, in fact, incorporated an unusually large amount of the Mosaic and Christian elements, which blend with Germanic customs and the relics of Roman law, in different proportions, to make up the various codes of the early Middle Ages, called the Laws of the Barbarians. His code opens with the Ten Commandments, followed by extracts from Exodus, containing the Mosaic law respecting the relations between masters and servants, murder and other crimes, and the observance of holy days, and the Apostolic Epistle from Acts xv 23-29. Then is added Matthew vii. 12, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." "By this one Commandment," says Alfred, "a man shall know whether he does right, and he will then require no other law-book." This is not the form of a modern Act of Parliament, but legislation in those days was as much preaching as enactment; it often resembled in character the Royal Proclamation against Vice and Immorality.

Alfred's laws unquestionably show a tendency to enforce loyalty to the king, and to enhance the guilt of treason, which, in the case of an attempt on the king's life, is punished with death and confiscation, instead of the old composition by payment of the royal weregeld. Hence he has been accused of imperializing and anti-Teutonic tendencies; he had even the misfortune to be fixed upon as a prototype by Oxford advocates of the absolutism of Charles I. There is no ground for the charge, so far at least as Alfred's legislation or any known measure of his government is concerned. The kingly power was the great source of order and justice amidst that anarchy, the sole rallying point and bond of union for the imperilled nation; to maintain it, and protect from violence the life of its holder, was the duty of a patriot law-giver: and as the authority of a Saxon king depended in great measure on his personal character and position, no doubt the personal authority of Alfred was exceptionally great. But he continued to govern by the advice of the national council; and the fundamental principles of the Teutonic polity remained unimpaired by him, and were transmitted intact to his successors. His writings breathe a sense of the responsibilities of rulers and a hatred of tyranny. He did not even attempt to carry further the incorporation of the subordinate kingdoms with Wessex; but ruled Mercia as a separate state by the hand of his brother-in-law, and left it to its own national council or witan. Considering his circumstances, and the chaos from which his government had emerged, it is wonderful that he did not centralize more. He was, we repeat, a true Teuton, and entirely worthy of his place in the Germanic Walhalla.

The most striking proof of his multifarious activity of mind, and of the unlimited extent of the task which his circumstances imposed upon him, as well as of his thoroughly English character, is his undertaking to give his people a literature in their own tongue. To do this he had first to educate himself--to educate himself at an advanced age, after a life of fierce distraction, and with the reorganization of his shattered kingdom on his hands. In his boyhood he had got by heart Saxon lays, vigorous and inspiring, but barbarous; he had learned to read, but it is thought that he had not learned to write. "As we were one day sitting in the royal chamber," says Asser, "and were conversing as was our wont, it chanced that I read him a passage out of a certain book. After he had listened with fixed attention, and expressed great delight, he showed me the little book which he always carried about with him, and in which the daily lessons, psalms and prayers, were written, and begged me to transcribe that passage into his book." Asser assented, but found that the book was already full, and proposed to the king to begin another book, which was soon in its turn filled with extracts. A portion of the process of Alfred's education is recorded by Asser. "I was honourably received at the royal mansion, and at that time stayed eight months in the king's court. I translated and read to him whatever books he wished which were within our reach; for it was his custom, day and night, amidst all his afflictions of mind and body, to read books himself or have them read to him by others." To original composition Alfred did not aspire; he was content with giving his people a body of translations of what he deemed the best authors; here again showing his royal good sense. In the selection of his authors, he showed liberality and freedom from Roman, ecclesiastical, imperialist, or other bias. On the one hand he chooses for the benefit of the clergy whom he desired to reform, the "Pastoral Care" of the good Pope, Gregory the Great, the author of the mission which had converted England to Christianity; but on the other hand he chooses the "Consolations of Philosophy," the chief work of Boethius, the last of the Romans, and the victim of the cruel jealousy of Theodoric. Of Boethius Hallam says "Last of the classic writers, in style not impure, though displaying too lavishly that poetic exuberance which had distinguished the two or three preceding centuries; in elevation of sentiment equal to any of the philosophers; and mingling a Christian sanctity with their lessons, he speaks from his prison in the swan-like tones of dying eloquence. The philosophy which consoled him in bonds was soon required in the sufferings of a cruel death. Quenched in his blood, the lamp he had trimmed with a skilful hand gave no more light; the language of Tully and Virgil soon ceased to be spoken; and many ages were to pass away before learned diligence restored its purity, and the union of genius with imitation taught a few modern writers to 'surpass in eloquence' the Latinity of Boethius." Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English, the highest product of that memorable burst of Saxon intellect which followed the conversion, and a work, not untainted by miracle and legend, yet most remarkable for its historical qualities as well as for its mild and liberal Christianity, is balanced in the king's series of translations by the work of Orosius, who wrote of general and secular history, though with a religious object. In the translation of Orosius, Alfred has inserted a sketch of the geography of Germany, and the reports of explorations made by two mariners under his auspices among the natives dwelling on the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea--further proof of the variety of his interests and the reach of his mind.

In his prefaces, and in his amplifications and interpolations of the philosophy of Boethius, Alfred comes before us an independent author, and shows us something of his own mind on theology, on philosophy, on government, and generally as to the estate of man. To estimate these passages rightly, we must put ourselves back into the anarchical and illiterate England of the ninth century, and imagine a writer, who, if we could see him, would appear barbarous and grotesque, as would all his equipments and surroundings, and one who had spent his days in a desperate struggle with wolfish Danes, seated at his literary work in his rude Saxon mansion, with his candle-clock protected by the horn lantern against the wind. The utterances of Alfred will then appear altogether worthy of his character and his deeds. He always emphasizes and expands passages which speak either of the responsibilities of rulers or of the nothingness of earthly power; and the reflections are pervaded by a pensiveness which reminds us of Marcus Aurelius. The political world had not much advanced when, six centuries after Alfred, it arrived at Machiavelli.

There is an especial sadness in the tone of some words respecting the estate of kings, their intrinsic weakness, disguised only by their royal trains, the mutual dread that exists between them and those by whom they are surrounded, the drawn sword that always hangs over their heads, "as to me it ever did." We seem to catch a glimpse of some trials, and perhaps errors, not recorded by Asser or the chroniclers.

In his private life Alfred appears to have been an example of conjugal fidelity and manly purity, while we see no traces of the asceticism which was revered by the superstition of the age of Edward the Confessor. His words on the value and the claims of a wife, if not up to the standard of modern sentiment, are at least instinct with genuine affection.

The struggle with the Northmen was not over. Their swarms came again, in the latter part of Alfred's reign, from Germany, whence they had been repulsed, and from France, which they had exhausted by their ravages. But the king's generalship foiled them and compelled them to depart. Seeing where their strength lay, he built a regular fleet to encounter them on their own element, and he may be called the founder of the Royal Navy.

His victory was decisive. The English monarchy rose from the ground in renewed strength, and entered on a fresh lease of greatness. A line of able kings followed Alfred. His son and successor, Edward, inherited his vigour. His favourite grandson, Athelstan, smote the Dane and the Scot together at Brunanburgh, and awoke by his glorious victory the last echoes of Saxon song. Under Edgar the greatness of the monarchy reached its highest pitch, and it embraced the whole island under its imperial ascendancy. At last its hour came; but when Canute founded a Danish dynasty he and his Danes were Christians.

"This I can now truly say, that so long as I have lived I have striven to live worthily, and after my death to leave my memory to my descendants in good works." If the king who wrote those words did not found a university or a polity, he restored and perpetuated the foundations of English institutions, and he left what is almost as valuable as any institution--a great and inspiring example of public duty.

THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME

"Has humanity such forces at its command wherewith to combat vice and baseness, that each school of virtue can afford to repel the aid of the rest, and to maintain that it alone is entitled to the praise of courage, of goodness, and of resignation?" Such is the rebuke administered by M. Renan to the Christians who refuse to recognise the martyrs of Stoicism under the Roman Empire. My eye fell upon the words when I had just laid down Professor Mommsen's harsh judgment of the last defenders of the Republic, and they seemed to me applicable to this case also.

It is needless to say that there has been a curious change of opinion as to the merits of these men who, a century ago, were political saints of the Liberal party, but whom in the present day Liberal writers are emulously striving, with Dante, to thrust down into the nethermost hell. Dante puts Brutus and Cassius in hell not because he knows the real history of their acts, or because he is qualified to judge of the moral and political conditions under which they acted, but simply because he is a Ghibelin, and they slew the head of the Holy Roman Empire; and the present change of opinion arises, in the main, not from the discovery of any new fact, or from the better sifting of those already known, but from the prevalence of new sentiments--Imperialism of different shades, Bonapartist or Positivist, and perhaps also hero-worship, which of course fixes upon Caesar. Positivism and Hero-worship are somewhat incongruous allies, for Hero-worship is evidently the least scientific, while Positivism aims at being the most scientific, of all the theories of history.

We are judging the opponents of Caesar, it seems to me, under the dominion of exaggerated notions of the beneficence of the Empire which Caesar founded, of its value as a political model, of its connection with the life of modern civilization, and of the respect, not to say devotion, due to the memory of its founder. Let us try to cast off for an hour the influence of these modern sentiments, and put the whole group of ancient figures back into its place in ancient history.

The Empire was a necessity at the time when it came--granted. But a necessity of what sort? Was it a necessity created by an upward effort, by an elevation of humanity, or by degradation and decline? In the former case you may pass the same sentence upon those who opposed its coming which is passed upon those who crucified Christ, or who, like Philip II., opposed the Reformation in the spirit of bigoted reaction. But in the latter case they must be charged, not with moral blindness or depravity, but only with the lack of that clearness of sight which leads men and parties at the right moment, or even in anticipation of the right moment, to despair; and such perspicacity, to say the least, is a highly scientific quality, requiring perhaps, to make it respectable and safe, a more exact knowledge of historical sequences than we even now possess. Even now we determine these historical necessities by our knowledge of the result. It was a necessity, given all the conditions-- the treachery of Ephialtes included--that the Persians should force the pass of Thermopylae. But the Three Hundred could not know all the conditions. Even if they had, would they have done right in giving way? They fell, but their spirits fought again at Salamis.

To me it appears that the Empire was a necessity of the second kind; that it was an inevitable concession to incurable evil, not a new development of good. The Roman morality, the morality which had produced and sustained the Republic, was now in a state of final and irremediable decay. That morality was narrow and imperfect, or rather it was rudimentary, a feeble and transient prototype of the sounder and more enduring morality which was soon to be born into the world. It was the morality of devotion to a single community, and in fact consisted mainly of the performance of duty to that community in war. But it was real and energetic after its measure and its own time. It produced a type of character, which, if reproduced now, would be out of date and even odious, but which stands in history dignified and imposing even to the last. Nor was it without elements of permanent value. It contributed largely to the patriotism of the seventeenth century, a patriotism which has now perhaps become obsolete in its turn, and is superseded in our aspirations by an ideal with less of right and self-assertion, with more of duty and of social affection, yet did good service against the Stuarts. The Roman morality, together with dignity of character, produced as usual simplicity of life. It produced a reverence for the majesty of law, the voice of the community. It produced relations between the sexes, and domestic relations generally, far indeed below the ideal, yet decidedly above those which commonly existed in the pagan world. It produced a high degree of self-control and of abstinence from vices which prevailed elsewhere. It produced fruits of intellect, some original, especially in the political sphere, others merely borrowed from Greece, yet evincing on the part of the borrower a power of appreciating the superior excellence of another, and that a conquered nation, the value of which, as breaking through the iron boundary of national self-love, has perhaps not received sufficient notice. What was of most consequence to the world at large and to history, it produced, though probably not so much in the way of obedience to recognised principle as of noble instinct, a signal mitigation of Conquest, which was then the universal habit, but from being extermination and destruction, at best slavery or forcible transplantation, became under the Romans a supremacy, imposed indeed by force, and at the cost of much suffering, yet, in a certain sense civilizing, and not exercised wholly without regard for the good of the subject races. Thus that political unity of the nations round the Mediterranean was brought about, which was the necessary precursor and protector of a union of a better kind. A measure of the same praise is due to Alexander, who was a conqueror of the higher order for a similar reason--namely, that though a Macedonian prince, he was imbued with the ideas and the morality of the Greek republics. But Alexander was a single man, and he could not accomplish what was accomplished in a succession of generations by the corporate energies and virtues of the Roman Senate.

The conditions under which this morality had maintained itself were now gone. It depended on the circumstances of a small community, long engaged in a struggle for existence with powerful and aggressive neighbours, the Latin, the Etruscan, the Samnite, and the Gaul; entering in turn, when its own safety had been secured, on a career of conquest, still in a certain sense defensive, since every neighbour was in those days an enemy; and continuing to task to the utmost the citizen's devotion to the State, the virtues of command and obedience necessary to victory, and the frugality necessary to supply the means of great national efforts; while luxury was kept at bay, though the means of indulging it had begun to flow in, by the check of national danger and the counter-attraction of military glory. But all this was at an end when Carthage and Macedon were overthrown. National danger and the necessity for national effort being removed, self-devotion failed, egotism broke loose, and began to revel in the pillage and oppression of a conquered world. The Roman character was corrupted, as the Spartan character was corrupted when Sparta, from being a camp in the midst of hostile Helots, became a dominant power and sent out governors to subject states; though the corruption in the case of Sparta was far more rapid, because Spartan excellence was more exclusively military, more formal and more obsolete. The mass of the Romans ceased to perform military duty, and there being no great public duty except military duty to be performed, there remained no school of public virtue. Such public virtue as there was lingered, though in a degraded form round the eagles of the standing armies, to which the duties of the citizen-soldier were now consigned; and the soldiery thus acquired not only the power but the right of electing the emperors, the best of whom, in fact, after Augustus, were generally soldiers. The ruling nation became a city rabble, the vices of which were but little tempered by the fitful intervention of the enfranchised communities of Italy. Of this rabble, political adventurers bought the consulships, which led to the government of provinces, and wrung out of the unhappy provincials the purchase money and a fortune for themselves besides. These fortunes begot colossal luxury and a general reign of vice. Violence mingling with corruption in the elections was breeding a complete anarchy in Rome. Roman religion, to which, if we believe Polybius, we must ascribe a real influence in the maintenance of morality, was at the same time undermined by the sceptical philosophy of Greece, and by contact with conflicting religions, the spectacle of which had its effect in producing the scepticism of Montaigne.

The empire itself was on the point of dissolution. In empires founded by single conquerors, such as those of the East, when corruption has made the reigning family its prey, the satraps make themselves independent. The empire of Alexander was divided among his generals. The empire of the conquering republic of Rome, the republic itself having succumbed to vices analagous to the corruption of a reigning family, was about to be broken up by the great military chiefs. Pompey had already, in fact, carved out for himself a separate kingdom in Spain, which with its legions he had got permanently into his own hands. Thus the unity of the civilized portion of humanity, so indispensable to the future of the race, would have been lost. Nor was there any remedy but one. Representation of the provinces was out of the question. Supposing it possible that a single assembly could have been formed out of all these different races and tongues, the representation of the conquered would have been the abdication of the conqueror, and abdication was a step for which the lazzaroni of the so-called democratic party were as little prepared as the haughtiest aristocrat in Rome. A world of egotism, without faith or morality, could be held together only by force, which presented itself in the person of the ablest, most daring, and most unscrupulous adventurer of the time. If faith should again fail, and the world again be reduced to a mass of egotism, the same sort of government will again, be needed. In fact, we are at this moment rather in danger of something of the kind, and these revivals of Caesarism are not wholly out of season. But in any other case to propose to society such a model would be treason to humanity.