might say no English statesman, has been more perseveringly liberal in power. Few English ministers have had higher aims or more generous intentions. And however inexplicable to the plain sense of the public his last unpardonable fault of backing Louis Napoleon in his coup-d'état, we are inclined to think, that even in that act of treason towards liberty, his Lordship was not unactuated by a liberal, however mistaken and mysterious motive.

We have not dwelt on Lord Palmerston's merits as an orator and a debater, nor as a popular leader and manager in the House of Commons. And indeed there are many other points of his conduct on which we should feel it necessary to enlarge, were we taking a final farewell of him. But his Lordship is not even politically dead; and we shall have future opportunities of completing and developing our judgment of his Lordship as a

statesman.

INDEPENDENT CONTRIBUTION.

[Under the above title a limited portion of the Westminster Review will occasionally be set apart for the reception of able articles, which, though harmonizing with the general spirit and aims of the work, may contain opinions at variance with the particular ideas or measures it will advocate. The object of the Editors, in introducing this new department, is to facilitate the expression of opinion by men of high mental power and culture, who, while they are zealous friends of freedom and progress, yet differ widely on special points of great practical concern, both from the Editors and from each other.]

ART. VIII. THE EARLY QUAKERS, AND QUAKERISM. 1. Quakerism; or, the Story of my Life. London: R. R. and G. Seeley, 1851.

2. Revue des Deux Mondes. Tome vi. 1er et 15 Avril, 1850. Les Quakers.

3. The Kingdom of Christ; or, Hints to a Quaker. By F. D. Maurice, M.A. 2 vols. London: J. G. F. and J. Rivington,

1842.

"BABacalar sayings we find treasured up in Coleridge's

ARK a Quaker, and he is a poor creature," is one of the

"Table Talk," very possibly piqued out of him by the discovery that the bark was too thick and "gnarled" for his oracles to penetrate; style not signifying much to the thorough-bred Friend, and the tone of Coleridge's thought-metaphysical disquisitions on the Logos and the Church-not being likely, to use a Quaker expression, to meet the witness of his heart. But whether the saying was the result of pique or not, we doubt not that in the minds of many it would meet with a response. These formal form-haters-what is their formhating but formalism? their virtue lies in their hats, as Samson's did in his hair. Unhat them, bark them, and you will, as Coleridge says, find the inside hollow and rotten. And yet, if there be no sap left in the tree, whence these fruits of slave emancipation, prison reforms, Irish famine relief funds, and other effective philanthropies? But in truth there are few subjects on which the popular notion is more contradictory and confused than on this one of the meaning of Quakerism. Let us imagine a Quaker-look for him with our mind's eye

and the chances are, we shall see no definite picture, but a series of dissolving views; at one time a sleek portly personage cased in the best of broadcloth, his eyes peeping slily out from under his beaver, his stiff upper lip frowning down on a snowwhite neckcloth, a heavy dragoon armed to the teeth for the field of bargain-making. At another time a wild dreamy-eyed fanatic, testifying against the priest in his "steeple-house," and refusing "hat honour" to the "creature," even though he be the Judge on his bench or the Queen on her throne; now an Elizabeth Fry chanting forth words of comfortable counsel to haggard Magdalens and staring prisoners; then a William Allen "feeling a concern to say what seemed to him the truth to his friend the Czar, such truth more needed by that friend than even the consolation by the outcast. Or, if we be a protectionist squire trampling down our hereditary clods, likelier still the image flitting before our fancy will be a John Bright, hounding on the canaille to an inroad on our broad acres. Which, then, is the true Quaker, the real Simon Pure? Or, perhaps, after all, this changeful appearance is not so much the fault of the staid Friend, whose besetting sin surely is not changefulness, as that of the medium through which we look, more or less distorted by our prejudices.

Not that these prejudices are to be wondered at; considering what kind of thing we are judging, the wonder would be if there were none. Quakerism is a high profession of morality, and our profession thereof, unless much above the average, will not incline us to look lovingly on the high professors: it will be well if we do not consider their profession an insult. Again, the vested interests in established forms and ordinances are very sensitive; the quick wits and ready tongues who gain fame and power, food for the hunger of their vanity if not of their bodies, by the art and mystery of clothing souls in these forms, will make out all new fashions as ugly as possible; much more will they cry out against these sans culottes, these shameless souls who roam through the spiritual world-ay, and worse still-thrive in it, naked as they were made, reckless of all priestly garb. To the priests, then, and to the priest-ridden, and to many who are neither one nor the other, but who, finding this form-clothing a defence in the storm of temptation, do yet believe in the mystical power of the sacraments and in the prerogative of ordained officers to administer them,-the man who can live a life not only of strict morals but of devout faith, who can be both honest man and hearty Christian, without help either of the things ministered or of the minister, must be a sad stumbling-block and rock of offence. "How can you hope to get to heaven without baptism?" was a question

Prejudice against Quakers.

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with which we remember hearing an honest church-goer astonish a Quaker child: "how can that Quaker man be so heavenly-minded without baptism?" is a question with which many a man cannot but astonish his own soul, or his soul's adviser. To which question, often enough, the readiest answer will be, that the Quaker is not heavenly-minded; that it is quite a delusion and a mistake to suppose he is.

Nor will the eccentricity of the Quaker's dress and address have been without its effect on our estimate of his character. It is not now as it was in William Penn's days, when men said to him, "Thou me, Thou my dog! If thou thou-est me I'll thou thy teeth down thy throat;" but very likely we have yet in our memories the indignant scorn, anything but friendly, with which in our schooldays we used to view those queerdressed strange-talking little Friends, with their stumpy hats and strait collars and demure gait, and how if our papas and mammas brought us up too properly to allow us to fling barley to them and cry, "Quack, quack," we more than half envied

those that did.

Then, moreover, the Quaker is so impracticable-his conscience is so troublesome-makes him such a crotchetty citizen, will not let him swear, or fight, or pay tithes-it comes across so many social duties, we hardly know what he will do; and yet it does not answer to avenge ourselves on his conscience, for though he turns not again, he will not suffer in silence; so, what with his scruples, his professions, his disgracefully bad principles, and, worse still, his provokingly good practice, no wonder if he be not in the best odour, and if there be no slight rejoicing when there is any proof or attempt at proof, that he is no better than, or rather as bad as, he should be. And it is thus we account for the otherwise inexplicable anomaly that a farrago of personal slander and vulgar abuse, made only more offensive by its spice of religious cant, savouring, it is hard to say whether most of the Satirist or the Record, should have. been so well received as has been the recent "Story of the Life of a Quakeress," by so large a portion of the respectable, not to say religious, press.

Nevertheless, in the long run, facts outlive and cry down prejudices; give public opinion facts, and time to judge them, and it does judge rather than prejudge them. Wherefore, mindful of the past history of Quakerism, so rich in good works, and viewing its present influence, so indisputably beneficent, the vox populi, spite of all such "Stories," does yet, and will, so long as it feels this influence, pronounce it on the

*Penn's Preface to "Fox's Journal."

whole a good thing. But what good thing? or whence the good? If there be truth in its distinguishing principle, how comes it that it is held by so few; that the number even of those few diminishes, generation by generation? If there be not truth, whence then this useful energy?

Is Coleridge really right, as Professor Maurice would seem to think, in supposing that the life is out of the tree and only its bark is left? If so, what kind of explosion must that have been in the hearts of the old Quakers, which discharged a force of such power, that rebounding from one form of sin and misery to another, it even yet deals such hard blows? Or if Coleridge be wrong, and the enthusiasm of Fox and Barclay and Burroughs yet live in the hearts of the Friends-the old fire not extinct, though glowing within rather than flaming withoutby what strange tact have they harnessed the car of worldly prosperity to the fiery steeds of their fanaticism, and given a method to their madness which Franklin might envy?

Again, puzzling as it must be to the orthodox believer to find a man living the life and holding the faith of a Christian, and yet denying the human conditions and refusing so much of the divine aids of Christianity, it must be still more puzzling to the Rationalist or sceptical philosopher that, denying so much, he should not deny more. "Why stop there, good friend?" he will say: "thou hast crossed the Rubicon, leaped "the ditch; it is between thee and the orthodox camp: what prevents thee then from coming to me? is not the road clear "between us?" And is it not clear? and why does the good Friend look upon the philosopher with pitying horror, and say that the bottomless pit is between them?

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These questions, and many others suggesting themselves to the observer of Quakerism, make it a noteworthy subject, an experimentum crucis of psychological theories, the true understanding of which would help to solve many a social problem. Mr. Bancroft, in his history of the United States, thus turns the Quakers to account, and makes them hewers of wood and diggers of foundations for his temple of liberty; and in the article by M. Melsund, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, they are curiously used as scarecrows and examples to the Socialists and Communists, or, as he calls them, the political fanatics of France. These papers are composed with care and expressed with vigour, and show a knowledge of the real life as well as of the apparent peculiarities and mere outward history of this sect --so little understood, or rather so generally misunderstoodwhich in an Englishman would be strange, and in a Frenchman is nothing short of marvellous; though, could Fox and Penn and Barclay look down on the French Babel and hear its babble