praise upon Henry. Like the laws of all other times, his statutes seem to have had no further aim than to remove some immediate mischief, or to promote some particular end.'

We have here an instance how little this kind of history, which presents deductions instead of facts, and sets before us the opinion of the author, instead of the grounds upon which an opinion may be formed, is to be trusted. If a summary of Henry's laws had been given, it would have appeared that there is in them the foresight and the benevolence for which Lord Bacon has extolled him. His anxious desire for bettering the condition of the people is repeatedly and earnestly expressed in the laws themselves; for to him,' it is there said, is no thing more joyous than to know his subjects to live peaceable under his laws, and to increase in wealth and prosperity, and to avoid enormities and injuries, so that they may live restfull under his peace. . . . . His grace considereth that a great part of the wealth and prosperity of this his land standeth in this, that his subjects may live in surety, under his peace, in their bodies and goods; and that the husbandry of the land may increase and be upholden. And his said highness shall not let for any favour, affection, cost, charge, nor none other cause, but that he shall see his laws to have plain and true execution, that his subjects may live in surety, and increase in wealth and prosperity, to the pleasure of God.' He protests that he has a singular pleasure, above all things, to avoid such enormities and mischiefs as be hurtful to the common weal; and that he most entirely desireth among all earthly things the prosperity and restfulness of this his land, and his subjects of the same to live quietly and surefully to the pleasure of God, and according to his laws; willing, and always of his pity intending, to reduce them thereunto by softer means than by such extreme rigour as was provided by certain statutes of his predecessors.' The tenour of his laws is in accord with this language. Their object was to abate the oppression of the powerful; to prevent the extortions which were practised under the colour of law; to repress the audacity of the lawless part of the people, and to check the general prevalence of corruption and perjury.

The Lord Keeper Guildford used to say, that of all law-books, that 'termed Henry VII. was the most useful, or rather necessary, for a student to take early into his hand, and go through with; because much of the common law which had fluctuated before, received a settlement in that time, and from thence, as from a copious fountain, it hath been derived, through other authors, to us, and is now in the state of common erudition, or maxims of the law.' The facilities which in this reign were afforded to the alienation of landed property, and the introduction of actions on

the

the case, are benefits to the jurisprudence of this country which have been duly appreciated. But Henry has claims to a better title than that of the English Justinian. It has not been sufficiently observed that the people of England, before his time, lived as little under the law as the people in certain parts of Ireland at this day. 'The laws live only where the law doth breed

Obedience to the works it binds us to.'

There was none of this obedience; the people were not conformed to it in their habits and feelings. It had been made an instrument of iniquity, not of justice, an engine of oppression and extortion, a craft for wronging the inoffensive and upright, and securing impunity to those who knew how to bargain or intrigue for it, if they could not obtain their end by direct intimidation. This perversion of the laws, and the consequent dread of all legal proceedings, produced an indifference even to that course of justice, without which no community can exist in peace and safety. A murderer, as at this time in Italy, and Spain, and Portugal, stood in no fear of being arrested by the people; and an indictment could not be preferred against him till a year and day had been allowed for the representatives of the deceased to proceed by way of appeal. During that time it often happened that some composition was made, or that the appellant was wearied and let the suit fall; and as often when the crime had grown old, the prosecution by indictment was neglected. A remedy was provided for this, by enacting that the suit by indictment might be taken at any time, leaving the right of appeal untouched, but securing the purposes of public justice if that right were not enforced; and this enactment, though it went no farther, tended greatly to correct the state of opinion, and the usages which had descended from more barbarous times. By another law, the township was fined if any murderer escaped by day; and, because jurors frequently shrunk from their duty, either for fear or favour, justices of assize and of the peace were empowered to try and punish offences upon information, without indictment, in all cases not extending to life or limb.

That good law,' as Bacon calls it, which gave the attaint upon a false verdict between party and party,' is censured by Mr. Turner, who says, that so dangerous an enactment seems to strike at the root of all independent use of these important functions.' He admits, however, that some gross cases of corruption must have occasioned it. In fact, the preamble states that perjury in the land is in many causes detestably used, to the disheritance and great damage of many and great number of his subjects well disposed, and to the most high displeasure of Almighty God, the good statute against officers making panels par

tially,

tially, for rewards to them given; against unlawful maintainers, ymbrasours, and jurors; and against jurors wantonly giving their verdict, notwithstanding.' Another law speaks also of perjury, as much and customably used by London jurors, and provides that they may be attainted for corruption, even though the verdict complained of should be found true. It is a proof of improved morals that enactments should be deemed reprehensible now which were thought good by Bacon, and which, beyond all doubt, were necessary when they were enacted. In point of morals, indeed, nations are always worsened by revolutions and civil wars; and where there is faith in a priest's absolution and in indulgences, the foundation of morality rests upon sand. Henry, by these provisions, endeavoured to correct some of the evils which an age of anarchy and violence had produced; and to supply the place of conscience by the fear of human laws,-in the best times a needful support, though a miserable substitution. But he was not one of those legislators who have supposed that every thing is to be effected by severity. His temper and his sound judgment led him to mitigate the rigour of the old laws; and in cases of treason, notwithstanding the insecurity in which he lived, he manifested a clemency of which there was no example under former kings. Mr. Hallam, indeed, whose short view of this reign is in this respect original, that it disputes all the merits which have been heretofore allowed to Henry VII., insinuates that even his clemency sprung from the sordid motive of selling pardons. A little consideration might have shown him, that the remark is as unjust as it is uncharitable; for, however avaricious Henry may have been in the latter part of his reign, it is no proof of avarice that he exacted fines from those persons to whom he was remitting the forfeiture of estates as well as life. Before the justice of Mr. Hallam's censures can be allowed, he must make it appear that a part is greater than the whole.

Blackstone, whose natural sense of equity was less deranged even by the practice of the law than Mr. Hallam's is by strong political prepossessions, has committed a similar injustice towards this king, saying, 'that there is hardly a statute in his reign, introductive of a new law, or modifying the old, but what, either directly or obliquely, tended to the emolument of the exchequer.' So ill-founded is this inference, that Mr. Turner supposes the commentator had forgotten Henry's laws when he thus condemned them. To commute the punishment of murder for a fine, acts upon manners and morals like the papal scheme of selling pardons for all sins at fixed prices. Laws, therefore, that enjoin or allow of such a commutation mark a barbarous state of society. But the substitution of pecuniary penalties, instead of imprison

ment

ment and mutilation, (and even death, in cases where there is no proportion between the moral and legal degrees of criminality,) was plainly an improvement in legislation; it tended to render humanity more sacred in the estimation of the people, as surely, and almost as directly, as the laws which provided for the adequate punishment of murder. Nor is it the only merit of Henry as a legislator, that he had this great end in view. No prince was ever more solicitous to promote the welfare of his people. He enforced those navigation laws, which (in Mr. Turner's words) 'made the growth of our naval strength bear always a due proportion to our commerce.' He checked the monopolizing spirit of the London companies, who, in the hope of making all the trade of the kingdom centre in London, exacted a fine of twenty pounds from every Englishman who went to a foreign mart, and prohibited their fellow-citizens from carrying goods to fairs and markets within the realm. There was a law, the intent of which was to keep the labourers, like the low castes of India, to the condition in which they were born, thus riveting the chains of feudal tyranny; it forbade any one to be bound apprentice in any city or town, unless his parents were possessed of lands or rent to the yearly value of twenty shillings. Henry repealed this in favour of the worsted weavers and clothiers at Norwich, limiting the repeal to that city where it was desired, and not extending it to places where the grievance was not yet felt. All his reforms were made cautiously; and if an enactment was found injurious in practice, he was not withheld by obstinacy or false pride from acknowledging that he had been mistaken in his views, and annulling it; but this repeal was confirmed as having been found good; and it was one important step in that emancipation of the servile class which the increase of trade promoted, and which the laws began to favour. It was Henry VII. also who admitted the poor to sue in formá pauperis.

Among the things of which Henry repented at the approach of death, with the intent of amending his conduct if longer life should be granted him, one was that he had promoted men unadvisedly in the church without sufficient regard to ability and character; and when he raised Fisher to a bishopric, he told his mother that the promotion of such a man would courage many others to live virtuously, and to take such ways as he doth. This intention was in a great degree fulfilled by Henry VIII.; it was the only point in which he followed the direction or the example of his father; and to the motives which directed his choice, and the sagacity with which it was made, we are indebted for the promotion of those men by whose moderation and wisdom and integrity the ecclesiastical part of our reformation was conducted.

Mr.

Mr. Hallam is pleased to say that Fisher was almost the only inflexibly honest churchman of that age.' The desire of disparaging the reformation and its founders must have been very strong when it tempted him to such an assertion; for in that age churchmen were the only class of men among whom inflexible honesty was found. In the same sort of temper he observes that a tenth part of Henry's language, by which, according to him, the University of Oxford was intimidated, was enough to terrify a doctor of divinity.' Doctors of divinity were not easily terrified in the days of Martin Luther; and, as Mr. Hallam cannot but know this, he has misplaced his sneer at the profession and the order.

No persons were more pliable to the wishes of Henry VIII. during the proceedings of the divorce, and to his policy when he assumed the ecclesiastical supremacy in his own dominions, than the men who afterwards became the directors and most active instruments of the Marian persecution. Even Sir T. More, according to Cardinal Pole, perceived, at first, nothing objectionable in this assumption; but he was reclaimed from that opinion, according to the cardinal, by a light supernatural, and a supernatural love, given him by the mercy of God for his salvation.' The story is, that Sir Thomas was conversing with a friend upon the dangers which he apprehended from a change of religion, taking religion " as it is, to be the grounds of the commonwealth.' This danger he expected would arise from the question concerning the sacrament of the altar, stiff' as the king was concerning the use of that sacrament' after the old form and honour;' and he expressed his fear, not from any immediate likelihood which appeared, but rather, says Pole, of an instinct that the fear of God had put into his mind.' His friend, perceiving more probability of such danger, by reason of the schism and departing from the obedience to the see of Rome, which then was most like to happen forthwith, the prince, being offended with the pope,' asked Sir Thomas earnestly of his opinion upon that point; and More answering readily, as his natural reason gave,' said that he took it not for a matter of so great a moment and importance, but rather as invented of men for a political order, and for the more quietness of the ecclesiastical body, than by the very ordinance of Christ.' This was his sudden and first answer; but he had no sooner said the word, than, as though his conscience had been stricken for so saying, 'he confessed that he had spoken without consideration, desired that what he had said might not be taken for an answer to the question; said that he had never studied the matter, and would now think better upon it, and in ten or twelve days show him his whole determinate opinion.' When the time

came,