. Raleigh, "that taking of oaths now-a-days is made rather a matter of custom than conscience." And what he deplored two centuries ago, has till now been fearfully increasing, through a mistaken system of legislation, which demands the awful sanction and needless repetition of oaths in cases the most frivolous and absurd; so that even Dr. Paley was compelled to admit, though he did it in silken phrase, that there does exist "a general inadvertency to the obligation of oaths, which, both in a religious and political view, is much to be lamented." We therefore feel that the pious but unknown author of this pamphlet has done his duty as a Briton and a Christian, in exposing the character of the great majority. of oaths administered in this country as "FALSE, FRIVOLOUS, or UNNECESSARY." After discussing, in the two first chapters, the lawfulness of oaths, in which he arrives at the opinions generally entertained amongst Christians, he proceeds to consider-oaths to observe or enforce local statutes oaths administered in the universities oaths on admission to offices and franchises-oaths relating to revenue and commerceon judicial oaths-on the repetition of oaths-on the mode of administering oaths-on the form of an oath with some concluding remarks. Having thus given an analytical view of this important tract, we shall only quote our author to illustrate the remarks we feel it our duty further to make upon this subject. The fact cannot be longer concealed, that the system of binding every petty transaction with the awful sanction of an oath, has at length attained to such a height of absurdity and wickedness, as well nigh to destroy the influence of the solemn appeal, and to blunt the moral sense of those who are required to take it, and who are thus, by the law, on Oaths. made to violate the law, by an act of deliberate perjury, almost at every stage of human life. This may be thought a bold assertion, but we are prepared to illustrate and sustain it. Suppose a gentleman of fortune places his son on the foundation of Winchester College: at the age of fifteen, the lad is required to take a solemn oath to observe the founder's statutes, and which expressly forbids him "Secreta revelare ad extra:" but how must this young gentleman laugh at the mummery of this oath, seeing that the grave enactments of William of Whykeham, which he swears to keep, like the secrets of freemasonry, are in fact perfectly unknown to him, being locked up in the safe custody of some episcopal Warden, and to which statutes he has no access without special application to him for the purpose! It was the intention of William of Whykeham that seventy poor scholars should be educated in his munificent establishment, and therefore the phrase, pauperes et indigentes scholares, is employed again and again in the statutes, as descriptive of those who should be alone elected; and the good man, to make surety doubly sure, enacted, that if any scholar should afterward possess, in temporals or spirituals, annui valoris centum solidorum, a hundred shillings a-year, he should be expelled the College. Now this youngster swears to observe those statutes secundum planum literalem et grammaticalem sensum et intellectum in their plain and obvious sense, which he has never seen, or if perchance he has seen them, which exclude him, on account of his patrician rank and fortune, from the foundation! Yet there he stays, revelling in the profligate expenditure of his rank, in direct violation of the oath which he has taken, patronized and caressed by the guardians of public morals. This is, however, C in every sense, his novitiate-perjury not excepted:-the young gentleman must go to the university, and then devote himself to the church, the bar, or the senate; or should he choose even the life of a country gentleman, he will yet have enough to do, in this awful work of forswearing! But let us attend him to his next stage. The youth arrives at Oxford, and appears before the Vice-Chancellor, describes his rank in life, and pays a matriculation fee, subscribes to the thirty-nine articles, takes the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and swears" to observe all statutes, privileges, and customs" of the university and though there is an 66 επινόμις seu explanatio juramenti, &c." which is a long discussion on the meaning of the oath, which points out the various cases in which those who transgress the statutes are guilty of perjury, and condemns as a violation, the systematic neglect of any statute, however obsolete; yet our young collegian, in common with his venerable seniors, reckless of the oath, habitually neglects these musty enactments. "The promises made by the matriculation oath are not limited to the period of pupilage. The words expressly extend the obligation to the whole time of the person continuing in the university. Yet are the same promises repeated with the solemnity of an oath, every time the matriculated member takes any new degree. For what purpose? Is the matriculation oath grown stale by a few years residence in the university? Or is its obligation so little considered, and so soon forgotten, that it is found necessary to renew it every three or four years? So in colleges, the oath to observe the statutes, which is first taken on admission to a scholarship, is repeated on admission to a fellowship. This also is needless. Is this repetition consistent with the spirit of our Saviour's injunction, 'Swear not at all?' Is it quite free from the sin of taking God's name in vain?— pp. 46, 47. We have not room to illustrate the full extent of this fearful system, as our student passes through his collegiate course, in which, at every stage, he swears that he has kept the statutable terms, performed the statutable exercises, subscribed the statutable declarations, and paid the statutable fees, the latter being the only parts, we imagine, of which he has been ever reminded: but we quote the testimony of the writer of this pamphlet. "I have witnessed with pain the effect produced by them on the minds of the young men, by whom they are taken. I have witnessed the ridicule, which is by they go up to the proctor who administers many cast upon these oaths, just before them; and I am satisfied, that the mischief produced by the practice is neither slight nor transient. The young mind is thus accustomed to trifle with an oath; and the habit or impression is not left behind, when the individual leaves the university."-pp. 52, 53. Now, to whatever profession the young gentleman turns, whether he enter the Church, the Inns of Court, or the Parliament, the same scandalous system awaits him. "I have heard of a member of parliament, who, when asked in what sense he rad, on taking his seat, subscribed the declaration, (required of members of parliament, by stat. 30 Car. II. sec. ii. cap. 1.) that the sacrifice of the mass is idolatrous, replied, that he had not much considered it; that he looked upon those things, much like the college oaths and subscriptions. Well does such a sentiment as this deserve the consideration of our legislators! It is inevitable, that by the multiplication and repetition of oaths, and declarations, and subscriptions, some unnecessary, some unmeaning, some trifling, some antiquated and scarcely intelligible, the awe with which oaths would otherwise be taken, and solemn declarations made or subscribed, should be essentially impaired; and while some, perhaps, of tender conscience, are by these barriers repelled from employments, for which they are pre-eminently qualified, the great majority do without reflection, as others have done before them, and are doing around them; and thus the object of the legislature is defeated, and laws intended to exclude unfit persons from office, have only the effect of excluding some who may, of all others, be the best qualified." pp. 53, 54. But, alas! this profanation is not confined to the patrician orders; it is emphatically a national sin, interwoven with the whole nor any means of forming a belief; somepolity of the country, extending even to municipal and commercial transactions. The young trader cannot become free of the com pany to which he belongs, and of the city of London, where he may chance to dwell, without taking oaths of the most distressing character to a conscientious mind. "The oath taken on admission to the Goldsmith's Company, in the city of London, is a specimen. The candidate for admission swears (among a variety of other matter) not to set pearls in gold. If, therefore, any persca, having taken up his freedom in this company, afterwards carries on the trade of a goldsmith and jeweller, it is obvious, that, in the common course of his business, he violates this oath every day of his life. Those, indeed, who exercise the trade of a goldsmith, do not necessarily take up their freedom in the Goldsmith's Company; and many take up their freedom in that company, who have no intention of carrying on the trade. The apprentice who claims his freedom by service, the son who claims it by birth, takes it up in that company of which his master, or his father, as the case may be, is free, without regard to the business which he has learnt, or in which he proposes to gain his livelihood. Still the oath is very objectionable. If the person, who takes it, is to exercise the trade of a goldsmith and jeweller, he pledges himself to abstain from a practice, which he intends to follow every day of his life-if he intends to carry on some other business, the oath, in this part, is nugatory."-pp. 59, 60. Do commercial pursuits lead him to have transactions with his Majesty's customs, he will there be required to take a multitude of oaths, notoriously objectionable. "That a custom-house oath should have become a proverb, is the disgrace and the sin of the nation. Whence has this arisen? In part from the multiplicity, and in part from the nature, of the oaths imposed by the legislature. The multiplicity of these oaths is mischievous; it familiarizes the mind of those who take them to a ceremony, which should never be approached without awe, but which, from habit, many go through with as much unconcern as any other part of mercantile business. The nature of these oaths is in many cases objectionable, sometimes relating to matters respecting which the deponent has no knowledge, times being in a prescribed form, or of a prescribed tenor, not adapted to the variety of circumstances which arise in commercial transactions. Where an oath is required respecting matters, of which the deponent can have no certain knowledge, or probable ground of belief, a carelessness as to the contents of an oath is the natural result; and, where an oath is required in the prescribed form, or of a prescribed tenor, the conscience first bends to take it, in a sense not justified by a rigorous construction of the oath, in a case where it might perhaps be fairly presumed, that the legislature, if it had foreseen such a case, would have framed the oath so as to meet it; and afterwards the oath is taken in cases, which do not admit of any such palliation. One "It is not necessary, under this head, to enter into detail. One or two speciinens of these oaths may suffice. specimen may be taken from the act of the last session for the general regulation of the customs, 6 Geo. IV. cap. 107. This act is a new code of custom-house law, the several laws relating to the customs having been repealed by a previous act of the same session. The specimen which I would select, is the oath which the owner, or commission-merchant, or his agent, having shipped for exportation goods on which a bounty or drawback is allowed, and having obtained a debenture for such bounty or drawback, is required to make before he can obtain payment of the debenture. He must make oath upon the debenture, that the goods mentioned therein have been actually exported, and have not been relanded, and are not intended to be relanded in any part of the United Kingdom, nor in the Isle of Man, (unless entered for the Isle of Man,) nor in the Islands of Faro or Ferro.' How can an owner or commission-merchant residing in London know, whether the goods have or have not been relanded in Ireland, or the Isle of Man, or the Isles of Faro or Ferro? How can a commissionmerchant or an agent have such a satisfactory knowledge of the intention of his principal, as to be able to swear positively that the goods are not intended to be relanded in any of the places specified in the oath."--pp. 62--64. It will not therefore surprise our readers to be informed, that, a few years back, a respectable wholesale house in the city kept a simple half-witted man on purpose to go through this drudgery of swearing, which none of their better informed and upright servants would undertake! Suppose, again, our young citizen prospers in his business, and is elected to the dignified parochial office of churchwarden-he enters upon his duties by swearing, with 20,000 of his brethren in the same office throughout the kingdom, that he will "present all such things and persons" as to his " knowledge are presentable by the laws ecclesiastical of this realm." cord be lighted up in the parish? Would If considered as a farce; and (if I am cor- 59. "Now by the canons of 1603, the persons and things, which churchwardens are to present, are distinctly pointed out. By canon 109: If any offend their brethren, either by adultery, whoredom, incest, or drunkenness, or by swearing, ribaldry, usury, and any other uncleanness, and wickedness of life, the churchwardens, or questmen, and sidemen, in their next presentments to their ordinaries, shall faithfully present all and every of the said offenders, to the intent that they, and Many other illustrations might every of them, may be punished by the be offered; but our minds sicken at severity of the laws, according to their heir these details of legalized transgresdeserts.' And by canon 110: If the churchwardens, or questmen, or assistsion, which are continued undisants, do or shall know any man within the turbed from age to age: we will parish, or elsewhere, that is a hinderer of therefore close this article with the the word of God to be read or sincerely impressive appeal of the respectpreached, or of the execution of these able writer before us, thanking him our constitutions, or of a fautor of any usurped or foreign power, by the laws of sincerely for the labour he has this realm justly rejected or taken away, bestowed on the subject, and reor a defender of popish and erroneous doc- commending his pamphlet to the trine; they shall detect and present the attention of all those who believe same to the bishop of the diocese, or ordinary of the place, to be censured and that a national transgression leads punished according to such ecclesiastical on to national ruin. laws as are prescribed in that behalf.' And by canon 111: In all visitations of bishops and archdeacons, the church wardens, and questmen, and sidemen, shall truly and personally present the names of all those which behave them selves rudely and disorderly in the church, or which, by untimely ringing of bells, by walking, talking, or other noise, shall hinder the minister or preacher. And by canon 112: The minister, churchwardens, questmen, and assistants of every parish church, and chapel, shall yearly, within forty days after Easter, exhibit to the bishop or his chancellor, the names and surnames of all the pa rishioners, as well men as women, which being at the age of sixteen, received not the communion at Easter before.' And what, I would ask, would be the consequence, if the churchwardens of any parish should, according to the exigency of their oath, present all such offenders? Would not an unquenchable torch of dis "Has not, therefore, a case been made out for the interference of the legislature ? Is not God's holy name taken in vain, under the sanction and at the requisition of the laws, not on a few occasions, but continually, habitually? Is not this a national sin? Does not this tend to destroy the reverence due to an oath, and relax the bonds by which society is held together? Has not the sanction of an oath already lost much of its efficacy in respect of oaths of office, and in matters of trade and revenue? And, if it is still in a considerable degree respected in our courts of justice, can we expect that they will long escape the demoralizing effect of the present system? Has not the multiplicity of frivolous and unnecessary oaths administered in our universities a mostdangerous tendency to corrupt the very sources of national morality? The subject is an awful subject, and I fear I may not have done it justice. But I would in conclusion ask, if the third commandment is continually, and habitually and systematically violated in this country, not merely by that customary and profane swearing which the laws, though under most inadequate penalties, prohibit, but in oaths administered at the requisition or under the sanction of the laws or of those local customs and statutes which the laws allow, will not God visit for these things? Can we, if we persist in this course, hope for his blessing on the nation? These are serious questions, which I would earnestly press upon the consideration of all those who are by the laws of the country intrusted with a voice in the legislature.' pp. 90, 91. ་་་་་་་་་་ History of the Commonwealth of England, from its Commencement to the Restoration of Charles the Second. By W. Godwin. Vol. II. 8vo. Colburn. HAVING introduced the first volume of this important work to the attention of our readers, in our number for February, 1825, it is not necessary that we should again enter at large into an examination of its merits. The admiration we expressed of the first volume, is more than due to the present. The difficulties attendant upon the undertaking, multiply as the historian advances to that great crisis of public affairs, which led to the execution of the king; and it strikes us that Mr. Godwin's talent rises with the difficulty of his subject. No one who is not well acquainted with the literature of those times, -a mass of political and theological speculation, not equalled either for bulk or subtlety by any succeeding age, can possibly be aware of the merit of a historian, who presents a candid and comprehensive statement of the transactions of that period, and a just portraiture of the eminent men of all parties, by which it was distinguished. The pleasure we have felt in the perusal of this second volume, exceeds that excited by the first, because the composition of the work is more graceful and easy, and the illusNEW SERIES, No. 21. tration of events displays greater labour and caution. The author has spared no pains to possess himself of accurate information. He has evinced considerable skill and acuteness in testing or correcting statements of facts made by party men. After having examined and exposed one of the empty boasts Council of Scotland, respecting of King Charles to the Privy the growth of the royal party, he expresses a feeling which has, no doubt, often crossed his mind in the course of his researches, when the contrary or partial statements of different writers had left him in perplexity, or when the absence of all light upon some important transaction had plunged him deeply into the ocean of conjecture. "It is thus that history is obliged to grope its way in treating of the most considerable events. We put together seemings, and draw our inferences as well as we may. Contemporaries who employ themselves in preserving facts, are sure to omit some of the most material, upon the presumption of their notoriety, and that they are what every body knows. History, in some of its most essential members, dies, even as generations of men pass off the stage, and the men who were occupied in the busy scene become victims of mortality. If we could call up Cromwell from the dead,-nay, if we could call up some one of the comparatively insignificant actors in the time of which we are treating, and were allowed the opportunity of proposing to him the proper questions, how many perplexing matters would be unramany doubts would be cleared up, how velled, and what a multitude of interesting anecdote would be revealed to the eyes of posterity! But history comes like a beggarly gleaner in the field, after death, the great Lord of the domain, has gathered the crop with his mighty hand, and lodged it in his garner, which no man can open." -pp. 29, 30. Mr. Godwin appears to us peculiarly distinguished, by a wise and ardent love of freedom. No stigma of fanaticism, or scare-crow of rebellion, can deter him from doing justice to the high-born emotions of the men who consecrated themselves at its shrine. Through all the perplexities of party interests, and all the tangled 3 R |