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Rh The internal disorders then agitating the whole of Christendom, were still less favourable to the growth of this science, considered as a branch of speculative study. Religious controversies everywhere divided the opinions of the multitude;—involving those collateral discussions concerning the liberty of conscience, and the relative claims of sovereigns and subjects, which, by threatening to resolve society into its first elements, present to restless and aspiring spirits the most inviting of all fields for enterprise and ambition. Amidst the shock of such discussions, the calm inquiries which meditate in silence the slow and gradual amelioration of the social order, were not likely to possess strong attractions, even to men of the most sanguine benevolence; and, accordingly, the political speculations of this period tum almost entirely on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of different forms of government; or on the still more alarming questions concerning the limits of allegiance and the right of resistance.

The dialogue of our illustrious countryman Buchanan, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, though occasionally disfigured by the keen and indignant temper of the writer, and by a predilection (pardonable in a scholar warm from the schools of ancient Greece and Rome) for forms of policy unsuitable to the circumstances of modern Europe, bears, nevertheless, in its general spirit, a closer resemblance to the political philosophy of the eighteenth century, than any composition which had previously appeared. The ethical paradoxes afterwards inculcated by Hobbes as the ground-work of his slavish theory of government, are anticipated and refuted; and a powerful argument is urged against that doctrine of Utility which has attracted so much notice in our times. The political reflections, too, incidentally introduced by the same author in his History of Scotland, bear marks of a mind worthy of a better age than fell to his lot. Of this kind are the remarks with which he closes his narrative of the wanton cruelties exercised in punishing the murderers of James the First. In reading them, one would almost imagine, that one is listening to the voice of Beccaria or of Montesquieu. “After this manner,’’ says the historian, “was the cruel death of James still more cruelly avenged. For punishments so far exceeding the measure of humanity, have less effect in deterring the multitude from crimes, than in rousing them to greater efforts, both as actors and as sufferers. Nor do they tend so much to intimidate by their severity, as by their frequency to diminish the terrors of the spectators. The evil is more peculiarly great, when the mind of the criminal is hardened against the sense of pain; for in the judgment of the unthinking vulgar, a stubborn confidence generally obtains the praise of heroic constancy.”

After the publication of this great work, the name of Scotland, so early distinguished