Robert Wallace - George Buchanan

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GEORGE
BUCHANAN

Title Page

GEORGE BUCHANAN

BY ROBERT WALLACE

COMPLETED BY J CAMPBELL SMITH

FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES

PUBLISHED BY OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, and the printing from the press of Messrs. T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh.

The concluding chapter of the book I intended to serve the purpose of prologue and epilogue, but on reflection I find that readers both in and out of Scotland may desire to be told a little more about Robert Wallace, M.A., D.D., and M.P., a collocation of titles of honour, so far as I know, unexampled. He was a minister of the Church of Scotland from the summer of 1857 to the autumn of 1876; was in succession the minister of Newton-on-Ayr, of Trinity College Church, Edinburgh, and of Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, in which last he succeeded Dr. Robert Lee, as also in the leadership of the Liberal Party of the Church of Scotland. The degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by the University of Glasgow, pretty much, it was believed, through the influence of Dr. Caird, the most eloquent preacher and one of the most profound theologians of our day. After Dr. Wallace became editor of the Scotsman he resigned his chair of Church History, his church, and even his licence to preach, and he left in abeyance the title of D.D., and became in his time, as a barrister-at-law, plain Mr. Robert Wallace. But the degree of a university is, I believe, indelible, and he will always be Dr. Wallace to me. His degree of M.A., like mine, was conferred by the University of St. Andrews in April 1853 after four years study, during which we attended simultaneously every Humanity class. He was first in every literary class, and by far the best classical scholar of my day. Dr. Alexander, the venerable professor of Greek, who had taught for thirty years, pronounced him the best student he had ever taught.

His splendid classical attainments, the erudition necessary to the chair of Church History, his extensive and distinguished practice as a debating gladiator in Church Courts, especially the General Assembly, perhaps even his experience in the solid, stolid, non-mercurial House of Commons, all fitted him, as few men have been fit, to do justice to the life, labours, and supreme European culture of George Buchanan.

To equal fitness I do not pretend. To the best of my ability I have tried to complete the unfinished task of my friend, with whom I at intervals interchanged ideas since the beginning of our college career in October 1849. I am not sure he would have agreed with all I say in the last chapter. For the views expressed therein I alone am responsible.

From one error in fact and a doubtful assumption as to Buchanans relation to Montaigne, the representative sceptic, I have been saved by Dr. P. Hume Brown, the author of the best life of Buchanan, whose knowledge of the history of Buchanan and his contemporaries is probably unrivalled. He read the proof-sheets, and for his friendly, disinterested attention Dr. Wallaces representatives and I are greatly obliged to him, as all readers ought to be, for they have the assurance that the most enlightened eye on the subject of Buchanan examined what they are expected to believe.

J. CAMPBELL SMITH.

Dundee , December 1899.

GEORGE BUCHANAN

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL

On the 21st July 1683, Lord William Russell was beheaded in Lincolns Inn Fields, because Charles II. , F.D., who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one, thought it would help to keep alive the Stuart doctrine of the Divine right of kings. On the same day, the political writings of George Buchanan and one John Milton were, by decree of the learned and loyal University of Oxford, publicly burned in front of their Schools by the common hangman, because they were regarded as the most formidable and dangerous defences of the principles on account of which it had been considered judicious to kill Lord William Russell, and perhaps also in token that if Buchanan and Milton had not been dead they might have been burned too, along with their books. It is comforting to reflect that this same decree was subsequently burned with the same publicityand by the same common hangman, one would hope.

At the time, however, the Oxford transaction, in view of the sycophancy, obscurantism, and other degrading characteristics of the then University, was the highest compliment that could have been paid to Buchanan and Milton, and especially to Buchanan. For Buchanan was substantially a century before Milton, who, like the rest of the Roundheads, was inspired by Buchanans principles and greatly assisted by his arguments. Dryden, indeed, declared that Milton stole his Defence of the People of England from Buchanans De Jure Regni apud Scotos ; but that was only Glorious Johns inglorious way of making himself controversially disagreeable. Milton put his own genius and experience into Buchanans idea, and produced an essentially original work. But what although he had not? Milton was fighting a great battle, and was entitled, or rather bound, to use the best weapons, wherever he could get them. The anti-plagiarising spirit is often a mere form of vanity. If the Royal Artillery declined to plagiarise from Armstrong and Krupp, and insisted on making all their ammunition themselves, I should tremble for the defence of the country. Not the less, however, does Buchanan amply merit the title of Father of Liberalism, since the principles which he successfully floated in unpropitious times undoubtedly produced the two great English, the American, and the first French Revolutions, with all their continuations and consequences.