Ireland. By Leonard Courtney, M.P. Mr. Giffen's Land Purchase Scheme :- I. By Samuel Laing II. By Michael Davitt Newman and Arnold.-II. Matthew Arnold. By R. H. Hutton The Quarterly Reviewer and the Old Testament Revision. By the Dean of Peterborough The Two Unions. By the Right Hon. G. Shaw-Lefevre Contemporary Life and Thought in Denmark. By Alexis Petersen-Studnitz 598 604 Peasant Property in France. By H. Baudrillart, Member of the Institute. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: A Fight for Art. II. By W. Holman Hunt The Exclusion of the Irish Members from the Imperial Parliament. By R. W. 761 Goethe and Carlyle. By Professor Max Müller. 772 India Revisited. By Samuel Smith, M. P.. 794 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: A Fight for Art. III. By W. Holman Hunt 904 OATHS: PARLIAMENTARY AND JUDICIAL.* SHOULD THEY BE ABOLISHED? IT is much to be regretted that the question which heads this article should have been raised in a manner singularly unfavourable to its calm and reasonable discussion. The circumstances which have given rise to it, and which are forcing it on to a final solution, are too unhappily familiar to .need recital here. But their result has been that a question of grave importance and interest, of which equally religious men might reasonably take, and have taken, different views, has been distorted into one between religion and atheism, or rather into one between religion and a single atheist, whose name certainly neither softens nor sweetens any controversy with which it is connected. Those who advocate the abolition of the Parliamentary Oath are consequently, and in many cases most unjustly, accused of a desire to facilitate the entrance into Parliament of atheists in general and of Mr. Bradlaugh in particular. While, on the other hand, those who do desire this are able to shelter themselves under the plea that many whose Christianity is unquestionable are desiring the same thing. Still more unfortunately the question has passed into the domain. of party politics; the two great parties in the State having, the one all but unanimously, and the other very largely, espoused opposite sides in the dispute. This is nearly the same thing as saying that it has passed out of the domain of reason and into that of passion and unreason. For in England, nowadays, government by party-not at any time perhaps the most perfect form of government—is * The word judicial refers, strictly speaking, to oaths of office taken by judges or magistrates. To avoid circumlocution, however, I use it in this article as signifying oaths taken in a court of justice. passing into something very different-namely, government for party. A state of things, that is to say, in which parties are no longer formed for the sake of promoting principles, but in which principles are invented for the sake of promoting party; a state of things in which legislative measures are less and less considered with reference to their own nature and probable results on society, and more and more with reference only to their effect upon the fortunes of some one or other of our political parties. Once sucked into that vortex, all questions, however in their own nature apart from or above politics, are dragged down and swept round and round like fragments of a wreck in a whirlpool, to emerge at last twisted and battered out of all semblance to their original shape. In this English maelstrom of ours we see just now Parliamentary Oaths whirling about in company with Free Education, Labourers' Allotments, Compulsory Vaccination, Deceased Wives' Sisters, Female Suffrage, Sunday Closing, Local Option, and many another piece of social flotsam and jetsam, no one of them in itself of a party nature, but all of them capable of being utilized for party purposes, and being so utilized accordingly. In fact, English life is becoming so saturated and flavoured with politics of the baser sort, that we are being rapidly reduced to the condition of the pauper Scotch lunatic, whose insanity had taken the form of the belief that he was a rich man faring sumptuously every day, but who complained that though his table was always spread with the richest variety of dainties, yet somehow or other everything he partook of tasted of porridge. At such a moment it needs some courage for a minister of religion, and especially for a bishop, to meddle with such a thorny question as this. Whatever he may say upon it will, in all probability, bring upon him the wrath, and, what is more to be dreaded, the misconstruction, of one or other of the parties, religious or political, engaged in disputing it; possibly of both, if he aims at being impartial. Nevertheless, in the interest of something higher and better than self or party, I venture to offer for the consideration of reasonable men a few thoughts which have influenced my own mind on this subject, and which may perhaps commend themselves to their minds. And in so doing I shall avoid as far as possible all the angry or unsavoury associations now linked with it. I shall try to argue it as I might have done if no such person as Mr. Bradlaugh had ever existed, or as if we had never known the blessings of party government, nor tasted the sweet reasonableness of a General Election. It may, I trust, help to this end if I begin by pointing out that, whatever else our present Parliamentary Oath was designed to effect, it was never designed to keep atheists out of Parliament. It was and is strictly a political test, and political too in a sense and for a purpose happily quite remote from modern English politics. It is dynastic. Its object is to secure in the council of the Sovereign the presence of those only who are loyal to the reigning dynasty. It binds the person taking it to "be faithful, and to bear true allegiance" to the existing Sovereign and his or her "heirs and successors according to law." It aims therefore at the exclusion from Parliament, not of atheists, but of traitors. It does not even, though it is an oath of allegiance to a Sovereign, exclude Republicans; for should the Parliament which imposes it decide at any time upon the ultimate abolition of monarchy, there would then be no "successors according to law" to whom to be faithful. All that it binds the Member of Parliament to is not to attempt to overthrow monarchy during the lifetime of the existing Sovereign, and meanwhile not to engage in any plot or revolution aiming at a change of dynasty. An undertaking which under the present dynasty we may safely pronounce to be superfluous. It is clear therefore that the oath in its present form was intended to be a political and not a religious test, and that as a political test it is practically all but obsolete. In the next place, we may observe that it does not even incidentally and indirectly act as a religious test; for no atheist that we know of has ever refused to take it; nay, on the contrary, the atheist whose case is now attracting such attention to it, was willing and eager to take it, and was only prevented from doing so by a vote of the House of Commons. Surely an oath which a pronounced atheist could only with great difficulty be prevented from taking, cannot be relied on as a religious test for the exclusion of atheists from Parliament. And further; it is manifestly impossible from the terms of the oath that it can have any such operation. For the atheist who takes it does not thereby declare himself a theist-as the Jew, if he had taken the oath to which Jews objected, would have had to declare himself a Christian. That oath being "on the true faith of a Christian," did necessarily imply that the person taking it held the Christian faith. But the atheist in taking the present oath is required to say nothing whatever as to his faith. He invokes against himself punishment by a Being in whose existence he has no belief. That punishment may not be a possibility in his opinion, but he is in no way bound to say beforehand whether it is so or not. He may choose to tell us this beforehand, and if he does he has no right to complain if we refuse to allow him to profane the oath by so taking it; but if he does not choose to tell us this, we cannot claim to go behind the oath and ask him what meaning he attaches to the words he is using. True, a highly conscientious atheist might decline to take even this oath because he would not even seem to believe in that which he disbelieved. But this is, so far as it goes, an argument not for but against maintaining the oath, inasmuch as it shows clearly that its effect is to keep out only honest and honourable atheists-that is to say, precisely those who, if atheists are to enter Parliament at all we should be least desirous of excluding. It follows then from these considerations, that the present Parliamentary Oath considered as a religious test is either wholly inoperative, or so partially operative as to be practically worse than none. If we desire a really efficient and sufficient test against atheists, we should draw up-not an oath-but a declaration which should disclaim atheism as distinctly as the declaration prescribed in the Act for "disabling Papists from sitting in Parliament" (30 Car. II. c. 2) disclaimed transubstantiation. Whether it would be desirable or wise to provide such a declaration is a question outside the scope of this article. All I contend for here is that, short of such a declaration, no test that we can frame could possibly "disable" atheists; and that as our present oath falls far short of this, it is as a means for "disabling" them practically worthless. It is therefore absurdly uncharitable to accuse those who would abolish it of desiring to help atheists into Parliament. There are, however, other points of view in which Religion, and especially the Christian religion, is deeply concerned with this question, not only of the Parliamentary Oath but of all oaths whatsoever. The morality of oaths; their lawfulness, even if not immoral for us Christians, bound as we are by the words of the Founder of our faith; the justice or injustice of imposing them in particular cases; and even their desirableness and expediency in many cases—all enter more or less, and some of them very deeply, into the region of religion and morality; and it is with reference to these aspects of the question, rather than with reference to any merely passing political accidents or incidents attaching to it, that I propose here to discuss it. Let us then divide our subject, as we preachers would say, under the four following heads, and ask 1. Is the imposition of an oath immoral? 2. Is the taking of one forbidden by Christ? 3. Is it unjust to require the taking of one in Parliament or in courts of justice? 4. Is it in the present day necessary or expedient to do so? And in the first place, let us begin with defining our subject. WHAT IS AN OATH? An oath is the invocation of God-or of a god-a supernatural Being-to witness the truth of the statement made by him who so invokes Him. And this invocation always implies two things. First, That the Being so invoked supernaturally knows the truth or falsehood of the statement so made; and secondly, is supernaturally able to punish the person invoking Him, if he speak falsely. I say a supernatural Being, for this is of the essence of the oath, as |