Investigation into Mr. Malone's Claim to Charter of Scholar by Samuel Ireland

Author:Samuel Ireland [Ireland, Samuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781134725908
Google: Ecp_AAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-08-21T15:57:14+00:00

Still pursuing his digression, Mr. Malone attempts to give an eulogium on the character of Queen Elizabeth. As he has provoked the subject, I trust, that a slight observation on the character of this princess, will be allowed me in my turn. It is intimated by Mr. Malone, that time may have abated the splendor of her name. Perhaps there is no better proof than this, that the splendor of her character was temporary and adventitious, rather than durable and solid. The most unequivocal test, to which the general policy or personal character of a sovereign can be brought, is the estimate of a fair, and unbiassed posterity; because it is an estimate, into which no temporary prepossessions, no heats of party, or faction can possibly enter. It is indeed somewhat remarkable that the example of this princess, whom every historian has represented to have been more tenacious, of the royal prerogative, and more avaricious of arbitrary sway, than any of her predecessors, should be held up as an object of such ardent veneration. I know not how to account for it, but by attributing it to the new fashioned propensity, not only to contemplate with complacency, but even with admiration, those periods of our history, in which the liberties of the people were the most over looked, or despised. Mr. Malone in his abhorrence of regicide, ought not to have forgot the cruel murder of the Scottish Queen, in which a lawful and aimiable sovereign was deposed by the artful, and jealous policy of the princess, of whom he is so violently enamoured. The reign of this queen, however, was prosperous, in the wars she entered into, and the commerce of the country was considerably extended at that period. This will account for the predilections to this princess. So true is it that a combination of prosperous circumstances, will throw a sort of magnificence over a government, the administration of which is uniformly conducted on the most arbitrary, and tyrannical principles. With regard to the “detestable doctrines “of modern republicans,” which our critic seems so thoroughly to apprehend, I shall only observe that it the cause of regular governments, has no better support, than the pen of an half informed and cloudy commentator, it stands in a state deplorably precsrious, and dissoluble.

But to return to the verbal objections of the critic. On the use of the word “bawble,” in the letter to Anna Hatherwaye, he observes, that he has some doubt, whether the word had obtained that signification, so early as the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. He doubts whether it was used at that time, though in the foregoing sentence, he allows that it bears the very sense affixed to it in several of our poet's plays. Why, however, the world is to be satisfied with die doubts of this gentleman, I am at a loss to discover, and I am equally perplexed to discern upon what principles his doubts, unaccompanied as they are even with the shadow of an argument, can operate against my reafonings.

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