IIOn Subscriptions to Matters of Opinion 0f the two English Universities, Oxford is the most ancient and most dignified.Of its numerous statutes which are penned in Latin, as many as may fill a moderate duodecimo volume are published, as the title-page declares, for the use of youth: and of these care is taken (for the honour of the government let it be spoken)that those for whose observance the are designed, shall not, without their own default, be ignorant since, at every man's admission, a copy is put into his hands.All the statutes, as well those that are seen as those that are not seen, every student at his admission is sworn in Latin to observe, ``So help me God'', says the matriculated person, ``touching as I do the most holy Gospel of Christ.''
The barbers, cooks, bed-makers, errand-boys, and other unlettered retainers to the University, are sworn in English to the observance of these Latin statutes.The oath thus solemnly taken, there has not, we may be morally certain, for a course of many generations, perhaps from the first era of its institution, been a single person that has ever kept.Now though customary, it is perhaps not strictly proper, as it tend to confusion and to false estimates, to apply the term perjury , without distinction, to the breach of an assertive and to that of a promissive declaration---to the breach of a oath and to that of a vow; and to brand with the same mark of infamy a solemn averment, which at the time of making it was certainly false,---and a single departure from a declared resolution, which at the time of declaring it might possibly have been sincere.[2]
But, if they themselves are to be believed who have made the oath, and who break it,---the university of Oxford, for this century and half has been, and at the time I am writing is, a commonwealth of perjurers.The streets of Oxford, said the first Lord Chatham once, ``are paved with disaffection''.
That weakness is outgrown: but he might have added then (if that had been the statesman's care) and any one may add still, ``and with perjury''.
The face of this, as of other prostitutions, varies with the time: perjurers in their youth, they become suborners of perjury in their old age.
It should seem that there was once a time, when the persons subjected to this yoke, or some one on their behalf, began to murmur: for, to quiet such murmurs, or at any rate to anticipate them, a practitioner, of a faculty now extinct, then very much in vogue,---a physician of the soul, a casuist , was called in.His prescription, at the end of every one of these abridged editions of the statutes---his prescription under the title of Epinomis seu explanatio juramenti &c.stands annexed.This casuist is kind enough to inform you, that though you have taken an oath indeed, to observe all these statutes---and that without exception, yet, in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, it amounts to nothing.What, in those instances, you are hound to do is---not to keep your oath, but to take your choice whether you will do that or suffer---not to do what you are bid; but, if you happen to be found out (for this proviso, I take for granted, is to be supplied)to bear your penalty.For---what now do you think your sovereign seriously wishes you to do, when he forbids you to commit murder? That you should abstain from murder at all events? No surely; but that, if you happen to be found out and convicted, you should sit quiet while the halter is fitted to your neck.
Who is this casuist, who by his superior power washes away the guilt from perjury, and controuls the judgments of the almighty? Is it the legislator himself? By no means: that indeed might make a difference.The sanction of an oath would then not with certainty be violated; it would only with certainty be profaned.It was a Bishop Saunderson, who, in the bosom of a Protestant church, before he was made a bishop, had set up a kind of confessional box, whither tender consciences repaired from all parts to heal their scruples.
This institution, whether it were the fruit of blindness or of a sinister policy, has answered in an admirable degree, some at least of the purposes for which it was probably designed.It has driven the consciences of the greater part of those by whom the efficient parts of government are one day to be filled, into a net, of which the clergy hold the cords.The fear and shame of every young man of sense, of spirit, and reflection, on whom these oaths are imposed, must at one time or other take the alarm.What! says he to himself, am I a perjurer?
