force still.  But in its mildest form—­personal disqualification or proscription—­it is a disturbance which only war justifies.  It may, of course, make itself odious by its modes of proceeding, by meanness and shabbiness and violence, by underhand and ignoble methods of misrepresentation and slander, or by cruelty and plain injustice; and then the odium of these things fairly falls upon it.  But it is very hard to draw the line between conscientious repression, feeling itself bound to do what is possible to prevent mischief, and what those who are opposed, if they are the weaker party, of course call persecution.

If persecution implies a state of war in which one side is stronger, and the other weaker, it is hardly a paradox to say that (1) no one has a right to complain of persecution as such, apart from odious accompaniments, any more than of superior numbers or hard blows in battle; and (2) that every one has a right to take advantage and make the most of being persecuted, by appeals to sympathy and the principle of doing as you would be done by.  No one likes to be accused of persecution, and few people like to give up the claim to use it, if necessary.  But no one can help observing in the course of events the strange way in which, in almost all cases, the “wheel comes full circle.” [Greek:  Drasanti pathein]—­Chi la fa, l’ aspetti,[58] are some of the expressions of Greek awe and Italian shrewdness representing the experience of the world on this subject; on a large scale and a small.  Protestants and Catholics, Churchmen and Nonconformists, have all in their turn made full proof of what seems like a law of action and reaction.  Except in cases beyond debate, cases where no justification is possible, the note of failure is upon this mode of repression.  Providence, by the visible Nemesis which it seems always to bring round, by the regularity with which it has enforced the rule that infliction and suffering are bound together and in time duly change places, seems certainly and clearly to have declared against it.  It may be that no innovating party has a right to complain of persecution; but the question is not for them.  It is for those who have the power, and who are tempted to think that they have the call, to persecute.  It is for them to consider whether it is right, or wise, or useful for their cause; whether it is agreeable to what seems the leading of Providence to have recourse to it.

FOOTNOTES: 

[56] See Pusey’s Theology of Germany (1828), p. 18 sqq.

[57] Narrative pp. 29, 30, ed. 1841; p 131. ed. 1883.

[58] [Greek:  Drasanti pathein, Trigeron mythos tade phonei.] Aesch. Choeph. 310.  Italian proverb, in Landucci, Diario Fiorentino, 1513, p. 343.

CHAPTER X

GROWTH OF THE MOVEMENT

1835-1840