Note 321 — Chapter LVIII · FROM THE RESOLUTION OF THE ATHENIANS TO ATTACK SYRACUSE, DOWN TO THE FIRST WINTER AFTER THEIR ARRIVAL IN SICILY.
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The proceedings in England in 1678 and 1679, in consequence of the pretended Popish Plot, have been alluded to by various authors, and recently by Dr. Thirlwall, as affording an analogy to that which occurred at Athens after the mutilation of the Hermæ. But there are many material differences, and all, so far as I can perceive, to the advantage of Athens.
1. The “hellish and damnable plot of the Popish Recusants,” (to adopt the words of the Houses of Lords and Commons,—see Dr. Lingard’s History of England, vol. xiii, ch. v, p. 88,—words, the like of which were doubtless employed at Athens in reference to the Hermokopids,) was baseless, mendacious, and incredible, from the beginning. It started from no real fact: the whole of it was a tissue of falsehoods and fabrications proceeding from Oates, Bedloe, and a few other informers of the worst character.
At Athens, there was unquestionably a plot; the Hermokopids were real conspirators, not few in number. No one could doubt that they conspired for other objects besides the mutilation of the Hermæ. At the same time, no one knew what these objects were, nor who the conspirators themselves were.
If before the mutilation of the Hermæ, a man like Oates had pretended to reveal to the Athenian people a fabricated plot implicating Alkibiadês and others, he would have found no credence. It was not until after and by reason of that terror-striking incident, that the Athenians began to give credence to informers. And we are to recollect that they did not put any one to death on the evidence of these informers. They contented themselves with imprisoning on suspicion, until they got the confession and deposition of Andokidês. Those implicated in that deposition were condemned to death. Now Andokidês, as a witness, deserves but very qualified confidence; yet it is impossible to degrade him to the same level even as Teukrus or Diokleidês, much less to that of Oates and Bedloe. We cannot wonder that the people trusted him, and, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, it was the least evil that they should trust him. The witnesses upon whose testimony the prisoners under the Popish Plot were condemned, were even inferior to Teukrus and Diokleidês in presumptive credibility.
The Athenian people have been censured for their folly in believing the democratical constitution in danger, because the Hermæ had been mutilated. I have endeavored to show, that, looking to their religious ideas, the thread of connection between these two ideas is perfectly explicable. And why are we to quarrel with the Athenians because they took arms, and put themselves on their guard, when a Lacedæmonian or a Bœotian armed force was actually on their frontier?
As for the condemnation of Alkibiadês and others for profaning and divulging the Eleusinian mysteries, these are not for a moment to be put upon a level with the condemnations in the Popish Plot. These were true charges, at least there is strong presumptive reason for believing that they were true. Persons were convicted and punished for having done acts which they really had done, and which they knew to be legal crimes. Whether it be right to constitute such acts legal crimes, or not, is another question. The enormity of the Popish Plot consisted in punishing persons for acts which they had not done, and upon depositions of the most lying and worthless witnesses.
The state of mind into which the Athenians were driven after the cutting of the Hermæ, was indeed very analogous to that of the English people during the circulation of the Popish Plot. The suffering, terror, and distraction, I apprehend to have been even greater at Athens: but the cause of it was graver and more real, and the active injustice which it produced was far less than in England.
“I shall not detain the reader (says Dr. Lingard, Hist. Engl. xiii, p. 105) with a narrative of the partial trials and judicial murders of the unfortunate men, whose names had been inserted by Oates in his pretended discoveries. So violent was the excitement, so general the delusion created by the perjuries of the informer, that the voice of reason and the claims of justice were equally disregarded. Both judge and jury seemed to have no other object than to inflict vengeance on the supposed traitors. To speak in support of their witnesses, or to hint the improbability of the informations, required a strength of mind, a recklessness of consequences, which falls to the lot of few individuals: even the king himself, convinced as he was of the imposture, and contemptuously as he spoke of it in private, dared not exercise his prerogative of mercy to save the lives of the innocent.”
It is to be noted that the House of Lords, both acting as a legislative body, and in their judicial character when the Catholic Lord Stafford was tried before them (ch. vi, pp. 231-241), displayed a degree of prejudice and injustice quite equal to that of the judges and juries in the law-courts.
Both the English judicature on this occasion, and the Milanese judicature on the occasion adverted to in a previous note, were more corrupted and driven to greater injustice by the reigning prejudice, than the purely popular dikastery of Athens in this affair of the Hermæ, and of the other profanations.