Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 25 - Chenevix
Chenevix. — Richard Chenevix, Esq., F.R.S., born in 1774, was a son of Colonel Chenevix, and grandson of Colonel Chenevix of the Carabineers, the older Colonel having been a brother of the famous Bishop of Waterford. Mr. Chenevix became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1801, having at an early age obtained eminence in the study and researches of chemistry. He is known as the author of “Remarks on Chemical Nomenclature, according to the System of the French Neologists” (1802). His “Observations on Mineralogical Systems” appeared first in a French translation in the Annales de Chimie. He published “Researches on Palladium, Corundum, &c,” in 1803. He was the author of many papers in the London journals, and a volume containing two original plays named “Mantuan Revels” and “Henry VII.” He died on 5th April 1830. He left for publication, under the editorship of Thomas Pery Knox,[1] his most important work, in two volumes 8vo, entitled “An Essay upon National Character, being an inquiry into some of the principal causes which contribute to form and modify the characters of nations in the state of civilisation.” Mr. Chcnevix does not treat of the nations separately, but different faculties and qualities are brought forward, one by one, in separate chapters, and in each chapter all the nations march past for review. In the chapter on Morality he finds occasion to remark —
“The nation that has retained the largest share of ferocity, which once was common among its barbarous ancestors, is that whose vanity is the most active — France. The cruelty of the French differs from everything that has hitherto been related; or could it be compared to any other, it must be to the cruelty of the Jews. French cruelty flourishes amid the most advanced progress of the social arts. It rages amid great urbanity, much apparent amenity, and a thoughtlessness which seems to bid defiance to deep-seated benevolence French cruelties have always been committed by one part of the nation upon the other, when both the contending parties were of course equal in civilisation. A humane and civilised nation, struggling with ferocious barbarians, may be so exasperated as to forget its natural moderation, and to become as cruel as its antagonists; but when it fights within itself it has no ferocity to excite its vengeance but its own. It is thus, pure and unalloyed by foreign inhumanity, that the cruelty of nations ought to be judged. (Chap. vi. 190-2.)”
“It has been asserted that the British nation has shed more blood upon the scaffold than any in modern, or perhaps in ancient history; but this charge is quite unfounded. . . . . The horror which such executions excite is the reason why the historian dwells upon them. . . . . When the Duke of Alva boasted at Madrid[2] that, during his administration of the Low Countries, eighteen thousand persons had been executed on the scaffold by his order, one sweeping phrase includes the whole transaction, together with thirty thousand more who perished for religion by other means; but when the reign of Mary is described by English writers, every particular which can excite compassion for the victims and indignation against the murderers is told. . . . . The cruelty of the British has, with as much regularity as can accompany human concerns, diminished progressively, and its diminution has kept due pace with the development of social improvement. . . . . At the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, six thousand three hundred French Protestant families were provided for in England. At the Revolution of France, 1789, more than one hundred thousand French emigrants, most of whom had lent their aid to the independence of the United States, were relieved here more than twenty years, at the expense of near six millions sterling (194-7).”
- ↑ Mr. Knox (born in 1805) is the eldest son of the Right Hon. George Knox, D.C.L., and grandson of Thomas, first Viscount Northland; he is a first cousin of the late Thomas, first Earl of Ranfurly.
- ↑ [Alva was on the borders of Germany (on his way back to Spain) when he made this boast to Count Louis van Koningstein, maternal uncle of the Prince of Orange, December 1572. Brandt, vol. i. book 10.]