That the end justifies the
means is a doctrine which everybody condemns by word of mouth, but the
practice founded upon which almost all men approve in their hearts,
whenever it applies to their own schemes, or to schemes the success of
which promises to benefit them, either individually or in the mass. As
the apologists of the French Jacobins have argued that their favorites
were cruel as the grave against Frenchmen only that they might
preserve France from destruction, so might the admirers of Henry plead
that he was vindictively cruel only that the English masses might live
in peace, and be protected in quietly tilling their fields, manuring
them after their own fashion, and not having them turned up and
fertilized after the fashion of Bosworth and Towton and Barnet. Surely
Henry Tudor, second of that name, is entitled to the same grace that is
extended to Maximilien Robespierre, supposing the facts to be in his
favor.
But are the facts, when fairly stated, in his favor? They are not. His
advocates must find themselves terribly puzzled to reconcile his
practice with their theory. They prove beyond all dispute that the
succession question was the grand thought of England in Henry's time;
but they do not prove, because they cannot prove, that the King's
action was such as to show that he was ready, we will not say to make
important sacrifices to lessen the probabilities of the occurrence of a
succession war, but to do anything in that way that required him to
control any one of the gross passions or grosser appetites of which he
was throughout his loathsome life the slave and the victim.
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