THE ideal painter of the excellence of English law, Sir John Fortescue, draws a contrast (highly favourable to his countrymen of his time) between the commons of France and of England. Of the commons of France he asserts, that they 66 are so impoverished and destroyed that they can scarcely live; they drink water; they eat apples, with bread right brown, made of rye; they eat no flesh, but a little lard, or the fat of bacon, or the entrails and heads of beasts, slain for the nobles and merchants of the land;" whilst, on the other hand, he represents the inhabitants of England as "rich in gold and silver, and in all the necessaries and conveniences of life; they eat plentifully of all kinds of fish and flesh, with which their country abounds; they drink no water, unless upon a religious score; they are well provided with all sorts of household goods and implements of husbandry; and every one, according to his rank, has all things conducive to make life easy and happy."

Grateful as this picture may be to a patriotic mind, it must be confessed to be altogether as ideal as the other representations of its author, and is, indeed, at variance, with the best contemporary testimony. Numbers of English poor, in years of scarcity, often died of hunger, or of diseases contracted by the use of unwholesome food; as they were accustomed to collect herbs and roots, which they dried, and made into bread. Eneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., relates, in one of his letters, that none of the inhabitants of a populous village in Northumberland, in which he lodged (1437), had ever seen either wine or wheaten bread, and that they expressed great surprise when they beheld these delicacies at his table. It appears

also from a line in Piers Plowman's Vision, that "old wortes, or cabbage," was a usual dinner- a diet that would not be considered very substantial in any age.

These statements, therefore, of Sir John Fortescue, must be taken as pictures of the general prosperity which would flow from English law, if it were acted upon in the spirit of his ideal representation, and properly reinforced by that law of right reason,

WHO ARE THEY?

which might always be called into manifestation. Of the actual and real influence of this idea, or law, the existence of Fortescue's book was itself an evidence sufficient to demonstrate that the principles of limited monarchy were as fully recognised in the reign of Edward IV., whatever particular acts of violence might occur, as they had been under the Lancasterian princes.

But it is for another purpose that we quote this great jurist's authority. He has in this description given his idea of what a people, as a people, and in particular the English people, ought to be. A people, to be properly denominated such, should be in a certain advanced state of civilisation. They should be rich in gold and silver, and in all the necessaries and conveniences of life; they should abound in all the kinds of flesh and fish which their country produces; their drink should not be elementary merely, but a generous composition; they should be well provided with all sorts of household goods and implements of husbandry; and every one, according to his rank, should have all things conducive to make life easy and happy. This is the old jurist's abstract idea of the English people as they ought to be; in addition to which, he patriotically intimates (and what patriotic heart will not join in with the suggestion?) that they should, in all these respects, be better off than their neighbours, the French.

In all these respects the people of England have surpassed surrounding nations: in all these respects long may the people of England excel every other people! In the course and progress of their history, what a contrast do they present to those of France! How surely and how wisely have they won for themselves the privileges and the rights of men! In one instance only are they censurable, when, urged on by a fanatical spirit, they proposed to establish a commonwealth on the ruins of the throne, and permitted a usurping faction to strike its roots easily, in a soil softened by the blood of a martyred monarch. But this bad example was, on a subsequent occasion, well redeemed by the magnanimous spirit in which the settlement

Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings

tease him;

Death comes, wi' fearless eye he sees
him;

Wi' bloody hand a welcome gies him;
And when he fa's,

His latest draught o' breathin leaves
him
In faint huzzas.'

"Whence, then, arises the difference of feeling in the former case? Το what does the oppressor owe his safety? To the spirit-quelling thought: the laws of God and of my country have made his life sacred. I dare not touch a hair of his head! 'Tis conscience that makes cowards of us all ;' but, oh! it is conscience, too, which makes heroes of us all."

In these particular qualities of our national character, the people of England act in conformity with the principle which makes men of men; and, thus acting, earn for themselves the right to be considered as such, and to be intrusted with the rights of such. This principle is indeed no other than a universal law which extends throughout creation, from an angel to an atom; and thus proves its validity. Man, says Hooker, refers to something simply desirable out of himself-an infinite good, which is none other than the Divine Being. In the same way, every created thing has reference to some other thing of greater perfection. Of the universality of the law, Lord Bacon was well aware, when he argued, that "they that deny a God, destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body, and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising of human nature; for, take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who to him is instead of a god, or melior natura; which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon Divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith which human nature in itself could not obtain." A higher authority also has said, "the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib." In these animals there is thus, as it were, a dawning of a moral na

ture; which, however, is referred for its further development to something higher, both in kind and degree, in man. But this is only one instance of that dependence of being upon being, and of all the parts of creation on each other, which in their co-ordinate whole compose the system of the universe-a dependence which requires for each the simultaneous existence of all. Thus, a vegetable derives its nourishment from inorganic bodies, and alters their inert substance, which is unfit for the food of animals unless it has previously undergone the influence of vegetable life. All the kingdoms of nature, in the lowest forms of being equally as in the highest, manifest symbols, each in its own way, of this universal law. Every inferior scale presents a deficiency, which is supplied in that immediately above it. organic bodies thus melt into the organised, and vegetables approximate to animal existences; nature rises in gradations from the mineral to the vegetable, and from the latter to the animal kingdom. Even so,

In

"unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"

In whatever degree this elevation of the human character has been effected, in that degree, and in that only, has a multitude of men acquired the right of being esteemed as a people. Wandering tribes are not a people, but the elements of a people. A settlement must be effected. -a social contract made or implied-law promulgedgovernment projected—the arts of life experimented, and science in some sort professed, before any approximation is made to that state of existence which should characterise a people. Nay, a higher constitution even than this is necessary. In the Old and New Testaments they are represented as no people who are not the people of God. "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God." 1 Peter, ii. 9, 10. St. Paul is equally explicit in his Epistle to the Romans, chap. x. ver. 19. "I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you." By which last passage the

:

apostle intends that the gospel shall be preached to Gentile nations, who shall thus become a people. It is a noticeable fact, that the northern hordes became not a people until they conquered more civilised nations, to be themselves conquered, though not physically, yet morally-adopting, as they mostly did, the customs of the countries which they vanquished. The Germanic nations, almost constantly resisting the Roman yoke, awaited the beneficial influence of Christianity, in order to their later but more effectual civilisation. Then they passed, as Madame de Stael well remarks, “instantaneously from a sort of barbarisin to the refinement of Christian intercourse." The same eloquent writer gives a decided superiority to the English over the rest of the different people who are of Germanic origin; though she contends, and perhaps rightly, that the same touches of character are constantly to be met with among all. "They were all distinguished," she says, "from the earliest times, by their independence and loyalty; they have ever been good and faithful; and it is for that very reason, perhaps, that their writings universally bear a melancholy impression: for it often happens to nations, as to individuals, to suffer for their virtues."

However this may be, much of the difference between the national characters of England and France, as also in the course and tendency of their revolutions, may be traced to the difference of their origin. The Italians, the French, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese, deriving their civilisation and their language from Rome, were the earliest civilised, and still bear, as the same writer observes, the character of a long-existing civilisation, of Pagan origin. Addicted to the pleasures and the interests of the earth, their arts of dominion, like those from which they had their origin, belong to the policy of a period superseded by Christianity, and have yet to recede before the genius of a better dispensation, against which they struggle, but in vain.

Now as, according to Lord Bacon and the prophet Isaiah, man stands in relation to the inferior animals as a melior natura, so is it the genius of Christianity that every individual should look up to a more excellent nature as a guide and example of its

own.

It is

But this more excellent nature must possess a homogeneity and a community with the inferior, or the medium of relation will yet have to be bridged over, and no influence can exist between things which have no connexion. In religion, as we all know, this community is produced by the exhibition of a Being in whom the human and divine are intermingled and interfused. At the same time that he was 66 over all, blessed for ever," he was a sufferer with his fellow-men; and even now that he is "exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high," he is "touched with a feeling of our infirmities." In politics it is necessary to produce and preserve the same sympathy between the better and inferior nature. by slow gradations, and by a community in certain qualities, that every rank of being ascends in the scale of creation. Even so should it be in politics-even SO must it be-or anarchy will ensue, and society be resolved again into its primitive chaos. Nature abhors a void, and there must be no links omitted in the chain, or a gap will be made, to stand within which a mediator will be with difficulty found. No one, we suppose, can doubt for a moment as to what we mean by the better and inferior nature, in a political sense. The term, used only for the sake of analogy, can merely imply the different ranks of society, as in its physical application it applies only to the ranks of being ascending in the scale of creation. Nevertheless, there is something more than bare analogy in the application of the phrase. Christopher North has well remarked, in one of his Noctes, "that in all countries where there is an hereditary peerage, that their's is a life under the finest influences; and that in the delicate faculties of the mind, in its subtlest workings, in its gentlest pleasures, in even its morbid sensibilities, we are to look for the principles which govern their social condition. In like manner, the literature of this country is a bulwark of its political peace; not by the wisdom of knowledge thus imparted, but by the character it has impressed on the life of great classes of its inhabitants, drawing the pleasures of their ordinary life into the sphere of intellect. By a control, then, of whatever kind, exercised upon the most finely sensitive faculties of the mind,

the higher classes of civilised nations are bound together in the union of society. But the cultivation of this sensibility is a work that is continually going on among themselves, and is carried to greater perfection, as they are less disturbed by intermixture of those who are strangers to their own refinement. It goes on from one age to another; it is transmitted in families; it is an exclusive and hereditary privilege and distinction of the privileged orders of the community." We are not, however, prepared to go the length of this writer, and argue that the intermixture of the lower, but aspiring classes, is an evil. On the contrary, we believe it to be exceedingly beneficial. It is a part of that principle by which "every thing strives to ascend, and ascends in its striving." The inferior class gets much more improved by the intermixture than the superior deteriorated. Commerce, which is continually raising up multitudes of men far above the condition of their birth, may have "thrown up such numbers into a high condition of political importance, so that they have begun to fill what were once the exclusively privileged orders with sometimes rude enough and raw recruits." Rude enough they may be, but these recruits increase the number, and consequently the power, of the aristocracy; and endeavour to imitate, and by imitation confess, the better manners of those to whom they wish to become associated. The next generation finds their children as polished, or nearly so, as those of families of longer standing. But what is better than all, their introduction introduces the real into a state of society which the ideal is all too apt to engross; and, in those same children of whom we have spoken above, both the real and ideal, in which the perfection of art and morals consists, become united, as they ought to be, and as they are in the works of Shakespeare, which, on that account, excel all other productions of the kind. Thus the improvement of larger and yet increasing bodies of men progresses from generation to generation; and if it also render it necessary that "aristocracy of rank must be supported by aristocracy of talent and virtue," it is a " summation devoutly to be wished," and not deprecated. At any rate, it is well, ay and not only expedient but necessary, that in order to preserve the

con

connexion and consequent influence of one rank on the other, they should intercommunicate, and so constitute one community-this, we say, is as necessary as that a certain distinction should be kept up between them. It is for this reason that Burke includes, in his definition and description of the people, the aristocracy, as necessarily generated from a state of civil society.

The beautiful order contemplated by this sagest of the statesmen of England is broken up, in principle, by the advocates of that exclusive aristocracy, which fears contamination through an addition to its numbers by those classes of society from which it was generated, and to which it is an object of generous emulation-a melior naturu—a something instead of a god through which they are inspired to put on a courage and generosity, which courage is manifestly such as they, without that confidence of a better station than their own, could never obtain."

66

Equally subversive of the same scheme of things are, in the other extreme, those opinions which would set up even the inferior grades of society against those who "bear rule in realms," and thus

"let in the daws

To peck the eagles." Hazlitt, in an eloquent passage, describes in glowing colours the people considered as disjunct from the aristocracy and its influence, and uses, on the occasion, terms in their praise which the class that he supposes (for none such in old states exists in reality) would by no means justify. This he seems to have felt; for, in a continuation of the subject, he feels it necessary to say, that " It is not denied that the people are best acquainted with their own wants, and most attached to their own interests. But then a question is started, as if the persons asking it were at a great loss for the answer; Where are we to find the intellect of the people? Why, all the intellect that ever was is theirs. The public opinion expresses not only the collective sense of the whole people, but of all ages and nations-of all those minds that have devoted themselves to the love of truth and the good of mankind who have bequeathed their instructions, their hopes, and their example, to posterity-who have