offence is openly tolerated. The state permits a furious association to be formed in its very bosom, to divide the property of others! Yet more the French society assists at that systematic destruction of its last pillar, as it would at a public game. Lyons even cannot rouse them to their danger, the conflagration of the second city in the empire fails to illuminate the public thought." Pp. 418-19.

In the midst of this universal fusion of public thought in the revolutionary crucible, the sway of religion, of private morality, and parental authority, could not long be expected to survive. They have all accordingly given way.

" Possibly the revolutionary worship has come in place of the service of the altar, which has been destroyed. Every religious tie has long been extinguished amongst us. But now, even its semblance has been abandoned. A Chamber which boasts of having established freedom, has seriously entertained a project for the abolition of the Sunday, and all religious festivals. That would be the most complete of all reactions, for it would at once confound all ages, and exterminate every chance of salvation.

"Such is the estimation in which religion is now held, that every one hastens to clear himself from the odious aspersion of being in the least degree attached to it. The representatives in Parliament, if by any chance an allusion is made to the clergy, burst out into laughter or sneer; they think they can govern a people, while they are incessantly outraging their worship; that cradle of modern civilisation. If a journal accidentally mentions that a regiment has attended mass, all the generals in the kingdom hasten to repel the calumny, to protest by all that is sacred their entire innocence, to swear that the barricades have taught them to forget the lessons of Napoleon, to bow the knee at the name of God." - P. 420. " In this universal struggle for disorganization, the fatal ardour gains every character. The contest is, who shall demolish most effectually, and give the most vehement strokes to society. M. de Schonen sees well that less good was done by his courage in resisting the at tacks on the temples of religion, than evil by the weight lent by the proposition for divorce, to the last establishment which was yet untouched, the sanctity of private life. To defend our public monuments, and overturn marriage, is a proceeding wholly for the benefit of anarchy; I say overturn it; for in the corrupted state of society where we live, to dissolve

its indissolubility, is to strike it in its very essence." - Pp. 412, 413,

"The recent Revolution has exhibited a spectacle which was wanting in that of 1789. Robespierre, in the Constituent Assembly, proposed the abolition of the punishment of death: no one then thought of death, none dreamed of bathing themselves in blood. Now, the case is widely different-We have arrived at terror at one leap. It is while knowing it, while viewing it full in the face, that it is seriously recommended. We have, or we affect, the unhappy passion for blood. The speeches of Robespierre and St Just are printed and sold for a few sous, leaving out only his speech in favour of the Supreme Being. All this goes on in peaceable times, when we are all as yet in cold blood, without the double excuse of terror and passion which palliated their enormities. - Poetry has taken the same line. The Constitutionel, while publishing their revolting panegyrics on blood, expresses no horror at this tendency. Incessantly we are told the reign of blood cannot be renewed; but our days have done more, they have removed all horror at it." P. 421.

of

On the dissolution of the hereditary Peerage, the great eat conquest the Revolution, the following striking observations are made.

"The democrats, in speaking of the destruction of the hereditary Peerage, imagine that they have only sacrificed an institution. There never was a more grievous mistake; they have destroyed a principle. They have thrown into the gulf the sole conservative principle that the Revolution had left; the sole stone in the edifice which recalls the past; the sole force in the constitution which subsists of itself. By that great stroke, France has violently detached itself from the European continent, violently thrown itself beyond the Atlantic, violently married itself to the virgin soil of Pennsylvania, whither we bring an ancient, discontented, and divided society; a population overflowing, which, having no deserts to expand over, must recoil upon itself, and tear out its own entrails; in fine, the tastes of servitude, the appetite for domination and anarchy, anti-religious doctrines, anti-social passions, at which that young state, which bore Washington, nourished freedom, and believes in God, would stand aghast.

"The middling rank has this evil inherent in its composition; placed on the confines of physical struggle, the intervention of force does not surprise it; it submits to its tyranny without revolt,

Has it defended France, for the last sixteen months, from the leaden sceptre which has so cruelly weighed upon her destinies? What a spectacle was exhibited when the Chamber of Peers, resplendent with talent, with virtues, with recollections dear to France, by its conscientious votes for so many years, was forced to vote against its conviction; forced, I say, to bend its powerful head before a brutal, jealous, and ignorant multitude. The class which could command such a sacrifice, enforce such a national humiliation, is incapable of governing France; and will never preserve the empire, but suffer it to fall into the jaws of the pitiless enemy, who is ever ready to devour it." -P. 487.

"No government is possible, where the mortal antipathy exists, which in France alienates the lower classes in possession of power from the ascendant of education or fortune. Can any one believe that power will ultimately remain in the hands of that intermediate class which is

causes of this extraordinary state; it is to be found in one alone--the social state is trembling to its foundations.

"This is precisely the state we have been in for sixteen months. To conceal it is impossible. What is required is to endeavour to remedy its disorders. France is well aware that it would be happy if it had only lost a fifth of its immense capital during that period. Every individual in the kingdom has lost a large portion of his income. And yet the revolution of 1830 was the most rapid and the least bloody recorded in history. If we look nearer, we shall discover that every one of us is less secure of his property than he was before that moral earthquake. Every one is less secure of his head, though the Reign of Death has not yet commenced; and in that universal feeling of insecurity is to be found the source of the universal suffering."-II. 491.

But we must conclude, however reluctantly, these copious extracts. Were we to translate every passage

without being allied to the multitude? Is it not evident, that its natural tendency is to separate itself daily more and more from the first class, to unite itself to the second? Community of hatred will occasion unity of exertion; and the more that the abyss is enlarged which separates the present depositaries of power from its natural possessors, the more will the masses enter into a share, and finally the exclusive possession, of power. Thence it will proceed from demolition to demolition, from disorder to disorder, by an inevitable progress, and must at length end in that anti-social state, the rule of the mul

titude.

"The moment that the opinion of the dominant classes disregards established interests, that it takes a pleasure in violating those august principles which constitute the soul of society, we see an abyss

begin to open; the earth quakes beneath our feet the community is shaken to its very entrails. Then begins a profound and universal sense of suffering. Capital disapa

pears; talents retreat become irritated

or corrupted. The national genius be comes intoxicated-precipitates itself into every species of disorder, and bears aloft, not as a light, but a torch of conflagration, its useless flame. The whole nation is seized with disquietude and sickness, as on the eve of those convulsions which shake the earth, and trouble at once the air, the earth, and the sea. Every one seeks the

bears in the most extraordinary way on the present crisis in this country, we should transcribe the whole of this eloquent and profound disquisition.

If it had been written in this country, it would have been set down as the work of some furious anti-reformer; of some violent Tory, blind to the progress of events, insensible to the change of society. It is the work, however, of no anti-reformer, but of a liberal Parisian historian, a decided supporter at the time of the Revolution of July; a powerful opponent of the Bourbons for fifteen years in the Chamber of Deputies. He is commended in the highest terms by Lady Morgan, as one of the rising lights of the age; * and that stamps

his character as a leader of the liberal party. But he has become enlightened, as all the world will be, to the real tendency of the revolutionary spirit, by that most certain of all preceptors, the suffering it has occasioned.

One would have imagined, from the description he has given of the state of France, since the Revolution of July, that he was describing the state of this country under the discussion of the Reform Bill; the pro

VOL. XXXI. NO. CXCV.

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3 R

bable tendency of the L.10 franchise; the universal languor and suffering which has followed the promulgation of that fatal change. Yet he is only describing the effects of triumphant reform in France. The inference is twofold; that the spirit now convulsing this country under the name of Reform, is the true revolutionary spirit, and that yet more acute and lasting distress may be confidently anticipated from its final triumph, than has attended the long and heroic resistance made to its progress. Salvandy, like all the liberal party in France, while he clearly perceives the deplorable state to which their revolution has brought them, and the fatal tendency of the democratic spirit which the triumph of July has so strongly developed, is unable to discover the remote cause of the disasters which overwhelm them. At this distance from the scene of action, we can clearly discern it. "Ephraim," says the Scripture, "has gone to his idols; let him alone." In these words is to be found the secret of the universal suffering, the deplorable condition, the merciless tyranny, which prevails in France. It is labouring under the chastisement of Heaven. An offended Deity has rained down upon it a worse scourge than the brimstone which destroyed the cities of the Jordanthe scourge of its own passions and vices. The terrible cruelty of the Reign of Terror-the enormous in justice of the revolutionary rule, is registered in the book of fate; the universal abandonment of religion by all the influential classes, has led to the extirpation of all the barriers against anarchy which are fitted to secure the well-being of society. Its fate is sealed; its glories are gone; the unfettered march of passion will

overthrow every public and private virtue; and national ruin will be the consequence. We are following in the same course, and will most certainly share in the same punishment.

In this melancholy prospect let us be thankful that the conservative party have nothing with which to reproach themselves; that though doomed to share in the punishment, they are entirely guiltless ess of the crime. Noble indeed as was the conduct of the Duke of Wellington, in coming forward at the eleventh hour, to extricate the Crown from the perilous situation in which it was placed, and the degrading thraldom to which it was subjected, we rejoice, from the bottom of our hearts, that the attempt was frustrated. Had he gone on with the Bill as it stood, from a sense of overwhelming necessity, all its consequences would have been laid on its opponents. The Whigs brought in the Reform Bill-let them have the execrable celebrity of carrying it through. Let them inscribe on their banners the overthrow of the constitution; let them go down to posterity as the destroyers of a century and a half of glory; let them be stigmatized in the page of history as the men who overthrew the liberties of England. Never despairing of their country, let the great and noble conservative party stand aloof from the fatal career of revolution; let them remain for ever excluded from power, rather than gain it by the sacrifice of one iota of principle; and steadily resisting the march of wickedness, and all the allurements of ambition, take for their motto the words of ancient duty, "Fais ce que dois: advienne ce que pourra."