me to make, which is not without importance in the question before us.

In England, as the government does not undertake to provide for men of letters, philosophers, and artists, the rich and enlightened classes of your nation consider themselves as not exempted from all concern respecting them. For a different reason, the French nation, which has the reputation of being devoted to literature, sciences, and arts, does nothing for those who cultivate them; it leaves them to the care of the government. In your country, a writer of talent and reputation may open a subscription for a work; and it is soon filled up. During the time of the emigration, several French authors adopted this expedient, and met with the same liberality which is exercised toward your countrymen. If one of your political writers join the party either of ministry or of opposition, if he remain faithful to the cause he has embraced, and if his writings appear decisive and convincing, he is sure not to be abandoned. This is not the case in France. Opinions are there so variable that no value is attached to any except the opinion of the day. If a writer enjoying the greatest share of public favour were to sustain a misfortune he would be blamed, and if he were reduced to open a subscription for a literary work, as a mode in which relief might be honourably afforded him, he would not only be unsuccessful, but I can affirm that the public would begin to doubt his talents. Opinions are not sufficiently settled among us, to become a bond of fraternity; and the interests of public liberty never elevate men's minds above the minor proprieties of social life. Your nation is conscious of being charged with the compensation of service and merit of all kinds; we are not conscious of this, because all our habits have tended to prevent us from feeling such a duty. Our minds are therefore not so independent, and consequently the government has less difficulty in establishing the restrictions, which it may require against the development and exercise of the intellectual faculties, the fairest endowment of man, and the only one, which can successfully contend against force in favour of liberty.

If you are convinced that public liberty is never sufficiently secured by the laws, when it is not guaranteed by the national manners, you will perceive that nothing in France is more unprotected than the present and future state of the liberty of the press, since the manners of our writers are servile; and our politicians never find in the past, the measure of those sacrifices that are demanded from them in the name of the general safety. Ever under the dominion of ancient habits, they give up every thing which is demanded in the name of the royal power; because the royal power formerly left us nothing of our own. Certainly in a nation which had long been accustomed to discuss its own interests, to defend its liberties, and which had not witnessed the origin and sudden death of more than twenty constitutions, a minister would not dare publicly to say, 'You are not wise enough to enjoy the

"liberties granted to you by the fundamental laws of the state; I alone am wise; place therefore the liberty of each individual at my disposal, and you shall see that I will make a better use of it for all, than each would for himself. Let the liberty of the press also be at my disposal; let every one be silent; let me alone 'speak, and you shall be convinced that I am more in the right 'than all of you.' In every country where such language could be held, its success would be certain; for if the manners of the people were not such as to suffer them to listen to such a proposal without laughter, not even a fool would attempt to make it. The moment it was hazarded, the greatest obstacle to its success would be surmounted. This has taken place before our own eyes ten times in the course of twenty-seven years; we have again witnessed it very recently, and it has succeeded, among those who had a right to discuss the question. Beyond the walls of the chambers indeed I do not think that the same opinion prevails concerning this very important subject. So long as we are without regular and lawful liberty, we shall have liberty by fits and explosions which is the worst of all its forms: hence I fear our politicians may be compared to engineers who, having charged their cannon with powder, should say that they only put in grape-shot and wadding to prevent the powder from taking fire; but they forget that it is not at the cannon's mouth that the fire is applied. The liberty of the press is an article of our constitution; certain temporary laws are used with it, as wadding (we are told) to prevent it from enflaming the public mind; but there will still be a sufficient opening for the fire to be communicated, and the detonation will be the more violent in proportion to the force of the constraint.

On the first return of the King a law was made against the liberty of the press, that is to say, against the public journals, and against books containing fewer than twenty printed sheets. This law was made in concurrence with the two chambers. The journals thus compressed by the hand of authority, could not defend the power which coerced them: on the contrary, one might have supposed that the restrictions had been contrived for the sole purpose of preventing the King and his ministers from obtaining any knowledge of the conspiracies then carrying on, for the purpose of bringing back Bonaparte or the Republic, for both those schemes were in agitation. Restrictive laws are fatal in consequence of their tendency to discourage the well disposed, who always feel less repugnance in obeying a law than in evading it, even when they deem it a bad one; whilst artful men turn and twist the law so many ways, that they at length find means to elude its provisions. So it happened in the present instance; the loyal writers had not time for the composition of publications of temporary interest exceeding twenty printed sheets; whilst the Jacobins, formed volumes of twenty-one sheets; and they would have contrived others of fifty, in order to keep clear of the law.

In consequence, the latter became masters of the field almost before the battle had begun. This strange legislative combination fully exposed the futility of the minds which conceived it; and was favourable only to the factious. Such was, and such must always be, the event in similar circumstances.

On the second return of the King, it was unfortunately imagined that the restrictive law had not been made for the general interest of society, but for the particular interest of the King; for the King alone in part reformed what had been done; and could not have been done without the concurrence of the chambers. His ordinance left the journals under the control of the police; and books, of whatever size, were exempted from all ministerial censorship provided they were not periodical; thus the Correspondent could not be translated into French, nor orders received for supplying it, without the permission of the police and a previous censorship, simply because it is periodical, that is to say, published at stated seasons, fixed upon and notified before hand. The law is so inconsistent that it apprehends danger from the circulation of a book which appears only every two months, yet foresees no danger in the publication of the same book if it appear twelve times in the course of a year, at periods not previously determined, because in that case it would not be periodical. You will begin to doubt whether we are in our senses, when we take these precautions against a book, because it is announced on the 1st of January for the whole year, while we are without any legal provision against other works, which may be published without any previous annunciation. Let me undeceive you; nothing can be wiser; and be assured that when ministers propose laws, they have made every arrangement to avoid being annoyed by them. This belongs to their station; it will be for the chambers to inquire whether the nation shall remain as free as the ministers. The police, having the control of all the journals, can prevent them from announcing works, which it is disposed to restrain from circulation; it can assail the authors, expose their books, to the laughter of fools, and injure their sale by other means that are at its disposal, and this so effectually, that a printed work shall be as little known as if the author had kept it by him in manuscript. On the contrary, a work appearing at fixed periods, and having regular subscribers, might circulate in spite of the journals, and would meet with striking success if conducted with talent and on sound principles. A periodical work might therefore obtain a greater ascendency over public opinion than the works of all the writers in the pay of the police; this is what they will not allow. It would disturb the union of the intellectual and material power. The whole, then, that we have hitherto gained by a representative government, is that the laws guarantee the ascendency derived from intellect, to those who have none, against those who possess that faculty. Under the ancient order of things such a combination could not have been conceived; and if the

direction of the public mind was engrossed by the monastic orders, it was because they were at that time the sole depositaries of every science. It was reserved for what has been called an enlightened age to show us that the law recognises every science to be the privilege of one man when he is minister of police. not laugh at us, but pity us; for every nation that has been misled from her ancient paths is for a long time to be pitied.

Do

That which was regulated by an ordinance of the King on his second return has been confirmed by the present Chamber of Deputies and is now before the Chamber of Peers. If the Chamber

of Peers should also adopt it, which they probably will do, the state of our laws regarding the press will be an apparent liberty for books, an avowed control over journals and periodical works. Now take our national manners into the account, and you will find that this state of things, which would be insupportable in England will scarcely be felt in France, where political liberty is a matter of only secondary concern, where every one has his own little private interest to promote, and with which he is exclusively occupied. Our writers aim not at independence of feeling; they aim at places and money; every thing is arranged with that view, and what is not yet so arranged, will be in a short time. As there is much less resistance in our manners, than warmth in our minds,. recourse is rarely had to violent measures of control. The ministers are but little provoked by an attack; and those who are opposed by the ministers are also good-natured people who feel no sort of rancour because they feel as little conviction. And how should there be any in a nation where doctrines are all uncertain and vacillate between remembrances of the past, and pretensions newly asserted. If we really loved public liberty, the case would be different; for the sake of a mighty interest the passions would take a loftier tone; but that is out of the question.

Do not conclude, however, that we are in love with despotism; our manners are too variable to yield to it; indeed we have no faith in it. Having for these twenty-seven years been accustomed to dwell on the events of to-morrow, what passes to-day never engages our thoughts; they are fixed only on what will come or what may come. How is it possible for a people, incessantly changing their constitutions and laws, living only on exceptions, and in a continual succession of ordinances, to attach themselves to any thing? The royal charter had given us the liberty of the press: it was quite natural for a Frenchman to expect that the laws would take it away. In fact, a law has taken it away; it is quite natural for a Frenchman to look for some circumstance that will restore it to us. The same may be said of personal liberty; if the constitution had not guaranteed it to us, you would have heard of great debates for obtaining it; but as we have it by the constitution, great debates have been held to deprive us of it. In short, my dear sir, a single reflection will suffice to show the difference between your English ideas relative to the press, and the notions

which prevail on the same subject with us in France. You will probably admit, that if your ministry were to propose that all the public journals should be placed at their disposal, and under their control, the whole English people would deem it an attack on one of their most important privileges. Well, sir, let us suppose the same proposal made in France, and you would scarcely meet a person who would think the question regarded any body but the Journalists. With this brief remark, which, I assure you, is not intended for sarcasm, but for simple, historical truth, I remain very truly yours,

F.

ART. III.-An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean; with an original Grammar and Vocabulary of their Language. Compiled and arranged from the extensive Communications of Mr. WM. MARINER, several years resident in those Islands; by JOHN MARTIN, M. D. 2 vols. royal 8vo. pp. 460-412. London, Murray, 1817.-From the Critical Review.

no single individual is the science of geography more indebted than to the late Captain Cook, who fell a sacrifice to the ignorance or ferocity of the barbarous regions he explored. In his first voyage the Society Isles were discovered by him; the insularity of New Zealand was ascertained, when the streights which separated the two component parts were distinguished by his name: and in the same voyage he explored the coast of New Holland through an extent of two thousand miles. In his second voyage he was enabled to negative the conjecture with regard to a southern continent within the reach of navigation; he added New Caledonia to our charts, the largest island in the South Pacific, New Zealand excepted; and also Georgia, in the latitude of Cape Horn, with an unknown coast that he called Sandwich Land, and which has been denominated the Ultima Thule of the southern hemisphere.

In his third voyage he revisited the Friendly Islands, discovered several smaller clusters on the tropic of Capricorn, and the Sandwich Islands to the north of the equinoctial line; he explored the western coast of America from 43 to 70 degrees of north latitude; he determined the proximity of Asia to that continent; and passing the streights between them, demonstrated the impracticability of a northern passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In consequence of these important discoveries, the hydrography of the habitable globe may be said to have been completed, with the exception of the Sea of Amur and the Japanese Archipelago; so that little remains for future navigators but to furnish us with more minute accounts of the situations he had examined, and this purpose with respect to the Friendly, or Tonga Islands, is performed in a very able and interesting manner by the author of the account before us, assisted as he was by his professional editor.