If the demand for

maintenance of the labourer. labour remains the same, and by a reduction of taxes the articles which the labourer uses are reduced in price from 18s. to 8s., his wages will fall from 18s. to 8s. But it will be said that the farmer and manufacturer, having more capital to lay out on labour, the reduction of taxes will bring an increased demand. This, indeed, may ultimately be the case; but it is not likely that such effect would follow a sudden stoppage of the payment of the dividends. So many consumers are spread over this country, who derive their income, either directly or indirectly, from the funds, that the first effect of a national bankruptcy would be a great diminution of demand, and a general depreciation of agricultural and manufactured produce throughout the

country.

Happily, we have not at present any reason to fear that we shall be placed in the ugly alternative of national bankruptcy or national ruin. But we must not, for this reason, undervalue the evil of a great national debt. An income-tax of two shillings in the pound would not be more than sufficient to pay the interest of sums borrowed to pay the expense of our American and French wars, and no one would think lightly of the burthen of that tax greatly increased in order to defray the expenses of fresh

wars.

CHAPTER XXX.

THAT A FREE GOVERNMENT REQUIRES PERPETUAL JEALOUSY, AND FREQUENT RENOVATION.

Le gouvernement d'Angleterre est plus sage parce qu'il y a un corps qui l'examine continuellement, et qui s'examine continuellement lui-même: et telles sont ses erreurs, qu'elles ne sont jamais longues, et que par l'esprit d'attention qu'elles donnent à la nation, elles sont souvent utiles.'-Montesquieu, Grandeur et Décadence des Romains, chap. viii.

ALL experience of human nature teaches us the fact, that men who possess a superiority, real or imaginary, over their fellow-creatures, will abuse the advantages they enjoy. A man cannot drive a one-horse chaise without looking down upon those who walk on foot; much less can a mortal be entrusted with the uncontrolled guidance of an empire, and not be guilty of insolence or oppression towards those who are styled his subjects.

The History we have been reviewing is pregnant with examples of the encroachments of power, and the decline of virtue in those who are appointed to govern. The House of Tudor enlarged their prerogative beyond the boundaries of all former times; the House of Stuart improved upon those bad precedents, and claimed, de jure, that despotic authority which the Tudors had exercised de facto. When this sin was washed away in the blood of the royal martyr, Cromwell, who had been appointed to command the forces of a free Commonwealth against an ambitious Sovereign, made use of the influence he had obtained to set up his own authority still higher than that of England's hereditary kings. When Charles II. was restored to

the throne of his father, by the indulgence of a forgiving nation, he imposed upon her a yoke at once more galling and more degrading than that of any former monarch. William III. passed his life in continual struggles with his subjects to obtain new prerogatives or prevent fresh restrictions on the royal power. When, by the accession of the House of Hanover, the Whigs at length became completely triumphant, they also fell off from virtue, and the martyrs and patriots of the seventeenth century were succeeded in the eighteenth by a race of pettifoggers and peculators. Nothing can show more clearly the necessity of perpetual jealousy than the corruption of the Whig party: inheriting all the great principles of liberty, and forming the only free government of any importance in Europe, power proved to them a Capua, and success induced them to forget the means and neglect the qualities by which they had obtained it.

It is true, that the continual agitation of public questions in England has in it something very alarming to persons at a distance. I remember when the question of the Liberty of the Press was discussed in the Spanish Cortes of 1811, an orator, who spoke against a free press, held out the fate of England as a warning, and asked the assembly if they wished to see as many factions, and as many tumults, as prevailed in Great Britain. But these things are more dreadful in appearance than in reality. Tavern-speeches, contested elections, fieldmeetings, and tumultuary processions, often seem to portend the instant destruction of the order of society; but the sound and the smoke are greater than the mischief, and the people, accustomed to the noise, pursue their occupations with as much composure as the crew of a frigate manœuvre the vessel amid the roar of the wind. The evils of

despotism, through less striking, occasion far more suffering: the one is like an eruption of the skin, of little importance, though visible to every eye; the other is a mortal, deep-seated disease, which unseen attacks the noblest and most vital parts of the frame.

These observations apply, in my opinion, to the agitated question of Parliamentary Reform. It appears to many, even in England, that the discussion of this subject is fraught with the mightiest dangers, and cannot terminate but in the convulsion of society. It appears to me, on the contrary, that these discussions arising out of the state of the people, and carried on with the whole nation for an audience, so far from being mischievous, tend to excite that spirit of enquiry and investigation which is necessary to the freedom of the State.

Whether Reform is carried or not, it cannot but be of the utmost service to direct the attention of the people to the conduct of the House of Commons, and to oblige them to become, either by their constitution or by the fear of shame, the vigilant guardians of the public interests. The discussion of the question of Reform will beneficially serve to prevent that stagnation of the public mind, and that blind confidence in the depositories of power, which are fatal to a free State.*

One melancholy reflection seems to result from what has been said. Liberty, which requires perpetual agitation, perpetual jealousy, and perpetual change, must be exposed to more hazards, and therefore be less durable in its nature than despotism, which to subsist requires only to be unaltered. A despotism, indeed, which is founded upon ignorance, and which carefully excludes the external light, may, if not invaded from without,

* Written in 1821, but applicable in some degree to 1865.

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be the most permanent of all governments; for the debasement of the people, which is one of its means of immediate government, is likewise a security against any future change. It would seem, indeed, that freedom, like all the best and finest productions of this world, is one of the most frail and transitory. But let not despotism boast her advantage: half a century of freedom within the circuit of a few miles of rock, brings to perfection more of the greatest qualities of our nature, displays more fully the capacity of man, exhibits more examples of heroism and magnanimity, and emits more of the divine light of poetry and philosophy, than thousands of years and millions of people collected in the greatest empire of the world can ever see accomplished in the darkness of despotism.