member of the cabinet, can not only resist, | If addresses and clamours are disregarded, recourse may be had to arms; and an open civil war be left again to determine, whether the sense of the people at large be, or be not, resolutely against its adoption. This last species of check on the power of the Sovereign, no political arrangement, and no change in the Constitution, can obviate or prevent, and as all the other checks of which we have spoken refer ultimately to this, so, the defence of their necessity and justice is complete, when we merely say, that their use is to prevent a recurrence to this last extremity-and, by enabling the sense of the nation to repress pernicious counsels in the outset, through the safe and pacific channels of the cabinet and the parliament, to remove the necessity of resisting them at last, by the dreadful expedient of actual force and compulsion. but suggest, or propose, or recommend any thing which he pleases for the adoption of that executive council;-and his suggestions must at all times be more attended to than tnose of any other person of the same knowledge or capacity. Such, indeed, are the indestructible sources of influence belonging to his situation, that, if he be only compos mentis, he may rely upon having more authority than any two of the gravest and most experienced individuals with whom he can communicate; and that there will be a far greater disposition to adopt his recommendations, than those of the wisest and most popular minister that the country has ever seen. He may, indeed, be outvoted even in the cabinet;—the absurdity of his suggestions may be so palpable, or their danger so great, that no habitual deference, or feeling of personal dependence, may be sufficient to induce his advisers to venture on their adoption. This, however, we imagine, will scarcely be looked upon as a source of national weakness or hazard; and is, indeed, an accident that may befal any sovereign, however absolute-since the veriest despot cannot work without tools-and even a military sovereign at the head of his army, must submit to abandon any scheme which that army positively refuses to execute. If he is baffled in one cabinet, however, the King of England may in general repeat the experiment in another; and change his counsellors over and over, till he find some who are more courageous or more complying. If a king, under any form of monarchy, attempt to act against the sense of the commanding part of the population, he will inevitably be resisted and overthrown. This is not a matter of institution or policy; but a necessary result from the nature of his office, and of the power of which he is the adminis trator-or rather from the principles of human nature. But that form of monarchy is the worst-both for the monarch and for the people-which exposes him the most to the shock of such ultimate resistance; and that is the best, which interposes the greatest number of intermediate bodies between the oppressive purpose of the king and his actual attempt to carry it into execution,-which tries the projected measure upon the greatest number of selected samples of the public sense, before it comes into collision with its general mass,— and affords the most opportunities for retreat, and the best cautions for advance, before the battle is actually joined. The cabinet is presumed to know more of the sentiments of the nation than the king;-and the parliament to know more than the cabinet. Both these bodies, too, are presumed to be rather more under the personal influence of the king than the great body of the nation; and therefore, whatever suggestions of his are ultimately rejected in those deliberative assemblies, must be held to be such as would have been still less acceptable to the bulk of the community. By rejecting them there, however, by silent votes or clamorous harangues, the nation is saved from the necessity of rejecting them, by actual resistance and insurrection in the field. The person and the office of the monarch remain untouched, and untainted for all purposes of good; and the peace of the country is maintained, and its rights asserted, without any turbulent exertion of its power. The whole frame and machinery of the constitution, in short, is contrived for the express The King's measure may triumph in par- purpose of preventing the kingly power from liament as well as in the council-and yet it dashing itself to pieces against the more radmay be resisted by the Nation. The parlia- ical power of the people: and those institument may be outvoted in the country, as well tions that are absurdly supposed to restrain as the cabinet in the parliament; and if the the authority of the sovereign within too narmeasure, even in this last stage, and after all row limits, are in fact its great safeguards these tests of its safety, be not abandoned, and protectors, by providing for the timely the most dreadful consequences may ensue. I and peaceful operation of that great control But, suppose that the Cabinet acquiesces:the Parliament also may no doubt oppose, and defeat the execution of the project. The Cabinet may be outvoted in the House of Commons, as the Sovereign may be outvoted in the Cabinet; and all its other members may be displaced by votes of that House. The minister who had escaped being dismissed by the King through his compliance with the Royal pleasure, may be dismissed for that compliance, by the voice of the Legislature. But the Sovereign, with whom, upon this supposition, the objectionable measure originated, is not dismissed; and may not only call another minister to his councils to try this same measure a second time, but may himself dismiss the Parliament by which it had been censured; and submit its proceedings to the consideration of another assembly! We really cannot see any want of effective power in such an order of things; nor comprehend how the royal authority is rendered altogether nugatory and subordinate, merely by requiring it to have ultimately the concurrence of the Cabinet and of the Legislature. The last stage of this hypothesis, however, will clear all the rest. ling power, which it could only elude for a season, at the expense of much certain misery to the people, and the hazard of final destruction to itself. that this submission is itself an evil--and an evil only inferior to those through which it must ultimately seek its relief. If any form of tyranny, therefore, were as secure from terrible convulsions as a regulated freedom, it would not cease for that to be a far less desirable condition of existence; and as the mature sense of a whole nation may be fairly presumed to point more certainly to the true means of their happiness than the single opinion even of a patriotic king, so it must be right and reasonable, in all cases, that his opinion should give way to theirs; and that a power should be generated, if it did not naturally and necessarily exist, to insure its predominance. Mr. Leckie, however, and his adherents, can see nothing of all this. The facility of casting down a single tyrant, we have already seen, is one of the prime advantages which he ascribes to the institution of Simple monarchy; and so much is this advocate of kingly power enamoured of the uncourtly doctrine of resistance, that he not only recognises it as a familiar element in the constitution, but lays it down in express terms, that it affords the only remedy for all political corruption. "History," he observes, "has furnished us with no example of the reform of a corrupt and tyrannical government, but either from intestine war, or conquest from without. Thus, the objection against a simple monarchy, because there is no remedy for its abuse, holds the same, but in a greater de-are said to give rise. The first of these topics, gree, against any other form. Each is borne with as long as possible; and when the evil is at its greatest height, the nation either rises against it, or, not having the means of so doing, sinks into abject degradation and misery." We have still a word or two to say on the alleged inconsistency and fluctuation of all public councils that are subjected to the control of popular assemblies, and on the unprin cipled violence of the factions to which they however, need not detain us long. If it be meant, that errors in public measures are more speedily detected, and more certainly repaired, when they are maturely and freely discussed by all the wisdom and all the talent Such, however, are not our principles of of a nation, than when they are left to the policy; on the contrary, we hold, that the blind guidance of the passions or conceit of chief use of a free constitution is to prevent an individual;-if it be meant, that, under a the recurrence of these dreadful extremities: Simple monarchy, we should have persevered and that the excellence of a limited monarchy longer and more steadily in the principles of consists less in the good laws, and the good the Slave Trade, of Catholic Proscription, and administration of law, to which it naturally of the Orders in Council:-then we cheerfully gives birth, than in the security it affords admit the justice of the charge-we readily against such a melancholy alternative. To yield to those governments the praise of such some, we know, who have been accustomed consistency and such perseverance-and offer to the spectacle of long-established despo- no apology for that change from folly to wis tisms, the hazards of such a terrific regenera- dom, and from cruelty to mercy, which is protion appear distant and inconsiderable; and, duced by the variableness of a free consti if they could only prolong the intervals of tution. But if it be meant that an absolute patient submission, and polish away some monarch keeps the faith which he pledges of the harsher features of oppression, they more religiously than a free people, or that he imagine a state of things would result more is less liable to sudden and capricious variatranquil and desirable than can ever be pre- tions in his policy, we positively deny the sented by the eager and salutary contentions truth of the imputation, and boldly appeal to of a free government. To such persons we the whole course of history for its confutation. shall address but two observations. The first, What nation, we should like to know, ever stood that though the body of the people may in- half so high as our own, for the reputation of deed be kept in brutish subjection for ages, good faith and inviolable fidelity to its allies? where the state of society, as to intelligence Or in what instance has the national honour and property, is such that the actual power been impeached, by the refusal of one set of and command of the nation is vested in a few ministers to abide by the engagements enter bands of disciplined troops, this could never ed into by their predecessors ?-With regard be done in a nation abounding in independent to mere caprice and inconsistency again, will wealth, very generally given to reading and it be seriously maintained, that councils, de reflection, and knit together in all its parts pending upon the individual will of an absoby a thousand means of communication and lute sovereign-who may be a boy, or a girl, ties of mutual interest and sympathy; and or a dotard, or a driveller-are more likely least of all could it be done in a nation already to be steadily and wisely pursued, than those accustomed to the duties and enjoyments of that are taken up by a set of experienced freedom, and regarding the safe and honour-statesmen, under the control of a vigilant and able struggles it is constantly obliged to main-intelligent public? It is not by mere popular tain in its defence, as the most ennobling and delightful of its exercises. The other remark is, that even if it were possible, as it is not, to rivet and shackle down an enlightened nation in such a way as to make it submit for some time, in apparent quietness, to the abuses of arbitrary power, it is never to be forgotten clamour-by the shouts or hisses of an ignorant and disorderly mob-but by the deep, the slow, and the collected voice of the intelligent and enlightened part of the community, that the councils of a free nation are ultimately guided. But if they were at the disposal of a rabble-what rabble, we would ask, is so ig norant, so contemptible, so fickle, false, and empty of all energy of purpose or principle, as the rabble that invests the palaces of arbitrary kings-the favourites, the mistresses, the panders, the flatterers and intriguers, who succeed or supplant each other in the crumbling soil of his favour, and so frequently dispose of all that ought to be at the command of wisdom and honour? Looking only to the eventful history of our own day, will any one presume to say, that the conduct of the simple monarchies of Europe has afforded us, for the last twenty years, any such lessons of steady and unwavering policy as to make us blush for our own democratical inconstancy? What, during that period, has been the conduct of Prussia-of Russia—of Austria herself of every state, in short, that has not been terrified into constancy by the constant dread of French violence? And where, during all that time, are we to look for any traces of manly firmness, but in the conduct and councils of the only nation whose measures were at all controlled by the influence of popular sentiments? If that nation too was not exempt from the common charge of vacillation-if she did fluctuate between designs to restore the Bourbons, and to enrich herself by a share of their spoils-if she did contract one deep stain on her faith and her humanity, by encouraging and deserting the party of the Royalists in La Vendée-if she did waver and wander from expeditions into Flanders to the seizure of West Indian islands, and from menaces to extirpate Jacobinism to missions courting its alliance-will any man pretend to say, that these signs of infirmity of purpose were produced by yielding to the varying impulses of popular opinions, or the alternate preponderance of hostile factions in the state? Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that they all occurred during that lamentable but memorable period, when the alarm excited by the aspect of new dangers had in a manner extinguished the constitutional spirit of party, and composed the salutary conflicts of the nation-that they occurred in the first ten years of Mr. Pitt's war administration, when opposition was almost extinct, and when the government was not only more entirely in the hands of one man than it had been at any time since the days of Cardinal Wolsey, but when the temper and tone of its administration approached very nearly to that of an arbitrary monarchy? * On the doctrine of parties and party dissensions, it is now too late for us to enter at large-and indeed when we recollect what Mr. Burke has written upon that subject, we do not know why we should wish for an opportunity of expressing our feeble sentiments. Parties are necessary in all free governments -and are indeed the characteristics by which such governments may be known. One party, that of the Rulers or the Court, is necessarily formed and disciplined from the permanence of its chief, and the uniformity of the interests *See his "Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents." Sub initio et passim. it has to maintain;-the party in Opposition, therefore, must be marshalled in the same way. When bad men combine, good men must unite :-and it would not be less hopeless for a crowd of worthy citizens to take the field without leaders or discipline, against a regular army, than for individual patriots to think of opposing the influence of the Sovereign by their separate and uncombined exertions. As to the length which they shoul be permitted to go in support of the common cause, or the extent to which each ought to submit his private opinion to the general sense of his associates, it does not appear to usthough casuists may varnish over dishonour, and purists startle at shadows-either that any man of upright feelings can be often at a loss for a rule of conduct, or that, in point of fact, there has ever been any blameable ex cess in the maxims upon which the great par ties of this country have been generally con ducted. The leading principle is, that a man should satisfy himself that the party to which he attaches himself means well to the country, and that more substantial good will accrue to the nation from its coming into power, than from the success of any other body of men whose success is at all within the limits of probability. Upon this principle, therefore, he will support that party in all things which he approves-in all things that are indifferent and even in some things which he partly disapproves, provided they neither touch the honour and vital interests of the country, nor imply any breach of the ordinary rules of morality.-Upon the same principle he will attack not only all that he individually disapproves in the conduct of the adversary, but all that might appear indifferent and tolerable enough to a neutral spectator, if it afford an opportunity to weaken this adversary in the public opinion, and to increase the chance of bringing that party into power from which alone he sincerely believes that any sure or systematic good is to be expected. Farther than this we do not believe that the leaders or respectable followers of any considerable party, intentionally allow themselves to go. Their zeal, indeed, and the heats and passions engendered in the course of the conflict, may sometimes hurry them into measures for which an impartial spectator cannot find this apology:-but to their own consciences and honour we are persuaded that they generally stand acquitted; and, on the score of duty or morality, that is all that can be required of human beings. For the baser retainers of the party indeed-those marauders who follow in the rear of every army, not for battle but for booty-who concern themselves in no way about the justness of the quarrel, or the fairness of the field-who plunder the dead, and butcher the wounded, and desert the unprosperous, and betray the daring;-for those wretches who truly belong to no party, and are a disgrace and a drawback upon all, we shall assuredly make no apology, nor propose any measures of toleration. The spirit by which they are actuated is the very opposite of that spirit which is generated by the parties of a free people; and accordingly it is among the advocates of arbitrary power that such persons, after they have served their purpose by a pretence of patriotic zeal, are ultimately found to range themselves. an enumeration of the advantages of absolute monarchy;-and we are tempted to follow his example, by concluding with a dry catalogue of the advantages of free government-each of which would require a chapter at least as We positively deny, then, that the interests long as that which we have now bestowed of the country have ever been sacrificed to a upon one of them. Next, then, to that of its vindictive desire to mortify or humble a rival superior security from great reverses and atroparty-though we freely admit that a great cities, of which we have already spoken at deal of the time and the talent that might be sufficient length, we should be disposed to devoted more directly to her service, is wasted rank that pretty decisive feature, of the suin such an endeavour. This, however, is un-perior Happiness which it confers upon all avoidable-nor is it possible to separate those the individuals who live under it. The condiscussions, which are really necessary to ex-sciousness of liberty is a great blessing and enpose the dangers or absurdity of the practical joyment in itself.-The occupation it affords measures proposed by a party, from those the importance it confers the excitement which have really no other end but to expose of intellect, and the elevation of spirit which it to general ridicule or odium. This too, it implies, are all elements of happiness pehowever, it should be remembered, is a point culiar to this condition of society, and quite in which the country has a still deeper, though separate and independent of the external ada more indirect interest than in the former; vantages with which it may be attended. since it is only by such means that a system In the second place, however, liberty makes that is radically vicious can be exploded, or a men more Industrious, and consequently more set of men fundamentally corrupt and incapa- generally prosperous and Wealthy; the result pable removed. If the time be well spent, of which is, both that they have among them therefore, which is occupied in preventing or more of the good things that wealth can propalliating some particular act of impolicy or cure, and that the resources of the State are oppression, it is impossible to grudge that by greater for all public purposes. In the third which the spring and the fountain of all such place, it renders men more Valiant and Highacts may be cut off. minded, and also promotes the development With regard to the tumult-the disorder- of Genius and Talents, both by the unbounded the danger to public peace-the vexation and career it opens up to the emulation of every discomfort which certain sensitive persons individual in the land, and by the natural efand great lovers of tranquillity represent as fect of all sorts of intellectual or moral exthe fruits of our political dissensions, we can-citement to awaken all sorts of intellectual not help saying that we have no sympathy and moral capabilities. In the fourth place, with their delicacy or their timidity. What it renders men more Patient, and Docile, and they look upon as a frightful commotion of the Resolute in the pursuit of any public object; elements, we consider as no more than a whole- and consequently both makes their chance of some agitation; and cannot help regarding success greater, and enables them to make the contentions in which freemen are engaged much greater efforts in every way, in proporby a conscientious zeal for their opinions, as tion to the extent of their population. No an invigorating and not ungenerous exercise. slaves could ever have undergone the toils to What serious breach of the public peace has which the Spartans or the Romans tasked it occasioned ?-to what insurrections, or con- themselves for the good or the glory of their spiracies, or proscriptions has it ever given country-and no tyrant could ever have exrise-what mob even, or tumult, has been torted the sums in which the Commons of excited by the contention of the two great England have voluntarily assessed themselves parties of the state, since their contention has for the exigencies of the state. These are been open, and their weapons appointed, and among the positive advantages of freedom; their career marked out in the free lists of the and, in our opinion, are its chief advantages. constitution?-Suppress these contentions, in--But we must not forget, in the fifth and last deed-forbid these weapons, and shut up these lists, and you will have conspiracies and insurrections enough.-These are the short-sighted fears of tyrants.-The dissensions of a free people are the preventives and not the indications of radical disorderand the noises which make the weak-hearted tremble, are but the natural murmurs of those mighty and mingling currents of public opinion, which are destined to fertilize and unite the country, and can never become dangerous till an attempt is made to obstruct their course, or to disturb their level. Mr. Leckie has favoured his readers with place, that there is nothing else but a free government by which men can be secured from those arbitrary invasions of their Persons and Properties-those cruel persecutions, oppressive imprisonments, and lawless executions, which no formal code can prevent an absolute monarch from regarding as a part of his prerogative; and, above all, from those provincial exactions and oppressions, and those universal Insults, and Contumelies, and Indignities, by which the inferior minions of power spread misery and degradation among the whole mass of every people which has no political independence. (April, 1814.) A Song of Triumph. By W. SOTHEBY, Esq. 8vo. London: 1814. L'Acte Constitutionnel, en la Séance du 9 Avril, 1814. 8vo. Londres: 1814. Of Bonaparte, the Bourbons, and the Necessity of rallying round our legitimate Princes, for the Happiness of France and of Europe. By F. A. CHATEAUBRIAND. 8vo. London: 1814.* Ir would be strange indeed, we think, if | many high and anxious speculations. The feelpages dedicated like ours to topics of present ings, we are sure, are in unison with all that interest, and the discussions of the passing exists around us; and we reckon therefore on hour, should be ushered into the world at such more than usual indulgence for the speculaa moment as this, without some stamp of that tions into which they may expand. common joy and anxious emotion with which the wonderful events of the last three months are still filling all the regions of the earth. In such a situation, it must be difficult for any one who has the means of being heard, to refrain from giving utterance to his sentiments: But to us, whom it has assured, for the first time, of the entire sympathy of all our countrymen, the temptation, we own, is irresistible; and the good-natured part of our readers, we are persuaded, will rather smile at our simplicity, than fret at our presumption, when we add, that we have sometimes permitted ourselves to fancy that, if any copy of these our lucubrations should go down to another generation, it may be thought curious to trace in them the first effects of events that are probably destined to fix the fortune of succeeding centuries, and to observe the impressions which were made on the minds of contemporaries, by those mighty transactions, which will appear of yet greater moment in the eyes of a distant posterity. We are still too near that great image of Deliverance and Reform which the Genius of Europe has just set up before us, to discern with certainty its just lineaments, or construe the true character of the Aspect with which it looks onward to futurity! We see enough, however, to fill us with innumerable feelings, and the germs of The first and predominant feeling which rises on contemplating the scenes that have just burst on our view, is that of deep-felt gratitude and delight,-for the liberation of so many oppressed nations,-for the cessation of bloodshed and fear and misery over the fairest portions of the civilised world,—and for the enchanting, though still dim and uncertain prospect of long peace and measureless improvement, which seems at last to be opening on the suffering kingdoms of Europe. The very novelty of such a state of things, which could be known only by description to the greater part of the existing generation—the suddenness of its arrival, and the contrast which it forms with the anxieties and alarms to which it has so immediately succeeded, all concur most powerfully to enhance its vast intrinsic attractions. It has come upon the world like the balmy air and flushing verdure of a late spring, after the dreary chills of a long and interminable winter; and the refreshing sweetness with which it has visited the earth, feels like Elysium to those who have just escaped from the driving tempests it has banished. We have reason to hope, too, that the riches of the harvest will correspond with the splen dour of this early promise. All the periods in which human society and human intellect have been known to make great and memorThis, I am afraid, will now be thought to be too able advances, have followed close upon much of a mere "Song of Triumph;" or, at least, periods of general agitation and disorder. to be conceived throughout in a far more sanguine Men's minds, it would appear, must be deeply spirit than is consistent either with a wise observation of passing events, or a philosophical estimate and roughly stirred, before they become proof the frailties of human nature: And, having cer-lific of great conceptions, or vigorous resolves; tainly been written under that prevailing excitement, of which I chiefly wish to preserve it as a memorial, I have no doubt that, to some extent, it is so. At the same time it should be recollected, that it was written immediately after the first restoration of the Bourbons; and before the startling drama of the Hundred Days, and its grand catastrophe at Waterloo, had dispelled the first wholesome fears of the Allies, or sown the seeds of more bitter ranklings and resentments in the body of the French people and, above all, that it was so written, be fore the many lawless invasions of national independence, and broken promises of Sovereigns to their subjects, which have since revived that distrust, which both nations and philosophers were then, perhaps, too ready to renounce. And after all, I must say, that an attentive reader may find, even in this strain of good auguries, both such traces of misgivings, and such iteration of anxious warn ings, as to save me from the imputation of having merely predicted a Millennium. and a vast and alarming fermentation must pervade and agitate the mass of society, to inform it with that kindly warmth, by which alone the seeds of genius and improvement can be expanded. The fact, at all events, is abundantly certain; and may be accounted for, we conceive, without mystery, and without metaphors. A popular revolution in government or religion or any thing else that gives rise to general and long-continued contention, naturally produces a prevailing disdain of authority, and boldness of thinking in the leaders of the fray,-together with a kindling of the imagination and development of intellect in a great multitude of persons, who, in ordinary times, would have vegetated stupidly in the places where fortune had fixed them. Power |