p 
 
 m 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 BY 
 
 W. E. GEEO 
 
 (v V 
 LONDON: X^Tj 
 
 TKUBNEK & CO., LUDGATE HILL 
 
 1884. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Li 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 i. 
 
 PAGE 
 FRANCE SINCE 1848 ..... 1 
 
 " North British Review," May 1851. 
 
 II. 
 
 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852 ..... 61 
 
 "North British Review," Feb. 1852. 
 
 III. 
 
 ENGLAND AS IT IS . . . . . . 136 
 
 "Edinburgh Review," April 1851. 
 
 IY. 
 
 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY . . .193 
 
 "Westminster Review," July 1852. 
 
 Y. 
 
 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES IN EUROPEAN WARS 268 
 
 " Fortnightly Review," June 1878. 
 
 JV&08563 
 
I 
 
 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 1 
 
 FRANCE is, KUT s%W v > the l an d of experiment, as 
 England is the land of compromise. There is scarcely 
 a religious, political, or social experiment she has not 
 tried ; scarcely a religious, political, or social phase 
 which she has not passed through. The form of Ro- 
 manism in its narrowest and harshest bigotry which 
 she exhibited towards the close of the reign of Louis 
 XIV., was exchanged under his successors for a wild, 
 angry, aggressive infidelity. This in its turn was suc- 
 ceeded by a cold and contemptuous indifference, which 
 is now giving place to a somewhat more hopeful spirit 
 in the poetical and mystical faith of Lamennais and 
 Lamartine among the adherents of the old creed, arid 
 to the stiff and dogmatic opinions of Guizot, Coquerel, 
 and Quinet among the votaries of the new. In polity 
 France was at one time a military aristocracy, when 
 the Guises and the Conde's were almost the equals of 
 the reigning prince. Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis 
 XIV. curbed the power of these rival potentates, and 
 established a central and relentless despotism, which 
 lasted till 1789, and was then followed in rapid succes- 
 
 1 From the " North British Eeview, May 1851." 
 Revue des deux Mondes. Paris : 1849, 1850. 
 
 A 
 
2 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 sion by the most democratic of republics and the most 
 stern of military empires, by a restoration, a second 
 revolution, a constitutional limited monarchy, a third 
 revolution, and an anomalous, ambiguous, tottering 
 republic. The social changes which the country has 
 undergone have been no less startling. Vassals and serfs 
 till sixty years ago, the people suddenly became, first, 
 the equals, then the tyrants of their former masters ; 
 and after losing their power under the empire, and 
 being firmly repressed under the succeeding dynasties, 
 they saw Communism for one short period actually 
 triumphant and in power, and are still struggling to 
 replace it at the Luxembourg. The middle classes, 
 non-existent or insignificant under the old monarchy, 
 and unwisely despised by Napoleon, have been domi- 
 nant since 1830, and promise to remain so still; 
 while the aristocracy, formerly the proudest arid might- 
 iest in Europe, have sunk into apparently hopeless 
 impotence, retaining even their titles with difficulty, 
 and in occasional abeyance. Hitherto, in all the 
 manifold forms which her government and her society 
 have assumed, France has been almost equally unfor- 
 tunate : she has travelled round the whole circle of 
 national possibilities, aud like Milton's Satan, has 
 contrived constantly " to ride with darkness." 
 
 When the revolution of 1848 once more summoned 
 her to the task of reconstruction, that task was far 
 more difficult than at any former period. In 1789 her 
 course was comparatively clear, and her materials com- 
 paratively rich. There were scandalous and universally 
 
FRANCE SINCE 184-8. 3 
 
 recognised abuses to be removed ; enormous grievances 
 to be redressed ; shameful oppressions to be cancelled ; 
 and rights long and cruelly withheld to be conferred. 
 There might be danger in all these changes ; but the 
 changes were rendered necessar}^ by decency and justice ; 
 and the necessity was clearly seen. The old theories of 
 government and society were to be swept away, but the 
 new ones had been long ready to take their place. Men 
 might be mistaken as to the value of the objects they 
 had at heart, and might overestimate the advantages 
 which were to flow from their attainment ; but they 
 had no doubt or confusion as to what these objects 
 were. They knew what they wanted. The enthusiasm 
 of the reformers might be irrational, and their faith 
 fanatical ; but they had a faith and an enthusiasm as 
 earnest as ever carried martyrs unflinching to the stake. 
 They had a new political framework to construct, but 
 they had the constituent elements of that framework 
 ready to their hand : they had an existing though a 
 damaged monarchy ; they had an aristocracy, frivolous, 
 corrupt, and haughty, but still retaining some of the 
 better elements of nobility within its bosom, and num- 
 bering many generous and worthy men among its 
 ranks ; and they had a tiers-etat, indignant at past op- 
 pressions, thirsting for the promised freedom, energetic, 
 trusting, simple, and with a loyalty not yet utterly 
 extinguished. The court, the clergy, the high nobility 
 were discredited and corrupt ; but corruption had not 
 yet penetrated the heart of the common people. They 
 had a hard task to fulfil, but the means of its ac- 
 
4 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 complishtnent were within reach : there was devotion, 
 energy, and zeal in ample measure there was high 
 virtue and aspiring genius there was eloquence of the 
 loftiest order, and courage tried in many a conflict, all 
 girding up their loins and buckling on their armour for 
 the struggle. 
 
 In 1799, the task was a clearer and a ruder one 
 still it was simply to replace an anarchy of which all 
 were sick and weary, by a strong government of any 
 kind. In 1830, it was simply to enthrone a monarch 
 who would govern according to the law, in the place 
 of one who sought to govern by his own foolish and 
 wicked will. But in 1848, when to the amazement of 
 all and with scarcely any note of warning, the monarch 
 fled and the dynasty and the constitution crumbled 
 away like dust ; and when the social as well as the 
 political structure seemed to be resolved into its original 
 elements, France saw before it a labour of a far more 
 herculean cast, surrounded with far more formidable 
 difficulties, and demanding a profounder wisdom. It 
 was not the reconstruction of a shattered cabinet it 
 was not the restoration of a fallen dynasty it was not 
 even the reform and purification of a partial and per- 
 verted constitution :^it was the re-edification of society 
 itself, of a society corrupt to its very core, in which 
 all the usual constituents of the social edifice were 
 poisoned, damaged, discredited, or non-existent in 
 which the monarchy was despised in which the aristo- 
 cracy was powerless in which the clergy was without 
 influence or general respect in which the leading poli- 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 5 
 
 ticians could not furnish forth a single man able to 
 command the confidence of the people in which the 
 middle classes were hopelessly selfish and devoted to 
 material interests, and the mass of the lower orders 
 were enduring severe privations, and swayed to and fro 
 by the wildest theories and the most impracticable 
 aspirations. 
 
 The purely political difficulties which presented them- 
 selves to the reconstructing statesmen of 1848, were the 
 least they had to encounter. Yet these were embar- 
 rassing enough. When James II. abdicated or was 
 dismissed from the English throne in 1688, he had 
 only one rival and possible successor. The nation, too, 
 as far as it could be said to be divided at all, was 
 divided between the adherents of James and those of 
 William of Orange. The old parties of Cromwell's days 
 were extinct or powerless. But in France there were, 
 and are still, four distinct parties, any two of them 
 capable by their junction of paralysing and checkmating 
 the others, any three of them, by their union, able 
 to overpower and drive out the fourth. There were 
 the old Legitimists, who acknowledged no monarch 
 but the exiled Count de Chambord ; not strong in 
 numbers, or in influence, or in genius ; inexperienced 
 and unskilful in political action, and singularly defective 
 in political sagacity ; strangely blind to the signs of the 
 times ; living in dreams of the past and visions of the 
 future ; but strong in this one point, that they alone 
 of all the parties which divided France, had a living 
 political faith, firm religious convictions, earnest an- 
 
6 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 cestral and traditional affections, a distinct principle to 
 fight for, and an acknowledged banner to rally round. 
 Though not numbering many adherents or vassals even 
 in the remoter and less altered provinces, their position 
 in society as the undoubted heads of the polite and 
 fashionable world, and embracing the oldest and most 
 respected families of the ancient aristocracy, gave them 
 a certain influence which, much as the prestige of high 
 birth has been dissipated in France, was still not 
 inconsiderable. 
 
 Next to them came the Imperialists those whom 
 recollections of former glory, and worship of the memory 
 of the most wonderful man of modern times, attached to 
 anything that bore the name or the impress of Napoleon. 
 Their chief strength lay in the army, whose veterans 
 looked upon their great captain almost as on a demigod, 
 whose soldiers had known no spoil, and whose marshals 
 no glory, since the empire had departed, whose thoughts 
 were always dwelling on the campaigns of Jena and 
 Marengo, who were constantly thirsting to renew the 
 triumphs of Austerlitz, and to wipe out the discomfiture 
 of Waterloo. But, besides the army, this party could 
 count a great number of adherents among the middle 
 classes, who remembered how Napoleon had restored 
 order and stability at home, while he extended the 
 boundaries and the influence of France abroad; how he 
 had opened by force new Continental markets for their 
 produce ; how he had stimulated industry, protected 
 commerce, and covered the land with roads, bridges, 
 and public institutions. Among the commercial people, 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 7 
 
 too, there were many who regretted the times when 
 commissaries and contractors grew wealthy in a single 
 year, and when a hardy speculation or a glorious cam- 
 paign supplied wherewithal to found and endow a 
 family. The peasantry of France, too, were Buona- 
 partists almost to a man, as far as they had any political 
 predilections at all. It was Napoleon who had re- 
 organised society after the horrors of the revolution. 
 If it was Napoleon who had taken their sons and 
 brothers as conscripts, it was he also who had led them 
 on to renown, and often to wealth and distinction. He 
 wrote his name indelibly on the very soil in every 
 department of France ; his is literally the only name 
 known in the agricultural provinces and among the 
 ignorant and stationary cultivators of the land. The 
 demagogues who agitated France and the ruffians who 
 ruined her before his time, as well as the monarchs who 
 have ruled her since, have passed away and left no 
 trace, but Napoleon is remembered and regretted 
 everywhere ; his is the only fame which has survived 
 the repeated catastrophes of sixty years, and floats un- 
 ingulfed on the waters of the deluge. Many of the 
 peasantry have never realised his death. Many even 
 believe, incredible as it may seem, that it is he himself 
 who now rules France. The overwhelming majority 
 which elected Louis Napoleon to the Presidency sur- 
 prised no one who has had an opportunity of convers- 
 ing with the peasantry in the less visited districts of 
 the country. 
 
 The third party was the Orleanists, or adherents of 
 
8 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 the existing dynasty. They were numerous and 
 powerful, and comprised many sections. They included 
 a great majority of the middle ranks, nearly the whole 
 of the commercial classes, and five-sixths of the practical, 
 sober, and experienced politicians of the land. Besides 
 those who were attached to the government by long con- 
 nection, by old habit, by services rendered or benefits 
 received, the Orleans dynasty rallied round it.all the 
 friends of constitutional liberty, all admirers of the 
 English system, all who hoped by means of the charter 
 imperfect and mutilated as it was and of the two 
 Chambers restricted as was the suffrage, and corrupt 
 as was often the influence brought to bear upon the 
 elections gradually to train France to a purer freedom, 
 and a higher degree of self-government ; to tide over 
 the period of national boyhood and inexperience, and 
 navigate the vessel of the state through the rocks and 
 shoals which menaced it, into smoother waters and more 
 tranquil times ; all the moneyed men, too, to whom 
 confusion, uncertainty, and change are fraught with 
 impoverishment and ruin; all that class, so numerous, 
 especially in Paris, who lived by supplying the wants 
 of travellers and foreign residents; all whose idol was 
 order, by whatever means it might be enforced, and at 
 whatever price it might be purchased, and who saw no 
 chance of peace or stability save under Louis Philippe's 
 rule ; and, finally, all belonging to that vast and inde- 
 scribable section of every nation, who owned no allegi- 
 ance, who worshipped no ideal, who sacrificed to no 
 principle, whom Dante has scorched with his withering 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 9 
 
 contempt, as neither good nor bad, but simply, and 
 before everything, selfish. The strength of this party 
 lay in its wealth, in its political experience, in its culti- 
 vation of the material interests of the country, in the 
 sympathy of England, and in all those nameless advan- 
 tages which long possession of the reins of power, under 
 a government of centralisation, never fails to confer. 
 
 Lastly, came the Republicans, divided, like the 
 Orleanists, into many sections. There were the re- 
 publicans on principle stern, honest, able, and uncom- 
 promising, of whom Cavaignac may be taken as the 
 living, and Armand Carrel as the departed, type. They 
 had clear, though often wild, conceptions of liberty 
 an intelligible, though an impracticable, political theory; 
 they worshipped a noble, though generally a classical, 
 ideal, for which they were as ready to die and to kill, 
 as any martyr who was ever bound to the stake. They 
 belonged to the same order of men as the Cromwells 
 and the Harrisons of England, and the Balfours of 
 Scotland, with the difference, that their fanaticism was 
 not religious, but political. Still they were, for the 
 most part, estimable for their character, respectable in 
 talents, and eminently formidable from the concentrated 
 and resolute determination of their 'zeal. There were 
 the republicans by temperament- the young, the ex- 
 citable, and the poetic, who longed for an opportunity 
 of realising the dreams of their fancy, whose associations 
 of freedom and renown all attached themselves to the 
 first phase of the old revolution, and whose watchword 
 was " the year 1793." Such are to be found in nearly 
 
10 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 all countries. Their mental characteristic belongs 
 rather to the time of life, than to the nation or the age. 
 Still they have played a prominent part in all French 
 convulsions. The Ecole Poly technique has an historical 
 fame. Then there were the Socialist republicans, 
 whose hostility was directed less against any dynasty 
 or form of government, than against the arrangements 
 of society itself ; who conceived that the entire system 
 of things was based upon a wrong foundation, and who 
 saw, in the overthrow of existing powers, the only 
 chance of remodelling the world after their fashion. 
 Of these Louis Blanc was the leader ; and among his 
 followers were hundreds of thousands of the operative 
 classes, soured and maddened with privations, thirsty 
 for enjoyment, and intoxicated with the brilliant and 
 beautiful perspective so eloquently sketched out before 
 them but, for the most part sincere, well-meaning, 
 ignorant, and gullible, and easily dazzled and misled to 
 wrong by the lofty and sonorous watchwords which 
 their mischievous guides knew so well how to pro- 
 nounce. Lastly, there were the wretches who in 
 troubled times come at the heels of every party, to 
 soil its banner, to disgrace its fortunes, to stain its 
 name who profit by its victory, and slink away from 
 it in defeat. The idle, who disdained to labour ; the 
 criminal, who lived by plunder ; the savage, whose ele- 
 ment was uproar ; men who hated every government, 
 because they had made themselves amenable to the 
 laws of all ; thieves and murderers, whom the galley 
 and the prison had disgorged all those obscene and 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 11 
 
 hideous constituents stalked forth from their dens to 
 swell the ranks of the republicans, and to pillage and 
 slay in the name of the republic. 
 
 Such were the political parties, in the midst of whose 
 noisy and furious hostility France was called upon to 
 constitute a strong and stable government, on the 
 morrow of that amazing catastrophe, which, on the 
 24th of February 1848, had upset a constitution, chased 
 away a dynasty, and left society itself in a state of 
 abeyance, if not of dissolution. The provisional autho- 
 rities partly self-elected, partly voted in by acclama- 
 tion, partly foisted in by low and impudent intrigue 
 had proclaimed a republic, without waiting to give the 
 nation time to express its volition in the matter, and 
 without any intention of deferring to this volition even 
 when expressed. To establish and consolidate a repub- 
 lican form of government was thus the task assigned to 
 the country ; a task which the existence of the several 
 parties we have enumerated would alone have sufficed 
 to make perplexing and difficult enough. But impedi- 
 ments far more serious were behind. All things con- 
 sidered, the problem was probably the hardest ever set 
 before a nation : to reconstruct society on a stable 
 foundation, with all the usual elements of society absent 
 or broken up, without a monarch, without an aristo- 
 cracy, without a religion, with no principle unques- 
 tioned, with no truth universally admitted and rever- 
 enced, with no time-honoured institution left standing 
 amid the ruins. She had to do all this, and more, in 
 spite of nearly every obstacle which the past and the 
 
12 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 present could gather round her, and in the absence of 
 nearly every needed instrument for the work. With 
 antecedents in her history with monuments on her 
 soil with arrangements in her social structure with 
 elements in her national character which seemed 
 peremptorily to forbid and exclude republicanism, she 
 endeavoured to construct a republic, and seemed re- 
 solved to be satisfied with nothing else. With no 
 honest, high-minded, or venerated statesmen, standing 
 out like beacon-lights among the multitude, whom all 
 were emulous to love, honour, and obey, she was called 
 upon to undertake a work which only the loftiest in- 
 tellects, operating upon the most trusting and submis- 
 sive people, could satisfactorily accomplish. She set 
 herself to rival and surpass, in their most difficult 
 achievements, nations that differed from her in nearly 
 every element of their national life. With a pervading 
 military spirit with a standing force of nearly half a 
 million, and an armed and trained population amount- 
 ing to two millions more with a centralised despotic 
 bureaucracy with Versailles and the Tuilleries ever 
 recalling the regal magnificence of former days with 
 an excitable temper, an uncommercial spirit, and a 
 subdivided soil she is endeavouring to imitate and 
 exceed that political liberty, and hoping successfully to 
 manage those democratic institutions, which have been 
 the slow and laborious acquisitions of Britain, with her 
 municipal habits and her liberal nobility ; of America, 
 with her long-trained faculty of self-government, her 
 boundless and teeming territory, and her universally 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 13 
 
 diffused material well-being ; of Switzerland, with her 
 mountainous regions and her historic education ; and of 
 Norway, with her simple, hardy, and religious popula- 
 tion, and her barren and untempting soil. 
 
 Let us look a little more closely into a few of those 
 peculiarities in the national character and circum- 
 stances, which appear to render the present struggles 
 of the French after a constitution at once stable and 
 democratic, so difficult if not so hopeless. 
 
 And, first, as to RACE. Races of men, like indi- 
 viduals, have their distinct type, their peculiar genius, 
 which is the product of their origin, their physiological 
 organisation, their climate, and the development of 
 civilisation through which they have passed, which 
 is, in fact, their inheritance from ancient times. Few 
 European nations are of pure blood ; almost all contain 
 several elements, and are the more sound and vigorous 
 for the admixture. The French and the English have 
 in common something of the Norman and something 
 of the Teutonic blood ; but in England the prevailing- 
 element is the Saxon sub-variety of the Teutonic ; in 
 France the prevailing element is the Gallic sub-variety 
 of the Celtic. From our Norman conquerors we derive 
 that intellectual activity, that high resolve, those habits 
 of conquest and command, so characteristic of our 
 upper ranks, and which have spread by intermarriage 
 through all classes. From our German forefathers we 
 inherit our phlegm, our steadiness, our domestic habi- 
 tudes, and our unhappy addiction to spirituous liquors. 
 
14 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 The predominance of Frank and Norman blood gave to 
 the old aristocracy of France those generous and noble 
 qualities which so long distinguished the class ; but 
 since it was submerged in the great deluge which 
 desolated the closing years of the last century, the Celtic 
 element which pervades the great mass of the people 
 has shone forth paramount and nearly unmodified. 
 Now, the Teuton and the Celt have characteristics and 
 capacities wholly dissimilar. According to the masterly 
 analysis of our first ethnographical authority, M. Gustaf 
 Kombst, the distinctive marks of the former are slow- 
 ness but accuracy df perception, a just, deep, and 
 penetrating, but not quick or brilliant intellect. The 
 distinctive peculiarities of the Celt, on the contrary, 
 are quickness of perception, readiness of combination, 
 wit, and fertility of resource. The passion of the Celt 
 is for national power and grandeur; that of the Teuton 
 for personal freedom and self-rule. The Teuton is 
 hospitable, but unsocial and reserved ; the Celt is im- 
 moderately fond of society, of amusement, and of glory. 
 The one is provident and cautious ; the other impetuous 
 and rash. The one values his own life, and respects 
 that of others ; the other sets little value upon either. 
 Respect for women is the characteristic of the Teuton ; 
 passion for women the characteristic of the Celt. 1 The 
 latter is intemperate in love ; the former is intemperate 
 in wine. The fancy of the one is sensuous; that of the 
 
 1 Dr Kombst remarks, as a constant fact, the existence of 
 Foundling Hospitals among Celtic nations, and their absence 
 among those of Teutonic origin. 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 15 
 
 other ideal. Lastly, the religious element presents 
 diverse manifestations in the two races ; in the Celt 
 there is a latent tendency towards polytheism, while 
 the Teuton displays a decided preference for mono- 
 theistic views; Romanism retains an almost unshaken 
 hold over the former ; Protestantism has achieved its 
 victories exclusively among the latter. 
 
 Now, these distinctions are riot fancies of our own, 
 derived from a glance at France, Germany, and Eng- 
 land, under their present phases ; they are taken on the 
 authority of a philosopher, whose conclusions are the 
 result of long study, and of the widest range of obser- 
 vation. The general accuracy of the delineation will 
 be generally acknowledged, and can scarcely fail to 
 impress us with the improbability that institutions 
 which are indigenous among one of these great divisions 
 of humanity should flourish and survive when they are 
 transplanted into the other. Self-government, and the 
 forms and appliances of political freedom, are plants of 
 native growth in England and America ; they are only 
 delicate and valuable exotics in France. These national 
 discrepancies manifest themselves in public life in a 
 thousand daily forms. The Englishman is practical, 
 business-like, and averse to change ; his imagination, 
 though powerful, is not easily excited ; his views and 
 aims are positive, unideal, and distinct. The French- 
 man is ambitious, restless, and excitable aspiring 
 after the perfect; passionne pour Kinconnu; prone to 
 " la recherche de I'absolu ; " constantly, as Lamartine 
 says, wrecking his chance or his possession of the good 
 
16 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 "par rimpatience du mieux." The Englishman, in 
 his political movements, knows exactly what he wants ; 
 his object is definite, and is generally even the recovery 
 of something that has been lost, the abolition of some 
 excrescence or abuse, the recurrence to some venerated 
 precedent. The Frenchman is commonly aroused by 
 the vague desire of something new, something vast, 
 something magnificent ; he prefers to fly to evils that 
 he knows not of, rather than to bear those with which 
 he is familiar. His golden age beckons to him out of 
 the untried and unrealised future; ours is placed almost 
 as baselessly, but far less dangerously, in the historic 
 past. The Frenchman is given to scientific definitions 
 and theories in politics ; the Englishman turns on all 
 such things a lazy and contemptuous glance. The 
 former draws up formal declarations of the rights of 
 man, but has an imperfect understanding of his own, 
 and is apt to overlook those of others ; the latter never 
 descants on his rights, but exercises them daily as a 
 matter of course, and defends them stoutly when 
 attacked. The one is confident in his own opinion, 
 though he be almost alone in his adhesion to it ; the 
 other has always a secret misgiving that he is wrong 
 when he does not agree with the majority, All these 
 are so many criteria of the possession of that " political 
 instinct/' that native aptitude for administrative busi- 
 ness, the defect of which in the French people has 
 hitherto rendered all their attempts at a working con- 
 stitution so abortive, 
 
 Next, as to RELIGION, the absence of which as a 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 17 
 
 pervading element is a deplorable feature of the 
 national character of France. The decay of her religious 
 spirit dates from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
 That fatal measure, while it banished Protestantism, 
 struck Romanism with impotence and a paralytic 
 languor. "The Galilean Church, no doubt, looked 
 upon this revocation as a signal triumph. But what 
 was the consequence ? Where shall we look after this 
 period for her Fen^lons and her Pascals ? where for 
 those bright monuments of piety and learning which 
 were the glory of her better days ? As for piety, she 
 perceived that she had no occasion for it, when there 
 was no longer any lustre of Christian holiness sur- 
 rounding her ; nor for learning, when there were no 
 longer any opponents to confute or any controversies 
 to maintain. She felt herself at liberty to become as 
 ignorant, as secular, as irreligious as she pleased ; and 
 amidst the silence and darkness she had created around 
 her she drew the curtains and retired to rest/' 1 To the 
 forced and gloomy bigotry which marked the declining 
 years of Louis Quatorze succeeded the terrible reac- 
 tion of the regency and the following reigns. Amid 
 the orgies of weary and satiated profligacy arose first 
 a spirit of scoffing, then of savage, vindictive, and 
 aggressive scepticism. The whole intellect of that 
 acute and brilliant people ranged itself on the side of 
 irreligion ; and nothing was left to oppose to the wits, 
 the philosophers, and the encyclopedists, save cold 
 prosings which it was a weariness to listen to, frauds and 
 
 1 Robert Hall Review of " Zeal without Innovation.'' 
 B 
 
18 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 fictions winch it would have been imbecility to credit, 
 pretensions which the growing enlightenment of the 
 age laughed to scorn, and the few rags of traditional 
 reverence which the indolent, luxurious, and profligate 
 lives of the clergy were fast tearing away. The un- 
 belief of the higher ranks spread rapidly to those below 
 them : some were unbelievers from conviction, some 
 from fashion, some from a low and deplorable ambition 
 to ape their superiors. " Bien que je ne suis qu'un 
 pauvre coiffeur," said a hair-dresser to his employer 
 one day in 1788, "je n'ai plus de croyance qu'un 
 autre." But worse than this, all that was warm or 
 generous in human sympathies, all that was hopeful or 
 promising for human progress, all that was true and 
 genuine in native feeling, was found on the side of the 
 philosophers. Religion ranged itself on the side of 
 ignorance and despotism. Scepticism fought the battle 
 of justice, of science, of political and civil freedom. 
 The philosophers had truth and right on their side in 
 nearly everything but their assaults on Christianity ; 
 and the Christianity then presented to the nation was 
 scarcely recognisable as snch. The result of these 
 unnatural and unhappy combinations has been that 
 religion has been indissolubly associated in the mind 
 of the French with puerile conceits, with intellectual 
 nonsense, with political oppression ; while infidelity 
 wears in their eyes the cap of liberty, the robes of 
 wisdom, the civic crown of patriotic service. 
 
 Even the shocking license into which atheism 
 wandered under the republic produced nothing more 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 19 
 
 genuine or deep than the reaction towards decency 
 under Napoleon. The nation remained at heart either 
 wholly indifferent or actively irreligious ; and such, in 
 spite of growing exceptions, it continues to this day, by 
 the confession of those even among its own people who 
 know it best. The two reigns of the Restoration, and 
 that of Louis Philippe, rather aggravated than mitigated 
 the evil. The effect of this national deficiency in the 
 religious element, is to augment to a gigantic height the 
 difficulty of building up either society or government in 
 France. Its noxious operation can scarcely be overrated. 
 The foundation-rock is gone ; the very basis is a shifting 
 quicksand. The habitual reverence for a Supreme 
 Being, whose will is law, and whose laws are above 
 assault, question, or resistance; the sense of control and 
 the duty of obedience which flow from this first great 
 conviction, lie at the bottom of all community and 
 all rule ; without these it is difficult to see how the 
 constructive task can even be commenced. 
 
 The absence of a fundamental and pervading religious 
 faith has shown itself in France in two special con- 
 sequences, either of which would suffice to make the 
 work set before them not merely herculean, but nearly 
 hopeless. The first is this : France prides herself upon 
 being a land in which pure reason is the only authority 
 extant. She has no prejudices to lie at the root of her 
 philosophy, no doctrine settled and universally adopted 
 and laid by as an everlasting possession, a Krrj/ma e? ae*, 
 in the sacred archives of the nation. She has no axioms 
 which it would be insanity or sacrilege to question. 
 
 
20 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 Everything is matter for speculation, for doubt, for 
 discussion. The very opinions which, with all other 
 people, have long since passed into the category of first 
 principles, are with her still themes for the wit of the 
 saloon and the paradoxical declamation of the school- 
 boy. The simplest and clearest rules of duty, the most 
 established maxims of political and moral action, the 
 assumptions, or the proved premises which lie at the 
 root of all social arrangements, dogmatic facts the most 
 ancient and widely recognised, have in France every 
 morning to be considered and discussed anew. Every 
 belief and opinion, without exception, is daily re- 
 manded into the arena of question and of conflict. 
 Topics the most frivolous and the most sacred, truths 
 the most obvious and the most recondite, doctrines 
 the clearest and the most mystical, are perpetually 
 summoned afresh before the judgment-seat of logic, 
 till none can by any possibility obtain a firm and 
 undisputed hold upon the mind. The fact is not 
 wonderful, though its consequences are enormously 
 pernicious. It is the inherited misfortune of a 
 generation which has grown up in the vortex of a 
 political and moral whirlpool, where nothing was 
 stable, nothing permanent ; where it was impossible 
 to point to a system, an institution, or a creed, quod 
 semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus ; where one 
 philosophy after another chased its predecessor from 
 the stage ; where one form of government was 
 scarcely seated on the throne before its successor drove 
 it into exile ; where, in a word, there was not a 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 21 
 
 school, a doctrine, or a dynasty, of which men of 
 mature age (to use the fine and pathetic language of 
 Grattan) had not " rocked the cradle and followed 
 the hearse/' not an institution extant and surviving 
 of which nearly every one alive could not remember 
 the time when it was not. The result of all this has 
 been that an entirely different class of subjects from 
 those ordinarily agitated in settled countries has 
 come up. Instead of discussing whether a monarch 
 should govern or only reign, they are discussing 
 whether the lowest and most ignorant orders of the mob 
 should not have the actual sovereignty in their hands. 
 Instead of considering modifications in the laws of 
 landed inheritance, they are disputing whether the 
 very institution of property be not in itself a robbery. 
 Instead of differing on details of the law of marriage 
 and divorce, they are bringing into question the 
 subject of family ties, and the relation between the 
 sexes in its entirety. Their struggles are not on 
 behalf of religious liberty, nor for this Church, nor for 
 that sect, .but for or against those fundamental ideas 
 which are common to all creeds alike. It is not such 
 or such a political innovation, such or such a social or 
 hierarchical reform which form the subject of habitual 
 controversy; it is the religious, political, and moral 
 ground -work of society that is at stake arid in 
 dispute. 
 
 We are here at once led to the recognition of that 
 great fact which explains, better than any divergence 
 of historic antecedents, or any dissimilarity of 
 
22 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 national character, the startling contrast between the 
 failure of the French Revolution, and the successes 
 of that great English movement of the seventeenth 
 century which corresponds to it. M. Guizot, with his 
 accustomed sagacity, has in his last work placed his 
 finger upon this distinction, though he abstains from 
 following out a contrast so painful and unfavourable 
 to his countrymen. The French Revolution followed 
 on a sceptical and philosophic movement of men's 
 minds. The English Revolution followed on a period of 
 deep religious excitement. The English revolutionists 
 were even more attached to their religious faith than 
 to their political opinions. They fought for liberty of 
 conscience even more fiercely than for civil rights. 
 " Ce fut la fortune de 1'Angleterre au xvii e> siecle, que 
 1'esprit de foi religieuse et 1' esprit de liberte politique 
 y regnaient ensemble. Toutes les grandes passions de 
 la nature humaine se deployment ainsi sans quelle 
 brisdt tous ses freins." The English political re- 
 formers were pious Christians, whose faith was an 
 earnest, stimulating, exalting, strengthening reality; 
 - -the French political reformers, on the other hand, 
 were atheists, brought up in the school of the En- 
 cyclopedists to despise and deride all that other men 
 held sacred, whose passions, interests, and prejudices, 
 therefore, found no internal impediment to their over- 
 flow. The Puritans unquestionably were bold re- 
 formers of religious matters as well as of political 
 ones ; they indeed attacked and overthrew the esta- 
 blished creed, while retaining intact the common 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 23 
 
 principles of the Christian faith ; but in the midst of 
 their successes in the chaos of ruins both of temples 
 and palaces which, like Samson, they heaped round 
 them there was something left always standing 
 which all sects reverenced and spared. They still, as 
 M. Guizot beautifully says, recognised and bowed down 
 before a law which they had not made. It was this 
 law which they had riot made this boundary wall not 
 built with hands which was wanting to the French 
 reformers : to them everything was human ; on no 
 side did they meet an obstacle, acknowledged as 
 divine, which commanded them to stop in their career 
 of conquest and destruction. The consequence was, 
 that in the one case the bouleversement reached only 
 the secondary and derivative, in the other, it em- 
 braced the primitive, fundamental, and indispensable 
 institutions of social life. 
 
 The second special operation of French irreligion on 
 society may be thus explained: The thirst after' 
 happiness is natural to the human heart, and insepar- 
 able from its healthy action. After this happiness we all 
 strive, though with every imaginable difference as to the 
 intensity of our desire, and the conception of our aim, 
 as to the scene in which we locate it, and the means 
 we employ to arrive at it. The cultivated, the virtuous, 
 and the wise, place their happiness in the gratification 
 of the affections, and the development of the intellectual 
 and moral powers. Material welfare they value indeed, 
 but they pursue it with a moderate and restrained 
 desire. To the ignorant and the sensual, happiness 
 consists in physical enjoyment and the possession of the 
 
24 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 good things of life. The paradise of the religious man 
 is laid in a future and spiritual world ; that of the un- 
 believer practical or theoretic in some earthly Eden. 
 On the belief or disbelief in the immortality of the soul, 
 will practically depend both the nature and the locality 
 of the heaven we desire. Now the French that is, 
 that active and energetic portion of them which gives 
 the tone to the whole people repudiate the doctrine 
 of a future life, and yet are vehement aspirants after 
 enjoyment. They are well described by one of them- 
 selves as " passiones pour le bonheur materiel." The 
 effect of the disbelief in a future world is ; of course, not 
 only to turn all their desires and efforts after happiness 
 upon this, but to make their conception of the happiness 
 of this life essentially and exclusively earthly, and to 
 cause them to pursue it with the impatience, the hurry, 
 the snatching avidity of men who feel that now or never 
 is their time, that every moment that elapses before 
 their object is grasped is a portion of bliss lost to them 
 for ever. Those, who, however dissatisfied with their 
 portion of this world's goods, still, like the majority 
 a decreasing majority we fear of our English working 
 classes, retain some belief in a future life, can strive 
 after the improvement of their earthly lot with a more 
 deliberate and less angry haste ; for if they fail, their 
 happiness is not denied, but only postponed to a more 
 distant and a better day. 
 
 " To them there never came the thought 
 That this their life was meant to be 
 A pleasure-house, where peace unbought 
 Should minister to pride or glee. 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 25 
 
 " Sublimely they endure each ill 
 
 As a plain fact, whose right or wrong 
 They question not, confiding still 
 That it shall last not overlong : 
 
 " Willing, from first to last, to take 
 
 The mysteries of our life as given ; 
 Leaving the time-worn soul to slake 
 
 Its thirst in an undoubted heaven." 
 
 
 
 But if this earth is indeed all, then no time is to be 
 lost, no excuse or delay is to be listened to. It is 
 natural, it is logical, it is inevitable for those who hold 
 this dreary creed to scout as insults those cautions as 
 to the danger of going too fast, those maxims of wisdom 
 which would assure us that social wellbeing is a plant 
 of slow growth, that we must be satisfied with small 
 and rare instalments of amelioration, that we must be 
 content to sow the seed in this generation, and leave 
 our children, or our children's children, to reap the 
 fruit. These indisputable truths sound like cruel 
 mockery to the man who, suffering under actual and 
 severe privations, regards a future existence as the 
 dream of the poet, or the invention of the priest. 
 
 The immeasurable and impatient appetite for mate- 
 rial felicity, which is now one of the distinctive traits of 
 French society, and which is the legitimate offspring of 
 her irreligion, is beyond question the deepest and most 
 dangerous malady which the State physician has to deal 
 with ; for the Frenchman is not only logical, but always 
 ready and anxious to translate his logic into practice. 
 If our lot is to be worked out, and our nature to receive 
 its full development on earth, we must set to work at 
 
26 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 once, at all hazards, and in spite of all obstacles, to 
 construct that present paradise which is to be our only 
 one. One of the historians of the recent revolution, 
 who'writes under the pseudonyme of Daniel Sterne, has 
 the following just remark : " S'il est vrai de dire que 
 le socialisme semble au premier abord une extension 
 du principe de fraternite, apporte au monde par Jesus- 
 Christ, il est en meme temps et surtout une reaction 
 contre le dogme essentiel du Christianisme, la Chute 
 et TExpiation. On pourrait, je crois, avec plus de 
 justesse, considdrer le socialisme comme une tentative 
 pour materialiser et imme'diatiser, si Ton peut 
 parler ainsi, la vie future et le paradis spirituel des 
 Chretiens." Hence these Socialist and Communistic 
 schemes, those plans for the re-organisation of society 
 on a new and improved footing, which have taken 
 such a strong hold on the imagination and affection 
 of the French proletaires. Hence the eagerness and 
 ready credulity with which they listen to any orators 
 or theorists who promise them, by some royal road, 
 some magic change, the wellbeing which they believe 
 to be both attainable and their due. Hence, too, 
 that daring, unscrupulous, unrelenting impetuosity, 
 with which these social iconoclasts emulate the fana- 
 ticism of religious sectaries, and drive their car of 
 triumph over ranks and institutions, over principalities 
 and powers, over all the rich legacies and pathetic asso- 
 ciations of the past, as remorselessly as did the daughter 
 of Servius over the scarce lifeless body of her father. 
 This passion for material wellbeing this " haste to 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848, 27 
 
 be happy "-is by no means confined to the socialist 
 schemers or the operative classes. It pervades ranks 
 far above them, more especially those members of the 
 bourgeoisie who have entered the liberal professions 
 without any means or qualifications except natural 
 aptitude and intellectual culture ; the advocates, sur- 
 geons, artists, journalists, and men of letters. These 
 are described by one who knows them well as the 
 section of French society whose material condition is 
 the most unsatisfactory and incongruous, while the 
 influence they exert on the fortunes of the country is 
 the most powerful. Their life is a combination of re- 
 volting contrasts, a feverish and perpetual struggle. 
 Their cultivated intellect, their excited fancy, raise 
 them every moment to a dazzling height, and show 
 them in dreams all the felicities and grandeurs of the 
 earth; while their waking hours " must stoop to strive 
 with misery at the door," and be passed in conflict with 
 the anxieties and humiliations of actual indigence or 
 uncertain remuneration. They live in daily contact 
 with men, their superiors in power and wealth, their 
 equals or inferiors in character, in talent, or in culti- 
 vation ; and the comparison disgusts them with in- 
 equalities of fortune, and the gradations of the social 
 hierarchy. Their ambition, everywhere excited, and 
 everywhere crushed back, finding in society as con- 
 stituted, no clear field, no adequate recompense, no 
 prizes satisfying to their wants or glorious enough for 
 their conceptions, sets itself to the task of reconstruct- 
 ing society afresh, after the pattern of their dreams. 
 
28 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 From this class are furnished the chiefs of the socialist 
 and revolutionary movements ; men whose desires 
 are at war with their destiny ; and who in place 
 of chastening and moderating the former, would 
 refashion and reverse the latter. 
 
 There is yet another class, swayed by loftier 
 motives, but pulling in the same direction. These 
 are perhaps the most formidable of all, because their 
 enthusiasm is of a more unselfish order, and flows 
 from a purer spring. These are men of high powers 
 and a fine order of mind, with little faith, or at most 
 only a mystical and dreamy one, in God or in futurity, 
 but overflowing with generous sympathies and wor- 
 shipping a high ideal, shocked and pained with the 
 miseries they see around them, and confident in their 
 capability of cure. They are a sort of political 
 Werthers, profoundly disgusted with the actual con- 
 dition of the world ; the lofty melancholy, inseparable 
 from noble minds, broods darkly over their spirits; an 
 indescribable sadness 
 
 " Deepens the murmur of the falling floods ; "- 
 they are disenchanted with life, and hold it cheap, for 
 it realises none of their youthful visions ; they deem" 
 that this world ought to be a paradise, and believe it 
 might be made such ; and, feeling existence to be not 
 worth having, unless the whole face of things can be 
 renewed, and the entire arrangements of society 
 changed, they are prepared -to encounter anything, 
 and to inflict anything, for the promotion of such 
 change. Hence obstacles do not deter them sacri- 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 29 
 
 fices do not appal them personal danger is absolutely 
 beneath their consideration and both in France and 
 Germany we have seen them mount the barricades 
 and fight in the streets with a contempt of death 
 which was utterly amazing, and seemed to have 
 nothing in common either with the vaunting heroism 
 of the French soldier, or the systematic and stubborn 
 courage of the English, or the hardy indifference of 
 the Russian. France has martyrs still martyrs as 
 willing and enthusiastic as ever but their cause is no 
 longer that of old. Instead of martyrs who suffered 
 death for freedom, for country, for religion, for devo- 
 tion to the moral law, we have men ready to encounter 
 martyrdom for objects scarcely worthy of the sacrifice, 
 for the exigencies of the passions, for the conquest of 
 material felicity, for the realisation of an earthly 
 paradise. 
 
 The degree to which this universal and insatiable 
 thirst for present and immediate enjoyment, and the 
 schemes, associations, and ambitions to which it gives 
 rise, must complicate the difficulties of any government 
 formed at a time when such desires and such attempts 
 at their realisation are rife, must be obvious at a 
 glance. One special point which even aggravates 
 these difficulties, we shall have to recur to presently. 
 
 Side by side with the absence of religion in France 
 
 partly as a consequence, partly as a co -existing 
 
 effect of remoter causes, there prevailed a deep-seated 
 
 torpor and perversion of moral principle. We do 
 
 not mean that there was not much virtue, much 
 
30 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 simple honesty, much conscientious adherence to the 
 dictates of the moral sense, still to be found in many 
 classes of the people, among the unsophisticated 
 peasantry of the interior, among the scanty a*id 
 scattered rural gentry who lived on their estates, and 
 even among the artisan class of the cities. But a 
 profound and mean immorality had spread its poisonous 
 influence deep and wide through nearly all those 
 ranks which, either directly or indirectly, act upon 
 the government, and give the tone to the national 
 character and the direction to the nation al policy. 
 So obvious was this painful truth, that it escaped 
 neither foreigner nor native ; it led to a general and 
 frequently expressed, though vague expectation, that 
 some great catastrophe must be at hand; it was dimly 
 felt that nearly all those warning signs those mystic 
 letters on the wall by which Providence intimates 
 approaching change, were visible on the face of French 
 society ; and we well remember that one individual, 
 thoroughly conversant with that society in all its 
 circles, distinctly predicted the revolution of February 
 more than a year before it occurred, not on the ground 
 of any political symptoms or necessities, but solely 
 from the corruption of morals and manners which 
 pervaded the higher and middle classes, the poli- 
 ticians, the writers, the commercial men, the artists, 
 the circles of fashion all alike, License in all that 
 concerned the relations between the sexes was no 
 novelty in France in this respect the profligacy of 
 the Eegency and the Directory could not be surpassed, 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 31 
 
 and indeed was not approached. But the high and 
 scrupulous, though sometimes fantastic and inconsistent 
 sense of honour, which formerly distinguished the 
 . French gentleman, seemed to be gone ; his regard for 
 truth and even pecuniary integrity was deplorably 
 weakened ; the " mire of dirty ways," whether in 
 political life or in speculative business, no longer 
 instinctively revolted his finer susceptibilities ; that 
 " sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which 
 felt stain like a wound, which inspired valour, while 
 it mitigated ferocity," had died away under the 
 demoralising influence of the repeated social convul- 
 sions of the last sixty years. When religion has 
 become an empty garment, and piety a faded senti- 
 ment, and loyalty extinct from want of nourishment, 
 and when strict moral rules have thus lost their fixity 
 and their sanctions, the spirit of a gentleman may for 
 a time, in some measure, supply their place ; but if 
 this also has died out, the last barrier to the overflow 
 of the twin vices ofr licentiousness and barbarity is 
 swept away. 
 
 The extent to which this spirit was extinguished 
 was not known to the world till the filthy intrigues 
 connected with the Spanish marriages (since so re- 
 morselessly laid bare by the publication of Louis 
 Philippe's private letters), and the suicide of the 
 diplomatic tool concerned in them, the Count de 
 Bresson, out of pure disgust at the dirt he had been 
 dragged through, first exposed a degree of low tur- 
 pitude, for which even France was scarcely prepared. 
 
32- FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 Then followed in quick succession the trial and con- 
 viction of a cabinet minister and a general officer for 
 dishonesty and peculation in their official capacities, 
 and the awful tragedy of the Duke de Choiseul- 
 Praslin, a member of the highest nobility in France 
 the murder of his wife as an obstacle to his illegiti- 
 mate desires, and his own subsequent suicide in prison. 
 When, finally, a statesman and philosopher as high in 
 rank and reputation as Guizot, expressed little sur- 
 prise and no horror at the corrupt malversation of his 
 former colleague M. Teste, and even consented to soil 
 his lips in public with a quasi-lie, in order to defend 
 the duplicity of his master, a sort of shudder ran 
 through the better circles of Europe, a perception 
 that the measure of iniquity was full, and that the 
 time of retribution must be at hand. It was as 
 if the book had been closed, and the awful fiat had 
 gone forth : " Ephraim is joined unto idols : let him 
 alone." " He that is unjust, let him be unjust still ; 
 he that is filthy, let him be filthy still : behold I 
 come quickly, to give to every man according as his 
 work shall be ! " 
 
 The prevalent immorality showed itself to the 
 French themselves in many minute symptoms which 
 were unobservable by other nations, in the looseness 
 of domestic ties, in the grasping and gambling spirit 
 of Parisian society, in the appearance of the lionnes, 
 as they were called, and other extravagant indecorums 
 of fashionable life ; but to the world at large, it was 
 chiefly signalised in the strange taste and monstrous 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 33 
 
 conceptions which degraded their popular and lighter 
 literature, and in the general corruption which per- 
 vaded all departments of the administration. We 
 very much question whether any period of history can 
 furnish a parallel to the French fictitious and dramatic 
 literature of the last twenty years. Former times 
 may have furnished comedies more coarse, tragedies 
 more brutal, novels more profligate ; but none display- 
 ing a taste so utterly vicious, a style of sentiment so 
 radically false and hollow, a tone and spirit so 
 thoroughly diseased. Not only do voluptuous pictures 
 everywhere abound ; not only is the unrestrained in- 
 dulgence of the natural passions preached up as venial, 
 to say the least ; not only is the conjugal tie habitually 
 ridiculed or ignored ; not only is genius ever busy to 
 throw a halo of loveliness over the most questionable 
 feelings, and the most unquestionable frailties ; but 
 crimes of the darkest dye are chosen by preference, 
 and with research, as the materials of their plot ; 
 criminals, black with every enormity which we hold 
 most loathsome, are the picked and chosen favourites 
 of the play- wright and the novelist ; scenes, which the 
 pure and refined mind shrinks even to dream of, are 
 the commonest localities of their unholy delineations ; 
 and the imagination of the writer is racked to 
 devise the most unnatural occurrences, the most im- 
 possible combinations, the most startling horrors. 
 This language sounds like exaggeration ; but it will 
 not be deemed such by any one who has even dipped 
 into the cloaca of modern French fiction, from its more 
 
34 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 moderate phase in Victor Hugo, to its culminating 
 point in " Le Juif errant," and the " Mysteres de 
 Paris." The favourite plan the supreme effort of 
 these writers is to conceive some marvellous event or 
 combination which has no prototype in nature, and 
 could never have presented itself to a sound or 
 healthy fancy; to depict some monstrous criminal, 
 and surround him with the aureole of a saint, to 
 describe some pure, beautiful, and perfect maiden, and 
 place her, as her atmosphere and cradle, in the lowest 
 and filthiest haunts, where barbarity nestles with 
 licentiousness. Excitement what the French call 
 une sensation is the one thing sought after ; the 
 object to which taste, decency, and artistic pro- 
 babilities, are all sacrificed : or if any more serious 
 idea and sentiment runs through this class of works, it 
 is that of hostility to the existing arrangements of 
 society, its inequalities, its restraining laws, its few 
 still unshattered sanctities. It is worthy of remark 
 that Victor Hugo, the author of "Marion de 
 L'Orme," " Lucrece Borgia/' " Bug-Jargal," and 
 " Hans d'Islande," is a leader of the extreme party in 
 the Chambers ; that Eugene Sue, the author of 
 "Atar-Gull," "Le Juif errant," and " Les Mysteres 
 du Peuple" is the chosen representative of the more 
 turbulent socialists ; and that George Sand (whom we 
 grieve to class with these even for a moment) was the 
 reputed friend and right hand of the desperate demo- 
 cratic tyrant, Ledru Rollin. Literature in France has 
 become allied not only with democracy that it may 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 35 
 
 well be without any derogation from its nobility but 
 with the lowest and most envious passions of the mob, 
 with the worst and most meretricious tastes of the 
 coulisses and the saloon. Its votaries and its priests 
 seem to have alike forgotten that they had an ideal to 
 worship, a high ministry to exercise, a sacred mission 
 to fulfil. Excellence, for which in former times men 
 of letters strove with every faculty of their devoted 
 souls, for the achievement of which they deemed no 
 effort too strenuous, no time too long is deposed 
 from its " place of pride ; " and success, temporary, 
 momentary, sudden success, success among a class of 
 readers whose vote can confer no garland of real 
 honour, no crown of enduring immortality, success, 
 however tarnished, and by what mean and base com- 
 pliances soever it be won, is their sole object and 
 reward. 
 
 The unwholesome and disordering sentiment which 
 alone could flow from such a school is nearly all that 
 the lighter intellect of France has had to feed upon 
 for more than half a generation ; and the corruption 
 of the national taste and morals consequent upon 
 such diet, is only too easily discernible. A passion 
 for unceasing excitement, a morbid craving for mental 
 stimulants thus constantly goaded and supplied, has 
 rendered everything simple, genuine, and solid in 
 literature, everything settled and sober in social 
 relations, everything moderate, stable, and rigid in 
 political arrangements, alike stale and flat. The 
 appetite of the nation is diseased ; and to minister to 
 
S6 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 this appetite, or to control and cure it, are the equally 
 difficult and dangerous alternatives now offered to its 
 rulers. 
 
 The second form in which the national demoralisa- 
 tion especially showed itself at once a fatal symptom 
 and an aggravating cause was in the general adminis- 
 trative corruption which prevailed. This did not 
 originate under Louis Philippe, but was beyond 
 question vastly increased during his reign ; and was 
 not only not discouraged, but was actually stimulated 
 by his personal example. The system of place - 
 hunting the universal mendicancy for public employ- 
 ment, which reached so shameless a height just 
 before the last revolution, found in him one of its 
 worst specimens. No jobbing or begging elector ever 
 besieged the door of the minister for a tobacco-license, 
 or a place in the customs or the passport office, with 
 more impudent pertinacity, than Louis Philippe 
 showed in persecuting the Chambers for dotations for 
 his sons. Those who were conversant with the 
 French ministerial bureaux declare, that it is difficult 
 to imagine, and that it was impossible to behold 
 without humiliation and disgust, the passionate 
 covetousness, the mingled audacity and meanness, dis- 
 played among the candidates for place. Everybody 
 seemed turned into a hanger-on of government, or a 
 petitioner to become so : everybody was seeking a 
 snug berth for himself or for his son, and vowing 
 eternal vengeance against the government if he were 
 refused. The system of civil administration in France 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 37 
 
 the senseless multiplication of public functionaries 
 has to thank itself for much of this embarrassing 
 and disreputable scramble. The number of places, 
 more or less worth having, at the disposal of govern- 
 ment, appears, by a late return to the Chamber, to 
 exceed 535,000. 
 
 " Les Franais," says a recent acute writer in the Revue des 
 deux Mondes, " se pre'cipitent vers les fonctions, parceque c'est 
 la seule carriere qui guarantisse 1'existence mdme mediocre, et 
 qui permette la securite* du lendemain. Dans 1'espoir d'assurer 
 a leurs enfans un Enlargement au budget, nous voyons chaque 
 jour de petits capitalistes consacrer au frais de leur education 
 une partie ou la totalite de leur mince heritage. Les fonctions 
 publiques sont conside'rees comme une assurance sur la vie, ou 
 un placement a fonds perdus. Une place exerce sur 1'esprit des 
 families la meme fascination que faisait autrefois une pr^beiide 
 ou un canonicat. Madame de Stael disait autrefois: ( Les 
 Franais ne seront satisfaits que lorsqu'on aura promulgue une 
 constitution ainsi con^ue ; article unique : Tous les Francais 
 sont fonctionnaires 'I ' Le socialisme ne fait que generaliser sous 
 une autre forme la passion des Francais pour les places, et 
 realiser, sous un autre nom, le mot de Madame de Stael. La 
 Charte du droit au travail peut, en effet, s'enoncer en une seule 
 phrase : Tous les citoyens sont salaries par l'6tat." 
 
 The number of electors in Louis Philippe's time 
 was 180,000 the number of places in the gift of the 
 Crown was 535,000 ; that is, there were three places 
 available for the purpose of bribing each elector. Put 
 this fact side by side with that passion for the posi- 
 tion of a government employe which we have just 
 described, and' it will be obvious that the corruption 
 must have been, as it was, systematic and universal. 
 The electors regarded their votes as a means of 
 purchasing a place. Each deputy was expected to 
 
38 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 provide in this way for as many of his constituents as 
 possible, and knew that his tenure of his seat depended 
 upon his doing so. Of course he was not likely to 
 forget himself: having purchased his seat, it was natural 
 he should sell his vote. Thus the government bribed 
 the Chambers, and the Chambers bribed the electoral 
 body. Now, from this eleemosynary giving way of 
 places, to selling them from selling them for support 
 to selling them for money the step is short and easy. 
 Some important considerations have been suggested 
 in mitigation of the culpability of Louis Philippe's 
 government in thus corrupting both the candidates 
 and the constituency, to which, though not pretend- 
 ing to admit their entire justice, we may give what- 
 ever weight they may, on due reflection, seem to 
 deserve. It is questionable (it has been said) whether 
 representative institutions among a corrupt and tur- 
 bulent people, or a people from any other causes unfit 
 for self-government, do not necessitate bribery in some 
 form. It was found so in Ireland : it was found so 
 in those dark times of English history which elapsed 
 from 1COO to 1760. The government of July found 
 representative institutions already established, and 
 was obliged to rule through their instrumentality. 
 The ministers were in this position : a majority in the 
 Chambers was essential to them, to the stability of 
 their position, to the adequacy of their powers. This 
 majority could not be secured, among an excitable 
 and foolish people, by wise measures, by sound 
 economy, by resolute behaviour ; nor among a corrupt 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 39 
 
 and venal people, by purity of administration, or 
 steady preference of obscure and unprotected merit. 
 They were the creation of a revolution which their 
 defeat might renew and perpetuate, and a renewal of 
 which would be, to the last extent, disastrous to the 
 country. They had, therefore, only two alternatives 
 either to distribute places with a view to the purchase 
 of parliamentary votes, to hand over appointments to 
 deputies for the purchase in their turn of electoral 
 suffrages ; or to enlarge the franchise to such an 
 extent as to render bribery impossible, and so throw 
 themselves on the chance which the good sense and 
 fitness for self-rule of the mass of the people might 
 afford them. This they had not nerve enough or 
 confidence enough to do ; and who that knows the 
 French people, and has seen their conduct on recent 
 occasions, will venture to say that they were wrong ? 
 
 If the French nation were fit for representative 
 institutions, if it had the sagacity, the prudence, the 
 virtues needed for self-government, the latter ought to 
 have been the course of the administration of July; if 
 it had not (and who now will venture to pronounce 
 that it had ?), the administration had no choice but to 
 command a majority by the only means open to them, 
 viz., corruption. Representative institutions among a 
 people unqualified for them can, therefore, only be 
 worked by corruption, i.e., by distributing the appoint- 
 ments at the disposal of the State with a view to the 
 purchase of parliamentary or electoral support. What 
 government, even in England or America, still less in 
 
40 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 France what government, in fact, in any country not 
 autocratically ruled could stand a month if all its 
 appointments were distributed with regard to merit 
 alone; if, for example, Lord Stanley refused office to 
 Mr Disraeli or Lord John Manners because they were 
 less competent to its duties than obscurer men; if Lord 
 Lonsdale or the Duke of Newcastle had all their re- 
 commendations treated with merited disregard ; if the 
 members for Manchester or London saw their proteges 
 contemptuously and rigidly set aside in favour of abler 
 but less protected men ? If corruption essentially 
 consists, as it undeniably does, in distributing the ap- 
 pointments and favours of the State otherwise than with 
 a sole regard to merit and capacity if any deviation 
 from this exclusive rule be corruption in a greater or less 
 degree, then it is clear that some degree of corruption 
 is inherent and inevitable in all representative govern- 
 ments, and that the extent to which it prevails will be 
 in precise inverse proportion to the sagacity and self- 
 denying virtue of the people, i.e. } to the degree in 
 which they can endure to see meritorious strangers 
 preferred to less deserving friends. Where, in modern 
 times, shall we find that blended humility and patriotism, 
 which made the rejected candidate for the Lacedemo- 
 nian senate go home rejoicing (perhaps with a touch of 
 quiet sarcasm in his tone), " that there were five hun- 
 dred better men in Sparta than himself ? " The people, 
 therefore, and the institutions, not the rulers, are to 
 blame for the amount of corruption which prevails. If 
 they have the reins in their own hands, and yet cannot 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 41 
 
 guide themselves, they must be governed by circuitous 
 stratagems instead of direct force for governed ab 
 extra they must be. It is the exclusive prerogative of 
 an autocratic government to distribute appointments 
 according to merit only. Corruption i. e. , appointments 
 not exclusively according to desert, but with ulterior 
 views, to purchase or reward parliamentary support 
 is the price which must be paid for free institutions 
 among an imperfect people. 
 
 There is much truth in this plea ; a plea which will 
 be recognised as valid by each individual, in proportion 
 as he is conversant with administrative life ; but it 
 does not affect our argument. For, whether the govern- 
 ment of France were excusable or not, the operation of 
 the wholesale, systematic, and unblushing venality and 
 scramble for place which prevailed, was equally indicative 
 of, and destructive to, the morals of the community. 
 
 One result of all this one of the saddest features of 
 French national life, one of the darkest auguries for the 
 future is the low estimation in which all public men 
 are held ; the absence of any great, salient, unstained 
 statesman, whom all reverenced, whom all could trust, 
 and whom all honest citizens were willing to follow 
 and obey : of any politician who, in times of trial, could 
 influence and sway the people by the force of character 
 alone. They are not only worse off than other nations, 
 at similar crises of their history, they are worse off 
 than themselves ever were before. They have not only 
 no Pericles, no Hampden, no Washington ; they have 
 not even a Turgot, a Lafayette, or a Mirabeau. Three 
 
42 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 only of their public men have been long enough and 
 prominently enough before the world to have made 
 themselves a European reputation Guizot, Thiers, and 
 Lamartine. All of these men have been at the head of 
 affairs in turn ; all are writers and historians of high 
 fame ; all are men of unquestioned genius ; and two of 
 them at least are types of a class. Thiers is a Provencal 
 by birth; with all the restless excitability, all the petil- 
 lante vivacity, all the quenchless fire, all the shrewd, 
 intriguing sagacity of the south. He launched into 
 the mixed career of literature and politics at a very 
 early age, and a characteristic anecdote is related of his 
 first successes. The Academy of Aix, his native town, 
 proposed the Eloge de Vauvenargues as the subject of 
 their yearly prize. Thiers sent in an essay (anony- 
 mous, as was the rule) which was of paramount merit ; 
 but it was suspected to be his, and as he and his patron 
 had many enemies, the academic judges proposed to 
 postpone the adjudication of the prize till the following 
 year, on the ground of insufficient merit in all the rival 
 essays. Some days were yet wanting to the period of 
 final decision. Thiers instantly set to work, and pro- 
 duced with great rapidity another essay on the same 
 text, which he sent in with the post-mark of a distant 
 town. The first prize was instantly adjudged to this, 
 and the second only to the original production ; and 
 when both turned out to be the work of the same 
 envied author, the academicians looked foolish enough. 
 Shortly after this youthful stratagem Thiers came to 
 Paris, the great rendezvous for all French talent, and 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 43 
 
 commenced life as a journalist that line which in 
 France so often leads to eminence and power. His 
 clear, vivacious, and energetic style, and the singular 
 vigour and frequent depth of his views, soon made him 
 favourably known. His " Histoire de la Revolution " 
 established his fame; and when, on the appointment of 
 the Polignac ministry in 1829, he (in conjunction with 
 Mignet and Carrel) established the " National " news- 
 paper, with the express object of upsetting them, and 
 pleading the cause of legal and constitutional monarchy 
 against them, he was one of the acknowledged leaders of 
 public opinion in France. The settled aim and plan of 
 the three friends is thus epigrammatically stated by M. 
 de St Beuve : " Enfermer les Bourbons dans la 
 Charte, dans la Constitution, fermer exactement les 
 portes; Us sauteront immanquablement par la 
 fenetre." In seven months the work was done the 
 coup d'etat was struck ; and Thiers was the prominent 
 actor both in that public protestation against the 
 legality of the Ordinances, which commenced the Re- 
 volution of July, and in those intrigues which com- 
 pleted it by placing the Duke of Orleans on the throne. 
 Since that date he has been the most noted politician 
 of France sometimes in office sometimes in opposi- 
 tion sometimes, as in February 1848, bending to 
 the popular storm, and disappearing under the waves 
 again, as in May, reappearing on the surface, as 
 active and prominent as ever, as soon as the deluge 
 was beginning to subside. Next to M. Guizot, he is 
 unquestionably the statesman of the greatest genius 
 
44 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 and the most practical ability in France ; subtle, inde- 
 fatigable ; a brilliant orator, an inveterate intriguer ; 
 skilled in all the arts by which men obtain power ; 
 restrained by no delicate scruples from using it as his 
 egotism may suggest; alike unprincipled as a minister, 
 and untruthful as an historian ; boundless in the 
 aspirations, and far from nice in the instruments, of 
 his ambition ; inspiring admiration in every one, but 
 confidence in no one. Still he is one of the few lead- 
 ing men in France who have a clear perception of 
 what that country needs, and can bear ; and if his 
 character had been as high as his talents are vast, he 
 might now have been almost omnipotent, 
 
 Guizot is a statesman of a different sort, gifted, 
 perhaps, with a less vivid genius, but with a character 
 of more solid excellence and an intellect of a much 
 loftier order. He earned his rank by many years of 
 labour in the paths of history and philosophy before he 
 entered the miry and thorny ways of politics, and 
 both as a diplomatist and minister has shown himself 
 equal to every crisis. Clear, systematic, and undoubt- 
 ing in his opinions, and pertinacious in the promotion 
 of them ; stern, cold, and unbending in his manners, 
 with something of the Puritan and much of the Stoic 
 in the formation of his mind, fitted by nature rather 
 for the professor's chair than the turbulent arena of 
 the senate, but "equal to either fortune;" earnestly 
 devoted to the pursuit of truth in philosophic matters, 
 but not always scrupulously adhering to it in the 
 labyrinth of political intrigue ; taught by history and 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 45 
 
 knowledge of contemporaneous life to look upon his 
 countrymen with a degree of mistrust and contempt, 
 which his ministerial career too often showed ; watch- 
 ing their follies with more of lofty disdain than of 
 melancholy pity, oftener with a sardonic smile than 
 with a Christian sigh, and meeting the most hostile 
 and stormy opposition with a cold and haughty imper- 
 turbability ; he was, perhaps, the most suitable, but 
 was certainly the most unpopular ruler that France 
 could have had. The stern front which he constantly 
 opposed to any extension of the popular power or 
 privileges, his resolute hostility to the liberalism of 
 the day, was much blamed at the time, and has since 
 been regarded by some as the proximate cause of the 
 Revolution of February, though scarcely, we think, 
 with justice. We are too well aware of the prodigious 
 and unseen obstacles which public men have to en- 
 counter, and of the incalculable difficulty of arriving 
 at a just estimate of their conduct in any peculiar cir- 
 cumstances, which is inevitable to all who are not 
 behind the scenes, to be much disposed to condemn 
 the conduct of M. Guizot, on this head, from 1840 to 
 1848. It was evidently pursued on system, and sub- 
 sequent events dispose us to think that it may very 
 possibly have been judicious. He seems to have been 
 convinced that the French were not ripe for larger 
 liberties or a wider franchise, and to have resolved to 
 let the education of many years of constitutional 
 monarchy pass over their head before granting them 
 more ; and when we remember that the parliamentary 
 
46 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 reforms of M. Thiers were as promptly and scornfully 
 thrust aside by the leaders of the February revolution, 
 as the conservative policy of his predecessor, we 
 greatly incline to think M. Guizot may have been 
 right. At all events, he acted on a plan, and from 
 conviction ; and if his master had trusted him with 
 sufficient confidence, and had displayed half his nerve, 
 the convulsion which agitated and upset all Europe 
 might, we believe, have been easily compressed within 
 the limits of a Parisian emeute. It is worthy of 
 remark that the three governments which succeeded, 
 the Provisional Government, the Dictatorship of 
 Cavaignac, and the National Assembly, have all 
 found, or thought, themselves obliged to be far more' 
 sternly repressive than ever M. Guizot was. His two 
 works, published since his fall, on " Democracy in 
 France," and on " The Causes of the Success of the 
 English Revolution/' display a profound knowledge of 
 the foibles, the wants, and the perils of his country- 
 men, such as no other French statesman has shown. 
 If he were again at the head of affairs, the experience 
 of the last two years would, we believe, be found to 
 have rendered the French far more competent to 
 appreciate his merits and more disposed to submit to 
 his rule. A popular statesman he can never be. 
 
 Lamartine was made to be the idol of the French 
 because he was the embodiment of all their more 
 brilliant and superficial qualities. But he was utterly 
 devoid of statesmanlike capacity. His mind and 
 character were essentially and exclusively poetic ; for 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 47 
 
 power and effect as an orator he was unrivalled ; and 
 his " Histoire des Girondins " is one of the most 
 splendid and ornate narratives extant in the world. 
 He had much of the hero about him ; he was a man 
 of fine sentiments, of noble impulses, of generous 
 emotions, of a courage worthy of Bayard, and 
 greater perhaps than even Bayard would have shown 
 in civil struggles. In the first three days of the 
 Provisional Government, Lamartine was truly a great 
 man : he was exactly the man demanded by the crisis ; 
 he had all the qualities those sixty hours of " fighting 
 with human beasts " required ; and it was not till that 
 long agony was passed, and the government, once 
 fairly seated, was called upon to act, that his profound 
 incapacity and ignorance of political science became 
 apparent. No man spoke more ably or more nobly : 
 no man could have acted more madly, weakly, or 
 irresolutely. He sank at once like a stone. From 
 being the admiration of Europe the central object on 
 whom all eyes were turned, he fell with unexampled 
 rapidity into disrepute, obscurity, and contempt ; and 
 the entire absence of dignity, manliness, and sense 
 betrayed in his subsequent writings has been astound- 
 ing and appalling. The words in which he sums up 
 the characteristics of the old Girondins are precisely 
 descriptive of himself : " Us ne savaient faire que 
 deux choses bien parler, et bien mourir." 
 
 The peculiar administrative institutions of France 
 present another obstacle of the most formidable nature 
 
48 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 to the establishment of a stable republican government 
 in that country. There are two distinct and opposite 
 systems of administration, the municipal or self- 
 governing, and the centralising or bureaucratic ; and 
 the degree of real freedom enjoyed by any nation 
 will depend more on the circumstance which of these 
 systems it has adopted, than on the form of its govern- 
 ment or. the name and rank of its ruler. The former 
 system prevails in America, in England, and in 
 Norway ; the latter is general upon the Continent, 
 and has reached its extreme point in Germany and 
 France. The two systems as usually understood, are 
 utterly irreconcilable : they proceed upon opposite 
 assumptions ; they lead to opposite results. The 
 municipal system proceeds on the belief that men can 
 manage their own individual concerns, and look after 
 their own interests for themselves ; and that they can 
 combine for the management of such affairs as require 
 to be carried on in concert. Centralisation proceeds 
 011 the belief that men cannot manage their own 
 affairs, but that government must do all for them. 
 The one system narrows the sphere of action of the 
 central power to strictly national and general concerns; 
 the other makes this sphere embrace, embarrass, and 
 assist at the daily life of every individual in the com- 
 munity. Out of the one system a republic naturally 
 springs ; or, if the form of national government be not 
 republican in name, it will have the same freedom, 
 and the same advantages as if it were : out of the 
 other no republic can arise; on it no republic, if 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 49 
 
 forcibly engrafted, can permanently take root ; its 
 basis, its fundamental idea, is despotic. 
 
 In no country has the centralising system been 
 carried so far as in France. In no country does it 
 seem so suitable to or so submissively endured by the 
 inhabitants. In no country is the metropolis so omni- 
 potent in fashion, in literature, and in politics. In none 
 is provincialism so marked a term of contempt. In 
 none has the minister at the centre such a stupendous 
 army of functionaries at his beck, appointed by his 
 choice, and removable at his pleasure. The number of 
 civil officers under the control of the central govern- 
 ment in France is 535,000 ; in England it is 23,000. 
 The functions of these individuals penetrate into every 
 man's home and business ; they are cognisant of, and 
 license or prohibit his goings out and comings in, his 
 buildings and pullings down, his entering into, or 
 leaving business, and his mode of transacting it. This 
 system, which in England would be felt to be intoler- 
 ably meddlesome and vexatious, is (it is in vain to 
 disguise it) singularly popular in France ; it is a 
 grand and magnificent fabric to behold ; it dates in its 
 completeness from the Consulate, when the nation first 
 began to breathe freely after the revolutionary storms ; 
 and amid all the changes and catastrophes which 
 have since ensued, amid governments overthrown and 
 dynasties chased away, no one has made any serious 
 endeavour to alter or even to mitigate this oppressive 
 and paralysing centralisation. It has evidently pene- 
 trated into and harmonises with the national character. 
 
 D 
 
50 FKANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 The idea of ruling themselves is one which has not yet 
 reached the French understanding : the idea of choos- 
 ing those who are to rule them is the only one they 
 have hitherto been able to conceive. 
 
 Now, this system, and the habits of mind which it- 
 engenders, operate in two ways to add to the difficul- 
 ties of establishing a firm and compact government. 
 In the first place, it deprives the people of all political 
 education ? it shuts them out from the means of ob- 
 taining political practice or experience ; it forbids that 
 daily association of the citizens with the proceedings 
 of the government, from which only skill and efficient 
 knowledge is to be derived. In England and in 
 America, every citizen is trained in vestries, in boards 
 of guardians, in parochial or public meetings, in 
 political unions, in charitable societies, in magistrates' 
 conclaves, to practise all the arts of government and 
 self-government on a small scale and in an humble 
 sphere ; so that when called upon to act in a higher 
 function, and on a wider stage, he is seldom at a loss. 
 This apprenticeship, these normal schools, are wholly 
 wanting to the Frenchman. The establishment of 
 them and practice in them is an essential preliminary 
 to the formation of any republic that can last. The 
 French have been busy in erecting the superstructure, 
 but have never thought of laying the foundation. The 
 following contrast drawn by a citizen of the United 
 States is, in many respects, just and instructive : 
 
 " It has never been denied that political institutions are 
 healthful and durable only according as they have naturally 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848, 51 
 
 grown out of the manners and wants of the population among 
 which they exist. Thus, the inhabitants of the United States, 
 inheriting from their English ancestors the habit of taking care 
 of themselves, and needing nothing but to be left to the govern- 
 ment of their own magistrates, have gone on prospering and to 
 prosper in the work of their own hands. Every state, county, 
 city, and town in America, you need not be told, has always 
 been accustomed to manage its own concerns without application 
 to or interference from the supreme authority at the capital. 
 And this self -controlling policy is so habitual and ingrained 
 wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has spread, that it will for ever 
 present an insuperable obstacle to the successful usurpation of 
 undue authority by any individual. The people of the thirteen 
 original transatlantic states, in the construction of a common- 
 wealth, had only to build upon a real and solid foundation made 
 to hand ; but in France the reverse of this was the case when in 
 the last century a republic was proclaimed, and continues so 
 now, without any material diminution of the rubbish, which 
 must be swept away before a trustworthy basis can be found 
 for the most dangerous experiment in a nation's history. The 
 executive power, securely ensconced in central Paris, like a 
 sleepless fly-catcher in the middle of his well-spun web, feels 
 and responds to every vibration throughout the artfully or- 
 ganised system, which extends from channel to sea, and from 
 river to ocean. Its aim has been to keep the departments in 
 leading-strings, and its success to prevent neighbours from 
 leaning only on each other for neutral aid and comfort in every 
 undertaking great or small, and to drive them to the minister of 
 the interior as the sole dispenser of patronage. Provincialism 
 has hence become naturally associated with social inferiority, 
 sliding easily into vulgarity ; and as vulgarity is often carelessly 
 taken for intellectual incapacity, the consequence is, that the 
 many millions living at a distance from the factitious fountain of 
 power are regarded and treated as children, even in matters that 
 most deeply concern their daily comfort. If, for example, a 
 river is to be bridged, a morass drained, or a church erected, 
 more time is lost in negotiating at head-quarters for permission 
 to commence the undertaking than would suffice in England or 
 America to accomplish the same object twice over. Disgusted, 
 doubtless, with all this, and, as too frequently happens, ex- 
 pressly educated by aspiring parents for some official employment, 
 
52 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 most provincials of distinguished talents, instead of honourably 
 addressing themselves for advancement, as is the custom in the 
 United States, to their own immediate communities, hasten to 
 the feast of good things, whether within the Elysee or elsewhere, 
 at which they soon learn to take care of themselves, leaving 
 their country, as the motto on their current coin has it, to the 
 ' protection of God.' 
 
 "No one ought to feel surprised, then, whenever a revolution 
 happens here, and a republic, the universal panacea which 
 haunts the French brain, is announced, that the people out of 
 Paris, utterly destitute of political training, and without leaders, 
 a s they are, should stand agape and helpless as a shipload of 
 passengers in a gale whose ruthless violence has left them with- 
 out captain or crew. Nor should their helplessness and apparent 
 imbecility be a reproach to their natural intelligence, for the 
 system of centralisation, so briefly alluded to above as a curse 
 to the country, has in its long course benumbed their faculties 
 and paralysed their energies for every sort of action beyond the 
 little circle of a material existence. Neither is this system 
 likely to be soon abandoned, the present minister of the interior 
 having very lately, to my certain knowledge, fiercely and firmly 
 resisted every attempt on the part of the Council of State to 
 modify its operation. In the absence, therefore, of the very 
 groundwork whereon to create and sustain a republic, how can 
 such a form of government endure, except while it is kept, as 
 at present, from toppling over, by the unwilling support of 
 various factions, which preserve it from falling only to prevent 
 an antagonist still more detested from taking its place 1 " 
 
 The second effect of this administrative centralisation 
 is to direct all the active, aspiring, discontented spirit 
 which is always fermenting in the community, upon the 
 originating power in the State. The people are passive 
 as regards the administrators, aggressive as regards 
 the government. They are annoyed or insulted by a 
 policeman or a sous-prefet, and they at once, having no 
 means of direct action upon him, the immediate and 
 subordinate agent, vent their indignation on the central 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 53 
 
 power. They have no readier way of avenging them- 
 selves on an obnoxious prefect than by upsetting the 
 dynasty which appointed him. When they feel them- 
 selves oppressed, unprosperous, or suffering, they go at 
 once to that which the system has taught them to 
 regard as the source of all the regal palace or the 
 ministerial hotel at Paris : they cashier their rulers, 
 bat never dream of changing the system of adminis- 
 tration, and consequently never mend their position. 
 The evil remains undiminished ; the discontent con- 
 tinues ; and all that has been learned is the fatal 
 lesson with what astounding facility governments may 
 be overthrown which have no root in the affections, the 
 habits, the wants, or the character of the people. In 
 England, if a policeman affronts us, we bring him 
 before a magistrate ; if an overseer or relieving officer 
 disgusts us, we remember it at the next election of 
 guardians ; if a tax-gatherer oversteps his powers, we 
 complain to his chief and insist on his dismissal ; 
 if refused a hearing we make parliament itself a 
 party to our grievances ; if a magistrate acts oppres- 
 sively we either expose him, or bring an action 
 against him, secure of impartial justice. But no act 
 of injustice or oppression ever weakens our loyalty to 
 Queen or parliament, for we know they are not respon- 
 sible for the faults of their subordinates, since they 
 have given us ample means of self-protection against 
 them. 
 
 A third reason which renders this central bureau- 
 cracy incompatible with any settled and secure 
 
54 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 government, except a powerful despotism, deserves 
 much consideration. We have already spoken of the 
 great difficulties thrown in the way of the re- organis- 
 ation of France, by that passion for material well- 
 being which is at present so salient a feature in the 
 character of her citizens, these difficulties are enormously 
 enhanced when this material wellbeing is demanded at 
 the hands of the government. Yet this demand is 
 one which every Frenchman thinks himself entitled to 
 make ; and for generations successive governments 
 have countenanced the claim. By taking out of the 
 hands of the individual the regulation of his own 
 destiny, and teaching him to look up to the abstrac- 
 tion called " The State," for guidance, direction, and 
 support, it has sedulously fostered a habit of expecting 
 everything from this supposed omnipotence, and has 
 effectually trodden out that spirit of humble but 
 dignified self-reliance which is the chief source from 
 which material wellbeing can be derived. It has said 
 to its subjects, to quote the words of one who has 
 read deeply the signs of the times, "Ce n'est point a 
 vous, faibles individus, de vous conserver, de vous 
 diriger, de vous sauver vous-memes. II y a tout pres 
 de vous un etre merveilleux, dont la puissance est sans 
 bornes, la sagesse infaillible, 1'opulence in^puisible. 
 II s'appelle 1'etat. C'est a lui qu'il faut vous 
 addresser ; c'est lui qui est charge' d'avoir de la force 
 et de la pr^voyance pour tout le monde ; c'est lui qui 
 devinera votre vocation, qui disposera de vos capacites, 
 qui recompensera vos labeurs, qui elevera votre en- 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. 55 
 
 fance, qui recueillera votre vieillesse, qui soignera 
 vos maladies, qui protegera votre famille, qui vous 
 donnera sans mesure travail, bien-etre, liberteY' * It 
 is not wonderful, then, that the French should have 
 contracted the habit of asking and expecting every- 
 thing even impossibilities from their government ; 
 and of urging their claims with the confidence and 
 audacity of " sturdy beggars ; " but picture to your- 
 self a people " passionne' pour le bonheur," and trained 
 to look for this bonheur at the hands of a government 
 which has taught them to demand it, but has no 
 power to bestow it, and then ask yourself what chance 
 of success or permanence can a republic so situated 
 have ? 
 
 Republicanism and bureaucracy are incompatible 
 existences. You may call your State a republic if you 
 will you may modify its form as you please you 
 may have two chambers or one you may place at 
 the head a military dictator, or an elective president 
 holding office for one year, for four years, or for ten ; 
 but so long as the administration of public affairs 
 remains central and bureaucratic, the utmost that full 
 representation or universal suffrage can give you, is 
 the power of choosing the particular set of busy bodies 
 who shall rule you, or rather the irresponsible indi- 
 vidual who shall appoint them. It is not liberty, but 
 merely the selection of your head oppressor. Thus 
 France is in a radically false position, and she has 
 not yet found it out ; she is indeavouring uncon- 
 * Emile Saisset. 
 
56 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 sciously to unite two incompatibilities. Her govern- 
 ment has all the finished and scientific organisation of 
 a despotism, with the political institutions which be- 
 long to freedom. Each man has a share in the choice 
 of his legislator and his executive chief; each man is 
 the depositary of a calculable fraction of the sovereign 
 power; but each man is the slave of the passport 
 office, the prefect, the gendarme, and the policeman. 
 The republic of to-day may wake and find itself an 
 empire to-morrow scarcely an individual Frenchman 
 would feel the difference and not one iota of the 
 administration need be changed. As it exists now, it 
 was the child and may be the parent of imperialism. 
 The whole machinery of autocratic rule is at all times 
 ready for the hand of any one who can seize it. 
 
 Again : the national traditions of the French as 
 written in their chequered history the monuments of 
 regal magnificence and splendour, still so cherished 
 and admired, in the Tuileries, at Versailles, and at 
 Fontainebleau the inextinguishable taste of the 
 people for gorgeous and imposing shows, and their in- 
 curable military spirit, all combine to make the 
 simplicity of a genuine republic unharmonious, gro- 
 tesque, and out of place among them. It is manifestly 
 an exotic a transplanted tree of liberty, which 
 nature never intended to grow out of such a soil. 
 The republic, save for a few short years, is associated 
 with no recollections of historic glory: the times which 
 a Frenchman loves to recall are those of Henri Quatre, 
 Louis Quatorze, and Napoleon none of them names 
 
FRANCE SINCE 1848. .57 
 
 redolent of liberty. The French are, essentially and 
 above all, a military people. Now, unreasoning 
 obedience to a non-elected and non-deposable chief, 
 an utter abnegation of the individual will, which are 
 the soul of success in war, are direct contradictions to 
 the ideas on which democracies are founded. The 
 passion for external luxury and splendour is incon- 
 gruous and fatal in a democracy, unless that splendour 
 can be shared by all the people ; yet in no civilised 
 nations is that passion stronger than in France, and 
 in few is the contrast so great between the palaces 
 of their inonarchs (which they still take pride in and 
 adorn), and the habitations of the other classes of the 
 community. In England, where the democratic 
 element is so powerful and so spreading, there is little 
 difference either in comfort or magnificence between 
 Windsor Castle and Chatsworth, between St James' 
 Palace and the noble mansion of Longleat. The 
 palaces of our sovereigns, the castles of our nobility, 
 the halls of our wealthy and ancient commoners, are 
 connected by imperceptible gradations ; our Queen 
 might take up her abode at the houses of some of 
 our country gentlemen, and scarcely discover any 
 diminution in the comfort of her accommodations, 
 or the splendour of her furniture. But in France this 
 is not so. Her royal palaces may rival or eclipse ours 
 certainly we have nothing so immense or gorgeous 
 as Versailles but the chateaux and hotels of her 
 nobles belong to an entirely different and much lower 
 class than ours. She has nothing to represent that 
 
58 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 class of mansions, which we count by hundreds, of 
 which Devonshire House, Northumberland House, 
 Belvoir Castle, Drayton Manor, Chatsworth, and 
 Longleat, are the type with us. The character of her 
 social hierarchy as depicted in her dwellings is essen- 
 tially monarchical: ours is essentially aristocratic. 
 Versailles and a republic would be a standing contra- 
 diction a perpetual incongruity and mutual reproach. 
 They represent, and suggest, wholly opposite ideas. 
 
 If this article had not already extended to so great 
 a length, we should have dwelt on other difficulties 
 which beset the task of reorganising government and 
 society in France ; on those arising from the material 
 condition of her people ; from the degree of poverty, 
 incompatible with contentment, in which so large a 
 portion of her population live ; from the want of a 
 "career," so painfully felt by many thousands of her 
 most active spirits, and so dangerous to internal peace ; 
 from the inadequacy of her protected manufactures, 
 her imperfect agriculture, and her undeve]oped com- 
 merce, to support in comfort the actual numbers on 
 her soil ; from the law of equal inheritance, with all 
 its fatal and unforeseen consequences to peace, to free- 
 dom, to wealth, to social interests, and intellectual 
 culture ; and last, not least, from the fatal necessitv, 
 which each new government that has sprung from a 
 popular insurrection finds itself under, of turning 
 instantly round upon the parties, the ideas, and the 
 principles which have elevated it to power. A govern- 
 ment created by a revolution finds that almost its first 
 
vei 
 
 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 59 
 
 task must be to repress revolutionary tendencies ; nay 
 more, that it must repress these tendencies far more 
 promptly, more severely, more incessantly, than would 
 be necessary to a government strong in the loyalty 
 of the nation, in the traditions of the past, in the 
 deliberate judgment of the influential classes, and 
 which was not harassed by the spectre of anarchy 
 daily knocking at its gates. Yet such a government 
 casting down the ladder by which it climbed to 
 office shutting the door in the faces of undeniable 
 claims rebuking and punishing the enthusiastic soldiers 
 who had fought for it imprisoning the friends to whom 
 it owed its existence fettering and fining the press 
 which had paved the way for its inauguration has, it 
 cannot be disguised, primd facie, an ugly aspect. 
 
 To conclude. The basis of the governments which 
 owed their origin to the first Revolution was reaction 
 against old anomalies ; the basis of the Empire was 
 military power; the basis of the Restoration was legi- 
 timacy, prejudice, and prestige ; the basis of Louis 
 Philippe's government was the material interests of 
 the nation, and the supremacy of the bourgeoisie as 
 the depositaries and guardians of those interests. The 
 Revolution of February being (as it were) an aggres- 
 sive negation, not a positive effort, having no clear 
 idea at its root, but being simply the product of dis- 
 content and disgust furnishes no foundation for a 
 government. Loyalty to a legitimate monarch ; defer- 
 ence to an ancient aristocracy ; faith in a loved and 
 venerated creed ; devotion to a military leader ; sober 
 
60 FRANCE SINCE 1848. 
 
 schemes for well-understood material prosperity ; all 
 these may form, and have formed, the foundation of 
 stable and powerful governments : mere reaction, mere 
 denial, mere dissatisfaction, mere vague desires, mere 
 aggression on existing things never. 
 
 To construct a firm and abiding commonwealth out 
 of such materials, and in the face of such obstacles as 
 we have attempted to delineate, such is the problem 
 the French people are called upon to conduct to a 
 successful issue. Without a positive and earnest 
 creed; without asocial hierarchy; without municipal 
 institutions and the political education they bestow ; 
 without a spirit of reverence for rights and of obedi- 
 ence to authority, penetrating all ranks, we greatly 
 doubt whether the very instruments for the creation of 
 a republic are not wanting. A republic does not 
 create these it supposes and postulates their exist- 
 ence. They are inheritances from the past, not pos- 
 sessions to be called into being by a fiat. They are 
 the slow growth of a settled political and social system, 
 acting with justice founded on authority and tradi- 
 tion, and consolidated by long years of unshaken 
 continuance. 
 
II. 
 
 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 1 
 
 WHEN we wrote of France in May 1851 of the diffi- 
 culty of its task, the instability of its government, and 
 the perplexity of its path hopeless as we then were 
 of a successful issue, we could scarcely have anticipated 
 that in seven short months that government would be 
 overthrown once more, that task abandoned in despair, 
 that path more dark and intricate than ever. Within 
 three years from the expulsion of the Orleanist dynasty 
 by a knot of fanatical republicans, both victors and 
 vanquished in that sudden struggle have been sup- 
 pressed by a military despotism ; the polity they had 
 joined in constructing has been violently swept away, 
 and France has again become a tabula rasa for consti- 
 tutional experimentalists. We wrote thus in May, 
 
 " The Revolution of February being (as it were) an aggres- 
 sive negation, not a positive effort, having no clear idea at 
 its root, but being simply the product of discontent and disgust 
 furnishes no foundation for a* government. Loyalty to a 
 legitimate monarch ; deference to an ancient aristocracy ; faith 
 in a loved and venerated creed ; devotion to a military leader ; 
 sober schemes for well understood material prosperity ; all 
 these may form, and have formed, the foundation of stable and 
 
 1 From the " North British Review, Feb. 1852." 
 
 1. (Euvres de Louis NapoUon Bonaparte. Paris. 3 torn. 8vo. 
 
 2. Des Id&s NapoUoniennes. Par L. N. BONAPARTE. Paris. 
 
G2 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 powerful governments : mere reaction, mere denial, mere dis- 
 satisfaction, mere vague desires, mere aggression on existing 
 things never. 
 
 " To construct a firm and abiding commonwealth out of such 
 materials, and in the face of such obstacles as we have attempted 
 to delineate such is the problem the French people are called 
 upon to conduct to a successful issue. Without a positive and 
 earnest creed ; without a social hierarchy ; without municipal 
 institutions and the political education they bestow ; without a 
 spirit of reverence for rights, and of obedience to authority, 
 penetrating all ranks, we greatly doubt whether the very in- 
 struments for the creation of a republic are not wanting. A 
 republic does not create these it supposes and postulates their 
 existence. They are inheritances from the past, not possessions 
 to be called into being by a fiat. They are the slow growth of 
 a settled, political, and social system, acting with justice, 
 founded on authority and tradition, and consolidated by long 
 years of unshaken continuance. 
 
 Viewed in our imperfect light, and from our field of 
 limited and feeble vision, the sun in his w,ide circuit 
 shines down upon no sadder spectacle than France now 
 presents to the gazing and astonished world. Rich in 
 material resources, but unable to turn any of them to 
 full account ; teeming with brilliant talent and clear 
 intelligence, but doomed to see the talent prostituted 
 and the intelligence abortive ; prolific beyond any other 
 country in theories of social regeneration and impossible 
 perfection, yet fated beyond any other to wallow in the 
 mire of the past, and to re-tread the weary cycle of 
 ancestral blunders ; unable to reduce into wholesome 
 practice any one of her magnificent conceptions ; 
 unable to conduct to a successful issue any one of her 
 promising experiments ; ever building houses of cards, 
 which every wind of passion sweeps away ; ever 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 63 
 
 recommencing, never ending ; the loftiest and most 
 insatiable of aspirants, the most paltry and laggard of 
 performers ; assuming to lead the vanguard of civilisa- 
 tion, but for ever loitering in the rear, for ever acting 
 as the drag. Such is the aspect of France to eyes yet 
 shrouded in the flesh, and darkened by the fears and 
 frailties of humanity. To higher and wiser witnesses, 
 
 " Who watch, like gods, the rolling hours, 
 With larger, other, eyes than ours," 
 
 who, gifted with a deeper insight, and purged from our 
 dazzling and misleading sympathies, can see through 
 the present confusion to the future issue it may be 
 that all these convulsions and vicissitudes are but the 
 struggles of Chaos to form itself into Kosmos, the 
 throes and efforts of a new birth. Each apparent 
 failure may be an essential step in the process of ulti- 
 mate achievement ; each backsliding may be a reculer 
 pour mieux sauter ; each shattered hope, over whose 
 ruin we have mourned, may have been built upon a 
 false foundation ; each seemingly fair and promising 
 construction, which we repine to see destroyed, may 
 have been an obstacle to something sounder and more 
 solid in the distance; and the late apparent annihilation 
 of all that past toil and sacrifice had gained, may be, 
 when viewed aright, an indispensable pre-requisite to 
 greater and more permanent acquisitions not the ebb 
 of progress only the receding wave of the advancing 
 tide. 
 
 Let us endeavour to arrive at a clear notion of the 
 actual situation of affairs, by a rapid glance at the 
 
G4 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 defunct constitution, and the conduct of the Assembly 
 and the President respectively. 
 
 The destruction of the constitution inaugurated in 
 1848 has surprised no one; the peculiar mode and time 
 of that destruction has surprised nearly everybody. 
 From the outset it was evident that it was not made to 
 last. The republic itself was a sudden and unwelcome 
 improvisation. It was imposed by the violent agents 
 of the revolution, and was never cordially accepted by 
 the intelligence, the property, or the experience of the 
 nation. When the Convention met, the republican 
 form of government was proclaimed, not deliberated on 
 nor chosen. The constitution, the work of this Con- 
 vention, bore upon it the stamp of the circumstances 
 under which, and the body from which, it emanated. 
 It was concocted by a combination of parties who had 
 all of them ulterior aims, and whose ulterior aims were 
 at variance with one another. The Republicans were 
 anxious to make it as purely democratic as possible. 
 The Constitutionalists desired to make the Assembly 
 supreme, both over executive and people. The Im- 
 perialists wished to prevent the return of the Bourbon 
 branches. The Orleanists and Legitimists wished re- 
 ciprocally to destroy each other's hopes. But all parties, 
 dreading lest their rivals should, by caprice or accident, 
 be recalled and entrusted with the executive authority, 
 concurred in reducing that authority to a minimum, 
 The constitution had many faults ; this was probably 
 its chief one. It would be unreasonable to demand 
 from a scheme concocted to meet the wants and satisfy 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 65 
 
 the exigencies of a passing crisis, and with the cannon 
 of the barricades yet ringing in the ears of its fabrica- 
 tors, either the maturity of reflection which charac- 
 terises the productions of patient reasoning, or the 
 thorough understanding of human passions and require- 
 ments, which can only be obtained by long practice in 
 political affairs; or that happy conformity with nationa 1 
 tastes and manners, which belongs only to institutions 
 which have grown up in the course of ages, and have 
 become firmly rooted in the soil. Few of those who 
 joined in the construction of it regarded it with hope ; 
 fewer still with admiration or real satisfaction. To 
 some it was a work of desperation; to others a pilot 
 balloon ; to nearly all an expedient to feel their way 
 out of an embarrassing position. Between the various 
 and hostile elements which contended for the mastery in 
 France, the constitution was not a permanent peace, 
 but merely an armistice, a hollow truce. From the 
 first hour that it was promulgated no one had faith in 
 its durability ; and perhaps the wisest provision which 
 it contained was the clause which anticipated the proba- 
 bility and prescribed the mode of its revision. 
 
 A powerful and long- established government skilful 
 and unscrupulous, and as resolute in denying the most 
 reasonable demands of the constitutional opposition, as 
 the wildest clamours of the socialists had been over- 
 thrown by a popular outbreak. A period of strange 
 misrule had succeeded, in which the more worthless of 
 the working classes and their leaders reigned almost 
 supreme. The first attempt at return to that state of 
 
 
 
66 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 order and repression which the very life of society 
 demanded, had been met by the desperate insurrection 
 of the loth of May, which gave a glimpse of the fearful 
 fate which hung over Paris, and the other great cities of 
 France, if the arm of the executive should be for one 
 moment paralysed or shattered. Scarcely had this been 
 expressed, and the capital been rescued from the "douze 
 heures de pillage " which Blanqui had promised to his 
 followers, when the same warning was repeated in still 
 more awful tones. The three days' battle in the streets, 
 which only the concentrated energy of a most resolute 
 dictator was able to determine in favour of the cause of 
 property and law when Cavaignac was preparing to 
 blow up a whole quarter of the city rather than run 
 the risk of a defeat ; when the issue appeared so 
 doubtful, and the case so threatening, that he even 
 meditated withdrawing his army into the country, and 
 concentrating his forces for a prolonged civil war; when 
 the skill and desperation of the insurgents was such, 
 and compelled such terrible severity, that to this hour 
 it is not known how many perished, and some estimate 
 the number at 10,000 this terminated the series of 
 impressive lessons which should have shown the con- 
 trivers of the constitution what was needed, and in what 
 direction their fears and precautions ought to lie. But 
 while the ears of every one yet tingled with the frightful 
 denunciations of the defeated insurrectionists ; while 
 the heart of every one yet beat at the thought of the 
 horrors they had barely escaped, through the dangerous 
 but indispensable resource of a military dictatorship ; 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 67 
 
 these pedants devoted their entire attention to weaken- 
 ing and hampering the executive power which had just, 
 and with difficulty, saved them : to a situation and 
 necessities almost unheard of in the world till then, 
 they opposed ideas and plans whose impotence and in- 
 adequacy had been fully proved by reiterated failures. 
 
 It was clear that what France demanded from the con- 
 stituent Assembly was the establishment of a supreme 
 power truly and efficiently executive, and a representa- 
 tion really national, a government sufficiently strong 
 to satisfy the craving need of being governed, which all 
 Frenchmen feel by a secret instinct, and have been 
 accustomed to by long generations of a bureaucracy, 
 and competent to wield with a firm and masterly hand, 
 the stupendous administrative sceptre which the central- 
 and a legislative assembly which should give to the 
 isation organised by Napoleon had bestowed on France; 
 various elements which constitute the real permanent 
 majority, to the summary of all the feelings, opinions, 
 and interests of the nation, an easy, natural, and regular 
 predominance, proportioned to their respective worth 
 and weight. How did it discharge this double task ? 
 
 For fifty years France had been covered with the 
 columns and arches of a most majestic administrative 
 edifice, constructed by a master hand, which strikes the 
 imagination by its grandeur, and charms the eye by the 
 uniformity and regularity of its arrangements. The 
 central power, seated in the capital, radiates to the re- 
 motest corners of the land, embraces everything in its 
 glance, grasps everything in its hand, exerts everywhere 
 
68 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 its mischievous stimulus or its stern control. It asks 
 advice from local bodies, but gives them no power, and 
 permits no interference. Even where it respects pri- 
 vate rights, it paralyses personal freedom, and weakens 
 individual responsibility; it keeps everything and 
 everybody under surveillance and in leading strings. 
 A system of direct taxation, strictly levied, gives it an 
 acquaintance with all fortunes; an organised system of 
 state education opens to it an entrance into all families. 
 Nothing, either in the domain of thought or of material 
 interests, escapes its interference ; everything looks 
 towards it; everything reposes upon it. From one end 
 of the country to the other, every one of the 37,000 
 communes into which it is divided, and every one of 
 the 36,000,000 of people who inhabit it, keep their 
 eyes steadily fixed upon the head quarters of the motive 
 power ; await their signal from its will ; imbibe their 
 inspiration from its breath. The tremendous weapon 
 of authority thus given to the central government, the 
 fearful burden of responsibility thus concentrated upon 
 a single head, hard to be wielded and oppressive to be 
 borne even by royalty secure of its position, accustomed 
 to command, aided by prestige, and protected by inviola- 
 bility, the new constitution placed in the hands of a 
 novice, renewable every four years ; chosen by the mass 
 to-day, re-confounded with the crowd to-morrow; chosen 
 by one party, and consequently the antagonist and the 
 destined victim of all other parties ; the butt of a 
 thousand intriguers, and driven to counter-intrigues for 
 his defence ; superintended with a hostile vigilance by 
 
FKANCE IN JANUARY 1852. G9 
 
 the most unsatisfiable and imperious of masters; viz., a 
 single, numerous, inexperienced, divided, and factious 
 Assembly, seldom suspending its sittings, and having 
 always a committee of " detective police " to watch him 
 during its short vacations. A dictatorship in the hands 
 of a puppet ! Supreme power in the hands of one who 
 is watched and treated as a public enemy ! A most 
 subtle, complete, and universal organisation, created by 
 the fiat, and designed for the purposes, of an iron and 
 imperial will, yet confided to the management of a 
 transient, ill-paid officer, bound hand and foot to the 
 caprices of a popular assembly ! The President was 
 expected, out of a salary of 25, 000 a year, to fill with 
 eclat the position of representative chief of a nation fond 
 of splendour, of gaiety, of hospitable show. He was 
 expected to keep the cup of supreme power ever at his 
 lips, but never to do more than taste it. He was to be 
 a great monarch without monarchical permanence, 
 without monarchical veto, without monarchical inviola- 
 bility. He was carried up to a pinnacle from which he 
 saw all authority, all grandeur, all dominion within his 
 reach, and as it were his appointed inheritance, and then 
 was bidden peremptorily to descend from the giddy 
 eminence, and to turn away his gaze from the alluring 
 prize. Restored for a moment to the imperial throne, 
 and grasping the reins of the imperial chariot, he was 
 expected to still every throb of imperial ambition. 
 Selected by a people accustomed to be much and ener- 
 getically governed, needing to be so, clamorous to be so, 
 and intrusted therefore with the position of a Caesar or 
 
70 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 a Czar, lie was expected to be the submissive slave of a 
 debating club of vestrymen, quarrelling among them- 
 selves, and elected by far fewer numbers than himself. 
 Such was the executive power in France as defined 
 and inaugurated by the new constitution : was the 
 legislative body more wisely organised ? It was perhaps 
 scarcely to be expected, that a people just broke loose 
 from all rule, fresh from a triumphant struggle with 
 established authority, fought in the name of the exciting 
 watchwords of liberty, equality, fraternity, should admit 
 any aristocratic element into the new system they were 
 framing; but why should they have deprived themselves 
 of that mighty influence in the scale of order and stabi- 
 lity, which, as all history shows, is afforded by a second 
 Chamber ? There are many ways of constituting an 
 Upper House without making it either a council of 
 nominees, or a senate of hereditary peers. It might 
 be elected simply by a higher class of electors, or, as in 
 Belgium, require higher qualifications in its members. 
 It might, as in Sardinia, be composed of men selected 
 from among literary, judicial, scientific, and military 
 notabilities. It might be chosen by different districts, 
 and for different terms, from those of the Lower House, 
 as in the state of New York, or might be obtained by a 
 double election, as in the federal Union of America. 
 There are so many modes in which an effective and 
 valuable second Chamber might be obtained, that the 
 French had no excuse for rejecting it on the ground of 
 difficulty. But the Assembly being resolved to retain 
 the supreme power in its own hands, was unwilling to 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 71 
 
 be in any way checked or fettered, or compelled to an 
 unwelcome degree of deliberation. It therefore cast 
 away, almost without the compliment of a discussion, 
 the suggestion of a second Chamber, with all the 
 obvious advantages that might have flowed from such 
 an arrangement, and substituted a most clumsy and 
 incautious scheme for preventing hasty or inconsiderate 
 changes in one direction only, by enacting that, how- 
 ever faulty their new constitution might prove, it 
 should be in the power of a small minority to prohibit 
 its amendment. They required a majority of three- 
 fourths to legalise a revision. They tied their own 
 hands in the one case, in which, as it happened, it was 
 peculiarly desirable to leave them free. Everything 
 else was stamped in moveable types : the hasty and 
 unmanageable constitution was alone stereotyped. It 
 was, perhaps, scarcely to be expected that, in a con- 
 stitution springing from a revolution which, if not 
 made by the masses, was at least promptly seized upon 
 by them, any other system than that of universal 
 suffrage should have been adopted. But three things 
 these lawmakers might have done which they did not: 
 they might at least have left the discussion of the 
 matter free ; they might have respected the principle, 
 once adopted, when it pronounced against them, as well 
 as when it spoke in their favour ; and they might have 
 surrounded its exercise with all the wise precautions 
 and judicious arrangements which could mitigate its 
 dangers, and render it the bond fide expression of the 
 nation's will. Instead of this, the Convention hastily 
 
72 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 passed a law early in 1848, placing the principle of 
 universal suffrage under the protection of the tribunals 
 making it penal to question or discuss it treating 
 the exposure of its evils and its dangers as sedition 
 and treason. In the next place, as if conscious that 
 their successors would desire to undo their clumsy 
 workmanship, they violated the principle they had laid 
 down, setting universal suffrage, or the government of 
 the majority, at defiance, by enacting that, where the 
 constitution was in question, the many should bow to 
 the decision of the few. Consider for a moment the full 
 extent of this grotesque and insolent absurdity. Every 
 republic, and the republic of 1848 more nakedly than 
 any other, is based upon the will of the majority. It 
 is their sole recognised foundation. An absolute 
 monarchy rests upon the divine right of kings. An 
 hereditary aristocracy rests upon the superior claims 
 and powers of special families. A theocracy rests upon 
 direct religious sanction. But republics sweep all these 
 away. The republic of 1848 ignored and denied them 
 all. Hereditary right, constitutional legality, estab- 
 lished institutions, equilibrium of power, it sacrificed 
 all to the blind worship of THE MAJORITY. No sooner, 
 however, had it done so, than it turned round upon 
 the nation, and said : " The majority is omnipotent, 
 and its authority unquestionable, only to authorise us 
 and to sanction our decrees : we pronounce it powerless 
 to negative or change them. So long as a minority of 
 one-fourth supports our constitution, so long that con- 
 stitution shall be inviolable." The majority of the 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 73 
 
 nation, by the voice of the majority of its representa- 
 tives legally elected, demands a change in the form of 
 the government. The minority steps in and says, "No! 
 there shall be no such change neither to-day, nor to- 
 morrow, nor ten years hence, so long as one-fourth of 
 the people or their deputies object to it. We, the few, 
 will control and govern you, the many." And the men 
 who held this language, and considered this proceeding 
 just, are the republicans par excellence ! The democrats 
 are the oligarchs. The very men who thus contended 
 for the permanent right of the few to bind the many, 
 were the very men who sprung out of the victory of 
 the many over the few, whose position, whose very 
 existence, was the creation of the principle they thus 
 repudiated ! The constitution which declared itself 
 inviolable and unchangeable, even by a large majority, 
 was the very constitution which was found to be so 
 intolerable that a large majority insisted upon its 
 alteration. Were they to retain and obey a bad law, 
 because that law itself forbad them to repeal it ? 
 Whence could anybody derive a right to make such an 
 enactment ? With what decency or justice could a 
 constituent assembly, itself the offspring of the victory 
 of the majority over the minority, enact that in future 
 the minority should bind the majority ? 
 
 If the principle of universal suffrage was thus 
 slightly respected, even by those who asserted it most 
 loudly, the arrangements for carrying it into practical 
 operation were marked by no extraordinary sagacity. 
 Out of the seven or eight million of voters who found 
 
74 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 themselves endowed with the franchise, a very large 
 proportion consisted of the peasantry of the rural 
 districts, little cognisant of political affairs, and little 
 interested in party strife. Numbers of them would 
 have no idea how to vote : numbers of them would 
 not care how they voted : numbers more would not 
 wish to vote at all. The rock on which universal 
 suffrage is almost always wrecked is, the ignorance or 
 the indifference of the great mass of the electors. 
 Thousands of the peasantry never stir from home : 
 hundreds of thousands know no one beyond the limits 
 of their own commune, and never hear the names of 
 obscure or intriguing political aspirants. If, therefore, 
 it were desired most effectually to confirm their indif- 
 ference to the elections, and to embarrass them in 
 their choice of a candidate, and utterly to confuse 
 their comprehension of the whole transaction, no 
 better scheme could have been devised than to make 
 them vote by departments instead of by arrondisse- 
 ments or by communes, and to call upon them to 
 elect at once, not one man whom they may chance to 
 know, but a whole list of ten, fifteen, or twenty, the 
 names of nearly all of whom they probably never 
 heard of, and of whose respective qualifications they 
 cannot form the most remote conception. A plan like 
 this was sure to throw the virtual choice into the 
 hands of clubs, or knots of political agitators, who 
 would exploiter the great body of the electors for 
 their own purposes and interests ; and was likely to 
 end in the great mass of the people retiring from the 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 75 
 
 exercise of the suffrage in carelessness or disgust. One 
 of the chief evils, indeed, of universal suffrage is, that 
 it never does, and rarely can, give the actual senti- 
 ments and wishes of the numerical mass of the 
 population. Those interested in political strife vote ; 
 those who are sick of it, or indifferent to it, abstain 
 from voting. Among the working classes this is 
 particularly the case. There is the peaceful indus- 
 trious artisan, loving work much, independence more, 
 and his family most of all, living aloof from the 
 turmoil and passions of the public world, and whose 
 leisure is spent by the domestic hearth, and in the 
 society of his wife and children. And there is the 
 artisan who considers himself enlightened, who fre- 
 quents cafes, who reads newspapers, who heads proces- 
 sions, who mans barricades, to whom haranguing is far 
 pleasanter than honest labour. To the first, a day 
 lost at elections is a nuisance and an injury, a supper 
 or a breakfast wanting, diminished wages, an unfinished 
 job, scantier food or clothing for his children or himself. 
 To the second it is a joyful holiday, a noisy spree, a 
 positive indulgence, possibly an actual gain of more 
 than he would have earned in a week by steady in- 
 dustry. The result is, that the first man, whose vote 
 would be of real value and meaning to the community, 
 never gives it : the second, whose vote is worthless 
 and a deception, records it on every occasion ; and the 
 nation is as far as ever from having gathered the real 
 feelings and opinions of its citizens. In times of ex- 
 citement and of novelty, such as the first general 
 
76 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 election, or the choice of a president, this evil is not 
 so much felt ; but so strongly was it beginning to be 
 feared, that one of the last proposals laid before the 
 late Assembly, was for making it penal to abstain 
 from the exercise of the franchise, for inflicting a 
 fine on all who neglected to record their votes. 1 
 
 Such being the constitution imposed upon France, 
 but never submitted to the country for ratification, what 
 has been the conduct of the Assembly elected under 
 its auspices ? Its whole career has been one series of 
 intrigues against the President, of squabbles among its 
 members, of assaults upon the liberties of the nation, of 
 violations of its trust, and of decisions which gave the 
 lie to its origin and its professions ; and it has done 
 more to sicken France with the very name and principle 
 of representative government than any elected body 
 since the days of the National Convention. It was 
 elected under a republic ; it was appointed to consoli- 
 date and perfect the republic ; it commenced life by 
 swearing allegiance and fidelity to the republic ; yet 
 it was composed in great part of Orleanists, Bonapar- 
 tists, and Legitimists, who made no secret either of 
 their actual views or of their ulterior designs. Probably 
 not more than 250 members were at any time genuine 
 republicans at heart. The Orleanists visited Clare- 
 mont, and intrigued for the return of the exiled House. 
 The Legitimists avowedly received their directions from 
 
 1 For this sketch of the vices of the constitution we are greatly 
 indebted to two brochures by M. Albert de Broglie. 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 77 
 
 Wiesbaden, and kept steadily before them the interests 
 of the Count de Chambord. The Bonapartists openly 
 sighed after the imperial regime, and took their orders 
 from the Ely see. The members of the Mountain alone 
 were faithful to their trust; they stood to their colours, 
 though conscious that the country was against them, 
 and combined with each of their antagonists in turn to 
 defeat and embarrass the others. A sadder, more fac- 
 tious, more disreputable spectacle than that Assembly, 
 a free country has seldom seen. They turned round 
 almost immediately upon the constituents who had 
 elected them. They abolished universal suffrage by 
 466 votes to 223, and disfranchised three millions of 
 electors. They sent an army to crush the republic of 
 Rome, then fighting so gallantly for its existence, by 
 469 votes to 180. They handed over the primary 
 instruction of the nation to the clergy by 4 4 o votes to 
 187. They enacted laws and sanctioned proceedings 
 against the liberty of the press, severer than Louis 
 Philippe had ever ventured upon. By compelling 
 every writer to sign his name to each article in the 
 journals, they struck a fatal blow at both the influence 
 and the independence of journalism. They sat nearly 
 in permanence, and kept the nation in perpetual hot 
 water. Whenever they adjourned for a short holiday, 
 they left a committee of watch-dogs to overhaul every 
 act of the executive. Their questors attempted to 
 gain the command of the army. And, finally, at the 
 moment of their dissolution, they were discussing, and 
 were expected by a factious combination, to pass a law 
 
78 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 (" on the responsibility of the executive ") which would 
 have virtually transferred the whole power of the state 
 into their hands. 
 
 While the Assembly were thus conspiring against, 
 violating, and discrediting the constitution to which 
 they owed their existence, and which they had sworn to 
 maintain, the conduct of the President had scarcely been 
 one whit more patriotic or more honest. From the first 
 day of his inauguration, it was evident that he was 
 determined to be re-elected by a revision of the con- 
 stitution, if that could be obtained ; if not, in defiance 
 of the constitution. It is even probable that he aimed, 
 not only at a prolongation, but at an increase of his 
 power. For this he flattered the army ; for this he 
 removed and appointed generals and prefects ; for this 
 he played into the hands of the priests ; for this he 
 joined the conservative majority in enacting the law of 
 the 31st of May ; for this he joined the republicans in 
 demanding its repeal. Every action betrayed his 
 patient plodding, and unscrupulous ambition. But on 
 the other hand, he had shown always such sagacity and 
 often such dignity ; his language and bearing were 
 moulded with such unerring tact to suit the tastes and 
 fancies of the French people ; and his personal objects, 
 as far as they were seen, were felt to harmonise so 
 much with the apparent interests of the country, that a 
 strong feeling had grown up among nearly all classes in 
 his favour. His popularity rose as that of the Assembly 
 declined. While reputation after reputation among 
 public men had sunk or suffered shipwreck, while 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 79 
 
 every other statesman had gone down in general esti- 
 mation, while Cavaignac had lost much of his prestige, 
 and Lamartine had been utterly extinguished, and 
 Thiers had been discredited, baffled, and unmasked, and 
 even Guizot had failed to make any progress towards 
 the redemption of his fame, the character of Louis 
 Napoleon gradually rose, from the first day of his 
 election; every step, whether his own or his opponents', 
 contributed to confirm his popularity and consolidate 
 his power. He suffered his rivals and antagonists to 
 exhaust and expose themselves by their own violence; 
 and, keeping strictly within the limits of his prerogative 
 he " bided his time/' and came out victorious from 
 every struggle. Previous, therefore, to the coup d'etat 
 there had gradually grown up among nearly all classes 
 of Frenchmen, a conviction that the destinies of the 
 nation would be far safer, and its character far higher, 
 if confided to a man who, whatever were his faults, had 
 at least shown that he possessed a definite purpose and 
 a firm will, than if left in the hands of a body of men 
 who had manifested no signs of a lofty and decorous 
 patriotism, who had regarded all questions of public 
 policy, foreign and domestic, only as they could be 
 turned to their own private or factious advantage, and 
 who had permitted the sacred banner of the common- 
 wealth, intrusted to their keeping, to be torn by the 
 animosities, and soiled by the passions of party. 
 
 Indeed, it is not easy to exaggerate the discredit 
 brought upon themselves, and upon the very theory of 
 representative government, by the proceedings of the 
 
80 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 leaders of the various political parties in France. 
 Chosen by a suffrage almost universal, bound to their 
 constituents by the closest ties, and returning to them 
 after only three years' tenure of office, it might have 
 been anticipated that, if only from selfish considerations, 
 they would have steadily devoted themselves to study 
 the real and permanent interests of the country, and 
 would have co-operated heartily and zealously with the 
 executive in devising and carrying out schemes for 
 rendering France peaceful and prosperous at home, and 
 powerful and respected abroad. It might have been 
 hoped that their labour would have been earnestly 
 directed towards developing the vast resources of the 
 country, and securing to its industry the freest and 
 most favourable action ; that everything calculated to 
 raise and improve the condition of the masses would 
 have had their first and most sedulous attention ; and 
 that, above all things, they would have striven hard 
 and have sacrificed much for the maintenance of that 
 silent internal harmony, which is the primary necessity 
 of a nation's life. It might have been expected that 
 they would have regarded every question of foreign 
 policy, first, in its bearings on the special interests of 
 France, and secondly, in its bearings on the progress 
 elsewhere of that freedom which they had just re- 
 conquered, and of which everywhere they were the 
 professed defenders. Instead of this, party politics, 
 not social philosophy, occupied almost their whole time ; 
 and external action was dictated by a desire to gain 
 the support of this or that section, to destroy this rival, 
 
FRANCE IN JANUAKY 1852. 81 
 
 or discredit that antagonist ; till their entire career 
 became one indecent and disreputable scramble. 
 
 The result inevitably was an increasing feeling on 
 the part of the public, first of indignation, then of 
 disgust, latterly of sickened and most ominous indif- 
 ference. Ominous, that is, for popular leaders and 
 representative assemblies ; for the people weary of 
 watching the objectless and petty squabbles of their 
 chosen legislators, and disheartened by finding that the 
 rulers they selected for themselves treated them no 
 better and served them no more effectively, than the 
 rulers who had been imposed upon them began to 
 turn their attention to their own private affairs, and to 
 discover how much more they could do for themselves 
 than governments and assemblies could do for them. 
 Since they had trusted more to themselves and less to 
 parliaments, they had prospered comparatively well. 
 Trade was spirited, and industry was thriving and 
 increasing. The political storms which used to agitate 
 all ranks began to pass nearly unheeded over their 
 heads ; for they perceived how paltry and inconse- 
 quential they were. They put their own shoulders to 
 the wheel, instead of calling on the gods above to help 
 them ; and all the noisy quarrels of the great Olympus 
 fell, as by magic, into their genuine insignificance. 
 An idea had already dawned upon the French, that an 
 Assembly which had done so little for them was not of 
 much importance to them; and that if they could 
 prosper in spite of its scandalous dereliction of its 
 duties, and its selfish abuse of its powers, they might 
 
82 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 perhaps prosper even were it non-existent. A whole- 
 some lesson, possibly, for the people, but a fatal one 
 for demagogues and orators. 
 
 When a people has thus begun to look after their 
 private affairs instead of discussing affairs of State, and 
 to act for themselves instead of calling on their rulers 
 to act for them, only one thing is needed to insure 
 their welfare viz., that the government should bring 
 them and secure them tranquillity and order. If it 
 will do this, they ask no more : if it does not do this, 
 it abnegates its paramount and especial function ; it 
 becomes to them a nuisance, not a protection " a 
 mockery, a delusion, and a snare." Now, few English- 
 men are aware, though it is no novel information to a 
 Parisian, to what an extent Frenchmen had come to 
 look upon the Assembly in this light. The constant 
 series of moves and stratagems of which the history 
 of that body was made up, kept the nation in a per- 
 petual state of excitement, expectation, and turmoil. 
 They never knew what would come next. They were 
 constantly on the qui vive for some new explosion. So 
 long as the Assembly was sitting, there was incessant 
 agitation and wild unrest; and thousands would thank- 
 fully have paid the members their twenty-five francs 
 a day not to sit at all. Peace comparative peace 
 came with prorogation ; but the sessions were felt to 
 be deplorably too long, and the vacations piteously too 
 few. So that the body which ought to have been the 
 shield and safeguard of the nation, the guardian of its 
 interests, the protector of its rights, had come to be 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 83 
 
 regarded as a plague, a mischief, and an enemy. Only 
 when it ceased to sit, did France begin to breathe 
 freely. 
 
 The plain truth is that no nation not even the 
 French can bear to be for ever in hot water. Cease- 
 less political agitation is an element in which neither 
 material prosperity, nor moral wellbeing can live. If 
 it seemed hopeless to find the needed tranquillity in 
 freedom, and republicanism, who can wonder if many 
 lost faith and heart, and began to cast a sigh after the 
 calm despotism which beckoned to them out of the 
 softening haze of the past, or towards that which 
 loomed gradually out of the uncertain future. France, 
 for many months back, had echoed in her heart of 
 hearts the words of that touching inscription on the 
 Italian tombstone implora pace. Wearied with 
 achievements which had led to nothing, and victories 
 which had been crowned by no enduring conquests, 
 and trophies dearly purchased, but barren of the pro- 
 mised consequences her whole desires were fast 
 merging into the one succinct petition of the grand 
 old warrior of Carthage, who harassed by perpetual 
 warfare, broken by family afflictions, and thwarted by 
 an ungrateful State closed a public life of singular 
 glory and of bitter disenchantment, with the simple 
 prayer, comprised in so few words, yet full of such 
 melancholy pathos: "Ego, Hannibal, peto pacem /" 
 Such was the state of feeling in France, and such 
 the relative position of the contending parties, 
 immediately previous to the coup d'etat, and it is 
 
84 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 important thoroughly to fix this in our minds, in order 
 to comprehend the full meaning of the President's 
 attempt, and the explanation of the manner in which it 
 was received by the nation. On the one side stood 
 Louis Napoleon, who had far surpassed all expecta- 
 tions formed of him from his discreditable antecedents, 
 and had risen higher day by day in public estimation 
 who had shown consummate knowledge of the 
 temper of the people, and supreme tact in dealing 
 with it who had finally taken his stand on the 
 broad basis of universal suffrage who had long fore- 
 seen and been preparing for the inevitable struggle 
 and with strange sagacity and patience had, as the 
 phrase is, given his opponents " rope enough to hang 
 themselves." On the other side stood the Assembly, 
 on the eve of an election, yet seemingly intent on 
 showing how unfit they were to be re-chosen, point- 
 ing, as their sole titles to popular confidence and a 
 renewal of their trust, to millions of constituents dis- 
 franchised to the revision of a clumsy constitution, 
 demanded by the people but refused by themselves to 
 the freedom of the press, through their means, trampled 
 underfoot to France, through their intrigues, rendered 
 light as a feather in the balance of European power 
 to her gallant army, through their connivance, engaged 
 in the degrading employment of restoring a miserable 
 pontiff, and enslaving an emancipated people to a 
 secret trust, perverted to the purposes of low ambition 
 to the very name of a representative assembly, through 
 their misconduct, covered with ridicule and shame. 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 85 
 
 What the President did we need not relate here ; 
 how he dissolved the Assembly, abolished the consti- 
 tution, imprisoned deputies and generals, appealed to 
 the people, and extinguished all resistance with un- 
 sparing severity, all this is known to every one. 
 The degree of his criminality in this daring usurpation 
 will be differently estimated by different men according 
 to the view they may take as to the wishes and in- 
 terests of France, the urgency of the crisis, and the 
 reality of the alleged and indicated intention on the 
 part of the Assembly to have forestalled and deposed 
 him. On the one hand, it is unquestionable that if 
 he had waited till the Assembly had passed the bill 
 (on executive responsibility), which they were then 
 considering, he would have been wholly in their 
 power. If he had allowed matters to go on as they 
 were till^the election of May, a popular outbreak and 
 a deplorable convulsion would have been almost in- 
 evitable ; for matters had been so arranged that both 
 the legislative and presidential elections would take 
 place at nearly the same time, under a disputed 
 electoral law, and when all the powers of the State 
 were in a condition of paralysis and dissolution. The 
 greatest contest ever known in a representative 
 system was to take place round the dying bed of 
 an expiring President and an expiring Assembly; and 
 the president sure to be chosen was a president in- 
 eligible by law. Moreover, Louis Napoleon might 
 plead that he, as well as the Assembly, was elected by 
 universal suffrage ; that the Assembly had ceased to 
 
 & 
 
86 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 be in harmony with their constitu tents, while he had 
 not ; that when two co-ordinate powers, equally 
 chosen by the people, disagree, the only mode of 
 deciding the dispute is by an appeal to the authority 
 from whicli both emanate ; and that all he did was to 
 make that appeal arbitrarily, which the constitution 
 denied him the power of doing legally. On the other 
 hand, it is equally undeniable that the act which he 
 has perpetrated bears, on the face of it, all the features 
 of a great crime. The constitution which he has 
 violently suppressed, bad as it was, was the de- 
 liberately framed constitution of his country, and was 
 the one which, knowing all its faults, he had sworn to 
 maintain and obey. The liberties which he had so 
 ruthlessly trampled under foot, were the liberties 
 which he had sworn to respect and to watch over. 
 The blood which he has shed was the blood of his 
 fellow-citizens, and ought to have been precious in his 
 eyes. The oath which he has broken was an oath 
 solemnly tendered and often voluntarily affirmed. 
 Therefore, if he is to be forgiven, he must sue out his 
 pardon from the future. Nothing can palliate his 
 crime, except its being the last. Nothing can excuse 
 his seizure of power, except the patriotic use he 
 makes of it. In the meantime we are not anxious to 
 hold the balance or to cast the lot between the guilty 
 President and the guilty Assembly. We adopt the 
 words of Victor Cousin on a different occasion, " Je 
 renvoie, done, les extravagances aux extravagans, les 
 crimes aux criminelles, et je detourne les yeux de ce 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 87 
 
 sang et de cette boue," and, from the sickening and 
 idle task of awarding the palm between two culpable 
 combatants, we turn to consider the prospects, the feel- 
 ings, and the fate of FRANCE under the new regime. 
 Power, illegally seized, is sometimes legally sanctioned. 
 The crimes of individual ambition are often overruled 
 by Providence so as to work out the welfare of nations. 
 In the first place, Louis Napoleon's usurpation has 
 been since ratified and sanctioned in a manner which, 
 after every reasonable deduction has been made on 
 account of the circumstances of the polling, leaves no 
 ground whatever for doubting that it was approved by 
 the nation. Whatever some of our English journals, in 
 their anger and amazement, may say as to the pro- 
 bability of the returns having been falsified, no man in 
 France believes that anything of the kind has been 
 done, to any important extent at least. The total 
 adult male population of France is, as near as can be 
 ascertained, nine millions, and of these we can scarcely 
 reckon fewer to be disqualified from various causes 
 than half a million. This would leave 8,500,000 as 
 the total number of electors under universal suffrage. 
 Of these in round numbers 7,500,000 have voted for 
 Louis Napoleon, and 700,000 against him, while 
 300,000 have abstained from voting. There can be 
 no doubt that some voted in ignorance of the facts of 
 the case; some in an overweening fear of the socialists ; 
 some because, though no friends to Louis Napoleon, 
 they saw no alternative between him and anarchy. It 
 is impossible to affirm, that an election which has 
 
88 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 taken place while all newspapers were suppressed or 
 garbled, while all public meetings and other facilities 
 for forming and circulating opinion were proscribed, 
 while the principal political chiefs were in durance, 
 and while many departments were under martial law, 
 can be considered as a fair one. We believe that Louis 
 Napoleon has done himself serious injury and injustice 
 by thus enabling his antagonists to assert, without the 
 possibility of disproof, that votes have been tampered 
 with, coerced, or obtained by fraud. But when every 
 allowance has been made, we do not believe, and we 
 think no man in France really believes, that the late 
 poll does not give the fair and genuine result of the 
 sentiments of the vast numerical majority of the nation. 
 As to the feelings of the middle classes, we are left to 
 gather the truth from a variety of indications. The 
 great and continued rise in the French rentes, which, 
 notwithstanding the foolish insinuations of some 
 ignorant journalists, was perfectly bond fide ; the 
 equivalent advance in the price of railway shares ; the 
 increased price of most kinds of goods; the immediate 
 and marked revival in nearly all branches of trade ; 
 the issuing of orders which had been long suspended ; 
 all concur to intimate the warm approval of the 
 coup d'etat by the industrial, commercial, and 
 financial classes of France. All our own private 
 foreign correspondents, whether enemies or friends of 
 the President, confirm this conclusion. All agree in 
 representing the state of anxiety and uncertainty in 
 which they had long been kept as utterly intolerable ; 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 89 
 
 most express confidence in the wisdom of Louis 
 Napoleon's future rule and its suitability to France ; 
 all speak of the satisfaction felt at the revolution being 
 nearly universal among all who have anything to lose 
 or anything to gain by honest and reputable means. 
 The majority of the press we presume to be hostile, 
 as also most of the politicians of France. The opinion 
 of the Legitimists and that of the Orleanists appears to 
 be divided. On the whole, however, it cannot be denied 
 that France has elected Louis Napoleon with hearty 
 good will, and anticipates much from his government. 
 In considering this matter, it is important that we 
 should divest ourselves of our insular prejudices and 
 habits of thought, and inquire not what we should feel 
 under such circumstances, but what Frenchmen would 
 be likely to feel ; not what regime would be suitable 
 for England, but what regime is best adapted for 
 France. We must bear in mind that our notions of 
 freedom and policy are utterly at variance with theirs 
 that our beau ideal of a perfect government is 
 diametrically opposite to theirs. The French notion 
 of liberty is political equality ; the English notion is 
 personal independence. The French are accustomed 
 to have their government do everything for them, and 
 direct them in everything, and they expect and wish 
 it to do so ; the English wish never to feel the action, 
 or be compelled to recognise the existence, of govern- 
 ment in their daily and private life. It would 
 therefore be both pedantic and misleading to judge 
 the one nation by the standard of the other, or to act 
 
90 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 for the one on the system of the other. There are 
 two kinds of freedom two modes in which a nation 
 may exercise and prove its liberty. We have chosen 
 one ; France has always shown a marked preference 
 for the other. We prefer to govern ourselves ; it is 
 the peculiar taste of the Anglo-Saxon. The French 
 prefer to choose their governor, and then leave every- 
 thing in his hands : it is the fancy of the Celt. If 
 we select the more troublesome mode, of directing 
 and ruling ourselves, and displaying our liberty in 
 every action of our daily life, we are scarcely at liberty 
 to despise our neighbour as a slave, because he prefers 
 the easier, lazier, and more dangerous plan of con- 
 centrating all his liberty into a single deed, and then 
 abnegating self-management and self-responsibility for 
 ever. ' Ours, indeed, is unquestionably the wiser and 
 the safer plan ; but it may not be suited for, or 
 practicable among, a race so divergent from ourselves 
 as are the people of France. 
 
 May not the French have been all along upon the 
 wrong tack, in aiming at the establishment of a parlia- 
 mentary government in their country ? May they not 
 have been entirely mistaken in adopting and supposing 
 that they could manage a machine which appeared 
 to have done so well with us ? May not the form of 
 government and the guarantees of freedom suitable 
 for France be wholly different from those which have 
 been found available in England ? 
 
 An ancient legend of deep significance relates that 
 there once lived a magician who had discovered a 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 91 
 
 spell of singular cogency and virtue, by means of 
 which he could command the attendance and compel 
 the obedience of a familiar spirit, through whose 
 services he acquired fame, wealth, and wide dominion. 
 A favourite pupil, inspired with the ambition of 
 rivalling his master's power, possessed himself of the 
 mighty secret, pronounced the magic spell, and evoked 
 the wondrous agency ; but he had emitted one little 
 and apparently unimportant word in the formula of 
 invocation, and the demon, therefore, though he had 
 obeyed the summons, refused to submit to the control 
 of the incompetent magician ; instead of being a 
 serviceable and obedient slave, he became an imperious 
 and terrific tyrant, whom the unfortunate evoker was 
 unable to dismiss, who tormented him through life, 
 and ended by tearing 'him to pieces. 
 
 The events that for the last sixty years have been 
 passing on the other side of the Channel, seem the re- 
 production of this medieval tale. France is the ambi- 
 tious pupil ; representative institutions the magical 
 spirit the power for good or evil which she has 
 evoked, but cannot manage or dismiss. In summon- 
 ing them to her aid to enable her to rise out of the 
 servitude and degradation of the past, and enter on a 
 new career of greatness and glory, she forgot one little 
 ingredient in the composition of the magic spell, the 
 omission of which has converted a blessing into a bane, 
 a patient servant into a capricious despot, and has 
 transmuted the pride and safeguard of England into 
 the curse and reproach of France. Personal virtue, 
 
92 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 public .principle, pure, lofty, and self-abnegating patriot- 
 ism was omitted from the invocation. The formula 
 was borrowed faithfully enough ; the spirit which 
 sanctified and gave it efficacy was alone left out. 
 
 From its first glorious beginning in 1789, to its 
 last ignominious ending in 1851, the whole history of 
 Representative Assemblies in France has been one 
 series of oscillations between despotism and impotence. 
 When there has been only one Chamber it has almost 
 invariably grasped at the supreme authority; when there 
 have been two they have been as uniformly curbed or 
 rendered insignificant. Parliaments in France have 
 always either absorbed the executive power or been 
 absorbed by it. They have alternately been omnipotent 
 or powerless. They have always been either sinned 
 against, or sinning. Never yet have the legislative and 
 the executive bodies worked in harmony as co-equal 
 and co-ordinate functionaries. Neither has endured 
 "a brother near the throne." Neither seems to have 
 been able to conceive any medium between absolute 
 authority or complete subserviency, nor to have 
 believed its existence safe or dignified till its rival and 
 colleague was effaced or enslaved. The reins of power 
 have dangled between the two, snatched alternately by 
 the one or the other, the unhappy chariot of the 
 State, in the meantime, dragged first into one ditch, 
 then into the other, but always going to the dogs. 
 
 When the first great revolution broke out, sixty-two 
 years ago, nearly all parties seemed disposed to put 
 aside the past as an ugly dream, the present looked 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 93 
 
 very hopeful, and the future very bright. A monarchy 
 strong in old associations, an Assembly rich in young 
 hopes arid enthusiastic aspirations, a fine spirit of 
 patriotism and energy pervading most classes of the 
 nation, seemed materials to warrant the most sanguine 
 anticipations. But the struggle for supremacy soon 
 began, the sovereign intrigued against the Chamber ; 
 the Chamber encroached upon the sovereign, thwarted 
 him, fettered him, reduced him to a cypher, imprisoned 
 him, and slew him. The Assembly possessed itself of 
 the executive power, and governed the country by 
 sections and committees : how, let the Reign of Terror, 
 and the reaction, incapacity, and license of the 
 Directory, proclaim. When Napoleon, on the 18th 
 Brumaire, overpowered the Chambers by an armed 
 force, and became First Consul, then Consul for life, 
 then Emperor, the Representative Assemblies sank into 
 a nullity, and throughout his reign remained little 
 but courts for registering and giving legal form and 
 validity to his decrees. Under Louis XVIII. and 
 Charles X., they were little heeded by the monarch, 
 and little respected by the people ; they spoke some- 
 times, but scarcely ever acted, and such spirit of 
 liberty as survived in France was kept in existence by 
 a resolute but persecuted press. Then came the 
 revolution of 1830, when "the charter was hence- 
 forth to be a truth/' a real fact ; but corruption soon 
 again made the Chambers what oppression had made 
 them before, the passive tools of the monarch's will. 
 An Assembly chosen by 180,000 electors, among 
 
94 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 whom the sovereign had 600,000 places to dispose of, 
 could be no valid barrier to his authority ; and Louis 
 Philippe became nearly absolute under the forms of 
 constitutionalism. Lastly followed the revolution of 
 February, which installed in office a single popular 
 and powerful Chamber, with an elective President 
 high in station, dignity, and nominal authority, but 
 watched, thwarted, and guarded as a public enemy. 
 The old contest immediately recommenced ; the Presi- 
 dent resented and fretted under his position of invidious 
 and jealous slavery ; the Assembly intrigued to en- 
 gross the entire authority of the State ; and the old 
 miserable struggle was terminated by the old rusty 
 weapon a coup d'etat, and a military despotism. 
 
 Now, why is it that constitutional government, 
 which works so well in England, will not work at all 
 in France ? Why is it that, however often it is re- 
 established there, the irresistible tendency of the 
 nation towards another state of things ensures its 
 speedy overthrow, or its virtual dormancy ? Why is 
 it that the representative system, every time it is set 
 up in France, seems, by its failure, to proclaim its 
 want of adaptation to the national necessities, its want 
 of harmony with the national characteristics ? Does 
 not this reiterated rejection of it, like food which does 
 not agree, indicate that it is not what France requires, 
 that it is not the medicine or the aliment which nature 
 prescribes for her present constitution, or her actual 
 maladies ? Let us consider, especially, two points 
 which will illustrate our meaning. 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 95 
 
 The representative system is essentially the creature 
 and the child of compromise. Constitutional govern- 
 ment, by which we mean an elective body emanating 
 from the people, co-existing as a reality by the side of 
 an executive, whether hereditary or not, endowed with 
 the requisite authority, is the result of mutual for- 
 bearance, moderation, and respect ; exists only by 
 virtue of these qualities ; could not endure for an 
 hour without them. It is an entire mistake to 
 imagine such a scheme theoretically good; it is, on 
 the contrary, theoretically imperfect, and is feasible 
 only on the supposition of additional elements, which 
 are not " nominated in the bond." It is an entire 
 mistake to affirm that English liberty has flourished 
 in consequence of our glorious constitution. English 
 liberty has flourished in spite of our anomalous and 
 defective constitution ; it has flourished in consequence 
 of national virtues, in the absence of which that con- 
 stitution would have been utterly unmanageable. The 
 machine which is supposed to have made us what we 
 are, would have broken down generations ago, had we 
 been other than what we are. It is full of checks and 
 counter-checks, of anomalies and incongruities, which 
 would seem to indicate its fitting place, as an un- 
 working model, in a museum of monstrosities. The 
 monarch has the sole power of forming treaties, and 
 of declaring peace and war. He alone commands the 
 army. He alone appoints all functionaries, civil, mili- 
 tary, and judicial. He can dissolve parliament when- 
 ever it thwarts him, and as often as he pleases. He 
 
96 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 can put an absolue veto on all its enactments. He can 
 suspend laws by orders in council, if he can find 
 ministers bold enough to run the risk of a refusal on 
 the part of parliament to indemnify them afterwards. 
 The House of Lords, or a majority of them, about 200 
 men, can snub both king and House of Commons, and 
 stop all proceedings indefinitely, and paralyse the 
 entire action of Government. Again, the House of 
 Commons can release the army from their allegiance, 
 by omitting to pass the yearly " Mutiny Bill." It can 
 refuse the monarch the means of carrying on the war 
 which it yet empowers him to declare, and of paying 
 the functionaries whom it yet authorises him to 
 appoint. It can impeach the ministers whom it 
 allows him to nominate ; yet if they are condemned, 
 it still leaves him the power of conferring immunity 
 upon them by an unlimited prerogative of pardon. 
 The constitution gives the monarch means of absolute 
 despotism, if he is wicked enough to desire it, and if 
 the army will stand by him, and if the people will 
 endure military rule. It gives the nobles power to 
 set both people and monarch at defiance, if they are 
 selfish and daring enough to do so. It gives the 
 Lower House the power of starving both its colleagues 
 into a surrender, on the supposition that both its 
 colleagues will keep within the limits of the law. But 
 it proceeds throughout on the supposition that none of 
 these things will occur ; that their occurrence will be 
 prevented by their possibility ; that none of the three 
 parties will be forgetful of their duties, or be disposed 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 97 
 
 to push their rights to an extreme ; that each will 
 bear and forbear ; that all will join in masking the 
 impossibilities of the constitution, and avoiding the 
 collisions which its theory makes so easy ; and that 
 all, like the reverential children of the frail patriarch 
 of old, will concur in covering, with a decent and 
 respectful drapery, the nakedness of their common 
 parent. 
 
 But what would be the result were the English 
 machine to be worked by French hands ? Each of 
 the three co-ordinate authorities would assert its power 
 to the utmost. Each would make use of its large 
 portion to seize the whole. The peers would put on 
 the drag at the slightest opposition to their will. The 
 Commons would stop the supplies on the most trivial 
 provocation. The sovereign would employ the army 
 to levy the taxes and subdue the people. The parlia- 
 ment would impeach the minister, and the monarch 
 would insult and defy them by giving him a free 
 pardon. The whole would be at a dead-lock in a 
 month. The opposing forces would substitute mutual 
 antagonism for mutual control ; and the result would 
 be, not a diagonal as with us, but simply a checkmate 
 not a medial movement, but an absolute stoppage. 
 The ultima- ratio which we have staved off for cen- 
 turies, would be reached by Frenchmen in a single 
 session. Representative government, then, we say, 
 embodies the essence, breathes the atmosphere, lives 
 the life of COMPROMISE. But the French hate com- 
 promise. The very idea of it disgusts them. What 
 
 G 
 
98 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 they are they like to be completely. What they have 
 they like to have to themselves, without colleague or 
 without competitor. A possession which they hold 
 only in concert, with equal co -proprietors, has few 
 charms for them. The Legitimists are unwilling to 
 replace their sovereign on the throne, on any basis 
 but that of divine right, and absolute authority. In 
 their notion he would be degraded if he owed his 
 crown to the summons of the people, or shared his 
 power with a new aristocracy, or a popular assembly. 
 The bourgeoisie in like manner would ignore the 
 nobles, and reduce them to a nullity. And the demo- 
 cracy, equally exclusive and intolerant, cannot imagine 
 that the mass of the people can be rightfully called 
 on to admit the existence or recognise the claims of 
 any other party, and insist upon an exclusive, absolute, 
 and uncontrolled dominion. Guizot, in his Treatise 
 on Democracy, seized' this peculiarity of France with 
 the quick instinct of a master's eye. " Peace is im- 
 possible," he says (for the word peace we would sub- 
 stitute representative constitutionalism), " so long as 
 the various classes and political parties whom our 
 society comprises, nourish the hope of mutually 
 destroying each other, and possessing an exclusive 
 empire. This is the evil which, since 1789, torments 
 us continually, and overthrows us periodically. The 
 monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements, have 
 not accepted or recognised each other, but have toiled 
 for their reciprocal exclusion. Constitution, laws, 
 administration, have been in turn directed, like 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 99 
 
 engines of war, to the destruction of one or other 
 party. It has been a ' war to the knife/ in which 
 neither of the combatants believed it possible to live 
 if his rival was still erect and breathing by his side." 
 
 French exclusiveness and the hatred of compromise, 
 then, is the first reason why representative institutions 
 have not flourished in France. But there is another 
 and a yet deeper cause. The revolutions have always 
 begun at the wrong end. They have looked only to 
 one point, and that not the primary, nor the most 
 essential one. They have begun their reforms with 
 institutions, not with individuals. They have thought 
 it sufficient to reconstruct society in the aggregate, 
 without modifying or amending the units which 
 compose it. They forgot in their earliest efforts, and 
 have never paused to remember since, that the con- 
 crete mass must represent and resemble the materials 
 of which it is made up ; and that if the individuals 
 are corrupt, selfish, violent, and impure, the com- 
 munity cannot be firm, peaceable, dignified, or noble. 
 Accustomed to trace their evils to their institutions, 
 taught alike by their writers and their orators to cast 
 upon empty forms the burden of their engrained sins, 
 they conceived that a change of institutions and of forms 
 would work those miracles, which are the slow and 
 painful product of private virtue and individual 
 exertion ; of patient toil, and more patient endurance 
 of mutual respect, and mutual love. They 
 imagined they could reform society without first 
 reforming themselves. Hence all their schemes and 
 
100 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 constitutions have been projects for obtaining the 
 reward without the effort the victory without the 
 conflict or the sacrifice ; for dispensing with in- 
 dispensable qualifications in place of eliciting or 
 exercising them ; for doing great actions without 
 first training great souls ; for seeking in the barren 
 and narrow range of the mechanical, what can only be 
 found in the rich resources of the moral world. They 
 worked for the salvation of the individual without 
 requiring his participation in the task. Fatal 
 blunder ! They imagined that men might be 
 rendered free and equal by destroying external barriers 
 and striking off material chains ; they did not per- 
 ceive that freedom and equality have their sole roots 
 and guarantees within the man. They abolished the 
 ancien regime; but they abolished it in vain, while 
 each man carried his ancien regime within himself. 
 The old vices, the old corruption, the old selfishness, 
 the old ambition, the old passion for material en- 
 joyments, the old incapacity for silent and elevated 
 patriotism, still survived, and were never struck out 
 at or fairly encountered : how then should not the 
 old anomalies re-appear ? The garments were torn 
 and buried ; but the body and the life remained. 
 Now, as surely as the laws of Providence are constant 
 and inexorable, so surely can there be, for nation or 
 for individual, no short cut to a goal which God has 
 placed at the end of a toilsome and appointed path ; 
 no mechanical contrivances for the attainment of an 
 end which is the allotted reward of moral effort and 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 101 
 
 self-denying virtue ; no human fiat for the gratuitous 
 bestowal of blessings for which heaven has appointed 
 a hard and heavy purchase-money. The functions of 
 government self-government as well as every other 
 demand qualifications, negative and positive, of no 
 ordinary kind ; qualifications which are not inherent 
 or innate ; qualifications for which the demand by no 
 means always calls forth the supply. The mere 
 possession of power confers neither capacity nor 
 virtue to exercise it well ; and in obtaining the 
 representative institutions that belong to freedom, 
 while still tainted with all the vices of their ancient 
 servitude, the French only seized a treasure of which 
 they had forgotten to secure the key, a weapon of 
 which they had not learned the mastery, a writing in 
 cypher to which they had not got the clue. Caution, 
 humility, obedience to law, long-suffering patience, 
 respect for others' rights, and others' opinions, these, 
 the sine qua non of a constitutional regime, they 
 never dreamed of practising ; aspiring to raise the 
 superstructure, while shirking the preliminary drudgery 
 of laying the foundation. 
 
 A third reason why parliamentary government, 
 which has answered so well in England, has answered 
 so ill in France, may be found in the fact, that it 
 harmonises with our habits and institutions, but is 
 wholly discrepant and incongruous with those of our 
 neighbours. We govern ourselves ; they are governed 
 by officials. Our whole system is municipal, theirs is 
 bureaucratic. We have already spoken of their 
 
102 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 centralised administration, and the extent to which 
 it pervades and interpenetrates the daily and domestic 
 life of the nation. In England, the civil servants 
 of the government are few, unconnected, and 
 unobtrusive ; in France they are innumerable, 
 omnipotent, and constitute a separate, or organised, 
 and powerful class. En England they confine them- 
 selves to absolutely necessary functions ; in France 
 they interfere with every transaction and every event 
 of life. In England, as a general rule, a man is only 
 reminded of their existence by the annual visit of the 
 tax-gatherer, unless, indeed, he has to appeal to the 
 law, or has rendered himself amenable to it ; in 
 France, scarcely a day passes, scarcely an operation 
 can be concluded, without coming into contact or 
 collision with one or other of their number. Many of 
 the duties performed by officials on the Continent 
 are here performed by elected, parochial, or municipal 
 functionaries, many are left to individual discretion, 
 many more are not performed at all. With us a 
 man's free will is limited only by his neighbour's free 
 will and his neighbour's rights ; in France, as in 
 Austria, it can be exercised only subject to govern- 
 ment or police permission previously obtained. 
 Restriction is the exception here ; it is the rule 
 there. Throughout the Continent, a citizen cannot 
 engage in business, build a house, or take a journey, 
 without leave ; and leave is only to be obtained 
 through an established routine of tedious and annoying 
 formalities which would drive an Englishman frantic. 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 103 
 
 A second operation of this centralised and over- 
 active bureaucracy, has necessarily been to deprive the 
 people of France of all share in those minor acts of 
 government which should form their education for 
 higher offices and more important functions. They 
 have only the faintest vestiges of those municipal 
 institutions which, with us, are such invaluable normal 
 schools of peaceable agitation and political discussion. 
 They have no local senates to prepare them for the 
 central senate of the nation ; or, where such exist, 
 they have no real power, and therefore excite little 
 interest. The officials do everything : the people 
 do nothing. They are associated with none of the 
 acts of government except the highest. They choose 
 no one except their legislative representatives and 
 their executive chief no one at least whose functions 
 are much more than nominal. Under a bureaucracy, 
 they have, and can have, no opportunity of training 
 themselves in those skilful tactics, those mutual 
 forbearances, those timely retreats, those judicious 
 compromises, which form the essence of safe and wise 
 political strategies. In a word, they are almost wholly 
 without those real parochial and communal liberties, 
 which are an indispensable preparation for national 
 and republican liberties. Hence, when summoned 
 to the task of self-government by means of a popular 
 assembly, they are like pilots intrusted with the 
 navigation of a ship who have never been at sea 
 before. 
 
 In May 1851 we wrote thus : 
 
104 FRANCE IN J'ANUARY 1852. 
 
 " Republicanism and bureaucracy are incompatible existences. 
 You may call your State a republic if you will you may modify 
 its form as you please you may have two chambers or one you 
 may place at the head a military dictator, or an elective president 
 holding office for one year, for four years, or for ten ; but so 
 long as the administration of public affairs remains central and 
 bureaucratic, the utmost that full representation or universal 
 suffrage can give, is the power of choosing the particular set of 
 busy bodies who shall rule you, or rather the irresponsible 
 individual who shall appoint them. It is not liberty, but merely 
 the selection of your head oppressor. Thus France is in a 
 radically false position, and she has not yet found it out ; she is 
 endeavouring unconsciously to unite two incompatibilities. Her 
 government has all the finished and scientific organisation of a 
 despotism, with the political institutions which belong to free- 
 dom. Each man has a share in the choice of his legislator and 
 his executive chief ; each man is the depositary of a calculable 
 fraction of the sovereign power ; but each man is the slave of 
 the passport office, the prefect, the gendarme, and the policeman. 
 The republic of to-day may wake and find itself an empire 
 to-morrow scarcely an individual Frenchman would feel the 
 difference and not one iota of the administration need be 
 changed. As it exists now, it was the child and may be the 
 parent of imperialism. The whole machinery of autocratic rule 
 is at all times ready for the hand of anyone who can seize it. ;; 
 
 What a commentary on our prediction has the 
 revolution of the 2d of December afforded ! Surely 
 it should teach France the soundness of our present 
 position viz , that she cannot serve two masters ; she 
 cannot at the same moment " fill her cup from the 
 mouth and from the source of the Nile." She cannot 
 be at once representative and bureaucratic. If she 
 desires parliamentary government, she must abolish 
 centralisation. But it is beyond dispute that this 
 system of administration, which to us seems so 
 intolerable, is singularly popular in France ; and that 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 105 
 
 parliaments, which appear to us so indispensable, are 
 by no means popular. The one system is indigenous, 
 and is, therefore, welcome and stable ; the other is an 
 exotic, and, therefore, takes no root, shows no stamina, 
 can arrive at no permanency or durability. It did not 
 grow out of the people's wants : it does not harmonise 
 with the people's sentiments. What France wants 
 is what Napoleon gave her viz., a firm and all- 
 penetrating administrative system, with municipal 
 bodies and national assemblies, whose functions were 
 limited to the representation of grievances ; and, in 
 addition, she wants what he did not give her and 
 what yet remains a desideratum a guarantee against 
 the misgovernment of arbitrary power. Now, we in 
 England are too apt to fall into the natural but some- 
 what pedantic error of supposing that this guarantee is 
 afforded, and can only be afforded, by representative 
 institutions. Yet the whole history of France since 
 her first revolution might have taught us our mistake. 
 She had representative institutions in 1793; yet they 
 did not secure her against the most grinding tyranny 
 which was ever imposed upon a people a tyranny 
 which was known and proved to be that of a minority 
 a tyranny, nevertheless, which it required the 
 bloodshed and the coup of the 9th Thermidor to 
 overthrow. She had representative institutions in 
 1799 ; yet they did not protect her against the 
 wretched misgovernment of the Directory, nor against 
 the daring conspiracy by which, on the 18th Brumaire, 
 both they and the Directory were superseded. Repre- 
 
106 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 sentative institutions did not protect France against 
 the arbitrary decrees of Charles X., nor against the 
 necessity of a revolution to dethrone him. They did 
 not enable her to extort reform from Louis Philippe 
 without the same bloody and rudimental expedient. 
 Finally, they did not protect her from the violent 
 usurpation of the President in December last. She 
 has tried them under every form and modification ; and 
 under none have they superseded the necessity of 
 revolutions; under none have they enabled her to 
 dispense with the same rude and primitive mode of 
 expressing dissatisfaction and desire of change which is 
 resorted to by nations to whom parliaments and ballot- 
 boxes are unknown. They are effective to preserve 
 the rights and liberties of citizens only where patriotism 
 and a sense of justice are so paramount that instruments 
 cannot be found to trample upon them. They are 
 powerful to deter bad rulers from misgovernment, only 
 when it is known that misgovernment will not be 
 borne. The same coup d'etat which has overturned 
 the government in France might have taken place in 
 England just as well, if the monarch had been wicked 
 enough to attempt it, the parliament discredited 
 enough to provoke it, the army subservient enough to 
 enact it, the people base enough or wearied enough 
 to submit to it. A representative system contains 
 "the form but not the power" of freedom. It offers 
 no security except on the assumption true with 
 us, false with our neighbours that the parties con- 
 cerned in it will be kept within its limits by a sense 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 107 
 
 of duty, or a sense of fear. A king of England could 
 not have acted as the President of France has done, 
 not because the parliament and the law forbad him, 
 but simply because the army would not have assaulted 
 the parliament or disobeyed the law, and because the 
 people would not tamely have endured either violation. 
 Representative institutions are merely an established 
 mode of manifesting to the ruler the resolution of the 
 nation. 'Other simpler, louder, and more cogent 
 modes of manifesting this resolution may be found 
 not indeed suited to our meridian, but possibly to the 
 meridian of France. This louder language is what 
 France always speaks in whether she has a parliament 
 or not. A central executive chief, chosen by the free 
 vote of the whole people, and liable at any time or at 
 stated intervals to be cashiered by a reversal of that 
 vote if he loses national confidence or incurs national 
 condemnation, may possibly enough be a better system 
 of government for France than any she has yet tried. 
 " But where is the security (we are asked) that such 
 adverse vote will be submitted to by a powerful chief?" 
 True ; but in reply we ask " Have we found that 
 representative assemblies have afforded any such 
 security?" And may not the whole matter be summed 
 up in this brief decision, that no mode of expressing 
 the national will will ever obtain submissive acquie- 
 scence, or reach the undisputed dignity of a sacred and 
 supreme decree, till the whole people, those who com- 
 mand as well as those who obey, those who succumb 
 as well as those who prevail, are penetrated and imbued 
 
108 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 with a paramount love of justice, a noble servitude to 
 duty, and a solemn reverence for law. When these 
 qualities reign universal and despotic, almost any form 
 of government will suffice to embalm freedom and 
 insure greatness ; till these are acquired and main- 
 tained, the wisest system of policy ever devised by the 
 most profound and subtle intellect of man can secure 
 them no liberty and bring them no rest. 1 
 
 1 We particularly recommend to our readers the following 
 quotations from one of the greatest historians and political 
 thinkers of our time : 
 
 " The English in the 16th century were, beyond all doubt, a 
 free people. They had not indeed the outward show of freedom ; 
 but they had the reality. They had not as good a constitution 
 as we have ; but they had that without which the best constitu- 
 tion is as useless as the king's proclamation against vice and 
 immorality, that which without any constitution keeps rulers in 
 awe force, and the spirit to use it. ... A modern Englishman 
 can hardly understand how the people can have had any real 
 security for good government under kings who levied benevolences 
 and chid the House of Commons as they would have chid a pack of 
 dogs. People do not sufficiently consider that, though the legal 
 checks were feeble, the natural checks were strong. There was 
 one great and effectual limitation on the royal authority the 
 knowledge that, if the patience of the nation were severely tried, 
 the nation would put forth its strength, and that its strength 
 would be irresistible. 
 
 " The Irish are better represented in parliament than the 
 Scotch, who, indeed, are not represented at all. [This was written 
 before 1832.] But are the Irish better governed than the Scotch? 
 Surely fnot. But this only proves that laws have no magical 
 or supernatural virtue ; that priestcraft, ignorance, and the rage 
 of contending factions may make good institutions useless ; that 
 intelligence, sobriety, industry, moral freedom, firm union, may 
 supply in a great measure the defects of the worst representative 
 system. A people whose education and habits are such that, in 
 every quarter of the world, they rise above the mass of those with 
 
FKANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 109 
 
 The cultivation of these qualities, then, and of the 
 virtues which are allied to them and foster them, is 
 the first necessity of the national life of France. For 
 this process the two requisites are time and rest. The 
 whole morale of France is fearfully perverted and dis- 
 organised ; how fearfully, we endeavoured to describe 
 in a previous paper. The very alphabet of the deca- 
 logue has to be revived. Religion has to restore its 
 influence and re-assert its claims. Literature has to 
 be rescued from its. grotesque deformities and its 
 hideous pollutions, to be cleansed from its old abomi- 
 nations, and inspired with a diviner life. The founda- 
 tions of social existence have to be purified and 
 renovated. The school-time and apprenticeship of 
 political action have to be passed through. But how 
 can religion flourish or be heard amid the miserable 
 intrigues or the sanguinary conflicts of balanced 
 factions ? How can the moral standard of a people be 
 
 whom they mix, as surely as oil rises to the top of the water ; a 
 people of such temper and self-government that the wildest 
 popular excesses recorded in their history partake of the purity 
 of judicial proceedings and the solemnity of religious rites ; a 
 people whose high and haughty spirit is so forcibly described in 
 the motto which encircles their thistle ; such a people cannot be 
 long oppressed. Any government, however constituted, must 
 respect their wishes, and tremble at their discontents. . . . 
 They will be better governed under a good constitution than 
 under a bad constitution. But they will be better governed 
 under the worst constitution than some other nations under the 
 best. In any general classification of constitutions, that of Scot- 
 land must be reckoned as one of the worst perhaps the worst 
 of Christian Europe. Yet the Scotch are not ill governed. And 
 the reason simply is that they will not bear to be ill governed." 
 Macaulay, Lord Burleigh and his Times. 
 
110 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 raised and cleared amid the tumults of passions con- 
 stantly excited, and of strife unceasingly renewed ? 
 How can literature rise into a purer atmosphere, or 
 breathe a calmer tone, or spread abroad the soothing 
 influence of a serener spirit, when " the loud transac- 
 tions of the outlying world " keep the cultivated circles 
 in a perpetual fever, which makes all wholesome food 
 distasteful, and all moderate and gentle stimuli insipid? 
 An interval of repose, a breathing time of recollection 
 and recovery, seems to be demanded alike in the name 
 of the material and the spiritual interests of France 
 alike for the development of her physical resources, 
 and the renovation of her moral life ; a period during 
 which a new generation might grow up, nurtured amid 
 all the sweet sanctities of domestic life, played upon 
 by all the countless influences of social peace, and 
 sheltered from the angry passions and turbulent emo- 
 tions which muddied and distracted the existence of 
 their fathers and their grandfathers ; a stable rule, 
 against which rebellion would be madness ; a settled 
 law, which should no longer leave obedience or dis- 
 obedience an open question ; a government which all 
 could respect, and which the bad should fear; and 
 such just civil and moderate political rights as might 
 be enjoyed and strengthened, and be gradually aug- 
 mented as they were exercised and mastered : these 
 seem now what France requires, and what her new 
 ruler, if he be either wise or patriotic, might bestow. 
 
 That the French nation as a whole is ardently, 
 though vaguely, attached to the great idea of the first 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. Ill 
 
 Revolution, there can, we think, be no reasonable 
 doubt. But there may be great doubt whether French 
 politicians are not as pedantic in supposing that this 
 idea necessarily involves a republic, as English politi- 
 cians are in conceiving all liberty to be bound up in 
 parliamentary forms. The two prolific principles 
 established in 1789 were, first, the sovereignty of the 
 people ; and, secondly, the inadmissibility of a privi- 
 leged class. Now neither of these principles require 
 that a republic, according to our notion of one, should 
 be the form of government selected. They merely 
 require that it shall not be an oligarchy ; and that, 
 whatever it be, it shall emanate from the people. 
 Many months ago we were assured by a very intelli- 
 gent Parisian, that " La France est republicain et 
 Bonapartiste ; " and that the two were by no means 
 incongruous or incompatible. That France should at 
 one and the same moment cling to a republic, and to 
 the name and memory of the man who destroyed the 
 republic, who rose upon its ruins, and replaced it by 
 one of the most iron and autocratic despotisms the 
 world ever saw, seems at first sight to involve a con- 
 tradiction ; but the inconsistency and improbability 
 will vanish when we reflect that Napoleon professed 
 to complete the idea of a Republic, and to govern in 
 its name that he took especial care to receive each 
 successive elevation through the forms of a popular 
 election that a Frenchman's notion of liberty is not 
 personal freedom, but political equality that a repub- 
 lican form of government is chiefly dear to him as 
 
112 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 embodying this inaccurate and incomplete conception 
 and that his bugbear, his bete noire, his pious 
 abomination, is not a chief or master, but a privileged 
 order. He dislikes and dreads an aristocracy, not an 
 autocracy. A nominal Commonwealth, even with an 
 arbitrary despot like Napoleon at its head, provided it 
 be in any sense, whether tacitly or formally, the 
 nation's choice, satisfies a Frenchman's confused and 
 misty ideal. This singular union of what seem to 
 Englishmen two opposed and mutually excluding con- 
 ditions of polity republican institutions and imperial 
 sway is embodied in a most characteristic manner 
 in much of the current coinage of France. Every old 
 five-franc piece contains what we should call an Irish 
 bull. All the money coined under the empire bears 
 " Republique Frangaise " on the one side, and 
 " Napoleon Empereur " on the reverse. The face of 
 the coin affirms a fact ; the back gives it a point- 
 blank contradiction. 
 
 We believe the coin so marked to be a faithful 
 representation of the mind of the great mass of the 
 French people, and to speak their real sentiments. 
 An emperor stamped upon a republic ! A regal, cen- 
 tral, powerful, brilliant chief, elected or confirmed by 
 popular suffrage. Not freedom from control, but the 
 selection of the great controller. Napoleon under- 
 stood this well. Chosen by the people, at first by a 
 sort of general acclamation, and afterwards by an 
 almost universal vote, he believed himself, and we 
 believe him to have been, a truer representative of 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 113 
 
 their wishes and opinions than any assembly that was 
 ever elected. Strong in the strength of this convic- 
 tion, and confident in his perfect comprehension of the 
 requirements of his country, he framed that wonderful 
 administrative organisation of which we have already 
 spoken, and promulgated the constitution under which, 
 with some modifications, France lived so long. The 
 principle of that constitution was that of a strong and 
 concentrated executive, aided by all the enlightenment 
 and assistance it could derive from the practical know- 
 ledge and experience of the ablest men in the country. 
 Napoleon refused no advice, but permitted no inter- 
 ference. The idea never entered into his head of 
 ingrafting upon one another two things as distinct in 
 their origin and as discordant in their operation as the 
 centralised administration, so peculiarly French, and 
 the parliamentary regime, so peculiarly British. He 
 looked upon the senate, the legislative body, the 
 council of state, the local and departmental councils, 
 as collections of men from whom he could gain much 
 useful information, and much valuable aid ; he never 
 recognised their right to shackle his administrative 
 action, or to step out of their narrow and allotted 
 province. With regard to the provincial councils, he 
 wished that they should be listened to with deference 
 and patience. One of the prefects of the Cote d'Or 
 having failed to listen with due respect to the repre- 
 sentations of the municipal body, Napoleon sent him 
 a severe and grave rebuke. But when the council- 
 general of the Haute Garonne, in the same year, took 
 
 H 
 
114 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 upon it to criticise a portion of the system of taxation 
 then established, he snubbed it most unmercifully, 
 and explained very clearly to its members the nature 
 and limits of their functions, as follows : 
 
 " Les conseils generaux ne sont point institutes pour donner 
 leurs avis sur les lois et sur les decrets. Ce n'est pas la le but de 
 leur reunion. On n'a ni le besoin ni la volonte de leur demander 
 de conseils. 
 
 " Us ne sont et ne peuvent <Hre que des conseils d'ad ministra- 
 tion. Dans cette qualite, leurs devoirs se bornent a faire con- 
 naitre comment les lois et les decrets sont executes dans leurs 
 departemens. Us sont autorises a representer les abus qui les 
 frappent, soit dans les details de 1'administration particuliere des 
 departemens, soit dans la conduite des administrateurs ; mais ils 
 lie doivent les faire qu'en consideYant ce qui est ordonne par les 
 lois ou par les decrets, comme etant le mieux possible. 
 
 u Un homme qui sort de la vie privee pour venir passer trois 
 ou quatre jours au chef -lieu de son departement fait une chose 
 egalement inconvenante et ridicule lorsqu'il se mle de comparer 
 ce qui existe en vertu des lois de 1'ad ministration generale 
 actuelle avec ce qui existait dans un autre temps, et lorsqu'k la 
 faveur de quelques observations utiles sur 1'administration par- 
 ticuli^re de son departement, il se permet des observations 
 critiques et incoherentes. . . . Sans donte, il a ete des temps, 
 oft la confusion de toutes les idees, la faiblesse extraordinaire de 
 1'administration generale, les intrigues, qui 1'agitaient, faisaient 
 penser a beaucoup de citoyens isoles, qu'ils etaient plus sages que 
 ceux qui les gouvernaient, et qu'ils avaient plus de capacite pour 
 les affaires. Ce temps riest plus. EEmpereur n'tfcoute personne 
 que dans la sphere des attributions respectives." 
 
 We are far from saying or thinking that the amount 
 of political liberty, and of participation in national 
 affairs, which Napoleon allowed even at the com- 
 mencement of his consulate, can or ought permanently 
 to satisfy a people like the French. But it well 
 deserves the dispassionate consideration both of our 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 115 
 
 own doctrinaires and our continental imitators, whether 
 a sounder and higher ultimate result may not be 
 obtained by commencing from such moderate germs 
 of political freedom and civil action as may in time, 
 by degrees, and through a process of extorted conces- 
 sions, be ripened and expanded into an ample and 
 fitting constitution, than by starting with such a con- 
 stitution ready made on paper ; whether it would 
 not be wise for Frenchmen to follow our example in 
 the slow, painful, and laborious steps by which we 
 have achieved and wrung out our liberties practising 
 them as we won them consolidating them as we went 
 along rather than to grasp at the finished treasure, 
 without learning the lessons which teach its value, 
 or acquiring the mystery over it which confers its 
 value and guarantees its security. As in the grand 
 old fictions of the Rosicrucian fancy, those aspirants 
 after superhuman power and earthly immortality 
 who seized prematurely on the arch-gift and inhaled 
 the rich elixir, before a long course of strengthening 
 toil, purifying abstinence from earthly passions, and 
 resolute crucifixion of all low desires, had fitted their 
 frames to breathe a rarer atmosphere, and gaze upon 
 intenser light were stricken into insanity or dazzled 
 into blindness by the awful revelation and the intoler- 
 able stimulus, so surely do the exciting air, the in- 
 toxicating draught, the wild delight, the terrible power 
 of liberty, ask for their healthy endurance and their 
 noble exercise, preparation scarcely less tedious and 
 elaborate, a soul scarcely less purified and strengthened. 
 
116 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 To gaze upon the splendour before the sight is purged 
 and fortified, is to rush not into light, but into dark- 
 ness. 1 
 
 If Louis Xapoleon, as both his writings and his 
 actions appear to indicate, takes the same view of the 
 needs and capabilities of France which we have here 
 endeavoured to explain, and if he be really animated 
 by that partially pure patriotism which consists in 
 wishing to connect his name indissolubly with the 
 grandeur and regeneration of his country, we believe 
 that he may yet employ his tenure of power in a 
 manner which will cause its origin to be forgotten and 
 forgiven. That he will do so, is rather our hope than 
 our sanguine expectation. It is what one of their 
 own philosophers described a future state to be, un 
 grand peut-etre. It certainly seems somewhat foolish 
 to fancy that a man who has attained his supremacy 
 by violence should use that supremacy for good. It 
 seems the very simplicity of sanguineness to expect that 
 a man who, in marching to his end, has trampled all 
 legality under foot, should, when that end has been 
 reached, proclaim, enforce, and submit to legality in 
 future. It is the curse and the punishment of guilt, 
 in public even more than in private life, that one 
 crime almost always necessitates another and another. 
 It is difficult for a usurper to control and restrain the 
 tools of his usurpation. It is difficult for the victor in 
 
 1 " Constitutions," said Sir James Mackintosh, "cannot be made; 
 they must grow" In this profound aphorism may we learn the 
 secret of French failures. 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 117 
 
 a civil strife to restore freedom and power of action to 
 the vanquished. It is difficult for a chief whose 
 conduct is open to the harshest criticism and the 
 bitterest invective, to permit fair license to the tongues 
 and pens of his antagonists. Nevertheless, on his 
 ability and courage to dare all this in a while 
 depends Louis Napoleon's exoneration and success. 
 We cannot too often repeat that he owes a great 
 expiation to his country. He has committed a 
 deliberate act of violence and treason, which can be 
 pardoned only on condition of its being the last. He 
 has seized power in a manner which only the beneficial 
 use he makes of it can induce history to forget or gild. 
 Yet it is undeniable that he has examples before him 
 of others who have stolen a sceptre and yet have 
 wielded it in the service of their country. It is still 
 left for him, by imitating their excellences and avoiding 
 their errors, to throw a veil over all that is deplorable 
 and disreputable in the past. Augustus waded to a 
 throne through an amount of bloodshed and of perfidy 
 of which Louis Napoleon has given us only a faint and 
 feeble reflex ; yet by giving to Rome a long respite 
 from sixty years of civil strife and tyrannous dominion, 
 by developing her resources, re-organising her empire, 
 cultivating her intelligence, and laying the foundation 
 for. 350 years of peace, he has left behind him a name 
 associated for ever with an age of political and literary 
 glory. Cromwell dismissed a parliament scarcely less 
 despised or discredited than that of France, with a 
 degree of violence and ignominy as great as Louis 
 
118 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 Napoleon inflicted; yet he governed better, and raised 
 the name of England higher, than any sovereign had 
 done since the Great Queen. In 1799 Napoleon 
 drove out the Council of Five Hundred by the actual 
 use of the bayonet, and installed himself as First 
 Consul by an autocratic fiat and a military force ; yet 
 his name is still dear to France less on account of 
 that long series of splendid campaigns, which brought 
 her at first so much glory, and afterwards so much 
 discomfiture and mortification than because, for the 
 first time since 1789, he gave her a strong and settled 
 government ; because he made her feel that she had a 
 masterhand and a sagacious pilot at the helm; because 
 he gave her rest from intrigues, conspiracies, and the 
 wearisome and humiliating succession of imbecilities 
 which had so long misruled her ; because he restored, 
 under wise and stern conditions, her shattered and 
 desecrated altars ; because, lastly and chiefly, he 
 reorganised the dissolved and decrepit system of 
 administration on a basis which has never since been 
 shaken, and educed order out of chaos. Louis Napoleon 
 may find in the history of his predecessors something 
 of example, but far more of warning. Three especial 
 errors he must guard against : he must avoid that love 
 of war and too exclusive reliance on the army, which 
 eventually lost Napoleon his crown ; he must avoid 
 the reaction towards priestcraft and the dread of a 
 free press, which led to the overthrow of Charles X. ; 
 and that neglect of the sentiments and demands of 
 the middle classes, which prepared the way for the 
 ignominious catastrophe of Louis Philippe. 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 119 
 
 First, If Louis Napoleon relies exclusively on the 
 troops to support his government he will commit a 
 fatal blunder. They cannot be trusted in to coerce 
 the nation. They may be relied on for a coup d'etat 
 against an Assembly respected by no one, deserted by 
 the bourgeoisie, and abused by the working classes ; 
 but assuredly they cannot be relied on for a systematic 
 crusade against the liberties, feelings, and affections of 
 their fellow-citizens. It has been all along pretty well 
 understood, that, though ready enough to fight against 
 emeutiers and socialists of Blanqui's caste, they could 
 never be relied upon to put down any insurrection in 
 which the National* Guard sided with the masses. In 
 each individual instance, in each sudden crisis, the 
 habit of obedience and the recollection of their military 
 oath would probably prevail, and cause them to obey 
 the orders of their immediate superiors. But this 
 would no longer be the case as soon as they had time 
 to consult and discuss among themselves, and as soon 
 as they perceived that they were made the tools of a 
 regular system inimical to those whom they loved, and 
 to whose ranks they belonged, and to the interests of 
 that nation of which they formed a recognised and 
 sympathising part. They soon learn and strongly 
 retain the instinct of dicipline and the esprit du corps ; 
 but they never wholly lose the sentiment of citizenship. 
 French soldiers are not, like English ones, chosen from 
 the lowest portion of the populace, arid enlisted virtually 
 for life. The conscription takes them nearly indiscri- 
 minately from all ranks, and they serve, or are required 
 
120 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 to serve, only for seven years. After that time, unless 
 they wish otherwise, they return to mingle with the 
 mass of their fellow-citizens. The result of this is 
 two-fold : first, that they retain most of the feelings 
 and predilections of the classes out of which they 
 were called yesterday, and into which they will be 
 reabsorbed to-morrow; and, secondly, that France 
 swarms with thousands of trained and disbanded 
 soldiers, equal in skill and experience to those actually 
 enrolled, but as full of political interests and predilec- 
 tions as any of their compatriot civilians. Thus the 
 army in France is not, as in England, a distinct body 
 set apart from the nation, and havfng no feelings and 
 opinions that are not bounded by the bar rack- walls. 
 It is merely that portion of the people which in each 
 particular year chances to be under arms. One-seventh 
 of them were simple citizens sons, brothers, husbands, 
 before everything last-year ; one-seventh of them 
 again become simple citizens sons, brothers, husbands, 
 before everything this year. The idea of using them 
 against the NATION, it would therefore be folly in 
 Louis Napoleon to entertain. 
 
 The officers of the army, again, are chosen from 
 among those middle classes out of whose hands the 
 late coup d'etat is supposed to have wrested power, 
 They belong to these classes, they marry into them, 
 they frequent their society, .share their feelings, imbibe 
 their sentiments. Like them, they read the news- 
 papers, and feel the deprivation when newspapers are 
 suppressed. In proportion to their rank and education 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 121 
 
 will be their susceptibility to all those social influences 
 which will make them reluctant and unsafe tools for 
 resolute misgovernment. 
 
 Moreover, the moment the army perceives that 
 Louis Napoleon's government depends on it alone, that 
 moment it becomes supreme, exacting, jealous, and 
 tyrannical. That moment also it becomes the arena 
 of the most desperate personal intrigues. That moment 
 gives to Louis Napoleon a score of formidable rivals. 
 He is a civilian. He has won his spurs in no memor- 
 able battle ; and it is only a military chief who can 
 reign by the sword. If the army is to be the centre 
 and instrument of power, there are many who have a 
 better title than he has to seize it. If, therefore, 
 he relies on the army alone, as an instrument of 
 misgovernment, he is leaning on a spear which will 
 break and pierce him. 
 
 Above all, Louis Napoleon must beware of so far 
 misreading the history of the great man whose name 
 he bears, as to look to war either for safety or for 
 power. Let the nephew well understand and lay to 
 heart the real foundations of the uncle's glories, the 
 true reason why the mere name is one of such magic, 
 the true reason why that name secured his own 
 election, while yet an unknown or an ill-known man. 
 It was not Napoleon's military, but his civil, services 
 that made him the idol of the nation from 1800 to 
 1804? ; it was a repetition, not of his military, but of 
 his civil services, that, in 1848, France looked for 
 from his nephew, when she chose him as her chief at 
 
122 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 a moment when a similar confusion to that which 
 Napoleon had closed seemed to call for a similar 
 elucidation, and made the people turn with hope and 
 affection to the mere echo of a great name. Napoleon's 
 military career, magnificent and brilliant as it was, 
 exhausted the nation, wearied the army, carried 
 mourning and desolation into every family: Napoleon's 
 military grandeur all passed away, and left France no 
 wider, no greater, no richer than he found her. But 
 his Code Civil has maintained its ground in every 
 country where he planted it ; his clear and simple 
 coinage has been everywhere adopted and confirmed 
 by the sovereigns whom he had ejected, and who 
 returned after his defeat ; and his elaborate and 
 scientific system of centralised administration has 
 never once been shaken or meddled with by any of 
 the monarchs or revolutions that have succeeded him. 
 The trophies of war have all perished : the trophies of 
 peace have all survived. The former made France 
 miserable : the latter have made her a celebrily and 
 an example. The former landed Napoleon in a 
 wretched banishment, and gave 
 
 " His name a doubt to all the winds of Heaven :" 
 
 the latter placed him high among the permanent 
 benefactors of mankind. 
 
 To Louis Napoleon, situated as he is, a war would 
 probably be about the most shallow and suicidal policy 
 he could pursue. In the first place, till firmly and 
 fairly established on his new throne, a foreign war 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 123 
 
 would only let loose his domestic foes. No wise chief 
 will march against an enemy, if he leaves half-subdued 
 treason and angry discontent behind him in his own 
 camp. In the second place, a war undertaken in 
 these days must either be a war against despots with 
 insurgents for allies ; or a war against freedom with 
 despots for allies. A war of the first kind would not 
 only concentrate against the President all the con- 
 tinental powers, but would involve him in a net of 
 incongruities and perplexities which would aggravate 
 ten-fold the perplexities of his actual position. It 
 could be successful only by the aid of those republican 
 parties in Hungary, Italy, and Prussia whose 
 equivalents and analoga in France he had just 
 repressed with such stern severity. He, the military 
 usurper, the violent destroyer of a free constitution, 
 would have to hoist the banner of liberty, and march 
 to the watch-word of the people's war-cry. The hero 
 of the coup d'etat, the imprisoner of inviolable 
 deputies, the gaoler of popular generals, would have 
 to proclaim everywhere liberty to the captive, and the 
 restoration of rights to the oppressed. If, on the 
 other hand, he joined the European autocrats, and 
 made war on liberty, and on England, Belgium, and 
 Sardinia as its representatives, he would commit a 
 still more fatal blunder, A war with England would 
 be very popular, no doubt, with many Frenchmen, 
 but it would be hateful to many more. It would 
 be a proclamation of deliberate hostility against the 
 cause of constitutional rights and liberties all over 
 
124 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 the world. It would bring him, the representative 
 and chief of a nation which still clings to the ideas of 
 the first great revolution, into close alliance with the 
 old worn-out tyrannies of Europe, and degrade him 
 into the ape and flunkey of the withered legitimacy of 
 the world. It would bring the republic of France, 
 which swears by universal suffrage, into direct collision 
 with every state in which any vestige of popular 
 election yet survives. It would involve her in a 
 crusade against the freedom for which she has fought 
 so gallantly, and suffered and sacrificed so much. 
 Such a war would be absolutely detestable to all 
 the better spirits of the French nation to the 
 intelligent classes whom it is so important for Louis 
 Napoleon to conciliate to his regime to the moderate 
 as well as the extreme to all, except those who love 
 plunder, and those who are thirsty for revenge. The 
 republicans of France sympathise deeply with the 
 struggling patriots of every land. To them the 
 expedition against Rome was the most hateful act 
 of the Assembly. The Orleanists and Moderates feel 
 that they must make common cause with the sup- 
 porters of free constitutions and limited monarchy 
 throughout the globe. The nation- as a whole feel 
 that, if the great contest and victory of 1789 is to 
 bear any fruit if it is not to be regarded as a 
 gigantic and insane blunder if it was an emancipa- 
 tion to be gloried in, not a crime to be repented of 
 France must remain the ally and champion of 
 national independence, and popular rights, wherever 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 125 
 
 they may be asserted. To espouse the cause of 
 depotism, to attack the free states of Europe, would 
 be to blaspheme the past, to deny her mission, to 
 desecrate her flag. For France to league with the 
 Russian autocrat, the Prussian perjurer, the Austrian 
 tyrant against constitutional England and Sardinia, 
 and republican America and Switzerland, would 
 indeed be for " the dog to return to his vomit, and 
 the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the 
 mire." 
 
 A war must either be successful or unsuccessful; in 
 either event it would be fatal to Louis Napoleon's 
 supremacy. If unsuccessful, the French would never 
 forgive him for having provoked it. The army would 
 desert him ; the people would despise him ; the 
 gentry would hate him ; the whole nation would cry 
 out against him ; every private interest and every 
 patriotic passion would combine to assail him ; and 
 the very foundations of his power would crumble 
 away like sand. If, on the other hand, the war 
 were to be glorious and triumphant, it would insure 
 his downfall as infallibly, though from another cause. 
 Louis Napoleon is not a soldier. His army must be 
 intrusted to the leadership of the ablest generals he 
 can appoint. His victories must be won by others. 
 He must select for the supreme command, not the 
 men he can rely upon as devoted to himself, but the 
 men whom the public voice or the desire of the 
 troops shall proclaim to be most fitted for the post. 
 The first brilliant exploit will give him a rival. The 
 
126 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 first glorious campaign will designate his dethroner 
 and successor. He may give the signal for war ; but 
 others will reap its laurels, others will gather in its 
 fruits, others will monopolise its glory. A war would 
 at once place the very men whom he has just cir- 
 cumvented, insulted, and imprisoned, at the head of 
 the army, by means of which he has climbed to 
 power. A war would at once place Cavaignac, 
 Changarnier, Bedeau, and Lamoriciere above him. 
 And if one of these should display any portion of 
 that political and administrative genius, which the 
 life of camps so often develops, and affords so many 
 opportunities of manifesting ; if he should be gifted 
 with that terse and stirring eloquence which soldiers 
 often possess ; and if solid and practical capacity 
 should give him over the reason of his countrymen, 
 that ascendant which his victories have already given 
 him over their imagination, then, assuredly, Louis 
 Napoleon would have found his master, and the 
 Assembly its merciless avenger. 
 
 Secondly, Louis Napoleon must especially guard 
 himself against the very probable mistake of supposing, 
 that because he has the support of the army and of 
 the masses of the numerical majority, and of the 
 organised forces of the nation he can afford to 
 despise the hostility, or dispense with the allegiance, 
 of the middle arid educated classes. He has already 
 given some indications of his tendency to fall into this 
 error. He is said to be contemplating the abolition 
 of the vexatious and burdensome octroi, the imposition 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 127 
 
 of an income-tax, and the promotion of extensive 
 public works, with a view to satisfy the poorer classes. 
 But measures of this sort will not suffice. The great 
 body of the ignorant peasantry have indeed voted for 
 him as representing in their minds the cause of order, 
 and the brilliant recollections of the Consulate and 
 the Empire. Large numbers of the working people 
 in the towns have also voted for him under the 
 impression that he will unite the two incompatibilities, 
 of a large remission of taxation, and a vigorous increase 
 of public expenditure. But these alone cannot main- 
 tain him. The town ranks of all sections are always 
 unreasonable in their expectations from a new regime, 
 and therefore certain to encounter disappointment, and 
 to change their admiration into disgust. Moreover, in 
 no country, least of all in France, can the contest ever 
 be a hopeful one for despotism, when all the cultivation 
 and intelligence of the nation is on one side, and only 
 brute numbers on the other. In no strife in modern 
 days is the major vis ever on the side of the mere 
 numerical majority. The skill, knowledge, discipline, 
 mental influence, intellectual resources, and moral 
 weight, of the middle and upper ranks, will always be 
 an immense over-match for mere masses of ignorant, 
 untrained, and stupid proletaires. Louis Napoleon, 
 therefore, must govern so as to conciliate the adherence 
 of the worthy writers, the financiers, and the literary 
 and political notabilities of France the natural leaders 
 of her people, the representatives of her material 
 interests and her moral power. 
 
128 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 Now, to these classes, material interests are not the 
 only ones, nor social comfort and physical wellbeing 
 the sole necessaries of existence. Selfish and worldly 
 as too many of them are, they cannot live by bread 
 alone. They demand a scope for their activity, an 
 arena for their talents. They will no longer be content 
 with the old frivolities of the theatre and the salon. 
 They have eaten of the tree of political knowledge ; 
 and, henceforth, the paradise of the senses and the 
 fancy is disenchanted in their eyes. They have known 
 the fascinations of political action, and will not again 
 acquiesce in being utterly debarred from it. It will 
 be dangerous to attempt to re-convert them into 
 cyphers, and impossible to confine their energies 
 within the poor and narrow circle of social trifling 
 which once sufficed. The President must reckon with 
 this natural ambition, and this rational activity. His 
 new constitution must be such as to offer an adequate 
 and worthy field for the power and aspirations of the 
 practical intellect of France. His administration must 
 provide places wherein the capacities of the restless 
 and the ardent may find ample, safe, and serviceable 
 development. He must prove to the rising and the 
 experienced politicians of the country, that the new 
 system offers great prizes for the ambitious, wide scope 
 for the active, noble occupation for the high-minded. 
 He must show them that there are worthier and 
 loftier vocations for the trained and ripened intellect 
 than party squabbles, or parliamentary intrigues, in 
 aiding the action of the State, and developing the 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 129 
 
 resources of the country. His cabinet must be a place 
 where genuine ability of every kind may find an 
 entrance. His senate must be an assembly to which 
 it will not be a degradation to belong. His house of 
 representatives must be a body entitled to speak freely 
 and discuss without reticence and fear. 
 
 Further, Louis Napoleon must remember that the 
 educated classes will not long endure to be debarred 
 from the full privileges and enjoyments of their educa- 
 tion. It is idle to imagine that men gifted with the 
 wonderful power of precise and brilliant expression, 
 which distinguishes the French, will not chafe and 
 rebel if condemned to an enforced silence, or compelled 
 to restrain their utterances within limits, or to direct 
 them into channels which it may suit a despot to 
 prescribe. Men conscious of capacity to think worthily 
 and to write splendidly on the exciting questions of 
 government and war, will not tamely permit them- 
 selves to be warned off their favourite and chosen 
 fields, and relegated to the duller walks of science or 
 fancy. Genius and talent, in every department of 
 literature, like gunpowder, becomes dangerous by being 
 compressed. They must be enlisted in the service of 
 the government, or they will be arrayed against it, 
 and in the end will be too strong for it. A free press 
 is even a better safety-valve than a free constitution 
 for the restless intellects and fiery tempers of the 
 cultivated classes. In addition to this, we must bear 
 in mind that the French are great readers. The 
 circulation of the Parisian newspapers is far beyond 
 
 I 
 
130 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 that of the London journals. Books and pamphlets, 
 too, sell there in numbers which appear to us nearly 
 fabulous. M. Granier de Cassagnac is said to have 
 sold 100,000 copies of his recent brochure. To most 
 Parisians of any education, and to many provincials, 
 their daily paper, with its brilliant " leader," and its 
 exciting feuilleton, is as necessary as their daily break- 
 fast. To deprive them of their habitual intellectual 
 pabulum, or to render it so innutritious and insipid, 
 as it would inevitably become under a censorship, 
 would render the President almost as unpopular with 
 the Parisians as if he were to endeavour, actually and 
 without metaphor, to starve them into allegiance. The 
 support then of the thousand writers, and the million 
 readers of France, Louis Napoleon can only conciliate 
 by respecting, and restoring as soon as it can be done 
 with safety, the freedom of the press. 
 
 Lastly, and above all, Louis Napoleon must beware 
 of relying on the PRIESTS. They are about the worst, 
 the weakest, and the most treacherous reed upon 
 which he could lean. We regard the tendency he 
 has shown in this direction with more jealousy than 
 any of his other proceedings. It looks like a pro- 
 jected coalition between the two armies of despotism 
 the military and the ecclesiastical. It is true that 
 one of the saddest and most menacing features of the 
 present aspect of French society is the absence of a 
 religious spirit. It is true that any one who should 
 reanimate religion in the nation would be the greatest 
 of human benefactors. But playing into the hands 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 131 
 
 of the Jesuits will have precisely, a contrary effect. 
 They are the notorious and irreconcilable enemies of 
 the central ideas which lay at the bottom of the 
 great French Revolution, and which are still en- 
 shrined in the hearts of the whole nation, viz., the 
 sovereignty of the people, as opposed to the divine 
 right of kings, and the reign of equal justice, as 
 opposed to class privileges. All that the country has 
 of noble in its recent history is arrayed against the 
 priests. All the long years of its degradation and 
 dishonour are associated with their rule. Everything 
 generous and lofty, everything popular and stimu- 
 lating, in its literature, has proclaimed relentless 
 war against priestcraft under any form. Eight or 
 wrong, priests in general, and Jesuits in particular, are 
 hated by everything in France (except moral ignorance 
 and rare fanaticism, and legitimacy, with its sinister 
 and ulterior designs), as the foes to enlightenment, the 
 upholders of humbug, the allies cf despotism, and the 
 serpents who creep into and poison domestic life. The 
 restoration of them, even to most modified and regu- 
 lated influence, was one of the most daring, difficult, 
 and unpopular of Napoleon's achievements. Notwith- 
 standing the strong reasons which then existed for 
 doing it, notwithstanding she consummate skill and 
 caution with which he did it, it was a reactionary step, 
 which his supporters could hardly tolerate or forgive. 
 The attempt to associate the priests once more to state 
 authority had done much to undermine the influence of 
 Charles X., before their mischievous advice led him to 
 
132 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 that attack upon the press by which he forfeited his 
 throne. The active intellects of the French nation, in 
 immense preponderance it is most deplorable that it 
 should be so, but it is so regard Christianity as a 
 deception and a chimera ; and their religious teachers 
 must resemble the archbishop of Paris much more, and 
 the bishop of Chartres much less than the great body 
 of them do at present, before this sad error can be 
 rectified. And so long as this is the case, any truck- 
 ling to the priests, any favouritism towards them, any 
 signs of an intention to re-impose upon the nation a 
 system which its intellectual leaders believe to be a 
 sham, will be resented as an insult. Christianity itself 
 is a glorious truth as well as a great fact ; but to the 
 educated portion of the nation the substitution of 
 priestly despotism in its place represents the system 
 which Rousseau discredited, which D'Alembert, Hel- 
 vetius, and Condorcet, and all the great literary names 
 connected with the social and political changes of the 
 18th century, won their fame by contending with and 
 overthrowing. The French may endure the restoration 
 of the imperial despotism never that of priestly sway. 
 They may again come under the dominion of the 
 Bastile never under that of the Inquisition. Louis 
 Napoleon could scarcely commit a blunder which will 
 more surely and more righteously combine against him 
 all that is virulent and all that is selfish, all that is 
 noble and all that is vicious, all that loves freedom and 
 all that loves fame, all that loves truth and all that 
 loves power, in the intellectual and social world of 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 133 
 
 France, than by holding out a hand of favour and 
 alliance to the Jesuits. The army will despise him 
 for it. The salons will ridicule and sneer at him for 
 it. The press will hate him for it almost to a man. 
 The stern Puritan Guizot, the unprincipled and brilliant 
 Thiers, the learned, eloquent, and democratic historian 
 Michelet, the richly gifted and artist-minded George 
 Sand, the dignified and honoured philosopher Victor 
 Cousin, even the disgracefully-popular ransacker of 
 moral cesspools and obscene cloacce, Eugene Sue, 
 men who could join in nothing else, who have scarcely 
 one other sentiment in common, would all unite in 
 one wild cry of mingled scorn, indignation, and disgust 
 at the ruler who could dream of replacing France 
 under the broken crozier and the stained and tattered 
 surplice of the priest. 
 
 Nor could the support of the clergy, thus dearly 
 purchased as it must be, ever be relied on by Louis 
 Napoleon. He can scarcely be weak enough to imagine 
 that an organised hierarchy, whose head and centre is 
 in Rome, can ever give faithful or cordial adherence 
 to a man who has risen on the /ruin and succeeded to 
 the inheritance of anointed kings. He cannot believe 
 that the servants of a Church whose first dogma, and 
 whose pervading idea, is the supremacy of divine right, 
 can in their hearts espouse a cause based on military 
 usurpation, and sanctioned by an appeal to universal 
 suffrage. He cannot flatter himself that the alliance 
 between the child of popular sovereignty and the 
 proclaimers of royal sacredness and inviolability, can 
 
134 FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 
 
 ever be more than a treacherous and hollow truce. 
 He must know that, by the necessity of the case, the 
 Catholic clergy such of them at least as, receive 
 their impulse from Rome are secret and zealous 
 Legitimists ; that they regard him only as a warming- 
 pan ; and that they propose to use him as the 
 restorer of an edifice which, when ready, the old and 
 rightful heirs are to inhabit, as the instrument for 
 the recovery of a patrimony which, as soon as it is 
 secured against the common enemy, they intend to 
 transfer to the legal owner. Knowing all this, we 
 can scarcely suppose, however Louis Napoleon may 
 coquet with the Jesuits for a temporary purpose, 
 that he will commit the enormous blunder of calling 
 them into his councils, or sharing with them his power. 
 We have said that we are not sanguine as to Louis 
 Napoleon's success in the position which he has so 
 violently and unwarrantably seized. The chapter of 
 accidents is always too rich in France to induce us to 
 venture on a prophecy. Our object in this Paper has 
 been to trace the causes which have led to the 
 catastrophe ; to explain the reasons why we think the 
 French nation may have been altogether on a wrong 
 tack in their endeavour to naturalise a parliamentary 
 government, to call attention to the irreconcilability 
 of such government with the centralised and 
 bureaucratic administration which is apparently so 
 popular, and is certainly so fixed ; and to show how 
 the powers which are held by the President, may be 
 wielded for the benefit of his country, if he be really 
 
FRANCE IN JANUARY 1852. 135 
 
 animated by a patriotic spirit, and gifted with 
 adequate capacities. 
 
 Since this article was in type, the President has 
 published his constitution and fulminated his decrees 
 of banishment. The first we have no time nor space 
 to criticise : the latter we cannot pass over without 
 the expression of our conviction that they are a 
 great blunder, as well as a great crime. Such 
 indiscriminate and illegal severity has alarmed and 
 staggered his supporters, and enraged more than it 
 has terrified his enemies. It is an indication and 
 confession of weakness, a wanton trampling upon 
 legal forms, a menacing inauguration of a reign of 
 terror. Already the murmurs of the Parisian salons 
 have warned him of his mistake and his danger. 
 Confiscation has now followed proscription, and the 
 whole arsenal of tyranny seems to be opened. 
 
III. 
 
 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 1 
 
 THIS book is a somewhat undigested mass of valuable 
 matter, interspersed occasionally with reflections of 
 much interest, and observations of considerable origin- 
 ality. The author is unquestionably a man of talent ; 
 he writes with vigour and smartness ; he has taken 
 pains in the collection of most of his materials ; and 
 his statistics are arranged with great care and managed 
 with unusual skill. In this point he is much superior 
 to his prototype and apparent master, Mr Alison. But 
 his range of topics is too wide to allow of his doing 
 justice to any one of them, and his book is disfigured 
 with an unwieldy series of quotations from blue books, 
 newspapers, and reviews; from publications that never 
 had authority, and publications that have long been 
 superseded. An enumeration of the heads of some of 
 his chapters, will give an idea of the extent of ground 
 which he careers over : " Population;" " Occupations 
 of the People ; " " Taxation, Eevenue, Expenditure ; " 
 
 1 From the "Edinburgh Keview," April 1851. 
 
 England as it is; Political, Social, and Industrial, in the Middle 
 of the Nineteenth Century. By WILLIAM JOHNSTON, Barrister-at- 
 Law. London : 1851. 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 137 
 
 " Theory of Progress ; " " Condition of the People ; " 
 " Crime ; " " Manners, Conversation ; " " Rich and 
 Poor;" "Railways;" "Sir Robert Peel;" "The 
 Press; " " The Tenth of April;" " The Church ;" " Soli- 
 citors and Attorneys ; " "Supply of London with Meat;" 
 "'Drinking Habits; " "The Poor Law;" and many 
 others. All these grave topics are disposed of in a 
 positive off-hand manner, and in the tone we might 
 expect from a man of lively and inquiring mind, whose 
 Tory predilections and protectionist opinions are often 
 so one-sided, as to show us as much of " England as it 
 is not," as of " England as it is." 
 
 The book, on the whole, however, is decidedly 
 readable, though, besides its discursiveness, it has two 
 rather serious faults. If we except two or three 
 chapters, the writer has no personal or practical know- 
 ledge of any of the subjects which he treats. The 
 chapters devoted to law and the legal profession will be 
 interesting to the unlearned, because there the author 
 is comparatively en pays de connaissance ; and from 
 the same cause, the chapters on Manners and Conversa- 
 tion are about the best in the book, because society 
 that is> London literary, legal, and political society 
 at least in one of its many-coloured aspects, appears 
 to be familiar to him ; not so life in the provinces, 
 and society among the middle classes. While, of the 
 people of the component parts of our social structure 
 in detail of the character, feelings, and position of 
 the masses he knows practically nothing, having 
 looked at them through the medium of books alone. 
 
138 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 His source of information on these points is sometimes 
 the " Times " newspaper ; sometimes an obscure 
 pamphlet ; sometimes a party review ; sometimes a 
 blue book. He speaks as a barrister from his brief, 
 who makes the most of the materials furnished to him, 
 but who has never come into personal communication 
 with his client, or seen the premises or machine on 
 which he descants so fluently to the jury. 
 
 The second great fault of the book is the absence of 
 any distinct purpose or object. It is not easy to 
 understand why the author should have been at the 
 pains of writing it, unless with the view (which he 
 seems to have entertained at the beginning) of giving 
 a general picture of England to some foreign friend. 
 For this, however, the work would be at once redun- 
 dant and imperfect. For any more definite aim it is 
 decidedly defective. The want of a back-bone of a 
 central idea, to connect and bind together the miscel- 
 laneous matter of which the book consists of some 
 clear principle or set of opinions to be illustrated and 
 enforced of some distinct object to be achieved, is 
 strongly felt by the reader as he goes on ; and we 
 wonder it did not manifest itself to the writer likewise. 
 
 As far, however, as any one prevailing idea can be 
 detected in the book, it is that England is going to the 
 dogs : as far as any distinct purpose can be traced, it 
 is to prove our national peril and retrogression. It 
 would be unjust to class " England as it is," with the 
 absurd and malignant work of Ledru Rollin (" La 
 Decadence de 1'Angleterre ") ; but there are some 
 

 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 139 
 
 undeniable resemblances between them. Both authors 
 are disposed to paint English society en noir, to think 
 that our imperial star is on the wane, that our national 
 maturity is past, and that old age and decrepitude are 
 at hand. It is natural that a foreigner of virulent 
 passions and disappointed ambition, an exile and a 
 fugitive, should thus gloat over the fancied ruin of a 
 rival nation, even while he owes to its generous and 
 powerful hospitality, his security from the vengeance 
 of his own countrymen : it is, perhaps, natural also, 
 that an English politician, seriously attached to the 
 party so long dominant, and so recently and signally 
 defeated, should distrust the success and dread the 
 consequences of a course of policy which he has all his 
 life conscientiously opposed, and that he should be 
 seen mistaking the discomfiture of his party for the 
 ruin of his country ; but we were scarcely prepared for 
 the easy indifference with which Mr Johnston enume- 
 rates the symptoms of our national decay, and the quiet 
 complacency with which he accepts our decline as a 
 settled historical fact. For ourselves, we have better 
 trust and stronger faith; we believe that we flourished 
 and advanced under Tory ministers and a restrictive 
 tariff ; and we are not without hopes that we shall 
 continue to flourish and advance even under a Whig 
 
 o 
 
 government, and a free commercial policy. And since 
 we entirely disagree with Mr Johnston as to the decay, 
 both actual and prospective, of Great Britain, we pro- 
 pose to join issue with him on this, the prominent 
 conception of his book. 
 
140 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 His idea concerning our national prospects and con- 
 dition, may be gathered from the following laboured 
 prophecy which he quotes from Mr Alison, and seems 
 to adopt in its entireness : 
 
 " A survey of the fate of all the great empires of antiquity, 
 and a consideration of the close resemblance which the vices and 
 passions by which they were distinguished at the commencement 
 of their decline bear to those by which we are agitated, leads (?) 
 to the melancholy conclusion that we are fast approaching, if we 
 have not already attained, the utmost limit of our greatness ; 
 and that a long decay is destined to precede the fall of the 
 British empire. During that period our population will remain 
 stationary or recede ; our courage will, perhaps, abate ; our 
 wealth will certainly diminish our ascendancy will disappear j 
 and at length the queen of the waves will sink into an eternal, 
 though not forgotten slumber. It is more likely than that these 
 islands will ever contain human beings for whom sustenance can- 
 not be obtained, that its fields will return, in the revolutions of 
 society, to their pristine desolation, and the forest resume its 
 wonted domain, and savage animals regain their long lost habita- 
 tions ; that a few fishermen will spread their nets on the ruins 
 of Plymouth, and the beaver construct his little dwelling under 
 the arches of Waterloo Bridge ; the towers of York arise in dark 
 magnificence amid an aged forest, and the red deer sport in 
 savage independence round the Athenian pillars of the Scottish 
 metropolis." 
 
 The warning symptoms of this impending desolation, 
 Mr Johnston traces in the deteriorating material posi- 
 tion of our working classes ; in the decay of friendly 
 intercourse between them and their superiors ; in the 
 increase of crime ; in the excessive toil and struggle 
 for existence everywhere manifest around us ; in the 
 scoffing and frivolous tone of society; and in the 
 dwarfed and degraded spirit of our statesmanship ; 
 signs and menaces which, if their existence could be 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 141 
 
 clearly proved, would go far to justify his gloomiest 
 and worst surmises. In most of these points, however, 
 we differ with him as to fact ; in some, as to causes ; 
 in others, as to the inference to be drawn from them. 
 Let us take them in succession. 
 
 First, as to the Physical Condition of the 'Masses. 
 Mr Johnston quotes largely from a pamphlet by 
 Dr Kay, published twenty years ago, describing the 
 unpaved streets and unhealthy dwellings of the poor 
 in many parts of Manchester, at a time when sanatory 
 arrangements had not yet commanded that degree of 
 public attention which they have now received ; from 
 a report by Mr Symons, published fifteen years ago, 
 depicting a similar state of things in Glasgow ; from a 
 statistical inquiry about the same date, showing that 
 35,000 of the population of Liverpool lived in cellars, 
 which have since been prohibited as dwellings by Act 
 of Parliament most injudiciously ; and, after adding a 
 few similar testimonies, he proceeds, 
 
 ""From all this evidence I conclude that, as regards the great 
 mass of the people, there is no reason for congratulation upon 
 the progress of wealth, virtue, or happiness. The mercantile 
 middle class become opulent through the use of cheap substitutes 
 for labour, but the labourers sink m the scale of social existence. 
 In the acquisition of wealth the nation has made great progress, 
 but in that distribution of it which seems best calculated to 
 impart moderate comfort on the one hand, and to abate the 
 pomp of superior position and the insolence of riches on the 
 other, the science of modern times is at fault, while the selfish- 
 ness connected with it revels, for the present, in unabated 
 triumph." 
 
 In another place he says : 
 
 " We regard with admiring wonder the inventions of science, 
 and our respect for human ingenuity is vastly increased ; but 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 when we inquire how far the use of them has benefited the great 
 mass of the people, we are compelled to dismiss all sense of 
 triumph in their achievements. ... It seems to me that there 
 can be no doubt of the total failure of the working class to 
 accomplish any advance at all. ... I do not find it specifically 
 denied by any class of politicians that since 1819 the rich have 
 been growing richer, and the poor more poor." 
 
 Now all these statements we hold to be utterly 
 untrue. Mr Johnston has fallen into the common 
 error of writers who treat of subjects of which they 
 have not enough personal cognisance to enable them 
 to read with judgment and discrimination. There is 
 evidence enough that is, printed assertions always 
 to be found in favour of every theory and every 
 opinion ; and an advocate, therefore, who merely 
 pleads from his brief, is at the mercy of the particular 
 set of documents which may chance to be put into his 
 hands, since he has no independent knowledge in 
 virtue of which he can decide upon their value. He 
 may form a perfectly honest and a perfectly sound 
 judgment as far as the data before him are concerned ; 
 but unless these data contain all that is required for 
 the formation of a just opinion, or unless his own 
 acquaintance with the rase can supply the deficiency 
 of the documentary evidence supplied him, he may be 
 led into the strangest fallacies, and his decision may 
 be utterly worthless. From Mr Busfield Ferrand's 
 harangues, from Mr Sadler's Committee, and even 
 from Lord Ashley's speeches, Mr Johnston might 
 derive, by the strictest and fairest process of de- 
 duction, notions upon the wretchedness and sickness 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 143 
 
 of the factory population, which a walk through a 
 cotton mill, a conversation with an operative, or a 
 study of the blue books issued by the Factory Com- 
 mission and the Factory Inspectors, would dissipate 
 into thin air. Written evidence, whether statistical 
 or other, is only available and safe in the hands of a 
 man who can sift and test it. -In the present case it 
 has led Mr Johnston grievously astray ; for it is not 
 difficult to show that the inventions of science, so far 
 from having been turned to the exclusive service of 
 the rich and great, have been directed in a paramount 
 and peculiar manner to comfort and facilitate the 
 daily existence of the working classes ; that the 
 augmentation of national wealth has been participated 
 in to a remarkable degree by all ranks in the com- 
 munity, and has added greatly to the comforts of the 
 poor and needy ; and that there is abundant reason 
 for suspecting the common assertion of " the rich 
 growing richer, and the poor poorer," to be the 
 reverse of true. 
 
 We are not disposed to draw a picture couleur de 
 rose of the condition of our people, any more than we 
 are willing to accept our author's silhouette en noir. 
 We have been too long and too near witnesses of their 
 struggles and their sorrows, to feel any temptation to 
 ignore them, or make light of them. But we must 
 remember that the question is not now, whether our 
 present state is satisfactory ? but, Is it improving or 
 deteriorating ? Are we advancing, or retrograding in 
 civilisation and well-being ? Is our actual progress so 
 
144 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 slow, as to make us despair about the future? or, 
 worse still, Is our improvement confined to the 
 outside, the surface, and the summit, while all within 
 is hollow, and a varnished decay is busy at our vitals? 
 Admitting then, and deploring, as we do, that the 
 condition of the masses is far from the ideal we 
 might form, far even from a point at once desirable, 
 attainable, and due, we affirm that it has improved, 
 and is still improving, with a rapidity, and in a 
 direction, which, viewed aright, justify the most 
 sanguine anticipations. 
 
 " The inventions of science have not benefited the 
 poorer classes." Have they not ? Look at railroads, 
 the great scientific marvel of the age, which, in the 
 course of twenty years, have brought the remotest 
 parts of our islands within twenty-four hours of each 
 other, which have quintupled our locomotive speed, 
 and multiplied the amount of our locomotion in a ratio 
 that baffles calculation. Who have been the chief 
 gainers by them ? Clearly the poor, to whom, 
 formerly, locomotion was a thing almost impossible ; 
 who, for the most part, passed the whole of life in the 
 narrow circuit of their native hamlet, or the town in 
 which they were apprenticed ; who frequently lived 
 and died without visiting the next valley, or crossing 
 the range of low hills which were ever before their 
 eyes ; who, if compelled by dire necessity to travel, 
 trudged painfully on foot, weary, limping, and heavy- 
 laden ; who, on their rare holidays, could find no 
 recreation but wandering in familiar fields, or boozing 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 145 
 
 at the wonted tavern. The wealthy could always 
 travel in luxurious carriages with spirited post-horses, 
 which carried them along at the rate of eighteenpence 
 a mile. The middle classes indulged their restless 
 and curious propensities on the top of the mail coach, 
 a mode of conveyance to which even now they look 
 back with affection and regret. But the poor, till 
 this great application of science to their use, were 
 absolutely rooted to their place of birth : they heard of 
 London, or York, or the mountains, or the lakes, as 
 distant scenes replete with wonders and attractions, 
 but as inaccessible as Paradise to them. Now, every 
 fine Sunday, every summer holiday, sees hundreds of 
 thousands of artisans rush from the smoky recesses of 
 Liverpool or London to make merry with their 
 friends, or refresh themselves after a week of toil 
 with the gay verdure and invigorating air of the 
 country. For the smallest sums, they are carried in 
 cheap trips to see York minster, or to wander on the 
 cliffs of Scarborough, or bathe in the sea at Dover ; 
 they are poured out in multitudes on the shores of 
 Windermere ; and conveyed, almost without any 
 intervention of their own, to London, to Dublin, to 
 Paris, at a cost which few among them cannot, by an 
 effort, manage to afford. What these new facilities 
 must have done to counterbalance and compete with 
 the low pleasures of intemperance and gambling, how 
 they have interfered with the cock-fight, and unpeopled 
 the racecourse, and replaced the bull-bait, may be 
 easily conceived. A " cheap trip " is now, with the 
 
 K 
 
146 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 artisan class, the established mode of passing a leisure 
 day. In 1848, the number who left Manchester 
 alone, in Whitsun week, by these excursion trains, 
 was 116,000; in 1849 it had risen to 150,000; 
 and last year it reached 202,000. Mr Johnston 
 himself gives a table (vol. i. p. 285) which should 
 have prevented him from penning the rash sentence 
 we have quoted from him on the uselessness of 
 scientific improvements to the poor. In 1849 the 
 number who travelled by railway were as follows: 
 
 Passengers. Receipts. 
 
 First Class . . . 7,292,811 1,927,768 
 
 Second . . . 23,521,650 2,530,689 
 
 Third and Parliamentary 32,890,323 1,816,476 
 
 Thus it appears that the poorer classes travelled by 
 railway to the number of nearly 33,000,000, and 
 could afford to spend in that mode of recreation nearly 
 2,000,000. They outnumbered the middle classes 
 in the proportion of four to three, and ^the wealthier 
 classes in the proportion four to one. 
 
 " The condition of the working classes has deterio- 
 rated, and their command over the comforts of life 
 has diminished." Has it ? Let us look at facts again. 
 At the close of the last century, rye, oaten, and barley 
 bread were extensively consumed throughout the 
 country : according to one authority, rye bread was 
 the habitual food of one-seventh of the population : it 
 is now entirely disused, and the use of wheaten bread 
 is almost universal even among the poorest classes. 
 To what extent their consumption of this has increased, 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 147 
 
 we have no means of knowing with any approach to 
 accuracy. According to the calculation of Lord 
 Hawkesbury, the consumption of wheat in the king- 
 dom in 1796 was 6,000,000 quarters: it is now 
 estimated by the most careful authorities (but of 
 course, as we have no agricultural statistics, this is 
 merely an estimate) at 15,200,000 quarters. The 
 growth of wheat in England is known to have enor- 
 mously increased ; and besides this, the amount of 
 wheat and wheat-flour imported and retained for home 
 consumption, which was 2,317,480 quarters in the 
 five years ending with 1800, had increased in the five 
 years ending with 1850 to 15,463,530 quarters. 
 Vast as has been our importation since, it has all gone 
 into consumption as fast as it was landed. Of course, 
 the difference between our population at the several 
 periods is to be taken into account. But, all things 
 considered, probably the price of grain may be the 
 best proximate test of the command of the working 
 classes over this the first necessary of life. Now, a 
 comparison of the past and present gives us a con- 
 clusive result ; and it is a fair comparison, because 
 the potato-disease and the famine of 1847 form an 
 ample set-off against the bad harvests at the begin- 
 ning of the century. The average price of wheat 
 during the first ten years of the century was 83s. 6d. ; 
 during the last ten years it was only 53s. 4d. The 
 same earnings therefore which in the last generation 
 could command only five quartern loaves would now 
 purchase eight. The fall in the cost of other articles 
 
148 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 of daily consumption among the poor has been nearly, 
 if not quite, as great. Coffee, which fifty years ago 
 was selling at 200s. a cwt., may now be purchased, of 
 equal quality, at 11 7s. ; tea, in the same period, has 
 fallen from 5s. to 3s. 4d. a Ib. ; and sugar from 80s. 
 to 41s. a cwt. In articles of clothing the reduction 
 is even more remarkable : a piece of printing calico, 
 29 yards long, which is made into three gowns, and 
 which as late even as 1814, cost 28s. in the whole- 
 sale warehouse, is now sold for 6s. 6d., and two years 
 ago sold as low as 5s. A piece of good 4-quarter 
 Irish linen (13 quality) bleached, sold in 1800 at 
 3s. 2d. a yard. Goods, the nearest to the same kind 
 now made, sell at 14d. Grey 4-quarter shirting 
 (20 quality), which cost 5s. 6d. a yard in 1800, and 
 3s. 6d. in 1830, now sells for Is. 6d. ; and the cost 
 of bleaching it is reduced in the same proportion, viz., 
 from 12s. a piece in 1800 and 8s. in 1830, to 3s. 6d. 
 in the present year. 
 
 These facts prove that the poor have the power of 
 purchasing a larger quantity of food and clothing than 
 formerly with the same sum. But we can go a step 
 further than this, and can show, in the case of many 
 articles, that they actually do supply themselves more 
 liberally than formerly. We have seen that they do 
 so with wheat. The average consumption of coffee 
 (in spite of the great adulteration with chicory) has 
 risen from one ounce and a tenth per head in 1801 
 to 28 ounces in 1849 ; tea from 19 oz. to 23 oz. ; 
 sugar from 15 Ibs., which it was in 1822, to 24 Ibs. 
 in 1849, against 22J Ibs. in 1801. 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 149 
 
 Now it needs no elaborate argument to show, that 
 increased cheapness of the principal necessaries of life 
 must redound to the essential benefit of the poorest 
 and most numerous section of the community. Of 
 such articles as bread, sugar, coffee, calico, and linen, 
 the wealthy and easy classes will always allow them- 
 selves as much as they desire or need ; and a reduction 
 in price will seldom induce them, as individuals (apart, 
 that is, from their servants and household), to increase 
 their consumption. It allows them, indeed, a larger 
 surplus to spend on luxuries or elegancies : but that 
 is the sum of its benefit to them ; to the poor it makes 
 all the difference of a scanty or an ample meal, of 
 warm or insufficient clothing, of an anxious or a care- 
 free mind, of a vigorous and healthy or a pining and 
 sickly family. Mr Johnston, indeed, seems disposed 
 to deny these conclusions, and has made a curious 
 discovery. <( If the labourer," says he (vol. i. p. 136), 
 " were more a consumer than a producer, this cheap- 
 ening of the produce of labour would be a prudent policy ; 
 but as the labourer is more a producer than a consumer, 
 the policy is manifestly inimical to his interests." 
 
 As this is a fallacy which, though not often; 
 so clearly expressed, is at the root of many of 
 the notions and feelings of conservatives and pro- 
 tectionists, it may be worth while to spend a few 
 sentences upon it, though it has been already 
 frequently exposed. In what way is the labourer 
 in what way can he be more a producer than a 
 consumer ? Is he not a consumer par excellence ? Is 
 
150 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 not a larger proportion of his total income expended in 
 articles of consumption than is the case with any 
 other class ? The middle class man purchases out of 
 his earnings books for his library, ornaments for his 
 chimney-piece, railway certificates for the investment 
 of his savings. A nobleman spends half his income 
 in foreign tours, in costly pictures, in vast con- 
 servatories, in strange exotics. The poor man spends 
 all his income in food, in clothing, or in rent. How 
 should he not be more benefited than any other, when 
 these are cheap and plentiful ? " Because," says Mr 
 Johnston, " he is himself the producer of them." 
 Here lies the fallacy. In what sense, producer ? 
 When a poor man is working on his own account and 
 not for wages, he is owner of the article which he 
 produces, and it is in his character of owner, and not 
 as the instrument of production, that he has a direct 
 interest in its price. Suppose him to be a maker of 
 calico, and that calico and all other articles fall equally. 
 He makes and sells calico ; but he purchases hats, 
 shoes, bread, bacon, sugar, and tea. He exchanges a 
 piece of cheap calico against cheap hats, cheap bread, 
 cheap sugar; instead of exchanging a piece of dear 
 calico against dear hats, dear bread, dear sugar : this 
 is the most favourable statement of the case for Mr 
 Johnston's theory. Yet, even on this statement, 
 cheapness could be no " imprudent policy " for the 
 poor man, since, in both cases, he exchanges what have 
 been his whole earnings for his whole expenditure; 
 and a man who does this can never be more a 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 151 
 
 producer than a consumer. But take the case of a 
 poor man working for wages. The only way in which 
 the cheapness of the article he produces can be a 
 disadvantage to him, is in the degree to which his 
 wages are affected by it. We will not stop to inquire 
 at present, whether the employer of manufacturing 
 labour or of agricultural is most likely, under a general 
 fall of prices, to be able to meet the fall in the article 
 which he produces without a reduction in the money 
 wages of his labour. The question before us, on a 
 comparison of prices and wages, is one of fact. Have 
 the wages of the labourer fallen, pari passu, with the 
 price of the article at which he labours or of the main 
 articles of his consumption ? Now, will any one 
 pretend to say that this has been the case ? Have 
 the wages of the agricultural peasant fallen in the 
 proportion of 83 to 53 ? Have the wages of the 
 calico weaver fallen in the proportion of 28 to 6 ? 
 Have the wages of either of them fallen in the 
 proportion of tea, coffee, or sugar. Is there any 
 ground for believing that their wages have fallen at 
 all ? Let us inquire a little into this. 
 
 We admit at once that this is a point on which we 
 cannot speak with the authoritativeness of distinct 
 and positive knowledge : neither can our opponents. 
 We have our strong convictions as they may have 
 theirs ; but neither we nor they have any documents 
 by which we can force others to adopt them. The 
 inquiry into the relative earnings of different trades 
 and occupations in this and the last generation is one 
 of singular difficulty, and one respecting the results of 
 
152 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 which those who have taken the most pains with it 
 will speak with the most diffidence. We have ex- 
 amined all the information which Mr M'Culloch and 
 Mr Porter have been able to collect, and all which we 
 ourselves have been able, from various sources, to 
 bring to bear upon the question ; and we avow 
 ourselves quite unprepared to speak dogmatically. 
 The following we believe to be the truth : The 
 wages of agricultural labour have fluctuated greatly at 
 different times, and even now vary immensely in 
 different counties, and for different qualifications ; but 
 we question whether any general change has taken 
 place either for better or worse. There is no rule 
 respecting them. There are districts where the 
 earnings are only 7s. a week ; there are others where 
 they are 12s. ; some where they are los. ; and we 
 have heard of cases where a first-rate ploughman or 
 thrasher received 20s., and where the farmer said it 
 answered to him to pay this. There are certain 
 occupations in which w r ages have fallen from special 
 causes, as that of the hand-loom weavers, where 
 ignorance, want of enterprise, and love of domestic 
 occupation have combined to induce them to continue 
 a hopeless competition against improved machinery; 
 as that of the tailors, deranged in some degree, some 
 years since, by the consequences of foolish and 
 unwarrantable strikes, but affected seriously, we 
 believe, only in the case of show shops and the like ; 
 as that of bad needlework, where the ease and 
 collateral advantages of the employment have tempted 
 into it excessive numbers. With these exceptions, we 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 153 
 
 believe that the wages of labour i.e., the amount 
 earnable in a given number of hours have rather 
 risen than fallen during the last fifty years. So much 
 for our belief, which, perhaps, may be worth no 
 more than the belief of others. The following, 
 however, are facts ; and comprise, we believe, all the 
 actual information extant, and to be relied on. Mr 
 Porter has ascertained from the Tables kept at 
 Greenwich Hospital, that the wages of carpenters had 
 risen from 18s. a week in 1800, to 29s. 3d. in 1836; 
 of bricklayers, from 18s. to 26s. 9d.; of plumbers, 
 from 19s. to 30s. In the same period the earnings 
 of London compositors in the book trade had 
 risen from 33s. to 36s.: we have ascertained that 
 they remain the same. The earnings of compositors 
 employed on the morning Papers had risen from 40s, 
 to 48s. a week ; they are now at the latter amount. 
 From evidence published by a Committee of the 
 House of Commons in 1833, added to such informa- 
 tion as we have been able to obtain up to the present 
 period, we give, as fully reliable, the following table 
 of the earnings of a spinner of cotton yarn, No. 200 
 at these several dates. 
 
 
 Weekly net 
 Earning. 
 
 Pounds of Flour 
 these would 
 purchase. 
 
 Pounds of 
 Flesh Meat 
 these would 
 purchase. 
 
 Hours 
 of 
 Work. 
 
 
 s. d. 
 
 
 
 
 In the year 1804 
 
 32 6 
 
 117 
 
 62 
 
 74 
 
 1833 
 
 42 9 
 
 267 
 
 85 
 
 69 
 
 1850 
 
 40 
 
 320 
 
 85 
 
 60 
 
154 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 In this case we see that in a trade more exposed 
 than almost any other to severity of competition, a 
 gradual rise of wages has been accompanied by a 
 gradual reduction in the hours of labour, and a 
 gradual, but decided, fall in the price of food. These, 
 we believe, comprise all the facts known and to be 
 trusted ; and assuredly they fully make good our 
 in position. 
 
 Mr Johnston returns to the charge (vol. i. p. 136) 
 thus : " The working classes have allowed them- 
 selves to be made the instrument of the middle orders 
 or men of business, and have been led away by the 
 delusion of accomplishing political changes, from which 
 practically they could derive no advantage." Is this 
 true ? Have they derived no advantage from the 
 political changes which have taken place during the 
 last twenty years ? Has parliamentary reform led 
 to the remission of no taxation which pressed heavily 
 upon them ? Has commercial reform, rendered 
 possible only by the great Act of 1832, brought 
 no addition to their comforts, no plenty to their 
 hearths, no spring to their industry, no demand for 
 their productions ? In what state would they have 
 been, if our exports in 1850 had been the same as 
 our exports in 1840 ? Has municipal reform relieved 
 them from no burdens and no injustice ? Have the 
 county courts afforded them no facility for the re- 
 covery of their small debts ? Has the increasing 
 attention now paid to those sanatory arrangements 
 which peculiarly concern the poor, no connection with 
 the augmentation of the popular element in our 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 155 
 
 government consequent upon parliamentary reform ? 
 Is the vast improvement which has taken place in the 
 schools for the working classes in no degree traceable 
 to the same influence ? Has not, in fact, the whole 
 of our legislation for the last fifteen years been 
 marked above all other characteristics by attention to 
 the wants, interests, and comforts of the poor ? Let 
 Mr Johnston look at our fiscal legislation alone, and 
 blush for the injustice of his charge. 
 
 It is scarcely too much to say, that since 1830 the 
 chief occupation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 has been the removal or reduction of taxes which 
 pressed upon the mass of the people. We know how 
 distasteful figures generally are both to hearers and 
 readers, and we shall therefore be merciful in our use 
 of them ; but we have collected a few which are too 
 speaking to be withheld. Since the peace in 1815 
 (leaving out that year), we have repealed, up to 1846, 
 taxes which produced annually 53,046,000; and we 
 have imposed taxes to the amount of 13,496,000; 
 leaving a clear balance of relief to the country of 
 39,550,000 a year. From 1830 to 1850, 
 21,568,000 of taxes have been repealed, and 
 7,925,000 imposed, showing a relief to the country 
 since that period of not less than 13,643,000. But 
 these figures, though showing the extent to which the 
 country has been eased, give a very inadequate 
 conception of the extent to which the working classes 
 have participated in that belief. Of the 7,925,000 
 of taxation imposed since 1830, 5,100,000 is 
 
156 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 furnished by the income-tax, from which they are 
 wholly exempted. In 1830, there were taxes on all 
 the raw materials of our industry ; now, all these 
 come in free. In 1830, there was a prohibitory 
 duty on foreign grain, foreign meat was excluded, and 
 heavy customs' duties were levied on all imported 
 articles of food. Now corn comes in free ; butchers'- 
 meat comes in free ; the duty on colonial coffee has 
 been reduced from 9d. and 6d. per Ib. to 4d. ; the 
 duty on foreign sugar was prohibitory, it is now 
 15s. 6d. a cwt. ; the duty on colonial sugar was 24s. 
 a cwt., it is now 11s. In 1830, the poor man's 
 letter cost him from 6d. to 13|d., he now gets it from 
 the furthest extremity of the island for a penny. In 
 fact, with the single exception of soap, no tax is now 
 levied on any one of the necessaries of life ; and if a 
 working man chooses to confine himself to these, 
 he may escape taxation altogether. Whatever he 
 contributes to the revenue is a purely voluntary 
 contribution. If he confines himself to a strictly 
 wholesome and nutritious diet, and to an ample 
 supply of neat and comfortable clothing, if he is 
 content, as so many of the best, and wisest, and 
 strongest, and longest-lived men have been before 
 him, to live on bread and meat and milk and butter, 
 and to drink only water ; to clothe himself in woollen, 
 linen, and cotton ; to forego the pleasant luxuries of 
 sugar, coffee, and tea, and to eschew the noxious ones 
 of wine, beer, spirits, and tobacco, he may pass 
 through life without ever paying one shilling of 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 157 
 
 taxation, except for the soap he requires for washing 
 an exception which is not likely to remain long 
 upon our statute-book. Of what other country in 
 the world can the same be said ? The discontented, 
 the factious, and the agitating still go about, telling 
 the working man that he, the heavily-taxed English- 
 man, cannot compete with the lightly-taxed foreigner; 
 speaking, as they might have been justified in some 
 respects in speaking in 1800, or in 1815, or in 
 1829; using language which may have been true 
 then, but which is simply false now. But in a work 
 like Mr Johnston's, carefully prepared for the press, 
 such unfairness and unveracity should, in common 
 decency, have been avoided. In no country in 
 Europe is the peasant and artisan so free from all 
 enforced taxation as in England. The French peasant 
 pays a salt-tax, a contribution personelle et mobiliere; 
 a licence-tax ; and, if he live in a town, the vexatious 
 and burdensome octroi. The German labouring man 
 pays a poll-tax, a class-tax, a trade-tax, and sometimes 
 a meat-tax ; and in certain parts an octroi also. The 
 English working-man pays no direct taxes whatever. 
 He is taxed only for his luxuries ; he pays only on 
 the pleasures of the palate ; if he chooses to dispense 
 with luxuries, none of which are essential and few of 
 which are harmless, he dispenses with taxation too ; 
 if, on the contrary, he chooses to smoke his pipe and 
 drink his glass, to sip tea from China, and sweeten it 
 with sugar from Jamaica, he at once puts himself into 
 the category of the rich, who can afford these 
 
158 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 superfluities ; he voluntarily steps into the tax-paying 
 class, and forfeits all title to sue or to complain 
 in forma pauperis. We are far from wishing to 
 intimate that he should not indulge in all harmless 
 luxuries to the utmost limit that he can afford ; but 
 most indisputably, in thus leaving it optional with 
 him whether be will contribute to the revenue or not 
 and subjecting him to no actual privations if he 
 decline to do so Parliament is favouring him to an 
 extent which it vouchsafes to no other class in the 
 community, and to which no other land affords a 
 parallel. His earnings are decimated by no income- 
 tax, like those of the clerk ; his cottage is subject to 
 no window-tax, like that of the struggling professional 
 aspirant ; very generally he does not even contribute 
 to the poor-rate ; he pays, like the rich man, to the 
 State only when he chooses to imitate the rich man 
 in his living. 
 
 In a very valuable paper, read by Mr Porter before 
 the British Association in August 1851, on " The self- 
 imposed Taxation of the Working Classes," he shows 
 in a very striking manner how far less liberally they 
 are treated by themselves than by the government 
 which their advocates so unfairly accuse of neglect and 
 injustice. He there clearly proves that the working 
 classes tax themselves every year, in three needless 
 and noxious articles alone, .to an extent equal to the 
 whole yearly revenue of the kingdom ; these articles, 
 too (which is the worst and most selfish feature of the 
 case), being consumed almost entirely by the heads of 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 159 
 
 families, to the exclusion of their wives and children. 
 Mr Porter, after a careful calculation, in which all 
 exaggeration is anxiously eliminated, gives us the 
 yearly expenditure of the people in the items of British 
 and Colonial spirits, beer and porter, tobacco and snuff; 
 leaving out brandy, as mainly used by the rich ; leav- 
 ing out all beer brewed in private families ; leaving 
 out English-made cigars, and all foreign manufactured 
 tobacco, which is chiefly the higher priced snuff and 
 Havannah cigars, not used by the poor. The sum 
 total is as follows : 
 
 Kum, gin, and whisky .... 20,810,208 
 
 Beer and porter 25,383,165 
 
 Tobacco and snuff 7,218,242 
 
 53,411,615 
 
 Let those who speak of working men as an oppressed, 
 impoverished, and extortionised class, reflect what a 
 magical change in their condition a very few years 
 would effect were this vast sum, thus worse than 
 thrown away, either expended in adding to their com- 
 forts, or laid by to raise them into a class of capitalists, 
 whom they so much envy and thoughtlessly malign. 
 
 " Vast as has been the increase of the national 
 wealth of late years, its distribution has been far less 
 satisfactory." So avers Mr Johnston. " Property is 
 more and more coagulating into larger masses. The 
 rich are becoming richer, and the poor poorer. No 
 class of politicians denies this." We deny it in toto : 
 there is no evidence to support the assertion ; and, 
 thanks to Mr Porter's industry and research, there is 
 
160 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 considerable evidence to disprove it. It is obvious 
 that when the savings of the working classes the 
 sums they accumulate and lay by are increasing, it 
 cannot be said, with any truth, that the poor* are 
 becoming poorer. Now, we have no means of know- 
 ing, with any certainty, what the total amount of these 
 savings are, because so large a portion of them are in 
 the hands of friendly societies and Odd Fellows' clubs, 
 of whose investments no summary is published. We 
 only know that they are largely increasing. The 
 number of these friendly societies registered was, in 
 1846, not less than 10,995 ; and the amount 
 deposited by them in savings' banks, and directly in 
 the hands of the National Debt Commissioners, was 
 3,301,560. In 1849, in spite of the severe pressure 
 and high prices of 1847 and 1848, this sum had 
 increased to 3,356,000. This, however, by no 
 means comprises the whole. Mr M'Culloch informs 
 us that, in 1815, these societies were said to have 
 numbered 925,429 members. If this be correct, they 
 must now, he says, reach 1,200,000. But leaving 
 these figures, over which some doubt may be thrown, 
 let us come to the Savings' Banks, where we have 
 official documents to rely on. In England, Wales, and 
 Ireland, the depositors, who numbered 412,217 in 
 1830, had increased to 970,825 in 1848 ; and the 
 amount deposited had sprung up from 13,507,568 
 to 27,034,026. The following will show the 
 increase in the deposits as compared with the popula- 
 tion, for England, Wales, and Ireland. In Scotland 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 161 
 
 owing to the greater facilities and the more liberal 
 interest afforded by the ordinary banks, savings' banks 
 have not till recently been much used. 
 
 s. D. 
 
 In 1831 the amount deposited was 12 8 per head 
 
 1836 16 4 
 
 1841 1910 
 
 1846 24 
 
 In 1848, the amount had fallen off to 20s. lid., 
 owing to the distress occasioned by the potato-rot, 
 and the high price of provisions : it has since again 
 increased. 
 
 It is, however, sometimes asserted that the bulk of 
 depositors in these institutions do not belong, properly 
 speaking, to the working classes, but are composed of 
 domestic servants and small tradesmen. As regards 
 friendly societies this assertion is certainly not true : 
 as regards savings' banks we cannot speak so decidedly, 
 since the callings of the depositors are not regularly 
 classified and published. But we have lying before us 
 a return from the Manchester and Salford Savings' 
 Bank, in 1842 from which it appears that out of 
 14,937 depositors, 3,063 were domestic servants, 
 3,033 children, whose parents had invested money for 
 them, only 2,372 tradesmen, clerks, warehousemen, 
 porters, artists, and professional teachers, and the 
 remainder were labourers and handicraftsmen in 
 various branches of industry. 
 
 The official accounts of the dividends paid to fund- 
 holders afford much valuable information, strongly 
 controverting the idea of the present tendency of pro- 
 
 L 
 
162 
 
 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 perty to concentrate itself into few hands. They show 
 that while the larger fund-holders are diminishing, 
 the smaller are increasing. More persons hold to the 
 half-yearly value of 5, fewer to the half-yearly value 
 of 500. 
 
 Fundholders receiving 
 at each Payment. 
 
 1831. 
 
 1848. 
 
 Increase per 
 cent. 
 
 Diminution 
 per cent. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Not exceeding 5 
 
 88,170 
 
 96,415 
 
 9-35 
 
 ... 
 
 10 
 
 44,790 
 
 44,937 
 
 0-33 
 
 
 50 
 
 98,320 
 
 96,024 
 
 
 2-33 
 
 100 
 
 25,694 
 
 24,462 
 
 
 4-79 
 
 200 
 
 14,772 
 
 13,872 
 
 
 6-02 
 
 300 
 
 4,527 
 
 4,032 
 
 
 10-93 
 
 500 
 
 2,890 
 
 2,647 
 
 
 8-41 
 
 1000 
 
 1,398 
 
 1,222 
 
 
 12-59 
 
 2000 
 
 412 
 
 328 
 
 
 20-38 
 
 Exceeding 2000 
 
 172 
 
 177 
 
 2-90 
 
 ... 
 
 
 281,145 
 
 284,127 
 
 
 
 The increase in the last item is caused by the insurance offices, 
 which invest largely in the funds. 
 
 The income-tax returns lead to a similar conclusion : 
 the smaller incomes have increased faster than the 
 larger. While the number assessed between 150 
 and 500, have increased between 1812 and 1848, 
 196 per cent. ; those assessed upwards of 500 have 
 increased only 147 per cent. The probate duty lists 
 give the same result. Between 1833 and 1848 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 The amount assessed on estates up to 1,500 had increased 15*56 
 between 1,500 and 5,000 . 9'21 
 
 ., ., 5,000 and 10,000 16*38 
 
 10,000 and 15,000 6'36 
 
 ., of upwards of 15,000 ., 7'20 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 163 
 
 While the amount of duty received on estates of 
 30,000 and upwards has been steadily though slowly 
 decreasing. 
 
 Driven from all these lugubrious and malcontent 
 positions, Mr Johnston takes refuge in the assertion 
 that, in spite of wealth, in spite of civilisation, in 
 spite of education, the moral condition of the people 
 of England has retrograded in recent years. We will 
 not now follow him through all the details he brings 
 forward in proof of his statement. We will give one 
 as a sample of the rest. He affirms, first (vol. ii. p. 
 247), as a matter which has fallen under his personal 
 observation, that the greatest curse and source of 
 crime and degradation among the labouring classes of 
 England is drunkenness ;. and secondly, that this vice 
 is on the increase, and " that from whatever cause, 
 the consumption of ardent spirits has far from dimin- 
 ished." We admit his first assertion : we entirely 
 deny the second. The decrease of habits of drinking 
 among the middle and higher classes has long been 
 matter of notoriety and of congratulation. Mr 
 McCulloch states the average consumption of wine in 
 the United Kingdom to have fallen since the close of 
 the last century from three bottles a man to one and 
 one-third, and from the last returns published we 
 deduce the following figures : 
 
 Per Head. 
 
 From 1795 1804 we consumed 0'52 gallons of wine a year. 
 18211824 0-22 '' 
 
 in 1842 0*18 
 
 in 1849 0-22 
 
164- 
 
 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 This is a most satisfactory result ; but it is not 
 generally known that the official documents relating 
 to the consumption of beer and ardent spirits show 
 one not less satisfactory with regard to the increasing 
 temperance of the poor. For the first quarter of this 
 century the high duties on British spirits caused such 
 an enormous amount of illicit distillation that no com- 
 parison can be instituted with that period. Since 
 1830 the following table shows the annual consump- 
 tion per head in the kingdom. 
 
 British Spirits drunk per head 
 Colonial ..... 
 Foreign ..... 
 
 1831. 
 90 
 15 
 05 
 
 110 
 
 1841. 
 
 77 
 09 
 04 
 
 1849. 
 84 
 11 
 
 08 
 
 90 1'03 
 
 The following table is still more clear and satisfac- 
 tory, as showing that there has been a large and, on 
 the whole, a continuous decrease in the use of ardent 
 spirits in England and Ireland, and that the sole 
 increase has been in Scotland. 
 
 Home made 
 Spirits 
 charged with 
 Dtuy. 
 
 1831. 
 
 1836. 
 
 1843. 
 
 1846. 
 
 1849. 
 
 England 
 Scotland 
 Ireland 
 
 U Kingdom 
 
 Gallons. 
 7,732,000 
 6,007,000 
 9,004,000 
 
 Gallons. 
 7,875,000 
 6,621,000 
 12,249,000 
 
 Gallons. 
 7,720,000 
 5,593,000 
 5,546,000 
 
 Gallons. 
 5,634,000 
 9,560,000 
 8,333,000 
 
 Gallons. 
 5,318,000 
 10,445,000 
 8,117,000 
 
 22,743,000 126,745 000 
 
 18,859,000 
 
 23,527,000 23,880,000 
 
 The diminution in the consumption of malt liquor 
 appears to have kept pace with that in the use of 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 165 
 
 spirits. In 1830 the beer duty was taken off, and a 
 great increase in the number of licences was the 
 result. The beer shops increased till 1838, when 
 they reached their maximum. Since that time they 
 have steadily declined. The licences granted in that 
 year were 45,717, or one for every 566 persons; in 
 1849 they were 38,200, or one for every 720 persons. 
 
 Consumption per Head in 
 
 British Spirits. 
 
 Bushels of 
 
 the United Kingdom. 
 
 Gallons. 
 
 Malt. 
 
 In the year 1831 . 
 
 90 
 
 1-63 
 
 1841 . 
 
 77 
 
 1-35 
 
 1839 . 
 
 84 
 
 1-32 
 
 It will be allowed, we think, that these figures 
 effectually dispose of Mr Johnston's rash assertion as 
 to the increase in the consumption of intoxicating 
 liquors among our increasing population. 
 
 We trust that the picture we have drawn of the 
 undeniable improvement of our population as a whole, 
 and of our progress in all the departments of national 
 well-being, will not be held to -indicate want of 
 knowledge of the amount of social suffering which still 
 exists, nor want of the deepest sympathy with the 
 sufferers. We are fully cognisant of the existence in 
 our great towns of a class of beings below the working 
 classes, permanently and almost hopelessly degraded. 
 We are not blind to the pressure, the privation, the 
 penury, the occasional starvation, even, prevalent 
 among many craftsmen, especially perhaps, among 
 sempstresses and tailors. We admit and deplore the 
 
166 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 depressed and impoverished condition of the agricul- 
 tural labourers over many parts of England ; and we 
 look upon this feature in the social state of England 
 with almost more anxiety than any other, because, 
 more than any other, an air of wretchedness and of 
 inability to rise would here appear to be characteristic 
 of a whole section of our population. But we do not 
 dwell upon these painful facts here, not from wishing 
 to ignore them, nor from feeling them to be irrecon- 
 cilable with our theory of progress, but because 
 unless they can be shown to spring out of our 
 advancing civilisation, or to prevail now to a greater 
 degree than formerly they are, in our controversy 
 with the asserters of our national decay, to a great 
 extent irrelevant considerations. The existence of 
 wide-spread distress is undoubtedly a proof that our 
 civilisation is imperfect, and our social system incom- 
 plete ; but that this distress is more extensive or 
 more severe than it has been, will not, we think, be 
 deliberately held by any one who is aware how 
 similar complaints, as angry and unmeasured, stretch 
 back through the whole half century ; how much 
 more sensitive to suffering, how much more quick to 
 detect and prompt to pity misery, the public mind 
 has of late years become ; and how many phases of 
 wretchedness formerly hidden in secrecy and silence 
 are now made known through a thousand channels. 
 If there are among us any class whose inability to 
 live in comfort or to rise out of their bondage is 
 justly chargeable upon the arrangements of society, 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 167 
 
 this is an impeachment of our civilisation, and a 
 fatal flaw in the structure of our political community. 
 But if, as we believe, all these cases of misery and 
 degradation where they are not those casual excep- 
 tions which must always exist in human, and 
 therefore imperfect, societies are distinctly traceable 
 to the former neglect of natural laws which are now 
 beginning to be studied and obeyed, and to a violation, 
 by the last generation, of principles which have been 
 taken as the guide and the pole-star of the present, 
 then this impeachment can no longer be justly 
 sustained. It is the law of nature that children 
 should suffer for their father's faults : it is the law of 
 nature that indolence, improvidence, recklessness, 
 and folly should entail suffering and degradation ; and 
 it is no just ground for the condemnation of our social 
 arrangements that they carry out this law ; nor any 
 argument against the progress of an age that the 
 action of this law is legibly written on its face. If, 
 indeed (in any but exceptional instances, which no 
 system can ever meet), the industrious, the frugal, and 
 the foreseeing whose parents before them were 
 industrious, frugal, and foreseeing also not only 
 cannot maintain their position or rise above it, but 
 are sinking lower and lower in spite of their exertions, 
 then the construction of society is somehow, some- 
 where, in fault, and our boasted progress is a mistake 
 and mockery. But who will affirm such cases to 
 exist except as rare anomalies ? 
 
 One remark more, and we will quit this branch of 
 
168 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 the subject. Much has been written of late respecting 
 the privations of the 30,000 needlewomen and the 
 23,000 tailors of the metropolis, and of the destitution 
 and squalor of the peasants in rural districts : shocking- 
 individual pictures have been drawn of the sufferings 
 of these classes ; and, exaggerated as some of them 
 may have been in tone and colouring, we do not deny 
 their truth in the main. They are true as scenes ; 
 are they true as general delineations ? Are they speci- 
 mens, or exceptions ? How deep do these miseries 
 go ? Are they characteristic of a class, or only of 
 individuals of that class ? There is, moreover, one 
 weighty consideration entirely left out of view by those 
 who draw rapid generalisations from these harrowing 
 descriptions, which we can only just indicate here. 
 How small a redundance of numbers in any branch 
 of industry will suffice to give to that branch 
 the appearance, and even, for the time, to cause the 
 reality, of general distress ? If, in the cotton trade, 
 there is regular employment, at ample wages, for 
 50,000 spinners, and 50,500 are seeking for work, 
 though it be only this extra one per cent, who are, 
 properly speaking, destitute or in distress, they may 
 easily succeed not only in actually making the other 
 ninty-nine sharers in their privations, but in giving 
 a general character of destitution and unetTiployedness 
 to the whole class. If there are 31,000 needlewomen 
 in London, and only 30,000 are wanted, the surplus 
 thousand, by their competition, their complaints, their 
 undeniable destitution, will inevitably produce on the 
 superficial observer the impression of starvation and 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 169 
 
 inadequate employment pervading the whole denomin- 
 ation. Apply these remarks to the clothing trades. 
 Now, if we are right in this, with what justice can 
 sufferings of this character be urged to show that 
 society is retrograding or out of joint ? How can 
 privations, however sad, however clamorous for cure, 
 resulting from the surplus of a few thousands and 
 properly belonging only to those few be adduced in 
 disproof of the progress and increasing comfort of a 
 population of 20,000,000 ? 
 
 The excessive toil required in nearly every occu- 
 pation the severity of the struggle for existence 
 the strain upon the powers of every man who runs 
 the race of life in this land and age of high excitement, 
 Mr Johnston regards as a great counter-indication 
 to the idea of progress. Unquestionably it is a great 
 drawback, and a sore evil. But it is by no means 
 confined to the lower orders. Throughout the whole 
 community we are all called to labour too early and 
 compelled to labour too severely and too long. We 
 live sadly too fast. Our existence, in nearly all ranks, 
 is a crush, a struggle, and a strife. Immensely as the 
 field of lucrative employment has been enlarged, it is 
 still too limited for the numbers that crowd into it. 
 The evil is not peculiar to the peasant or the handi- 
 craftsman perhaps even it is not most severely felt 
 by him. The lawyer, the statesman, the student, the 
 artist, the merchant, all groan under the pressure. 
 All who work at all are overworked. Some have 
 
170 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 more to do than they can do without sacrificing the 
 enjoyments, the amenities, and all the higher objects 
 of existence ; others can scarcely find work enough to 
 enable them to keep body and soul together. No one 
 can be more keenly alive than we are to all that is 
 regretable in such a state of things. But we doubt 
 whether the mischief is increasing : we know that 
 many efforts are making to diminish it : that some 
 progress has already been achieved in this direction ; 
 and that while the evil is felt and admitted, we are 
 also beginning to perceive in what quarter its eradi- 
 cation must be sought. Shorter hours of labour have 
 already been enforced in factories ; among tradesmen, 
 and shopmen, and milliners there is a popular move- 
 ment supported by an organisation of considerable 
 extent, called "The Short-time Movement;" and in the 
 legal, and we believe in the medical profession likewise, 
 employment is more diffused and less monopolised by 
 a few than was the case a few years ago. The Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons which sat last session 
 to inquire into official salaries, elicited some valuable 
 information on this subject from the then Attorney- 
 General, and other leading counsel, to the effect that 
 owing to the establishment of County Courts and other 
 legal arrangements, many more barristers are employed 
 now than formerly ; and that while there are fewer 
 colossal fortunes made at the bar, there are a 
 greater number of lawyers in the receipt of moderate 
 professional incomes. 
 
 Further progress in the cure of this pervading 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 171 
 
 malady must be sought in the diffusion of simpler 
 habits and more moderate and rational desires ; in 
 sounder views of the objects of life, and a juster 
 estimate of the elements of true enjoyment ; in the 
 stronger development of individual volition, and in a 
 growing emancipation from senseless and tyrannical 
 conventionalities. To enable us all to work less in- 
 tently and less incessantly, it is only necessary that we 
 should be content to live more humbly and be satisfied 
 with less ; we must all alike purchase leisure by 
 frugality, and by contentment with a lowlier and less 
 ambitious lot than we have hitherto striven after. 
 This is the only coin by which the pearl of great price 
 can be bought. The labourer who aspires after con- 
 tinental ease must be satisfied with the privations and 
 parsimony of continental living; the merchant must be 
 content to purchase the delights of domestic society 
 and unanxious nights at the price of dying fifty 
 thousand pounds poorer than he once expected ; the 
 physician or the lawyer, if he cannot easily refuse the 
 practice which flows in upon him in such overwhelming 
 abundance, can at least, by limiting his desires to the 
 accumulation of a more modest fortune, retire earlier 
 from the struggle, and devolve his business upon his less 
 successful brethren. If we could all be suddenly en- 
 dowed with wisdom to perceive how few of the worthier 
 objects of earthly existence require wealth for their 
 attainment, how truly all the real happiness, even of 
 refined and intellectual life, is within the reach of an 
 easily-acquired competence, how seldom the rich are 
 
172 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 free, even in the expenditure of their riches ; how 
 generally how almost universally the affluent are 
 compelled to lay out their envied wealth, not in adding 
 one iota to their own enjoyment, but in obedience to 
 the tyrannical dictation of the world in which they live, 1 
 we should discover that the excessive toil and the 
 severe struggle of life which we all unite to deprecate 
 and deplore, is, in truth, a self-imposed necessity, like 
 the taxation of the poor. If the English" people could 
 all at once be induced to lay aside their luxurious, 
 wasteful, and showy mode of life, and adopt the 
 frugality and temperance of the Spaniards, the simple 
 habits of the Tyrolese, and the unostentatious 
 hospitality of the Syrians, how few among us would 
 not find a superfluity at their disposal ! 
 
 We rejoice to believe that this more rational and 
 homely spirit is spreading among us, especially in 
 detached localities ; and we do not think that a good 
 citizen could render any more valuable service to his 
 country than in promoting it, by argument and 
 example, wherever his influence extends. 
 
 It is, however, incumbent upon those who, by a 
 shorter process than that of national enlightenment, 
 would bring about less strenuous exertion and shorter 
 hours of labour in all industrial occupations, to con- 
 sider what the attainment of their purpose signifies 
 and would involve. Less labour signifies less pro- 
 
 1 The late Lord Dudley used to observe that, " the only real 
 competence was to have 10,000 a year, and for the world to 
 believe that you had only 5000. You would then have 5000 
 for yourself" 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 173 
 
 duce : shorter hours of work mean a diminution in the 
 quantity of all those articles of necessity and comfort 
 which work creates. The Provisional Government of 
 France, after the last Revolution, issued a degree 
 reducing the hours of daily labour by one-third ; but 
 they soon found, by actual results, what a fatal and 
 shallow blunder they had made, looking to the object 
 they had in view. If the peasant works eight hours 
 instead of ten, he has so many fewer quarters of wheat 
 to exchange with the artisan ; if the weaver works 
 eight hours instead of ten, he has so many fewer shirts 
 or coats to exchange against the bread of the agricul- 
 tural labourer ; there is less food and less clothing for 
 the community at large ; all articles rise in price, and 
 therefore none of the producers benefit by the advance, 
 while society, as a whole, is worse provided for than 
 before. We are far from saying that the leisure thus 
 purchased may not be well worth its cost ; but we 
 mast not imagine that it can be had for nothing, or 
 that it can be obtained at any cheaper rate. It is only 
 by being, as a nation, contented with less, that we can 
 safely venture to take measures for producing less. If 
 we diminish labour, we must put up with diminished 
 supplies ; unless, indeed, we can employ our labour on 
 more fertile and productive fields. 
 
 Yes ! say the votaries of " organisation," there is 
 a third alternative. In general we work too much 
 but there are many among us who do not work at all : 
 set the idle to work. Alas ! this expedient would go 
 but a small way towards meeting the difficulty. How 
 
174 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 many unemployed are there in Great Britain ? and 
 what proportion do they bear to the total population, 
 the great mass of whom are alleged to be overworked ? 
 Among the middle classes there are some, among 
 the higher there are many, who do nothing. But how 
 infinitesimal a proportion do these form of 20,000,000 ? 
 In the manufacturing districts we hear of a few unem- 
 ployed artisans ; and in the metropolis the complaint 
 is of the multitude of the overworked, not of the idle. 
 Tn the agricultural districts even, the number of able- 
 bodied unemployed is small and diminishing. The 
 number of adults so described was, on January 1, 
 1849, 201,644; in 1850, 170,502; in 1851, 
 154,525. It is pretty certain that if all the unem- 
 ployed in all ranks were set to work, they would not 
 relieve the overworked to the extent of half an hour a 
 day. If, indeed, as some have suggested, all who are 
 occupied in supplying the ornaments and luxuries of 
 life were to be employed in producing necessaries, the 
 result might be very different ; but this would have 
 serious evils of its own ; and be of use only as far as 
 it should bring us back to the remedy we have shown 
 to be the true one, simpler and more frugal habits 
 diffused through the community. 
 
 Mr Johnston devotes a careful chapter to the 
 examination of the Criminal Returns for the last 
 fifteen years ; and seems strongly disposed to draw 
 from them an augury favourable to his notions of the 
 deterioration of our social state. Except, however, in 
 the single and very painful instance of the increase of 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 175 
 
 murders, which cannot be gainsaid, we do not see 
 that his statistics bear out his impressions. A com- 
 parison of the total commitments for various classes of 
 offences during the last fifteen years, gives the follow- 
 ing results. 
 
 Nature of Offences. 
 
 Five Years 
 ending 
 1839. 
 
 Five Years 
 ending 
 1844. 
 
 Five Years 
 ending 
 1849. 
 
 Increase per 
 Cent, between 
 First and Last 
 Period. 
 
 Murder 
 
 315 
 
 347 
 
 365 
 
 15-8 
 
 Attempts to murder 
 
 
 
 
 
 and manslaughter . 
 
 1,763 
 
 2,210 
 
 2,153 
 
 22-1 
 
 Total offences against 
 
 
 
 
 
 the person 
 
 9,559 
 
 10,885 
 
 10,318 
 
 8' 
 
 Violent and malicious 
 
 
 
 
 
 offences against pro- 
 
 
 
 
 
 perty 
 
 7,666 
 
 11,340 
 
 8,958 
 
 16'8 
 
 Simple ditto 
 
 90,172 
 
 113,047 
 
 111,804 
 
 24- 
 
 Total of all commitments 
 
 112,864 
 
 142,389 
 
 136,408 
 
 20'8 
 
 Yearly average . 
 
 22,573 
 
 28,478 
 
 27,282 
 
 20-8 
 
 Now, notwithstanding the marked decrease in all 
 offences except murder between 1844 and 1849 ; 
 notwithstanding, also, the consideration that, against 
 an increase between the first and last periods here 
 given for comparison (an increase varying from eight 
 to twenty-four per cent.), there has to be set an 
 increase of population amounting to fourteen per cent. ; 
 still we are quite ready to confess, that, at first sight, 
 the result presented is the reverse of satisfactory. 
 But there are two or three considerations which, when 
 duly weighed, will do much to mitigate our dis- 
 appointment. And, first, let us inquire into the 
 
176 
 
 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 relative heinousness of the offences committed in 
 these three periods, as indicated by the severity of the 
 sentences passed upon them by the judges. Many 
 crimes necessarily classed together under the same 
 general denomination may be marked by very different 
 degrees of guilt ; and, where no material change has 
 taken place in our penal laws, between the periods to 
 be compared, we do not know that any fairer estimate 
 can be obtained of the relative enormity of crimes 
 than that afforded by the view taken of them by those 
 who were judicially cognisant of all the circumstances 
 attending their commission. 
 
 Sentences. 
 
 Five Years 
 ending 
 1839. 
 
 Five Years 
 ending 
 1844. 
 
 Five Years 
 ending 
 1849. 
 
 Increase 
 per Cent, 
 since 
 
 Decrease 
 per Cent, 
 since 
 
 
 
 
 
 1832. 
 
 1839. 
 
 Death 
 
 1,627 
 
 368 
 
 282 
 
 
 82 
 
 Transportation 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 for more than 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15 years . 
 
 2,646 
 
 1,162 
 
 493 
 
 
 81 
 
 Tr. from 7 to 15 
 
 5,087 
 
 9,766 
 
 6,173 
 
 21 
 
 
 Tr. for 7 years . 
 
 10,864 
 
 15,110 
 
 12,668 
 
 17 
 
 ... 
 
 Imprisonment 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 above 2 years . 
 
 72 
 
 76 
 
 15 
 
 80 
 
 Im. above 1 year 
 
 1,775 
 
 2,395 
 
 2,208 24 
 
 
 Im. 1 year and 
 
 
 
 
 
 under 
 
 56,341 
 
 77,501 
 
 81,979 
 
 45 
 
 ... 
 
 Thus it appears that while the offences judged 
 worthy of death and transportation for life have 
 diminished since 1839, 81 per cent.; and those 
 judged worthy of shorter terms of exile have in- 
 creased somewhat faster than the population, the vast 
 increase which has taken place has been in those 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 177 
 
 offences punishable by a year's imprisonment, or even 
 less. A comparison between the last five years and 
 the five years immediately preceding, shows a diminu- 
 tion in all offences except those visited with the mildest 
 penalties. 
 
 There are, however, other circumstances which render 
 the increase or diminution of committals for crime a 
 very inadequate and often deceptive criterion of the 
 moral progress of the community. Iri the first place, 
 the varying skill and activity of the police will go far 
 to modify any conclusions we might draw from 
 criminal returns. An increase in the number of com- 
 mittals is often only an indication of a better system 
 of detection. The number of offenders brought to 
 justice is often no more complete or accurate test of 
 the number of offences committed, than is the number 
 of fish caught of the number swimming in the river. 
 If every year a larger proportion of existing criminals 
 be not brought to light, our police cannot be improv- 
 ing as it ought. It is, therefore, obvious that an 
 increase in the crimes made known may easily co-exist 
 with an actual decrease in the crimes committed. In 
 the second place and this is a point to which we 
 wish to call special attention crime is, for the most 
 part, committed not by the community at large, but 
 by a peculiar and distinct section of it. A great 
 portion of the crimes of violence, and most of the 
 crimes of fraud, .are due to professional criminals ; 
 and an increase of offences indicates rather increased 
 activity in this criminal population, or increased facility 
 
 M 
 
178 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 for their depredations, or, at most, an increase in their 
 numbers, than any augmented criminality on the part 
 of society in general. The inmates of our gaols, the 
 culprits in our docks, belong habitually, in an over- 
 whelming proportion, to a class apart, a class whose 
 occupation and livelihood are found in the commission 
 of offences ; who are compelled to this trade because 
 they know no other, and because no other is in vogue 
 among the people with whom their lot is cast ; and 
 who are in many cases trained to it as regularly as 
 others are trained to weaving, to ploughing, or to 
 tailoring. The increase of crime, therefore, generally 
 bespeaks, on the worst supposition, an increase of the 
 criminal population ; and in no degree militates 
 against the idea of the progress of morality and civil- 
 isation among all other classes, though it shows, with 
 painful distinctness and with startling emphasis, that 
 society has not succeeded in removing the motives 
 which stimulate to a criminal career, or in redeeming 
 and absorbing those classes from which the criminal 
 population is recruited. While it is one of the bene- 
 ficial effects of a good police, to separate more and 
 more the light from the darkness, our swollen return 
 of crime is undoubtedly a blot upon our escutcheon and 
 a drawback on our progress ; not as impeaching the 
 general honesty and virtue of the nation, but as showing 
 the existence of a class among us which the advance 
 of civilisation ought to have eradicated or suppressed. 
 These reflections may suggest an explanation of the 
 mistake both of those who, finding the great majority 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 179 
 
 of criminals to be uneducated, conceive that their 
 criminality is due to their ignorance, and will be 
 removed by their instruction ; and of those also, who, 
 finding no regular and steady ratio (or only an inverse 
 one) between the spread of education and the decrease 
 of crime, infer that instruction is not an efficient ally 
 of morality or a natural antagonist to crime. The 
 criminality of the inmates of our gaols and convict 
 ships, though found in almost invariable concomitance 
 with ignorance, does not spring from it ; but the con- 
 comitance is to be explained by the reflection that 
 absence of all proper training and instruction is only 
 one of the many characteristics of the class in which 
 habitual and professional criminals are found. No 
 education will eradicate their criminality unless it 
 should raise them out of the class from which they 
 have sprung, or otherwise alter the surrounding cir- 
 cumstances which hem them in, and point their course 
 with an imperious and overpowering hand. Also, 
 under these circumstances, it is evident that no 
 national education, however improved in its quality, 
 or excellent in its direct results, can be reasonably 
 expected to produce any decisive effect upon our 
 criminal returns, as long as it stops short of our 
 professional criminal population. Crime cannot be 
 diminished by any moral influence bearing only upon 
 the non-criminal classes. 
 
 Another count of Mr Johnston's indictment against 
 the present age is the want of cordial and kindly 
 intercourse between different ranks : 
 
180 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 " The separation between rich and poor the dissympathy and 
 isolation of classes, is the great social evil of the time. Institu- 
 tions for scientific and literary teaching by lectures, at the 
 cheapest possible rates, are established ; parks for the recreation 
 of the lower orders are planted ; even clubs, upon something like 
 the aristocratic model, where conveniences and luxuries are sup- 
 plied at low prices : but all this seems to be unsuccessful. What 
 one wants to see a mutual and hearty recognition of the differ- 
 ences of condition, a kind and cordial condescension on the one 
 side, and an equally cordial, but still respectful, devotedness, on 
 the other appears to make no progress." Vol. i. p. 131. 
 
 This is a common and natural, but we think an 
 inconsiderate complaint. It is " a longing, lingering 
 look behind," cast after the characteristics of an era 
 that has passed away. It is the hankering which 
 pervades the Young-England party. It is the secret 
 regret indulged in by the more amiable portion of our 
 aristocracy. The truth is, that that kind of friendly 
 intercourse between the higher and lower orders 
 seductive as we feel it to be in description beautiful 
 and touching as it often was in reality belonged to 
 feudalism, and is simply impracticable and incongruous 
 in a democratic age. It arose from and depended, 
 upon a relative position of the two classes which no 
 longer exists. It could not be ingrafted on their 
 present relations. The theory of generous protection on 
 the one side, and grateful and affectionate dependence 
 on the other, can no longer form the basis on which 
 the social hierarchy rests. If still cherished among 
 the aristocratic rich, it is repudiated by the labouring 
 poor ; and if the former were to attempt to act it out, 
 they would be met by ridicule, repulsion, and rebellion, 
 from the latter. To explain fully the nature of the 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 181 
 
 change in the relations of the two parties, and the 
 precise point in the change which English society has 
 now reached, would require us to copy whole pages 
 from Mill's philosophic chapter on " The Probable 
 Future of the Working Classes/' and from the fourth 
 volume of Tocqueviile's " Democracy in America." 
 The error of those who thus seek to recall the attach- 
 ments and sympathies of feudalism " lies in not 
 perceiving that these virtues and sentiments, like the 
 clanship and hospitality of the wandering Arab, belong 
 emphatically to a rude and imperfect state of the social 
 union. We have entered into a state of civilisation 
 in which the bond that attaches human beings to one 
 another must be disinterested admiration and sympathy 
 for personal qualities, or gratitude for unselfish services 
 not the emotions of protectors towards dependents, 
 or of dependents towards protectors. Of the working 
 classes of Western Europe, at least, it may be pro- 
 nounced certain that the patriarchal or paternal system 
 of government is one to which they will not again be 
 subject. They have taken their interests into their 
 own hands " 
 
 The unsatisfactory nature of the intercourse now 
 subsisting between rich and poor arises mainly from 
 the fact of the relations between them being in a state 
 of transition ; neither of the two parties having alto- 
 gether discarded the old ideas, nor wholly embraced 
 and comprehended the new. Both are still somewhat 
 under the influence of feudal associations ; and con- 
 
 1 Mill's Political Economy, vol. ii. p. 317. 
 
182 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 found in their minds the rights and duties of the 
 past relation with those of the relation which has 
 superseded it. The bond between the two classes, and 
 their mutual obligations, are as clear and imperative as 
 ever ; but these obligations have changed their char- 
 acter, and require to be defined anew. Till they are 
 so defined and thoroughly realised by both, the inter- 
 course between the classes can never resume a perfectly 
 simple and satisfactory footing. At present, circum- 
 stances and recollections combine to make it impossible 
 to mix either on the old footing of feudalism, or on 
 the new footing of equality. The great repudiate the 
 one ; the lower orders repudiate the other. There are 
 three relations in which capital and labour, the rich 
 and the poor, the noble and the peasant, may stand to 
 each other. There is the relation of slavery, the rela- 
 tion of vassalage, the relation of simple contract. In 
 the first there is absolute dependence and absolute 
 control ; in the second there is a modified submission 
 and partial protection and command ; in the third 
 there is theoretic equality, and simple service is 
 balanced against simple payment. In Egypt and in 
 Carolina, the first of these relations subsists; in Russia 
 and Hungary the second ; in France and Pennsylvania 
 the third ; and in none of these countries is there 
 any misunderstanding or confusion on the subject. In 
 England, on the contrary, we are stepping from the 
 second to the third of these relations, but have not 
 quite realised or got accustomed to the change. 
 Neither the higher nor the lower classes see clearly, or 
 feel invariably, in which of the two relative positions 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 183 
 
 they stand, or wish to stand. Each party borrows 
 some of the claims of the former relation, but for- 
 gets the correlative obligations. The peasant and 
 the artisan conceive that they are entitled to claim 
 from their master the forbearance, the kindness, the 
 protection in danger, the assistance in difficulty, the 
 maintenance in distress and destitution, which belong 
 to the feudal relation ; but they forget to pay the 
 corresponding duties of consideration, confidence, and 
 respect. On the other hand, the master is too apt to 
 forget that his servants, and the nobleman that his 
 tenants, are now, in the eye not only of the law but of 
 society, his equal fellow-citizens ; and he is still some- 
 times seen exacting from them, not only the stipulated 
 work and rent, but that deference, devotion, and 
 implicit obedience to which only virtue, justice, and 
 beneficence on his part at present can entitle him. 
 
 Now we are not disposed to regret that the relative 
 position of the classes has been thus changed : the 
 matter for regret is that the change is not fully felt or 
 comprehended, and that it has come upon us before 
 both parties were perfectly prepared to meet it. In 
 the new relation properly regarded and conscientiously 
 adopted with all its corollaries, there may be, if less 
 that is picturesque and poetical, more that is elevating, 
 than in the old. We confess that, in spite of the 
 seductions of fancy, we have no hankering after the 
 past paradise of serfdom. We believe that the 
 reciprocal dependence and fostering of feudalism have 
 been replaced by something better, worthier, and 
 more hopeful. There is no longer the same fre- 
 
184 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 quent and devoted attachment on the part of 
 individuals among the rich to individuals among 
 the poor (and vice versti). But there is, what was 
 unknown in feudal times, regard, care, and compassion 
 for the poor as a class : sympathy for them and a sense 
 of duty to them, as being an integral, acknowledged, 
 vital portion of the community. In the regretted 
 days of aristocracy and vassalage, the servant revered 
 and loved his lord, and the lord was kind to the 
 dependents who belonged to him, and was in daily 
 intercourse with them ; but justice to the labouring 
 masses, compassion to the aggregate poor, a desire to 
 elevate and improve the condition of the people as a 
 whole, were sentiments as yet unborn. Now, it is 
 true, we see but seldom those attachments of superior 
 and serf, lasting, not only through a long lifetime, 
 but through many generations which so beautified 
 and hallowed the social life of medieval times. We 
 do not so often witness the sports and feasts of peasants 
 in the parks of our nobility, encouraged and presided 
 over by the benevolent and condescending great. 
 Instead, however, of all this we have signs of interest 
 and regard more substantial, if less attractive ; we have 
 sanitary commissioners ; we have factory and mine 
 inspectors ; we have organised education ; we have 
 official investigations into every reported abuse ; * and 
 charitable associations for relieving or precluding every 
 possible variety of wretchedness. 
 
 But feudalism has found a still more valuable 
 substitute and successor. Self-reliance has replaced, 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 185 
 
 or is fast replacing, among our working classes, the 
 enthralling, enfeebling habits of dependence on the 
 protection and guidance of another, which was 
 distinctive of past times. Among the agricultural 
 peasantry the old feelings and the old habits may 
 linger still ; but among artisans and handicraftsmen 
 of every denomination, among the dwellers in the 
 great hives of our industry which are replenished 
 from the rural districts, and who must in time 
 communicate their own spirit to the homes from 
 which they spring, a proud sense of self-dependence, 
 a resolution to owe their well-being and advancement 
 to themselves alone, a surly and contemptuous thrust- 
 ing back of charitable aid or guidance from above, 
 are rapidly spreading, and manifesting themselves 
 sometimes in forms which we might resent and 
 deplore, were not the substance which gives rise to 
 them so beyond all price. 
 
 The duties which the higher ranks of society owe 
 to those below them in the social hierarchy, are not 
 obliterated or discharged by this change in their 
 relative positions, which modern times and political 
 reforms have brought about : but the nature of these 
 duties is materially altered. To distressed individuals 
 of every description and of all ranks we all owe 
 tender compassion and charitable aid : while to the 
 lower orders, as such, we owe not charity but justice, 
 not so much the open purse, as the equal measure. 
 Advice, as far as they will receive it ; guidance, as 
 far as they will submit to it ; control at times, as far 
 
186 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 as the unbounded freedom of the English constitution 
 will enable us to exercise it ; education of the best 
 quality and to the utmost extent that our unhappy 
 sectarian jealousies will permit us to bestow it. We 
 owe them fair play in everything ; justice of the most 
 even-handed sort, full, unquestionable, and over- 
 flowing ; the removal of every external impediment 
 which prevents them from doing and being whatever 
 other classes can do and be. We owe it to them 
 to employ our superior capacities, our richer op- 
 portunities, our maturer wisdom, in cheering their 
 toil, smoothing their difficulties, directing their often 
 misguided and suicidal energies. We owe to them 
 every facility with which we can surround their 
 conflict with the obstacles of life, facility to obtain 
 land, to obtain employment, or obtain colonisation ; 
 facility to acquire temperate habits, to accumulate 
 savings, to employ them wisely, to invest them well : 
 facility, above all, to acquire that which is at once the 
 key and [crown of all, solid and comprehensive 
 instruction in all the things which belong both to 
 their earthly welfare and their future peace. Our 
 duty to them as a class, may be comprised in a single 
 sentence ; we should enable them to get everything, 
 but should give them nothing, except education ; 
 and if we give this to one generation, the next may 
 safely be trusted to get .it for themselves. Com- 
 passion to the afflicted, encouragement to the 
 struggling, aid to the feeble, succour to the destitute, 
 these man owes to man, independent of rank or 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 1 87 
 
 station, creed or colour, according to the measure of 
 need on the one side and capacity on the other. 
 
 The chapter which is devoted to Sir Robert Peel is 
 one of the most interesting in the book. Mr Johnston 
 regards that eminent and lamented statesman from an 
 opponent's point of view, but in no hostile spirit. He 
 considers that to speak of him as " the embodiment 
 and type of the age in which he lived, implies no 
 compliment, if the age be (as he evidently conceives 
 it) essentially unheroic an age of compromise and 
 artifice an age more prolific of prudence than of 
 elevated feeling an age in which generous enthusiasm 
 is dead/' Again, he is inclined to account for the 
 high and sincere encomiums passed upon Sir Robert 
 Peel by leading men of all parties, " by a vitiated state 
 of the general mind, so far as regards public affairs ; 
 by the want of heroic attachment to high principle, 
 by the fact that we have at present upper classes 
 at once disdainful and mean, and middle classes 
 worshipping what is safest, or what seems so." 
 
 Now though we do not think that Mr Johnston is 
 altogether just to the character of Sir Robert Peel, still 
 it is not our province to undertake his defence at 
 present, except in as far as the grounds on which he is 
 condemned would ensure the condemnation of nearly all 
 the statesmen of the age ; and besides, would indicate 
 a want of appreciation of their peculiar difficulties, and 
 a misconception of the qualities of character and the 
 course of conduct exacted from them by the nature of 
 
188 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 representative governments and the circumstances of 
 modern times. 
 
 It is a common complaint among the laudatores 
 temporis acti, and our author echoes it in more than 
 one passage that the race of great statesmen has died 
 out, that their modern representatives are dwarfed 
 and dwindled, and that statesmanship itself has become 
 low, time-serving, and mediocre. The sentiment is no 
 new one : as the men of our days look upon Pitt, and 
 Fox, and Burke, the men of their times looked back 
 on Bolingbroke and Chatham ; these in their turn on 
 Halifax and Clarendon ; and these again on Walsing- 
 ham and Burleigh. But the truth is that the states- 
 men of one age or country are unsuited to the 
 requirements of another; and it is from failing to bear 
 this in mind that we are so generally unjust to the 
 men of our own day, so needlessly desponding about 
 our future, and so apt unduly to extol the great leaders 
 of the past. Our age demands very different qualifi- 
 cations in its public men from those which made men 
 eminent and serviceable in the time of our forefathers. 
 The statesmen of an autocratic government, like 
 Austria or Russia, would scarcely be more out of place 
 in a constitutional government like ours, than the 
 statesmen of Elizabeth, or Charles, or Anne would find 
 themselves in the reign of Victoria. The magnificent 
 powers of Sully and Richelieu, even of Stein and 
 Hardenberg, would be misplaced in the latitude of 
 London. Marlborough and Godolphin would be 
 impeached for corruption; the domineering genius of 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 189 
 
 Lord Chatham would cause him to bo shelved as an 
 " impracticable " man, with whom it was impossible to 
 act ; the imperious temper of Hyde and Strafford 
 would be much more promptly fatal to them in our 
 days than they at last became even in their own ; and 
 even a Cecil or a Bacon could scarcely manage to 
 govern with a reformed parliament as " viceroy over 
 them." The very qualities which made men great in 
 public life formerly, would bar them out from public 
 life now. A vast change has taken place in the nature 
 of the statesmanship required ; and it is still in pro- 
 gress. The statesmanship required now is far less 
 initiative and more administrative than formerly. A 
 public man in the present day cannot decide upon his 
 principles and purposes and carry them out by the 
 mere force of the high position to which his sovereign 
 may have raised him. He is debarred from the 
 glorious power which belongs to the rulers of autocratic 
 states, of deciding in his own mind on the measures 
 suited to ensure his country's grandeur or well-being, 
 and enacting and enforcing them, regardless of the 
 opposition of parties less far-seeing, less profound, less 
 patriotic than himself. He cannot place before him a 
 great object, and say, " This my position as prime 
 minister enables me to attain, and I will disregard 
 present hostility and blame, and trust to future results 
 to justify and vindicate my wisdom." He is denied 
 that noblest privilege of the wise and mighty that 
 which gives to statesmanship its resistless fascination 
 for the ripened mind the right to elaborate, " in the 
 
190 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 quietness of thought," a system of policy, solid in its 
 foundations, impartial in its justice, far-reaching, 
 fertilising, beneficent in its operation, and to pursue 
 it with unswerving and imperturbable resolve. He 
 cannot, like Peter, systematise the civilisation of a bar- 
 barous empire; he cannot, like Richelieu, by the union 
 of high office and indomitable will, subdue and paralyse 
 a haughty, and ancient aristocracy; he cannot, like 
 Colbert, reconstruct the finances and commerce of a 
 great kingdom; he cannot,- like Stein, by an over- 
 powering fiat, raise a whole nation of proletaires out 
 of serfdom into civil possessions and civil rights. He 
 >is powerless except in as far as he can induce others to 
 agree with him. He has not only to conceive and 
 mature wise -schemes, he has to undergo the far more 
 painful and vexatious labour of persuading others of 
 their excellence, of instructing the ignorance of some, 
 of convincing the understandings of others, of com- 
 bating the honest prejudices of one party, of neutralis- 
 ing the interested opposition of another ; he has to 
 clip, to modify, to emasculate his measures, to enfeeble 
 them by some vital omission in order to conciliate this 
 antagonist, to clog them with some perilous burden in 
 order to satisfy that rival, till he is fain to doubt 
 whether compromise has not robbed victory of its 
 profit as well as of its charms. 
 
 These are some of the difficulties which statesmen 
 have to overcome in a country where parliament is 
 omnipotent, and where every citizen is a dogmatic and. 
 self-complacent politician. Though modern statesman- 
 
ENGLAND AS IT IS. 191 
 
 ship may call for other qualities than those needed in 
 former days, the qualities are assuredly neither fewer, 
 less lofty, nor less rare. A thorough mastery of facts, 
 a clear purpose, a patient temper, a persevering will ; 
 a profound knowledge of men, of the motives which 
 actuate them, of the influences by which they are to 
 be swayed ; skill to purchase the maximum of support 
 by the minimum of concession ; tact to discern the 
 present temper and the probable direction of the 
 popular feeling ; sagacity < to 'distinguish between the 
 intelligent and the unintelligent public opinion, 
 between the noisy clamour of the unimportant few, 
 and the silent convictions of the influential many, 
 between the outcry which may be safely and justly 
 disregarded, and the expression of the mind of the 
 country which it would be wrong and dangerous to 
 withstand ; these are surely qualifications which 
 demand no ordinary combination of moral and intel- 
 lectual endowments. The statesman of to-day requires 
 as comprehensive a vision and as profound a wisdom 
 as in former times, with intenser labour, and a far 
 wider range of knowledge ; but he requires other gifts 
 which formerly were scarcely needed. For, he now 
 has not only to decide what ought to be done, and 
 what is the wisest way of doing it, but he has to do it, 
 or as much of it as he can, in the face of obstacles of 
 which Machiavelli had no conception, which would 
 have baffled Mazarin, and at which even Chatham or 
 Walpole might have stood aghast. To quarrel with a 
 statesman because he is what his age compels him to 
 
192 ENGLAND AS IT IS. 
 
 be, because he meets the requirements of his day and 
 generation, because he does not import into a demo- 
 cratic age, and into a country in which the popular 
 element is unprecedentedly active and powerful, the 
 habits and qualities of mind which could only find 
 their fitting field and natural development in aristo- 
 cratic or despotic eras, is simply to join issue with the 
 political necessities of the times. In England, in the 
 middle of the nineteenth century, with a reformed 
 parliament, with a free and powerful press, with a 
 population habituated throughout all its ranks to the 
 discussion of political affairs, a minister, whatever be 
 his genius, can no longer impose his will upon the 
 nation ; to be useful and great he must carry the 
 nation along with him, he must be the representative 
 and embodiment of its soberest and maturest wisdom, 
 not the depository or exponent, still less the 
 imperious enforcer, of views beyond their sympathy, 
 and above their comprehension. The nature of our 
 government prescribes the qualifications of our states- 
 men ; to hanker after a different order of men is to 
 pine for a different order of things. 
 
 With these remarks we close our notice of Mr John- 
 ston's work. It is a readable and well-written book, 
 abounding with information of many kinds. Its faults 
 are a want of purpose, too manifest a disposition to 
 decry the present and exalt the past, and too blinding 
 a habit of looking at most questions, whether they 
 concern things or persons,- from a party point of view. 
 To this last objection we may be peculiarly alive, 
 the party views not being our own. 
 
IV. 
 
 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY/ 
 
 WITHIN one generation three statesmen have been 
 suddenly called away in the zenith of their fame, and 
 in the full maturity of their powers. All of them were 
 followed to their graves by the sincerest sorrow of the 
 nation ; but the nature of the grief thus universally 
 felt was modified in each case by the character of the 
 individual, the position which he held, and the nature 
 of the services which the country anticipated from him. 
 When Sir Samuel Romilly fell beneath the over- 
 whelming burden of a private calamity, the nation was 
 appalled at the suddenness of the catastrophe, and 
 mourned over the extinction of so bright a name. 
 He had never held any very prominent public office, 
 though the general estimation in which he was held 
 designated him ultimately for the very highest. He 
 had achieved little, because he was a reformer in a 
 new path, and had to fight his way against the yet 
 unshaken prejudices of generations, and the yet un- 
 broken ranks of the veteran opponents of all change ; 
 but thoughtful men did honour to the wisdom and 
 purity of his views, and there was steadily growing up 
 among all classes of the community a profound con- 
 viction of his earnestness, sincerity, and superiority to 
 
 1 Westminster Review, July 1852. 
 N 
 
194 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 all selfish and party aims, and a deep and hearty 
 reverence for the stern, grave, Roman-like virtue which 
 distinguished him from nearly all his contemporaries. 
 It was universally felt, that if he had lived he would 
 have risen high and have done much ; and that, 
 whether he lived or died, the mere existence of so- 
 lofty and spotless a character reflected lustre on the 
 country where he shone, and raised the standard by 
 which public men were judged. It was felt that 
 although England might not suffer greatly by the loss 
 of his services,. it would at least be the less bright and 
 glorious for his departure ; and hence he was mourned 
 for with an unusually unselfish and single-minded 
 grief. The regret of the nation at Canning's untimely 
 death was at once more bitter and more mixed. A 
 brilliant " spirit was eclipsed ; " the voice that had so 
 long charmed us was henceforth to be silent ; the 
 intellect that had served the country so long and so 
 gallantly could serve her no more. All this was sad 
 enough, but there was something beyond this. There 
 was the feeling that the curtain had fallen before the 
 drama was played out, when its direction had just been 
 indicated, but while the issue could as yet be only 
 dimly guessed. There was a general impression that, 
 with his acceptance of the Foreign Office in 1822, 
 a new era and a noble line of policy had commenced 
 for England, and that, with his accession to the pre- 
 miership in 1827, the ultimate triumph of that policy 
 was secured ; that the flippancy and insolence which 
 had made him so many enemies in early life, were 
 
SIR K. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 195 
 
 about to be atoned for by conscientious principle and 
 eminent services ; that years and experience had 
 matured his wisdom, while sobering his temper and 
 strengthening his powers ; that the wit and genius 
 which, while he was the ill-yoked colleague of Pitt, 
 Sidmouth, and Castlereagh, had too often been em- 
 ployed to adorn narrowness, to hide incapacity, and 
 to justify oppression, would now be consecrated to the 
 cause of freedom and of progress ; and that the 
 many errors of his inconsiderate youth would be nobly 
 redeemed by the dignified labours of his ripened age. 
 With one memorable and painful exception, his former 
 antagonists were yearning to forgive the past, and to 
 form the most sanguine visions for the future ; and 
 the dismay which his elevation spread among the 
 tyrants abroad, was the measure of the joy with which 
 it was hailed by the Liberals at home. When, 
 therefore, he died, after only four months' tenure 
 of his lofty station, the universal cry was, that the 
 good cause had lost its best soldier and its brightest 
 hope. Men could scarcely forbear from murmuring 
 that so brief a sceptre had been granted to one who 
 meant so well and could have done so much ; and to 
 all the friends of human progress, the announcement 
 of his death was like thick darkness -settling down 
 upon their cherished anticipations. But another 
 feeling mixed with those of sorrow and despondency 
 a feeling of bitter indignation. Right or wrong, it 
 was believed that Canning had fallen a victim, not to 
 natural maladies, nor yet to the fatigues of his 
 
196 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 position, but to the rancorous animosity of former 
 associates and eternal foes. It was believed that he 
 had been hunted to death, with a deliberate malignity, 
 which, to one so acutely sensitive as himself, could 
 scarcely have been otherwise than fatal. There was 
 much truth in this. The old aristocrats hated him as 
 a plebeian, though Nature's self had unmistakably 
 stamped him as a noble ; the exclusives loathed him 
 as an "adventurer;" the Tories abhorred him as 
 an innovator ; powerful and well-born rivals could not 
 forgive him for the genius which had enabled him 
 to climb over their heads ; some could not forget his 
 past sins ; others could not endure his present virtues ; 
 and all combined to mete out to him, in overwhelming 
 measure, the injustice, the sarcasm, the biting taunt, 
 the merciless invective, with which, in days long gone 
 by, he had been wont to encounter his antagonists. 
 There was something of righteous retribution in the 
 treatment which must have made it doubly difficult 
 to bear : what wonder that he sunk under the 
 assault ? But the British nation, which instinctively 
 revolts from any flagrant want of generosity, and will 
 not endure that a man should be punished for 
 attempting, however tardily, to recover and do right, 
 have done full justice to his memory, and have 
 never heartily pardoned his assailants. 
 
 The sudden and untimely death of Sir Robert 
 Peel gave a severe shock to the feelings of the country, 
 occasioned deeper and wider regret, a more painful 
 sense of irreparable loss, and of uneasiness and appre- 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 197 
 
 hension for the future, than any similar event since 
 the death of Canning. The loss of Mr Huskisson 
 was a great one ; but the country felt that there were 
 others on whom his mantle had fallen who were 
 competent to follow in his steps, and to replace him 
 at the council board. Lord Grey, when he died, had 
 long retired from office ; he was as full of years as of 
 honours, and the nation had nothing to anticipate 
 from his future exertions ; thus the general sentiment 
 at his departure was one of simple sympathy and calm 
 regret. Lord Spencer, too, popular and respected as 
 he had once been, belonged rather to the past than to 
 the present ; and though regretted, he was no longer 
 wanted. But long as the public career of Sir E. Peel 
 had been, no one regarded it as closed ; great as were 
 the services which he had rendered to his country, 
 there were yet many more which it looked to re- 
 ceiving at his hands. The book was still open ; 
 though no longer in the early prime, or the unbroken 
 vigour of life, he was in that full maturity of wisdom 
 with which age and experience seldom fail to crown an 
 existence as energetically spent as his had been ; he 
 filled a larger space in the eyes of England and the 
 world than any other statesman of his day and 
 generation; and to his tried skill, his proved patriotism, 
 his sedate and sober views, and his unmatched 
 administrative capacity, the nation looked with con- 
 fidence and hope as the sheet-anchor of its safety. 
 We believe there never was a statesman in this 
 country on whose trained and experienced powers, on 
 
198 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 whose adequacy to any emergency and any trial, both 
 friend and foe, coadjutor and antagonist, rested with 
 such a sense of security and reliance. As long as the 
 Duke of Wellington remained in the full possession of 
 his powers, the country felt that it need not fear the 
 result of any war ; as long as Sir R. Peel was spared 
 to us, the country felt that it need not lose heart at 
 any domestic convulsion or civil crisis. Hence the 
 universal feeling of dismay which attended the 
 announcement of his unexpected death in 1849. It 
 was not that we could not yet boast of many men of 
 great administrative ability, some statesmen of pro- 
 found and comprehensive views, and several rising 
 politicians who may, in the future, vindicate their 
 olaim to high renown ; but Sir R. Peel left behind 
 him no one whom the nation esteemed his equal no 
 one who, naturally and by universal acclamation, 
 stepped into his vacant place, as the acknowledged 
 inheritor of his influence and his fame no one whom, 
 in case of danger or emergency, England could 
 unanimously and instinctively place at the head of 
 affairs. 
 
 The time has perhaps scarcely yet come for a full 
 and impartial estimate of the character and career of 
 this eminent man. The shock of his death is still too 
 recent, the memory of his signal services in the great 
 struggle of the day too. fresh in the mind of the 
 nation, and the possibility of crises, in which we shall 
 incline to turn to him with unavailing longing, too 
 imminent, to make it likely that we can avoid erring 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 199 
 
 on the side of lenity to his failings, and undue 
 .admiration of his capacities and his achievements. 
 His own papers and correspondence, which we trust 
 will shortly be given to the world, are still also a 
 sealed book ; and we may err in our estimate of some 
 transactions for want of the light which the publica- 
 tion of these documents could throw over them. But 
 on the other hand, many impressions are now fresh in 
 our minds which fade away year by year. We have 
 always been conscientious opponents of the great party 
 with which he acted during four-fifths of his career ; 
 and we feel wholly free from the bias which connection 
 with any political school can scarcely fail to create. 
 We are conscious of no feelings or prepossessions 
 which should prevent us from trying Sir Robert Peel 
 by the fairest standard which morality and philosophy 
 can set up ; and if we should be thought, wherever 
 doubt is possible, to incline to the more charitable 
 explanation, it is because we from our hearts believe 
 that in estimating public men in England, the more 
 charitable our judgment is, the more likely is it 
 to be just. 
 
 It is interesting to observe what a vast majority of 
 our most eminent statesmen, during the last century, 
 have been commoners, and how many even of these 
 have sprung out of the middle class, strictly so called. 
 William Pitt, " the great commoner," was the second 
 son of a country gentleman, who had acquired parlia 
 inentary importance by the purchase of close boroughs. 
 
200 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 Edmund Burke was the son of an Irish attorney. 
 The father of Charles James Fox was the second son 
 of a country baronet, of no very enviable reputation, 
 in Walpole's time. Canning's father was a briefless 
 barrister, whose family cut him off with an annuity 
 of 150, and whose widow was afterwards obliged to- 
 support herself by going upon the stage. His friend 
 Huskkson. was the son of a country gentleman in 
 Staffordshire, of very restricted means. The origin of 
 Sir Robert. Peel was humbler than that of any, his 
 father having begun life as a manufacturer in a small 
 way, in Lancashire, and having rapidly risen to- 
 enormous wealth. These recollections are encouraging 
 enough ; they seem to indicate that, whatever may be 
 the fate or condition of our aristocratic families, the 
 under strata of society are fully adequate to furnish a 
 constant supply of suitable candidates for the public 
 service, and that there is nothing in our national 
 system which need prevent such men from rising to 
 their proper statipn. It is worthy of note, that none 
 of these we have named owed their elevation to the 
 legal profession, which, in all times, has been a ready 
 ladder by which plebeian ambition could attain the 
 highest posts. 
 
 Sir Eobert Peel's father early destined him for 
 public life, and was resolved that he should enjoy 
 every advantage for the race he was to run. No pains 
 was spared in his education. At Harrow he was 
 noted for steady diligence, but not for brilliant parts. 
 At Oxford he took a double-first. He entered 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 201 
 
 parliament in 1809 ; was made Under Secretary for 
 the Colonies in 1811 ; Chief Secretary for Ireland in 
 1812 ; Home Secretary in 1822 ; Prime Minister in 
 1834 ; and again in 1841. His parliamentary life- 
 lasted just forty years ; and during the whole of it, 
 whether in or out of office, he was prominently before 
 the public eye. 
 
 His public life exactly coincides with the eventful 
 period during which an entire change has been 
 wrought in the tone and spirit of our national policy, 
 foreign and domestic a change which he, partly 
 intentionally, partly unconsciously, contributed much 
 to bring about. When he appeared upon the stage, 
 old ideas and old principles were predominant, 
 triumphant, and almost unshaken. When, at the 
 age of sixty-one, the curtain closed upon his career, 
 everything had become new. When he entered 
 public life, we were in the midst of the most 
 desperate war England ever had to wage, undertaken - 
 on behalf of an exiled royal family, and ended by 
 replacing them upon a throne from which they had 
 already been once driven by popular insurrection, and 
 from which they were soon to be ignominiously 
 expelled a second time. Before three summers have 
 passed over his grave, we find statesmen of every party 
 Lord Derby, Lord John Russell, and Lord Palmerston 
 vieing with each other in proclaiming as the guiding 
 principle of the foreign policy of Britain, the acknow- 
 ledgment of the indisputable right of every nation to- 
 choose its own rulers and its own form of government. 
 
202 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 When Sir Robert Peel became Chief Secretary for 
 Ireland at the age of twenty-four, the penal laws 
 against the Catholics were in full force, and seemingly 
 stereotyped in our statute book. One of his last 
 measures during his last term of office was to endow 
 in perpetuity the Catholic College of Maynooth. 
 When he began life, the Test and Corporation Acts 
 were unrepealed, and the Dissenters were fettered 
 .and irritated by numberless injustices ; by the passing 
 of the Dissenters Chapels Bill before his death he 
 helped to sweep the last of them away. In 1809, 
 the old glories of rotten boroughs and purchasable 
 constituencies were untouched and unbreathed upon ; 
 the middle classes and the great towns to which 
 England owed so much of her wealth and energy, 
 were almost without a voice in the legislature ; and 
 the party which had held power, by a sort of pre- 
 scriptive right, for a quarter of a century, was pledged 
 to resist any change in the representation. In 1849, 
 Parliamentary Eeform had been matter of history for 
 .seventeen years, and rumours of a new and further 
 innovation were beginning to be. heard without either 
 alarm or incredulity. In 1809 the most restrictive 
 and protective commercial policy was not only 
 -established, but its wisdom and justice were not even 
 questioned. In 1849, Sir Robert Peel went to his 
 grave amid the blessings of millions, for having swept 
 it away for ever. Finally, when he entered political 
 life, the old Tory party seemed as rooted in Downing 
 Street as the oak of the forest, and the Whigs to have 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 203 
 
 their permanent and natural place in opposition. 
 When he finally quitted office, the old Tory party was 
 broken up and obsolete, and even their modified and 
 advanced successors maintained an unequal contest 
 with the Liberals. Everything that the men with 
 whom he was first connected most dreaded and 
 deprecated had been done ; everything that they 
 pronounced impossible had come to pass. Parliament 
 had been reformed ; Catholics had been emancipated ; 
 Dissenters had been raised to a footing of equality; 
 Unitarians and Quakers sat in St Stephens ; republics 
 had been unhesitatingly acknowledged ; the corn laws 
 and the sugar duties had been ruthlessly abolished. 
 An entirely new spirit had been infused into our 
 policy the spirit of freedom and progress. If Sir 
 Robert Peel's first chief, Mr Perceval, could return to 
 life, he would find himself in a world in which he 
 could recognise nothing, and in which he would 
 be shocked at everything ; and it is hard to say 
 whether England or her quondam premier would be 
 most scandalised at each other's mutually strange and 
 ghastly apparition. And all this mighty change has 
 taken place during the career, and partly by the 
 instrumentality, of a single statesman. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel's accession to the cabinet in 1822 
 in place of Lord Sidmouth, synchronising as it did 
 with Canning's return to the management of our 
 foreign affairs, coincides with the commencement of a 
 purer morality and a higher tone of character among 
 public men. Since that time there has been little 
 
204 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY, 
 
 jobbing, and scarcely a single transaction that could 
 be called disgraceful among English ministers. Pecu- 
 lation and actual corruption, or rather corruptibility, 
 have, it is true, never been the characteristics of our 
 political personages since the time of Walpole and 
 Pelham ; but up to the beginning of this century, 
 jobbing of every kind among public men was common, 
 flagrant, and shameless. Even in the days of Pitt, 
 places, pensions, and sinecures, were lavished with the 
 most unblushing profusion to gratify official avarice, 
 to reward private friendship, or to purchase parlia- 
 mentary support. Ministers provided for their families 
 and relations out of the public purse with as little 
 scruple as bishops do now ; and indeed considered it 
 as part of the emoluments of office to be able to do so. 
 The Prime Minister (Perceval, for example,) pocketed 
 two or three comfortable sinecures himself, as a matter 
 of course. Public opinion and the public press exer- 
 cised only a very lax and inadequate watchfulness 
 over the public purse. The trial of Lord Melville, 
 First Lord of the Admiralty, for malversation, is 
 familiar to every one. The same laxity of official 
 morality prevailed in Perceval's time, and, indeed, 
 with little improvement, till Lord Sidmouth's retire- 
 ment. A glance over the pension and sinecure list of 
 those days is painfully instructive. Tn 1810 the 
 number of sinecures was 242, and the emoluments 
 attached to them 279,486 a year : in 1834 these 
 were reduced to 97,800, and they do not now 
 exceed 17,000. In the reign of George III. the 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 205 
 
 pension list considerably exceeded 200,000 a year; 
 and even as late as 1810, it reached 145,000 : it is 
 now reduced to 75,000 ; and of this sum not more 
 than 1200 can be granted in any one year. The 
 committee on official salaries, which sat during 1850, 
 brought out in strong relief the contrast between the 
 present and the past in all points connected with the 
 purity of our administrative departments ; and it is 
 impossible to read the evidence in detail without 
 being strongly impressed with the high morality and 
 spotless integrity which now distinguish our public 
 men. All the acuteness of our financial reformers on 
 that occasion could not drag to light a single job, and 
 scarcely a single abuse, while it placed in the very 
 brightness of noon-day the official probity and honour 
 of the existing race of statesmen. 
 
 But this is far from being the only improvement 
 that has taken place among them. Their notions of 
 patriotism have become loftier and more just ; their 
 allegiance to party more modified and discriminating ; 
 their devotion to their country more paramount and 
 religious. They are more conscientiously obedient to 
 their own convictions, and less submissive to the 
 trammels of regimental discipline. Statesmen are 
 beginning to feel not merely that they are playing a 
 noble game, pregnant with the most thrilling interest, 
 and involving the mightiest stakes but that they are 
 called upon to guide a glorious vessel, freighted with 
 richer fortunes than ever Caesar carried with him, 
 through fluctuating shoals, and sunken rocks, and 
 
206 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 eddying whirlpools, and terrific tempests ; that on 
 their skill, their watchfulness, their courage, their 
 purity, their abnegation of all selfish aims, depend the 
 destinies of the greatest nation that ever stood in the 
 vanguard of civilisation and freedom ; that they must 
 not only steer their course with a steadfast purpose 
 and a single eye, and keep their hands clean, their 
 light burning, and their conscience cler.r, but that 
 even personal reputation and the pride of consistency 
 must be cast aside, if need be, when the country can 
 be best served by their immolation. They must act 
 
 " As ever in their Great Taskmaster's eye," 
 
 and must find in these lofty views of a statesman's 
 honour and requirements the only counteraction that 
 can be found to the mean struggles, the wearisome 
 details, the unworthy motives, the low and little 
 interests with which they are brought daily into 
 contact. 
 
 The key to all the enigmas, all the imputed guilt, 
 all the peculiar usefulness to his country of Peel's 
 career, is to be sought in the original contrast between 
 his character and his position. Of a cautious and 
 observing temper, and conscientiously desirous to do 
 the best for his country whenever that best became 
 clear to him, he was the son of a Tory of the narrow- 
 est and stiffest sort, whose mind had been enlarged 
 by no culture and whom no experience perhaps could 
 have taught ; and he was at once enlisted into the 
 ranks and served under the orders of men who rarely 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 207 
 
 doubted, who never inquired, into whose minds no 
 suspicion ever entered that what was best for their 
 party might, possibly not be best for the nation also, 
 to whom every article in their own creed appeared 
 unquestionably right, and every article in their oppo- 
 nent's creed as unquestionably wrong. In those days 
 in all times perhaps to a greater or less extent 
 the young me.n whose birth or connections or parental 
 position destined them for a political career, entered 
 public life, as our young clergymen enter the church 
 now, with the thirty-nine articles of their faith put, 
 ready cut and dried, into their hands unexamined, 
 unquestioned, often unread ; their opinions, like their 
 lands, were a portion of their patrimony ; and they no 
 more suspected the soundness of the one than the 
 value of the other. As at Oxford and Cambridge 
 men are educated for the clerical profession not by a 
 searching critical and philosophical investigation into 
 the basis of the creed they are to teach not by an 
 acquisition of all those branches of knowledge which 
 alone could entitle them to form an independent opinion 
 on its merits not by a judicial hearing of all that can 
 be said against it as well as for it but simply and 
 solely by a memorial mastery of the items which com- 
 pose it, and a competent acquaintance with the stock 
 arguments which the learning and ingenuity of all 
 times have discovered in its favour; so were the 
 young politicians of Peel's day prepared for the arena 
 into which they were cast and the strife they were to 
 wage not by a careful study of political science in 
 
208 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 the works of the masters who have thrown light upon 
 it from all sides not by a profound acquaintance 
 with the wisdom which is learnt from history not by 
 mastering the difficult problems of political and social 
 economy not by a conscientious appreciation of the 
 truth that lay in the views of their antagonists arid a 
 sedulous elimination of the error that had crept into 
 their own, but merely by habitually seeing and 
 hearing only one side of every question by imbibing 
 every prejudice, reflecting every passion, learning to 
 ^cho with thoughtless confidence every watch-cry of 
 the party for whose service they were designed. And 
 .as our young clergymen begin their theological studies 
 as far as those studies consist in the first great 
 duty of ascertaining and following the truth only 
 .after they have assumed the livery and sworn the 
 oath of fealty and of faith, only when the fatal docu- 
 ment has been signed and the investiture of slavery 
 received, only when their doom is irrevocably fixed, 
 and when earnest and single-minded inquiry incurs 
 the awful hazard of landing them in doctrines which 
 they have vowed, and were enlisted, to combat and 
 destroy, and if they be honest men of casting 
 them forth upon the world with the blighted prospects 
 and the damaged character of renegades and apostates, 
 or at best with the stigma of instability and incon- 
 sequence for ever clinging to their name ; so did the 
 young statesmen of Peel's epoch begin their political 
 education when they had already taken their seats in 
 parliament, returned by a particular interest, and on 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 209 
 
 the faith of definite or understood professions : they 
 began to examine and reflect on political questions 
 when such deliberation was especially difficult, because 
 in the midst of an exasperating contest, and especially 
 dangerous because, if sincere, it was as likely as not 
 to lead them to desertion and damnation. Hence, 
 with the members of both professions, it has been the 
 too common practice natural and, from human weak- 
 ness, scarcely avoidable and only gently to be con- 
 demned to shut their eyes and fight blindly on, 
 endeavouring to believe themselves conscientious so 
 long as they were consistent and satisfied, so long as 
 they used the old weapons, marched under the old 
 banner, and stood by the old friends. 
 
 Great as is the public evil, and severe the individual 
 misery, arising from the source just indicated, few who 
 reflect how large a portion of the opinions of all of us 
 is hereditary, will be disposed to deal severely either 
 with the sinners or the sufferers. We naturally adopt 
 the views of those whom we have loved and honoured 
 from our infancy, and it is right we should. We natu- 
 rally imagine that those who have been wise and faith- 
 ful in all that regards ourselves, are equally wise and 
 faithful in matters that lie beyond the scope of our 
 present knowledge. We naturally believe that doctrines 
 against which we have never heard anything said, are 
 doctrines against which nothing can be said ; and we 
 find it hard to conceive, that what we have always heard 
 treated as axioms of science, are among the most dis- 
 putable matters of opinion. Not only our positive 
 
 O 
 
210 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 creed, but our tone and turn of mind, are framed in- 
 stinctively after the model of those among whom we 
 live ; and thus it becomes a matter of the greatest dif- 
 ficulty both to enter into and do justice to the views of 
 others when presented to us, or to divest ourselves 
 even of what may hereafter be proved erroneous in 
 our own. No man can start in life, whether in a 
 political, religious, or literary career, with his mind a 
 carte blanche: few can wait to take up a definite 
 position till they have thoroughly mastered and 
 impartially weighed all sides of the great questions 
 with which they have to deal. In public affairs, 
 especially, action is an essential requisite to a com- 
 plete understanding of them ; it is only by being 
 involved in them that you can see deeply into them ; 
 it is only in parliament that the education of a 
 member of parliament can be completed. It is not 
 till you hear views diametrically opposed to those you 
 have inherited, stated by an opponent whose powers 
 you cannot but recognise as superior to your own, and 
 whose sincerity of conviction you cannot doubt, that 
 you perceive, with amazement and dismay, how 
 doubtful appears much that you had always considered 
 as self-evident, and how pla/usible seems much that 
 you had been taught to regard as monstrous and 
 indefensible. An abyss seems to open beneath your 
 feet : the solid ground is no longer stable ; and all the 
 landmarks of your mind are shaken or removed. 
 Much change, many inconsistencies, some vacillation 
 even, should be forgiven to all who serve the 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 211 
 
 country as senators or statesmen, especially to those 
 who enter on her service young. 
 
 Few men have drawn more largely than Sir Robert 
 Peel on this wise indulgence, and few have had a 
 stronger claim to have it extended to them in over- 
 flowing measure. It was his irreparable calamity to 
 have been thrown by nature into a false position. 
 His birth was his misfortune a sort of original sin 
 which clung to him through life. Born in the very 
 centre of the Tory camp in a period when Toryism 
 was an aggressive principle, an intolerant dogma, a 
 fanatic sentiment, in a period, too, when party 
 passions were virulent and unmeasured to a degree of 
 which we, in our times, have had only one brief 
 specimen, and when Toryism was rampant, dominant, 
 and narrow, in a manner which amazes and shocks us 
 as we read the contemporary annals of those days, 
 Sir Robert Peel was yet endowed with native 
 qualities which could not fail to place him at once in 
 antagonism with his position, for he had a solid 
 intellect, an honest conscience, an innate sense of 
 justice and humanity, an acute observation, and a 
 keen spirit of inquiry, which were incompatible with 
 Toryism as it then existed, mental and moral endow- 
 ments which, from the moment he entered public life, 
 placed him among the most liberal and enlightened of 
 his own party, which speedily created a sort of secret 
 uneasiness among them, and which clearly showed 
 that he was destined either to drag them on with 
 him or to march on before them and without them. 
 
212 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 To this originally false position may be traced nearly 
 all those obliquities and inconsistencies which have 
 laid Sir Robert Peel's career so open to hostile 
 criticism. Created of the stuff out of which moderate 
 Liberals are made, but born into the ranks in which 
 only rigid Tories could be found, his whole course was 
 a sort of perpetual protest against the accident of his 
 birth an inevitable and perplexing struggle between 
 his character and his circumstances, his conscience and 
 his colleagues, his allegiance to principle and his 
 allegiance to party. As his mind ripened and his 
 experience increased r he was compelled, time after 
 time, to recognise the error of the views which he had 
 formerly maintained, and which his colleagues still 
 adhered to ; and like all progressive statesmen, he 
 was frequently obliged to> act on his old opinions, 
 while those opinions were in process of transition, and 
 to defend courses, the policy of which he had begun 
 to suspect, but had not yet definitely decided to 
 abandon. Hence, if we look at his strange and 
 incongruous career in a severe and hostile spirit, we 
 see a minister who through life was incessantly 
 abandoning doctrines he had long pertinaciously 
 upheld, and carrying out systems of policy he had 
 long denounced as dangerous and unsound deserting 
 and betraying his own party, and usurping the 
 victory of his opponents. Looking at the same 
 career from a more generous, a more philosophic, and, 
 as we deem it, a juster point of view, we see a 
 statesman born in intolerant times, and cast among a 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 213 
 
 despotic and narrow-minded party, whose path through 
 history may be traced by the exuvice he has left lying 
 by the wayside, by the garments he has outgrown and 
 flung away, by the shackles from which he has 
 emancipated himself, by the errors which he has 
 abandoned and redeemed. 
 
 The political progress of a country, with free 
 institutions and a parliamentary government like that 
 of England, is brought about by the perpetual 
 struggle between two great parties, each of whom is 
 the representative often imperfect and unworthy 
 enough of distinct principles and modes of thought. 
 The predominant idea and feeling of one party, is 
 reverence for ancestral wisdom and attachment to a 
 glorious past, beautiful in itself, but unduly gilded by 
 a credulous and loving fancy : the predominant senti- 
 ment of the other is aspiration after a better future. 
 The efforts of the first are directed to preserve and 
 consolidate what is left to us: those of the second, 
 to achieve whatever is not yet attained. From their 
 contests and compromises contests confined within 
 fixed limits, and conducted according to certain 
 understood rules of war compromises by which one 
 party foregoes something to obtain an earlier victory, 
 and the other sacrifices something to avert an utter 
 defeat results the national advance towards a more 
 humane, just, and comprehensive policy. The progress 
 bears the stamp of the mode in which it is wrought 
 out ; it is slow, fragmentary, and fitful ; but it is 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 secure against retrogression, and it never overleaps 
 itself. It exhibits none of those mournful, disappoint- 
 ing, and alarming spectacles with which the political 
 struggles of the Continent abound. The party of the 
 past, however mighty in possession, and however dog- 
 gedly entrenched, is never able wholly to resist. The 
 party of the future, however elastic with the energy, and 
 buoyant with the hopes of youth, is never powerful 
 enough to carry all before it. Those who pull forward 
 and those who hold back, never fairly break asunder. 
 All move together against the wish of the latter but 
 far more slowly than the former would desire. Neither 
 party entirely separates from the other, as in Germany. 
 Neither party entirely overpowers the other, as in France. 
 Now this peculiar character of our progress, tp 
 which must be attributed both its durability and its 
 safety, is due to a class of men to whom England 
 owes more than to almost any of her sons, and to 
 whom she is in general most scandalously ungrateful 
 viz., the Liberals in the Conservative camp, and the 
 Conservatives in the Liberal camp. Unappreciated by 
 the country misrepresented by the press miscon- 
 strued and mistrusted by their friends suspected of 
 meditated desertion reproached with virtual treason 
 suffering the hard but invariable fate of those who 
 are wide among the narrow, comprehensive amid 
 the borne's, moderate among the violent, sober among 
 the drunken condemned to combat against their 
 brethren, and to fraternise with their antagonists 
 they lead a life of pain and mortification, and not 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 215 
 
 unfrequently sink under the load of unmerited obloquy, 
 which their unusual, and therefore unintelligible, 
 conduct brings upon them. The Liberals call them 
 timid and lukewarm Laodiceans ; the Tories call 
 them crotchety, impracticable, and fastidious. They 
 do the hardest duty of the conscientious patriot, and 
 are rewarded by the bitterest abuse that could be 
 lavished on the common enemy. Lord Falkland was 
 one of these men ; Burke was another ; Lord Grey, in 
 a measure, was a man of the same stamp. These 
 were all Conservatives among the friends of progress. 
 Sir Robert Peel was a Liberal, cast among the friends 
 of stationariness and reaction. In the march of the 
 nation towards securer prosperity, sounder principles, 
 and a wiser policy, he occupied for more than a 
 quarter of a century that post of pain, calumny, and 
 mortification but of inestimable importance also 
 the Leader of the Laggards, the man who chained 
 together the onward movement and the backward 
 drag the Reformers and the Tories ; who saved the 
 latter from being left utterly behind stranded, 
 useless, and obsolete ; and checked the too rapid 
 advance of the former, by acting as the bond which 
 compelled them to draw the reluctant conservatism of 
 society along with them. 
 
 Peel's naturally just and liberal sentiments showed 
 themselves in various small indications early in life, 
 and excited some uneasy misgivings in the minds of 
 his own bigoted colleagues. As early as 1812, when 
 eh was Irish Secretary, and when such notions were 
 
216 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 rare among his party, he expressed in parliament his 
 anxiety for the extension of education among the 
 Irish peasantry ; and in 1824, when he was Home 
 Secretary, he ga\ 7 e great offence to the Ultra - 
 Protestants of his party by expressing himself 
 thus : " In the education of the poor in Ireland, 
 two great rules ought now to be observed : first to 
 unite, as far as possible, without violence to individual 
 feelings, the children of Protestants and Catholics 
 under one common system of education ; and secondly, 
 in so doing, studiously and honestly to discard all idea 
 of making proselytes. The Society whose exertions 
 had been referred to [the Kildare Street Society] 
 seemed to him to have erred in the latter respect." 
 When he came into office, after the Reform Bill, 
 as is well known, he steadily supported and firmly 
 administered the system of mixed education intro- 
 duced by the Whigs. As soon as he entered the 
 Cabinet in 1822 he directed his immediate attention 
 to the amelioration of our prison discipline and the 
 mitigation of the scandalous severity of the criminal 
 code, and in June of that year announced that govern- 
 ment were preparing measures on these important 
 topics. In March, 1826, he introduced two valuable 
 Bills, for " the Improvement and Consolidation of the 
 Criminal Laws," in a speech of singular modesty, 
 discretion, and good feeling ; but most unhappily he 
 omitted to do justice to the harder labours of his 
 predecessors in the same field ; and those who 
 remembered the persevering but unavailing efforts 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 217 
 
 of Sir Samuel Romilly, and Sir James Mackintosh, 
 for similar objects, at a time when humanity was 
 rarer and less reputable, could not forgive his 
 apparently ungenerous silence. They ever afterwards 
 accused him of " gathering where he had not strewed, 
 and reaping where he had not sown." Three years 
 later, when the colleague of the Duke of Wellington, 
 he introduced one of the greatest administrative 
 improvements of our time the new police force in 
 place of the old incapable nocturnal watchmen, and 
 the inefficient and scanty parish constables. And 
 throughout the whole of this term of office he showed 
 the most earnest spirit of economy and retrenchment, 
 such as extorted the applause even of the Opposition. 
 "They," says Mr Roebuck (vol. i. p. 164), " who 
 were most conversant with the finances of the country 
 considered that economy was carried further than had 
 been yet known, and that a spirit of fairness and 
 complete freedom from jobbing or nepotism pervaded 
 every branch of the administration." Mr Hume, 
 who was undoubtedly the most earnest advocate for 
 retrenchment in the House, frankly acknowledged 
 that " the Chancellor of the Exchequer had gone 
 as far as he imagined he could go with safety on the 
 present occasion." Mr Baring and Mr Huskisson, 
 both great authorities on such subjects, confessed that 
 " the Chancellor of the Exchequer had gone to the 
 utmost verge of reduction possible in the present 
 state of the country, without the substitution of other 
 taxes." And generally the selection of the taxes to 
 
218 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 be taken off was deemed judicious and made solely 
 with a view to public and not partial interests. We 
 have enumerated briefly these points in Sir Robert 
 Peel's career, to prove that the liberalism which he 
 showed so increasingly in later life was no external 
 element superinduced upon his character by the 
 change in his political position and party connections, 
 but one which had been always present, though long 
 kept under restraint by unsympathising colleagues 
 and the native caution of his temperament. 
 
 Many of Sir Robert Peel's qualities and defects as a 
 minister lay upon the surface, and might be com- 
 prehended at a glance. He was not a man of genius; 
 he was not a man of consistent action ; he had nothing 
 of the deep-seated science of the philosophic states- 
 man ; and till the last four or five years of his life, he 
 displayed nothing of the high historic grandeur of the 
 patriot-hero. But he had other qualifications and 
 endowments, which, if less grand and rare, were 
 probably more suited to the age in which his lot was 
 cast, and the part which he was called upon to play. 
 In the first place, he was, pre-eminently, and above 
 all things, prudent. Cautious by temperament, 
 moderate by taste, his instinctive preference was 
 always for a middle course : he disliked rashness, and 
 he shrank from risk ; the responsibilities of office 
 were always for him a sobering and retarding weight: 
 and those who watched his course and studied his 
 character, early perceived that he was not a leader 
 who would ever push matters to an extreme, or put to 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 219 
 
 hazard the tranquillity or the welfare of the country 
 by too pertinacious and protracted an adherence to 
 personal sentiments or old opinions, or by too 
 desperate a fidelity to prejudice or party. He might 
 be too tardy sometimes in yielding ; but no one 
 doubted that he would yield, if it became obviously 
 wise and necessary to do so. He carried prudence 
 almost to the height of genius, and early earned for 
 himself the most serviceable of all reputations in this 
 country that of being a " safe man." 
 
 Connected with this leading characteristic was 
 another of the same order. He was uniformly 
 decorous, and had a high sense of dignity and 
 propriety. He was a worshipper of the TO KPSKOV both 
 in manners and in conduct. He scarcely ever 
 offended against either the conventional or the 
 essential bienseances of society. He never made 
 enemies, as Canning did, by ill-timed levity or 
 heartless jokes. His speeches and those of his 
 brilliant colleague, on the occasion of the Manchester 
 massacre, place in strong contrast the distinctive 
 peculiarities of the two men. Both took the same 
 side, and nearly the same line of defence ; but the 
 tone of the one was insolent and unfeeling, that of 
 the other dignified and judicial. The language of 
 Canning on that occasion was never forgotten or 
 forgiven : after a few years no one remembered that 
 Peel had ever had the misfortune to defend so bad a 
 cause. Peel, too, had, even at the beginning of his 
 career, too great a respect for his own character, to 
 
220 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 allow himself to be dragged through the dirt by his 
 superior colleagues. Even when his position obliged 
 him to excuse what was indefensible, he contrived to 
 allow his inward disapproval to pierce through his 
 apology. He was fortunate enough, or skilful enough, 
 to be out of office during the memorable prosecution 
 of the Queen ; and the only time that he was 
 compelled to speak upon that disgraceful business, he 
 expressed a grave regret that a suitable palace had 
 not been provided for her Majesty, and that her name 
 had been excluded from the liturgy. 
 
 One requisite for an English statesman perhaps 
 at the present day the most indispensable of all in 
 which the Whigs generally have been singularly 
 deficient Peel possessed in unusual measure, at least 
 in the latter portion of his life viz., a quick and 
 instinctive perception of public opinion. He had a 
 keen and sensitive ear to the voice of the nation, and 
 an almost unerring tact in distinguishing the language 
 of its real leaders and movers from that of mere noisy 
 and unimportant declaimers. He seems first to have 
 acquired this faculty in 1829, or at least to have 
 awakened to a sense of its vast importance ; and the 
 memorable two years during which the Reform Bill 
 was under discussion a time in which his political 
 education advanced with marvellous rapidity brought 
 it almost to perfection. This peculiar tact Lord John 
 Russell never has been able to learn. And in truth 
 it is not easy to acquire it, or to say how it is to be 
 acquired. It is an instinct rather than an attainment; 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 221 
 
 and an aristocracy which does not belong to the 
 people, or live much with them, or sympathise 
 promptly in their feelings, seldom possesses it. Public 
 opinion expresses itself in many ways ; its various 
 organs hold fluctuating language, and give forth 
 conflicting oracles ; the powerful classes are often 
 silent; the uninfluential classes are generally clam- 
 orous. If novel and important measures are proposed, 
 those who concur are commonly satisfied with a quiet 
 and stately nod of approbation : those who object are 
 loud and vehement in their opposition. How, amid 
 these contradictory perplexities, is a statesman to 
 ascertain the sentiments of the intelligent and effective 
 portion of the nation ? If he goes to the members of 
 the House of Commons, he cannot overlook the fact 
 that they represent only the feelings of their con- 
 stituents, or, it may be, of their nominators ; and that 
 the unrepresented, or the unequally represented, 
 portion of the community forms a most essential 
 element in the popular opinion. At best, members 
 cannot be relied on to speak more than the sentiments 
 of the country at the time of their election ; and 
 they, like the minister, are students of the same 
 problem, and puzzled with the same conflicting 
 clamours. If he looks to petitions, he is inquiring in 
 a most deceptive quarter ; for we all know how even 
 " monster " petitions can be " got up." If he looks to 
 public meetings, he cannot fail to be aware that their 
 importance and significance depend entirely on the 
 character and position of the people who take a part 
 
222 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 in them ; that there are meetings of many thousands 
 in the open air, which it would be folly to listen to, 
 and mere weakness to respect ; and meetings of a few 
 scores " in an upper chamber," indicative of an 
 influence and of sentiments which it would be 
 absolute insanity to disregard. Lastly, if he looks to 
 the press, how is he to know among what class of 
 readers each newspaper circulates ? How can he tell 
 whether it is really expressing their sentiments, or 
 merely seeking to lead them to its own. How can 
 he ascertain whether on any particular topic, such as 
 Lord Palmerston or the Poor Law, the " Times " is 
 actually the organ of public opinion, or only that of 
 private malignity, or idiosyncratic crotchets ? How is 
 he to distinguish how many of its readers read it with 
 disgust and disagreement, like himself, and how many 
 with acquiescence and credulity ? Where the press is 
 not unanimous, or nearly so where it is widely 
 divided in its judgments, as is almost constantly the 
 case how is the statesman to apportion to each 
 organ its actual influence, or the number and weight 
 of its clients, so as to gather from the whole something 
 like an accurate estimate of the national expression ? 
 It is abundantly obvious that he must be left very 
 much to the guidance of his own sagacity ; and with 
 this sagacity Sir Robert Peel was endowed in a most 
 unusual measure. After 1832, he scarcely ever made 
 the mistake which his antagonists were making 
 every day of not knowing whose quiet voice to 
 listen to, and whose clamorous demands to disregard. 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 223 
 
 Sir Robert Peel was not certainly a statesman of 
 the highest order which we can picture to ourselves 
 for the government of a great state ; but it is by no 
 means so clear that he was not the most finished 
 specimen of that peculiar class of statesmen who alone 
 can find a place in a representative constitution such 
 as ours, in which the democratic element so largely 
 preponderates. He had no far-seeing plans for the 
 preservation and regeneration of the empire, which 
 he kept in view through all vicissitudes, and to 
 which, amid all his various terms of office, he per- 
 severingly made everything conduce. His policy was 
 based upon no profound or well-digested system, 
 upon no philosophic principle to which he could adhere 
 through good report and ill report, and keep ever 
 before him as the guide and pole-star of his career. 
 To praise like this he has no claim. He often erred 
 as to what ought to be done, and he often discovered 
 it deplorably too late. But whatever he had to do 
 he did well. He had the rare merit, among our 
 public characters, of being a thorough man of business. 
 He was a statesman of consummate administrative 
 ability. His measures were always concocted with 
 the most deliberate and patient skill. His budgets 
 were models of clearness and compactness. As soon 
 as discussion began, it was made apparent that he 
 had weighed every difficulty and foreseen every 
 objection. He was always master of his subject. 
 The result was that his proposals scarcely ever 
 underwent any alteration in their passage through 
 
224- SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 parliament ; they might be accepted or rejected ; they 
 were never mutilated or transmogrified. Those of 
 his opponents, on the other hand, even when in the 
 plenitude of their power, and commanding such a 
 majority as had backed scarce any minister since the 
 days of Pitt, were so clipped, curtailed, modified, and 
 added to, that when they came forth from the ordeal, 
 the parents could scarcely recognize their own offspring. 
 Peel's measures were finished laws before they were 
 brought forward ; the Whig proposals were seldom 
 more than the raw materials of legislation thrown 
 down on the floor of the House of Commons, to be 
 wrought by that manufactory into the completed 
 fabric. Hence grew a general conviction, that though 
 the Whigs were often right, yet that they could not 
 be trusted to embody their own ideas in suitable and 
 judicious enactments ; that Peel might be often 
 mistaken, yet that he was always up to his work. 
 He was often on the wrong tack, but he always sailed 
 well. 
 
 Peel's whole heart was in the public service. He 
 seemed actually to love toil. He was indefatigable 
 and most conscientious in the performance of his 
 official duties. The veriest drudge of office was not 
 more constant at his desk. The most plodding 
 committee-man could not rival him in the persevering 
 regularity of his attendance in the House of Commons. 
 During his short but most memorable ministry in 
 1835, he went through an amount of labour that was 
 almost incredible. He was Chancellor of the Ex- 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 225 
 
 chequer as well as First Lord of the Treasury. He 
 had scarcely a single colleague competent to afford 
 him any efficient aid. He had to struggle against a 
 hostile House of Commons, and a mistrusting country. 
 The fight was not of his choosing, and he knew from 
 the first that it was a hopeless one. But he contended 
 gallantly to the last toiling incessantly from seven 
 o'clock in the morning till long past midnight and 
 when at last he resigned, he had risen fifty per cent, 
 in public estimation. 
 
 We now come to the great peculiarity of Sir 
 Robert Peel's career that which has brought upon 
 him the accusation of being a traitor, a turn-coat, a 
 man of infirm purpose, and of variable and inconstant 
 views want of consistency. On three several 
 occasions he recanted all his previous professions 
 adopted the opinions he had hitherto strenuously 
 opposed and carried out the policy which he had 
 been accustomed to denounce as mistaken and 
 dangerous. He did so on the question of a metallic 
 basis for the currency ; he did so on the question of 
 Catholic Emancipation ; he did so on the question of 
 the Corn Laws. All were topics of first-rate magni- 
 tude all involved great and long-contested principles 
 on all his views underwent an entire and radical 
 change. For this change he was bitterly reproached 
 with treachery and tergiversation by those who did 
 not see the truth as soon as he did, and by those 
 who have not seen it yet ; he was ungenerously 
 
 p 
 
226 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 taunted by those who were wise enough or happy 
 enough to see it earlier ; and made the subject of 
 depreciation and grave rebuke by those who appear 
 to hold that if a statesman cannot discern the right 
 path at the beginning of his career, he ought at least 
 to persevere in the wrong one to the end. 
 
 Now this charge of " inconsistency " and tergiversa- 
 tion has so long been popularly regarded as the 
 heaviest and most damaging that can be brought 
 against the character of politicians, that it is well 
 worth while to spend a few moments in inquiring how 
 it comes to be so estimated, and how much of justice 
 may be awarded to this estimate, when weighed in 
 the balance of unprejudiced reason. When a states- 
 man draws himself proudly up, and declares amid 
 the prolonged cheering of his audience, " / never 
 abandoned my party ; / never changed my opinions ; 
 I never voted in favour of measures / had spent the 
 best years of my life in opposing," he imagines that 
 he is putting forth the most irrefragable claim to 
 public confidence and admiration. When he seeks 
 the most fatal and irritating weapon with which to 
 wound or discredit an antagonist, he rakes up from 
 buried volumes of Hansard the expression of senti- 
 ments and doctrines widely at variance with those 
 now professed, and taunts him with sitting side by 
 side with colleagues who were his foes in years gone 
 by ; and the arrow generally strikes home ; and 
 though none are invulnerable by it, none seem able 
 to refrain from using it, and none can receive it 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 227 
 
 without suffering and shrinking. Why is this ? 
 Why should the charge be felt so painfully ? 
 
 The explanation is an historical one. Our morality 
 and our sensibility on this subject have descended to 
 us from those days when parliament was not an 
 assembly in which the interests of the nation were 
 discussed by the representatives of the nation with 
 the object of ascertaining its wishes and promoting 
 its welfare, but an arena in which trained gladi- 
 ators contended for the mastery a field of battle 
 in which two marshalled hosts contended for the 
 victory ; days when senators were not men selected 
 by the people to investigate, deliberate, and legislate 
 for the exigencies and the progress of the country 
 according to the best light which science and study 
 could bring to shine upon them but soldiers enlisted 
 for an avowed cause, marching under a known banner, 
 owing allegiance and obedience to an acknowledged 
 chief. Hence the morality of parliament then was 
 the morality of military life ; and in the military 
 code, desertion is the most heinous of all crimes. 
 Again, in those times from which our present party 
 morality has been inherited the times of Walpole, 
 and Pelham, and the first Pitt tergiversation and 
 change of party were nearly always traceable, or 
 supposed to be traceable, to some mean or sinister 
 motive. It was generally accompanied and explained 
 by the acceptance of a peerage, a pension, or a place. 
 
 From these two circumstances, it naturally resulted 
 that political inconstancy was regarded less as 
 
228 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 indicative of a mental process of conviction, than 
 as involving personal honour ; the accusation was a 
 flagrant insult ; the fact was fatal to a statesman's 
 popularity and the stainless purity of his reputation. 
 Bat why the same conventional rule of judgment 
 should be maintained now, when no senator is ever 
 influenced in his changes by the promise of a bribe 
 or the hope of a place, and scarcely ever by low 
 ambition or personal pique, and when members of 
 parliament are not party combatants, but deliberating 
 legislators, it is not easy to perceive. Still less 
 reasonable does it seem when we reflect that no 
 statesman of the present generation, and scarcely any 
 of the last, can point to a career of unswerving 
 consistency. Lord Eldon, indeed, was a model of 
 unchanging constancy ; but it is impossible to regard 
 this as a virtue in him, for we know that it was the 
 result of a bigoted temper, and a narrow mind, and 
 was about the most mischievous of his many noxious 
 qualities. 
 
 Had all his colleagues been like him, we should, 
 ere now, have seen a revolution as complete and 
 unsparing as that of France. " What a consistent 
 career has Lord Eldon's been," wrote a contemporary 
 of his in 1829, " the ever active principle of evil in 
 our political world ! In the history of the universe 
 no man has the praise of having effected as much good 
 for his fellow-creatures as Lord Eldon has thwarted." 
 The consistent career of the late Lord Grey does, 
 indeed, present many points for admiration ; but we 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 229 
 
 must remember that Lord Grey started in life with 
 opinions far in advance of his day and generation, 
 many of which were wholly inapplicable and out of 
 place then ; and there was more than one occasion 
 both in early and in later life, when his fidelity to 
 party led him into language and conduct deplorably 
 inconsiderate, unworthy, and unjust. Among living 
 statesmen who can point to a consistent career, in the 
 ordinary sense of the term ? Is it Lord Derby, who 
 was at one time the fiercest assailant, and at another 
 the subordinate minister of Peel ; at one time the 
 vigorous reformer, at another time the resolute 
 stickler for the intact existence of the Irish Church ? 
 Is it Sir James Graham, the Radical of early days, 
 who, in 1831, stood in the very van of the Whig 
 party, as the colleague of Lord Durham and Lord 
 Grey; who, in 1835, was a devoted adherent of the 
 seceding Lord Stanley; and in 1845, a colleague of 
 Sir Robert Peel, and an opponent of Lord Stanley ? 
 Is it Lord Palmerston, who has held office successively 
 under the Duke of Portland, Mr Perceval, Lord 
 Liverpool, Sir Robert Peel, Mr Canning, Lord Grey, 
 and Lord John Russell ? 
 
 Is it Mr Gladstone, either in what he has done or 
 in what he has contemplated ? Is it Mr Disraeli, 
 the quondam Radical, the present leader of the 
 reactionary rump ? Finally, is it even Lord John 
 Russell, who made the " appropriation clause " a 
 sine qua non in 1835, and passed a bill without it 
 in 1838 ; who opposed the motion for an inquiry 
 
230 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 into the operation of the Corn Laws in 1839 ; who 
 proposed a fixed duty of eight shillings in 1841, and 
 declared for total repeal in 1845 ? We do not mean 
 to intimate that all these statesmen were not con- 
 scientious, and may not even have been right in 
 their various changes of party and modifications of 
 opinion ; but assuredly none of them can lay claim 
 to the attribute of immutability. 
 
 There is a wise, and there is an unwise, species 
 of political constancy. There is a narrow and 
 mechanical, and there is a large and comprehensive, 
 view of the same great principle of rectitude. There 
 is a steadiness of opinion and of purpose which 
 imbues itself with noble sentiments, and places 
 great objects ever before it ; which, having studied 
 deliberately the best interests of the country and 
 decided the direction in which it ought to steer, 
 keeps those interests and that goal in view through 
 'till bewildering storms, and through every intervening 
 cloud ; which in each emergency selects that policy 
 best suited, during that emergency, for nearing the 
 appointed haven ; which in every danger chooses and 
 follows the pilot who best understands that peculiar 
 portion of the chart of destiny over which the vessel 
 of the state is at that moment steering ; and which 
 knows how to preserve an essential, if not a superficial, 
 consistency by varying its means and its course to 
 secure the unity of its end. And there is a stubborn- 
 ness of will, an unbending rectilinearness of march, 
 like that of the Norwegian Leming, which cannot 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 231 
 
 comprehend that perils which press from one quarter 
 are not to be met by the same weapons and the 
 same attitude which is appropriate against those 
 which menace from an opposite direction; which 
 would apply the same panacea to every social malady, 
 and to every condition of the patient to the state of 
 excitement and the state of collapse ; which cannot 
 conceive that altered national circumstances may 
 demand altered national policy ; which, in the 
 difficult navigation of public life, ascertains its 
 position and calculates its course, not by fixed land- 
 marks, but by floating fragments not by objects 
 eternal in the heavens, but by objects moving upon 
 earth ; and which deludes itself into a belief that 
 it is nobly pursuing one consistent purpose, so long as 
 it is surrounded by the same familiar faces, and 
 uttering the old ancestral shibboleth of party 
 though the circumstances which made its companions 
 patriots, and its war-cry a just and noble reality, have 
 long since been reversed. There is a perseverance 
 which is " instant in season ; " there is a pertinacity 
 which is instant " out of season ; " and there is a 
 national purblindness which confounds the two 
 qualities so diametrically distinct in one common 
 admiration. Finally, there is a consistency the 
 boast of the shallow and the vain, but often of the 
 conscientious too which forms its opinions, collects 
 its maxims, and adopts its party according to the best 
 light it has, and then shuts the door of the mind 
 against all disturbing knowledge and all bewildering 
 
232 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 and novel illumination, which petrifies into impene- 
 trability or congeals into a frozen fog. And there is 
 an open and earnest convincibility, which, aware that 
 the utmost wisdom it can attain at the outset of its 
 career is at best fragmentary and imperfect, is 
 constantly storing up new facts, mastering new dis- 
 coveries, deliberating on new arguments, profiting by 
 old errors, digesting the lessons of past experience ; 
 which feels that the first duty of a high position is to 
 abjure prejudice, and give to the country the full 
 benefit of every added information, of every successful 
 experiment, of every elaborated science. Men of this 
 stamp of mind are marked out for misrepresentation 
 and for taunt ; they are made the butt of every Tory 
 blockhead to whom so imegotistical a conscience, so 
 lofty and unconventional a standard of public duty, 
 are things utterly incomprehensible ; but they are the 
 men who most truly serve, and most often save, their 
 country, and the country generally appreciates them 
 better than either parliament or party. 
 
 The truth is that in a country of free institutions, 
 like England, of which progress is the law and life, 
 that sort of inconsistency which is implied in political 
 conversion must be not only an admitted fact, but a 
 recognised prerogative ; and in an age of transition 
 like that in which we live, these conversions must be 
 necessarily frequent and rapid. Were it otherwise 
 were conversion a forbidden thing the strife of 
 parties would become a war of extermination ; the 
 nation could advance in her course of enlarging and 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 233 
 
 enlightening policy only by the death or political 
 extinction of the conservative statesmen. Not only 
 would our progress be more tardy, but it would be 
 more fitful, spasmodic, and dangerous. There would 
 be no change till by process of election or of death the 
 obstructions were reduced to an absolute and permanent 
 minority, and then the change would be sudden and 
 immense. We should lose all the advantage and all 
 the safety which now arises from the gradual modifica- 
 tions which take place in the views of the most 
 reflective statesmen of all parties, and by the ceaseless 
 and often almost imperceptible passing over of 
 influential politicians from one camp to the other : 
 those who, yielding to the moulding spirit of the age, 
 and the influx of new impressions, desert the ranks of 
 the Tories for those of the Reformers, carrying with 
 them many of their early associations with a venerated 
 past and much of the native conservatism of their 
 temperament : those, on the other hand, who having 
 achieved the great reforms on which they had set their 
 hearts, or swayed by the insensible influence of 
 increasing years, begin to fear the too rapid encroach- 
 ments of the democratic element, and therefore join 
 the ranks of the retarders, carrying with them to the 
 quarters of their former antagonists many of their 
 popular sympathies, and some faint embers of their 
 old enthusiasm for reform. A progress which draws 
 the old nation along with it is not only securer, but 
 far more 'Complete than one which results from the 
 defeat of one party and the predominance of another ; 
 
234 SIR B. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 and for this it is essential that the liberty of con- 
 version should be upheld as one of the indisputable 
 privileges of our public men. But, like all other 
 liberties, it must be surrounded with such guarantees, 
 limits, and conditions as shall prevent it from de- 
 generating into licence. 
 
 These conditions are three : the public have a 
 right to require from a statesman who abandons his 
 former opinions, or party, that his changes shall not 
 be vacillations, but advances ; that they shall be 
 fairly and candidly avowed as soon as decided ; and 
 that they should not, if possible, be in the direction of 
 his personal interest ; not so much so at least as to 
 give the slightest fair opening for ascribing them to 
 sinister motives. Let us try Sir Robert Peel's 
 conversions by this standard. 
 
 In the first place, though a perpetually changing, 
 he was never a vacillating statesman. His course 
 was essentially progressive. Every step he took was 
 a step forward. He never "tried back." From the 
 Peel of 1812 to the Peel of 1829, the advance is 
 rapid and remarkable: from the Peel of 1829 to the 
 Peel of 1849, the improvement is so wonderful that 
 individual identity is almost lost. He began life as 
 the underling of Lord Sidmouth the shallowest, 
 narrowest, most borne, and most benighted of the old 
 Tory crew. He ended life leading the vanguard of 
 the most liberal of the matured statesmen of the age. 
 He began life the advocate of the civil disqualifications 
 of Catholics and Dissenters. He ended it the 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 235 
 
 advocate of complete religious freedom. He was 
 born a monopolist ; he passed through many phases of 
 gradual emancipation, and at last died a free-trader. 
 Unlike Lord Stanley, who started from the front rank 
 of the Reformers, and has now, in his course of 
 retrogression, reached almost the rear rank of the 
 Obstructives, Sir Robert Peel started in , the race 
 with every disadvantage, clogged with every weight 
 and fetter which could impede his progress ; but he 
 cast them one by one aside, and advanced, with slow 
 and timid, but not oscillating footsteps, to complete 
 emancipation from early prejudices and from old 
 connections. 
 
 Further, in all his changes, as soon as he saw his 
 way clearly, he stood to his colours manfully. " When 
 he was ambiguous, unsatisfactory, reserved, and 
 tortuous," says Mr Disraeli, " it was that he was 
 perplexed, and did not see his way." When once he 
 had fixed upon his line, he never attempted to shirk 
 the consequences or corollaries of his new policy. He 
 not only accepted, cheerfully and candidly, the deli- 
 berate decisions of the legislature, even when opposed 
 to his own opinions, as settled and accomplished facts 
 (as in the case of the Reform Bill) ; but when his 
 ripening convictions, or the wisdom which time and 
 experience brought with them, compelled him to re- 
 treat from a position, to retract a policy, or avow a 
 change, he never attempted to deny the fact, or 
 extenuate the magnitude of that change he was 
 never guilty of the common subterfuge of little 
 
236 SIR E. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 minds of endeavouring, by petty and underhand 
 manoeuvres, to counteract the effect of the course he 
 was publicly obliged to take. He did not do things 
 by halves, or in a niggard and reluctant spirit. When, 
 in 1819, a careful inquiry in a committee of the 
 House of Commons produced an entire change of 
 opinion on the subject of our metallic currency, the 
 bill which he then introduced for the resumption of 
 cash payments was a complete and thorough measure, 
 and formed the basis for all his subsequent action on 
 the same topic in 1834 and 1844. When in 1829 
 he felt obliged, in direct contravention of all his 
 previous policy, to concede emancipation to the 
 Catholics, the measure he brought forward was a 
 complete and generous one. There were no needless 
 reservations of the high places of the state ; there 
 was no attempt to save appearances by the enactment 
 of fancied securities ; there were no evasive clauses, to 
 undo by a side-wind the manifest and declared 
 intention of the measure. It was as graceful a 
 surrender at discretion as could well be made ; and 
 not only did he subsequently show no wish to undo 
 his work, or to escape from its consequences, but in 
 his steady support of the Irish national education 
 system, in his augmentation and establishment of the 
 Maynooth Grant, and in his erection of the " Godless 
 Colleges," he uniformly proved himself prepared and 
 resolved to act in the spirit of his own. great measure. 
 The Keform Bill was carried against his most strenuous 
 opposition; but having been carried, after deliberate 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 237 
 
 discussion, by the pronounced will of the nation, Sir 
 Kobert Peel struck no back-handed j blow at its 
 efficiency. And when, in 1846, he at length per- 
 ceived the wisdom and necessity of a resignation of 
 the corn laws, he proposed, not the half-way house of 
 a fixed duty, but total abolition while admitting 
 that in so doing he laid himself open to the deepest 
 obloquy and the most unsparing criticism. And ever 
 afterwards he supported ministers manfully, whenever 
 this measure, or any of its consequences, was in 
 question. When, therefore, a statesman's changes 
 have thus invariably been slowly and cautiously made, 
 honestly avowed, resolutely and unflinchingly carried 
 out, and when, above all, they have always been in 
 one direction not backwards and forwards, but 
 invariably onward what more can be said in defence 
 of inconsistency, if inconsistency in a statesman be 
 allowable at all? 
 
 Secondly, Sir Kobert Peel always fulfilled the other 
 conditions we have specified as required to sanction 
 change of opinion and to redeem it from moral 
 reprobation. In many of the most important 
 measures of his life, he adopted the views and 
 carried out the plans of his opponents ; but (save on 
 one occasion, which has been already noticed) he was 
 always careful to render honour where honour was 
 due to give the credit of triumph of the principles 
 he had tardily embraced to those who had early 
 maintained them. Thus in 1811, just after his 
 entrance into public life, and probably before he 
 
238 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 had time to give any consideration to the subject, he 
 adopted the views of his ignorant and bigoted old 
 father on the Bank Restriction Act, and voted against 
 the celebrated bullion resolutions of Francis Homer. 
 But when, in 1819, in compliance with the order of 
 a select committee of the House of Commons, he 
 introduced his measure for the resumption of cash 
 payments, we find him saying : " I am ready to avow 
 without shame or remorse that my views on this 
 subject were materially different when I voted against 
 the resolutions brought forward in 1811 by Mr 
 Homer, as chairman of the bullion committee ; but 
 having gone into this inquiry determined to dismiss 
 all former impressions, to apply to the subject my 
 unprejudiced attention, and to adopt every inference 
 that authentic information or mature reflection could 
 offer to my mind I now conceive the principles laid 
 down by Mr Homer to represent the true nature and 
 laws of our monetary system ; and it is without 
 shame or repentance that I thus bear testimony to 
 the superior sagacity of that distinguished statesman." 
 In 1829, in bringing forward his memorable bill for 
 Catholic emancipation, Sir Robert Peel spoke as 
 follows : " The credit of this measure belongs to 
 others, not to me. It belongs to Fox, to Grattan, to 
 Plunk et, to the gentlemen opposite (the Whigs), and 
 to an illustrious friend of mine (Mr Canning), who 
 is now no more. By their efforts, in spite of my 
 opposition, it has proved victorious." Again, in 
 1846, on the night when he took leave of power 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 239 
 
 after the final carrying of the repeal of the corn laws, 
 the crown, and consummation of a long series of 
 measures in the direction of free trade, he spoke 
 thus: "The name which ought to be associated 
 with the success of these measures, is not the name 
 of the noble lord opposite, nor is it mine. The name 
 which ought to be and will be, associated with those 
 measures, is that of one, who acting, as I believe, 
 from pure and disinterested motives, has, with 
 untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and 
 has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the 
 more to be admired because it was unaffected and 
 unadorned the name which ought chiefly to be 
 associated with the success of these measures is the 
 name of Richard Cobden." 
 
 Sir Robert Peel never attempted to disguise or 
 diminish the fact of his change of opinion. When 
 decided and complete, it was always manfully avowed 
 as soon as circumstances would permit. The 
 tergiversation which has brought upon him the 
 severest animadversion was that which took place 
 on the Catholic question. In the passionate language 
 of the time, it was designated by no gentler name 
 than that of treachery. It is worth while, both for 
 the sake of the individual and for the elucidation of 
 political morality, to go a little closer into the facts 
 of this remarkable question. In the first place, it is 
 alleged that to change at all on such a topic reflects 
 no honour on his sagacity : for this was no new 
 question, with respect to which want of knowledge 
 
240 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 or of previous consideration could be pleaded. The 
 subject was one specially connected with his earliest 
 official situation : it had always been a prominent 
 one : he had been in the habit of discussing it for 
 seventeen years. Every argument in favour of the 
 principle of Catholic emancipation had been repeatedly 
 urged upon him, and been repeatedly repudiated by 
 him. Every danger likely to arise from its refusal 
 had been pointed out in the clearest manner, and 
 with wearisome reiteration, and had been by him 
 denied, undervalued, or despised. How came the 
 truth to dawn upon him so slowly, and to be admitted 
 so reluctantly ? And how can the long persistence 
 and the tardy recantation be reconciled with any 
 character for statesmanship ? 
 
 Little can be said to weaken the force of these 
 representations, except that the whole history of the 
 question shows the peculiar character of the man's 
 mind. It was his nature to yield to conviction 
 slowly and reluctantly. He was born on the wrong 
 side, and it cost him seventeen years of warfare to get 
 right. That, with his hereditary notions as to the 
 sanctity and authority of the English Church, he 
 should shrink from throwing open the doors of the 
 constitution to the hereditary and irreconcilable 
 enemies of that church, does not surprise us. That, 
 knowing the Irish Catholics as he did, he should 
 dread and deprecate the introduction of such men 
 into the British legislature, surprises us still less. 
 The conduct of the " Irish Brigade " in recent years 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 241 
 
 has shown us that he was not wholly wrong. But 
 that a man naturally so just and equitable should not 
 have shrunk from denying to so large and respectable 
 a body of his fellow-subjects the full rights of citizen- 
 ship, does, we confess, appear incongruous. And that 
 so keen an observer and so cool a reasoner should 
 have so long continued blind to the danger, increasing 
 every year, arising from the internecine strife, is quite 
 inexplicable, and clearly shows that at this period of 
 his life he read " the signs of the times " far less 
 truly and promptly than he afterwards learnt to do. 
 But it must be observed that he himself placed the 
 cause of his yielding in 1829 what he had till then 
 opposed, upon its right footing. It was a change of 
 policy, not a change of opinion. He held as strongly 
 as ever his conviction of the desirableness of Catholic 
 exclusion. But it was no longer possible. Circum- 
 stances had changed. Through the organising and 
 agitating powers of Mr O'Connell, the danger of 
 refusing had at length become greater than the 
 danger of conceding, and therefore only did he 
 yield. He chose then, as he had chosen hitherto, 
 that which he believed to be the least of two evils for 
 his country. Catholic emancipation and civil war 
 were both mischiefs to be dreaded and averted; but 
 the latter was the worst mischief of the two. When 
 the alternative was put thus clearly before him, he 
 logically and inevitably gave way. " According to 
 my heart and conscience," said he, "I believe that 
 the time is come when less danger is to be appre- 
 
 q 
 
242 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 bended to the general interests of the empire, and to 
 the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Protestant 
 establishment, in attempting to adjust the Catholic 
 question, than in allowing it to remain any longer in 
 
 its present state Looking back upon the 
 
 past, surveying the present, and forejudging the 
 prospect of the future, again I declare that the 
 time has at length arrived when this question must 
 
 be adjusted I have for years attempted to 
 
 maintain the exclusion of Roman Catholics from 
 parliament and the high offices of the state. I do 
 not think it was an unnatural or unreasonable 
 struggle. I resign it in consequence of the conviction 
 that it can no longer be advantageously maintained. 
 .... I yield, therefore, to a moral necessity which 
 I cannot control, being unwilling to push resistance 
 to a point which might endanger the establishments 
 that I wish to defend." In plain words, he saw that 
 he was defeated, and therefore capitulated, to save 
 useless bloodshed and a worse catastrophe. This was 
 not the language of a great or a foreseeing statesman ; 
 but it was the language of a prudent and conscientious 
 minister, and of an honest man. 
 
 " But," it is said, " if such were his views, he 
 should not have proposed Catholic emancipation at 
 all. He should have resigned, and have left the 
 settlement of that great question, with its satisfaction 
 and its glory, to those whose opinions regarding it 
 were thus proved to have been right." Undoubtedly 
 he would have consulted both his own feelings and 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 243 
 
 his own fame by acting thus ; and under ordinary 
 circumstances this would have been the proper course 
 to have pursued. But higher than mere personal 
 considerations were here involved. Let us look into 
 the details of the case : in them we believe we shall 
 find his complete justification. 
 
 The state of affairs, as already stated, produced, 
 towards the close of the year 1828, in the minds 
 both of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Eobert Peel, 
 a strong conviction that the government of Ireland, 
 on the old system, had become impossible, and that 
 Catholic emancipation must be conceded, if they 
 were not prepared to hazard the alternative of civil 
 war. Having arrived at this conviction, the first 
 point was of course to secure that a measure for this 
 purpose should be carried; the second, longo in- 
 tervallo, was that it should be carried by the proper 
 parties. Fortunately, the publication of Lord Eldon's 
 correspondence has thrown great light upon the 
 ministerial difficulties at this crisis. Lord Eldon, who 
 hated the Catholics like poison, was in constant 
 communication with the King, and has described his 
 state of mind in vivid colours. George IV., whose con- 
 science had never in the course of sixty years withheld 
 him from the indulgence of any bad passion or the 
 commission of any agreeable crime, felt an insuperable 
 objection, partly of mortified pride, partly of alarmed 
 scruple, to conceding Catholic emancipation. He 
 could not, however, turn a deaf ear to the representa- 
 tions of his ministers. He at length assented to their 
 
244 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 proposals. Then he withdrew his assent. He played 
 fast and loose with them ; entreated them to forego 
 their intentions ; entreated them not to desert him ; 
 empowered Lord Eldon to see if he could not rescue 
 him from them ; kept them in doubt up to the last 
 moment whether he would not break his pledged 
 word, and by pronouncing the royal veto give the 
 signal for civil war. These difficulties with the King 
 ministers could not explain could scarcely even hint 
 at; and hence their explanations always seemed 
 incomplete and unsatisfactory. The history of the 
 case was this, as we know it now from authentic 
 sources. 1 
 
 In August, 1828, after the close of the session, Sir 
 Robert Peel wrote confidentially to the Duke of 
 Wellington, explaining to him in the clearest manner 
 the absolute necessity of at once settling this great 
 question, which had now reached a position which 
 made all government impossible, and concluding in 
 this manly language : 
 
 " I must at the same time express a very strong opinion, that 
 it would not conduce to the satisfactory adjustment of the ques- 
 tion, that the charge of it in the House of Commons should be 
 committed to my hands. 
 
 "I put all personal feelings out of the question. They are, 
 or ought to be, very subordinate considerations in matters of 
 such moment ; and I give the best proof that I disregard them, 
 by avowing that I am quite ready to commit myself to the 
 support of the principle of a measure of ample concession and 
 relief, and to use every effort to promote the final arrangement 
 of it. 
 
 1 ' Lord Eldon's Life and Correspondence." Speech of Sir E. 
 Peel in the House of Commons, Dec. 17, 1831. 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 245 
 
 " But ray support will be more useful, if I give it with the 
 cordiality with which it shall be given, out of office. Any 
 authority which I may possess, as tending to reconcile the 
 Protestants to the measure, would be increased by my retire- 
 ment. I have been too deeply committed on the question have 
 expressed too strong an opinion with respect to it too much 
 jealousy and distrust of the Koman Catholics too' much 
 apprehension as to the immediate and remote consequences of 
 yielding to their claims to make it advantageous to the King's 
 service that I should be the individual to originate the measure." 
 
 From that period to the end of the year the 
 ministers were occupied in endeavouring to obtain 
 the consent and to fix the mind of the false and 
 vacillating monarch. When this consent was finally 
 obtained, and it became necessary to prepare for 
 meeting parliament on the new footing, Sir Robert 
 Peel, on the 12th of January 1829, again wrote to the 
 Duke, praying for permission to retire, stating, " that 
 retirement from office was the only step he could take 
 which would be at all satisfactory to his own feelings, 
 and deprecating in the most earnest manner his being 
 the person to bring forward the measure in the House 
 of Commons." But in the meantime the difficulties 
 of the Duke had been greatly increased by the 
 announced hostility of the bench of bishops, and he 
 intimated to Sir Robert Peel that he could not main- 
 tain his ground if he (Sir Robert Peel) persisted in 
 resigning. " The earnest appeal, also, made to him 
 by the King, not to shrink from proposing a measure 
 which, as a minister, he advised the King to adopt, 
 left him no alternative, consistent with honour and 
 public duty, but to make the bitter sacrifice of every 
 personal feeling, and himself to originate the measure 
 
246 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY* 
 
 of Eoman Catholic Eelief. Could he, when the 
 King thus appealed to him when the King referred 
 to his own scruples, and uniform opposition to the 
 measure in question when he said, e You advise this 
 measure you see no escape from it you ask me to 
 make the sacrifice of opinion and consistency will 
 not you make the same sacrifice ? ' What answer could 
 he return to his sovereign but the one he did return ? 
 viz., that he would make that sacrifice, and would 
 bear his full share of the responsibility and unpopu- 
 larity of the measure he advised." 
 
 The plain and brief truth of the case was this : 
 the safety of the country required that Catholic 
 emancipation should be at once conceded of this 
 there was no doubt. The Whigs, no doubt, ought to 
 have carried it, but the King, it was well known, 
 would not endure a Whig ministry, and the King was 
 impracticable, testy, and prevaricating, and manageable 
 by no one but the Duke. If the Duke had resigned 
 he would have thrown himself into the hands of the 
 old Tories, emancipation would have been refused, 
 and civil war and national retrogression and disgrace 
 would have been the consequence. But the Duke's 
 resignation would have been necessitated by Peel's 
 retirement. As an honest and disinterested patriot, 
 therefore, Sir Robert Peel, in our judgment had no 
 option but to act as he did act. 
 
 Considerable blame was thrown upon Sir Robert 
 Peel at the time, on the ground of the apparent sud- 
 denness of his conversion. In 1828, it is said, he 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 247 
 
 declared that his opinion as to the impolicy of con- 
 cession remained unchanged, while at the beginning 
 of 1829 he himself proposed concession. And, more 
 than this, he allowed his brother and brother-in-law 
 to deliver speeches at public meetings in various parts 
 of the country, most violent and decided in their 
 denunciations of Catholic emancipation, at the very 
 time when it appeared he had advised his sovereign 
 to grant emancipation, and shortly before he himself 
 proposed it to parliament. With regard to the 
 latter charge, which brought upon him much 
 odium and the bitter indignation of his relatives, 
 it will suffice to observe that not only could 
 he not, consistently with his oath and duty as a 
 cabinet minister, have given them any intimation of 
 the change under consideration, but that from the 
 vacillation and unreliableness of the King, ministers 
 themselves felt no security till the speech from the 
 throne was actually delivered, that they would be 
 allowed to bring forward their proposals, and that 
 infinite mischief and embarrassment would have 
 resulted from permitting their intention to leak out 
 before the monarch was publicly committed on the 
 subject. With regard to the suddenness of Sir Robert 
 Peel's conversion, we know now that it was rather 
 apparent than real ; and of sudden ministerial changes 
 in general a more honourable explanation can be 
 given than is commonly supposed. Men in public 
 life, and more especially ministers in actual office, 
 when new facts, deeper reflection, stronger arguments, 
 
248 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 or altered positions, come to shake their previous 
 opinions and produce an incipient change, are placed 
 in a situation of singular difficulty. They can seldom 
 retire or lie by till the inchoate operation is complete; 
 their position often calls upon them for constant 
 action and perpetual speech ; in the meantime, they 
 are obliged to conceal from the public the mental 
 process which has just commenced, so long as it is 
 imperfect and uncertain ; they must speak and act 
 in accordance with their past, not with their future 
 selves ; if they speak, they must speak in conformity 
 with the old opinions over which doubt is gradually 
 creeping ; if they act, they must act on the principles 
 which they are beginning to abandon, not on those 
 which they are beginning, but only beginning, to 
 adopt. This is a hard and painful position ; yet it is 
 one which duty to their colleagues and their country 
 not unfrequently compels public men to endure. 
 Like other men, if they are honest, inquiring, and 
 open-minded, they must inevitably find modification 
 after modification coming over their opinions in the 
 course of their career, as knowledge ripens, as facts 
 develop, as wisdom matures. Yet for a leading 
 senator to be silent, or for a chief minister to retire, 
 e.very time he felt the first warning symptoms of such 
 an alteration, would be simply impracticable in actual 
 life, though no doubt the most comfortable course for 
 his own feelings, and the safest for his reputation. 
 Thus he is in a manner obliged, by the requirements 
 of his position, to continue making the best defence 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 249 
 
 he can for his old course and his old principles till 
 his suspicion of their unsoundness has risen into a 
 clear and settled conviction ; and when, having 
 arrived at this point, he suddenly and conscientiously 
 avows his change, there is unquestionably, primd facie, 
 a very dark case against him. We believe we have 
 here indicated the secret of that course of conduct 
 which brought down so much obloquy upon Sir 
 Robert Peel on two memorable occasions in 1829 
 and in 1846. We do not affirm that it presents a 
 full justification : but we do hold that it affords a fair 
 and not discreditable explanation of many apparently 
 sudden or too rapid changes in the opinions and 
 measures of public men. 
 
 In the third place, a statesman's changes, we have 
 said, ought never to be so manifestly in the direction 
 of his personal advantage as to leave any decent 
 ground for attributing them, either wholly or in part, 
 to sinister or interested motives. On this head, Sir 
 Eobert Peel's tergiversations stand free from the 
 slightest suspicion. Whatever might have been said 
 in the angry surprise of the moment by a deserted 
 and disappointed party, everyone now feels not only 
 that all his changes were conscientious, but that all of 
 them were made at the most bitter sacrifice of personal 
 feeling. His first inconsistency on the currency 
 question, in 1811 brought him into immediate and 
 very unpleasant collision with his father, who even 
 spoke before him in the debate ; and it is understood 
 that the old gentleman scarcely ever heartily forgave 
 
250 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 his son for his change of opinion, either on this 
 occasion or in 1829. Few men, indeed, ever made 
 greater sacrifices than Sir Robert Peel to his views of 
 public duty ; for he deliberately sacrificed to them 
 what to minds as ambitious and as sensitive as his, is 
 far dearer than place, or power, or popular applause 
 and admiration the attachment of his party, the 
 good opinion of his personal friends. In 1829, he 
 incurred knowingly and manfully, though with 
 acknowledged pain and reluctance the reproaches 
 and indignation of a great party, the fury of those 
 bigots who had long regarded him as their safest and 
 most presentable champion, the rupture of many 
 private ties, the blame of many dear connections, and 
 the representation of the University of Oxford, to 
 which he had long clung with honourable pride, and 
 which Canning had so ardently desired ; and what, 
 perhaps, to a proud man was worse of all, the 
 humiliation of avowing an ignominious defeat, and 
 the mistake and short-sightedness of years. " The 
 tone of his observations," observes Mr Roebuck, 
 " proved how acutely he felt the suffering of the fiery 
 ordeal to which the indignation of his former friends 
 had subjected him, how his mind still lingered about 
 the objects of his former solicitude, and with what 
 pain he divested himself of the character of the great 
 Protestant leader." 
 
 " Allusion has been made," he said, indignantly, " to the 
 sacrifice of the emoluments of office, which, it is insinuated, 
 ought to have been preferred to the course I have adopted. 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 251 
 
 Good God ! I cannot argue with the man who can place the 
 sacrifice of office or emolument in competition with the severe, 
 the painful sacrifice I have made a sacrifice which it seems to 
 be supposed I have consented to in order to retain my office. 
 . . . Perhaps (he concluded) I am not so sanguine as others 
 in my expectations of the future ; but I have not the slightest 
 hesitation in saying that I fully believe the adjustment of the 
 question in the manner proposed, will give better and stronger 
 securities to the Protestant interest and the Protestant establish- 
 ment than any other that the present state of things admits of, 
 and will avert evils and dangers impending and immediate. 
 What motive, I ask, can I have for the expression of these 
 opinions, but the honest conviction of their truth 1 ? ... I 
 well know I might have taken a more popular and selfish course. 
 I might have held language much more acceptable to the friends 
 with whom I have long acted and to the constituents whom I 
 have lately lost. * His ego gratiora dictu alia esse scio ; sed me 
 vera pro gratis loqui, et si meum ingenium non moneret, 
 necessitas cogit. Vellem equidem vobis placere ' } sed niulto 
 malo vos salvos esse. J " 
 
 What it must have cost Sir Robert Peel, and what it 
 did cost him, in pride, in affection, in repute, to break 
 loose from his party in 1846, and propose the repeal 
 of the corn laws, we can now fully estimate. 1 The 
 
 1 Mr Disraeli, in his " Life of Lord George Bentinck," gives a 
 graphic sketch of the memorable night when the Protectionists 
 revenged themselves on their leader by voting with the Whigs 
 on the Irish Coercion Bill, and so ejecting him from office. It 
 was the evening when the repeal of the Corn Laws had finally 
 passed the House of Lords : 
 
 "At length, about half past one o'clock, the galleries were 
 cleared, the division called, and the question put. . . . 
 More than one hundred Protectionist members adhered to the 
 minister ; more than eighty avoided the division ; nearly the 
 same number followed Lord George Bentinck. But it was not 
 merely their numbers that attracted the anxious observation of 
 the Treasury bench, as the Protectionists passed in defile before 
 the Minister to the hostile lobby. It was impossible he could 
 
252 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 desertion of many with whom he had long acted the 
 rage of the country gentlemen whom he had dis- 
 appointed the bitter indignation of those whom he 
 dragged over the grave of their pledges and their 
 prejudices to support his new policy the merciless 
 sarcasms, the unsparing imputations of premeditated 
 treachery, nightly cast at him by the impotent fury 
 of the deceived, and the deep malignity of the baffled 
 altogether formed a combination of painful and 
 
 have marked them without emotion the flower of that great party 
 which had been so proud to follow one who had been so proud to 
 lead them. They were men, to gain whose hearts, and the hearts 
 of their fathers, had been the aim and the exultation of his life. 
 They had extended to him an unlimited confidence, and an 
 admiration without stint ; they had stood by him in the darkest 
 hour, and had borne him from the depths of political despair to 
 the proudest of living positions. Bight or wrong, they were 
 men of honour, breeding, and refinement, of high and generous 
 character, and of good weight and station in the country, which 
 they had ever placed at his disposal. They had been not only 
 his followers, but his friends j had joined in the same pastimes, 
 drank from the same cup, and in the pleasantness of private life 
 had often forgotten together the cares and strife of politics. 
 
 " He must have felt something of this, while the Manners, 
 the Somersets, the Bentincks, the Lowthers, -and the Lennoxes, 
 passed before him. And those country gentlemen those 
 1 gentlemen of England ' of whom but five years ago this very 
 same building was ringing with his pride of being the leader if 
 his heart were hardened to Sir Charles Burreli, Sir William 
 Joliffe, Sir Charles Knightly, Sir John Trollope, Sir Edward 
 Kerrison, Sir John Tyrrell he surely must have felt a pang 
 when his eye rested on Sir John Yarde Buller, his choice arid 
 pattern country gentleman, whom he had himself selected and 
 invited but six years back to move a vote of want of confidence 
 in the Whig government, in order, against the feeling of the 
 court, to instal Sir K. Peel in their stead." P. 300. 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 253 
 
 formidable obstacles, which would have deterred from 
 such a course any man who loved his country less, or 
 valued his reputation and his comfort more. But he 
 faced all with a grave and sorrowful fortitude, which 
 has not been without its reward. The nation saw 
 and appreciated the earnest and unselfish sincerity of 
 the man ; did full justice to the honesty of his 
 purpose, and the difficult firmness of his resolution, 
 and in the end placed him on a pinnacle of popularity 
 achieved by no statesman since Lord Grey. Never 
 has it been the fate of a statesman to do his duty to his 
 country in the face of so many difficulties difficulties, 
 it is true, the main portion of which were created by 
 his own antecedents arid at the cost of so complete 
 a surrender of all that statesmen hold most dear. In 
 the course of thirty years, he changed every opinion, 
 violated every pledge, broke up every party, dis- 
 appointed every prophecy, deserted every colleague 
 whom he could not draw along with him ; yet, in 
 spite of all, at the time of his death he stood in 
 public estimation arid respect the unquestioned chief, 
 longo intervallo, of all the statesmen of the day. 
 And why was this ? but because it was clear to all 
 that sincere conviction, and conscientious, unselfish 
 devotion to his country's service, were throughout the 
 actuating principles of his conduct were at the 
 bottom of every changed opinion, of every broken 
 pledge, of every scattered combination, of every 
 severed friendship, of every disappointed hope. It 
 occurs to many public men to sacrifice place, power, 
 
254 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 and friends to their principles and their faith : it was 
 reserved to Sir Robert Peel to sacrifice to them his 
 reputation and this, not once, but time after time, 
 and yet to find it, like the widow's cruse, un- 
 diminished by the daily waste. 
 
 Of all Sir Robert Peel's conversions, his conversion 
 to free trade and the repeal of the corn laws is the 
 one which brought upon him the greatest obloquy and 
 the heaviest charges, but we think with little justice. 
 If, indeed, when he took office at the head of the 
 Conservative party, in 1841, after ousting the Whigs 
 who, in their hour of danger and despair, had 
 begun to tamper with the protection hitherto afforded 
 to the agricultural and the colonial interests he had 
 already discerned the necessity, and made up his 
 mind to the wisdom of a surrender, and yet led his 
 party on to the attack, and assumed power in the 
 name, and for the defence, of the old party, then no 
 language can be found severe enough to condemn 
 such black and premeditated treachery. But there is 
 not the slightest ground for believing this to have 
 been the case. When, after the general election of 
 1841, he was summoned to take office by the large 
 majority of a parliament elected under the combined 
 influence of a general conviction of Whig incapacity and 
 mismanagement aided by the alarm created among 
 the agriculturists by their proposal of a fixed duty, 
 and among the West Indians by their attempt to 
 reduce the differential duties on slave sugar he 
 found the country in a condition calling both for 
 
SIR R. PEELS CHARACTER AND POLICY. 255 
 
 immediate action to rescue it from misery and 
 depression, and for a sincere and searching study of 
 the causes which had plunged it into such adversity. 
 The finances were deplorably dilapidated. The deficit 
 was annual, and annually increasing ; and the Whigs 
 had tried in vain to cure it. The trade of the 
 country was languishing, manufacturers were failing, 
 many mills were closed, bread and meat were scanty 
 and dear, want of employment and want of food were 
 driving many to despair, and goading others into 
 violence. Altogether, it was a gloomy period, the 
 suffering and despondency of which are even now 
 fresh and painful in our memory. It was one of those 
 epochs which make all men earnest, and cause many 
 to think and question who never thought or questioned 
 before. Sir Robert Peel met parliament in the 
 autumn, passed the necessary routine measures for 
 the service of the country, and then steadily refused 
 to give any intimation of the plans by which he 
 proposed to meet the alarming state of matters, till he 
 had had the five months of the recess for careful 
 deliberation. Those months were spent by himself 
 and his colleague, Sir James Graham, in anxious 
 investigation and reflection. Few men are aware 
 how effectually, in all worthy and honourable minds, 
 the awful responsibilities of office during a time of 
 national distress, crush and drive away all selfish and 
 personal considerations ; how they tear away the veil 
 from the flimsy arguments which sufficed to answer 
 an objection or silence an opponent ; how they shrivel 
 
256 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 into nothing the claims of consistency, the prejudices 
 of connection, the pride of reputation ; and how they 
 compel the most sincere and laborious efforts to arrive 
 at truth. The impression made upon the two leading 
 ministers by that dreadful time never faded from 
 their minds. Those who knew them then saw an 
 unwonted gravity upon their faces. Those who knew 
 them afterwards heard them say that no party or 
 political considerations would induce them to risk the 
 recurrence of such a period of suffering and gloom. 
 It was the remembrance of 1842 that shaped their 
 course in 1846; they saw a similar period approaching, 
 and they dared not, and could not, meet it with any 
 restriction on a starving nation's supply of food. 
 
 Sir E. Peel met parliament in 1842, with bold 
 and statesmanlike proposals : He saw that it was 
 necessary to restore the finances, to relieve and 
 unfetter industry, and to increase the supply of food 
 for the people. So he imposed a property tax to 
 enable him to modify a prohibitive and oppressive 
 tariff; he greatly reduced the duties on the raw 
 materials of manufacturers, and he admitted foreign 
 cattle and meat at moderate rates of duty. Further 
 than this he would not go ; because further than this 
 he did not see his way. His new corn law was 
 scarcely an improvement on the old one ; and he was 
 aware of this himself. On that subject his opinions, 
 though shaken, were still undecided. He did not see 
 his way; and his language showed this. Those who 
 reproached him with ignorance and cowardice for not 
 
SIR K. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 257 
 
 repealing the corn laws then, and those who re- 
 proached him with treachery and tergiversation for 
 repealing them four years later, alike showed that 
 they had not studied his career, and did not under- 
 stand the peculiar character of his mind. He 
 was, as a statesman, exactly what the English are 
 as a nation. They are, in spirit, essentially Con- 
 servative. They instinctively venerate what is 
 old, dread what is novel, mistrust what is untried. 
 They are ever unwilling to make a change till 
 unmistakable expediency or necessity forces it upon 
 them. They hold by precedent and custom till the 
 position in which these retain them has become no 
 longer tenable or safe. They hate rash experiments, 
 Imt they love substantial justice. Hence, during the 
 greater part of his life, Sir Robert Peel was a man 
 .after their own heart. He was pre-eminently a 
 tentati/ue, not a scientific statesman. He had nothing 
 of the political philosopher about him : he never 
 formed a theory, and then followed it out systemati- 
 cally to its consequences; he always felt his way. 
 He felt his way in criminal law reform ; he felt his 
 way in the concession of equal institutions to Ireland ; 
 he felt his way on the currency question ; he felt his 
 way in his financial measures ; he felt his way in his 
 liberal commercial policy. His first steps towards 
 free-trade, in 1842, were made in doubt and tremb- 
 ling : it was obvious that he had no thorough con- 
 fidence in the principles of the free-traders, and that 
 lie still thought there was much weight in the 
 
 R 
 
258 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 reasonings and the fears of their antagonists, but he 
 perceived that the effect might be serviceable, and it 
 was desirable that the experiment should be tried ; and 
 it was not till he saw how buoyantly the commerce of 
 the country sprang forward under the timid and 
 tentative relief which he had given, showing that at 
 least he had done no harm and made no mistake, 
 that he began to see his way more clearly, and to 
 announce his opinions more courageously, and with 
 fewer reservations and misgivings. Had bad harvests, 
 instead of good ones, followed his first tamperings 
 with the old protective tariff, and the distress of the 
 country been exacerbated instead of being relieved, 
 we believe he would have concluded that he had 
 been wrong, and that the further alterations of 1843, 
 and the systematic revision of 1845, would have been 
 indefinitely postponed. 
 
 In the same way he proceeded with the corn laws. 
 No one could see his countenance and hear his speech 
 when, after six months of anxious reflection, he pro- 
 posed his new scale of duties in 1842, without being 
 convinced that he had begun to feel thoroughly 
 doubtful of his ground : the fearful distresses of his 
 countrymen had compelled him to look into the sub- 
 ject more closely than he had ever done before, and 
 to listen with more candour and attention to the 
 reasonings of his opponents. The consequence was, 
 that his mind became utterly unsettled ; he had to 
 propose a law at a time when his old views had been 
 greatly shaken, but when the antagonistic views of 
 the free-traders had not yet wrought full conviction : 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AKD POLICY. 259 
 
 hence he defended his measure by arguments wholly 
 unworthy of an intellect like his, and for three years 
 insisted on giving it a fair trial. But during all this 
 period, as was evident from his altered and hesitating 
 language, his mind was gradually ripening for the 
 final change : it was impossible for him, charged as 
 he was with the destinies of England, to sit night 
 after night in the House of Commons, listening to the 
 lucid expositions, the crushing logic, of the small but 
 indefatigable band of the champions of commercial 
 freedom, without finding first, doubt, then admiration 
 and surprise, then conviction, successively creeping 
 over him. We well remember, as he sat silent after 
 one of the calm, clear, irrefutable speeches of Mr 
 Cobden (regarding the effect of the corn laws on 
 grazing and dairy farmers), which made an unwonted 
 impression on the House, the dismayed country 
 gentlemen began to whisper anxiously from the back 
 benches : " This will never do ! Why don't Peel get 
 up and answer him ? " Sir Robert Peel turned half 
 round and muttered in a low voice: "Those may 
 answer him who can." 
 
 When his conversion was thus almost completed,, 
 came the memorable and terrible summer of 1845 
 incessant rain, a damaged and defective harvest, and 
 the universal potato-rot and the work was done. 
 Peel felt that he dared not encounter another period 
 of distress and scarcity with the corn laws still un- 
 repealed : he saw starvation in prospect for Ireland, 
 and possibly for England also ; and he recognised the 
 
260 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 impossibility of maintaining any impediments to the 
 most unlimited supply of foreign food. The more he 
 thought, the more he listened, the more he observed, 
 the clearer became his vision, and the more resolute 
 his purpose. At the beginning of November he pro- 
 posed to throw open the ports ; but his colleagues 
 were by no means unanimous, and he felt it was not 
 a step to be taken with divided councils. Later in 
 the month, Lord Morpeth joined the league : on the 
 22nd, Lord John Russell wrote his celebrated letter 
 to the electors of London : he, too, like his great 
 rival, was a convert to the pressure of the times and 
 the arguments of the leaguers. A week after, Sir R. 
 Peel resigned, after recommending the Queen to send 
 for Lord John Russell, and placing in her Majesty's 
 hands a written promise to assist his rival, by every 
 means in his power, in effecting the now necessary 
 settlement of this great question. The issue is well 
 known : Lord John Russell could not form a ministry, 
 .and Sir R. Peel again took office with all his col- 
 leagues, except Lord Wharncliffe, who died, and Lord 
 Stanley, whose prejudices were too stubborn to yield 
 to facts, and whose heart was not yet touched by the 
 prospective sufferings of his fellow-countrymen. He 
 carried the repeal of the corn laws in the session of 
 18 4? 6, after a hard contest, and the most savage and 
 bitter personal attacks, and then, according to a tacit 
 understanding, gracefully laid down his power, and 
 retired for ever from official life. 
 
 That a tentative and gradually progressive policy 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 261 
 
 like his, does not indicate the possession of the highest 
 qualities of statesmanship, we readily concede. The 
 merit of the prophetic mind that sees far into the 
 future belongs not to Sir R. Peel. Few politicians 
 ever read the present better, or the future less. He 
 was clear-sighted, rather than far-sighted. " His 
 life was one perpetual education," says Mr Disraeli. 
 " He was not a rapid learner," observes Mr Roebuck, 
 " but he was continually improving. He was ever 
 ready to listen to the exposition of new ideas." The 
 truth is, as Mr Disraeli perceived, Sir R. Peel was 
 not an original mind ; he drew his inspiration from 
 others. He was not of that order of great men who 
 early embrace vast objects and prolific principles, 
 inoculate the country with them, and educate the 
 country up to them through long years of effort, 
 obloquy, and misconstruction. He was not even of 
 those who say, with Artevelde, 
 
 " I will not wait upon necessity, 
 And leave myself no choice of vantage ground ; 
 But rather meet the times while still I may, 
 And mould and fashion them as best I can." 
 
 He scarcely ever anticipated the verdict of the 
 country ; he was never too early ; often too late. 
 But when we reflect how great a change has of late 
 years come over the political action of the country ; 
 how completely the general rules, and many even 
 of the smaller details, of our policy are now decided 
 by public opinion out of doors * ; how entirely both 
 
 * Mr Disraeli, indeed, conceives that much of this change lies 
 at the door of Sir Kobert Peel. " No minister," he says, "ever 
 
262 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 ministers and parliament have become mere instru- 
 ments to legalise, embody, and execute those decisions 
 to which the exertions of independent thinkers and 
 associated bodies have gradually led the national 
 mind, it may be questioned whether a man who 
 sympathises and adopts, is not more needed at the 
 helm, in our times, than a man who initiates still 
 more than one who anticipates or misreads. The day 
 is past when British rulers could govern according to 
 the dictates of their own wisdom ; nothing can now 
 be done that the country is not ripe for ; and a 
 minister who is too forward for his age finds himself 
 simply powerless. 
 
 " Had the intellect of Sir Robert Peel," says Mr Roebuck, 
 "been of a bolder and more original cast, he would probably 
 Lave been a less successful minister, as in that case he might 
 often have proposed reforms before the nation was prepared to 
 receive them, and thus have diminished his power as a minister 
 Avhile earning the renown of a philosopher. . . . The 
 philosopher who discovers great truths, and collects the 
 evidence by which they are eventually established, must be 
 content to have his reward in the reverence and gratitude of 
 posterity, and must be satisfied with the consciousness of the 
 real value and importance of his discoveries. But the statesman, 
 to be useful, must be powerful ; and in a government like ours, 
 and among a practical people like the English, the safest course 
 
 diminished the power of government in this country so much as 
 this eminent man. No one ever strained the constitution so 
 much. He was the unconscious parent of political agitation. 
 He literally forced the people out of doors to become statesmen, 
 and the whole tendency of his policy was to render our institu- 
 tions mere forms." There is much truth in this : but surely 
 the Whigs must share the guilt if guilt there be for what 
 party of late years have so constantly compelled the country to 
 modify their measures and make amends for their deficiencies 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 263 
 
 for a reforming minister is never to be before his age. Let him 
 not be obstinately wedded to any views or opinions let him be 
 ever ready to hear, and carefully and respectfully listen to, all 
 sides of every question but let him religiously abstain from 
 appropriating or assenting to any novel conception, until the 
 public thoroughly understands and earnestly adopts it." 
 Preface, p. xix. 
 
 On one memorable instance, however, Sir Robert 
 Peel hung back behind his age. He did not recognise 
 the demand of the nation for reform, and when he 
 did, he refused to bow to its wishes. He opposed 
 the Reform Bill to the last ; though when passed, he 
 proclaimed it to be " a final and irrevocable settle- 
 ment of a great constitutional question, which no 
 friend to his country would attempt, directly or 
 insidiously, to disturb ; " and set himself diligently 
 and with consummate sagacity to the task of recon- 
 structing the disorganised Conservative party, on a 
 basis suited to the altered circumstances of the times. 
 Yet it is to be observed that no man contributed 
 more largely to the success of the Reform Bill than 
 Sir Robert Peel himself, since, if it had not been for 
 the breaking up of the Tory camp caused by his 
 proceedings in 1829, that great measure could not 
 have been carried, and indeed would never have been 
 proposed. The effect, too, of the discussions on that 
 measure, the conduct of the people regarding it, and 
 their subsequent course at elections, in completing his 
 political education, and making him thoroughly com- 
 prehend the middle classes, can scarcely be too highly 
 estimated. 
 
264 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 Mr Disraeli thus sums up his able and discrimi- 
 nating, but somewhat hostile, estimate of his great 
 opponent : 
 
 " One cannot say of Sir Robert Peel, notwithstanding his 
 unrivalled powers of dispatching affairs, that he was the greatest 
 minister this country ever produced ; because, twice placed at 
 the helm, and on the second occasion with the court and the 
 parliament equally devoted to him, he never could maintain 
 himself in power. Nor, notwithstanding his consummate 
 parliamentary tactics, can he be described as the greatest 
 party leader that ever flourished among us, for he contrived to 
 destroy the most compact, powerful, and devoted party that 
 ever followed a British statesman. Certainly, notwithstanding 
 his great sway in debate, we cannot recognise him as our 
 greatest orator, for in many of the supreme requisites of oratory, 
 he was singularly deficient. But what he really was, and what 
 posterity will acknowledge him to have been, is the greatest 
 MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT that ever lived." 
 
 Mr Roebuck's estimate is juster and more compre- 
 hensive : 
 
 " His strongest sympathies were with the nation, and not 
 with a dominant section or party ; and in this he was pre- 
 eminently distinguished from the Whig statesman to whom he 
 was through life opposed. . . . His conduct during his last 
 administration, though it gave offence, never to be forgiven, to 
 some of his immediate partisans, made him the most popular 
 minister, and the most powerful statesman known in England 
 since the days of the first William Pitt. The nation had 
 confidence in his prudence ; they believed him sincerely 
 anxious to promote the welfare of his country, and to have 
 real sympathies with the industrious millions of our people. 
 There was a feeling, every day growing stronger, that he was 
 destined to be the people's minister ; that he would be able, by 
 means of popular support, to which at length he could alone 
 look for aid, to depart from the rule by which the whole 
 government of the country had hitherto been placed exclusively 
 in the hands of the aristocracy, and to unite upon the Treasury 
 bench a really national administration. . . . Entertaining 
 
SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 265 
 
 the hope that such was to be the ultimate mission of Sir Robert 
 Peel, the nation looked with eager expectation to his future 
 career. He rose in their affections in proportion as he lost the 
 favour of his party, and was never so powerful as when by 
 that party he was at last scouted, and deemed to be for ever 
 dismissed." 
 
 This is quite true. During the four years that 
 elapsed between his resignation of office and his- 
 death, he grew daily in intellectual and moral stature, 
 and in favour with the great body of the people. 
 For the first time in his long life he was free 
 unshackled by any party ties, and liberated from all 
 embarrassing antecedents. He stood there as the 
 great " Moderator " a sort of consulting physician to 
 the nation, to be called in when ordinary doctors were 
 at fault. There was one service especially which it 
 was hoped he might live to render. Eich in official 
 experience, but unhampered by official connection 
 exempt from the snares and prejudices of ambition , 
 because no ambition could aspire to a higher eminence 
 than he had already reached apart and aloof from 
 all the embarrassments of party, since he had for ever 
 and voluntarily ceased to be a leader it was felt that 
 he, and he only, was the statesman competent to 
 examine and report upon the whole machine of our 
 government to point out the defects in its system, 
 and to suggest the quarter in which a remedy was to 
 be sought ; in a word, to reform Downing Street, and 
 recall both the Legislature and the Executive to their 
 original and proper functions. To enter further upon 
 this topic prolific as it is would lead us into a 
 digression now, for which we have no space left. 
 
266 SIR R. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 
 
 We must conclude. When the Duke of Wellington, 
 on receiving the melancholy tidings of Sir Robert 
 Peel's death, emphatically pronounced him to be 
 " the most honest man " he had ever known, the 
 world was somewhat surprised at the peculiar terms 
 of the eulogy. We were not. We can quite 
 understand what the Duke meant. He intended 
 to declare that in all his course his colleague had 
 always appeared to him perfectly single-minded and 
 conscientious. The praise was discriminating and 
 deserved. We fully believe that Sir Robert Peel at 
 all times did what he thought best for the coimtry, 
 according to his light and the scope of his vision ; 
 that whether he walked straightly or tortuously 
 whether he changed or persevered whether he led 
 his party or deserted them, he acted in each and 
 every case as his conscience, in its then state of 
 enlightenment, dictated.* He did this at the cost 
 of much personal pain, for he was a man acutely 
 sensitive to the opinions and feelings of those around 
 him, at once proud and sensitive. Therefore we 
 place him morally, though perhaps not intellectually, 
 in the very first rank of public men. Would that all 
 had his singleness of mind, his genuine patriotism, his 
 
 *It is an interesting fact, and one that has come to us on 
 high authority, that, for many of the latter years of his life, Sir 
 Eobert was in the invariable habit, at whatever hour he 
 returned from Downing Street or the House of Commons, of 
 reading for half an hour in some serious or religious book, 
 before retiring to rest. It was only by this habit, he said, 
 that he could keep his mind calm and clear after the distractions 
 and irritations of the day. 
 
SIR B. PEEL'S CHARACTER AND POLICY. 267 
 
 honesty in seeking truth, his candour and courage in 
 avowing error ! 
 
 Sir Robert Peel was a scholar, and a liberal and 
 discerning patron of the arts. He was a man of fine 
 and sensitive organisation, and of judicious and ready 
 benevolence. Though not social, he had many 
 literary interests, and much elegant and cultivated 
 taste. Possessed of immense wealth, with every 
 source and avenue of pleasure at his command, it 
 was no slight merit in him that he preferred to such 
 refined enjoyment the laborious and harassing service 
 of his country. He had his recompense. By his 
 unblemished private character, by his unrivalled 
 administrative ability, by his vast public services, 
 by his unvarying moderation, he had inspired, not 
 only England, but the world at large, with a 
 respect and confidence such as few attain. After 
 many fluctuations of repute, he had at length reached 
 an eminence on which he stood independent of 
 office and of party one of the recognised potentates 
 of Europe ; face to face, in the evening of life, with 
 his work and his reward ; his work, to aid the 
 progress of those principles on which, after much 
 toil, many sacrifices, and long groping towards the 
 light, he had at last laid a firm grasp ; his guerdon, 
 to watch their triumph and their influences. Nobler 
 occupation man could not aspire to ; sublimer power 
 no ambition need desire ; greater earthly reward, 
 God, out of all the riches of his boundless treasury, 
 has not to bestow. 
 
V. 
 
 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES IN 
 
 THE startling and novel step for which, like so many 
 novelties, we are indebted to the erratic genius who 
 rules our destinies at this critical conjuncture of sum- 
 moning our Asiatic subjects to fight our European foes, 
 and (to borrow Canning's phrase) calling the East upon 
 the scene to redress the menaced balance of the West, 
 has roused the most thoughtful and suggestive of our 
 journalists to discuss the secondary and remoter con- 
 sequences of that measure. In a remarkable article 
 full of foresight and reflection, which well merits the 
 grave consideration of both patriots and statesmen, 
 the Spectator points out how pregnant with the 
 widest and mightiest results the proceeding may not 
 impossibly turn out to be, and how essential it is 
 that at the very outset England should clearly and 
 thoroughly realise those speculative issues, and make 
 up the national mind whether they are to be regarded 
 as fraught with evil and . danger, or with beckoning 
 prospects of the most magnificent and dazzling order. 
 In following out this prophetic vision, however, which 
 
 1 Fortnightly, June 1878. 
 
EMPLOYMENT OF OUK ASIATIC FORCES. 269 
 
 it does in a spirit of anxious and thoughtful inquiry, 
 it commits itself to views both of morals and .philo- 
 sophy prevalent enough no doubt, but to my mind so 
 very questionable, that a searching examination of 
 them is greatly to be desired. One of the Spectator s 
 positions I regard, as utterly unsound ; I am inclined 
 to see hope and opportunities where it sees only peril 
 and the probability of wrong ; and the patriotic 
 temper breathing through the article, while more 
 moderate than is customary, seems curiously at 
 variance with the advanced and daring doctrines 
 generally promulgated in its columns. 
 
 We shall have to quote rather largely, but it is 
 necessary to lay before our readers the entire substance 
 of the argument we propose to question, and in the 
 main to controvert. 
 
 "With an audacity which, as we frankly concede to those who 
 follow him, has in it something splendid, Lord Beaconsfield has 
 broken through the traditions of a century, has broken through 
 them successfully, and has at a stroke changed all the relations 
 previously existing between India and the United Kingdom. He 
 has changed India from a far-away Empire, secluded in the 
 depths of Asia, to a closely-connected dependency, situated for 
 all purposes of practical politics, and especially for war, upon the 
 Mediterranean. Talk of Russian intrusion into that sea, Lord 
 Beaconsfield has brought India into it, with her whole army, and 
 her boundless resources for the supply of men. In profound 
 secrecy, without a previous vote of Parliament, without a hint 
 being given to the people, while his leader in the Commons was 
 pledging himself to the lips that nothing was being done, he has 
 ordered the Indian Army into Europe, avowedly to fight a 
 European people, and the Indian Army has obeyed him with 
 delight. . . . 
 
 " So far as observers well accustomed to Sepoys can perceive, 
 
270 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 there would be no difficulty, except money, in landing 60,000 
 native troops, officered, drilled, and provided like Europeans, in 
 any part of the Mediterranean. We could conquer the Turkish 
 Empire in Asia from the European side, and never expend an 
 Englishman. . . . 
 
 " No such alteration in the position of this country as a fighting 
 Power has occurred since she substituted Regular regiments for 
 train-bands and feudal retainers, and it involves the entire 
 future relation of the English people to themselves and to the 
 world. . . . 
 
 " We are constrained to believe, and we would gladly believe 
 the contrary, that it will affect those relations for evil. We 
 cannot think it well for any nation to be able to fight by deputy, 
 to be able to wage war without making sacrifices, to be able to 
 win territories for themselves through the aid of men who have no 
 control over their policy, and who are not to be responsible for the 
 successes they achieve and we believe such a position especially 
 bad for the English people. Already the worst tendency of that 
 people is the one we may call the Carthaginian the desire for 
 empire to be created by mercenary swords. They have fought 
 their greatest campaigns by the aid of subsidised allies. They 
 have resolutely rejected a conscription, so resolutely that, by a 
 strange perversion of ideas, they have boasted of their freedom 
 from it as if it were a proof of superior virtue. They have 
 refused even to submit to the universal military training which 
 every statesman among them of both parties would, if it were 
 politically safe to speak out, tell them was directly for their good 
 would make them healthier men, more active men, and men 
 with more capacity for command, for obedience, and for organisa- 
 tion. With the employment of the natives of India as Imperial 
 troops, the grand restraints on the English haughtiness and 
 disposition to crush down instead of conciliating opposition will 
 be removed. . . . 
 
 " We cannot believe that a power so terrible, and to be used 
 with so little responsibility to its subjects, can be trusted to any 
 government or any nation without moral and political deteriora- 
 tion. The single check on the military governments of tLe 
 Continent, the one barrier against grand wars of aggrandisement, 
 is that the army is the nation, that if Prince Bismarck, or Prince 
 Gortschakoff, or M. Gambetta engage in wars of conquest, they 
 must conquer by expending those who ultimately rule them. 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 271 
 
 The English people are about to throw even that check away , 
 and embark on huge enterprises in the security, or at least in the 
 belief that they have behind them the soldiers of a continent 
 whom they rule, but who are not themselves, to whom they need 
 only give pay and honours. That the men come voluntarily, 
 willingly, even delightedly to the work does not alter the case, 
 which is this, that they are not us, that the burden of the 
 sadness of their loss does not fall on English homes. Take them 
 in the very best point of view, a true point, it would seem, for 
 the hour, as our willing allies, and still they relieve us of a strain 
 which, if it ought to be borne, ought to be borne alone by the 
 nation which decides that it has to be endured. There are no allies 
 on earth to whom a people like the English, with their secular 
 history of effort and of freedom, ought to entrust their work. 
 There is in the whole arrangement a shifting of the burden from 
 the rulers on to their dependants, a reliance on expense as an 
 equivalent for self-sacrifice, a postponement of national duty for 
 the sake of national ease, which can produce no good. Can it be 
 well that at this moment, when temper and reason are still 
 struggling, that the second restraining force should be removed, 
 that they should be reminded that they can dispose of other races 
 than their own, that they have a recruiting-ground in Asia which 
 costs them nothing but money, and which cannot be exhausted ? 
 We say nothing of what appears to us the wickedness of ruling 
 India because Europe is nobler than Asia, and then calling in 
 Asia to beat down Europe ; nothing of the fierce jealousy which 
 all Europe will henceforth feel of our possession of the mighty 
 Empire at last brought home to its doors an Empire which, 
 if its people will fight on our side, becomes a seventh Great 
 Power, stronger for invasion than any of the six, except, perhaps, 
 Germany and confine ourselves to the single and, as we believe, 
 unanswerable question, Is it well, for the sake of success in a 
 single quarrel, to deteriorate the nation, to make universal 
 military training impossible, to rely on Asiatic swords instead 
 of our own, to sink from the Roman position, of which we were 
 so proud, to the Carthaginian 1 The nation seems for the 
 moment intoxicated with its new strength, but when the states- 
 men meet again, we trust that among them, at least, we shall 
 find a few who can think of the future as well as the present, 
 and plead that national strength can never be found in a 
 measure which, so far as it succeeds, must emasculate the 
 national character. 
 
272 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 The first comment we have to make is, that the 
 Spectator not only condemns Englishmen for declining 
 to submit the whole youth of the nation to that 
 "universal military training" which is the fashion 
 and the law elsewhere, and which, our Contemporary 
 maintains, is judged by every statesman of all parties 
 to be politically desirable, and indeed essential, both 
 in a social, personal, and even moral point of view 
 but goes on .to blame them in the most decided terms 
 for that obstinate " perversion of ideas " which makes 
 them insist on raising their standing armies by volun- 
 tary enlistment, instead of by obligatory and forcible 
 conscription, according to the example set us by the 
 military empires and republics of the Continent. Now 
 the former doctrine we shall not here elaborately con- 
 trovert ; we may even admit that the adoption of the 
 training recommended would be attended with some 
 incidental and collateral gains, though at the cost of 
 risking or surrendering a certain portion of our indus- 
 trial supremacy, already gravely menaced. But we 
 cannot but think that the view in question springs 
 from hasty and partial consideration. The Spectator 
 overlooks one of the most undesirable, and yet in- 
 evitable, consequences of the system it recommends. 
 Military training cannot fail to generate military tastes; 
 you cannot create warlike discipline and habits with- 
 out at the same time fostering warlike ideas ; it is 
 idle and shallow, it seems to us, to fancy that you can 
 make a- camp life, habituation to arms and tactics, 
 .direct preparation, that is, for the work of fighting 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 273 
 
 and slaughter (for, in plain terms, it means this, if it 
 means anything serious at all) the earliest and most 
 universal occupation of the young citizen in his most 
 plastic years, the indispensable preliminary to all the 
 other various businesses of life, without instilling into 
 his mind the notion that antagonism, conflict, and 
 campaigning are likely enough to be the paramount, 
 and may be the most sacred, as they can easily become 
 the most welcome, functions claimed for him by the 
 State. You say to the youth as soon as he comes 
 forth from school and college, teeming with fun, over- 
 flowing with energy, eager for adventure, "First of 
 all you must be ready to fight, you must qualify your- 
 self to fight well, and to fight against any one whom 
 your country or your colonel tells you to regard as an 
 enemy ; " and then you fancy that after a couple of 
 years spent in learning this lesson, and learning it in 
 daily companionship with hundreds of others as busy 
 with it as himself, he will not have taken to the trade 
 with zeal, and like it better than the more laborious and 
 less exciting callings by which bread is to be earned, 
 families maintained, and the nation carried forward 
 in its progress. Is there foresight, is there wisdom, 
 is there even sound sense or solid morals in proposing 
 thus to arouse and engrain in the natures of the whole 
 coming generation those sentiments of Chauvinism, 
 ambition, and aggrandisement, so easily disguised 
 under the names of patriotism and preparation, which 
 now on the Continent are keeping millions under 
 arms, which engross half the engineering talent of the 
 
 s 
 
274 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 time in devising weapons for mutual destruction, and 
 which we are beginning dimly to recognise as consti- 
 tuting the curse and opprobrium of our age ? If there 
 is a nation in Europe qualified by its blessed insularity, 
 its dawning morality, its incipient perceptions of what 
 is truly great and wise to give a new direction to the 
 march of human progress, that nation surely is our 
 own ; and yet we are urged quite gratuitously, and 
 apparently in the pure excitement of the imitative 
 spirit, to throw aside our noble possibilities and to 
 follow the vulgar example of military monarchies else- 
 where, who have neither our rare exemptions nor our 
 loftier aims. 
 
 The Spectator has never been distinguished for its 
 pacific temper, but at least it has always taken a high 
 moral tone, and in dealing with political questions has 
 been prone to consider, more than most journals, what 
 was right or wrong rather than what was expedient 
 or the contrary. It has usually gone in for resolute 
 conscientiousness often for downright Christianity; 
 and no public instructor has preached the Fiat justitia 
 mat cesium with sterner courage. Therefore we are 
 the more surprised at finding our high-minded guide 
 appearing as an enthusiastic votary not only of uni- 
 versal military training as the most obligatory part of 
 the curriculum of national education, but of imperative 
 and inescapable conscription as 4he fittest mode of 
 recruiting our standing armies. We have always 
 understood that if there be one thing indisputably 
 wicked, it is to take human life otherwise than in 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 275 
 
 self-defence, or by necessity, or in a righteous quarrel; 
 that to slaughter, and to slaughter wholesale, men who 
 have done you no wrong, against whom you feel no 
 anger, and with whom you were the best of friends 
 but yesterday, is to commit this primd facie wicked 
 action in its most succinct and naked form ; and that 
 to do all this at the command of your superior in 
 military rank or administrative position, of whom you 
 ask no questions and upon whose wisdom, justice, or 
 temper, you have no reason to place reliance, is if 
 possible an aggravation of the criminality of the 
 original proceeding. An army collected and officered 
 by voluntary enlistment is composed either of men so 
 unthinking, and with the moral sense so unawakened 
 or so inchoate, that the reality of the position in which 
 they have placed themselves has never presented itself 
 to their imagination ; or of those who, by a process of 
 sophistry which they call reasoning, have persuaded 
 themselves that it is their duty to serve their country 
 in this anomalous fashion, and in this special and 
 probably congenial office ; that it is for their rulers 
 wise or foolish, good or bad to determine the right- 
 eousness of the war, and for themselves to obey blindly 
 and never suffer the question of right or wrong to 
 present itself to their thoughts and disturb the con- 
 centrated simplicity and effectiveness of their violence; 
 or perhaps that the entire sinfulness of the act if 
 sinfulness there be, as there usually is lies with those 
 who give the command, and not with those who 
 execute it ; so that neither generals nor soldiers, but 
 
276 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 only the Sovereign or the Cabinet, incur the faintest 
 responsibility here or risk of punishment hereafter, 
 however oppressive, iniquitous, scandalous, and san- 
 guinary the war and its details may be. Somehow or 
 other these men contrive to satisfy their consciences, 
 incomprehensible as the modus operandi may appear 
 to us : those who believe in inherited guilt and altru- 
 istic punishment and imputed righteousness and vicar- 
 ious redemption, may conceivably count upon vicarious 
 damnation likewise ; and thus go to the soldier's 
 massacre or the soldier's grave with the cceur leger 
 of Emile Ollivier, or the glowing enthusiasm of the 
 undoubting Islamite. They must settle the matter 
 with themselves, do the questionable duty they have 
 chosen, and accept the consequences they have incurred 
 or determined to ignore. They have voluntarily 
 selected their career ; it has not been forced upon 
 them from above, or ab extra, or by lot. 
 
 But in the case of an army raised by conscription, 
 this cannot be said. The precise opposite must in 
 thousands of instances be true. The ballot is no 
 respecter of persons still less of consciences or con- 
 victions. Troops collected by lot will contain even 
 now numbers who hate war, some who believe it in 
 any circumstance to be wrong, far more who know 
 that in nine cases out of ten it is foolish, and who 
 believe it in five cases out of six to be distinctly and 
 flagrantly unjust, a positive sin on the part of those 
 w r ho bring it about, or who suffer it by carelessness or 
 clumsiness to come about, a sin (only less grievou 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 277 
 
 possibly because veiled or clouded by the perplexity of 
 conflicting duties) in those who aid it and enact it by 
 becoming its reluctant and saddened instruments. 
 The number who hold these sentiments in the inner- 
 most recesses of their nature is increasing year by year. 
 It is the aim and the function of our moralists and 
 preachers, of many of our wisest statesmen, and of 
 hundreds of our economists and public writers, to swell 
 this number : even the Spectator, bellicose as its- 
 instincts are, has often, with pardonable inconsistency, 
 laboured for this end ; and it is impossible to doubt, 
 in spite of the attitude of Europe at the present hour, 
 that this condemnation of war in all but the most rare 
 and exceptional contingencies that is in defence of 
 the rights, the liberties, the duty or the honour of the 
 assailed will spread as sense and civilisation make 
 way among mankind, will become the mark and the 
 measure of that civilisation for which we are all really 
 or nominally striving ; and that this condemnation 
 will ere long deepen and intensify into general 
 abhorrence. Yet what are the advocates of con- 
 scription contending for ? Simply for a law which, by 
 force and under severe penalties, shall compel all 
 those increasing thousands the elite, be it re- 
 membered, and the beckoning examples of their 
 fellow-men, those who feel already as we trust we 
 may all feel in time to inflict what they know to be 
 a wrong, to commit what they believe to be a crime, 
 and to do this under the peremptory orders of men 
 whom they regard as utterly mistaken, and have ample 
 
278 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 reason to fancy both incompetent and passionate, and 
 perhaps self-seeking and unconscientious into the 
 bargain. There is no escape, no refuge, no alternative 
 for the victims thus cruelly " impressed " into the 
 service. They may not resign ; they cannot desert 
 that is dishonour ; they cannot refuse that would be 
 flogging, branding, or disgraceful death death which 
 few would have the courage to canonize as martyrdom. 
 The case is so grave, the elements of the question so 
 undeniable, the public conscience is already so far 
 partially awakening, that even now a few of the more 
 excitable of our eminent divines are venturing to 
 pronounce that in an unjust war (which they believe 
 the menaced one to be) those who think as they think 
 ought to " throw up their commissions," and refuse to 
 fight. But what officer dare perhaps we might ask 
 what officer could resign his commission on the eve 
 of a campaign, any more than a naval captain could 
 unbelt his sword and go below when alongside of the 
 enemy's ship, and so avoid participation in his 
 country's sin ? Probably we might ask more perti- 
 nently, What officer has a right to retire from the 
 service because he believes this special service to be 
 iniquitous and criminal ? His scruples should have 
 come to him much earlier. When he entered the 
 service he bound himself to obey his Sovereign's 
 orders without distinction of innocence or guilt. He 
 bartered away once for all, and without a hesitation, 
 a murmur, or a thought, " his right of refusing to do 
 wrong." Again : is there to be no consideration for 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 279 
 
 the private who has been forced into the ranks by the 
 conscription which our illogical moralists are so zealous 
 to establish ? The dilemma comes upon him, as well 
 as upon his colonel, as the Scripture says, " like pain 
 upon a woman in travail, and there is no escape." 
 
 But conscription is not only indefensible as being 
 immoral : I believe it to be wasteful and unscientific, 
 and therefore unstatesmanl ike as well. It is a scheme 
 which neglects and abuses the resources of the country. 
 There are to be found among us in teeming thousands 
 men who could serve the State excellently as soldiers, 
 and who can be made useful to it in no other way 
 the roughs, the reckless, the idle, the incurably 
 impetuous, the insatiably adventurous, those to whom 
 a life of steady industry is an abomination and almost 
 an impossibility, those who are not exactly bad, but 
 pretty certain to become bad if left to themselves. To 
 these men the profession of a soldier would be genial 
 in everything except its discipline, and discipline is 
 precisely what they need, and cannot do without. 
 Their exuberant energies, a curse to the community 
 otherwise, would be utilised in uniform. They are 
 nearly certain to become criminals if they are not 
 made recruits. If you do not enlist them in the 
 ranks you may lay your account for maintaining them 
 for half their life in gaol ; if you do you would make 
 them patriots instead of prisoners not to dwell on 
 the economical consideration that you can maintain 
 them more cheaply in the barrack than in the 
 penitentiary. But there is a further reflection which, 
 
280 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 with many minds, will weigh yet heavier you will be 
 raising them enormously in the moral as in the social 
 scale. To the industrious peasant or the skilful 
 artisan, more obviously and deplorably still to those 
 better natures whom a blind conscription would sweep 
 into the ranks, the career of the private soldier would 
 be a step downwards, and might be moral ruin : to 
 the rough and the potential malefactor it would be a 
 step upwards, possibly salvation. Those who have 
 contrasted the drafted militia-man or the raw recruit 
 lounging into the depot, with the same man' after six 
 months' discipline, are often astounded at the meta- 
 morphosis that short time has wrought ; and with the 
 great majority of these subjects the stern discipline of 
 the drill sergeant is the only schooling adequate or 
 suitable to their vehement natures. The rough, who, 
 left to run wild, would rapidly have developed into the 
 ruffian, learns as a soldier to serve the community he 
 would otherwise have preyed upon, and acquires that 
 self-respect which is the first step to good, and may 
 even, among the possibilities of war, earn success and 
 distinction which will make a man of him for ever. 
 It is strange that this view of the subject, obvious 
 enough, one would suppose, should have been so 
 habitually overlooked by our "world-betterers," and 
 that these abounding and appropriate resources for our 
 national defence, this social muck " wealth in the 
 wrong place" (to borrow the metaphor of Lord 
 Palmerston) should have been regarded as mere 
 " muck " to be got rid of. 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 281 
 
 So much for the rank and file of our standing 
 armies. The officers are to be found just as easily 
 and to be utilised just as well. The raw material for 
 command and guidance, as well as for disciplined 
 obedience and courage, is to be found among us in 
 equally rich abundance, only we have to look for it 
 in other quarters. The rough among the mass has 
 his analogue in the higher orders, and in ample 
 numbers, only he is an improved specimen and is 
 called by another name. No country in the world, 
 perhaps, so swarms with idle " swells/' capable of 
 good, but doomed, too probably, by surrounding cir- 
 cumstances, to evil with their faces set less towards 
 Jerusalem than towards Jericho. The families both of 
 the nobility and gentry, and of those who aspire to be 
 classed with them, and are often quite as wealthy, 
 abound with young men following no calling or pro- 
 fession and exempted by parental riches from the 
 necessity of working for a living, yet not endowed 
 with that particular kind of property which of itself 
 entails and constitutes an occupation, who begin life 
 with nothing to do, and before long find that nothing 
 rather burdensome and very dangerous ; energetic, 
 athletic, and courageous, hating study and stagnation, 
 eager for adventure, fit for command or competent to 
 learn it through the channel of obedience, prone to 
 mischief, not unlikely to become noxious, and often 
 worthless and contemptible as well ; doing harm, and 
 often great harm, simply because they have literally no 
 scope for the overflowing energies and hidden capabilities 
 
282 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 of a magnificent physique. These are precisely 
 the natures of whom first-rate officers ought to be 
 made; who should become officers just because 
 there is no other career or profession open to them 
 and suited for them ; who are neither clever enough 
 nor disposed enough for sedentary toil to be attracted 
 to the Bar, nor sober and grave enough to be fitted 
 for the Church, but who at the head of a regiment in 
 active service would be accurately in their place, and 
 who, if they are not there, will dawdle through life 
 wasting it, scarcely enjoying it, perhaps even disgrac- 
 ing both talents and opportunities, mere sportsmen in 
 their youth, mere club-saunterers when age comes. 
 To men of this class a commission in the army, 
 especially in regiments intending service or in 
 scientific corps, would be absolute redemption ; and 
 no one who is not acquainted with the circles of 
 society in which they swarm, can know either what 
 thousands of them there are, what splendid commanders 
 many of them might be made, nor how utterly incap- 
 able any other school than the army would prove to 
 make the great majority of them what they ought to 
 be. Such men, it would seem, ought to be enticed 
 into the service, not deterred from it at the threshold 
 by needless or inappropriate intellectual requirements. 
 It would suffice that the demands as to capacity and 
 conduct should be adequate, and that the purely pro- 
 fessional teaching and discipline should be thorough 
 and sagacious. In a word, we would endeavour to 
 utilise the idle, the adventurous, and the energetic in 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 283 
 
 the higher and the lower ranks alike to get service 
 out of those who will be the enemies of society if you 
 do not make them its defenders to get out of them 
 the sole and the special service they are qualified to 
 render and to get them by voluntary enlistment 
 (which has never failed us yet), and not by the sweep 
 of a drag-net which collects the unwilling and incom- 
 petent at random. 
 
 Of course if the system of remplapants be admitted, 
 if those on whom the lot has fallen are allowed to 
 purchase substitutes, and conscription be mitigated or 
 virtually annulled by so inconsistent a contrivance, 
 the chief objections to it fall to the ground. But 
 then the arguments which recommend it to the popu- 
 lar fancy fall to the ground also, and a new set of dis- 
 suasives come to the front. What becomes of the 
 merit or equity of a function, obligatory on all citizens 
 without distinction, which yet can be discharged by 
 deputy, of a duty which can be evaded by a money 
 payment, of a theoretically universal burden which yet 
 practically falls upon the poor alone ? Is there in any 
 land a more monstrous partiality recognised by law ? 
 Yes ; perhaps there is one yet stronger, and it arises 
 out of the identical arrangement. Where else have 
 we a tax levied by lot ? What should we think of deci- 
 mating the importers of tea or tobacco, for example, 
 to determine which of them should pay the custom's 
 duty ? Or to settle which of a dozen publicans shall 
 be mulcted for an excise license ? Yet how, in prin- 
 ciple, would such a system differ from an appeal to 
 
284 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 the ballot-box to ascertain who, out of a thousand 
 youths just completing their twentieth year, shall 
 either be drafted into an unwelcome profession, or 
 pay twenty guineas for exemption ? Wherein would 
 consist the sagacity or the justice of drawing lots 
 among citizens, all equal in the eye of the law, as to 
 which of them shall and which shall not contribute, 
 in purse or person, to the treasury of their common 
 country ? 
 
 There is logic and there is equity in a system like 
 that of Germany, which makes every man without 
 exception a soldier for a given portion of his life, 
 whatever deterring considerations may be urged against 
 it. But I can recognise neither wisdom nor justice 
 in a law which leaves to mere blind chance the 
 decision who shall risk his life for his native land, 
 who shall swell its revenue, and who shall escape 
 either obligation. Necessity might drive a nation to 
 measures so anomalous, but of such necessity there is 
 no question here. 
 
 The principal grounds on which we are inclined to 
 join issue with the Spectator as to the propriety of 
 employing our Indian troops in our imperial and 
 European wars may .be gathered from the above 
 reasoning. We agree that it is the commencement 
 of a new line of action, .a line which is capable of 
 indefinite extension, and one, therefore, which should 
 be maturely and dispassionately weighed, and not 
 adopted on a sudden emergency, or at the bidding of 
 
IN EUKOPEAN WARS. 285 
 
 mere Executive caprice. It is arguable enough, and 
 probably true, that this particular action of the Cabinet 
 involves a stretch of the royal prerogative, in some 
 points questionable and indecorous, and probably 
 transgressing the limits of the constitution. This, 
 however, if the country so decide, can easily be 
 rectified for the future by regular parliamentary pro- 
 ceeding. We feel, too, that the practice if it once 
 became a practice might open upon our Eastern 
 Empire financial complications, and possibly also 
 serious danger danger which experienced Indian 
 statesmen are not disposed to underestimate. It may 
 be perilous to drain Hindostan periodically of corps 
 d* armee that might be needed on the spot ; and in 
 order to escape this risk we should probably be in- 
 duced to maintain our Indian forces at a strength not 
 required by Indian needs, and therefore not justly 
 chargeable on Indian resources which, indeed, could 
 not bear them, and ought not to be strained to bear 
 them. It might also be dangerous, it is supposed, to 
 our now recognised, unquestioned, and peaceful 
 supremacy in that anomalous portion of the British 
 Empire, to accustom native tribes and troops, dis- 
 ciplined and warlike, whom we have conquered and 
 taught to feel our superiority, and trained under 
 British officers to subdue all Oriental foes to accus- 
 tom these to meet on equal terms and defeat white 
 forces, among which might be some of the best regi- 
 ments of European monarchies. The Oriental imagina- 
 tion is vivid and not altogether without a rude logic 
 
286 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 of its own ; and these troops, returning home flushed 
 with victory and thirsting for action might, it is con- 
 ceived, forgetting the warning memories of 1857, 
 begin to fancy that their English leaders and fellow- 
 soldiers might not be more unconquerable than ''heir 
 Russian foes, and might, with or without real pro- 
 vocation, grow more turbulent and formidable than 
 they have been hitherto. At all events, these forces 
 scores of thousands probably enough, no longer 
 wanted, would be difficult and costly to keep in idle- 
 ness, and yet not safe to disband would inevitably, 
 deal with them as we pleased, be a fresh embarrass- 
 ment added to our many Indian problems. These 
 considerations, admittedly grave ones, and of pressing 
 practicality, we do not propose to discuss ; they lie 
 beyond our present range of vision. 
 
 But the Spectator, and many of our more reflective 
 politicians besides, see a wider and deeper mischief in 
 the distance two distinct mischiefs indeed ; mischiefs 
 which, if real, are assuredly not to be made light of 
 or ignored. They believe that the use of Indian 
 troops who are ready and anxious to fight, who fight 
 well, and who can be had to fight in any numbers 
 would, once inaugurated, be resorted to on all occasions, 
 and would thus accustom us to depend on mercenaries, 
 and, rapidly and certainly, make Englishmen the 
 purse-proud snobs it is always in them to become. 
 They fear, further, that the possession of these almost 
 inexhaustible military resources, costing us nothing but 
 their pay and their commissariat, would render Great 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 287 
 
 Britain the meddlesome bully of Europe, and perhaps 
 the oppressor of our colonies as well ; in a word, that 
 having boundless power, we should be prone to trust 
 to this power instead of to the equity of our rule or 
 the righteousness of our cause. Do these surmises 
 point to true rocks ahead or merely fanciful ones ? 
 And if real, what antagonistic considerations have to 
 be set against them ? Let us deal with the last fore- 
 boding to begin with. We think it may be dealt with 
 briefly. Indeed, it strikes us as all but imaginary. 
 
 In the first place the argument appears to be 
 erroneous aw fond. It is analogous to that which 
 used to be so favourite a one with the Manchester 
 School of Economists in their younger days, and which 
 is not wholly out of currency even now: " Don't trust 
 the Ministers with money they are certain to misuse 
 it. They are incurable spendthrifts only by reduc- 
 ing their allowance can you keep them within bounds 
 at all. Cut down the Budget to the lowest limit, even 
 at the risk of cutting into the quick because only 
 thus can you exercise any check on wasteful and 
 mischievous expenditure." Now surely this style of 
 reasoning should be out of date. I think we have 
 reached that stage of political training when we need 
 not curtail our means lest we should apply them wrong- 
 fully. We ought to have at least power to do our 
 duty, and to trust to our morals and our sense not to 
 abuse that power. We ought to have outgrown that 
 period of political infancy, when we need to be kept 
 poor and weak, lest we should squander our riches and 
 
288 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 prostitute our strength. I am even disposed to think 
 that some among us have occasionally been too much 
 influenced by the feeling, when called upon for action, 
 " Oh ! we cannot afford this, or we must not risk 
 that," sentiments which are scarcely seeming in a 
 great nation or in a high-minded statesman. I do 
 not believe that there is the slightest danger lest our 
 boundless command of Indian troops should induce us 
 to conquer or control the Kaffirs of the Cape or the 
 negroes of Jamaica by the strong arm instead of by 
 righteous, considerate, and judicious government. I 
 am not sure that there has not sometimes been an 
 inclination, half soft, half stingy, to meet turbulence 
 and rebellion rather by temporising than by firm 
 resistance, and thorough and conclusive measures. I 
 am quite sure that in the present temper of our 
 moralists in the press and our Radicals in the House 
 of Commons, to say nothing of the too frequent line 
 of criticism adopted by whichever party happens to be 
 " her Majesty's Opposition," there is quite enough to 
 prevent the governors of our dependencies, or the 
 generals they employ, from venturing on proceedings 
 which are fairly assailable on the grounds of humanity 
 or justice. Probably the danger is, in these days when 
 military daring is so common and civil courage so 
 rare, lest those who serve their country in high com- 
 mand and in trying emergencies, should consider 
 rather what proceedings will be approved at home 
 and be defensible in Parliament, than what would be 
 most suitable for the aim in view, and therefore pro- 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 289 
 
 bably in truth most right, kind, and wise. With 
 regard, again, to our action in the angry controversies 
 which break out from time to time in Europe, we may, 
 I think, be satisfied at last that thanks to the high, 
 if not always sound or sober, tone taken by several of 
 our more Christian and sympathetic statesmen, whom 
 probably it would be invidious to name thanks also 
 to the Press, which (with exceptions, no doubt) has 
 seconded their remonstrances so well the moral sen- 
 sibilities of England have become so awakened, if we 
 may not say enlightened, that it would be next to 
 impossible for any government to drag us into a war, 
 or enterprise, or course of conduct which was distinctly 
 unrighteous or overbearing, and could be shown to the 
 prevailing sense and conscience of the nation to be 
 such. And it is somewhat curious and startling to 
 find the Spectator thus anxious to tie our hands and 
 impair our powers of doing whatever we deem it our 
 duty to do without counting the difficulty or the cost 
 the Spectator which, with all its merits, has at least 
 never been non-intervening or pacific, but rather per- 
 haps over-prompt to rouse the sleeping vigilance of 
 Britain against the first symptoms of encroachment 
 to embrace every generous cause in any quarter how- 
 ever distant, to make herself the righter of every 
 wrong, and the champion of the oppressed throughout 
 the world. I may be short-sighted, I may be partial, 
 but I sincerely believe that if there be any nation 
 which can be safely trusted with the power to work 
 its will, to do what it deems right and beneficent 
 
 T 
 
290 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 according to the measure of its lights (often limited, 
 coloured, and refracted beyond question), that nation 
 is our own. Now, at least, amid all our failures and 
 mistakes, we try to act fairly towards those we deal 
 with; we endeavour to rule with equity, and with a 
 genuine desire to do them good, those who are com- 
 mitted to our sway; and we doubt whether the same 
 can be said of any other State. 
 
 In answer to the other class of arguments so forcibly 
 urged by the Spectator, we have to plead that, while 
 recognising to the full the risk and the ignominy of 
 a nation, either from weakness, laziness, or luxury, 
 committing its defence to aliens and hirelings, we dispute 
 the analogy of the cases and the relevancy of the 
 warning. In the first place the Sikhs and other war- 
 like tribes of India under our sway are not " mercen- 
 aries " in any strict sense of the word. The epithet 
 is scarcely more applicable to them than to the Celts 
 of Ireland or to the Highlanders of Scotland, who were 
 subdued, indeed, far earlier, but who were our enemies 
 once, and some of whom are hardly amalgamated yet, 
 but who fight side by side with the Saxon portion of 
 our armies, and who have served us with equal loyalty 
 and courage. Our coloured Indian forces are the 
 Subjects of our Sovereign as much as our Canadian or 
 Australian brethren perhaps even more so, for these 
 are self-governing colonists, which the Indians are not ' 
 and would, it is believed, fight for their " Empress" 
 with unquestioned fidelity and zeal. They are paid, 
 no doubt, for their services, just as our recruits at 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 291 
 
 home are paid, but these services are voluntarily ren- 
 dered in both instances alike. Being our subjects, and 
 having entered the military profession by choice, and 
 agreeing gladly and eagerly to follow our lead to any 
 country and to support us against any foe, we consider 
 that we are entitled to avail ourselves of their services 
 as freely as we should those of our volunteers at home 
 or the regiments which might be offered to us by 
 New Zealand or the Dominion holding that the 
 duties of British subjects are as wide as the dangers 
 of the British empire, and that all the races 
 Britain governs and protects may be righteously called 
 upon to share in her defence. We cannot echo the 
 sentiment so eloquently dwelt on by the writer we 
 are controverting, that there is something unworthy 
 in "a people like the English, with their secular 
 history of effort and of freedom," entrusting their 
 tasks to others, to allies, however eager, reliable, and 
 competent ; nor can we share the fear he intimates, 
 but scarcely feels, lest, Carthaginian-like, we should 
 grow soft y and become fond of doing all our rougher 
 work by deputy. The troops whom we use we should 
 command and lead as well ; and the expectation that 
 the soldiers would ever learn to despise or desire to 
 resist the British officers who have shared with them 
 the dangers of the battle, the glory of the victory, and 
 " the rapture of the strife," we may be allowed to look 
 upon as fanciful. Equally are we inclined to treat as 
 fanciful the probability that either the upper or the 
 lower classes of our race will ever be cured of their 
 
292 EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES 
 
 combative propensities, grow tired of fighting, or 
 become purified and elevated enough in tone and 
 temper to be averse from fighting when a cause pre- 
 sents itself good and great enough to fight for. At 
 least we have as yet seen no indications of any change 
 in the national character like that. 
 
 Nor, finally, are we inclined to treat as very serious 
 or very imminent the danger lest we should grow 
 careless or criminally lavish of our subjects' blood in 
 war, because that blood was Indian and not English, 
 though we may not regard that risk as quite imagin- 
 ary. But the efforts of moralists should be directed, 
 it appears to us, to raise the intellects of statesmen, 
 and to enlighten the consciences of the people, rather 
 than to cripple the nation's capacity to execute the 
 nation's will. When our rulers and our senators have 
 realised that to shed one drop of blood needlessly or 
 unjustly is a sin for which history will make them 
 answerable, and equally a sin whosoever be the veins 
 from which that blood may flow, the guarding and 
 restraining doctrine wanted will have been learned. 
 And surely in an age of progress and reflection so 
 simple a principle ought not to be so difficult to reach. 
 Nor do we believe that even now the politicians could 
 be found among us who (consciously at least) would 
 give their vote for war if it could be fought with 
 Sikh troops, and for peace if English ones were 
 indispensable. 
 
 To conclude then : notwithstanding warning con- 
 siderations which we admit it may be wise to weigh, 
 
IN EUROPEAN WARS. 293 
 
 yet as a matter of sound principle the correctness of 
 which we cannot question, as statesmen and as moralists 
 alike, we give our voice for employing our Indian 
 forces in European action to whatever extent may be 
 found necessary. Having this superb strength in 
 reserve, we see no moral reasons to deter us from 
 using it to the fullest extent in every adequate emer- 
 gency and in every righteous cause. If war is justi- 
 fiable it should be waged cum toto corpore regni. It 
 is weak and senseless to go into battle with hands 
 tied and weapons left at home. We reach this con- 
 clusion by three paths ; first, because it is wise and 
 sound economy to use all members of the community 
 in those functions for which they have a special 
 aptitude ; secondly, because in the case of those 
 occupations which to some seem questionable, but 
 which circumstances may render essential, it is surely 
 wise and just to assign them to those classes who can 
 discharge them with the greatest readiness, the most 
 complete absence of scruple, and therefore the least 
 wear and tear of the moral sense ; and thirdly, be- 
 cause we eschew as utterly false and shallow that 
 principle of political action that desires us to be feeble 
 in order to make us harmless, and would disable us 
 from doing what the nation deems right lest we should 
 be tempted to do what they deem wrong ; the doc- 
 trine of those who are so convinced of the inherent 
 wrong-headedness of both Government and people that 
 they would keep England weak for fear she might be 
 mischievous if strong, and are content to curtail our 
 
EMPLOYMENT OF OUR ASIATIC FORCES. 
 
 power of doing good as the only conceivable means of 
 preventing us from doing evil. 
 
 That the influence of Great Britain in the Areo- 
 pagus of Europe has been greatly augmented at this 
 crisis by the knowledge that she has the vast military 
 strength of India at command, and is prepared, if 
 called upon, to use it, is, we apprehend, indisputable ; 
 and the danger, which we dispute as little, that our 
 Government have shown an inclination to use this 
 reserve of force in an unwise and unrighteous quarrel, 
 is a reason for controlling or changing our rulers, but 
 scarcely for renouncing our power. 
 
 EDINBURGH : TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS. 
 
TRUBNER'8 ORIENTAL SERIES, 
 
 " A knowledge of the commonplace, at least, of Oriental literature, philo- 
 sophy, and religion is as necessary to the general reader of the present day 
 as an acquaintance with the Latin and Greek classics was a generation or so 
 ago. Immense strides have been made within the present century in these 
 branches of learning ; Sanskrit has been brought within the range of accurate 
 philology, and its invaluable ancient literature thoroughly investigated ; the 
 language and sacred books of the Zoroastrians have been laid bare ; Egyptian, 
 Assyrian, and other records of the remote past have been deciphered, and a 
 group of scholars speak of s-till more recondite Accadian and Hittite monu- 
 ments ; but the results of all the scholarship that has been devoted to these 
 subjects have been almost inaccessible to the public because they were con- 
 tained for the most part in learned or expensive works, or scattered through- 
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 Post Svoy pp. 568, with Map, cloth, price i6. 
 
 THE INDIAN EMPIRE : ITS HISTORY, PEOPLE, 
 AND PRODUCTS. 
 
 Being a revised form of the article "India/' in the ''Imperial Gazetteer,'* 
 
 remodelled into chapters, brought up to date, and incorporating 
 
 the general results of the Census of 1881. 
 
 BY W. W. HUNTER, C.I.E., LL.D., 
 
 Director-General of Statistics to the Government of India. 
 
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 ESSAYS ON THE SACRED LANGUAGE, WRITINGS, 
 AND RELIGION OF THE PARSIS. 
 
 BY MARTIN HAUG, PH.D., 
 
 Late of the Universities of Tubingen, Gottingen, and Bonn ; Superintendent 
 of Sanskrit Studies, and Professor of Sanskrit in the Poona College. 
 
 EDITED AND ENLARGED BY DR. E. W. WEST. 
 
 To which is added a Biographical Memoir of the late Dr. HAUG 
 
 by Prof. E. P. EVANS. 
 
 I. History of the Researches into the Sacred Writings and Religion of the 
 
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 TEXTS FROM THE BUDDHIST CANON 
 
 COMMONLY KNOWN AS " DHAMMAPADA." 
 
 With Accompanying Narratives. 
 
 Translated from the Chinese by S. BEAL, B.A., Professor of Chinese, 
 University College, London. 
 
 The Dhammapada, as hitherto known by the Pali Text Edition, as edited 
 by Fausboll, by Max Miillers English, and Albrecht Weber's German 
 translations, consists only of twenty-six chapters or sections, whilst the 
 Chinese version, or rather recension, as now translated by Mr. Beal, con- 
 sists of thirty-nine sections. The students of Pali who possess Fausboll's 
 text, or either of the above-named translations, will therefore needs want 
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 for, even if they understand Chinese, the Chinese original would be un- 
 obtainable by them. 
 
 "Mr. Beal's rendering of the Chinese translation is a most valuable aid to the 
 critical siudy of the work. It contains authentic texts gathered from ancient 
 canonical books, and generally connected with some incident in the history of 
 Buddha. Their great interest, however, consists in the light which they throw upon 
 everyday life in India at the remote period at which they were written, and upon 
 the method of teaching adopted by the founder of the religion. The method 
 employed was principally parable, and the simplicity of the tales and the excellence 
 of the morals inculcated, as well as the strange hold which they have retained upon 
 the minds of millions of people, make them a very remarkable study." Times. 
 
 " Mr. Beal, by making it accessible in an English dress, has added to the great ser- 
 vices he has already rendered to the comparative study of religious history." Academy. 
 
 "Valuable as exhibiting the doctrine of the Buddhists in its purest, least adul- 
 terated form, it brings the modern reader face to face with that simple creed and rule 
 of conduct which won its way over the minds of myriads, and which is now.nominally 
 professed by 145 millions, who have overlaid its austere simplicity with innumerable 
 ceremonies, forgotten its maxims, perverted its teaching, and so inverted its leading 
 principle that a religion whose founder denied a God, now worships that founder as 
 a god himself." Scotsman. 
 
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 Second Edition, post 8vo, cloth, pp, xxiv. 360, price los. 6d. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF INDIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 BY ALBRECHT WEBER. 
 
 Translated from the Second German Edition by JOHN MANN, M.A., and 
 TH^ODOR ZACHABJAE, Ph.D., with the sanction of the Author. 
 
 Dr. BUHLER, Inspector of Schools in India, writes: " When I was Pro- 
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 Professor COWELL, of Cambridge, writes : "It will be especially useful 
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 " Is perhaps the most comprehensive and lucid survey of Sanskrit literature 
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 Times. 
 
 Post 8vo, cloth, pp. xii. 198, accompanied by Two Language 
 Maps, price 123. 
 
 A SKETCH OF 
 THE MODERN LANGUAGES OF THE EAST INDIES. 
 
 BY ROBERT N. CUST. 
 
 The Author has attempted to fill up a vacuum, the inconvenience of 
 which pressed itself on his notice. Much had been written about the 
 languages of the East Indies, but the extent of our present knowledge had 
 not even been brought to a focus. It occurred to him that it might be of 
 use to others to publish in an arranged form the notes which he had collected 
 for his own edification. 
 
 " Supplies a deficiency which has long been felt." Times. 
 
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 Second Corrected Edition, post 8vo, pp. xii. 116, cloth, price 53. 
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD. 
 
 A Poem. BY KALIDASA. 
 
 Translated from the Sanskrit into English Verse by 
 KALPH T. H. GRIFFITH, M.A. 
 
 " A very spirited rendering of the Kumarasambhaxa, which was first published 
 twenty-six years ago, and which we are glad to see made once more accessible." 
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 "Mr. Griffith's very spirited rendering is well known to most who are at al 
 interested in Indian literature, or enjoy the tenderness of feeling and rich creative 
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 Post 8vo, pp. 432,. cloth, price i6s. 
 
 A CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF HINDU MYTHOLOGY 
 
 AND RELIGION, GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, AND 
 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 BY JOHN DOWSON, M.R.A.S., 
 Late Professor of Hindustani, Staff College. 
 
 " This not only forms an indispensable book of reference to students of Indian 
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 circle of savants" 2'imes, 
 
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 Saturday Review. 
 
 P0st 8vo, with View of Mecca, pp. cxii. 172, cloth, price 98. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE KORAN. 
 
 BY EDWARD WILLIAM LANE, 
 
 Translator of " The Thousand and One Nights ; " &e., &c. 
 A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with an Introduction by 
 
 STANLEY LANE POOLE. 
 
 "... Has been, long esteemed in this country as the compilation of one of the 
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 man, Calcutta. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp.. vi. 368, cloth, price 143. 
 
 MODERN INDIA AND THE INDIANS, 
 
 BEING A SERIES OF IMPRESSIONS, NOTES, AND ESSAYS. 
 BY MONIER WILLIAMS, D.C.L., 
 
 Hon. LL.D. of the University of Calcutta, Hon. Member of the Bombay Asiatic 
 
 Society, Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford. 
 Third Edition, revised and augmented by considerable Additions, 
 
 with Illustrations and a Map. 
 
 ' ( In this volume we have the thoughtful impressions of a thoughtful man on some 
 of the most important questions connected with our Indian Empire. . . . An en- 
 lightened observant man, travel ling among an enlightened observant people, Professor 
 Monier Williams has brought before the public in a pleasant form more of the manners 
 and customs of the Queen's Indian subjects than we ever remember to have seen in 
 any one work. He not only deserves the thanks of every Englishman for this able 
 contribution, to the study of Modern India a subject with which we should be 
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 Buddhist and Moslem, for his clear exposition of their manners, their creeds, and 
 their necessities." Times. 
 
 Post Svo^pp. xliv. 376, cloth, priee 143. 
 
 METRICAL TRANSLATIONS FROM SANSKRIT 
 WRITERS. 
 
 "With an Introduction, many. Pcose Versions, and Parallel Passages from 
 
 Classical Authors. 
 
 BY J. MTJIR, C.I.E., D.C:L., LL.D., Ph.D. 
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 THE GULISTAN; 
 
 OR, ROSE GARDEN OF SHEKH MUSHLIU'D-DIN SADI OF SHIRAZ. 
 
 Translated for the First Time into Prose and Verse, with an Introductory 
 
 Preface, and a Life of the Author, from the Atish Kadah, 
 
 BY EDWARD B. EASTWICK, C.B., M.A., F.R.S., M.R.A.S. 
 
 " It is a very fair rendering of the original. "Times. 
 
 " The new edition has long been desired, and will be welcomed by all who take 
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 " It is both faithfully and gracefully executed." Tablet. 
 
 In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. viii. 408 and viii. 348, cloth, price 28s. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS RELATING TO INDIAN 
 SUBJECTS. 
 
 BY BRIAN HOUGHTON HODGSON, ESQ., F.R.S., 
 
 Late of the Bengal Civil Service ; Corresponding Member of the Institute ; Chevalier 
 of the Legion of Honour ; late British Minister at tire Court of Nepal, &c., &c. 
 
 CONTENTS Of< VOL. I. 
 
 SECTION I. On the Kocch, B6do, and Dhimal Tribes. Part I. Vocabulary. 
 Part II. Grammar. Part III. Their Origin, Location, Numbers, Creed, Customs, 
 Character, and Condition, with a General Description of the Climate they dwell in. 
 Appendix. 
 
 SECTION II. On Himalayan Ethnology. I. Comparative Vocabulary of the Lan- 
 guages of the Broken Tribes of Ne"pal. II. Vocabulary of the Dialects of the Kiranti 
 Language. III. Grammatical Analysis of the Vayu Language. The Vayu Grammar. 
 IV. Analysis of the Bahing Dialect of the Kiranti Language. The B^hing Gram- 
 mar. V. On the Vayu or Hayu Tribe of the Central Himalaya. VI. On tue Kiranti 
 Tribe of the Central Himalaya. 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. II. 
 
 SECTION III. On the Aborigines of North-Eastern India. Comparative Vocabulary 
 of the Tibetan, B6d6, and Garo Tongues. 
 
 SECTION IV. Aborigines of the North-Eastern Frontier. 
 
 SECTION V. Aborigines of the Eastern Frontier. 
 
 SECTION VI. The Indo-Chinese Borderers, and their connection with the Hima- 
 layans and Tibetans. Comparative Vocabulary of Indo-Chinese Borderers in Arakan. 
 Comparative Vocabulary of Indo-Chinese Borderers in Tenasserim. 
 
 SECTION VII. The Mongolian Affinities of the Caucasians. Compailson and Ana- 
 lysis of Caucasian and Mongolian Words. 
 
 SECTION VIII. Physical Type of Tibetans. 
 
 SECTION IX. The Aborigines of Central India. Comparative Vocabulary of the 
 Aboriginal Languages of Central India. Aborigines of the Eastern Ghats. Vocabu- 
 lary of some of the Dialects of the Hill and Wandeiing Tribes in the Northern Sircars. 
 Aborigines of the Nilgiris, with Remarks on their Affinities. Supplement to the 
 Nilgirian Vocabularies. The Aborigines of Southern India and Ceylon. 
 
 SECTION X. Route of Nepalese Mission to Pekin, with Remarks on the Water- 
 Shed and Plateau of Tibet. 
 
 SECTION XI. Route from Kathmandu, the Capital of Nepal, to Darjeeling in 
 Sikim. Memorandum relative to the Seven Cosis of Nepal. 
 
 SECTION XII. Some Accounts of the Systems of Law and Police as recognised in 
 the State of Nepal. 
 
 SECTION XIII. The Native Method of making the Paper denominated Hindustan, 
 Nepalese. 
 
 SECTION XIV, Pre-eminence of the Vernaculars ; or, the Anglicists Answered : 
 Being Letters on the Education of the People of India. 
 
 (t For the study of the less-known races of India Mr. Brian Hodgson's ' Miscellane- 
 ous Essays' will be found very valuable both to the philologist and the ethnologist ' 
 Times. 
 
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 THE LIFE OR LEGEND OF GAUDAMA, 
 
 THE BUDDHA OF THE BURMESE. With Annotations. 
 The Ways to Neibban, and Notice on the Phongyies or Burmese Monks. 
 
 BY THE EIGHT REV. P. BIGANDET, 
 Bishop of Ramatha, Vicar- Apostolic of Ava and Pegu. 
 
 "The work is furnished with copious notes, which not only illustrate the subject- 
 matter, but form a perfect encyclopaedia of Buddhist lore." Times. 
 
 "A work which will furnish European students of Buddhism with a most valuable 
 help in the prosecution of their investigations." Edinburgh Daily Review. 
 
 " Bishop Bigandet's invaluable work." Indian Antiquary. 
 
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 Post 8vo, pp. xxiv. 420, cloth, price i8s. 
 
 CHINESE BUDDHISM. 
 
 A VOLUME OF SKETCHES, HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 
 BY J. EDKINS, D.D. 
 
 Author of " China's Place in Philology," "Religion in China," &c., &c. 
 
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 sophy, religion, literature, and ritual is set forth." British Quarterly Review. 
 
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 English writers." Record. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. 496, cloth, price i8s. 
 
 LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. 
 
 WRITTEN FROM THE YEAR 1846 TO 1878. 
 BY ROBERT NEEDHAM CUST, 
 
 Late Member of Her Majesty's Indian Civil Service ; Hon. Secretary to 
 
 the Royal Asiatic Society; 
 and Author of " The Modern Languages of the East Indies." 
 
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 with so much learning, sympathy, and literary talent." Academy. 
 
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 of inquiry, reflection, and speculation, and that on subjects as full of fascination as 
 of food for thought." Tablet. 
 
 " Exhibit such a thorough acquaintance with the history and antiquities of India 
 as to entitle him to speak as one having authority." Edinburgh Daily Review. 
 
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 to many of the pages." Athenceum. 
 
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 Post 8vo, pp. civ, 348, cloth, price i8s. 
 
 BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES; or, Jataka Tales. 
 
 The Oldest Collection of Folk-lore Extant ; 
 
 BEING THE JATAK ATTHAVANNANA, 
 
 For the first time Edited in the original Pali. 
 
 BY V. FAUSBOLL ; 
 
 And Translated by T. W. RHYS DAVIDS. 
 
 Translation. Volume I. 
 
 " These are tales supposed to have been told by the Buddha of what he liad 
 
 , . 
 
 " It is now some years since Mr. Rhys Davids asserted his right to be heard 
 this subject by his able article on Buddhism in the new edition of the ' Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica. ' " Leeds Mercury. 
 
 " All who are interested in Buddhist literature ought to feel deeply indebted to 
 Mr. Rhys Davids. His well-established reputation as a Pali scholar is a sufficient 
 guarantee for the fidelity of his version, and the style of his translations is deserving 
 of high praise." Academy. 
 
 eraure o our race ; an ... presen a eay compee pcure o e 
 
 social life and customs and popular beliefs of the common people of Aryan tribes, 
 
 soca e an cusoms an popuar ees o e common peope o ryan res, 
 closely related to ourselves, just as they were passing through the first stages of 
 civilisation." St. James's Gazette. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. xxviii. 362, cloth, price 143. 
 
 A TALMUDIC MISCELLANY; 
 
 OR, A THOUSAND AND ONE EXTRACTS FROM THE TALMUD, 
 
 THE MIDRASHIM, AND THE KABBALAH. 
 
 Compiled and Translated by PAUL ISAAC HERSHON, 
 
 Author of " Genesis According to the Talmud," &c. 
 
 With Notes and Copious Indexes. 
 
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 Mr. Hershon is a very competent scholar. . . . Contains samples of the good, bad, 
 and indifferent, and especially extracts that throw light upon the Scriptures." 
 British Quarterly Review. 
 
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 " Without overlooking in the slightest the several attractions of the previous 
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 them all in interest." Edinburgh Daily Review. 
 
 " Mr. Hershon has . . . thus given English readers what is, we believe, a fair set 
 of specimens which they can test for themselves." The Record. 
 
 :l This book is by far the best fitted in the present state of knowledge to enable the 
 
 icrts by the life-long de 
 
 " The value and importance of this volume consist in the fact that scarcely a single 
 extract is given in its pages but throws some light, direct or refracted, upon ttose 
 Scriptures which are the common heritage of Jew and Christian alike. " John Bull. 
 
 " It is a capital specimen of Hebrew scholarship ; a monument of learned, loving, 
 light-giving labour." Jewish Herald. 
 
TRUB NEK'S ORIENTAL SERIES. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. xii. 228, cloth, price ys. 6d. 
 
 THE CLASSICAL POETRY OF THE JAPANESE. 
 BY BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN, 
 
 Author of " Yeigo Henkaku Shiran." 
 
 " A very curious volume. The author has manifestly devoted much labour to the 
 task of studying the poetical literature of the Japanese, and rendering characteristic 
 specimens into English verse." Daily News. 
 
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 the classical poetry of Old Japan that we must turn for indigenous Japanese thought, 
 and in the volume before us we have a selection from that poetry rendered into 
 graceful English verse." Tablet. 
 
 "It is undoubtedly one of the best translations of lyric literature which has 
 appeared during the close of the last year." Celestial Empire. 
 
 "Mr. Chamberlain set himself a difficult task when he undertook to reproduce 
 Japanese poetry in an English form. But he has evidently laboured con amore, and 
 his efforts are successful to a degree. "London and China Express. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. xii. 164, cloth, price 103. 6d. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ESARHADDON (Son of Sennacherib), 
 
 KING OF ASSYRIA, B.C. 681-668. 
 
 Translated from the Cuneiform Inscriptions upon Cylinders and Tablets in 
 the British Museum Collection ; together with a Grammatical Analysis 
 of each "Word, Explanations of the Ideographs by Extracts from the 
 BjrLingual Syllabaries, and List of Eponyms, &c. 
 
 BY ERNEST A. BUDGE, B.A., M.R.A.S., 
 
 Assyrian Exhibitioner, Christ's College, Cambridge. 
 
 " Students of scriptural archaeology will also appreciate the 'History of Esar- 
 haddon.' " Times. 
 
 " There is much to attract the scholar in this volume. It does not pretend to 
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 controlling its results." Academy. 
 
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 in his laborious task." Tablet. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. 448, cloth, price 2is. 
 
 THE MESNEVI 
 
 (Usually known as THE MESNEVITI SHERIF, or HOLY MESNEVI) 
 
 OF 
 MEVLANA (OUR LORD) JE^ALU 'D-DIN MUHAMMED ER-RUMI. 
 
 Book the First. 
 Together with some Account of the Life and Acts of the Author, 
 
 of his Ancestors, and of his Descendants. 
 Illustrated by a Selection of Characteristic Anecdotes, as Collected 
 
 by their Historian, 
 MEVLANA SHEMSU-'D-DIN AHMED, EL EFLAKI, EL 'ARIFI. 
 
 Translated, and the Poetry Versified, in English, 
 BY JAMES W. REDHOUSE, M. R. A. S., &c. 
 
 " A complete treasury of occult Oriental lore." Saturday Review. 
 
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 extant in that language," To. blet. 
 
TR UBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. xvi. 280, cloth, price 6s. 
 
 EASTERN PROVERBS AND EMBLEMS 
 
 ILLUSTRATING OLD TRUTHS. 
 
 BY KEY. J. LONG, 
 Member of the Bengal Asiatic Society, F.R.G.S. 
 
 " We regard the book as valuable, and wish for it a wide circulation and attentive 
 reading. " Record. 
 
 " Altogether, it is quite a feast of good things." Globe. 
 " It is full of interesting matter." Antiquary. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. viii. 270, cloth, price 73. 6d. 
 
 INDIAN POETRY; 
 
 Containing a New Edition of the "Indian Song of Songs," from the Sanscrit 
 of the "Gita Govinda" of Jayadeva ; Two Books from "The Iliad of 
 India" (Mahabharata), "Proverbial Wisdom " from the Shlokas of the 
 Hitopadesa, and other Oriental Poems. 
 BY EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I., Author of "The Light of Asia." 
 
 " In this new volume of Messrs. Trlibner's Oriental Series, Mr. Edwin Arnold does 
 good service by illustrating, through the medium of his musical English melodies, 
 the power of Indian poetry to stir European emotions. The ' Indian (Song of Songs ' 
 is not unknown to scholars. Mr. Arnold will have introduced it among popular 
 English poems. Nothing could be more graceful and delicate than the shades by 
 which Krishna is portrayed in the gradual process of being weaned by the love of 
 
 ' Beautiful Radha, jasmine-bosomed Radha,' 
 
 from the allurements of the forest nymphs, in whom the five senses are typified." 
 Times. 
 
 " No other English poet has ever thrown his genius and his art so thoroughly into 
 the work of translating Eastern ideas as Mr. Arnold has done in his splendid para- 
 phrases of language contained in these mighty epics." Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " The poem abounds with imagery of Eastern luxuriousness and sensuousness ; the 
 air seems laden with the spicy odours of the tropics, and the verse has a richness and 
 a melody sufficient to captivate the senses of the dullest." Standard. 
 
 " The translator, while producing a very enjoyable poem, has adhered with toler- 
 able fidelity to the original text." Overland Mail. 
 
 " We certainly wish Mr. Arnold success in his attempt ' to popularise Indian 
 classics,' that being, as his preface tells us, the goal towards which he bends his 
 efforts." Allen's Indian Mail. 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. xvi. 296, cloth, price los. 6d. 
 
 THE MIND OF MENCIUS ; 
 
 OR, POLITICAL ECONOMY FOUNDED UPON MORAL 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A SYSTEMATIC DIGEST OF THE DOCTRINES OF THE CHINESE PHILOSOPHER 
 MENCIUS. 
 
 Translated from the Original Text and Classified, with 
 Comments and Explanations, 
 
 By the REV. ERNST FABER, Rhenish Mission Society. 
 
 Translated from the German, with Additional Notes, 
 By the REV. A. B. HUTCHINSON, C.M.S., Church Mission, Hong Kong. 
 
 " Mi*. Faber is already well known in the field of Chinese studies by his digest of 
 the doctrines of Confucius. The value of this work will be perceived when it is 
 remembered that at no time since relations commenced between China and the 
 West has the former been so powerful we had almost said aggressive as now. 
 For those who will give it careful study, Mr. Faber's work is one of the most 
 valuable of the excellent series to which it belongs," Nature, 
 
TRUBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES, 
 
 Post 8vo, pp. 336, cloth, price i6s. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. 
 
 BY A. EARTH. 
 Translated from the French with the authority and assistance of the Author. 
 
 The author has, at the request of the publishers, considerably enlarged 
 the work for the translator, and has added the literature of the subject to 
 date ; the translation may, therefore, be looked upon as an equivalent of a 
 new and improved edition of the original. 
 
 " Is not only a valuable manual of the religions of India, which marks a distinct 
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 Post 8vo, pp. viii. 152, cloth, price 6s. 
 
 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 THE SANKHYA KARIKA OF IS'WARA KRISHNA. 
 
 An Exposition of the System of Kapila, with an Appendix on the 
 Nyaya and Vais'eshika Systems. 
 
 BY JOHN DAVIES, M.A. (Cantab.), M.R.A.S. 
 
 The system of Kapila contains nearly all that India has produced in the 
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 to the mysterious questions which arise in every thoughtful mind about the origin of 
 the world, the nature and relations of man and his future destiny,' and in his learned 
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 hauer and Von Hartmann.' " Foreign Church Chronicle. 
 
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 A MANUAL OF HINDU PANTHEISM. VEDANTASARA. 
 
 Translated, with copious Annotations, by MAJOR G. A. JACOB, 
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 The design of this little work is to provide for missionaries, and for 
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 "There can be no question that the religious doctrines most widely held by the 
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 Post 8vo, pp. xii. 154, cloth, price ys. 6d. 
 
 TSUNI I I GO AM : 
 
 THE SUPREME BEING OP THE KHOI-KHOI. 
 BY THEOPHILUS HAHN, Ph.D., 
 
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 lected by Dr. Hahn and printed in his second chapter, enriched and improved by 
 what he has been able to collect himself." Prof. Max Muller in the Nineteenth 
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 By Rev. E. M. WHERRY, M.A., Lodiana. 
 
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 THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. 
 
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 BY JOHN DAVIES, M.A. (Cantab.) 
 
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 THE QUATRAINS OF OMAR KHAYYAM. 
 
 Translated by E. H. WHINFIELD, M.A., 
 Barrister-at-Law, late H.M. Bengal Civil Service. 
 
 Omar Khayyam (the tent-maker) was born about the middle of the fifth 
 century of the Hejirah, corresponding to the eleventh of the Christian era, 
 in the neighbourhood of Naishapur, the capital of Khorasan, and died in 
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 " Mr. Whinfield has executed a difficult task with considerable success, and his 
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 Post 8vo, pp. xxiv. 268, cloth, price 93. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS AND 
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 In Two Volumes. Vol. I., post 8vo, pp. xxiv. 230, cloth, price ys. 6d. 
 
 A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN AND 
 MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGIONS. 
 
 By DR. C. P. TIELE. 
 
 Vol. I. HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Translated from the Dutch with the Assistance of the Author. 
 
 By JAMES BALLING AL. 
 
 " It places in the hands of the English readers a history of Egyptian Religion 
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 YUSUF AND ZULAIKHA. 
 
 A POEM BY JAMI. 
 
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 " Mr. Griffith, who has done already good service as translator into verse from the 
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 LINGUISTIC ESSAYS. 
 
 BY CARL ABEL. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Language as the Expression of National 
 
 Modes of Thought. 
 The Conception of Love in some Ancient 
 
 and Modern Languages. 
 The English Verbs of Command. 
 Semariology. 
 Philological Methods. 
 
 The Connection between Dictionary and 
 
 Grammar. 
 The Possibility of a Common Literary 
 
 Language for all Slavs. 
 The Order and Position of Words in the 
 
 Latin Sentence. 
 The Coptic Language. 
 The Origin of Language. 
 
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 THE SARV A - DARSANA - SAMGRAHA ; 
 
 OR, REVIEW OF THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS OF HINDU 
 
 PHILOSOPHY. 
 BY MADHAVA ACHARYA. 
 
 Translated by E. B. COWELL, M. A., Professor of Sanskrit in the University 
 
 of Cambridge, and A. E. GOUGH, M.A., Professor of Philosophy 
 
 in the Presidency College, Calcutta. 
 
 This work is an interesting specimen of Hindu critical ability. The 
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 THE QUATRAINS OF OMAR KHAYYAM. 
 
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 Post 8vo, pp. Ixv. 368, cloth, price i^s. 
 
 TIBETAN TALES DERIVED FROM INDIAN SOURCES. 
 
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 BY F. ANTON VON SCHIEFNER. 
 
 Done into English from the German, with an Introduction, 
 BY W. R. S. RALSTON, M.A. 
 
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 "... Ought to interest all who care for the East, for amusing stories, or for com- 
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 Post Svo, pp. xvi. 224, cloth, price gs. 
 
 UDANAVARGA. 
 
 A COLLECTION OF VERSES FROM THE BUDDHIST CANON. 
 
 Compiled by DHARMATRATA. 
 BEING THE NORTHERN BUDDHIST VERSION OF DHAMMAPADA. 
 
 Translated from the Tibetan of Bkah-hgyur, with Notes, and 
 Extracts from the Commentary of Pradjnavarman, 
 
 By W. WOODVILLE ROCKHILL. 
 
 " Mr. Rockhill's present work is the first from which assistance will be gained 
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 originally discovered by the late M. Sohiefner, who published the Tibetan text, and 
 had intended adding a translation, an inteution frustrated by his death, but which 
 has been carried out by Mr. Rockhill. . . . Mr. Rockhill may be congratulated for 
 having well accomplished a difficult task. " Saturday Review. 
 
 " There is no need to look far into this book to be assui^ed of its value." Athenaeum. 
 
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 A HISTORY OF BURMA. 
 
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 the Earliest Time to the End of the First War with British India. 
 
 BY LIEUT. -GEN. SIR ARTHUR P. PHAYRE, G.C.M.G., K. C.S.I., and C.B., 
 
 Membre Correspondant de la Societe Academique Indo-Chinoise 
 
 de France. 
 
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 In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. xxiv. 566, cloth, accompanied by a 
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 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES OF AFRICA. 
 
 BY ROBERT NEEDHAM CUST, 
 Barrister-at-Law, and late of Her Majesty's Indian Civil Service. 
 
 Third Edition. Post 8vo, pp. 276, cloth, price ys. 6d. 
 
 RELIGION IN CHINA. 
 
 By JOSEPH EDKINS, D.D., PEKING. 
 
 Containing a Brief Account of the Three Religions of the Chinese, with 
 Observations on the Prospects of Christian Conversion amongst that 
 People. 
 
 " Dr. Edkins has been most careful in noting the varied and often complex phases 
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 religions in China, and his long residence in the country has enabled him to acquire 
 an intimate knowledge of them as they at present exist." Saturday Review. 
 
 " Dr. Edkins' valuable work, of which this is a second and revised edition, has, 
 from the time that it was published, been the standard authority upon the subject 
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 OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION TO THE 
 SPREAD OF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS. 
 
 BY C. P. TIELE, 
 
 Doctor of Theology, Professor of the History of Religions in the 
 University of Leyden. 
 
 Translated from the Dutch by J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, M. A. 
 
 " Few books of its size contain the result of so much wide thinking, able and labo- 
 rious study, or enable the reader to gain a better bird's-eye view of the latest results 
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 lint there are some men whose sketches from a thumb-nail are of far more worth 
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 BUDDHIST RECORDS OF THE WESTERN WORLD, 
 
 BEING THE SI-YU-KI BY HWEN THSANG. 
 
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 BY SAMUEL BEAL, 
 
 Trinity College, Cambridge ; Professor of Chinese, University 
 College, London. 
 
 Post 8vo. 
 
 THE APHORISMS OF THE SANKHYA PHILOSOPHY 
 OF KAPILA. 
 
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 Post 8vo. 
 
 THE .LIFE OF THE BUDDHA AND THE EARLY 
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 MANAVA-DHARMA-CASTRA ; 
 
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 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY is essentially the chief intellectual study 
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 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY," a series of 
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 THE FOLLOWING HAVE ALREADY APPEARED: 
 
 VOLS. I. -III.] In Three Volumes, post 8vo, pp. 350, 406, and 384, with 
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 A HISTORY OF MATERIALISM. 
 
 By Professor F. A. LANGE. 
 
 Authorised Translation from the German by ERNEST C. THOMAS. 
 
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 NATURAL LAW : An Essay in Ethics. 
 
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 VOLS. V., VI.] In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. 268 and 288, cloth, 153. 
 
 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM: 
 
 ITS FOUNDATIONS CONTRASTED WITH ITS SUPERSTRUCTURE. 
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 VOL. VII.] Second Edition. Post 8vo, pp. xix. 249, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 TO THE SPREAD OF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS. 
 
 By O. P. TIELE, 
 
 Dr. Theol., Professor of the History 'of Religions in the University of Leiden. 
 Translated from the Dutch by J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, M.A. 
 
 " Few books of its size contain the result of so much wide thinking, able and laborious 
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 these sentences, cut and perhaps also dry, short and clear, condense the fruits of long 
 and thorough research." Scotsman. 
 
 VOL. VIII.] Post 8vo, pp. 276, cloth, 73. 6d. 
 
 RELIGION IN CHINA: 
 
 Containing a Brief Account of the Three Religions of the Chinese, with 
 
 Observations on the Prospects of Christian Conversion 
 
 amongst that People. 
 
 By JOSEPH EDKINS, D.D.. Peking. 
 
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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC. 
 
 BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF 
 
 A COURSE OF LECTURES 
 
 DULIVUUKD AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OP GREAT BRITAIN, 
 IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH 1877. 
 
 By WILLIAM POLE, Mus. Doc. Oxon. 
 
 Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh ; one of the Examiners in Music 
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THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 VOL. XII.] Post 8vo, pp. 168, cloth, 6s. 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF THE HUMAN RACE. 
 LECTURES AND DISSERTATIONS 
 
 By LAZARUS GEIGER, 
 Author of " Origin and Evolution of Human Speech and Reason." 
 
 Translated from the Second German Edition by DAVID ASHER, Ph.D., 
 
 Corresponding Member of the Berlin Society for the Study 
 
 of Modern Languages and Literature. 
 
 light on the early condition of mankind. He prosecuted his inquiries in a thoroughly 
 philosophical spirit, and he never offered a theory, however paradoxical it might seern 
 at first sight, for which he did not advance solid arguments. Unlike the majority of 
 German scholars, he took pleasure in working out his doctrines in a manner that was 
 likely to make them interesting to the general public ; and his capacity for clear and 
 attractive exposition was hardly inferior to that of Mr. Max Muller himself. " St . James * 
 Gazette. 
 
 VOL. XIII.] Post 8vo, pp. 350, with a Portrait, cloth, ros. 6d. 
 
 DR. APPLETON : His Life and Literary Relics. 
 
 By JOHN H. APPLETON, M.A., 
 Late Vicar of St. Mark's, Staplefield, Sussex; 
 
 AND 
 
 A. H. SAYCE, M.A., 
 Fellow of Queen's College, and Deputy Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford. 
 
 " Although the life of Dr. Appleton was uneventful, it is valuable as illustrating the 
 manner in which the speculative and the practical can be combined. His biographers 
 talk of his geniality, his tolerance, his kindliness, and these characteristics, combined 
 with his fine intellectual gifts, his searching analysis, his independence, his ceaseless 
 energy and ardour, render his life specially interesting." Nonconformist. 
 
 VOL. XIV.] Post 8vo, pp. xxvi. 370, with Portrait, Illustrations, and an 
 Autograph Letter, cloth, I2s. 6d. 
 
 EDGAR QUINET : 
 
 HIS EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS. 
 
 By RICHARD HEATH. 
 
 " La plante est visible dans son germe. Et qui ne voudrait, s'il le pouvait, voir un 
 monde dans 1'embryon." Histoire de mes Idees. 
 
 " Without attaching the immense value to Edgar Quinet's writings which Mr. Heath 
 considers their due, we are quite ready to own that they possess solid merits which, 
 perhaps, have not attracted sufficient attention in this country. To a truly reverent 
 spirit, Edgar Quinet joined the deepest love for humanity in general. Mr. Heath . . . 
 deserves credit for the completeness and finish of the portraiture to which he set his 
 hand. It has evidently been a labour of love, for the text is marked throughout by 
 infinite painstaking, both in style and matter." Globe. 
 
THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 VOL. XV.] Second Edition, post 8vo, cloth, ys. 6d. 
 
 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 By LUDWIG FEUERBACH. 
 
 Translated from the Second German Edition by MARIAN EVANS, 
 Translator of Strauss's " Life of Jesus." 
 
 "I confess that to Feuerbach I owe a debt of inestimable gratitude. Feel- 
 ing about in uncertainty for the ground, and finding everywhere shifting sands, 
 Feuerbach cast a sudden blaze into the darkness, and disclosed to me the way." 
 From B. Baring -Gould's " The Origin and Development of Religious Belief," 
 Part II. , Preface, page xii. 
 
 VOL. XVI.] Third Edition, revised, post 8vo, pp. 200, cloth, 33. 6d. 
 
 AUGUSTS COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 By the late JOHN STUART MILL, M.P. 
 
 VOL. XV1L] Post 8vo, pp. xliv. 216, cloth, 73. 6d. 
 
 ESSAYS AND DIALOGUES OF GIACOMO LEOPARD! 
 
 Translated from the Italian, with Biographical Sketch, 
 by CHARLES EDWARDES. 
 
 "He was one of the most extraordinary men whom this century has produced, both 
 in his powers, and likewise in his performances." Quarterly Review. 
 
 "This is a good piece of work to have done, and Mr. Edwardes deserves praise both 
 for intention and execution." Athenaeum. 
 
 "Gratitude is due to Mr. Edwardes for an able portraiture of one of the saddest 
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 works." Academy. 
 
 SCHOPENHAUER writes: "No one has treated the subject (The Misery of Life) so 
 thoroughly and exhaustively as Leopardi in our own days. He is wholly filled and 
 fermented with it ; everywhere the mockery and misery of this existence are his theme ; 
 on every page of his works he represents them, but with such diversity of form and 
 expression, with such wealth of illustration, that he never wearies, but rather entertains 
 and stimulates us throughout." 
 
 VOL. XV1IL] Post 8vo, pp. xii. 178, cloth, 6s. 
 
 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY : 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 By HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 Translated by JOHN SNODGKASS, 
 Translator of " Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos from the Prose of Heinrich Heine." 
 
 " Nowhere is the singular charm of this writer more marked than in the vivid pages 
 of this work. . . . Irrespective of subject, there is a charm about whatever Heine wrote 
 that captivates the reader and wins his sympathies before criticism steps in. But there 
 can be none who would fail to admir. the power as well as the beauty of the wide-ranging 
 pictures of the intellectual development of the country of deep thinkers. Beneath his 
 grace the writer holds a mighty grip <>f fact, stripped of all disguise and made patent over 
 all confusing surroundings." Bookseller. 
 
 "No better selection could have been made from the prose writings of an author 
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 produced as much German prose as fills nearly a score of volumes." North British Daily 
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THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 VOL. XIX.] Post 8vo, pp. xviii. 310, with Portrait, cloth, ios. 6d. 
 EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 By MONCURE D. CONWAY. 
 Author of "The Sacred Anthology," " The Wandering Jew," " Thomas Carlyle," &c. 
 
 This book reviews the personal and general history of the so-called "Tran- 
 scendental " movement in America; and it contains various letters by Emerson 
 not before published, as well as personal recollections of his lectures and con- 
 versations. 
 
 "... The loftiest, purest, and most penetrating spirit that bad ever shone in 
 American literature." Professor Tyndall. 
 
 " Almost all Americans appear to be agreed that Emerson holds the foremost place 
 in the history of their national literature. . . . For more than thirty years Mr. Conway 
 was intimately acquainted with Emerson, from whom, in truth, he received much kind- 
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 friend's character and modes of thought as they revealed themselves at different periods 
 in daily intercourse. Mr. Conway has not, however, confined himself to personal re- 
 miniscences ; be brings together all the important facts of Emerson's life, and presents 
 a full account of his governing ideas indicating their mutual relations, and tracing the 
 processes by which Emerson gradually arrived at them in their mature form." St. 
 James's Gazette. 
 
 VOL. XX.] Fifteenth Edition. Post 8vo, pp. xx. 314, cloth, ids. 6d. 
 ENIGMAS OF LIFE. 
 
 By W. R. GREG. 
 
 Contents : Realisable Ideals Malthus Notwithstanding Non-Survival 
 of the Fittest Limits and Directions of Human Development The Signifi- 
 cance of Life De Profundis Elsewhere Appendix. 
 
 " What is to be the future of the human race? What are the great obstacles in the 
 way of progress ? What are the best means of surmounting these obstacles? Such, in 
 rough statement, are some of the problems which are more or less present to Mr. Greg's 
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 observations about them, always expressed in a graceful style, frequently eloquent, and 
 occasionally putting old subjects in a new light, and recording a large amount of read- 
 ing and study." Saturday Review. 
 
 VOL. XXL] Post 8vo, pp. 328, cloth, ics. 6d. 
 
 ETHIC 
 
 DEMONSTRATED IN GEOMETRICAL ORDER AND DIVIDED 
 INTO FIVE PARTS, 
 
 WHICH TREAT 
 
 I. OF GOD. 
 II. OP THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE MIND. 
 
 III. OF THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE AFFECTS. 
 
 IV. OF HUMAN BONDAGE, OR OF THE STRENGTH OF THE AFFECTS. 
 V. OF THE POWER OF THE INTELLECT, OR OF HUMAN LIBERTY. 
 
 By BENEDICT DE 'SPINOZA. 
 
 Translated from the Latin by WILLIAM HALE WHITE. 
 
 " Mr. White's translation, though it is not, perhaps, so polished in some parts as it 
 might have been, is faithful, clear, and effective. . . . We can only express the hope that 
 the book may meet with the acceptance it deserves." British Quarterly Review. 
 
 " Mr. White only lays claim to accuracy, the Euclidian form of the work giving but 
 small scope for literary finish. We have carefully examined a number of passages with 
 the original, and have in every case found the sense correctly given in fairly readable 
 Knglisti. For the purposes of study it may in most cases replace the original ; more Mr. 
 White could not claim or desire." Atkenctutn. 
 
THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 VOL. XXII.] In Three Volumes. Vol.1., post 8vo, pp. xxxii. 532, cloth, i8s. 
 THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA. 
 
 By ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. 
 
 Translated from the German by 11. B. HALDANK, M.A., and JOHN KEMP, M.A. 
 
 " The translators have done their part very well, for, as they say, their work has 
 been one of difficulty, especially as the style of the original is occasionally ' involved and 
 loose.' At the same time there is a force, a vivacity, a directness, in the phrases and 
 sentences of Schopenhauer Which are very different from the manner of ordinary German 
 philosophical treatises. He knew English and English literature thoroughly ; he ad- 
 mired the clearness of their manner, and the popular strain even in their philosophy, 
 and these qualities he tried to introduce into his own works and discourse." Scotsman. 
 
 VOLS. XXV.-XXVII.] In Three Volumes, post 8vo, cloth. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 
 
 By EDWARD VON HARTMANN. 
 
 [Speculative Results, according to the Inductive Method of Physical Science.] 
 Authorised Translation, by WILLIAM C. COUPLAND, M.A. 
 
 *** Ten Editions of the German original have been sold since its first appearance in 1868. 
 
 VOLS. I.-II.] EXTRA SERIES. 
 
 Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. 348 and 374, with Portrait, cloth, 2 is. 
 
 LESSING : His Life and Writings. 
 
 By JAMES SIME, M.A. 
 Second Edition. 
 
 " It is to Lessing that an Englishman would turn with readiest affection. We cannot 
 but wonder that more of this man is not known amongst us." THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " But to Mr. James Sime has been reserved the honour of presenting to the English 
 public a full-length portrait of Lessing, in which no portion of the canvas is uncovered, 
 and in which there is hardly a touch but tells. We can say that a clearer or more 
 compact piece of biographic criticism has not been produced in England for many a 
 day." Westminster Review. 
 
 " An account of Lessing' s life and work on the scale which he deserves is now for the 
 first time offered to English readers. Mr. Sime has performed his task with industry, 
 knowledge, and sympathy ; qualities which must concur to make a successful biogra- 
 pher." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 11 This is an admirable book. It lacks no quality that a biography ought to have. Its 
 method is excellent, its theme is profoundly interesting : its tone is the happiest mixture 
 of sympathy and discrimination : its style is clear, masculine, free from effort or affecta- 
 tion, yet eloquent by its very sincerity." Standard. 
 
 "He has given a life of Lessing clear, interesting, and full, while he has given a 
 study of his writings which bears distinct marks of an intimate acquaintance with his 
 subject, and of a solid and appreciative judgment." Scotsman. 
 
 VOL. III.] Vol. I, post 8vo, pp. 264, cloth, 73. 6d. 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE POLYNESIAN RACE : 
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS, 
 AND THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE TO THE TIMES OF 
 
 KAMEHAMEHA I. 
 By ABRAHAM FORNANDEB, Circuit Judge of the Island of Maui, H.I. 
 
 "Mr. Fornander has evidently enjoyed excellent opportunities for promoting tho 
 study which has produced this work. Unlike most foreign residents in Polynesia, he has 
 acquired a good knowledge of the language spoken by the people among whom he dwelt. 
 This has enabled him, during his thirty-four years' residence in the Hawaiian Islands, to 
 collect material which could be obtained only by a person possessing such an advantage. 
 It is so seldom that a private settler in the Polynesian Islands takes an intelligent interest 
 in local ethnology and archaeology, and makes use of the advantage he possesses, that 
 we feel especially thankful to Mr. Fornander for his labours in this comparatively little- 
 known field of research." Academy. 
 
THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 VOLS. IV., V.] Iii Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. viii. 408; viii. 402, cloth, 2 is. 
 
 ORIENTAL RELIGIONS, 
 
 AND THEIR RELATION TO UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 
 By SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 I. INDIA. 
 
 VOL. VI.] Vol. II., post Svo, pp. 408, cloth, ics. 6d. 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE POLYNESIAN RACE : 
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS, 
 
 AND THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE TO THE TIMES OF 
 KAMEHAMEHA I. 
 
 By ABRAHAM FORNANDER, Circuit Judge of the Island of Maui, H.I. 
 
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