Volume 67 / Part 6 — ALISON’S POLITICAL ESSAYS.[5]

ALISON’S POLITICAL ESSAYS.^[5]

The collection of scattered periodical essays, especially such as are of a strictly political character, is an adventure far more perilous to the reputation of an author than the issue of any single work deliberately planned, and laboriously executed in the closet. The historian, dealing solely with the records of the past, reviving or recreating pictures which have long ago appeared upon the ancient canvass, may without difficulty arrange his scattered portraits and groups in such an order, that they shall impress the public mind with a feeling of absolute novelty. A historical paradox, if ingeniously conceived and plausibly conveyed, is sure to command attention. The fickleness of the Athenians was by no means idiosyncratic to that volatile nation. All men weary of hearing the same phrase and the same judgment invariably repeated. They suspect the justice of Aristides, or the perfidy of Crookback Richard, on account of the unanimous verdict, and are by no means displeased when any daring casuist steps forward, armed with a tolerable array of proof, to detract from the rigid virtue of the one, or to palliate the vices of the other. In truth, the materials of all history are so various and conflicting in their character, that an artist of consummate skill, who is withal not over-scrupulous, may easily pass off fictions under the disguise of broad reality. Historical sketches, therefore, which relate to past events, may be viewed in the light either of lively episodes or of profound commentaries; and their republication, after a term of years, can in no way affect the soundness of the author’s judgment.

To republish criticisms, especially such as relate to the works of cotemporaries, is certainly a more delicate task. It is easy to comment upon an author whose works have been long before the public, and frequently and diligently scanned. High criticism may discover beauties or detect faults which have escaped the notice of less keen and scrutinising observers; but, in the aggregate, certainly in the majority of cases, the broad opinion which has been expressed by others is allowed to remain unchallenged. The influence of previous judgment invariably sways the critic. None are rash enough to deny the genius of Shakspeare; at the same time, nothing is more certain than that, were another Shakspeare to arise amongst us at this moment, there would be no kind of unanimity as to his deserts. In all ages and in all countries this has been the rule. Personal spite, unacknowledged and possibly unperceived envy, party difference of opinion, disparity of station, prejudice of education—all these, in their turn, have passed, like so many clouds, between the sun of living genius and the critics who surveyed its orbit. Nor ought we to overlook the fact that, in many instances, meteors have been mistaken for suns, and the eyes of the critic been dazzled by a glare, to which his own willing imagination lent at least one half its brilliancy. Therefore it is that contemporary criticism, when republished in an abiding form, rarely satisfies the expectation of the reader. His own judgment has been formed, apart from the considerations and prejudices which are so apt to beset the critic; and he conceives an unfavourable impression of the literary acuteness of the writer, when he finds a gross discrepancy between the older and the later estimate.

But far more trying to an author is the republication of political essays, composed during the progress of great national events. This branch of composition is peculiar to our own age, in which periodical literature is so marked and eminent a feature. Pamphleteering is of venerable date. Sir Thomas More, Milton, Marvell, Swift, and Defoe, were all notable pamphleteers; but periodical writing, in the highest sense of the term, is the invention of the present century. That great and influential organs of public opinion, ranking among their contributors the men of the highest intellect and the most laborious acquirements, should have been established in our time, marks not only the development of the influence of the press, but the importance of the events which such men are imperatively summoned to discuss. It marks even more, for it has established a power beyond the boundaries of the old constitution, which, as it is used or misused, cannot fail to affect materially the destinies of Great Britain.

Every political treatise referring to events which have engrossed the attention of the day, either as modifications or as changes of our social system, must be valuable in later years. It must necessarily recommend or condemn measures on account of their probable operation in the time to come; it must in some degree be a prophecy, or else it is practically worthless. The politician studies the past merely as his guide for the future. If he is learned, wise, and at all an adept in the science which he professes—than which no other is of so momentous an import—he will consider past history as the barometer which must guide him in predicating the approach either of a tempest or a calm. Temporary clamour or occasional obstruction will not lead him to forsake clear principles of action, or to recommend a grand constitutional remedy in the case of a trifling local disease. He must look forward beyond the sphere of immediate action—resolute in this belief, that one false step, however small, may upset the equilibrium of the State. Expediency, the modern idol, finds little favour in the eyes of the true and sagacious statesman. He tests measures by their intrinsic value, regardless of the “pressure from without;” and he looks upon Parliamentary majorities as of less moment than the maintenance of the real interests of his country.

If we apply these remarks to our later political history, and to the conduct of those men whom circumstances have elevated to the highest stations in Government, we shall at once perceive that the first great principles of practical statesmanship have been abandoned. The welfare and integrity of the Empire has been made a subsidiary object to the triumph of party ambition; and accordingly, CONSISTENCY, that grand test of a politician’s sincerity and soundness, is the very quality which is wanting. To consistency, indeed, neither Lord John Russell nor Sir Robert Peel, for many years the rival chiefs of party, can lay the slightest claim. They have been playing a long, and, doubtless, an interesting game, with the map of Britain and its dependencies before them as a chess-board: they have directed the whole of their energies to giving checkmate to one another; and with this view they have again and again altered the relative positions of king and queen, bishops, knights, castles, and pawns. To counteract the last move of his adversary was the great object of each of these ingenious players. It was a pretty trial of dexterity and finesse; but we trust, for the sake of the chessmen, that the match is finally concluded. Talent of this kind may, indeed, be available when it is necessary to contend with a foreign adversary; but it is worse than mischievous when practised systematically at home.

To have surveyed the political events of the last twenty years with a calm and dispassionate eye—to estimate the consequences of each concession to popular clamour, and each move for party purposes—to form inductions as to the future from the indelible history of the past—to trace the causes of social misery and disquiet to their remote and recondite source—to discern the coming cloud of adversity in the midst of apparent abundance—required more than common thought, learning, sagacity, and prescience; and the man who has done all this, cannot fail to be ranked, in the estimation of those whose judgment is of real value, among the first masters of political and economic science. Many brilliant commentaries upon passing events, which at the first blush were received as absolute oracles of wisdom, have utterly failed in their predictions, and are now consigned to oblivion. They failed—if from no other cause, at least assuredly from this—that they flowed from the pens of partisans, whose whole energies were devoted to the advancement of themselves and their faction. Party spirit, indeed, has of late years almost entirely overshadowed that patriotism which was once our highest boast. Truth may be spoken of an opponent—and very often more than truth; but it is seldom expressed with regard to the political conduct of those whom men are accustomed to regard as their friends. Private motives are allowed to interfere with the more rigorous functions of the censor; the moralist is changed into the apologetic rhetorician; the judge becomes the interested advocate.

Were the present crisis of our political history less momentous than it truly is—were not the great and final struggle for a return to the principles, by means of which our national greatness was achieved, so near at hand—we might, from motives and considerations easily appreciable, have left this volume of Mr Alison’s collected political essays without any special notice. For a long period of years, embracing the most important changes which have been made in the institutions and relations of this country, Mr Alison has been a constant contributor to the Magazine, adopting his own views, enforcing his own opinions, without reference to the distinctions of party or the position of individual statesmen. We believe that, in some respects, the attitude of the Magazine has differed from that assumed by any periodical publication in the country. It has never been the organ of a Party, and never subservient to a Government. Many times we have been compelled to differ from those whose political opinions have been thought most closely to approximate to our own; and never have we hesitated to express that difference in clear and unambiguous terms, knowing that a true and honourable conviction never ought to be concealed, or can be without affecting the integrity of those who entertain it.

The present publication sufficiently discloses the part which Mr Alison has taken in the political discussions which have arisen during that eventful period. They are valuable to the rising generation for two especial reasons. In the first place, they are a faithful record of the impressions which passing events made upon the mind of a highly-gifted, generous, and independent man, the object of whose life was apart from those pursuits which inflame the passions, whilst they warp the judgment, of the mere partisan. In the second place, they will enable the reader to trace, step by step, the innovations which modern Liberalism has made upon the older limits of the constitution; and to estimate the consistency of those who at one time affected to be the opponents of that Liberalism, and at another, whether through weakness, or treachery, or ambition, came forward to assist in its blind and infatuated progress.

Perhaps the most interesting papers in the present volume are those which refer to the memorable and exciting era of the Reform Bill. They are not only interesting, but highly instructive in a constitutional point of view, as showing the utter disregard of the Whig faction to the maintenance of that political framework which, when in power, they affect to worship with almost superstitious veneration. Never, probably, was there a period in our history when the passions of the populace were more dexterously and deliberately excited by men of high station, and by no means contemptible intellect. Treason was then in vogue: sedition openly encouraged. Most of us can recollect the ugly and ominous emblems which were paraded through the streets of the larger towns, and the violence with which every one supposed to be hostile to the popular measure was assailed. Haughty aristocrats, like the late Earl Grey, condescended to treat with Jacobin clubs and political unions; the physical power of the masses was appealed to as an argument of irresistible weight, and Whig officials were privy to the plan of a projected Birmingham insurrection. The voice of reason was entirely stifled amidst the general democratic howl, and all suggestions as to a modification of the grand electoral scheme were treated with fierce hostility. The framers of the measure had no wish that its details should be narrowly sifted, or submitted to the test of principle. There was a deep meaning in the phrase, which at that time passed into a proverb, “The Bill—the whole Bill—and nothing but the Bill!” No other method of reform, however large and comprehensive, would have suited the junta who then deemed themselves secure of an interminable lease of power. And why? Because any other measure which might have embraced the claim of the Colonies to a share in the Imperial representation, would have interfered with their special project of lowering the landed interest, and giving a decided preponderance in Parliament to the votes of the urban population.

We are far from wishing to maintain that the spirit which animated the councils of the Conservative leaders of the day was in all respects the most prudent; or that they did not to a certain extent accelerate the movement by withholding minor concessions, which might have been gracefully and advantageously given. But in justice to them it must be remembered, that they had a great principle to contend for—a principle too little understood then, and perhaps only now becoming generally appreciated on account of the pernicious effects which have resulted from its violation. The older Representative system of Great Britain might appear to the casual eye artificial, unequal, and therefore unjust; but it had this grand and wholesome advantage, which we look for in vain in its successor, that, by means of it, not only were the great classes of the community at home adequately represented, but our fellow-subjects of the Colonies could, and did, exercise a direct influence within the walls of St Stephen’s. To allow this influence to be encroached on, however covertly or plausibly, seemed tantamount to an abandonment of the principle by which the Conservative party had been guided throughout; and subsequent events have shown that no exaggerated estimate was formed of the tendencies of democratic rule. This conviction of the prospective danger of the Reform measure to the integrity of the British Empire was, we know, the main cause of that early, though perhaps injudicious, resistance to the extension of the electoral suffrage, which finally gave way before the impulse added to popular excitement by the example of foreign revolution. As regarded the welfare of our Colonies, the Reform Bill was virtually a death-blow. It laid the foundation for a rapid succession of measures, selfish in their tendency and grossly impolitic, which have already gone far to pervert the loyal feelings of the Colonists, by teaching them that the mother country has decided upon a policy altogether injurious to their interests as subjects of the British Crown. They have had no voice, no direction in the legislative enactments which have since that time so deeply affected their prosperity; they have been governed rather as tributaries than as portions of the Empire; and their complaints have been too often treated with undisguised contumely, or, at best, with haughty indifference. Our opinion as to the importance of the maintenance of our Colonial dominions, and the imminent necessity which exists of securing that maintenance by giving them some effective voice in the legislative councils of Great Britain, has been repeatedly expressed. No other step will suffice to stay the tide of disaffection; and happy will it be for all of us, if the practical refutation of the Free-trade delusion, now becoming every day more obvious and acknowledged, shall lead to such prudent measures, with regard to our dependencies, as may again consolidate into one great and united mass, inspired by the same feelings and actuated by the same interests, the scattered elements of British greatness and renown.

But apart altogether from Colonial considerations, the Reform Bill has been productive of the most serious consequences to the internal economy of this country. Under its benign operation the National Debt, instead of being diminished, is augmented; whilst, at the same time, by a system of ruinous cheapness, induced by the free admission of foreign produce to compete in the home market with our own, incomes have been lowered by nearly a half, and the means of paying the increased taxation have been proportionably curtailed. We do not believe that the Whigs, while straining every energy to carry the Reform Bill, meditated the possibility of any such results. We have their own statements—at least those of Lords Melbourne and John Russell—to the contrary; and even were it otherwise, we are not disposed to attribute to that party so great a share of political prescience, as to assume that they foresaw the consequences of their own deliberate act.

It was, however, foreseen by others. In 1831, Mr Alison, arguing from historical precedents, predicted that the natural effect of the passing of the Reform Bill would be the repeal of the Corn Laws.

“When it is recollected,” wrote he, “that 300 English members of the Reformed house are to be for the boroughs, and only 150 for the counties, it may easily be anticipated that this effect is certain. And in vain will the House of Peers strive to resist such a result: their power must have been so completely extinguished before the Reform Bill is past, that any resistance on their part would be speedily overcome.

“This first and unavoidable consequence of this great change will at once set the manufacturing classes at variance with the agricultural interest; and then will commence that fatal war between the different classes of society, which has hitherto been only repressed by the weight and authority of a stable, and, in a certain degree, hereditary government, composed of an intermixture of the representatives of $1 interests. When it is recollected that wheat can be raised with ease in Poland at prices varying from 17s. to 20s. a quarter, and that it can be laid down on the quay of any harbour in Britain at from 33s. to 40s., it may easily be anticipated what a revolution in prices will, in the $1, be effected by this measure. We say in the $1 instance—for nothing seems clearer than that the $1 effect will be, by throwing a large portion of British land out of cultivation, and in its stead producing a more extensive growth of grain on the shores of the Vistula, to restore the equilibrium between the supply of corn and its consumption, and, by means of destroying a large portion of British agriculture, raise the prices again to their former standard.”

We have lately been favoured, from certain quarters, with ingenious disquisitions touching the probable future price of grain in this country—disquisitions to which we by no means object, as, apart altogether from their truth or their falsity, they manifest a growing uneasiness as to the possibility of maintaining the Free-trade system for many months longer. We may perhaps be allowed to take some credit to ourselves for having effected this change in the tone and sentiments of gentlemen who, not long ago, were clamorous in their praise of cheap food and diminished agricultural prices. In our January Number, by the aid of the most intelligent, skilful, and experienced agriculturists of Scotland, we proved, beyond the power of refutation, that no British farmer could stand his ground against the present influx of foreign corn, and that no possible reduction of rent, short of its annihilation, would enable him to meet the deficiency. We were met, as might naturally be expected, by the double weapons of rancorous abuse and deliberate falsification.^[6] But these having utterly failed in their purpose, our antagonists have since changed their ground altogether, and are now attempting to argue, against the experience of each successive week, that the present fall of prices is merely temporary, and that wheat must again rise to something like its former level. How long they may continue in their endeavours to propagate this fresh delusion we know not. They cannot mislead the farmers, at whose door ruin is at present knocking with an unmistakeable sound. The only men they can mislead are their unhappy dupes, who have been taught to believe that the prosperity of Britain depends solely upon one of the weakest, most unstable, and most precarious of its manufactures.

In the same article from which we have just quoted, Mr Alison wrote as follows:—

“Now, the misery arising from the reduction of the resources of the farmer could not be confined to his own class in society; it would immediately and seriously affect the manufacturing and commercial interests. The great trade of every country, as Adam Smith long ago remarked, is between the town and the country: by far the greatest part of the produce of our looms is consumed by those who, directly or indirectly, are fed by the British plough. Not the haughty aristocrat only, who spends his life in luxurious indolence among his hereditary trees, but the innumerable classes who are maintained by his rents and fed by his expenditure—the numerous creditors who draw large parts of his rents through their mortgages, and live in affluence in distant towns upon the produce of his land—the farmers, who subsist in comparative comfort on the industry which they exert on his estates—the tradesmen and artisans, who are fed by his expenditure or the wants of his tenantry—all would suffer alike by such a change of prices as should seriously affect the industry of the cultivators. Every shopkeeper knows how much he is dependent on the expenditure of those who directly or indirectly are maintained by the land, and what liberal purchasers landlords are, compared to those who subsist by manufactures; and it is probable that the first and greatest sufferers by the repeal of the Corn Laws would be many of those very persons whose blind cry for Reform had rendered it unavoidable.

“Now, the discouragement of British agriculture consequent on a free-trade in corn would be $1, although the benefit to the inhabitants of towns could only be temporary. After the destruction of a large portion of British agriculture had been effected, by the immense inundation of foreign grain, prices would rise again to their former level, because the monopoly would then be vested in the hands of the foreign growers; and the bulky nature of grain renders it $1 impossible to introduce an $1 supply of that article by sea transport. But the condition of British agriculture would not be materially benefited by the change; because prices would rise $1 in consequence of the British grower being, for the most part, driven out of the field; and could be maintained at a high level only by his being $1 from an extensive competition with the foreign cultivator. Should the British farmers, recovering from their consternation, recommence the active agriculture which at present maintains our vast and increasing population, the consequence would be, that prices would immediately fall to such a degree, as speedily to reduce them to their natural and unavoidable state of inferiority to the farmers of the Continent.

“In considering this subject, there are two important circumstances to be kept in view, proved abundantly by experience, but which have not hitherto met with the general attention which they deserve.

“The first of these is, that, in agriculture—differing in this respect from manufactures—the introduction of machinery, or the division of labour, can effect $1 in the price of its produce, or the facility of its production; and perhaps the best mode of cultivation yet known is that which is carried on by the greatest possible application of human labour, in the form of spade cultivation. The proof of this is decisive. Great Britain, with the aid of the steam-engine, can undersell the weavers of Hindostan with muslins manufactured out of cotton grown on the banks of the Ganges; but it is undersold in its own markets by the wheat-grower on the banks of the Vistula, or in the basin of the Mississippi. It is in vain, therefore, for a state like England, burdened with high prices and an excessive taxation—the natural consequence of commercial opulence—to hope that its industry can, in agriculture as in manufactures, withstand the competition of the foreign grower. Machinery, skill, and capital can easily counteract high prices in all other articles of human consumption: in agriculture, they can produce no such effect. This is a law of nature which will subsist to the end of the world.

“The second is, that a comparatively small importation of grain produces a prodigious effect on the prices at which it is sold. The importation of a tenth part of the annual consumption does not, it is calculated, lower prices a tenth, but $1—and so on with the importation of smaller quantities. This has always been observed, and is universally acknowledged by political economists. Although, therefore, the greatest possible importation of foreign grain must always be a part only of that required for the consumption of the whole people, yet still the effect upon the current rate of prices would be most disastrous. The greatest importation ever known was in 1801, when it amounted, in consequence of the scarcity, to an $1 part of the annual consumption; but the free introduction of much less than that quantity would reduce the price of wheat in the first instance, in an ordinary year, to 45s. the quarter.

“The repeal of the Corn Laws, therefore, is calculated to inflict a $1 wound on the agricultural resources of the empire, and permanently injure all the numerous classes who depend on that branch of industry, and confer only a $1 benefit, by the reduction of prices, on the manufacturing labourers. The benefit is temporary, and mixed up, even at first, with a most bitter portion of alloy; the evil lasting, unmitigated by any benefit whatever.”

We are now in the course of enduring that precise phase of suffering, arising from the repeal of the Corn Laws, which was predicted by Mr Alison more than eighteen years ago; and it is solely from the extent of that suffering that we are inclined to form a better augury for the future than we could have ventured to have done in the course of the bygone year. Three months have not passed since, at the opening of Parliament, the Whig Ministry with unparalleled audacity ventured to congratulate the country on its general prosperous condition! Themselves indeed they might congratulate, that, by means of an income and property tax, imposed under false pretences by a former Premier, the public revenue was still sufficient to meet its ordinary engagements; but what other ground of congratulation there was, no host of witnesses could tell. Could they venture to congratulate the country $1 on the state of the manufacturing districts? Has this little interval of three months, at a time of universal peace and unparalleled cheapness, sufficed to change universal prosperity into widespread and acknowledged depression? Not so. The depression had begun long before—it commenced so soon as falling prices warned the agricultural consumers of the fate which was in store for them; and if Ministers did not know this, they are utterly unfit to retain their places longer. The continuance of that depression can be only measured by the existence of the Free-trade system. If that is allowed to go on, and if there be indeed, as is now the common cant of the Liberal journalists, no possibility of retracing our steps, the next move will be one of plunder. No foreign trade can compensate for the tithe of the loss sustained by the depreciation of property at home. That cheapness which means nothing else than curtailment of individual profits, from the highest to the lowest, cannot possibly coexist with expensive government and enormous taxation. The public creditor will be marked for the next blow; and his situation is the more precarious from the peculiar monetary history of the country, and the first important measure—pity also that it had not been the last!—which Sir Robert Peel was instrumental in carrying through the House of Commons.

We are not only hopeful but sanguine as to the power of Great Britain in extricating herself from a difficulty, not transient as before, but settled in its character, because we believe that the downfal of a wretched, presuming, and ignorant faction cannot be much longer delayed. We have been cursed, for many years back, by the predominance of a race of quacks, impostors, sham economists, and political adventurers, who, through favour of the Reform Bill, have forced their way into Parliament, after having failed in the ordinary occupations of trade, and have succeeded in palming their crude and pestilential doctrines upon Ministers too occupied with individual ambition to care much for the public welfare. Does any one believe that such men have any interest in maintaining the public credit, or that they would not, did an opportunity occur, attempt to defraud the creditor, as they have already succeeded in diminishing the means of the debtor? Surely a thoughtful review of the political events which have occurred within the last five years is enough to remove any lingering credulity on this point. We do not ask any one to adopt our views, or to accept our construction. Let him deliberately reflect upon the language of these men in 1845, when the political and commercial fever was at its height—when private individuals were persuaded that they might rear fortunes without the drudgery of industry, and when statesmen were preparing to recommend the same false principle for the general guidance of the nation. How the upstart economists swaggered, strutted, and cackled then! Not a whit less incompetent and treacherous, as guides in their own path, than were the mushroom clerks and pimpled adventurers of the Stock Exchanges in another, they stood forth like so many political John Laws, proclaiming that unbounded wealth, increased demand for labour, and endless influx of capital would be the immediate result of their magnificent free-trading schemes. They had figures and blue-books, returns, calculations and balance-sheets, painfully concocted by plodding theorists, ready at hand to back up their asseverations, and to satisfy the doubts of the most sceptical. This is peculiarly an age in which men are befooled by figures. A century ago, it was enough that a statement should pass from writing into print, and be included in the columns of a journal, in order to secure its currency as a point of popular belief. The increase of journalism has in some respects remedied this, most men being now alive to the fact that typography possesses no peculiar immunity from falsehood. But figures are—or at least were a few years ago—untainted in their reputation. Few people were cautious enough to resist a tempting calculation. It never entered into their heads to suppose that there lay gross error, radical fallacy, and often deliberate fraud, in the imposing array of cyphers which were ostentatiously paraded for their inspection. If half-a-dozen unscrupulous swindlers determined to start a railway, nothing more was required to secure a rush for the scrip, than a summary of phantom traffic, exhibiting a clear return of some fifteen or twenty per cent after deduction of the working expenses. We all know what has been the result of that widespread infatuation. In precisely the same manner did the economists concoct their accounts, when they issued their Free-trade prospectus. Less honest, or perhaps more daringly fraudulent than the railway projectors, they did not propose to grant any compensation for the land at all, but their traffic tables were undoubtedly an arithmetical $1! Two millions per week of clear gain was about the smallest estimate; and to this result various persons, whose previous biography, now that they have emerged as public characters, might be interesting, pledged their valuable reputations!

That they imposed upon the leaders of party, as well as upon a large section of the nation, is no matter of marvel. Statesmen are not exempt from folly, imprudence, or delusion, any more than private persons. One may be cold, selfish, and greedy; another rash, unscrupulous, and obstinate; but, as there are few fish which will not take a bait, so there seem to be few modern statesmen proof against the temptation of altering their policy, if, by doing so, they believe that they can secure possession of an unlimited lease of power. In the present case the bait was dexterously spun between the two rivals, and the anxiety of both to secure it was so great, that neither took the precaution of examining curiously into the nature of its actual texture.

There is hardly a man in the country, from the peer to the artisan, who is not asking himself at this moment, what he has gained by Free-trade. So far as the agricultural interest is concerned, there is no dubiety on the point. The landlord is dunned for reduction of rent, is discontinuing his improvements, reducing his establishment, and setting his house in order for an altered style of living. The tenant is wellnigh ruined, furious that he has been betrayed, economising labour as he best can, or seriously meditating emigration. The labourer finds his wages reduced, his small comforts curtailed or abolished, work scarce, and the workhouse at no great distance. Let them all take comfort. According to our hopeful economists, this is a mere “transition state of suffering.” What the next state is to be, no prophet of them all can foretell. Meantime certain Solons advocate a wholesale emigration—rather a strange panacea for a nation about to be so prosperous!

Go to the towns or the manufacturing districts, and ask how they are prospering. The cotton trade is threatening to shut up. The travellers are returning disconsolate to their employers with the news that orders are every day becoming more scarce, and money payments even scarcer. There is no joy or exultation now in Leeds or Bradford. The journeymen operatives are combining against the slop system. The Morning Chronicle harrows up the feelings of its readers, by tearful tales of the misery and destitution which prevails throughout the large towns of the empire, and no human being can deny the truth of the appalling statements. Scottish philanthropists, on their midnight visits to the wynds of Edinburgh, are struck with amazement at the squalor and vice which they encounter, and not less with the shoals of destitute creatures who are hurrying, with perverse infatuation, from the free open country to the fated atmosphere of a loathsome city garret. They want to check the stream, and drive the current back again. But whither? In the country there is no work for these people. Machinery has forced the hand-loom from the villages; Free Trade is reducing the wages of the spade to nothing. From the Western Highlands, and from Ireland, those who have money enough left to secure a passage on ship-board are emigrating by thousands—it is, we are told by a correspondent, the briskest trade in Liverpool. Those who have no money left are trooping to the towns, with the prospect before them of a fate which might rend the heart of the most callous. Who would wish to be a statesman, if for the consequences of all his deeds he must be held accountable hereafter?

Ask the master-manufacturers themselves how they are getting on, now that they have succeeded in their darling scheme of securing cheap food, and paralysing the home trade? You may ask if you will, but you will hardly obtain an answer, save through the medium of the trade circulars, all filled with dismal forebodings. Were another Cobden testimonial to be proposed just now, the subscriptions would scarcely purchase many shares in the most depreciated of the lines.

Ask the gentlemen of the railway interest, what cause is in operation to crush down their traffic and annihilate their dividends? They will tell you to a man that it is the universal agricultural depression. Ask the iron-masters how they are thriving? At this moment they are trembling for the stability of their colossal fortunes.

It is utterly impossible that this state of matters can continue much longer. If we do not reverse our mad and desperate policy—and that soon—the pressure of taxation, still retaining its former money-level, whilst the production which contributes to it is depreciated by a half, will become so unendurable, that any remedy, however desperate, will find numerous advocates; and amongst the foremost and most clamorous of these will be the leading sham economists. The stateliest ship, when the water is gaining upon her hold, must perforce part with her guns—the parallel case is being practically exhibited just now, by the efforts of the financial reformers to get rid of our warlike establishments. If we cannot part with our defences, we must do without something else. There is in the mean time a talk of reducing salaries, paring down judicial emoluments, and retrenching diplomatic expenses. Lord John Russell, with no very good grace, has been forced to refer these matters to a committee, for the evident purpose of securing the longest possible period of delay. But the tax-gatherer will not be idle in his function, and still the clamour will increase. Superfluities will go first—but no surrender of superfluities will meet the exigency. Men, when pressed to the last extremity, become reckless of their personal obligations; and we have already heard from various quarters intimations that, if the land is to be permanently depreciated, the creditor who has lent his money on the security of that land must be prepared to share the burden of the loss with the owner. There is a smack of wild justice in this, not at all unpalatable to the taste of a burdened debtor. Sir Robert Peel’s favourite question, “What is a pound?” will be argued afresh, after a fashion little likely to secure the approval of the original propounder of the query. We shall be told, truly enough, that the pound is the mere conventional representation of a certain amount of produce; and a very large body of men will begin to talk of paying off their debts, both private and public, upon a principle which, if once adopted, would destroy the whole credit of the country. Three years ago, Mr Doubleday demonstrated that, if the repeal of the Corn Laws should have the effect of reducing the price of wheat on the average to 4s. or 4s. 6d. per bushel, only two courses are left—either to repeal the taxes down to five-and-twenty millions at most; or to alter the currency law of 1819, and reduce the value of money to half the present value. We have now almost touched the mark.

All this was clearly foreseen and foreshadowed by Mr Alison, in his memorable paper of 1831; and we beg of our readers to peruse with attention the following extract, as of primary importance at the present juncture of affairs:—

“Such a change of prices might be innocuous, if individuals and the public could begin on a new basis, and there were no subsisting $1, which must be provided for at a reduced rate of incomes. But how is such a state of things to go on, when individuals and the State are under so many engagements, which cannot be averted without private or public bankruptcy? This is the question which, in a complicated state of society such as we live in, where industry is so dependent on credit, is the vital one to every interest.

“There is hardly an individual possessed of property in the country who is not immediately or ultimately involved in money engagements. The landlords are notoriously and proverbially drowned in debt, and it is calculated that $1 of the produce of the soil finds its way ultimately into the pocket of the public or the private creditor. Farmers are all more or less involved in engagements either to their landlords or to the banks who have advanced their money; merchants and manufacturers have their bills or cash-accounts standing against them, which must be provided for, whatever ensues with regard to the prices of the articles in which they deal; and private individuals, even of wealthy fortunes, have provisions to their wives, sisters, brothers, or children, which must be made up to a certain money amount, if they would avert the evils of bankruptcy. Now, if the views of the Reformers are well founded, and a great reduction is effected in the price of grain, and consequently in the money-income of every man in the kingdom, through the free trade in corn, how are these undiminished money-obligations to be made good out of the diminished pecuniary resources of the debtors in them? Mr Baring has estimated that the change in the value of money, consequent on the resumption of cash-payments, altered prices about 25 per cent; and everybody knows what widespread, still existing, and irremediable private distress $1 change produced. What, then, may be anticipated from the far greater change which is contemplated as likely to arise from a free-trade in grain?

“But, serious as these evils are, they are nothing in comparison with the dreadful consequences which would result to $1 from the change, and the widespread desolation which must follow a serious blow to the national faith.

“It is well known with what difficulty the payment of the annual charge of the National Debt is provided for, even under the present scale of prices; and how much those difficulties were increased by the change of prices, and the general diminution of incomes, consequent on the resumption of cash-payments. Indeed, such was the effect of that change that, had it not been counterbalanced by a very great increase, both of our agricultural and manufacturing produce at the same time, it would have rendered the maintenance of faith with the public creditor impossible. Now, if such be the present state of the public debt, even under the unexampled general prosperity which has pervaded the empire since the peace, and with all the security to the public faith which arises from the stable, consistent, and uniform rule of the British aristocracy, how is the charge of the debt to be provided for under the diminished national income arising from the much hoped-for change of prices consequent on the Reform Bill and repeal of the Corn Laws, and the increased national impatience, arising from the consciousness of the power to cast off the burden for ever?—Great and reasonable fear may be felt, whether, under any circumstances, the maintenance of the national faith inviolate is practicable for any considerable length of time: no doubt can be entertained that, under a Reform Parliament, and a free trade in grain, it will be impossible.”

We forbear quoting the picture which our author has drawn of the awful consequences which must instantly follow on a crash of the national credit—not because we consider it in any degree overcharged, but because we are now satisfied that the country is alive to its danger. We are too well accustomed to the braggadocio of modern journalism to attach much weight to the expiring vociferations of men who have done their utmost to lead us into the present dilemma; and who now, finding themselves powerless to advise, are vainly attempting to keep up a delusion which the experience of each succeeding week is dissipating with extraordinary rapidity. The most talented of the Free-trading journals virtually confess that the experiment has altogether failed. They are not able to point out one single iota of advantage which has resulted from it, beyond the purely supposititious one that, for a time, it secured the tranquillity of Great Britain. This is at best an ignoble argument in behalf of a bad measure; but we believe it to be utterly without foundation, inasmuch as there probably never was a great question agitated in which less interest was evinced by the masses of the nation than in that of the Corn Laws. But we should be sorry, indeed, to rank the loyalty of the British people so low, or to suppose that the crown of these realms rested upon so weak a foundation, as the adoption of such a view as this must necessarily infer. The journals to which we allude are by no means unconscious of the loss which we have incurred, or of the danger in which we presently stand. The insane boast of Mr Villiers, at the opening of the session, that a depreciation of ninety-one millions had taken place in the annual produce of British labour, found no echo in the columns of our more sharp-sighted contemporaries. They are now attempting to show that this calculation was an utter mistake; that importations are gradually diminishing; and that prices must necessarily rise. Most glad should we be if their views upon this subject were sound; but, unfortunately, stern experience points to a different result. We complain, and that with perfect justice, that they will not face the difficulty, and tell us what is to be done, supposing prices remain as they are. Agricultural quackery has done its utmost, and has been extinguished by the shout of general derision. No man in his senses believes that production can be artificially stimulated, or the earth so manured as to yield double crops to supply the frightful deficiency in the annual balance-sheet of the farmer. Both arms of husbandry are shattered. Cattle-feeding has been made, by Sir Robert Peel’s tariff, as profitless as tillage; and all countries have been invited, and are availing themselves of the invitation, to inundate our markets with their produce. Under such a state of things, what hope is there of recovery—what chance of manufactures reviving, so long as the best customers for manufactures are borne down? Are they not borne down? Let us see. The depreciation of food was stated by Mr Villiers at £91,000,000. The whole land rental of the United Kingdom is, according to a late statistical authority, £58,753,615. Let us suppose that rents are reduced by one-third—a reduction which, considering that mortgages and public burdens still remain undiminished, will cripple the means of most of the proprietors in the kingdom—and the rental will fall to about £39,169,000. Still there will remain a loss of nearly £52,000,000 annually, to be borne by the tenantry; in other words, low prices will have to that extent affected their power of purchase. The real case is even stronger than the hypothetical one, because the farmers, who constitute the larger consuming body, are at present receiving no such remission of rent. Of £178,000,000, the estimated amount of British manufactures, we export £58,000,000, and there remain for home consumption goods to the value of £120,000,000. Upon the sale of these depends not only the prosperity, but the existence of the manufacturers; and yet people are astonished that their wares do not go off as formerly! How, in the name of common sense, can they be expected to go off, when no margin of profit is left, in his own trade, to the great consumer? What these reasonable gentlemen anticipate is this—that the proprietor shall have no surplus from his rent, or the farmer any remuneration from his toil and capital; and yet that they shall continue to purchase all articles of manufacture as before!

We observe that a contemporary journal, which naturally feels rather sore on the subject of the Corn Laws, has twitted Mr Alison with a failure of prophecy, in not having allowed for a sufficient lapse between the passing of the Reform Bill and the notable era when the lion and the lamb coalesced—when Sir Robert Peel finally became a convert to the dazzling discoveries of Mr Cobden. Our respected brother seems to think that Mr Alison must feel disappointed that the march of democracy has been so slow; that the avatar of Free-trade was so long in coming; and that our fields were not, several years ago, abandoned by the disappointed husbandman. For the satisfaction of the kindly critic, we shall quote the following passage, penned in 1832, immediately after the passing of the Reform Bill, and then, perhaps, refresh his memory as to the manner in which the later measure was carried:—

“Dark and disastrous, however, as is the future prospect of the British empire, we do not think its case hopeless, or that, after having gone through the degradation, distraction, and suffering which must follow the destruction of the Constitution, it may not yet witness in the decline of its days some gleams of sunshine and prosperity. The laws of nature have now come to aid the cause of order; its usual suffering will attend the march of revolution; experience will soon dispel the fumes of democracy; the reign of Political Unions, of Jacobin Clubs, and tricolor flags, must ere long come to an end; the suffering, anxiety, and distress consequent on their despotic rule, the suspension of all confidence, and the ruin of all credit, must consign them to the dust, amidst the execrations of their country, if they are not subverted by the ruder shock of civil warfare and military power. The distress, misery, and stagnation, in every branch of industry, already consequent on the Reform Bill, have been so extreme, that they must long ago have led to its overthrow, not only without the resistance, but with the concurrence, of all the Reformers who are not revolutionists, had it not been for the delusion universally spread by the revolutionary journals, that the existing distress was not owing to Reform, but to the resistance which it had experienced, and that the danger of revolution, great in the event of the measure being thrown out, was absolutely nugatory in the event of its being passed. These two sophisms have alone carried the bill through the resistance it experienced from the property, education, and talent of the country, and blinded men’s eyes to the enormous evils which not only threatened to follow its triumph, but attended its progress. But these delusions cannot much longer be maintained. Reform is now victorious: the bill is passed unmutilated and unimpaired; and its whole consequences $1. When it is discovered that all the benefits promised from it are a mere delusion; that stagnation, distress, and misery have signalised its triumph; that trade does not revive with the contracted expenditure of the rich, nor confidence return with the increased audacity of the poor; that the ancient and kindly relations of life have been torn asunder in the struggle, and the vehemence of democracy has provided no substitute in their stead; that interest after interest, class after class, is successively exposed to the attacks of the revolutionists, and the ancient barrier which restrained them is removed: the eyes of the nation must be opened to the gross fraud which has been practised upon it. Then it will be discovered that the aristocratic interest, and the nomination boroughs, which supported their influence in the Lower House, were the real bulwark which protected all the varied interests of the country from the revolutionary tempest, and that every branch of industry is less secure, every species of property is less valuable, every enterprise is more hazardous, every disaster is more irretrievable, when its surges roll unbroken and unresisted into the legislature.

“It is upon this very circumstance, however, that our chief, and indeed our only hope of the country is founded. Hitherto the great body of the middle classes have stood aloof from the contest, or they have openly joined the reforming party. They were carried away by the prospect of the importance which they would acquire under the new Constitution, and did not perceive that it was their own interests which were defended, their own battle which was fought, their own existence which was at stake, in the contest maintained by the Conservative party. Now the case is changed. The old rampart is demolished, and, unless these middle ranks can create a new one, they must be speedily themselves destroyed. From the sole of their feet to the crown of their head, the middle classes of England at present stand exposed to the revolutionary fire; every shot will now carry away flesh and blood. Deeply as we deplore the misery and suffering which the exposure of these unprotected classes to the attacks of revolution must produce, it is in the intensity of that suffering, in the poignancy of that distress, that the only chance of ultimate deliverance is to be found. Periods of suffering are seldom, in the end, lost to nations, any more than to individuals; and it is years of anguish that expiate the sin, and tame the passions, of days of riot and licentiousness.

“The Constitution, indeed, is destroyed, but the men whom the Constitution formed are not destroyed. The institutions which protected all the classes of the state, the permanent interests which coerced the feverish throes of democracy, the conservative weight which steadied all the movements of the people, are at an end; the peril arising from this sudden removal of the pressure which hitherto regulated all the movements of the machine is extreme, but the case is not utterly hopeless. It is impossible at once to change the habits of many hundred years’ growth; it is difficult in a few years to root out the affections and interests which have sprung from centuries of obligation; it is not in a single generation that the virtues and happiness, fostered by ages of prosperity, are to be destroyed. As long as the British character remains unchanged; as long as religion and moral virtue sway the feelings of the majority of the people; as long as tranquil industry forms the employment of her inhabitants, and domestic enjoyments constitute the reward of their exertion,—the cause of order and civilisation is not hopeless. Revolutions, it is true, are always effected by reckless and desperate minorities in opposition to opulent and indolent majorities; but it is the ennobling effect of civil liberty to nourish a spirit of resistance to oppression, which outstrips all the calculations of those who ground their views upon what has occurred in despotic monarchies.”

And so it happened. The reaction throughout the country was complete. The Conservative party rallied; and rallied so effectively, that, with many converts in its ranks, and the rising youth of the new generation to back it, a great majority in the House of Commons was secured, and the leadership intrusted to the hands of one who, in despite of previous lapses, appeared at that time to have earned the distinction by his zeal, and who gained it by the force of his protestations. Had the leader been true to the cause which he then professed, we should have been spared the ungracious duty of commenting upon a solemn treachery, to which history affords no parallel, and the memory of which will live long after the grave has closed above the head of the principal delinquent. How was it possible that such an event could fail again, for a time, to disunite a party, formed out of the ruins of the old one by a rapid and indiscriminate conscription? That dependence and faith which high and chivalrous spirits are so ready to place in one beneath whose colours they have fought—the ready trustingness of youth—the great prestige which surrounds the name of a veteran and successful statesman—the belief in his superior sagacity—the recollection of blandishments and flattery, so prized by the young when proceeding from the lips of honoured age,—all these things combined to break up the Conservative party, and to place the reins of government once more in the hands of the eager Whigs. Perhaps it is better so. There is no risk now of a second betrayal, whatever may be the future fortunes of the Country Party; and on the head of him who caused the social change let the whole consequences rest. England’s political annals have at least gained one character more by the act. The future historian who shall chronicle the transactions of the last five years, whatever be his creed or his politics, will speak with veneration and honour of Lord George Bentinck, for whose early fate more honest tears were shed, than have often been paid as a tribute to the patriot who has fallen in battle, the defender of his country’s cause.

We have not left ourselves much room to glance at the three interesting papers in this volume, on the subject of the two French Revolutions of 1830 and 1848. They will be read with profound attention by thousands who may have passed them over cursorily in their anonymous original form; because Mr Alison’s profound and intimate knowledge of the working of French diplomacy, of the turbulent and dangerous element which lies, like molten lava, beneath the surface of French society, and of the secret causes of those outrages which, from time to time, have shaken that unhappy country, must needs give an additional assurance of their value. It is curious to observe how entirely the speculations of the author, as to the consequences which might arise from the first of those sudden revolutions, are borne out by the marvellous issue of the second. The falsity of the system which made the stability of a government and the existence of a dynasty mainly depend upon the doubtful adherence, and still more doubtful valour, of a civic National Guard, was clearly pointed out and exposed at the time when the Liberal press of England was loud in its approbation of the citizen soldiers who had violated their oaths, and the citizen king, who, more fortunate than his worthless father, had succeeded in supplanting his kinsman and rightful sovereign.

“Of the numerous delusions,” wrote Mr Alison in 1831, “which have overspread the world in such profusion during the last nine months, there is none so extraordinary and so dangerous as the opinion incessantly inculcated by the revolutionary press, that the noblest virtue in regular soldiers is to prove themselves traitors to their oaths; and that a $1 is the only safe and constitutional force to which arms can be intrusted. The troops of the line, whose revolt decided the three days in July in favour of the revolutionary party, have been the subject of the most extravagant eulogium from the Liberal press throughout Europe; and even in this country, the Government journals have not hesitated to condemn, in no measured terms, the Royal Guard, merely because they adhered, amidst a nation’s treason, to their honour and their oaths.

“Hitherto it has been held the first duty of soldiers to adhere, with implicit devotion, to that $1 which is the foundation of military duties. Treason to his colours has been considered as foul a blot on the soldier’s scutcheon as cowardice in the field. Even in the most republican states, this principle of military subordination has been felt to be the vital principle of national strength. It was during the rigorous days of Roman discipline, that their legions conquered the world; and the decline of the empire began at the time that the Prætorian Guards veered with the mutable populace, and sold the empire for a gratuity to themselves. Albeit placed in power by the insurrection of the people, no men knew better than the French Republican leaders that their salvation depended on crushing the military insubordination to which they had owed their elevation. When the Parisian levies began to evince the mutinous spirit in the camp at St Menehould in Champagne, which they had imbibed during the license of the capital, Dumourier drew them up in the centre of his intrenchments, and, showing them a powerful line of cavalry in front, with their sabres drawn, ready to charge, and a stern array of artillery and cannoneers in rear, with their matches in their hands, soon convinced the most licentious that the boasted independence of the soldier must yield to the dangers of actual warfare. ‘The armed force,’ said Carnot, ‘is essentially obedient;’ and in all his commands, that great man incessantly inculcated upon his soldiers the absolute necessity of implicit submission to the power which employed them. When the recreant Constable de Bourbon, at the head of a victorious squadron of Spanish cavalry, approached the spot where the rearguard, under the Chevalier Bayard, was covering the retreat of the French army in the valley of Aosta, he found him seated, mortally wounded, under a tree, with his eyes fixed on the cross which formed the hilt of his sword. Bourbon began to express pity for his fate. ‘Pity not me,’ said the high-minded Chevalier; ‘pity those who fight against their king, their country, and their oath!’

“These generous feelings, common alike to republican antiquity and modern chivalry, have disappeared during the fumes of the French Revolution. The soldier who is now honoured is not he who keeps, but he who violates his oath; the rewards of valour are showered, not upon those who defend, but on those who overturn the government; the incense of popular applause is offered, not at the altar of fidelity, but at that of treason. Honours, rewards, promotion, and adulation, have been lavished on the troops of the line, who overthrew the government of Charles X. in July last; while the Royal Guard, who adhered to the fortune of the fallen monarch with exemplary fidelity, have been reduced to $1 from the bounty of strangers in a foreign land. A subscription has recently been opened in London for the most destitute of these defenders of royalty; but the Government journals have stigmatised, as ‘highly dangerous,’ any indication of sympathy with their fidelity or their misfortunes.

“If these ancient ideas of honour, however, are to be exploded, they have at least gone out of fashion in good company. The National Guard who took up arms to overthrow the throne, have not been long of destroying the altar. During the revolt of February 1831, $1, the emblem of salvation, was taken down from all the steeples in Paris by the citizen soldiers, and the image of our Saviour effaced, by their orders, from every church within its bounds! The two principles stand and fall together. The Chevalier ‘without fear and without reproach’ died in obedience to his oath, with his eyes fixed on the Cross; the National Guard lived in triumph, while their comrades bore down the venerated emblem from the towers of Notre Dame.”

Singular was the retribution which awaited France. The “Ulysses” of Europe, as he has been styled—the old, crafty, insincere, penurious, yet plausible and half-sagacious man, sate in apparent peace upon his throne for wellnigh eighteen years, negotiating alliances, maintaining a fair outward character, pandering to popularity, identifying himself with the $1, and identifying his sons with the army—and all this to fall at last before the worst planned and most poorly contrived insurrection which was ever attempted in the streets of a European capital. Surrounded by his citizens, the citizen king went down. We know now, from the revelations of De la Hodde and others, what was the true nature and commencement of that beggarly conspiracy. We know that a few hundred suspected and ill-organised Socialists, along with a handful of newspaper editors, not two of whom possessed sufficient personal courage to lay hand on a loaded musket, contrived to overawe Paris, to bully the redoubted National Guard, and to send poor old Ulysses again upon his travels, without much chance of finding a second imperial Ithaca. Farce and tragedy are here so closely interwoven that it is wellnigh impossible to separate their texture. The dethronement of such a king may be a grand European disaster, but it militates nothing against the principle or the sanctity of royalty. It was but a simple Presidency gone a-begging. The King of the Bourse or the Railway Monarch had about them nearly as much of that divinity which should surround the royal character as Louis Philippe, the chosen of the shopkeepers, and the veteran dabbler in the funds. No true greatness, no high nobility of soul, elevated him to the throne of France—ignoble beyond all precedent was the manner in which he was compelled to leave it. The retreat of Charles X. was a triumph compared with his panic-stricken and unfollowed flight.

The following are Mr Alison’s remarks upon the last of these Revolutions. The reader will not fail to observe the extreme similarity between the two astounding Revolutions, and the precise nature of the cause which enabled both of them to be successfully carried through by an otherwise contemptible rabble.

“Who is answerable for this calamitous Revolution, which has thus arrested the internal prosperity of France, involved its finances in apparently hopeless embarrassment, thrown back for probably half a century the progress of real freedom in that country, and perhaps consigned it to a series of internal convulsions, and Europe to the horrors of general war for a very long period? We answer without hesitation, that the responsibility rests with two parties, and two parties only—the King and the National Guard.

“The King is most of all to blame, for having engaged in a conflict, and, when victory was within his grasp, allowing it to slip from his hands from want of resolution at the decisive moment. It is too soon after these great and astonishing events to be able to form a decided opinion on the whole details connected with them; but the concurring statements from all parties go to prove that on the $1 day the troops of the line were perfectly steady; and history will record that the heroic firmness of the Municipal Guard has rivalled all that is most honourable in French history. The military force was immense; not less than eighty thousand men, backed by strong forts, and amply provided with all the muniments of war. Their success on the first day was unbroken; they had carried above a hundred barricades, and were in possession of all the military positions of the capital. But at this moment the indecision of the King ruined everything. Age seems to have extinguished the vigour for which he was once so celebrated. He shrank from a contest with the insurgents, paralysed the troops by orders not to fire on the people, and openly receded before the insurgent populace, by abandoning Guizot and the firm policy which he himself had adopted, and striving to conciliate revolution by the mezzo termini of Count Molé, and a more liberal cabinet. It is with retreat in the presence of an insurrection, as in the case of an invading army; the first move towards the rear is a certain step to ruin. The moment it was seen that the King was giving way, all was paralysed, because all foresaw to which side the victory would incline. The soldiers threw away their muskets, the officers broke their swords, and the vast array, equal to the army which fought at Austerlitz, was dissolved like a rope of sand. Louis Philippe fell without either the intrepidity of the royal martyr in 1793, or the dignity of the elder house of Bourbon in 1830; and if it be true, as is generally said, that the Queen urged the King to mount on horseback and die as ‘became a King’ in front of the Tuileries, and he declined, preferring to escape in disguise to this country, history must record, with shame, that royalty perished in France without the virtues it was entitled to expect in the meanest of its supporters.

“The second cause which appears to have occasioned the overthrow of the monarchy in France, is the general, it may be said universal, defection of the National Guard. It had been openly announced that 20,000 of that body were to line the Champs Elysées $1 on occasion of the banquet; it was perfectly known that that banquet was a mere pretext for getting the forces of this Revolution together; and that the intention of the conspirators was to march in a body to the Tuileries after it was over, and compel the King to accede to their demands. When they were called out in the afternoon, they declined to act against the people, and by their treachery occasioned the defection of the troops of the line, and rendered farther resistance hopeless. They expected, by this declaration against the King of their choice, the monarch of the barricades, to secure a larger share in the government for themselves. They went to the Chamber of Deputies, intending to put up the Duchess of Orleans as Regent, and the Count of Paris as King, and to procure a large measure of reform for the constitution. What was the result? Why, that they were speedily supplanted by the rabble who followed in their footsteps, and who, deriding the eloquence of Odillon Barrot, and insensible to the heroism of the Duchess of Orleans, by force and violence expelled the majority of the deputies from their seats, seized on the President’s chair, and, amidst an unparalleled scene of riot and confusion, subverted the Orleans dynasty, proclaimed a Republic, and adjourned to the Hotel de Ville to name a Provisional Government!...

“Here, then, is the whole affair clearly revealed. It was the timidity of Government, and the defection of the National Guard, which ruined everything,—which paralysed the troops of the line, encouraged the insurgents, left the brave Municipal Guards to their fate, and caused the surrender of the Tuileries. And what has been the result of this shameful treachery on the part of the sworn defenders of order—this ‘$1’ prætorian guard of France? Nothing but this, that they have destroyed the monarchy, ruined industry, banished capital, rendered freedom hopeless, and made bankrupt the State! Such are the effects of armed men forgetting the first of social duties, that of fidelity to their oaths.”

Of the other papers contained in this volume, that on the subject of “the British Peerage,” written at a time when certain worthy fellows out of doors seemed to be determined that crown, mitre, and coronet should go together into one blazing bonfire, similar to that which lately received the state chair of Louis Philippe—and when certain peers within testified their respect for the dignity and privileges of their order, by doing their best to have it swamped by new creations—will especially challenge notice as a stately, dignified, and elaborate composition. Other essays, such as those on Crime and Transportation, Ireland, the Navigation Laws, and the Commercial Crisis of 1837, evince the care and attention which Mr Alison has bestowed on the leading topics of economy and government with which modern statesmen are inevitably compelled to grapple. Of their intrinsic merit we shall say nothing. They have often been cited as the ablest expositions of the peculiar views which they advocate, and all of them bear the impress of a mind earnest in its convictions, and thoroughly practical in its tendency. Mr Alison does not, like too many writers of the day, content himself with finding out what is faulty, or defective, or radically vicious in any branch of our social economy—he indulges in no vague and pointless declamation; but while he lays bare the wound, distinctly and emphatically inculcates the proper remedy. Many persons there are, of course, who will not subscribe to his doctrines, but we believe there are very few who will question the sincerity or deny the philanthropy of his views. And when it is considered that the three massive volumes, of which this is the first, were composed at intervals of short respite from the toil of an engrossing profession, and form but a small portion of the literary labours of the author, it may be questionable which is most to be wondered at—the largeness of his information, or the unwearied energy of his mind.

These certainly are not the columns in which this work of Mr Alison can be discussed with absolute impartiality, nor is the writer of this article free from a pardonable bias. Where affection, veneration, and gratitude for many wholesome lessons, conveyed with a kindliness which has made those lessons still more valuable, are warm at the heart, criticism is impossible; and it would be absurd and false to feign that we approach this book with any idea of fulfilling the critical function. Yet thus much may we be allowed to say, that for integrity of purpose, honesty of design, clear and unvarying adherence to principles, laboriously sought for and conscientiously adopted—for the virtue and total absence of selfishness which distinguish the patriot, and for the grace and accomplishment which adorn the scholar and the gentleman, it would be difficult to find within the four seas that encircle Britain a superior to the author of these Essays, and of the famous History of Europe.

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