the high road to ruin. It is condemned to the chastisement of heaven."Pp. 394-399.

"The more that the progress of the revolution produced of inevitable concessions to the passion for democracy, the more indispensable it was, that the press should have taken an elevated ground, to withstand the torrent. The reverse has been the case. Thence have flowed that perpetual degradation of its tendency, that emulation in calumny and detraction, that obstinate support of doctrines subversive of society, those appeals to the passions of the multitude, that ostentatious display of the logic of brickbats, that indignation at every historic name, those assaults on everything that is dignified or hereditary, on the throne, the peerage, property itself. Deplorable corruption! permanent corruption of talent, virtue, and genius! total abandonment of its glorious mission to enlighten, glorify, and defend its country."-P. 402.

The radical vice in the social system of France, our author considers as consisting in the overwhelming influence given to that class a little above the lowest-in other words, the £10 householders-in whom, with unerring accuracy, the revolutionists of England persuaded an ignorant and reckless Administration to centre all the political power of this country. Listen to the practical working of this system in France, as detailed by this liberal constitutional writer :

"The direct tendency of all our laws is to deliver over the empire to one single class in society: that class, elevated just above the lowest, which has enough of independence and education to be inspired with the desire to centre in itself all the powers of the state, but too little to wield them with advantage. This class forms the link between the upper ranks of the Tiers Etat and the decided Anarchists; and it is actuated by passions, the reverse of those of both the regions on which it borders. Sufficiently near to the latter to be not more disturbed than it at the work of destruction, it is sufficiently close to the former to be filled with animosity at its prosperity : it participates in the envy of the one, and the pride of the other a fatal union, which corrupts the mediocrity of the intelligence of its members, their ignorance of the affairs of state, the narrow and partial view they take of every subject. Thence has sprung that jealous and turbulent spirit which can do nothing but destroy: which assails with its wrath everything that society respects, the throne equally with the altar, power equally with distinction: a spirit equally fatal to all above and all below itself, which dries up all the sources of prosperity, by overturning the principles, the feelings, which form the counterpoise of society; and which a Divine legislator has engraven on the most ancient tables of the law, the human conscience.

"Thus have we gone on for eighteen months, accumulating the principles of destruction: the more that we have need of public wisdom for support, the more have we receded from it. The evil will become irreparable, if the spirit of disorder, which has overthrown our authorities, and passed from the authorities into the laws, should find a general entrance into the minds of the people.-There lies the incurable wound of France."-P. 405.

It was in the face of such testimony to the tremendous effect of rousing democratic ambition in the lowest of the middle class of society; it was within sight of an empire

VOL. I.

I

wasting away under their withering influence, that the Reformers roused them here to a state of perfect fury, by the prospect of acquiring, through the £10 clause, an irresistible preponderance in the state.

Is the literature of France in such a state as to justify a hope, that a better day is likely to dawn on its democratic society? Let us hear what the friend of constitutional freedom says on that vital subject

"There is a moral anarchy far worse than that of society, which saps even the foundations of order, which renders it hardly consistent even with despotism utterly inconsistent with freedom. We have seen political principles and belief often sustain the state, in default of laws and institutions; but to what are we to look for a remedy to the disorder which has its seat in the heart?

"Were literature to be regarded as the expression of thought, there is not a hope left for France. Literary talent now shows itself stained with every kind of corruption. It makes it a rule and a sport to attack every sentiment and interest of which society is composed. One would imagine that its object is to restore to French literature all the vices with which it was disgraced in the last century. If, on the faith of daily eulogiums, you go into a theatre, you see scenes represented where the dignity of one sex is as much outraged as the modesty of the other. Everywhere the same spectacles await you. Obscene romances are the model on which they are all formed. The muse now labours at what is indecent, as formerly it did at what would melt the heart. How unhappy the young men, who think they ape the elegance of riches by adopting its vices,-who deem themselves original, merely because they are retrograding, and who mistake the novels of Crebillon and Voltaire for original genius! It would seem that these shameful excesses are the inevitable attendant of ancient civilisation. How often have I myself written, that that degrading literature of the last century flowed from the corruptions of an absolute monarchy! And now Liberty, as if to turn into derision my worship at its altars, has taken for its model the school of Louis XV., and improved upon its infamous inspirations."-Pp. 408-9.

This revolutionary torrent has broken into every department; it has invaded the opinions of the thoughtful, the manners of the active, the morals of the young, and the sanctity of families. The fatal doctrine of a general division of property is spreading to an extent hardly conceivable in a state possessing much property and great individual ability.

"When the spirit of disorder has thus taken possession of all imaginations, when the revolutionary herald knocks with redoubled strokes, not only at all the institutions, but at all the doctrines and opinions which hold together the fabric of society, can property, the corner-stone of the edifice, be respected? Let us not flatter ourselves with the hope that it can.

"Property has already ceased to be the main pillar of the social constitution. It is treated as conquered by the laws, as an enemy by the politicians. Should the present system continue, it will soon become a slave."-P. 416. "The proof that the revolutionary torrent has overwhelmed us, and that we are about to retrograde for several centuries, is, that the principle of con

fiscation is maintained without intermission, without exciting any horror. An able young man, M. Lherminier, has lately advanced the doctrine, that society is entitled to dispossess the minority, to make way for the majority. Well, a learned professor of the law has advanced this doctrine, and France hears it without surprise. Nay, farther, we have a public worship, a hierarchy, missionaries-in fine, a whole corps of militia-who go from town to town, incessantly preaching to the people the necessity of overturning the hereditary descent of property; and that scandalous offence is openly tolerated. The state permits a furious association to be formed in its very bosom, to divide the property of others! Yet more-French society assists at that systematic destruction of its last pillar, as it would at a public game. Lyons even cannot rouse them to their danger,-the conflagration of the second city in the empire fails to illuminate the public thought."-Pp. 418-19.

In the midst of this universal fusion of public thought in the revolutionary crucible, the sway of religion, of private morality, and of parental authority, could not long be expected to survive. They have accordingly all given way.

"Possibly the revolutionary worship has come in place of the service of the altar, which has been destroyed. Every religious tie has long been extinguished amongst us. But now, even the semblance of religion has been abandoned. A Chamber which boasts of having established freedom, has seriously entertained a project for the abolition of the Sunday, and all religious festivals. That would be the most complete of all reactions, for it would at once confound all ages, and exterminate every chance of salvation.

"Such is the estimation in which religion is now held, that every one hastens to clear himself from the odious aspersion of being in the least degree attached to it. The representatives in Parliament, if by any chance an allusion is made to the clergy, burst out into laughter or sneer; they think they can govern a people, while they are incessantly outraging their worship,that cradle of modern civilisation. If a journal accidentally mentions that a regiment has attended mass, all the generals in the kingdom hasten to repel the calumny, to protest by all that is sacred their entire innocence, to swear that the barricades have taught them to forget the lessons of Napoleon, to bow the knee at the name of God."-P. 420.

"In this universal struggle for disorganisation, the fatal ardour gains every character. The contest is, who shall demolish most effectually, and give the most vehement strokes to society. M. de Shonen sees well that less good was done by his courage in resisting the attacks on the temples of religion, than evil by the weight lent by the proposition for a divorce, to the last establishment which was yet untouched, the sanctity of private life. To defend our public monuments, and overturn marriage, is a proceeding wholly for the benefit of anarchy; I say overturn it; for in the corrupted state of society where we live, to dissolve its indissolubility, is to strike it in its very essence."-Pp. 412, 413.

"The recent revolution has exhibited a spectacle which was wanting in that of 1789. Robespierre, in the Constituent Assembly, proposed the abolition of the punishment of death: no one then thought of death, none dreamed of bathing themselves in blood. Now, the case is widely different -We have arrived at terror at one leap. It is while knowing it, while viewing it full in the face, that it is seriously recommended. We have, or we affect, the unhappy passion for blood. The speeches of Robespierre and St Just are printed and sold for a few sous, leaving out only his speech in favour of the Supreme Being. All this goes on in peaceable times, when we are all as yet in cold blood, without the double excuse of terror and passion which palliated their enormities.-Poetry has taken the same line. The

Constitutionnel, while publishing their revolting panegyrics on blood, expresses no horror at this tendency. Incessantly we are told the reign of blood cannot be renewed; but our days have done more than renewing it, they have removed all horror at it."-P. 421.

On the dissolution of the hereditary Peerage, the great conquest of the Revolution, the following striking observations are made :

"The democrats, in speaking of the destruction of the hereditary Peerage, imagine that they have only sacrificed an institution. There never was a more grievous mistake; they have destroyed a principle. They have thrown into the gulf the sole conservative principle that the Revolution had left; the sole stone in the edifice which recalls the past; the sole force in the constitution which subsists of itself. By that great stroke, France has violently detached itself from the European continent, violently thrown itself beyond the Atlantic, violently married itself to the virgin soil of Pennsylvania, whither we bring an ancient, discontented, and divided society; a population overflowing, which, having no deserts to expand over, must recoil upon itself, and tear out its own entrails; in fine, the tastes of servitude, the appetite for domination and anarchy, anti-religious doctrines, anti-social passions, at which that young state which bore Washington, nourished freedom, and believes in God, would stand aghast.

"The middle rank has this evil inherent in its composition; placed on the confines of physical struggle, the intervention of force does not surprise it; it submits to its tyranny without revolt. Has it defended France, for the last sixteen months, from the leaden sceptre which has so cruelly weighed upon her destinies? What a spectacle was exhibited when the Chamber of Peers, resplendent with talent, with virtues, with recollections dear to France, by its conscientious votes for so many years, was forced to vote against its conviction; forced, I say, to bend its powerful head before a brutal, jealous, and ignorant multitude. The class which could command such a sacrifice, enforce such a national humiliation, is incapable of governing France; and will never preserve the empire, but suffer it to fall into the jaws of the pitiless enemy, who is ever ready to devour it."-P. 487.

"No government is possible, where the mortal antipathy exists which in France alienates the lower classes, in possession of power, from the ascendant of education or fortune. Can any one believe that power will ultimately remain in the hands of that intermediate class which is detached from the interests of property, without being allied to the multitude? Is it not evident that its natural tendency is to separate itself daily more and more, from the first class, to unite itself to the second? Community of hatred will occasion unity of exertion; and the more that the abyss is enlarged which separates the present depositaries of power from its natural possessors, the more will the masses enter into a share, and, finally, into the exclusive possession of power. Thence things will proceed from demolition to demolition, from disorder to disorder, by an inevitable progress, and must at length end in that anti-social state, the rule of the multitude.

The moment that the opinion of the dominant classes disregards established interests, that it takes a pleasure in violating those august principles which constitute the soul of society, we see an abyss begin to open; the earth quakes beneath our feet-the community is shaken to its very centre. Then begins a profound and universal sense of suffering. Capital disappears; talents retreat become irritated or corrupted. The national genius becomes intoxicated-precipitates itself into every species of disorder, and bears aloft, not as a light, but a torch of conflagration, its useless flame. The whole nation is seized with disquietude and sickness, as on the eve of those con

vulsions which shake the earth, and trouble at once the air, the earth, and the sea. Every one seeks the causes of this extraordinary state; it is to be found in one alone the social state is trembling to its foundations.

"This is precisely the state we have been in for sixteen months. To conceal it is impossible. What is required is, to endeavour to remedy its disorders. France is well aware that it would be happy if it had only lost a fifth of its immense capital during that period. Every individual in the kingdom has lost a large portion of his income. And yet the revolution of 1830 was the most rapid and the least bloody recorded in history. If we look nearer, we shall discover that every one of us is less secure of his property than he was before that moral earthquake. Every one is less secure of his head, though the Reign of Death has not yet commenced; and in that universal feeling of insecurity is to be found the source of the universal suffering."-II. 491.

But we must conclude, however reluctantly, these copious extracts. Were we to translate every passage which is striking in itself, which bears in the most extraordinary way on the present crisis in this country, we should transcribe the whole of this eloquent and profound disqui

sition.

If it had been written in this country, it would have been set down as the work of some furious anti-reformer; of some violent Tory, blind to the progress of events-insensible to the change of society. It is the work, however, of no anti-reformer, but of a liberal Parisian historian, a decided supporter, at the time, of the Revolution of July; a powerful opponent of the Bourbons, for fifteen years, in the Chamber of Deputies. He is commended in the highest terms by Lady Morgan, as one of the rising lights of the age; * and that stamps his character as a leader of the Liberal party. But he has become enlightened, as all the world will be, to the real tendency of the revolutionary spirit, by that most certain of all preceptors--the suffering it has occasioned.

Salvandy, like all the Liberal party in France, while he clearly perceives the deplorable state to which their revolution has brought them, and the fatal tendency of the democratic spirit which the triumph of July has so strongly developed, is unable to discover the remote cause of the disasters which overwhelm them. At this distance from the scene of action, we can clearly discern it. " Ephraim," says the Scripture," is joined to his idols: let him alone." In these words is to be found the secret of the universal suffering, the deplorable condition, the merciless tyranny, which

* France, ii. 342.