No More Learning

He denies the accuracy of our counting, and, by
reckoning all the Scotch and Irish peers as peers of the United Kingdom,
certainly makes very different numbers from those which we gave. A
member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom might have been expected,
we think, to know better what a peer of the United Kingdom is.

By taking the Scotch and Irish peers, Mr Sadler has altered the average.
But it is considerably higher than the average fecundity of England,
and still, therefore, constitutes an unanswerable argument against his
theory.

The shifts to which, in this difficulty, he has recourse, are
exceedingly diverting. "The average fecundity of the marriages of
peers," said we, "is higher by one-fifth than the average fecundity of
marriages throughout the kingdom. "

"Where, or by whom did the Reviewer find it supposed," answers Mr
Sadler, "that the registered baptisms expressed the full fecundity of
the marriages of England? "

Assuredly, if the registers of England are so defective as to explain
the difference which, on our calculation, exists between the fecundity
of the peers and the fecundity of the people, no argument against Mr
Sadler's theory can be drawn from that difference. But what becomes
of all the other arguments which Mr Sadler has founded on these very
registers? Above all, what becomes of his comparison between the
censuses of England and France? In the pamphlet before us, he dwells
with great complacency on a coincidence which seems to him to support
his theory, and which to us seems, of itself, sufficient to overthrow
it.

"In my table of the population of France in the forty-four departments
in which there are from one to two hectares to each inhabitant, the
fecundity of 100 marriages, calculated on the average of the results of
the three computations relating to different periods given in my table,
is 406 7/10. In the twenty-two counties of England in which there is
from one to two hectares to each inhabitant, or from 129 to 259 on the
square mile,--beginning, therefore, with Huntingdonshire, and ending
with Worcestershire,--the whole number of marriages during ten years
will be found to amount to 379,624, and the whole number of the births
during the same term to 1,545,549--or 407 1/10 births to 100 marriages!
A difference of one in one thousand only, compared with the French
proportion! "

Does not Mr Sadler see that, if the registers of England, which are
notoriously very defective, give a result exactly corresponding almost
to an unit with that obtained from the registers of France, which are
notoriously very full and accurate, this proves the very reverse of what
he employs it to prove? The correspondence of the registers proves that
there is no correspondence in the facts. In order to raise the average
fecundity of England even to the level of the average fecundity of
the peers of the three kingdoms, which is 3. 81 to a marriage, it is
necessary to add nearly six per cent. to the number of births given in
the English registers. But, if this addition be made, we shall have,
in the counties of England, from Huntingdonshire to Worcestershire
inclusive, 4. 30 births to a marriage or thereabouts: and the boasted
coincidence between the phenomena of propagation in France and
England disappears at once. This is a curious specimen of Mr Sadler's
proficiency in the art of making excuses. In the same pamphlet he
reasons as if the same registers were accurate to one in a thousand, and
as if they were wrong at the very least by one in eighteen.

He tries to show that we have not taken a fair criterion of the
fecundity of the peers. We are not quite sure that we understand his
reasoning on this subject. The order of his observations is more than
usually confused, and the cloud of words more than usually thick. We
will give the argument on which he seems to lay most stress in his own
words:--

"But I shall first notice a far more obvious and important blunder
into which the Reviewer has fallen; or into which, I rather fear, he
knowingly wishes to precipitate his readers, since I have distinctly
pointed out what ought to have preserved him from it in the very chapter
he is criticising and contradicting. It is this:--he has entirely
omitted 'counting' the sterile marriages of all those peerages which
have become extinct during the very period his counting embraces. He
counts, for instance, Earl Fitzwilliam, his marriages, and heir; but has
he not omitted to enumerate the marriages of those branches of the same
noble house, which have become extinct since that venerable individual
possessed his title? He talks of my having appealed merely to the
extinction of peerages in my argument; but, on his plan of computation,
extinctions are perpetually and wholly lost sight of. In computing
the average prolificness of the marriages of the nobles, he positively
counts from a select class of them only, one from which the unprolific
are constantly weeded, and regularly disappear; and he thus comes to the
conclusion, that the peers are 'an eminently prolific class! ' Just
as though a farmer should compute the rate of increase; not from the
quantity of seed sown, but from that part of it only which comes to
perfection, entirely omitting all which had failed to spring up or come
to maturity. Upon this principle the most scanty crop ever obtained, in
which the husbandman should fail to receive 'seed again,' as the phrase
is, might be so 'counted' as to appear 'eminently prolific' indeed. "

If we understand this passage rightly, it decisively proves that Mr
Sadler is incompetent to perform even the lowest offices of statistical
research. What shadow of reason is there to believe that the peers who
were alive in the year 1828 differed as to their prolificness from any
other equally numerous set of peers taken at random? In what sense were
the peers who were alive in 1828 analogous to that part of the seed
which comes to perfection? Did we entirely omit all that failed? On the
contrary, we counted the sterile as well as the fruitful marriages of
all the peers of the United Kingdom living at one time. In what way were
the peers who were alive in 1828 a select class? In what way were the
sterile weeded from among them? Did every peer who had been married
without having issue die in 1827? What shadow of reason is there to
suppose that there was not the ordinary proportion of barren marriages
among the marriages contracted by the noblemen whose names are in
Debrett's last edition? But we ought, says Mr Sadler, to have counted
all the sterile marriages of all the peers "whose titles had become
extinct during the period which our counting embraced;" that is to say,
since the earliest marriage contracted by any peer living in 1828. Was
such a proposition ever heard of before? Surely we were bound to do no
such thing, unless at the same time we had counted also the children
born from all the fruitful marriages contracted by peers during the same
period. Mr Sadler would have us divide the number of children born to
peers living in 1828, not by the number of marriages which those peers
contracted, but by the number of marriages which those peers contracted
added to a crowd of marriages selected, on account of their sterility,
from among the noble marriages which have taken place during the last
fifty years. Is this the way to obtain fair averages? We might as well
require that all the noble marriages which during the last fifty years
have produced ten children apiece should be added to those of the peers
living in 1828. The proper way to ascertain whether a set of people be
prolific or sterile is, not to take marriages selected from the
mass either on account of their fruitfulness or on account of their
sterility, but to take a collection of marriages which there is no
reason to think either more or less fruitful than others. What reason is
there to think that the marriages contracted by the peers who were alive
in 1828 were more fruitful than those contracted by the peers who were
alive in 1800 or in 1750?

We will add another passage from Mr Sadler's pamphlet on this subject.
We attributed the extinction of peerages partly to the fact that those
honours are for the most part limited to heirs male.

"This is a discovery indeed! Peeresses 'eminently prolific,' do not,
as Macbeth conjured his spouse, 'bring forth men-children only;' they
actually produce daughters as well as sons! ! Why, does not the Reviewer
see, that so long as the rule of nature, which proportions the sexes so
accurately to each other, continues to exist, a tendency to a diminution
in one sex proves, as certainly as the demonstration of any mathematical
problem, a tendency to a diminution in both; but to talk of 'eminently
prolific' peeresses, and still maintain that the rapid extinction in
peerages is owing to their not bearing male children exclusively, is
arrant nonsense. "

Now, if there be any proposition on the face of the earth which we
should not have expected to hear characterised as arrant nonsense, it
is this,--that an honour limited to males alone is more likely to
become extinct than an honour which, like the crown of England, descends
indifferently to sons and daughters. We have heard, nay, we actually
know families, in which, much as Mr Sadler may marvel at it, there are
daughters and no sons. Nay, we know many such families. We are as much
inclined as Mr Sadler to trace the benevolent and wise arrangements of
Providence in the physical world, when once we are satisfied as to
the facts on which we proceed. And we have always considered it as
an arrangement deserving of the highest admiration, that, though in
families the number of males and females differs widely, yet in great
collections of human beings the disparity almost disappears. The chance
undoubtedly is, that in a thousand marriages the number of daughters
will not very much exceed the number of sons. But the chance also is,
that several of those marriages will produce daughters, and daughters
only. In every generation of the peerage there are several such cases.
When a peer whose title is limited to male heirs dies, leaving
only daughters, his peerage must expire, unless he have, not only
a collateral heir, but a collateral heir descended through an
uninterrupted line of males from the first possessor of the honour. If
the deceased peer was the first nobleman of his family, then, by the
supposition, his peerage will become extinct. If he was the second, it
will become extinct, unless he leaves a brother or a brother's son. If
the second peer had a brother, the first peer must have had at least two
sons; and this is more than the average number of sons to a marriage in
England. When, therefore, it is considered how many peerages are in the
first and second generation, it will not appear strange that extinctions
should frequently take place. There are peerages which descend to
females as well as males. But, in such cases, if a peer dies, leaving
only daughters, the very fecundity of the marriage is a cause of the
extinction of the peerage. If there were only one daughter, the honour
would descend. If there are several, it falls into abeyance.

But it is needless to multiply words in a case so clear; and, indeed it
is needless to say anything more about Mr Sadler's book. We have, if we
do not deceive ourselves, completely exposed the calculations on which
his theory rests; and we do not think that we should either amuse our
readers or serve the cause of science if we were to rebut in succession
a series of futile charges brought in the most angry spirit against
ourselves; ignorant imputations of ignorance, and unfair complaints of
unfairness,--conveyed in long, dreary, declamations, so prolix that we
cannot find space to quote them, and so confused that we cannot venture
to abridge them.

There is much indeed in this foolish pamphlet to laugh at, from the
motto in the first page down to some wisdom about cows in the last. One
part of it indeed is solemn enough, we mean a certain jeu d'esprit of
Mr Sadler's touching a tract of Dr Arbuthnot's. This is indeed "very
tragical mirth," as Peter Quince's playbill has it; and we would not
advise any person who reads for amusement to venture on it as long as he
can procure a volume of the Statutes at Large. This, however, to do
Mr Sadler justice, is an exception. His witticisms, and his tables of
figures, constitute the only parts of his work which can be perused with
perfect gravity. His blunders are diverting, his excuses exquisitely
comic. But his anger is the most grotesque exhibition that we ever saw.
He foams at the mouth with the love of truth, and vindicates the Divine
benevolence with a most edifying heartiness of hatred. On this subject
we will give him one word of parting advice. If he raves in this way to
ease his mind, or because he thinks that he does himself credit by it,
or from a sense of religious duty, far be it from us to interfere. His
peace, his reputation, and his religion are his own concern; and he,
like the nobleman to whom his treatise is dedicated, has a right to do
what he will with his own. But, if he has adopted his abusive style from
a notion that it would hurt our feelings, we must inform him that he is
altogether mistaken; and that he would do well in future to give us his
arguments, if he has any, and to keep his anger for those who fear it.

*****




MIRABEAU. (July 1832. )

"Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, et sur les deux Premieres
Assemblees Legislatives". Par Etienne Dumont, de Geneve:
ouvrage posthume publie par M. J. L. Duval, Membre du Conseil
Representatif du Canton du Geneve. 8vo. Paris: 1832.

This is a very amusing and a very instructive book: but even if it were
less amusing and less instructive, it would still be interesting as a
relic of a wise and virtuous man. M. Dumont was one of those persons,
the care of whose fame belongs in an especial manner to mankind. For he
was one of those persons who have, for the sake of mankind, neglected
the care of their own fame. In his walk through life there was no
obtrusiveness, no pushing, no elbowing, none of the little arts which
bring forward little men. With every right to the head of the board, he
took the lowest room, and well deserved to be greeted with--Friend, go
up higher. Though no man was more capable of achieving for himself
a separate and independent renown, he attached himself to others; he
laboured to raise their fame; he was content to receive as his share of
the reward the mere overflowings which redounded from the full measure
of their glory. Not that he was of a servile and idolatrous habit of
mind:--not that he was one of the tribe of Boswells,--those literary
Gibeonites, born to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the higher
intellectual castes. Possessed of talents and acquirements which made
him great, he wished only to be useful. In the prime of manhood, at the
very time of life at which ambitious men are most ambitious, he was not
solicitous to proclaim that he furnished information, arguments, and
eloquence to Mirabeau. In his later years he was perfectly willing that
his renown should merge in that of Mr Bentham.

The services which M. Dumont has rendered to society can be fully
appreciated only by those who have studied Mr Bentham's works, both in
their rude and in their finished state. The difference both for show and
for use is as great as the difference between a lump of golden ore and a
rouleau of sovereigns fresh from the mint. Of Mr Bentham we would at all
times speak with the reverence which is due to a great original
thinker, and to a sincere and ardent friend of the human race. If a
few weaknesses were mingled with his eminent virtues,--if a few
errors insinuated themselves among the many valuable truths which he
taught,--this is assuredly no time for noticing those weaknesses or
those errors in an unkind or sarcastic spirit. A great man has gone from
among us, full of years, of good works, and of deserved honours. In some
of the highest departments in which the human intellect can exert
itself he has not left his equal or his second behind him. From his
contemporaries he has had, according to the usual lot, more or less than
justice. He has had blind flatterers and blind detractors--flatterers
who could see nothing but perfection in his style, detractors who
could see nothing but nonsense in his matter. He will now have judges.
Posterity will pronounce its calm and impartial decision; and that
decision will, we firmly believe, place in the same rank with Galileo,
and with Locke, the man who found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it
a science. Never was there a literary partnership so fortunate as that
of Mr Bentham and M. Dumont. The raw material which Mr Bentham furnished
was most precious; but it was unmarketable. He was, assuredly, at once a
great logician and a great rhetorician. But the effect of his logic was
injured by a vicious arrangement, and the effect of his rhetoric by a
vicious style. His mind was vigorous, comprehensive, subtile, fertile of
arguments, fertile of illustrations. But he spoke in an unknown tongue;
and, that the congregation might be edified, it was necessary that some
brother having the gift of interpretation should expound the invaluable
jargon. His oracles were of high import; but they were traced on
leaves and flung loose to the wind. So negligent was he of the arts of
selection, distribution, and compression, that to persons who formed
their judgment of him from his works in their undigested state he seemed
to be the least systematic of all philosophers. The truth is, that
his opinions formed a system, which, whether sound or unsound, is more
exact, more entire, and more consistent with itself than any other. Yet
to superficial readers of his works in their original form, and indeed
to all readers of those works who did not bring great industry and great
acuteness to the study, he seemed to be a man of a quick and ingenious
but ill-regulated mind,--who saw truth only by glimpses,--who threw
out many striking hints, but who had never thought of combining his
doctrines in one harmonious whole.

M. Dumont was admirably qualified to supply what was wanting in Mr
Bentham. In the qualities in which the French writers surpass those
of all other nations--neatness, clearness, precision, condensation--he
surpassed all French writers. If M. Dumont had never been born, Mr
Bentham would still have been a very great man. But he would have been
great to himself alone. The fertility of his mind would have resembled
the fertility of those vast American wildernesses in which blossoms and
decays a rich but unprofitable vegetation, "wherewith the reaper filleth
not his hand, neither he that bindeth up the sheaves his bosom. " It
would have been with his discoveries as it has been with the "Century
of Inventions. " His speculations on laws would have been of no more
practical use than Lord Worcester's speculations on steam-engines. Some
generations hence, perhaps, when legislation had found its Watt, an
antiquarian might have published to the world the curious fact that, in
the reign of George the Third, there had been a man called Bentham, who
had given hints of many discoveries made since his time, and who had
really, for his age, taken a most philosophical view of the principles
of jurisprudence.

Many persons have attempted to interpret between this powerful mind and
the public. But, in our opinion, M. Dumont alone has succeeded. It is
remarkable that, in foreign countries, where Mr Bentham's works are
known solely through the medium of the French version, his merit is
almost universally acknowledged. Even those who are most decidedly
opposed to his political opinions--the very chiefs of the Holy
Alliance--have publicly testified their respect for him. In England,
on the contrary, many persons who certainly entertained no prejudice
against him on political grounds were long in the habit of mentioning
him contemptuously. Indeed, what was said of Bacon's philosophy may be
said of Bentham's. It was in little repute among us, till judgments in
its favour came from beyond sea, and convinced us, to our shame, that we
had been abusing and laughing at one of the greatest men of the age.

M. Dumont might easily have found employments more gratifying to
personal vanity than that of arranging works not his own. But he could
have found no employment more useful or more truly honourable. The book
before us, hastily written as it is, contains abundant proof, if proof
were needed, that he did not become an editor because he wanted the
talents which would have made him eminent as a writer.

Persons who hold democratical opinions, and who have been accustomed
to consider M. Dumont as one of their party, have been surprised and
mortified to learn that he speaks with very little respect of the
French Revolution and of its authors. Some zealous Tories have naturally
expressed great satisfaction at finding their doctrines, in some
respects, confirmed by the testimony of an unwilling witness. The date
of the work, we think, explains everything. If it had been written ten
years earlier, or twenty years later, it would have been very different
from what it is. It was written, neither during the first excitement
of the Revolution, nor at that later period when the practical good
produced by the Revolution had become manifest to the most prejudiced
observers; but in those wretched times when the enthusiasm had abated,
and the solid advantages were not yet fully seen. It was written in the
year 1799,--a year in which the most sanguine friend of liberty might
well feel some misgivings as to the effects of what the National
Assembly had done. The evils which attend every great change had
been severely felt. The benefit was still to come. The price--a heavy
price--had been paid. The thing purchased had not yet been delivered.
Europe was swarming with French exiles. The fleets and armies of the
second coalition were victorious. Within France, the reign of terror was
over; but the reign of law had not commenced. There had been, indeed,
during three or four years, a written Constitution, by which rights
were defined and checks provided. But these rights had been repeatedly
violated; and those checks had proved utterly inefficient. The laws
which had been framed to secure the distinct authority of the
executive magistrates and of the legislative assemblies--the freedom of
election--the freedom of debate--the freedom of the press--the personal
freedom of citizens--were a dead letter. The ordinary mode in which
the Republic was governed was by coups d'etat. On one occasion, the
legislative councils were placed under military restraint by the
directors. Then, again, directors were deposed by the legislative
councils. Elections were set aside by the executive authority.
Ship-loads of writers and speakers were sent, without a legal trial,
to die of fever in Guiana. France, in short, was in that state in which
revolutions, effected by violence, almost always leave a nation. The
habit of obedience had been lost. The spell of prescription had been
broken. Those associations on which, far more than on any arguments
about property and order, the authority of magistrates rests, had
completely passed away. The power of the government consisted merely in
the physical force which it could bring to its support. Moral force it
had none. It was itself a government sprung from a recent convulsion.
Its own fundamental maxim was, that rebellion might be justifiable. Its
own existence proved that rebellion might be successful. The people
had been accustomed, during several years, to offer resistance to the
constituted authorities on the slightest provocation, and to see the
constituted authorities yield to that resistance. The whole political
world was "without form and void"--an incessant whirl of hostile atoms,
which, every moment, formed some new combination. The only man who could
fix the agitated elements of society in a stable form was following a
wild vision of glory and empire through the Syrian deserts. The time was
not yet come, when

"Confusion heard his voice; and wild uproar
Stood ruled:"

when, out of the chaos into which the old society had been resolved,
were to rise a new dynasty, a new peerage, a new church, and a new code.

The dying words of Madame Roland, "Oh, Liberty! how many crimes are
committed in thy name! " were at that time echoed by many of the
most upright and benevolent of mankind. M. Guizot has, in one of his
admirable pamphlets, happily and justly described M. Laine as "an honest
and liberal man, discouraged by the Revolution. " This description, at
the time when M. Dumont's Memoirs were written, would have applied to
almost every honest and liberal man in Europe; and would, beyond all
doubt, have applied to M. Dumont himself. To that fanatical worship
of the all-wise and all-good people, which had been common a few years
before, had succeeded an uneasy suspicion that the follies and vices
of the people would frustrate all attempts to serve them. The wild and
joyous exaltation, with which the meeting of the States-General and the
fall of the Bastile had been hailed, had passed away. In its place
was dejection, and a gloomy distrust of suspicious appearances. The
philosophers and philanthropists had reigned. And what had their reign
produced?
Philosophy had brought with it mummeries as absurd as any
which had been practised by the most superstitious zealot of the darkest
age. Philanthropy had brought with it crimes as horrible as the massacre
of Saint Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of the human mind. These
were the fruits of the great victory of reason over prejudice. France
had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that
a courtezan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted
her freedom against Louis, that she might bow down before Robespierre.
For a time men thought that all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth
century was folly; and that those hopes of great political and social
ameliorations which had been cherished by Voltaire and Condorcet were
utterly delusive.

Under the influence of these feelings, M. Dumont has gone so far as
to say that the writings of Mr Burke on the French Revolution, though
disfigured by exaggeration, and though containing doctrines subversive
of all public liberty, had been, on the whole, justified by events, and
had probably saved Europe from great disasters. That such a man as the
friend and fellow-labourer of Mr Bentham should have expressed such
an opinion is a circumstance which well deserves the consideration of
uncharitable politicians. These Memoirs have not convinced us that the
French Revolution was not a great blessing to mankind. But they have
convinced us that very great indulgence is due to those who, while the
Revolution was actually taking place, regarded it with unmixed aversion
and horror. We can perceive where their error lay. We can perceive that
the evil was temporary, and the good durable. But we cannot be sure
that, if our lot had been cast in their times, we should not, like them,
have been discouraged and disgusted--that we should not, like them,
have seen, in that great victory of the French people, only insanity and
crime.

It is curious to observe how some men are applauded, and others reviled,
for merely being what all their neighbours are,--for merely going
passively down the stream of events,--for merely representing the
opinions and passions of a whole generation. The friends of popular
government ordinarily speak with extreme severity of Mr Pitt, and with
respect and tenderness of Mr Canning. Yet the whole difference, we
suspect, consisted merely in this,--that Mr Pitt died in 1806, and Mr
Canning in 1827. During the years which were common to the public life
of both, Mr Canning was assuredly not a more liberal statesman than his
patron. The truth is that Mr Pitt began his political life at the end
of the American War, when the nation was suffering from the effects of
corruption. He closed it in the midst of the calamities produced by the
French Revolution, when the nation was still strongly impressed with the
horrors of anarchy. He changed, undoubtedly. In his youth he had brought
in reform bills. In his manhood he brought in gagging bills. But the
change, though lamentable, was, in our opinion, perfectly natural, and
might have been perfectly honest. He changed with the great body of his
countrymen. Mr Canning on the other hand, entered into public life when
Europe was in dread of the Jacobins. He closed his public life when
Europe was suffering under the tyranny of the Holy Alliance. He, too,
changed with the nation. As the crimes of the Jacobins had turned the
master into something very like a Tory, the events which followed the
Congress of Vienna turned the pupil into something very like a Whig.

So much are men the creatures of circumstances. We see that, if M.
Dumont had died in 1799, he would have died, to use the new cant word,
a decided "Conservative. " If Mr Pitt had lived in 1832, it is our firm
belief that he would have been a decided Reformer.

The judgment passed by M. Dumont in this work on the French Revolution
must be taken with considerable allowances. It resembles a criticism on
a play of which only the first act has been performed, or on a building
from which the scaffolding has not yet been taken down. We have no doubt
that, if the excellent author had revised these Memoirs thirty years
after the time at which they were written, he would have seen reason to
omit a few passages, and to add many qualifications and explanations.

He would not probably have been inclined to retract the censures, just,
though severe, which he has passed on the ignorance, the presumption,
and the pedantry, of the National Assembly. But he would have admitted
that, in spite of those faults, perhaps even by reason of those faults,
that Assembly had conferred inestimable benefits on mankind. It is clear
that, among the French of that day, political knowledge was absolutely
in its infancy. It would indeed have been strange if it had attained
maturity in the time of censors, of lettres-de-cachet, and of beds of
justice. The electors did not know how to elect. The representatives
did not know how to deliberate. M. Dumont taught the constituent body of
Montreuil how to perform their functions, and found them apt to learn.
He afterwards tried, in concert with Mirabeau, to instruct the National
Assembly in that admirable system of Parliamentary tactics which has
been long established in the English House of Commons, and which
has made the House of Commons, in spite of all the defects in its
composition, the best and fairest debating society in the world. But
these accomplished legislators, though quite as ignorant as the mob of
Montreuil, proved much less docile, and cried out that they did not
want to go to school to the English. Their debates consisted of endless
successions of trashy pamphlets, all beginning with something about the
original compact of society, man in the hunting state, and other such
foolery. They sometimes diversified and enlivened these long readings by
a little rioting. They bawled; they hooted; they shook their fists. They
kept no order among themselves. They were insulted with impunity by
the crowd which filled their galleries. They gave long and solemn
consideration to trifles. They hurried through the most important
resolutions with fearful expedition. They wasted months in quibbling
about the words of that false and childish Declaration of Rights on
which they professed to found their new constitution, and which was at
irreconcilable variance with every clause of that constitution. They
annihilated in a single night privileges, many of which partook of the
nature of property, and ought therefore to have been most delicately
handled.

They are called the Constituent Assembly. Never was a name less
appropriate. They were not constituent, but the very reverse of
constituent. They constituted nothing that stood or that deserved to
last. They had not, and they could not possibly have, the information
or the habits of mind which are necessary for the framing of that most
exquisite of all machines--a government. The metaphysical cant with
which they prefaced their constitution has long been the scoff of
all parties. Their constitution itself,--that constitution which
they described as absolutely perfect, and to which they predicted
immortality,--disappeared in a few months, and left no trace behind it.
They were great only in the work of destruction.

The glory of the National Assembly is this, that they were in truth,
what Mr Burke called them in austere irony, the ablest architects of
ruin that ever the world saw. They were utterly incompetent to perform
any work which required a discriminating eye and a skilful hand. But the
work which was then to be done was a work of devastation. They had
to deal with abuses so horrible and so deeply rooted that the highest
political wisdom could scarcely have produced greater good to mankind
than was produced by their fierce and senseless temerity. Demolition
is undoubtedly a vulgar task; the highest glory of the statesman is to
construct. But there is a time for everything,--a time to set up, and a
time to pull down. The talents of revolutionary leaders and those of the
legislator have equally their use and their season. It is the
natural, the almost universal, law, that the age of insurrections and
proscriptions shall precede the age of good government, of temperate
liberty, and liberal order.

And how should it be otherwise? It is not in swaddling-bands that
we learn to walk. It is not in the dark that we learn to distinguish
colours. It is not under oppression that we learn how to use freedom.
The ordinary sophism by which misrule is defended is, when truly
stated, this:--The people must continue in slavery, because slavery has
generated in them all the vices of slaves. Because they are ignorant,
they must remain under a power which has made and which keeps them
ignorant. Because they have been made ferocious by misgovernment, they
must be misgoverned for ever. If the system under which they live were
so mild and liberal that under its operation they had become humane
and enlightened, it would be safe to venture on a change. But, as this
system has destroyed morality, and prevented the development of the
intellect,--as it has turned men, who might under different training
have formed a virtuous and happy community, into savage and stupid wild
beasts,--therefore it ought to last for ever. The English Revolution,
it is said, was truly a glorious Revolution. Practical evils were
redressed; no excesses were committed; no sweeping confiscations took
place; the authority of the laws was scarcely for a moment suspended;
the fullest and freest discussion was tolerated in Parliament; the
nation showed, by the calm and temperate manner in which it asserted its
liberty, that it was fit to enjoy liberty. The French Revolution was,
on the other hand, the most horrible event recorded in history,--all
madness and wickedness,--absurdity in theory, and atrocity in practice.
What folly and injustice in the revolutionary laws! What grotesque
affectation in the revolutionary ceremonies! What fanaticism! What
licentiousness! What cruelty! Anacharsis Clootz and Marat,--feasts of
the Supreme Being, and marriages of the Loire--trees of liberty, and
heads dancing on pikes--the whole forms a kind of infernal farce, made
up of everything ridiculous, and everything frightful. This it is to
give freedom to those who have neither wisdom nor virtue.

It is not only by bad men interested in the defence of abuses that
arguments like these have been urged against all schemes of political
improvement. Some of the highest and purest of human beings conceived
such scorn and aversion for the follies and crimes of the French
Revolution that they recanted, in the moment of triumph, those liberal
opinions to which they had clung in defiance of persecution. And, if
we inquire why it was that they began to doubt whether liberty were a
blessing, we shall find that it was only because events had proved, in
the clearest manner, that liberty is the parent of virtue and of order.
They ceased to abhor tyranny merely because it had been signally shown
that the effect of tyranny on the hearts and understandings of men is
more demoralising and more stupifying than had ever been imagined by
the most zealous friend of popular rights. The truth is, that a stronger
argument against the old monarchy of France may be drawn from the
noyades and the fusillades than from the Bastile and the Parc-aux-cerfs.
We believe it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a
revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovernment which has
produced that revolution. Why was the French Revolution so bloody and
destructive? Why was our revolution of 1641 comparatively mild? Why was
our revolution of 1688 milder still? Why was the American Revolution,
considered as an internal movement, the mildest of all? There is an
obvious and complete solution of the problem. The English under James
the First and Charles the First were less oppressed than the French
under Louis the Fifteenth and Louis the Sixteenth. The English were less
oppressed after the Restoration than before the great Rebellion. And
America under George the Third was less oppressed than England under
the Stuarts. The reaction was exactly proportioned to the pressure,--the
vengeance to the provocation.

When Mr Burke was reminded in his later years of the zeal which he had
displayed in the cause of the Americans, he vindicated himself from the
charge of inconsistency, by contrasting the wisdom and moderation of the
Colonial insurgents of 1776 with the fanaticism and wickedness of the
Jacobins of 1792. He was in fact bringing an argument a fortiori against
himself. The circumstances on which he rested his vindication fully
proved that the old government of France stood in far more need of
a complete change than the old government of America. The difference
between Washington and Robespierre,--the difference between Franklin and
Barere,--the difference between the destruction of a few barrels of
tea and the confiscation of thousands of square miles,--the difference
between the tarring and feathering of a tax-gatherer and the massacres
of September,--measure the difference between the government of America
under the rule of England and the government of France under the rule of
the Bourbons.

Louis the Sixteenth made great voluntary concessions to his people;
and they sent him to the scaffold. Charles the Tenth violated the
fundamental laws of the state, established a despotism, and butchered
his subjects for not submitting quietly to that despotism. He failed in
his wicked attempt. He was at the mercy of those whom he had injured.
The pavements of Paris were still heaped up in barricades;--the
hospitals were still full of the wounded;--the dead were still
unburied;--a thousand families were in mourning;--a hundred thousand
citizens were in arms. The crime was recent;--the life of the criminal
was in the hands of the sufferers;--and they touched not one hair of his
head. In the first revolution, victims were sent to death by scores for
the most trifling acts proved by the lowest testimony, before the most
partial tribunals. After the second revolution, those ministers who had
signed the ordinances, those ministers, whose guilt, as it was of the
foulest kind, was proved by the clearest evidence,--were punished only
with imprisonment. In the first revolution, property was attacked. In
the second, it was held sacred. Both revolutions, it is true, left
the public mind of France in an unsettled state. Both revolutions were
followed by insurrectionary movements. But, after the first revolution,
the insurgents were almost always stronger than the law; and, since the
second revolution, the law has invariably been found stronger than the
insurgents. There is, indeed, much in the present state of France which
may well excite the uneasiness of those who desire to see her free,
happy, powerful, and secure. Yet, if we compare the present state of
France with the state in which she was forty years ago, how vast a
change for the better has taken place! How little effect, for example,
during the first revolution, would the sentence of a judicial body
have produced on an armed and victorious partty! If, after the 10th of
August, or after the proscription of the Gironde, or after the 9th of
Thermidor, or after the carnage of Vendemiaire, or after the arrests of
Fructidor, any tribunal had decided against the conquerors in favour of
the conquered, with what contempt, with what derision, would its award
have been received! The judges would have lost their heads, or would
have been sent to die in some unwholesome colony. The fate of the victim
whom they had endeavoured to save would only have been made darker and
more hopeless by their interference. We have lately seen a signal proof
that, in France, the law is now stronger than the sword. We have seen a
government, in the very moment of triumph and revenge, submitting itself
to the authority of a court of law. A just and independent sentence
has been pronounced--a sentence worthy of the ancient renown of
that magistracy to which belong the noblest recollections of French
history--which, in an age of persecutors, produced L'Hopital,--which,
in an age of courtiers, produced D'Aguesseau,--which, in an age of
wickedness and madness, exhibited to mankind a pattern of every virtue
in the life and in the death of Malesherbes. The respectful manner in
which that sentence has been received is alone sufficient to show how
widely the French of this generation differ from their fathers. And how
is the difference to be explained? The race, the soil, the climate, are
the same. If those dull, honest Englishmen, who explain the events of
1793 and 1794 by saying that the French are naturally frivolous and
cruel, were in the right, why is the guillotine now standing idle?
Not surely for want of Carlists, of aristocrats, of people guilty of
incivism, of people suspected of being suspicious characters. Is not the
true explanation this, that the Frenchman of 1832 has been far better
governed than the Frenchman of 1789,--that his soul has never been
galled by the oppressive privileges of a separate caste,--that he has
been in some degree accustomed to discuss political questions, and
to perform political functions,--that he has lived for seventeen or
eighteen years under institutions which, however defective, have yet
been far superior to any institutions that had before existed in France?

As the second French Revolution has been far milder than the first,
so that great change which has just been effected in England has
been milder even than the second French Revolution,--milder than any
revolution recorded in history. Some orators have described the
reform of the House of Commons as a revolution. Others have denied the
propriety of the term. The question, though in seeming merely a
question of definition, suggests much curious and interesting matter for
reflection. If we look at the magnitude of the reform, it may well
be called a revolution. If we look at the means by which it has been
effected, it is merely an Act of Parliament, regularly brought in, read,
committed, and passed. In the whole history of England, there is no
prouder circumstance than this,--that a change, which could not, in any
other age, or in any other country, have been effected without physical
violence, should here have been effected by the force of reason,
and under the forms of law. The work of three civil wars has been
accomplished by three sessions of Parliament. An ancient and deeply
rooted system of abuses has been fiercely attacked and stubbornly
defended. It has fallen; and not one sword has been drawn; not one
estate has been confiscated; not one family has been forced to emigrate.
The bank has kept its credit. The funds have kept their price. Every man
has gone forth to his work and to his labour till the evening. During
the fiercest excitement of the contest,--during the first fortnight of
that immortal May,--there was not one moment at which any sanguinary
act committed on the person of any of the most unpopular men in England
would not have filled the country with horror and indignation.

And now that the victory is won, has it been abused? An immense mass
of power has been transferred from an oligarchy to the nation. Are
the members of the vanquished oligarchy insecure? Does the nation seem
disposed to play the tyrant? Are not those who, in any other state of
society, would have been visited with the severest vengeance of the
triumphant party,--would have been pining in dungeons, or flying to
foreign countries,--still enjoying their possessions and their honours,
still taking part as freely as ever in public affairs? Two years ago
they were dominant. They are now vanquished. Yet the whole people would
regard with horror any man who should dare to propose any vindictive
measure. So common is this feeling,--so much is it a matter of course
among us,--that many of our readers will scarcely understand what we see
to admire in it.

To what are we to attribute the unparalleled moderation and humanity
which the English people had displayed at this great conjuncture? The
answer is plain. This moderation, this humanity, are the fruits of a
hundred and fifty years of liberty. During many generations we have had
legislative assemblies which, however defective their constitution might
be, have always contained many members chosen by the people, and many
others eager to obtain the approbation of the people:--assemblies in
which perfect freedom of debate was allowed;--assemblies in which the
smallest minority had a fair hearing; assemblies in which abuses,
even when they were not redressed, were at least exposed. For many
generations we have had the trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Act, the
freedom of the press, the right of meeting to discuss public affairs,
the right of petitioning the legislature. A vast portion of the
population has long been accustomed to the exercise of political
functions, and has been thoroughly seasoned to political excitement.
In most other countries there is no middle course between absolute
submission and open rebellion. In England there has always been for
centuries a constitutional opposition. Thus our institutions had been so
good that they had educated us into a capacity for better institutions.
There is not a large town in the kingdom which does not contain better
materials for a legislature than all France could furnish in 1789. There
is not a spouting-club at any pot-house in London in which the rules of
debate are not better understood, and more strictly observed, than in
the Constituent Assembly. There is scarcely a Political Union which
could not frame in half an hour a declaration of rights superior to that
which occupied the collective wisdom of France for several months.

It would be impossible even to glance at all the causes of the French
Revolution within the limits to which we must confine ourselves. One
thing is clear. The government, the aristocracy, and the church were
rewarded after their works. They reaped that which they had sown. They
found the nation such as they had made it. That the people had become
possessed of irresistible power before they had attained the slightest
knowledge of the art of government--that practical questions of vast
moment were left to be solved by men to whom politics had been only
matter of theory--that a legislature was composed of persons who were
scarcely fit to compose a debating society--that the whole nation was
ready to lend an ear to any flatterer who appealed to its cupidity, to
its fears, or to its thirst for vengeance--all this was the effect of
misrule, obstinately continued in defiance of solemn warnings, and of
the visible signs of an approaching retribution.

Even while the monarchy seemed to be in its highest and most palmy
state, the causes of that great destruction had already begun to
operate. They may be distinctly traced even under the reign of Louis the
Fourteenth. That reign is the time to which the Ultra-Royalists refer
as the Golden Age of France. It was in truth one of those periods which
shine with an unnatural and delusive splendour, and which are rapidly
followed by gloom and decay.

Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to
have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not
a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the words, a great king.
Never was there so consummate a master of what our James the First would
have called kingcraft,--of all those arts which most advantageously
display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his defects.
Though his internal administration was bad,--though the military
triumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his reign were not
achieved by himself,--though his later years were crowded with defeats
and humiliations,--though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood
the Latin of his mass-book,--though he fell under the control of a
cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman,--he succeeded in passing
himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the
more extraordinary because he did not seclude himself from the public
gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen, and whose
very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no
man is a hero to his valet;--and all the world saw as much of Louis the
Fourteenth as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see
him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He then kneeled down
at the side of his bed, and said his prayer while the whole assembly
awaited the end in solemn silence--the ecclesiastics on their knees,
and the laymen with their hats before their faces. He walked about
his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. All
Versailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in
the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in
the morning. He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically
in the presence of all the grandes and petites entrees. Yet, though he
constantly exposed himself to the public gaze in situations in which it
is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity, he
to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe
and reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshippers can
be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially
subject during the season of courtship. It was an illusion which
affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall.
Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of
the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly of his
majestic stature.