by the Crown. The number of hereditary peers is limited as above; the peerage goes only in the male line; and upon each peer is perpetually entailed landed property to the amount of 30,000 livres. This partial creation of peers for life only, appears to remedy a very material defect in the English constitution. An hereditary legislative aristocracy not only adds to the dignity of the throne, and establishes that gradation of ranks which is perhaps absolutely necessary to its security, but it transacts a considerable share of the business of the nation, as well in the framing of laws as in the discharge of its juridical functions. But men of rank and wealth, though they are interested by a splendid debate, will not submit to the drudgery of business, much less can they be supposed conversant in all the niceties of law questions. It is therefore necessary to add to their number a certain portion of novi homines, men of established character for talents, and upon whom the previous tenor of their lives has necessarily impressed the habits of business. The evil of this is that the title descends to their posterity, without the talents and the utility that procured it; and the dignity of the peerage is impaired by the increase of its numbers: not only so, but as the peerage is the reward of military, as well as the carnest of civil services, and as the annuity commonly granted with it is only for one or two lives, we are in some danger of seeing a race of nobles wholly dependent upon the Crown for their support, and sacrificing their political freedom to their necessities. These evils are effectually, as it should seem, obviated by the creation of a certain* number of peers for life only; and the increase of power which it seems to give to the Crown, is very fairly counteracted by the exclusion of the episcopacy, and the limitation of the hereditary peerage. As the weight of business in the Upper House would principally

* The most useless and offensive tumour in the body politic, is the titled son of a great man whose merit has placed him in the peerage. The name, face, and perhaps the pension, remain. The dæmon is gone: or there is a slight flavour from the cask, but it is empty.

devolve upon the created peers, and as they would hardly arrive at that dignity without having previously acquired great civil or military reputation, the consideration they would enjoy would be little inferior to that of the other part of the aristocracy. When the noblesse of nature are fairly opposed to the noblesse created by political institutions, there is little fear that the former should suffer by the comparison.

If the clergy are suffered to sit in the Lower House, the exclusion of the episcopacy from the Upper House is of less importance: but, in some part of the legis lative bodies, the interests of the church ought unquestionably to be represented. This consideration M. Neckar wholly passes over.

*

Though this gentleman considers an hereditary monarchy as preferable in the abstract, he deems it impossible that such a government could be established in France, under her present circumstances, from the impracticability of establishing with it an hereditary aristocracy: because the property, and the force of opinion, which constituted their real power, is no more, and cannot be restored. Though we entirely agree with M. Neckar, that an hereditary aristocracy is a necessary part of temperate monarchy, and that the latter must exist upon the base of the former, or not at all-we are by no means converts to the very decided opinion he has expressed of the impossibility of restoring them both to France.

We are surprised that M. Neckar should attempt to build any strong argument upon the durability of opinions in nations that are about to undergo, or that have recently undergone, great political changes. What opinion was there in favour of a republic in 1780? Or against it in 1794? Or, what opinion is there now in favour of it in 1802? Is not the tide of opinions, at

*The parochial clergy are as much unrepresented in the English Parliament as they are in the parliament of Brobdignag. The bishops make just what laws they please, and the bearing they may have on the happiness of the clergy at large never for one moment comes into the serious consideration of Parliament.

this moment, in France, setting back with a strength equal to its flow? and is there not reason to presume, that, for some time to come, their ancient institutions may be adored with as much fury as they were destroyed? If opinion can revive in favour of kings (and M. Neckar allows it may), why not in favour of nobles? It is true their property is in the hands of other persons; and the whole of that species of proprietors will exert themselves to the utmost to prevent a restoration so pernicious to their interests. The obstacle is cer

tainly of a very formidable nature. But why this weight of property, so weak a weapon of defence to its ancient, should be deemed so irresistible in the hands of its present, possessors, we are at a loss to conceive; unless, indeed, it be supposed, that antiquity of possession diminishes the sense of right and the vigour of retention; and that men will struggle harder to keep what they have acquired only yesterday, than that which they have possessed, by themselves or their ancestors, for six

centuries.

In France, the inferiority of the price of revolutionary lands, to others, is immense. Of the former species, church land is considerably dearer than the forfeited estates of emigrants. Whence the difference of price, but from the estimated difference of security? Can any fact display, more strongly, the state of public opinion with regard to the probability of a future restoration of these estates, either partial or total? and can any circumstance facilitate the execution of such a project, more than the general belief that it will be executed? M. Neckar allows, that the impediments to the formation of a republic are very serious; but thinks they would all yield to the talents and activity of Bonaparte, if he were to dedicate himself to the superintendence of such a government during the period of its infancy: of course, therefore, he is to suppose the same power dedicated to the formation of an hereditary monarchy: or his parallel of difficulties is unjust, and his preference irrational. Bonaparte could represent the person of a monarch, during his life, as well as he could represent

the executive of a republic; and if he could overcome the turbulence of electors, to whom freedom was new, he could appease the jealousy that his generals would entertain of the returning nobles. Indeed, without such powerful intervention, this latter objection does not appear to us to be by any means insuperable. If the history of our own restoration were to be acted over again in France, and royalty and aristocracy brought back by the military successor of Bonaparte, it certainly could not be done without a very liberal distribution of favours among the great leaders of the ariny.

Jealousy of the executive is one feature of a republic; in consequence, that government is clogged with a multiplicity of safeguards and restrictions, which render it unfit for investigating complicated details, and managing extensive relations with vigour, consistency, and despatch. A republic, therefore, is better fitted for a little stage than a large one.

A love of equality is another very strong principle in a republic; therefore it does not tolerate hereditary honour or wealth; and all the effect produced upon the minds of the people by this factitious power is lost, and the government weakened: but, in proportion as the government is less able to command, the people should be more willing to obey; therefore a republic is better suited to a moral than an immoral people.

A people who have recently experienced great evils from the privileged orders and from monarchs, love republican forms so much, that the warmth of their inclination supplies, in some degree, the defect of their institutions. Immediately, therefore, upon the destruction of despotism, a republic may be preferable to a limited monarchy.

And yet, though narrowness of territory, purity of morals, and recent escape from despotism, appear to be the circumstances which most strongly recommend a republic, M. Neckar proposes it to the most numerous and the most profligate people in Europe, who are disgusted with the very name of liberty, from the incredible evils they have suffered in pursuit of it.

Whatever be the species of free government adopted by France, she can adopt none without the greatest peril. The miserable dilemma in which men living under bad governments are placed, is, that, without a radical revolution, they may never be able to gain liberty at all; and, with it, the attainment of liberty appears to be attended with almost insuperable difficulties. To call upon a nation, on a sudden, totally destitute of such knowledge and experience, to perform all the manifold functions of a free constitution, is to entrust valuable, delicate, and abstruse mechanism, to the rudest skill and the grossest ignorance. Public acts may confer liberty; but experience only can teach a people to use it; and, till they have gained that experience, they are liable to tumult, to jealousy, to collision of powers, and to every evil to which men are exposed, who are desirous of preserving a great good, without knowing how to set about it. In an old-established system of liberty, like our own, the encroachments which one department of the State makes on any other are slow, and hardly intentional; the political feelings, and the constitutional knowledge, which every Englishman possesses, creates a public voice, which tends to secure the tranquillity of the whole. Amid the crude sentiments and new-born precedents of sudden liberty, the Crown might destroy the Commons, or the Commons the Crown, almost before the people had formed any opinion of the nature of their contention. A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigour of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze, that he might chuckle over the splendour.

Why can factious eloquence produce such limited effects in this country? Partly because we are accustomed to it, and know how to appreciate it. We are acquainted with popular assemblies; and the language of our Parliament produces the effect it ought upon public opinion, because long experience enables us to conjecture the real motives by which men are actuated; to separate the vehemence of party spirit from the