VIII. 1. An Act for the Encouragement of Navigation and Commerce, by regulating the Importation of Goods and Merchandize, so far as relates to the Countries or Places from whence, and the Ships in which such Importation shall be made. 3 Geo. IV. c. 43, 24th June, 1822. 2. An Abstract of the New Navigation Act, 3 Geo. IV. c. 43, with a List of the Ancient Statutes and Modern Acts relating to Trade which have been repealed by the Acts 3 Geo. IV. cc. 41, 42; to which is added an Abstract of a Bill for Consolidating the Laws relating to the Trade with the East Indies. 3. An Abridgement of the Two Important Navigation and Commercial Acts of Parliament just passed. By G. P. Andrewes. 430 IX. Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France and Navarre; to which are added, Recollections, Sketches, and Anecdotes, illustrative of the Reigns of Louis XIV., Louis XV. and Louis XVI. By Madame Campan, First Femmede-Chambre to the Queen. X. ROYAL MEMOIRS,-containing 1. A Narrative of the Journey to Varennes. By H. R. H. the Duchess of Angoulême; printed uniformly with Mad. de CAMPAN.-2. A Narrative of the Journey to Bruxelles and Coblentz in 1791. By MONSIEUR, now Louis XVIII. King of France.-And 3. Private Memoirs of what passed in the Temple, from the Imprisonment of the Royal Family to the Death of the Dauphin. By H. R. H. the Duchess D'Angoulême. XI. 1. Annuaire Historique Universel. 2. Histoire des Evènemens de la Grèce. Par M. Raffenel. XII. Histoire de la Théophilantropie, depuis sa Naissance jusqu'à XIII. 1. The Crisis of Spain. La Crise de l'Espagne. 4. De l'Excellence de la Guerre avec l'Espagne. Par A. L. B. 5. Anecdotes of Spanish and Portugueze Revolutions. By Count Pecchio. Index. 449 464 1474 493 536 561 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. JANUARY, 1823, ART. I. Histoire de l'Assemblée Constituante de France. Par M. Ch. Lacretelle. 2 vol. 8vo. Paris. 1822. THE 'HE most ungrateful task which an historian can undertake is to record the transactions of his own times. Let him use what discretion he may, he must offend the mighty phalanx of those who think they cannot be too lightly censured, or too highly praised; and he is constantly placed between the perilous alternatives of drawing down hatred upon himself, or of sacrificing his duty. No doubt, however, can exist as to the course he is bound to pursue. No man is called upon to register the deeds of his contemporaries; but, the moment he does engage in such a work, he must give up every object but truth; he must treat the living as he would the dead; and speak of them with the same impartiality as if they had existed centuries ago. : The situation of M. Lacretelle, in this respect, is more favourable than that of most historians who have treated of a period so near to their own not only the scythe of time has mowed down more numerous actors than have usually fallen in political disturbances; but events have succeeded each other so rapidly, the period has been so completely filled with wonders, that the early part of the revolution has almost lost the interest it claimed in its newness; and has, in some measure, obtained the oblivious honours of premature antiquity. Of the men who were engaged in it, many have fallen on the scaffold, many in the field. The survivors, dragged into new scenes of action, now contemplate the past with indifference; and, intent upon the reputation which later incidents have completed for them, care very little about the rough-hewn fame which their early exploits had sketched. This state of feeling too has been particularly increased by the mobility of the French character; and many who could not tolerate the slightest aspersion upon their present conduct, can yet listen unmoved to praise or censure upon their actions of an older date. M. Lacretelle is known by several other works of considerable merit, and well worthy of perusal; the History of the Religious Wars during the five Reigns, from Henry II. to Henry IV. inclusively; and the History of France during the Eighteenth Century. With respect to the work before us, it is written, for the most part, with fairness; and upon the whole, the author may be con sidered as the best French historian now existing; and if historical pictures and sketches were real history, we should not hesitate to place him in the first rank among his countrymen, dead or alive. The present, however, is not his first essay upon the French Revolution. A narrative of that dreadful event had been commenced by Rabaud St. Etienne, a partizan of the republic, but averse to regicide; and it was continued by M. Lacretelle in the same tone of mind. But the volumes now before us breathe a different spirit; and we heartily congratulate their author upon the severe animadversions which this change has drawn upon him from the French liberalists. The deviations of M. Lacretelle from sound principle have been in a great measure corrected by years; and his former helpmates are nettled at his abjuration of wickedness and folly. We could quote numerous instances of a similar reform among the eminent men of our own country; and as far as we have had opportunities of observing the direction which the tide of political opinions assumes, as men advance in life, we have found their general tendency to be from ultra democracy in youth, through milder modifications of popular influence, to more settled forms of monarchy, in maturer age. To inexperienced imaginations, fresh from the classic schools of Greek and Roman polity, a republic has irresistible charms, until the world has taught them that its fascinations are all in theory. The commerce of mankind, the study of other histories, the corrections which reason daily brings to the illusions of fancy, show, at length, how vain are the dreams of democracy, in nine-tenths of the globe; and intellects, matured by years, abandon them. Such was the course which the judgment of Burke pursued; the opinions of Sheridan were less tinctured with popularism, if we may use the expression, in his late, than in his early years; Grattan latterly had imbibed a different idea of the French Revolution, from that which he once harboured; and Curran, even so early as 1802, gave up many notions he once entertained in its favour, declaring that it had thrown the nation one century back from true liberty. We might add another, a living Irish orator, no less distinguished, whose present opinions, in the senate, have a slighter leaning to the popular side, than when he began his honourable career. We have mentioned Irish orators, because, in their island, imagination still bears a greater proportion in the public mind, than it does in forming the spirit of these more sober provinces of the British realm. M. Lacretelle, as we observed above, has followed this general law. We wish it were in our power to compliment M. Lacretelle upon the correction of another fault which pervaded his former works, particularly his History of France during the Eighteenth Century,' and which is entirely unworthy of a man of talents; we mean mean the unqualified and silly abuse of England; allegations which he scarcely could believe at the moment he uttered them; and which did infinite discredit either to his understanding or to his veracity. All the harm that the French do to themselves, is done, according to M. Lacretelle, by the intrigues of England; and whenever the British are guilty of a generous act, as, for example, in the succours sent to Lisbon after the earthquake of 1755, (the French, be it remembered, sent none, though the Spaniards did,) self-interest is always the motive. We have no objection to be painted as we are, but that we may be so, it is necessary to understand us; now this is what M. Lacretelle does not seem to do, any better than the rest of his countrymen. Were but onetenth part of the petty_vices, the envy, the malignity of which the common herd of French writers accuse us true, our minds would never have attained the moral greatness which has raised our little territory above the widest and most favoured empires of the earth. It must be added, however, that this fault, though not removed, is somewhat diminished in the present work; and we are inclined to think that Madame de Staël has contributed a little to rectify French minds upon the subject of our guineas spent in foreign corruption. This lady certainly understood thus much concerning practical liberty; namely, that there could be none, where the strictest account was not given of the public money. Now as Pitt and Cobourg, Pitt and Repnin,-for Pitt was always at the head of the firm of iniquity-never inserted in their budgets an article of the sums alleged to be paid to stimulate French hands to commit French crimes; and as she was aware how jealous and watchful the British parliament always is on the point of expenses, she justly concluded and maintained, that none had ever been so applied. It is strange that the French, when they accuse us of spending our money to foment the bloody scenes so frequent among them, do not perceive that the nation which sells itself to foreigners, and, for the gold of an implacable enemy, as they are pleased to style us, destroys what it should cherish, is just as wicked, and not near so respectable, as a nation actuated by its own passions, however bad. ,,, The present volumes are in substance a continuation of the History of France during the Eighteenth Century.' They contain the period of the Constituent Assembly; of the commencement of a revolution which raised such hopes, and excited so much enthusiasm among the devotees of liberty; which, compared with the sequel, was yet sullied by few crimes; which was hailed as the harbinger of universal freedom, and called 'the most stupendous fabric of human wisdom and virtue that ever had been erected.' To us, it has always appeared in a different light. We have, from the beginning, considered it as the most tremendous chaos that ever the united wiles and strength of insanity, backed by the profoundest combinations of wickedness, had made of human society; and it was the more destructive, because the men who undertook it, if they had not the prudence which knowledge can bestow, had all its ingenuity, and employed their vivacity in more speedy demolition than ever before was imagined by man. During the greatest part of the last century, the French were unquestionably one of the happiest nations of Europe, not perhaps according to English ideas, but according to the notions they themselves had formed; and after all, each man is the best judge of what he likes the most. An Englishman cannot consider as happiness whatever does not please upon reflection; but the satisfaction of a Frenchman is rather disturbed as soon as ineditation interferes. If ever mortals proved, by their actions, that they consider this world but as a transient scene, the passage from they know not whence to they know not whither, it is the French; and none so completely act upon the principle of total ignorance concerning the past and the future. This did not prevent them from revelling in life as long as it lasted. On the contrary, it made them more intent upon its pleasures. They possessed the most happy knack of creating illusions in conformity to their wishes and their vanity. When beaten in war, they thought themselves victorious, or else betrayed or outnumbered, but never unfortunate. When reduced to mock magnificence under Lewis XV. they continued to think themselves as important as under Lewis XIV. When Turenne, Condé, no longer commanded their armies, or Tourville their fleets; when Colbert, Bossuet, Molière, Lesueur were no more, they still thought that their generals must be the best in the world, their ministers the wisest, their poets the most inspired, their artists the most exquisite; and they were pleased to know that Europe bowed before their excellence in every species of frivolity. With their bales of female fashions, they thought they were spreading their power over the world; and they rejoiced to see tributary natious entangled in their silk and embroidery. These were the pretensions in which they long delighted. But these at least were innocent amusements; and it was only when they began to turn their minds to serious things, that the bad effects of misapplied levity were fully felt. There is a route traced out to each society by the natural circumstances in which it is placed; and the ruin of empires proceeds from thwarting these influences. The bias of the French was not to grave and solemn purposes; and the greatest series of calamities they ever experienced was when they turned their light and volatile thoughts to concerns that require a reach of reflection, and a depth of combination. On |