surely and swiftly brings round a remedy, thus closing a period of idleness which is else sure, of itself, without inflammatory politics, to prove the mother of infinite mischief. How concisely this remedy acts, and in how brief a number of days it gathers strength, may be seen by the following simple calculation:- Every forty thousand turn-outs will regere a thousand pounds a day to feed them, at sixpence a-day, and their families, as stationary, and able to use more economy, at least the same sum. Here at once arises a demand of L.28,000 for each 40,000 insurgents during one fortnight. It is suppo supposed that 200,000,

or five such bodies of 40,000 each, are now self-exiled from work; that is, in other words, a money demand of one hundred and forty thousand pounds will be made on the joint-stock purse of the insurrection by the end of the first fortnight (now nearly accomplished) for the insufficient support of the insurgents. Here lies a firm natural curb-chain upon the riotous body; in which overwhelming restraint, let us say for ourselves, that we are far indeed from exulting when we think of the rioters as poor men pleading for natural rights, against cotton masters too often inclined to combine for severe exaction, and sometimes (we doubt not) tyrannically rapacious. If we feel at any moment inclined to exult in such a barrier existing to the progress of a riotous mob, it is when we reflect on the certainty with which an idle mob transmigrates into a cruel and sanguinary mob, fearful even to themselves, as parts bearing a separate interest from the whole; but still more, when we represent to ourselves this mob-not as contending for undoubted rights, or natural equities on the model of all Scriptural justice, (such as the rights of colliers to see their own day's produce of coal fairly weighed in their own presence)-but insolently declaring that they will abrogate the whole constitution, laws, and polity of these imperial kingdoms at one blow; will impose upon us all a new constitution, out of which are to emanate such future laws as may be suitable to such

a beginning. Then indeed our hearts grow sterner in contemplating their matchless insolence and criminal folly. But in any case, it is for their own interest that a speedy close should set bounds to their career. Now the contributions of shopkeepers and private families, but much more the system of certain provision shops in the smaller towns, by which they pledge themselves to loans or credit, varying in amount through one fortnight or upwards in time, and most of all the system adopted by a number of shops in Hyde, promising publicly (we quote their own words literatim) " to assist pecuniary or otherwise," meaning probably to assist by pecuniary means or any other, seems entitled to the gravest judicial investigation: because this aid and "comfort," as the ancient laws call it, tends violently to prolong the struggle by weakening its natural restraint; and because the Hyde variety of this case tends more effectually to that result, by publishing far and wide the knowledge of so encouraging a faith in the justice and the ultimate success of the rioters. Were it not for these extensive private contributions, the funds of the rioters would be limited to the sums accu. mulated by the benefit societies, to which multitudes among them have contributed; and where the purpose had been entirely under a private agreement, the money will have been easily diverted into any other channel by an overruling majority; though often we believe that want of work is the very casus fæderis contemplated by such societies. These accomplices in higher stations ought, of all concerned, to be the most severely punished, or at least next after the original instigators of the riots, if they should judicially be proved to have been the Corn-Leaguers. And in the rear of these two cold-blooded accomplices before the act and in the act, as regards scrutiny and punishment, should be ranged all those who have been arrested, or shall be denounced and convicted, as coercers of their own brethren who had wished to pursue their work in quietness.

We have at length arrived at the tenth and closing volume of Mr Alison's able and important work; and, while we congratulate the writer on the intelligence which conceived, the talent which sustained, and the vigour which completed such a performance, we still more congratulate the country on the possession of one of the noblest offerings which our age has laid upon the altar of historic lite

rature.

The choice of the subject itself was highly judicious. It gave great opportunities to a writer capable of employing them. The French Revolution was the most influential event since the Reformation. In its magnitude, its depth of appeal to human opinions, the extent to which it impressed the old European system, and the strong impulse which it has given to the minds of nations, there is a singular resemblance to the prime mover of the sixteenth century. Their principles alone differ, and the difference, in that point, is obviously extreme; but their instrumentality has a remarkable similitude. The same element which sweeps away the harvest and the soil, is the source of all fertility. The furrow torn up by the thunderbolt differs little in appearance from the tillage of the plough. The especial characteristic of both was, that they addressed themselves

to a new source of power; that, abandoning the old and formal influences of the state, they adopted influences altogether new; that, abandoning the old official organs of national impression, they spoke directly to the multitude. Leaving thrones and hierarchies to their stately inefficiency, they turned their faces at once to the vast aggregate who stood without the walls of palace and temple, and who answered them with a shout, which in the former instance shook superstition in its strongholds, and in the latter loosened the foundations of all established rule. But here the similitude ends. The Reformation was the greatest gift of Providence since the establishment of Christianity; the French Revolution the most reckless display of human guilt since the supremacy of Rome. The one was an illustrious example of those interpositions by which the Supreme Disposer condescends from time to time to invigorate man, willing, but too weak, for virtue. The latter was an example of that remorseless and precipitate rapidity with which man, left to the guidance of the passions, plunges into public and personal ruin.

But the advantages of the Revolution as a subject of authorship, are more striking than those of the Reformation. It was a complete event,

VOL. LII. NO. CCCXXIV.

2E

circumscribed within a quarter of a century; an entire action, of the highest interest and most extraordinary variousness of incident and character, compressed into the briefest period of any one great change in history; an action, too, near enough to our time to possess the full excitement of novelty, yet remote enough to supply us with the calmness and strength of ascertained fact.

The

Revolution has utterly passed away in substance, but still exists in spirit; for no man can rationally look upon the feverish condition of Europe at the present day, the restlessness of the public mind, or the power of popular opinion every where, without tracing their alliance with the convulsions of 1789. Nothing can be clearer, than that the old constitution of European government has been essentially altered, however it may retain its shape, in foreign countries. Like the conjecture of some of our philosophers, that, in the deluge, the axis of the earth sustained a shock which changed its climates; the moral deluge which, in our day, overran the civilized world, did more than sweep its surface it shifted the position of its governmental poles, and impressed a new character upon the temperament of its nations. Representation, a principle once unheard of but in England, is now the demand or the possession of Europe. What termination it may find is beyond our conjecture; but that it is advancing, and will continue to advance, until it absorbs every other principle, is almost a matter of demonstration. Yet the French Revo

lution has wholly past away. We have seen its cradle, its maturity, and its grave. Like the double entombment of Napoleon, it was inhumed alike at Marengo and at Waterloo. Or, likethat mighty soldier himself, its spirit may be wandering through earth or air, but its body will never reappear before men, at least in the shape in which it descended into the sepulchre. Europe exhibits an almost total suppression of the republican forms; and the first fruits of the Revolution have been a harvest of minor monarchies. France herself is controlled by a powerful throne, using popular forms only to exercise a more resolute authority over popular passions; skilfully using the Revolution to put down the Revolution, extinguishing

the flame in its own ashes, and sagaciously and constantly employing at once the splendours of monarchy and the vigilance of despotism, to make the people forget the license of the Republic, or dread a collision with the weight of the sovereignty. At once to dazzle and restrain; to make the populace proud, yet afraid of the sceptre; to indulge the national love of display, and yet keep the national caprices in rigid subordination, is the existing policy. Far be it from us to visit it with blame; it is the only policy for France. Yet this is only the régime of Louis XIV., exercised with a more delicate skill, and adapted to a more trying era. The building of Versailles was more a stratagem of state than even an indulgence of royal luxury. The new embellishment of Versailles is in the same spirit; but the king has added to it the fortification of Paris, and the union is only emblematic of the time.

Mr Alison will have achieved another triumph if the success of his work shall excite a taste for historical writing among our authors. In the last century England took the lead in history. It was most unfortunate that Gibbon's irreligious follies should have been transferred to his " Decline and Fall of Rome;" for in all other respects he stands at the head of all the historians of his time. His copiousness of knowledge, his rich though formal style, and his singular power of arrangement, rendered his vast history the first in the world. Its massiveness and magnificence remind us of the architecture of antiquity; one of those great Basilicas, at once a palace, a seat of judgment, and a temple, exhibiting boundless ornament, costliness, and solidity of material; yet degraded by many an impure emblem, filled with false worship, and breathing the incense of the passions.

The other two great historians of this period have been too long fixed in their rank to suffer modern censure. Hume was evidently a man of remarkable skill, and nothing can be more adroit than his general ingenuity, or more graceful than the chief portion of his narrative. But more exact knowledge has gradually diminished his interest, and a true and great history of England is yet to be written.