interesting soever they may be. Those already made will sufficiently indicate the character of the work. It is clear that Dr Arnold, in addition to his well-known classical and critical acquirements, possesses a discriminating judgment, a reflecting philosophic turn of mind, and the power of graphic interesting description. These are valuable qualities to any historian: they are indispensable to the annalist of Rome, and promise to render his work, if continued in the same spirit, the best history of that wonderful state in the English, perhaps in any modern, language. We congratulate him upon the auspicious commencement of his labours; we cordially wish him success, and shall follow him, with no ordinary interest, through the remainder of his vast subject, interesting to the student of ancient events, and the observer of contemporary transactions.

We have already said that we find no fault with Dr Arnold on account of his politics; nay, that we value his work the more because, giving in the main, as it promises to do, a faithful account of the facts of Roman history, it cannot fail to furnish, from a source the least suspicious, a host of facts decisive in favour of Conservative principles. By Conservative principles we do not mean attachment to despotic power, or aversion to genuine freedom: on the contrary, we mean the utmost abhorrence of the former, and the strongest attachment to the latter. We mean an attachment to that form of government, and that balance of power, which alone can render these blessings permanent,— which render property the ruling, and numbers only the controlling power,-which give to weight of possession and intellect the direction of affairs, and intrust to the ardent feelings of the multitude the duty only of preventing their excesses, or exposing their corruption. Without the former, the rule of the people degenerates, in a few years, in every instance recorded in history, into licentious excess and absolute tyranny; without the latter, the ambition or selfishness of the aristocracy perverts to their own private purposes the dominion of the state. Paradoxical as it may appear, it is strictly and literally true, that the general inclination of abstract students, remote from a practical intercourse with mankind, to republican principles, is a decisive proof of the experienced necessity for Conservative

policy that has always been felt in the actual administration of affairs. Recluse or speculative men become attached to liberal ideas, because they see them constantly put forth, in glowing and generous language, by the popular orators and writers in every age: they associate oppression with the government of a single ruler, or a comparatively small number of persons of great possessions, because they see, in general, that government is established on one or other of these bases; and, consequently, most of the oppressive acts recorded in history have emanated from such authority. They forget that the opportunity of abusing power has been so generally afforded to these classes by the experienced impossibility of intrusting it to any other; that if the theory of popular government had been practicable, democracy, instead of exhibiting only a few blood-stained specks in history, would have occupied the largest space in its annals; that if the people had been really capable of directing affairs, they would, in every age, have been the supreme authority, and the holders of property the declaimers against their abuses; and that no proof can be so decisive against the practicability of any such form of government, as the fact, that it has been found, during six thousand years, of such rare occurrence, as to make even learned persons, till taught by experience, blind to its tendency.

MIRABEAU

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, MAY 1832]

"IT is a melancholy fact," says Madame de Stael, "that while the human race is continually advancing by the acquisitions of intellect, it is doomed to move perpetually in the same circle of error, from the influence of the passions." If this observation was just, even when this great author wrote, how much more is it now applicable, when a new generation has arisen, blind to the lessons of experience, and we, in this free and prosperous land, have yielded to the same passions, and been seduced by the same delusions, which, three-and-forty years ago, actuated the French people, and have been deemed inexcusable by all subsequent historians, even in its enslaved population!

It would appear inconceivable, that the same errors should thus be repeated by successive nations, without the least regard to the lessons of history; that all the dictates of experience, all the conclusions of wisdom, all the penalties of weakness, should be forgotten, before the generation which has suffered under their neglect is cold in their graves; that the same vices should be repeated, the same criminal ambition indulged, to the end of the world; if we did not recollect that it is the very essence of passion, whether in nations or individuals, to be insensible to the sufferings of others, and to pursue its own headstrong inclinations, regardless alike of the admonitions of reason and the experience of the world. It would seem that the vehemence of passion in nations is as little liable to be influenced by con

Par

Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, et sur les Premières Assemblées Législatives. ETIENNE DUMONT, de Génève. 8vo. London: E. Bull. 1832.-We have translated the quotations ourselves, not having seen the English version.

siderations of prudence, or the slightest regard to the consequences, as the career of intemperance in individuals; and that in like manner, as every successive age beholds multitudes who, in the pursuit of desire, rush headlong down the gulf of perdition, so every successive generation is doomed to witness the sacrifice of national prosperity, or the extinction of national existence, in the insane pursuit of democratic ambition. Providence has appointed certain trials for nations as well as individuals; and for those who, disregarding the admonitions of virtue, and slighting the dictates of duty, yield to the tempter, certain destruction is appointed in the inevitable consequences of their criminal desires, not less in the government of empires than in the paths of private life.

Forty years ago, the passion for innovation seized a great and powerful nation in Europe, illustrious in the paths of honour, grown gray with years of renown. The voice of religion was discarded, the lessons of experience were rejected : visionary projects were entertained, chimerical anticipations indulged the ancient institutions of the country were not amended, but destroyed: a new constitution was introduced, amidst the unanimous applause of the people. The monarch placed himself at the head of the movement, the nobles joined the commons, the clergy united in the work of reform: all classes, by common consent, conspired in the demolition and reconstruction of the constitution. A new era was thought to have dawned on human affairs; the age of gold to be about to return through the regeneration of mankind.

The consequence, as all the world knows, was ruin, devastation, and misery, unparalleled in modern times the king, the queen, were beheaded; the nobles were exiled or guillotined, the clergy confiscated and banished, the fundholders starved and ruined, the merchants exterminated, the landholders beggared, the people decimated. The wrath of Heaven needed no destroying angel to be the minister of its vengeance: the guilty passions of men worked out their own and well-deserved punishment. The fierce passion of democracy was extinguished in blood: the Reign of Terror froze every heart with horror: the tyranny of the Directory destroyed the very name of freedom: the ambition of Napoleon visited every cottage with mourning, and doomed to

VOL. II.

I

tears every mother in France; and the sycophancy of all classes, the natural result of former license, so paved the way for military despotism, that the haughty Emperor could only exclaim with Tiberius-" O homines ad servitutem parati !"*

Forty years after, the same unruly and reckless spirit seized the very nation who had witnessed these horrors, and bravely struggled for twenty years to avert them from their own shores. The passion of democracy became general in all the manufacturing and trading classes: a large portion of the nobility were deluded by the idea that, by yielding to the torrent, they could regulate its course: the ministers of the Crown put themselves at the head of the movement, and wielded the royal prerogative to give force and consistence to the ambition of the multitude: political fanaticism again reared its hydra head: the ministers of religion became the objects of odium; everything sacred, everything venerable, the subject of opprobrium. By yielding to this tempest of passion and terror, enlightened men seriously anticipated, not a repetition of the horrors of the French Revolution, but the staying of the fury of democracy, the stilling of the waves of faction, the calming the ambition of the people.

That a delusion so extraordinary, a blindness so infatuated, should have existed so soon after the great and bloody drama had been acted on the theatre of Europe, will appear altogether incredible to future ages. It is certain, however, that it exists, not only among the unthinking millions, who, being incapable of judging of the consequences of political changes, are of no weight in a philosophical view of the subject, but among thinking thousands who are capable of forming a correct judgment, and whose opinions on other subjects are highly worthy of consideration. This is the circumstance which furnishes the real phenomenon, and into the causes of which future ages will anxiously inquire. It is no more surprising that a new generation of shopkeepers, manufacturers, and artisans should be devoured by the passion for political power, without any regard to its recent consequences in the neighbouring kingdom, than that youth, in every successive generation, should yield to the seductions of pleasure, or the allurements of vice, without ever

* "O men, ripe for slavery!"