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well, held the place, and enjoyed all the form of power that had belonged to their predecessors: But as they no longer contained those individuals who were able to sway and influence the opinion of the body of the people, they were without respect or authority, and speedily came to be the objects of public derision and contempt.

the country was placed by the convocation | Parliament, after it was purged by the Indeof the States-General; but it was materially pendents, and the assemblies that met under aggravated by the presumption and improvi- that name, during the Protectorate of Cromdence of those enthusiastic legislators, and tended powerfully to produce those disasters by which they were ultimately overwhelmed. No representative legislature, it appears to us, can ever be respectable or secure, unless it contain within itself a great proportion of those who form the natural aristocracy of the country, and are able, as individuals, to influence the conduct and opinions of the greater part of its inhabitants. Unless the power and weight and authority of the assembly, in short, be really made up of the power and weight and authority of the individuals who compose it, the factitious dignity they may derive from their situation can never be of long endurance; and the dangerous power with which they may be invested, will become the subject of scrambling and contention among the factions of the metropolis, and be employed for any purpose but the general good of the community.

As the power and authority of a legislature thus constituted, is perfectly secure and inalienable, on the one hand, so, on the other, the moderation of its proceedings is guaranteed by a consciousness of the basis upon which this authority is founded. Every individual being aware of the extent to which his own influence is likely to reach among his constituents and dependants, is anxious that the mandates of the body shall never pass beyond that limit, within which obedience may be easily secured. He will not hazard the loss of his own power, therefore, by any attempt to enlarge that of the legislature; and feeling, at every step, the weight and resistance of the people, the whole assembly proceeds with a due regard to their opinions and prejudices, and can never do any thing very injurious or very distasteful to the majority.— From the very nature of the authority with which they are invested, they are in fact consubstantiated with the people for whom they are to legislate. They do not sit loose upon them, like riders on inferior animals; nor speculate nor project experiments upon their welfare, like operators upon a foreign substance. They are the natural organs, in fact, of a great living body; and are not only warned, by their own feelings, of any injury which they may be tempted to inflict on it, but would become incapable of performing their functions, if they were to proceed far in debilitating the general system.

In England, the House of Commons is made up of the individuals who, by birth, by fortune, or by talents, possess singly the greatest influence over the rest of the people. The most certain and the most permanent influence, is that of rank and of riches; and these are the qualifications, accordingly, which return the greatest number of members. Men submit to be governed by the united will of those, to whose will, as individuals, the greater part of them have been previously accustomed to submit themselves; and an act of parliament is reverenced and obeyed, not because the people are impressed with a constitutional veneration for an institution called a parliament, but because it has been passed by the authority of those who are recognised as their natural superiors, and by whose influence, as individuals, the same measures might have been enforced over the greater part of the kingdom. Scarcely any new power is ac- Such, it appears to us, though delivered quired, therefore, by the combination of those perhaps in too abstract and elementary a form, persons into a legislature: They carry each is the just conception of a free representative their share of influence and authority into the legislature. Neither the English House of senate along with them; and it is by adding Commons, indeed, nor any assembly of any the items of it together, that the influence other nation, ever realized it in all its perfecand authority of the senate itself is made up. tion: But it is in their approximation to such From such a senate, therefore, it is obvious a standard, we conceive, that their excellence that their power can never be wrested, and and utility will be found to consist; and where that it would not even attach to those who the conditions upon which we have insisted might succeed in supplanting them in the are absolutely wanting, the sudden institution legislature, by violence or intrigue; or by any of a representative legislature will only be a other means than those by which they them- step to the most frightful disorders. Where selves had originally secured their nomination. it has grown up in a country in which perIn such a state of representation, in short, the sonal liberty and property are tolerably secure, influence of the representatives is not borrow-it naturally assumes that form which is most ed from their office, but the influence of the favourable to its beneficial influence, and has office is supported by that which is personal a tendency to perpetual improvement, and to to its members; and parliament is chiefly the constant amelioration of the condition of regarded as the great depository of all the the whole society. The difference between authority which formerly existed, in a scat- a free government and a tyrannical one, contered state, among its members. This author- sists entirely in the different proportions of ity, therefore, belonging to the men, and not the people that are influenced by their opinto their places, can neither be lost by them, ions, or subjugated by intimidation or force. if they are forced from their places, nor found In a large society, opinions can only be reby those who may supplant them. The Long united by means of representations; and the

natural representative is the individual whose example and authority can influence the opinions of the greater part of those in whose behalf he is delegated. This is the natural aristocracy of a civilized nation; and its legislature is then upon the best possible footing, when it is in the hands of those who answer to that description. The whole people are then governed by the laws, exactly as each clan or district of them would have been by the patriarchal authority of an elective and unarmed chieftain; and the lawgivers are not only secure of their places while they can maintain their individual influence over the people, but are withheld from any rash or injurious measure by the consciousness and feeling of their dependence on this voluntary deference and submission.

If this be at all a just representation of the conditions upon which the respectability and security of a representative legislature must always depend, it will not be difficult to explain how the experiment miscarried so completely, in the case of the French Constituent Assembly. That assembly, which the enthusiasm of the public, and the misconduct of the privileged orders, soon enabled to engross the whole power of the country, consisted almost entirely of persons without name or individual influence; who owed the whole of their consequence to the situation to which they had been elevated, and were not able, as individuals, to have influenced the opinions of one-fiftieth part of their countrymen.There was in France, indeed, at this time, no legitimate, wholesome, or real aristocracy.The noblesse, who were persecuted for bearing that name, were quite disconnected from the people. Their habits of perpetual residence in the capital, and their total independence of the good opinion of their vassals, had deprived them of any real influence over the minds of the lower orders; and the organization of society had not yet enabled the rich manufacturers or proprietors to assume such an influence. The persons sent as deputies to the States-General, therefore, were those chiefly who, by intrigue and boldness, and by professions of uncommon zeal for what were then the great objects of popular pursuit, had been enabled to carry the votes of the electors. A notion of talent, and an opinion that they would be loud and vehement in supporting those requests upon which the people had already come to a decision, were their passports into that assembly. They were sent there to express the particular demands of the people, and not to give a general pledge of their acquiescence in what might there be enacted. They were not the hereditary patrons of the people, but their hired advocates for a particular pleading.They had no general trust or authority over them, but were chosen as their special messengers, out of a multitude whose influence and pretensions were equally powerful.

When these men found themselves, as it were by accident, in possession of the whole power of the state, and invested with the absolute government of the greatest nation

that has existed in modern times, it is not to be wondered at if they forgot the slender ties by which they were bound to their constituents. The powers to which they had succeeded were so infinitely beyond any thing that they had enjoyed in their individual capacity, that it is not surprising if they never thought of exerting them with the same consideration and caution. Instead of the great bases of rank and property, which cannot be transferred by the clamours of the factious, or the caprice of the inconstant, and which serve to ballast and steady the vessel of the state in all its wanderings and perils, the assembly possessed only the basis of talent or reputation; qualities which depend upon opinion and opportunity, and which may be attributed in the same proportion to an inconvenient multitude at once. The whole legislature may be considered, therefore, as composed of adventurers, who had already attained a situation incalculably above their original pretensions, and were now tempted to push their fortune by every means that held out the promise of immediate success. They had nothing, comparatively speaking, to lose, but their places in that assembly, or the influence which they possessed within its walls; and as the authority of the assembly itself depended altogether upon the popularity of its measures, and not upon the intrinsic authority of its members, so it was only to be maintained by a succession of brilliant and imposing resolutions, and by satisfying or outdoing the extravagant wishes and expectations of the most extravagant and sanguine populace that ever existed. For a man to get a lead in such an assembly, it was by no means necessary that he should have previously possessed any influence or authority in the community; that he should be connected with powerful families, or supported by great and extensive associations. If he could dazzle and overawe in debate; if he could obtain the acclamations of the mob of Versailles, and make himself familiar to the eyes and the ears of the assembly and its galleries, he was in a fair train for having a great share in the direction of an assembly exercising absolute sovereignty over thirty millions of men. The prize was too tempting not to attract a multitude of competitors; and the assembly for many months was governed by those who outvied their associates in the impracticable extravagance of their patriotism, and sacrificed most profusely the real interests of the people at the shrine of a precarious popularity.

In this way, the assembly, from the inherent vices of its constitution, ceased to he respectable or useful. The same causes speedily put an end to its security, and converted it into an instrument of destruction.

Mere popularity was at first the instrument by which this unsteady legislature was governed: But when it became apparent, that whoever could obtain the direction or command of it, must possess the whole authority of the state, parties became less scrupulous about the means they employed for that purpose, and soon found out that violence and

was attached, from their fortune, their age, or their official station; if, in short, instead of grasping presumptuously at the exclusive di

every thing on the credit of their zealous patriotism and inexperienced abilities, they had sought to strengthen themselves by an alliance with what was respectable in the existing establishments, and attached themselves at first as disciples to those whom they might fairly expect speedily to outgrow and eclipse.

terror were infinitely more effectual and expeditious than persuasion and eloquence. The people at large, who had no attachment to any families or individuals among their dele-rection of the national councils, and arrogating gates, and who contented themselves with idolizing the assembly in general, so long as it passed decrees to their liking, were passive and indifferent spectators of the transference of power which was effected by the pikes of the Parisian multitude; and looked with equal affection upon every successive junto which assumed the management of its deliberations. Having no natural representatives, they felt themselves equally connected with all who exercised the legislative function; and, being destitute of a real aristocracy, were without the means of giving effectual support even to those who might appear to deserve it. Encouraged by this situation of affairs, the most daring, unprincipled, and profligate, proceeded to seize upon the defenceless legislature, and, driving all their antagonists before them by violence or intimidation, entered without opposition upon the supreme functions of government. They soon found, however, that the arms by which they had been victorious, were capable of being turned against themselves; and those who were envious of their success, or ambitious of their distinction, easily found means to excite discontent among the multitude, now inured to insurrection, and to employ them in pulling down those very individuals whom they had so recently exalted. The disposal of the legislature thus became a prize to be fought for in the clubs and conspiracies and insurrections of a corrupted metropolis; and the institution of a national representative had no other effect, than that of laying the government open to lawless force and flagitious audacity.

It is in this manner, it appears to us, that from the want of a natural and efficient aristocracy to exercise the functions of representative legislators, the National Assembly of France was betrayed into extravagance, and fell a prey to faction; that the institution itself became a source of public misery and disorder, and converted a civilized monarchy, first into a sanguinary democracy, and then into a military despotism.

It would be the excess of injustice, we have already said, to impute those disastrous consequences to the moderate and virtuous individuals who sat in the Constituent Assembly: But if it be admitted that they might have been easily foreseen, it will not be easy to exculpate them from the charge of very blameable imprudence. It would be difficult, indeed, to point out any course of conduct by which those dangers might have been entirely avoided: But they would undoubtedly have been less formidable, if the enlightened members of the Third Estate had endeavoured to form a party with the more liberal and popular among the nobility; if they had associated to themselves a greater number of those to whose persons a certain degree of influence

Upon a review of the whole matter, it seems impossible to acquit those of the revolutionary patriots, whose intentions are admitted to be pure, of great precipitation, presumption, and imprudence. Apologies may be found for them, perhaps, in the inexperience which was incident to their situation; in their constant apprehension of being separated before their task was accomplished; in the exasperation which was excited by the insidious proceedings of the cabinet; and in the intoxication which naturally resulted from the magnitude of their early triumph, and the noise and resounding of their popularity. But the errors into which they fell were inexcusable, we think, in politicians of the eighteenth century; and while we pity their sufferings, and admire their genius, we cannot feel much respect for their wisdom, or any surprise at their miscarriage.

The preceding train of reflection was irresistibly suggested to us by the title and the contents of the volumes now before us. Among the virtuous members of the first Assembly, there was no one who stood higher than Bailly. As a scholar and a man of science, he had long stood in the very first rank of celebrity: His private morals were not only irreproachable, but exemplary; and his character and dispositions had always been remarkable for gentleness, moderation, and philanthropy. Drawn unconsciously, if we may believe his own account, into public life, rather than impelled into it by any movement of ambition, he participated in the enthusiasm, and in the imprudence, from which no one seemed at that time to be exempted; and in spite of an early retreat, speedily suffered that fate by which all the well meaning were then destined to expiate their errors. His popularity was at one time equal to that of any of the idols of the day; and if it was gained by some degree of blameable indulgence and unjustifiable zeal, it was forfeited at last (and along with his life) by a resolute opposition to disorder, and a meritorious perseverance in the discharge of his duty.

The sequel of this article, containing a full abstract of the learned author's recollections of the first six months only of his mayoralty, is now omitted; both as too minute to retain any interest at this day, and as superseded by the more comprehensive details which will be found in the succeeding article.

(September, 1818.)

Considérations sur les Principaux Evènemens de la Révolution Françoise. Ouvrage Posthume de Madame la Baronne de Staël. Publié par M. LE DUC DE BROGLIE et M. LE Baron A. DE STAËL. En trois tomes. 8vo. pp. 1285. Londres: 1818.

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No book can possibly possess a higher | like this, we have not yet facts enough for so interest than this which is now before us. much philosophy; and must be contented, It is the last, dying bequest of the most bril- we fear, for a long time to come, to call maný liant writer that has appeared in our days;- things accidental, which it would be more and it treats of a period of history which we satisfactory to refer to determinate causes. already know to be the most important that In her estimate of the happiness, and her has occurred for centuries; and which those notions of the wisdom of private life, we who look back on it, after other centuries think her both unfortunate and erroneous. have elapsed, will probably consider as still She makes passions and high sensibilities a more important. great deal too indispensable; and varnishes over all her pictures too uniformly with the glare of an extravagant or affected enthu siasm. She represents men, in short, as a great deal more unhappy, more depraved, and more energetic, than they areseems to respect them the more for it. In her politics she is far more unexceptionable. She is everywhere the warm friend and animated advocate of liberty-and of liberal, practical, and philanthropic principles. On those subjects we cannot blame her enthu siasm, which has nothing in it vindictive or provoking; and are far more inclined to envy than to reprove that sanguine and buoyant temper of mind which, after all she has seen and suffered, still leads her to overrate, in our apprehension, both the merit of past attempts at political amelioration, and the chances of their success hereafter. It is in that futurity, we fear, and in the hopes that make it present, that the lovers of mankind must yet, for a while, console themselves for the disappointments which still seem to beset them. If Madame de Staël, however, predicts with too much confidence, it must be admitted that her labours have a powerful tendency to realize her predictions. Her writings are all full of the most animating views of the improvement of our social condition, and the means by which it may be effected--the most striking refutations of prevailing errors on these great subjects-and the most persuasive expostulations with those who may think their interest or their honour concerned in maintaining them. Even they who are the least inclined to agree with her, must admit that there is much to be learned from her writings; and we can give them no higher praise than to say, that their tendency is not only to promote the interests of philanthropy and independence, but to soften, rather than exasperate, the prejudices to which they are opposed.

We cannot stop now to say all that we think of Madame de Staël:-and yet we must say, that we think her the most powerful writer that her country has produced since the time of Voltaire and Rousseau-and the greatest writer, of a woman, that any time or any country has produced. Her taste, perhaps, is not quite pure; and her style is too irregular and ambitious. These faults may even go deeper. Her passion for effect, and the tone of exaggeration which it naturally produces, have probably interfered occasionally with the soundness of her judgment, and given a suspicious colouring to some of her representations of fact. At all events, they have rendered her impatient of the humbler task of completing her explanatory details, or stating in their order all the premises of her reasonings. She gives her history in abstracts, and her theories in aphorisms:and the greater part of her works, instead of presenting that systematic unity from which the highest degrees of strength and beauty and clearness must ever be derived, may be fairly described as a collection of striking fragments-in which a great deal of repetition does by no means diminish the effect of a good deal of inconsistency. In those same works, however, whether we consider them as fragments or as systems, we do not hesitate to say that there are more original and profound observations-more new images -greater sagacity combined with higher imagination and more of the true philosophy of the passions, the politics, and the literature of her contemporaries-than in any other author we can now remember. She has great eloquence on all subjects; and a singular pathos in representing those bitterest agonies of the spirit, in which wretchedness is aggravated by remorse, or by regrets that partake of its character. Though it is difficult to resist her when she is in earnest, we cannot say that we agree in all her opinions, or approve of all her sentiments. She overrates the importance of literature, either in determining the character or affecting the happiness of mankind; and she theorises too confidently on its past and its future history. On subjects

Of the work before us, we do not know very well what to say. It contains a multitude of admirable remarks-and a still greater number of curious details; for Madame de Staël was not only a contemporary, but an eyewitness of much that she describes, and had the very best access to learn what did not fall

giant outline which it traces on the sky. A traveller who wanders through a rugged and picturesque district, though struck with the beauty of every new valley, or the grandeur of every cliff that he passes, has no notion at all of the general configuration of the country, or even of the relative situation of the objects he has been admiring; and will understand all those things, and his own route among them, a thousand times better, from a small map on a scale of half an inch to a mile, which represents neither thickets or hamlets, than from the most painful efforts to combine the indications of the strongest memory. The case is the same with those who live through periods of great historical interest. They are too near the scene-too much interested in each successive event-and too much agi. tated with their rapid succession, to form any just estimate of the character or result of the whole. They are like private soldiers in the middle of a great battle, or rather of a busy and complicated campaign-hardly knowing whether they have lost or won, and having but the most obscure and imperfect conception of the general movements in which their own fate has been involved. The foreigner who reads of them in the Gazette, or the peasant who sees them from the top of a distant hill or a steeple, has in fact a far better idea of them.

under her immediate observation. Few persons certainly could be better qualified to appreciate the relative importance of the subjects that fell under her review; and no one, we really think, so little likely to colour and distort them, from any personal or party feelings. With all those rare qualifications, however, and inestimable advantages for performing the task of an historian, we cannot say that she has made a good history. It is too much broken into fragments. The narrative is too much interrupted by reflections: and the reflections too much subdivided, to suit the subdivisions of the narrative. There are too many events omitted, or but cursorily noticed, to give the work the interest of a full and flowing history; and a great deal too many detailed and analyzed, to let it pass for an essay on the philosophy, or greater results of these memorable transactions. We are the most struck with this last fault-which perhaps is inseparable from the condition of a contemporary writer;-for, though the observation may sound at first like a paradox, we are rather inclined to think that the best historical compositions-not only the most pleasing to read, but the most just and instructive in themselves-must be written at a very considerable distance from the times to which they relate. When we read an eloquent and judicious account of great events transacted in other ages, our first sentiment Of the thousand or fifteen hundred names is that of regret at not being able to learn that have been connected in contemporary more of them. We wish anxiously for a fuller fame with the great events of the last twentydetail of particulars-we envy those who had five years, how many will go down to posthe good fortune to live in the time of such terity? In all probability not more than interesting occurrences, and blame them for twenty: And who shall yet venture to say having left us so brief and imperfect a me- which twenty it will be? But it is the same morial of them. But the truth is, if we may with the events as with the actors. How judge from our own experience, that the often, during that period, have we mourned greater part of those who were present to or exulted, with exaggerated emotions, over those mighty operations, were but very im- occurrences that we already discover to have perfectly aware of their importance, and con- been of no permanent importance!-how cerjectured but little of the influence they were tain is it, that the far greater proportion of to exert on future generations. Their atten- those to which we still attach an interest, will tion was successively engaged by each sepa- be viewed with the same indifference by the rate act of the great drama that was passing very next generation!—and how probable, before them; but did not extend to the con- that the whole train and tissue of the history nected effect of the whole, in which alone will appear, to a remoter posterity, under a posterity was to find the grandeur and inter- totally different character and colour from any est of the scene. The connection indeed of that the most penetrating observer of the prethose different acts is very often not then sent day has thought of ascribing to it! Was discernible. The series often stretches on, there any contemporary, do we think, of Mabeyond the reach of the generation which homet, of Gregory VII., of Faust, or Columwitnessed its beginning, and makes it impos- bus, who formed the same estimate of their sible for them to integrate what had not yet achievements that we do at this day? Were attained its completion; while, from similar the great and wise men who brought about causes, many of the terms that at first ap- the Reformation, as much aware of its impeared most important are unavoidably dis-portance as the whole world is at present? or carded, to bring the problem within a manageable compass. Time, in short, performs the same services to events, which distance does to visible objects. It obscures and gradually annihilates the small, but renders those that are very great much more distinct and conceivable. If we would know the true form and bearings of an Alpine ridge, we must not grovel among the irregularities of its surface, but observe, from the distance of leagues, the direction of its ranges and peaks, and the

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does any one imagine, that, even in the later and more domestic events of the establishment of the English Commonwealth in 1648, or the English Revolution in 1688, the large and energetic spirits by whom those great events were conducted were fully sensible of their true character and bearings, or at all foresaw the mighty consequences of which they have since been prolific?

But though it may thus require the lipse of ages to develope the true character of a Ꭲ .

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