Oxford, pluming themselves on their consistency, and their love for our ancient institutions,' while uttering the war-cries of Whiggery, and frantically defending the modern substitutes for a National Faith and an English Sovereign. Well was it, therefore, that some one, learned and witty, a man alike of the world and the closet should be found to confront historical fallacies with historical truths, and hold up to the new generation a faithful portrait of their ancestors instead of a vapid caricature. Garrick, acting Macbeth in a powdered wig, with buckles to his shoes, was not more remote from scenic fidelity, than worthy Sir Robert Inglis vociferating No popery' from historical toryism. To establish the fact of this ludicrous discrepancy, who so capable, as combining the qualifications we have just mentioned, as Mr. Disraeli? and we are happy to think, that having discovered his rôle, he is playing it with admirable skill and talent. Oxford and Cambridge, Eton and Manchester, Birmingham and the House of Commons-the seats of learning and the hives of industry, the emporiums of wealth and the chambers of ignorant indifference-nay, even the cottages of rustic poverty have heard the startling voice, which proclaims we have been the victims of delusion, and points to the Church and the Crown as the only hope for the people. A remarkable proof was afforded of the acceptance which these views have found in the public mind, when a speaker could address amid loud cheers such observations as the following to the vast multitude collected in the Free Trade Hall of Manchester. We see a truth-seeking inquisition at work, which refuses to accept the low and party views of the historians of the last century; the data upon which history is to be formed are carefully sought out, revolved from the obscurity in which they are shrouded, and from them independent conclusions are formed, often at variance with received notions and opinions.

In a social and political point of view-political I mean, in its most legitimate and least party sense-I rate highly the good which may accrue to this country from having its past historynot a mere record of the kings who reigned and the battles they fought, but the history of its inner life, the habits, thoughts, and tastes of its people, the real aims and objects of its governors laid faithfully before us, because I am every day more and more convinced that half the mischief which is done to a country like this by its legislators and rulers is done from a misunderstanding of its past history.' Encouraged then, we may suppose by manifestations of popular sympathy, such as awaited him at Manchester and elsewhere, and relying on the evidently increasing disinclination of the people to be any longer duped by either of the heartless factions which have so long fattened on the ignorant bigotry they themselves have stimulated,

Mr. Disraeli has not hesitated to lay before the public, views of history and of politics, the truth of which it is the object of this Review in the main to confirm and enforce.

Of the story and plot of 'Sybil' we shall say little or nothing; by the time these pages are printed the great majority of our readers will have read the novel of the season; and, although certainly a novel, Mr. Disraeli himself would admit that the interest of Sybil' lies in sketches of life and manners prevalent in the Two Nations under the same sceptre, 'between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy, who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets -the Rich and the Poor,' in the views of English history hinted at or developed, in the estimate formed of living statesmen, and the course of political and social conduct from which the people are taught to expect the regeneration of their national character, and the restoration of their individual rights with which this remarkable book abounds-to these points then we shall mainly restrict ourselves.

Lord Bolingbroke laid it down as a maxim, that for all practical purposes English history commenced after the wars of the Roses; we, in these days, may, perhaps, with equal truth, assert that for all social purposes it dates from the Reformation; for all legislative it commences with the revolution of 1688. To that last event we owe the present distinguishing features of English polity; a vast standing army, an enormous debt, a nominal sovereign, an inadequate, hampered and undisciplined clergy, and an omnipotent ploutocracy. Well does Mr. Disraeli say,—

If it be a salutary principle in the investigation of historical transactions to be careful in discriminating the cause from the pretext, there is scarcely any instance in which the application of this principle is more fertile in results than in that of the Dutch Invasion of 1688. The real cause of this invasion was financial. The Prince of Orange had found that the resources of Holland, however considerable, were inadequate to sustain him in his internecine rivalry with the great Sovereign of France. In an authentic conversation which has descended to us, held by William at the Hague with one of the prime abettors of the invasion, the prince did not disguise his motives; he said, "Nothing but such a constitution as you have in England can have the credit that is necessary to raise such sums as a great war requires." The prince came, and used our constitution for his purpose. He introduced into England the system of Dutch finance. The principle of that system was to mortgage industry, to protect property; abstractedly, nothing can be conceived more unjust; its practice in England has been equally injurious. In Holland, with a small population engaged in the same pursuits, in fact, a nation of bankers, the system was adapted to the circumstances which had created it. But applied to a country in which the circumstances were entirely

different, to a considerable and rapidly increasing population, where there was a numerous peasantry, a trading middle class struggling into existence, the system of Dutch finance, pursued more or less for nearly a century and a half, has ended in the degradation of a fettered and burdened multitude. Nor have the demoralizing consequences of the funding system on the more favoured classes been less decided. It has made debt a national habit; it has made credit the ruling power, not the exceptional auxiliary, of all transactions; it has introduced a loose, inexact, haphazard, and dishonest spirit in the conduct of both public and private life; a spirit dazzling, and yet dastardly; reckless of consequences, and yet shrinking from responsibility. And, in the end, it has so overstimulated the energies of the population to maintain the material engagements of the state, and of society at large, that the moral condition of the people has been entirely lost sight of.'

It follows then that the objects which statesmen should have in view, are, the reduction and ultimate destruction of the debt, the restoration of power to the Sovereign, independence and vitality to the Church, and a diminution of the empire which wealth now enjoys over this country. With respect to the first point, the present Ministers may say, with justice, that they have taken a step in the right direction. Sir James Graham, indeed, in the debate on Lord John Russell's resolutions asserted that their reduction of the Three and a Half per Cents was the greatest financial operation that had been performed for we do not know how long; that was the exaggeration of self-praise; but without assenting to it, or to the prophecy of the author of Hawkstone that Sir Robert Peel will go down to posterity as the author of that reduction, and of the New Police, we hail it as a measure good in itself, and better in its future tendencies. But for any indications on the part of this administration or the legislature which it rules with so absolute a sway, of a desire to compass those other ends which we have specified, we look in vain. Rem, si possis recte si non quocunque modo, rem,' seems to be the rule deliberately adopted by every leading politician in the House of Commons, with the exception of Lord Ashley, and of the New Generation,' whose views Sybil' may be regarded to express. All measures are judged of by the consideration will it increase the wealth of the country?' And if a minister can show that in the present year there is more bullion in the bank, and more millions invested in railroads than in any previous year, the mammon-worshippers are in ecstasies, and the people are congratulated by the royal lips at the close of a weary session, from which they derive no possible benefit, on their flourishing and prosperous condition. Fatal delusion! The same minister who boasts of the eighty millions embarked in railway speculations yet unfinished, informs the Commons through his Poor-law Commissioners that one eighth of the people are paupers. Let the country continue to flourish and

prosper after this fashion-let the eighty millions be doubled, and let every fourth Englishman instead of every eighth be a pauper, and what then?-a revolution, such as the world has not yet seen. The extent to which this wealth-adoration is pushed, is as ludicrous as it is alarming: it makes a liberal peer exact the last farthing for the rent of a lug of land from the starving peasant, and insists on the industry of the country being entirely dependent on money-wages; though it shrinks with horror from any attempt to secure the permanence or sufficiency of those wages. Mr. Disraeli sees the rottenness of such a system, and exposes with happiest power the sophisms and perversions of history on which it is based, and the consequences to which it is rapidly leading. The destruction of the monasteries, and the alienation of their lands from the people to the courtiers, is a favourite topic with the economic philosophers; and even Mr. Hallam is induced by his whiggery to do despite to his kindlier feelings, and defend that spoliation. The most delightful and philosophical perhaps of all the chapters in 'Sybil' is devoted to an examination of Mr. Hallam's dictum, Better has it been that those revenues should thus from age to age have been expended in liberal hospitality, in discerning charity, in the promotion of industry and cultivation, in the active duties, or even generous amusements of life, than in maintaining a host of ignorant and inactive monks, in deceiving the populace by superstitious pageantry, or in the encouragement of idleness and mendicity.' The scene is admirably conceived; near the ruined abbey of Marney, among an agricultural population subsisting on seven shillings per week, an incendiary fire had at last occurred; the brother of the lay abbot, after hearing some of the particulars from the farmer whose barns had suffered, turns in a musing mood to the thought inspiring ruins:

'Why was England not the same land as in the days of his lighthearted youth? Why were these hard times for the poor? He stood among the ruins that, as the farmer had well observed, had seen many changes; changes of creeds, of dynasties, of laws, of manners. New orders of men had arisen in the country, new sources of wealth had opened, new dispositions of power to which that wealth had necessarily led. His own house, his own order, had established themselves on the ruins of that great body, the emblems of whose ancient magnificence and strength surrounded them. And now his order was in turn menaced. And the people-the millions of toil, on whose unconscious energies during these changeful centuries all rested-what changes had these centuries brought to them? Had their advance in the national scale borne a due relation to that progress of their rulers, which had accumulated in the treasuries of a limited class the riches of the world, and made their possessors boast that they were the first of nations; the most powerful, and the most free, the most enlightened,

Constitutional History, vol. i. p. 108.

the most moral, and the most religious. Were there any rick-burners in the times of the lord abbots? And if not, why not? And why should the stacks of the earls of Marney be destroyed, and those of the abbots of Marney spared?"

While such reflections are passing through his mind, he discovers two visitors engaged in exploring the ruins, and enters into conversation with them:

:

"At any rate, it was a forfeiture which gave life to the community," said Egremont; "the lands are held by active men, and not by drones."

"A drone is one who does not labour," said the stranger, "whether he wears a cowl or a coronet, 'tis the same to me. Somebody I suppose must own the land: though I have heard say that this individual tenure is not a necessity; but however this may be, I am not one who would object to the lord, provided he were a gentle one. All agree the Monastics were easy landlords; their rents were low; they granted leases in those days. Their tenants too might renew their terms before their tenure ran out: so they were men of spirit and property. There were yeomen then, sir; the country was not divided into two classes, masters and slaves; there was some resting place between luxury and misery. Comfort was an English habit then, not merely an English word."

"And do you really think they were easier landlords than our present ones?" said Egremont, enquiringly.

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Human nature would tell us that, even if history did not confess it. The Monastics could possess no private property: they could save no money; they could bequeath nothing. They lived, received, and expended in common. The monastery, too, was a proprietor that never died and never wasted. The farmer had a deathless landlord then not a harsh guardian, or a grinding mortgagee, or a dilatory master in chancery: all was certain, the manor had not to dread a change of lords, or the oaks to tremble at the axe of the squandering heir. How proud we are still in England of an old family; though God knows, 'tis rare to see one now. Yet the people like to say, "We held under him, and his father, and his grandfather before him: they know that such a tenure is a benefit. The abbot was ever the same. The monks were in short in every district a point of refuge for all who needed succour, counsel and protection; a body of individuals having no cares of their own, with wisdom to guide the inexperienced, with wealth to relieve the suffering, and often with power to protect the oppressed."

"You plead their cause with feeling," said Egremont, not un moved.

"It is my own; they were the sons of the people, like myself." "I had thought rather these monasteries were the resort of the younger branches of the aristocracy," said Egremont.

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Instead of the pension list," replied his companion, smiling, but not with bitterness.

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Well, if we must have an aristocracy, I would sooner that its younger branches should be monks and nuns, than colonels without