such circumstances we cannot help exclaiming, in the words of one of the most amiable of Homer's heroes, “ Νυν τις ενηειης Πατροκληος δειλο Μνησάσθω, πασιν γαρ επίστατο μείλιχος είναι à aucune forme de gouvernement. Il pense que la meilleure constitution pour un peuple est celle à laquelle il est accoutumé. Le vice fondamental des théories sur les constitutions politiques, c'est de commencer par attaquer celles qui existent, et d'exciter tout au moins des inquiétudes et des jalousies de pouWe have no difficulty in admitting that, dur- voir. Une telle disposition n'est point favoring the ten or twelve years which followed the able au perfectionnement des lois. La seule appearance of the "Vindicia Gallica," the époque où l'on puisse entreprendre avec sucopinions of Sir James Mackintosh underwent cès de grandes réformes de législation, est some change. But did this change pass on celle où les passions publiques sont calmes, et him alone? Was it not common? Was it où le gouvernement jouit de la stabilité la plus not almost universal? Was there one honest grande. L'objet de M. Bentham, en cherchant friend of liberty in Europe or in America whose dans le vice des lois la cause de la plupart des ardour had not been damped, whose faith in the maux, a été constamment d'éloigner le plus high destinies of mankind had not been shaken? grand de tous, le bouleversement de l'autorité, Was there one observer to whom the French les révolutions de propriété et de pouvoir." Revolution, or revolutions in general, appeared To so conservative a frame of mind had the exactly in the same light on the day when the excesses of the French Revolution brought the Bastille fell and on the day when the Girond-most uncompromising reformers of that time. ists were dragged to the scaffold—the day when And why is one person to be singled out from the Directory shipped off their principal oppo- among millions and arraigned before posterity nent for Guiana, or the day when the Legisla- as a traitor to his opinions, only because events tive Body was driven from its hall at the point produced on him the effect which they proof the bayonet? We do not speak of enthu-duced on a whole generation? This biographer siastic and light-minded people-of wits like may, for aught we know, have revelations from Sheridan, or poets like Alfieri, but of the most Heaven like Mr. Percival, or pure anticipated virtuous and intelligent practical statesmen, cognitions like the disciples of Kant. But such and of the deepest, the calmest, the most im- poor creatures as Mackintosh, Dumont, and partial political speculators of that time. What Bentham had nothing but observation and reawas the language and conduct of Lord Spen- son to guide them, and they obeyed the guidance ser, of Lord Fitzwilliam, of Mr. Grattan? What of observation and reason. How is it in phyis the tone of Dumont's Memoirs, written just sics? A traveller falls in with a fruit which at the close of the eighteenth century? What he had never before seen. He tastes it, and Tory could have spoken with greater disgust finds it sweet and refreshing. He praises it, and contempt of the French Revolution and its and resolves to introduce it into his own counauthors? Nay, this writer, a republican, and try. But in a few minutes he is taken violently the most upright and zealous of republicans, sick; he is convulsed; he is at the point of has gone so far as to say that Mr. Burke's death; no medicine gives him relief. He of work on the Revolution had saved Europe. course pronounces this delicious food a poison, The name of M. Dumont naturally suggests blames his own folly in tasting it, and cautions that of Mr. Bentham. He, we presume, was not his friends against it. After a long and violent ratting for a place; and what language did he struggle he recovers, and finds himself much hold at that time? Look at his little treatise exhausted by his sufferings, but free from some entitled “Sophismes Anarchiques,” In that trea- chronic complaints which had been the torment tise he says, that the atrocities of the Revolu- of his life. He then changes his opinion again, tion were the natural consequences of the ab- and pronounces this fruit a very powerful resurd principles on which it was commenced;-medy, which ought to be employed only in exthat while the chiefs of the constituent assem-treme cases, and with great caution, but which bly gloried in the thought that they were pulling down an aristocracy, they never saw that their doctrines tended to produce an evil a hundred times more formidable-anarchy; that the theory laid down in the “Declaration of the Rights of Man" had, in a great measure, produced the crimes of the Reign of Terror;-that none but an eye-witness could imagine the horrors of a state of society in which comments on that Declaration were put forth by men with no food in their bellies, with rags on their backs, and with arms in their hands. He praises the English Parliament for the dislike which it has always shown to abstract reasonJugs, and to the affirming of general principles. In M. Dumont's preface to the "Treatise on the Principles of Legislation"-a preface written under the eye of Mr. Bentham and published with his sanction--are the following still more remarkable expressions:-" M. Bentham est bien loin d'attacher une préférence exclusive ought not to be absolutely excluded from the Pharmacopoeia." And would it not be the height of absurdity to call such a man fickle and inconsistent because he had repeatedly altered his judgment? If he had not altered his judgment, would he have been a rational being! It was exactly the same with the French Revolution. That event was a new phenomenon in politics. Nothing that had gone before enabled any person to judge with certainty of the course which affairs might take. At first the effect was the reform of great abuses, and honest men rejoiced. Then came commotion, proscription, confiscation, the bank ruptcy, the assignats, the maximum, civil war foreign war, revolutionary tribunals, guillotin ades, noyades, fusillades. Yet a little while, and a military despotism rose out of the confusion, and threatened the independence of every state in Europe. And yet again a litte while, and the old dynasty returned, followed by a train of emigrants eager to restore the old | his course through those times. Exposed sucabuses. We have now, we think, the whole before us. We should therefore be justly accused of levity or insincerity if our language concerning those events were constantly changing. It is our deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind. But it was not only natural, but inevitable, that those who had only seen the first act should be ignorant of the catastrophe, and should be alternately elated and depressed as the plot went on disclosing itself to them. A man who had held exactly the same opinion about the Revolution in 1789, in 1794, in 1804, in 1814, and in 1834, would have been either a divinely inspired prophet or an obstinate fool. Mackin-lowed. tosh was neither. He was simply a wise and good man; and the change which passed on his mind was a change which passed on the mind of almost every wise and good man in Europe. In fact, few of his contemporaries changed so little. The rare moderation and calmness of his temper preserved him alike from extravagant elation and from extravagant despondency. He was never a Jacobin. He was never an Antijacobin. His mind oscillated undoubtedly; but the extreme points of the oscillation were not very remote. Herein he differed greatly from some persons of distinguished talents who entered into life at nearly the same time with him. Such persons we have seen rushing from one wild extreme to another-out-Paining Paine-out-Castlereagh cessively to two opposite infections, he took both in their very mildest form. The constitution of his mind was such that neither of the diseases which committed such havoc all around him could, in any serious degree, or for any great length of time, derange his intellectual health. He, like every honest and enlightened man in Europe, saw with delight the great awakening of the French nation. Yet he never, in the season of his warmest enthusiasm, proclaimed doctrines inconsistent with the safety of property and the just authority of governments. He, like almost every honest and enlightened man, was discouraged and perplexed by the terrible events which folYet he never, in the most gloomy times, abandoned the cause of peace, of liberty, and of toleration. In that great convulsion which overset almost every other understanding, he was indeed so much shaken that he leaned sometimes in one direction and sometimes in the other; but he never lost his balance. The opinions in which he at last reposed, and to which, in spite of strong temptations, he adhered with a firm, a disinterested, an ill-requited fidelity, were a just mean between those which he had defended with a youthful ardour and with more than manly prowess against. Mr. Burke; and those to which he had inclined during the darkest and saddest years in the history of modern Europe. We are much mistaken if this be the picture either of a weak or of a dishonest mind." ing Castlereagh-Pantisocratists-ultra-Tories What his political opinions were in his lat--Heretics-Persecutors--breaking the old ter years is written in the annals of his country. laws against sedition--calling for new and Those annals will sufficiently refute the calumsharper laws against sedition--writing demo-ny which his biographer has ventured to pubcratic dramas--writing laureate odes--pane- lish in the very advertisement to his work. gyrizing Marten-panegyrizing Laud-consist- "Sir James Mackintosh," says he, "was avowent in nothing but in an intolerance which in edly and emphatically a Whig of the Revoany person would be offensive, but which is lution: and since the agitation of religious altogether unpardonable in men who, by their liberty and parliamentary reform became a naown confession, have had such ample experi- tional movement, the great transaction of 1688 ence of their own fallibility. We readily con- has been more dispassionately, more correctly, cede to some of these persons the praise of elo- and less highly estimated." While we tranquence and of poetical invention, nor are we scribe the words, our anger cools down into by any means disposed, even where they have scorn. If they mean any thing, they must been gainers by their conversion, to question mean that the opinions of Sir James Mackintheir sincerity. It would be most uncandid to tosh concerning religious liberty and parliaattribute to sordid motives actions which ad-mentary reform went no further than those of mit of a less discreditable explanation. We think that the conduct of these persons has been precisely what was to be expected from men who were gifted with strong imagination and quick sensibility, but who were neither accurate observers nor logical reasoners. It was natural that such men should see in the victory of the third estate in France the dawn of a new Saturnian age. It was natural that the disappointment should be proportioned to the extravagance of their hopes. Though the direction of their passions was altered, the violence of those passions was the same. The force of the rebound was proportioned to the force of the original impulse. The pendulum :.wung furiously to the left because it had been drawn too far to the right. We own that nothing gives us so high an idea of the judgment and temper of Sir James Mackintosh as the manner in which he shaped the authors of the Revolution,-in other words, that Sir James Mackintosh opposed Catholic Emancipation, and quite approved of the old constitution of the House of Commons. The allegation is confuted by twenty volumes of parliamentary debates, nay, by innumerable passages in the very fragment which this writer has done his little utmost to deface. We tell him that Sir James Mackintosh has often done more for religious liberty and for parliamentary reform in a quarter of an hour than the feeble abilities of his biographer will ever effect in the whole course of a long life. The Continuation which follows Sir James Mackintosh's Fragment is as offensive as the Memoir which precedes it. We do not pretend to have read the whole, or even one half of it. Three hundred quarto pages of such matter are too much for human patience. It would be unjust to the writer not to present our readers, few of whom, we suspect, will be his readers, with a sample of his eloquence. We will treat them with a short sentence, and will engage that they shall think it long enough. "Idolatry! fatal word, which has edged more swords, lighted more fires, and inhumanized more hearts, than the whole vocabulary of the passions besides." A choice style for history, we must own! This gentleman is fond of the word "vocabulary." He speaks very scornfully of Churchill's "vocabulary," and blames Burnet for the "hardihood of his vocabulary." What this last expression may mean, we do not very clearly understand. But we are quite sure that Burnet's vocabulary, with all its hardi hood, would never have dared to admit such a word as "inhumanized." Of the accuracy of the Continuation as to matters of fact we will give a single specimen. With a little time we could find twenty such. "Bishop Lloyd did not live to reap, at least to enjoy, the fruit of his public labours and secret intrigues. He died soon after the Re volution, upon his translation from St. Asaph to Worcester." Nobody tolerably well acquainted with political, ecclesiastical, or literary history, can need to be told that Lloyd was not made Bishop of Worcester till the year 1699, after the death of Stillingfleet; that he outlived the Revolution nearly thirty years; and died in the reign of George I. This blunder is the more inexcusable, as one of the most curious and best known transactions in the time of Anne, was the address of the House of Commons to the queen, begging her to dismiss Lloyd from his place of almoner. As we turn over the leaves, another sentence catches our eye. We extract it as an instance both of historical accuracy and philosophical profundity. "Religion in 1688 was not a rational conviction, or a sentiment of benevolence and charity; but one of the malignant passions, and a cause of quarrel. Even in the next age, Congreve makes a lying sharper, in one of his plays, talk seriously of fighting for his religion." What is meant by "even in the next age?" Congreve's first work, the novel of "Cleophil," was written in the very year 1688; and the "Old Bachelor," from which the quotation is taken, was brought on the stage only five years after the Revolution. But this great logician ought to go further. Sharper talks of fighting, not only for his religion, but for his friends. We presume, therefore, that in the year 1688, friendship was "one of the malignant passions, and a cause of quarrel." But enough and too much of such folly. Never was there such a contrast as that which Sir James's Fragment presents to this Continuation. In the former, we have scarcely been able, during several close examinations, to detect one mistake as to matter of fact. We never open the latter without lighting on a ridiculous blunder which it does not require the assistance of any book of reference to detect. The author has not the smallest notion of the state of England in 1688; of the feelings and opinions of the people; of the relative position of parties; of the character of one single public man on either side. No single passage can give any idea of this equally diffused ignorance, this omninescience, if we may carry the "Lord Halifax played his part with deeper perfidy. This opinion is expressed without renet, which seems, indeed, too inconsistent to be ference to the strange statement of Bishop Burtrue. It should be cited, however, for the judg ment of the reader. The Marquis of Halifax, says he, (on the arrival of the commissioners at Hungerford,) sent for me; but the prince said, though he would suspect nothing from our meeting, others might; so I did not speak Yet he took occasion to ask me, so as nobody with him in private, but in the hearing of others. observed it, if we had a mind to have the king in our hands. I said by no means, for we would had a mind to go away? I said nothing was not hurt his person. He asked next, what if he so much to be wished for. This I told the prince, and he approved of both my answers.' "Is it credible that Lord Halifax started an And this is the man who has been chosen to age. We conceive that it is the same with political science. Like those other sciences which we have mentioned, it has always been working itself clearer and clearer, and depositing impurity after imparity. There was a time when the most powerful of human intellects were deluded by the gibberish of the astrologer and the alchymist; and just so there was a time when the most enlightened and virtuous statesmen thought it the first duty of a government to persecute heretics, to found monasteries, to make war on Saracens. But time advances, facts accumulate, doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain, and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority-of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on, till schoolboys laugh at the jargon which imposed on Bacon,-till country rectors condemn the illiberality and intolerance of Sir Thomas More. that King William gave the very first bishopric | the old times, as to deny that medicine, surge that became vacant after the Revolution? Til- ry, botany, chemistry, engineering, navigation, lotson, Tennyson, Stillingfleet, Hongh, Patrick, are better understood now than in any former all distinguished by their exertions in defence of the reformed faith, all supporters of the new government, were they all passed by in favour of a man of no weight-of a man so unimportant that no person of rank would talk with him about momentous affairs? And, even granting that Burnet was a very "inferior personage,' did Halifax think him so? Everybody knows the contrary-that is, everybody except this writer. In 1680 it was reported that Halifax was a concealed Papist. It was accordingly moved in the House of Commons by Halifax's stepfather, Chichley, that Dr. Burnet should be examined as to his lordship's religious opinions. This proves that they were on terms of the closest intimacy. But this is not all. There is still extant among the writings of Halifax a character of Burnet, drawn with the greatest skill and delicacy. It is no unmixed panegyric. The failings of Burnet are pointed out; but he is described as a man whose very failings arose from the constant activity of his intellect. 64 His friends," says the Marquis, "love him too well to see small faults, or if they do, think that his greater talents give him a privilege of straying from the strict rules of caution." Men like Halifax do not write elaborate characters, either favourable or unfavourable, of those whom they consider as "inferior personages." Yet Burnet, it seems, was so inferior a personage, that Halifax would not trust him with a secret! And what, after all, was the mighty secret? This writer calls it "an overture of guilt and infamy." It was no overture of guilt and infamy. It was no overture at all. It was, on the face of it, a very simple question, which the most devoted adherent of King James might naturally and properly have asked. This, we repeat, is only a fair sample. We have not observed one paragraph in the vast mass, which, if examined in the same manner, would not yield an equally abundant harvest of error and impotence. What most disgusts us is the contempt with which the writer thinks fit to speak of all things that were done before the coming in of the very last fashions in politics. What he thinks about this, or about any other matter, is of little consequence, and would be of no consequence at all, if he had not deformed an excellent work, by fastening to it his own speculations. But we think that we have sometimes observed a leaning towards the same fault in persons of a very different order of intellect from this writer. We will therefore take this opportunity of making a few remarks on an error which is, we fear, becoming common; and which appears to us not only absurd, but as pernicious as any error concerning the transactions of a past age can possibly be. Seeing these things-seeing that, by the confession of the most obstinate enemies of innovation, our race has hitherto been almost constantly advancing in knowledge, and not seeing any reason to believe that, precisely at the point of time at which we came into the world, a change took place in the faculties of the human mind, or in the mode of discovering truth, we are reformers: we are on the side of progress. From the great advances which European society has made, during the last four centuries, in every species of knowledge, we infer, not that there is no more room for improvement, but that in every science which deserves the name, immense improvements may be confidently expected. But the very considerations which lead us to look forward with sanguine hope to the future, prevent us from looking back with contempt on the past. We do not flatter ourselves with the notion, that we have attained perfection, and that no more truth remains to be found. We believe that we are wiser than our ancestors. We believe, also, that our posterity will be wiser than we. It would be gross injustice in our grandchildren to talk of us with contempt, merely because they may have surpassed us-to call Watt a fool, because me chanical powers may be discovered which We shall not, we hope, be suspected of a may supersede the use of steam-to deride the Digoted attachment to the doctrines and prac-efforts which have been made in our time to tices of past generations. Our creed is, that improve the discipline of prisons, and to en'he science of government is an experimental lighten the minds of the poor, because future science, and that, like all other experimental philanthropists may devise better places of sciences, it is generally in a state of progres- confinement than Mr. Bentham's Panopticon, No man is so obstinate an admirer of and better places of education than Mr. Lan caster's Schools. As we would have our descendants judge us, so ought we to judge our fathers. In order to form a correct estimate of their merits, we ought to place ourselves in their situation to put out of our minds, for a time, all that knowledge which they, however eager in the pursuit of truth, could not have, and which we, however negligent we may have been, could not help having. It was not merely difficult, but absolutely impossible, for the best and greatest of men, two hundred years ago, to be what a very commonplace person in our days may easily be, and, indeed, must necessarily be. But it is too much that the benefactors of mankind, after having been reviled by the dunces of their own generation for going too far, are to be reviled by the dances of the next generation for not going far enough. remains because they fell in the breach, and did not live to penetrate to the citadel. Now here we have a book written by a man who is a very bad specimen of the English of the nineteenth century, a man who knows nothing but what it is a scandal not to know. And if we were to judge by the self-complacent pity with which he speaks of the great statesmen and philosophers of a former age, we should guess that he was the author of the most original and important inventions in political science. Yet not so:-for men who are able to make discoveries are generally disposed to make allowances. Men who are eagerly pressing forward in pursuit of truth are grateful to every one who has cleared an inch of the way for them. It is, for the most part, the man below mediocrity, the man who has just capacity enough to pick up and repeat The truth lies between two absurd extremes. the commonplaces which are fashionable in On one side is the bigot who pleads the wisdom his own time,-it is he, we say, who looks of our ancestors as a reason for not doing what with disdain on the very intellects to which it they, in our place, would be the first to do, is owing that those commonplaces are not still who opposes the Reform Bill because Lord considered as startling paradoxes or damnable Somers did not see the necessity of parlia-heresies. The writer is just the man who, if mentary reform,-who would have opposed he had lived in the seventeenth century, would the Revolution because Ridley and Craumer have devoutly believed that the Papists burned professed boundless submission to the royal London,-who would have swallowed the prerogative, and who would have opposed whole of Oates's story about the forty thouthe Reformation because the Fitzwalters and sand soldiers disguised as pilgrims, who were Marischals, whose seals are set to the Great to meet in Gallicia, and sail thence to invade Charter, were devoted adherents to the Church England,-who would have carried a Proof Rome. On the other side is the conceited testant flail under his coat,-and who would sciolist who speaks with scorn of the Great have been furious if the story of the warmingCharter, because it did not reform the church; pan had been questioned. It is quite natural of the Reformation, because it did not limit the that such a man should speak with contempt prerogative; and of the Revolution, because it of the great reformers of that time, because did not purify the House of Commons. The they did not know some things which he never former of these errors we have often combated, would have known, but for the salutary effects and shall always be ready to combat; the lat- of their exertions. The men to whom we owe ter, though rapidly spreading, has not, we it that we have the House of Commons are think, yet come under our notice. The former sneered at because they did not suffer the deerror bears directly on practical questions, and bates of the House to be published. The obstructs useful reforms. It may, therefore, authors of the Toleration Act are treated as seem to be, and probably is, the more mis-bigots, because they did not go the whole chievous of the two. But the latter is length of Catholic emancipation. Just so we equally absurd; it is at least equally symp-have heard a baby, mounted on the shoulders tomatic of a shallow understanding and an of its father, cry out, "How much taller I am unamiable temper; and, if it should ever than papa!" become general, it will, we are satisfied, produce very prejudicial effects. Its tendency is to deprive the benefactors of mankind of their honest fame, and to put the best and the worst men of past times on the same level. The author of a great reformation is almost always unpopular in his own age. He generally passes his life in disquiet and danger. It is therefore for the interest of the human race that the memory of such men should be had in reverence, and that they should be supported against the scorn and hatred of their contemporaries, by the hope of leaving a great and imperishable name. To go on the forlorn hope of truth is a service of peril: who will undertake it, if it be not also a service of honour? It is easy enough, after the ramparts are carried, to find men to plant the flag on the highest tower. The difficulty is to find men who are ready to go first into the breach; and it would be bad policy indeed to insult their VOL. IIL-38 This gentleman can never want matter for pride, if he finds it so easily. He may boast of an indisputable superiority to all the greatest men of all past ages. He can read and write. Homer did not know a letter. He has been taught that the earth goes round the sun. Archimedes held that the sun went round the earth. He is aware that there is a place called New Holland. Columbus and Gama went to their graves in ignorance of the fact. He has heard of the Georgium Sidus. Newton was ignorant of the existence of such a planet. He is acquainted with the use of gunpowder. Hannibal and Cæsar won their victories with sword and spear. We submit, however, that is not the way in which men are to be estimated. We submit that a wooden spoon of our day would not be justified in calling Gaii leo and Napier blockheads, because they never heard of the differential calculus. We submit that Caxton's press in Westminster Abbey, |