"Remark of Lewis XVI. "That would be perhaps the way to obtain nothing. Our parliaments are accustomed to grant all that is required of them at the expence of the people: but they are also in the habit of refusing every thing, and of suffering themselves to be exiled, when they are to establish any tax to their own personal prejudice. To assemble the men of property in my kingdom for the purpose of levying taxes, is taking the very means of rendering them averse to the tax demanded. The Abbé Terray has fully proved that there is no certainty of raising a tax, except when it is levied by order of him who does not pay, or who pays the least part of it. The idea of forming perpetual states-general is subversive of the monarchy, which is only absolute because its authority is not divided. The moment they are assembled, there exists no longer any thing intermediate between the king and the nation, except an army; and it is grievous to confide to the military the defence of the authority of the state, against the French people assembled. The system of M, Turgot is a fine dream; it is a particuJar species of Utopian government, coming from a man whose views are good; but who would overthrow the actual state of things. The ideas of M. Turgot are extremely danger ous; and resistance must be made to their novelty. "All this,' says M, Turgot, may be done this year, or the beginning of the next: but it is not until the first days of October, after the last harvests, that the municipal elective assemblies could be held.' "Remark of Lewis XVI. "Here then is a new France speedily regenerated, and assembled: but, in the mean time, old France, that is, the great of the kingdom, the parliaments, the provincial assemblies, the échevins, the prévôts des marchands, the capitouls, would hold their sittings also, and perhaps put themselves in insurrection, desiring to know by the commission of what crimes they had merited being deposed. "After a few years, your majesty would have a new people, and the first of people. "Remark of Lewis XVI. "It is certain there would then be estahlished in France assemblics extremely new; for the right of property, with that of birth, and quality, the antient forms of the monarehy, would be abolished, to substitute in their places the assemblies of a new people, "Instead,' says M. Turgot, of the corruption, the meanness, the intrigues, and rapacity, which generally prevail, your majesty would meet at every step with virtue, disinterestedness, honour, and zeal,' Remark of Lewis XVI. "Iam ignorant whether France, administered by persons chosen by the people, and by the most wealthy, would be more virtupus than it is, administered by the right of birth, and the choice of kings. I find, in the succession of administrators named by my ancestors, and in the chief families of the robe, and even of finance, in my kingdom, Frenchmen whose names would reflect honour on any nation. The passage from the state of things abolished, to that which is now proposed by M. Turgot, metits attention; since we see plainly what is, but only see in theory what is not; and dangerous enterprises ought not to be undertaken, unless we know their tendency.-Feb. 15th, 1788. "Observation. "At the time this memorial was written, Lewis the XVIth. was strongly imbibed with the philosophical and revolutionary ideas of M. Turgot. Twelve years had now elapsed since the dismissal of that minister, when the monarch, finding that those opinions had spread among the people, turned back to the cause of the evil, which he appears to have found in the porte-feuille in which were deposited M. Turgot's regenerating notes and observations. "It is on the present memorial, containing certainly the genuine principles of the revolution which took place in the following year, that the monarch fixed his particul. r attention. The remarks on the dispositions of this note are judicious: but M. Turgot's ideas had taken too deep root in the mind of the nation, to be now eradicated. The germs of the revolution, fostered by a genial ray from the western hemisphere, had already sprung up; and the king might make comments, if he pleased, on their mischiev ous properties: but it was too late to arrest, with a feeble hand, the progress of their mighty vegetation." The translations of these letters are executed with the ease, the elegance, the idiomatic ambidexterity of a patriot of both countries. They will be appealed to by future grammarians, to decide controversies of language, and to assist in ascertaining the shades of meaning which separate synonymous parallelisms. They constitute in their present form a book remarkably well adapted to assist young persons in the acquirement of French. All the letters are given first in the ori ginal language, and next in a skilful and close version. The commentaries are in general pervaded by an humane and equitable spirit, favourable to liberty, to morality, and to rational religion. The insincerity of Lewis is indeed arraigned; but it is there. The Girondist party is indeed applauded; but it has exalted claims to admiration. Some historical criticisms are interspersed of solid value; such a the observations on the sixty-fourth le ter; yet we could have wished for the intermixture of a little more of that personal and specific information concerning many individuals alluded to, which the translatress has probably had peculiar opportunities of attaining. The present here made to the English public is the more valuable, as we understand that the French edition is not yet published; and possibly may be thought by the low jealousy of the new monarch of France unfit for publication in his realms. An authority reduced to put its seal on the doors of printingoffices, may be worthy of the barbaric force by which it was elevated: but it must check the foundation of schools, and the circulation of intelligence in France: it must condemn an adolescence, elsewhere consecrated to learning, there to be squandered in the debauched idleness of camps and barracks, if it would retain in its grasp the crosier of bigotry and the sceptre of tyranny. ART. XIII. A Statistical View of France, compiled from authentic Documents. By the Chevalier DE TINSEAU. 8vo. pp. 178. THIS work, with the exception of a few pages of remarks, consisting wholly of tabies, is no proper object of literary criticism. It is, however, a most important political document, and on this account demands a short analysis of its contents. The tables contained in this volume were drawn up in the 10th year of the French republic, (1801) by order of the government, and under the direction of the minister of justice, Abrial, assisted by Chanlaire and Herbin. Although the total amount of the French population is considerably greater than it has usually been reckoned, yet there seems no reason to call in question the accuracy of this enumeration, more especially as the present population of several of the large manufacturing towns, is stated considerably lower than what was known to be the actual amount before the revolution. The first document is a compleat table of all the departments, subdivided into districts and cantons, with an account of the population of the cantons and chief towns, their territorial extent, and the number of communes belonging to each canton. There are 102 departments, divided into 3317 communes, occupying an extent of 636,343 kilometres, (about 193,933 square miles) and containing a population of 33,101,343 souls, exclusive of the six departments of Piedmont, whose population is 1,946,800 souls, on a territory of 21,906 kilometres. The population of old France amounts to 27,989,924 souls, on 161,810 square miles of territory; the acquisitions from Germany, including the Austrian Netherlands, amount to 18,678 square miles, with a population of 4,387,000 inhabitants; those from Switzerland and Italy (exclusive of Piedmont) amount to 5103 square miles, with a population of 727,419 inhabitants; hence the total population of the French empire, not including the dependent and tributary states of Holland, Switzerland, Tusca ny, and the Cisalpine republic, amounts to 35,051,143 souls. The second table contains a list of the 500 principal cities and towns in France, arranged according to the number of their inhabitants; of these, 29 contain from 1500 to less than 4000 each; 116 contain from 4000 to 5000; 106 contain from 5000 to 6000; 58 contain from 6000 to 7000; 34 contain from 7000 to 8000; 27 contain from 8000 to 9000; 15 contain from 9000 to 10,000; 45 contain from 10,000 to 15,000; 21 contain from 15,000 to 20,000; 22 contain from 20,000 to 30,000; 12 contain from 30,000 to 50,000; 8 contain from 50,000 to 100,000; and 4 contain above 100,000. The population of the whole 500 towns amounts to 5,405,119 souls; of which Paris contains 546,856; Bourdeaux 112,844; Marseilles 111,130; and Lyons 109,500. The third table exhibits the internal revenue, collected in the 102 departments, under the heads of-1. land-tax, 2. personal taxes, and upon furniture, &c. 3. house and window tax, 4. patents, or licenses to exercise particular trades, 5. additional centimes; besides which the expences of public instruction, provincial administration, and judicial courts, are charged on each department. The total amount of all these are,-1. landtax 210,000,000 francs, 2. personal, &c. 32,000,000, 8. houses and windows. 17,600,000, 4. patents 21,845,425, 5. additional 38,720,000, 6. administration 13,205,686, 7. judiciary 14,909,385, 8. public instruction 3,158,500; in all, 351,438,997 francs, or somewhat less than 11 francs for each individual. Such are the resources and native strength of that formidable power, which the unprincipled aggression of the confederated kings has exalted upon the ruins of the European continent. ART. XIV. History of the Revolutions of Russia, to the Accession of Catherine the First: including a concise Review of the Manners and Customs of the 16th and 17th Centuries. By HENRY CARD, A. B, Pemb. Coll. Oxon. 8vo. pp. 710. ONE of the most valuable sources of Russian historiography, is Schloetzer's Probe Russischer Annalen. Mr. Tooke, in his excellent History of Russia, has consulted, with becoming attention, the admirable labours of this profound, this omniscient antiquary; who, in all the branches of arctic paleosophy, has displayed a research, a sagacity, and an adapted erudition, which will long be toiled after, with vain emulation, by the panting antiquaries of these puny times. From a writer on the revolutions of Russia, one is disposed to expect, and even to claim a careful perusal of at least all the leading authorities. It is not enough to tell us, (at page 6) that "the several writers who relate, in the sixteenth century, the history of Russia in the Latin language, are far superior in their compositions to any other foreigners of a subsequent date;" when the first antiquary, which the world ever produced, has subsequently consecrated so much labour to the express investigation of Russian affairs. Yet Mr. Card seems ignorant of the very existence of Schloetzer, and neither refers to his memoirs in the commentaries of the Petropolitan academy, to his specimen of Russian annals, nor to the sketches scattered in his northern history. Assemani, the Syrian, fancied he had found in Theophanes, that is in the year 774, the first traces of the Russian name; but a severer criticism construes the epithet guia, to mean ruddled, or painted red, and not Russian. It is therefore in the Bertinian annals, and to the year 839, that the first trace must be referred. The Russians speak a Slavonian dialect, and must consequently be allied in language, as Forster has shewn in his letter to Michaelis, with the Medes of antiquity; from some of whose tribes they no doubt descend. In 862, they submitted to the sway of Rurik, a Norman, who made Novgorod his chief residence, or seat of empire. In the Vandal tribes, who peopled Carinthia, Bohemia, Bavaria, and Moravia, the peasantry have still Slavonian names, but the nobility Gothic names; so that an early internal he reditary ascendancy was every where acquired by the Goths, over the contiguous Slavonians; either because they were the more civilized of the two tribes, or from a physical admiration of their fairer complexion and appearance. Such causes would sufficiently account for the elevation of Rurik; but our author as sures us, (page 8) that " he was selected by the republicans of Novgorod, to purge their city from the impurities of discord." How has Mr. Card found out, that there ever was a republic at Novgorod? Does he rely, in this age of historical criticism, on the authorities which taught Milton that Rurik descended from Augustus, and flourished in 573? And that the imperial cup was the skull of Stoslaus, inscribed seeking other mens' be lost his own. It may be allowed to Soumarokoff, in a tragedy, to make Vadim a hero of liberty; but the historian should not describe savages like citizens of Geneva or Paris. The dynasty, which sprang from Ru rik, continued to reign until 1598. In 882, they acquired Kiow, and transferred thither the seat of power. In 955, Olga, the daughter-in-law of Rurik, went to Constantinople, and was there baptised. Her husband and son continued faithful to Perun, the national idol; but in 988, Volodimer, or Vladimir, a grandson, submitted to baptism. With the religion of the Constantinopolitan Greeks, their monks, their arts, their sciences, penetrated into Russia; and already, in 1056, was born Nestor, the first Russian annalist, who wrote at the end of the eleventh century, and died in the Pechzerian convent at Kiow. He supplies what of tradition is known concerning the earliest history; and from his time onward, other monkish chronicles furnish the rest. Sylvester, the abbot of Perejaslavil who died in 1123, was the continuato of Nestor's chronicle; to him succeede Simeon, bishop of Susdal, who wrote i 1206, and many other ecclesiastics. Some corroborations or corrections of their intelligence, may be gleaned from the chronicles (stepennye knigi), pedigrees (Rodoslovnje knigi), and red books (Rozradnye knigi); but the earliest document preserved in the archives of the empire, dates from czar Andreas, who died in 1158. It is one part of the usual task of an historian, to record and to appreciate the fountains of his intelligence; but from the references attached to the chapters of this work, one would almost suppose the greater part of these notorious particulars to have escaped our author's know ledge. The Latin historians of the sixteenth century, Leclerc and Leveque, Frenchmen, and Bayer, are his favourite vouchers, and from them he often quotes at second hand. Instead of complimenting the Russian nation with an original enquiry into its annals, which might contribute to inspire at Petersburgh and Moscow a solicitude about English opinion, we have a declamatory substitution of vague allusions, to novel or definite intelligence. Every thing is narrated, as by Gibbon, in abstractions. It is always the intrepidity, or the piety, or the cruelty, or the patience of the sovereign, and never he himself, which produces a given effect. As in a French epic poem, allegorical personages seem the only agents; thus all precision of assertion, all personality of information, is inconveniently eluded. Yet the style itself is highly polished, splendid, and impressive; like the tragedy of Zingis, it abounds indeed with hard names and Loisy lines. We have to hear "How 'gainst the Nirons the bold Naimans "stood, "And red Taxaṛtes foam'd with Omrah's blood." But if any dexterity of diction could prepare the public for receiving, with interest, an account of heroes and tribes, as yet so unknown to celebrity here, it is precisely a form of narrative, which has associated their mention with periods so spangled with sounding epithets, and rounded with polysyllabic terminations. We shall quote the account of the introduction of christianity: "The first ray of evangelical light seemed to beam on the Russians under the reign of Oskold, the prince of Kief; in one of those sudden excursions of piratical adventure which perhaps had before alarmed the timorous Greeks, the enterprizing Oskold marked out their magnificent city of Constantinople, as the grand object of his predatory ambition; this daring attempt was made with two hundred boats, or Monoxyla as they are called by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. If the whole force of their country had been exerted, their navy perhaps might have amounted to two thousand vestels. Without opposition they passed the Thracian Bospho rus. Emboldened rather than satiated by this extraordinary success, they attempted and succeeded in occupying the port of Constantinople, under the reign of the Emperor Michael III. who had some time left his capital with the vain hope of chastising the inof these unwelcome and dangerous visitors, he returned with his army to revive the fainting courage of his capital. The reader, who keeps in his remembrance a geographical view of Constantinople, and the situation of the Russians, can well imagine the numerous difficulties which the Emperor had to encounter in effecting a landing at the palace disputable offspring of fear, directed his agistairs, from whence his superstition, that intated steps to a church of the Virgin Mary; where the devout Emperor, with his no less devout patriarch, passed the whole night in prayers; instead of meditating the relief of his people by a well determined spirit of zeal and patriotism. solence of the Saracens. On the first news By the injunctions of the patriarch, the garment of the Virgin Mary, a most precious dipped into the sea; and their weak hearts relic, was drawn from the sanctuary and fondly persuaded themselves, that by this act of futile devotion, the thunder-bolt of divine vengeance would have been hurled against these bloody and fierce barbarians. A seasonable tempest, however, released them from their present fears, by compelling the Russians to a precipitate retreat, which was most piously attributed, by their blind credulity, to the propitious influence of the mother of God. Oskold, the chief of this expedition, after enjoying the glory of humbling the Greek pride, demanded a peace, which was readily granted by their abject fears, and perhaps from a secret persuasion, that in a second protectress might come too tardy. After the critical juncture, the succours of their divine terms of the treaty had been adjusted, Oskold expressed a wish to receive the sacred waters of baptism. And, under his auspices, a Greek bishop, with the name of Metropolitan, might for the first time have administered the sacrament in the church of Kief: but the salutary vegetation of the gospel was blighted by the ungenial touch of these barbarians; since, after the death of Oskold, this short glimpse of holy light was soon involv ed in a cloud of ignorance, so thick and heavy as to obscure almost all traces of their christian conversion. "Nor did this loathsome darkness disappear, until the Russian throne was mounted by the princess Olga. A woman (perhaps of the meanest extraction) who could punish the death of her husband Igar, and obtaining a regal sway over a fiery and turbulent people, who then could scarcely submit with patience to the government of their legal princes must have been pre-eminently gifted with those masculine qualifications, which imprint the duty of obedience on minds the least tinctured with the virtues of civilization. Though gross idolatry overspread her country, yet the precepts and example of the missionaries transplanted by Oskold had made an impression on her heart too deep to be easily effaced; accordingly, moved by the wish of embracing christianity in the most august manner, or by the less spiritual desire of extending the circulation of her trade, she sailed from Kief to Constantinople in the time of public and private tranquillity. "The royal historian, the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, welcomed her arrival with all the honours appropriate to the majesty of her rank; and with all the forms and ceremonies which could flatter her female vanity, and display the transient greatness of his luxury and splendour. From the numerous and costly presents which at once perhaps excited her astonishment and gratified her avarice, we may select, as no mean specimens of imperial generosity, and as most adapted to a lady's wants, some vases of rare value, and a quantity of those fine stuff's which were then only fabricated in the east. The emperor himself conducted her to the baptismal fount, where she received the venerated name of the empress Helena. The Russian chronicles would teach us to believe, that her beauty so captivated Constantine, that he offered to share his throne with her; but if the emperor himself had not informed us that his wife was yet alive, we should want no better evidence to refute this tale, and to show us that he would have indig nantly rejected the union, than the perusal of his instructions to his son Romanus, in which he exposes the ill policy of listening to the overtures of foreign alliances. "On her return to Kief and Novgorod, she pertinaciously adhered to her new religion; but this great princess, great does she deserve to be called, (for in this babarous age, she constructed towns and villages, formed bridges and roads for the benefit of trade, and esta blished institutions of general utility,) sensibly experienced the weakness of her power, and the obstinacy of human nature in her unremitting endeavours to wean her nation and son from their attachment to the gods of their fathers. "Proud and sanguinary, and strangers to all those pursuits which give birth to acts of humanity and juctice, her people scorned and were ill calculated to tread in the smooth paths of humanity and peace. Whilst to all the frequent pious exhortations of his mother, the harsh inflexibility of Sviatoslaf insultingly demanded, whether she wished him to become an object of contempt and derision, to his companions. From the temper of this interrogatory, it requires no prodigious depth of sagacity to have foreseen, that the christian religion would soon shrink into insignificance and obscurity on the death of Olga. And indeed so rapid was its decline, that the churches erected by the fervent zeal of this princess, could scarcely preserve it from total extinction. "We have now contemplated the rise and progress of christianity, and deduced the visible causes of its decay. From this period, a more pleasing exercise commences; to observe the gradual extirpation of paganism, and to mark the final establishment of the christian religion. "The military renown, the increasing wealth, the unrelaxing firmness,, the extensive authority of Vladimir, now began to command the fears and invite the attention of the neighbouring potentates. By gilts they courted his esteem; by embassies they solicited his conversion to their respective religions. Nearly at the same time, it is said, were presented to him, deputies from the Pope, or rather of some catholic prince, from the people of great Bulgaria, and from the Jews established among the Kozares. But all their prospects of success were darkened by the mission and lively eloquence of a Greek Metropolitan. This loquacious prelate, whom the chronicles dignify with the appellation of a philosopher, though he failed in making an absolute proselyte of his illustrious auditor; was, however, dismissed with his friendship and gifts: an enviable happiness which the rest, perhaps, had sighed for in vain. Indeed, so strong was the impression made on the heart and understanding of Vladimir, by the discourse of this theological advocate, that he dispatched six or ten Russians, of pre-eminent wisdom among their countrymen, to inspect minutely the religious principles and rites of their different countries. They first directed their course to the Bulgarians, (eastward of Russia) and zealous champions of the warlike prophet of Mecca; but they soon changed their abode, little moved by their extravagant veneration for the chimerical doctrines of their apocryphal Koran. They afterwards visited the Latin churches of Germany, whose want of external ornament they beheld with the unfavour able emotions of pity and contempt. But in their arrival at Constantinople, they gazed, with inexpressible admiration and delight, on the magnificent dome of St. Sophia; and their attention was equally arrested by the pompous and alluring embellishments which adorned their altars; by the impressive pic tures of their saints and martyrs; by the ric vestments of their priests; by their idolatrou worship of images and relics; and by Uk pleasing order of their ostentatious cerem. nies. A religion, therefore, which era brace such a succession of splendid rites, was so s considered, by their uncultivated intellecis to contain the very essence of christianity. |