In

they will perish with it; these, Sire, are the last words of your parliament.' Such was their spirit in the practice of politics. its theory they could train such minds as Montesquieu's. In oratory we find the two most eloquent of the French writers, Rousseau and De Retz, bear most striking testimony to the eloquence of such speakers as they possessed in Talon and Loyseau de Mauléon. Nor had they degenerated from their former worth. Never did this illustrious body appear more illustrious than at its close, when its long and bright array of the L'Hôpitals and D'Aguesseaus was excelled and worthily concluded by the crowning glory of Malesherbes. It appears to us very remarkable, that as the English army has produced, perhaps, the best officers, so the French bar has produced, by general admission, the best jurists of modern Europe; the appointments in both cases being a matter of purchase and sale.

We therefore consider it most unjust to represent, as Lord John Russell means to do, the persons or orders we have mentioned as the causes of the French Revolution :-(We say means to do, because, except in the title-page, which calls his compilation The Causes of the French Revolution,' there is really not a syllable in the work to show that the latter was produced by the former.)-Yet something even beyond this has been asserted, and an excuse invented for the Jacobins-which had certainly never occurred to M. le Vasseur, or any other of the Jacobins themselves. A recent writer, and one too of a very different calibre from Lord John Russell, attempts, even more broadly and intelligibly than his lordship, to make the upper classes in France responsible not only for the origin of the Revolution, but also for all the crimes and atrocities to which it afterwards proceeded. He tells us that, the truth is, a stronger argument against the old monarchy of France may be drawn from the noyades and the fusillades than from the Bastille and the Parc aux Cerfs.' He proclaims it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovernment which has produced that revolution. . . . The reaction is exactly proportioned to the pressure-the vengeance to the provocation. Such

*See a recent Number of the Edinburgh Review, Article on Dumont.-We take the liberty of alluding to this essay, because general report ascribes it to another member of the present government, Mr. Macaulay, and the internal evidence of the style leaves no doubt that the report is correct. From his political opinions we differ still more widely than from Lord John Russell's; but we trust that no difference of political opinions will ever affect our estimate of any man's talents. His speeches in parliament, like his political and historical essays, have been distinguished by rich allusions and remarkable energy of language. His essay on M. Dumont's Souvenirs is, as all the rest, full of plausible theories and of ingenious illustrations. Of his style, indeed,

Such is the strange doctrine-under which it is attempted to make the nobles and clergy of France bear the odium of the very excesses which cost them their titles, their fortunes, their lives. It is, in fact, an ill-considered attempt to apply mechanical laws to politics. Propter quia post is the logic of superficial readers and rhetorical arguers. But this rule without an exception' will be found, on the contrary, to have scarcely an instance in its favour. The annals of every country belie it. Some of the most oppressive dynasties have had the most tranquil subjects,-some of the best have been requited with rebellions. But even comparing together different revolutions, it will be seen that the degree of popular outrage is anything but a test and measure of the degree of royal misrule. Look to the whole tenor of the eastern revolutions, and compare them with the French. It will surely not for one moment be contended that even the worst days of the old French monarchy ever approached the cruelty or oppression of Turkey or Morocco. On the principle of equal reaction, any revolution at Constantinople, or at Fez, ought to be a thousand times more fierce and dreadful-more destructive of life and property-than any revolution at Paris. How do the facts accord with this theory? The French Revolution of 1789 made hundred thousands of families orphans and outcasts-it is crowded with murders whose ferocity might disgrace a commonwealth of wolves. In general history,nay, even in the Turkish annals, we find revolution after revolution effected with comparatively nothing of bloodshed and horror. A strangled sultan or vizier-a few plundered shops-a few bowstrings and capidgees sent off to the provincial pashas-make up the usual sum of atrocities. The oppressive men or measures that caused the insurrection are removed, and the manyheaded monster having thus, by a violent throe, flung off the burthen that galled it, immediately resumes its usual yoke of submission. Every part of the government returns to its regular and peaceful routine-the same haratch is paid into the same treasury the same spahees guard the same posts-the same veneration greets the new sultan-the same ready obedience attends the new divan.—And nearer home, and more to the point,

indeed, both in speaking and writing, we cannot altogether approve. It does not give us so much the idea of an orator as of a Professor of Rhetoric. Antithesis is not an ornament, but a material;-every idea is systematically broken into sentences, and every period worked up for effect, in the manner of a peroration. Thus, separately considered, each is splendid, but when we come to view the whole together, we are dazzled with the universal glare-we are stunned with the universal declamation. We are inclined to think that Mr. Macaulay would clearly perceive the faults of his style, were he to use it in any longer historical work, such as that which he has announced on the restoration of the Bourbons. M 2

Mazarin

Mazarin succeeds Richelieu, and Buckingham Somerset; and De Luynes indues the bloody robe of the Maréchal d'Ancre.

Some readers may be surprised that we have alluded to Turkish examples, but we know of no reason whatever why, in examining this pretended rule, we should confine ourselves to Christian or to civilized countries, or to cases of fundamental changes in the laws and institutions. But if even we thus limit our sphere of observation, the result will be the same. Compare, for example, our two revolutions of 1642 and 1688. The government of James the Second was certainly by much more severe and sanguinary and opposed to precedent than that of Charles the First. Yet the re-action against Charles the First was very far more violent and fatal than that against his son. Again, compare the Spanish revolution of 1821 with the French of 1789. No man who has either seen or studied the two nations will deny that the evils of the old Spanish system—the abuses both in church and state, for some of which, such as the mesta, there is no parallel and even no name in other countries-were infinitely greater and more grievous than any that can be charged on the old monarchy of France. Were the excesses of the Spanish revolution greater too? We are no apologists for the Spanish patriots of that day. Their ignorance, their presumption, their blind obstinacy, their precipitation in planning, their slowness and negligence in execution, can neither be denied nor be excused. They have done their best to render a good cause not only an object of blame, but of contempt. The pure emblem of liberty has been defaced by their dirty and bungling hands. Even those who, like Agustin Arguelles, were most upright and irreproachable in character, and had hitherto seemed sober and steady in judgment, were no sooner raised above the multitude-than they became dizzy, lost their balance, and were whirled along with the rest. All this we admit against the Spanish patriots. But still, did they ever embrue their hands in deep torrents of innocent blood? Did they ever contrive to combine the crimes of atheism with the mummeries of superstition? Was a courtezan ever hailed as the Goddess of Reason, and worshipped on the high altar of Toledo? Did the Tagus, like the Loire, ever see struggling wretches tied together in pairs and plunged into its stream, while the ruffians on its banks shouted in exultation at the dying convulsions of their victims, and called their agonies marriages'?

Then again, as the Spaniards of 1821 were more misgoverned than the French of 1789, so were the Neapolitans of the former period more misgoverned than the Spaniards. The character of the Neapolitans too-from whatever cause-was, beyond that of

any

any other Christian nation, ignorant, ferocious, and depraved. Yet the Neapolitan revolution was even milder than the Spanishproperty was less endangered, and life less often sacrificed. So ill do the facts accord with this plausible theory! So much easier is it to assert than to examine!

It would be endless to accumulate further instances. Of all the French kings, Henry III. was perhaps the worst, Henry IV. certainly the best. Under the last of the Valois, the people were rent with factions and ground down with oppression; under the first of the Bourbons they were contented and happy. Now, according to the 'rule without an exception,' the mob of Paris would have been distinguished after the death of Henry III. by peculiar ferocity, and after the death of Henry IV. by peculiar moderation. It so happens, however, that the very reverse was the case. One of the facts most honourable to the Parisian populace occurred soon after the death of Henry III. :—their forbearance and patience during and after the horrible sufferings of the siege of 1590 can never be too much praised-one of the foulest blots on their historical character occurred soon after the death of Henry IV. The Italian adventurer Concini, whom we have already alluded to under the title of the Maréchal d'Ancre, was brought, by the favour of the great king's weak and obstinate widow, first to high rank and dignity, and then to a violent and disgraceful death. His character seems to have been vain rather than vicious, and comparatively few evil actions can be charged either upon his conduct or his counsels. Yet the mob of Paris, which had crouched before the powerful favourite, sprung with most tiger-like fury on his helpless remains. The scene that ensued was not unworthy the philosophers and philanthropists of later days. Voltaire, in his Voyages de Scarmentado, makes that imaginary traveller arrive at Paris at this period, and be politely accosted by several persons, desirous of showing attention to a stranger, and asking him whether he chose to have a morsel of Marshal d'Ancre for breakfast; and this is scarcely an exaggeration. The authentic details recorded by Le Vassor fully bear it out. Shall we relate how the corpse, having first been disinterred, was mutilated, dragged through the streets, torn limb from limb, deliberately roasted and greedily devoured? Let us rather shrink from this horrible scene, and only recollect, that the people who committed this atrocity submitted immediately and readily to the dominion of worse men and more incapable favourites.

We have devoted more time than perhaps it deserves to the refutation of the ministerial theory, from a deep conviction of

its mischievous and demoralizing tendency. It represents revolutions, not as the sudden, terrible, and uncontrollable convulsions which they have been hitherto considered,-dealing out their blows on the wisest and the best, and, even when striking the guilty, always striking them in vengeance and not in punishment, -but rather as systematic and salutary movements, uniformly accomplishing the ends of justice with great fairness, though, perhaps, in a somewhat irregular manner, and meting out against oppressive rulers exactly that degree of retribution which their previous oppression deserved. It may teach the people no longer to dread their own excesses. It may teach them that revolutions may always be undertaken with alacrity, because, with the principle of equal reaction within them, they will always be bounded by justice. All history proclaims the very reverse to be the case.

The real causes of the French revolution seem to us very obvious. And first the feeble character of Louis XVI. In the opinion of M. Dumont this single cause would be sufficient to account for the whole of the revolution:

Suppose,' he says, a King of a firm and decisive character in the place of Louis the Sixteenth, and the revolution would not have taken place. His whole reign did nothing but produce it. Nay, more, there was no period, during the whole first assembly, when the king, if he could have changed his character, might not have re-established his authority, and formed a mixed constitution, more firm and solid than the old Monarchie Parlementaire et Nobiliaire of France. His indecision, his weakness, his half-measures, have ruined all. The inferior causes which contributed to this result are only the development of this great first cause. Where the monarch is feeble-minded, the courtiers are intriguing, the factions are loud, the populace is daring, good men become timid, the most zealous public servants become discouraged, the men of talent meet only with repulses, and the best counsels lead to no effect.'

Another very efficient cause was the example of the United States. The old French government, in assisting the North American insurgents, imagined that they should strike a heavy blow against England. They did so,-but it recoiled still more heavily against themselves. A vague idea of republican equality spread amongst the French officers on that service. They were most of

*What, by the way, does Lord John Russell mean when he says, 'The eighteenth century had no predominant interest to contend for: whether Maria Theresa should have a province the less, or George II. a colony the more, was not a question to excite enthusiasm or absorb attention' ?-p. 139. The Hanoverian succession-the American War of Independence-and the Revolution of France, on which the previous example of America had some influence, were at least the produce of the eighteenth century and this from the philosophical historian of the French Revolution!

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