THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

FOR NOVEMBER, 1815.

Art. I. 1. Considerations sur une Année de l'Histoire de France. Par M. de F. 8vo. pp. 168. Price 55. Dulau and Co. 1815.

Considerations relative to a Year of the History of France. By M. de F. &c.

2. Letter to the Right Honourable Lord Erskine, on the present Situation of France and Europe; accompanied by Official and Original Documents. Second Edition, 8vo. pp. 128. Murray, 1815.

3. Carpe Diem; or the True Policy of Europe, at the present Juncture, with regard to France. 8vo. pp. 44. Price 1s. 6d. Stockdale,

1815.

THE restless concern which every individual in this country takes in the administration of public affairs, and in every thing that comes under the name of politics, forms no insignificant feature in our national character. It results from that sense of individual importance, and that right of opinion, which attach to the subjects of a free government, and which make men something more than the mere cultivators or occupiers of the soil;

• While e'en the peasant boasts these rights to scan,

And learns to venerate himself as man.'

How much soever some persons may despise, and others affect to dread, the operation of this feeling in the great mass of the community, it is certainly an indication of a prevailing degree of intelligence and moral activity; superior, we apprehend, to what is to be found pervading the several classes in other countries. Far from being connected with a spirit of insubordination, it is but a practical illustration of all that we profess to admire in the theory of our political constitution. Nor could there be a much more fatal symptom of the state of public feelVOL. IV. N. S. 2 L

ing, than the declension of this general interest in public affairs, and a consequent indifference of opinion. It would evince either a deterioration of character, amounting to a disregard of all social relations, or the desperate stillness, preceding some convulsive change. The most violent opinions on political subjects, are, we conceive, less to be dreaded, than a public without opinions, and, consequently, so much the more at the mercy of the impulses of feeling. While men are thinking, or, which comes nearly to the same thing, while they are talking of what others have thought about, their minds are for the time occupied, and there is less danger of their being hurried on to precipitate action. Wherever the greater part of the community are accustomed to think on public affairs, there is scarcely any possibility of a sudden or violent revolution taking place; because the progress of opinion, unlike the infection of sympathy, is necessarily slow a mental process, however hasty or imperfect, must take place in each separate individual, before he is fitted to become an agent in such a change; and even then, he will be very different from a mere instrument, which retains its determined shape, and is steady to the purpose of its assigned use. He that pauses to think, begins to calculate; and in this state of mind he is liable to the operation of all those mixed and opposing motives which tend to weaken resolve, and which render decision the most arduous part of daring actions.

It is in this way, that we should account for the striking difference observable between the revolutionary changes in English history and the seemingly parallel circumstances which have taken place in other countries. In England, they have been uniformly effected by opinion, conducted upon principle, with an avowed deference to laws recognised by both the contending parties, and with a view to determinate objects. They have not been the blind work of feeling, acting with the impetuosity of instinct, but the measured result of thought. The natural effect of the love and possession of civil liberty, has been to strengthen an attachment to the laws, from which that very liberty is derived, and to whose authority the ultimate appeal is always made. In these laws the spirit of Britain seemed to speak; in them the abstractions for which the people fought were imbodied: these were their monarch and their country, and a tyrant was an alien. According to the theory of the British Constitution, the public voice, or, in other words, prevailing opinion, is the sovereign, and the monarch himself is but its minister; not, strictly speaking, the public will, which is an uncertain and unintelligent faculty, but the mind of the nation, shaping, as in a mould, the characters of its representatives, and, through this medium, making itself slowly but irresistibly obeyed. Public opinion, in England, expressed, not so much by occasional communications

of the sense of the nation,' as by a gradual establishment of certain truths and principles, partakes of the nature, and acts with the force of law; and the most violent infringement of the spirit of the constitution, would be committed by the executive authority that should oppose the letter of the law to its dictates. In fact, the most beneficial and the most brilliant acts in the annals of our legislative history, have been distinctly achieved by the people, whose voice has availed in spite of all that was vicious in their institutions, or corrupt in their government. All that those who are interested in the welfare of their country, have to do, is, to deposite with the public the materials of opinion, and to communicate those rational views of the ends of government, and the purposes of the social economy, which may, after diffusing themselves through the community, at length extend to the source of authority itself.

It is deeply to be regretted, that the channels of information and influence on political subjects, should be so generally under the control of mercenary or party writers; and that persons who ought not to wear the livery of any party, should make their right of opinion serve them instead of the reason of their opinions. On no other subjects, perhaps, do men of intelligence satisfy themselves with information equally imperfect, or with notions equally crude; and chiefly, we suppose, because, where the passions are strongly excited, men are always the most impatient of the exercise of judgement. The vehemence of opinion is often, in these cases, only a vent of the feelings. The abuse of ministers, or that of demagogues and Jacobins, in which many love to indulge themselves, is at the bottom nothing more than a harmless effort of the mind to relieve itself of a certain portion of what may be called bilious fear or uneasiness :-thought is innocent of the out

rage.

The worst evil to be apprehended from these superficial habits, is, lest the exercise of the most sacred rights of Englishmen should sink into disuse or degradation, from being thus associated with the factious spirit of party, and the ascendency of intelligent opinion over the more corrupt principles that are always at work in the state, should be weakened by a growing indifference in the better part of the community to political discussions, in consequence of the incompetent manner in which they are generally maintained.

What is the reason that subjects which, as interwoven with history, are considered with dispassionate and earnest attention, as vitally connected with our social welfare, should seem to lose their dignity and importance, when presented to us in the form of the politics of the day? How is it that we suffer ourselves to forget, that the familiar transactions recorded in to-day's news

paper, will be the very materials of future history, and that the affairs of the present moment, which we so hastily dismiss, will be investigated by posterity, as the remote causes of a complicated series of events affecting the happiness of thousands Why should those principles, by the aid of which we pursue the mazes of history,-the belief in an over-ruling Providence, a reference to a moral estimate in our appreciation of actions and characters, and a benevolent regard for the highest interests of the human ráce,—all seem to forsake us, when we enter upon any question of modern politics? No agency beyond that of the immediate actors, unless the vague idea of chance supposes a higher agency, no morality but that of expediency, are then to be recognised; the success of measures, then, is to be estimated by their execution rather than their consequences, and taxes, and subsidies, and parties, and all the dirty machinery of government, take the place in our minds of nobler considerations. It is an evil, and a great evil, be it chargeable on what cause soever it may, that on political subjects, of all temporal affairs, persons will not feel as men and think as Christians, but will feel by party and think by proxy.

The first of the pamphlets at the head of this article, whatever be the name or motives of its Author, is certainly superior in ability and depth of thought, to the ordinary productions of the day, and deserves to be read with more than ordinary attention. M. de F. writes like a very intelligent man, and what is more, like an honest man. He appears to be equally sensible of the relation which history bears to politics, and of that which subsists between policy and morality. He manifests, too, a rational admiration of the English Constitution, and a competent acquaintance with English history; and if we add to all this, that he is a royalist, we hope we shall not cancel his claims on the attention of those of our readers, should there be any such, who think the salvation of France is altogether vested in its Jacobinical leaders.

The Author commences his work with some prefatory remarks on the respective advantages and disadvantages of a contemporary survey, and an historical retrospect of great transactions, the details and causes of which lie most open to the inspection of the near observer, but the grand result-the whole in all its relations, is best appreciated when thrown into the perspective of the past. Contemporary observers may see more easily, and err more easily: posterity is able to discern less, but to judge better, of what it knows. To this general rule, however, he considers there are some exceptions; in the case, for instance, of revolutions which crowd into a few years the elements of ages, and which being originated, developed, and consummated in the course of a life, fall under the judicial Cognizance of the generation which has witnessed them.