rested. As oblivion of the past, and anticipation only of the future, constitute the strength of the one party, so actual experience and historical authority furnish the strength of the other. Hence the one alleges that history is an old almanac; the other, that it is the great basis on which all political knowledge must be reared. But the latter principles will never be placed on a proper foundation, nor will those who hold them ever assume a position from which they cannot by possibility be forced, until they fairly take their stand on this ground, and boldly front all the obloquy to which it will expose them. If they do so, their principles, however disagreeable to human vanity, can never be overthrown; for experience will, to the end of time, demonstrate their universal application, and the very men who are most loud in declaiming against their falsehood, will in general, by their conduct, afford the most signal proof of their truth. 29. If any doubt could exist as to the warlike tendency of popular institutions, it would be removed by the immediate and disastrous result upon the tranquillity of Europe of the French Revolution of 1848. Since Wellington sheathed his victorious sword at Paris in 1815, general peace had prevailed in Europe, interrupted only for a short period by the Polish Revolt, consequent on the triumph of the Barricades in 1830. But no sooner had the government of Louis Philippe been overthrown, than the revolutionary party in every country, now uncontrolled, broke out into every species of excess, and war, in its most hideous form, arose on all sides. Charles Albert perfidiously attacked Austria with the forces of revolutionised Italy in Lombardy: democratic Prussia sought to wrest Holstein from the Danes: Poland was only restrained by the presence of two hundred thousand Russians: Hungary became the theatre of a frightful struggle, terminated at last by a Muscovite intervention, second only to the partition of the Austrian empire in the danger of its consequences. 30. These considerations explain a fact which would otherwise be wholly inexplicable; but the illustrations of which may nevertheless be observed in every page of history; viz, that the popular and democratic party, so far from resting on the principles of the Christian religion, in general evince the most deadly hostility to its tenets, and that its principles form the corner-stone of the opposite body, who endeavour to maintain the ascendancy of property and education. During the first fervour of the Reformation, indeed, the stubborn supporters of religious freedom formed a temporary alliance with political enthusiasts, and the Puritans of Cromwell stood side by side with the republicans and Fifth-Monarchy men. But that was a temporary union, arising from mutual necessity, which did not long survive the circumstances that gave it birth. Religious freedom, in truth, was the object for which the Protestants fought in the sixteenth century; civil liberty was regarded only so far as it might prove conducive to spiritual independence. It was in the eighteenth century that the real democratic spirit was first fully devel oped, and then it was at once rested on a dogma of human perfectibility. Its advocates loudly proclaimed the native innocence of man, and inculcated a total emancipation from all the restraints of religion; and before the close of the contest, the contending parties had universally hoisted their true colours. Liberty, philosophy, indulgence, were inscribed on the banners of the one side; religion, self-denial, duty, on those of the other. 31. If we consider, however, the principles of the Christian religion, such a result must appear at first sight not a little surprising. More than any religion that ever existed, the precepts of the gospel provide for the humble, and enjoin duties on the great among mankind. Alone of all other faiths, it from the outset proclaims the univer sal equality of mankind in the sight of Heaven; it preaches in an especial manner the gospel to the poor; it denounces greater risks of ultimate pun ishment to the rich than to the indigent; and incessantly inculcates the duty of charity to the unfortunate as the first of Christian graces. There was some truth, though much blasphemy, in the saying of the followers of Babœuf, that Jesus Christ was the first sansculotte. How, then, has it happened that a faith of this description, inculcating doctrines so eminently favourable to the poorer ranks, and so subversive of all distinction in the different classes of men, at least in moral responsibility, has not been universally seized upon as the very corner-stone of the popular party throughout the globe? 32. Simply because it at the same time inculcates the doctrine of human corruption; because, if it announces the universal equality of men in the sight of Heaven, it as loudly proclaims their universal tendency to guilty indulgence; because it gives no countenance to the idea, that alterations in social institutions, how important soever in themselves, or the elevation of a new class to the duties of government, will be of the least effect in remedying human evils, unless accompanied or preceded by a corresponding change in the active dispositions of men; and constantly impresses the eternal truth, that the only reform which is likely to be of the least efficacy, is the reform of the human heart. Sedulously avoiding the mention of external things, hardly ever alluding to the forms either of civil or ecclesiastical government, except to inculcate obedience to existing authority, it as uniformly proclaims the equal responsibility of the governors and the governed; and imposes upon both, under equal sanctions, the duty of integrity in conduct and charity in feeling. It loudly proclaims the iniquity of the world and the miseries of mankind: it tells us that a remedy exists for these multifarious evils; but it tells us, at the same time, that that remedy does not consist in substituting the government of the many for the government of the few, but in the adoption by all, whether in or out of authority, of the golden rule, to do to others as they would be done by. Thence it is that the religion of the gospel is so generally obnoxious to the VOL. XIL democratic party all the world over; for it at once strikes at the root of their dreams of human perfectibility, and announces, as the only remedy for existing evils, the extirpation of existing and wide-spread wickedness. It prescribes a contest to the many as well as to the few; but it is not a contest with temporal power, but with spiritual temptation-its theatre is not the arena of politics, but the recesses of the breasts of its sanguine votaries. And yet few experienced observers, either of the stream of human events, or of mankind as they exist around them, will probably doubt that it is in that quarter only that a really efficacious reform can be adopted; and that if the one thing needful is there generally done, it is of comparatively little importance what is effected elsewhere. 33. Instead, therefore, of arriving at the conclusion, that alterations in the form of government should be the great object of patriotic effort, and that important social benefits may be effected by such changes, unattended with moral improvement, the precepts of religion, equally with the results of experience, point to the conclusion, that the only secure foundation that can be laid for general amelioration is in private rectitude; that the heart is, literally speaking, the fountain from which the issues both of individual and social improvement must flow; and that unless moral and religious cultivation have preceded the acquisition of political power, and been widely and successfully diffused, it will speedily be converted into an engine merely for indulging all the worst passions of the human breast. And this explains how it happens that in some simple and remote countries, such as the Swiss cantons, even a pure democracy has been found to exist for centuries without inducing any public calamities; while in others, more advanced in civilisation, no sooner have political privileges been given to the people, than they instantly applied them to the worst purposes, fell under the dominion of the most selfish characters in the community, and, like victorious soldiers after the storm of a town, broke out into the most unbridled excesses of rapine, lust, and social conflagration. It is the want of moral restraint which lets in all this flood of evils, and by removing all other coercion renders inevitable the rule of force. Generally speaking, the danger of their overwhelming society upon the acquisition of power by the people, is just in proportion to the absence of religious influence, the age, and corrupted state of the community. "The necessity for external government to man," says Coleridge, "is in an inverse ratio to the vigour of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence the more virtue the more liberty." the minion of aristocracy; and his flatteries are only the more dangerous that they are addressed to a larger, a more impassioned, and a less enlightened circle than is to be found either in the halls of princes or the precincts of nobles. 35. How, then, has it happened, if all mankind are thus equally corrupt, and disposed to farm out political power for no other purpose but selfaggrandisement, that so marked a distinction is to be observed in the effect of forms of government upon human society; and whence the astonishing variety in the progress and elevation of mankind at different periods of the world, and under the influence of different forms of government? The 34. This inherent corruption, let it question is a natural one, and, if the be remembered, is universal. It can- foregoing principles are well founded, it not be said that any class of society is should meet with a solution in consist exempt from this inherent weakness; ency with them. And a very slight or that in any hands, whether few or consideration must be sufficient to exmany, the possession of power is not plain, not only how this great diversity likely to lead to its abuse. All have has happened, but to point in the most equal need of the internal restraint of decisive manner to the form of govern moral principle; and all, to improve ment which promises the greatest sothat principle, require external coercial happiness and public elevation. cion. Whoever asserts that the absolute 36. Since the creation of man, a government of kings is the best form of civil society, and that they may be safely intrusted with the uncontrolled direction of human affairs, is a mere flatterer of courts, and his opinion is belied by every page of history. Whoever asserts that an oligarchy or an aristocracy stands in need of no restraint, because their interests are identified with those of the people on their estates, and because the greatest efforts of nations have been achieved by their means, is not less insensible to the evidence of facts, or less apt, if his opinions are implicitly followed, to mislead and degrade mankind. Whoever asserts that the great body of the people are capable of the arduous duty of selfgovernment, that democratic institutions are the only true foundation for good administration, and that abuse of power need never be apprehended in their hands, because they are at once beyond its seductions, and exposed to its evils, is not less a sycophant of power than the eulogist of courts or vast majority, probably nine-tenths, of the human race, have existed under the government of single monarchs or chiefs exercising nearly absolute power within their separate principalities. Not to mention other examples that must be familiar to every reader, the whole of Asia, embracing six hundred millions of inhabitants, or nearly twothirds of the whole human race, has, from the earliest period to the present hour, been uniformly governed by the absolute power of a single individual. Certain restraints upon the uncontrolled exercise of human power have no doubt existed in the East as well as in other parts of the world; but they consist, not in any limitation of power in the sultaun or chief, but in his occasional dethronement; the remedy against the evils of oppression is not the limitation of authority, but the murder of the despot. Great as have been the evils which in every age have flowed from the selfishness, the rapacity, and the iniquities of these arbi trary governors of their species, it is yet evident that there must be some general and substantial benefits which have resulted from their rule, or it would long ago have been terminated by the common consent of mankind. Lightly as European independence may think of Asiatic despotism, philosophy will not despise a system of government under which two-thirds of the human race have subsisted from the beginning of time; and which is so firmly rooted in universal consent in that part of the world, that no amount of tyranny on the part of individual sovereigns, and no changes resulting from religion or conquest, have ever made them for one moment think of altering it. Whatever is found to have existed to a great extent among mankind for a very long period, must necessarily have been attended with great practical advantages which have overbalanced its evils. The sagacious observer of such institutions, if he cannot discover their utility, will rather suspect that his powers of observation have been defective, than that mankind for so long a period, and over so great a surface, have obstinately persisted in what was destructive to themselves. But it is evident what has occasioned this uniformity of government in the East; the advantages of despotism are as clearly marked as its evils. They consist in the rude but effective coercion of human passion by the vigorous hand of single administration; the substitution, it may be, of the oppression of one, for what certainly would be the licentiousness of all. 37. Aristocratic societies are those which in every age have made the most durable impression on human affairs; and where patrician rule has been combined with a certain development of democratic energy in society, they have led to the greatest and the most splendid of human achievements. The empires of Carthage and Rome in ancient, and of Great Britain in modern times, are sufficient to demonstrate, that under no other form of government is it possible to combine such great and heroic achievements with such steady and durable progress. Its evils, as those of all earthly things, are many, and they consist chiefly in the uniform tendency of all holders of aristocratic power to consider it as a patrimony for themselves and their dependants-instead of a trust to be exercised for the public good, and the consequent restriction of office and power to a limited circle of society. But amidst many and evident evils, these examples decisively demonstrate that such a form of government is at least a move in the right direction. No community need be afraid of going far astray which treads in the footsteps. of Rome and England. The secret of the prodigious ascendancy that this form of government has given to the nations which have embraced it, consists in the combination of fixity of purpose, arising from the durability of interest on the part of the holders of property, who constitute the ruling power, with courage and energy in the lower classes, springing from the facilities given them of rising in society. It is the power of steam restrained from its frightful devastation, and subjected to the guidance of firm and experienced hands. 38. Democratic government has produced, at different times, effects so opposite and contradictory, that it is not surprising that the opinions of men should be divided as far as the poles are asunder, in regard to its merits. Examined in one view, it exhibits the examples of the brightest eras on which the eye of the historian can rest. The arts of Greece, the arms of Rome, the navy of England, the peopling of America, have arisen from its exertions. All the greatest achievements of the human mind have been effected under the influence of its fervour. Whatever may have been the suffering and agony with which the convulsions it produced have been accompanied, they have led to the most splendid exertions of human genius, and the widest spread of the human race. No one can contemplate the shores of the Mediterranean, studded with the successive colonies of Greece, Carthage, and Rome, or the shores of the ocean now beginning to glitter with those of England, without seeing that to this social agent of tran 40. One of the most favourite doc trines which overspread the world, from the principles of the French Revolution, was the opinion, so readily formed, so perseveringly acted upon, that forms of government were all in all; that there was no inherent or indelible difference in the races of men; that climate and physical circumstances were of little moment; but that one and the same set of republican institutions might with equal advantage be applied to all mankind. With how much obstinacy, with what little success, this principle has been applied by the French during the fervour of their Revolution scendant power it is given to effect of cabinets, and induced a universal the greatest and most momentous combination of mankind to effect its changes in the destiny of man. The overthrow. Roman empire itself was built up of the colonial settlements formed by its democratic citizens, or those of the Grecian republics, on the adjoining coasts of Europe and Asia. Its conquests were but the bursting of the bands of armed and disciplined democracy into the savage tribes or enfeebled monarchies by which it was surrounded. If the French Revolution was to that great country a source of lasting evil, it gave it also a brief period of surpassing glory; and if we would seek the latent spring which, at an interval of two hundred years, has implanted the British race in the western and southern hemisphere, we-by the English, during the less veheshall find it in the efforts of the sturdy Puritans in the days of Charles I., and the visions of social regeneration in those of William IV. and Queen Victoria. ment but more protracted delusions which have succeeded it-need be told to none who are acquainted with the history of the last half century. Yet is there no opinion which the wisest of men in every country have more strenuously contested, which experience in every age has more decisively disproved. Corneille had a deeper insight into human affairs when he observed, that the institutions of men require to be as various as their colour, character, or complexion.* Montesquieu was nearer the truth when he asserted, that no nation ever rose to durable greatness but by institutions in harmony with its national spirit. Guizot arrived at it exactly when he said, "It is by the study of political institutions that the greater part of scholars, historians, and philosophers have sought to ascertain the state of society and the advancement of civilisation. It would have | been wiser to study the state of society with a view to understand its institu 39. If we examine democracy in another view, it appears the most biting scourge that the justice of Heaven ever let loose upon guilty man. At no other periods than when it was in the ascendant, and by no other agents than its conquests or oppression, has such intense suffering been inflicted on the human race. To the surrounding nations, Rome appeared a vast fountain of evil, always streaming over, yet always full, from which devastating floods incessantly issued to overwhelm and destroy mankind. We may judge how far and wide it laid waste the neighbouring states, from the nervous expression which Tacitus put into the mouth of the Caledonian chief, "ubi solitudinem fecerunt, pacem appellant." And if any doubt could exist as to the fearful nature of the evils which republican ambition brings upon mankind, they would be established by the fact, that in twenty years it occasioned a slaughter of not less than ten millions of human beings on the two sides dur-Telle est la loi du ciel, dont la sage équite ing the French Revolutionary war; and that such was the acute suffering which was produced throughout Europe by its triumph, that it overcame all the jealousy of nations and all the rivalry * "Par tous les climats Ne sont pas bien reçus toutes sortes d'etats; Seme dans l'univers cette diversité, rains, -Cinne, Act ii. scene 1. |