in the year 1801 must have amounted to £3,418,386, and in 1849 to £84,226,787." -(PORTER'S Progress of the Nation, p. 357.)

Certainly here there has been falsehood, fraud, and wilful imposition on the public, but on the part of which writer? We never knew, in the whole history of literature, an instance in which a malignant attack on an author resulted in such a complete and triumphant vindication, both of his fairness and his facts.

As a specimen of Sir Archibald's powers of narrative, we may take the following, on the death of the Princess Charlotte :

"No words can paint the universal consternation and grief which seized the entire nation on this calamitous event, which buried an illustrious princess, the sole daughter of England, and a royal posterity, in a single tomb. Nothing comparable to it had been seen in the country since the head of Charles I. fell upon the scaffold. Then was seen how universal and deep-seated is the loyalty of the British heart, and how strong and indelible the chords which bind the people to their sovereign. Every house, from the ducal palace to the peasant's cottage, was filled with mourning; tears were seen in every eye; the bereavement was felt by all with the intensity of domestic affliction. Business was generally suspended; scarce a word was spoken even by the most intimate friends when they met in the streets-they pressed hands and went on in silence. The hum of men ceased; no sound was heard but the mournful clang of the church-bells, which from morn till night gave forth their melancholy peal. Minute-guns were fired from all the batteries and ships

'The flag was hoisted half-mast high,
A mournful signal on the main,
Seen only when the illustrious die,
Or are in glorious battle slain.'

"A royal proclamation ordered a general mourning. The injunction was unnecessary; every human being above the rank of a pauper spontaneously assumed the garb of woe. On the 18th November, when the funeral at Windsor took place with great solemnity, every church and chapel in the United Kingdom was opened and filled with mourning multitudes, whose grief could find no other alleviation but its united expression."(Vol. i. pp. 342, 343.)

From his reflections on the passing of the Reform Bill we extract,

"In a word, the fault of the Tories in this great debate, and it was no light one, was, that they used the political power which had grown up in their hands as a property, not a trust, and resisted to the last those changes in the representation of the Commons which time had rendered necessary, and which were essential either to insure beneficial legislation, or to diffuse contentment and satisfaction among the people. The fault of the Liberals, which was still greater, consisted in this, that when they got the power they introduced a reform in Parliament based on erroneous principles, which destroyed one system of class legislation only to introduce another still more at variance with the interests of the majority; and, having brought it forward, forced it through by violent excitement of the people, and unconstitutional coercion of the sovereign. The Tories, in the last extremity, in a great measure expiated their fault by the praiseworthy self-sacrifice which they made at the call of public duty. The Whigs, in the moment of triumph, in some degree redeemed theirs by the moderation with which they used the unlimited powers acquired by victory."-(Vol. iv. pp. 418, 419.)

Further on he adds,

"Without pronouncing decidedly on this deeply interesting question, upon which the world is as yet too young to form a conclusion that can be relied on, there is one truth which has been completely demonstrated by the constitutional experience in the last times, both of France and England, of permanent importance to mankind, and which will largely benefit the future generations of men. That is, that a uniform representation is but another name for class government, and that the governing class will always be found in that which is immedi ately above the lowest line of the suffrage. In France, when the line under the Restoration was drawn by the payment of £12a-year of direct taxes, that ruling class was not found in thirty thousand of the richest proprietors in the country, but in the poorest in the enfranchised classthose paying from £12 to £20 direct taxes, who were two-thirds of the ninety thousand electors. In England, by the Reform Bill, supreme power was vested in persons in boroughs paying from £10 to £20 rent; that is, in the buying and selling class, interested chiefly in beating down the cost of production.

The ruin of constitutional freedom in

France, the dissolution of the colonial empire of Great Britain, will be cheaply purchased if they impress upon mankind the eternal truths, that a real representa tion in government is the essential need of civilised man, and can never be refused without imminent danger; that uniformity in the suffrage inevitably induces class government; that the ruinous nature of such government is in the direct proportion of the number admitted into the class; and that the only way to avoid these evils is class representation."-(Vol. iv. p. 424-426.)

This, we think, contains one of the most important views relative to the effect of a uniform franchise which it is possible to conceive. There is the real difficulty under which we have been labouring ever since the passing of the Reform Bill. Every proposed new reform has contained some scheme more or less effectual, to get quit of this one uniform tyrant majority, and give some variety to the representation, either by a difference of qualification or a representation of minorities. It is the grand problem which we have now to solve, and which was met, in the old constitution, by the much-abused rotten boroughs. They afforded a real representation to every wealthy interest, whether colonial, moneyed, or manufacturing. What that constitution really was deficient in, or rather what the old Tory party committed the enormous fault of not extending it to, was the means of representing the feelings and wishes of the great masses of people who had grown up in the new manufacturing towns. The refusal of the Tories to give representatives to the new and important commercial cities, rendered the overthrow of the old constitution merely a matter of time. The great object which we have now to attain, is by variety in the franchise to secure the representation of classes, and not merely that of the most numerous class.

The view given by Sir Archibald of the causes which led to, and the passing of the Reform Bill, is, we think, singularly clear and convincing. Our only fault with him here and elsewhere in domestic history is, that he attributes too exclusive an effect to the influence of the currency. Its

effect was great, but not so great, we think, as he imagines; other causes, we believe, concurred, of equal importance. These he always mentions, but not with the same degree of prominence. This is a point, however, upon which people will probably continue to differ until the end of time. His view of the Irish famine and its effects is very curious, and much elaborated; his account of the gradual progress and final adoption of Free-Trade principles by Sir Robert Peel, by far the most temperate and impartial which we have seen. His remarks upon the great change of that able leader, whilst retaining office, we think unanswerable-just to the man and the difficulties of his position, yet pointing clearly out the ill effects to party confidence, and consequently party government, under which we have been labouring ever since.

In treating of all commercial and social subjects, Sir Archibald posis practical experience. His position sesses one great advantage, and that as Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and chief judge in the great commercial and manufacturing city of Glasgow, has given him a practical insight into the working of our commercial system, a knowledge of our manufacturing interests, and a personal acquaintance with the habits and views of the working classes, which no literary and few political men of the day possess. And this gives his opinions upon such subjects a value far above that which would attach to them were they merely those of an able speculative writer. Brought every day into contact with mercantile men, manufacturing interests, and skilled artisans, his views on these subjects seem to have arisen from personal observation, and to have been tested by the results of a long experience. They are no crude theories fashioned in the closet, but the practical deductions of an acute and close observer. We take as an example his remarks on Trades' Unions:

"Worse even than plague, pestilence, and famine, combinations among workmen are the greatest social evil which, in a manufacturing or mining community, afflicts society. These, bad as they

often are, affect only the bodies of men; but strikes affect their minds. They utterly confound the ideas of right and wrong among immense numbers of the people, by arraying them in hostile bands against their fellow-men, induce a bellum quam plus civile in the heart of peaceful society; and, in their latter stages, lead them anxiously to expect the perpetration of the most atrocious crimes for the attainment of what they consider their legitimate rights. They subject tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of persons, innocent of any offence, and anxious only to earn a subsistence by honest industry for themselves and their families, to months of compulsory idleness and real destitution. They deprive them, often for long periods, of occupation, as fatal to their minds as the loss of wages is to their bodies. They band them together, in the beginning, by the strong attraction of common hope; in the end, by the hellish bond of committed wickedness. They subject the immense majority of quiet, inoffensive persons to the tyrannical rule of a small minority of violent and ambitious men, who form a secret power, wielding an authority greater than even the triumvirate of Augustus, or the Committee of Public Salvation of Robespierre. Their evils do not terminate with the closing of the strife, and the resumption of labour by the combined workmen. They leave a long catalogue of ills behind them; and for years after, the energies of the workmen are depressed by the debt which they cannot discharge, idle habits which they cannot conquer, and crimes into which they have been involuntarily led.

"What tends greatly to increase this strange indifference to the greatest social evil which afflicts society is the opinion, generally entertained, that strikes are always unfortunate to the workmen, and therefore that their good sense will lead to their discontinuance. There never was a greater mistake. In the great majority of instances, strikes are successful; and it is the knowledge of

this fact which renders them of such frequent occurrence. It is true, the world in general hears nothing, except of those which are unfortunate, because it is for the interest of no one to publish those which are successful; and being soon over, they are as soon forgotten. But they are not forgotten by the workmen, who are encouraged by their frequent successes to try their strength with their masters in circumstances entirely different, when they are sure to be defeated. The reason is, that they are

successful when it is for the interest of the master to retain the men in his service, and unsuccessful when it is for his interest to get quit of them. With a rising market for the produce of their labour, no master will allow his workmen to remain idle as long as any profit remains to himself from their labour. With a falling one, he is too happy of a pretext to get quit of paying them their wages, for the produce of which existing prices will not yield a profit. Thus strikes are constantly successful when they take place with a rising market, and as uniformly unsuccessful when they are ventured upon with a falling; and it is because the workmen cannot be brought to see the difference of these situations, that they occur so often, and, under circumstances evidently hopeless, are adhered to with such pertinacity.”—(Vol. vi. p. 306-310.)

Before passing from the subject of domestic history and legislation, we may give another specimen of the hastiness and inaccuracy of the critic in the Edinburgh Review. Alluding to the assistance afforded to the bald had said :South American republics, Sir Archi

"We repealed the laws against foreign enlistment, permitted expeditions of 8000 and 10,000 men, many of them Wellington's veterans, to sail from the Thames under the very eye of Government, and advanced immense sums by loan to enable the insurgent states to prolong the contest."-(Vol. ii. p. 739.)

Upon this the reviewer remarks:

"The fact is precisely the reverse: the III.) was passed in 1819, the year in 'Foreign Enlistment Act' (59th George which these occurrences began, and rendered foreign enlistment a misdemeanour."-(Edinburgh Review, No. 225, p.

151.)

Now, had he taken the trouble to have made himself even cursorily acquainted with the work which he has undertaken to criticise, he would both have known that Sir Archibald has given a long, most minute, and perfectly accurate account of the Bill then brought in, of the changes it made in the law, and how it became a dead letter, and have been able then to see the entire justice of the remark he has so elaborately misrepresented. This account extends from page 408 to 417 of his first

volume. These extracts will show its tenor :

"On the part of Government it was argued by the Earl of Liverpool, Lord Bathurst, and Lord Castlereagh,-As the law at present stands, by the 9th and 29th George II. and the 9th George III., it is made felony, without benefit of clergy, to seduce subjects of this country to enlist in the service of foreign powers. It is proposed in the present Act to take away the capital sanction, and declare persons enlisting in foreign service guilty of misdemeanour only, and to declare the supplying the belligerents with warlike stores, and equipping vessels for warlike purposes, the like offence." -(Vol. i. pp. 409, 410.)

This proposed law, repealing the penalty of death affixed to the crime of foreign enlistment, and constituting it a misdemeanour, punishable with a few months' imprisonment only, was passed. But, continues Sir Archibald,—

"The Act of Parliament passed re

mained a dead letter. The embarkation of troops, stores, and loans continued without intermission; and as detailed in a former work, Spanish America was thereby rendered independent, and severed from the dominion of Old Spain."(Vol. i. p. 416.)

After this, which of these two has best explained the history of the period-Sir Archibald, who, after most carefully explaining what really took place, alludes to it afterwards as having been a practical repeal of the former law prohibiting foreign enlistment with the punishment of death-or the reviewer, who represents this nominal retention of a trifling and unenforced penalty as a real, rigorous, upright, and zealous discharge of the right of non-intervention, guaranteed in the most solemn and especial manner by a clause of the treaty concluded with Spain in the year 1814?

II. The history of France between 1815 and 1848 naturally divides itself into two distinct portions-the history of the Restoration, and that of the House of Orleans. The first is a period of great interest: the more closely it is studied, the more minutely it amined, the more

we will become convinced that it was at once the time when there was most real liberty in France, and most discontent. France never forgave the Bourbon kings their restoration by the bayonets of the Allies in 1815, and their forced reduction of France to its old limits. Of this period Sir Archibald's is by far the most impartial and the most instructive History which has yet been published. Bringing strongly out the faults of the Bourbon kings, developing, in the clearest terms, the fatal error of Charles X. in throwing himself into the arms of the partiprêtre, he yet has convincingly shown that no amount of good government on their part would ever have reconciled the democratic party to their rule, or induced the nation to forget their origin. And this leads to one most remarkable phenomenon, without a clear understandhistory is unintelligible-viz. that ing of which, this period of French while popular distress always led to popular discontent in England, it was popular prosperity which led to the greatest amount of popular discontent in France.*

"It is very remarkable, that, while the prosperity of the country had increased in this prodigious ratio during the Restoration, its discontents had fully kept pace with it; and they had now reached the highest point at the very time when the wellbeing of the people was most universal and conspicuous. The smiling aspect of the fields, the busy activity of the commercial towns, the animation of the seaports, were equalled only by the general discontent and sullen disloyalty which pervaded these scenes of prosperity and happiness. What was still more remarkable, the classes among whom the discontent was the greatest, were the very ones which had most largely benefited by the government of the Bourbons, and been most severely crushed by that which This memorable had preceded it. example proves the fallacy of the opinion bances are to be regarded as serious, if generally entertained, that no disturthe material comforts of the people are duly attended to; and of the truth of the distinction drawn, in a former work, between troubles originating in real grievances, which may be expected to

be alleviated by their removal, and such as arise from the thirst for political power, which are only increased by such comforts as tend to increase the pugnacious propensities of the people."-(Vol. iii. pp. 485, 486.)

The cause of the overthrow of Charles X. was his throwing himself into the arms of the ultra-Catholic party, the nominal point on which the revolution broke out, his suspension of the liberty of the press, and change in the electoral law, under the 14th Article of the Charter, which says, "Le Roi

nomme à tous les emplois d'administration publique, et fait les règlemens et les ordonnances nécessaires pour l'exécution des lois et la sûreté de l'état." This power had been twice exercised by his predecessoronce on the 13th July 1815, when, by a royal ordonnance alone, the representation was established on an entirely new basis, and the Chambers so elected proceeded to the transaction of business without any protest being lodged; and again, on the 5th September 1816, when, by a royal ordonnance alone, the electoral sys tem was again altered so as to get quit of the Royalist, and secure a Liberal majority in the Chambers.

On both these occasions it was exercised by a Liberal ministry in the interest of Liberal views, and there never was then a word said about its illegality: when, however, it was now used by a monarchical ministry in favour of ultra-Conservative principles, the democratic party rose in arms against it. This, how ever, was the nominal, not the real, cause of the contest. Under the imprudent, but weak and honest government of the Bourbons, the Liberal party had advanced in power and influence till they became ungovernable by any then existing power in the State. They were determined to have a government of their own construction, and a monarch of their own choice, and it was only a question of time and opportunity when the hour for the contest was to strike. Sir Archibald, with great force, pourtrays the almost inSane conduct of the Polignac ministry, who, on the one hand, threw down the gauntlet to the whole Liberal

party by the Ordonnance of the 25th July 1830, and enraged beyond endurance the National Guard by decreeing their dissolution; whilst, on the other, they took no steps whatever to prepare for the military contest now inevitable in the streets of Paris, and left their whole arms in the possession of the disbanded citizen soldiers.

The real error, in a constitutional point of view, committed by Charles X., was his formation of a ministry composed of the parti-prêtre in the face of an adverse majority in the Chambers.

"It is evident," says Sir Archibald, "that the fall of Charles X. was imme

diately brought about by his refusal to sentative government, that of taking his submit to the first principle of a repreministers from the majority of the popular branch of the legislature. There can be no doubt that it is often very galling to a sovereign to be obliged to do so, and that it seems very like depriving him of the liberty, in choosing his confidential servants, which is accorded to the meanest of his subjects. Still it stitutional monarchy; and if a sovereign is the fundamental principle of a conaccepts such a throne, he is bound to

conform to its conditions. The point at issue between Charles and the Chamber of Deputies was, whether he was to maintain, contrary to their wishes, the ultra-royalist administration he had chosen; and although not absolutely bound to defer to their wishes in the first instance, yet, having tried the last resort of a dissolution, and received from mined on the subject, it was his unthe nation a legislature equally deterdoubted duty, as a constitutional monarch, to obey."-(Vol. iii. p. 551.)

The memorable night of the 28th July-that after the second of the "three glorious days"-is thus described by our author :

"The night which followed was a melancholy one in Paris, and not less so to the insurgent leaders than the royal troops.

The excitement of the contest was suspended; but the silence and the darkness brought with them what was yet more terrible, for with them came pation of the future. That the Governthe memory of the past and the anticiment would be overthrown there could be little doubt, now that the troops of the line had for the most part deserted