tion may be disturbed by various causes. The influence of accidental circumstances, the authority of particular classes, even the personal character of individuals, may have the greatest effect in exciting or restraining popular revenge. We need not remind our readers of the various unhappy coincidences which combined to increase the natural resentment of the French nation;—of the foolish weakness, and more foolish insolence of the court, the unprincipled character of the popular leaders, the want of moral and religious feeling among the lower classes. Still, we do not comprehend the argument which attributes the crimes and impieties of that unhappy time to the demoralizing effects of the Revolution itself. Sudden anarchy may bring evil passions and infidel opinions to light; but we do not understand how it can bring them into existence. Men do not insult their religion and massacre their fellow-creatures, simply because it is in their power. The desire to do so must previously exist, and in France we have every proof that it did exist. We might give innumerable instances of the cruel and vindictive temper displayed from the most ancient times by the lower classes in France. In the Jacquerie, in the civil wars of the Bourguignons and Armagnacs, and in the seditions of the League and the Fronde, they constantly displayed the ferocity naturally excited by slavery and oppression. Their scorn for Christianity, though more recently acquired, had become, long before the Revolution of 1789, as inveterate as their desire for revenge. We shall give, in Mr Alison's own words, one very singular proof of the extent to which it prevailed. In speaking of the Egyptian expedition, he says They' (the French soldiers) not only considered the Christian faith as an entire fabrication, but were for the most 'part ignorant of its very elements. Lavalette has recorded that hardly one of them had ever been in a church, and that in Palestine they were ignorant even of the names of the holiest 'places in sacred history.'-(iii. 419.) This was in 1799, only ten years after the first symptoms of popular innovation. Here, then, were 30,000 full-grown men, collected promiscuously from all parts of France-many of them well educated, and all of sound mind and body-who appear to have felt about as much interest in the religion of their ancestors as in that of Brahma or Confucius. And yet the great majority of this army must have been born fifteen or twenty years before the first outbreak of the Revolution; and the very youngest of them must have past their childhood entirely under the ancient régime. There cannot, surely, be a stronger proof that, long before the royal authority was shaken, the great mass of the French nation had

become such thorough infidels as to be almost ignorant of the very existence of Christianity.

Our limits will not permit us to discuss with Mr Alison the great question, whether the French Revolution was on the whole a benefit, or a disaster to mankind. Though some passages in the earlier part of his History seem to bear a more hopeful interpretation, it is clear that upon the whole he considers it as an event most fatal to France, and most menacing to the rest of Europe. The following are, in his opinion, its most pernicious consequences, as regards France alone- The national morality has been destroyed in the citizens of towns, in whose hands alone political 'power is vested. There is no moral strength or political energy in the country. . . France has fallen into a subjection to • Paris, to which there is nothing comparable in European history. 'The Prætorian guards of the capital rule the state.. • Commercial opulence and habits of sober judgment have been 'destroyed, never to revive. A thirst for excitement every where prevails, and general selfishness disgraces the nation. Religion has never resumed its sway over the influential classes. . And the general depravity renders indispensable a powerful ' centralized and military government. In what respect,' he asks, 'does this state of things differ from the institutions of China or the Byzantine empire ?'-(x. 548.) In what respect, we prefer to enquire, does it differ from the institutions of France before the Revolution? We are no implicit admirers of the present French government; but we appeal to Mr Alison's own statements, whether it is not infinitely preferable to that of Louis XVI. ? Still less are we blind to the many and serious faults of the present generation of Frenchmen; but we are at a loss to conceive how any reasonable being, who compares the second revolution with the first, can deny the superiority of the Frenchman of 1830 to the Frenchman of 1793-that is, to the Frenchman of the ancient régime, when seen in his true colours. But, without stopping to argue so extensive a question in detail, we must confess that we should be glad to hear from Mr Alison a distinct answer to a few such plain questions as the following:- Would Louis-Philippe, though he were the most depraved and violent man in Europe, dare to imitate the orgies of the regency, or the tyranny of Louis XV.? Are life, property, and honour, less safe than in the time of the Bastile, and the Parc aux Cerfs? Is the present condition of the peasantry worse than it was under the feudal law? Have the middle classes less political power than in 1742? Is France less prosperous at home, or less respected abroad, than in 1763 or 1783? However common infi

delity may unhappily be, is religion less respected than in the days of Voltaire? However low the national standard of mora. lity, was it higher when Madame de Parabére, or Madame du Barri, was the virtual ruler of France? All the declamation in the world about Oriental tyrannies, and centralized despotisms, will not get rid of these simple tests; and we are at a loss to imagine how even Mr Alison could reply to one of them in the affirmative.

If we are right on this important point, we shall not allow the crimes of the Revolution, or the sufferings which it caused, to prevent us from considering it a beneficial change. In saying this we trust that we shall not be understood as wishing to palliate the excesses of the popular party, or to undervalue the evils inseparable from all popular convulsions. A revolution, at its best, is a painful and perilous remedy; at its worst, it is the severest trial which a nation can undergo. If we are inclined, notwithstanding, to consider such trials as benefits, it is because we believe that they seldom occur, except in cases where hopeless slavery and irreparable decay are the only alternatives. There is no doubt that the French Revolution was an instance of the worst kind;-perhaps it was the very worst that ever occurred. Not only did the popular movement result in atrocities, but the exhaustion which followed led to the usurpation of Napoleon and the wars of the empire. Three millions and a half of Frenchmen, and a prodigious number of foreigners, perished, who but for the Revolution and its consequences might have ended their days in peace. Human ingenuity, in short, can scarcely imagine means by which a greater amount of violence and bloodshed could have been crowded into a quarter of a century. Still we are persuaded that an escape from this fiery trial would have been dearly purchased by the continuance of the ancient régime for another century. The evils of violence and bloodshed, dreadful as they are, cannot be compared to those of oppressive institutions. Violence and bloodshed are necessarily partial, but oppressive institutions are universal. It is impossible to guillotine a whole nation; it is impossible to enrol a whole nation as conscripts; but it is easy to make a whole nation miserable by disabilities and exactions. Even under the

*

Mr Alison enumerates the victims of the Revolution, including those of the civil war in La Vendée, at 1,022,351 souls; and the soldiers who perished in the wars of the Empire, at 2,200,400.-(See vi. 410, ii. 400.) This does not include those who fell at Waterloo, in the battles of the revolutionary contest, and in the various naval actions of the war.

VOL. LXXVI. NO. CLII.

B

Reign of Terror, each individual citizen must have felt that there were many hundred chances to one in favour of his escape from denunciation; but no peasant had a hope of escaping the tyranny of the feudal customs. Violence and bloodshed are in their nature transitory; but oppressive institutions may be perpetual. Crimes which spring from passion soon exhaust themselves; but crimes which spring from habit may continue for ever. The Reign of Terror was over in fourteen months; but the ancient régime might have subsisted until its effects had reduced France to the decrepitude of China or Constantinople. Violence and bloodshed produce merely suffering; but oppressive institutions produce degradation also. A French peasant might retain the pride and spirit of a free man, though he knew that the next day he might be dragged before a revolutionary tribunal, or hurried off to join the army in Spain or Russia. But a French peasant who had been placed in the stocks for want of due servility to his seigneur, who had seen his son sent to the galleys for destroying a partridge's eggs, who knew that the honour of his family had been outraged by some licentious noble, such a man could not but feel himself a debased and unhappy slave. The sufferings of the Revolution, in short, were to the sufferings of the ancient régime as the plague of London to the malaria of a tropical climate. The one was a temporary though overwhelming blow, the other a wasting pestilence-the perpetual source of terror and misery to every successive generation existing within its influence.

Mr Alison's opinions upon the French Revolution induce him to speak with triumphant admiration of the foresight shown by Mr Pitt and Mr Burke upon that subject, and with condescending compassion of the blindness of Mr Fox. Posterity,' he assures us, will not search the speeches of Mr Fox for historic truth, nor pronounce him gifted with any extraordinary politi'cal penetration. On the contrary, it must record with regret 'that the light which broke upon Mr Burke at the outset of the Revolution, and on Mr Pitt before its principal atrocities began, only shone on his fervent mind when descending to the ' grave.'-(v. 720.) That, we presume, will depend upon the view taken by posterity of the events in question. It is impossible to deny that Mr Burke appreciated the character of the then existing generation of Frenchmen more truly than Mr Fox. But if future ages see in the French Revolution a shock which, dreadful as it was, saved France from hopeless and lingering decay, they will scarcely deny their admiration to the statesman who discerned its true character; merely because his sanguine and generous nature led him to think too favourably of the individuals

who conducted it. The physical evils inflicted by the French Revolution are already almost effaced, and their last traces will vanish with the present generation. But its moral consequences may endure for ages, and it is by their ultimate character that the comparative wisdom of the rival statesmen must be tried.

It may be true that Mr Fox was induced, late and reluctantly, to despair of French liberty. But it was not the turbulence of the Revolution which changed his opinions. It was the forcible interruption, not the natural tendency, of its progress, which caused his despondency. He had foreseen that the excesses of the French people were incapable of being a permanent evil; but no human skill could enable him to foresee the downfall of Napoleon. It would be unfair to blame a physician for ignorance in recommending sea-bathing, because his patient happened to be carried off by a shark; and it is equally unjust to assert that Mr Fox was originally wrong in his opinion of the French Revolution, because he lived to see its benefits destroyed for a time by the unexpected interference of a powerful usurper.

We are at a loss to comprehend the precise moral lesson which Mr Alison would lead his readers to draw from the French Revolution. Nor, to say truth, is it easy to conceive how he can find any instruction at all in an event which he believes to have originated in mysterious insanity, and to have terminated in hopeless slavery. It is true that we find in his work plenty of sonorous declamation about the fatal career of guilt, the short-lived triumphs of wickedness, and the inevitable laws of retribution. But we know nothing more annoying to the reader than this sort of rhetorical amplification, upon subjects which require to be discussed with the most rigid precision of which language is capable. No doubt Robespierre was a wicked man, and was as miserable as wicked men generally are. No doubt Napoleon was rash and ambitious, and owed his downfall to his own pride and recklessness. No doubt the French populace were madmen and ruffians, and made themselves as wretched by their crimes as they deserved to be. But all this is not the sort of instruction which we expect from an elaborate history of the Revolution. We have searched Mr Alison's work for a calm dispassionate discussion of the means by which the evils of the ancient government might have been removed, and yet the excesses of the Revolution prevented; and we have found ourselves again and again baffled and bewildered by a mazy tissue of words. No reasonable being who reads Mr Alison's narrative requires to be lectured about the horrors of anarchy. Every body knows that anarchy is a tremendous evil; but was it an avoidable evil? was it a greater evil than continued subjection? was there no middle course by