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power little under the influence of public opinion, and too apt to be abused. But local irresponsible boards would be liable to the same objection. If they are an object of really great interest to the people, and create party-divisions and competition, the minority is ruthlessly trampled down by the majority. But more commonly the public apathy leaves the management of the whole in the hands of a few self-interested men, who have their own reasons for seeking office and managing the public business. Inquiries into misconduct, and attempts to eradicate fixed abuses, have ever been in such cases hard, tedious, and depressing tasks. But when at the head of the whole department there is, as in the present instance, a cabinet minister, liable to be questioned in Parliament, the responsibility to the country is complete and instantaneous. Let a single damaging case be made out,-let even papers be moved for which there is reluctance to give, or a question be asked that is awkwardly answered, -the whole system quivers with alarm, and the charge passes through to its destination, though originating in the humblest department of a local board, like an electric shock. Thus the General Board, if it be. a centre of power, is also a centre-and a very sensitive centre --of responsibility. But we must always remember that its proper functions are, not the practical enforcement of sanitary rules, but the creation and embodiment of the local boards, and the imparting to them assistance and advice in the performance of their duties. If an individual, or a parochial board, should have made any great discovery in practical sanitary arrangements, it would be a toilsome task to persuade every local body of its efficacy. But as responsibility is ramified from the centre, so is light and knowledge. Ere the Cholera had approached our shores, the Board of Health, after tracing with sedulous vigilance its footsteps through every part of the world, and concentrating all that had been seen and known regarding it by the most skilful and sagacious men in all countries, were able to devise precautionary arrangements having the effect of arresting the progress of the pestilence. In the face both of the great experience and of the skilful deduction from that experience which were thus put before the public, and of which other European nations are now gladly taking advantage, many corporate bodies, in their selfconceit, chose to adopt totally different views, and to let the people die in thousands. They showed in this what was to have been hoped for from their unaided local efforts; but it was one of the advantages of the new system that their conduct has been exposed, and recorded as a warning for the future. Indeed, the thousand ways in which a body of competent and able men, with the great resources of the science of the nation at their dis

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posal, may impart knowledge, both of the existence of evils and of their probable remedies, cannot well be estimated or even conjectured. The sanitary condition of the mercantile navy a subject in which the British public might well be supposed to take an interest - has been for the first time announced to the public by the Board of Health. It has been shown by them that many of our ships are moveable cellars, as ripe fevernests as any of the Liverpool cellars, -- and as urgently standing in need of amendment.

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Another great service likely to be performed by such a Board is at the same time the source of animosity towards it. On the matter of sanitary reform, the interests of individuals and of classes will often be at variance with those of the public, which it will be the duty of the Board to protect. With attornies seeking popularity and business, with dethroned local authorities, and especially with owners of small and unwholesome houses, whose profits are enlarged by the degradation of the people, whoever seeks to enforce a Public Health Act must lay his account with waging incessant war. The Board of Health have, in their General Report, thus announced their views and intentions on this matter:

'Considering the provisions made for the satisfaction of the ratepayers with the application of the act, we should hesitate to recommend the enforcement of its provisions against the general and deliberate wishes of the inhabitants of any town, when the intended measures were placed fully and fairly before them. But in the face of proved facts of preventible evils under which the great bulk of the population of a town may be suffering, we should be cautious in accepting as the real expression of opinion, declarations against remedies, unless under scrutinies and precautions, such as experience has suggested in relation to the guises assumed by such interests as those above indicated.* We should not accept as expositions of the aversion of "the people," or of the unwillingness of the town, declarations which we know to be got up on ignorant or false representations by the owners of the worst conditioned tenements, in respect to which may be requisite to adopt compulsory measures, or by local functionaries whose powers it may be necessary to supersede; or by one local party in the mere spirit of opposition against the measure which may happen to have been initiated by persons belonging to another, or to no local party whatsoever.' (P. 67.)

It is painful to think that it is among those middle classes where we otherwise find the best citizens of the State, that opposition to sanitary reform has chiefly shown itself, and is likely to continue. But we do not hesitate to say that their

Viz., those of small house proprietors, who get themselves represented in the elected managing bodies, to suit their own interests.

opposition to it is generally as selfish as it is barbarous. There is unfortunately a sensitiveness against meddling with the abuses as well as the uses of property in this country, which seems to drive the comfortable classes frantic when anything can be called or made to appear an infringement on absolute and sometimes offensive rights, and then compassion, justice, and the still small voice of reason will appeal to it, as to other frenzies, in vain. But let the middle classes be cautious, and be at the trouble to understand the question. If they now run their eye over society from its summit to its base, they will see that the one great remaining and most dangerous gap is where the middle class ends and the working class begins. It were well that this gap, like the others that have been but are no more, should be filled up, or smoothed over; and that can only be done when the humblest classes shall have shaken off a portion of the debasement which now hangs about them: Or the wealth which is retained through a selfish refusal to co-operate in this good cause, may in the end be found not so secure, as all who love the advancement of civilisation, as well as the security of property, must ever wish to see it.

ART. VIII.-Histoire de la Révolution de 1848. By A. DE LAMARTINE. 2 tomes. Paris: 1849.

THE

HE most valuable materials for the history of great events are undoubtedly afforded by the autobiographies of those who took a distinguished part in them. They perceived the importance of details which a bystander would have neglected. They knew what was proposed and what was decided at secret councils; they can tell us what they themselves did, and, what is often very different, what they intended. Such narratives, however, are comparatively rare: And those which we possess. have generally been written long after the events-when the recollections of the narrator had lost their first vividness; while their publication is often delayed still longer, until the cotemporaries of the writer have passed away,-perhaps until he has passed away himself, so that much of the restraint, which the liability to denial and exposure would have imposed on his inventions or on his suppressions, has been removed. memoirs of M. de Talleyrand, for example - which we are only to have twenty years hence, will not be received with the confidence which they would have deserved if they had been published in his lifetime, or even immediately after his death: And one of the great merits of M. de Lamartine's work is its freedom from these objections. It must have been written within a few

The

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months of the events which it relates; and it is published while almost every other actor in that great drama can protest against its statements or supply its omissions. On the other hand, of course, this proximity has its inconveniences. M. de Lamartine cannot feel as impartially as if his work had treated of times long since passed; or speak as boldly as if it had been intended to be posthumous. In following the course of this narrative, we accordingly often wish for names where we find mere designations, and for details where we find only general statements. Much is obviously concealed from us which it would have been useful to know, but dangerous to tell. Undeserved praise, too, appears to be frequently awarded; and deserved blame to be still more frequently withheld. These objections, however, are far more than counterbalanced by the freshness and vivacity of the narrative: a freshness and vivacity which even as great a poet as M. de Lamartine could not have given to it, if he had written it ten years later. But it is not what it calls itself. It is not a History of the Revolution of 1848. It is an account of what M. de Lamartine said and did from the 24th of February to the 24th of June in that year. But, as he took a great share during that period in the creation, organisation, and direction of the Republic, he cannot tell his own story without interweaving that of the Revolution. The accessory, however, is always kept in proper subordination to the principal. What we are told of the fortunes of France is always subservient to the real subject of the work- the fortunes of M. de Lamartine. We shall treat the work therefore, not as a history, but as an autobiography. As the former it would be meagre and unsatisfactory; as the latter it is as copious as we could wish it to be.

But before we proceed to the personal narrative, we must say something of M. de Lamartine's opinions as to the causes of the Revolution-partly because those opinions obviously influenced his actions, and it would be unfair to criticise his conduct, without stating what were the circumstances under which he supposed himself to be acting, and partly because our own view of those circumstances differs very widely from his, and we wish to submit both to the judgment of the reader.

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'If a revolution,' says M. de Lamartine, 'is the result of immoral or personal causes, if its source be in the crimes or in the solitary greatness of one man, or in ambition, national or individual — in a sovereignty disputed by different dynasties, in a national thirst for war or for conquest, or even for ill-acquired glory, or, above all, in mutual hatred between classes of fellow countrymen, - such a revolution is a prelude to decline, decomposition, and to national death. If a revolution be the result of a principle, of reasoning, of feeling —

of an aspiration, however blind, towards a better organisation of government or of society, of a thirst for the improvement of the relations of citizens to citizens, or of the nation to other nations,—if it spring from a lofty idea, not from an abject passion,—such a revolution, even in its calamities and in its errors, is a proof of vigour, of youth, and of life- which promises to the race which effects it, a long and glorious period of growth. Such was the French Revolution of 1789, such is that of 1848.'*

In criticising so rhetorical, and so vague a writer as M. de Lamartine, it is necessary to ascertain, so far as it can be ascertained, the sense in which he uses his terms. Revolutions arising from the first class of causes are, he says, 'des préludes de 'décadence et des signes de décomposition et de mort dans une race humaine.'

Now what is national death? Is it the destruction of separate nationality? Are Scotland, Wales, and England dead-because they have coalesced into Great Britain? Had Flanders, Brittany, Burgundy, Normandy, Alsace, and Loraine more life when they were independent, than since they have become parts of France? During the last 3000 years the inhabitants of Persia and of Greece have been subject to every vicissitude to which a people can be exposed. They have been split into tribes, they have coalesced into kingdoms, they have been parts of great empires, they have been subject provinces-and yet, neither the Greeks nor the Persians have ever ceased, or, as far as we can perceive, are ever likely to cease, to be living nations. The only sense which we can affix to the words national death' is positive destruction. Such destruction as was the fate of the inhabitants of some of the Roman provinces on the irruption of the barbarians; or such as the Spaniards inflicted on the inhabitants of Hispaniola. But such a destruction can be produced only by an exterminating war. A revolution, without doubt, by weakening for a time the power of a nation, by injuring its finances, by rendering disaffected a large portion of its population, by disturbing its existing relations with other countries, and by placing at the head of its affairs inexperienced and violent men, is likely to bring on it foreign war, and to render that war disastrous. But modern war, however mischievous, is not destructive. It may retard the increase of population, but does not positively diminish it. France herself, during the course of the long, and ultimately disastrous, wars which arose out of her revolution, constantly increased in population. The Hungarian revolution has produced one of the most sanguinary wars of modern times: but

*Vol. i. p. 2.

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